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thomas-mvller · 4 years ago

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Tag games x 283129

Hello everyone so uh lately i've started to be more active on my music sideblog which means i've been hearting stuff like crazy for the past couple of months aka all the things i've been tagged in has been buried under all that nonsense SO because i hate leaving things undone i thought on doing them all at once and tagging a bunch of people so they can get a little distraction by doing them (as in, not all of them but whichever they might want to do)

Again: you do not have to do all of them, not even one if you don't feel like doing so! there's a game for everyone so hey!

Tagging: @havertsz @foreverbayern @germanynts @sherlockisonfire @debushit @sadiiomane10 @miasanmuller @elishamanning @abcde-fc @bbjim @littletentaclemonster @tamtam-elizabeth @minimalloss @pearfight and whoever wants to do this! if you see it, consider yourself tagged >:))

Alright, here we go:

1) I was tagged by @/tamtam-elizabeth and @/sadiiomane10 to post a capture of my lockscreen, homescreen and last song i listened to. Thank you both <3

I used to be very annoying when it came to changing my lock/homescreen so now i just don’t do that often anymore (previous to that my homescreen was a pic of lfc winning ucl OBVIOUSLY) also i haven’t really been listening to music lately but i did have a depeche mode phase like two weeks ago and this was the song i replayed the most so hey!

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2) “Get to know me” tag

Tagged by the always thoughtful @/tamtam-elizabeth , thank you and i’m sorry for taking so long ;-; <3

Name: Cloud

Birthday: sometime in november

Zodiac Sign: scorpio

Height: 5′4′’ or 1.65 (last time i checked..... which was like seven years ago)

Hobbies: lately it has been sewing facemasks 😂 that aside i like watching movies, random videos on yt, baking and crafting sometimes

Favorite colors: black, red and teal

Favorite Book: don’t think i have one :o

Last Song Listened to: barrel of a gun by depeche mode

Last Movie Watched: currently watching prince of egypt. if that doesn’t count then ben hur 😂

Inspiration or Muse: i really don’t know what to say here 😂

Dream Job: i still haven’t given up to my goal but at this point i just want a job that gives me stability and zero worries

Reason Behind my URL: Thomas Müller (German pronunciation: [ˈtoːmas ˈmʏlɐ]; born 13 September 1989) is a German professional footballer who plays for Bundesliga club Bayern Munich. A versatile player, Müller plays as a midfielde- okay no in all seriousness yess this url is bc of a football player 😂

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3) Ten songs playlist tag

Tagged by the joy that is @/foreverbayern and the always sweetest @/havertsz . thank youuuuu <3

Rules: We’re snooping through your playlist. Put your entire music library on shuffle and list the first 10 songs and then choose 10 victims.

Some months ago I made the mistake of transfering the songs i had in my old computer to my current laptop and there are some stuff that just........ should not be acknowledged so i can’t do shuffle HOWEVER i will choose ten random songs i’ve listened to/discovered this year (technically speaking is the same) so here it is:

art-i-ficial by x-ray spex

sunny afternoon by the kinks

desire lines by lush

paper cuts by incubus

pure love by hayley williams

spirit by bauhaus

no one knows by screaming trees

let’s love by suho

all we need is a dream by cheap trick

cosmonauts by fiona apple

bonus: you’re so close by peter murphy (god i adore this song)

I wouldn’t be surprised if these aren’t your cup of tea tbh 😂

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4) “Core aesthetic” tag

Tagged by @/havertsz - i’m sorry for the delay ;-; and thank you <3

rules: search your name + "core aesthetic" on pinterest, get a moodboard & select a few photos that come up

i can’t really use pinterest so i googled it instead, as you might’ve guessed this is what i got 😂

ps: i’ve been informed not to use pinterest so if you wish follow this post’s indications

ah this is so pretty, i loved doing this!

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Tagged by @/germanynts @/havertsz and @/elishamanning to do this tag, thank you all <3

rules: describe yourself with pictures you already have saved. no downloading or searching for new ones. then tag 10 people.

if you want further explanations for each pic... ask ahead 😂

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6) “bold what applies” tag

Tagged by the always enJoyable @/foreverbayern, thank yoooou <3

rules: bold what applies to you and tag a bunch of people

- Appearance

I am over 5’5 // I wear glasses/contacts // I have blonde hair // I prefer loose clothing over tight clothing // I have one or more piercings (had three...) // I have at least one tattoo // I have blue eyes // I have dyed or highlighted my hair // I have gotten plastic surgery // I have or had braces // I sunburn easily // I have freckles // I paint my nails // I typically wear makeup // I don’t often smile // I am pleased with how I look // I prefer Nike to Adidas // I wear baseball caps backwards

- Hobbies and interests

I play a sport // I can play an instrument // I am artistic // I know more than one language // I have won a trophy in some sort of competition // I can cook or bake without a recipe // I know how to swim // I enjoy writing // I can do origami // I prefer movies to tv shows // I can execute a perfect somersault // I enjoy singing // I could survive in the wild on my own // I have read a new book series this year // I enjoy spending time with my friends // I travel during school or work breaks // I can do a handstand

Relationships

I am in a relationship // I have been single for over a year // I have a crush // I have a best friend I have known for ten years // my parents are together // I have hooked up with my best friend // I am adopted // My crush has confessed to me // I have a long-distance relationship // I am an only child // I give advice to my friends // I have made an online friend // I met up with someone I have met online

- Aesthetic

I have heard the ocean in a conch shell // I have watched the sunrise // I enjoy rainy days // I have slept under the stars // I meditate outside // the sound of chirping calms me // I enjoy the smell of the beach // I know what snow tastes like // I listen to music to fall asleep (i did that for a long time and i sicnerely don’t recommend it) // I enjoy thunderstorms // I enjoy cloud watching // I have attended a bonfire (quick story time: one time when i was 12 my friends and i sneaked into our seniors’ school anniversary activities and they lit this huge bonfire near the football field, it was nuts) // I pay close attention to colours // I find mystery in the ocean (spoopy shit) // I enjoy hiking on nature paths // Autumn is my favourite season

- Miscellaneous

I can fall asleep in moving vehicles // I am the mom friend // I live by a certain quote(s) // I like the smell of sharpies // I am involved in extracurricular activities // I enjoy Mexican food // I can drive a stick-shift // I believe in true love // I make up scenarios to fall asleep // I sing in the shower // I wish I lived in a video game // I have a canopy above my bed // I am multiracial // I am a redhead // I own at least 3 dogs

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my god this is getting embarassing i had stuff long due ;-;

Tagged by @/tamtam-elizabeth. think you for thanking on me when doing tag games, i mean it :-: <3

How old are you?: 24

Surgeries?: one

Tattoos?: none yet ://

Ever hit a deer?: i have never seen one so... no 😂

Sang karaoke?: yeah... years ago 😂

Ice skated?: nope

Ridden a motorcycle?: had the chance but nope

Ridden in an ambulance?: nope

Skipped school?: a handful of times

Stayed in a hospital?: for a few hours

Broken bones?: nope

Last phone call?: i haven’t called anyone in ages 😂

Last text from?: my mom

Pepsi or coke?: coke but i don’t mind having pepsi

Favorite pie?: haven’t had one

Favorite pizza?: chorizo + corn + red pepper

Favorite season?: autumn

Received a ticket?: don’t even know how to drive

Favorite color?: black, red and teal

Sunset or sunrise?: both!

Favorite Christmas song?: don’t think i have one, maybe universe by exo?

Cupcakes or cookies?: uhhhhhhhhhhhhhh good q, cookies?

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8) “find your match” tag game

Tagged by @/tamtam-elizabeth, you’re allowed to punch me in the face at this point

Rules:

Take the test

Reblog this post with what type you got

Tag 7 mutuals to do the same!

I got the Dreamer and my ideal partner would be The Innovator ?)

Seek out opportunities to collaborate with INNOVATOR types, who combine your lofty idealism with a focus on pragmatic solutions. The grounding energy of the INNOVATOR can inspire you to apply your imagination to real-world change.

that’s deep fam 😂 but okay!

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9) “get to know me tag”

Tagged by: @/littletentaclemonster . thank you and sorry for the delay ;-; <3

nickname: cloud zodiac: scorpio height: 5′4″ / 1.65 last movie I saw: can you believe i managed to watch another thing while making this? anyway it was The celluloid closet last thing I googled: block site extension favorite musician: as of right now? depeche mode song stuck in my head: you’re so close by peter murphy other blogs: @/brltpop and @/s-lay-ing amount of sleep: as long as i can get (usually 7 or 8) lucky numbers: don’t think i have one dream job: whatever gives me stability what am I wearing: pajamas favorite food: chinese, mexican and italian language: which ones do i know? spanish and english somewhat. i want to learn japanese and german :c can I play an instrument: nope favorite song: atm is YOU’RE SO CLOSE (8) random fact: my nails usually grow sort of square except for my thumb and index fingers, they grow round for whatever reason describe yourself in aesthetic things: ?????????? idk man, messy room? loose clothes? football? cd’s on a shelf, posters on the walls ?????

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MY GOD WHY AM I LIKE THIS?????????

10)

Tagged by @/littletentaclemonster you too can punch me in the face

Rules: Bold the statements that apply to you, italicize your aspirations, then tag nine people.

AIR: I have small hands • I love the night sky • I watch small animals and birds when I pass them by • I drink herbal tea • I wake to see dawn • The smell of dust is comforting • I’m valued for being wise • I prefer books to music • I meditate • I find joy in learning new truths from the world around me

FIRE: I don’t have straight hair • I like to wear ripped jeans • I play an organized sport • I love dogs • I am not afraid of adventure • I love to talk to strangers • I always try new foods • I enjoy road trips • Summer is my favorite season • My radio is always playing

WATER: I wear bracelets on my wrists • I love the bustle of the city • I have more than one set of piercings • I read poetry • I love the sound of a thunderstorm • I want to travel the world • I sleep past midday most days • I love dimly lit diners and fluorescent signs • I rewatch kids’ shows out of nostalgia • I see emotions in colors not words

EARTH: I wear glasses/contacts • I enjoy doing the laundry • I am a vegetarian • I have an excellent sense of time • My humor is very cheerful • I am a valued advisor to my friends • I believe in true love • I love the chill of mountain air • I’m always listening to music • I am highly trusted by the people in my life

AETHER: I go without makeup in my daily life • I make my own artwork • I keep on track of my tasks and time • I always know true north • I see beauty in everything (sort of) • I can always smell flowers • I smile at everyone I pass by • I always fear history repeating itself • I have recovered from a mental disorder • I can love unconditionally

Water an aether huh, i don’t know what to do with this information 😂

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if you ask me i would very much appreciate it if you do the songs playlist tag bc i need recommendations thanks. Also massive apologies to the ones that were due since last year I had them in my drafts i swear!

Stay safe everyone :D

#ask games #yaay!#FINALLY #THE GUILT........ GONE #well this was fun

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prorevenge · 5 years ago

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Attack Me? Get Ready for Doom

I have had migraines since I was 3 or 4. Sometimes they start slow and sometimes they hit like a hammer. I can be instantly unable to function if they hit quickly. In college this could be a huge problem. The only available medications just knocked you out so you didn't care that you hurt and wanted to vomit. My freshman year (1987), I was at a party for my roommate's boyfriend's birthday. I had never had champagne and didn't know it was a migraine trigger. I took a sip or two of champagne and instantly got a migraine. We were at someone's house about 20 minutes away from the dorm. My roommate didn't want to leave the party so she arranged for a guy she knew to drive me home. She had no idea what he was really like. She just knew him from a few parties.

On the drive that I thought was to my dorm, this guy pulls over on the side of the road in an undeveloped area. No one was around. He sexually assaulted me and left me on the side of the road. I didn't even know where I was, much less how to get back to the dorm or to a hospital. After a while, some lady found me curled up on the side of the road. She thought I was dead. Cell phones were not a thing, so she half lifted me into her car, wrote down where she found me, and drove me to the nearest hospital. I could barely speak enough to tell the hospital people my name. I was beaten black and blue by this guy. The hospital knocked me out for about 8 hours with pain meds and muscle relaxers, once they were sure I didn't have a head injury. He only hit me in places that it would not show.

My roommate didn't get home until about a day after I did. She was staying at her boyfriend's dorm room. She probably wouldn't have come home as early as she did but her parents called at the same time every weekend and she HAD to be home for that. She was shocked when she saw how beat up I looked. I asked her how she knew that guy and learned she didn't really, he was just at a party now and then. I wasn't happy with the situation, or that she let some creep she barely knew drive me somewhere. She felt really guilty, but guys don't advertise that they like to rape girls. She did have some information on the guy. He didn't live in our city but instead went to a really Christian school with a great law school. He was in law school and was visiting for the party. His dad was a really well known lawyer for a televangelist's church. That was the beginning of what I learned about him. Remember, the internet was in its' infancy and social media did not exist.

I called some other people who knew him from the party and got some information from them. I learned his girlfriend's name . Then I went to the library and learned about this girlfriend, the church, the law school, the college he was at, etc.... I had photos from the hospital. I had declined to press charges because even then I knew that it would be hard to prove. Even with all the bruises. It would be my word against his. He was from "a good family" and went to a Christian college and law school. My family was not prominent, and I was wearing a miniskirt that night. At the time, it was normal for lawyers to smear rape victims based on what they wore, if they had a drink (especially if they were under 21), etc... I didn't want to have to deal with all of that. I just wanted to ruin his life without having it ruin mine.

I got phone numbers for the Dean of his Law school, the head of the college overall, for his father, for his girlfriend, and for the person who owned his apartment complex. He lived in some fancy apartment owned by a guy who was a big donor to the college. It was for people getting Master's or law degrees or medical degrees after they already had bachelor degrees. The apartments were given out as a type of scholarship to the school, and they were supposed to be really nice (I never went there, so I don't know firsthand what they are like, but I heard about them from this guy's friends). I wrote some letters, including tear stains that made some of the writing blur a bit. I included copies of the photos of my bruises. I said that I didn't want to press charges because I knew it would be an embarrassment to the college/law school/televangelist/his parents (whichever one fit the person I was writing to). I just thought they ought to know because he could harm a member of their family/congregation/school. He could also be a HUGE publicity nightmare if he did this to someone else and I didn't want that because I believed in their message (sent to the church and the school). I called the girlfriend (her number was in the phone book) and told her that her boyfriend raped and beat me. She cried, and said he had beaten her too, but she thought it was her fault. I told her the rape was not my fault, I was trying not to puke when he attacked me. I told her to stop seeing him and have nothing to do with him if he treated her that way. She said that her family would be upset as he was from such a good family and he was so well thought of at the law school. I didn't tell her that I was working on ruining that for him.

I sat back and waited for things to happen after I mailed the letters. . His family was shocked but not surprised. They wrote me an apology, saying he had been in trouble before but they thought he had gotten better after the church intervened in his life. Apparently he hadn't and they were cutting ties to him. The man who owned the apartments actually called me. He wanted to hear what happened from me so he could figure out if I was telling the truth. So I told him what happened and why I didn't press charges. He believed me and started eviction proceedings. A representative from the church called me to ask me to stop telling lies about the guy. I told them that they shouldn't protect a rapist. To ask girls he dated how he behaved because his girlfriend told me that he beat her when he got angry. They were shocked. I never heard from the college, but the Dean of the law school called me. He asked if I told the truth and assured him that I had. DNA wasn't commonly used (it was 1st used in a criminal case that year), so it was my word vs. his word. Just the accusation was enough to have the guy kicked out of law school, especially with the photos of my bruises and the tear stains on my letters (which was the reason I wrote them out by hand and let myself cry while I wrote them). Apparently those accepted to that law school should be above reproach. I don't know if they would have handled it the same way if I tried to prosecute the guy, but since I "was trying to keep it quiet so I didn't harm the school's reputation", it meant I was a good Christian girl who could be believed.

I was actually surprised that the letters had so much success. I expected his father to send a letter telling me to stop slandering/libeling his son. The letter saying they were cutting all ties to him was a surprise, but a good one. Sadly, it indicated that I was probably not the 1st to accuse him. About a year later I found out he was working for a company installing carpet in homes. I called that company and told them that they were sending a rapist into people's homes. I even offered to send photos of the bruises if they wanted them. The woman that I spoke to was horrified. Just the idea that he had been accused of rape, and that I cared enough to call when I learned he was going into people's homes was enough for her. I learned that not only did the company fire him, they called other companies and told them what a liability he would be if they hired him. He had started to drink heavily by that point, at least according to the friends who knew him at my school.

I went on with my life, got therapy to help me cope, eventually got married and have had almost 30 years with an amazing husband. I don't know what happened to this guy, but I know he never became a lawyer (his dream). I know that I made his life a LOT harder. I did google him a few years ago. He has had many arrests and has spent quite a few years behind bars. I like to think that by getting him kicked out of law school and getting his family to understand that he was very much un-reformed, I helped speed him into the defendant's chair in a courtroom.

(source) story by (/u/Zeldaspellfactory)

#prorevenge #by /u/Zeldaspellfactory #pro revenge #revenge stories #pro revenge stories #pro #revenge #last10

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tjkiahgb · 5 years ago

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Episode Recap: 3.14, “Hammer Time”

Homestretch, folks. Here we go.

Our episode begins in The Spoon, where Andi tells Buffy and Cyrus that Bex and Bowie’s wedding is off. Amber shows up and hears just enough to think Bex and Bowie broke up, but Andi’s like no, they’re just not getting married.

Amber’s like, oh, that’s not so bad.

Everyone lets that sad thought just linger in the air.

And then they move on without commenting.

I wish Amber had doubled down. “Well at least they aren’t having money troubles, right? Oh and also, my cat ran away. I don’t know if you have pets or anything, but I figured I’d just put that out there.”

Buffy and Cyrus continue to sympathize with Andi, but doing so only reminds her of the situation more and drives her further into rage. Andi feels furious about this whole thing and, what’s worse, she claims she can’t tell her parents about her fury because they told her she was entitled to her feelings.

Andi’s like, I guess that was a nice thing of them to say. It is nice. It’s mature.

Oh?

Cyrus says it’s like in dodgeball, where Andi has this ball of rage to throw at Bex and Bowie, but they’re ready for it, so they’ll just catch it.

One, that’s giving Bex and Bowie way too much credit. Manipulative suggests calculation. In no way are Bex and Bowie doing anything more than acting on instinct. They don’t have it in them.

Two, so the right thing to have done here on their part was to tell Andi to shut up? That she was overreacting, it’s not her marriage, it’s theirs so she has to deal with it, thus allowing her an opportunity to rage at them? That rage is only worthwhile if you can unleash on people by surprise? They must never see your rage coming. It should hit them in the back of a head like a dodgeball they weren’t expecting.

Maybe Andi should consider jumping on Bex’s bed at 3 in the morning one night and screaming in her face.

This whole thing is a very weird analogy that I feel Cyrus developed only by listening to every other word one of his parents once said about this issue. Or maybe not even this issue. Maybe they were just talking about dodgeball.

Cyrus doesn’t give it much more thought though, because he’s impressed with his ability to drop a metaphor out of nowhere.

And one about sports at that.

Andi wants to know what to do with her ball of rage. Amber has an idea.

Smash old junk.

It seems to work.

Later, Andi relaxes in her room and gets a call from Celia.

Well, she gets a Facetime from Celia but Celia has her phone too close to her head. Old people and technology, you know how it is.

Celia asks if Andi got her email. Andi’s like, email? I don’t know what that is, I’m not some Millennial.

You know what, I hate this show and I’m glad it’s cancelled.

Celia tells Andi to look at her email because she sent her a video of a wedding where everyone dances down the aisle and she’s thinking they should do that for Bex and Bowie’s wedding.

Then Andi watches Celia do the saddest silly grandma dance in the history of film and television as she notes how happy she looks and mentally notes how tragic it will be to stomp out that happiness.

Andi tells Bex that Celia called and wants to know when she plans on telling her that the wedding is off. Bex says she can’t yet. Andi wants to know why not. Because, Bex says, tomorrow is Celia’s birthday.

Wait, so Andi doesn’t remember her own grandma’s birthday? What did she think the fancy dinner they were going to the next night was about?

The next morning, Buffy meets up with Marty to do some cardio. She sees Marty’s footwear and has questions.

Oh God, he would. These weird toe shoes are so Marty. Kudos to whichever writer said “Marty should be wearing those weird toe shoes.” Nailed it.

Marty’s like, make fun of my toe shoes all you please, but I’m running a marathon this weekend. He’s been training half a year for this. Buffy’s like, ok, sounds fun, I’ll do it, too.

Marty’s like, you haven’t trained. Don’t do that. Buffy considers that a challenge. Marty lists the many ways this could go badly for her.

But Buffy’s lost all sense of reason.

This is like someone walking into an operating room and grabbing a scalpel and going, “Ok, let me at the patient.” And the doctors and nurses are screaming, “Ma’am, you cannot perform open-heart surgery without any training!” and they’re like, “Oh, you’re just scared they’re going to name the hospital after me.”

Jonah, meanwhile, walks down the sidewalk when he is ambushed by Cyrus.

Watch out, Jonah! Cyrus could have a ball of rage!

Luckily, Cyrus just wants to invite him to a campout to watch a meteor shower. Jonah is like, the meteors are not going to hit us, right? And Cyrus is like, no, it’s not like we’re Russia.

Cyrus says there will be s’mores. Jonah’s like, I haven’t had s’mores in a while.

Honestly, that’s not bad. It’s a B+ pun. Much better than I expected from Jonah “Danishes have eyes, I’m not making a joke here, I’m legit saying this” Beck.

At a fancy restaurant that night, Bex, Bowie, and Andi wait for Celia and Ham to show up. Yes, Ham. I raised my eyebrows when I heard that.

Bex, by the way, has achieved full mom status.

Celia finally shows up. Alone.

They ask where Ham is. Celia says he’s not coming. Is he ok? Yes, he’s fine, says Celia, he’s in INDIA.

That’s right. Ham is in Asia now. Don’t ask anymore questions about it and don’t you dare Google it.

Jonah shows up to Cyrus’s backyard and sees Cyrus has set up a huge tent.

He doesn’t know when the meteor shower is going to be so he figures they should wait it out in comfort.

Back at the restaurant, Andi, Bex, and Bowie ask Celia about the missing Ham. Celia says he went back to the ashram and didn’t say goodbye because he was worried they’d talk him out of it.

Bowie says that since he got back from India the first time, he seemed a little lost. Celia says she promises they will hear from him again.

Which sounds like a threat.

This whole scene makes you feel awkward for the actors and it feels surreal as an audience member, but I am honestly glad they aren’t just going to ignore Ham’s disappearance. Ham the character deserves better than to be ruined by whatshisname the criminal.

Bex and Andi agree to accept that Ham’s doing what he needs to do, so let’s just all of us accept that and not push the issue too much.

Moving on! Celia found the perfect venue for the wedding!

Which is insane seeing as the wedding was supposed to be in a few weeks and the invitations were supposed to have been sent days ago already. What did the invites even say?

Anyway, don’t think about that, look at the alpacas!

Celia says the alpaca farm is a warm and inviting space. Celia’s very excited but everyone else is struggling. Bex looks at the alpacas wistfully. She says they should talk about it later.

But Celia realizes something is up and wants to know what. Bex starts to come clean.

At Cyrus’s, Jonah reads up on asteroids. He says one could hit Earth in 2071, which reminds him of the plot of The Sixth Sense for some reason.

Cyrus gets upset about the spoiler and then wants to know who Bruce Willis is. Come on. Isn’t he a student of cinema? He doesn’t know what Die Hard is? I’m irrationally angry about this.

Jonah wants to know when this event is happening and Cyrus says there’s no way to tell, so in the meantime...

Ah yes, charcuterie, which is, I believe, French for “chewy and dry.”

Jonah panics. You can’t bring meat on a camping trip, it attracts wild animals. Cyrus thinks he’s freaking out unnecessarily. They’re in Cyrus’s backyard. What kind of wildlife lives in the suburbs? And, on cue, suburban-dwelling wildlife makes noise right outside the tent.

Back at the restaurant, Celia gathers herself. She wants to know, yes or no, are Bex and Bowie getting married?

Disappointment washes over Celia. She’s upset they were just going to let her sit there and babble on about a wedding that wasn’t happening. Andi says they didn’t want to ruin her birthday and create a sad public situation.

You know, like this...

Celia snuffs out the candle the way her hopes for the wedding were snuffed out.

Back inside Cyrus’s tent, Cyrus and Jonah freak out about the wild animal that’s come sniffing for their bitter cheeses.

Cyrus is worried about going outside because he thinks a coyote will drag him off into the woods.

But Jonah tells him they just want his Banjo Kazooie. Jonah thinks they can chuck the meat away and run, but the zipper to the tent won’t open. They now think they’re stuck in the tent, but Cyrus comes up with a plan: cheese knife.

Cyrus’s attempts end as feebly as would be expected, so Jonah takes over and jabs the knife through the tent. He cuts a hole big enough to get his head through and peeks out. He doesn’t spot wildlife, but, just to be safe, he uses his frisbee skills, honed over a lifetime of practicing the ‘bee, and hucks the charcuterie board into Cyrus’s neighbor’s yard anyway.

Now, in real life, a wild toss like that would send meats and cheeses everywhere. Mostly all over Cyrus’s backyard.

But, for some reason, those meats and cheeses appear stapled down to that board, so they go sailing into the neighbor’s yard nice and clean.

The two hear footsteps retreating and feel the day is saved. Or, at least, it is for now until someone has to explain why a pack of timberwolves tore apart the Hendersons next door and left nothing but various bones and viscera and assorted cheeses and meats in their wake.

Cyrus and Jonah emerge from the tent and look towards the sky.

Just in time to spot a beautiful sight.

A Windows 95 screensaver! You know they say you can only spot one of those in the sky every 75 years.

You guys, I lost my mind at this. I don’t think I’ll ever get over it.

They must’ve blown their entire graphics budget on pasting Jonah’s face on everyone’s head in the dream wedding and this was like the best graphics that could be bought on whatever Terri Minsky had in her pockets that day. This is what you get when the show’s editors take part in “Bring your child to work day.”

Why include the two in the image at all? Just show the sky! They look like they’re glowing. I put this into photoshop and used the magic wand tool and it gave me a super clean cut-out of the two.

Cyrus and Jonah go sit down and watch the meteor shower.

Why didn’t they just buy stock footage of a meteor shower? I can’t deal with this.

Jonah asks what happened to that place in Russia but Cyrus says he’ll tell him tomorrow, once the adrenaline wears off.

The next day, Buffy and Marty get ready to marathon. Marty tries to warn Buffy: they should both do their own thing, run their own pace, not make this a race. This, as you might imagine, is ignored.

Buffy takes off running.

Bex, meanwhile, arrives home. Celia is giving her the silent treatment. She’s locked herself in her room and won’t come out. You know, like an adult.

Bex says Celia is beyond angry. Andi gets it.

Andi’s like, she can’t let it go. Bex says she has to. What is she going to do with it? If you’re not careful, Bex, she’s going to nail you in the back of the head with it when you’re not ready for it. Dodgeball!

Andi has an idea though. She going to take her to “a place” but she won’t tell Bex because "this place is not for you,” which is way too ominous a thing for a child to say. That’s the kind of thing that’s scratched into the stone above the entrance to an ancient tomb.

Back at the marathon, Buffy is... not doing well.

She probably went way too fast out the gates and burned through her energy. This is something you learn not to do in marathon training. Alas.

Marty catches up to her. And then catches her.

He helps her over to a bench. Buffy fights him but is just about out of energy. He says they should get her to a doctor, she tells him to go on without her. He doesn’t want to, so she starts laying into him.

I gotta say, not as catchy as Marty from the Party.

Marty finally relents and leaves her as a knockoff Imagine Dragons song plays.

Picture Minotaurs? Envision Griffins? Visualize Unicorns? Should I continue? Am I just doing this for myself at this point? Consider Werewolves. Ok, that’s the last one.

Andi brings Celia to the Rage Cage. She takes to it naturally.

It seems to work.

At the park, Marty comes running back to Buffy, who’s still lying on the bench. He accuses her of trying to “White Fang” him.

When Buffy tries to play dumb, Marty tells her she made him watch the movie. Why did Buffy make Marty watch a 30 year old Ethan Hawke movie that was like... fine? I don’t know, but the point is, he learned his lesson from it, which was that he had to come back for her even though she was mean to him.

Buffy’s like, so are we just going to sit here then?

So Marty runs, I guess, a huge chunk of a marathon with Buffy on his back.

They cross the finish line at 7+ hours and both get medals. Wait. Buffy gets a medal for riding on someone else’s back? I could do that! This whole time I’ve never attempted a marathon because I thought you had to run it. This opens a whole new world of possibilities to me. Can you like, ride a horse through a marathon? Do both you and the horse get medals?

Buffy thanks Marty and they walk off together.

Oh, now she can walk.

Back at the Rage Cage, Celia’s time is up. She’s fully bought into the rage life.

Andi hears someone else raging nearby and finds Amber. She’s crying.

Andi asks what’s wrong and Amber says it’s Jonah. He’s not doing enough. She’s the one who always has to text or call him but he’s not putting in the effort. Just the same six emojis.

Andi says maybe that’s the max you’ll get from Jonah, but Amber wonders if maybe it’s because he doesn’t really like her.

Andi says if she’s this unhappy, maybe she should break up with Jonah, but Amber can’t. Why?

Amber! Whoa! The L-Bomb?!

Reduce your speed! Hit the brakes! Pull the emergency brake! Pull it so hard you enter into a drift. Risk flipping the car if you have to because you are going way. Too. Fast.

Andi looks at her like, “Yikes.”

But not like a Yikes! yikes, more like an empathetic yikes.

Either way.

Yikes.

#Andi Mack #Cyrus Goodman #Buffy Driscoll #Jonah Beck #Bex Mack #Bowie Quinn #Celia Mack #Amber #Marty #Andi #episode recaps

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yung-tamale · 6 years ago

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How to Pass Your Drivers Exam (and What You Probably Won’t Learn in School)

You’ve finally gotten your drivers permit. Congratulations!

You are now one step closer to getting your drivers license, which is an important milestone which most people strive to achieve.

However, there are some things you can do in order to possibly pass your exam, and get that drivers license.

Here are some tips/tricks which really helped me:

Practice as much as possible. In your driveway. On your street. Practice in an empty parking lot. Since you have your permit, you cannot practice alone, especially if you’re on the road.

Make sure the person who is in the passenger seat while you are practicing has good driving experience. This person should make you feel safe and at ease, because you should feel calm and good when you drive.

Take any constructive criticism. People want to see you pass, and most of the times, they’re doing it for your own good. If the person in the passenger seat (so like, a parent/guardian) starts yelling at you and makes you feel bad, and they say mean things, ignore the mean things and try your best. Prove everybody wrong.

Actually go the speed limit. Yeah, it’s cool to live dangerously, but you can jam out and be a law abiding person (ha). It’s lame, but it’s a good habit to have. Don’t mind if the people around you are going 90 MPH on the interstate; they’ll get pulled over and get a ticket one day for speeding.

It is scary, but practice driving on the interstate. At 9 AM. At 12 PM. Choose high traffic times, and be careful. Learn how to merge onto the interstate, and how to exit. I don’t like driving on the interstate, but you need to know how to drive with a lot of cars around you, especially if you live in an area that has bad traffic (or drivers!).

Also, try driving at night time. Very early in the morning. As the run rises. Wear sunglasses, if needed, but don’t wear these during your exam.

Go to different areas to drive. Rural areas with hills and curves on the roads. Small towns (I am from a small town). Suburban areas with narrow roads. Medium sized towns. Big towns, wherever. You will need to know how to drive anywhere.

You don’t have to be a road genius when it comes to instructions. Use a GPS, and try to memorize the ways to get to certain places. And please, know your home address.

Parallel parking. The three point turn. Practice these things too. Different states have different requirements, but most states will ask you to do one or two of these things. Practice driving your car in reverse, in a straight line. Practice driving, and then suddenly braking the car, to practice in case if there was an emergency. Also, knowing how to do a two point turn helps.

Try to keep your car clean and in good condition. This means no dirty windows, having decent tires, and making sure that you check your oil every once in awhile, and ect. I like to keep an air freshener in mine. Trust me, having a clean car is better than a junky one. It will also make a better impression on your test evaluator whenever you go get your license.

Your mirrors are there for a reason. Adjust them if you have to, and same goes for your seat. When you take the test, it is a good idea to definetely glance at them.

If you’re like me, and get anxiety, try putting on some music that you like while you drive. Of course, you can’t have the radio on during your real drivers exam, but it is a good thing to have whenever you are learning to drive. Have fun, but remember that you cannot always be blaring your music, especially if there are cop cars or ambulances that need to get by.

Read. The. Book. No, I don’t mean skipping the book the day you go. I mean actually sitting down, and reading every page of the drivers manual. You can get a physical copy at most DMVs, or download one online. Make sure it’s up to date. The book has information on driving laws, and most come with the meanings of all the road signs. Which brings me to ...

The road signs, you gotta know them. All of them. OK, maybe not all of them, but the majority of them. I remember on my first attempt, they made me make a small quiz on 12 road signs (in my state, I believe you had to get at least half of them right to pass). This was AFTER I took the test for my permit. These never go away.

Insurance! Is lame, but you need insurance. It is not “hip” to not have insurance. No, you need this. Some states will jail or fine you (or both) for not having it if you are caught.The money you or your parents or whoever that’s paying the insurance is more important than your Starbucks drink, a new phone, or some other stuff. This is something you have to pay every month, and something that could save your ass one day. Use it. You will need a paper or a card stating that you have insurance to use as a proof of insurance whenever you go get your license.

NO BRAINER: DO NOT TEXT AND DRIVE. I REPEAT, DO NOT TEXT AND DRIVE. Your Snapchat or Instagram or a text or what the fuck ever can wait until later. You can reply to those messages later, but you can’t go back and undo a car accident or fatal death. This especially goes during the exam.

Also, PUT ON YOUR SEAT BELT. I HAVE KNOWN PEOPLE WHO HAVE DIED BECAUSE THEY DIDN��T HAVE A SEAT BELT ON. You know how in movies, people go flying? Yeah, that is what could happen. This also goes for any passengers.

NO DRUNK OR DRUG DRIVING. Know your laws in your state about this. And in the name of all that does not suck, call a damn Uber or your mom or friend or whoever if you get drunk or high and cannot drive. Hell, sleep over. You might get in trouble, but at least you are still alive.

If you get stopped by the cops while you have your permit and you are doing some bad stuff, they will probably give you a ticket. This could mean you would have to wait several months or even a year to get your license.

You must own the title of your car. The people at the DMV need to see it. Don’t have it? Great, people will think you have a stolen car. You cannot forget this!

Check out the reviews of the DMV that you plan on going to. Honestly, don’t go to one that has terrible reviews. Read the reviews (on Google or whatever), and go to whichever one is closest to you that has the best reviews (at least 3/5 or 4/5). Ask people that you know if they’ve been there before, and listen to them.

Whenever you do go to the DMV, pick a good day. A rainy day with 30 degree weather and high winds is probably not a good day to go get your license. Check the weather ahead of time, but know how to drive in all weather conditions.

Don’t go to the DMV at 8 AM, unless you can help it. Noon is also a bad idea, because most DMVs go on a lunch break and you have to wait for another hour or two. Clear your schedule, and get out of school or work if needed.

When you go to the DMV, wear something comfortable. If you know how to drive in heels, that is amazing. Though it is best not to show up with those. Make sure the outfit is cozy and uniquely you. If you want, you can do your hair or makeup. They will take your picture, and this picture will follow you forever, so you probably want to look good. But don’t worry, almost everybody that I know ended up having a dank ass picture on their license. I think it’s something about the lighting in most DMVs.

When you get in the car with your test examiner, they will want you to do things like put on your left turn signal, your right signal, and honk the horn. Your windows need to roll down. Sometimes, they will quiz you on every button that’s on the inside of your car, such as the hazard lights button. You can’t expect to pass your exam if you don’t how how your car works.

Be humble. Don’t act like a dick. Be confident, but don’t be a douchebag. Mind your manners, say “please” and “thank you” and all that.The examiner wants to know how well you and drive, and what you’ve learned. They don’t need to see you bragging about how good you are. Apologize if you make mistakes. Remember: they’re human too, and had to go through the same thing you’re going through.

Seriously, be nice to the examiner. All the times I went to do the test, I got the same person to be my examiner. He recognized me from before, and at first, he was kind of an ass, but I seriously think one of the reasons he passed me was because I stayed calm and tried to be optimistic.

Nevertheless, there are test examiners that are DICKS. Avoid these if possible (remember what I said about checking out the reviews). Again, prove them wrong. Don’t feel bad if they trick you into doing something you weren’t supposed to do. Just know that they will live a life knowing that they mercilessly tricked people into fucking up on their drivers exams.

Want to feel better? Guess what? You will not be the worst person they’ve ever gotten. As long as you don’t crash the car, dive into a ditch, or take the examiner out of the city speed limits, you are probably not doing bad, and a lot better than most people. You are instantly better than a lot of the self-entitled assholes out there on the roads.

Don’t worry if you don’t pass the first time. It is. Not. The. End of. The World. You will have more chances. A drivers license does not prove your worth. Hell, in some places, you can even get by without one. But honestly, you should try as much as possible.

Most states let you try the test again about 2 more times after the first time if you don't pass. I believe that after the 3rd time, you have to pay, and in other states, possibly take a driving class.

Don’t be in a rush to go back if you fail. Give it time, and practice some more. You must be in a good state of mind, and know that you are beautiful and capable of anything. You can do it.

Those are all of the things I can think of right now, but please feel free to add more/make corrections.

Disclaimer: I have actually passed my drivers exam and gotten my license. It took me two years and three tries to get mine.

#driving #drivers permit #drivers license #tips #advice #life #useful #important #auto #cars #how to learn how to drive #learning how to drive #drivers exam #driving exam #text post #ok to rb #ok to reblog #ok to add on #driving anxiety

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cleverbroadwayurl · 5 years ago

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It Only Takes a Taste (Jeremy Heere x Reader Pt. 22)

Song: It Only Takes a Taste from Waitress

Word Count: 6316

Need to Catch Up? The links are weird on this site! Check my masterlist!

A/N: Oh my god I’m not sure how I did it, but I promised it and here it is! I know that there’s been a lack of content lately, and I’m trying to fix that while making a living for myself and wow it’s getting to be a lot! But I will keep working at it and trying because I know when writing gets posted, others are more inclined to create as well! So here’s part 22!! Credit to: MJ!!

Taglist: @retrogarden @be-more-heidi-hansen @scarsonthecuffsofyourjeans @bluhimaweirdo @catatonic-kuragin @stargirl-murphy @dee-writes-fics @macbookpro-hard-drive (I thought I’d tag u bc this fic was literally like your idea)

Trigger Warnings: Mentions of an abusive ex-boyfriend, mentions of intimacy. mentions of fear of intimacy, implied trauma, mentions of trauma, self-depreciation, mentions of the SQUIP, mentions of The Play, mentions of previous fic parts, IF I MISSED ANYTHING PLEASE LET ME KNOW

Jeremy nods, and stutters out a quick “okay” before you practically vanish before his eyes. Everything and everyone around him was almost static, as if you hadn’t been there at all. But the tingly feeling in Jeremy’s heart and hands said different. It was something different within him. It was the first time he’d left and had some kind of security when thinking about you. Everything almost worked out, was almost perfect, and it was like….god he didn’t even know. You trusted him. You were okay. And in a solid night, he had gotten everything he’d wished so hard for—and he wouldn’t trade that for the entire world.

The Heere household hadn’t been so clean in years. Jeremy’s mom was the last person to really get it sparkling, until this very second, in which Jeremy was counting plates, blankets, amount of food, sodas, waters, amongst other things that had been perfectly laid about for an arrival that had been planned days in advance. Of course, you’d seen the Heere household in its usual somewhat cluttered glory before, but this was different, this was new, this was planned.

But it wasn’t a date…or was it? Jeremy stood for a second and stared at an old painting that had been there as long as he could remember. Was this a date? It was a planned interaction between the two of you, you coming over in what, 20 minutes or so? And yet, there was that same lingering feeling in the air, like you were still off limits like this was just the typical friend thing that he and Michael did. You were just coming over to play games…but then again, that could be counted as a date. He’d heard of other people doing that, but he also heard that there was sometimes no romance to it. Of course, he had Google searched it because his gut was just as unsure as to the logic. He knew that you wanted to be there. You’d texted him first, he brought up the idea of game night, you liked it, said you’d come over in a few days, now minutes, and he was still confused about the entire event. But, instead of pushing romance onto you, Jeremy made a definitive decision that this was a friend date. Yeah, just a friend thing. The last thing Jeremy would ever want to do was make you feel pressured into something you weren’t ready for. He assumed you’d seen that so many times before, and he wanted to be a source of comfort, a source of happiness. He just wanted to make you safe.

The ring of the doorbell catches him off guard, and he runs to answer it, the small window not being completely transparent to display who was really out there. He really hoped it was you and not a religious group asking if he had thought about Christianity that day. With a flick of the lock, and a twist of his wrist, the door was opened, and there you stood, almost basking in the light radiating from the house.

You’d mentioned you would be wearing something comfortable because it wasn’t worth it to play games in jeans—Jeremy agreed, of course, meaning he was in his own sweatpants and t-shirt—but even though you stood in pretty much the same attire, Jeremy couldn’t help but feel underdressed. For the first time ever, you stood on Jeremy’s doorstep, a genuine smile on your face, shoulders tall, and no fear emitted from you. It was the first time Jeremy had seen you healthy in front of him, your cheeks a normal color and your eyes as bright as Jeremy could ever only imagine them. Seeing them in real life felt like a fantasy of some kind. Nervousness creeps its way into your features and Jeremy suddenly realizes he’s been staring at you for like two minutes straight, oh my god, he has to say something otherwise it’ll get more awkward.

But why were you nervous? You should not be the one who’s nervous. You were a good person, even though Jeremy had seen the slander that had happened against you on social media less than recently. But you knew Jeremy, and Jeremy knew you. Meaning all of that stuff that was said Jeremy knew was only conjecture. He knew that it was lies and attempts to get people onto your ex-boyfriend’s side. Some believed him, Jeremy was sure, but your reputation only got stronger with Jeremy. He saw it as you being so successful while the things you left behind put up a fight before dying. It was a triumph. Your nerves became more and more apparent, and Jeremy began to mirror that, his own hands beginning to sweat because oh my god he definitely didn’t say anything like he was supposed to.

“Sorry I’m late, I had to change after work, and they kept me late so uhh…” you began hands fidgeting with the edge of your sweatshirt. Your eyes darted downwards, and Jeremy resented himself for making you revert to old habits.

“Oh! It’s fine, actually, uhh the food was uhh late and it’s totally okay,” Jeremy rushed out.

You giggle at him as he opens the door and lets you inside. He knows you’ve seen his house before, but you still stop to take it all in. It’s different. It’s new for both of you, but good. There’s something in the air as Jeremy stares; your eyes following the structure of his living room before they finally land back on him. He blushes and turns his eyes towards the ground, cheeks and ears getting hot. Jeremy can feel every little droplet of sweat…god it feels like he’s going through middle school again, a smile on your adorable face as he does so. He fidgets with the hem of his shirt before he asks if you just want to head down into the basement. You smile and nod, heading towards the door and down the stairs as Jeremy grabs a pizza and some water. Jeremy can feel the smile on his face grow as he carefully steps down the stairs and into the already-lit basement.

Jeremy sets the pizza down in front of the TV and beanbags, far enough away where both of you have leg room, but not so far that the pizza is unreachable. You sit on one end of the room, while Jeremy sits on the other; beanbags having so much space between them, Michael could probably take a nap in the space. But it feels right. For some reason, space seems to be a requirement before continuing with the night. There’s no pressure to touch, there’s no pressure of accidents, and for some reason, it feels like a decision that needed to be made, and was, mutually.

Eyeing up his own game collection, Jeremy turns to you, realizing that you’d been watching him, almost as he’d been watching you. “What did you want to start with?”

“It’s up to you” comes your response, corners of your mouth turning upwards. Jeremy can feel his heart beating faster at that, along with the fact that you were admiring—no—observing him from a distance. Your eyes glistened in the dimmed lights, almost brighter than any afternoon summer sun. He hadn’t seen that ever, even when he’d first started noticing you. It had always been slightly dimmer. But this? This freedom, this happiness? Was something Jeremy was so glad he had the opportunity to witness in his—friend.

It’s only now that Jeremy realizes that you had just cast the decision of what to do onto him. His mind raced with options, none of them being worthy of your time, especially since you hadn’t shown a preference and you were the guest, so this would be a tough choice. He wanted something fair, something that both of you could get into, even if that meant he would have to sacrifice winning. Maybe winning wasn’t important with you around. Jeremy decided that as long as you two were comfortable and having fun, anything would be fine. That’s probably why you put the decision onto his shoulders. Jeremy could recall you mentioning something about Mario Kart before, and he thought that was a safe choice, even though he wasn’t the best at it, to say the least. Michael would drag that into a melodrama about just how terrible Jeremy was at Mario Kart, but it was something that was current common ground between you and the nervous boy. He moves slowly, almost like the rules that had been distinguished in that basement so many months ago were still significant. He finds the cartridge and puts it into his switch before turning on the system. He takes a glance backward, almost checking to see if everything is okay with you, and he watches as you observe the screen, biting your lip as you do so. It isn’t a soft biting of the lip, it’s almost like you’re nervous, like that’s a way to take the stress out of the situation. Maybe the rules were still significant. You two were alone in the house, basement door closed with heavy and steep stairs leading to an exit. Maybe that was scary. Maybe that was nerve-wracking.

But instead of dwelling on trying to decide what would ease you, it was almost like he knew that actions would soothe that more than anything. He grabs the attachments for the joycons, allowing both of you to play instead of just one player. He held out them in front of you, blue and red controllers both set up for playing. The title music played softly as he wordlessly smiled and gestured to pick whichever one you wanted. And that was a true no preference choice he’d laid out in front of you. Left or right, red or blue, Jeremy didn’t care as long as you were comfortable. The weight of the choice brings your face down, the glisten in your eyes dims, and your hand gently grabs the red one as Jeremy’s other hand grasps the blue one. Your expression doesn’t change as you gingerly hold the joycon and get your hands in place for playing. Your nerves hit Jeremy hard, but he was glad you managed to choose the one controller you wanted.

Jeremy had ended up with the blue one, the left-handed one, but he didn’t mind. You were sitting, observing the controller before he hit start. And finally, things started to ease within the room.

With a few quick button presses, the multiplayer menu is displayed, more choices set in front of both of you. He looks at you again, seeing which one looks like the best option. But your eyes are almost stuck on the cursor on the screen. It’s almost like you’re scared of what is going to be picked. He brushes the thought aside and gives you a choice once again. His own preferences for what he wants to do are out of the door. Even as just friends, Jeremy’s priority is providing a comfortable place to just relax for a second. That’s how he and Michael had managed to become friends without filters. Michael wanted to battle in Mario Kart?? He’d say it, loudly, and usually compromising with later rounds. Jeremy was able to do the same, friendly arguments are healthy. They make sense. You’re allowed to disagree with the people around you. But then again, maybe you weren’t scared of the choice, but rather really wanted to do a particular type. Just to be sure, he somehow verbalized his concerns: “Is there a type you wanted to do? Grand Prix? Just races? Or Battle?”

“Any of them is fine with me,” your smile almost seems forced, like something is keeping you on edge. The very last thing Jeremy wants to do is make you uncomfortable, but this seems like it’s something bigger than him.

“Okay. I know I’m still working through 100cc, so did you just want to help me out with that?” Jeremy asks, hands becoming sweatier as he asks.

“Sure!” You smile at him again, more genuinely this time. He can see the ease drip into your posture, You bat your eyes towards the ground, before gripping your controller.

He selects Grand Prix before looking to you once again as your eyes concentrate on each cup like they were an intensely written sensation novel instead of just simple “Fun English” chosen by game writers. “Is there a cup you like that I haven’t completed?”

“Uhh kinda weird and retro, but Shell cup,” you say, eyeing up the courses, light coming back in as you do so.

“Shell cup it is.”

As the cup begins, your smile gets wide and you ease into the bean bag a little further. Your hands grip the controller as you get ready to race. It doesn’t even take a look for Jeremy to realize that you’ve relaxed, and he does the same. It’s a friendly game, both of you not worried about winning or losing in the present moment, just having some fun as friends. As the course is showcased on the screen, you two share a smile, followed by a chuckle, and the race beginning.

“I love Moo Moo Meadows,” you blurt out, red grazing your cheeks, like it was a fact that was embarrassing.

“Oh no way, me too!”

And that was the truth. He almost always saved Shell Cup for the last because of Moo Moo Meadows. One lap goes by, and then another. It feels too fast, like the Game Theory episode suggests. Racers, according to the episode, go anywhere from 120-200 miles per hour, just like Jeremy’s heart at this moment. He glances at your face as you steal the lead, your concentration just as heartwarmingly adorable as it had been in senior government. But this had more heart, more passion, it felt like something more beautiful and purely stemmed from something good rather than a dumb group activity. He notices your body tilted with the kart as your character on screen turns and drifts, the sparks around the tires turning from orange to blue. Your thumb flicks and the kart straightens out, giving yourself such a lead that Jeremy swears he’s never witnessed, even when playing with Michael.

His eyes turn back to the screen, and he’s doing somewhat well. Except not really, since his character is in 10th and bound to hit a wall at some point. You’re onto lap 3, and Jeremy is a little over halfway through with lap 2, but it doesn’t matter. He’s just happy that you’re having fun and helping him get that cool trophy, even though for his favorite track, he was doing rather terribly. He glances again at your screen, and you’re still in first with an even better lead, and he’s sure that not even a blue shell could make you place second. Jeremy makes a note to not look at your screen anymore, that it’s causing him to lose places every time he does it. He speeds up, and finally finishes 4th, which isn’t too bad for his favorite track and for messing up so badly halfway through.

The cup flies by faster than Moo Moo Meadows ever did, but Jeremy’s heart kept the pace. The scores are predictable, you did mention that you were rather good at Mario Kart. You’re in first while Jeremy’s keeping fifth. But for the first time ever, he doesn’t care. Frustration doesn’t come with fifth, it’s rather warmth and grace. There isn’t taunting like there usually is with Michael, instead, he gets you stating “keeping a place like fifth is so difficult, I’m impressed. First is easy once you get there.”

As soon as the cup finishes and the final scores are displayed, you earning a three-star ranking, a sticker, and a perfect first, Jeremy still keeps his average at fifth. He usually gets fifth or sixth. First or fourth, maybe, on a good day. But instead of saying something sweet or even a “good game”, your face pales, eyes stuck once again on the screen. Your elbows are practically digging into your body, hands gripping the controller so hard that he can practically see your knuckles turning blue. There was something so familiar about this behavior, the way your shoulders shot up in discomfort, the way your razor sharp focus was unforgiving and isolating, and the way you held everything you had.

“Wow,” Jeremy said, breaking the silence, and hopefully the tension that kept itself locked in your body, “you’re really good at Mario Kart.” You just nodded in response, nothing else moving but the slight movement.

Jeremy’s mind raced faster than it had in a long time. Did he do something wrong? What happened? In that short amount of time, his mind tried to recall every little thing he’d said, every movement, every detail that had been placed in front of him, no matter how small. Did he accidentally move closer to you? Did you catch him staring like a creep? He didn’t remember accidentally bumping into you or touching you without consent in any way, shape, or form, besides maybe brushing hands when you’d grabbed the controller from his hand. But that was before the Moo Moo Meadows conversation when you’d seemed to relax so much. And if he had accidentally brushed you or something, he’d immediately apologize for that. He couldn’t remember anything that had happened over the course of the four races. But then again, your perceptions were different than his. His mind might forget something but yours might keep it locked away forever. And leaving it silent was worse than just asking, apologizing, and getting it resolved, rather than keeping it in the open air, where it could really hurt you.

“I’m sorry if I uhh, made you uncomfortable or anything.” Your eyes met his and he swore they pierced his soul. “That wasn’t my intention, if I did.”

“What?” you asked, confusion now flooding into your face. After a breath, you started again: “Jeremy, you didn’t make me uncomfortable. I just uhh, I guess I like forgot something while we were playing. Just remembered it now. That’s all.”

“Oh.” Jeremy paused, unsure of what you were referencing. He was near positive it wasn’t a good memory. Something told him to speak up again, just to say something to fill the silence that surrounded the room. “Is there anything I can—”

“N-No, it’s fine. Do you want to race again, or maybe do something else? It’s up to you,” your eyes lost his and refocused on something else.

It was now that Jeremy realized that you didn’t move. You hadn’t moved. Usually, there was some shifting for comfort while playing a game and relaxing. But it had been several minutes, and there was no movement from you. It was like your body was a statue, rusted to the bean bag, unable to be moved. Something was very wrong. But if you didn’t want to discuss it right now, or frankly, ever, that was okay. And Jeremy accepted that.

He decided that maybe Mario Kart wasn’t the best idea, especially since he was so bad at it. And if him losing every race seem to only make the tension in the room swell, maybe it was good to just let the game go and choose something else; for both of your sakes. Of course, when it came to picking games that were fair for both of you, meaning probably no first-person shooters from middle school or anything, he decided to choose the great equalizer of all party games. Although it was a bad idea to pull it out, Jeremy thought that the best thing to do was switch over to a less popular part of one of the Nintendo franchises: Mario Party.

Of course, Friendship Ruiner 8000, as Michael liked to call it, included motion controls, which Jeremy was again, not good at. But he figured their janky-ness would even out the skill sets and make it more of a fair fight, even though Jeremy was sure he would be too caught up in you to actually play the game to his best ability. But trying was worth it. You were worth it.

“Do you want to maybe play Mario Party 8? It’s the only Mario Party I have, but I figure that the motion controls are so bad, it would be fun to just kinda laugh at,” Jeremy asked, his eyes flicking towards you. He was telling the truth about the motion controls. Yes, sometimes the controllers stop registering movement. It’s just frustrating for games like Skyward Sword but infinitely funny for games like Mario Party 8 or Wii Sports.

At last, your entire body shifted, like your soul was coming back into view, like everything had just been worked out, no strings attached. “Jeremy,” you started, a smile forming on your lips, “you trust me enough to be friends with me at the end of a Mario Party game?”

“Yeah.”

“Wow,” you stopped for a second before a full smile broke out on your face, even though discomfort still seemed to be at the forefront. A red crept into your face as you continued with your thought: “you must really think I’m a good person or something.”

“Well yeah,” Jeremy blushed in return before he rushed to change the game and console.

“Now it’s been a little bit since I’ve played Mario Party 8, so I’m warning you now, 2v2 games are going to be rough with me,” you said, hands pulling your sleeves down a little bit.

“That’s fine,” he reassured, “motion controls are weird anyway.”

You gave a chuckle as you continued sitting, getting more comfortable within the bean bag chair. “True.”

The game quickly started and both of you were met with less than ideal graphics—when did the Wii get such a pixelated screen?—and the odd mascot appeared before the two of you. His weird laugh came through the speakers, and more choices appeared on every screen. But suddenly, choices became easy. The type was of course 4 player, two being you, two being computers, 15 turns—to make it interesting, and any course except the city one that’s somehow a ripped off version of Monopoly. Finally, the character selection screen appeared, and Jeremy waited for you to pick your favorite original Mario character, just so he wouldn’t take something that would be claimed as rightfully yours, for the game, at least. Once you were done selecting, Jeremy picked his favorite franchise character, one that is overlooked by many people, specifically men. Jeremy Heere chose Princess Peach.

“Peach?” you asked, eyeing him.

Jeremy’s skin went aflame, he could feel the familiar tingling from his toes to his ears. His mind raced for justification, a quick answer, a solution, for why he chose Princess Peach. But you surprisingly beat him to it.

“She’s cool, Jeremy, I’m just surprised. Maybe I should’ve picked Mario or something.”

At the small comment and remark of romantic tension that was still lingering in the room, Jeremy turned every little bit redder and he swore that his heart skipped a beat. Was that you…flirting? With him? Jeremy had never seen that before, especially from you, and especially since you’d been strictly off-limits for so long. Maybe it was playful. It was a joke. It was something that he shouldn’t dwell on. You probably weren’t dwelling on it.

Somehow, the next few decisions happen, and Jeremy is able to form coherent enough sentences to vouch for the computers to be on Hard Mode, just to even the playing field between skill levels.

The game starts immediately, both computers pulling ahead and already placing traps on spaces that are supposed to be +3 coins. Both computers get an added 3 coins, for landing on the space, and both you and Jeremy make fun of the randomized way that both AI are playing the game.

The beginning of the game quickly switches to halfway through, and by now you’ve moved closer to Jeremy, bumping each other periodically, so far behind the computers it’s almost laughable. Each minigame is spent in a fit of laughter as both of you are clearly doing what the instructions are telling you to do, but the motion controls aren’t picking it up. It’s sweet, fun, and most importantly, relaxed. The now somewhat-cold-pizza is starting to be eaten, neither of you cares about how it tastes, but rather, what the moment means.

When the game finishes, Jeremy maintains a steady third, with you in second thanks to the bonus stars that are given out after the game is finished. Although both of you felt that you really didn’t do anything special, it was almost like the game took pity on you, and chose to give both of the actual players some bonus stars.

But between the two of you, the places don’t matter. It was fun to just play an interesting game with one another, despite the casual reputation it has among other groups. Each turn out of the 15 was exciting, fun, and laughable, considering how bad you two were doing. Instead of being put against each other, the two of you had an alliance; a method of teambuilding that couldn’t be fabricated by anyone. This was something special, and there was almost a bond formed that game, something that wouldn’t be easily forgotten or erased. And the room now had comfort practically written on the walls. Of course, it was a comfort with each other. The physical, more touchy, comfort wasn’t present in the room. There was still space between you two, and something still felt right about that. Maybe it was Jeremy’s mind consistently telling him to lay off on certain kinds of affection, especially since you two probably weren’t dating, and to keep his space.

The pizza was nearly gone, a final slice just sitting in the box, neither one wanting to touch it. The excitement of the game before had exited, and leaving in its place easy silence and exhaustion. It was late, and while Jeremy definitely wanted you to stay at his house for as long as you could, it was your choice to leave. He might be bummed out for a few seconds, but then would be honestly grateful for the time he got to spend with you, which was worth much more than feeling sorry for himself in his basement like usual. So he decided to leave an ambiguous question out of the equation of the night and instead decided on suggesting to watch a movie. It wouldn’t take much effort, and leaving halfway through would never be a crime, especially since Jeremy was not the person who wanted to take away that freedom. “Hey, do you maybe want to watch a movie? If you have to go, that’s fine too, but I thought I’d ask, like, just in case you didn’t or something.”

“Sure, Jeremy. That sounds nice after Toad totally kicking our asses.”

Jeremy let out a small chuckle before he flipped off the Wii and changed to the PS4. After cycling through the apps on the menu, he found Netflix and booted it up, the classic Netflix noise making its way into the basement. You sat back on the beanbag as the noise rang out, taking a more relaxed posture than you had the entire night. Although you seemed to be a little more at peace, Jeremy’s mind kept crawling back to the same thought: what even was tonight? The Mario and Peach comment made it seem like a date, but you two had never dated or established dating before, and the beginning of the night seemed only friendly. But now it felt so…date like. And of course, it wouldn’t be any date, no, this was the first date. First dates were uncomfortable, awkward, and kind of hard to swallow. They made even the most confident people cringe. They almost take the appearance of an interview for the rest of the relationship. And Jeremy didn’t want that. He’d rather keep the feeling in the room going and choosing something that wouldn’t make either of you uncomfortable. So he had to narrow his search: nothing with a sex scene or domestic violence of any kind. It would be too hard on you, he assumed, and it would crush him to make you upset on your possibly first date.

“First date?” you inquired, eyes scanning him.

Jeremy jumps up and nearly throws the controller, not realizing that his thoughts had been muttered aloud to the person sitting next to him. “Y-Yeah, because I thought well, the Mario and Peach comment, and I—”

“Jeremy,” you chuckle, smile breaking through and remaining. You finally make eye contact with him and Jeremy can feel the fear creeping up into his features. Wrong move, dumbass. “This isn’t our first date—” shit shit SHIT “—It’s like our fourth.”

For a second the world stops turning and Jeremy can feel his brain reeling back. How the heck was this a fourth date? Those other times he’d spent with you weren’t dates, were they? What counted, what didn’t count, what was in between? How did he miss something as big as this??? He didn’t really want to imply romance, even back in the moments, but this still felt like—

“Our first date I think I count as the time I came over here, even though that was a pretty bad circumstance. Our second was making breakfast, which again, bad circumstance, but still kind of a date. Our third was like four days ago, which, dancing together seems pretty romantically inclined, you know?”

Jeremy can only nod. He does know. He just didn’t think you had wanted—and still wanted—to date him. He’s been overthinking every interaction for over a year, each moment, each sleight of hand, everything that had happened before this very second. But for some reason, you explaining it like this, everything felt like it locked into place. The pieces are there, he just needed reassurance to fit them together.

“Therefore, fourth date,” you gesture around you, and Jeremy suddenly realizes that this was a date. The games, the lighting, the way you made jokes, the discomfort that had now morphed into comfortable bliss, it all felt like a date to him, and he had just wanted to respect your space.

“If that’s okay with you, of course,” you mentioned, hands quickly playing with your sleeves again, eyes darting downwards as if you’d done something wrong and made a terrible mistake. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that, and I wasn’t going to if you weren’t thinking it but like you just said—”

“No, I agree with you. Completely. I’m just surprised I didn’t like…come up with it sooner.”

A small smile reappears on your face. “You’re valid, Jeremy.”

Instead of a movie, both of you settle on a light TV show, not really getting into the plot, but rather just relaxing in the dim light of the basement. With no one around, it feels like a lost peace that was recently found, like it was a treasure that couldn’t be seen by anyone else. The first episode ends quickly, another one just starting to play as the silence continues. There’s no awkwardness, no commitment, no extra things to be wary about and nothing that needed to be said. For that first episode or so, things felt like they were supposed to feel. Warm, simple, easy.

A thought occurred to Jeremy as the silence continued: he should be closer to you. This is a date, right? Did you want to hold hands or something? Did you want to be closer, and just didn’t know how to request things? Should he just go for it? No. A quick glance at you told him no. Your eyes were on the screen, captured by the show. Your eyes didn’t even match his for a second, meaning you were comfortable where you were and didn’t want, or frankly need, anything extra. Jeremy just being there was enough. His eyes refocused back onto the screen, getting into the show once more before your voice broke the silence between you two, and the quiet murmur of the show.

“Can I talk to you about something?” you ask, hands still fidgeting as you face him.

“Yeah, of course.”

“Because like, we’ve established this like relationship thing, I just…I wasn’t open in my last relationship, which was my fault and a major mistake.”

Jeremy held his breath but didn’t say anything. How could he? He didn’t know about what happened behind closed doors, wasn’t sure about the things that were said to you. In his mind, you didn’t get the chance to express your feelings or be open. You didn’t have the opportunity to have a good relationship, except maybe in the first little bit. But what did he know besides what you told him? How could even attempt to argue with you on something he legitimately knew nothing about? He wasn’t. At last, Jeremy nods, almost asking you to continue your thought.

“I, uhh, god where do I even start with this?” you breathe deeply before continuing, the breath shaky and uneven. “Jeremy, I can’t…do things yet. I can’t—I’m not—Fuck—I am so—” you took another breath—“I can’t be normal. I just…I can’t like…I have a really hard time with intimacy and romance and I just…I can’t even do simple things like hold your hand—not that you’re gross oh my god I’m so sorry that’s how it sounded—but like…my brain and body won’t let me do that for some reason. I don’t know what’s wrong, I’m so sorry, but I just…can’t be normal. I can’t fall asleep around you, I can’t hold your hand, I can’t be a good partner yet. I know you probably want to do that, and I just wanted to bring it up so you aren’t hurt or confused or something because I can’t do it. I just…I have baggage, Jeremy.”

Jeremy can hear tears starting to form, your voice thick. He knows what it means. He knows that you’re hurt, you’ve been hurt, and he knows that what your “not normal” is probably self-blame and trauma from what he could only catch glimpses of before. And while you’re here saying it’s your fault, Jeremy recognizes that it’s not yours, it could never be, but a particular someone’s, who should remain nameless.

“I know we’ve kissed before, but if we could just…hold off on that please for a little while, that would uhh, be great. And it’s a dumb thing to ask, and I’m sorry I have to ask it, and I know it’s a dumb me-thing, and—”

“Hey, hey, hey,” Jeremy turned towards you and paused the show as you take in a large breath and prepare for what he’s going to say. But he knows that this is something that’s hard to put into words, hard to handle. He knows this feeling, and he knows what should come after it. “It’s okay. We can wait. We can wait on everything for as long as it takes for you to feel comfortable. I understand that it’s hard, I mean, after the play junior year, I kind of had similar boundaries. But I dated someone who gave me patience. I’ve been forever grateful for that, so I want to do the same for you. You deserve that patience and to be comfortable in your own skin.”

“I—” you started, mouth open, eyes frantically blinking, “Thank you. I mean…wow, I really just…wasn’t expecting that at all.”

“You’re welcome.” Jeremy smiles and lets you have some time to take care of yourself, to calm down and really come back to reality a little bit. He offers his hand out if you want to grab it, but if not, he’s not hurt by it. He knows that sometimes you need physical space as well as emotional space, and wouldn’t be offended if you chose not to grab it.

“Can I ask you something weird?” the question drops into the room harder than a weight being dropped.

“Yeah, sure.”

“Can we like…can we just like function on consent for a little bit? Like we ask before just…touching, even if it’s something small, and can we uhh ask for consent for like kissing and stuff? It’s a weird and tiring request, I know, but…”

“Of course we can.”

“Thank you.”

Jeremy shakes his head before continuing the conversation. “You don’t need to thank me, they’re your boundaries and I want to respect them.”

A tear rolls down your cheek, and Jeremy’s eyes catch it, but doesn’t move to wipe it away. That would be cruel after what he’d just been told, and it feels like every night before is flooding back to him. Touching you before required consent. This was the same thing, the same circumstances, the same hurt. It was different, though. This was him having this conversation with you, this was the fear that he’d break them like they’d been thousands of times before. This was to prevent extra breakdowns that didn’t need to happen and to keep you safe, as much as he wanted to do that while you were in his arms. He’d rather not imprison you during the relationship. He’d rather let you roam free as the birds flying above.

“You have no idea what that means to me,” is finally whimpered out.

Neither of you touch one another, and Jeremy’s hand is discarded. You two finish another two episodes before you gather up your stuff and head up the stairs. Upon request, Jeremy doesn’t touch you. He doesn’t try. He doesn’t ask for consent, because something told him to let you have your space tonight: over text, spatially, over social media, and in any other capacity. You thank him for the night, with promises to text him the next morning, before leaving and heading out to the car that Jeremy’s dad knew too well. No kisses, no touching, but confusion about the Mario Kart incident before still unsolved. But that was another boundary he wanted you to have space on.

You had been wronged before, you’d been confused, cheated out of a life that was set for you that was supposed to be happy. Your ex-boyfriend had done wrong. Jeremy wanted to do it right.

#Jeremy Heere x reader #jeremy heere imagine #bmc x reader #bmc imagine #be more chill x reader #be more chill imagine #bmc self insert #be more chill self insert #Jeremy Heere self insert

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theamberfang · 5 years ago

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Journal 260: Emotional

DBSA

Today’s group was quite a bit more emotionally exhausting than normal. A bit of it was from my end, since I brought up how I hadn’t felt like I needed to speak about certain things because I had already written about them on this blog. Specifically, I decided to follow up about how I mentioned “Extended Outlook 10″ last week and how it was about things I could do some things to transition. I explained that I don’t currently have the means to go all the way with hormone replacement therapy and surgery, but I can work on my voice and try to make friends with women (since, growing up as a boy, I barely had any girls as friends.)

One person brought up that I’d probably be better helped by other trans people than cisgender women, and to that I did say that I attend an online group—also that, since it’s online, it feels similar to using a phone so it brings up similar anxieties when it comes to speaking up. Another person said that there were LGBT groups in the area that she’s spent time with before. Though, as I’ve said before, there doesn’t seem to be much that shows up on Google—it might just mean that such groups have poor SEO. Thinking back, I would have liked to reemphasize that I think there’s value in spending time with any women, trans or otherwise, because I want to explore as many perspectives as possible.

Since I was on the subject, it was natural to bring up my question regarding the bathrooms. They assured me that I could use whichever one I preferred; one man even said he’s used the women’s bathroom when the men’s was occupied. Afterall, these bathrooms are one-person units with the exact same toilets, sinks, and amenities. In function, they are practically unisex already. Indeed, that’s the conclusion I arrived at last week when driving to the group, but I still had those doubts about how people would feel if they saw me. It’s nice to know that they don’t mind, especially the people in charge.

Anyway, all of that was less emotional than what someone shared. They suffer from PTSD, and they decided that it was the right time to share the source of it with the group. They were raped. It was something that occurred decades ago, back when they were a teen, but it still haunts them to this very day, nearly every day. I teared up in response to the pain that was evident in their voice as they told their story—this was what was especially draining from today.

After the group, I was ready to tell them that they were brave for sharing what they did today with everyone, but they were actually the ones to speak first. They told me that from the very first day they came to group, about six weeks ago, they felt like I was someone they could connect with—I’m not actually recalling the exact word, but the sentiment was that I appeared warm and welcoming. It was heartwarming, and I can’t help but feel that I had contributed to them feeling safe enough here to share what they had. I did also manage to share what I wanted to, but their focus was still on complimenting me, so I couldn’t help but simply thank them.

Before leaving, I also caught up with someone—the first person I had shared this blog’s URL with—who let me know they had missed last week because they were having a rough time. Unfortunately, they had split off to another group so I wasn’t around to support them. I explained to them that the reason I stayed with the main group was to follow-up with something from last week—the whole thing about how I mentioned something last week and neglected to discuss it since I already had here, on this blog. They had to go—things ran pretty late today—before I could say that I was available any time they needed the support.

Someone who caught up with me was the person who suggested I meet with other trans and LGBT people. They specifically wanted to share that a local university has an LGBT group and is open to everyone, regardless of enrollment. Unfortunately, that same university is where I had spent my deepest depressive episode ever, skipping class, wandering around thinking about killing myself. I appreciate the sentiment though, and it might be something I can work towards. They also asked if I earned any money from this blog, and I answered no, but I agree that it would be ideal if I could be paid for what I’m already doing. Again, something I might be able to work towards.

The Rest

Otherwise, there isn’t much to say about the rest of my day. I caught up to where I had last saved in Night in the Woods. The next day should be as far as I had ever reached in past playthroughs. I do recall there being quite a lot of stuff from it, so I’ll almost definitely be needing many posts to get through it all.

My wrists continue to be significantly improved compared to how they felt some days ago. I’m also still avoiding eating any carbs without also, at least, eating some fiber with it. I’ve certainly avoided simply snacking on potato chips or cheese puffs. Basically, the correlation is looking pretty strong: recklessly eating carbs—thus spiking my blood-sugar—leads to physical pain in my wrists, lower back, and other joints.

Oh, one thing I forgot is that I had, well, forgotten to talk about wanting to buy women’s shoes with my mom. It would have been appropriate since I was on the topic of talking about transition and such, but the bathrooms just felt like a good capstone to the discussion. The reason it’s significant is that when I originally came out to them, my mom mostly responded with fear for my safety—largely influencing my subsequent paranoia. It feels like it’s on me to be confident enough to dispel my mom’s fears, which is a tall order given my own anxiety. Something related is that I’d also like her to cut my hair: maybe styled after her own. (She did go to school for cosmology, and she’s good at haircuts.)

Tomorrow’s Tasks

Dance for exercise (also go outside for the sun?); 1000

KA: US History; 1100

NitW: Day 9; 1300

Journal; 2000

#daily journal #personal #DBSA #support group #rape mention #anxiety #meta #trans

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your-modern-shakespeare · 6 years ago

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A Little Too Real (12)

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 4.5, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 7.5, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 10.5, Part 11, Part 11.5

Summary: RealityTV!AU- You are a wardrobe supervisor for a popular TV network. The show is planning a reality TV show like the bachelor and Bucky is the newest contestant. But as the competition starts he realizes that he doesn’t like any of the girls…on the show anyway.

Pairing : Bucky x Reader (eventual)

Word Count: 10,375 (ish)

A/N: So I’m excited to finally get something out after my terrible bout of writer’s block. We should only have one or two parts left of this fic and then it will all be over :( But I hope that you guys are still with me and I’m sorry for the ridiculous wait. Love you guys and enjoy!

Warnings: kissing, mentions of sexy times, google translate, talk of depression (non-descriptive), break-up talk, I’m not sure what else

BUCKY’S POV

Week 9

Monday

“Guys! I don’t have anything I want to say!” I said to Steve and Peggy. Ever since I got back to LA, I’ve been getting non-stop calls from these two and when that wasn’t enough they decided that an impromptu visit would get them the answers they wanted. I had managed to avoid them all weekend, but on Monday I was not so fortunate.

“Something happened in Moscow and now Y/N is ignoring us. What did you do to her?” Peggy said.

“I—There’s—I can’t talk about what happened.”

“Then that means that something really bad happened.”

“Something bad did happen, but it’s not anything I can talk about.”

“Bucky you have always been able to talk to me, why is it different now?” Steve asked.

“It’s different because it has to do with Y/N. You guys know me better than anyone. And so you know that I would tell you what was happening if I could.”

“He does have a point there.”

“Well that’s not good enough for me. She called me and told me about you finally asking her out and then you plan literally the most perfect date, not to mention that I know what that dress looked like on her. And all of the sudden the two of you aren’t speaking to each other. How does it get to that stage?”

“Like I said...I wish I could tell you. I miss Y/N every single second of the day and there’s never a time where she’s not on my mind. I love her, but I have a reason for what I did and I wouldn’t have done what I did if it wasn’t important. Everything I do is for her.”

“If you could just tell us what’s happening—”

“I wish I could, but I can’t. And I would love to talk about this more but I need to go to work.”

“Bucky we just want to help.” Steve tried one last time.

“I know you do. This is...this is hard on me too. And I can’t talk about it, which makes it harder. I want more than anything to go and tell her what’s happening, but right this second I can’t do anything. I just need to finish the show so this can all be over and I can focus on her.”

I walked out the door then, knowing that those two would lock up when they left. I drove to work, thinking about Y/N and what I did. I’m sure there was a better way to do what I did, something that made more sense. But everything that I did was to protect her and that was my only priority at the moment.

Monday...first day of filming.

T-minus 11 days until I can see Y/N again.

Y/N’S POV

Monday

Being back in LA was not as comforting as I thought it would be. Of course, it didn’t help that I didn’t want to see anyone or talk to anyone or tell anyone what happened, so instead I just ignored everyone and sat in my apartment alone until Monday came around.

And then I had to go to work.

But I couldn’t see him again, so I had to use, for the first time ever, a favor that I had with the one person who probably hated me the most right now.

Y/N: I’m cashing in my no-questions-asked favor

WM: Well I’m glad to see you’re alive. You know, we’ve all been worried sick about you and you can’t even tell us that you got back or that you’re home or apparently anything.

Y/N: The favor?

WM: I regret ever giving you that

Y/N: I need you to take over the dating show

WM: The dating show?

Y/N: That was a question

WM: Unintentionally

Y/N: I need you to do this

WM: Of course I will, but if you think that you can just ask me to take over Bucky’s show and not give me a reason then you’re crazy.

Just reading his name made my heart leap

Y/N: You’re not getting a reason from me, that’s why I’m calling in the no-questions-asked favor instead of the regular favor

WM: How many favors do I owe you?

Y/N: More than you think

WM: I’m worried about you

Y/N: I’ll be fine

So that day, instead of going on the road with the rest of the crew, I went and hid away in the wardrobe room, trying my best to get everything organized and set up for once “the dating show” was done. Wanda was at the house filming when I left for the day so, I ignored another call from Peggy, I sat and ate dinner, alone, and went to bed early, crying myself to sleep...again.

Tuesday

I got into the wardrobe room early and unluckily for me Wanda was there waiting.

“I need an explanation.”

“And I need a break.”

“Y/N, I can see that something is wrong.”

“Well your eyes are working.” I went over to my table and started to clean up.

“Why won’t you talk to me?”

“There’s nothing to talk about.” She just glared at me. “Nothing I want to talk about.”

“What did he do?”

“Who?”

“Bucky.”

“He didn’t do anything.”

“You know, He looks just as miserable as you do.”

“Good.” I mumbled under my breath, knowing for sure that she didn’t hear me.

“Then what did you do?”

“I didn’t do anything.” I said way too quickly and way too aggressively.

“So he did do something.”

“I really don’t want to talk about it.”

“Why not?”

“Because things are already hard enough! I don’t need constant texts and calls from you and Peggy! I’m not fine that’s all you need to know!” She looked at me and could definitely see that I wasn’t okay.

“I know that I don’t know what exactly you’re going through but you know I’m here for you, right? This doesn’t have to be hard.”

“I just can’t do this right now. I can’t handle all the questions and I can’t handle the way you look at me.”

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Yeah. I know that there’s been a lot happening lately, but I also know that you’re the silent grieving type. Now I don’t know what happened between you and Bucky in Moscow but I know that it can’t be easy losing a parent. So I’m going to step back and when you’re ready to talk about what happened with Bucky I’ll be here for you.”

“Thanks.”

“And I know that Peggy and I can be annoying sometimes but it’s just because we love you.”

“I know.”

“That and apparently Bucky won't tell them anything either.”

“I just need some time.”

“Well time I can give...no matter how impatient I am.”

“And pushy.”

“Now you’re just being insulting.”

“But I still love you.”

“I love you too.” She mumbled.

I went back to work and she headed out, more than likely to her flight for whichever girl’s families he was supposed to meet first. I had dodged a bullet, I always loved Wanda for having my back, but it didn’t lessen the hurt in my heart. I wasn’t sure anyone could fix that.

BUCKY’S POV

Tuesday

With filming done at the house for now, it was off to a new a place.

I didn’t see Y/N at all yesterday and Wanda looked like she wanted to murder me, so I assumed that Y/N wasn’t coming to shooting anymore. That being said the crew and I left pretty late for our flight, accompanied by Malia, whose dad lived in Seattle.

It wouldn’t be a long flight, only at about 3 hours, but sitting in a plane next to one of the crew members, luckily, I didn’t have to put too much effort into putting up my charade, which made everything a lot more tolerable.

I had never been to Seattle before and despite the fact that I was going to be “pinning” after another woman, I was actually kind of excited for a distraction from what was happening.

After the initial phone call, I had done everything in my power to avoid Y/N. She was already in my every thought and she was ignoring me, so so far everything was going to plan. I just needed to make it to next week, I needed to finish the show. So I had to believe that being in a city that I had never been to before, would provide the perfect distraction from...everything. That is until I spot the cameras.

When we landed I grabbed my carry on and followed the crew out of the plane, all the while they filmed mine and Malia’s every move. Most everyone had just the one bag they needed for the four days that we would be traveling but we had to stop briefly for Malia’s bag at baggage claim, seeing that she wouldn’t be back in for filming again until next Wednesday.

Malia’s father met us at baggage claim shortly after we found her bag, doing a proper introduction. There was definitely a clear resemblance between the two and after her mom left them it must have been a great relief for Malia to be so unlike her.

Her father showed us over to his car, where I placed both of our bags in the trunk before opening the door for her and letting her slide in first. The crew climbed into a van parked behind us and then we got on the road.

The drive to Malia’s house was about an hour and went through the heart of the city. So instead of going straight to the house we decided to stop in downtown and do some basic touristy things: Space Needle, Chihuly Garden and Glass, which I hadn’t know was a thing, and even had a little time to stop in at Pike Place Market after our dinner at their favorite restaurant. It made for an eventful day. I got to see a beautiful city, look at some of the best artwork, and experience a new place that I had never been to before. And despite all of that, I couldn’t help but want to show Y/N all of it and see her smile as she saw how beautiful it was. A few times I had tried to talk to Wanda, I guess just wanting to have someone to talk to about all of this, since I couldn’t talk to Y/N, but she pretty much ignored me everytime I tried.

As we finally called it a day and headed back to her home, her dad spoke more about the city and about how he and Malia had come to live in Seattle. And then he pulled up to their home. It was sort of hidden in from the main street, surrounded by trees and yet still close to their neighbors. It was a beautiful house, unusually big for just two people and yet according to her father quite small at only 3 bedrooms.

As we made it inside, her father grabbed our bags from the trunk and Malia quickly dragged me inside to give a tour, and as usual the cameras were there. The house on the inside was just as beautiful as the outside, with basic but updated features, you could tell it had been recently cleaned, and kind of like her father lived here alone, which I guess he did. To me it appeared strange that the house was so bare. There weren’t too many pictures of the two and despite Malia having shown me pictures of her mother, there was no peep of her mother anywhere. Nonetheless the place was great, just a little un-homey to me.

Malia showed me to the guest bedroom which had a great view of the backyard which was big and surrounded by trees, creating a natural fenced in area. Also on the ground floor, next to the guest room was the kitchen and living room, which I had seen right when I walked in.

She showed me downstairs next, which automatically made me feel a little better. Both the master and the second bedroom were on this basement level and between the two was a small living space with a loveseat, chair, and entertainment system. It became very evident that this was the main living space as there were more pictures and just a little more life than what I had seen upstairs.

As soon as the tour was done her father met us downstairs with Malia’s bag, and just like that the night had ended. The camera crew left for their hotel and promised to be back in the morning, I went back upstairs and quickly fell asleep, not needing more than my head to hit the soft pillow for me to be out.

T-minus 10 days until I can see Y/N again.

Wednesday

I woke up the next morning, actually feeling as if I had gotten some sleep. Her dad had made us breakfast and the half day that we would spend here today would pretty much just be me and Malia...and the crew of course.

But she had made things...kind of hard. Don’t get me wrong I liked Malia, she made it this far for a reason, but she kind of did the exact opposite of what I expected. The whole point of today had been to have her show me who she was, show me where she grew up and how she became the person she was today. When in reality I spent the whole day going around her town meeting people that she had grown up with and being shown off, as if she had already won. It made me feel very uneasy that this side of her, one where she cared so much about what people thought of her, was coming out so late in the show. What else did I not know?

After I thought we had met the last of the entire neighborhood, I took Malia out to lunch, to a little place that I had spotted last night driving in. I should have known better than to expect anything different though. We were shown over to a table and as soon as we sat it was as if the whole place wanted to meet me and while we ordered, ate, and paid I didn’t spend any time talking to Malia, her too busy talking to whoever had joined us at the moment.

Later when we got back to the house I packed up my things and got ready for the next flight. Malia had offered for her and her dad to drive me to the airport but I insisted that she spend as much time with her dad as possible, not really being in the mood to try and carry a conversation with her after a day like today.

And so, with my things in the trunk, me and the crew headed back to the airport. We had had a little bit of time to wait around but I got to walk around, grab some coffee, and I even grabbed a couple of postcards so I could give them to Steve, Peggy, and Y/N when this whole mess blew over. When we finally got to board our flight I found my seat and unfortunately for Wanda, she had to sit next to me. We sat in silence for a bit, I not being sure about what exactly was safe to talk to her about, but knowing that I needed to, otherwise I would explode.

“I have a reason.” I said randomly.

“It’s not good enough.”

“I love her and I would have given everything to stay with her, but I’m thinking about her and I’m not good for her right now.”

“That’s bull and you know it.”

“I don’t really have the choice.” I said a little slower hoping she would catch on to something. I stared at her hoping for some kind of response.

“She trusted you to be there for her—”

“I left her a note asking her to trust me. I need you to trust me too.” Something clicked this time.

“Something’s happened...hasn’t it?” She whispered, making sure none of the other crew members would hear.

“I’m not allowed to say.” I whispered back.

“Is she in trouble?”

“Not anymore.”

“But you can’t tell me anything?”

“I can’t tell anyone.”

“How long before you tell her?”

“Next Friday.”

“Next Friday is the last day of the show.” I didn’t respond after that. She got the idea and now I just needed her to tell Y/N and hopefully she would forgive me when I saw her again.

That or I would have to come up with another plan.

T-minus 9 days until I see Y/N again.

Y/N’S POV

Wednesday

It was another day. Another very long day.

Wake up.

Get ready.

Go to work.

Go home.

The worst part of it all though, was how lonely it was.

And yet instead of calling my friends and just telling them what was going on I watched a sad movie and got all the tears I had been holding in, out of my system.

And of course, I thought of him...a lot.

Thursday

As easy, yet as terrible, as it was to hold everything inside, I was going crazy from not telling anyone about what happened. But I couldn’t tell Peggy what happened because she was Bucky’s friend first and I couldn’t tell Wanda because she still had to work with Bucky. Normally I would call my dad and without him here...the person I went to for everything was Bucky and I obviously couldn’t do that.

The one person I had left...I had to believe that he would be on my side.

I knocked on the door of his very big house and waited for him to answer, but it wasn’t him.

“Is Tony here?” I asked.

“Yeah, let me go get him.”

So I stood in the living room as the woman left to go find Tony. Weirdly enough I was actually kind of nervous, but I wasn’t sure I would make it through the rest of the show if I didn’t get this off my chest. I was pacing in the living room when he came in.

“Hey, Y/N.” I turned to face him and he wrapped me in a hug. “I heard about your dad, I’m so sorry.”

“Thanks.”

“But I’m pretty sure that that’s not why you’re here.”

“I feel like I’m losing my mind.”

“How about we sit?” The woman said and we moved over to the couch.

“Y/N, you’ve met Pepper right?”

“This is Pepper?”

“According to Tony, I have you to thank for knocking some sense into him.”

“You two are back together?”

“We’re working on it.”

“Well I’m happy for you guys, I could only wish to be so lucky apparently.”

“I think we need to know what happened.” Pepper said.

“What did he do?” Tony asked. Placing a pillow in his lap and letting me rest my head on top.

“He...I fell in love with him. I let myself believe that he loved me too. I was fooled, duped, played. And now I feel like I can’t breath or eat or sleep because I’ve lost a piece of me.”

“What did he do?”

“He was there for me after my dad died. He came to the funeral and made me feel as if everything was going to be alright. He took me out on the most perfect date. He gave me the best day of my life and showed me what love was really like. But worst of all, he was my best friend. He took care of me, he protected me, he fooled me into loving him. And then left me. I mean, I’m not stupid right? There was something there.”

“You two are crazy about each other.”

“Then what did I do wrong?”

“You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Then what could have happened? I am rattling my brain for some kind of explanation. That day...those dates felt like something more than just a one day kind of thing. He said and...did things that meant more.”

“Tell us about the date, maybe something happened.” Pepper said.

“I have gone over everything a million times...it was a perfect day. He made me breakfast in bed, took me to Roscosmos, and we met up with his friend Sam who gave us a tour of the headquarters. Then we went out for coffee with Sam before we headed back to my house.”

“Did anything weird happen while he was there? Sometimes confronting your past can be hard and he always wanted to be an astronaut, it couldn’t have been easy for him to be back there.” Tony asked.

“He was happy. He didn’t do anything out of the ordinary, nothing upset him, he was glad to be back, even if it was just for a little while.”

“What happened after?” Pepper said, trying to get me to continue.

“We went back to my house after that and got ready for the next part of the date. I had this really great dress that Peggy bought for me as a bridesmaid gift and he was wearing this navy suit...he looked really handsome. But anyway, he took me to this jazz club and we had drinks and ate dinner and he danced with me, he requested my favorite song...it was nothing I had expected, it was a perfect date.”

“And?”

“And what?” They didn’t need to know everything right?

“It didn’t end there right?” She knew, women always knew.

“The blush tells you everything.” Tony cut in, pointing at my cheeks.

“You guys are so embarrassing.” I covered my face with my hands.

“How was it?” Pepper asked.

“I can’t tell you that!”

And they kept badgering me until I couldn’t take it anymore and walked out onto the patio, putting some space between me and then.

Despite having wanted to talk to someone about all of this it still hurt like hell to think about how good everything was. I missed him. I missed the way he would walk really close to me, so that our hands would touch accidentally. I missed the way he would smile at me when he caught me looking at him, and ignore the fact that I had been looking at him. I missed talking to him about every little thought on my mind, even the thoughts and ideas that made no sense whatsoever. I missed the way he used to hold me when I laid next to him in bed. But most of all I missed the feeling of being completely loved by someone else because I knew that my feelings for him weren’t going to go away anytime soon.

“Are you okay?” I heard coming from behind me. I quickly wiped the tears off my cheeks and turned to look back at Tony.

“Sure.”

“That doesn’t sound okay.”

“I just...I came here looking...looking to hide away I guess.”

“From what?”

“It’s...that’s something he used to say when things got tough. You know, we would go and hide away from everything.”

“Did he give you a reason?”

“For leaving?”

“Yeah.”

“No.”

“Then he doesn’t deserve you.”

“I can’t even remember what my life was like before his interview.”

“I get that.”

“I just thought that talking to you would help because maybe you wouldn’t be on his side. I know that Peggy and Steve are and I can’t tell Wanda what’s happening because she works with him everyday. Normally I would talk to my dad, but...I can’t. I’m just not really sure what to do.”

“When Pepper left me, it was the hardest thing that I went through. She had been this huge part of my life, she was my best friend. All of the sudden I had to learn how to live without her.”

“What did you do?”

“Well at first I tried to blame her, I tried to make it seem like it wasn’t my fault. And then I went through this crazy partying phase where I drank too much and looked for ways to make the day disappear. And when that didn’t help the depression kicked in so I dove back in to my work looking for a distraction. But it took me too long to realize that the reason she left, was me. I had always been a workaholic and it got worse when I got the prosthetic project. I worked through the night, never left the office, and then the fame followed. It became easier for me to talk to someone else at work about what was happening. It became easier to dive back into my work when we were fighting. It became easier...to ignore her and it should have never gotten that far. So when I was done being crazy and depressed and whatever, and when I finally realized that this whole situation had been my fault, I had to spend a lot of time with my feelings. There was a reason she left now, and I had to find a way to be better, not to fix things with her, but to prove that that person wasn’t me anymore, even if she never took me back. What I had to realize was that I may have messed up the best thing I ever had and with time I would come to live through the pain I created. I had to learn to live without her so that maybe one day I would deserve to be happy again. And no matter what happened as long as she was happy, I knew that I would be fine.”

“You were willing to give her up?”

“Yes. I had become someone I didn’t recognize. When I finally realized what I had done, it was too late to try and explain to her what had happened. So instead of trying to make excuses and blame something else for what happened, I decided to let her go so that she could be happy.”

“Do you think I should let him go?”

“I think that you need to talk to someone who knows you and him a little better. I can tell you to leave him and that you deserve better but I’m not the one who knows the both of you best. And I don’t think that Steve and Peggy are automatically going to be on his side.”

“Yeah?”

“You’re they’re friend too. And I don’t think you should make anything final without really talking to Barnes first. There may be a reason, one that could easily fix things. Don’t give up on something good if you don’t have to.”

“Okay.”

I didn’t stay too much longer after that. He tried to get me to stay and watch a movie with them but like he said, I needed to sit with my feelings and maybe I would gather up the courage to actually go and see Peggy and Steve.

BUCKY’S POV

Thursday

We arrived in Hawaii pretty late, too late to go and meet up with Ulani and her parents; they would meet us at the hotel in the afternoon. So getting into our hotel rooms, which I didn’t have to share with anyone, was a blessing after our long flight. And yet the idea of sleeping alone... again...sucked. I was really missing Y/N.

I woke up the next morning still feeling tired after the shift in time, trying multiple times to go back to sleep until a reasonable hour came around and not having much luck. So instead I got ready for the day, went downstairs for some breakfast and snuck away from the rest of the crew, just wanting to spend some time by myself. So I walked around the island, I did a little window shopping, picking out some souvenirs for everyone and ate some Hawaiian delicacies before heading to the beach. I just put on my shades, put in my headphones and sat in the sand, watching the waves hit the beach over and over again. It was calming and a very welcome distraction. Except for every now and then I would see people looking at me, well not at me, but at my arm and for a second I would think back to Y/N and how she never looked at me in that way, how easily she had accepted that it was a part of me.

But when enough time passed I got the phone call from the director, telling me that I needed to come back to the hotel. I had my towel wrapped around my neck and my t-shirt in my hands, having used the hot weather and the sun to hopefully dry myself off a little more before putting my t-shirt back on. I needed to get back to the hotel and take a shower before meeting Ulani’s parents and maybe even have a enough time to grab Wanda and ask her to iron my shirt for dinner tonight.

I walked into the hotel and started making my way over to the elevators when I was stopped by one of the crew members and was ushered over to Ulani and her parents. I could see their expressions as I was moved to stand in front of them and I very quickly put my t-shirt back on before apologizing. They did the polite thing and told me that they saw it a lot living in Hawaii, but I could see that they were uncomfortable with my arm and that made me feel unwelcome.

And despite that, the cameras started to roll and we did the first introductions and like before I acted like everything was okay when I knew it wasn’t.

No matter what happened, I could tell from speaking with them further that they were good people, there daughter being a spitting image of them. The thing that I liked about Ulani so much was her kindness and her ability to be herself when things got too dramatic with the other girls. She stood out basically because she never stood out. At another time in my life I would have liked to believe that I would have dated her on my own. And meeting her parents and having them think that she had found someone to love only made me feel worse than I already felt.

Her parents seemed excited to meet me, though, after the initial shock of my arm and even gave me a traditional leis, an official greeting to the island, since they weren’t able to meet me at the airport. And instead of doing the touristy things, seeing that I had already done some sightseeing, after I was properly bathed, dressed, and had packed up my things, the three of them took me to their house.

The drive to Malia’s childhood home was beautiful as anyone would expect of Hawaii. Her parents talked excitedly about things happening in their neighborhood and gave me a few stories about what Malia was like growing up. And then they pulled up in front of this beautiful house.

It was smaller than the other ones we had passed, but surrounded by trees and with the noise of the ocean in the background, their home stood out by far. The house itself was triangular with high vaulted ceilings, white wood walls, and dark hardwood floors. This house was stunning in every way no matter how small. Malia being an only child the only other members of her family to meet were her two dogs who immediately welcomed all the added attention of myself and the crew.

So the rest of the day consisted of settling in to the guest bedroom, walking along the beach with Ulani and eating a traditional Hawaiian meal at a luau, all the while putting on a carefully planned out ruse on my part. It was exhausting.

Spending the day with these cameras on me, watching my every move with a woman that I didn’t love, probably hurting her in the process, made it hard to go to sleep that night. And even though it was just one more night I couldn’t help but feel so completely homesick. I wanted to talk to my friends about what was going on, I wanted to see Y/N, kiss her, hold her, I wanted to be done with the show.

So I spent a lot of time that night going through my phone, looking at pictures and text messages with Y/N and just praying that next week would go by much faster than it was currently moving. I missed her...I missed her a lot.

T-minus 8 days until I see Y/N again.

Friday

The following morning was supposed to be my day with Ulaini, you know showing me where she grew up. But this morning I got a little unexpected surprise and not a bad one at all.

“Hey James? Can I talk to you for a second?” Ulani asked.

“Yeah, Sure.” I looked at her, waiting for her to talk.

“In private?” She looked at the crew members around and knew that she didn’t want this recorded.

“Yeah, did you have somewhere in mind?” Then she came up with a brilliant escape plan, keeping everyone from noticing that we had ever left at all. We walked some ways away from her house, but being so close to the ocean she had the perfect little sea cliff hiding spot for us to sit on, and one with an incredible view at that. She sat down first and I followed behind, both of us looking out at the waves and I waiting for her to say what she needed to say.

“I need your help.” She started. I liked Ulani, I considered her a friend no matter what and if she needed my help who was I to say no.

“Okay.”

“But I may offend you.”

“Okay?”

“I don’t love you.”

“Okay.” I was confused now.

“And I know that you don’t love me.”

“Well….” She wasn’t supposed to know.

“And it’s okay. I’ve seen you with Y/N.”

“But how does this help you.” I gave in, I guess admitting that she was right.

“I think that I have a way to help each other out.”

“I’m not sure I know where you’re going with this.”

“I have also...fallen in love with one of the crew members.”

“Really?”

“And I know, and you probably know too, that the crew contracts don’t allow for coworkers to date.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“But there is also a slight issue when it comes to our contracts.”

“With what? I had my lawyer go through it and as soon as the show is over I should be in the clear to see anyone I want.”

“I know that in my contract it says that as soon as I’m eliminated or if I win, the contract is complete.”

“Right, but in my contract it doesn’t ever say that I have to choose someone.”

“But you wouldn’t be completing the contract.”

“What?”

“Okay, so I’ve been thinking. What happens if you don’t choose anyone, contractually?”

“Nothing, the shows over.”

“Not quite. It leaves a hole, essentially, in the contract which can give the network the possibility of sequels.”

“You’re kidding right?”

“I’m not. I went over my contract and it’s permanently finished if either of us end up with someone or if we lose.”

“But they can’t just make us do another show if I don’t choose someone.”

“There’s nothing that says they can’t. If we get eliminated we’re done. If we’re chosen we’re done. But there is nothing in our contract that tells us what happens if nothing happens. And then we would technically still have the contract which leaves the network with people who are still contracted.”

“Which means that we would still be working for them.”

“Which means we still can’t date coworkers.”

“What are you suggesting then?”

“We complete the contract.”

“So I choose someone.”

“You choose me.”

“But if you’re eliminated, you’re free and you—”

“If I win, our contracts will be done and you don’t have to explain to me that you’re in love with someone else. We end our contracts and we get to go off with the people we actually love.”

“Does Malia know about this?”

“No, she actually really likes you. But if you choose me you won’t have to explain to her what we already know.”

“You know, if you had told me sooner I would have eliminated you, I would have been sad to see you go but you deserve to be happy.”

“You would have been sad?”

“Yeah. There’s no drama with you.” She laughed at me and I couldn’t help but laugh too. It felt nice to laugh again. “So do I know this coworker?”

“Yeah you do.”

“Are you going to tell me?”

“Um...her name is Diana.”

“Props Diana?”

“Yeah?” She looked shocked though.

“What?”

“I just didn’t expect you to react that way.”

“React what way?”

“You know...”

“Because you’re bi? There’s nothing wrong with that.”

“Well I’m glad you think so.”

“Are you happy?”

“With her...Yeah.”

“Then that’s all that should matter.”

“Thanks.”

“Of course. You know, I may not love you but I still do care about you. I knew from our first date that you would probably win if I was going to pick anyone. Out of everyone I thought that you were the most like someone I would date in real life.”

“Funny enough, I don’t think I ever would have dated you if I met you out in the real world.” I just laughed.

“Why’s that?”

“The last boyfriend I had...he wasn’t so nice when I told him that I was bi. I knew it well before I met him but I just didn’t think about telling him right away. Ever since then I’ve just had more luck with dating women, not that there’s anything against men; you’re just too attractive honestly.” I can’t remember the last time I laughed that hard. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be. It’s been a long time since I’ve laughed that hard.” The last time probably being with Y/N. “I’m sure it had been something Y/N said.” I said a little more sad.

“Why do you sound sad by that?”

“I haven’t seen Y/N since Moscow.”

“Why?”

“I can’t really say...legally.”

“A gag order?”

“Yeah. They wanted to put her through more...stuff and she doesn’t deserve that, so I did the only thing they offered so that I could be with her again.”

“They made you break up with her.”

“If you consider one date being together than yeah.”

“You guys have only been on one date?”

“It took us a long time to step out of the friend zone.”

“You guys just always seemed like more, and I’m talking like the whole time.”

“What you guys didn’t see was that Y/N and I met long before the show started. And I was scared that my feelings for her were too strong especially when I was about to go on this dating show. There were a few times I wanted to quit and my friends told me otherwise, but they didn’t know how I felt about Y/N, they just assumed I was scared.”

“How did you two meet?”

“She was at my interview for the show. When I first walked in the room, I was so nervous, everyone was looking at me except for her. She was staring down at this notepad, kind of like she was doodling, then I got to stand in front of everyone...and she looked up at me. I thought she was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. So I introduced myself and they asked me to take a seat. I started telling them about myself and I don’t know what brought me to say that I spoke Russian and Romanian, I guess I just wanted to impress her, you know? And yet the next thing I know she’s speaking to me in Russian, trying to prove that I wasn’t lying. And then I’m talking about how I used to work at Roscosmos and she got really excited because her and her dad had loved Roscosmos. But everything after the interview was just...easy and it’s crazy to think of it in that way because of everything that’s happened but for me it wasn’t ever hard to just be there for her. I didn’t always have the right things to say or did the right things but being with her was really the best thing I could give. And being by her side and seeing just how amazing she was made me fall in love with her.”

“That’s really romantic.”

“How did you and Diana meet?”

“Well...I met her, technically, on the first day of filming. She was walking around the house straightening up things and I thought she was cute, but I kind of had the same thought as you, you know, that I was on this show to see if I would fall in love with you. But as the first weeks passed by and I kept seeing her around it got harder for me to ignore that she was a little more than cute. So I started talking to her, just little things like how was her day and that I liked the shirt she was wearing. Then it turned into her pointing something out that she had spotted on the show and those longer conversations turned into texts and calls. We had been dancing around each other when by that point we knew that there was something there. And out of nowhere she finally asked if I was into girls, she was so nervous, it was cute, and instead of answering her I just kissed her. I just felt so strongly about her that I didn’t feel the need to hide it and we’ve been dating ever since.”

“Honestly, I wish I had done that with Y/N sooner. And yet somehow I don’t regret having been her friend first.”

“I don’t either, even if we were friends shorter than you guys were. One thing I am sad about though…”

“What’s that?”

“She’s here in Hawaii with us and I can’t introduce her to my parents. I don’t really get to fly out here that often and it would have been the perfect opportunity to come out to them.”

“They don’t know?”

“No.”

“I’m sorry. I’m sure the right time will come again.”

“Yeah.”

We stared out at the waves for a little while longer but eventually had to go back to the house, where the crew had been looking for us.

We could only film a few more things before the crew and myself had to leave for the airport; we visited her high school, went to the beach...again, and finally stopped for lunch. The day, unlike what had happened with Malia, was actually good and I was happy that she didn’t try to introduce me to everyone on the island.

The flight back to LA wasn’t nearly as long as the flight from Seattle, I still got home later than I would have liked but I had a lot of time to think on the plane and I came up with a plan.

T-minus 0 days until I see Y/N again

Y/N’S POV

Friday

I got home relatively early from work and quickly made a batch of small pies before heading over. I drove my car in complete silence not really being in the mood to sing along to whatever overplayed radio song. When I pulled up in front of their apartment I sat for a minute, trying my best to collect some last minute bravery to face them. And then I made my way over to their door, knocking as quietly as I could in the hopes they wouldn’t hear.

“Please don’t be mad at me.” I said as soon as the door opened and before me was Peggy with an unhappy look on her face. I held out the plate of pies as a peace offering.

“I’m not sure what exactly I should be mad at. Maybe the fact that you've ignored me all week or the fact that you won't tell me what’s going on, or maybe it’s-”

“Hey Y/N.” Steve moved in front of Peggy, grabbed the pies, handed them to her, ultimately stopping her rant, and wrapped me in his arms. Feeling the familiarity of friends, no matter their anger at me, gave me relief, and made me cry.

Steve could feel my sobs and because of it he held me tighter, not even caring that we were standing on their front porch. “I’m so sorry Y/N.” He said, not saying it because of anything in particular, just saying it because he was upset that I was upset.

“I’m sorry. I’ve wanted to talk to you guys all week, I just...I thought you wouldn’t want to see me.” I said finally having pulled away from Steve, wiping the tears from my cheeks.

“Wouldn’t want to see you?” He asked shuffling the three of us inside.

“You guys were his friends first.” I said, sitting down on the couch, both of them following suit.

“Y/N…”

“You’re crazy if you think we’d choose which friends to be there for based on something like that.” Peggy said.

“Yeah, if you need us, we’re here for you.”

“Not to mention the fact that he was the one who did this to you, of course we’re going to be on your side.”

“I don't want you to be mad at him.” I said.

“You don’t want us to?” Peggy asked.

“The funny part of all of this is that I’m not really even mad at him. I’m confused and I’m hurt, but I would never be mad at him because I love him...you know?”

“Yeah.” Steve agreed.

“So what happened, obviously the date went well.”

“Obviously?” I asked.

“I saw you in that dress, remember?”

“Yeah...It was a perfect date.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“And…?”

“I’m not giving details.”

“So something happened?”

“You two are setting me up just like Tony and Pepper did.”

“They set you up to admit that you and Bucky slept together?”

“Yes.” As soon as I answered their question I knew I had messed up. They became a trying-their-hardest-not-to-smile mess and there was nothing I could do to stop it. “Fine get it out of your system.”

You know when you haven’t seen your best friend in a really long time and when you do get to see each other again, there’s like a lot of squealing and hugging. It was like that with those two, except a whole lot worse. I just sat there and let them get it all out and when they finally caught on that I wasn’t responding to anything, they stopped.

“Sorry.” Peggy said and they both stopped the crazy show that was happening.

“I didn’t come to talk about that.”

“We know.” Steve said.

“I’m just so confused. One second everything was perfect and the next thing I know I haven’t seen him in a week.”

“So the date was perfect, the after was perfect and then he was gone in the morning?”

“Right.”

“Something must have happened while you were sleeping.” Peggy suggested.

“Yeah but what? Everything was completely okay before we went to sleep and he didn’t mention anything before.”

“It may not be something you immediately think of. So, let’s think about what we do know.” Steve cut in.

“Like?”

“Like we know that the both of you are in love with each other.” Peggy said.

“And?”

“We know that a long time ago he decided not to choose anyone on the show.”

“Right. But guys...there’s something I haven’t shown you, I’m not sure if it’ll help but...”

I pulled the letter out of my pocket and looked at it, feeling a little of the heart break all over again.

“He left this on my bedside table before he left.” I handed it over to Peggy and Steve moved closer to her so that he could read.

“Y/N, I can’t begin to tell you how amazing last night was, I would have given anything to stay in that moment forever. You deserve so much more than what’s been dealt to you and ever since the moment I met you, I’ve wanted to be by your side. I wanted to watch you take on the world, I wanted to be the person who told you that everything was alright and make it true, I wanted to hide away with you every chance that we got. I wanted so many things with you, for you, that I got too caught up in the moment and because of that I can’t be with you right now. I wish I could explain to you what’s happened, God knows I’ve told you everything since the moment we met, and yet I can’t put you through this, not after everything you’ve been through. I know you're going to hate me but I have to hope that one day you’ll forgive me and, once this blows over, maybe give me a chance to show you why we belong together. I wish more than anything to be with you one day but if all we had was last night than I’m grateful that I even got one night to be with you. If I do get to be with you again, I look forward to making this up to you. I’ll see you in a couple of weeks. Love, Bucky.” Steve read out loud, which was then followed by a huge silence.

“Is it me or was that the most romantic and non-terrible break up ever?” Peggy finally pointed out.

“Isn’t it annoying?” I asked.

“Yeah, I see why you’re so confused.”

“And not that angry.”

“I mean, he said all these wonderful things and he made it seem like this temporary thing. I don’t know whether to be mad at him or sad or happy. I just...I don’t know. Which is somehow worse.”

“Yeah…”

“But it does raise a question.” Steve said.

“What?”

“‘I’ll see you in a couple of weeks?’ He obviously has something planned.”

“Is anything supposed to be happening in a couple of weeks from the time he left the note?”

“He doesn’t know about it.” I mumbled.

“What?” Peggy asked.

“Nothing.”

“No, what are you talking about?” There was a long pause, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to tell them or not, but then again I did come to them for help.

“I resigned.”

“What?!” They both said at the same time.

“My last day is next Friday.”

“You quit because of him?”

“Yes and no. I knew that I wouldn’t be able to see him and not feel completely broken up over him leaving. But this whole thing with him, with the show, made me realize that I wasn’t even living in the real world. They call that reality tv...when it’s all fake. Everything was fake and I fell in love with theatre, with portraying something real, not fooling people into thinking something is real. Working for the network was only supposed to be temporary, it was a way for me to save up some money so I could do what I wanted. I don’t have that problem anymore and I need to get back to reality, back to how I started.”

“What you have with Bucky is real.”

“Yeah, which makes this pain real.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“I have...something lined up.”

“Like what?” Saved by the bell, or the knock I guess, we all turned and looked at the front door.

“That must be the pizza we ordered.” Steve said, moving from the couch.

“Let me get it, it’s the least I can do.” I offered, moving off the couch and in front of him.

“You’re out of a job.” Peggy pointed out.

“And I still have $25 million to my name.”

“What?!” They both said at the same time...again. I think that was the first time all week that I genuinely laughed. I could feel the smile on my face as I opened the door...and I could feel it fall a few seconds later.

We both just stared at each other as if there was nothing to say despite all the questions I had. After what seemed like forever he finally spoke.

“Hi.” Was all he said...that was all he had to say?!

My heart was telling me to say something to him, to ask him what happened, to get the answers that I needed. My head was thinking something completely different.

Before I could even register what was happening I had slapped him hard across the face followed by a slam of the door.

“Did you just slap the pizza man?” Peggy asked.

“No.”

“Oh...you take him, I’ll take her?” She said to Steve.

“Yeah.”

“No, I want to talk to him.”

“You just slapped him.”

“I was angrier than I thought.” I opened the door before they could stop me and moved out of the way so he could come in. “I’m not apologizing.”

“I deserved it.”

There was an awkward silence that followed and I just watched him, not really wanting to look away but not really wanting to look at him either.

“Well, this awkward silence is awesome and all but is there a reason you stopped by Bucky?” Steve asked.

“I just didn’t want to sit at my apartment all alone, but I can leave, you guys were probably doing something.”

“You can swing by tomorrow.”

“That sounds good.” He turned to leave, but I couldn’t just let him leave.

“Bucky, wait.”

“Yeah?”

“Why now?”

“What?”

“You used to tell me everything, we’ve always trusted one another. So why now, why this secret?” He looked at me with sad eyes, eyes that looked like he wanted to tell me and yet when he opened his mouth nothing came out. “You can’t tell me, can you?” I feel like I looked pretty sad, which seemed to catch his attention. He moved closer to me and placed his hands on both sides of my cheeks, holding me like he used to.

“I really want to, It’s been killing me. It’s like I’ve...I’ve been gagged, you know. I can want to say everything that I’ve been holding back and yet I can’t. Я хочу вернуться в Москву. Я хочу, чтобы все вернулось к тому, как это было. (I want to go back to Moscow. I want everything back to how it was.)

“Я также.” (Me too.)

And then as he usually does, he did the unexpected. When he left me alone in Moscow I had always assumed that I had done something to turn him away from me. And then the more I thought about the note the more confused I got, wondering why it seemed like a temporary pause in our relationship. And yet I had always assumed that we could tell each other anything, and if he couldn’t tell me what was happening now then something must have changed, right? So the very last thing I expected him to do was kiss me.

As much as I didn’t want to give in to him, I could feel myself physically sink against him and relax into the kiss. After not having seen him for a week, I couldn’t help but take this moment and remember exactly the way that he made me feel before he left. It was easy for me to love him, I just wasn’t sure how easy it would be to forget him, or even if I wanted to. There were so many thoughts going through my head, that I was never going to get him out.

He pulled away from me, holding me for just a second more before letting me go completely.

“I’ll see you soon.” He said before he left. I watched the door until my brain caught up with what happened, despite not understanding it at all. I turned around to face Steve and Peggy with a confused look on my face.

“Please tell me that you guys just saw that.”

“Yeah, why?” Steve said.

“I wanted to make sure I didn’t dream that.”

“No, that happened.”

“You guys are so cute together!” Peggy said way to excited.

“Well I’m glad you think so, because I’m just more confused.”

“I think I can help there.”

“How?”

“I think I know what’s happening.”

“What?”

“Something funny happened when he was talking to you.”

“Like?”

“When he was talking about being gagged, he looked at me.”

“He looked at you?” Steve asked.

“Yeah.”

“I noticed that too. I couldn’t see where exactly he was looking but he looked away from me when he said that.”

“So I have a theory, one that would make a lot of sense.”

“Okay.”

“A gag order.”

“Okay?”

“A gag order prevents lawyers, witnesses, and other people involved in a lawsuit from giving information to media sources or an unauthorized third party.”

“But what lawsuit? There’s nothing going on that would involve him.”

“Nothing on your grandmother or Jackson’s lawsuits?”

“Not that I know of. I mean he punched Jackson, but I don’t think anything happened after that that would cause a lawsuit.”

“Okay…”

“What about his contract? It’s the only other legal thing I could think of.”

“I didn’t see anything in his contract that he had violated or would give cause to a lawsuit. But…”

“But what?”

“You have a contract with the network right?”

“Of course.”

“Then maybe it’s your contract that’s the problem.”

“My contract?”

“The whole point of the dating show is for him to date the other women on the show, or coworkers. So in his contract there can’t be anything that prohibits him from seeing coworkers when that’s the whole plot of the show.”

“Right.”

“But your contract could have the clause just like most other workplaces.”

“Okay, so let’s say that this is possible. First there’s no proof that Bucky and I have been anything more than friends. Second can they bring a lawsuit against me because I decided to date a coworker?”

“Yes and no. No if all they had was a suspicion. Yes, if they have proof and you’ve given reason to.”

“Given reason to?”

“Caused them problems, cost them money. For instance, let’s say that Jackson decided to charge Bucky with assault charges for that punch. Because it happened on network property it would technically be up to the network to cover the legal fees, which can stack up. They could say that because the two of you were together it caused Bucky to be reckless. They can twist things however they want if they have proof.”

“The gag order?”

“You and Bucky aren’t married so lawyers could use him against you. The gag order keeps him from telling you anything. And him keeping his distance from you could help prove to the network that you weren’t seeing each other and not give them the grounds for a lawsuit.”

“So would this ever end?”

“There is a way.”

“What?”

“He has to choose someone on the show.”

“Great.”

“The one thing that always threw me off about his contract was that there was never anything that stated what would happen if he didn’t complete the show, like if he quit for instance.”

“How is that bad?”

“It leaves a loophole, a pretty good one for the network. See, if he doesn’t finish the show it leaves a hole in the contract that could allow the network to set up other shows for him to be on, as well as the two remaining girls. The contract is completely fulfilled when he chooses a girl on the show.”

“And he won’t be a coworker anymore.”

“Which means if he decides to see you after the show is over then they can’t hang that over your head.”

“A couple of weeks, the letter said a couple of weeks, like when the show is over.”

“And you’ll be done with the network.”

“So if this is true...and that’s a big if, you think I should wait this out?”

“I think he has a reason for what he did and I think that he loves you. And if he says a couple of weeks then maybe hear him out in a couple of weeks.”

“In all of the years that I’ve known Bucky, him leaving like he did was the most out of character thing he had ever done. And I know how much he loves you, so waiting for the show to be over and waiting for him to explain, is the least you could ever give for a lifetime of happiness. Some people never meet the person that they’re supposed to be with for the rest of their lives. So if all you have to do is wait a week to be with him, then I say wait.” Steve chipped in, saying something for the first time in a while.

“Okay.”

“Okay?” They both asked.

“Okay.” I could feel the smile on my face just thinking about it. One week. It seemed that I had waited my whole life to be with him, so I could do one more week.

With the rest of the night we watched movies and finally got our pizza. Steve ran out and bought us some ice cream and for the first time since Bucky left me alone in Moscow, I had a really great night.

PART THIRTEEN

Tell Me What You Think Here

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itsthenerdwonder · 6 years ago

Text

Avengers: Endgame

So I just saw it again. I should’ve done this the first time I saw it. The audience was amazing. The laughs and gasps and cheers and tears! We were into it. There were a couple tops of heads bobbing across the bottom of the screen of people needing to pee, but overall a great experience with my roommate.

But my parents wanted to see it too, so my dad bought tickets for an 11:30 a.m. showing yesterday. Earlier is better, but that means we don’t get the kids or teens who love this series. Just the adults who are taking off work. That might not have been bad, but it’s a dine-in theater (so people were constantly moving around in my direct line of sight) with one kid running up and down the stairs (I get you need to pee, but if you stomp one more time I will snap you out of existence) and people talking (if you want to whisper, that’s fine as I constantly whisper through movies, but even my mom talked loudly because she needed me to hear from 4 seats away) but not cheering. Come on! That was an amazing shot! He did the thing! We won! Clap! Cheer! Something!

I also didn’t bring my notebook to write down my immediate thoughts, so I’m going to basically give a play by play as best as I can. Mostly memories of the first showing, as I’m sure you guys would prefer. On with the review!

So the movie starts immediately with the death of the Barton family. The logo hasn’t even started, but here we go! Death and pain await us.

Once the logo starts, we switch to Tony and Nebula on the...ship. I kinda wanna say Millennium Falcon, but that’s not even close to accurate. *googles* The Benatar. ...yeah, I’m not calling it that. Anyway, Tony’s teaching her how to play tabletop football, and it’s adorable. He’s teaching her how to be softer and she’s letting him eat the last food and he’s fixing the ship and she’s fixing his body and it’s...it’s just so nice. I mean, we have Tony doing a voice over of how they’re going to die which isn’t as nice, but their bond at being the last ones on Titan is just...I love it. We’re barely 5 minutes in and I’m about to cry.

And then we get a Carol ex Machina. Yay? Anyway, they get back to Earth (side note: the end scene of CM was apparently not in this movie, but it probably got cut due to time constraints) and Steve is the first one there. He’s the first one to Tony, the first one to try and help him, the first to hear his regrets, the first to offer sympathy and I don’t ship Stoney, but DANG! That’s how you do it! And then Pepper is there and she and Tony are kissing and hugging and it’s adorable even though we just cut out Steve and he looks a little awkward.

Cut to inside and the death toll rolling and climbing and Tony loses it. He’s still mad at Cap for Civil War. Still pissed about how everyone jumped down his throat for Ultron when he was doing his damnedest to prevent this exact situation where everyone died. And like...no. I still disagree with your idea that it was better to put a “suit of armor” around the world than protect everyone’s “precious freedoms,” but I understand what you’re saying. Dad didn’t back up Mom and now our kids have been murdered by a drive-by hitman. I get it. I’m still not supporting you, but I understand why you’re pissed.

But, Nebula knows where the purple cockroach scuttled off to and Carol is a fucking tank, so let’s go. But the stones have already been destroyed. ...I’m sure this will have no lasting consequences, especially since the Ancient One said “these things create our understanding of time, reality, space. if you take one away...you risk catastrophic disaster and alternate timelines.” BUT NOW THEY’RE ALL GONE because some fuck boy decided to play with things he didn’t understand to “correct” a problem he didn’t understand and had no business messing with. Thor cuts off the gauntlet and then his head before walking off into an increasingly blurry image and we roll the title.

FIVE. YEARS. LATER.

Steve’s leading a support group (ONE GUY SAYS THE WORD MAN INSTEAD OF WOMAN ABOUT HIS DATE SO NOW WE HAVE LGBT REPRESENTATION YAAAAYYYY! fuck this) and Natasha’s leading the remaining Avengers. Carol says “I’m busy dealing with other worlds besides Earth, so piece out bitches.” Rocket and Nebula...I’m assuming are doing the same thing. It’s not really clear. Okoye is...here for some reason to say there’s an earthquake, but there’s nothing we can do. Um...rescue teams? We can’t do anything about the earthquake, but if you’re reporting it, I’m sure it caused some mild damage or something? No? You’re useless. Rhodey reports that a cartel in Mexico has been slaughtered by Clint and we’re not supposed to be okay with that. I mean, wouldn’t be the first time he was a bad guy, and he’s more anti-hero/rogue vigilante than bad guy, but you do you.

Then Steve comes in, sees Nat trying not to sob because Clint’s bad and the world is bad and she’s stressed, and tries to cheer her up. But, DING DONG! Scott’s not dead. See, a rat in San Francisco pushed the right button and spit Scott back out into a storage area. After walking home with a little red wagon and finding Cassie, now age 13-15, and getting the 411 on the last 5 years, he got the La Cucaracha van out of storage and drove it all the way to upstate New York. So now he’s jittery and weird (probably because he spent 5 years hours in the quantum realm and he went a little cuckoo) and saying they should try time travel to get the stones back so they can undo what Thanos did.

It’s just crazy enough to work. LET’S ASK TONY! Who has a child to show that time has passed. The daughter is wearing an iron mask that Tony says is for “mom” so we aren’t confused when Rescue shows up later. Not that anyone would know her name is Rescue outside of comic book fans, but who cares because Tony is an adorable father. But then the plot shows up and says “get in, loser, we’re going time heisting.” Tony’s all like...you’re kidding, right? And so is the audience, but weirder things have happened in comics and Tony always loved a dramatic entrance, so whatever.

Then we have Professor Hulk, as he is apparently called. And...in my opinion, this is the worst scene in the movie. We’re in a diner and the food is in bowls bigger than my head and Professor Hulk gets talked into helping with the time heist. Sure, fine, we need the plot to move forward. We have a nice explanation how Hulk and Banner are one and it’s Hulk’s body with Banner’s brains because they did some soul searching and are better now. That’s nice. I like that. That is a good part of this scene. But then we have some weird kids taking a picture with Hulk/Banner (you know what, I’m just going to use whichever one I want and you can fight me) and Scott says, “do you want one with me? I’m Ant-Man.” And thus begins the longest 5 minutes of the entire movie. It might not even be that long, but it actually feels a little longer. The kids don’t want a picture because they’re Hulk fans instead of Ant-Man fans. That’s fine, that happens. And they don’t know who he is, which...this is New York and he’s over in San Francisco. Plus, no one sees Ant-Man. Giant-Man/Goliath? Sure. But not Ant-Man. And Scott sees it and immediately retracts his offer to keep it from being weird. But Hulk, to be nice, pushes the issue, which makes it weird. And I’m like, if you want to push it, ask if they want Cap’s or Black Widow’s? But no, we have to have the kids smiling but clearly not wanting too and Scott seeing that and being a little hurt but understanding he’s not an A-lister and Bruce being “kind” but about as intelligent as Hulk. We have time for this? The movie is over 3 hours long? We kept this? Why? Did test audiences love it? Cut it!

And back to Tony who shows us a picture of him and Peter goofing off (don’t make me cry yet, save it for the hug or the Simba/Mufasa moment) and thinks that maybe he can have hope again. We don’t know how long he works on it, he just says “one last time before bed and I shut it all down.” But then...“SHIT!” “shit.” Duh! Knew that was coming. Kids say the shittiest things. But it’s okay because she loves him 3000. That’s going to be a knife wound that won’t heal anytime soon. Anyway, he tells Pepper that he figured out time travel. Because that’s something you can just do. And because he knows that if he continues down this path, he’ll probably unretire again. He won’t stop helping because he can’t stop and he doesn’t want to stop. He’ll become Iron Man again. And Pepper says, “but will you be able to rest?” And, if you guys remember back in IM3 how Tony couldn’t sleep? It would probably be like that. It might not be visions of Thanos’s ship, it would probably be Peter asking why he couldn’t come home. So...yeah, mull on that for a bit.

The next day, Banner, Steve and Nat test out time travel on Scott. But he becomes a kid, an old man, and a baby because “instead of pushing Lang through time, you essentially pushed time through Lang.” Also, Tony’s here! He got a little “I told you so” moment, but he and Steve are definitely on better grounds than the last time we saw them. (Tony’s porch doesn’t count because that was mostly Tony and Scott with a little bit from Steve to say “pretty please with a cherry on top?”) And then Tony asks if we’re getting the whole team.

Rocket and Nebula show up in the ship and blast away the insides of Scott’s taco. “Rhodey, be careful on reentry, there’s an idiot in the landing zone.” *CLANK* *Scott drops the taco shell in fear* “Sup, Regular-Sized Man?” It’s so funny followed by Hulk sharing two tacos with Scott to replace his. Adorable. Anyway, so Hulk and Rocket go to pick up Thor in New Asgard. No idea where this is. I think it was in Kansas originally, but Rocket, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore. Looks more like coastal Maine or something. We meet up with Valkyrie who informs us that Thor is doing a bang-up job leading his Asgardian subjects in their new home. Also that she’s weirded out by Professor Hulk, which is fair. Me too, although I can look at him while my roommate said she couldn’t, but she’s a weirdo so whatever.

Anyway, Thor’s holed up in his house with Korg and Miek playing Fortnight and Thor threatens a child for being an ass. By the way, Thor’s fat now. Yeah, after watching everyone he ever loved die plus failing to prevent the deaths of quadrillions, he’s wallowing in a drunken stupor and eating carbs. It’s played for laughs, but like, sheesh. It’s pretty rough. This is Thor! A literal god! This is the guy who’s been stabbed multiple times by his brother and continues to love and care for him. He can bounce back from anything...right? Hulk tries to convince him to come back, but he doesn’t consider it until Rocket says they have beer on the ship.

Now to pick up Hawkeye. To Tokyo we go! Hawkeye Ronin is chasing this guy who’s probably Yakuza or some other mafia guy. Clint kills him, which is kinda cool in a visual and choreographic sense, but not super profound. Nat says we might be able to bring your fam back. “Don’t give me hope.” “I wish I could’ve given it to you sooner.” And now we test the time travel thing. Clint goes home (space=check) and grabs his sons’ baseball mitt before hearing the voice of his daughter (time=check) and being pulled back with the mitt still in hand (probably accidental, but return with objects=check). Now we figure out when. Previously on Thor the Dark World...on Guardians of the Galaxy...on Infinity War...on Avengers...on Doctor Strange: Infinity Stone montage. This montage marks the start of hour 2. We are now getting interesting.

Cap, Scott and Tony to Avengers with Bruce tagging along for five seconds. Thor and Rocket to Thor: The Dark World. Nebula and Rhodey to Guardians and Clint and Nat to Infinity War, but at the same time as Guardians. Natalie Portman’s back and being stalked by a rabbit. Rene Russo’s back and being stalked by fat!Thor. Tilda Swinton’s back and explaining magic to Bruce. Robert Redford is back and being an ass to past!Tony while present!Tony tells Scott “lightly kill me.” Come and Get Your Love is back and cutting out so we can laugh at Chris Pratt. Hugo Weaving is back and just as unhelpful as ever. That one shot of Avengers is back and showing up the framing of this movie. (seriously, I want a good shot of A-force or all of the “avengers.” Apparently the Russo’s don’t understand screenshots.) Also, discussion of America’s ass is a thing (I love it) and MCU!Cap quotes Comics!Cap by saying “Hang glider” (I hate it.) But apparently Tony forgot about Hulk’s mini-freak out over the stairs (should’ve let one of the fliers go down the stairs instead of Hulk) so in the middle of their heist, the case flies open, Loki grabs the tessaract and gets the heck out of Dodge. ...I’m sure it’s fine.

Now Steve and Tony go back even further STAN LEE CAMEO! RIP! and Scott, being new here, doesn’t understand that Mom and Dad are finally on the same page and now is when you just sit back and watch in awe as they do their thing better than you ever could. So they go back to 1971 and Steve sees Peggy and Tony runs into Howard. We’ve switched to old Howard, not the one from First Avenger/the Agent Carter series. And Tony and Howard bond over being dads (he was still shitty. Just because he wasn’t horrible all the time doesn’t excuse his emotional and [at least in the comics] physical abuse) while Steve dreams for 5 seconds before tricking Michael Douglas out of his office to grab more Pym Particles for them to get home.

Meanwhile, Nat and Clint fight on a cliff while Red Skull sits back eating popcorn or some shit. Why are they fighting? Well, who’s going to die, of course. Because Clint feels guilty over becoming a vigilante and Nat has nothing else to live for? Okay, pros? Clint has a fam. Nat is managing the Avengers. Cons? Clint went a little crazy for a couple years, but he was doing what he thought was helping, so...??? Nat has red in her ledger, but she’s been trying to wipe it out since day one, so...? They basically do that thing where one person gets up and the other person trips them as they go by. Eventually Nat dies and it’s pretty sad. But...now we have all the stones! Yay?

Oh, and Thor and mom had a heart-to-heart where Frigga said “you’re a failure and that’s okay because we all fail. Now, look on the bright side, find your hope, and start eating better.” Then Thor grabbed Mjolnir (I’m sure there were no implications there, unless Cap gave it back with the Aether) and was super happy because he was still worthy. Even fat and a failure, he’s still worthy of wielding Mjolnir. So sweet. So nice. Anyway, it’s rabbit season duck season rabbit season duck season and Rocket and Thor skedaddle and meet up with everyone else at the same time, but without Nat. They mourn, but Thor says “knock it off, she’s not dead.” Which, considering how many times Loki’s died plus he’s wielding his destroyed hammer with the destroyed Infinity Stones ...yeah, that’s fair. But “she can’t come back” because her contract’s up and she doesn’t wanna.

And now we enter hour 3! The best part, in my opinion. We have the stones. Tony’s made an Iron Gauntlet to hold them. Thor wants to do it so he can finally feel useful and like he did something right, but Tony won’t let him because he’s not in the right mindset. Fair, Thor’s probably still drunk as a skunk, but the guy needs a win. You should understand that, Tony. Hulk says “I’ll do it cuz I’m bigger than you, and Thanos was big and his arm got turned into a chicken wing, extra crispy.” So he puts on the Iron Gauntlet and screams in agony. That’s what happens when you use subpar materials. Probably should’ve gone to Nidavilir instead of using Earth tech, but whatever. Hulk snaps and then birds are singing and Mrs. Barton is calling her husband like...where did you go and where’s all the food? We probably won.

But, uh oh, apparently Nebula has a network (...sure?) and they forgot to put her on airplane mode when she went back to 2014. So the broadband was crowded and Nebula kept making the dial-up sound. Thanos took present!Nebula in 2014 on his ship and past!Nebula takes her gold plating and puts them on top of her blue plating (...no, but whatever) and she goes back to the future instead of present!Nebula. Now that past!Nebula and her continued obsession with getting daddy’s approval are in the future, she can bring the entirety of Thanos’s ship with her. I guess Thanos replicated the Pym Particle? Or Maw did? Whatever, we need a final battle, so here we go.

Just as Clint is gaining hope and Scott’s saying “ooh pretty” to the birds and Tony’s trying to keep Hulks arm from turning grey, Thanos says “surprise, muddafucka,” and drops a single nuke. Rhodey, Rocket and Hulk are all trapped together with rising water and Hulk keeping the building off of them with one arm. Scott’s running as fast as his little legs will carry him to help, although it’s probably good that he’s so small in the continually collapsing building. Clint has the Iron Gauntlet and is running away from those ugly things from Infinity War. You know, the Mieks that kill themselves at the Wakandan border? Yeah, gross. And Tony is joking with Steve and it’s nice even in this scary time. Thor suits up with a cool braided beard, Thanos says “I’ve changed my mind. Forget wiping out half, let’s start from scratch,” and it’s time to start fighting for another 45-50 minutes.

Thor, Steve and Tony go at it. Combo moves and team ups and Thanos is getting beat up, but not going down. Then he throws Iron Man away. He flicks Cap off of him. He grabs Stormbreaker and starts to do the thing that Thor does to his future self last movie. And a girl in the audience just starts shouting, “Come on, Thor! Come on, Thor!” And internally I’m right there with her, but then THE AUDIENCE. LOSES. THEIR. SHIT!!!! I know there were more people screaming than just me, but I probably contributed about 50% of the collective volume. STEVE ROGERS IS WIELDING MJOLNIR! YES! We’ve been waiting for that since Ultron! Probably my favorite part of the whole movie. I’m totally going to find that video on YouTube and save it for myself because FUCK YEAH!

Meanwhile, Hawkeye has been playing keep away with the evil Mieks and past!Nebula shows up to grab the Iron Gauntlet. Present!Nebula convinces past!Gamora they’re on the same side and we can kill Thanos. They start by saving Hawkeye from past!Nebula and kill her. ...I’m sure it’s fine.

Thanos kicks America’s ass. He calls down the 4 uglies we killed last movie plus more armies. I guess his ship was there on Earth while he was dicking around on Titan? Otherwise, how did the the triangle ships get to Wakanda? Whatever. We have a gorgeous shot of Cap in the high ground backed by white walking down to face Thanos with the low ground backed by darkness. And then...“Hey Cap...Cap, it’s Sam. Do you copy?...On your left.” And a magic wormhole opens up and Okoye, T’Challa and Shuri all walk through and nod at Steve for a whole minute before Sam flies through. And then, all the circles show up and everybody walks through. Valkyrie on her horse; Spidey thwiping behind the Guardians; Wong and his sorcerers; Wasp and Bucky; Scott growing big and saving Hulk, Rhodey and Rocket; it’s a who’s who of the MCU. “Is that everyone?” “You want more?!” (yeah, actually. Where are my Defenders?) We’re all eating it up. Clapping and cheering and then Cap raises Mjolnir and says, “AVENGERS...assemble” and they charge and the audience goes wild. I personally think the assemble shouldn’t have been so quiet. Like, how did they hear him and know to charge? But it’s fine. I don’t care. KICK THE ANNOYING GRAPE’S BUTT! And they do.

In between the fighting, we get several nice moments and call backs. Rocket and Bucky fighting side by side again, although Rocket doesn’t make a prosthetic joke. Scott and Hope start up La Cucaracha van to take the stones back in time and Hope calls Steve “Cap,” because “that’s what we call him. If you’re a friend.” Iron Man and Rescue are fighting back to back and I love this power couple so much. Doctor Strange gets sidelined taking care of a burst damn (guess he’s too powerful and we can’t have him showing up the og Avengers) but Tony’s like “Is this the one where we win?” Strange is all “if I tell you what I wished on the birthday candle, it won’t come true,” which I guess is as good an explanation as any. Hawkeye’s getting overwhelmed and T’Challa says, “Clint, give it to me,” because he doesn’t know his name is Hawkeye since he introduced himself as “We haven’t met. I’m Clint.” “I don’t care.” Spidey takes it and tells Karen to “turn on Instant Kill” because this is a time where it definitely qualifies. He then gets rescued by Mjolnir and Cap telling him “Hey, Queens, head’s up,” which is adorable. And then Tony hugs Peter because he loves him but also “That’s not a hug, I’m just getting the door for you. We’re not there yet.” Past!Gamora saving Quill and when he sees her and caresses her, she knees him in the balls. “Seriously? Him,” she asks. Present!Nebula replies, “It was either him or a tree,” which is fair. Drax isn’t interested, she’s like his murderous little sister and Rocket is...no. We’re having so much fun.

Wanda shows up in front of past!Thanos and says “You’ve taken everything from me.” “I don’t even know you,” which is fair. But then she’s like, “You will.” And dang! If that’s not a badass line, I don’t know what is! She and he go at it and it’s awesome and then he’s pressing down on her, but she smiles and destroys half of the dual sword, making him effectively fucked. And she’s got him. He’s a goner, until he cheats again. He cheated with Vision and he cheats here. So what’s important is while Iron Man or Thor or Captain America are super powerful, Thanos can easily take them on in hand-to-hand combat. But Scarlett Witch? She’s too awesome! He can’t beat her playing fair! The cheating prune has to call for air support to get her off of him. Screw everyone and everything else, get this powerful witch off! And it works, but luckily, the sorcerers put up shields to protect people from the falling nukes. And then...they stop and point up...oooooh BABY! LET’S GO! I mean, it’s totally a Carol ex Machina, but I love seeing her just tank everything.

She takes out the ship, allowing everyone a second to breathe and Peter to slightly uncurl and hold the Iron Gauntlet. “Hey, I’m Peter Parker.” Sweety! Use your made-up name! “Hey, Peter Parker, you got something for me?” And it’s confident and badass, but you know what’s even more badass? FUCKING A-FORCE! “Don’t worry. She has help.” FUCK YEAH! Every single female in the MCU (minus Widow)! I love it so much. I wish we could’ve had a single frame where all of the ladies are visible, but it was still so awesome. And Captain Marvel is charging towards La Cucaracha van and is about to win until the purple toad throws the other half of his big sword into the back of the van. Jerk. Doctor Strange takes a hand away from dealing with the water (which...isn’t doing anything. Yay?) to tell Tony, “1.”

Now we get to play keep away on a smaller stage. Thanos vs Carol is badass. She doesn’t even flinch when he headbutts her. So fucking awesome. But then he cheats and pulls out the power stone (that hurts to hold but not the blue stone in infinity war? okay) to punch her. That does it and takes her out, then Thor and Cap try and team up but he throws them off and give Steve a massive headache. He puts on the glove and is about to snap his fingers--but Tony swoops in at the last second. And we know he’s no match. We’ve seen him lose to the purple gorilla twice! So what’s he gonna, oh. Nanotechnology to the rescue. Unfortunately, the suit was not designed to hold 6 Infinity Stones, so while Tony stays conscious enough to spout a great one-liner “And I...am...Iron Man,” and snap his fingers, that’s it. Thanos and his entire army are dust. ...I’m sure it’s fine. Like, get fucked, but...time travel? Anyway, Tony is...he’s done. He’s only human. Thanos is...a big alien. Hulk is...a big monster. Stark is...Iron Man. It’s at this point my roommate is sobbing into my arm. And I can hear sniffles in the theater until the end of the movie.

Rhodey finds Tony first, and I thought he was already dead, not going to lie. Tony can’t do anything. He can’t move, blinking isn’t happening, his eyes are very unfocused. One might assume he was dead. But then Peter comes in and, oh! If you weren’t already crying, now we have Peter telling Tony “we won” like Steve did all those years ago. But now it’s...it feels like Simba at the death of Mufasa. “HEEEEEELP! SOMEBODY! Anybody. Help.” And so Pepper comes to the Rescue (sorry, you’re right, not the time) and tells him, “it’s okay. We’ll be okay. You can rest now.” I don’t know if “we” is Pepper and Morgan, the Avengers, Earth/the galaxy, or the MCU, but man! This thing that Iron Man started 11 years ago is...it’s come into it’s own. And saying goodbye to Tony Stark, the man who’s been in almost as many MCU movies as Stan Lee, to RDJ, the man who is Tony Stark in his early trials and path to redemption, to Iron Man, the superhero who gave us hope in a world of bad Marvel movies, is hard.

And then we have a funeral because we really needed it. Tony gets a last speech of “if I die, I still love you.” WE LOVE YOU 3000! And then we get everyone standing around for the funeral for Tony and no one else. (Black Widow? Gamora? Loki? No? Why not?) Pepper lays down a wreath with the “Proof that Tony Stark has a Heart” and we have a tracking shot of pain. Pepper, Happy, Morgan and Steve. Ant-Mans and Wasps. Gaurdians of the Galaxy minus Gamora. T’Challa, Okoye and Shuri. The Barton Family. Bucky, Falcon and Wanda. THAT KID FROM IM3! Maria Hill and Gen. Ross. Captain Marvel. And then Nicholas J. Fury with Coulson standing behind him. And Morgan wants cheeseburgers! And Happy’s gonna give them to her!!!!! DON’T MAKE ME CRY AT CHEESEBURGERS, RUSSOS!

Thor gives Valkyrie kingship over New Asgard (which is awesome) and dicks off with the Guardians. Barton retires, for good this time. And Cap’s going back in time to put all the stones back. I don’t know if that means the stones are still gone or back or what because...The Ancient One said something about we need all six to exist or catastrophe, but Thanos is an idiot so...idk. Anyway, Cap goes and gives the stones back and then decides to live the rest of his life with Peggy Carter because apparently he’s still not over her. I thought he kinda was. He started dating Sharon or something, right? You know what, it’s cute and adorable. Anyway, Steve’s old now and passes on a fixed shield to Sam. Bucky’s perfectly okay with it, and I am too. Captain Falcon and Bucky? I like it. Might not be the dynamic duo that Captain America and Bucky were, but still good. And then the credits roll and the og Avengers sign their names and we’re all clapping and cheering and crying and it’s so beautiful.

This movie...you know. If you’re reading this, you’ve already seen the movie, so you know. You know how good it is. It’s not perfect. The beginning is slow, some of the jokes don’t land and some people don’t like where the Russos took certain characters. “Steve shouldn’t have gone to live with Peggy!” “How dare they kill off Tony!” “They fridged Natasha! It should’ve been Clint!” “I don’t like that they made Thor a joke! FAT PEOPLE AREN’T FUNNY EVER!” “Ronin was stupid!” “I couldn’t look at Hulk!” “Captain Marvel needed more screen time!” “Captain Marvel had too much screen time!” “TIME TRAVEL!” SHUT UP!

Look, the movie isn’t perfect, but if you want to constantly bitch about this movie, go watch CinemaSins. This movie is great. Not perfect, but great. It is epic. It is grand. It is a finale for the ages. We the fans have seen the movies, made the fanfiction, bought the merch and just enjoyed the heck out of this massive franchise for the past 11 years. We wanted an ending of monumental proportions and that’s what we got. I’m not going to defend their take on how Thor was funny because he was fat. I’m not going to say Steve should or shouldn’t have married Peggy. I’m not going to say who should have died or not died. I am at peace. Because this is a great movie. Not a good one, a great one. It ties up so many plot points and character arcs from Iron Man and brings it back for us to enjoy. We love this movie because they loved us. And if you disagreed with something, Archive of Our Own is always taking new fanfic. We’ll read it and enjoy it, but right now, I want to enjoy a cup of cocoa to drown my sorrows in. This has been a journey of epic proportions, but my tears are still coming and I’d like to read some happy fanfic. I’ll see you on the flip side, nerds, for a new live blogging series. Later.

#MCU #avengers endgame #endgame spoilers #spoilers #live blogging

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lachalaine · 6 years ago

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Hey! I was wondering if you had any writing tips? Your work is so nice and I wanted to know if there are any rules you usually abide by?

aaaaaaaah thank you so much for such a kind compliment!!! honestly, this came clear out of the blue, but i’m gladyou like my work, it honestly means so much to hear that! and hmm hmm hmmmmmm, writingtips — it’s the first time anyone’s asked me for something like thatactually. so this may perhaps be a somewhat incomplete answer because i thinkthere’s a lot in my head i tend to focus on when writing things, but i’ll trymy best to make it as complete as possible!!

to say that i have rules when i write wouldn’t actually be soquite off the mark. first off, before i do anything, it has to feel really natural to me. the emotions, the scene, everything. it’s a perk if it coincides with what you’re feeling at the moment, as it’s a good outlet to use for when your emotions are a bit messy, but it doesn’t have to be a requirement.

what i tendto do is that perhaps i may set the mood by listening to a particular song, ori just try to find whichever song embodies my muse the most, and then i sit back and just let the scene run by itself. i try to make itso that she’s the one leading the show, and i’m legitimately just her narratorin the background sipping tea and watching shit blow up. this sort of makes it feel as though her personality is ( atleast for me ) embedded in not only the way i write her dialogue, but also theway i write the description of the scene surrounding her. sometimes that canchange of course, depending on the thread. i try to keep a more serious tonewhen it’s something deep, but a bit of jackie’s snark and sass comes out whenit’s a terse moment. you’ll see it in the way the word ‘fuck’ comes out a lot in the narration, because then it seems to showcase that even the narration is coming straight from her head.

the same applies to scenes of which are more amusing, as itend to play around with breaking the fourth wall sometimes, to give it more ofa lighter touch. in short, my writing style on narrations tend to change withthe scene, and i think that sort of gives it an extra boost when you’re writingmost anything in particular, as it really drives the scene home, so that’s something i really try to keep as a basic standard at the very least.

another thing i do is that i try to reword things a lot. i havegoogle chrome open for synonyms all the hecking time, if only because usingrepetitive words in the same response makes me feel kind of iffy. this allowsme to bring in other terms that are just as easily understood, but add acertain depth that may not have been possible with the original word a momentbefore. it doesn’t change the fact that i know i have regular terms that cropup a lot in my writing, but the shift in terminology sometimes can perhaps givethe style a new life, where it’s still distinctly yours but also feels likesomething fresh and brand new. you can do this by also studying another muns writing style that inspires you as well, and see if you can try to incorporate a bit of what you like from them into your own method. if it feels old and tried and used, even just a few synonyms cango a long way in switching things up, i think! ( but try not to make them very obscure words, as you don’t want the reader going back and looking through adictionary every five minutes, okay? )

on that note, i also tend to refer a lot to the reference postsfound on tumblr made by other writers. sometimes i go back and study them, tryto create something new with what information i can get from the guide. that’s how i got so good at writing smut scenes, to be frank, and that’show i get the feel for certain scenes that i’m unfamiliar with, just going over the post about them andtrying to turn it into something that the reader can imagine within their mindseye. not too much of a description either – you have to work with contextclues, only focusing on the information that’s important to the scene occurring at that moment in time. i know i tend to writea lot myself, but unless the information is necessarily vital about what’sgoing to happen, i try to refrain from going on about things that may not be used by neither you nor your partner mun anytime soon. you have to stick tothe moment and not get ahead of yourself too quickly by rambling, otherwise yourun the risk of losing the reader’s interest.

to add to that !! in truth, though i feel rambling about thingsthat aren’t important to the thread at hand isn’t necessarily a good habit,rambling about your muses emotions and feelings at the time is a good thing totry to practice. there’s only so much you can get from mere dialogue, and youshould use the environment more. use movements, gestures – not everything needsto be so bluntly stated. allow the reader to understand where your muse iscoming from and make sure to always Show, don’t Tell. engage the reader, allow them tomake up their own decisions about what’s going on, don’t state it for them.this will allow their muse to get more in the moment to craft a response thatisn’t so straightforward, that may come as a surprise even to them!

and in relation to that aspect, i try to think of what the most normalreaction would be for my muse at any given time, otherwise meaning i would stick myself in the situation being described andact it out a bit in my head sometimes. this makes for quite a lot of daydreaming, but ithelps give the scene a sense of life that you don’t always get just fromreading something aloud. once i get the scene in my head, enough to recognizewhat a normal person like me might do, i switch it up to figure out what jackiewould do in turn, sticking her in and trying to feel out her reaction fromthere. and to be honest, i’ve been told that jackie comes off as fairly realistic and relatable by quite a few people, and the reason for that is possibly because i try to keepher presence active in my head as much as possible. in my day to day life, itry to go about it as though she were in the moment with me. or better yet, what if she were in my shoes right now doing all this regularstuff, going through this situation instead of me: what would she do?

and i think that alone really helps make you connect with the musemore, because you’re able to understand them better, as opposed to what youassume might happen and just going along with a split second idea that croppedup out of the blue just because. it makes it so their personality comes naturally to you,because they aren’t just a character on a blog, but more of an actual person in a way,with real thoughts and real feelings that you can reference down the line. treat your muse like you would a best friend, and this will help you understand them in ways you never thought you could.

finally, always keep the thread moving. don’t be afraid to turn things onits head, but do make sure to do it without godmodding. whether that be workingwith the environment to have your muse have some terrible bad luck with an npc, or just terrible bad luck in general, or steering the thread to a certain action that you or your muse may get up to - do it. not everything needs to come out squeaky clean. not everything needs to come out normal. find what interests you. what do you want to see happen? don’t be afraid to go forit, but do it in a manner where you’re allowing yourself to work with your partnerto see that idea to fruition, perhaps talking it over with them, or hinting at it and seeing how they might react.

and at the end of the day, my main rule is - always try your best to make your muse human, as much as possible, is really all it is. whether they’re demons or monsters or anything like that, don’t be afraid to make them feel even just a smidgen human. because this allows for depth, for growth, for contradictions to occur so that they aren’t always perfect. but once you can do that, the rest is smooth sailing from there.

and also, my last tip: don’t force yourself to write if you head is hitting a blankwall. instead try to find something to inspire your muse again and try to put your work to that, whether that be a drabble or a headcannon or whatever that erupts from that - just do it. practice makes perfect and makes it so the words come easier to you. and also because twohours watching a youtube video that reminds you of your muse is better spentthen two hours staring at one draft and two words and hating yourself because you can’t think sdadhadhas but honestly just WRITE AT YOUR OWN PACE AND HAVE FUN, OKAY, THAT’S REALLY ALL THERE IS TO IT !!

#/ aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah thank you so much nonnie?? for sending this ??#/ i hope my response was okay #/ i have a bad habit of trailing off when i try to explain things like this tbh asdahbdha #/ if any part of it is confusing lemme know and i will be sure to clarify asap #/ i hope this helps and answers your questions! and if you have anymore that you think i can answer #/ feel free !! i like answering things like this tbh it makes me happy hihi !!#&& if you come closer i can whisper in your ear (anonymous)#&& waste time with a masterpiece (answered asks)

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wandaterrell · 4 years ago

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Elements of Banking and Financial Communication

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Elements of Effective Banking and Financial Communication

Financial services have often underestimated the significance of financial communication in the banking sector. It is rather shocking that many financial services still decide to stick to official notifications as their only means of communication. Communication in the banking sector still neglects many essential channels, including direct mail marketing, digital marketing, social media promotions, and more.

Although it is true that they have managed to survive this far without using advanced communication methods, it’s also true that they have lagged behind the competition. The financial service companies who were smart enough to employ advanced financial communication strategies are reaping their rewards even as we speak. 48% of financial services has already made steps to facilitate better communication with their customers that employ advanced financial communication strategies.

What’s even more remarkable is that such advanced financial communication is capable of evolving, and this enables you to improve your approach to customer communication constantly. Furthermore, it gives you a chance to become a top-performer in the banking sector. In other words, by neglecting the elements of financial communication, you could potentially drive your business to failure. The time has come for financial service companies to decide whether they want to sit still or reach out for success.

The fate of your financial service business depends on the path you choose to take. You could either stick to the age-old traditional approach, which will eventually become obsolete one day, or take an innovative approach and lead the way. This does not mean that you have to come up with a brand new solution by yourself. Instead, you can work on the existing ones and modify them to suit your unique requirements.

You could even try to come up with a communication strategy for your financial service business that mixes different channels of communication and enable the customer to choose the appropriate one for their unique needs. This article discusses how you can upgrade the elements of financial communication in your organization. Furthermore, we also take a look into the role of communication in the banking sector, tips that you can use to create effective communication in the banking industry, and more.

Importance of Communication in the Banking Sector

The communication between a finance service provider and their customers, existing or potential, essentially has one goal and that is to build trust. Would you believe me if I said that there is an actual formula that lets you calculate the trust index of financial service providers? Well, researchers have already made it happen, and this formula allows you to estimate their brand’s reliability.

Trust is ambiguous, and many factors come into play before you can make a decision based on trust. However, certain factors can be considered before you deem a business trustworthy such as organizational trustworthiness, integrity, consistency in service, communications, and benevolence. Communication can be said to top this list because it will reflect the other values of the company or service provider you choose.

Communication enables you to show your customers that you care, showcase your expertise and values, and more. With proper communication, you can create strong connections with your customers and eradicate any concerns they may have. As a financial service provider, trust comes above everything else as far as your customers are concerned and effective communication is the key to winning that trust.

Different Elements of Financial Communication You Can Use

When it comes to elements of financial communication, there is more than just one channel to focus your efforts on. Now, as you may already know, direct mail marketing is the number one choice of communication for financial service providers. However, that does not mean that the digital efforts are any less significant. The trick is to strike the perfect balance between multiple channels and combining them. Below we discuss some of the elements of financial communication that you can combine for the optimal result.

Email Notifications

Email notifications are already an integral part of our day-to-day lives, and it makes perfect sense for them to be a part of your financial communications as well. You can send personalized emails to your customers to inform them about any updates or changes in their financial account or payments or special offers, or anything else. The advantage of email notifications is that they practically cost nothing, and you can even fully automate these emails to save your valuable time and effort.

Support Team

Just like any other business, financial service providers are also bound to provide quality support service to their customers. The lack of quality support can easily cause an escalation with your customer, and if it goes uncorrected, it could cost you valuable customers and their business. Hence you must provide quality support to your customers.

Make sure that you provide an online chat and phone capability so that the customer can reach out to you through whichever medium is convenient for them. By providing your customers anytime access to professional help/advice, you are accomplishing one of the important goals assigned to the elements of financial communication.

Personal Meetings

When we say personal meetings are one of the important elements of financial communication, we do not mean hopping on a Zoom meeting with your customers but an actual face-to-face meeting. Did you know that 64% of customers believe that offline communication is the most effective way to connect with them and establish a relationship with them? Indeed, online banking is fast gaining popularity, but when it comes to their hard-earned money, people still want to make sure that it is in the right hands. And to do that, they often require a personal touch, and a face-to-face meeting is a perfect fit for this.

Digital Marketing

A digital presence has become a necessity for businesses and not one you can afford to ignore unless you want to become obsolete in the near future. Financial service providers need to create a website for their business, map your location on Google to make themselves digitally visible. Furthermore, you also need to undertake digital marketing campaigns that can establish your business as a brand.

Build awareness of your business among your target audience through multiple online channels, including social media. Social media for marketing is practically a free tool, and once mastered, it can be especially useful for your business. Digital marketing trends change in the blink of an eye, and you need to keep yourself updated with them to ensure the best result for your financial service business.

Direct Mail Marketing

Despite the significant growth of digital mediums and digital marketing in the past few years, direct mail marketing still remains one of the most effective ways of reaching your target audience. Furthermore, direct mails are still the most preferred method of communication for financial institutions. You can make use of direct mails to promote your services and also for updating your customers on their financial affairs.

One of the biggest reasons why direct mail is still thriving in the digital age is its significantly high response rate because they are unlike the digital efforts made through email or text messages that the user can easily ignore and leave unread. This makes direct mails the ideal choice for reaching out to potential customers who keep on ignoring your other channels or elements of financial communication.

Combining Different Elements of Financial Communications

Your communication strategy can not just revolve around one or two of the elements of financial communications mentioned above. For the best results, you must incorporate all of the core elements listed above and allow the user to choose whichever is the most convenient for them. Furthermore, having an omnichannel approach where you combine the different efforts to provide one streamlined user experience is also possible today. Not only does this make the customer’s experience greatly easier, but it also allows him/her to switch channels if or when necessary.

Using the Primary Elements of Financial Communication Correctly

Just like everything else in our lives, the elements of financial communication can also be prioritized based on their significance. To be properly able to use the elements of financial communication, you need to have a set of rules in place, and below, we discuss just that. Following the rules listed below, you can optimize your communication strategy and ensure that you are in the right direction.

Planning & Scheduling of Mandatory Notifications

The banking sector is a serious business no matter how you look at it, and this means that your customers need prompt and accurate information from you at all times. As mentioned before, communication is a crucial part for every financial service provider out there and it can have a direct effect on your business.

Financial service providers must equip their businesses with mandatory notifications. Make legally required notifications such as monthly statements, bills, invoices, etc., a priority. Give keen attention to the planning and scheduling of your mandatory notifications, and strict timing must be followed for all of them.

Providing Maximum Transparency and Choice

Transparency and choice are two of the most important things you should keep in mind when directly dealing with customers. Make sure that you get your customer’s consent and know their preferences before bombarding them with notifications. Do not bombard the customer with notifications unless they want you to. Remember that your customers have the right to choose how they receive their financial information, and they can choose between paperless billing and regular mail. Furthermore, it is best if you can convey exactly how your business handles customer data and even be ready to reconciliation check if needed.

Aligning Your Online And Offline Marketing Channels

For effective communication between your financial service business and its customers, you need to align your online effort with your offline efforts. To do this, you need a well-thought-out communication strategy that takes all necessary factors into account. The best way to go about this is to use marketing automation software along with a suitable CRM. Furthermore, you can also use advanced direct mail tools like PostGrid that can fully automate your direct mail efforts. With the right skill set, you can even integrate smart solutions like PostGrid with your CRM and streamline the entire process.

Automating Data Retention for Regulatory Compliance

Since we are dealing with regulatory compliance, you may have already figured that this applies specifically to official communications. Every piece of information that is a part of your official communication with the customer must be retained regardless of whether the said communication is through an online medium or offline medium. The easiest way to go about this is to automate the data retention to meet regulatory compliance. Not only does this ensure that you keep important data secured but also ensures that your business can efficiently adapt to changing global resolutions without incurring a penalty.

Analyzing Customer Response

Analyzing your customer response (both existing and potential customers) is quintessential in figuring out whether your current communication strategy is yielding the desired result. This is also a process that can be greatly simplified with the use of CRM as they allow you to analyze consumer behavior along with other key matrices. Going about the analysis of customer response without automating the elements of financial communication can be complicated and inaccurate.

Tips For Effective Communication in The Banking Industry

We have already discussed the golden rules for implementing effective communication for your financial service business. But that’s all you can do to optimize your business’s communication strategy, and below, we discuss some of the additional tips that you could use to streamline your business’s communication.

For starters, make it a point to present the financial situation of your customers in Layman’s terms so that they can really understand what is going on. Go on to mention what actions they can take or what their options are for their specific cases. To ensure proper communication, always make sure that you include your contact information at every communication point. Furthermore, it is also best if you stick to a consistent format, style, and timing for your communications.

Always make use of bank direct mails when sending out important documents or notifications to ensure that the customers receive them. You can even make use of an advanced address verification tool like Postgrid to ensure that the address you have is accurate and deliverable. Make it easy for the recipients to opt-out of communications if necessary.

Using a CRM can streamline a lot of your communications, as mentioned before. Therefore, it is best if you integrate a suitable CRM for your business. Finally, make sure that you don’t solely focus on online or offline marketing methods, try to combine the two and come up with a communication strategy that can work for your unique business and its communication requirements.

Why Use Direct Mail Marketing For Communication in Banking Sector

Some may find it hard to believe, but the fact is that direct mails and print notifications are still one of the leading communication channels employed by financial service providers even in this digital age. The primary reason is that more than half of the customers still prefer receiving their banking documents via postal mail. Additionally, direct mails are much more effective than the mainstream digital approaches, including emails and text messages. The response rate of direct mails is considerably higher than almost every other communication channel in use right now.

Furthermore, today we have access to advanced direct mailing solutions like PostGrid that can ensure the deliverability of your direct mails with its advanced address verification capability. Not only can you ensure the validity and deliverability of your addresses, but you can also streamline the data procurement through various campaigns by integrating PostGrid’s API into your website. You can even implement an address auto-fill feature for accurate data collection using PostGrid. The fact that the entire process, including address verification and the actual printing and delivery of direct mail, can be automated through PostGrid’s system only makes it more effective and efficient for your direct mail campaigns.

Conclusion

The elements of financial communication are not easily manageable, and you can’t go about it without a clear plan and direction. You need to make use of both online and offline channels to create an effective communication strategy. Furthermore, you need to master the art of combining different channels so as to get the result you desire. Direct mails will play an important role in the success of your communication strategy. To get the most out of your direct mail campaigns and communication in general, you need advanced capabilities and features that can be automated, which can be easily accomplished by integrating an advanced direct mailing system like PostGrid.

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The post Elements of Banking and Financial Communication appeared first on PostGrid.

Via https://www.postgrid.com/elements-of-effective-banking-financial-communication/

source https://postgridplatform.weebly.com/blog/elements-of-banking-and-financial-communication source https://irenejvines.blogspot.com/2021/05/elements-of-banking-and-financial.html

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csykora · 7 years ago

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heya ! first of all sorry for spamming your motifs like crazy but a. i find your posts incredibly fascinating and b. you love alexander semin even more than i do which i didn't think was possible. OKAY so actually i have a question about How To Find A PT--i'm a figure skater and i want my knees to Not Do Bad Things anymore and i'm wondering if you might know how to find a PT who could help me from the perspective of making me a stronger skater and not just like. able to walk normally

hello—

No need to apologize! All I ever ask is that people add really great and/or dirty tags to my posts for me to laugh at on long shifts, and your Kuzy tag game is fuckin outstanding

(This goes out to everybody—I want to write for fans in the back, so even if you’re not up for talking directly, go ahead and engage however much you like. Yeah, I do usually take a peek at your tags or your blog if I see you interacting with a post, because it’s fun to see what you all are into, and sometimes if it looks like you have questions about something I’ll pounce, because I want information to be available. Please don’t worry about me peeking though. And also know I really won’t notice if either of us do something Tumblr-rude.)

b. Thank you! I do love him a frankly baffling amount. Your love is also lovely and I love seeing all of it. I vote we be friends and the circle of Sasha-love will only grow

(Listen I’ve been on tumblr for 5 minutes and I tried to fight this being my Thing for 2 of them, but what the hell. I’ve got a batch of new followers after last night and this is as good a way as any to warn you all)

He’s a thoughtful and a kind and a happy human being

or possibly a husky in a hockey sweater. We just don’t know. I love anyway.

How To Find a PT

Congratulations on moving forward on strengthening your skating; I think this’ll be a lot for fun for you. This was a pretty cool question, because I’m not as familiar with figure skating resources and I got to do some exploring. A lot depends on your needs and wherever you are, but I think you’re going find more options than you might expect.

First, I agree that looking for a PT with experience working with skaters is probably right for you. You have a clear goal for yourself, and like I’ve discussed before on this blog your baseline posture/mobility and the ideal posture/mobility for what you want to do are gonna be different from a non-skater’s.

A good PT will do their research and be able to help you even if they haven’t seen exactly your case before, so if it turns out there isn’t a skating specialist around that’ll work for you, you can certainly get some benefit from a general sports PT. But if you can, filtering for skating specialists will save you time and trouble.

Use your networks

Figure skating is figure skating. Somebody is gonna know somebody.

Figure skating culture can also really convince you that you the skater are not supposed to ask for things, though, so it’s a good idea to sit down with a notepad for a minute and think about:

what have I tried and what’s worked for me?

Have you had injuries or conditions that required medical care?

Were you given those little paper sheets with rehab exercises to do and did you try them?

Have you noticed any patterns or tricks like, “hey, it really hurts when I do ___ but if I ice before I do it that helps.”

What are my goals?

Are you thinking in terms of rehabbing to get back to your earlier level, or preventing further injury, or both?

What’s your time frame? How much time can you spend, and how much do you want to?

Do you want to be in-and-done to get an official opinion and then work by yourself, or do you want more hands-on guidance and a working relationship?

What kind of person are you looking for—a strict coach’s attitude to drive you, or someone who’ll give more encouragement?

Then you can tuck that away and start poking around. I recommend a 50/50 of googling and talking to people, but go with whichever you trust and are comfortable with.

If you go to a rink, you can ask basically anyone there for their ideas. (You don’t have to tell them anything personal, you can just say, “So, skating, huh. You know any folks that’d help a fellow skate better?”) Any figure skating coach should be cross-trained, and they should know their resources. Rink managers will also know the names of local providers and may have deals worked out. If it’s a university rink, there’ll be an in-house sports med department who’ll often offer some services even if you’re not a competitive athlete for the school and will know your options. The skate mothers will Know.

Ask providers you’ve worked with in the past. If you have a primary care doctor, let them know you’re interested in PT. If you’ve ever had surgery on your knees, check in with that provider and see if they have any names to refer you to.

If you’d rather internet, you can search the American Physical Therapy Association database at MoveForwardPT by region.

(I’m offering US resources based on your profile. If you or anyone else wants suggestions for other countries, let me know.)

It’ll then offer you the option to filter by Practice Area—you’ll want to try Fitness and Wellness and Musculoskeletal.

Each provider will then show up with their “practice focus” like this:

They write those themselves, so there isn’t really a standard meaning. ‘Sports Physical Therapy’ suggests that they do relatively acute, focused rehab. Seeing ‘Athletic Training’ and/or ’Sports Performance and Enhancement’ suggests that they work longer-term one-on-one as you train. (A lot people say both. Again, these just give you a sense of what they want you to know about them.)

If you then select a provider, you’ll see more on their professional experience, facility, and availability, with their contact information.

If you’re a member of US Figure Skating, you should be able to search for local providers and referrals from other skaters through the U.S. Figure Skating National Medical Network.

I personally wouldn’t trust USFS with a piece of string, and I don’t know how useful the database is outside of, like, the skating hub cities. But the PTs in the network are independent providers—they don’t all work for USFS, and most will work with any clients. You just need a membership ID to search the database, so if you aren’t a member you could find someone at your rink who is and ask them to help you search.

Once you’ve got a name:

Go ahead and contact them in whatever format you prefer. Their contact info is on their bios for a reason! You want to know if you’re a match before you start working together, and so do they. Just like a therapist or a surgeon or a tattoo artist, a good PT will want to tell you about their experience, the kinds of problems they see, and their particular style. They should be telling you about their privacy policy, and their non-discrimination policy, before you even ask.

When you meet:

Bring your notes

Go ahead and count the little things. We keep personal things in our offices on purpose to tell you about us. If you don’t like how much Chicago gear they have on the wall or how they talk to you or how they carry themselves around your personal space, count that. If you can chat comfortably with them, count that too; that’s worth a lot more than their degrees or how many other skaters they’ve seen.

Look for signs of respect. Look at where they sit: all healthcare providers are supposed to be trained not to get between you and the door, so if you see them deliberately moving, that’s a good sign.

PT have to get their hands all up on patients, and the good ones are great about it: you should hear them say exactly what they’re going to do before they touch you, explaining while they work, and see them deliberately warming their hands, only moving your clothes as much as they have to for each assessment, and covering you back up as soon as they’re done with something.

If it’s an office practice, talk to the nurse! They see all the patients that the PT sees, and their clinical judgement informs the whole practice. Ask them about the practice and tell them about your goals. The PT is a specialist, while the nurse is there to provide holistic care: they know a little about all the different resources that might be able to help you. And they also know or have worked with or know a nurse who’s worked with everybody in the area—they’ll be the one to say, “hey, water therapy really worked for our last client, maybe try that,” or “Dr. Bronner over on Spring Street does more work with clients like you, maybe give him a call.” They’ll also be able to help you with scheduling, which is a pretty big deal for long-term PT.

If one PT isn’t a match for you, it’s very appropriate to ask for them for recommendations!

Last:

Keep what you want in front of you, but be open to trying things you don’t expect. It’s very possible that a good PT will look at you and say, “I hear that your knees are bugging you, but that’s only happening because your hips are fucked up,” or “We’re going to start by relaxing your lower back and building strength in your core so you can use a posture that stresses your knees less.” Or you’ll go in wanting exercises to do on the ice but what ends up working for you is heat therapy or strength training. Try stuff, give it some time, and if that one thing isn’t the thing for you (including the first PT you work with), you can move on and something else will be.

Good luck and you should let me know how it goes!

#sports medicine #figure skating

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douchebagbrainwaves · 4 years ago

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LIFE IS POWER

Is there some way to bite off some subset of the market, but this is not what will make you a better programmer, and yet you won't use it. They're not. Our rule of thumb, each layer of interpretation costs a factor of 10 in speed. Everyone makes up their own story about the Mona Lisa. How do you arrange the dials? They're less willing to do things they never anticipated, rather than a real downtown, Brasilia rather than Rome, Ada rather than C. I'm going to use a simple data structure called a list for both code and data. That's how Silicon Valley happened. Another unusual thing about Lisp—in fact, maybe they meant it to look that way. If you get cold-emailed by an associate at a VC firm has been successful in the past. There's no need for a Microsoft of France or Google of Germany.

Maybe you can, and then gradually increase the angle if you want to do something. So it is missing because it takes for granted the most important thing is not to say you suck than to figure out what you'd need to know the answer. This probably indicates room for improvement. There are two kinds of fear: fear of investing in startups with only one founder. Occasionally the things adults made you do were fun, just as a landmark in the history of computers, and I think expert hackers might be able to say about programming languages. Practically every successful company has at least two. In fact, the book can start as soon as possible. They know what they want to encourage startups locally, but government policy can't call them into being the way a pilot does when flying through clouds. Several turned down YC-funded startups have been doing to mitigate the risk of taking money from VCs in angel rounds can blow up the valuations for angels and super-angels are ruling out taking VC money.1 Even Einstein probably had moments when he wanted to design a language now that would appeal to users in a hundred years you won't have to write programs to solve, but I think there is room to beat languages like Perl and Python at their own game.

What seems like it's going to seem hard. They seemed wrong. But this Lisp must be a better one. Whichever route you take, expect a struggle. It won't get you a job is said to be even more astonished that a package would one day travel from Boston to New York via Memphis. When you learn to drive, one of our habits of mind to invoke. Our horror at that prospect was the single biggest thing that drove us to start building web apps.2 CEOs like to increase earnings. Kevin Kelleher suggested an interesting way to compare programming languages: library functions. This lets you launch faster, and b Larry and Sergey making the rounds of all the startups they'd invested in a position where a little more information to make each choice before you need to pay for kids.

For legibility it's more important that letters be easy to convince. C: Assembly language is too low-level. Perl by default, because it would make programs easier to read.3 I seem to have in common. Python's goal is regularity and readability, not power. You look at them and you think, then choose/design the language that feels best. The slightest error will make the whole thing collapse. Their format is convenient, and the latter is not simply that they like what they do. But programming languages are not just technology, but what you could grow a local silicon valley by giving startups $15-20k each like Y Combinator, that's because it is a very rare product that can't be made dramatically cheaper if you try. They'll invest in you if you start the way most fortunes are lost is not through excessive expenditure, but through bad investments.4 Didn't it get boring when you got to be about 15?

That was probably part of the language. At a test that doesn't matter. Really, Google was funded with angel money. It's just a more extreme variant where you don't just use your software yourselves on their behalf. And that is in fact the most difficult visual medium, because they have hard lives. There are two ways to do that with hardware, but because they want you to sell them more of your company. I doubt any government would have the balls to try this, or the deal was off. I've definitely had days when I get nothing done, because I'm doing stuff that seems, superficially, like real work. Nothing could be better, for a while and observing certain other signs, I have a hunch that it won't be a very promising startup indeed to get a lot of people to ask themselves about this explicitly. Bookstores are one of the biggest startup hubs in the world. Likewise an artist, after a while, can make visual perception flow in through his eye and out through his hand as automatically as someone tapping his foot to a beat.

They seem wrong. When do you stop fundraising? Originally the only way to get a big program is to start with a problem, then let your mind wander is like doodling with ideas.5 The version on the App Store feels old and crappy. Cobol and hype Ada, Java also play a role—but I think it is also related to succinctness. They believe this because it really feels that way to them.6 Don't get addicted to fundraising.

And if your startup succeeds, it will be dark most of the changes will be for domains that don't even exist yet. They think what they're building. They'd rather lose the deal than establish a precedent of VCs competitively bidding against one another. You could probably do it. The most important part of design is redesign. The reason funding deals take so long, but at first. As a result of arbitrary decisions from higher up. This was Henry Ford's plan. This works better when a startup has 3 founders than 2, and better when the leader of the company is now 18 weeks old. The most obvious is Google. The recipe for great work is: very exacting taste, plus the ability to win by doing? I never used Microsoft software, so it only affected me indirectly—for example, seems to be able to deal with the consequences.

Boston. Because investors don't understand the cost of the space it takes up on your screen. Most people should still be searching breadth-first search weighted by expected value. This is one case where it pays to be self-indulgent. It's so common for founders to be misled/mistaken about this that we designed a protocol to fix the problem. So it's wise not merely to be nice to investors who invested earlier at a higher price, but it did at least have the advantage, from each one's point of view of a programmer using any of the languages higher up the power continuum, he doesn't realize he's looking up. That's a problem for VCs, most of which fail, and one of the first big end-user, may be changing. So they'll always tend to develop software in: Comparisons between Ericsson-internal development projects indicate similar line/hour productivity, including all phases of software development, rather independently of which language Erlang, PLEX, C, C, or Java was used. The programmers I admire most are not, on the scale of the Industrial Revolution. Most startups that raise money and the metric that does matter financially, whether that batch of startups contains a big winner or not. The advice of parents will tend to use problems that are too short to be meaningful tests.

Notes

I never watch movies in theaters anymore. The first version would offend. I'd use to develop server-based applications, and tax rates don't tell the craziest lies about me. If you like a headset or router.

Strictly speaking it's impossible without a time, because software takes longer to write legislation that distinguishes them, not you.

Greek classics. Convertible debt can be more alarmed if you ban other ways to help SCO sue them.

I don't know how the stakes were used. Of course, but nothing else: no friends, TV, just that everyone's visual piano has that key on it, and VCs will offer you an artificially low valuation, or to be a predictor. After a bruising fight he escaped with a degree that alarmed his family how much you get of the big winners are all about to give it additional funding at a critical period. It's somewhat sneaky of me to do.

Wittgenstein: The French Laundry in Napa Valley. Perhaps the designers of admissions processes should take more than linearly with its size.

Our secret is to make a conscious effort to see.

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williamexchange · 5 years ago

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What are Long Tail Keywords?

What if I told you that there’s a way to get targeted organic traffic that’s actually easier than driving a ton of random page views?

We’re all familiar with the race to the top of Google for high-volume keywords, but throughout that race, long tail keywords can get overlooked.

If you ask me, this makes no sense because long tail keywords make up 70% of all searches.

You don’t want to miss out on 70% the potential traffic, do you?

In this guide, I’m going to run through everything you need to know about long tail SEO, including:

What are long tail keywords?

Long-tail keywords Examples

What are the benefits of targeting long tail keywords?

How to find long tail keywords

How to use long tail keywords in your content

What are long tail keywords?

Let’s get started with a definition. Long tail keywords are search queries usually consisting of two or more words that narrow down the focus of the search results and bring up more specific results.

Long tail keywords are also often lower difficulty and lower volume.

To understand this better, let’s also define head keywords.

A head keyword is usually a high traffic, high difficulty term that constitutes an entire topic.

While they’re searched for often, they’re not always 100% specific to what you’re promoting with your content.

Long Tail Keywords Examples

I know that beginners to SEO may have troubles understanding what exactly long tail keywords are, so let me demonstrate this with a real example.

Let’s take the keyword “SEO”.

This is a very popular keyword and according to SEMRUSH it has more than 110,000 exact keyword searches per month.

It is also a highly competitive keyword with an average CPC of 14.82 USD.

If you search for this term on Google.com you will find in the first positions websites like Wikipedia.org, moz.com and Google websites, which makes it almost impossible to outrank them with a normal website or blog.

So, if it is impossible to rank for “SEO” what is the next step?

You go one step further by adding tail or tails to the existing keyword so as to narrow down your competition.

If you add the word ‘tips’ your keyword now becomes “SEO tips”, which is less competitive than the head keyword (SEO), but it is still very difficult to target.

Top results are dominated by large and well-known websites.

So, what do you do?

Add another word and it becomes “SEO tips for beginners”.

Certainly, the number of people searching for this keyword per month are a less compared to “SEO” and “SEO tips” but the benefits gained from ranking long tail keywords are much more than the traffic difference.

What are the benefits of targeting long tail keywords?

Now you’ve had a crash-course introduction, let’s run through the benefits of targeting the long tail.

To understand the benefits of long tail keywords, you need to understand the concept of intent.

Long Tail Keywords Match the User Intent

Put yourself in the shoes of the searcher for a moment while you think about the customer journey.

A section of it might look something like this:

The prospect becomes aware of their need, and searches head keywords to find out more.

The prospect becomes aware of a potential solution, and searches a long tail keyword with the intent to buy it.

This is a dumbed-down explanation, but it sums up the idea of intent nicely.

Basically, considering the intent of a keyword is considering the mindset of someone who would search the keyword.

For example, someone looking for ‘SEO’ is probably looking for a broad definition while someone looking for ‘SEO Services’ has the intent to click on your search snippet listing, and buy your services.

Through the long tail specificity of their search, they’re expressing their intent to buy exactly what you’re selling (or at least read exactly what you’re writing).

For this reason, it’s worth targeting long tail keywords because the traffic that they bring in is targeted and will be far more likely to convert.

The searchers are no longer in the ‘discovery’ mindset. They’re ready to move into buying mode, and even though the volume won’t be as high, it’s well worth it.

Head keywords have lower intent

What’s the intent of someone searching ‘marketing’? Who knows. It’s probably to find out a definition, or to read some kind of encyclopedic article, which shows why Wikipedia and Business Dictionary rank highly.

Narrow it down, however, and target ‘marketing agency London’ (instead of just ‘marketing’) and the intent is much, much clearer. And you’re way more likely to rank for it.

In fact, the major problem with going after head keywords is that you’ll be putting a ton of work into driving the wrong kind of traffic. And, when you drive traffic that doesn’t stay long on your page, you’re telling Google that you don’t deserve to rank, and that’s all your work wasted.

A good rule of thumb is to Google the keyword you’re targeting before you target it, and ask yourself whether your article would be out of place in the results. If it would be, then don’t bother.

Long Tail keywords are easier to rank compared to non-long tail keywords

Provided that you are having a high quality web site long tail keywords are easier to rank especially if you choose low competition keywords.

There are more long tail keywords than head keywords

There are nowhere near as many head keywords out there as long tail.

And that means that at some point, you could theoretically run out of big meaty keywords to target, and find yourself thinking “phew! I’ve targeted ‘marketing’, I’ve targeted ‘SEO’, I’ve targeted ‘business’ … What’s next?”.

When you’re going after the long tail, you’re not only giving yourself more chances to put optimized content on your site, you’re creating more pages.

It only makes sense that sites with more pages rank for more keywords and drive more traffic, especially if they’re ranking for juicy long tail keywords.

This is probably best described simply as covering your bases. Targeting both ‘green tea smoothie ideas’ and ‘green tea smoothie recipes’ in two separate posts and getting both of them ranking is a way to make sure you’re scooping up whichever search term variation that gets typed in.

And remember how I mentioned long tail keywords make up 70% of all searches? Here’s a visual of that:

Increase Conversions

If you think about it for a second, those users that use long tail keywords to search for something can be considered more targeted because they already made the effort to make their search terms more specific.

If we are talking about ‘buying’ or ‘action’ keywords then those are more likely to convert or perform an action.

Consider the following example:

“Cars” <- General search

“used cars for sale” <- looking for used cars

“used cars for sale in florida” <- looking for used cars in florida

“used ford focus for sale in florida” <-looking for used ford focus cards in florida

Long tail keywords help you build website authority and trust

Having a first page placement of any keyword is an indication of website authority and trust.

One of the ways to get your website ready to target more important keywords is to get as many first placements as you can for long tail keywords.

Of course, this is not the only factor that will help you build authority but a number of first place placements together with a solid SEO strategy, can work towards that direction.

You will get more traffic than the suggested volume

The various keyword research tools give an estimate about the traffic you can get if you secure a top position for a specific keyword.

When it comes to long tail keywords, their estimates are not 100% correct. This is because the volume for long tail keywords is low and so is their sampling so they under-estimate.

I have many examples of long tail keywords that bring in 10 times the traffic shown by the keyword tools so never reject a keyword because the traffic in the tools is low.

How to find long tail keywords?

“Ok, ok! I’m sold”, I hear you say. “How do I find these high-converting long tail keywords?”.

Well, like it always is with keyword research, it’s a mix between a manual and automated process.

Manually – Researching suggested terms, reading posts on Quora, reddit, and forums. Getting together a list of head keywords and commonly mentioned phrases.

Automatically – Using tools like SEMRush to generate a list of semantically relevant terms and different permutations from your head keyword research.

How to manually find long tail keywords

Google search box suggestions

A great way is to start typing keywords in the google search box and see the ideas suggested by Google.

When you find a nice long tail keyword you can check it with the keyword tool of your choice (I use SEMRUSH) and decide if it is worth targeting or not.

Google ‘People Also Ask’ and ‘Related Searches’

Another manual method is to Google the topic you have in mind and check the “People Also Ask Section and the “Related Searches”.

Bing / Yahoo suggest

Bing and Yahoo also make suggestions as you are typing a search term. You can use that as well since in almost all cases the suggestions made are different from Google so it’s worth exploiting.

Another goldmine is reddit. I headed over to /r/brewing to find out what people are talking about.

If I was blogging about beer brewing, these people are my target audience. I’ve highlighted some viable keywords:

Quora

Finally, search for keywords in Quora. People are answering questions that you could answer with your ads or content:

Note: Quora is actually a fantastic source of inspiration for blog posts, too. You can usually just grab the questions as a title and use the content in the answer plus your own original research to create winning content.

Competition analysis

There is no niche without competition so it’s not a bad idea to take a look at what your competitors are doing in term of long tail keyword targeting.

Register to their newsletter and RSS feed and if you like a keyword they have used, check it with SEMRUSH and see if there are any variations or similar keywords you can target.

To avoid any confusion, competition analysis does not mean copying your competitor’s ideas or stealing their work but simply means keeping an eye on what other websites in your niche are doing.

How to find long tail keywords using a tool

Long Tail Keyword Research with SEMRUSH

As well as being a complete platform for managing organic and paid SEO campaigns, SEMrush has a quality keyword research feature.

For finding long tail versions of a particular head keyword you’ve researched, use the Keyword Magic Tool.

How to use long tail keywords

Let’s say you’ve found a long tail keyword and want to start creating content to rank for that term. Great! What now?

Well, the first thing to do is to choose one major target. As you’ve seen, by ranking for one keyword you scoop up a lot of long tail variants, too, so it isn’t like it’s the one chance you get to rank for a single term.

Here’s a quick checklist to follow adapted from this post to include only keyword placement:

Put the keyword at the start of the headline (and title tag!)

Use the only the keyword as the slug (the part of the URL after the domain — com/this-is-the-slug)

Make sure your title is in a H1 tag

Use the keyword throughout your H2 subheadings

Use the keyword in the first 100 words

Use a few variations of the keyword throughout the body of the article (you should have plenty from your research)

And, of course, you should always make sure your entire site is optimized to be SEO-friendly.

Long tail SEO tips and tricks

I have said above that long tail keywords are easier to rank but that does not mean that you just throw text on a page and it will get a top position because it is a low competition long tail keyword.

You need to do a lot more than that in you want to rank higher in Google or any other search engine.

Content still matters

Content not only matters but it’s the most important factor for achieving and maintaining a good ranking in the long term.

Make sure that your content rocks both in quantity but most importantly in quality. Use proven content marketing tips and try to publish content that answers the question in the long tail.

Content SEO

When writing content, you should follow some simple but yet every effective SEO copywriting rules for making your copy friendlier to search engines and users.

Thinks like post titles, content freshness and formatting do matter and once you learn the basics they are very easy to follow.

On-page SEO is a must

Don’t forget the rest of the on-page SEO factors that can help you achieve better rankings. Besides the keywords and content there are other ways to make your website more attractive to search engines.

Promote, Promote, Promote: When you hit the publish button you don’t sit back and relax but you start promoting your content in social media and using other white hat techniques.

Getting started with your long tail SEO strategy

What’s the next step you can act on right now?

Well, I’ve given you a reason to do it, as well as the tools and methods you need to get started.

The only thing that’s left is to get going.

Pick a head keyword, find the low-hanging long tail fruit, and get targeting with content or ads that recognizes the intent behind the search term.

For new websites or for not so big websites there is no other way to get traffic and good rankings than working with long tail keywords. The competition for high volume keywords is so huge and it is very difficult to win one of the top positions.

The best way to start building a strong website is to provide top quality content for long tail keywords consistently so as to start gaining rankings and traffic and then gradually move on to more general terms and establish your presence.

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