#also we kept saying we were gonna use our universities recording equipment but we are so bad at making journeys to campus etc

[munadyke]

popping in real quick to ask a question abt podcasts tehe pls answer

[do-your-socks-have-holes-in-them]

Spooky Month 10/25

Prompt: Ghost Hunting

Summary: Patton joins his brothers on their ghost hunt, and makes a new friend.

Warnings: implied past character death, because... ghosts

Pairings: platonic Moxiety

@sanderssidescelebrations​

~ ~ ~

Twelve-year-old Patton Sanders sighed and crossed his arms, leaning back in the creaky old porch swing. He didn’t even want to be here, really. Ghost hunting in some abandoned house that was supposed to be haunted hadn’t sounded like that much fun to begin with, especially the way his older brothers described it. Logan kept going on about proving whether ghosts existed at all, and it wasn’t very exciting to start out with the thought that what they were looking for probably didn’t exist in the first place! Roman, on the other hand, seemed convinced he could fight a ghost with his bare hands and become some sort of hero.

Patton didn’t like either of those ways of thinking about it, not that the twins listened to him—they were going into high school next year, so obviously they knew everything. They had only invited him at all because they wanted another person to help carry all the equipment they’d ordered from Amazon, and he’d agreed because he didn’t have much better to do that day. Then, as soon as they got to the house… 

“Um… Patton… maybe it’s best if you stay out here for now,” Logan had suggested when he’d tried to follow them in.

“We wouldn’t want you to get hurt if it turns out to be dangerous,” Roman added. “We’re technically responsible for you right now.”

“If everything seems safe, then you can join us.”

“Make sure nobody steals our bikes, okay?” With that last remark, they’d both disappeared into the house and shut the door, leaving him outside on the porch. He wasn’t mad at them exactly, but he wasn’t having a great time either. It was nice out, at least, but it was still boring out here, and if anybody came by and saw him they’d all probably get in trouble, and he hadn’t even thought to bring anything to entertain himself with.

Through the door, he tried to listen for what exactly they were doing in there. It sounded like mostly a lot of metallic clunks as they set up their stuff, plus the muffled sound of each of them trying to tell the other he was doing it all wrong. Patton jumped and almost fell off the swing when something started making a horrible staticky noise, but he was pretty sure he remembered them saying it was supposed to do that. …For some reason. They would have demonstrated last night, but had ended up decided there was no point turning it on when there couldn’t possibly be a ghost in their house. (Patton was pretty sure they were afraid there might be, but he was nice enough not to say so.)

“Ghosts!” Roman called, loud enough to be heard clearly through the door. “If there truly is anyone… or anything… haunting this house- come out and show yourself to us!”

Silence followed, except for the horrible static, of course. Logan gave it a try next. Less dramatic, but still loud enough to be heard from anywhere in the house, of course.

“If there are any spirits here, give us a sign of your presence.”

There was another silence from any potential ghosts. Logan started to say something else, but Roman was already trying a… different strategy, encouraged by the lack of response so far.

“Hello? Ghost? Get out here, unless you’re afraid to-”

He cut off with a muffled protest, and Logan hissed something at him Patton couldn’t make out. Roman was laughing almost too hard to continue. Only almost, though.

“Why not? The ghost is a coward!” Logan snapped at him to cut it out, but it was easy to tell he was laughing, too, however much he wanted to pretend he wasn’t. “Hey! Ghost! You’re-”

Patton had no idea what happened after that, but he heard a crash, and then his brothers screamed, and before he could finish scrambling off the swing to make sure they were okay they had already come running out of the house with everything they’d set up scooped haphazardly into their arms.

“What happened?! Did you see the ghost? Guys?”

They didn’t seem to hear him. They were busy sorting out the equipment to make sure it wasn’t damaged from their hasty exit, looking wide-eyed at each other and saying things like “do you think that got recorded?” and “Roman, I told you not to do that-” “But it worked!”

“Does that mean it’s not safe?” Patton tried again, except not very loudly. “If you don’t tell me it’s not safe, I’m gonna go in, okay?”

They did not, in fact, tell him anything of the sort, or even appear to notice he had said anything. So, feeling a little bit guilty, but not very, because they hadn’t been very nice to him so far today, he opened the door as quietly as he could and walked inside.

The interior of the possibly haunted house wasn’t all that impressive. Mostly, it was just dark and- he sneezed mid-thought- dusty. There wasn’t even any furniture. Which made sense, because there was no one living here- or, at least, no one living here- but it was still weird, walking through a house with completely empty rooms.

“Hello?” he called quietly. There was no answer, which was a little bit of a relief. “Uh, sorry about Roman and Logan. It sounded like they were being kinda rude, but they… didn’t mean it? I mean, I don’t think they thought you were real.” He paused again, shuffling his feet awkwardly. “I just wanted to say hi, I guess, if you’re there…” He waited a few more seconds, then sighed disappointedly and turned to leave.

“Hey.”

Patton squeaked and spun around. There was a boy standing behind him. He looked closer to the twins’ age than Patton’s, with dark clothes and dyed hair. More to the point, Patton could see through him.

“Oh- oh gosh, hi, I didn’t think that would actually work!”

The boy shrugged, almost embarrassed. “Not a lot of people to talk to when you’re haunting a house, so, if you’re not gonna be a jerk about it…”

“Of course not!” Patton started to put out his hand to shake, but stopped when he remembered his new friend wasn’t really… solid. “Um- I’m Patton, what’s your name?”

“Oh, uh…” Now he did look embarrassed. “It’s Virgil,” he muttered.

“That’s a cool name!” He smiled, and Virgil blinked and hesitantly smiled back.

---

It took far longer than either of them would have liked to admit for Logan and Roman to realize they couldn’t see Patton anymore. Logan dropped the camera he’d been bemoaning the lack of clear ghost images on and looked around a bit frantically, only to realize the door of the house was ajar.

“Oh. Oh, no.”

“We’ll just have to go back in there and save him,” Roman decided, pacing back and forth on the sidewalk. “Patton is not gonna get killed by a ghost on my watch!”

Logan had to agree. Much as he didn’t like the idea of possibly missing out on evidence, he also agreed they would have to leave the ghost-hunting equipment outside- if the ghost showed up again, it would be much easier to run away without all that. (Also, he was pretty sure half of that stuff was fake anyway.) They crept up to the door together and eased it open, almost holding their breath. They were not prepared for what they saw inside.

Patton was sitting cross-legged on the floor, and the ghost who’d appeared out of nowhere to scare them half to death earlier was in a similar position next to him, and as far as either of them could tell they were just… talking. As they watched in stunned silence, Patton cracked a terrible pun, and the ghost laughed.

This was insane. Logan took a step forward, unsure if it was still a good plan to grab Patton and run, and a floorboard creaked. Both Patton and the ghost looked up. He resisted the urge to take a step back again. “Patton? What… are you doing?”

“Right- guys, this is Virgil! He’s sorry for scaring you earlier, right?” He stared at Virgil, who looked incredibly awkward and sheepish.

“Y-yeah. Sorry. I guess I overreacted a little.”

“A little?!” Roman scoffed. “I thought you were going to kill us!”

“And now,” Patton interrupted, raising his voice, “you two have to apologize for coming in here and being rude to him.”

They both looked at him with incredulous expressions. But then they looked a little to the side of him, at the ghost waiting expectantly, and mutually decided it might be a good idea to just go along with it.

“Yes… Of course. We apologize.”

“Sorry I called you a coward.”

Patton beamed. “There we go! Come sit with us, I was just telling Virgil about the last season of Steven Universe ‘cause he doesn’t have a TV in here and-”

“Well, I’m sorry to interrupt,” Logan interrupted, “but we do sort of need to go home. It’s getting close to dinner time.”

“Oh.” Patton slumped sadly, and Virgil looked disappointed as well. He leaned in and said something to Patton, very quietly.

“Yeah, of course!” Patton turned back to his brothers. “We can come back to visit again, right?”

They glanced at each other. “Why?”

“To see my new friend?” But they didn’t seem to be particularly swayed by that, so he added, “And if you don’t, I’ll tell mom you brought me here in the first place.”

Now that was a threat. “Fine,” Roman agreed quickly, “whatever- do not tell her anything about this.” Virgil was laughing. Roman waited until Patton was looking away and made a face at him. Apparently, just because he was dead didn’t mean he was above being just as childish and making one back.

“Come on,” Logan said to both of them- still not willing to leave the safety of the doorway- and Patton stood up reluctantly and followed him out. Just before closing the door behind him, he turned back and waved to Virgil.

“Bye,” he called. “See you later!”

After a moment, Virgil smiled and waved in return. “Yeah… Later.”

[mikami]

Death Note Audio Drama 03

Disc 3: Beloved Enemy - a summary / partial translation

Prior translations / an explanation as to what the fuck this is.

The title of this disc is so alarming, but it’s actually the first disc out of the ones I have listened to that doesn’t title drop in the text. The plot is still not going off the rails. In this: long conversations about porn, chips vs flips,  some good old L and Light first meeting (devoid of tennis) and..... Light being a nightmare retail customer who needs to speak to the manager.

___

We’re at To-Oh entrance exams. The teacher gives lengthy exam instructions, very teacher-typical. He also explains how big and important To-Oh is, because a German listener will naturally not necessarily be aware of that. The exam starts. The door opens.

TEACHER: You’re late, Mr...

LIGHT: Yagami. Light Yagami. I always get nervous if I have to wait too long.

TEACHER: You should still come earlier as to not bother the others. Please sit.

RYUK: Oh, he doesn’t like you, Light. Your cool attitude apparently--

Light coughs loudly. 

RYUK: Calm now. Nobody here can see or hear me. So here’s where the elite fights to get into University? All those freshly-scrubbed students with their freshly scrubbed brains... Oh, somebody is running even later.

TEACHER: What’s up with you millenials? As if there was nobody else in the world. And where’s your shoes? 

L: Bare feet help me think. 

TEACHER: It’s January. Aren’t you cold?

L: No.

TEACHER: You can sit here, next to the other one who was late. Mr...?

L: Erm, Ryuga. Hideki Ryuga. 

TEACHER: Really? That’s your name?

L: Yeah. 

TEACHER: Like the actor?

L: Yeah.

TEACHER: From TV?

L: Is there anything wrong with that?

TEACHER: Well, good luck, Mr. Ryuga.

RYUK: That’s not his name, Light. That’s not his name. He’s lying. 

LIGHT: I’m trying to focus here.

RYUK: I’ll bet. But I’ve got the eyes of a shinigami. And I know who that guy is. I can tell you, you’ve got a fan. A big fan. He pretends to study the task at hand, but he’s watching you. Like he’s been watching you for weeks. Don’t turn around now, but sitting behind you... is L.

____

TITLE MUSIC ____

Soichiro and L are watching Light. Soichiro insists Light is gonna study, but L points out that Light is about to leave the house. They notice the piece of paper that Light uses to check people coming into his room. Soichiro justifies it as “He’s a teen. And his sister always steals his pens”. 

_____

Ryuk and Light on the street. Light explains to Ryuk that someone was in his room, based on the door handle trick from the manga. They took out the more complicated pencil lead check. Light coerces Ryuk into looking for cameras the same way as in the manga. 

_____

Light returns home. We’re back with the surveillance team.

L: Now let’s see what your son is going to do with the rest of his evening. Camera 3. 

SOICHIRO: The exams are only a week away. He’s going to study until he falls asleep.

L: Weeell, you could put it that way.

SOICHIRO: Good lord. 

L: Is “Skimpy Cousins” on the curriculum this year?

SOICHIRO: My son of all people...

L (amused): It looks like a pile of books for studying... and with a very wide definition, that’s true.... Mandatory material, so to say. Camera 7, zoom in just a little... I’d like to read the titles. “Minxes in Uniforms”...

SOICHIRO: What we’re doing here isn’t right.

L: We’re looking for a killer. He’s looking at dirty booklets.

SOICHIRO: I’m just saying, watching this... is wrong.

L: If we witness it coming to a murder, it’ll be worth it. Though ‘coming’ might be the wrong term here. 

SOICHIRO: You’re enjoying this...

L: Not as much as he is, apparently. Or are we just supposed to think so?

L launches into his whole thing about how Light almost seems to just immediately want to point out what it is that he’s hiding. Soichiro is pissed. “You wanted evidence? There’s your evidence. My son likes to look at naked girls. Not quite a crime.” He’s very insistent that this is prove of Light’s innocence...

____

Ryuk chatters while he looks for cameras. He doesn’t get why human men love ‘the female form’. Women in the shinigami realm don’t even always have skin. Ryuk personally is very very into teeth on demon ladies. 

____

L and Soichiro are still arguing about the surveillance. L asks Soichiro if he’s told his family about the investigation, Soichiro denies and points out ruefully that he hasn’t been home a lot lately. L is like “Well, at least  every passing moment without your son doing voodoo magic or summoning the devil or whatever brings us closer to taking him off our list”.

_____

Ryuk found a lot of cameras and explains that to Light.

_____

A lengthy Sakura TV feature about a resident from an Australian village named ‘good old Tommy Smith’ dying. He left a goodbye message and shot himself. 

_____

STORE CLERK: Can I help you? 

LIGHT: Yes, I’d like to buy a portable TV. A small one.

STORE CLERK: Oh, alright. How small?

LIGHT: Small enough to fit into your pocket.

CLERK: Oh, you want a pocket TV? 

LIGHT: Exactly. The smaller the better.

CLERK: Oh, alright, good... Maybe you’d be better off looking on the ground floor.

LIGHT: Where they sell the cell phones?

CLERK: Yes. Practically every smartphone can stream TV nowadays.

LIGHT (in annoyed sing-song): But I don’t want a smartphone. I want a TV.

CLERK: Yes, okay, fine! Of course. I’m just saying. If you want a screen that fits into your pocket, then usually--

LIGHT: I said it before. I don’t want a cell phone. I also don’t want to use the internet. I don’t want to stream. I don’t want a two-way data transfer. 

CLERK: But--

LIGHT: I want a device that’s constructed to receive and display a TV signal. And I want this device to be small.

CLERK: Alright, I’ll just the manager real quick. 

____

A continuation of the Tommy Smith report. After his death it turned out he was a killer who was now in witness protection. People from the village get interviewed. Tommy Smith was a perfectly fine citizen to them.

____

MANAGER: Hello, sir. I’ve heard you’re looking for a portable TV?

LIGHT: That’s correct.

MANAGER: Did Gina tell you about our offers in regards to smartphones?

LIGHT: I don’t want one. Do you have portable TVs or not? 

MANAGER: You’re actually serious. 

LIGHT: The customer is always right, isn’t that so?

MANAGER: Well, we haven’t sold something like that in years. And even second-hand, you’ll probably be out of luck. An analogue terrestric signal hasn’t been broadcasted in forever. That means that everything that was produced ca. 2002 is only a useless pile of metal today. But wait... we still sell pro monitors! It’s what directors use to see what the camera is filming.

LIGHT: And those can receive TV signal?

MANAGER: Sure. But it really won’t be cheap.

LIGHT (sighs): I’ll pay in cash.

____

Muffled TV noises with cheesy lines.

SACHIKO: Sayu dear, do we really have to watch this during dinner?

SAYU: He’ll say it now! 

LIGHT: Who’s saying what? 

SAYU: He’s been taking his time for ten episodes now! 

SACHIKO: But you can record it and watch it later...

SAYU: Can not! I need to send my tweet right when he says it! Exactly in that moment! 

LIGHT: In what moment?

HIDEKI RYUGA (muffled from TV): I love you. 

Sayu gasping frantically.

SAYU: Yes! Yes! Oooooh my god. Oh my god! He said it! He told her! Hideki Ryuga is such a dream...

SACHIKO: And here I thought the guy was playing for the other team...

SAYU: Why can’t my school have men like you, Hideki? 

SACHIKO: Sayu, now come and eat your dinner.

SAYU: But mom...

____

The dinner conversation plays muffled. A phone rings. L picks up.

L: Matsuda, what’s up?

MATSUDA: Absolutely incredible. Hideki just confessed his feelings to Miko. 

L (through grit teeth): In the Kitamura household...

MATSUDA: They’re all watching channel 4. The whole family is parked on the couch in front of the TV.

Since everyone is watching the same channel, they’re broadcasting their fake message about 1500 agents being on the Kira task force now. Light calls them idiots for announcing this on the media. He also calls out that it’s an exaggeration by the police rather than true news. And he then takes chips and goes up to study.

_____

Ryuk explains some more about the cameras, that there are 64 and they cover every inch of the room. 

_____

SOICHIRO: What is he doing?

L: Studying. XXL party bag of chips, but... he’s studying.

SOICHIRO: This is exactly what we call a negative positive.

L: What do you mean, chief inspector?

SOICHIRO: We get a ton of equipment just to find out my son is doing.. nothing. 

L: We still don’t know how Kira gets his victims into his scope.

SOICHIRO: But we can strongly suspect Kira isn’t doing so by reading books and eating flips.

L: Chips.

SOICHIRO: They are flips.

L: Chips is the genus.

They are interrupted by another task force member (Matsuda?), mad about them wasting time watching Light doing nothing. 

_____

Light and Ryuk go out to the park, so that Ryuk can eat an apple. Light explains that nobody else likes Barbecue taste in this family (they kept the flavor change from the VIZ translation) and thus he can hide the TV in his flips bag. When Ryuk calls it a chips bag, Light actively corrects that it’s flips. Seems to run in the family.

_____

L is woken up because Ukita is calling on the phone about new murders that weren’t reported on while none of the suspects could have seen the news. L is suspicious that the family is cleared right on the first day of surveillance. Soichiro is annoyed.

______

The trash gets taken out and Ryuk points out how expensive the TV was, just like in the manga. Ryuk calls it a chips bag again and Light corrects to ‘flips bag’ again. 

______

A news report about Misa’s stalker dying. Misa herself is on air, recounting the event and claiming that Kira protected her like a guardian angel. 

_____

Paula Virilio calling L. She’s at a poolside because the FBI stint got her suspended. She wants L to rethink his illegal surveillance plans, since he might otherwise end up like her. L tells her the cameras were already removed. L briefly speculates that Kira might actually be God, then immediately gets rid of the thought. It’s the same as the thoughts he has as an internal monologue in the manga. Virilio says that once Light’s innocence is proven, he’ll be a totally normal college student again, and that gives L an idea....

_____

SOMEONE: You want to do what?

L: The entrance exams for college are next week. I’ll participate in them and naturally pass and thus go to college with Light Yagami. Look at him up-close, in person.

Agents laughing.

MATSUDA: L, come on, it’s not that easy. 

SOMEONE: Light does his entrance exams at To-Oh. That’s basically the best in the country.

MATSUDA: The average exam-taker passes at fourth try only. Those kids prepare for years.

L: Yagami seems pretty confident...

SOMEONE: He passed the test exams as the best. He’s the cleverest guy in the whole country. 

L: Out of the known guys. 

More laughter.

MATSUDA: Seriously now. You want to come in there, basically from the streets, and beat Japan’s best?

L: Hmm, yes.

MATSUDA: I’ll tell the others. We’ll open a betting pool. 

L: No, we’re not telling anyone. We’re just doing it. 

MATSUDA: Just... doing it?

L: Yeah, we’ll register and all. I’ll write the tests. 

MATSUDA: Okay, but you’ll have to give them a name.

L: Then let’s give them a name.

MATSUDA: Which name?

L: Just come up with something. Anything.

[ Side note but I have no idea if all of the Matsuda speech here is Matsuda, men’s voices are killing me. ]

____

L approaches Light at college and Light is annoyed, until L introduces himself as L. L is being a huge brat in this scene as well (”Oh come on, Light. You’re cleverer than you let on. Or at least I hoped so.”). Light lets on that he knows Kira needs a name, L points out that they haven’t released that info. Light justifies it by it being obvious because L is using a fake name.

L says Light could help with the investigation and invites Light to coffee. (He’s paying!)

_____

Soichiro and Kitamura are talking. Kitamura is noticing that he’s being watched and confronts Soichiro about it. (”Since Christmas, there’s been a few too many gas leaks in our street... or electric workers... even Jehova’s Witnesses have suddenly risen from their graves. I think if I was a criminal, I’d suspect someone is looking for excuses to snoop through my house. And then I think... No. Because last time I checked my business card, it said goddamn general inspector top honcho of the whole national police department! ”)

____

Light is hiding out in the café bathroom, having his little speech about L challenging him and him taking the challenge of them playing friends. (”Alright, L. You wanna be my buddy? Chill out with me? Let’s do it. Let’s see who breaks first.”) He’s far less angry than he is in the manga in this scene.

____

Ukita and Matsuda are supervising the scene from outside the café and L is bugged, too.

____

L tells Light he suspects him of being Kira. The L and Light dialogues in this episode are largely fairly close to the manga without too many amusing quips or interesting new bits. 

____

Soichiro and Kitamura keep arguing about the necessity of surveillance. Soichiro discloses that his son is a main suspect. 

SOICHIRO: The team is currently out trying to cross my son of the list once and for all.

KITAMURA: How can they do so?

SOICHIRO: Face to face.

KITAMURA: Isn’t that dangerous?

SOICHIRO: Mortally so.

KITAMURA: What exactly are they doing?

SOICHIRO: They’re probably having  coffee together. 

KITAMURA: Hah. Well that’s at least some not totally wasted working hours.

SOICHIRO: If you have a better idea, just come right out with it!

KITAMURA: How about this? Catch me a killer. 

SOICHIRO (tense): I’m sorry it’s not going fast enough for you.

_____

L shows Light the ‘L did you know’ message. Now (unlike at first mention), they point out the coded nature of the messages. L also gives out the faked ‘and they have red hands’ message addition. 

_____

Kitamura is still pissed about the Kira investigation not going anywhere and how it impacts his reputation. Soichiro gets extremely angry that they don’t have enough men and that just getting paid some more doesn’t solve the problem. 

SOICHIRO: Can you even imagine the pressure these men are under? Men with families? With children? I don’t think you can! If this was a flu epidemic, you’d mobilize the army. But sadly it’s just a row of unexplained heart attacks. So I’m left with just half a dozen men. 

KITAMURA: I gave you a cheque book with endless credit, Yagami.

SOICHIRO: Money doesn’t solve the problem, sir. The men think my task force is a suicide mission!

KITAMURA: Maybe that’s what it is, Yagami. But if we admit the full truth, we’ll have a nationwide panic.

SOICHIRO: We’re doing all we can. Everything. We’re following every hint. This criminal is smarter than any we’ve met before. He’s invisible! And kills from a distance! So... yes. I will bug your home, if it brings us even a centimeter closer to the truth. I can’t remember when I last slept. I haven’t shaved in days. And I go home and face my little boy, my firstborn, with all his potential.... his charm... his mother’s eyes... and grades most parents can only dream of... And I have to pretend... I have to... ghhgg. Uughh... [having heart attack noises]

____

Light says he wants his dad to prove L’s identity as L to him before he joins the investigation. Then both of them get the phone call that Soichiro is in the hospital. 

____

In the hospital. Soichiro’s gonna be fine, hurray. It was just stress. L lets Soichiro know that Light is gonna join the team now despite still being a suspect. That’s all the content in this conversation, everything else from the manga is cut. Soichiro asks L to watch over Light and L is like ‘yeah, I won’t take my eyes off him’.

Light immediately calls that out when they’re out of the room. (”Is that supposed to be funny?”). L and Light part ways outside the hospital, promising to find Kira together.

L’s car leaves, Ryuk points out that Light is playing with fire. Light ends the episode with the words “The game has begun.”

[corystssides]

Roommates, Part 7

Yes, it has been almost a year since I updated this. No, I do not have an excuse.

Words: 2971

Summary: It’s game night

Warnings: swearing, implied family troubles, brief impromptu coming out scene (roman), I think that’s it but lmk

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6

Logan didn’t show up to Chemistry. Virgil took it as a good sign. Hopefully, Logan was taking an extended afternoon nap and he would be peppy and cheerful for game night. Virgil made sure to take extra good notes today, because no doubt Logan would want to look at them later. He even made sure to put them back into his binder instead of shoving the pages haphazardly into his backpack to sort out later in the day. Then, to perk himself up a bit, to make sure he wasn’t a downer during game night, Virgil went to the little food shop in the university center and bought an energy drink. It had started raining outside, and while right now it was just a light drizzle, the darker clouds in the distance seemed to promise a downpour.

When Virgil got back only to see that Logan wasn’t there, he thought that was a little odd, but not something to worry about. He was probably hanging out with those friends he’d finally seemed to have made. The ones with the poor taste in music that he was talking about at lunch.

It was really only around dinner time that Virgil started getting concerned. Logan still wasn’t back, and it was getting closer and closer to game night. They’d all decided to skip dinner in favor of Patton’s tofu loaf, so the neighbors were coming over at 6:30. And it was pouring outside, so no doubt Logan would want to change before then.

Virgil decided to text Logan, in case he’d gone to the library and fallen asleep or something. No sooner had he sent the text though, than he heard the buzz-buzz of Logan’s phone, coming from Logan’s bed.

Great.

Virgil tried to not worry about it. Logan had probably just forgot it. He was angry after lunch and decided to take a walk and just forgot his phone. No biggie.

He definitely hadn’t decided that he’d had enough of Virgil and college and just decided to leave. That was ridiculous to consider. There’s no way that he’d decide to just hop on a plane back to Ohio and leave his phone so that he’d never even have to think about hearing from Virgil again. It was Logan, after all. He might have had a bit of a temper over the last few days and maybe he hung on to stupid things for a bit too long, but it still took him at least three business days to make a decision about anything.

Then again, their big fight had been Sunday. Three business days from that was Wednesday. Which was today.

But surely he wouldn’t flake out on his friends? The ones who invited him to the concert?

Unless that was a lie Logan had made up to have an excuse not to hang out with Virgil on Friday. Because he would be gone.

Virgil found himself knocking on the neighbors’ door at 6:25. “Have either of you seen Logan since lunchtime?” he asked.

“Wasn’t he in Chemistry with you?” Roman asked.

“No, he skipped. I haven’t seen him since lunch,” Virgil said.

“That’s when I last saw him,” Patton said, shrugging.

“I didn’t see him, but he was in the dorms talking to someone on the phone right before Chemistry,” Roman said. “He left right after he finished the call, so I thought he was just hoofing it to class so he wouldn’t be late. Have you called him?”

“He left his phone on the bed,” Virgil said.

“Ah,” Roman said.

“I’m sure he’ll turn up!” Patton said. “He wouldn’t want to miss game night!”

Virgil wasn’t so sure, but he let the other two guide him back to his room. They had Risk, Monopoly, and a deck of cards. Not wanting to start either board game without Logan, they decided to play Go Fish.

Roman was in the middle of totally winning Go Fish when Logan finally showed up, at 7:13 pm. He was soaking wet, dripping on the hardwood, shivering, and looking generally miserable. He didn’t say hello, opting instead to say, “Did you know that our school IDs work as free bus passes?”

“If you took the bus, why are you soaking wet?” Patton asked.

“I’m Jared, I’m 19, and I never learned how to read bus schedules,” Logan muttered, slipping off his shoes and walking over to his closet. “And I am going to put on dry clothes now because I’m freezing.”

“I can put this tofu loaf in the microwave for you, that should warm you up quicker,” Patton said.

“Thanks,” Logan said. “Sorry for being late, everyone.”

“What were you even doing all day, besides apparently skipping class?” Roman asked.

“First I walked downtown, then I walked uptown, and I made it to 71st street, which is basically out of town, and then I decided I didn’t want to walk back so I waited for a bus, and that took me to the mall, but I couldn’t figure out which bus I needed to take from there so I just walked back to campus.”

“Don’t you have a car? Why didn’t you just drive?” Virgil asked.

“I didn’t intend to walk that far,” Logan said. “Also even if I had, this town is basically impossible to navigate and I left my phone here, so I probably would have been lost and taken just as much time getting home anyway.”

“How do you not know how to read bus schedules?” Patton asked. “How did you get places as a child?”

“I live in rural Ohio,” Logan said. “The only buses out there are school buses, so all you have to know is your bus number.”

“How did you get places?” Patton asked, now even more bewildered.

“For the most part, I didn’t really go anywhere, so I didn’t have to worry about it,” Logan said. “But also, I made sure to pass my driving test.”

“Ah,” Patton said. “I haven’t taken that yet.”

“Why?” Logan asked, joining them now that he was in dry clothes.

“I just haven’t gotten around to it yet. It’s not like I really need it. I have my permit for ID and we have a bus system in town for transportation, and I have a bike too.”

The microwave beeped, and Patton took the remaining tofu loaf out. Virgil pulled a plastic fork off his desk and handed it to Logan. “Thanks,” Logan said to the two of them.

“Are we gonna finish this game or are we gonna switch to Monopoly?” Roman asked.

“I’m pretty sure neither of us can beat your number of pairs, so let’s just say you win,” Virgil said, starting to gather his cards.

“Sounds good to me,” Roman said, pushing all of his pairs on the floor into a pile.

Patton gathered up his cards and then took the cards from the other two. He plopped them into the card box and then handed Monopoly to Roman, who started setting it up.

“I haven’t played Monopoly in forever,” Virgil said, swiping the instructions. “I don’t think I remember how to play.”

“Too many fights break out when you play?” Roman asked.

“Nah, my sib’s just not fond of it. They think it’s boring and takes too long. So we play Risk or Candyland instead.”

“Your sibling...Elijah, right?” Patton asked.

“Eliot,” Virgil said.

“Hand me the instructions when your done, please, Virgil,” Logan said. “I’m pretty sure I don’t remember the way Monopoly is actually played either. When I used to play it on tennis trips we had to make up so many house rules to avoid fights that I’m pretty sure we were actually playing an entirely different game.”

“I’m sorry, did Astro Boy over here just admit to being a jock?” Roman asked, passing out the money.

“I played for two years, so not really,” Logan said, meticulously lining up the money piles that Roman handed him.

“Why didn’t you stick with it?” Patton asked.

“The administration cut tennis at the beginning of junior year to ‘save money,’” Logan said. “Not really sure how they saved anything, considering we the players had to buy our own equipment and uniforms and we had to do our own fundraisers in order to raise the money to go to competitions, but that was their excuse.”

“Oh my gosh, you’re bitter,” Roman said, delighted.

“Listen, the girls’ tennis team won state for five years in a row before they cut us, and while the boys didn’t have quite that record, we were still pretty high up there. Football, on the other hand--which, by the way, gets their uniforms paid for by the school and got a new scoring sign my junior year--the football team wins like one or two games a year. They suck. But sure, let’s cut the state champions who pay for all their own stuff and keep buying the football team nice things that they don’t deserve.”

“You’re so fucking bitter dude oh my gosh,” Roman said. “Did you like, create a barricade in the lunchroom and demand the reinstatement of tennis or no one gets their pizza? Because if you’re still this upset about it I can’t imagine how you were junior year of high school.”

“I’m taking the dog piece guys,” Patton said.

“I want the hat,” Logan said, taking the small silver piece and putting it on Go. “We took it to the administration, the PTA, even the school board. Mary, the captain of the girls’ team, she started a petition. But--” Logan shrugged, “--it’s tennis. Nobody cared.”

“That sucks, dude,” Virgil said, handing over the instructions.

Logan took them from him and started speed-reading them.

“Hey I vote that we have a house rule that landing on free parking gets you the chance money,” Roman said.

“I’m good with that,” Virgil said.

“Me too,” Patton said.

“Sure,” Logan said, putting down the instructions. He noticed that Roman and Virgil had picked the car and the shoe. “Let’s roll and see who goes first.”

Patton rolled highest, so he went first, followed clockwise by Roman, Virgil, and Logan. Virgil’s very first move put him on a Chance spot. He drew a card and swore.

“What?” Patton asked.

“I’m going to jail on my first turn!” Virgil said, moving his piece into the jail box.

Roman cackled. Logan rolled and got to the “Just Visiting” part of Jail.

The four of them snatched up the properties fairly quickly, though Virgil ended up getting the least amount of properties of all of them. He kept making poor rolls while in jail, so he ended up having to wait out the entire sentence while the other three commenced bouncing their pieces around the board. Patton dominated the conversation, talking about all the dogs he’d seen on campus today, and how intimidating his French class was, and how everyone else was better at speaking French but he was still the boss at grammar, and how boring his history homework was. Virgil chipped in when relevant, and Roman sometimes derailed the conversation or responded with a story of his own. Logan was quiet, mostly just eating his tofu loaf when it wasn’t his turn.

“Hey Astro Boy, you okay over there?” Roman asked.

Logan scowled. “Please tell me you’re not going to keep calling me that.”

Roman grinned, “Only until I find something better.” Then he turned serious. “Are you okay though?”

“Yeah,” Logan said. “Just tired.”

“Like I haven’t heard that excuse before,” Roman said.

“I’m being perfectly honest here. I took a several-hours long walk, I don’t have the energy to feel anything but tired,” Logan said with the ghost of a smile.

“Okay, well as long as you’re sure,” Roman said.

“I’m always sure,” Logan said.

Virgil swore under his breath again, and Logan looked over to see that he’d landed on Boardwalk, a property that Roman had been lucky to get. Scowling, Virgil handed over the money. “I’m gonna be out of the game in like ten minutes at this rate,” he said.

“I’m sure your luck will turn around,” Patton said comfortingly.

As he said that, Roman landed on the “Go to Jail” box. “What?!” he shrieked. “Oh, the indignity!”

“You’re right, Patton, my luck did just turn around.”

“You’re so mean to me, Virgil!” Roman said, pouting. Virgil just laughed.

Logan rolled the dice and landed on Park Place, which had so far not been purchased.

“Don’t you dare,” Roman said.

Logan smirked. “Patton, hand me the property card for Park Place, please,” he said, drawing up the correct amount of paper money. Roman made a dramatic noise of despair as the exchange was made.

The game went on. Roman had to spend two turns in jail, but did roll doubles on the third try. All the properties were finally purchased. Patton got the “Get out of jail free” Chance card. Now Monopoly started in earnest.

Virgil was barely hanging on. He kept hitting properties that belonged to someone else, especially on the expensive side of the board. If it weren’t for the $200 bonus for passing Go, he would have been out by now. The only thing that was saving him was the fact that no one had a monopoly on any of the colors yet. None of the other three had brought up trading or buying properties so far. It seemed they were waiting for an opportunity.

Virgil’s phone buzzed. It was someone from Biology, asking what answer he got on one of the homework questions.

Homework...questions?

“Shit!” Virgil said.

“What?” Logan asked.

“I have Bio homework due tonight!” He stared at his Monopoly stuff, thinking about what to do. “Here Roman, you can have all my properties.”

“What? But Virgil, we’re roommates.”

“Yeah, but Roman and I are friends.”

Logan gave him a look of affronted disbelief, but then he laughed. “Okay, I feel like I deserved that.”

Virgil walked over to his desk, and with a sigh, flipped open his laptop. At least he’d remembered before 11:59. He opened up the questions and started his biology while also keeping half an ear on the conversation that the others were having. For the most part, it was Logan and Roman getting indignant over bad rolls while Patton giggled in the background.

Virgil started with the question that his classmate had asked him about. He vaguely remembered reading about it on the assigned reading. He sighed, and dug through his backpack for the book. Already he could feel that he’d be missing out on the rest of game night.

As he focused on the homework, he stopped paying attention to the others. He pretty much tuned them out until he heard Roman say dramatically, “Listen, Logan, I am simply too gay to do math right!”

Virgil turned around just in time to see Logan go through all five stages of grief in two seconds, and then say, “I’m sorry?”

“I like men, Logan, if that disturbs you we can’t be friends.” Virgil saw an all-too-familiar look of fear that maybe-coming-out-was-a-mistake-and-the-level-of-ok-with-gay-had-been-miscalculated on Roman’s face. Oh dear.

“No, I got that, that’s fine. I don’t get why that means you can’t do math.”

“It’s a joke, Logan,” Virgil said.

“It’s an internet stereotype,” Roman said.

“...Ah,” Logan said.

“One of these days, I’m going to set you up on social media, and that’s a threat,” Virgil said.

“I’m on social media,” Logan said. “I have a Facebook account.”

“Do you have Instagram?” Roman asked.

“No.”

“Snapchat?” Patton asked.

“No.”

“Twitter?”

“Myspace?”

“Tumblr?”

“No, and isn’t that last one like, a porn site or something? I know it was banned at school for being inappropriate.”

“I mean...yeah, there is a lot of porn there, but technically it’s pretty much twitter without the character limit,” Virgil said.

“I see.”

“Why do you have less social media presence than my grandmother?” Roman asked.

“I only had a flip phone until this year, so that means no Snapchat and no Instagram, and I’m overall not very fond of the Twitter format, so I didn’t ever make an account.”

“That’s so wild, dude,” Roman said, landing on Free Parking and collecting hella money. “I don’t think I would have survived high school with a flip phone. I love taking pictures of my friends too much, and you can’t do that with a shitty flip phone.”

“My phone had a camera,” Logan pointed out.

“Yeah, but I bet it had a resolution of like, 100 by 100. I like taking good pictures.”

They bickered for a bit about the pros and cons of flip phones, and Virgil turned back to his homework. Not much later, they abandoned the game, citing boredom. They gave Roman the credit for winning again, since he was the only one with a Monopoly (on the green properties, which he got when Virgil gave him all his stuff). Roman brought up that they could still play Risk, but since Virgil was out, having to do homework, and Logan was visibly exhausted, Patton quietly suggested that they call it early this week and just play Risk next week. The three who were not doing homework cleaned up all the game pieces and empty plates, and then Roman and Patton said their goodbyes.

Once the two neighbors left, Logan flopped onto the bed. He gave a cursory glance at his phone, which had a few texts from his father and one from Remy, and then popped it into his top right desk drawer without answering any of them. Despite the lights being on and Virgil working away on his homework, Logan was asleep within ten minutes. Virgil supposed he really was exhausted.

With a sigh, he turned back to his homework. It was only a few hours until 11:59, after all.

[pavle-fredfox-blog]

The 4th wall breaking Missadventures of the 55189th

                               World 2687 “Lunaris I”

Location :site *****

Leutenant Pavle“The Emperial forces are struggling to take the location.We are going in to take one of the rebel HQ’s.Wish us luck”.

Commander Alexander “Where is the back up unit”.

Soilder “Sir they were ordered by RC 15 to take out a key position”.

Explosions go out in the distance and a mech the size of an elephant falls from the sky.

???? “GOD DAMIT, they have anti-mech systems.I will try and regroup with...”

Leutenant Pavle“Negative private stay there and try helping the push a little.”

RC15 “Remember i want the leading officers Alive”*comunications cut out for 2 seconds*”your punishment for failure will be severe this time,and no explosives until the taget is secured.”.

Leutenant Pavle “OK squad split up me and 3 of you to the right,4 go straight,and 4 go right,the rest decide where to go”just as he said that 25 anti-mech turrets pop out and shoot down 15 out of the 20 squad members (counting those that made it there).

“Ok change of plans we will all take out these turrets and slowly try one way after the other.Also we will go from the left to the right and then throu middle”.

The 5518 mech corp squad a was wondering for about an hour throu the whole sector and ended up destroying enouf of the hq that the rebels had to retreat.the commanding officers mostly escaped except for the few that were eather injured,captured or sleaping.The victory at the HQ forced the rebels to reatreat about 10 kilomiter’s and for them to thin out their line a bit.    

Leutenant Pavle “Ok men lets go party,i hope that HQ dosen’St change the plans in the last second”

RC15 “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. Willian Shakespeare right???.Oh and you were are right about that we changed the plan.The enemy has a communication’s outpost 150 Killometers here,if you capture it we can  try to encircle the enemy force in this region.”

Leutenant Pavle”Wow your on fire today commander.Also woud it not be easier if you just used your magic to whipe them off the face off the universe.”

RC15”Eh im to lazy to do it,Plus i have to manage the rest of the front”.

Leutenant Pavle “Well you heard her LETS GO I DONT WANT TO GET US EXECUTED FOR TREASON.Also will we get any reainforcements,we are kinda low on men.”

RC15 “Not my problem”.

Leutenant Pavle “Great,i hope the reward wont be a day off like last time”.

                           Operation Starnberg

Leutenant Pavle”After the order was given out we were teleported to the location,We rushed to end it....”

Corporal Volnus “Sir the enemy has 8 Anti-Mech Batteries (one battery is one Artilery gun), 2 on every side.It looks like its the main Communication tower “ *Communications cut off*

Leutenant Pavle “CORPORAL VOLNUS..REPORT IN WHAT IS HAPPPENING.CORPORAL JOVAN WHAT IS HAPPPENING REPORT IN................I HATE PLOT ARMOUR...SORRY PILOT ARMOUR”

RC15 “Jeez calm down its just corporal Volnus a lazy son of a **** and that guy from earth Jovan.Now take out the communications or i will”

A light started shining so bright that it was seen across the system

A loud scream was heard across the system

“I WHO SHALL AWAKEN HAVE AGREED TO LEND MY DRAGONLY POWER,THOSE WHO HEAR THIS SHALL KNOW MY NAME,I AM INTURION.SCREAM MY NAME IN PAIN AS I GRANT REVENGE ON THOSE WHOM I SEE FIT TO DIE.LETS GO ,YOUR TRAIN TO PURGATORY AWAITS.So call my name scream INTURION!!!!!!!!!”.

Screams coud be heard across the system,as Leutenant Pavle started to become deformed,His body slowly turned into a mix of a dragon and a human.During the entire time he screamed “I am the one who calls upon this anchent power,oh holy dragon awaken at the sound of my scream for INTURION I SUMMON YOU”

                                          2 mounths later

Leutenant Pavle “ I remember waking up outside of my mech surrounded by a field of dead people coloured red both me and the corpses.One of my arms had “Scream my name and i shall grant you power.But i shall take your life force away.Every hour shall become a year with my power” writen on it.

The doctors started to remove him from the healing equipment when a man rushed into the room.He carried a letter that was signed by RC15.

Pavle opened the letter,it said :

Congratulations on your promotion General Pavle,You not only managed to take out the enemy leadership and their communications but also 15025 rebel soilders,2500 Anti-Mech batteries,250 Mech’s and also destroyed a Usnik class dreadnough.You shall become leader of the new 55189TH Extermination Force or better known as EF.”

I remember that he cried when he read that and then he said “I WONT GET BOSSED AROUND YES”.

The doctors laughed at that and then he said “i forgot to tell you you have an order to go to your army and train the soilders.Also they want you to get an special unit to go with you.You coud call them the Black blood battalion,i mean i hope you find who blead black just like you did 2 mounths ago”.

General Pavle “That is how the name of our Battalion came to be.There was another battalion like that,I cant remember the name,let me ask the guy who created the timeline.”.

                             END RECORDING

                                                              RECORDING .....

General Pavle”The training of the Black Blood Batalion is going great.It sucks that i must also manage the Extermination Force.Well i guess i better get to training i heard there may be new recruits coming soon.But it is not certain until the Maze ends.Today is 2 years from operation Starnberg and 2 years from death of my best friends and comrades Steff Sergeant Jovan and high sergeant Volnus.”

He looked sadly with a bit of anger,you coud see the flames in his eyes ready to become reality.He scremed the name Inturion after and imagined himself ripping RC15 to shreads.That all got out “SO TELL ME HOW ARE YOU SLEAPING EASY,HOW ARE YOU ONLY THINKING OF YOURSELF.SHOW ME HOW DA F**** DO YOU JUSTIFY TELLING ALL YOUR LIES LIKE SECOND NATURE” RC19 heard that and replied “OK SHUT THE FUCK UP IM LISTENING TO A GUY BEING TOTURED IF YOU DONT SHUT UP YOUR NEXT”

General Pavle “Listen mark my words one day one day YOU WILL PAY YOU WILL PAY.Karma’s gonna come collect your dept (sais RC15 silently)”

RC19 “SHUT THE F*** UP LAST WARNING”

General Pavle”Also one thing,when is the next maze??”

RC3 “Next cicle and you better shut up i don’t want RC19 to get you frst *smiles*”

General Pavle “Thanks RC3 but i just want to ask how much time do i have to run??”

RC3 “5”

General Pavle “THANKS NOW BYE”

He ran like no person did before.He was able to run away from RC3 for a good 10 seconds,then he triped and fell off the hill and was about to fall into the torture chaimbers

General Pavle “FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU”

RC3 “OH YES”

It was at this moment Pavle knew he fucked up,so he pulled a pistol out and said “I always was a peace of s**** and if i coud, i woud kill myself,but its elegal OUCH with OUCH all of the read coats”.

And then he pulled the trigger to see his clip was empty, and then he saw a big as f*** rock heading for his face, he coud hear in the distance

You guess what happened next.He barely dodged the rock but fell into the chambers hitting his manly bits on a covenietly placed “steel mat that had sharp bits” and he screamed in pain so much that RC19 took her headphones off and started dancing to it.RC3 stoped and started laughing.

General Pavle “I...guess if im gonna die like this,then i will say this NOW WE ARE ALL SONS OF BITCHES”

RC3 “He knows he wont die and will just be healed right??

General Pavle “JUST LET ME DIE YOU SICK F***.I hate my life,i hate everything. You sick twisted F***”

RC3 “Who are you talking to???.Eh never mind you know what will happen”

General Pavle “I hate myself right now i wish that the mind eraser is going to be manufactured soon”

                                                     2 Hours later

General Pavle “Welp thanks for that doc.i realy hope RC3 wont stay here for a long time”

Random medic “Dont worry she wont.but you are an unluck guy.Your being sent off to a far off planet  with RC35 to take out a mayor rebel stronghold.It is rumoured that a person who can fight Read Coats is there”

General Pavle “Welp i guess its good to move away from this place...it reminds me of operation Starnberg.I lost all of my best friends and comrades in the frst 15 minutes of the mission”

Commander Wilhelm “Well i guess im not the only poor bastard assigned to that planet.I lost about 15 houndred men in the frst 30 minutes”.

He said that with a small anger in his voice.He looked at General Pavle and said “I know what you have been throu,RC15 was my commander too.She forced us to deploy behind enemy lines and try to take their commander.It is to bad she put the coordinates to be in a minefield 200 Kilometers away from the location.It was also near their artillery corp. so i lost most of my battalion in there just to end up getting there with 15 men.Out of which only me and 2 others survived”

General Pavle “You know if i didn’t lose anything i loved and cared for i woud have had a different reaction.For now i coud not care less”

RC15 “Hate me,YOU CANT ESCAPE ME and you are NEVER gonna change me”

General Pavle “Shut up IM DONE TAKING YOUR SHIT.LEAVE ME ALONE OK,I DONT WANT TO SEE YOU UNLESS IM FORCED TO “

RC15 “WELL FUCK YOU”

Suddenly 15 red lights start flashing around General Pavle.He noticed it and barely escaped the houndreds of red chains coming out of the light.RC15 scremed at him “BE A GOOD BOY AND DIE LIKE YOUR FRIENDS VOLNUS AND JOVAN”.Pavle screamed at her to shut up.But she kept repeating it until...

General Pavle “I Who shall awaken am the Banished dragon.I am the one who laughs at the Red Coats,i Greave when i see the Blue Caps.I shall become one of the 3 Great Dragon’s Inturion.I shall drag you to the void for your judgement.”

He screamed out loud to summon him cause the dragon’s can say nah bruh

“ INTURION”

A light shined,as bright as a star.A voice called out a name.But the only reply was

“I am Inturion and the unification has just begun.I shall punish you for thy sins and then i will get a little vacation”.Pavles body started to change shape,as an armour made of purple appeared on him.The arour looked similar toa medival knight,While having a crusader-ish helmet.

The station shaked like there was an earthquake.In a millisecond Pavle travelled 500 meters and hit RC15.I will call her by her name from now on.The name is Isidora

Isidora was able to barely dodge it.She hit Pavle in the chest,he did not shake at all.He punched her in the face.Her shield broke and Isidora got thrown 50 meters back just to hit a wall.About 25 red lights the size of a normal person’s head pop up above Pavle.2 THOUSAND chains come crashing down chasing him throu the room.Pavle charges throu the door breaking it.He runs off heading to the Hangar,Isidora chases him there constantly summoning thousands of shains that chase him.Each time one of those gets close enouf to him he dodges it.It took them 10 seconds to travel 150 kilometers from the medical bay to the hangar.RC3 was preparing to leave when she saw what is happening she joined in.The fight got bloodier.The entire fight Isidora screamed

“DIE LIKE THE REST”

the entire time.Pavle Screamed back

“I fight for what i feel is right.You know if i don’t then WHO will fight for what is right,who is gonna fight for the weak.AND IF IT COMES TO IT TONIGHT I WILL BE READY TO DIE”.

After he said that a big Purple light started to go out of his eye,he pushed RC3  away she hit a wall 200 meters away from the fight.The crew that was in the hangar was shocked some one coud stand up to red coats,none of them tought it was possible to defeat one of them but two was a thing they tought only the god can do.He jumped back 50 meters,while also screaming “DJOLE I SUMMON YOUR BLADE TO SMITE JUDGEMENT” .A blade of purple light 15 meters long.It took Isidora                    15 Nanoseconds to attack him.He blocked her and kicked her back 55 meters.He sliced off her thumb at the same time.RC3 jumped and kicked him in the face,he tried to punch her but she dodged,then Isidiora punched him between his legs.There was no Dragon armour on that bit.He screamed so loud that the entire ship heard him scream

“DONT PUNCH THERE”.He kicked her in the head and knocked her out.A red light the size of a person poped up above Pavle.RC3 kicked Pavle in the face and 2 TONS of chains fall on him.Pavle falls unconcus,his body reshaping to how it was before the battle,His armour disappeared,after the chains cleared out,RC3 started to laugh and she said “Welp looks like he almost killed you RC15,”

RC15 “He....woud have succeded if you did not join in”.

RC3 “Well i guess i was not wrong about him.

            200 Years later on station X-55189

Pavle wakes up hearing a siren and he hears a voice.”Coution The Inturion is waking up!!!”.

Pavle opens his eyes and hears “Are you sure he is alive,i don’t want to lose my rating i healed 20 thousands soilders.I WONT LET MY RATING GET RUINED BY ONE GUY WHO IS IN A COMA FOR 200 YEARS.Now let me do my job”. He uses his magic glowing eye to try blinding Pavle while yelling “WAKE THE F*** UP AS****”.

Pavle wakes up and said” STOP IT”

Dock stitches sais “Great thing you woke up after 200 years i guess??.I got a list of things to tell you.

1st from the Read Coats GET THE F*** WORK

2nd from grand admiral GET THE F*** TO WORK

3rd  from most soilders i met HOW are you

4th from RC3 you ok??

5th  from i donno who but it sais that RC15 is not to blame for the death of Volnus and Jovan.

And now there is 5 minutes till the mission begins now get ready and lets go.meet you on the field”

General Pavle “IS RC3 near me??”

Stitches “no she is not even in the station”

General Pavle “YES YES YES”

Stitches “she is in a transport shuttle docking in the room next to you”

General Pavle “FFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUU”.

Pavle hears RC3 coming to the room,and he asks Stitches

General Pavle” PLEASE HELP ME DONT LET HER CATCH ME”

Stitches “ You have to go on a mission so i suggest you just put this on and run into the hangar bay and prepare for the mission”

Stitches hears a sound of doors breaking.RC3  asks “Is he up alredy”.Stitches starts running to the hangar,gets into his titan and drops down ,while falling he talks  to Pavle saying “You know your not the squad leader anymore”.Pavle responds by saying  “SORRY I CANT HEAR PEAPLE TALKING ABOUT THEIR AUTHORITY.

       THE END OF CHAPTER 1

GENERAL PAVLE “ IS HE REALY GONNA END IT LIKE THAT”

      Planet 559986 “Lucifor”

Location : Site 26

General Pavle “So what happened in the period of 200 years in which i overslept”

Mayor Boris “Nothing much,the rebellion got annihilated and RC15 got her thumb back after you cut it out,RC3 has killed 50 peaple who semed similar to you.And she is the one who asked that you don’t get killed”

Pavle hears Stitches screaming “ Dont give General Pavle ANYTHING.You know you shoud remove anything that can kill,AND ASK A READCOAT TO BE ON STANDBY IF HE TRIES TO LEAVE”.A random soilder asks “Why don’t we just send him to the front”.Stitches replies “DO YOU KNOW ABOUT FRIENDLY FIRE,THIS ISNT A GAME,HE CAN STILL SHOT PEAPLE ON OUR TEAM”.Stitche’s titan asks “Why don’t we just take his guns???.Stitches “Becose i am not an enginer and im not sure i can find a enginer who can remake a titan out off thin air”.Then a soilder ask “Why do you think that will happen “

Stitches said “My eye lets me see magic that people posses.And i am getting sick loking at him.DO YOU KNOW THAT HE ALMOUST KILLED RC3 AND RC15??.PLUS THOSE WEAPONS ARE OF HIS DEAD FRIENDS.IF YOU WANT TO BECOME AIR THAN GO AHEAD”.

A rebel platoon broke throu the lines and got to the camp,one of them shot at the tent General Pavle’s tent.He shot one of the few things one of the few gifts he had from his dead comrades.That was the last straw.

RC3 is currently doing paperwork on her ship,she gets a call.She looks to see its from Stitches.She answers it and sais “OK WHY ARE YOU INTERU..”.The call ended,she heard a loud scream from the planet.She tought it was some one being burned in the planets volcano that was nearby,which had direct communication lines with her.She then heard a loud shout

“OH BANISHED DRAGON,THE ONE WHO GIVES DEVINE PUNISHMENT.THY SHALL AWAKEN FROM THY SLUMBER.JUSTICE SHALL BE SERVED FOR WE ARE DONE DREAMING THE CENTURIES LONG DREAM.INTURION PRIMUS.”

Pavle’s body started to reshape,His fist reshaped into a human-dragon hybrid, and strong enouf to kill a person.His legs became a mix of human and dragon.His armour Was purple,with a mix of glass and steel being used in his helmet to both protect his eyes and improve his eyesight.That material was used to make cube shaped glasses near his eyes.The rest of his armour was made of unknown material.The armour was coloured in a drak shade of purple.The eye part was coloured crimson red.

Back on the ship RC3 is boarding a shuttle to get to the planet.Everyone on the ship told her not to go.Even the pilot refused to fly her down there.She ended up sending the pilot to her private torture chaimbers,then she used her magic powers to fly down.She travelled 1500 kilometers in 10 seconds.She came just to hear him say the final words of the phrase.

General Pavle “I WHO SHALL AWAKEN AM THE EMPEROR THAT FELL FROM THE VOID’S GRACE.I AM THE ONE WHO BRINGS  JUDGEMENT.I AM THIS DIMENSIONS FRST EMPEROR.I CAME TO SHOW THAT  I AM STILL ALIVE,AND NOW BY THY LAW I SHALL SEND YOU TO THE DEPEST SECTOR OF MY PURGATORY.A PLACE WHERE LIGHT DOSENT SHINE,A PLACE WHERE DEATH DOSENT SHOW UP,A PLACE WHICH THE GODS DONT DARE MENTION.A PLACE WHERE ONLY THE VOID LORD CAN ROAM.AND MY PERSONAL REALM.FOR I AM INTURION PRIMUS”.

A purple light started to shine.The rebels started to run.The entire camp with their titans headed to the “Inturion free heaven”.On the frontline the fighting stoped,RC15  gotten out of her tent to see what is happening and then she saw the light.She muttered “I...inturion”.As the look on her face turned from a happy smile into an expression of fear,a fear she never had before now.She rushed to the sight where the light was seen.

The camp site is coloured in red,Pavle is no where to be seen,same as RC3,a distress call was sent to other RC’s.25 kilometers from the sight a battlefield coloured red with blod.Blod from both the imperial and rebel soilders.Pavle stands coloured in red,on a plain that he created after he cut a moutan into air.He said “Your officiali welcome to the land of the f***ed”.RC3 stood behind him,shocked at the power he has,a single rebel soilder comes out of the ground,he had to move the bodies of his fallen comrades just to get out of the trench that was turned into history.The soilder screamed “IS THAT ALL YOU HAVE TO SAY,AFTER YOU DID ALL OF THIS,DID YOU NOT HAVE PEAPLE YOU CARED FO..”the soilder was stoped by pavle teleporting  26 meters from him,pointing his spear at him.Pavle screamed”i had,they were killed by men like you.AND MY BOSS RC15 INSULTED THEM AND TOLD ME TO GO ON.SHE KEPT ON INSULTING THEM AND ME TILL 200 YEARS AGO I ALMOUST KILLED HER.DO YOU UNDERSTAND”.The soilder looked at him with frear,sorrow,and a feeling of anger,yet there was sorrow.Pavle told him “I shall grant you mercy,i shall send you to the void lord,you don’t deserve hell”.Then the rebel soilder just disappeared.RC3 saw that and she started to show human emotions.RC15 arrived by that time,it took her a full minute to fly 2500 kilometers.

Red lights lighted the sky above Pavle,he smiled behing the helmet.He then asked “So shall we finish this then”.he asked looking at RC15.She smiled and responded “This shall end in your death”.As she said that a giant laser came from space,the laser was the size of a small village.RC15 smiled and said over the communications “Its good to se you arrived RC2.Oh RC 5 and RC 10 are here too??”.

As she said that Pavle came out off the blast with a scratch on his hand wich he used to absorb most of the blow.He LITERALY took the magic out of the attack and used it to power his defense.

General Pavle “NOW I AM MAD.PAVLE SMASH”

RC 15,RC 3,RC 2,RC 5,RC 10 “NANI??”

General Pavle “LIMIT BREAK”

Stitches “Hello there”

General Pavle “GENERAL KENOBI”

Stitches “I AM NOT KENOBI YOU PEACE OF SHIT”.

Stitches attack Pavle with a blade of pure red.Pavle barely dodges it.He then screams “LET ME FINISH THIS DAMIT”

Stitches “NO YOUR GOING A BIT TO FAR.YOUR RUINING THE STO..I MEAN THE PLANET,YOU KILLED SO MANY OF BOTH OUR AND REBEL MEN.”

General Pavle “LET...ME...HAVE....MY REVENGE”.As Pavle said that his body started to shape-shift to more of an dragon than a human.As the transformation was happening he screamed “I AM A DRAGON AND AS A DRAGON I SHALL FIGHT”.

Stitches wastes no time attacking Pavle.Pavle manages to dodge all of Stitcheses sword slashes.Stitches tried to slash him 35 times in a fraction of a second.Pavle then proceded to counter by faking a kick,just to punch Stitches in the face and to send him flying about a kilometre back.Pavle then proceded to say “I AM A LION AND I WANT TO BE FREE.DO YOU SEE THE LION WHEN YOU LOOK INSIDE OF ME...LION’S BLADE I CALL UPON THY”.Stitches got up and said “THAT SON OF A B****”.Then he ran 1kilometer in a second,barely managing to hit Pavle’s hand. Which was enouf to push Pavle 50 meters and to trow his sword 2 kilometers away”.Pavle then said “I TOLD YOU TO LET ME KILL THAT BI***”.Richa...i mean Stitches replied with “SHUT UP WE HAVE THE SAME POWER,IF YOU RLY WANT TO DO IT THEN YOU HAVE TO BEAT ME,AND I DONT WANT TO CLEAN YOUR SHIT.LIKE LITERALY”

Then Stitches screamed “STOP OR I WILL HAVE TO END THIS ENTIRE S*** HERE.I HAD FUN TOO YOU KNOW”. As he said that he punched Pavle in the head,then he did a back flip while also hitting Pavle with one foot in the manly bits and the other foor hit him in the head.Pavle then screamed in pain from the kick in the b****.

General Pavle “CMON MAN YOU TOO.WHAT WILL THIS BECOME A RUNNING GAG”.

RC 3 “Is it just me or does everyone not know what is happening”

Fives “HIS CRINGE LEVEL IS OVER 9 THOUSAND”

General Pavle “Wait a sec  Stich”.As he said that he teleported behind Fives and put his hands infront of his eyes and said “GUESS WHO”.

Fives responded with “MEDIC”.Which got Stitches angry cause he came into a fight to tell a joke and then called for a medic when he got into truble.Then he said “I WONT LET YOU KILL HIM.I ALREDY HAVE ENOUF WORK”.

General Pavle “Wrong and now THY SHALL DIE”.As he said that he snaped Fives’s neck.After that he jumped back,and said “WILL YOU LET ME FINISH NOW”.

Stitches “YOU CAN CS:GO GO TO HELL”.

General Pavle “CMON MAN NOT THA....”.As he said that he triped on a stone..agen.

General Pavle “NOT AGEN..”

He fell down into a trench  and hit his head on a bayonet.Then RC3 said “Do you ever get that feeling of DEJA VU”.

General Pavle/Stitches  “CMON YOU TOO”.

RC 3 “What?? I just said i got a feeling of seeing something before”.

RC 1 “Lets get this over with.”.

Stitches “Il let you handle this.I promise not to interfear”

General Pavle “I think its not neded.I am on the limit of going into another 200 year coma.But i might as well take that b**** out “

RC 15 “WHO DO YOU CALL A B*********”

She tries to summon the chains.But failes due to the loss of mana.After Pavle sucked her mana and the mana of RC 5,RC 2 AND RC 10.

General Pavle “OK THIS IS LIKE 2 GODS FIGHTING WITH STICKS.”

Stitches “You know we used to much jokes.YEAH IM BREAKING THE 4TH WALL DEAL WITH IT.DEAL WITH IT!!!!.What overused joke can we put here.”

General Pavle “WAIT NOOOOOOOOOO”

Stitches “DO YOU KNOWS WHAT THE EMPERORS FAVORITE DRINK”.HE LAUGHED

EVERYONE “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO”.

Stitches “ITS MAUTAN-DEW IT”

General Pavle”I AM DONE WITH THIS SHIT.I CANT TAKE IT.YOU RUINED THE ENTIRE THING.IF WE ARE DOING THAT THEN WE MIGHT AS WELL MAKE US  RED COAT LEADERS”

Stitches “DID YOU NOT READ THE ORIGINAL BOOK”

General Pavle “THERE IS NO BOOK.YOU DID NOT EVEN FINISH IT”

Stitches gives him an USB stick with the story.Pavle procedes to say “TO HELL THY SHALL GO”.As he said that the USB burns into ash.

General Pavle “WHERE IS YOUR STORY NOW”.

Rich...I MEAN Stitches sais “ YOU VOT M80 I HAVE 9 THOUSAND OF THESE.BRING IT ON”

General Pavle “Isnt that to low”

Stitches “I actually have 4 Million.I just had to do the cringy joke”

General Pavle “FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU”.

Pavle goes into a come becose Stitches ruined his mood.Now since i have to sinc my timeline with his i will say he had a bit.NOW F*** YOU RICHARD FOR RUINING MY CANNON.

Stitches “4TH WALL BREAKING TIME”

General Pavle “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO”

Stitches “Now i made all of the too much anime like sh** non cannon for the main time line but there is INFINATE TIMELINES.”

General Pavle “STILL F YOU”.

Stitches “WE HAVE NO OFFICIAL CANNON WE ARE LIKE RICK AND MORTY WE HAVE MULTIPLE TIMELINES BUT THERE IS NO MAIN CANNON”

General Pavle “ F YOU FOR THAT “

Stitches  “STOP USING ANIME REFRENES.THIS STORY  NOT A MANGA ITS NOT A ANIME.”.

He got PTSD from the anime.also F**** the writer.

                                    2 IRL Weeks laters

*Doors explode* Peaple with red masks looking like the youtube logo break the 4th wall and the wall of the room we were joking at.

Youtube “ COPYRIGHT OPEN UP.WE ARE TAKING OVER.YOUR UNDER ARREST FOR ABUSING COPY RIGHT LAWS.”

Stitches “ I ONLY DID ONE RICK AN”

Youtube soilders shoot Stitches and say “SHUT THE F UP.NO NAMING THE SERIES”

General Pavle “YOU ACTIVATED MY MEMECARD.”

Youtube Soilders “NANI”

General Pavle “CO-WRITER PROBLEM.I SENT YOU THE ENTIRE STORY AND NOW YOU NEED TO READ IT TO DEATH”

Youtube Soilders “FUUUUUUUUUUUU”

General Pavle “OK LETS FINISH THIS BIT”

Stitches “Ok but i still get to do the trap card joke”

General Pavle “NOOOOOO”.

Stitches makes a cute cat face

General Pavle “FINE...Y0U WIN”

Stitches “ Pavle out of story F**** YOU FOR FORCING ME TO DO THAT...”

                    Back to the story

General  Pavle “WELL NOW THAT WE FINISHED BREAKING THE WALL”

RC 3 “what wall???”

General Pavle/Stitches “WE ARE NOT EXPLAINING IT”

Stitches “But i coud do a deapool joke here”

General Pavle “No i am wriing this so i say no.NOW “

Pavle starts smiling at Stitches and has a look on his face that sais “ITS MEME TIME”

General Pavle “ITS TIME TO MURDER THIS TRACK”

Stitches “DONT”

Pavle charges into Stitches and stops moving all of a sudden

Stitches “YOU ACTIVATED MY TRAP CARD”

General Pavle “NOOO DONT DO IT”

Stitches “THE ROCK MEME”

Pavle trips on a rock and slides on the blood of the rebels hitting his Manly bits onto a Red coat that had her foot up.HE WENT FROM THE SPEED OF LIGHT INTO 0 WITH ALL OF THE IMPACT BEING CONTAINED IN HIS MANLY BITS AFTER HE ACCIDENTLY SLIDES ONTO A RANDOM READ COATS SHOES.WICH HAVE SMALL SPIKES AT THE BIT WHERE THE FINGERS ARE AT

General Pavle “I..hate...you”

General Pavle “I AM GOING TO WHIPE THIS PLANET CLEAN FROM THE SH*** STAIN YOU CALL THE RC’S”

RC  1 “Shut the f** up.If you stop i will give you my home made Palacinka.”

General Pavle “DEAL”.

Stitches “Your THAT easy to bribe”

General Pavle “SHUT UP.”

Stitches “WAIT DONT”

Stitches “DONT YOU DARE”

General Pavle “IN SERBIA YOU DONT BRIBE WITH MONEY”

General Pavle “YOU BRIBE THEM WITH PANCAKES”.

Pavle stood up.He sent his spear back to its realm.

General Pavle “But let me send RC15 to the realm of the F****ed for about 2 weeks aka the time i am likely to be in coma for.Also Richard.THANKS FOR THE PAIN OF GETTING STABED IN THE **** OVER 7MILION TIMES”.Then pavle fired a portal shot into RC15 he missed...then he fired agen.and AGEN he missed,then he fired 2 more shots and missed both.then he ran out of bullets,he had a poscicle and then passed out from losing his powers.BUT ONLY THEN he accidentally shot a reserve round and hit RC15 and sent her to the realm of the f***ed.

Pavle woud end up being unconcius for 2 Weeks.Stitches ate all of his pancakes,and said a few flity like thing to RC1 without realising it.When Pavle heard that happened he sent Stitches to the realm of the f****ed for 2 weeks and returned RC15 just to tell her.

General Pavle “IF I EVER SEE YOU AGEN YOU WILL BE STUCK IN THE REALM OF THE F***ED FOREVER”.

                           END OF CHAPTER 2.AND PART 1 OF THE STORY.

Timeline and the creation of the universe : Richard Mann

Writing the current story : Pavle “Fredfox”.

All characters here were eather made from real peaple or got the names from real peaple.And cause some characters do some stupid or sadistic stuff it dosent mean they are like that IRL.This is an overexaturated and Comedic F you and a good story that i just wrote my take on and added a few names to un named characters.There will probably me more.I hope some one actualy reads this

[eamesandbellamyaremyheaven]

Bloodreina - The New Avenger Chapter Four (The 100/Marvel)

Prologue || Chapter One || Chapter Two || Capter Three

Summary: The 100 AU in the Marvel Universe What if Octavia and Bellamy joined the Avengers after escaping HYDRA’s Ark Project? Set after the Battle of New York. 

Pairings: All platonic for now: Steve x Octavia, Avengers x Octavia, Bellamy x Octavia, Bellamy x Raven, Octavia x Raven, Boodreina x Winter Soldier, more to come soon…

Word Count: 2287

Warnings: Bad writing maybe? (sorry about that)

A/N: I had to divide the previous chapter into two, because it was getting too long. Also, I am moving into my new home, and therefore I won’t be able to post regularly. I am sorry for that, I was really hoping to keep the updates at least once a week, but please, don’t give up on this story, I am still very devoted to it, and I’m hoping next week I’ll have that problema solved :)

Chapter Four - Revelations Part 2

 Sam Wilson was a nice guy. When you get home from your morning run and you have three beaten up SHIELD agents, who also happen to be fugitives, in your door steps asking for shelter what do you do? You should probably say “Hell no” and close the door on their faces, but not Sam. What does cool-guy Sam? He cooks you breakfast while you clean your wounds. 

“So, the question is: who in SHIELD could launch a domestic missile strike?” 

Steve said, as he walked around the table, where Nat and Octavia stood sit, eating the breakfast Sam cooked.

“Pierce” Natasha answered as she finished chewing her food “Who happens to be sitting on top of the most secure building in the world.”

“But he's not working alone, Zola's algorithm was on the Lemurian Star.” Steve stated

“So was Jasper Sitwell.” Octavia said with a raised eyebrow and a triumph smile, as she acknowledge that Sitwell’s presence in the ship might had something to do with Zola’s algorithm being there too. As Zola stated, HYDRA was everywhere. 

Steve nodded “So, the real question is: how do the two most wanted people in Washington kidnap a SHIELD officer in broad daylight?” 

Sam had stood quietly, listening until that moment, when he left momentarily and came back to drop a manila folder at the centre of the table “The answer is: you don't.”

“What's this?” Octavia opened the folder, reading the files inside, as Steve leaned from behind her, grabbing a photo of Sam with a fellow winged pilot

“Call it a resume.” Natasha smiled at the remark, as she leaned closer to Octavia, inspecting the content herself.

“I thought you said you were a pilot.” Steve said, to which Sam smirked

“I never said pilot.”

Steve shook his head hesitantly, not wanting to put Sam in more trouble “I can't ask you to do this, Sam. You got out for a good reason.”

“Dude, Captain America needs my help. There's no better reason to get back in.” he sounded just like a kid seeing Santa at the mall, Octavia couldn’t help but smile at his excitement.

Steve looked back at Octavia, his lips curled up, matching her smile. It was all the convincing he needed to agree with Sam’s involvement “Where can we get our hands on one of these things?” 

“The last one is at Fort Meade, behind three guarded gates and a twelve-inch steel wall.” Steve looked at Natasha, who simply shrugged her shoulders, the plan was already arranged in her head.

“Shouldn't be a problem” Natasha assured “How do you plan on getting him to talk?”

Octavia dropped the closed folder back at the top of the table and stood up, full agent mode on “Leave that to me. I have a way with people”

*** 

They had manage to take Sitwell to the rooftop of a building, away from his security. Sam stayed in the alleyway as Natasha and Octavia watched with amusement Steve throwing Sitwell across the rooftop, the weaker man scurrying away from the soldier’s touch.

“Tell me about Zola's algorithm.” Steve demanded

“Never heard of it.”

“What were you doing on the Lemurian Star?” Natasha asked now, her voice low and menacing

“I was throwing up, I get seasick.” Sitwell lied, and even when Steve forced him to the edge of the rooftop, he just stood there, smiling “Is this little display meant to insinuate that you're gonna throw me off the roof? Because it's really not your style, Rogers.” 

Steve shrugged, a small smile played in his lips. He loosen the grip on Sitwell, allowing the man to stand on his own feet, and even gently smoothed the creases in the smaller man’s jacket “You're right. It's not. It's hers.  

Steve and Natasha stepped aside, allowing Octavia to raise her foot and kick Sitwell right across his chest, and off the roof. Octavia raised her head, her eyes meeting Steve’s amused expression.

“Is this your way to persuade people, O?” he asked, and Octavia chuckled lightly

“I don’t think asking nicely would’ve suffice, Cap”

Suddenly Sam, now equipped in his Falcon jet-pack suit with wings, flied back up to the rooftop holding Sitwell and tossed him down on the floor. Octavia walked towards Sitwell in long strides, pulling him up with ease, and he held his hand up in fear, shaking, ready to squeal out everything “Zola's algorithm is a program...for choosing Insight's targets!”

“What targets?” Steve asked, as he came closer 

“You!” Sitwell replied, pointing at the super-soldier “A TV anchor in Cairo, the Undersecretary of Defense, a high school valedictorian in Iowa city. Bruce Banner, Stephen Strange, anyone who's a threat to HYDRA! Now, or in the future.”

“The Future? How could it know?”

Sitwell laughed “How could it not? The 21st century is a digital book. Zola taught HYDRA how to read it. Your bank records, medical histories, voting patterns, e-mails, phone calls, your damn SAT scores. Zola's algorithm evaluates people's past to predict their future.”

Natasha and Steve spoke in unison “And what then?” but Sitwell was already lost in his thoughts “Oh, my God. Pierce is gonna kill me.”

“What then?!” Octavia spoke, more threatening, as she shook him by the hem of his jacket 

“Then the Insight Helicarriers scratch people off the list. A few million at a time.” 

*** 

They were now heading to the Triskelion, SHIELD headquarters. Sam was driving, and Steve stood on the passenger seat, as Natasha and Octavia were stuck on the backseat with Sitwell in the middle of them.

“HYDRA doesn't like leaks.” Sitwell said, looking directly at Octavia

“So why don't you try sticking a cork in it.” Octavia chimed, but the man ignored her 

“HYDRA doesn’t like traitors either... Bloodreina”

The entire car felt into an heavy silent. 

“What’s a Bloodreina?” Sam asked, oblivious to the name

“Bloodreina was HYDRA’s biggest creation. Born and raised inside the organization, trained from a young age by the Winter Soldier herself. Ruthless, cold-blooded, a force to reckon with. Your friend here killed hundreds, elevating HYDRA with each death-” 

“That’s enough” Steve voice ringed above Sitwell’s, shutting the man down.

Suddenly something landed on the car roof in a thud, and before anyone could react to it a silver hand crashed through the rear window, pulling Sitwell out through it and throwing him into the oncoming traffic, killing him instantly. 

Bullets flew from the gap of the window. Octavia leaned down, quickly covering her head on her hands while Natasha jumped from her seat into Steve’s lap, pulling his head down just as a bullet hit the head-rest, and shoving Sam’s shoulder aside avoiding another one incoming. 

Instinctively, Steve pulled the break handle, stopping the vehicle abruptly, and making the assailants body flung out of the roof and down onto the street, who methodically used his metal hand as a support for his effortlessly landing, coming to an halt right in front of them. Octavia raised her head from her hands, and she was now facing the Winter Soldier.

Before she could register the events, another car smashed into theirs from behind, pushing them forward, and all it took to the Winter Soldier to jump back onto their car was a long stride, smashing through the windscreen with his metal hand and pulling out the steering wheel from Sam’s hand “Shit!” Sam yelled as he threw his hands up, and the car kept going forward, with any acceleration or steering from him.

Octavia was already prepared for that outcome. She pulled her gun from the holster and shot at the Winter Soldier, barely hitting him at his metal shoulder, but it was enough to make him retreat, jumping onto the vehicle behind them. 

Their car was now being pulled off the road, and Steve held on to the car door, pulling Natasha and Sam closer. Octavia burst her door open and nodded to Steve, smiling briefly before jumping out of the car, rolling to the side of the road.

Her head was spinning and her ears were ringing, as Octavia struggled to stand up. She looked around for her friends, just as Sam made contact with the asphalt, rolling to the side of the road a few feet onwards, and Steve and Natasha slid down for a while longer, still on top of the door. 

Octavia started to walk towards them, but the clicks of safety locks alerted her to the incoming gunfire.

“Watch out!” Octavia yelled, throwing herself behind a flipped car, watching as a group of HYDRA agents, commanded by the Winter Soldier, started shooting at them. The rest of her group scattered, running in different directions, and Octavia seized an small opening in the enemy’s advance to shoot one of them down, and just as the Winter Soldier was about to fire against her she hit him in his eye goggle. She ran towards the opposite direction, knowing very well that shot only gave her a few second of advantage, as she heard his voice, rough and domineering, command his group in Russian “She’s mine. Find him”

*** 

Octavia ran looking for cover as her mind raced, trying to come up with a plan to take down the soldier. She  couldn’t beat him in speed or strength, but maybe she could outsmart him. She used a chapter from Natasha’s book, placing her phone behind a car while playing a record of her voice on loop, as she hid herself close, waiting for him.

Soon, she saw the Winter Soldier stride closer, drawn by the voice. He stopped silently, pulled up a grenade and rolled it down on the floor, over to where he though her to be. The bomb exploded and Octavia took advantage of the loud noise to jump towards the soldier, right fist curled and up, hitting him across the cheek with all her power.

The soldier stumbled back a few steps, and Octavia brought her gun up, holding it to his temple, but before she could take the shot the soldier grabbed the barrel and pushed it aside, the bullet grazing his hair, but missing entirely.

He then used his metal arm to hit Octavia across the ribs, and as she backed down, winded, he raised his own gun, unlocking the safety, but instead of shooting Octavia, who stood on the ground in front of him, he shot Natasha, but not before she sent one of her electromagnetic bands towards the metal of his arm, disabling it momentarily.

“Nat!” Octavia cried out, as she ran towards the girl, pulling her aside just as Steve arrived, giving them coverage. She inspected the wound, it was bleeding substantially, and although she wanted to help Steve, she knew Natasha would bleed out if she didn’t stop the bleeding.

Sam flew right into them, looking worried at Natasha state before turning his head to the battle ahead of them. He was ready to go help Steve, but Natasha tugged at his leg, stopping him “Let O help Rogers, I need you to do something else for me” then she turned her attention to the girl, mouthing “go” to her, wincing when she took her hands away from the bullet hole, blood starting to flow again. Sam took Octavia’s place, setting the palm of his hand over the wound, as Octavia walked towards the two man fighting, just in time to grab Steve’s shield, which had been thrown away earlier, and sling it back to Steve, standing in between him and the full force of the metal fist.

Steve then grabbed the metal arm with one hand and buried the shield in the metal bellow the shoulder, disorienting the soldier, and in one swift blow he raised the shield, knocking him in the face, and using his free hand he grabbed the Winter Soldier and whipped him over his shoulder, into the ground.

The soldier didn’t seem to loose his balance, as he gracefully rolled unto the ground, standing with his back turned to Steve. His mask hanged loose on the ground, and as he turned around Steve lost all composure, his voice barely more than a whisper

“Bucky?”

The Winter Soldier froze for a moment, at the mention of the name, and as he looked back to Steve and raised his weapon he spoke hesitantly “Who the hell is Bucky?”

Before he even got the chance to fire, Octavia kicked him on the ribs, and this time he lost balance and rolled a few meters on the concrete. As he got up, his eyes moved erratic, as if the name was familiar, but still he chose to raise his gun, but this time, he was met with a grenade fired by Sam. 

When the smoke and flames cleared out, there was no trace of the soldier.

Tags: @glossiefandom, @dayanna-hatter

[mandibierly]

Shark Week Night 2 Sneak Peek: An Evening of Firsts

Shark Week continues Monday with three premieres: Shark Vortex, which explores how warmblooded makos, great whites, and porbeagles thrive in the waters of New England; Return to the Isle of Jaws, which makes a potential major discovery about great white behavior in Western Australia; and Alien Sharks: Stranger Fins, which searches for sawshark in the Bass Strait between Australia and Tasmania and the elusive goblin shark in Japan. It’s a night for serious Shark Week fans with discoveries, filming firsts, and fascinating species. Here’s a preview.

SHARK VORTEX (8 p.m. ET)

Dr. Greg Skomal and Joe Romeiro study the annual summer spectacle that occurs as the warmer Gulf Stream pushes into southern New England to meet the cooler Labrador Current and brings with it a multitude of shark species. As you see in the clip above, coldblooded blue sharks mingle with the warmblooded mako, the fastest shark species.

A First: The clip also shows the first time cameras have captured one mako biting another mako in the gills as a threat tactic. “A lot of the sharks we see, including makos, are scarred up. And we always attribute those scars to other sharks but we rarely, if ever, get to see those kinds of social interactions, where a shark basically says to another shark, ‘Get out of my way,'” Skomal tells Yahoo TV. “To actually see it happen is not only rewarding from a professional point of view, but also a little but sketchy when you’re in the water with one of these things saying, ‘Wow, at any moment, this powerful creature could bite me.’ It doesn’t happen, but I’ll tell you it’s a little unnerving.”

For Science: The hour focuses on makos, great whites, and porbeagles because their physiology is unique in that it adapts well to cold-water environments, warming their organs so they can maintain their speed and agility and make decisions quickly — all crucial to survival. Most Shark Week fans will never have heard of the porbeagle, which makes its home in the Gulf of Maine. As Skomal says, it looks like a cross between a great white and a mako, and it’s referred to as a ghost shark in the film because so little is known about the elusive species. Skomal and Romeiro team with Dr. James Sulikowski, a marine biologist at the University of New England who works with porbeagles, to try to find one and tag it. “I’ll be honest with you, I didn’t think we were gonna catch one, and there’s nothing more frustrating than being totally prepared to study a species and not being able to find it,” Skomal says. “The more we know about the porbeagle, the better equipped we are to protect them, whether it’s closing an area because it’s a nursery, or it’s modifying the behavior of fishermen in some way so they don’t use gear that’s gonna impact them. Whatever it is, we can’t come up those solutions unless we can define how this animal lives and where it goes. This is the first step to doing that. I think that’s what it’s all about.”

Don’t Miss Moment: Skomal has helped identify more than 280 great whites, but it turns out one —  which he’s named Berly and finally gets to tag — holds a special place in his heart. “She’s a big, mature female, and for me, if I want to know where big girls go to give birth to their young, or to mate with big boys, I need to track them, and Berly became an obsession because she’s been elusive. She plays hard to get with me. She only shows up every couple of years, and she’s really an attractive, big, dominant female, and it’s kind of a personal story as much as it is a professional one,” Skomal says. “One of the things that most people don’t realize is that Berly is my wife’s nickname as well. And so Joe and I had an inside joke going during the show about Berly and my hot pursuit of her, as it was also the case when I pursued my wife. Her real name is Kimberly, and I kept calling her Kim early on in our relationship, and she says, ‘You know, I don’t like the short name Kim.’ So I said, ‘All right, I’ll call you the rest of it, Berly.’ But she doesn’t know that this is a big part of the film, so it’s gonna be interesting when I sit and watch it with her and she hears her nickname being screamed all over the camera.”

Return to the Isle of Jaws (9 p.m.)

It’s the follow-up to the 2016 special that followed renown shark cinematographer Andy Casagrande as he explored a newly discovered great white hot spot — and saw males only. As you see in the clip above, when he returns at the same time of year, it’s still a boys club.

Andy Casgrande filming “the brothers” (Credit: Discovery)

A First: What Casagrande wasn’t expecting to find, however, was two great whites that looked like brothers swimming together. “I was just like, ‘Oh, my god. Am I seeing this properly?’ They don’t leave each other’s side. They disappear down a ledge, they come back. They’re turning at the same time. They’re respectful of each other where they give each other distance, but they’re still staying in formation. It’s one of the most amazing things I’ve seen out of all my years of Shark Week,” Casagrande says. “People don’t really realize white sharks can have up to 14 pups in their belly. If I were born with 13 siblings, I’d probably hang out with them at least for the first couple years, just because safety in numbers. It sort of flips what we think about sharks on its head, because most people don’t think there’s any sort of maternal or paternal instinct or anything remotely cuddly about sharks. If we’re correct, it’s a breakthrough that white sharks develop relationships among family members — or at least these guys did. And no one’s ever even considered that.” He hopes to return to study “the brothers” more, including a DNA test.

The Danger Zone: Casagrande and conservationist Paul de Gelder find themselves in some trouble when the motorized cage they’re diving in (which was nicknamed The Widowmaker off-camera) gets stuck on the rocks in the shallows. “We’d been able to take it down to the bottom, down to 7,800 feet deep, interact with the sharks, get out of the cage, swim with them, and they love this thing — they like to chew it, they like to interact with it,” Casagrande says. “But Paul and I got a little too infatuated with the seals and looking into where the white sharks could potentially be hunting, and we got into shallow water and got smashed up into the rocks. I always find with Paul de Gelder I’m always in very close to near-death situations for some reason, but we’re always having a great time, which is, I guess, why Paul and I are such good mates.”

Was the situation as bad as it looks? “It was way more scary than it looks, to be honest,” de Gelder says. “They didn’t show much of the footage where Andy and I were trying to drag it off the rocks by ourselves. We were wedged between the cage and a huge boulder, and the waves crashing over it almost squashed us. But we eventually just had to call it a day and say, ‘We can’t do this,’ and come back later with the crew.”

Alien Sharks: Stranger Fins (10 p.m.)

The popular Alien Sharks franchise returns with Dr. Craig O’Connell on the sawshark mission in the Bass Strait, and Dr. David Ebert and marine biologist Victoria Elena Vasquez hitching a ride with a local fisherman in Tokyo Bay, hoping that his net will pull up a live goblin shark from the deep-sea canyon.

A First: After a long wait (during which they spot many other species of “alien sharks”), Ebert, Vasquez, and local goblin shark expert Dr. Kazuhiro Nakaya finally become the first team to tag and release a healthy goblin. “Tagging a goblin shark may not just be representative of what it’s like to be a goblin shark, it might also clue us in to life in the deep sea and how other deep-sea sharks utilize that area,” Vasquez says. “That’s the fun thing about being a pioneer on a certain aspect of research, what you learn could be applicable to other things.”

Don’t Miss Moment: The goblin shark has the fastest bite ever recorded, at .16 seconds, which the team — and viewers — get to witness on deck. “It is awesome on a lot of different levels. One, it was reinforcement that the protocol that we had on the boat was working, that these animals were healthy and vigorous [after being caught], because they’re exerting that sort of behavior,” Vasquez says. “It was a really nice moment to be able to share that with Dr. Nakaya because he had only seen video up to that point, and we all got to experience seeing a goblin shark protrude its jaws in real-time together. It was just surreal.”

History May Repeat Itself: Two years ago, Vasquez and Dr. Ebert discovered a new species of lantern shark, which Vasquez’s young cousins helped name the ninja lantern shark because of its uniform jet-black coloring and the spines on its dorsal fin resembling a ninja star. This trip, they may have found another new lantern species. “There’s still a lot of work to go into that, genetic analysis and comparison,” Vasquez says. “We think it’s a new species, but we’re just being very careful as we’re looking over data to make sure that we have made the correct assessment.”

For Science: Vasquez says her professor used to joke that she was his “problem child” because she wanted to study white sharks. But when she told him it was because she was really interested in the science of sharks, something clicked. “He was like, ‘If you think white sharks are cool for what they’re capable of doing, then learn about these other sharks. And if you still want to study white sharks, maybe we can talk about that, but tell me why these other sharks aren’t just as interesting.’ That’s why I fell in love with these other sharks, because of the diversity,” she says. “You wouldn’t talk about mammals in this huge generalization, because besides the fact that mammals include ourselves, you would never put a mouse and an elephant in the same category. So when we think about an intimidating great white shark, that doesn’t represent all species. There’s a species called a shyshark, because when it gets scared it covers its eyes with its tail fin, which is really adorable. …  I’m not sure many people know about glowing sharks, or the fact that some of them have these chainsaws on their faces like the sawshark. I always kind of joke that great white sharks are the gateway shark. If you’re really interested in sharks, it’s a great one to start with, but there’s just so much more out there. I think that was the point my professor was trying to make to me, and it really stuck because when I get to share information about lesser-known species with people, they get really excited, because there’s just so much out there to learn and discover. We’re still discovering new species every year. We always like to say, ‘Alien sharks need love, too,’ so the more people can support them is great. And if they’re trying to figure out how, the easiest thing you can do is talk about them. People can start learning about something that’s not a great white, and that’s a wonderful start.”

Shark Week continues through July 30 on Discovery.

Read more from Yahoo TV: Shark Week: How to Prep Great Hammerheads for an Underwater Ultrasound Shark Week Sneak Peeks: Phelps vs. Shark, and Shark vs. Croc Michael Phelps on His Shark Week ‘Race’ With a Great White Shark Week’s ‘Return to the Isle of Jaws’ Has a Major Discovery

[meggannn]

i just finished the turian ark quest again and sorry here’s a sad shakarian andromeda au

shepard left the milky way after either being dishonorably discharged or choosing to depart out of guilt or atonement for her actions at torfan. alec ryder recruited her as a fellow n7 after he is discharged for his illegal ai research, and though shepard isn’t entirely sold on the initiative, she has nothing left for her in the milky way and alec makes the case that with her talents she might do more good in andromeda, so she accepts his offer of becoming second in command.

shepard is hastily made pathfinder after the entire ryder family is killed when the hyperion collides with the scourge. younger than alec but not inexperienced, she leads harper and kosta, along with a skeleton crew of specialized combatants she vets personally including a young asari archaeologist who wants to open the first andromeda university and an old grizzled krogan vet who’s tired of watching his people kill themselves in the milky way (cough), and travels across the galaxy to eliminate the kett and eventually make tentative peace with the angara. it’s not ideal, she misses the her old life so much it hurts, but she’s doing what she can.

and then an sos pinging as a private natanus comm signal reaches the tempest

she follows it to, oddly, havarl, where a former c-sec officer garrus vakarian is leading a ragtag group of turian fighters, also awakened from pods, against the roekaar. they’ve been out here for weeks, vakarian explains, and his dad, castis, is the turian pathfinder. despite orders, before entering cryosleep garrus installed personal trackers in his and his sister’s suits in case of emergency if they were separated on landing – which is exactly what happened. but we don’t have a ship and we’ve being tracked on foot by unknown hostiles for weeks, we’re running out of dextro supplies and oh spirits someone finally showed up. you’re the human pathfinder? the human ark landed? well if you’re willing to help i’m not gonna complain. got any spare clips?

after rescuing what remains of the group from the roekaar (during which garrus may or may not suffer a serious injury and nearly be killed…… um) they track garrus’s faint signal to what was once called habitat-5, but now appears to be a debris field after being pulverized with the scourge. the natanus readings are everywhere across this system: with garrus’s tracker they rescue dozens of pods, but find hundreds more floating and lifeless, thousands still unaccounted for. most concerning, the ark itself is still missing. with the destruction of habitat-5, the initiative has no locatable world capable of supporting dextro life, and the more pods they recover, the less space and resources there are on the nexus for the awakening turians and soon-to-be-arriving quarians. efforts are made to relocate as many turians as they can to colonies, but the majority of those recovered are weak from their time afloat in space and need the medical expertise and support of the resources on the nexus to fully heal, further draining resources on the already straining station.

vakarian is better at hiding it than most, but shepard is well aware how to read anxiety in all species of soldiers. his focus is fixed on discovering what remains of the turian ark, and with it, his family, but they both know finding his father and sister will be useless if turians have nowhere to live when they’re rescued.

then one day, a salarian team discovers a pod labeled ‘vakarian, solana’ floating adrift in slow orbit over a gaseous moon. it’s been powerless for months.

shepard finds him in the drive core, fooling with something on the console. she knows busywork when she sees it.

“here.” she hands him a bottle of palaveni horosk that nyx had managed to scrounge up last month and handed to her with a meaningful look that morning. “i was saving it for when we found natanus and rescued everyone inside and became big damn heroes. but i think you deserve it. you can keep it to yourself if you like, i won’t tell anyone.”

vakarian stares at the bottle she’s placed in his palm for several long, unblinking moments, then sighs and tosses it back, draining half of it in one long swig. he caps what remains and places it on the edge of the console, away from any sensitive tech that might get unhappy when wet.

“my dad’s still out there,” he says hoarsely. he’s staring at the bottle and the six-hundred-year-old brand label, probably out of business by now back home, distilleries left to waste and the name all but forgotten in obscure academic records. “i know the odds. i don’t need anyone to tell me what we’ll probably find out there. and yet – i just found my sister’s corpse in a frozen glass pod, the last words she said to me were ‘they’ll wake me up first so i can say i’m older than you in this galaxy, too.’ now have to plan her funeral on – on a negative budget with no place to bury her. and part of me still has the audacity to hope, about my dad. and it’s the worst thing i’ve done to myself. but i can’t stop.”

shepard doesn’t know how to tell him she well understands without crossing emotional boundaries that might be… inappropriate, to a race such as the turians. “you haven’t heard anything else from him on the private link you installed?”

vakarian shakes his head once.

“you will,” she says.

“shepard,” he says.

“if he’s anything like you,” she says, “you will.”

he laughs briefly, without humor.

“even if he’s still alive, where are we going to put fifteen thousand colonists?” he still isn’t looking at her. “we have no planet for dextro life, commander. the only one was blasted into debris by that – fucking dark cloud, whatever the hell it is. i woke up and survived off rations from my pod and found other survivors and kept them alive as long as i could, and they only followed because they believed me when i said the nexus would have a plan, and things would get better. but we were hunted in the dark one by one by foreign snipers, and when we found civilization – found you, we found the nexus was just as desperate for dextro resources as we were. no help’s coming. we’re on our own.”

shepard grips the edge of his carapace gently, and turns him toward her.

“you’re a part of this crew, vakarian,” she tells him, “and you will have what you need when you’re under my command. that includes weapons and mods so that you can kill as many kett as you want. that includes dextro supplies and rations, so that you have enough strength to tear the galaxy apart until you find your family. and it includes someone to talk to, so that even if you think you don’t need it, you know it’s there if you do.” she lets go of his collar and eases a step away. “and if you’re going to stay, you’re free to call me shepard. god knows the rest of this ship did without invitation.”

he blinks, slowly. “commander – ”

“shepard.”

“ma’am,” he says slightly mollified, and she decides not to push it today. “your ship is the top of her class. i’d be honored continue working on her. but i knew when you took me on this was a temporary assignment. you agreed to help me only so far as we reached the natanus, and it’s… clear that’s not happening any time soon. it would be a strain on your – i should be reassigned on the nexus given the circumstances.”

“the tempest has priority clearance to equip its med bay and galley with whatever dextro supplies my team requires,” shepard continues as though he has said nothing. “we already have one turian in the cargo bay. she knows how to share. quite frankly, i’m sure the nexus won’t mind if we take another off their hands and put him to productive work on the initiative’s most advanced starship.”

he stares at her for another long moment. turians have such steady, piercing blue eyes, she thinks – against hard plated faces and their metallic exterior, especially one with a hawke-like sniper’s patience such as garrus, sometimes their eyes are the only part of them that seem vibrantly alive.

“my father,” he starts again, then stops. his brow shifts just the slightest, tensing; he can’t seem to bring himself to continue.

“we’ll find him,” shepard says again. “i can’t promise that the answers will be what you want. but we will.”

vakarian seems to believe that, at least. he draws up to full height, exhales, and then grasps her palm. “then thank you, comma – shepard.” he tilts his head slightly, as though he’s considering her. “you know, when you say it, i almost believe it.”

“i’ve been told i have that effect on people.” she waves with a finger to the forgotten bottle on the console. “you going to finish that?”

“yes,” he says, and makes no move to do so. his mandibles flare in what she recognizes as a turian version of a smile. “but then please call me garrus. it might make things easier to get into the habit before we meet up with my father. being called ‘big vakarian’ and ‘little vakarian’ was only amusing for so long back in c-sec.”

fair enough. “i imagine you must take after him too, then.”

“you shouldn’t have trouble telling us apart, ma’am,” garrus vakarian says, and in a single motion reaches back a hand to grasp the bottle and point the tip toward her, an offer. his mandibles are still flared, eyes warm. if she didn’t know any better, she might call it – cheeky. “i’m the good looking one.”

[pupfresh]

Pup and Coming: Ends Meet

Ends Meet Genre: Punk Hometown: California x New Jersey

How did you become a band? 

Mike: We’ve known each other for 20+ years. Growing up in Middletown NJ, we had a sort of extended group of core punks that always played in bands together, played shows in small clubs and basements, generally just having fun in the scene doing our own thing. Ironically, over those 20+ years we never actually played in a band together. Instead, we would go into the studio or go into Casey’s shed and just jam – we’d work on riffs separately and pick a time and date and roll the tape and see what happened. Around 2011, we started working on riffs and song ideas via email because with my crazy work schedule, family life and commitment to another band it was the only way I could do it. The stuff he was sending me was so good, I couldn’t pass it up and I saw it as an outlet for trying out new and slightly weird things musically – my own take on what modern punk guitar playing could be. Looking back, that was sort of the genesis of what we’re doing now.

Fast forward to 2015 – we had sort of paused on things just due to distance and life changes and all the rest – and Casey re-sent some stuff we had worked on that he had been polishing and it just sparked something in me that I just needed to commit to this and make it work. As we started locking down songs, it just became super clear to us that we were making the music we always wanted to make and we just kept at it. We both have a deep connection to punk rock, particularly 90’s-era melodic skate punk and hardcore, and we both realized Ends Meet was the outlet we needed to put our own spin on things and put some music back into the world as a sort or tribute to the bands we grew up listening to and who shaped our lives. I won’t say it's the easiest thing in the world to do this sort of long distance, remote songwriting and recording. But it’s so uncommon to have the kind of musical connection Casey and I have – we literally can finish each others songs without even being in the same room (or state), and that was something I wasn’t about to pass up. There’s a level of trust between us that runs over 20 years deep and with “Making Music, Making Enemies” we just wanted to put it all to the test and put it out there – and do it 100% DIY. And I couldn’t be more proud of it.

Casey: We had talked about jamming all the way back in the 90's but things never came together. Then we finally started something in '02 and BOOM, Mike's moving to California. So we discussed the possibility of stitching everything together through emails and I'd mix everything down once it was completed. Never had time. We would jam over the holidays when we were in the same time zone every year but that was it - a few hours to unload all our ideas and aggressions over the past 300 + days. Then in 2011, with no current projects, I set up my drums and mic’s in my mom's basement one weekend and just went off. I sent the raw files to Mike, who loved them, and he ran with it. Mind you, these were literally 2:30-3 minute pieces of time where I pressed record and just pounded out some fast, punky stuff. I wasn't too stoked on any of them but wanted to build regardless. When I got the guitar tracks back I was blown away. I plugged in my bass and did basic follows of his root notes and mixed it down and sent it back to him. Both of us really dug it but didn't quite know where to go with it.

Cut to September, 2015. I own a house, have built up a decent recording space, got a nice Pro Tools workstation and am again bit by the bug. I plug in those old tracks and line them to a click track. I like it. A lot. So I set my drums up and record them to a clicked out version of those old tracks and give it a listen. Now I'm really stoked. I call Mike to bring him up to speed and tell him how good it sounds by using old, half assed thrown together tracks. "Now imagine what it would sound like if we were to take a serious crack at it." I thought it was gonna be a tough sell on him. He's a busy dude. Successful in business, a family man, a surfer, a skater... I'm just some lonely dude with a jam space and ambition. To my surprise, he takes to the idea. I'm stoked. I head to the basement the next day and pound out another 2 old beats/songs. Email them. He writes guitars. Emails me. I write bass lines. Email him. He records vocals. Emails me. Load it into my timeline and get cracking. The result is "Making Music, Making Enemies" and I am damn pleased with how it came out for a myriad of reasons. But above all I am proud to be able to make good, focused music in the vein that he and I both have been itching to do for well over a decade. He is my brother in music and together we are accomplishing EXACTLY what we set out to do.

Where did the band name originate from?

Casey: I was pining over a bunch of names at a Frank Turner show in NYC. I'm watching him play (and damn does he play) and I text Mike "We should get Frank Turner to sing on our songs, that would really tie it together" or something to that effect. That leads my thoughts to coming up with a name that illustrates how far we have come in our lives, our goals, our ambitions, and our music, and yet how far apart we truly are. How can we tie all of this together? How, in a simple and concise way, can we package what we're doing and what we have done? How do we make all these ends meet? Bingo!

Mike: I was totally drawing a blank on band names. Casey was texting me random names here and there, and some of them seemed cool but nothing was super inspiring. Then one day he sent over a few potential names that played off of the theme of long-distance, connections, stuff like that. As soon as I saw “Ends Meet” the “X” logo popped into my head. I sketched it out and sent it to him and we knew instantly that was the one – the name and the symbol were perfect for what we were doing.

Where do you guys draw your influences for your music? Mike: I could write a novel on this, there are so many influences I owe a debt to. I’ll start by saying that my cousin Jeff (aka JJ, currently the lead signer of the legendary Discharge) got me into punk rock pretty early - I was around 10 years old. He had me listening to the Dead Kennedy’s, Sex Pistols, The Exploited, Crass, Subhumans, Germs, The Clash – real classic, raw, first wave punk. Soon after, I wandered my way into the “new school” punk scene through skateboarding and found Pennywise, Bad Religion, NOFX, DRI, Strung Out, Lagwagon, Rancid, Good Riddance, RKL, Offspring, Black Flag, Propagandhi, No Use For A Name, Face To Face, Pulley, Bouncing Souls, Butthole Surfers, Gorilla Biscuits, Unwritten Law, Green Day, Rise Against – tons of Fat Wreck Chords and Epitaph bands. To this day they are the bands that have shaped my musical core and continue to influence my guitar playing. There’s an awesome sort of unstructured randomness to a lot of that mid-90’s punk, nobody really knew the formula yet. I did my best to channel a lot of that random, non-traditional song structure and style into what I’m doing with Ends Meet. Some late-era influences would include bands like A Wilhelm Scream, Pears, Thrice, Glassjaw, letlive, H09909, Useless ID, The Flatliners, The Sainte Catharine’s, None More Black, Implants, Mute and Against Me. And that’s barely scratching the surface of what I’m inspired by.

Casey: The 90's. In my head, I'm still there. Being a Jersey boy I have always had a passion for the New Brunswick scene (Lifetime, Endeavor, etc.) but also had the privilege to play out with some of my other favorite locals over my musical career like The Postman Syndrome, Catch 22, OCG, and a bunch of others. The NJ scene is as varied as it is talented and I'm proud of that. Everything else I draw from is completely California skate punk: Strung Out, Pulley, NOFX, Face to Face, Lagwagon, NUFAN... pretty much anything on Fat Wreck. Then there's the geographic anomalies like A Wilhelm Scream (MA) and a lot of the stuff going on in Gainesville, FL. But first and foremost... yeah. I like the 90's.

What sets you apart from all the other bands out there? Casey: Heart. And lack of band members. Who else writes music from opposite sides of a continent and plays several instruments on each song?

Mike: In addition to Casey’s points, I think we embody DIY more so than a lot of bands. We literally do every single thing ourselves – write, record, mix, master, design + artwork, release, promote. Casey recorded the drums, bass and mixed and mastered in a basement. I recorded guitars in a garage and recorded some of the vocals parked in my car in Oakland and San Francisco. My personal mission is to prove that we can make good-sounding music with good production value  by ourselves - with nothing but the some grit and determination. We don’t need a ton of fancy equipment or studio space to do it. We purposefully decided not to send out a demo to record labels for our first release because we wanted this to be 100% ours. Will that be the case forever? Who knows. But I’m very proud of the fact that we did it.

What’s your favorite part about being in a band? Mike: Having an outlet for creativity and a partner in crime to make it real. I can get an idea, record it, send it to Casey and in a few days we have the foundation of a song. It’s literally one of my favorite things in the world to download a drum track, plug in my guitar and just let it rip.

Casey: The gratification of building something that hasn't existed in the universe before you made it so.

What are the bands future plans?

Casey: Make great records.

Mike: Making more of the music we want to hear in the world, and somehow figuring out a way to play some live shows that leave an impression on people.

What was your favorite cartoon growing up? Mike: Danger Mouse. Look it up.

Casey: Man, that's a tough one. "Growing up" happens in stages. First it was He Man and the Transformers, then came The Ninja Turtles, then there were things like Dexter's Lab and Johnny Bravo, and then anything Space Ghost was in. If I had to call it, I'd probably lean Ninja Turtles. That one had the longest and deepest impact on me. I actually have the first 4 seasons on DVD. They're hilarious.

Favorite pizza topping?

Casey: Pepperoni and mushroom. You buying?

Mike: Plain. A slice of plain NJ pizza is heaven in the shape of a triangle.

If you could have one superpower what would it be?

Casey: To be able to fall asleep whenever I needed to and wake up completely refreshed on demand.

Mike: To be able to do things simultaneously by being in more than one place at the same time.

What is the first album you ever bought?

Casey: Cassette: Nirvana "Bleach" CD: Offspring "Smash" Mike: I literally have no clue. It was probably like MC Hammer or some shit in the 80’s. The first CD I remember buying that really changed my life was the self-titled Pennywise album – I never looked back after that one.

Anything else you’d like to say?

Mike: Yes, but I ran out of words. So, next time. Casey: I like turtles.

[everydaymamaof3]

What makes them tick...

I’ve wanted to blog about my parenting journey through this pandemic for quite some time now.. but I just didn’t have the right amount of words and motivation. Not until now.

So back when this all started, back in March 2020, we were kind of in a state of shock. I remember the exact same feelings inside my body, as what I had when we were forced out of our homes during the wildfires in 2017. No appetite. Confused. Adrenaline. Moody.

And because this lasted so long, I went through a wheel of emotions over time. The wheel would be on a pretty predictable rotation. So once I got the hang of it, a year and a half later, I’m managing it a lot better.

But I never thought about what true emotions the girls were having. People just kept saying, kids are resilient. Kids are fine. Get kids back in school. Kids will be fine if you’re fine. Well how in the actual fuck was anyone fine through this? No other way to ask that question.

Of course we all had moments of fine. But it was trying on us, on levels we can’t describe. What did that do to these young people?

Well we got to witness it first hand with our youngest. It started with an out of her control, bad vibe in the universe. A negative comment. And festered into full blown fear. Would she have experienced this the same way if we weren’t in a pandemic? No. I don’t think so. The problem was, so many of these sensitive to others emotions, kids, were in hyper absorb mode due to what was happening in the world. They were drowning in energy they couldn’t keep up with. Making them hypersensitive to their environment.

She was confident. Fearless. Hilarious. Marched to the beat of her own drum. Which is finally coming back. But I felt like such a failure. Like why is my kid experiencing this? But as time went on, I realized it was an even bigger event than the pandemic. Many parents just didn’t openly talk about like I do. Or they just don’t want to admit it, which is fine. It’s their journey not ours.

Her and I are intertwined in emotions. Being the baby, and the last one syndrome from me, makes that grip just a little bit tighter. It absolutely does not mean I love any of my girls differently. I love them all with 3 parts of my heart. An equal space for each of them. But the characteristics and personality of the youngest and me are in sync. Vs my older girls who are more their fathers daughters, personality wise 💕 But still parts of me and I hold them all equally close.

We are seeing the light and they’re all amazing and thriving and navigating this. My oldest, working in the thick of it as an RN, as a soon to be wife, maybe mother soon, finding her magic as a young adult woman. My middle trying to navigate pre teen, puberty, new emotional development, the pull between friends and family time, balance, me craving just a little bit more of that sweet time we have left where she’s still young...pestering her to choose us over her peers and her own time, which I realize is incredibly selfish...and the littlest learning to tackle her emotions, and that shift where independence becomes crucial, but the crave to still be little is still present. Not fully understanding the world, still needing that canopy of protection above. But also that parachute to jump!

I am not a helicopter mom. I am the farthest from it. But this time in the world brought some helicopter characteristics out in me and I’m kinda pissed about it. I was really quite ashamed of myself a few times, being overprotective, frustrated with other children or their parents, for being mean to mine, which is NORMAL, and any mother who says she’s never done that can add liar to her resume, although I do know it was just feeling sad for my own kid, and sometimes when we feel inadequate or like we’re doing something different than another parent, our reaction isn’t always the right one. I’m a teacher to little humans. I know better, and quite often forget that kids act out of jealousy, just because, peer pressure, or because they developmentally lack that part of the brain that sends the signal of logic. My girls aren’t perfect. And sometimes were probably the cause of battles, but god forbid most mothers admit that to the full extent. We always have a “but”. Ahhh motherhood...

I had an aha moment the other day, prompting the desire to write. I was watching this documentary about the human body. About the different systems. How they function, what makes them tick. And they did this one episode on the nervous system and how to have it operating at its full potential.

It made me stop and think. What are we doing?

I loathe the whole “keeping up with the Jones’s” way of life. Hate it with all of my being. I was not raised that way. My girls are not, and will not be raised that way, because it creates entitlement. Arrogance. Selfishness. As well as the desire to always want what others have. Who wants to live like that?

My mom shopped at bargain stores. The clearance rack, not because we couldn’t afford it, but because she was smart and realized how quickly we outgrew things. I hated it, but now as a mom fully understand it. Expensive stuff was for special occasions. I had unique style, but it was who I was. To the point I had a clock face purse in grade 8, that everyone made fun of me for, but I could’ve cared less. I still remember that purse. I remember how excited I was when she bought it for me at Mariposa.. remember that store. My oldest was raised the same.. no I’m sorry, I’m not gonna put myself in debt to buy you $300 jeans. Just not happening when a $50 pair looks exactly the same. The girls have never once asked for something because someone else has it. Actually that’s a lie, maybe after seeing a toy or something they’ve asked, but it’s only been one time, and never heard about again, kind of request.

I want them to be individual people. I want to know what makes them tick. What brings out their potential?

Our middle daughter came home with a career paper that she wrote recently. She’s an incredible writer. She keeps pages of stories and music in her room, that I never thought twice about. Just thought, “oh yeah, she’s like me, likes to write like I did when I was a kid”. We’re helping fuel her passion for baking and creating cakes... but then I read this.. she has another passion too.

Then while thinking about them, I thought why do we always compare our kids to us? We want them to be little versions of us. But the thing is, they’re not.

After reading her paper, I sat and thought. Our youngest is moved by music. She dances non stop. She dances out the door in the morning, she sings constantly and moves. She dances in my room, in her room, always wants music around her and it’s what makes her tick.

So I said to my husband, I want a recording studio room for one and a dance studio area for the other. And we are making that happen. We’ll start gathering a few recording equipment pieces and set up a space for one. And my dad will come and work his retired papa magic in our basement that is honestly just full of stuff, to create a dance space. It’s simple. It’s doable. It could be the key to unlock potential we aren’t aware of yet. They show us little bits and pieces of what makes them tick...and quite often we miss it, because we are busy doing life... I wanna embrace that. I did a bit with my oldest, however in retrospect I so badly wish I did more. She wanted to be a marine biologist, after several trips to the Aquarium. Her eyes would light up, she talked about it non stop, it was that “thing” that she dreamed about. And ya never know, maybe one day she’ll walk that path. She did get into the medical field, and is close to home so I guess I shouldn’t complain.

I hate the pandemic for bringing out the worst in people. For creating a level of hypocrisy in humans that I hope we can recover from. For the confusion. For the divide. For the fear. For the frustration. But I love the pandemic for making me have thoughts I maybe wouldn’t have had. For giving me moments to think and to watch, and be more aware of mine and my girls emotions and dreams. For making me aware of other people’s behaviour and lack of practicing what they preach. For opening my eyes more. But feeling empathetic and understanding of most, because I too have been riding the same roller coaster.

I love the pandemic for making me the mom I am in this moment. For helping me raise strong, kind and driven young ladies who will live their life with purpose. That’s all I want.

We’re gonna go through a lot of stuff over the next chapter of their lives, as raising teenage girls is my next roller coaster ride, but as crazy as it sounds, I’m grateful for this test the past year and a half. I feel like in a way, I grew. In the most important, emotional ways as a mom. Ways that have made me more “observer”, than “knower”. If that’s even a word.

[britishhiphop]

RIP: Scott La Rock

“By age 25 Scott ‘La Rock’ Sterling had achieved what many people only dream of. As part of a duo called Boogie Down Productions, he was on the verge of signing a major recording contract and he had kept a promise that he had made to himself: He, a young man from the South Bronx who had become a high school basketball star and had earned a bachelor’s degree in business, would settle for nothing less than stardom. All that came to an end Wednesday 27th August 1987 when Mr. Sterling was fatally shot outside the Highbridge Homes on University Avenue in the South Bronx.” —Esther Iverem, The New York Times, August 31, 1987 Twenty-three years ago, New York’s adolescent rap scene was forced to grow up. Violently. The murder of Scott La Rock was much more than simply the loss of a talented up and coming DJ. In many ways, La Rock—in both his life and his death—set the stage for hip-hop as we know it today. While he was alive, La Rock drafted the aesthetic blueprint for gangsta rap with the previously unexplored street themes and shocking imagery of BDP’s classic Criminal Minded (the only album he ever recorded). On the business side, his Black-owned independent label, B Boy Records, pioneered the burgeoning genre’s rebel entrepreneurialism. “Scott would have been Puff before Puff, no question,” says Chris Lighty, a close friend of Scott’s who now runs the Violator Records empire. “But without the dancing. He approached the music as a business at a time when most people just wanted to be down and make records.” Born March 2, 1962, in South Ozone Park, Queens, Scott Monroe Sterling was raised far from the grimy scene that he would later help to mold. His parents split when he was four, and he lived with his mother, Carolyn Morant, a career municipal employee. When Scott was young, they moved from Queens to the Morisania section of the Bronx, and then to Morris Heights. Scott excelled in both academics and sports at Our Savior Lutheran High School, graduating in 1980 and heading off to Vermont’s Castleton State College. He earned a varsity letter in basketball there, but as it became clear that his talent would never take him to the NBA, Scott switched his extracurricular focus from hoops music. “Our turntables were on our desks and our books were on the floor,” said La Rock’s four-year college roommate, Lee “The Mack” Smith Jr., to the Times back in ‘87. “I would come home and hear the bass before I opened the door.” After graduating in 1984, Scott returned to New York in hopes of finding work and making in-roads to the music industry. Through a connection of his mother’s, Scott landed a jacket-and-tie nine-to-five as a social worker at the Franklin Armory Men’s Shelter on 166th St in the Bronx. At night, though, he’d lose the noose, spinning at the blossoming hip-hop hot spot, the Broadway Repertoire Theatre on 145th Street. Socially gifted, Scott quickly earned a rep for his skills on the turntables and a progressive business sense as well. “He was just a smooth, approachable brother,” remembers DJ Red Alert. “He could relate to any type of person, that’s why so many people gravitated to him.” Beyond spinning records, though, Scott aspired to create his own. He began studying the art of making beats at his Bronx buddy Ced Gee’s place and searching the city’s clubs for a worthy MC partner. (Ced would go on to form the Ultramagnetic MCs with Kool Keith Thornton.) Strangely, La Rock would find his rapping other half not among the denizens of dimly-lit nightspots like Broadway R.T., but under the bright fluorescents of the shelter where he worked his day job. One of Scott’s responsibilities at the shelter was doling out subway tokens to those who needed to travel to job interviews. Shortly after starting, though, he got wise to the fact that several of the shelter’s residents were faking interviews to score tokens, which they’d use instead to go party. When Scott confronted one of the hustlers, the situation got loud and ugly. The resident called Scott a “house Negro, one paycheck away from homelessness.” Scott countered that the homeless man was “obviously lazy, otherwise he’d have a job.” Security was called to separate the two before they came to blows, and the resident left the shelter. The homeless man was Kris “KRS-One” Parker—a cocky, 20 year-old graffiti artist and self-taught “philosopher” who preferred the street life to the mundane world of working. Three months later, Scott ran into him at Ced Gee’s apartment (coincidentally, KRS had also been putting in time on Ced’s equipment.) After their less-than-civil start, Scott extended the olive branch by inviting KRS to one of his parties. “My mind got blown clean out of my head,” remembers KRS-One of his summer 1985 introduction to the hip-hop scene at the Broadway R.T. “Just seeing Scott DJing, and then watching Mantronix walk by, and then Doug E. Fresh is in the corner grabbing a drink… It was just too much for me.” Scott took a liking to KRS, and to two of his fellow shelter residents, Joseph “Just Ice” Williams, Jr., “I.C.U.” and 15-year-old Derrick “D-Nice” Jones, a cousin of a security guard. “He’d invite us down and we’d hang out way past the nine p.m. curfew, get drunk and party,” says KRS of BDP’s prenatal period. “At the end of the night Scott would take us all out for breakfast and we’d talk about who we were gonna be and what we were gonna do.” “Scott gained a freedom hanging out with us,” KRS continues. “And being around him made us feel important.” via britishhiphop.co.uk

[gordonwilliamsweb]

COVID-19 Crisis Threatens Beleaguered Assisted Living Industry

David Aguirre jumped in his truck and drove toward the hospital in the predawn darkness the minute he got the news: His 91-year-old mom was being rushed from her Texas assisted living facility to the emergency room.

Estela Aguirre would be one of five residents to die and six others to be sickened by the novel coronavirus at The Waterford at College Station, part of a financially strapped chain of assisted living sites called Capital Senior Living.

“My mom was a sweet, kind person. People really felt like they’d known her for 100 years. She was just that kind of soul,” said Aguirre, who lost his mother on March 28. “Some days, I’ll sit down and have my heart cry.”

Assisted living complexes, home to more than 800,000 people nationwide, have quickly become a new and dangerous theater in the coronavirus war. Challenged by deepening financial pressures, sicker residents, limited oversight and too few employees, they now face a crisis that could force companies into bankruptcy, roil the industry and even close some facilities — putting frail seniors at greater-than-ever risk.

More than 700 cases of COVID-19 at assisted living facilities had been reported in at least 29 states as of Wednesday, according to public health authorities and news organizations.

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Capital Senior Living serves as a prime case study of the new dangers facing the assisted living industry and the people they serve. The Dallas-based company, which owns or operates more than 120 senior communities nationally, told investors on a March 31 conference call that residents at three of its facilities had tested positive for the coronavirus.

Even before those cases struck, though, the company was ailing. Its stock had plummeted 80% since late February. Last week, the company disclosed a 2019 loss of $36 million. Officials said on the conference call they had sold complexes in recent months, even before the surge of COVID-19 cases, to improve the firm’s financial cushion. Recently renegotiated leases will also help, they said.

The pandemic looks poised to exacerbate its finances further, as residents lose their ability to pay amid the faltering economy and costs rise to care for them.

And fragile economics compound the threat of the virus that rages through assisted living facilities, which are much less regulated and medically equipped than nursing homes but serve tens of thousands of America’s most vulnerable elders.

Estela Aguirre died on March 28 after being sickened by the novel coronavirus at an assisted living facility in College Station, Texas.(Courtesy of David Aguirre)

Problems Magnified

When Georgia officials inspected Capital Senior Living’s Waterford at Oakwood facility in February, their report said it “failed to provide watchful oversight consistent with the residents’ needs.”

Employees and residents told inspectors more staff was needed, and a review of the call log showed it sometimes took more than half an hour for workers to respond to residents, according to the inspection report.

Company officials said in a written statement that they can’t comment on individual cases but that “our top priority is always the safety of our residents and employees.”

The company lists at least 650 job openings on its website, many for credentialed positions such as certified nursing assistant or certified medical assistant. But a Facebook post on an Iowa facility’s website says: “If you are interested in a nursing aid position, you do NOT have to be a CNA and will be trained on site.”

With 6,300 employees, the company said, it “always has several hundred job openings.” As employees are furloughed in other industries, it said, it “has accelerated its activities to seek top talent.”

Staffing levels have grown in importance — and become harder to adequately address — in assisted living facilities as people increasingly “age in place” and try to avoid expensive nursing homes.

“In many ways, today’s assisted living residents are yesterday’s nursing home residents,” said Robyn Grant, director of public policy and advocacy at the National Consumer Voice for Quality Long-Term Care. “You have a perfect storm, with the needs increasing while [regulatory] requirements have not kept up with that.”

Grant said virtually no federal standards for assisted living exist, as they do for nursing homes. “We have a patchwork of regulation. In some states, you have more robust protections. In some, they are weak and inadequate. For residents, it is the luck of geography.”

As the pandemic grows, advocates for seniors worry that conditions will worsen as employees stop coming to work because they fear COVID-19 or must stay with children whose schools have closed. Or they may contract the coronavirus themselves.

“We’re really concerned about this when residents need more staff than ever,” said Tony Chicotel, an attorney with California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform. “We’re gonna have the opposite.”

There are more than 25,000 assisted living facilities across the country, and the median monthly cost to live in one is $4,000, according to the National Center for Assisted Living. Residents, more than half 85 or older and often with arthritis, memory problems and depression, need help with daily tasks but receive less medical attention than in a nursing home. That’s because assisted living staffs are typically smaller and the workers have less health care training than those at nursing homes. And fewer than half the states have minimum staffing regulations for assisted living communities.

Sheryl Zimmerman, a professor in the School of Social Work at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said only about half have a nurse on staff, and many workers are personal care aides, not certified nursing assistants. Staffers don’t receive as much training about things like the use of gloves and masks as do nursing home workers, even though they often help residents with eating, bathing or using the toilet.

“It’s not a health care workforce,” she said. “In general, they do not have the level of infection prevention you would hope to see.”

Staff shortages exacerbate this issue, and the surging economy and low unemployment before the pandemic meant many senior communities were already struggling to hire employees, said Amy Orlando, a Connecticut attorney specializing in elder law.

Rising wages to attract or retain workers and fierce competition fueled by a building boom a few years ago led to financial challenges at many assisted living facilities, said Beth Burnham Mace, chief economist for the National Investment Center for Seniors Housing & Care, a nonprofit research organization.

Financial Straits

Capital Senior Living is among the companies under extreme pressure.

As the company’s stock price has fallen to a few dimes, investors fear a possible bankruptcy filing, financial analysts said in interviews. They are worried new residents will stop moving in as others leave or die, hurting revenue. More than half its communities are below 90% occupancy, according to an executive on the conference call. Analysts say that level is roughly the minimum needed for profitability.

“I have confidence in our ability to continue delivering great service and a warm, caring environment to our residents,” Brandon Ribar, the company’s chief operating officer, told stock analysts on the call.

The company declined to make executives available to KHN for an interview but said it is “exercising extreme caution” and “following strict disinfecting and sanitizing guidelines.” Among the safeguards are screening anybody entering a facility and quarantining new residents for their first 14 days.

But one analyst raised a dire scenario if the pandemic worsens: the theoretical closure of facilities.

“Is there a certain rule of thumb, where if occupancy hits a certain point you just say, ‘Hey, let’s just shut down this facility, because we’re just going to lose too much money?’” Steven Valiquette, of Barclays Capital, asked executives on the conference call.

CEO Kimberly Lody, who was brought into the company last year, dismissed the concern, saying Capital Senior Living has “strong flexibility” to reduce staff and other costs if the number of residents decreases substantially at particular facilities.

Assessing The Quality Of Care

Several relatives of the facilities’ residents said they put their trust in staff members because they’ve generally been happy with their loved ones’ care.

Barry Curtis, whose 85-year-old mother, Orvaline, lives at the company’s Sugar Grove facility in Plainfield, Indiana, said he knows staffing can be a problem for communities but hasn’t seen much turnover at Sugar Grove or heard complaints about staffing from his mom. But the pandemic has revived old, haunting memories of her father telling her about pulling carts down Arkansas streets to pick up bodies during the 1918 flu.

Debbie Gilbert, whose brother Donald Bussey lives in assisted living at River Crossing in Charlestown, Indiana, said staffing has also been “pretty consistent” at the site. “They’re doing the best they can out there,” she said.

Assessing the quality of care is difficult. There’s no assisted living resource comparable to Nursing Home Compare, a federal website that includes star ratings, staffing levels and inspection results for nursing homes.

A KHN review of online inspection records in nine of the 23 states in which Capital Senior Living operates found dozens of problems in the past five years, including instances of insufficient staff, inadequate infection control and failure to screen employees for criminal violations. However, it is difficult to compare the overall quality of the company’s facilities to those of other companies within most states or around the country.

But within California, records show the company’s Garden Court at Villa Santa Barbara had 16 substantiated allegations since mid-2016, more than four times the average number among licensed facilities with at least one.

For example, inspectors last year found the facility contracted with an outside agency that could show no proof it was certified to provide home services to residents. Inspectors also found that staff members contracted to provide care had no records of training or licensing as skilled professionals such as registered nurses or licensed vocational nurses. The facility pledged to ensure staffers have basic training and that outside agencies have credentials before starting work.

The company added it has a “rigorous Quality Assurance program” and has instituted new leadership across the company that has “positively impacted operations and resident care.”

COVID-19 threatens to erode oversight and transparency even more. Long-term care ombudsmen, who traditionally went to facilities and talked to residents, now must assess care from afar because of restrictions on visitation. And COVID-19 has removed another type of helping hands and watchful eyes.

“We know when family and friends are visiting, they’re monitoring, seeing the condition of their loved ones,” Grant said. “They are now without those additional ears and those additional eyes.”

And there’s always a foreboding, a sense the virus could find its way into the facility — as it did in Texas.

“My mom was a sweet, kind person,” says David Aguirre (standing, right) of his mother, Estela Aguirre, pictured with her family. “People really felt like they’d known her for 100 years. She was just that kind of soul.”(Courtesy of David Aguirre)

Aguirre said his mom was in relatively good health for her age. She had memory problems, congestive heart failure and Parkinson’s disease, but her symptoms were mild.

Aguirre said his family was pleased with the care she got at the Waterford. The Brazos County Health Department said the facility had taken steps to prevent the spread of COVID-19 by restricting visitors, screening staff and using “enhanced cleaning procedures.”

“I still hold very high praise for the staff in the facility,” Aguirre said. “They’re doing all they can with everything they’ve got.”

By the time a hospital doctor broke the news to Aguirre of his mother’s positive COVID-19 test, there was no way to save her because her lungs were so badly damaged.

The doctor offered him the chance to say goodbye if he wore protective equipment.

But Aguirre, 67, said he feared being sickened by the virus or spreading it to his family.

So he missed seeing her draw her last breath.

COVID-19 Crisis Threatens Beleaguered Assisted Living Industry published first on https://nootropicspowdersupplier.tumblr.com/

[dinafbrownil]

COVID-19 Crisis Threatens Beleaguered Assisted Living Industry

David Aguirre jumped in his truck and drove toward the hospital in the predawn darkness the minute he got the news: His 91-year-old mom was being rushed from her Texas assisted living facility to the emergency room.

Estela Aguirre would be one of five residents to die and six others to be sickened by the novel coronavirus at The Waterford at College Station, part of a financially strapped chain of assisted living sites called Capital Senior Living.

“My mom was a sweet, kind person. People really felt like they’d known her for 100 years. She was just that kind of soul,” said Aguirre, who lost his mother on March 28. “Some days, I’ll sit down and have my heart cry.”

Assisted living complexes, home to more than 800,000 people nationwide, have quickly become a new and dangerous theater in the coronavirus war. Challenged by deepening financial pressures, sicker residents, limited oversight and too few employees, they now face a crisis that could force companies into bankruptcy, roil the industry and even close some facilities — putting frail seniors at greater-than-ever risk.

More than 700 cases of COVID-19 at assisted living facilities had been reported in at least 29 states as of Wednesday, according to public health authorities and news organizations.

Email Sign-Up

Subscribe to KHN’s free Morning Briefing.

Sign Up

Please confirm your email address below:

Sign Up

Capital Senior Living serves as a prime case study of the new dangers facing the assisted living industry and the people they serve. The Dallas-based company, which owns or operates more than 120 senior communities nationally, told investors on a March 31 conference call that residents at three of its facilities had tested positive for the coronavirus.

Even before those cases struck, though, the company was ailing. Its stock had plummeted 80% since late February. Last week, the company disclosed a 2019 loss of $36 million. Officials said on the conference call they had sold complexes in recent months, even before the surge of COVID-19 cases, to improve the firm’s financial cushion. Recently renegotiated leases will also help, they said.

The pandemic looks poised to exacerbate its finances further, as residents lose their ability to pay amid the faltering economy and costs rise to care for them.

And fragile economics compound the threat of the virus that rages through assisted living facilities, which are much less regulated and medically equipped than nursing homes but serve tens of thousands of America’s most vulnerable elders.

Estela Aguirre died on March 28 after being sickened by the novel coronavirus at an assisted living facility in College Station, Texas.(Courtesy of David Aguirre)

Problems Magnified

When Georgia officials inspected Capital Senior Living’s Waterford at Oakwood facility in February, their report said it “failed to provide watchful oversight consistent with the residents’ needs.”

Employees and residents told inspectors more staff was needed, and a review of the call log showed it sometimes took more than half an hour for workers to respond to residents, according to the inspection report.

Company officials said in a written statement that they can’t comment on individual cases but that “our top priority is always the safety of our residents and employees.”

The company lists at least 650 job openings on its website, many for credentialed positions such as certified nursing assistant or certified medical assistant. But a Facebook post on an Iowa facility’s website says: “If you are interested in a nursing aid position, you do NOT have to be a CNA and will be trained on site.”

With 6,300 employees, the company said, it “always has several hundred job openings.” As employees are furloughed in other industries, it said, it “has accelerated its activities to seek top talent.”

Staffing levels have grown in importance — and become harder to adequately address — in assisted living facilities as people increasingly “age in place” and try to avoid expensive nursing homes.

“In many ways, today’s assisted living residents are yesterday’s nursing home residents,” said Robyn Grant, director of public policy and advocacy at the National Consumer Voice for Quality Long-Term Care. “You have a perfect storm, with the needs increasing while [regulatory] requirements have not kept up with that.”

Grant said virtually no federal standards for assisted living exist, as they do for nursing homes. “We have a patchwork of regulation. In some states, you have more robust protections. In some, they are weak and inadequate. For residents, it is the luck of geography.”

As the pandemic grows, advocates for seniors worry that conditions will worsen as employees stop coming to work because they fear COVID-19 or must stay with children whose schools have closed. Or they may contract the coronavirus themselves.

“We’re really concerned about this when residents need more staff than ever,” said Tony Chicotel, an attorney with California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform. “We’re gonna have the opposite.”

There are more than 25,000 assisted living facilities across the country, and the median monthly cost to live in one is $4,000, according to the National Center for Assisted Living. Residents, more than half 85 or older and often with arthritis, memory problems and depression, need help with daily tasks but receive less medical attention than in a nursing home. That’s because assisted living staffs are typically smaller and the workers have less health care training than those at nursing homes. And fewer than half the states have minimum staffing regulations for assisted living communities.

Sheryl Zimmerman, a professor in the School of Social Work at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said only about half have a nurse on staff, and many workers are personal care aides, not certified nursing assistants. Staffers don’t receive as much training about things like the use of gloves and masks as do nursing home workers, even though they often help residents with eating, bathing or using the toilet.

“It’s not a health care workforce,” she said. “In general, they do not have the level of infection prevention you would hope to see.”

Staff shortages exacerbate this issue, and the surging economy and low unemployment before the pandemic meant many senior communities were already struggling to hire employees, said Amy Orlando, a Connecticut attorney specializing in elder law.

Rising wages to attract or retain workers and fierce competition fueled by a building boom a few years ago led to financial challenges at many assisted living facilities, said Beth Burnham Mace, chief economist for the National Investment Center for Seniors Housing & Care, a nonprofit research organization.

Financial Straits

Capital Senior Living is among the companies under extreme pressure.

As the company’s stock price has fallen to a few dimes, investors fear a possible bankruptcy filing, financial analysts said in interviews. They are worried new residents will stop moving in as others leave or die, hurting revenue. More than half its communities are below 90% occupancy, according to an executive on the conference call. Analysts say that level is roughly the minimum needed for profitability.

“I have confidence in our ability to continue delivering great service and a warm, caring environment to our residents,” Brandon Ribar, the company’s chief operating officer, told stock analysts on the call.

The company declined to make executives available to KHN for an interview but said it is “exercising extreme caution” and “following strict disinfecting and sanitizing guidelines.” Among the safeguards are screening anybody entering a facility and quarantining new residents for their first 14 days.

But one analyst raised a dire scenario if the pandemic worsens: the theoretical closure of facilities.

“Is there a certain rule of thumb, where if occupancy hits a certain point you just say, ‘Hey, let’s just shut down this facility, because we’re just going to lose too much money?’” Steven Valiquette, of Barclays Capital, asked executives on the conference call.

CEO Kimberly Lody, who was brought into the company last year, dismissed the concern, saying Capital Senior Living has “strong flexibility” to reduce staff and other costs if the number of residents decreases substantially at particular facilities.

Assessing The Quality Of Care

Several relatives of the facilities’ residents said they put their trust in staff members because they’ve generally been happy with their loved ones’ care.

Barry Curtis, whose 85-year-old mother, Orvaline, lives at the company’s Sugar Grove facility in Plainfield, Indiana, said he knows staffing can be a problem for communities but hasn’t seen much turnover at Sugar Grove or heard complaints about staffing from his mom. But the pandemic has revived old, haunting memories of her father telling her about pulling carts down Arkansas streets to pick up bodies during the 1918 flu.

Debbie Gilbert, whose brother Donald Bussey lives in assisted living at River Crossing in Charlestown, Indiana, said staffing has also been “pretty consistent” at the site. “They’re doing the best they can out there,” she said.

Assessing the quality of care is difficult. There’s no assisted living resource comparable to Nursing Home Compare, a federal website that includes star ratings, staffing levels and inspection results for nursing homes.

A KHN review of online inspection records in nine of the 23 states in which Capital Senior Living operates found dozens of problems in the past five years, including instances of insufficient staff, inadequate infection control and failure to screen employees for criminal violations. However, it is difficult to compare the overall quality of the company’s facilities to those of other companies within most states or around the country.

But within California, records show the company’s Garden Court at Villa Santa Barbara had 16 substantiated allegations since mid-2016, more than four times the average number among licensed facilities with at least one.

For example, inspectors last year found the facility contracted with an outside agency that could show no proof it was certified to provide home services to residents. Inspectors also found that staff members contracted to provide care had no records of training or licensing as skilled professionals such as registered nurses or licensed vocational nurses. The facility pledged to ensure staffers have basic training and that outside agencies have credentials before starting work.

The company added it has a “rigorous Quality Assurance program” and has instituted new leadership across the company that has “positively impacted operations and resident care.”

COVID-19 threatens to erode oversight and transparency even more. Long-term care ombudsmen, who traditionally went to facilities and talked to residents, now must assess care from afar because of restrictions on visitation. And COVID-19 has removed another type of helping hands and watchful eyes.

“We know when family and friends are visiting, they’re monitoring, seeing the condition of their loved ones,” Grant said. “They are now without those additional ears and those additional eyes.”

And there’s always a foreboding, a sense the virus could find its way into the facility — as it did in Texas.

“My mom was a sweet, kind person,” says David Aguirre (standing, right) of his mother, Estela Aguirre, pictured with her family. “People really felt like they’d known her for 100 years. She was just that kind of soul.”(Courtesy of David Aguirre)

Aguirre said his mom was in relatively good health for her age. She had memory problems, congestive heart failure and Parkinson’s disease, but her symptoms were mild.

Aguirre said his family was pleased with the care she got at the Waterford. The Brazos County Health Department said the facility had taken steps to prevent the spread of COVID-19 by restricting visitors, screening staff and using “enhanced cleaning procedures.”

“I still hold very high praise for the staff in the facility,” Aguirre said. “They’re doing all they can with everything they’ve got.”

By the time a hospital doctor broke the news to Aguirre of his mother’s positive COVID-19 test, there was no way to save her because her lungs were so badly damaged.

The doctor offered him the chance to say goodbye if he wore protective equipment.

But Aguirre, 67, said he feared being sickened by the virus or spreading it to his family.

So he missed seeing her draw her last breath.

from Updates By Dina https://khn.org/news/covid-19-crisis-threatens-beleaguered-assisted-living-industry/

[stephenmccull]

COVID-19 Crisis Threatens Beleaguered Assisted Living Industry

David Aguirre jumped in his truck and drove toward the hospital in the predawn darkness the minute he got the news: His 91-year-old mom was being rushed from her Texas assisted living facility to the emergency room.

Estela Aguirre would be one of five residents to die and six others to be sickened by the novel coronavirus at The Waterford at College Station, part of a financially strapped chain of assisted living sites called Capital Senior Living.

“My mom was a sweet, kind person. People really felt like they’d known her for 100 years. She was just that kind of soul,” said Aguirre, who lost his mother on March 28. “Some days, I’ll sit down and have my heart cry.”

Assisted living complexes, home to more than 800,000 people nationwide, have quickly become a new and dangerous theater in the coronavirus war. Challenged by deepening financial pressures, sicker residents, limited oversight and too few employees, they now face a crisis that could force companies into bankruptcy, roil the industry and even close some facilities — putting frail seniors at greater-than-ever risk.

More than 700 cases of COVID-19 at assisted living facilities had been reported in at least 29 states as of Wednesday, according to public health authorities and news organizations.

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Capital Senior Living serves as a prime case study of the new dangers facing the assisted living industry and the people they serve. The Dallas-based company, which owns or operates more than 120 senior communities nationally, told investors on a March 31 conference call that residents at three of its facilities had tested positive for the coronavirus.

Even before those cases struck, though, the company was ailing. Its stock had plummeted 80% since late February. Last week, the company disclosed a 2019 loss of $36 million. Officials said on the conference call they had sold complexes in recent months, even before the surge of COVID-19 cases, to improve the firm’s financial cushion. Recently renegotiated leases will also help, they said.

The pandemic looks poised to exacerbate its finances further, as residents lose their ability to pay amid the faltering economy and costs rise to care for them.

And fragile economics compound the threat of the virus that rages through assisted living facilities, which are much less regulated and medically equipped than nursing homes but serve tens of thousands of America’s most vulnerable elders.

Estela Aguirre died on March 28 after being sickened by the novel coronavirus at an assisted living facility in College Station, Texas.(Courtesy of David Aguirre)

Problems Magnified

When Georgia officials inspected Capital Senior Living’s Waterford at Oakwood facility in February, their report said it “failed to provide watchful oversight consistent with the residents’ needs.”

Employees and residents told inspectors more staff was needed, and a review of the call log showed it sometimes took more than half an hour for workers to respond to residents, according to the inspection report.

Company officials said in a written statement that they can’t comment on individual cases but that “our top priority is always the safety of our residents and employees.”

The company lists at least 650 job openings on its website, many for credentialed positions such as certified nursing assistant or certified medical assistant. But a Facebook post on an Iowa facility’s website says: “If you are interested in a nursing aid position, you do NOT have to be a CNA and will be trained on site.”

With 6,300 employees, the company said, it “always has several hundred job openings.” As employees are furloughed in other industries, it said, it “has accelerated its activities to seek top talent.”

Staffing levels have grown in importance — and become harder to adequately address — in assisted living facilities as people increasingly “age in place” and try to avoid expensive nursing homes.

“In many ways, today’s assisted living residents are yesterday’s nursing home residents,” said Robyn Grant, director of public policy and advocacy at the National Consumer Voice for Quality Long-Term Care. “You have a perfect storm, with the needs increasing while [regulatory] requirements have not kept up with that.”

Grant said virtually no federal standards for assisted living exist, as they do for nursing homes. “We have a patchwork of regulation. In some states, you have more robust protections. In some, they are weak and inadequate. For residents, it is the luck of geography.”

As the pandemic grows, advocates for seniors worry that conditions will worsen as employees stop coming to work because they fear COVID-19 or must stay with children whose schools have closed. Or they may contract the coronavirus themselves.

“We’re really concerned about this when residents need more staff than ever,” said Tony Chicotel, an attorney with California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform. “We’re gonna have the opposite.”

There are more than 25,000 assisted living facilities across the country, and the median monthly cost to live in one is $4,000, according to the National Center for Assisted Living. Residents, more than half 85 or older and often with arthritis, memory problems and depression, need help with daily tasks but receive less medical attention than in a nursing home. That’s because assisted living staffs are typically smaller and the workers have less health care training than those at nursing homes. And fewer than half the states have minimum staffing regulations for assisted living communities.

Sheryl Zimmerman, a professor in the School of Social Work at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said only about half have a nurse on staff, and many workers are personal care aides, not certified nursing assistants. Staffers don’t receive as much training about things like the use of gloves and masks as do nursing home workers, even though they often help residents with eating, bathing or using the toilet.

“It’s not a health care workforce,” she said. “In general, they do not have the level of infection prevention you would hope to see.”

Staff shortages exacerbate this issue, and the surging economy and low unemployment before the pandemic meant many senior communities were already struggling to hire employees, said Amy Orlando, a Connecticut attorney specializing in elder law.

Rising wages to attract or retain workers and fierce competition fueled by a building boom a few years ago led to financial challenges at many assisted living facilities, said Beth Burnham Mace, chief economist for the National Investment Center for Seniors Housing & Care, a nonprofit research organization.

Financial Straits

Capital Senior Living is among the companies under extreme pressure.

As the company’s stock price has fallen to a few dimes, investors fear a possible bankruptcy filing, financial analysts said in interviews. They are worried new residents will stop moving in as others leave or die, hurting revenue. More than half its communities are below 90% occupancy, according to an executive on the conference call. Analysts say that level is roughly the minimum needed for profitability.

“I have confidence in our ability to continue delivering great service and a warm, caring environment to our residents,” Brandon Ribar, the company’s chief operating officer, told stock analysts on the call.

The company declined to make executives available to KHN for an interview but said it is “exercising extreme caution” and “following strict disinfecting and sanitizing guidelines.” Among the safeguards are screening anybody entering a facility and quarantining new residents for their first 14 days.

But one analyst raised a dire scenario if the pandemic worsens: the theoretical closure of facilities.

“Is there a certain rule of thumb, where if occupancy hits a certain point you just say, ‘Hey, let’s just shut down this facility, because we’re just going to lose too much money?’” Steven Valiquette, of Barclays Capital, asked executives on the conference call.

CEO Kimberly Lody, who was brought into the company last year, dismissed the concern, saying Capital Senior Living has “strong flexibility” to reduce staff and other costs if the number of residents decreases substantially at particular facilities.

Assessing The Quality Of Care

Several relatives of the facilities’ residents said they put their trust in staff members because they’ve generally been happy with their loved ones’ care.

Barry Curtis, whose 85-year-old mother, Orvaline, lives at the company’s Sugar Grove facility in Plainfield, Indiana, said he knows staffing can be a problem for communities but hasn’t seen much turnover at Sugar Grove or heard complaints about staffing from his mom. But the pandemic has revived old, haunting memories of her father telling her about pulling carts down Arkansas streets to pick up bodies during the 1918 flu.

Debbie Gilbert, whose brother Donald Bussey lives in assisted living at River Crossing in Charlestown, Indiana, said staffing has also been “pretty consistent” at the site. “They’re doing the best they can out there,” she said.

Assessing the quality of care is difficult. There’s no assisted living resource comparable to Nursing Home Compare, a federal website that includes star ratings, staffing levels and inspection results for nursing homes.

A KHN review of online inspection records in nine of the 23 states in which Capital Senior Living operates found dozens of problems in the past five years, including instances of insufficient staff, inadequate infection control and failure to screen employees for criminal violations. However, it is difficult to compare the overall quality of the company’s facilities to those of other companies within most states or around the country.

But within California, records show the company’s Garden Court at Villa Santa Barbara had 16 substantiated allegations since mid-2016, more than four times the average number among licensed facilities with at least one.

For example, inspectors last year found the facility contracted with an outside agency that could show no proof it was certified to provide home services to residents. Inspectors also found that staff members contracted to provide care had no records of training or licensing as skilled professionals such as registered nurses or licensed vocational nurses. The facility pledged to ensure staffers have basic training and that outside agencies have credentials before starting work.

The company added it has a “rigorous Quality Assurance program” and has instituted new leadership across the company that has “positively impacted operations and resident care.”

COVID-19 threatens to erode oversight and transparency even more. Long-term care ombudsmen, who traditionally went to facilities and talked to residents, now must assess care from afar because of restrictions on visitation. And COVID-19 has removed another type of helping hands and watchful eyes.

“We know when family and friends are visiting, they’re monitoring, seeing the condition of their loved ones,” Grant said. “They are now without those additional ears and those additional eyes.”

And there’s always a foreboding, a sense the virus could find its way into the facility — as it did in Texas.

“My mom was a sweet, kind person,” says David Aguirre (standing, right) of his mother, Estela Aguirre, pictured with her family. “People really felt like they’d known her for 100 years. She was just that kind of soul.”(Courtesy of David Aguirre)

Aguirre said his mom was in relatively good health for her age. She had memory problems, congestive heart failure and Parkinson’s disease, but her symptoms were mild.

Aguirre said his family was pleased with the care she got at the Waterford. The Brazos County Health Department said the facility had taken steps to prevent the spread of COVID-19 by restricting visitors, screening staff and using “enhanced cleaning procedures.”

“I still hold very high praise for the staff in the facility,” Aguirre said. “They’re doing all they can with everything they’ve got.”

By the time a hospital doctor broke the news to Aguirre of his mother’s positive COVID-19 test, there was no way to save her because her lungs were so badly damaged.

The doctor offered him the chance to say goodbye if he wore protective equipment.

But Aguirre, 67, said he feared being sickened by the virus or spreading it to his family.

So he missed seeing her draw her last breath.

COVID-19 Crisis Threatens Beleaguered Assisted Living Industry published first on https://smartdrinkingweb.weebly.com/

[airoasis]

My First Semester with the iPad Pro 11 inch: Student's Review

New Post has been published on https://hititem.kr/my-first-semester-with-the-ipad-pro-11-inch-students-review/

My First Semester with the iPad Pro 11 inch: Student's Review

Hiya guys that is Paul and that i simply finished up my first semester of my freshman year of institution and ever considering the iPad pro got here out in early November i have been using it as my main gadget for university and that i love it! In the pas,t I’ve tried utilizing just about each gadget available in the market for institution however I on no account used something that’s been equipped to essentially trade the way I realized in this kind of huge method which the iPad pro has been ready to do. In order a university pupil, i am taking notes at all times and my favorite process of notetaking is by means of hand considering that if I sort my notes on the pc I just form of zone out and replica down what’s in front of me with out truely paying awareness to what’s happening in the category.I also like having the ability to sort of write out what I visualize in my head in a logical approach that i’m gonna have an understanding of later and also you simply cannot do that when you’re typing your notes. If i am pressed for time, I would make a decision to sort out my notes, but more often than not, I prefer doing them by way of hand. So for the first few months of college, I was once taking my notes just the historical-school way, simply in spiral-certain notebooks, however when the iPad pro came out in November, I made up our minds to provide it a shot and i do not consider i am gonna switch again every time soon. I decided to buy Notability to take all my notes in, I consider it was round $8, and that i heard that GoodNotes is an extra wellknown choice and there is almost always just a few free apps out there which are first rate for word-taking however I determined to go with Notability because I’ve heard nothing but first-class matters about it and that i figured i couldn’t go mistaken with it.And the primary time I truely sat down at school, pulled up Notability, and used my iPad to take notes with, I saw immediate benefits. That will virtually go back and look at that first page of notes I took and you can see that at the beginning, I used the iPad identical to i would use a normal pen and paper, just writing down what I proposal used to be crucial. However as the class went on I started messing round with a few of the elements within the app and that is after I fairly started to fall in love with taking notes on the iPad. I began making use of one-of-a-kind colours to aid me distinguish what I was doing and that i variety of created my possess form of color scheme that i ended up sticking with for the rest of the semester. So i exploit the colour black for normal, simply style of informational notes. I take advantage of purple for key information, green for instance problems given in class, blue for my solutions to these problems, orange for the instructor’s way to the problems, and red for any questions that I could need to ask later. I spotted that taking notes on this method kept me so much more engaged in school on the grounds that I used to be invariably pondering of what we were doing and what color I wanted to be utilising.But more importantly, it made my notes so much easier to learn when I went again to review them later in view that the whole lot was once colour coded and i knew what I used to be watching at instantly. So i do know some of you perhaps thinking that you would just do the identical factor on paper with extraordinary colored pens, and i suppose that would work, you’d nonetheless must fumble round with the entire exclusive pens in school and lift them round all day, however you additionally would not get any of the further advantages which i am about to speak about. The new Apple Pencil, the Apple Pencil 2, has this really cool function where in the event you double tap the facet of the pencil, it switches the writing device that you are using. So if I used to be writing whatever and that i messed something up I could just double tap to change to the eraser software, erase what I simply wrote, and double tap once more to change again to the pen.Again after I took notes on paper, i might become with scribbled out notes far and wide the page so it can be great that i don’t ought to deal with that on the iPad. The Apple Pencil itself is relatively quality. I love the matte finish that they went with this yr and it has a really nice weight to it so it feels satisfactory within the hand. Now some humans do not truely just like the physical sensation of writing on a monitor however i don’t mind it in any respect, I believe it feels fine, so i might say if you are concerned about that, i would endorse going to the Apple retailer and trying it in the market. An additional improvement of digital be aware-taking is the potential to speedily move around and resize something that you’ve got written. So for example, should you desired to return and add anything into something you have already written down, which you can just use the cut device and description probably the most text and pull it right down to make room for anything else that you want to put in writing.And preserve in mind that even as i am talking about my expertise with the Notability app, these are beautiful common points that I consider can be on hand to most observe-taking apps available in the market. But my favorite and i think probably the most useful feature that i take advantage of on a every day foundation is whatever called word Replay. So for those who faucet the little microphone in the prime correct nook of Notability, it starts recording utilizing the built-in mic on the iPad. So I suggestion that used to be pretty cool, I could go back and listen to what occurred in class that day. However once I went again to play it later that day, I saw that it synchronized my writing with what the teacher used to be announcing in school so I would see precisely what I was writing whilst the teacher was talking. In actual fact, this permits me to check the entire category if I wanted to take action, which is an highly priceless finding out instrument for me. And there are much more advantages that include taking notes on the iPad.That you can again your notes as much as the cloud so you can continually have access to them on your whole instruments, i’ve mine backed as much as Google drive, that you would be able to also seamlessly just take a photo and insert it straight into your notes, you can share your notes with classmates just by way of email, and a lot extra that make this, for my part, the first-rate option to take notes in the market. And the whole thing I simply talked about can technically be done on the 9 factor seven inch, simply base model iPad, so you don’t relatively want the eight hundred greenback iPad professional to do this, but there are a few advantages that include this heftier price tag. First off, I consider the 11 inch measurement is best. I was once fairly torn between the eleven inch and the 13 inch when this was once first announced but i am rather completely happy I went with the eleven inch due to the fact that it’s definitely big ample to take notes on, handwritten notes, I had no main issue with that , but it is usually small enough to use like a common pill.It is at ease adequate to keep in a single hand, but also massive adequate for break up-screen use, which I used at all times with my schoolwork. And if you wish to watch films or videos on this thing, consume any style of media, it can be undoubtedly huge sufficient for that as good. I’m additionally a enormous fan of the one hundred twenty Hertz so-known as "pro movement" show, which truly implies that this display refreshes at twice the price of most different monitors out there. And this is relatively primary for observe-taking in detailed given that it makes handwriting your notes just that rather more typical since there may be nearly no delay between your enter and what indicates up on the screen. So that is my experience utilising the iPad pro for school. Now there is so much extra to this gadget, I comprehend it’s an incredibly strong tablet, Jonathan from TLD at present made a exceptional video displaying how this is even competent to edit 4k pictures, which is ridiculous, however I also believe it can be a nice studying software for any pupils available in the market.It maintains me extra engaged in my classes, it makes my notes far more comprehensible, and i’m ready to go back and almost replay each single category, and for me, that makes it valued at the hefty fee tag. If you are in the iPad professional, I think it’s about $forty off on Amazon at the time of this recording, so i will go away a link for that within the description beneath. I additionally get a ton of questions about what equipment i exploit to make my videos, so I’ve began linking all my gear in the descriptions of all my movies, and people are Amazon affiliate links, so if you buy some thing by way of a type of links, I get a small percent back and it rather helps the channel out. Anyhow, should you liked this video, leaving a thumbs up could be greatly preferred, and i will seize you guys in my subsequent video.Deuces, baby. .

[batterymonster2021]

My First Semester with the iPad Pro 11 inch: Student's Review

New Post has been published on https://hititem.kr/my-first-semester-with-the-ipad-pro-11-inch-students-review/

My First Semester with the iPad Pro 11 inch: Student's Review

Hiya guys that is Paul and that i simply finished up my first semester of my freshman year of institution and ever considering the iPad pro got here out in early November i have been using it as my main gadget for university and that i love it! In the pas,t I’ve tried utilizing just about each gadget available in the market for institution however I on no account used something that’s been equipped to essentially trade the way I realized in this kind of huge method which the iPad pro has been ready to do. In order a university pupil, i am taking notes at all times and my favorite process of notetaking is by means of hand considering that if I sort my notes on the pc I just form of zone out and replica down what’s in front of me with out truely paying awareness to what’s happening in the category.I also like having the ability to sort of write out what I visualize in my head in a logical approach that i’m gonna have an understanding of later and also you simply cannot do that when you’re typing your notes. If i am pressed for time, I would make a decision to sort out my notes, but more often than not, I prefer doing them by way of hand. So for the first few months of college, I was once taking my notes just the historical-school way, simply in spiral-certain notebooks, however when the iPad pro came out in November, I made up our minds to provide it a shot and i do not consider i am gonna switch again every time soon. I decided to buy Notability to take all my notes in, I consider it was round $8, and that i heard that GoodNotes is an extra wellknown choice and there is almost always just a few free apps out there which are first rate for word-taking however I determined to go with Notability because I’ve heard nothing but first-class matters about it and that i figured i couldn’t go mistaken with it.And the primary time I truely sat down at school, pulled up Notability, and used my iPad to take notes with, I saw immediate benefits. That will virtually go back and look at that first page of notes I took and you can see that at the beginning, I used the iPad identical to i would use a normal pen and paper, just writing down what I proposal used to be crucial. However as the class went on I started messing round with a few of the elements within the app and that is after I fairly started to fall in love with taking notes on the iPad. I began making use of one-of-a-kind colours to aid me distinguish what I was doing and that i variety of created my possess form of color scheme that i ended up sticking with for the rest of the semester. So i exploit the colour black for normal, simply style of informational notes. I take advantage of purple for key information, green for instance problems given in class, blue for my solutions to these problems, orange for the instructor’s way to the problems, and red for any questions that I could need to ask later. I spotted that taking notes on this method kept me so much more engaged in school on the grounds that I used to be invariably pondering of what we were doing and what color I wanted to be utilising.But more importantly, it made my notes so much easier to learn when I went again to review them later in view that the whole lot was once colour coded and i knew what I used to be watching at instantly. So i do know some of you perhaps thinking that you would just do the identical factor on paper with extraordinary colored pens, and i suppose that would work, you’d nonetheless must fumble round with the entire exclusive pens in school and lift them round all day, however you additionally would not get any of the further advantages which i am about to speak about. The new Apple Pencil, the Apple Pencil 2, has this really cool function where in the event you double tap the facet of the pencil, it switches the writing device that you are using. So if I used to be writing whatever and that i messed something up I could just double tap to change to the eraser software, erase what I simply wrote, and double tap once more to change again to the pen.Again after I took notes on paper, i might become with scribbled out notes far and wide the page so it can be great that i don’t ought to deal with that on the iPad. The Apple Pencil itself is relatively quality. I love the matte finish that they went with this yr and it has a really nice weight to it so it feels satisfactory within the hand. Now some humans do not truely just like the physical sensation of writing on a monitor however i don’t mind it in any respect, I believe it feels fine, so i might say if you are concerned about that, i would endorse going to the Apple retailer and trying it in the market. An additional improvement of digital be aware-taking is the potential to speedily move around and resize something that you’ve got written. So for example, should you desired to return and add anything into something you have already written down, which you can just use the cut device and description probably the most text and pull it right down to make room for anything else that you want to put in writing.And preserve in mind that even as i am talking about my expertise with the Notability app, these are beautiful common points that I consider can be on hand to most observe-taking apps available in the market. But my favorite and i think probably the most useful feature that i take advantage of on a every day foundation is whatever called word Replay. So for those who faucet the little microphone in the prime correct nook of Notability, it starts recording utilizing the built-in mic on the iPad. So I suggestion that used to be pretty cool, I could go back and listen to what occurred in class that day. However once I went again to play it later that day, I saw that it synchronized my writing with what the teacher used to be announcing in school so I would see precisely what I was writing whilst the teacher was talking. In actual fact, this permits me to check the entire category if I wanted to take action, which is an highly priceless finding out instrument for me. And there are much more advantages that include taking notes on the iPad.That you can again your notes as much as the cloud so you can continually have access to them on your whole instruments, i’ve mine backed as much as Google drive, that you would be able to also seamlessly just take a photo and insert it straight into your notes, you can share your notes with classmates just by way of email, and a lot extra that make this, for my part, the first-rate option to take notes in the market. And the whole thing I simply talked about can technically be done on the 9 factor seven inch, simply base model iPad, so you don’t relatively want the eight hundred greenback iPad professional to do this, but there are a few advantages that include this heftier price tag. First off, I consider the 11 inch measurement is best. I was once fairly torn between the eleven inch and the 13 inch when this was once first announced but i am rather completely happy I went with the eleven inch due to the fact that it’s definitely big ample to take notes on, handwritten notes, I had no main issue with that , but it is usually small enough to use like a common pill.It is at ease adequate to keep in a single hand, but also massive adequate for break up-screen use, which I used at all times with my schoolwork. And if you wish to watch films or videos on this thing, consume any style of media, it can be undoubtedly huge sufficient for that as good. I’m additionally a enormous fan of the one hundred twenty Hertz so-known as "pro movement" show, which truly implies that this display refreshes at twice the price of most different monitors out there. And this is relatively primary for observe-taking in detailed given that it makes handwriting your notes just that rather more typical since there may be nearly no delay between your enter and what indicates up on the screen. So that is my experience utilising the iPad pro for school. Now there is so much extra to this gadget, I comprehend it’s an incredibly strong tablet, Jonathan from TLD at present made a exceptional video displaying how this is even competent to edit 4k pictures, which is ridiculous, however I also believe it can be a nice studying software for any pupils available in the market.It maintains me extra engaged in my classes, it makes my notes far more comprehensible, and i’m ready to go back and almost replay each single category, and for me, that makes it valued at the hefty fee tag. If you are in the iPad professional, I think it’s about $forty off on Amazon at the time of this recording, so i will go away a link for that within the description beneath. I additionally get a ton of questions about what equipment i exploit to make my videos, so I’ve began linking all my gear in the descriptions of all my movies, and people are Amazon affiliate links, so if you buy some thing by way of a type of links, I get a small percent back and it rather helps the channel out. Anyhow, should you liked this video, leaving a thumbs up could be greatly preferred, and i will seize you guys in my subsequent video.Deuces, baby. .