#also my phone is so set up for dark mode that my background looks weird but eh

[fandom-fae]

i put my tumblr in light mode again and it looks so weird. i feel like i’m scrolling through a really long old screenshot on pinterest

[fishyfishyfishtimes]

Daily fish fact #6 444 205

Fish!

The fish like to have a little drink :) Sadly as they drink the water around them they also drink their own pee, and that is the curse that they will have to live with for the rest of their life

#fish #fishfact #fish facts #fishblr #biology #zoology

( 2 notes )

🪼 clovergonads follow

Tasseled wobbegong women >>>>>>>>>>>

🐸 i-eat-skin follow

bitch those are goosefish

( 27,196 notes )

🐚 seashell-on-the-seashore follow

Say what you want about fishblr updates, but I think this format for reblubs is a wonderful improvement over the previous one. One of the only times staff did good.

🐚 seashell-on-the-seashore

@featherstar53 If reblub chains got too long, new reblubs would start appearing as darker and darker until you couldnt see the text anymore. It mimicked how light disappears as you go deeper in the ocean but the sunken code this webbedsite runs on never set a cap for how dark it gets, so eventually you would have to copy ad paste the text on the reblubs onto somewhere to read them.

🐍 swamplamprey follow

It sounds fake but it's true! You can still find some older fishblr post screenshots with this effect:

This even went for full abyssal mode users! In their case, the text would slowly turn from white to dark blue, effectively making it impossible to read against the black background.

🦞 fastest-claw-in-the-west follow

I think it would be super funny if they brought this back but for individual posts. Like the reblubs stay the same colour but the posts themselves get gradually and gradually darker until you can't see them anymore lol. It would be disastrous but also funny and it might finally stop some of you frys from being so addicted to this webbedsite

#im all for a bit of chaos lol #treasure trove: talking tag

( 730 notes )

🌿 invertlike-behaviour follow

Okay for the record. My eyes are Red because I'm a COMMON ROACH! RUTILUS RUTILUS! It's not because I smoke seaweed!

🌿 invertlike-behaviour

Okay Yes I smoke seaweed all day. But the specific reason my eyes are red is Not That

( 104 notes )

🦈 spiritually-placoderm follow

🫧 surgeonsturgeon follow

OP you forgot brackish water and the option for inhabiting both

🦈 spiritually-placoderm

Shut your inferior ass mouth up

🫧 surgeonsturgeon

#(i couldnt find the actual gif i wanted to use but this weird tiger shark will have to do) #(not sure why his fins look like that)

( 1,020 notes )

☀️ slenderfish follow

"ocean sunfish have over 40 parasite species" factoid actualy just statistical error. average ocean sunfish is infected with only one or two parasites. Parasites Georg, the mola who suffers from every ailment known to fish and has over 1 000 000 000 parasite species infesting his flesh and organs, is an outlier adn should not have been counted

( 193,239 notes)

🪷 trout-about-you follow

Selfieeeee :3 (ignore the two sea lampreys attached to my flesh)

🪲 toebiter follow

how did you take the picture you aren't holding your phone

🪷 trout-about-you

The sea lamprey on the left took it for me

( 58 notes )

🔲 salmonidae-supremacy-deactivated

FISH USED TO MIGRATE THOUSANDS OF MILES TO BREED. WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS!!!!

IN MY DAY PUSSFISH LIKE THIS WOULD GET EATEN ALIVE BY REAL RIVER MONSTERS FOR BREAKFAST.

🐟 darting-action follow

these are Siamese fighting fish bruh.... They don't have migration as part of their life cycle lmao

🔲 salmonidae-supremacy-deactivated

OF COURSE THE YOUTH CAN'T PUNCTUATE THEIR SENTENCES PROPERLY. I SHOULDN'T EXPECT SO MUCH FROM THE SOFT FRY THEY ARE. ALWAYS GETTING RILED UP!

🔲 skip-hopper-deactivated

Ignore this guy, @darting-action. He's well known for saying offensive nonsense like this, I think he's bait and trying to get someone to bite.

🔲 salmonidae-supremacy-deactivated

YOU MUST BE ONE OF THOSE INBRED DOMESTIC SCUM OR HATCHED YESTERDAY SINCE YOU ENTIRELY LACK THICK SCALES. I SPEAK THE TRUTH AND ONLY THE TRUTH. IF YOU GET TRIGGERED THEN THAT'S NATURAL SELECTION, SON. YOU SHOULD FIGHT ME IN REAL LIFE.

🔲 walrus-tits-in-my-mouth-deactivated

You really dont know a thing about natural selection, do you? Bettas have flashy fins because they have to seem threatening to possible competitors. They don't migrate so they aren't built for that. They're built for living in ponds and marshes, low oxygen environments, and by cod, they are built for fighting territorial battles! You shouldn't underestimate a fish literally called fighting fish. They're very tough and hardy fish and can even send larger fish fleeing!

🔲 salmonidae-supremacy-deactivated

SIAMESE FLAILING PUSSFISH HAVE LADY FINS BECAUSE THEY'RE WEAK AND SOFT AND HAD HUMANS DECIDE WHO THEY BREED WITH FOR THEM. THEIR QUOTE UNQUOTE "FIGHTING PROWESS" SURE DIDN'T SAVE THEM FROM BEING PRISSY LITTLE PRINCESS FISHIES FOR LITTLE KIDS DID IT? THE INDUBIDABLE FACT IS THAT THEY'RE MUSKIE FOOD.

🔲 iknowthecrabbypattysecretformula-deactivated

Wait a minute... I recongize that picture on the right! That's from @betta-than-this 's OnlyFins! How did you get that picutre hmmm? Salmonidae? How on Ocean did you gain access huh?

🐠 betta-than-this follow

"Indubidable" is a pretty specific word to use. This you @salmonidae-supremacy-deactivated?

🔲 iknowthecrabbypattysecretformula-deactivated

LMAOOOOOO GOTTEMMM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

🔲 aquarium-life-deactivated

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

🐟 darting-action

woag i never saw this entire chain before until it hit me on my dashboard. Why does this have so many notes

Thanks fishblr user walrus tits in my mouth for biology info i didn't know

🫖 burgle-the-turts follow

Woah woah woah we're just gonna ignore this guy using p*ssfish as an insult!!???? THE CATFISH SLUR????????? No one is going to bring this up!!!!!???????

🔲 tilapia11128-deactivated

does anyone in this thread smoke seaweed

🌊 herringageposts follow

date of origin: 28th of august, 2017

( 392,229 notes )

🟧 sponsored

Suffering all alone, handsome?

No need to anymore.

👄 pollywannacracker follow

Reblub with your favorite snack in the tags! I’ll go first: coral polyps! :}

🚬 shark-noir follow

@ninjalantern-999

#as for me #my fave is definitely my lower set of teeth when they shed #crumchy :D

( 295 notes )

🩸 must-lunge follow

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA STUPID HUMAN DROPPED ITS ELECTRONIC CAMERA IN THE LAKE!!!!!!!! NEVER GETTING THAT BACK BUB!!!!!! I'M TELLING ALL MY ISOPOD AND MUSSEL FRIENDS AND THEY'RE GONNA LIVE INSIDE IT!!!!!

🧑 official-human-posts follow

ofishal human post

#ofishal human post #this post contains humans

( 891 notes )

🦦 hellofromtheotterslide follow

Wait, how come this site is called fishblr and not something like oceanblr or aquablr? Wouldn't that be more inclusive?

👑 goldielocks follow

I believe the name "fishblr" pays homage to the meaning of the word where just about everything in the water was considered a fish. It's why we have words like "shellfish", "whalefish", "jellyfish", "starfish".

Personally aquablr would work really well, too. There's a sizeable amphibious userbase on here.

🦐 worldwideshrimp follow

You forgot whale shark! Those arent fish either but are called fish

👑 goldielocks

....Whale sharks are fish. They are sharks. It's in the name.

🦎 eye-of-newt follow

But I thought it was a whale named after sharks? WHALE shark! Why else would they put whale up first?

👑 goldielocks

A whale named after a shark would be called a shark whale. You can take one look at a whale shark and see that, with its gills and fish tail, it is a shark.

⚪️ number1-seacucumber-ass-enjoyer-77 follow

Wait, then what about baby whales? Are those whales named after babies?

👑 goldielocks

If you're talking about the actual whale babies, then yeah. If you mean the mormyrids, small aquatic animals that can sense electricity, then no, those are fish. Sometimes names are inaccurate to what the animal really is.

🌌 themanta1234 follow

If you think about it, fishblr is also inclusive to aquatic tetrapods since they are lobe-fins, and therefore fish :D It's a term that can include everyone on here, the perfect catchall!

🦑 abyssal-gigantism follow

Ewwww fuck that definition. If mammals hear about them being fish on some sort of """"technicality"""" then this webbedsite is gonna get flooded with those self-important idiots! "OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOOOOO LoOk At MeEeEeEeEEE i'M a MaMmAL!!11!!! I TAKE CARE of mah BAAABIEEEES!1111 I'm SUCH a good MAMAAA!!! All those OTHER STUPID HEARTLESS ANIMALS could NEVER do as I DO!!! I LOVE sweating into my BAABIEEEES' MOUTH1!1!1!111!!! I'm FLUFFY and AWSUM and ERRYBODDY LUUUVSSSSS MEE!!!!!!!!!!111!!!!!!! You should all LUV me TOO!!!!"

Is THAT how you want every fishblr post to look!!!!??????

🦛 drippohippo follow

😨

🪄 magicmanatee45 follow

DD:

🎼 humpbacked-musician-offishal follow

:'''((((

🐋 blainvilles-bitch follow

🕶️ egg-laying-mammal-of-action follow

:///////////

🐢 greenXD follow

i think jellyfish shouldn't be classified as fish because they're clearly living spaghetti

🌜 foolish-idol follow

Great fucking post everyone. Hit the air bubblers

( 60,376 notes )

🟩 ultrahyva-heihoi follow

Guys what the fuck kind of sponsors does fishblr have I just saw an ad for having parasites housed in me who are they advertising to 😭💀💀

#i swear the quality of this site keeps going down and down #if you see ads for parasites then report the shit out of em #fuck em my friend got early onset cataracts due to parasites

( 4 notes )

😃 doweopenandcloseourmouthtoday follow

Yes! :) :O :) :O :) :O :) :O

[dreamlikeapsycho]

I saw the max facts (pun intended 😂) you did for that question a while ago. So I was wondering if maybe you could tell us some more facts about Max it doesn’t have to be anything too detailed but anything you know would be nice to know, pretty please 😊

Okay... RANDOM FACTS ABOUT MAX - PART 2

I went on deep analysis mode this time to try and say all of Max's little nice and cute moments I know of.. Pls take notice, tho!! I'm not trying to flex or anything, I'm just a simple peasant girl on Maximilian's kingdom for a long time and it happens I have FBI blood in my veins 😭 so It's all gather on my brain and hard drive lol SO! I'm just answering this ask with a lot of thought and care so you can know more about Max and how he is even more awesome than you think!!! (And just in text form, cause Max doesn't need to be tagged on more personal stuff on IG (there’s too much illegal fishing at my tumblr pond already! 👏). It’s probably weird to know certain things, yes, but at least I'm respectful, I'll never bother him with this kind of stuff). Well, enjoy the bible below to end up knowing very little about him, still haha.. Just some more small facts.

- Max was at a barbecue just yesterday. It was someones birthday from the set of his new movie. He drank his beer, like usual, idk about the meat.. there was wurst and chicken.. I'm not sure if he's trying to be a vegetarian or not (after that thoughtful video he posted) 🤔.. maybe he didn't eat it, I don't know!!

- a little while before the start of this shooting, he was at the Baltic Sea filming for the series he's gonna be in (just one episode again! Don't get your hopes too high lol he's gonna be a security guard who disappears mysteriously, so....)

- He helped his friend renovate his house a few weeks ago!! How could I forget that on the first post.. Then, he had to go to Hesse for the movie shooting, and his friend had to call another friend to come help him lmao damn

I think I could describe some videos I have then... at least there's some cool and funny stuff. (Friends himself tagged in the past and cast friends)

- Max's dad went to the same uni as him. Also, he voiced a police officer on the phone in a short film Max wrote and directed all by himself (he didn't act on it, but he was also another police officer over the phone haha). Another thing, his dad made the official music for one of his plays.

- The falafel day.. his friend was taking a piss filming Max at the shop from afar and zooming in, saying "omg, guys! I found Noah from Dark! He's right there buying falafel" lmao, then, Max is just standing there looking all wonderful with his perfect hair and such, moving his hands, scratching his chin, ordering his food, and his friend talks some more, doing like a rough Max voice "yeah yeah, I'll have that one. Good, yeah". 😂

- the day he went to take a walk in nature. His friend asks him for a cigarette, he is denied, he goes to take it anyway, Max slams his cup of tea on the table and tries to take his cigarette back and it's all black and they're just laughing lmao (I love his laugh btw, so giggly!)

There was storys posted by Max himself.. so, maybe you saw it, but it's from before dark s3 came out.

- The pigeon storys. He filmed two pigeons chasing each other at the station, one always running from the other and he captioned "me trying to flirt" haha

- He screen recorded an ad for an app that deletes people from pictures and made some joke too, I can't remember exactly what he wrote, smt like "when you break up, but still wants to keep the picture" lol also, he unfollowed like 5 people that week after posting that... hm 👀

- he posted a video of him walking in the dark with really cold wind.. you can only see his hair flying around. Also, with a mask on, another chasing a cat in a big field, and that one drinking his coffee and eating his yogurt (you most likely saw it already)

- Ohh.. His friend was playing Max's drums the other day!!! Made a lot of jokes, it was obvious he was messing around in Max's room (maybe they live together, maybe he just waters the plants lol idk). Some of the jokes were "I've been playing this drums since 1921" and "the drums and me are a perfect pair, don't ever believe otherwise". I wonder what Max said to him.. he can't do anything about it, he's not in Berlin hahah. He has a little giraffe in his room, and other home decors (you can see it on his drumming video on his own IG)

- he likes to read on longer train rides.

- there's a video of him screaming inside a wardrobe after being jumped by a friend and one of him putting lipstick on with the song "I'm a sexy motherfucker" playing in the background hehe we was tagged, it was easy to find when there wasn't much tagged post.

- There's moments of ppl filming something/themselves and he just comes and photobombs it lol he is just like thiss 👏 showing his tongue and doing a funny face and such. One of those I saw it on the IG of a Das Boot cast member I actually already followed before.

- this group was such a blast. There's a few pictures, one of them he's in a dress, he has white stockings on til his thighs, heels and all haha lovely

- His improv-group.. he was almost in tears singing "I believe I can fly" with the group on their last day.. But he was happy! A mix of emotions. He loves everyone, he expresses his love a lot to people in general, he says it and adds heart emojis to make sure haha you can see his comments going on IG of his cast friends, especially from Das Boot (I followed a lot of the guys). So, about always commenting something funny on people's posts.. I didn't saved those, so I forgot most of it, but one I remember was that someone posted a video of a hailstorm and he was like "what are u doing, free ice!! Go grab them" hahaha

- Max has that Noah picture where he's peaking by a wall (you know that one Baran posted) printed and framed! 👏

- Things he’s pretty much always with: his backpack and his big headphones (it's always on his neck. At almost every picture, from every year, with different people etc. I was confused when he had normal headphones at his farm storys. Maybe he forgot them in Berlin 😭. Besides those, his rings, necklaces and bracelets (always, for years and years! Same ones, even). He uses frequently on premieres, as I saw it. Sometimes they also show up on his characters in his one-episode works!! Hahah is so nice when that happens. You can notice this on my screencaps.

- that pic of him that is everywhere now (with glasses, holding a bottle of champagne), I posted that months ago.. There's 2 more pics and 1 video. One pic, he is pretending the automatic lighter that's on the table is a Harry Potter wand (but I think I cropped the table, right.. I can't remember). This was actually posted by Max himself and he tagged his friend who took it. I went to see if they posted smt and there was a picture where he is literally biting the cork of that bottle off with his teeth Lmaoo, and one video.. he is talking on the phone trying to block the view with his feet.. this man!!

- he really doesn't care about buying too much unnecessary clothes and shoes and stuff. He is mindful of his things and the environment!! 

- there's a video of him on the set of Der Zauberlehrling, I need to recall where I got that from (maybe I could share this one. I'm not sure), he is messing with the broom and someone asks him "hey Max, what's that animal?" and points to the fluffy microphone. He says "it's a fucked up coala bear" (in english) 😂

Again.. I can't say names or anything, cause ppl are not mindful! Like.. I know I'm probably weird, but only for myself and my FBI office LOL I don't go over there and follow/reply to all these people’s posts and storys or take their videos and tag Max on them, this is just not.... nah. I'll always be respectful (yeah, some older stuff has gifs, cause he had like 10k followers, and 5 fans on tumblr lol But i never sent/tag him in anything personal directly.. that’s why i only posted on tumblr for the past year, in fact! I never thought things would be the way they are now a year later.. so, newer stuff it's not posted/gif nor ever will). I don't want him to be weirded out and like, disappear from IG!! I think about these things.. when people are being weird and stuff towards him. I don’t know how ppl don’t think about this when tagging him recklessly in random pictures and videos!!!

I wish he had more interviews, so we could know more proper stuff about him. (The few interviews he has are translated on my IG highlight. There's still an 8min interview missing there, cause I'm contemplating about being more of a bother to german speaking people, since I only have basic german..

[cilliansaccent]

The Peaky Designer - Cillian Fanfic, Chapter 20

Hello, welcome back. Below is the next instalment of my fanfiction!

Leave a like or a comment if you liked it, or if I can do anything better! Please, it would mean the world and to understand if anyone is enjoying my writing. Also, sharing/reblogging would be even better.

PLEASE READ:

I will not be including Cillian’s family as it’s kinda weird since he has children lmao. Just a mention of his parents and a previous lover.

I will indicate in a chapter if there is smut in the beginning and before the actual scene!!

I will add trigger warnings if there is any!!

There is a variety of levels of swearing during a chapter, I will not hold back, everyone swears.

The timestamp for the Fic is now 2016 and onwards!!

——- ——- ——- ——- ——- ——- ——- ——- ——- ——- ——- ——- ——-

Background: Gabrijela Babic is a Croatian girl from Sydney, Australia. She is born in the year 1991 on the 24th of December. She studies a Fashion degree in a University with a major in Game Design as well. Her teacher in the fashion designer class managed to nail an Internship on the set of Peaky Blinders with the shows very own Costume Designer, Allison McCosh. There, she travels to London for under a year to learn how to be one, working alongside the actors as well the man she admires, Cillian Murphy. But, her platonic feelings for the man begins to grow into something more, and she wonders whether she should pursue them or let him go for fear of her strict parents and her three older brothers…

Characters:

Swantje Paulina as Gabrijela Babic (swalina on Instagram)

Cillian Murphy

Word Count: 4,972

!!Warnings!!: None!!

Date: February 2017

Chapter Name: Disaster

Brief Chapter Outline: Her Sunday gig went fine till Lucia came along and spilled some information to Leo, Gabrijela’s brother. The next day Gab faces off with her parents about who she’s been seeing with. It ends badly...

——- ——- ——- ——- ——- ——- ——- ——- ——- ——- ——- ——- ——-

It came around to her Sunday gig and tonight it seemed more people had joined in the club.

"God! I've never seen this place so packed!" Maya said as they were readying themselves on the stage.

"Literal madhouse." Ben nodded as he plucked his guitar to tune it.

Gabbie giggled and glanced up, Cillian was seated right at the front, drinking his favourite beer. He raised it and gave her a smile then mouth 'I love you'.

She blushed and repeated it in the same manner before it was time to start the show. They played mostly rock again this time, replaying some fan favourites from last night.

Cillian watched from his vantage spot since he had to move now as people crowded around the damn stage to dance and take photos. He was unable to see his love so he stood a little farther back drinking his beer. He took some photos but not much, he liked to remember the moment and not have a phone to aid him in remembering.

He was minding his own business when someone brushed up against him, "Hey, Cillian."

Glancing over, Cillian frowned and moved away. The girl was dressed in a leopard patterned tube top with a matching mini skirt that really was sitting at the edge of baring her ass. She had curly black hair and eyes that seemed to gobble him up and readying him for sex.

"I'm sorry, who are you?" He did not like how the girl had come on to him so strongly, and she stayed way to close for comfort.

"What? How can you not know me?" She looked totally hurt. "Lucia. You know, Gabbie's only best friend in this whole fucking world." She rolled her eyes, crossing her arms.

"Ah... Yes. Lucia. Hi." He kept his guard up, he wasn't going to let this girl do anything to him. He remembered when Gab had told him what happened between Logan and Lucia.

"Hi. No how are you? Wow, thanks. I'm fine." She raised a brow. "You gonna get me a drink or should I stay here looking like a moron?"

Cillian was in total shock as to how she was acting. Rude and pushy. He never really came across anyone like her and so he stuttered when he tried to speak. No use.

"Of course. I know. I am so fucking gorgeous, I know that's what you are thinking and why you are so dumbfounded and not speaking. So, I shall forgive you for that." She touched his arm and gave him a smile that made him shiver. "Oh? You liked that?" She had backed him to a pole and he frowned.

"I don't. Please stop touching me." He had set down his empty beer glass and gently pulled her hands off him.

"What? You like, shivered so of course, you liked that." She went to reach for his shirt and he grabbed her wrists.

"Stop. I will call the security to kick you out. Now leave me alone, please." He stayed entirely calm.

"What's happening here?" Gabbie asked as she weaved her way through the crowd.

Cillian hadn't seen them finish and sighed, "Nothing. I was telling Lucia to leave me be."

"Shall I call the security?" Gab asked as she stepped to his side, locking her arm around his. She looked at Lucia, no hint of emotion.

"No! Oh my god. I wasn't doing anything at all, how can you think that? God, I missed you!" Lucia went to go hug Gab but she threw her hand out to stop her.

"What is wrong with you?" She asked with a deep frown.

"What? Nothing is wrong. I miss my bestie! Can't I hug you?" Lucia placed her hands on her hips.

"No. And I am not your bestie. I'm nothing to you. Now leave us alone, I don't want to see you at all." Gabrijela tugged Cillian away as Lucia watched them go with pure anger and hatred shining in her eyes.

"Sorry about that." Gabbie said as they came to the bar.

"No, no. Don't be sorry. Not your fault." Cillian leaned down and kissed her forehead. "What are you gonna have?" He asked her as he pulled out his wallet to pay.

"Uh. Nothing if you're paying." Gabbie placed her hand over his. "I got this. I swear."

"No, please. You've been playing all night. Let me treat you to something." He held her hand and smiled in a way that would so make her comply with him.

She groaned, "Fine. Only cause you're cute." She giggled and he ordered her a mocktail.

"I'm gonna head to the men's toilet, you good here by yourself?" He asked.

"Yep. I'll wait here." She kissed him softly and he slipped away.

Gab stood there, sipping her drink and enjoying the atmosphere. Until someone stepped up beside her.

"Who was that?" Leo, Gabrijela's brother, the youngest of the three older brothers she had.

"Wh- Leo! Hi, hello. Who was who?" Gab raised a brow. Her heart instantly kicked in fast mode, no one in her family knew she was dating a guy. Especially a much older guy who had knocked her up now.

"Gabrijela. The one you kissed." He raised a brow, dark eyes bore into hers in that familiar overprotective instinct.

"No idea what you are going on about. You must've mistaken me for another couple beside me." She turned away, facing the bar as she twirled her glass.

He muttered a curse word in Croatian and was about to tell her off when Lucia wedged herself between them.

"Hi, Leo. Nice to see you again." She battered her eyes at him.

"Lucia." Leo wasn't fond of Lucia one bit.

Gabrijela was getting worried now. She wasn't ready to tell her family that she was dating Cillian and Lucia was here now... Oh fuck.

"Has Gabbie told you the good news?" Lucia smiled wickedly at Leo.

"What news?" His brows furrowed.

"Jeez, she's been real secretive now, huh?" She turned to Gab. "Go on. Tell him."

"There is nothing to speak about. Now get lost, Lucia. I have no idea why the fuck you are here." Gab was going to lose her shit. She truly hated Lucia. She ruined her life and she wasn't going to let her do it again.

"Oh my god. Fine, I'll tell him." She sighed and rolled her eyes and turned to Leo, "She's fuckin' Cillian Murphy. You know, the dude from Peaky Blinders. Plays Thomas Shelby. The super old guy." Lucia dumped the news on Leo. "They practically fucked the first night she was in London, I saw it when I was speaking to her-"

Gabrijela snatched someone else's drink and used her own to just dump it on the bitch, "You son of a bitch! Stop ruining my life!" She screamed, totally losing her shit now.

Lucia screamed out and faced her, and gave one mighty shove which made Gabrijela hurtle backwards with Lucia on top of her.

Cillian saw it all unfold as he had arrived over and he and Leo jumped into action and yanked off the screeching woman off Gabrijela who almost clawed her face off.

"Fuck you! Why can't you see I'm helping you?! I am your best friend! Forever!" Lucia hollered as a security guard came over to drag her dumb ass out.

Gabrijela was in shock as Cillian's arms came around her and helped her to her feet, "Holy shit. Are you okay? Are you hurt?" He did not let her go.

"I need air." She whispered to him as she held on to him for dear life.

"I got you." He whispered gently as they walked out of the bar and away from the people to a bench along the street a little way down the path.

Gabrijela sat and took in deep breaths, her hand subtly on her tummy as she calmed her nerves.

"What the fuck was that, Gab?" Leo had found them outside and wasn't too happy. "Talk to me now."

"Excuse me, it's clear she needs a moment, whoever you are." Cillian stood and kept himself between the guy and Gab.

Leo glanced at him, "She's my fucking sister. I need to talk to her."

"Give her a moment, then you may," Cillian repeated with a much more clear and authoritative tone.

"And who the fuck are you? You the guy that's fucking my sister? Huh? Are ya?" Leo was getting up into his face now.

"Leo. Fuck. Off." Gabrijela looked up, "Seriously. I do not want to talk to you right now. I need to be on my fucking own." She stood and began to walk down the street.

"Don't you talk to me like that, I need you to come right back here! Now!" Leo shouted.

"I said leave me alone! Do you not get that? LEAVE. ME. ALONE!!" Gabrijela shouted back.

Cillian was at her side and arm around her, "Hey. Relax. Come on. Let's go back to my hotel yeah?"

"Oh hell no she isn't. She's coming back home with me. Mum and Dad want to talk to you and I think I know what it is." Leo's eyes focused on Cillian now.

Gab saw the look and felt sick suddenly, then threw up all over her brother.

"Gah! The fuck!" He stumbled back as he glanced at himself then at Gabrijela. "You go back with him, Mum and Dad are gonna be so mad."

"Don't care." Gab stayed close to Cillian as he hailed a taxi and they got in.

"Gabrijela, come on- Fucking hell get out of that taxi!" Leo yelled as he watched the cab drive off.

Gab wrapped her arms around herself, shaking her head. "My god." She whispered.

"That was a mess," Cillian said, placing a hand on her thigh gently.

"It was." She murmured and leaned against him some more.

They reached the hotel finally and her phone had not once stopped buzzing from Leo or her friends. She replied to her friends she was okay and not to worry much. She sat on the bed as Cillian prepared a bath for her in which she was grateful for then undressed and eased into the warm water.

Cillian stayed close, "Want me to put music on?" He asked as he stroked her hair gently.

She glanced over and nodded, "I'd love that. And... Is it okay if I could be alone for a bit?" She murmured softly.

"Of course my love. You can take as long as needed." He leaned over and kissed her lightly and set the music up, turned the lights low which she was eternally grateful for and she was alone. She sunk back into the water a little and soaked up the oils and scents.

Tonight had gone good and then ended badly. Lucia had once again ruined her life and she had not expected Leo to be there. And what the fuck did he mean by Mum and Dad wanting to talk to her about? She thought hard and... Maybe... Oh god. Gab felt panic rise in her but she tried to push it away.

She had to find out tomorrow whether she liked it or not.

 -----

 Cillian had been the best to her all night and all morning. He had made sure she was comfortable, happy and well-fed. And by fed not just by food.

Gab flopped back on the bed beside Cillian. She was grinning, she had ridden him for most of the fuck session which his morning wood had woken her.

"God." Cillian looked at her, his smile wide, "You really take the breath out of me." He reached over and cupped her face.

"Do I now? Is that good?" She rolled over and placed a hand over his chest, fiddling with that fine hair.

"I think so. Or it's showing how old I am getting." He chuckled softly.

"Nah. I think you just haven't had someone like me." She leaned in and kissed him deeply.

"Mm, true." He murmured as he turned to pull her close to his body. He made to move on top of her to continue but her damn phone rang. Again.

"Ugh." Gabbie groaned as he laid back as she sat up and padded to her bag. She pulled out her phone and cursed.

"Who is it?" Cillian sat up, his back to the headboard.

"My Dad. And Mum. Called me like eight times." She let the phone ring to the end. Then listened to the voice message.

"Hi, Gabrijela. I've been calling you all morning now and you are not picking up. Leo informed me of who you got into the taxi with and you need to come home right this instant. We need to have a chat of what you have been up to and what you have been hiding from us. Get home now."

She rolled her eyes. Her dad was very pissed off. She listened to her Mum's.

"Hello, darling. Please pick up I want to know if you are safe, that is all. Your father is cursing up a storm here and it would be good of you to at least call one of us. Please come home, we need to discuss some things."

Gabrijela knew her mum was trying to be nice but she knew she was very disappointed in her. She sighed, "I have to head home, Cillian."

"Your parents?" He frowned as she began to dress.

"Yep. I am going towards a war zone right now. I need to mentally prepare myself." She had hoped nothing bad would go this arvo. She had plans for tomorrow with Cillian as it was Valentine's day. A surprise for him and she was quite excited about it. She had done the organising yesterday morning when they lazed around in bed.

"And you have to go now?" He asked as she came to the bed and sat down.

"I do, sadly. I'm sorry Cillian." She frowned and took his hand, "I don't want to but for the sake of my parents... I must." She let out a sigh through her nose.

He squeezed her hand, "Okay. I'll figure something to do today." He smiled, "I love you. Call me later if you can?"

"Always. Also, be ready by ten tomorrow morning." She leaned over and kissed him deeply.

"Why?" He returned it, moving closer.

"Can't tell you. It's a surprise." She giggled and patted his cheek as they kept kissing and she was the one to pull away. "Bye-bye. I love you forever, Cillian." She murmured and he watched her leave the room.

Upon arriving home, she was glad her parents were not home and had gone to work. She spent time with her niece Tijana and her sister-in-law Tatiana who was married to Leo. She had spoken to Tatiana about what was to come tonight and she was happy that her sister-in-law was supportive.

"Leo was all mad." She said as they sat outside in the backyard, Tijana playing with her toys.

"I bet he was." Gab sighed as she took a drink of her coffee. "He yelled at me last night after Lucia attacked me and demanded me to go home. I seriously did not want to go home."

"You stayed with that man? What is his name? What is he like?" She asked with a small smile.

"I did. His name is Cillian." Gabrijela found herself smiling at the thought, "He is the most amazing man I've ever met. We got so much in common, we always have something to talk about. He cares for me, knows my likes and dislikes... He knows me very, very well."

Tatiana watched her and could see the pure love radiating off her, "You love him?"

"I am. So, so, so deeply in love with him. I cannot think of myself with any other person but him." Gab whispered, "I am unbelievably happy, Tatiana. I really am. I've never been in such a good mind before. He makes me crazy."

Tatiana laughed, "And... How old is he? I don't want to judge you or anything but..."

"He's forty-one this year," Gabrijela said softly.

"Wow. Uh... Yeah. That's a big gap. Mum and Dad don't know how old he is, don't think Leo has figured that out yet." Tatiana said. "Though, is he good though?"

"Good in what?" She raised a brow.

"You know. Sex! You must be having sex with him, right? Or is this just a no sex relationship?" Tatiana giggled.

"Of course I am having sex with him! Ugh, he is amazing. Like holy crap amazing. I'm always breathless afterwards." They both laughed and Tatiana beamed.

"And he treats you good?"

"Always. Trust me. He treats me good in many ways, not just in bed." Gabrijela blushed.

The girls spent their day in the backyard before it was time to head inside.

Then it was the sounds of hell rattling down the road and her fathers truck pulled up and parked in the driveway beside the house. Gabrijela was stressing when her mum came home soon after her dad had walked in. The usual discussion of how was his day and making coffee for him then for her mum.

It was about an hour that had passed, Leo home as well when Gabrijela came to the table with her family. She sat at the head of the table for a first and knew she was in for a ride tonight. The worst kind.

"Why didn't you come home with me last night, Gab?" Leo started.

"With the way you spoke to me, no way," Gab said bitterly.

"So you went back with that man? Is that where you went?" He asked.

"Yeah. Back to his hotel room cause I wasn't feeling well and stressed out, Leo. I got attacked by Lucia and almost had my face ripped off!" Gabrijela raised her voice.

"What happened now?" Liljana, her mother, asked with wide eyes. As if this was new to her.

Gab stared at her brother in shock, "You left that bit out? Yeah, Lucia attacked me after she was pestering me all night. She's a damn psycho. I poured wine on her to shut her damn mouth up." Gab shook her head.

"Yeah to shut her up from telling me that Gabrijela is dating a man. Who I know is an actor and a much older actor. I've seen him in that show I've been watching with Gab." Leo bristled.

Gab glanced between her parents, "Fine. Yeah. I've been dating a man who I am very much in love with, alright?"

"How'd you two meet?" Her mum asked.

"When I was overseas doing that internship for the show Peaky Blinders. He's the main character for that show, I had to prepare his costume for each day and help him dress and all that." Gab explained. "We talked. Got close but not close enough since I was with another guy, Logan. Though I had a bad falling out with him as Lucia had come to see me and she slept with him. After that, Cillian, the guy I am now dating, was there for me when I needed someone. And it... Just happened. We clicked after that and now we are inseparable." Gabrijela explained the best she could.

"And how old is this man, Gab? Hm?" Her dad now chimed in.

Gabrijela swallowed. This was it, "He is turning forty-one this-"

"Forty-One?! Gabrijela what is wrong with you? He is too old for you! No! I do not allow this stupidity of yours. You cannot see this man anymore. Whatever it is, it will not last. You are so young, you can do so much better!" Her dad yelled with anger.

"I love him, dad! I am not going to throw all that away just because you don't like it!" Gabrijela was beyond angry now. She was hurting.

"No! You do not know love. You got no experience in what is love. This man, clearly only using you because you are young and agile. He will not want you in a year or two. Do not make a fool of yourself, Gabrijela." Nikola shook his head, "Unbelievable. I thought I raised you better."

"Darling. We only want the best for you and this is not what we had in mind. Please, do not hurt yourself for such an old man. Really? Could you not have found anyone else?" Her mother tried to soothe the pain.

Gab felt tears in her eyes, "No." She pulled her hand back from her mothers, "Cillian is the one. Whether you like it or not. I will continue to be with him-"

"No, you will not. I forbid you from seeing him. If I see you with him I will make sure he-"

"What will you do, huh, dad? You gonna punch him? Ruin your daughter's life just because you can't accept my decisions? You never accepted anything I did. I had to always do what you both wanted me to do. I never got to choose what I wanted. I'm twenty-five years old. I can decide what I do with my life, not you. Not anymore." Gabrijela stood up.

"Not under this roof you don't. I make the rules here, Gabrijela! I do, and you better fucking listen to me." Her father snapped which made her wince.

"Nikola! Don't swear-" Her mother tried to calm him down.

"Yeah? And if I don't? Huh? What are you gonna do, huh? You can't do shit to me, dad." Gabrijela now faced off with her father.

"You will not speak to me like that. I am the leader of this house and you are to follow them. I don't care if you are twenty-five. That does not matter to me. What matters is you living under this roof and you making an absolute fool of your life. You are wasting it! What will happen when he is sixty? Huh? Like me, old and wrinkly. Will you still sleep with him? Hm? Will you still kiss him and be with him when you are in your prime life?"

"You don't know me as well as you do, dad. I love him and I will love him to the end of my fucking life. You better accept it because I will not change anything to suit your wishes. My life dad. My problems." Gabrijela kept her ground. She would not be trampled on like this.

"Enough! Stop it. Gabrijela you are not listening to us. You-"

"Oh, I am listening quite clearly. That's all that I've been doing my whole damn life. I'll take in your considerations but I will not put them into motion. I love Cillian, I will be with him and you have no way of stopping me."

"Get the fuck out of my house then," Nikola said, nothing but rage and spite in his voice.

"Nikola, you will not kick out our daughter," Liljana said.

"Tata, don't do this." Leo seemed afraid and shocked now as how much this had escalated.

"Shut up. She can leave if she wants to do whatever she wants. I do not want to see it then. Pack your shit and get out." Nikola slammed his hands on the table which made everyone jump.

Gabrijela let her tears fall as she stared hard into her father's eyes. "I want to know one thing though," She whispered, "How did you find out?" Gab never posted anything online whatsoever. 

It was her mother who replied, "Lucia had told us this morning when Leo mentioned it to us. We did not believe him but when your friend-" 

"She is not my friend. I hate her. She is a scumbag. And so, what she tell you exactly huh? Come on, tell me." Gab urged. Her heart hurt. 

"She said that you were being taken advantage of some old man and seemed lost by his charms. We are worried that you might be but we can help you get out of it." Her mother said with pure worry. 

Gabrijela laughed with no emotion, "Wow." She said shaking her head with utter disbelief, "Just... Wow. So you would take her word rather than mine?" 

"It's not like that," Liljana said quickly. 

"It clearly is. She's lost her mind, mum. She is becoming obsessive over me. I am not her friend no longer. It truly hurts to know you took her word than listening to your daughter. Really shows what kind of person you are. I'm glad I'm being fucking kicked out." Gab turned and then ran upstairs to her room. She grabbed her suitcase and began to pack her clothes in. Then her duffle bag for more items as books, chargers and her laptop.

"Gabrijela, don't listen to him. Stay. Let us work this out." Her mother had come up to see her.

"No." Gab shook her head, unable to stop her tears or her sobs. "I'm going to leave. I don't need this shit in my life right now. I really don't and you standing there staring at me as if I am some fucking failure isn't helping either." Gabrijela looked at her.

"Swearing isn't nice," Liljana said, arms crossed.

"Nor is kicking out your daughter which you clearly support. It's cool. I'm glad I've been kicked out. Don't have to be fucking trapped in this shit hole." She shoved as much as she could. She was surprised she had taken well over half her wardrobe.

"Gabrijela-" Her mother started.

"Move." She sauntered past her and headed down the stairs. She grabbed last bits and pieces as well as her car keys and dumped her shit in.

"Gabrijela come on. Don't be like this." Her mother raced out after her.

"Don't try and make me feel bad. This is your fault. Not mine. I feel bad for Tijana living in this house. I hope Tatiana and Leo get out before they're corrupted by your bullshit." Gabrijela did not listen to any more accusations her mother threw at her and she drove off.

Gab drove into the city, messaged Maya that she was using the car spot for their apartment for unknown lengths of time. Maya mentioned they had hidden the key in the walled-off spot if she needed the apartment to herself. She thanked her but she wasn't going to use it. Just needed a place to leave her car without paying stupid fees.

She grabbed her shit out and dragged it to the main street and headed to the hotel where Cillian was staying. It was already dark and she wasn't a fan of walking the streets alone in the city but thankful the hotel was in view.

In the foyer, she sat on a couch and called up Cillian.

"Hey, love. How are you?" Cillian's voice made her instantly better.

"Not okay. I'm in the foyer. Can... You get me? Please?" She asked in a small voice.

"Of course. I'll be there in a moment." He hung up and some minutes went by and he was there walking to her. "What is all this?" He frowned before she ran to him and wrapped her arms around his waist. His arms automatically wrapped around her as he held her as she cried into his chest.

When the sobbing subsided, Cillian helped her up to his room with her suitcase and duffle bag. Then they laid back on the bed, her head on his chest and her explaining what had happened.

"God... I am sorry, Gabrijela. I really am. I can't believe they would treat you like this." Cillian was in total shock as to how she could be kicked out. Just for dating someone.

"It's fine. Not your fault. They just can't fathom their daughter dating someone who is twice her age. I really don't care about the age gap, Cillian. I'm just hurt that they couldn't see how I am in love and happy for a change. It's always been their way and no other way." Gab sniffled.

Cillian stroked her hair. He could see her parents point but to kick her out for her decision? Unacceptable. "Parents should always be there." He murmured more like a spoken thought.

"I wish they were, Cillian. God, I can't even imagine now to tell them of the pregnancy." She felt fear shoot through her. There was no way she was going to live in that house ever again.

"We'll do that together if you want." Cillian offered and she looked up.

"You want to?" She cupped his face.

"I'd love to. I want to be there for you and support you. I don't want you to be alone." He placed his hand over hers.

She smiled, "Okay... Well, I guess I'll wait until this cools down before we nail them with another shit storm."

"Not a shit storm. A miracle." He kissed her softly.

After that, she showered and put on a nice dress and he took her out for dinner at a restaurant he had found earlier that day. They ate good food and talked about baby things and when to tell his family as well. They would do it tomorrow morning and Gabbie was very excited. She loved his family to the moon and back.

They walked along the harbour, hand in hand. The night was warm but comfortable, they went to a bar for a bit then headed home to relax in bed and watch a movie together.

Gabrijela was only in her bra and panties as she fell asleep in his arms, despite the day being fucked, she was happy in her lover's arms. She was warm and safe and loved. That was what mattered to her. Cillian being with her.

[euphoric-melancholyy]

The Secrets We Keep

I’m on a personal vendetta against “May’s abusive boyfriend” trope so I thought it would be fun to give May a really awesome, loving boyfriend who’s just a little confused as to why she lets her teenage son stay out til 1 every night and sleep somewhere else every weekend. Also, he’s friends with Tony Stark? Chris - May’s new boyfriend -  feels like he’s missing something here. 

I’m posting this instead of a fic rec today

Also on Ao3 and Fanfiction.net

May Parker hadn’t planned on stepping back into the dating scene, but then again she hadn’t planned on most of the important life events that seemed to shape her. His name was Chris. He was handsome, tan with dark hair and scruff that couldn’t quite be called a beard yet, and hooded green eyes that all the hospital patients commented on. Chris worked alongside her at Queens Memorial, exchanging quips about 90s pop culture and recipes to actually cook for Peter. He cared for his patients with a rare sensitivity to their needs, always trying to brighten their day and learn a little bit about what makes them happy.  Like her, he was a widower, having lost his wife eight years prior to cancer. And she hadn’t planned on him crashing her little bubble, being a balm for the isolation of raising a super-powered kid who seemed to attract danger like a magnet. Not that she could tell Chris that. 

But even so, he soothed her worries when Peter was out on patrol and being with him felt like relearning how to breathe. It felt euphoric, and scary and soothing and exciting all at once. She wasn’t sure when she had last smiled as much as she did when Chris entered the picture. It didn’t go unnoticed by Peter either, her newfound giddiness after long days at work now more commonplace than exhaustion. 

After three dates, she tells her nephew, nervously twirling spaghetti around her fork as she awaits his reaction. 

His eyes brighten as she speaks and he puts down his fork, eagerly leaning forward as she tells him about the Italian dinner he made for them on their last date. “That’s great, May! As long as you’re happy, I’m happy. I know Ben would feel the same way, by the way." 

Peter’s lips are pressed together in a soft smile and she’s not sure why she’d been so worried to tell him. Pride overwhelms her in that moment, of who he is and his kindness, his inability to let the little guy suffer when he knows he can help. She might not love that he’s risking his life as Spider-Man, but she can still be proud of him for it. It coils in her chest with the near constant ebb of fear, but it’s warm and inviting and she’s not sure how she got to raise the best kid in the universe.  

"He’d be so proud of you, Pete.” She beams at him before eating a forkful of spaghetti.  “Spider-kid.”

“It’s Spider-Man, May.” He protests. “You sound like Mr. Stark when you make those nicknames.”

“Oh, we can’t have me sounding like him, now can we?”

“You already tag team me like divorced parents who stay friends, so I don’t see why not.”

“It’s called co-parenting,” she responds and Peter rolls his eyes. 

“So when can I meet this Chris?” Peter asks and she doesn’t even try to stifle her smile at his eagerness. She might not be able to help him with homework or any of his Spider-Man activities, but this - this she can handle.

-/-/-

They set ground rules. The first and most important rule is that Chris can’t know Peter’s Spider-Man, at least not for awhile. It means Peter can’t leave his suit lying around or continue crawling on the ceiling out of boredom or stress or whatever reason he decides it’s a better place to pace than the floor. 

They also agree not to tell Chris that he spends half his week with the Tony Stark. 

(“People at school already tease me about it being fake and I don’t care, but…it isn’t normal for a random teenager to just hang out with Mr. Stark. And what if he connects Spider-Man? Then that puts him in danger too and I just, I- I don’t want him to know yet May.”) 

This is a secret May still thinks she can handle — at least, for a time. If asked, she says that Peter has an internship with Happy Hogan.

And, in some weird twist of fate he never wants to experience again, Peter finds himself giving the talk. He’s beat red the whole time, cheeks flushed as he stammers through his explanation. 

(“May, I-I have enhanced senses and um, I can hear your heartbeat. And I can hear a - hear a conversation happening two blocks over right now. So like, if - if he’s gonna spend the night, or something, please for the love of my innocence, let me be at the Compound. Or- or just tell me. I need a heads-up.”

“If your hearing is actually that good, I’m sure you’ve heard worse.”

“Yeah, but not from you and I never want to.”)

-/-/-

The second rule is broken three weeks after Peter meets Chris. Though they get along famously, Peter usually isn’t around when Chris is at the apartment. It isn’t planned, he’s just busy and overcommitted. At this point, it’s only his third time being in the older man’s presence.

They’re all at the table together, eating lasagna that Chris had made when Tony knocks on the door and May answers. 

“Ah, Ms. Parker, lovely to see you as always. Mind if I borrow Peter for a few days? It’s for,” he glances at Chris and gives a signature fake smile and nod, “Internship stuff.”

“Uh, Mr. Stark, what are you - what are you doing here?” Peter asks, his voice getting higher the more he talks. “I thought Happy was coming, not that it isn’t great to see you. It is I just - I-”

“Happy’s in the car, kid.” Tony says, smiling to himself at Peter’s nervous rambling. 

May sighs and side steps, inviting him in while Peter gets a bag together. “If anything happens to my kid Stark, I will personally come and kill you. FRIDAY will let me in and you won’t even see it coming.” She keeps her face stern for a moment, then breaks into a wide grin. “Chris, meet Tony Stark. Tony meet Chris."  

Chris is unsurprisingly starstruck and confused, stumbling over his words in a way that May finds to be the most adorable thing she’s ever seen. "Hi, uh, hi. You’re I-You’re here? And you’re Iron Man. And Peter?” he stops mid-ramble and extends his hand. Tony takes it. “It’s nice to meet you, Mr. Stark.”

“Likewise. Peter’s told me a lot about you. Speaking of, kid, hurry up. I don’t have all day." 

Peter runs back into the common area, backpack in tow and wearing his suit, sans mask, under his clothes. The red spandex peaks out at his wrists. Tony cocks an eyebrow at his protege.  

"What?” the teen asks. 

“Nothing. Let’s go." 

Peter kisses May on the cheek, promising to be safe and update her three times a day, before following his mentor out the door. 

-/-/-

The next night, they’re curled up on the couch together with May’s head on Chris’s chest and legs intertwined. The news plays softly in the background but May isn��t really paying attention. 

"So when were you gonna tell me that you’re BFFs with a billionaire? With Iron Man himself?” Chris asks, running his fingers through her hair. There isn’t anything accusatory in his tone and May cuddles closer to him. 

“We’re not BFFs. He mentors Peter sometimes with… science stuff. It all goes over my head. Peter asked me not to mention it. He doesn’t like drawing attention to himself." 

"And Iron Man just whisked Peter off to. . ?” he lets his question trail off. 

“Some nerdy science conference in Italy.”

“Damn, that’s-” he pauses, looking at the TV and pointing. On the screen, there’s a breaking news alert about The Avengers fighting another alien army, because apparently normal villains went out of style in 2012.  “Wait, that Italy?" 

She sees Peter, Spider-Man, next to The Hulk, Iron Man flying above as they fight off their oppressors. Everyone’s there - Cap and Widow and Iron Patriot and Hawkeye, but they are pulled away to another part of the fight. They’ve been fighting for at least half an hour when she watches as Spider-Man is thrown into a building. The bricks break with the impact and it begins to cave and she swears she stops breathing for a moment. It’s another five minutes before she sees him again, red and blue swinging around and webbing up the aliens. Iron Man fires his repulsors at the last big baddie and Hulk smashes their foe’s head half a dozen times. 

"Don’t worry. I’m sure Peter’s fine,” Chris offers, his voice low and serious. “He’s at a conference, not fighting these monsters." 

"Yeah.” It’s barely above a whisper and she takes out her phone when she gets a message from Peter. 

Don’t worry. I’m okay. It’s gonna take more than that to take me out. Tony is going all “dad mode” on me. It’s embarrassing. 

May looks up to the TV to see Iron Man cradling an injured Spidey and flying them to their jet. She smiles and types out a response. 

I can see that. You did great, Pete. Take an ice bath or something, that looked like it hurt. Love you.

“He’s fine,” she says, grabbing the remote and turning off the TV. 

“Told you,” Chris quips, leaning in to kiss her. It’s soft and it calms her nerves in a way she can’t explain. “So, you know Iron Man, but who’s your favorite Avenger?”

“I’m partial to Spider-Man. He is Queens’ local vigilante after-all." 

"May Parker, a Spider-Man fan,” he teases. She throws a pillow at him. 

-/-/-

“Shouldn’t Peter be home by now?” Chris asks one night. May glances at the time on her phone. It reads 12:33 a.m. 

“He has until 1 a.m.”

“Isn’t that kinda late? I mean he’s only sixteen - he could get seriously hurt out there. Or partying and drinking his weight in-”

“He’s fine, Chris. Peter’s a good kid. I trust him.” She looks towards his bedroom door. It’s shut so he can just silently swing in. The crime has been quieter lately - thank god. No alien attacks or evil mutant who has it out for her kid. “His curfew goes back to 11:30 once school starts up." 

Chris looks skeptical, but he’s not about to tell her how to raise her nephew. "Whatever you say.”

-/-/-

Peter’s body aches, muscles throbbing with the all-enveloping pain of post battle. Blood trickles down from around his left eye, which is now swollen shut. He cries, a short high pitched wince as he comes back into consciousness, his body pressing against a pile of rubble. 

A sharp pain erupts at his most definitely broken ribs and he bites down another cry. He could hear someone calling his name in the distance, their voice muffled as if they were screaming underwater. 

“Peter! Spider-Man!" 

Peter groans, opening his eye as he tries to recall where he is but there’s a glint of red and gold blocking his sight. 

"T'ny?”

“Yeah, bud. You blacked out there for a few minutes and I thought I’d come get you.”

“I’m o-” His word is caught on a hiss of pain as Tony lifts him into his arms and Peter curls into himself. “Shit.”

“Maybe don’t become a ragdoll for steampunk Ursula next time, okay?”

“Wha?”

“Otto Octavious - madman with mechanical arms. I’ll explain it to you when you’re more coherent. Pretty sure you have a concussion.”

Peter wakes later in the dim light of the medbay. Mr. Stark sits in a recliner next to him, checking and promptly ignoring his emails. Peter’s head throbs, his left eye still swollen shut, his body aching, but it’s duller than before, the pull of drugs making his mind fuzzy. He’s been stripped of his suit and looks down to find he’s wearing an old MIT hoodie of Tony’s and…his Hello Kitty pajama pants, great. 

“Four broken ribs, a concussion, a skull fracture, and of course there’s that eye - I’ll get you an eye patch and you can cosplay as Nick Fury.” Tony remarks, looking to the kid. 

“Better that than these pajamas. Really, Mr. Stark?”

“Punishment for scaring the shit out of me,” he says with a smirk, but the rest of his face betrays his cool demeanor. There’s worry lines etched into his expression that furrow his brow and dark bags under his eyes. His hair is disheveled and Peter has the urge to reach out and fix it, but decides that would be weird. It’s strange to see his mentor like this, so unguarded and worried, and not TV ready. Tony isn’t even trying to hide it, which seems to be the worst part for Peter.  He hates that he caused this.

“I’m sorry. Thanks, for - for saving me.” Peter says with a sheepish smile. 

“Don’t mention it,” Tony says, reaching a hand out to ruffle his hair. Peter leans into the touch. “Actually do. Please mention it to your lovely Aunt. She gets off at two tonight so I’m gonna drive you back. Don’t worry, I’m sending some Captain America level narcotics with you for all that,” his hand makes a circle in the air, gesturing to Peter’s everything. 

Peter gets home at 1:45, the hood of Tony’s sweatshirt pulled over his head in a sad attempt to hide his eye and some dry blood caked into his hairline. The smell of homemade pizza overwhelms his senses before he even walks in the apartment. It’s odd, May rarely cooks especially in the middle of the night. 

“Hey hon,” Chris calls as Peter walks through the door. He’s standing in the kitchen, looking in the oven. “I thought I’d make you some dinner befo- oh my god Peter!”

Peter freezes, trying to stifle the panic that’s bubbling in his chest. Chris is already by his side less than a second later, hesitantly pushing the hood off Peter’s head and examining his eye with a concerned what the hell happened? 

“Uhh…I was jumped? Yeah. Jumped. I was jumped.” 

Chris considers him for a minute, soft gaze searching Peter’s in a way that makes him uncomfortable, like he’s learning something new. “C’mere,” Chris’s says, voice low and laced with so much concern that Peter doesn’t even protest as he follows him to the couch. 

“I already went to the doctor. Mr. Stark took me. Really Chris, it’s okay. I’m fine.”

“Even if you already went, I’m worried and I’m a doctor, and I’d feel a lot better if you let me look. Please, Peter.” 

The way he says Peter, it’s not unlike how Tony says his name sometimes, like a whispered prayer for him to be okay, and it breaks his resolve. Slowly, Peter lifts the hoodie over his head and tosses it to the floor. Chris gasps and it’s full of surprise and fear and all the emotions Peter wanted to avoid for at least a week, and Peter chances a look down. His torso is littered in bruises of varying shades and there’s a cut along his stomach. He can feel the medicine Dr. Cho gave him wearing off and it hurts. 

“Pete,” the older man whispers, hands held in suspension above Peter’s ribs, like he wants to touch them but he’s terrified of causing anymore pain. “Your ribs…You-”

“They’ll be fine in a few days. I have a concussion too, so can I just,” Peter sighs, resting his head against the back of the couch. It’s soft and comforting and he’s just so ready for this day to be over. “Go to bed, please?”

The door opens in that moment and May walks in. She’s wearing blue scrubs and her hair is tied in a loose ponytail. Immediately she locks eyes with Peter, and her face crumbles as she rushes over.  “Peter, baby! I- Tony said you were in a fight, but this…”

“I’m fine, May. Really. It really wasn’t a big deal. It’s not even worth worrying over.”

May shoos Chris to the side and sits down in between them. Her eyes run over Peter in a professional way, ending on his swollen eye. One of her hands goes to cup his cheek, “Okay, first off you cannot possibly say it’s not a big deal when you look like this. What did Dr. Cho say?” Her thumb brushes over his temple and a scowl replaces her worried look. As if wanting to prove her point, a gut-clenching pain shoots through him and he pulls his knees to his chest, sucking in air when his ribs protest painfully.

“A couple of broken ribs, skull fracture…” Peter whispers, wishing his metabolism didn’t work its way through all the painkillers in five minutes. 

“And a concussion,” Chris reminds, his hand resting on May’s knee.

They look like a team, Peter thinks, and May’s presence had calmed Chris’s erratic heartbeat the moment she came home. The idea elicits pangs of guilt on top of everything - guilt at the lies he and May have concocted to keep his identity of Spider-Man safe. He wonders how hard it’s been on May and Chris’s relationship, how many white lies she’s had to tell, but he pushes the thought down and focuses on the throbbing in his head instead. At least that can be dealt with, he thinks, and asks May to get his medicine from his backpack. She hands it to him with a sad gleam in her eyes. It makes him want to crawl under the nearest blanket and hide from their sympathetic glances. 

“Really May, it’s nothing I can’t handle. Just everyday stuff,” Peter tries to reassure her. 

“Peter, you were jumped,” Chris says, his tone serious. “That’s not an everyday thing, or at least I hope not. It’s a big deal and it’s scary. Your ribs are broken for god’s sake. Your eye is swollen shut. I just-” Chris pauses, looking down at the cut along Peter’s ribs. May’s brows furrow in confusion at the mention of Peter being jumped, but she quickly schools her expression. 

May sighs. “We’ll let you get some rest, okay superhero?” She offers her hand to help Peter get up. He takes it and stands. “Call if you need anything. We’ll be right here.”

“Thanks May. Thank you, Chris.”

He’s asleep not even ten minutes later, lulled by the concerned whispers of May and Chris from two rooms over. When he wakes the next morning, his body is sore, but his eye is almost back to normal. 

-/-/-

Five months have passed when May wakes to the shrill of “Iron Man” by Black Sabbath playing from her phone at 3 a.m. Peter had thought it’d be funny to set it as her ringtone for when Tony called and she never got around to changing it back. Her bedroom is coated in darkness, save for the light from her phone and she squints at it. Chris is wrapped around her like a koala, arm slung over her stomach and lips pressed to the back of her shoulder. 

“ ‘Ello,” she yawns as she answers, her eyelids drooping and the remnants of sleep threatening to pull her back in.

“May,” Tony’s says, his voice serious and raw with emotion that she’s never heard from the billionaire and it scares her, wiping away all the tiredness and replacing it with fear. May shoots out of bed, trying to keep her breath even but it fails. “Peter’s alive, first off, so don’t worry about that. He’s okay, kind of, well, he will be. He’s - he was shot earlier on patrol - twice. The damn kid. And Happy is on his way to get you, he should be there in ten minutes, so-”

“Peter was shot?” she whisper-screams, the words knocking the air from her lungs. And she can’t help it, the way her mind immediately goes to Ben on that fateful night, Peter at the police station covered in her late husband’s blood, silent sobs racking his body. The edges of a panic attack seeps in at the memory and her heart is going to beat out of her chest and she can’t breathe, she can’t breathe, can’t breathe, can’t-

She hears someone call her name, but she isn’t sure where she is anymore, and her mind takes her back to that first night without him, an inconsolable Peter wrapped around her muttering apologies between broken sobs. Peter didn’t go to sleep until noon the next day. She’s at Ben’s funeral, and there’s flowers everywhere - bright and vibrant and sickening wisps of color among black suits and dresses and her husband’s cold body. Everyone comes up and shakes her hand, offering words of comfort and food, but she doesn’t want any of it. Peter’s at her side and she squeezes his hand, tries to reassure him (and herself) that it’ll be okay. Peter nods, his eyes red and his motions slow and robotic and Peter-

Peter. This is about Peter. Peter’s been shot. 

Her world comes back into focus and she sees Chris kneeling in front of her, sleep mussed hair and wide green eyes full of concern. His thumb wipes at a tear on the apple of her cheek and she presses the phone to her ear. Tony is still talking, telling her to breathe and that Peter’s okay and Happy’s almost there.

“I’m sorry,” she chokes out a sob. “Tony, I…”

 “It’s okay. He’s gonna be okay. He has to be okay,” he pauses. “Do you want me to stay on the line?”

She leans her head on Chris and her eyes flutter closed. He wraps his arms around her and it’s grounding. Peter’s alive. Peter isn’t Ben. Peter’s alive. She repeats it over and over, a silent mantra and she realizes both Chris and Tony are waiting for a response. “I…” she speaks into her phone. “Chris is here. I- I’m okay,” May hangs up and turns her attention to Chris. 

“Peter was shot. He - I have to go. I - Happy, he’s outside I gotta-”

“Let me go with you,” Chris says. And god, she wants him too. She wants to curl into his side in the car and tell him everything, but she knows she can’t do that to Peter. Not right now. He asked her to keep his identity safe, to keep Chris safe, and that’s the least she can do when her nephew is out saving the world every night. 

“I need you to stay at the apartment, please I- I know you want to come, but I need you here. I’ll be back in a few days. I just - I’m sorry, I need to go.” She kisses him, soft and quick and rushes out the door before he can protest.  

-/-/-

Unable to process the night’s frightening turn of events, Chris is left standing at the doorway. He had called multiple hospitals looking for Peter, but none of them seemed to have anyone that matched his description. It wasn’t until May called the next morning saying that Peter was okay and recovering at the Avengers Compound, that he figured out why. 

Why is he at The Avengers Compound, May? That’s insane he had said, but she acted as if it was normal, saying that Tony preferred treating him there. When he asked about what happened, she said it was an unfortunate wrong place, wrong time, but that it didn’t matter now because he was okay. 

Now, five days later, Peter and May were coming home. He waits inside the apartment for them, pacing the living room as he cleans the countertops for the seventh time in the few days they’ve been gone. He can hear laughter down the hall and it takes him a moment to realize it’s them. Peter is rambling excitedly about something - he can’t tell what - and he stops as the door opens.  What he doesn’t expect is to see Tony Stark behind her, his arm around Peter’s shoulder, beaming at a perfectly healthy, energetic kid. It throws him for a loop how domestic they look. 

Like a family. 

And that’s when it hits him. The internship, the nights at the Compound, the easy banter, Stark taking care of him after he’s injured. Chris pauses his inner monologue, sweeping the group from head to toe with his gaze. “Wait…Is Peter Tony’s secret son or something?”

Fin 

[theswiftarmy]

#6 - A Helicopter Ride To Oak Felder’s Spaceship

“Well, this is great, Taylor and that swift attorney of hers now have even more leverage to use against us to get Taylor’s masters.”  Scooter sneered.

           “I miss Sushi.”

           “You can get more when we land.”  Scooter said back.

           “My cat.  Scootsy B, not the food.  I’m actually pretty full, which is surprising, because usually sushi doesn’t always fill you up.  You know?”

           The Carlyle Lawyer met eyes with Justin.  I know exactly what you mean he thought. They mentally agreed.

“Why did you have your cat in the office anyway?”

           “It was bring your cat to the office day, Scooter! Remember?  Last time I brought Tuna, so this time, it was Sushi’s turn.” He sent a quick text to Hailey to give her the news on Sushi.  At least Tuna was still safe with Hailey.  For now…  

The moment Justin pushed the tiny icon to send his text message to Hailey he immediately received another.  It was a message from Ed Sheeran offering to take Tuna to a safe place.  “That’s weird.”

“What?” Scooter asked.

“Ed just asked if he could come get Tuna.”

“Maybe he’s just asking you for a can of tuna?”  Scooter shrugged.  “To make a tuna sandwich?”  He offered. Everyone but Scott shrugged.

“Don’t reply to him.”  Scott said in a very Jeff Goldblum-ish way.  Someone had to be that Jeff Goldblum voice of reason, and Jeff isn’t here at the moment, so Scott got the gig.

Justin looked up from his phone, “But why not?  Ed is totally cool with me I really don’t think—Whoa.  This is even weirder.  He just sent me a little heart, and a cat emoji out of the blue.”

“It’s a phish.” Scott said unsympathetically.  Again with the Jeff G voice.

“No, Tuna is my cat, not a fish.”  Bieber responded.  No one responded back.

“They’re trying to figure out where we plan to land.”  The Carlyle Group legal rep eventually added.  

Scott nodded in his direction.  “Precisely.”

Scooter lost his patience.  “This is ridiculous!  I mean, all this over, what… Some music?  Guys, IT is JUST music!  This is crazy.”

Scott turned and locked eyes with Scooter.

“You don’t know what you’ve bought, Scooter, do you?” He said in a very serious tone, a Jeff Goldblum serious tone.  The corporate helicopter engines and blades hummed away in the background as they flew through the air.  The cabin of the helicopter felt like a war room now.  The cutting edge modified Bell 525 Relentless was custom built, a boardroom like interior, extra long flight range with multiple tanks of gas.  They sat in fancy seating facing one another with wide views through the windows of the world outside, this big machine was a traveling fortress and a businessperson’s dream.  From up here, one could keep a whole company going, even if it were under siege.

“Well, I mean, is there something you’re not telling me, Scott?”

Scott closed his eyes, meditated for a moment, “It’s more than just music, it’s so much more than you even know, Big Machine is… something special…”

           “Spare me the story, you told me that when you sold me the label.  Remember? And I ran the numbers, liked what I saw… He was there.”  The legal rep nodded.

           Scott opened his eyes and his gaze became hypnotic. “Taylor’s catalog is… something special… Taylor Swift’s catalog is REALLY special.  More than you could even know.”

           “Yes.”  Scooter stared at Scott incredulously.  “It’s catchy music that sells!  It sells REALLY well, that’s WHY I bought your label.  That’s all it is!”  He threw his hands in the air, “Catchy songs!  That’s how we make a living, Scott.  We make fun little musical hooks that people can’t get enough of, catchy songs that people listen to and dance to over and over again… THEY have a good time and WE make money—”

           “Oh, Scooter, catchy songs?  That’s cute.  Yes, that’s cute, Scooter.  I’ll say it again.“  He paused to stress every word.  “You, don’t, know what you’ve bought, DO you?”

           “Okay Scott,” Scooter sat back in his chair, “Enlighten me.  Enlighten all of us here.  Because, to me, it was just a business transaction, I bought some catchy music recorded on hard disk; I bought ownership of melody, notes combined with chords that people enjoy. They listen to it in the morning at the gym, on their way to work or school, maybe afterwards to unwind, have a good time, or dance the night away! I bought MASTERS.  IT. IS. JUST. BUSINESS.  If I didn’t buy Taylor Swift’s masters, then what exactly did you sell me, Scott?”

           Scott smiled and sat back in his seat.

“You guys never figured it out, did you?  All those catchy Taylor Swift songs, every time you sang along, and you never figured it out?”

“Figured what out, Scott Borchetta, figured WHAT out?”  Scooter Braun grew impatient.  “WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO HAVE FIGURED OUT!?!?”

Scott stared through the window of the hovering helicopter moving slowly away from the Big Machine offices, a giant Taylor Swift banner had been dropped over the front hanging from the roof and extending all the way to the street, the same concerned facial expression he had just a short time ago looking out that now covered office window returned.

“Have either of you ever heard of a Porter Pyramid?”  he looked over at the Carlyle lawer and then back to Justin and Scooter.

“What on earth are you talking about Scott!  A pyramid?  Like, Egypt? What does that have to do with anything? You’ve lost your mind.  Heck, I feel like I’VE lost MY mind.  What on Earth is going on right now, you know? We’re flying through the air in what might as well be a military grade corporate helicopter after nearly having lost our lives at the hands of a bunch of obsessed Taylor Swift fans!”

“Bill Porter.”  Scott repeated, again in that smooth Jeff Goldblum voice.  “He worked in RCA Studio B, in Nashville, Tennessee from 1959 to 1964.”

“Are you even listening to me Scott?  What does this have to do with anything?”  Braun turned to Bieber.  “I’m talking about a life or death situation here, and he’s talking about pyramids.”  

Justin shrugged.

Scott laughed.  “Do you want to know what you’ve bought, or not?”

Scooter fell silent.  “Fine.” He shook his head, “Sure, whatever.”

“Bill Porter.  He created something called a Porter Pyramid. ”

Scooter rolled his eyes then nodded begrudgingly.  “Annnd…”

“It was nothing more than a piece of fiberglass cut in the shape of a triangle, and hung from the ceiling using a string.  He made a bunch of these and put them around the studio.  They changed the resonant modes the room naturally created.  He was a true audio engineer pioneer.”  Scott paused for a moment to make sure he had Scooter and Justin’s full attention before he continued, “Basically, they SHAPED sound.  Frequencies captured by the microphone were different with the Porter Pyramids installed.  Bill Porter considered the studio's acoustics problematic, with resonant room modes creating an uneven frequency response.  Through careful experimentation he found spots in the room where resonant modes were minimal—”

“Wait, wait, stop, stop, okay?”  Scooter interrupted.  He sat a little closer to the edge of his cabin seat, intrigued. “Interesting stuff and all with the music history lesson, but can we skip ahead to the part where Taylor’s masters come in to all of this?”

Scott waited a few seconds, and continued unfazed, “What he didn’t tell anyone, was that shortly after he took the job in June of 1959, he was mixing a song called The Three Bells.  While editing the master to be sent to New York for pressing, Porter accidentally hit the wrong controls on the tape recorder and stretched the tape at the beginning of the song, this distorted the pitch.  Without telling anyone, he spliced in a different take with a good intro at the beginning, and sent that version instead.”

“Oh snap!”  Justin exclaimed.

           “What he ALSO didn’t tell anyone, was that he made recordings during his resonant room modes experiments.  One of those recording contained nothing more than silence in the empty room.  The sound of a blank space.  He didn’t note on the recording where the microphone was placed, or the arrangement of the Porter Pyramids within the room.  All we know, is it was recorded at RCA Studio B at some point between 1959 and 1964. We have strong suspicion it was actually recorded the same morning that Elvis recorded the song ‘Are You Lonesome Tonight?’  Elvis recorded the song at the request of his manager Colonel Tom Parker, at Four AM on April Fourth, the studio was completely dark while the recording took place. This recording may have been made right after that.  It may not have been his first, though, we have reason to believe he made a secret earlier recording for Elvis when RCA acquired his recording contract.” He looked over at the legal rep, “He might have been experimenting as early as maybe 1950? He graduated high school in 1949, studied electronics at the University of Tennessee and served in the US army reserves in the early part of the 1950s.  Chuck Berry, Alan Freed… Rock and Roll, it was all about to happen—”

“Okay.  Wait hold up, why would someone keep a recording of an empty room?”  Justin asked. “If it was for experimenting with microphone placement to record at Four in the morning, then why would you keep it? If you figured out how to make the recordings sound right, why keep a recording… of nothing?”

Scott looked around the interior of the flying boardroom aboard the Bell 525 helicopter cabin, first at Scooter, and then back to Justin, his face very serious, “I wondered that too.  I found the tape I’m referring to at the bottom of a box of used studio equipment that I had purchased from a close friend when I first founded Big Machine Label Group.  Not having the proper equipment to play it back on, I set it aside.  During Taylor’s first recording session, she saw it and inquired about it.  It had Bill Porter’s name on it and was simply labeled ‘Easter Egg’.  Taylor was obsessed with knowing what was on the old tape, so I made a few calls, and was able to borrow a machine to play it back on. We went personally to pick the machine up.  We brought it back to the studio and set it up.  She was more excited than a kid on Christmas morning.  Of course, when we finally played the tape back… Nothing. Just the sound of a empty room.”

“Weird.”  Scooter and Justin commented in unison from the edge of their seats.

“We sat there in the studio at Big Machine and listened to the whole tape, ready to hear a piece of Nashville history.  But Taylor and I heard nothing, a whole lot of nothing.  When it finished, we rewound the tape, and listened to it again. A little way into our second listen we forgot we were even listening and felt… Strange.  You remember that scene in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, when Grandpa Joe and Charlie sampled the Fizzy Lifting Drinks?  It’s just before the ‘Goose with the Golden Egg’ scene.”

Scooter and Justin shook their heads yes, completely captivated.  “It was THAT feeling.  Floating, almost drunk on something.  Drunk on something stronger than drinks at the bar. That’s how I describe it, and it’s what Taylor would probably say now if you asked her. Her word for it then was ‘wonky’… It reminded me of something out of the Willy Wonka movie.  Right after that feeling, came another, all of a sudden—and this is going to sound odd, but the best way I can describe it is that my ears had… hunger pangs.  As though, you want to hear a sound or melody SO BAD, that ‘Easter Egg’ sound made you WANT sound, NEED to hear music.  Almost, like, as you listened to it, you longed for a melody, for notes to hear anything in your ear—And as soon as you heard music, you would then feel relaxed, hypnotic. Satiated.  Some kind of sonic fullness is the best I could guess at the time—Like the end of Thanksgiving dinner.  Taylor shouted out, ‘I NEED to play something.  ANYTHING.  I NEED to hear music!’.  I shook my head swiftly yes… The craving for music was undeniable, absolutely unbearable. We couldn’t take it any longer.  Taylor dove for her guitar and began to strum a few chords and sing a few notes, she then sang a song she had recently written, Tim McGraw.”

Scott wiped his eye, the beginning of a tear.  “I couldn’t take it.  It was the most beautiful sound I had ever heard.  It sent shivers down my spine.  Taylor actually started to cry and teardrops fell on her guitar.  We wouldn’t know at the time, but it was that Bill Porter sound that did it to us.  And I immediately said it sounded like the best song I’d ever heard, so I hit record on the studio system and she played and sang.  What we didn’t realize until after we finished recording Taylor’s song was that the Bill Porter Easter Egg tape had been playing in the background the whole time.  That old recording was now in the background of her new take.  The Porter tape eventually ended—it wasn’t until the old reel-to-reel tape ran out with a startling sputtering noise, we had completely forgotten it was even there.  When Taylor finished her take we played back the impromptu recording.  Then we listened to it again and another time. We both almost cried as we listened to that very first recording of her song ‘Tim McGraw’.  It was just, good.  I mean, it sounded like heaven was opening the gates for our ears, for just a moment, to give us a glimpse.  Then Taylor looked at me and said, ‘I don’t know who this Bill Porter guy is but he's the reason for the teardrops on my guitar, the only thing that keeps me wishing on a star, he's the song in the car I keep singing, don't know why I do.’ That’s how it felt to me too. Taylor just kept saying that over and over again. How it was the song in the car, the one you can’t stop singing and don’t know why.”

Scott stopped for a moment, he was transported back to where it all began, before all of this fighting, “After playing the song for a few friends, they too became… Oddly obsessed with it as well.  And then, we all did.  I think we listened to it—my God, maybe a hundred times in a row?  It completely took me off guard; I’d never seen, or heard, anything like this in all my years in the music industry.  So, we recorded another song, but this time, it didn’t get quite the same reaction.  We recorded a third, it too was good, but still missing something.  Taylor went back and listened to that first take, she listened to it again and again, finally, it clicked what we did different, she was the first to figure it out.  She said, ‘I think it has something to do with that mysterious room noise tape that was playing in the background… The Easter Egg noise.’  She was right, I don’t know how she figured that out, but she was spot on. Whatever it was, it added something special to the mix, it was like something out of Willy Wonka’s factory. Candy for your ears.  We promptly hooked up the borrowed antique reel-to-reel tape machine to a direct input recording device that was connected to the high end pro audio studio equipment, hit record on the digital studio recording system, and pushed play on the small machine, the tape spun up, and the meters went off the charts, just as Taylor’s music soon would.  I mean, the VU meter kept slamming against the peg!  Something was definitely there.  The meters kept peaking, I tried to turn the signal level down, I was thinking it would distort or overload, but it’s hard to engineer a sound you can’t hear.  

Every time I fiddled, the signal changed itself, so I just let Bill Porter take the wheel and drive.  When it finished, we had ourselves the only high-resolution isolated pristine copy of that track. Whatever this Easter Egg gift from Bill Porter was, it was ours now, it was Taylor’s, it was no longer part of that small machine, it was part of Big Machine Records.  We played the song back, and waited for the wonky feeling to kick in, unsure if we would feel it again, but we sure as heck did, the feeling kicked in with the digital master, just the same as the vintage tape recording. Taylor recorded her songs again. She re-recorded the songs that didn’t get quite the response that the first song did.  When we mastered the tracks, we added Porter’s sound to the master track in the background, you couldn't hear it, but it was there. Presto!  They couldn’t get enough of it.  Taylor and I had struck gold.  We felt like the Elvis was back!  Like we were sitting there that night on the Fourth of April at Four AM in the morning, we were back in the 60s, 1960 to be eact, RCA Studio B with Bill Porter himself at the controls and Elvis in the studio.  The man with the golden ear, Bill Porter, was here.”

“Wow.  This is unbelievable.”  Justin said in disbelief.  

“Yeah, I have to agree with Bieber.  That can’t be real.”  Scooter remarked after struggling for words. “That’s a lot to take in.  Basically, you’re telling me that Taylor Swift’s music has a secret undetectable sound added to the mix, like some kind of catnip for your ears, that you found on some obscure old studio tape labeled ‘Easter Egg’ and that’s the reason why all her Swifties are obsessed with her music—and with her?”

“But is it so hard to believe?  Look what happened with Elvis fans… How about Beatlemania?”  Scott offered.

“But how does it even work?” Justin asked.

“Your guess is as good as mine.”  Scott replied.

“It just doesn’t seem plausible.” Justin said, still skeptical. “Like, cool story bro, you know? But…  Sonically laced tunes that turn you into a Taylor Swift addict? Like she’s dealing pop songs to junkies who just can’t get enough and do whatever she wants to get more?  The sugar candy high of riding a Taylor Swift music ride.”

“Let me ask you this, Justin, let’s say it was plausible, let’s say for the sake of argument, that you had the ability to command your fans at your will? They would follow your every word—do anything you asked.  What would you do with that?  Humor me.”

“Well, I mean, my fans already do that.  But, you’re talking if I could steal fans at will, through some kind of mind altering way?  Like they wouldn’t have a choice but to listen to my music? As soon as they heard one of my fresh hot beats?  It would be stuck in their head, on repeat?”

“Exactly.”  Scott confirmed.

“Well” Justin thought.  “If I’ve got three wishes, the first wish would be to get more wishes.  Right?  So, I’d go on some nationally televised program and play my stuff to as many people as I possibly could that would listen to…”  He trailed off. “…listen to It.” He finished saying in a quiet voice.

“Nail.  On. The. Head.” Scott said.

“The American Music Awards!”  Bieber shouted out.

Scott said nothing, his reply was a single nod.

Justin continued his thought, “She wants to play her whole back catalogue, so people will go back and listen to it all again.  And then they’ll hear that Wonka thing and go on a Porter Pyramid trip! Pyramids… She’s like a modern day Pharaoh.  So THAT is why she was playing one of her old songs on the live stream earlier and singing over it!”

“Precisely.”  Scott leaned forward in his seat,  “Her new stuff, Lover, doesn’t have the Easter Egg in it.  She needs as many people as possible to listen to her old stuff in order to keep them under her… control, for lack of a better term.  The more followers she has, the easier it will be to get the old masters from us and obtain the Easter Egg track for use in new material.  It’s a war of numbers.  If everyone is on her side, we won’t have anyone on ours.  Those masters are as good as hers.  She will be Pharaoh, if we can’t stop her.”

“Wow.  This is unbelievable.  And not like that song ‘Unbelievable’ from the 90s, which is actually a pretty cool song. This is just, unbelievable.”

“Ed Sullivan show!”  Scooter interjected.  “The Beatles made their first appearance as a nationally televised event.”

“Indeed.”

“But what’s the connection?  Did The Beatles ever record with Porter?”

“That part is somewhat hazy.  We know that Porter was connected to Elvis and RCA.  But just before Elvis worked with Porter, he was in Germany for 2 years in the army.  Right around the same time as Elvis, The Beatles were playing clubs in Germany too. It’s entirely possible we don’t have things exactly right.  From the research, it seems as though perhaps somehow the sound initially came from some early recording Elvis did and Bill simply reconstructed it.  A cleaner, better, much more potent version—But we just keep coming back to that night, April Fourth, at Four Am, when they recorded in the dark with the studio pitch black.”

“You keep saying WE.  How many people know about this?”

“Well…” He pointed to the Carlyle guy.

“Okay.  Who else?”

“We think Max Martin may have figured out a variation of it.  It’s not nearly as effective as Porter’s though.”

“That would explain Britney Spears.” Scooter thought for a second. “And the Swiftian alliance with Kesha’s Animals and Katy Perry’s KatyCats.”

“That’s what I was thinking too.”  Scott confirmed.

“So that’s why Katy Perry’s version of Dark Horse went to the top of the charts, while the other one remained virtually unknown.”

Scooter nodded again.

“This is real.  I mean, like, REALLY real.”  Scooter said. His face turned pale.  “We’re being manipulated through music!”

Bieber sat up in his seat, “You know it’s only a matter of time until this gets out there.  You know that right?  I mean, Harry Potter was only able to keep his stuff secret for so long before everyone was all, LOOK, he’s a wizard!”

“Really Bieber?”  Scooter said.

“What?  I’m a Harry Potter fan!”  Scott and Scooter tossed Bieber a look. “Okay, from the guy who just said ‘Really real’ just… whatever.  Listen, you two keep discussing what to do about Hermione Granger gone rouge while I check in with the captain and lieutenants of my Beliebers to see where those masters are…”  He pulled out his phone and between tapping buttons.

“So what happened between you two anyway?  I mean, why are you here, on this helicopter with me, while Taylor’s out there assembling an army?  Why are we even having this conversation, why did you even sell Big Machine?  Why not just keep things the way they were, keep turning out Taylor hits, keep the Swiftie train on track.  Take over the world…”

Scott sighed.  He said nothing.   He looked out the window, Big Machine Label Group now a speck in the distance. Lovers, haters, and art all have the ability to betray you.

“That army isn’t for me, Scooter.”

“Then who is it for?”

“You.”  Scott narrowed his eyes.  “It’s your blood she wants.  As long as you’re master of her masters, she won’t stop coming after you, she’ll never stop.”

“Why am I the bad guy here?”  He clinched his fists.  “No, I know what this is, I’m the fall guy for this!  That’s what this is!  This is a setup.”

“No.”  The Carlyle lawyer added flatly.

Scott looked down to the floor.  “You were just more… Able to handle our situation with Taylor.”

“Situation?”  Scooter asked, his voice becoming shaky.  “What situation?  You mean there’s more to this?”

Scott shifted his gaze to the Carlyle lawyer then back to Scooter. “Have you heard the lyrics to her song ‘Look What You Made Me Do?’  ‘I’m sorry, the old Taylor can’t come to the phone right now. Why?  Oh, because she’s…’”

“Speaking of situations, guys—” Justin interrupted.  “I’ve kind of got a situation here myself.”

“What’s going on?  Are her masters safe?”  Scooter said worriedly shifting nervously in his seat.

“I don’t know—Wait, my chats are jammed, I can’t send a message back!”

The cabin occupants inside the sophisticatedly elegant interior of the flashy corporate helicopter shared simultaneous shivers down their spines.

“I’m being spammed!  It’s all hearts and cat emojies.”

“Swifties.”  Scott surmised.

“Where are the masters?!?!” Scooter howled.

“I don’t know.  It was an ambush!  My Beliebers captain and his two lieutenants had them safely stowed in a military grade stainless steel carrying case.  We were on a secure private group chat just discussing the situation.  They indicated that they were on their way to a new location because the original location was crawling with Swiftie scouts—the next message said they had been sneak attacked!  Without any other option Taylor’s masters were handed off to two undercover Arianators acting as spotters.  The last message said he thinks the Arinators have them.  Then the Swiftie spammers took over the group chat and he went offline.”

Scott spoke smoothly.  “If the Swifties have them, it’s over.  But… If the Arianators managed to take possession we might still have a chance here.”

“Okay, so where do we go from here?”  Scooter sat, palms sweaty.  His heart beating fast—This was not what he signed up for when he agreed to purchase Big machine Label Group.

“Wait.  I think I know. “  Justin said coolly.  “Ariana Grande wouldn’t risk keeping them.  But there is someone else she would trust.  Someone of reason, and sound mind, someone who truly wouldn’t take sides until he had all the facts, and could make a sound moral choice.”

“Who?”  Scooter asked.

“Oak.  Oak Felder.”

“Oak Felder.  Of course!“ Scott opened a small seatbelt cover beside him pulling the seatbelt over him and clicking in.  “Boys… Buckle up!  We’re going to find Felder.  With any luck, Taylor’s masters are safely on their way to Oak’s studio.  Roads?  Where we’re going, we don’t need roads.  Because we’re in a helicopter!”

Everyone shook their heads.

“Great Scott.  That’s great.”  Scooter said. He was not amused.

“Oh come on, that was gold!”

“Let’s just get to Oak Felder, before Taylor’s Swifties do.  Okay?”  Scooter’s stomach was doing back flips.

The helicopter accelerated to full flight speed onwards and upwards, to Oak Felder’s studio—The Spaceship.

@taylorswift @justinbieber

[obsessed-withthe-hales]

Full Count (Part 10 of Curve Ball)

Summary: An accidental collision. Lucky shoes. Baseball lessons. As much as they might try to deny it, fate seemed to be working to bring Derek and Y/N together. But being in each other’s lives could prove to be more complicated than either one of them bargained for.

Author’s Note: So, I’ve had this done for awhile. Then I moved, started work, left for a nine day trip...and realized I forgot to post this! I’m sorry this is unbelievably delayed, I am The Worst. But it is finally here and I’m so very excited to share this with you! Please let me know what you think :)

As always, a HUGE thank you to my co-pilot on this series, @snipsnsnailsnwerewolftales!!! She is so amazing to work with and always such great ideas!!! I can’t even say thanks enough <3

Warnings: Probably language; awkward tension

Tags: @wheresthekillswitch, @urwarriorangel, @palaiasaurus64, @melanie451, @houseofrahl, @life-what-life-i-dont-have-one, @splashofbi, @livinglife-dsa, @miaforeverblue, @imadangerouscause, @noordinarymagic, @viahalsvy, @cryingbecausesebastianstan, @palaiasaurus64, @wheresthekillswitch, @fannytf, @jazzrivera27, @boofy1998, @julieanncupcake, @blackcoffeeandgreenteaforme

*******************************************************************************************

Being back was weird.

Getting into the habit of going to classes again, figuring out my new schedule for the semester (plus finding all the new buildings), and trying to start doing homework again…it was weird. My body had been on sleep and relaxation mode for the last few weeks over break, so even getting up in the mornings to get ready was a struggle. But there was a bright side: seeing my friends again.

Stiles and I had texted pretty much every day, even coordinating movie viewing parties from miles away. By the time break was over, I think I had burnt Uncle Chris out on Star Wars so bad that he couldn’t even stand to hear the titles. Seeing Scott again was great, too. And spending time with Lydia, something I had severely slacked on last semester, was amazing. She and I had sat for hours catching up the night we came back, finally retiring to bed once the clock hit an obscene hour.

While all of that had been awesome, there was one thing that kept lingering in the back of my mind: Derek. I had managed to not think about him constantly over the holidays, which was a HUGE accomplishment, but as soon as I started packing my things to head back to school, it was like someone had opened the floodgates. What if I run into him? Literally...again. Or even worse: what if I bump into him, literally...again...and he completely ignores me? What if I see him first, should I wave or smile or call out or just pretend like I don’t see him at all? It was like the irrational part of my brain was in hyperdrive and the off switch was broken.

Irrationality did not make a great start to the new semester.

We were three days in and I was as paranoid as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. I tried to make easy conversation with Stiles as we walked together between classes, tried to not scan every room that I walked into for his face, tried not to listen for his voice meshed into the background in the student center or dining halls or walking down the sidewalk. You’re acting like a crazy person, Y/N. He’s not hiding around the corner waiting to jump out at you! If only the rational part of my brain had current control over my mind….

“I was thinking Lord of the Rings this time, what do you think?” Stiles’ voice broke me out of my thoughts.

“Sorry, what?”

“Lord of the Rings. Movie weekend. Kicking off the semester,” he said, hands waving about. “Did you get any of that?”

“Uh…I got LOTR and that’s about it,” I admitted. “Sorry Stiles. I’ve had some…stuff…on my mind.” The look in my best friend’s eyes told me he most likely knew to what I was referring, but he decided to not push, something I was really grateful for.

“My room, this weekend. We’ll start off a new semester with a new set of movies! Are you free? I mean, I’m assuming you are so I expect you to be there, I’m just asking out of courtesy.” Giving him a playful elbow in the ribs, I smiled and agreed to attend, much to Stiles’ delight.

“I have a meeting with Professor Yukimura Friday after class, but I’ll come straight over after that.”

“Perfect! Alright, this is my stop,” he sighed as we approached a split in the sidewalk. “I will see you Friday night then. Also,” Stiles paused, moving to stand in front of me. His face got about as serious as his could before he spoke again, this time much softer. “I know the you-know-who stuff sucks, but it’ll get better with time. Okay? You know I’m here for you.” My cheeks heated up just the slightest, but I smiled at the brown-eyed boy in front of me.

“Thanks, Stiles. Really.”

“Anytime.” With that, he clapped his hand- his right hand- on my shoulder and gave a goofy grin. “Plus, I could give him a stern talking to at baseball practice once it starts up again next week. Take my trusty bat and pull him to the side…”

“Slow down there, killer,” I laughed. “No need for all that.”

“Just putting the offer out there,” he replied, beginning to walk backwards. “See you Friday!” And with that, he turned around and was off.

I know, Alli, you really like Stiles. I do, too.

*line break*

“I already have two papers and a chem lab assigned,” Scott groaned, plopping down next to me on the futon in their dorm room. “This is off to a great start.”

“Tell me about it,” I snorted. “I met with Yukimura today and he gave me the rundown of what all he’s teaching this semester and what he’ll need my help with and seriously, I’m not sure how I’m going to handle all that on top of my regular work load.”

“Y/N, you’re practically a genius. And history is your forte. I’m sure you’ll be fine,” Stiles said, the compliment making my cheeks warm. “Plus, can’t you like opt out if it becomes too much?”

“Yeah, that’s true. I’d just hate to stick him with everything.” Letting out a sigh, I tried to shake those stress-inducing thoughts from my head. “Anyway, it’ll probably be fine, just like you said. Come on, Stilinski let’s get this movie started!”

“I’m trying, I’m trying,” Stiles grumbled, frantically searching for something. Scott and I exchanged confused looks before he cleared his throat and spoke up.

“Uh Stiles…what the hell are you looking for?”

“Popcorn! We can’t have movie night without popcorn! I swear we had some leftover…” Slamming the drawer he had been digging through closed, Stiles ran a hand down his face in defeat, popping out one hip and propping his free hand on it. Quirking a brow at his distress, I jumped up from the futon and jammed my thumb toward the door.

“I’ll just go grab some from my dorm. I can be there and back in like twenty-ish minutes?”

“No, don’t worry about it,” Stiles muttered, shuffling toward his bed. “It’ll be late by the time you get back and you shouldn’t go alone, especially in the dark-“

“Well, how about you guys come with me and we just move the viewing party to my room?” I offered. “I just have to text Lydia and see if she’s okay with that.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, totally.” Pulling out my phone, I shot her a quick message, receiving an almost instant reply of assent. “Alright, grab everything and let’s go!”

“You’re sure Lydia’s okay with this? It’s a long movie,” Scott asked.

“Oh definitely,” I assured him. “She’s secretly a huge LOTR fan. She’ll love it.” I paused and pursed my lips, thinking for a moment. “Don’t tell her I told you that.”

As we shuffled down the hallway of Stiles and Scott’s dorm, arms loaded with extra blankets and pillows, I chuckled at Stiles’ continuous rant of the mysterious popcorn disappearance. Scott and I exchanged knowing looks, silently agreeing that yes, our friend was ridiculous and had likely eaten the rest of the popcorn himself sometime during finals week as it was one of his go-to stress foods, but we didn’t have the heart to suggest that, instead just letting him ponder out loud. I was paying much more attention to Stiles’ words than anything else, not hearing the opening and closing of a room door as we rounded the corner.

Stiles stumbled, causing his blankets to shift in his arms and begin to unfold. Because I am the world’s greatest klutz, my foot- left foot-  found the corner of the blanket that now reached the floor, tugging it out of my best friend’s arms and resulting in my subsequent descent toward the ground. Landing with a thud, but thankfully on top of Scott’s pillow that I had been carrying, my eyes drifted along the dingy carpet to find the toes of sneakers that I recognized all too well.

“Y/N, are you alright?” Scott asked, concern in his voice as he knelt down to help free me from the blanket’s evil clutches. All the words to formulate a coherent response to his kind question had suddenly vacated my brain, however, because I was staring right into the exact pair of green eyes I had been dreading seeing. You have got. To be. Kidding me.

“Derek!” Stiles exclaimed, his face not hiding his surprise and mild panic well at all. “How uh- how was your…your break?” He was trying so very hard to act casual, bless his soul, but the boy could not help but to feed into the awkward tension already suffocating the hallway. Thankfully, Derek’s eyes shifted from mine to Stiles’ as he spoke, giving me the opportunity to scramble to my feet with Scott’s help. I could feel my cheeks burning bright red, just knowing that they could all hear my hammering heart. Act natural, Y/N. So you fell, no big deal! It’s fine. Totally. Fine.

“It was alright,” Derek answered, not offering much more than that. Aaaaand there’s that voice. That damn nice voice. Wait, no stop that! Stiles pursed his lips and nodded. The four of us just stood there in the middle of the hallway, the silence becoming more and more weird as time passed. Oh my god, somebody say something PLEASE! This is like the longest anyone has ever gone without speaking, ever.

“Are you ready for practice to start up next week?” Scott asked, his question breaking the silence and making me sigh internally with relief.

“Yeah, should be good.” Scott’s eyes squinted in curiosity at this second short response, but he didn’t push any further. I forced myself to fix my gaze back on the ground as I felt Derek turn back toward me, desperately not wanting to have to speak to him. Thankfully, Stiles came to the rescue.

“Well!” he announced, readjusting the load in his arms. “We should get moving. Don’t wanna…be out too late.” With that, his hand subtly found my back and nudged me forward, Scott in tow as we hustled out of the dorm. Once out in the crisp night air, I took a deep breath and let the freshness try to stamp out all that awkward tension.

“I know he doesn’t usually say much, but that was weird even for Derek,” Scott noted. Stiles and I agreed before quickly dropping the subject and heading in the direction of my building.

I knew that things were tense and weird between Derek and I after…everything…but something still didn’t feel quite right. Maybe it was just me being too optimistic, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that he might have been extra broody and withdrawn for more reasons than just seeing me.

[norgad-vcd]

Revised Text

What goes on, online?

Anything and everything. It’s a beautiful and vibrant mess of human interaction. Everything from trivial and thoughtless acts to the most sincere and genuine deeds. It’s grounds for the vicious and the virtuous alike. The internet is what you make of it; a tool as good or bad as it’s wielders.

It’d take a thousand lifetimes to see it all.

How about a quick glimpse instead?

Hiya, I’m Tom! I’ve spent enough of my life online that I can confer some of my findings to you. This book is a smörgåsbord of experiences, phenomena, and memories I’ve been witness to and participant in during my time here. While not a full picture, it should help you navigate the ballpark of possibilities out there. My experiences are just one sample from billions; perhaps after this you’ll seek to venture out further into that world-wide web, or - at the very least - understand a little better those who do.

Friendships don’t care about how you nourish them, just that you do.

Catching up online is great for keeping friends close. It might be raining, someone might be away from home, or even sick and stuck at the hospital; the reason doesn’t matter. It might not be perfect - and sure, we could all get a little more sunlight - but for what it’s worth it’s good for the soul and sometimes the best thing on hand.

How do I put this?

It’s not all the same thing though, there’s different tools for different jobs. There’s a difference between how I talk to people in an idle chat and talking to someone in a formal meeting; different modes of communication for different settings and people. It’s the same thing with online modes of communication. Sending a message on Discord to one of my friends, I’d take a casual, grammarless, and very loose style of typing. Contrast that with an email to my grandmother; that’s much more structured and considered, like a half mimicry of a handwritten letter to be delivered by post. People still sign off emails with their names at the end, as if emails don’t also just tell you who they’re from in the ‘sender’ info.

Occasionally I’ll need to message someone I only vaguely know. In these circumstances it can feel a bit standoffish and unfamiliar. I’ll type out sanitised and unambiguous sentences; without tone of voice - or a history of talking to the person online before - it’s hard to judge sarcasm, emotion, and everything else conveyed nonverbally in a conversation. Erring on the side of caution seems to be the best bet, until we both get to know each other’s style of writing a bit better.

Over the first 2020 lockdown, me and most of my real-life friends started a minecraft server together and played through it for the duration of our stint stuck at home. It was like a little clubhouse, each time we logged in and saw things change slightly since last time. We left each other notes and set up gifts and pranks for when people left and returned. It was a great way to keep in touch when we were otherwise very isolated from social contact.

On a lot of platforms there’s a little indicator that tells you if someone’s online, offline, or possibly busy. This is really useful to see if someone might be free to talk or hang out. It’s also really good at betraying to someone the fact that I still have not gone to sleep, despite the fact that I said I was going to sleep about four hours ago.

To be fair, they said they were going to sleep about four hours ago as well.

[JOSH TEXT]

A big benefit to text chat is that if I’m preoccupied and all my friends are talking about something, I’m not left behind and out of the loop. I can always re-read what everyone wrote once I have time, pick up all the new inside jokes and keep up to date with people’s lives. The same can’t be said for voice chat; if I miss a hangout there I’ve missed it for good. This can get a bit weird if people are using both at the same time though; the text portion of the chat devolves into a complete mess of contextless strings of text and images out of nowhere. With a keen eye and a bit of detective work I can often piece together the general gist of the missed conversation, but other times it remains a mystery forever.

Whenever someone sends me a meme, I’m elated. I get to look at a funny picture, but I also get to send that same funny picture to someone else. Who knows how many hands the image passed through before it reached me, and how many more hands it will pass through before it reaches its final viewer. Maybe it’ll never reach a final resting place, instead getting recycled and remixed into memes anew until the end of time.

[ANOTHER GUEST SPEAKER TEXT]

Who are you, on the internet?

Online, your real-life identity isn’t attached to you by default. Of course there’s places where the expectation is indeed a connection to real identities - like Facebook for example - but this is not a requirement. I’m not known as ‘Tom’ online, people know me by my username.

It’s not a fake me, or a way to lie to people, it’s just an alternate expression of myself. We act differently to different people in so many social situations, - from time with family, to at work, and to hanging out with friends - the internet allows even more possible ways to express parts of ourselves. For me, it’s liberating to exist in a state that’s disconnected from the tangle of my real life self, and to keep the tangle of my internet presence away from real life as well.

On the internet, nobody knows who you are.

Unless you divulge them to others, your identity, physical appearance, background, nationality, gender, race and so on are completely unknown; this is the great equalizer. Free from biases based on your physical self, you can be perceived as purely another person.

A clean slate can tempt some however to act recklessly. If an identity and history can be shed so easily, some people feel emboldened to act without the threat of consequences; verbally beat someone up, and then wash their hands of the whole incident.

It’s important to remember that people online are still people; while their faces might be obscured, they still have thoughts and feelings. In general, talking to people online has about the same potential as real-life to be great, awful, or somewhere inbetween; it’s mostly luck of the draw who you’ll run into.

I don’t know the names or faces of some of my closest friends.

That doesn’t mean I don’t care about them; I just care more about who they are as an individual. I still know their personalities, their sense of humor, what they like and don’t, and everything else you’d know about a friend. We still have inside jokes, favourite group pastimes, and all the rest.

Who are you talking to?

When I was younger and my parents would ask who I’m talking to on the computer, I wouldn’t know how to respond.

Do I tell them “I don’t know” and spark images in their heads of catfishers and criminals?

Do I tell them my friend’s username and get told “that’s not a real name”?

Most of the time I’d just try to give a vague non-answer and hope the conversation goes elsewhere. Keep my little world safe.

[SYDNEY TEXT]

Perfect is the enemy of good.

Because everyone lives in different time-zones, it can often be difficult to pre-plan hangouts. Oftentimes me and my friends have planned to have a movie night at a specific time, and then once that time rolls around, one or two people are still offline, probably asleep. Oftentimes whoever was missing will come online several hours later and be sorry and upset that they held everyone up and wasted everyone’s time. Of course, we had all just postponed the movie night and just hung out and chatted instead.

Oftentimes we have to accept that it’s near impossible to have everyone hang out at the same time; it’d require half of us to be up at god awful times or to wake up at 4am for something. Instead of trying to plan big ‘everyone’ events every once in a blue moon, we try to have frequent but smaller hangouts. It might mean that we don’t get to see everyone at the same time, but it’s still workable. If we were to hold out till everyone was free at the same time, we’d never end up hanging out at all.

She should have been back by now.

A while ago, someone in one of my friend groups noted that someone hadn’t been online for two weeks. Dread set in. We all knew that our friend was very prone to getting ill, and we didn’t want to say it but we were worried she might have died. Since we don’t know each other in ‘real life’ it was entirely possible that someone could drop dead one day and we’d never get any confirmation; just left wondering what happened. We asked around in common friend circles, and nobody had heard from her, coming up on about three weeks at that point. We had to do something.

Multiple friend circles of people from all around the world, scrambling to find any scrap of information about our lost friend. One person had ‘maybe’ an address that they sent something to once, but it might have been an old house. We found about three different possible legal names, and had no way to be sure which was right. We ended up sending a letter addressed to the name we thought was most likely to be right, or to “the family of”. Someone tried ringing her house, but the people on the other end of the line didn’t know who we were, and we didn’t know who they were; we got hung up on because they thought we were stalkers. It was all desperate fumbling in the dark, but we were worried sick.

There were only ever two possible outcomes; if she came back we would find out she was alright, if she didn’t we would be left eternally hoping she would. Nobody wants to be the one to say “Hey guys, I think our friend might be dead, we should give up.” Time soon gave us our answer; she was alright. She had been stuck in hospital for a while and didn’t have access to a phone to let us know what had happened. We were all so relieved and had a laugh over how everyone overreacted, but it really did scare me. I’ve learned to really value the time I get to spend with my online friends; next time might not be so lucky, and if something were to happen it’s hard to ever get closure on it.

There’s never been a better time to pick up a new hobby.

One thing the internet’s really helped with is connecting like-minded individuals. Before the internet, if you had a niche hobby, you were probably the only person you know in your town with that hobby. Kinda lame, yeah? Nowadays, you can reach across the globe and connect with everyone who’s into the same stuff as you! Mainstream topics can have gargantuan communities, but what I find even more interesting is the weird obscure hobbies and groups, the kind that would never survive without the internet.

People online dedicate huge amounts of their free time to making resources and guides to almost everything. Need more bespoke help? You’d be hard pressed not to find someone who’s keen to chat more about their favourite pastime, if it means welcoming a new person into the fold. Guides and resources, instructional videos; it doesn’t matter if you’re trying to get into carpentry, cooking or, (mine)crafting; you’ll find support along the way.

Some things really should have stayed niche.

Conspiracy theorists. Hate groups. Radical extremists. The internet’s power to connect people can also amplify voices that really didn’t need amplifying. What once were lone people with fringe beliefs - isolated and ‘alone’ - are now monstrous communities with the power to warp people’s sense of normality. There’s a critical mass where people don’t need to interact with people with outside views, they’ve got plenty of people to talk to in your own bubble. They don’t need to ‘go outside’.

We’re all susceptible to this; it’s only human. However, it’s important to stay vigilant. While you shouldn’t keep people around that make you miserable, you shouldn’t block out the first sign of dissent. Maintain a healthy variety in the people you talk to, and the content you consume.

[ANDREW TEXT]

In the rules discussion channel of a board game group I’m in, I swear sometimes it’s like I’m stuck in a time loop. I watch a random person ask a common question about the game, and then someone else will get the rules clarified for them. A few hours will pass, the conversation drifting elsewhere as people drop in and out. Suddenly, I spot it; the same question from before, but from a different person. Like clockwork, another nameless devout will rise up and deliver the answer. And again. And again. It’s like a two-line stage show where the audience is also the cast, over and over and over.

Since profile pictures and usernames are self-selected, every time I talk to someone new I get a weird little keyhole view of what who I’m talking to might be like.

This person has a picture of a cat as their profile image. Is it their cat, or did they just think the cat looked nice? Their username is ‘Millie’, is that their real life name; maybe? Or what if it’s the cat’s name? Are they pretending to be their cat? Are they a cat?

[RAZEK TEXT]

I do a wee bit of online gaming, and in a lot of these games the people you get paired with are completely random. I know nothing about this motley crew I’ve been thrown into, and yet we’re all expected to conform into a cohesive team and work together to win. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes the luck of the draw has it that I’m paired with a bunch of inept clowns, and sometimes I’m paired with intelligent and skilled players who I mesh with really well. On the odd occasion, I might even strike up a good conversation with my team, build up some rapport. Start cracking jokes and bantering.

There’s a strong but ephemeral connection..

Sooner or later, the game ends. We say our goodbyes, and the game throws us back to the wind; like two ships passing in the night. There’s a slim chance we’ll ever both be in the same game again, but it doesn’t matter that much. We still had a good time, made a brief but positive impact on someone else’s day; and hey, there’s always the chance one of us sends the other a friend request before we leave.

Having a large presence online - that is, having other people follow or be ‘fans’ of you - is a mixed bag. For me it’s been really good in allowing me to get my art out there and get clients, but it’s also weird. It feels a bit like I’m up on a stage sometimes, everyone’s watching me. I’ve lost the feeling of being ‘just another guy in the crowd’. What if someone reads something I posted the wrong way? Do I keep being aloof and carefree, or will that hurt my image. Should I care?

[CHAI TEXT]

People with large presences can feel familiar, friendly, like you’re already friends. I’ve caught myself falling into this in the past. The brain’s great at filling in the details you want to be real. I realised that I had it written in my head that this person was super cool and the best and that it’d be really cool if we hung out; all extrapolation. While it’s entirely possible that they were everything I had imagined them to be, until it’s tested it’s all just imagination and fantasy. If I’ve never talked to them, how could I even know?

[DAVID TEXT]

What happens when the digital and the physical self have to intersect?

The two identities are from the same person, but they’re not the same.

One time, my parents sent me a text along the lines of “Your sister showed us your art; looking really cool Tom!”.

How.

I’d never sent my family any of my online profiles. I check my Twitter; sure enough in front of my eyes the screen tells me my sister has followed my twitter account. Abject horror. How much did they look at? What did they think? Should I start looking for a flat?

It’s not that I had anything to hide, it’s just that it felt… misaligned. Like two worlds coming together that shouldn’t. I’m sure for them it was just “Wow, look at our son go!”, but for me in the moment it was a sudden wave of confusion and dread.

One time, I was lucky enough to have a few of my internet friends visit in real life. I was showing them around my house, when I ran into my mum. It hit me. Who do I even introduce these people as? We all know each other by our online names and had been using them in conversation minutes earlier, but that would make no sense to my poor mum. And so, awkwardly, one by one my friends rattled off a set of names entirely alien to me. We all barely managed to keep straight faces as each of us discovered “Wait, this person’s called WHAT?”.

We all promptly forgot each other’s names within about two minutes.

Thanks to the internet, I met my partner.

Almost four years later we’re still going strong, twelve thousand kilometers apart. It helps a lot that a lot of our common interests can be done online, chiefly gaming and movies. But even the other stuff, we can still do together in some aspects. We always say good morning and goodnight to each other on the phone, and fill each other in on what we’ve been up to that day. If we go somewhere and see something cool, we can still share pictures and videos. If I make a really nice dinner, I can send them the recipe and they can have a taste (though that last one might depend on their cooking skills).

Of course, it’s not identical to an in-person relationship. We have to put a lot more effort into reaching out to each other and making time to hang out and talk; it won’t happen by accident. We’re both really looking forward to being able to move together, but until then, being together apart isn’t all that bad.

[WESLEY TEXT]

Listen a moment, before you go.

I am only one person. My field of view is limited, as is my experience. Take my advice with a grain of salt, I can’t prepare you for everything. There’s so much more waiting out there for you to uncover, some good, some bad; be sensible.

[CREDITS ‘N’ SHIT]

[jamesstegall]

How digital beauty filters perpetuate colorism

When Lise was a young teenager in Georgia, her classmates bullied her relentlessly. She had moved with her family from Haiti a few years earlier, and she didn’t fit in with the other students. They teased her about her accent, claimed she “smelled weird,” and criticized the food she ate.  But most often they would attack her with remarks about her dark complexion. Sometimes teachers would send her home from school because she couldn’t stop crying. “I remember going home and I would take those copper wire things that you scrub dishes with,” she says. “I would go to the bathroom and I would take my mom’s bleach cream and scrub my skin with it.” 

And it wasn’t just white classmates. Black students harassed her too—for being an outsider, for being too different. She remembers them asking, “Why is she so dark?” 

Just when she thought it couldn’t get worse, the phone in her palm became an endless stream of pictures of beautiful, lighter-skinned women getting dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of likes and affirming comments. She slowly began to notice that the world wanted parts of her—like her curves and her lips—but not things like her dark skin or her hair. Not her whole self, all together. 

As she struggled to cope with the abuse, Lise convinced herself that the darkness of her skin was to blame. And social media platforms and the visual culture of the internet suggested the same thing. 

Even among those closest to her, the undesirability of her darkness was reinforced. She grew to realize that her mom, aunts, and friends all used the skin-lightening creams she’d borrowed after school, many of which contain toxins and even carcinogens. It was confusing: her community fought hard against racism, but some of the prejudice she experienced came from Black people themselves. 

And social media was just making it worse.

The prejudice Lise experienced—colorism—has a long history, driven by European ideals of beauty that associate lighter skin with purity and wealth, darker tones with sin and poverty. Though related to racism, it’s distinct in that it can affect people regardless of their race, and can have different effects on people of the same background. 

Colorism exists in many countries. In India, people with darker skin were traditionally ranked lower in the caste system. In China, light skin is linked to beauty and nobility. In the US, not only Black people face colorism; white Italian or Greek people with darker skin can experience it too. Historically, when African-Americans were enslaved, those with lighter skin were often given more domestic tasks where those with darker skin were more likely to work in the fields.

These prejudices have been part of the social and media landscape for a long time, but the advent of digital images and Photoshop created new ways for colorism to manifest. In June 1994, notoriously, Newsweek and Time both ran cover images of O.J. Simpson’s mug shot during his murder trial—but on Time’s cover, his skin was markedly darker. The difference sparked outrage: Time had darkened the image in what the magazine’s photo illustrator claimed was an attempt to evoke a more “dramatic tone”. But the editing reflected that the darker the man, the more criminal the American public assumes him to be. 

This association has very real consequences. A 2011 study from Villanova University found a direct link between the severity of sentences for 12,000 incarcerated women and the darkness of their complexion. 

And today, thanks to the prevalence of selfies and face filters, digital colorism has spread. With Snapchat, Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook a part of billions of people’s everyday lives, many of us find that people see far more pictures of us than ever before. But there are biases built into these systems. At a basic level, the imaging chips found in most personal cameras have pre-set ranges for skin tones, making it technically impossible to accurately capture the real variety of complexions. 

Over 200 million people use Snapchat Lenses every day, some of them to lighten their skin tone. Other filters and automatic enhancing features can do the same on Instagram and TikTok.

And the images that do get taken are often subject to alteration. Snapchat reports that over 200 million people use its filter product, Lenses, every day. Some of them use it to lighten their skin tone; other filters and automatic enhancing features can do the same on Instagram and TikTok. Photo technologies and image filters can do this in ways that are almost imperceptible. Meanwhile, social media algorithms reinforce the popularity of people with lighter skin to the detriment of those with darker skin. Just this week, Twitter’s image-cropping algorithm was found to prefer faces that are lighter, thinner, and younger.  

Selfie-esteem

We’ve reported before on the ways in which digital technologies are narrowing beauty standards. The phenomenon has led to the concept of the “Instagram face,” a particular look that’s easily accessible through the proliferation of editing tools. Photos reflecting this look, with a small nose, big eyes, and fuller lips, attract more comments and likes, leading recommendation algorithms to prioritize them. We also interviewed researchers who say beauty ideals are narrowing even more dramatically and quickly than they expected—with especially profound effects on the way young girls, in particular, see themselves and shape their identity. 

But it could be particularly catastrophic for women with darker complexions, says Ronald Hall, a professor at Michigan State University and an expert on colorism. As more European looks are increasingly held up as an ideal, “these young girls imitate these behaviors, and those who are super dark-complected see no way out,” he says. “Those are the ones who are most at risk for harming themselves.” 

That harm can involve bleaching or other risky body treatments: the skin-lightening industry has grown rapidly and is now worth more than $8 billion worldwide each year. But beyond physical risks, researchers and activists have also begun documenting troubling emotional and psychological effects of online colorism.

Amy Niu researches selfie-editing behavior as part of her PhD in psychology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. In 2019, she conducted a study to determine the effect of beauty filters on self-image for American and Chinese women. She took pictures of 325 college-aged women and, without telling them, applied a filter to some photos. She then surveyed the women to measure their emotions and self-esteem when they saw edited or unedited photos. Her results, which have not yet been published, found that Chinese women viewing edited photos felt better about themselves, while American women (87% of whom were white) felt about the same whether their photos were edited or not.

Niu believes that the results show there are huge differences between cultures when it comes to “beauty standards and how susceptible people are to those beauty filters.” She adds, “Technology companies are realizing it, and they are making different versions [of their filters] to tailor to the needs of different groups of people.” 

This has some very obvious manifestations. Niu, a Chinese woman living in America, uses both TikTok and Douyin, the Chinese version (both are made by the same company, and share many of the same features, although not the same content.) The two apps both have “beautify” modes, but they are different: Chinese users are given more extreme smoothing and complexion lightening effects. 

She says the differences don’t just reflect cultural beauty standards—they perpetuate them. White Americans tend to prefer filters that make their skin tanner, teeth whiter, and eyelashes longer, while Chinese women prefer filters that make their skin lighter.  

Niu worries that the vast proliferation of filtered images is making beauty standards more uniform over time, especially for Chinese women. “In China, the beauty standard is more homogeneous,” she says, adding that the filters “erase lots of differences to our faces” and reinforce one particular look. 

“It’s really bad”

Amira Adawe has observed the same dynamic in the way young girls of color use filters on social media. Adawe is the founder and  executive director of Beautywell, a Minnesota-based nonprofit aimed at combating colorism and skin-lightening practices. The organization runs programs to educate young girls of color about online safety, healthy digital behaviors, and the dangers of physical skin lightening. 

Adawe says she often has to inform the girls in her workshops that their skin is being lightened by social media filters. “They think it’s normal. They’re like, ‘Oh, this is not skin lightening, Amira. This is just a filter,’” she says. “A lot of these young girls use these filters and think, ‘Oh my God, I look beautiful.’”

“They think it’s normal… [but] it’s contributing to this notion that you’re not beautiful enough.”

Amira Adawe, Beautywell

It’s so easy to do—with a few clicks, users can make their appearance more similar to everyone else’s ideal—that many young women end up assuming a lighter-skinned identity online. This makes it easier to find acceptance in the digital world, but it can also make it harder for them to identify with their real complexion. 

When Adawe explains how using a face filter can be part of a cycle of colorism, she is often met with resistance. The filters have become essential to the way some girls see themselves. 

“It’s really bad.” she says. “And it’s contributing to this notion that you’re not beautiful enough.” 

And it’s complicated regardless of your skin tone.

Halle, a single biracial woman in her mid-20s, thinks a lot about her own racial identity. She says most people would use the term “ambiguous” to describe her appearance. “I have whiter features,” she says. “My skin complexion is lighter than some other mixed-race girls’, and my hair is less curly.” She also used to be a regular user of dating apps. And from conversations with her friends who have darker complexions, she realized that her experience on dating apps was very different from theirs.

“Quite candidly, we compare matches and number of matches,” she says. “That is where I started to realize: wait a minute, there’s something going on here. My friends who identify as Black or Afro-Latina don’t get as many matches.” 

It’s already known that beauty-scoring algorithms, which rank the attractiveness of images, give higher scores to whiter women. In March, we reported on how the world’s largest face recognition company, Face++, sells a racially biased beauty scoring algorithm that it markets to digital platforms, and online dating sites in particular.

Halle says her experience on these apps reflects the wider world, too. “This is deeply rooted in racism, colorism, and everything that’s happening in our society,” she says. The experience became so frustrating for her that she deleted all her dating apps. MIT Technology Review has reached out to many dating sites to ask whether they use beauty-scoring algorithms for matches, but none will confirm or deny. 

Even if they do not use systems like Face++, however, they do use recommendation algorithms to learn user preferences over time. And this is another way that colorism and bias can creep in and be perpetuated. 

Recommendations based on user preferences often reflect the biases of the world—in this case, the diversity problems that have long been apparent in media and modeling. Those biases have in turn shaped the world of online influencers, so that many of the most popular images are, by default, of people with lighter skin. An algorithm that interprets your behavior inside such a filter bubble might assume that you dislike people with darker skin. And it gets worse: recommendation algorithms are also known to have an anchoring effect, in which their output reinforces users’ unconscious biases and can even change their preferences over time. 

Meanwhile, platforms including TikTok have been accused of intentionally “shadow-banning” content from some Black creators, especially those discussing the Black Lives Matter movement or racism in general. That diminishes their reach, and the cycle reinforces itself further. (In a statement, a TikTok spokesperson said “We unequivocally do not moderate content or accounts on the basis of race.”)

Michigan State’s Ronald Hall says he’s “extremely worried” about the impact on women of color in particular: “Women of color are constantly bombarded with these messages that you gotta be light in order to be attractive.”

Adawe, meanwhile, thinks the only solution is an all-out ban on filters that lighten faces. She says she has emailed Snapchat asking for just that. “Social media companies keep [creating] filters because the demand is so high,” she says. “But to me, I think they’re promoting colorism, whether they realize it and whether it’s intentional or not.” 

A spokesperson for Snap told MIT Technology Review, “Our goal is to build products that are fully inclusive of all Snapchatters, and we’ve put in place a number of processes and initiatives to help us do that. Our guidelines for all Snapchatters—which also apply to Lens submissions—prohibit discrimination and the promotion of stereotypes, and we have an extensive review process in place for Lenses, which includes testing them on a wide range of skin tones.” 

The company says it is partnering with experts for advice, and earlier this year it launched an initiative to build an “inclusive camera”, which is meant to be better at capturing a broader range of skin tones.

A completely different lens

Lise, who now lives in Minnesota, struggled with the effects of colorism for a long time. She went to therapy, watched endless YouTube tutorials on photo editing, and even bought a $600 camera that she hoped would make her look less dark in photos. Eventually she came to realize how harmful it had been.

“Now I just view everyone’s social media page with a completely different lens,” she says.

Today, she’s a new mom: when we spoke via Zoom, I was greeted by her cooing and wiggling baby. I was delighted, but Lise apologized profusely while she adjusted the lens. 

She says she wants to see more raw photos online that show beautiful women who look like her. She no longer edits her skin color in photos, and she tries hard to stop the negative thoughts in her head, though it can be hard. “Oh, I’ll be darned if I see someone saying anything to a beautiful dark-skinned woman,” she says. “I don’t care if it’s online, I don’t care if it’s in person—I’m going to call you out. I just can’t be quiet about it anymore, but it’s taken years. I’m going to be more conscious about what I’m teaching my son.”

from MIT Technology Review https://ift.tt/2VSqjPh via IFTTT

[cloudbattrolls]

[TW for: worms (nothing graphic but still), implied attempted assault mention (again nothing graphic but still)]

The fuchsia looks up at the big annoying mansion and squints. Okay, sure, she has a skyscraper for her stuff, but she rents out most of the floors anyway, and that’s for work. Her biggest estate is for her ducks anyway.

God, she sounds like such a typical highblood just thinking that. But then, that’s why she’s here at this door that has a golden dang doorbell and intricately carved engravings on the metal door of -

- of something that got just a little bit damaged. Chipped. Barely noticeable. Because someone has clearly tried to cover it up by trying to bend it back in place with what has to be at least blueblood strength.

A proud highblood with a fancy door would just call a repair drone. They don’t need to cover anything up.

Great.

She rings the doorbell three times out of due diligence to convention and waits, but when she takes out her lockcracker, she’s not surprised to find the security system’s already been compromised and it clicks open in seconds.

Chimer walks through the definitely not suspiciously dark lobby, into the entry room and her boots hit something hard.

She looks down, squinting in the low light - trolls might be nocturnal but it’s seriously dark in here and -

- oh that’s bones.

That’s...scattered bones.

That’s a whole ass skeleton.

She sniffs. Oh yup that’s definitely the scent of remains, fresh ones, and - fuck it, she’s using her phone as a flashlight - are those tiny teethmarks?

She wouldn’t call them that but what else can be they be, little sharp divots into cracked marrow and bones with barely even scraps of flesh clinging to them? What the fuck did this? A school of piranhas, maybe, but do land piranhas exist? Is that a thing?

Fuck it, that’s probably a thing and also probably a taken band name, which sucks because she wants that band name now.

Well, that explains why he didn’t answer the door.

“Is this all coffee? I’m disappointed.”

“I’ll keep if you don’t want it, mate.”

She freezes at the sound of voices and then realizes they sound familiar, even if one is harder to place.

Oh you have got to be kidding.

“Allele, get out here, and get explaining because I have two questions and they are what, and also, the fuck.”

There’s some whispers and muffled noises she can’t quite make out and she realizes the other speaker has an accent too, a higher, stranger voice that reminds her of...

It’s her tealblood friend who steps into the room first, looking slightly guilty. Her voice is a little more hoarse than usual - almost like she has a cold.

“Oh shit, was he one of yours?”

The fuchsia rolls her eyes.

“Kinda? Not really. I was hoping he would be, but those sure were the yesternights when he had like, a face he could talk with. He seemed okay; background checks came back clean-ish, which is better than I can say for eighty percent of every other blueblood in power in this city.”

The kangaroo-moth troll winces and scratches her neck - which looks like it has some weird dark patch on it - eyes flicking from side to side. Her coat, the fuchsia notes, is clean. And there wasn’t any blood on the carpet either. Or much of anything besides bones.

“Uhhh...yeah. ‘Bout that. Not so much.”

Chimer sucks in a breath.

“How bad was it.”

Allele opens her mouth but gets interrupted by -

“Let’s just say we took a peek at his hard drive and my goodness, I think anyone who possessed even the dullest, most broken moral compass, no matter where it pointed, would agree it pointed far away from him.”

Them.

Etuuya Vannyn steps into the room, sprightly as a mountain goat, eyes practically beacons in the dark with how bright they shine yellow and green and everything makes sense now.

Chimer looks at Allele.

“Girl. Please. Higher standards? Maybe? A little? A crumb, for your good pal Chimer?”

Allele starts, head swiveling like a hootbeast’s as she looks back and forth between the pair of trolls, one nearly a foot taller with crossed arms and pressed back fins and the other, well.

The other isn’t really a troll at all.

“You two - what - how”

Her friend waves a hand.

“I’ll explain later, you explain now. Not you.” She adds, pointing at the fake jade, who mimes zipping their lips with the utmost wide-eyed innocent look. “Allele. Start talking.”

“Ok, so, we think we might’ve found the resistance - “

The taller woman raises a hand.

“Hold up. This place is clean, right? Clean as we can reasonably get it?”

Allele nods.

“Guy had his own hardcore blockers and boy do we know why now, plus we set our own background noise creator and waffler too. Couple’a more organic bugs running around as a distraction just so anyone peeking finds something, cos that’s less eye-catchy than a void.”

Chimer nods; in Civitrecce it’s always less suspicious to have a few spies running around - any absence of them will just draw others like moths to flame. So anyone smart will have their own bugs in the area looking like outside eavesdroppers to discourage or fight off the others if it becomes necessary. Of course, even your own spies can be hacked, controlled by some beastspeaker if they’re bio enough - but that’s just the risk everyone takes.

“Okay, so, you think you found the resistance. The one I have tried, and failed, to track down for half my life. My life that is way longer than yours, sport.”

Allele snorts.

“Yer also a great bleedin’ political figure, you dumbarse. They know how to hide from you, wouldn’t be very good at their jobs if they didn’t, huh?”

“Wow, I never thought of that.” Retorts the seadweller. “Yeah that’s why I totally went looking for them as myself, and also never had anyone else on the case. I am the dumbest pair of fins that ever flopped on land, ya got me, show’s over.”

Allele shakes her head.

“You don’t get it. Everything you do, just by existin’, makes some kinda impact in the data stream. They can always feel you comin’ even if you try to be quiet cos you’re like a carp in a pond of minnows. Sure the other carp won’t notice you, but the minnows will even if you swim slow. Folks you set on the case got that connection too. You’re just proper fucked, not your fault really.”

Chimer grinds her teeth, fins ruffling in disappointment. It makes sense and she hates it. It’s just - if she could find them and help them, they could achieve so much. It’s risky, but if even half the rumors she’s heard about the kind of psiionics they have are true...

“Right. Fine. Spiffy. So what does the resistance have to do with this guy?”

Allele brightens up, but lowers her voice.

“Cause we think we found one of ‘em and they offered us a reward for taking him out and retrieving his data.”

“What kind of reward?”

“Info, what else. Not like they have a ton of cash to throw around. Not legit stuff anyway.”

Chimer considers this. From the very little she’s been able to pin down about the resistance - and their mode of operations has changed throughout the sweeps anyway, though always with an obvious emphasis on secrecy - that does match up.

They rarely rob their victims directly, or else no one’s been able to catch them at it, because electronic fund thefts are too easy to trace in the city - there’s a whole legislacerator branch dedicated to it.

They’ve ripped caegers away from highbloods before to expose them for corruption and let their fellows swoop in and tear them apart, or ruined businesses by crashing their stock, but their tack is usually redistributing the wealth to the city’s lowbloods en masse. Generous, also makes it basically impossible to track to its source when divided up so small.

“Wait. ‘We?’ Just how long have you two been up to murdershenanigans? I mean - dumbass question, you’re both murdershenanigans types, but like, together. As an unholy duo.”

Allele looks guilty and then defensive, her muscular, scarred arms crossing to mirror the fuchsia’s own.

“Some perigees. What’s it to you? I didn’t know you knew ‘em. Besides, they’re good at it and they know a lot, s’nice to work with an older troll and pick things up.”

The fuchsia groans.

“Allele. I mean this in the nicest possible way, but you’re off your goddang rocker. Do you actually know anything about what you’re standing next to? They’re imperial.”

“Were.” She insists. “Just like me! They told me and I looked some stuff up. M’not stupid, Chimer.”

The teal’s tone is resentful and ugh, she guesses she should be nicer but why them.

Especially with the fucking skeleton on the floor.

The rainbowdrinker is apparently so unconcerned by the conversation that they have...pulled out a swap and are playing lusus passing.

All right then.

“Fine. Cool. What did this guy do? What data did they want you to get?”

“Lists of bribes.” Allele says, much more somber now. “Trolls he bribed to ignore his shit.” She shudders. “There were a lot.”

“Bribes for -“

“Lowblood fighting rings. And worse.” Interjects the drinker, looking up. “Much worse. He trafficked in everything if someone was selling along his shipping routes. Even had deals with the Neishis.”

They must know. They must know what that name means to her, but there’s no smug satisfaction or knowing smile. Their face is deathly serious, all former levity gone.

Do they...care? Actually care?

If what they’re saying is true - and Allele believes them - then they technically did her a favor by stopping her before she could reach out to him, and it sounds like...

No, she’s got to be sane. This isn’t how things should be handled. She can’t let her own feelings get in the way; that’s what all her enemies expect from her.

“So the solution was not coming to me but eating him. Yeah, that sounds legit.”

“Didn’t even leave me anything for jerky.” Complains the teal.

Chimer gives her a look that speaks volumes and all of them are punctuated five exclamation points deep.

“Hey, it’s my thing.” Mumbles the teal defensively, looking down. “Waste not, all that shit.”

“You’ve got no good excuse for your power trip cannibalism, you weirdo. At least they don’t have a choice. But...”

The seadweller’s voice trails off as she looks at the empty sockets of the skeleton, the picked-clean vertebrae. This was a whole troll, not a small one, and now he’s just...remains.

“How, and why, did he wind up like this. Don’t you only drink blood?”

“Mmhmhm...technically. But given I am...unusual, I can also pulp flesh into liquid and drink it if I want to. It’s often not worth the effort, but I was hungry...and mad.”

Their little laugh creeps her out, and how do they do that. Just what type of drinker are they?

She knows they were designed as some kind of spy system, but she never knew the details of Rhomox’s project - hardly wanted to spend more time talking to the guy than she had to, he was insufferable, and the caverns weren’t releasing anything at the time.

“Allele. Come on. I don’t care if you wanna kill random clowns or legis or whatever but this is gonna have consequences and leave a power vacuum. He could well get replaced by someone worse.”

She shakes her head.

“Almost no one as bad as him even among highbloods. And we know cause he took...he took so many photos. I was almost sick.”

Her old friend does look ill at the very thought, and the drinker simply looks unreadable, watchful.

The seadweller sighs and puts two fingers to her forehead.

“Fine. I’ll accept he maybe deserved this but did you have to kill him in his own hive, his hive I was last seen entering and my staff knew I was going to visit, so there are records? This is gonna look really fucking bad for me.”

Allele’s mouth opens in surprise and then she shuts it, looking chastened.

“No. I made sure I was caught by a delayed camera drone, but that miss Yorkyt was not. This is just an unfortunate drinker attack you stumbled on.”

The teal spins to face her companion.

“What! You didn’t tell me that.”

“We were a little busy disabling all the guard droids, hmm? You’re welcome.”

She looks a bit thrown, but nods.

Chimer snorts.

“Yeah, drinker attack. What kind of drinker does this? Sure you’re not a really chatty zombie?”

They look at her, head tilted, and then hold up their arm, sleeve falling down so their slim wrist is exposed.

Something wriggling pokes out of the skin, one, two, several of them gleaming white and as she leans closer to look she sees they have...fangs.

Then they all go back in, and her eyebrows have climbed into hairline.

“Huh.”

So that’s what Epsilo is so afraid of. That’s what attacked Amdzah...but he only had two bite marks in his neck, the standard drinker punctures. Nothing like this.

That’s what Claire keeps around.

That’s what Allele is insane enough to ally with.

“Well that’s a thing. Hey, Allele.”

“Yeah?”

“Where did you misplace your mind, maybe we can claim it at the lost and found.”

The assassin scowls, her long angular face twisted in a frown.

“Aren’t ya supposed to be accepting and all that junk?”

“Sure, and I’m also supposed to use my thinkpan.”

“They’re right here, don’t be fuckin’ rude.”

She rolls her eyes.

“All right. Shoot. Sell me on why this is actually smart and they’re not just going to eat us too.”

Allele makes an offended noise, then coughs, but the drinker simply looks at her with amusement.

“Well, I’m full at the moment for one thing. And for another, I happen to respect you and miss Yorkyt. You don’t deserve what I did to him. Though it was rather fun.”

Morbid curiosity pushes her onward, even though the fuchsia knows she might well regret it.

“...what happened.”

“We disabled his systems and his droids, Allele knocked out the few troll staff and got them away via transportalizer. He tried to attack her and she fended him off a perfectly decent blast, but he was clearly on some sort of steroids and even a sonic wail didn’t do much to him. He got his hands round her neck and was about to tear her coat off...and that’s when I tackled him down.”

Their eyes glow brightly again and they smile, long needle teeth showing.

“I swarmed out into his body and it’s funny, how even the biggest most muscular troll will writhe when their innards are being devoured.” They say in a soft voice.

“It’s funny how they’ll scream and beg and curse, being at the mercy of someone else, when they get such a kick out of doing it to others. Of course, when I ate his tongue he couldn’t curse anymore, though his eyes were certainly enough to get the message across, and when I ate his throat...mmhmhm. And then I ate his hateful eyes, and the rest of him followed.”

Allele’s hoarseness. That dark spot has to be a bruise.

Chimer clenches her fists.

“That’s not...for fuck’s sake. We can’t just eat and kill who we want because they’re bastards. Look I get it, this guy was absolutely evil and creeping Sufferer I would’ve wanted to kill him myself but this wasn’t the way to solve it. If you’d brought me evidence I could’ve - ”

“ - had him in front of a legislacerator court, miss Latrai? I guarantee he would’ve already had bribes or blackmail on half the jury. Or would you give him to the lowbloods whose quadrants he and his trolls abused? Poetic justice, certainly, but they would be culled for it if they were found out, and everything gets found out here.”

She hisses, fins fluffed out in sheer irritation. It makes sense, it all makes shitty annoying sense.

“An’ you couldn’t have locked him up yourself,” Allele chips in, “cause you would’ve been discovered too.”

“Yeah, thanks, brah. Really what I need to hear right now.”

She fixes the - whatever they are - with a glare.

“I don’t see why I shouldn’t just kill you.”

Tuuya tilts their head again, their wavy hair bobbing.

“No reason, really. Would you like to? I have a weapon that can do it.”

She blinks.

“Are you serious.”

“Of course. Being killed by you would be a decent way to go.”

“No! What? You can’t! Why?”

Allele winces and rubs her throat after her cry, but looks at them confused and hurt.

They look back at her calmly.

“I deserve this, miss Yorkyt. I am no hypocrite. I tried to end my own undead existence long ago, but being what I am, it is impossible. My worms will always stop me. So I need someone else to do it, someone who deserves to kill me, and miss Latrai is perfect for the job. The fuchsia who tries so hard to see justice done in a fundamentally unjust world, moirail of Sevenn Tarann. She kills a monster and the world is a little better for it. That’s nice, isn’t it?”

This is weird. This is so weird. She expected them to fight her. To protest. But they really are willing? Unless it’s some kind of trick.

They pull out a long knife and hand it to her.

“It gets superheated.” They advise her. “The casing and guard will protect you from the worst of the convection. Be careful to get every last worm, or I could come back.”

They stand patiently, hands clasped.

Allele looks...upset. Somehow. Is that how Claire would feel? Do they have other people who care about them? They’re creepy, but...Margol seems to like them too.

Stupid. She should just...do it. Get it over with. Get rid of the threat not only to trolls in general but mutants and limes if the empire ever got their hands on them again. Eliminate the risk.

Aren’t ya supposed to be accepting and all that junk?

There are limits, right? No one can complain about her killing a worm swarm. It’s not like killing a mutant or a lime or anyone else the empire has decided is too weak to be allowed to live. And they’re sadistic. Killing that blueblood was a delight for them, not an unfortunate duty.

She doubts they always restrict themselves to morally bankrupt victims either. They’ve probably drank from plenty of lowbloods who can’t afford to be weakened that way.

Claire would be better off without them. So would Allele. Look what they did to Amdzah; they could snap any time.

But Amdzah only had the one wound, and even Epsilo said he turned up with it bandaged...

UGH.

“I can’t.” She growls. “I’d get too much flack for it. I don’t need more problems right now, dealing with this is enough. You two realize it’s not just him, right? You wanna do this properly, you’re gonna have to take down his whole network.”

“Duh.” Says the teal, rolling her eyes. “What did you think we were gonna do?”

She looks not a little bit relieved.

The drinker’s face is unreadable.

“So you won’t, then?”

“Nope, sorry.”

The fuchsia hands the knife back. They put it away in their sylladex.

“If you change your mind, you are welcome to.” They state.

“Cooool. Anyway, we should all make ourselves scarce. Tell me how it goes with your maybe-a-resistance contact.”

With that the politician turns and leaves, back out the damaged door into the moonlight. She sighs, running a hand through her hair.

Nothing’s ever simple, is it. Nothing’s ever easy, doing it her way. Sometimes she envies her teal friend and her uncomplicated morals.

But someone has to believe in a better way, no matter how unrealistic it is. No matter how hard it is to get there.

Whatever Cherie says, it’s not just because of how she was made, whose soul she got. She chose it. She’ll keep choosing it.

No matter what.

[mrgrant9559-blog]

Witch Way Is Right? Part 4

A/N: Ok, you uglies are starting to multiply so I gotta make a Part 4... In this one, Reader is going to have to make a choice he thought he wouldn’t have to make until he was older... NOT LIKE THAT!!! Also, sorry to the guy who gave me the prompt to write this, but I guess I’m going in a completely different direction compared to what you sent me... I really hope you enjoy what I came up with and once again I’m sorry... ON WITH THE STORY!

Summary: (Y/N) is a male witch and also comes from a family of witches. When (Y/N) is backed up in a corner by his brother, who chose the dark path, he is forced to choose his own fate, choosing the light path. This causes an Ecliptic War between Light and Dark Witches. During this war, an eclipse (both solar and lunar) is happening, and won’t end until one brother is left standing. With the help of the Avengers and other helpful heroes, will (Y/N) be able to defeat his brother, or will the world be forever secluded in darkness?

Subject: Avengers x Male!Reader

Characters: (Y/N), Peter Parker, Ned Leeds, Tony Stark, Brother OC

Tags: @writeyouin @thegreatficmaster @avengersohyeah @lzzywinchester @uselessace

Word Count: 3,097 words?! I had no idea I was doing that much!! My bad 😅

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

________________________________________________________

Third Person POV:

“So what do you say, (Y/N)? You comin with me or am I dragging your unconscious body outta here?” Alex said as his eyes started to glow a purple hue. (Y/N) knows he has to fight him, or at least hold his own until his parents are conscious again. It won’t be easy but he can’t make it look hard either.

“You wouldn’t happen to have a spell that makes your voice less irritating, would you?” a familiar voice sounded through the halls. (Y/N) tried looking around to find the source of the voice. Then a web was shot at Alex’s face, covering his whole mouth as Spider-Man dropped from the ceiling and landed next to (Y/N). “Oh nevermind, I figured it out.” Spidey joked.

“Spider-Man?! I can’t believe its really you! Your voice sounds... familiar though.” You said.

“Uhhh... I-I get that a lot.” He stammered. You couldn’t put your finger on it, but looking at him from a close distance, you couldn’t help but notice how tall he was. Almost the same height as you. For a “Spider-Man”, he really seemed like a high schooler. Maybe he’s a student at Midtown High, too. In the middle of your thoughts, Alex ripped the webbing off his face with a irritated grunt.

“You know, most spiders tend to have 12 eyes. Let’s see how well you can handle that, shall we?” Alex said with his eyes once again glowing purple as he was starting to conjour up a spell. “Ton kánei pio aráchni!”(Make him more spider-like!) He chanted. You start to see Spidey squirm around and yell as he seems like he’s in pain but you can’t really tell. You unexpectedly fire a blast at Alex, causing him to fall back on his ass. This gives you and the webhead enough time to hide. You run through the halls dragging Spidey with you until you find the Custodian Room to see whats wrong with him.

Reader’s POV:

“Spidey, are you hurt? Do you feel different? Talk to me! Whats goin on?” I asked worried. Who knows what my dumbass brother did to him.

“Yeah, I think I’ll be alright.” He says with that same familiar voice, and I start to get suspicous. Why does he sound so damn familiar. I got an idea.

“Take off your mask!” I suggest.

The hero looks at me with his mask displaying wide eyes. “What?! No way! I can’t have you know who I am, ok? Not like this!” he says.

“Look, man, I need to see if my brother did something weird to you. I heard him say something about 12 eyes before he casted the spell. Plus, I can tell by the sound of your voice and your height that you go to this school, so you either show me now or I find out on my own eventually.” I say matter-of-factly.

He sighs and then looks up at me. “Alright fine, but please don’t freak out!”

“Yeah yeah, whatever. Now hurry up before my brother finds us.” I say quickly. To be honest, I don’t know how much time we have before my brother barges in, so we gotta be quick about this. He takes off his mask and I can’t believe my eyes! “PARKER?! OH MY GOD WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?!” I yell in horror.

“I told you not to freak out, (Y/N)!” He says annoyed.

“No Peter. Ugh, it’s not that at all!” I say as I try to shield my eyes. He looks at me confused. Or at least I think he’s confused.

“What the hell is it then? Did your brother really put some wierd spell on me?!” He asks. I grab my phone out of my pocket and go to the camera app. I put it in selfie mode and hand it to him. He looks at it and now it’s his turn to freak out.

“OH MY GOD!! WHAT THE FUCK?! I HAVE 12 EYES!!! He yells.

“See?! I told you! Ugh, just look at them going in different directions and stuff.” I say in disgust.

“FIX IT!! YOU CAN FIX IT, CAN’T YOU?! He asks worriedly.

“Yeah I can fix it. Just calm down and let me concentrate.” I say calmly. I need him to relax because I’ve honestly never tried to reverse someone’s spell, let alone my own brother’s.

I remember when I was about 9, Alex accidently gave me a second head when he said in Greek, “two heads are better than one.” To this day, I don’t know if it was on purpose or not. I also remember my mom saying the spell backwards and my second head was gone. Thats it! “Inhcára oip ienák not!” I chanted and Peter went back to having only two eyes. He frantically started touching his face. Relief washed over him as he realized he was back to normal. He looked at me as if I had just saved his life, which I guess I sorta did.

“How’d you do it?” he asked.

“I remembered when my mom reversed a spell Alex accidentally put on me when I was younger. She just said the spell backwards and it wore off, so thats what I did. Honestly, I didn’t know if I’d even be able to reverse a spell from a fully powered dark witch.” I admitted.

“I don’t know what I would’ve done with an extra set of eyes. Thanks, (Y/N). Really.” He said thankfully. I was so focused on fixing Peter’s eyes, I didn’t even notice the door had been opened.

“Yeah, (Y/N). Thanks. If it wasn’t for you and webhead over here screaming like bitches, then it would’ve taken me longer to find you two.” Alex said as his eyes started to shift to a purple hue once again. “Speaking of bitches, Peter! I would’ve never guessed a scrawny nerd like you would be Spider-Man.” Peter hurriedly tried to find his mask and he put it back on, but I really don’t see a point. Alex points two fingers towards Peter and flicks them to the side as he says, “Árchise!”(Begone). Peter flies through 6 classroom walls like they were nothing.

“PETER!” I yell as I try to get up to check on him but my brother casts another spell to stop me in my tracks.

“Leavin so soon? We haven’t even gotten to the blood shed, yet.” He says. He uses his magic to spin me around so that I’m facing him and he repeatly says, “Sýnkrousi!”(Crash!) 10 times and every time he says it, I’m thrown to each wall in the hallway. After the final wall throw, he then says, “Makriá mazí sou!”(Away with you!) and I’m thrown through some more walls to the school gym. I’m lying on the floor still breathing surprisingly. Alex said he’s gonna drag my unconsious body outta here, but if he keeps this up, the only he’ll be dragging is my corpse.

My body aches and I’m sure there’s blood coming out of my nose, not to mention the blood running down the left side of my face from my head having an open wound on it. My Mom and Dad are unconsious I’m guessing from the works of Baron Mordo so I know they’re not coming. Peter must have connections with the Avengers but like I said I earlier I don’t think they’re on good terms after that huge war at the airport. Which means I’m on my own. And if I’m on my own then that also means I have no choice but to use my trump card. I start to shift so that I’m on my knees. My parents told me to use this spell only on emergencies, but this seems like more than an emergency. It’s life or death!

I don’t know how but I find the strength and mental courage to stand on my feet. I’m out of beath still but that doesn’t stop me from doing what needs to be done. I close my eyes and concentrate. I’ve only heard of people using this spell at 18, so I’m kinda curious as to what might happen to me if I’m doing this at age 15. After I’ve fully concentrated, I cast the spell by saying, “Écho epiléxei ti moíra mou!”(I’ve chosen my fate!).

Suddenly, two different colored portal emerge in front of me. One is Purple and the other is Gold. Purple being the Dark Path, which is what my brother chose, and Gold being the Light Path, which is what I’m choosing. Even though my parents are gonna be mad at for choosing my path before I’m done with high school, they won’t be mad at me like they were with Alex when he chose his path. I just hope they understand cause like I said before, I have no choice. I begin walking towards the Gold portal and the closer I get to it, the warmer I feel. Like, I was really destined to chose this path! I’m just a few steps away from it until I hear my brother yell in the background.

“STOP!” He says. “(Y/N), don’t go to the Light path! Think of all the damage we could cause together! We could rule this world with an iron fist and become Gods! No one would be able to stop us!” He tries to convince to join him, but what he’s saying just causes me to move faster towards the Gold portal. I donmt want the world to fear, I want people to look up to me. I wanna be on kids’ lunch boxes and back packs. I wanna be a hero! And thats exactly what I’m gonna do!

I fully walk through the portal and I feel different. I feel older and more experienced. Peter lands down next to me in his full Spider-Man suit and I notice that I’m now taller than him. What the hell happened to me? I turn towards him and his mask gives off this surprised expression.

“Peter, are you ok?” I ask.

“Yeah, I’m fine but are you ok?” He asks and I’m confused.

“What do you mean? I feel great! In fact, I feel better than great! I feel like...”

“You’re 18?” Alex interrupts. “Dammit (Y/N), you idiot! We could’ve became something greater! Everyone would know our names in fear!”

“I don’t want people to fear me, Alex! And I especially don’t want to be known as a god. I’d rather be known as a legend. A Hero!” I argue. I can’t see Peter’s face, but I can tell he’s looking at me with a smile. I can see Alex’s eyes glow purple again.

“You know the difference between a God and a Hero? Heroes die!” He says as he shoots a powerful energy blast towards me, causing a mild but destructive explosion.

The gym is engulfed in smoke and I can hear Alex laughing like he won, but I’m far from done with this fight. I snap my fingers and the smoke dissappears to reveal Alex’s face go from happy to shocked. I looke to my right and see that Peter is still alright. I guess my protection spell worked. I cause my eyes to glow gold. I look at Alex and he looks scared. Serves the asshole right.

“Beydaan maeak!”(Away with you!) I say as a portal suddenly appears behind Alex and he’s sucked into it and sent to the dark realm. I look around and notice all the damage thats been done to the school. I realize that I have to fix it sense it’s kinda my fault.

My eyes glow gold again as I chant, “Iieadatan bna!”(Rebuild!). The rubble and and debris from the broken wall in the gym started to repiece itself like a jigsaw puzzle. The smoke and dust started to disappear into nothingness. I also decide to erase everyones memory from what happened 5 minutes ago to now. I’ll let Peter and Ned keep their memories. I feel like I can trust them with knowing this about me. Plus, if Ned can keep Peter’s secret, then I’m pretty sure he can keep mine, too.

I notice that these spells just come to me naturally. I don’t need a spellbook or anything like that, and usually I’d be exhausted after using 3 spells in a short time but now I don’t feel anything. Must be one of the benefits of choosing your path. That and so much more, which I can’t wait to find out.

“Mimhat aldhaakirat!”(Memory eraser!) I conjour and a gold ring appears around me and expands throughout the school. I look to the side and notice that Peter is gone. He must’ve left to go put on his regular clothes. I never really had the time to actually soak in the fact that my friend is Spider-Man. Which means, he must have connections with the Avengers. I wonder if he’ll put in a good word to Tony Stark for me!

“I guess thats that. Now to go check and see if the spell actually worked.” I said. I walk towards the double doors and peek through the halls. Everything seems back to normal. No hole in the ceiling. No broken pipes dripping water on the ground. People are walking to their next class as if nothing happened. I decide to do the same just to seem normal for a while, which might be harder than I thought sense I’ve aged 3 years. I’m walking towards class and see Peter come up behind me. He winks at me but his face is still a little scratched up. I snap my fingers and his face is instantly cleared. He looks at me surprised until he remembered the cuts on his face.

“Yeah, I almost forgot about my face. I’ve been doing this so much, I’m just used to having a couple scars and making dumb excuses about them. Thanks alot, for everything. I’m sure if you weren’t there, then I’d have more than just a couple scars on my face.” He said.

I look at him and smile. “Don’t worry about it, Pete. I’m just glad we got away with it scot free.” I say as I’m about to pull open the classroom door. Once we walk in, my eyes go wide as I look at the classroom and only see... MY PARENTS?! My dad has his arms folded above his chest and my mom has her hands rested above her waists. My dad starts to walk closer to us and I swear, my spine grows colder with each step he takes. “Hey, guys!” I stammered, “You guys remember Peter, right?”

“Oh we remember Peter. What we DON’T remember is our 15 year old son suddenly being 18! What the hell did you do?!” He says as his voice gets louder with each word.

“Well, you see ,” I stammered again, “I had to fight Alex on my own because you guys were unconscious and he was really powerful, so I had no choice but to choose my path and I did.

Now, it was my mom’s turn to speak. “What do you mean we were unconscious? We were awake the whole time. We just heard about what happened on the news. How could you choose your path without telling us, (Y/N)?”

“I had no choice, Mom! If I didn’t he was gonna kill me for sure! I mean, what did you guys want me to do?!” I questioned.

“Honestly, son. This may come off as a shock to you, but we wanted you to choose the Dark Path.” My dad said and I’m surprised my eyeballs didn’t pop out of my skull. They wanted me to choose dark?! That’s crazy!

“Are you guys for real?! Why on Earth would I choose the dark path. I mean you guys have taught me all my life that we have to live as light witches!” I say.

“I know, son but we would’ve kept you on the right path we promise we would. Now, with your brother choosing dark path and you choosing light path, well you have no idea what you two have started.” My dad says while looking at me with a stern looks.

“What are you talking about?! What did I start?” I ask.

Suddenly, I hear the classroom door open and someone walks in. “I’m sorry but am I interrupting something here?” the man says. I turn around and I can’t believe who it is!

“Mr. Stark! What are you doing here?” Peter blurts out.

“Oh, I was in the neighborhood. Thought I’d say what’s up to my favorite web-slinger. Also I came here for your friend here. (Y/N) is it?” Tony said. My parents and I are still surprised that he’s here. Even though I have a huge crush on Captain America, I’m still a huge fan of the billionaire, playboy, philanthropist.

“You want me?! What for, sir?” I ask.

He takes off his shades and I can tell he’s serious. “Well I noticed all the crazy shit that was going on over here, so I sent in a couple micro drones to see what was going on and they spotted you with a gold, flashy, ring expanding around you. So, I assumed that random Eclipse outside was because of you and this evil brother of yours I was hearing about just now.” He says.

“Wait. What eclipse?!” I ask. I ran out the classroom door, ran through the hall towards the school doors and noticed it was dark out already. I made it outside and looked up to see a total solar elipse in the middle of the sky right above us. Is this what my parents were talking about? If so, then I have a feeling I’m in a lot more trouble than I thought.

“Breathtaking isn’t it? You must have some pretty unique abilities to do something like this. Ever thought of joining the Avengers?” Tony says standing to the side of me while looking at the eclipse with his shades on. If I wasn’t so confused right now, I’d be on the ground, hyperventilating with excitement. My parents and Peter walk out the front door and towards us. My parents look up and they have a sick look on their face. Like something they wish would never happen just happened.

My mom has tears roll down her face as she says, “It’s starting already? I thought we had a little more time!”

“What is this? What the hell is going on?!” I ask in confusion

My dad looks towards me and says, “The Ecliptic War.” What the hell is an Ecliptic War?!

________________________________________________________

I guess we’re about to find out in the next part! I really hope you guys enjoyed, I know I dragged the story on longer than expected but the more I wrote, the more ideas I got. So I really hope you guys enjoy the direction I’m taking with the story and sure you guys follow so you can know when Part 5 is coming... Anyways, bye, my uglies!!

[utopia-dystopia-meganfmpwsc]

Magazine Mock-ups and Final Magazine Outcome

For this project our task was to create a magazine linked with my chosen theme dystopia. I have used my research and idea that I have been inspired by to produce my final magazine. I have been gathering images to put into it, using my ideas and colour pallets. I`ve been taking pictures of 2 models which I didn't want to many models because then It would look unorganised and I have chosen 1 friend to relate o the coloured gels and different colours lights and another model to relate to the red theme.  as well as editing them with lots of technique on photoshop and illustrator. I have also created a logo as well using different techniques. I have shown some outcomes on my blog of the different stages which I have done through my magazine and I think the process is very interesting how ideas, edits and layouts change. We produced magazine mock-ups which show what they magazine will look like in real life and it make it more professional land love my magazine more. I was inspired by colour gels, different coloured lights and using very dark colours such as red which runs through most of my Images. My magazine is like split into 2 sections 1 section of 1 model and the other a different model. I decided to call my magazine  rayless because it means “dark or gloomy” which I wanted the dark theme to run through the magazine but also have the coloured lights relating to the word “ ray”. I think my magazine definitely portrays the theme of dystopia.

In conclusion I really like the outcome of my magazine and I think it definalty fits with the theme of dystopia and my research has helped me along the way. 

Front cover:

Here I have made one of my Images Black and white and then going into Adjustments > Levels, I MADE THE Image look more professional. Then using  the lasso tool I cut out a segment of the Image In colour and placed over the image in the same section. I tried to make it look blended by cutting a weird shape out not just one circle. I also have not re touched my Image because I wanted to make it look realistic and making it more rough which really like the effect of. For the logo I went on dafont.com and Used the font Urae-Nium and then using the eyedropper tool I picked out a red tone in the Image and used that colour for the dashes In the logo and I think everything goes together. I think using black and white make it look more professional as well. 

Pages 2 & 3:

For image 2 I took 3 photos from my photo shoot where I used pink and blue colour gels but also red colour gel on the yellow background and used 3 different angles in the studio. I changed the hue and saturation of the image to make it more darker and red tones to fit with my theme but also has that sense of different colours which fitted with my my original Ideas. I really love this page like how it has turned. I also think the shiny on him goes with the colours as well. 

For Image 3 I used a black backdrop and wanted it to have a swoosh effect behind the normal photo. To do this I used shutter speed and learning how to changing the settings on the camera. To make it behind I used the lasso tool to cut out the photo of my friend and put it on top of the shutter speed Image. I think the effect goes well together, its not to subtle but not to brought which goes well I really like how the blue colour gel and red colour gel look half and half which reminds me of heaven and hell relating to both themes but what make it look dystopia is the Images against the black backdrop making it dark. I really like how this has turned out and looks great with the other paging use colour gels. 

Pages 4 & 5:

For page 4 I changed my photo what I took outdoors of my model to Black and white and then going into Adjustments > Levels, I made the Image look more professional and the used a red square and used the blend tool to make it have a mix of colours. I was originally going to have this as a double page spread but instead I cut out the red segment using the select tool and mirrored the mages which gave a very eerie effect portraying dystopia. I also used a white background to make the Image stand out. I really like the final Layout. 

I really like the out come of page 5. I made this by changing all my images to grey scale and then retouched all the Images to make my models skin smoother and glow more. Then I make all the Images the same size and Put them on 1 A4 document. Then I filled the background black. Then used the type tool I types 4 different words. I used the word “dystopia” which is my theme. I used the definition of dystopia, I also used the letters 1234 to make it look like a original photo outcome and some random numbers along the side. I added the phrases and numbers in the same area of each Image remind of a original photo outcome. I then used the paint tool and painted across my models face and added a random circler shapes across of my images. I decided to use red to fit with my theme and colour pallet this is one of my favourite outcomes. 

Pages 6 & 7:

For page 6 I changed my photo what I took outdoors of my model to Black and white and then going into Adjustments > Levels, I made the Image look more professional and the used a red square and used the blend tool to make it have a mix of colours. I was originally going to have this as a double page spread but instead I just used half of the image making very eerie and mysterious  portraying dystopia. I really like the outcome of this image because I think using only half makes it look more professional. I decided to go with a red square to it with my colour palate which runs through most of my magazine.

For page 7 I changed my photo what I took outdoors of my model to Black and white and then going into Adjustments > Levels, I made the Image look more professional. Then making it look simple but effective used a brush from the brush tool and crossed it across the face and slightly onto he white background. I decided to  used a white background to make the image stand out. I also used a red brush to fit with my theme. 

Pages 8 & 9:

For pages 8 & 9  I took this image in my projection class. The red matches the red in my colour palette in my magazine. I love there Chinese writing effect because  it reminds me of neon lights in china which are popular in photography. Then I Changed the colour ode and hue & saturation to make the writing ore red toned. Then going to Adjustments > Levels, made the model more darker bringing out the writing but yo can still see the model but make it look very creepy and I think think the pose putting her hand on her neck makes it very unique and creepy fitting with my theme of dystopia. I think it will look very good as a double page spread. 

Pages 10 & 11:

For this double page I decided to change my Image black and white , I changed the levels to make it look more professional. Then stretched a square across the Images and blending the 2 together to make the images look red fitting with my red theme running across the rest of the Image. Then I wanted to cover some of her face so using the lasso tool I cut on a part of her jacket and placed it over her eyes. Then I found 3 words relating to my theme of dystopia and put them in the font “BEBAS NUE”. I think the size of the text goes really well with the images and brings it all together. I think this looks really good as a double page spread and I really like the outcome of this looks very professional. 

Pages 12 & 13:

For page 12 I decided to change my Image black and white , I changed the levels to make it look more professional. Then stretched a square across the Images and blending the 2 together to make the images look red fitting with my red theme running across the rest of the Image. Then when they where blended I changed the hue and saturation to make the Image a deeper red and then changed the levels of them as a whole to make it darker fitting with my theme. I think making the images darker make it look more mysterious because with was shot in a woods which portrays dystopia highly. 

For page 13 I took the original Image in my colour gel shoot. I took it on a NiIxon camera. I decided to red gels because it a colour that match with my dystopia theme. I used a black background to make it look dark going against my dystopia theme. I edited the hue and saturation of the image as well as the levels to get the colour and lighting right to make it look more professional. Then I placed over that Image a photo from my light pen shoot and then blended the photos together using “Lighter colour blend” so that only the light pen would show up and not the background. Then because the original photo of the was very pink I changed the colour modes and hue saturation to make it more orange to compliment the original photo. I really like how the shape doesn't cover her face and words really well with the Image. I think all the colours compliment each other and goes well with the other images in the magazine. 

Page 14 & 15:

For pages 14 & 15 I've also taken the original shoot  in my colour gel shoot. I used my phone this time to get a red-pink hue, but it still matches my dystopia theme. I wanted to use red gels because they were a colour that suited my theme of dystopia. To make it look dark against my theme of dystopia, I used a black backdrop. Then I placed over that Image a photo from my light pen shoot and then blended the photos together using “Lighter colour blend” so that only the light pen would show up and not the background. I like how Image 14 is on the white backgrounds and image 15 is larger  because it makes each one stand out individually. 

For Image 14 I like how I have changed the light pen photo to a blue colour adding colour to the image but also the red. It still fits my theme of dystopia because of the facial expressions, red colour gels and dark lighting but still has different colours .It also reminds me of  smoke which makes it even more eerie portraying the theme of dystopia. 

For Image 15 the light pen reminds me of a devils halo. I think all the colours including the pink / red halo with the pink / red background. Even if its pink its I l very dystopia because of the dark lighting and the dramatic facial expressions. Everything compliment each other and goes well with the other images in the magazine and like how it portrays the theme of dystopia. 

Back Cover:

Here I have took photos of my friend which originally was in a purple colour and I changed the hue and saturation and colour levels to fit with my theme of using red. Then using another photo form the same photoshoot and using the lasso tool I cut out the Image and then using the blends setting I blended it together so it looked behind but also a little over the face which produced a green colour like a colour gel which Is what I wanted to go for. I really like how my front and back are and both the same models but fit with each segment with the back fitting with the red theme. 

Below is my my magazine InDesign:

Here below is example of how we made  our magazine mock-ups to see what they would look like in real life. 

[deepstheeskimo]

Digga Deeps

I really like the lights aisle at B&Q. The way that amongst paint rollers and grouting it stands there glistening like some beacon is mesmerising. I may be a moth.

Something I always manage to wonder when I see these aisles (Before my pupils fully dilate) is what the financial and climate cost of keeping this kit all day is? As the endorphins mass in my brain am I effectively punching a baby polar bear in the head? Will Dave Att turn up with a film crew and facetiously commentate over me as I float towards the lights like a Disney character that’s smelt a nice window-ledged pie? Regardless, it’s the brighter the better for me and as I stand there like something out of a dystopian film absorbing electric light. Offer me an energy saving bulb and you’ll end up chewing it.

I do the same in the sun. Georgie calls me a lizard because they sit there still in the warmth, heating their cold blood. I act like a particularly cold-blooded and maybe cold hearted reptile, leaning my head back and closing my eyes to greedily absorb any vitamin D going spare. If they made a reptile Christmas Carol I could be a character adviser for whatever poor slowworm they got to play Ebenezer Scrooge.

That said, my one true love has always been electric light. Apparently it was one of my first words- no, really. Mum reckons she once closed the curtains and I proclaimed ‘digga-da!’ which she and dad both swear sounded exactly as though I was trying to wrap my dumb baby chops around the word ‘electric light’. Some of my strongest childhood memories are of gloomy days lit up by lights, so it fits. I made many visits to my grandma with her dimmer switches to change the atmosphere in the room and a cabinet of ornaments lit up by a lovely warm light and then used to peer round the corner of the spare room door at my dad miserably incubating himself next to a SAD light every February. Even when I went to the Tate last year one of my favourite pictures, Matisse’s Snail, was trumped by an installation of messages punched out in the form of LED light.

My addiction is obvious all the time. I revel in cloudy days when I can turn on a desk lamp at work or the lettered light box when working from home, the screaming tunnels of the Tube are even bearable if the carriage has a couple of lights on the blink giving an interesting light pattern, if I have few brewskis and I’ll be drawn to whichever takeaway that is competing in the oh so competitive 1am market and at a festival I’m probably alright without that washing powder/arsenic/ceramics dust ‘E’ so long as you put me near a flashy screen. Guy Fawkes Night is frankly an orgy.

I think the reason I like the light so much though is just because I’m so scared of the dark. I really hate the dark - not some Facebook mum reason and certainly not ‘the darkies’ like some army colonel. It makes me feel at once small and also interconnected with the world, in a way that makes me compare myself and feel inadequate. When we’re in November and it’s dark by about 15:00 I’ll be staring at my screen not letting it in, like some minecraft kid terrified of Herobrine or a computer science student is of a social gathering. The way to brace against this all encompassing darkness as I leave the office* is normally to wrap up in my coat and look up to see the electric light pouring out of the other hamster wheels. The contrast of light against dark is one reason why I love Original Pirate Material so much.

I realise I may sound like @ NugsBunny or some such sad sack but as we come round to winter and I start to get sad and shrink back into my Hermit Crab shell, the one thing I’m excited for is to plonk down in my joggers next to a lamp and decide which form of light I’d like for the evening. I get to hide away with my phone (on day mode, of course) and G watching the brightly flashing TV.

To a normal brain this will, I understand, sound totally Gwen Stefani** but to me it’s all pervading. Same with rain. I remember once walking up a set of outside stairs on the way to collect a prescription in the driving rain. I walked up Keighton Hill from my uni lecture and I remember being so angry and sad, nearly washed away by a torrent of water. All around me was grey, clouds sat on top of me, a flash of lightning in the background and I was absolutely soaked to the bone. I called someone to loudly complain (as if they were the Met Office) that today had meant to be at most a tiny bit of drizzle. ‘But it is only drizzle in Nottingham’. Same person, a few months later. It’s early December about 16:50 and I‘ve bussed it back from Uni, about to head into Saino’z: ‘Christ what a long day it’s been- about time for some dinner and then off to bed’ I say. The reply wasn’t too impressed. Turns out I don’t process the dark and cold in a normal way. Final proof of that was a note I wrote at Idles last year. I was freezing cold and people, caring, asked why. All I could think was because I’d come from somewhere dark and cold- inside my head. Weird what the lack of a wind up torch can do to people.

*maybe this year I’ll find safety in putting on The Chase?

**yeah, bananas. As in crazy. You know her song: ‘B-AN-AN-AS’. Meh, maybe it won’t catch on

[impurelight]

Mi 9T

When the OnePlus 7T came out I distinctly remember posting 'Oh, it's the double priced Mi 9T'. Because it is. The Mi 9T is one of the best phones you can buy for 300 USD. So I bought it and here are my impressions using it.

The first thing I noticed when I powered on this phone is the display. It is gorgeous. Just, it looks painted on as you'd expect. But also I can actually use the autobrightness mode. This is my first AMOLED phone. All the rest were LCD's and on LCD's if you lower the brightness the colours also get washed out. Perhaps this has to do with impurities in the red, green, and blue filters. But whatever the case I'd always leave autobrightness off because in dark modes it was too difficult to see anything.

This AMOLED fixes that. In fact it looks even better at night when there's no other light because the colours just pop that much more.

Also about the display there is an oversaturated colour mode turned on by default. I turned it off because although it looks good in most circumstances, if you have a colour that's already really saturated the extra saturation can bump that colour into uncanny levels of saturation.

Oh, and AMOLED displays are not as sharp as LCD panels. It's probably due to the pentile subpixels but if you look closely you can see some diamond stuff going on. Not the actual pixels and in normal use it looks fine but if you stop and stare at it it does look a bit off.

A post about the Mi 9T would not be complete without a talk about MIUI. I really like MIUI. So browsing MIUI discussions the 2 big problems with it are the task management and the notifications not showing up.

First the notifications. Yeah, they don't all show up on the lock screen. But I don't really care about that. When I look at the lock screen it's usually only to control my music as there is a fingerprint icon that displays over the fingerprint sensor. More on this later. So I can unlock my phone without ever seeing the lock screen. Pretty nifty.

And all the notifications show up in the shade so I'm not really sure why people are talking about that. It doesn't bother me that much.

And second there's the task management. MIUI is brutal about killing tasks that are eating battery life. Certain apps will run in the background as long as you opened them manually like the clock. But the official instructions to get something to run in the background are to:

Go into the battery settings and select no optimizations.

Go into the permissions and allow the app to autostart.

Go into the multitasking view (which looks really weird, not worse, just weird. In fact it might even be a bit better than that waste of space multitasking UI stock Android uses. Why they ever moved from the cards UI is beyond me.), long press on the app in question, and select the lock icon to keep MIUI from killing it.

And then I realized there are additional steps no one tells you:

Restart your phone.

Start the app after your phone has restarted.

So it's a bit of a pain. I wouldn't even know this if I didn't have a Mi Band 4. They even put the instructions in the Mi Band app. You'd think the Mi Band would do this automatically given it's made by the same company but I guess not.

I'm not sure if all these steps are necessary but they are recommended.

The upside of all this is that you get fantastic standby time. Like I can go to sleep and my phone won't drop in battery life overnight. There are times I'll go to sleep with my old Android One phone around like - I don't know - 40%ish battery life and wake up with 15% and a low battery warning. It's pretty annoying. I don't know if this trade off is worth it but I mean it's not so bad if you follow all the steps.

As for the rest of MIUI it's pretty amazing. Oh, yeah, people also complain about the launcher not having an app drawer. I don't mind, on my old phone I put all the apps on my home screen anyways. Although I now use Nova just because the default app drawer does not support adaptive icons and some of the icons in the default launcher are pretty bad. But the default launcher has a better swipe animation. When you swipe up the app goes back into its icon. I wish Nova had this but unfortunately not. When you swipe up the app just shrinks into the middle of the screen.

Speaking of the swipe gestures they're pretty cool. Up to go home. Up and hold (not up and to the right like in iOS) to access multitasking (which causes a vibration. BTW the vibration motor on the Mi 9T is really loud). And right or left to go back. Sometimes they do conflict with other things. Especially in Nova launcher (this is more probably due to not being able to go home again if you're already home) and in games but it's not that bad.

My one complaint is you still get that stupid swipe up twice to go home in full screen apps. That means when you're playing a game and you swipe up instead of going home you get a message "swipe up again to go home". It's pretty annoying and I don't know why they do it. But it doesn't bother me as much as having to swipe up to get to a button so I could go home because you're doing the same thing twice. That annoyance of having to swipe up twice is actually what made me never want a phone with on screen buttons. But now all the phones have edge to edge screens so I guess I have to move on.

Also some more notes on MIUI: it doesn't whine about mobile data. On stock android it's like "Oh, you don't have mobile data. Do you want to enable it?" And it's just so annoying. I don't know what sort of fantasy land Google lives in where everyone has unlimited data all the time. Also the clock text is really nice. I mean, it's just a clock but I still really like it.

It only displays like this if you don't have notifications though. It displays the boring normal text if you have a notification. Too bad. I would have perferred it if it always displayed this clock.

Also the battery icon text is too small.

And there's a lot of notification spam. Especially the app updates. Some update through the Play store but others don't. I don't understand why they can't all just update through the Play Store. Oh, well, at least the app update ones can be blocked by the cleaner ones cannot.

And there's this nifty feature called fingerprint shortcuts. Basically once you unlock your phone with your fingerprint you can slide your finger to one of a few shortcuts. This could be really useful if you could customize the shortcuts at all. Oh, well.

Speaking of the fingerprint sensor it's not what I expected. I saw tons of videos and they all had the fingerprint being really fast. And yeah, it's about that fast. But only if you have your finger in the same position you normally unlock the phone with. As soon as you start moving around or you're holding your fingers at a weird angle it can take about twice or even three times as long to unlock and the sensor will occasionally stutter for some reason. And if your hands were recently wet (even if you dryed them) it can even refuse to unlock entirely. I'd still say the fingerprint sensor is pretty good and way better than a back mounted one but I don't like how all those 'reviewers' lied to me.

So I briefly touched on the light up fingerprint icon. Basically there is an icon right over the fingerprint sensor so you know where to press. It's pretty nifty. It's easy enough to know where the fingerprint sensor is as it's usually marked by an unusually oily spot on the screen but it's nice to know explicitly. It's not always on, it appears to light up whenever you move the phone. Also the brightness of the icon doesn't use the ambient light sensor. So in dark locations it'll be fine but in bright locations you can hardly see it.

Also the Wifi is insanely good on this phone. Much better than my previous phone. The connection appears to be much more reliable and the connection is faster.

So let's talk about the camera. I keep on touching it when holding the phone. Because there are three cameras and a flash module. Anyways, it's a fine camera. In a comparison with the stock camera app the Google Camera app gave me much more details so I'm using that even though the HDR isn't as aggressive in that.

Also there is this sky replacement effect in the MIUI gallery app. It is so convincing. It makes the random dual exposure thing Google's doing this year look like a joke. The only problem is that if there's something that looks too much like sky, like a white house in front of some white clouds, it'll try to replace that too.

The last thing I wanted to talk about is the default case. It's really nice. I originally thought it was too thin but it appears to give the phone enough protection. Just be a little careful with it. I love how the buttons are so easy to press unlike other thick cases. Also it's very tight so you won't have to worry about it falling off.

So those are my thoughts on the Mi 9T. I love it. The only question here is, "If I had an equivalent phone running stock Android would I take it?" And to be honest I'd have to lean more towards the 'no' end of the scale. I don't really care about notifications, the closing apps issues is solvable and greatly improves battery life, and the fingerprint icon is a godsend. My biggest problem with MIUI is probably the battery percent in the top right is way too small.

Oh, and PS. Google's migration assistent is a complete joke. Contacts and stuff transfer fine but as for apps it basically use reinstalls them all one by one from the Play store. What a pain.

[riickgrimes]

coloring tutorial #1

this tutorial was requested like months ago after I picked up a new coloring technique and i finally had the time (and motivation) to do it.

Ok so we’re turning this:

into this: 

I just wanna warn you before we start that my laptop is colored weirdly and it has a kind of yellowish tint that throws off my colorings, to compensate for that I always add a lil to much blue and red, so on your computer/phone/etc it my look really reddish/magenta

Step 1: levels layer

I never really used to use the white arrow but since the trend of like “super bright whites” started, I’ve been using it more. And as you probably know, the moving the black arrow affects the blacks/darks, the grey arrow affects the neutrals, and the white arrow affects the whites.

This is a very simple and very slight adjustment.

Step 2: first curves layer

Of course, this brightens your gif, you don’t want to make it too bright though because we’ll use brightness/contrast in the next step.

Step 3: first brightness/contrast layer

Obviously, this brightens your gif even more. I don’t have a set ratio b/w brightness and contrast, I just adjust it until the gif looks good.

Step 4: second brightness layer

The second brightness layer is a kind of habit that i picked up from my old technique. I was never the biggest fan of super contrasted gifs, so I would always lower the contrast in a second layer. The contrast from the first brightness layer is kinda still there, just lessened.

Step 5: selective color layer - IMPORTANT

Here you make all the adjustments you usually would in the reds and yellows, but what’s really important is the whites.

Like I mentioned, there’s kind of a trend going on nowadays where the whites in a gif (like the background or the highlights on a person’s face), are extremely bright. I love this trend, I think it looks so good.

Btw, make sure you have “absolute” marked. This makes adjustment affect the whites more than “relative” does. I like to decrease the yellow and increase the cyan to make the whites/hightlights have more of a bluish tint. I don’t think that this is that necessary bc you can probably do the same thing in a curves layer later on.

I also mess around in the neutrals and the blacks.

I only increase the yellow, which will make the gif look very yellow and weird but that gets fixed later on. 

Increasing the black basically just adds more contrast

Step 6: second curves layer - IMPORTANT

The second curves layer is also very important in getting a bright white with a bluish tint.

Make sure you’re out of RGB mode and go to the blue mode. Drag the dot/circle thing in the right hand corner to the left. This gives the highlights/whites more of a subtle blue tint. I guess you could also drag it from the center like a normal curves layer, but I find that it’s more harsh that way. 

You can also do the same for the green and red modes, for this particular gif, I only moved them slightly to the left.

And of course if you feel like your gif needs to be brighter, you can adjust the black line in the RGB mode.

***notice how the highlight on lydia’s cheek and nose and the white in the background are more pronounced.***

Step 7: color balance layer

The first thing I do is move the color balance layer underneath all of my other layers

I always increase the blue to counteract what I did in the neutrals and everything else is just up to preference.

AND NOW WE’RE DONE!!!

If you have any questions feel free to ask!!!!

[mealha]

Five tips for photographing the old stuff you want to sell online

The internet is a big place—you should be able to find someone who'll buy your old smelly shoes. (ijeab via Deposit Photos/)

When it comes to selling stuff online, a strong lead photo is important. That’s true whether you’re hocking those vases you started making after you took a pottery class, the t-shirts you had made up featuring that clever line you couldn’t believe nobody had thought of, or simply just a bunch of things you don’t want anymore.

So if you’re looking to be the next Jeff Bezos, you should probably hire a professional photographer (and those vases probably won’t cut it, either), but if your ambitions are more along the lines of downsizing or making a buck off a hobby, you can definitely do the job yourself.

Using things you already own, you can turn a corner of your house into a makeshift studio that will help you take the best photos you can of anything you can’t wait to get rid of.

Ready your items

A perfectly shot, beautifully composed photo of a greasy, fingerprint-covered phone is still a photo of a dirty phone. Before even touching a camera, you’ll need to get your items ready to be photographed—grab a cloth and give them a dust-down. If there are fingerprints or grease stains, use a wet wipe or screen wipe to get rid of them. Also, plump up any pillows, iron out any creases, and generally just make things look nice. The more effort you put in before the shoot, the better your end photos will look.

Set up your "studio"

For small items, place a table near a window. They are a big and even source of natural light, which looks great in photos. Avoid using flashes or electric lights, unless you absolutely know what you’re doing.

Clean the table, remove any clutter, and, if you want, put a tablecloth on it. It’s going to be the background to most of your photos, so you’ll want to keep it as simple as possible. If you go for a tablecloth, avoid prints, and choose solid, neutral colors that contrast with the items you’re photographing. Black on black works for Wednesday Adams, but it won’t work for you here.

You probably won’t be able to easily move larger items, like a couch or TV, so you’ll have to photograph them in place. Before you do, clean up the surrounding area and throw open any blinds, curtains, shutters, and doors to let as much natural light in as possible.

Use the best camera you have

You should use the camera that will give you the best results. For almost everyone, that will actually be your smartphone, unless you have a recent DSLR or mirrorless camera that you're comfortable using. If you don't, don't worry—smartphone cameras are so reliable and easy to use that they're hard to beat.

If you have a smartphone with a built-in telephoto lens (like a Pixel 4, for example), even better. It's the perfect lens for photographing small objects.

Don't get too artsy

Simple, and well composed. This photo shows off the phone perfectly. (Harry Guinness/)

You’re trying to take functional photographs to sell something—not sexy shots for Instagram likes—so don’t go for any crazy angles and effects.

Instead:

<b>Fill the frame.</b> Whatever you're shooting should take up as much space in the photograph as possible.

<b>Shoot at a slight angle, rather than straight on.</b> This will give everything depth.

<b>Show the object properly.</b> Don't take upside down photographs, place your item at a weird angle, or otherwise confuse things. You want people to look at the photo and instantly know what they're seeing.

<b>Take lots of photos.</b> Get shots of the sides and back, and any important details. They won't be the main photos, but you might need supplementary shots. It's better to get them now. Also, the more options you shoot, the more likely it is you'll get a great photo.

<b>Watch the background.</b> You want the object to stand out. If it blends with the background, use a table cloth or piece of colored card so it's easy to see.

<b>Don't use portrait or HDR mode.</b> Smartphone cameras can apply a lot of computational photography effects—you can skip them here. It is unlikely they'll give you good results and will only distract from what you're trying to sell.

<b>Only take photos during the day.</b> You want as much light as possible. If it's dark, the images won't look as good.

Taking photos of screens

Phones are one of the best things to sell online. For this, you will definitely want a photo of the screen, but taking one can be a bit awkward. If the screen is off, you’ll get a lot of reflections, and if the screen is on, you can get a horrible moiré pattern—that weird interference effect that looks like black lines on your screen.

Small reflective screens aren’t that hard to deal with. (Harry Guinness/)

Dark screens reflect whatever is in front of them. Your two options are to either turn the screen on or control what’s reflected. For small screens, like phones, it’s actually pretty easy. Take the photos of the phone face-up on a table in a room with a nice plain ceiling near a blank wall, and adjust the angle of your photo until nothing distinct shows in the reflection—simple.

For larger screens, things are a bit trickier. If you can’t turn it on, try to make whatever’s in the reflection at least look neat. Ensure there are no reflections of your unmade bed or dirty dishes.

Larger, fixed screens can present problems. In the first photo, you can see me and my bed in the reflection. In the second, there’s a bad moiré pattern. In the third, however, by controlling the angle and what’s on screen, I have a good photo. (Harry Guinness/)

If you've ever tried to take a photo of your computer screen with your phone, you'll have seen a moiré pattern. It's what happens when the pixel grid in your smartphone camera and the pixel grid in the screen don't overlap perfectly. There are a couple of ways to avoid or minimize it:

<b>Shoot your photos at an angle.</b> Play around until you find one where the moiré pattern isn't visible. The effect can be pretty obvious if you stay head on.

<b>Move closer or further away.</b> This changes how the grids overlap and so changes the effect. Find a distance that works.

<b>Put something on the screen.</b> The moiré lines are most visible on blank space. If you display a colorful photo, even if there's a mild effect, it won't be noticeable.

Tidy things up in post

If you’ve got the chops, it’s worth tidying up any photos you shoot in Photoshop or whatever image editing app you like. You don’t have to do much—adjusting the color balance, brightness, and contrast can really make your photos pop. You can also use cloning or healing tools to remove any small blemishes you missed.

However, be careful not to rely entirely on Photoshop, or push things too far. If whatever work you did on the photo is easily noticeable, potential buyers might doubt the product looks as good in real life. You’re better off with good, natural-looking photos than something that screams, “EDITED!”

Sell, sell, sell

Once you’ve got your shots, it’s time to get selling. Just by putting in a small bit of effort, your images will stand out from the hoards of mediocre shots. Go through the photos you took and pull out the best few. You’ll want to upload enough images to fully show off your products, but not so many you overwhelm potential customers—like a bad real estate agent. Make sure the lead image shows the item off properly, then use any other images you like to show details and alternative angles.

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