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fandomwritingbit · 2 years ago

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I don't know about you, but tests and all that scary stuff is coming around for me next week, and all year I've been having horrible little thoughts about William lately.

So get this, lets say you actually study for that type of stuff (i know i don't) and you just can't get the information to stick in your head!

✨Magically!✨ You or Will, idrc comes up with the bright idea on how to get it to stick in your head by sitting on his dick and reading or going over whatever you've gotta remember

i might've read this somewhere butttttt, i'm a needy little whore at 1 am lets goooo

Before I forget, I love your fics and I have never submitted one before so...! As usual, drink your water, eat some food, and remember to get rest! unlike some of us Lastly, don't forget to sexualize your favorite old man/woman/other

Hi, thanks for the request, this one was an absolute joy to recieve, I love all your little asides lol. Please feel free to send others!

Exams season is a killer and I really hope you get what you want out of it, just remember that tests and numbers and shit don't define you as a person Xx

That being said, whilst this may not be the most optimal way to study, its certainly the most enjoyable...

william afton x (gn)reader

A/N- Reader's between 18 and early 20s. William is a neighbour, for my plot convenience lmao.

You're sitting at the kitchen table to do some studying today, rather than barricaded in your room as usual. You'd read something online about a change of scenery being good for remembering stuff and because your parents were out it seemed a good opportunity.

With each passing minute, you dawned to the conclusion that that post was bollocks because it wasn't working.

You had your laptop open in front of you, surrounded by a frankly obnoxious amount of papers, trying to wrap your head around content for an exam tomorrow. But each time you wrote a line it was like your mind was rubbed blank, Men in Black style. It was so frustrating, and you knew you should have done it earlier but, good god, why was it so hard to remember anything?

So engrossed in feeling inadequate, you flip the laptop shut angrily, tilting your head back so it touched the chair in anguish. Defeated. It was as you did this that you clocked a figure in the kitchen doorway, making your body jerk up-right and turn round in one fluid moment.

Keep reading

"Mr Afton, how long hav- what are you doing here?" you blurt out, quick to try and compose yourself, you weren't physically or mentally ready for guests, especially ones you'd been casually hooking up with since you moved back home.

"Just dropping this off for your dad. I didn't want to interrupt cos you seem to be... trying not to cry?"

He laughed as he said the last part, moving over towards you and helping himself to a chair. Pushing all your papers to the side without asking. "What's wrong then, been missing me?"

Usually you'd laugh at that but you just shrug at him, half angry at his expression and half at your situation. "You know, I could fucking cry." You do manage a laugh, but its shaky, "Because I'm going to fucking fail this fucking exam because I can't drill any of this shit through my fucking thick fucking skull." You rattle off quickly, each use of 'fucking' harsher than the last.

...

You hadn't really meant to let any of that out. But frustration had taken hold a bit too strongly there.

Afton just stared at you for a few seconds, his lips pressed into a hard line and you could tell he was trying not to laugh at you. You were a bit unsure how you'd react if he did.

After a few moments of silence you place your forehead in your hands and mutter 'sorry'.

"You're alright. Though you shouldn't be studying whilst you're upset, no wonder nothings going in."

"...If you tell me to calm down, I'll lose it." you say, head still in hands, laughing a bit at how much this was bothering you, it was an exam, a booklet of paper, what kind of melt would be this upset. Literally everyone else, you suppose. You take a deep breath.

"Right. Uh when's the test?" he asks you, half looking at a sheet of notes, his interest quickly peaked.

You laugh shortly. "9am."

"Then you've got... What, 20 hours? You've got time to calm down and revise." He put his hand on your shoulder, "You, sweetheart, need to relax."

You swat his hand away, laughing at his cockiness you could tell where this was going, "That's why you came over then? Heard dad's car door shut and your shoes were half-on I'll bet?"

He flashed you a smarmy grin, "You're not far wrong." You shake your head, messing about with this prick was the last thing you should be doing, but the first thing you needed.

"You know, if this type of revision isn't working for you... I heard that associating information with a sense can help you remember things."

You could hardly believe him, seeing you upset and still vying for what he came for. A risky move, Really. You suppose it took cojones, could have made you want to grab a hold of his, or squash them under your shoe.

"Oh yeah?" you ask sarcastically, "What are you suggesting?"

You're not sure how long it took for fresh marks to appear on your neck and your pants to be around your ankles, but you quickly find yourself sitting on his lap and letting his cock slip inside you.

As familiar as the low grunt from behind your ear was becoming, the feeling of him stretching you open always surprised you.

You raise your hips up and press back down again, moaning slightly, he let you slowly ride him for a few moments before, just as your rhythm increased, he grabbed your hips.

"Easy," his voice was thick, brushing against your neck, "You're supposed to be fucking studying."

You groan your protest, a hair away from booing him. "What is it you study again?" His question makes you laugh and you lean back against him with your back arching, causing him to grunt. He gripped your hips harder now forcing you still.

"Fuck 's sake. History."

He hummed in your ear, thinking for a minute, whilst your body throbbed around him desperate for some kind of stimulation. "And what's this on?" He could tell you were aching for something so he pushed you forwards, dragging you back, the angle allowing him to press so fucking deep.

"Come on, sweetheart."

"Civil war. Spanish."

Your gruff answer mirrored his growing frustrations.

"And uh... I don't- who won that?" The fact he couldn't move inside your tight hole was making him white-knuckled with restraint.

"-Nationalists."

With your one word answer that was enough studying for the both of you. He started to move your hips along him, letting your eager pace take over.

You knew that you were going to be up all night doing this now, but you didn't really mind.

#fnaf smut #fnaf william afton #william afton x reader #william afton x you #william afton smut #fnaf 18+

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chicaotaku-fanfics · 3 months ago

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There’s Three of You?! Pt. 9

FINALLY!!! New chapter’s here. I’m sorry for the delay, hope you enjoy it, and again, thank you for giving this story a shot!

Warnings: foul language, might be some medical inconsistencies.

CHAPTER 9

Will gave me a ride to the hospital today, we spent some hours at Molly’s last night with Jay -I told them about the baby and how I really wanted to strangle the young mother, but they both helped me calm down-, we arrived and checked on our patients, discharged the ones that needed it, and as the day started, we received one of the most complicated cases I’d ever seen.

“Trauma 4. Incoming.” said Maggie, Will and I turned to look, I grabbed my protective glasses and put them on, just like Will did. And just in time.

In came Brett, her partner, Severide and another firefighter holding the chandelier on top of our patient.

“45-year-old male, multiple penetrating injuries to the chest. GCS 12, BP's 90 over palp.” Brett gave us the rundown.

“Did you give him anything for pain?” asked Will

“We've given him 4 morphine and 500 saline.” said Brett’s partner.

“What happened?” I asked.

“Chandelier fell from about 20 feet and landed right on him.” said the Lieutenant.

“How long ago was this?” asked Will.

“Maybe 30 minutes.” answered Severide.

“Did he lose consciousness?” I asked.

“No.” answered Severide again. Now that’s impressive. I got into position, near the other firefighter and close to the patient’s head.”

“All right. Let's get ready to move 'em.” said Will.

“Very gently on my count.” we said at the same time, we looked at each other and nodded. “One, two, three.” we said again and we all lifted, placing the board on the bed.

“Ah!” the poor man moaned in agony.

“All right, can you tell me your name?” asked my brother

“Ru-Russel Ro-Rollins.” answered the patient, very clearly struggling to speak.

“Russel?” asked Connor as he walked up to the patient.

“Connor, oh, thank God. Help me.” said the man on the bed.

“All right, we're going to, bud.” said Connor

“All right, airway's in tact. Get me a set of vitals. Someone draw a gas and get a chest X ray.” ordered my brother.

“You know him?” I asked Connor.

“Since I was a kid. Russel, can you move your fingers and toes?” said Connor.

“I think.” answered Russel with difficulty.

“Where did this happen?” asked Connor.

“At the store.” said a woman’s voice, making Connor turn.

“Claire?” he asked, I turned to look at the woman, then at Connor and then back at the patient.

Not my place to pry in.

“Sat's 90. Heart rate's 124.” said my brother.

“All right, everybody, quiet.” ordered Connor, the room was engulfed in silence, only the monitors were emitting sound. “Russel, take a deep breath for me, huh?” said Connor, having put on his stethoscope and placing it gently on the patient’s left back side.

“I don't hear much on the left side. We're gonna need a chest X-ray. It's not optimal, but we're gonna do it from here.” Connor declared, I started to worry about what might happen if done wrong.

“Am I going to die?” asked Russel

“Hey, Russel, listen to me. No, you are not.” said Connor, I looked at him.

“No, you are gonna be fine, Russel. You're gonna be fine.” said the young woman.

“You have to wait over here.” said April, gently moving her to give us doctors room to work.

The X-ray machine arrived, as well as the coats, I was handed one, as well as everyone else who was close to the patient.

“All right, I'm gonna hold the plate from here. You just shoot as head on as possible, okay?” said Connor.

“Here, Russ. Listen to me. You're doing great, buddy. I just need you to keep as still as possible, please.”

“X-ray. Everyone clear?” said the technician.

“Clear.” we all answered.

The machine makes its distinctive sound, then the sound of the monitors comes back, I’m just waiting to see the result of the X-ray.

“Big hemopneumothorax with some shift. He needs a chest tube.” said my brother, he went to get the tray with the chest tube kit, when Connor pretty much took it from Will’s hands.

“I got it.” said Connor, moving the tray. “Who's the trauma attending on call?” he asked, I saw Will pretty much ripping off his gloves and glasses as he stepped out of the trauma bay, pissed off at being pretty much pushed aside from the case, I stayed behind to help if needed.

I just hope its not…

“Dr. Zanetti.” said April.

God fucking dammit.

“Page her. Tell her we need her down here right now.” ordered Connor.

“Got it.” said April.

“I'm sorry, are you family?” Maggie asked the woman.

“I'm--I'm his employer.” she answered then made a pause. “Claire Rhodes from Dolan Rhodes.” she said then.

“The department store?” asked Maggie

“Yeah.” she answered.

“Dr. Rhodes, is he–” Maggie started, but the woman Claire interrupted her.

“He's my brother.” she said.

That explains why Connor seems to want to avoid his last name… not that I would think of him any differently, he’s one hell of a good doctor.

Just then, my personal nightmare arrived.

“What are we looking at?” Zanetti asked.

“45-year-old male. Impaled glass in his left chest. Arrived hypotensive, but responded to blood and fluids. Left tension pneumo.” answered Connor from where he was finishing with the tube.

“That's a cluster.” she said.

No kidding.

“Oh, God.” I heard Claire say from outside the trauma room. One look from Zanetti and Maggie got moving.

“Ma'am, let me show you where you can wait.” said the head nurse and ushered the distraught woman away.

“Got a chest tube in on the left side.” said Connor.

“Pressure's improved. Base deficit was 8.” I said, just then Zanetti turned to look at me, clearly not expecting that I was even helping with this case.

“We need to get this thing off to see what we're dealing with. What did you sedate him with?” she asked again, turning his attention to Connor.

“Got two of Versed with the chest tube.” said the raven surgeon.

“Which one of you is in charge?” asked Zanetti.

“That's me.” answered Severide.

“I need to remove it without allowing this piece to vibrate in the slightest, so I'm thinking cuts here, here, and here.” she said, signaling the places and parts necessary.

“Yes, ma'am.” the Lieutenant answered.

Then the blonde woman turned to me.

“Hey intern girl, you’re not a surgeon, leave my trauma bay and let us real doctors work.” she said, with that damn self-satisfied smirk and her holier-than-thou attitude I despise so much. Connor’s expression, as well as April’s and Severide’s was one of pure surprise and shock.

“Oh, I’m sorry Your Majesty. First of all, I was one of the primary when the patient arrived, second of all, I’m not an intern, I’m a junior resident now.” As soon as I said that, Zanetti’s expression changed to one of surprise. “Third of all, he’s my patient too. I’m not leaving, deal with it.” I said, she looked like I had just smacked her in the face. I hold my ground.

At some point Reese came in, I didn’t want her to experience Zanetti’s horrible attitude, but there was no escaping that woman’s ego.

“I want a CTA of his chest ASAP. Figure out exactly what's bleeding.” Zanetti said.

“Got to get him on his back before we get him upstairs.” said Connor, getting one of the hand saws to cut the glass.

“Oh, you're gonna use--“ started Reese, but Zanetti cut her off in a very rude way.

“Yes, he is. Can you hold the patient steady please? Thank you.” she said in the worst possible tone.

I was holding the patient’s head, stabilizing his neck.

“Would it kill you, Dr. Zanetti, to be nice? Or is that stick you have so far up your ass that it's your default mood now?” I asked, I then heard a snort come from where Connor was standing, Zanetti looked at me like she wanted to kill me, I didn’t care.

“All right, hang in there, Russ.” said Connor, having regained his composture, turning the saw on and effectively cutting the glass.

“All right, we're gonna flip him over onto his back gently on my count. One, two, three.” Zanetti said, we all moved to reposition Russel.

“Okay.” Connor and I said at the same time.

“All right, let's start to package him up. Newbie, start a femoral line.” said the blonde surgeon. I had moved from my position at the head of the bed to be closer to the exit, but I ended right beside Reese.

Reese got the kit, but started to take too long in Zanetti’s eyes, before she could intervene in the worst way possible, I took charge.

“I got this Reese, Maggie support his neck for me please. Connor, you need any help?” I asked him, he looked at me, I moved my eyes towards Reese and then back at what I was doing, and it was enough for him to take the hint.

“I do, actually. Reese, get over here and help me splint the glass to keep it still.” he said, Reese moved over to him, they got to work. “One wrong move on the way, and he could have a massive hemorrhage.” Connor added as an afterthought, I wanted to slap him, rich guy or not.

I was finishing the line when Zanetti spoke again.

“Maggie?”

“Yep.” asked the head nurse.

“Call the blood bank. Tell them I want five more blood, five plasma, and six platelets typed and crossed.” ordered the blonde surgeon.

“Yes, ma'am.” said Maggie.

“All right, are we ready?” just as Zanetti asked, I covered the line, signaling I was done. And just like that, they rolled the patient out of the ED.

I took off my gloves and glasses, and nodded to Reese to follow me. We made it to an empty room and we both got inside. As soon as I closed the door, I turned to look at the other girl.

“Reese, you good?” I asked her.

“Who was that?” she asked.

“That would be Dr. Zanetti. The trauma surgery attending. A woman who believes that, because she’s a surgeon, she’s better than us 'mere mortals': the ED docs, interns, med students, residents, etc.” I explained, she looked down.

“She’s awful.” said Reese, I snorted.

“Yeah, she is. Don’t let her get you down. You’re talented and a very good student. You’ll make a great doctor one day.” I told her honestly, she looked up and I smiled at her. “Come one, let’s get back to work.” I said, she nodded, then placed her hand on top of mine over her shoulder.

“Thanks Dr. Halstead. I needed that.” she said, I let out the Halstead Chuckle®.

“It’s always a pleasure working with you Reese. If you ever need help with anything, I’m here for you, okay?” I asked her, she nodded, “Oh, and before I forget.” I added, Resse turned to look at me. “Call me Lilly, Dr. Halstead actually gets confusing when there’s two of us.” I say to her with a smile, and just like that, we went back to the ED.

Done! Again, I’m sorry for the delay and I’ll try to post next chapter later today.

Thanks for giving my story a go, love you all!

#fanfic #one chicago #oc #will halstead #jay halstead #halstead sister #halstead brothers #connor rhodes #chicago fire #chicago med #chicago pd #fanfiction

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somerandomgaydipstick · 25 days ago

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A List of Gripes, Misgivings, Nitpicks, and Other Criticisms of the Wilds Beta

With the beta winding down, we should all take the time to really reflect on how much we enjoyed it. Well, of course we enjoyed it. This is Monster Hunter we're talking. But the beta was, well, a beta test. Capcom dropped it to us specifically to test out Wilds, and generate feedback. This is exactly what I have today to, if they somehow see this; feedback. This is a list of gripes, nitpicks, and small misgivings about MH Wilds I have developed from my time with the beta. I would also like to hear the thought of the community at large and how they compare to my own. I played about 20 hours of it from Tuesday until Sunday, but didn't quite get to trying out all of the weapons. I do, however, have notes on most of them. While I adored the beta and am just as hype for Wilds as the next guy, the whole point of a beta is still to generate constructive community feedback. To that end, here's what I have to say:

System:

Right off the bat, sure I'm on PS5, but this game *really* needs better PC optimization. As funny as looking like a PS1 game for some people was, that simply should not be happening to so many people who have purchased a new GPU anytime in the past couple of years.

Can there please be an option to play offline even if your system is online? Thank you very much. 100 player lobbies are cool and all, but if I wanted to play a game with MMO elements like that I would play an actual MMO. It was my biggest gripe with World for most of its lifespan, and I can't help but think it's only gonna get worse with Wilds.

Environment:

I get if it was done the way it was for the sake of demonstration, but the weather shouldn't change nearly as fast as it did in the beta. It coming and going so often made it feel a lot less significant.

Gathering was for the most part cool, but had some really tedious aspects. I like the idea using the grappling hook for it, but I think that putting loot away takes way too long. Also why does zooming in automatically take the Seikret out of sprint? Can I please sprint while focusing aback the birb?

Speaking of items, the item box menu was awful. Why are all the useful functions in their own dinky little menu? Literally just give me Rise item box, or at least add a 1-button shortcut to the loadout and select stack menus.

I also think the equipment menu could be a little better. I think there should be some button that specifically goes to the loadouts menu and one that goes to the armor-by-set menu.

Fishing was way too slow. I know the whole point of fishing is patience, but I shouldn't have to wait two minutes just to catch a single Sushifish. The full game will probably have consumable baits to remedy this, but nonetheless fishing as it stood was truly agonizing.

I wish we knew about how cooking ingredients work. How do we replenish them in the full game? Do we just buy them from that little grocery stand in base camp? Do we earn them for doing optional requests? What's the deal there? Dumping a bunch of them onto us was probably the way to go for the beta, but I'm gonna be hungry for answers until the full release drops.

The pop-up camp system is really cool, I just think it needs some fine tuning. I think that monsters ought to be a little less inclined to attack "Dangerous" camps than they were in the beta, and a little more inclined to attack "Unsafe" camps.

Monsters:

Chatacabra's damage was undertuned. I know it's basically this game's drome, but I'm pretty sure Great Izuchi dealt more damage in the Rise demo than Chatacabra ever did. It only barely felt like a threat in that first quest, and that was mostly because we didn't get to eat beforehand.

Doshaguma's damage, however, was overtuned. Alpha Dosha managed to cart me more times on average than Rey Dau. If Doshaguma is sort of supposed to be the Anjanath to Rey Dau's Rathalos, that just should not be the case. Also, I think it was way too aggressive in its last phase. Felt worse than a 4th gen Furious Rajang in that regard.

Balahara was a weird mix of attacks that did way too much damage and did too little. Generally, the mud attacks were a little too strong, and the biting attacks were a too weak, but that might just be a matter of personal taste. Shouldn't the attacks by its mouth, which is a perma-wound when open, be really dangerous to present some sort of risk-reward?

The fight itself was extremely well tuned--overall the best in the beta--but I wish Rey Dau would actually use area 5 more often. I only ever saw it go up there a couple of times. Maybe make it go up there instead of 9 and 10 during the Plenty?

Weapons:

Focus mode is really cool, but trying to move independently from the camera and hold an attack at the same time is really awkward. Maybe add an option to bind Focus Mode to L3 on controllers?

Greatsword doesn't feel nearly as meaty as I wish it would. Also, what why does Hammer have something with a higher MV than TCS? It's a really cool attack, don't get me wrong, but I just find the idea of TCS being dethroned in that regard irksome. Other than that, both were great. I mained Hammer in World and Greatsword in GU, and they're both probably gonna be up there in Wilds.

Gunlance felt strong. Like it did a wee bit too much damage for once. Maybe slightly reduce the shell damage. That being said, please for the love of god don't touch shell scaling now that, after 5 whole generations, it is finally fixed. Maybe they could, however, remove the wee bit of intrinsic fire from them and change that out for whatever element the Gunlance itself has? Pretty please?

Nothing but praises to sing for Longsword, Lance, and Charge Blade. They knocked it out of the park with these. Maybe a little too much with Longsword in particular.

Also no real notes on the Sword & Shield, Dual Blades, Hunting Horn, or Insect Glaive. I'm not super familiar with these weapons to begin with.

I have no notes whatsoever on any of the ranged weapons. Didn't get around to playing them myself and have never really liked them to begin with. Bow looks cool though.

That leaves Switch Axe. Poor, poor, Switch Axe. The focus attacks are cool. The counter in Sword Mode and the Offset in Axe Mode are cool. Unbridled and Full Release Slash are cool. But why does sword gauge not recharge passively? Why do sword attacks consume so much gauge? Why revert the change from Rise and not let axe mode get phial bursts when amped? Why does Axe Mode feel more like a chore than anything else? Why does the amped state last for so little time? Also why does hitting circle after that one axe combo morph you into sword? Why is morph slash not always an option? Why does trying to input Wild Swing while moving forward do that fuckass running attack? They had a great thing going in Rise, and IMO kinda dumpstered Switch Axe in Wilds from what we've seen.

TL:DR; I hope Capcom does some fine tuning here and there, fixes up the tent menus, makes fishing bearable, and for the love of Gog fixes Switch Axe for Wilds's full release in February. This game is already looking like one of the best 2025 releases, and if they can just tune it a little bit, it might become my single favorite video game ever.

#monhun #monster hunter #monster hunter wilds #mhwilds #mh wilds beta #beta tester #capcom

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where-does-the-heart-lie · 2 years ago

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Do you think the revs ever… well not regret taking sabo in but realize they had no clue what they were getting themselves into? They fish this poor boy out of the water and expect to be dealing with a sad little wet beast scarred in two ways by the world maybe with the drive to fight back and instead 5 years later have to consider if Cthulhu herself wasn’t letting her kids go for a swim and if they accidentally stole one because this thing can’t be human.

Do you think they have to disclaim to the fish man revs this is not normal human child behavior?

Yes to all that, but I think they also realize the positives outweigh the negatives in many ways.

I like to think that sabo is the rev's golden boy. Like they watched him grow up from just a 10 year old boy and progress so much to the point where he's been awarded the title Chief of Staff.

So this is what Wikipedia says a chief of staff is. What im getting from it through my terrible reading comprehension is that the one with this position works with planning, but mostly with the people of any rank. They make sure their staff is operating at optimal levels and is happy and content.

Solving problems? Mediate disputes? A confidant/advisor to the chief executive?

Sounds like this guy is just the bestie of the army. It sounds like to me, that this guy does such a good job at making people perform their best because he knows how his besties work. And in turn, his besties are like “i love this guy actually. He might be really fucking weird and he also might not have blinked in like a good 20 minutes, but he understands all of us. He takes the time to know us and appreciates us on a personal level. I feel like with this guy around we can do anything.”

And if there’s ONE THING we know about the revolutionary army, is that inspiring people is what they’re all about. That one scene with Belo Betty is a great example of the rev’s way of victory. They inspire people to fight for themselves.

The Rev’s don’t have millions of staff members, they only have one base. They cant be at every single place they start a revolution in to protect the citizens from what comes after revolting. So what they do, is they to teach them that they can be their own heroes, how to sustain by themselves, and most importantly, HOW TO UNIONIZE!!!!!

AND THATS THE FUCKIN BEAUTY OF SABO OKAY????

BECAUSE IF THIS GUY ?????👇

youtube

WAS ON YOUR TEAM. AND HE DID THIS SHIT???? WOULD YOU NOT FEEL INVINCIBLE FOLLOWING HIM????? WOULD YOU NOT FEEL LIKE YOUR BACK FUCKIN COVERED BY THIS ABSOLUTE BEAST????

Not everything he does is conventionally “correct”, but he gets the job done and he figures it out, okay??? Sometimes you have to just go running face first into a stream of gunfire to get👏shit👏done👏 and Sabo is more than willing to. On really any given occasion. He wants to. Please let him do it, he begs you.

Because what sabo exactly is inspiration. That’s what those three brothers are! They are inspiration. They are freedom. They are fire. They are hope. They are tragedy. They are One Piece. Quintessentially

T L D R:

Sabo is a force of nature and the rev army’s bestie. He may seem stupid and impulsive, but the reality is that he does what needs to be done with no hesitation. That man inspires many, knows his army, is strong as hell, and is just a great guy. Taking in Cthulhu’s baby was the best mistake they ever made.

He’s also absolutely clinically insane.

Thank you and good night [takes a bow]

Edit: im posting this right after i posted a pic of him painting his nails. The man’s got range, I’ll give him that.

#ask reply #sorry long post #im also not sorry though #i have a lot of feelings #@tani rani #long post #sabo

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laxmiree · 1 year ago

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[CN] MLQC Lucien's Through Thousands of Mirrors event translation (Day 1 -Thursday)

⚠️ SPOILER ALERT ⚠️

This post contains a HEAVY SPOILER for the event that has not been released in EN yet! Feel free to notify me if there are any mistakes in the translation~

Through Thousands of Mirrors Event | Day 1 (You're here!) | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 | Day 6 | Day 7 | HS/Uni SSR Story: Monochrome Scenery

[Tidbits: I don't wanna break the flow so I'll put some information here first 😂. Dr. Lawson is Lucien's post-grad professor. Before, he also appears in UR MQ Distant Similarity. During his post-grad he has three seniors Colt, Elliot, and Caroline.]

[Math]

Seeing the particularly puzzled expression on the classmate next to him, Lucien starts to consider whether he should offer some assistance within his capabilities.

For instance, he thinks about telling the classmate that the topic currently being discussed on the blackboard is not from the same chapter as the one in the textbook he's currently reading.

[MATH/BIOCHEMISTRY]

After the vending machine devours Lucien's one dollar and twenty-five cents for the third time, and with only three minutes left to get to his next class, he begins to seriously contemplate whether he should try some mysterious repair method—like giving it a good smack or a swift kick.

[BIOCHEMISTRY]

Lucien coincidentally runs into Colt by the sports field, just as Colt is about to attend a cricket practice session.

Upon realizing that his senior from the lab is not only managing coursework and a significant project workload but also juggling a 20-hour weekly part-time job and daily school cricket team training, Lucien begins to contemplate whether there is any room for further optimization in his own schedule.

[PREVIEW/COMPUTER SCIENCE]

During the brief half-hour period, Lucien typically uses the time to prepare for the upcoming class or visit the library to research and gather information.

In any case, that time should not be spent on arguing and explaining to people, like the enthusiastic campus volunteer in front of him.

"No, thank you. I'm not a high school student attending a summer camp. This is my student ID, and I'm indeed a student here, a graduate student. Yes, I'm not lost, and I need to get to my class. Can you please let me go?"

[COMPUTER SCIENCE]

Lucien presses the enter key, intending to ask the teacher if he can leave early once his coursework is done. However, the error message on the screen deters him from that thought. So, he sits back down and begins to examine it again.

But that's okay, he does understand the commonality between computer science and experimental research: it's often hard to know right away if the thing at hand will work, why it's not working, or even why it's even working.

[LAB]

Come on, come on, come on. After moving this box, there's another.

And after moving that box, there are three more to go.

The prospects for the future and the shine in one's eyes are often taken away by the God of research in such necessary yet mechanical repetitive work.

[LAB]

Lucien goes out to get some water and returns to find a school burger on his desk.

Colt, with dark circles under his eyes, waves at Lucien and saying, "No need to thank me, newcomer. Have some food, we might be staying here today."

Lucien quietly eats the burger, hesitant to tell Colt that he has spent more time in the laboratory than in the dorm.

[LAB]

When Dr. Lawson enters the laboratory, what he sees is a scene where his graduate and doctoral students are sleeping and sprawled all over the place.

On the laboratory whiteboard, several words were written in large letters: "Publish immediately! Guaranteed to be published in Nature!!"

Dr. Lawson retrieves small blankets from the cabinet, covering each of these research madmen.

He proceeds to organize the data and take over the finishing work on the project. Of course, when it comes to authorship in the paper, not a single one of these kids' names can be left out.

#OK BUT this whole event and story kinda explain why he has a some attachment to Dr. Lawson 🥺#mlqc lucien #mr love queen's choice #mlqc cn #mlqc spoiler #mlqc #mlqc translation #mr. love queen's choice #mr love lucien #mlqc xu mo #mlqc spoilers

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infinitelytheheartexpands · 7 months ago

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on the cusp between childhood and adulthood, the sudden onset of grief when you weren’t in the room where it happened, and the impossible art of growing up in a very short time: or, why the princess of france from love’s labour’s lost means a lot to me personally

on the heels of reading as the princess of france with @socialshakespeare

heads up, the rest of this is going to get Very Long Very Quickly, so i’m putting it under a cut. tw for discussions of cancer, parental death, and grief.

so when @socialshakespeare announced that it would be doing love’s labour’s lost this month, in the box where you can put any additional notes about your casting preferences, i pretty much begged the admins to let me have a turn as the princess of france. y’know, i said, as a sort of twenty-first birthday present. and i was cast as the princess of france! thank you, socshakes! <3

but there was a very specific reason why i asked to play the princess of france.

and that reason is simply: she reminds me of me. more particularly, she reminds me of me from 2020, but me from 2020 was really the germination point of me today.

“savannah, everyone changed in 2020, 2020 was a fucking unbelievable year and it changed us all. it changed our whole world.” yeah. i’m well aware. but there’s a specific reason for me.

***

see, in early 2020, i was having a pretty decent time, actually. it was my senior year of high school, i had a great group of friends (much like the princess had her three ladies except my core friend group was bigger than that), things with my family weren’t great but i knew that come august i would be able to move out.

that first period of covid was awful and it changed so much and at times it felt like i was having a mental breakdown, but it wasn’t what ultimately ripped me apart that year.

you see, in 2018, about a month before my fifteenth birthday, my father was diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer. for a good long while, though, it seemed like he might beat the odds. treatments were working, he went to one of the best hospitals in the country to get good care, and we believed that he just might make it.

and then in the summer of 2020, things rapidly took a turn for the worse.

on july 20, 2020, we all got sat down and told that the treatments weren’t working anymore, and they had elected to put my father on hospice care. i sobbed all that night and into the next morning, but i had a cashier job that summer at walmart. i was an essential worker and i had to power through.

in love’s labour’s lost, everyone knows even before the princess arrives that her father is extremely sick. for heaven’s sake, it’s why the princess is there in the first place instead of the king. and yet the princess powers through. there’s deals to be made, familial honor to be defended, and there’s also that tiny matter of falling in love and playing with the joy and laughter that come with it. and the princess embraces it.

she is young, she is optimistic, she is a bit sheltered maybe yet so smart, she has devoted friends, she has seemingly all the time in the world because no one knows when the time runs out so might as well believe it never will, right?

my high school graduation came five days later, on july 25. a rare opportunity to see friends then and, at long last, after a two-month delay and twelve years of study before that, a chance to celebrate. relatives came in. we had cake and flowers. we took photos on the soccer field in 90-degree weather but it didn’t matter because we were together and we were so full of joy on that blue-sky day.

and after that, only nineteen days until leaving. i had been counting the days for months, excited for new possibilities, not understanding the impact. it would be easy, i thought. all that needed done were to pack my bags and suitcases and buy some last-minute things, say my goodbyes for now to my favorite people, enjoy every moment i could, and wait in a haze of delightful agony and optimism until the morning of august 13 came.

this went as planned for about three days.

july 29, 2020, started like any other day. i got my things together, had an argument with my stepmom about doing the dishes (you said i can’t do the dishes when it’s late and everyone’s asleep after i get off work, when do you expect me to do them), decided to start the dishwasher right before i left for work (if she was mad about it, then she could unload the dishwasher as needed and we could have this conversation when i got home, i reasoned) and went to walmart for my shift that day. i cut one of my fingers on a taco seasoning packet, watched some of the salzburg 2007 production of berlioz’s benvenuto cellini on my lunch break, and in general otherwise it was a pretty normal shift. and like all normal shifts, i took my sweet time getting out and getting home.

at about 5:15 i was dawdling and trying to find an excuse to not get in my car just yet when i got a call from my stepmom that basically went like this:

me: hi

stepmom: hey. are you coming home yet?

me: i will be there in a little bit.

stepmom: it’s been raining so you need to be careful getting home.

me: it hasn’t rained that much and i know how to drive in the rain.

stepmom: just be careful getting home. bye.

so i sighed and went “well i can’t put this off any longer”, and got in my car and put some more berlioz on and drove home, thinking about how she sounded upset over the phone and oh i was going to get a tongue-lashing for leaving the dishes in the dishwasher all day.

and just as i was pulling up, i noticed my older brother’s truck outside. huh, i thought, that’s weird. why is he here?

i pulled into the driveway and saw my stepmom sitting on the step outside the side door by herself. two thoughts about what this meant went into my head at about the same time:

option 1: uh oh my stepmom is big mad and she waited out here just so she could tell me off right when i got home

option 2: uh oh my brother and my stepmom got into a fight again for whatever reason and she just can’t deal with it right now

(both of these, for the record, were entirely plausible things that could have happened)

so i parked and got out and decided to not commit to either of these but just play this very strange situation as coolly as possible. i believe my exact words were “hey, what are you doing out here by your lonesome?”

and like monsieur marcade, she could only get out a handful of words, and it was left to me to fill in the meaning.

the meaning: savannah, your father is dead.

and, to quote a different shakespeare play, “i must be from thence.”

my father died and i wasn’t there.

***

this is the same fate to befall the princess of france: her political mission mixed with girls’ trip has taken her to navarre, to a world full of annoying yet beloved men and delightful games and amateur theatre filled with passion. and then she learns that her father all the way in paris has died, and she wasn’t there.

now we don’t know what the princess’ relationship with her father was like; this is not something that is discussed at all in the play. but i know what my relationship with my father was like. we didn’t always understand each other or agree on everything, but i loved him. and in a childhood where the concept of family was a loose one due to an over decade-long stretch of family drama, he was the one constant.

and then four days after my high school graduation, he was simply gone, never to return.

now some folks will probably go back to those days of late july and early august 2020 and see that i posted exactly nothing about all this. why? i just needed a space where i could forget, where i could live in denial for a little longer, where i could cling to something in my life that wasn’t about this unimaginable loss until i couldn’t anymore.

living in the late 1500s, with a whole country to newly run, no social media, and a permanent existence in the public eye, the princess does not have this sort of escape. she knows right away the awful truth. it is inevitable; she must leave this happy sojourn, this newfound love.

her first line after she realizes her father is dead shows that plainly: “boyet, prepare. i will away tonight.” and even as she plans to shut herself up in a mourning-house, it is at the same time that she will be learning first hand how to run her kingdom.

sixteen days after my father’s death, i left home to learn how to live on my own. and even before that, i got only five days of bereavement leave from work, and i went back to work the day after my father’s funeral. let alone the rest of the frantic preparations for leaving home and starting a brand new life alone—in the middle of a pandemic and now, with this grief weighing on me.

life and the world do not wait for grief.

and sixteen days is too fast to grow up.

you can’t just flip the switch from child to adult, especially when you’re grieving.

and when the world forces you to do so, it is truly awful.

there’s no closure to it. as another character mourns in the closing moments of the play, “our wooing doth not end like an old play.” well, neither did the princess’ relationship with her father.

to continue with the shakespeare allusions, as much as i love and am heartbroken by the deathbed reconciliation between king henry iv and prince hal in henry iv, part 2 (a scene i was lucky to get to read with socshakes last september and which still lives in my head rent free), sometimes it simply doesn’t work out that way and you’re still left to pick up the pieces and forever wonder what might have been in those final moments on top of it.

living without that—without those answers, without closure, without any sort of comfort, on top of everything else—is so, so hard.

it is widely accepted that the love’s labour’s won mentioned in the catalogues is, in fact, a lost sequel and not an alternate name for any number of surviving shakespeare comedies. and while i have never found love in the manner of any shakespeare comedy, i believe nonetheless that i am living the princess’ story—a young woman, always grieving, trying to learn about life and figure out how to live it in a hostile world, trying to balance all the things, trying to come to terms with closure that will never come to her.

love’s labour’s lost fills me with an ache by the end. a true heartache, a deep emotional pain like few other stories i have ever come across. when i first saw it, i praised it for being messy and real. i saw me in it. i saw my own grief. i saw what i could have been, the kind of person i was before that fateful and fatal summer, the realization that we must leave that self behind because they can no longer navigate this new world, the not wanting to let go, the not understanding why but knowing you have to anyway. to know you have to take the other road.

***

recently, for a local exhibit, a museum asked people in the area to send in writing about their regrets, something they wished had happened differently. mine was eventually one of the ones selected for inclusion. here it is.

in another lifetime, i am there when my father dies.

i am there, holding his hand, feeling the blood that connects us rush through him, hearing his breaths—however shallow.

skin on skin.

i’m able to tell him one last time that i love him, i will always love him. perhaps through all the pain that comes with a pancreatic cancer diagnosis, the sleep-like state he was in for most of the last two days, he will hear me and even respond.

my family can all grieve together, knowing we all saw it happen and we all got a strange sort of closure.

my relationship with him on this earth would not feel like a perpetually unfinished story, with an ending written when i wasn’t even there.

but it is this lifetime.

someone once said grief is just love with no place to go. i believe that. and, well, this is my life. i have to muddle through and believe, make closure out of thin air and time, let love go nowhere and everywhere.

***

so, life imitates art and vice versa. and thank you @socialshakespeare for letting me have this story that has come to mean so much to me in the few short months since i first came across it. <3

#personal #thoughts #love’s labour’s lost #love’s labor’s lost #on humanity #on grief #on growing up #tw cancer #tw parental death #tw grief #words words words #theatre #plays #theater #my writing #if you made it this far thanks for reading <3 #shakespeare #william shakespeare

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intertexts · 7 months ago

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YAYYYY YOU KNOW DAKOTA BACKSTORY NOW <333 YOU MADE IT !!!!!!

EPISODE 19 + 20 TRIVIA:

- they are all. so very sad. let me play you a song on the worlds tiniest violin

- charlie: "im angling my mic so i can lay on the ground"

- after 5 minutes of just going "im sad" "im sad" "me too" they are FINALLY talking about the episodes

- SUMMER AND DOUG !!!!!!!!!! ohhh i love them they are important 2 me

- the other heroes with summer and doug were fan created!!! the one with black and white hair is Portalgeist (teleportation power), the one with the green visor is Valence (no mention on their power), and then the pink one with the mask is Sleepyhead (sleep/illusion/dream powers) :]

- grizzly: "im glad the water thing worked!! william was proud of me because i didnt rush in and that meant a lot"

- "there is a reason dakota thinks there are three different summers and not just one summer, i think it'll probably come up when we meet the doctor" << HELLO??? i dont actually remember this. omg

- "i hope le frog can finally move on and get over us now. hes their problem now" MEAN 2 HIM !!!!!!

- william figuring out how to neutralize the demons........ woag (on that note he said his original intention was to turn it into a wisp. do with that what you will)

- moving onto 20 woooooo everyone sad again!

- bizly: "i have gone over it in my head a thousand times how i would present her and everything, i hope i did it some sort of justice because every time ive thought about it since you originally told that idea it has made me *this sad*"

- "DAKOTA COLE CHARACTER STUDY EPISODE" << this is such a huge win for me

- "dakota has been very scared to go see his aunt for a very long time. i dont think he ever would have done that alone. i almost wanted him to say that to you guys in the episode but i dont think he wouldve even processed it enough to admit that yet"

- condi and charlie both said they didnt really know what to say in character a lot kf the time but then they realized they didnt really have to say anything, the important part was that the characters where physically there for dakota in that moment

- grizzly: "i mean im sure it was a huge surprise for william and vyncent not just the scenario itself because dakota never talked about it, but the fact that i dont think theyve seen him get emotional like that. its always been sort of over the top righteous anger and never anything this soft or quiet" (charlie: im curling up in a ball on the floor)

- DAKOTA DAMASCUS !!!!!!!!!!!

- they (bizly and grizzly) were a little nervous about how well this was gonna play out because its such a direct real life kind of issue, but they both really like that it adds such a huge layer to dakotas character

- bizly: "i mean, you have this guy- both of his parents were literally killed in the wake of a superhero fight and he STILL grows up with the mindset of 'i wanna be a superhero!' and just this unwavering optimism and urge to do the right thing"

- condi: "i cant wait for us to get into william shit too i reaaally wanna get into whats going on with him"

charlie: "huh? what william stuff?"

condi, suddenly SUPER AGGRESSIVE: "I wanna go to *FUCKING DEADWOOD*"

- grizzly: "i mean william is scared of facing things so part of dakotas whole goal with this was to face something he was really scared of doing to hopefully inspire william to do the same"

- charlie: "i think ive said this before but i think william sees dakota as... making it. into the prime force, as a superhero, just as The Guy who stands out above us all, right. i think he sees dakota making it out of all of this. i don't think he sees that for himself."

grizzly: "dakota Will Not make it to that point without dragging william and vyncent up with him. hes not gonna leave them behind for anything"

- "there are a lot of things william would pry into way too much, i mean its literally on his sheet as one of his complications, but i dont think he would ever pry about this unless dakota brought it up first and wanted to talk about it" aaaahhh the ghostkicksisms

- bizly had said someone had been in the apartment recently, which was weird because his aunt has been in rehab for a WHILE. grizzly doesnt even know who it couldve been

- they said they intentionally kept the details of her rehab sort of vague, they didnt want to get too into the descriptions of it bc that would be too real and too heavy and they wouldnt want to represent anything like that in a poorly handled way. generally though she is there for addiction/alcoholism

- "how pissed would you guys be if we got to the end of the campaign and le frog was the final boss" and they all get VERY GENUINELY ANNOYED JUST AT THE THOUGHT OF THAT POSSIBILITY "bizly i would leave. i would quit"

- charlie: "i have NOTABLY *not* been using a secret identity for a LONG time. because i think william stopped taking the whole hero thing seriously, he doesnt see a point in it anymore"

- bizly says they have already met who he plans to be the final villain of the whole campaign!! theyre trying to guess now, charlie says it would be cool if it was mark (holy shit), grizzly says mal !!!! he thinks mal is going to take the tricksters power in some way. he also jokingly said it would be funny if harlem shade turned out to be the main bad guy because he would have fun playing him as a villain. (condi had to leave early so he doesnt get a guess) . charlie says they all have their own Big Villains right now (wiwi has mal, vyncent has the lich, grizzly doesnt have one yet but he probably will eventually), but he doesnt necessarily see mal becoming THE villain. neither of them think the trickster is going to be the main villain since the whole point of season 2 has been to get ashe back

- GRIZZLY ADMITS HE THINKS MARK IS A REDEEMABLE CHARACTER. WIN !!!!!!!!!!!

DAKOTA CHARACTER STUDY WHOOOOO!!!!!! I MADE IT!!!!!!! a little blood covered and trembling but i made it!!! also jesus i have a BACKLOG of trivia u sent me i wanna talk about so bad... thank u king btw. its so fucking awesome 2 finish an episode & then receive so much trivia about it. fuck yes a little bowl of seeds for me (<- can't stop fucking saying that now!!)

I LOOVE the prime rifterssss i love fan created characterssss theyre so good!!! man. i love summer and doug. yeah even doug. also YEAH the reason he fucking thinks there's three summers is because he has FUCKING BRAIN DAMAGE from ONE MILLION CONCUSSIONS and JUMPING OFF A SKYSCRAPER and being EXPERIMENTED ON!!!!! NKDFKDFGHfgk. or at least. thats what i think.

i also thought he was gonna turn it into a wisp!!!!!!! i was so surprised when it didnt work... my assumption is that they were like, different variants of the same thing, whatever that thing fucking is. which. i guess is maybe not true!! wild.

FEELING INSANE OVER EPISODE 20. LIKE. IN GENERAL. joining charlie in a fucking ball on the floor tbh. what i will say before i spend like, a fucking week sorting through my thoughts & shit is that i do think they did a really good job w/ handling the addiction plot point... whenever anything like that comes up it really is always a crapshoot of like oh okay is this going to be unintentionally shitty to addicts. is this going to be wildly inaccurate. is it going to be ableist. etc etc etc. & i think the vague and blurry brushstrokes that they Did draw were really well done... more specific detail wouldn't have carried nearly as much weight as that description of their trashed rotting apartment & the way they reacted 2 seeing each other !!! wails and cries and throws up.

ALSO, the way his parents were killed feels like such a fucking missing piece slotting into place for his character? i had figured that-- ok i knew his parents were dead & i also knew he'd had.. personal experience with the um. violent and dangerous area of effect superheroism has. but knowing they were collateral damage in that umm. knockoff darkseid? darkstar? fight makes so much sense irt his perception of heroism & not wanting to be responsible for deaths. god.

& ummm i'm feeling fucking normal about "he sees dakota making it out of all this, he doesn't see that for himself." & "he doesn't see a point in the superhero thing anymore" like, we knew that already. but. doesn't make it easier to hear!! MORALLY AMBIGUOUS VIGILANTE WILLIAM WISP WHEN.

i have no idea who the bbeg is gonna be dude. oh my god. its gonna end up being fucking alan (allen??) or something. it's gonna be one of the s5. this is amogus now. anyway. GOOD EPISODE!!!

#also WHOOOOO mark mention i love u mark winters. what the fuck are you up to now babygirl i miss u...#mac tag!#pd lb

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aropride · 1 month ago

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i have been deeply appreciating ur TGI posting and was wondering what ur fave songs off of it are !! - mare

HI MARE im free from academia for the day (FINALLY) so i can answer this yayayaayy

as of right now. and this is in album order And im about to list off like a good third of the album sorry in advance but: only girl living in la, dog years, letter to god 1974, letter to god 1983, darwinism, lonely is the muse, and life of the spider

first of all. only girl living in la is an INSANE way to start an album. Like i knew i was absolutely in for it seeing the track list and that we were Starting with a 6 minute long song i was like Oh she loves me specifically she knew id been tormented by songs that are 2 minutes long for too long. i dont think ive ever finished the first song on an album and been, like, scared to listen to the rest of it before (good thing)

dog years. i canteven say anything yet Like theres no words. probably one of my favorites out of my favorites

letter to god 1974 and letter to god 1983 are twins to me. (well triplets shoutout letter to god 1998 no disrespect to my girl its just the first two are my faves personally) Thank u halsey for addressing the "wanting to get really sick so people would pay attention to you" to "getting really sick and it turns out people kinda dont gaf if ur in ur 20s about it" pipeline

hometown- is anyone else trying so hard to escape their hometown or is it just me and halsey and gerard "i know im never getting out of belleville" way. also i love her voice on this one

darwinism- i was reading it as being about physical disability but apparently she said it was about neurodivergence either way is anybody else feeling ostracized from the rest of society or is it just me and halsey out here

lonely is the muse- INSANE FUCKING SONG vocally lyrically musically everything. when i found out there was gonna be a Whole Album and lonely is the muse was on it i realized i was going to die.and then i did. <3

life of the spider- i knew there was a tori amos song on the album and the one tori amos song im really familiar with is me and a gun so of course i was terrified .and i was right to be. love a song i cant listen to without having a panic attack one of my favorite genres. insanely haunting song i cant really listen to this one casually yet or possibly ever i have to like sit down and prepare. this morning i saw a spider in my bathroom and started crying. tomorrow more of the same. "favorite" not in the way where i listen to it a lot favorite in the way where i can barely listen to it at all

also one more thing i feel like in general the album is organized very well does that make sense. like the songs are in a specific order that is good and makes sense. only girl living in la -> ego -> dog years -> letter to god 1974 is an insane run of songs generally let alone first on the album but also it like. makes sense why theyre in that order. also darwinism -> lonely is the muse -> arsonist -> life of the spider i can say the same of. like yeah thats the exact order those songs should go in. this is really not a Shuffling Album to me at ALL theres a specific order they all go in and i really like that Bc half the time These Days it feels like everythings so focused on having 2 minute long songs with 15 second clips that blow up on tiktok that its always nice to have an album thats like. Ok thankgod they actually give a fuck about this and its not optimized for social media analytics

thank u for reading My essay ^___^<3 u sent this 5 hours ago when i was working on my school stuff and i waslike oh thank god i get to talk about music later. A little treat for meeee to rewind and such.And then immediately i wrote A lot of sentences but, like, for fun this time so it counts as Rewinding

#ask #violexides #tgi #LMK UR FAV SONGS ALSO.... looks ar u with my big wide autistic eyes

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ageless-aislynn · 3 months ago

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Click pictures to make bigger 😎

1. Classic pinstripe suit, bald with sunglasses - The look of a dapper businessman who also slaughters evil in his spare time.

2. All black suit, no tie, bald with sunglasses - The Angel of Death has no tie. The Angel of Death NEEDS no tie.

3. White dress shirt with tie, black dress pants and glasses - Could it be... Clark Kent? No, friends, it is just Frank West, photojournalist.

4. Pink dress shirt with tie, white dress pants and hat - There might be a zombie apocalypse but that's no excuse to stop working on your golf swing while looking like a fine gentleman at the same time.

5. Classic little black dress with deep v-neck and white shirt - It's classic for a reason. Also, please note the sensible shoes, suitable for stomping zombies and running for your life.

6. No shirt, dual ammo bandoliers, camo pants, bald with sunglasses - Rambo? Never heard of him. I bet he's a fine fellow, though. Frank probably wouldn't mind having him at his back while they're handling this pesky zombie horde problem.

7. Orange prison jumpsuit - The biggest crime of all is not being able to profess his love for Leah. 💘

8. No shirt, boxers, and police hat - For your next party, call 1-888-HOT-OFFICER-WEST for all of your exotic dancer needs! 😇

9. Yellow suit and hockey mask - No, the giant gun isn't compensating for anything. I'm not sure why you'd even ask that...? 🤔😜 An appropriately chaotic look for a chaotic time.

10. Wrestler trunks - Brand loyalty. Frank has it. Also, cake? Frank has that, too. 😇 I ❤️ one (1) photojournalist who was built to be a brawler. 😍😍😍

Brad looks like he spends a LOT of time questioning Frank's common sense fashion sense, doesn't he? 😂😂😂

Yes, friends, I've decided to tackle one of THE most time-consuming video game achievements out there: Dead Rising's 7 Day Survivor. It requires 14 uninterrupted hours to complete. You cannot save. You cannot quit and come back later to pick up where you left off. Frank's health constantly depletes so you have to scavenge for food (which does NOT respawn) or he can starve to death every 20 minutes. The survivors have turned on you and will kill you on sight. The psychopaths are no longer in their usual spawn locations. The zombies will munch you relentlessly. You die, your run is done. Your power goes off, your PC/console crashes, you fall asleep, you get distracted, you're done.

So why do I want to do it? 🤔

Because it's the only achievement I don't have (technically, there's also 5 Day Survivor in there as well, but if you get 7 Day, you'll have gotten 5 Day along the way). Because I love this game so much. It brings me so much silly joy. Because I want to see if my strategy will work.

Because I want to know that I can.

So! Help me pick from some of my favorite looks for Frank. We want to look strong, ready to kick zombie butt and to survive for a week under very hostile conditions in the Willamette Mall.

I'm currently writing up my strategy, including food locations, survivor and psychopath spawn times, and an optimal path to take through the mall with the best places (aka that have doors you can shut) for Frank to stay safe with his stashes of food. Then I'm going to print it because I'm just That Way™️and want a physical copy to refer to once I start this. I'm not chancing minimizing the game to open a file or to watch a tutorial video. Georgette and I are FOCUSED on success!

Me and Georgette, our hands joined in a solemn pact to keep Frank alive for 14 hours. (O hai, Eobard, wish us luck, hm, buddy? 😉)

14 hours, girl, we can do it! I've got the support of my family, just got to let them know when I start. I can pause the game to eat and things like that but I don't want to leave it paused any longer than necessary. The in-game clock stops at the same time so you're just adding more overall hours by pausing.

Wish me luck, friends! I'm not sure what day I'll be doing this but it'll be soon! 🤞😣🤞

#dead rising #dead rising poll #poll #video game poll #frank west #help pick frank's outfit #7 day survivor #video game achievement #aislynn's poll #ageless aislynn #woo-hoo!#i am excite to try for this #wish me luck

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greenandhazy · 10 months ago

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I thought I had found the perfect apartment and I was going to be like the first person to tour, but then the tour had to be rescheduled twice because of timing issues on their end, and then I fucking. Forgot to confirm the new rescheduled date, despite having it on my calendar for a week and a half. Which I only found out after I paid $20 for a Lyft to get me there on time in the middle of the workday (working from home this afternoon) and it’s been half an hour but they haven’t replied to my email BEGGING to reschedule as soon as possible.

And I literally just threw myself on the bed and cried over it, because increasingly I’m become aware of the fact that every aspect of my life is being negatively affected by my lack of control over my living situation, which isn’t even THAT BAD but is just… not optimal for allowing me to function and I don’t know how to fix it. And I am juuuuust on the edge of being able to afford living on my own which means options like this are SCARCE.

Anyway. That’s it. Just feeling sad and miserable over here for a minute, constantly reloading my email.

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waywardstation · 2 years ago

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I love the train of thought au! I hate Tumblr though, especially mobile Tumblr. Had to scroll for 30~20 minutes to reach the bottom of the tag. (Mobile Tumblr reloaded at least a few times and I almost threw my phone. I think I cried twice in frustration.)

I am absolutely foaming at the mouth because I've always liked the way Ingo and Emmet get presented, the characterizations are just so... Mwah 🤭.

For some reason the only thing I could think about after spending an entire night reading that wall of posts was the concept of big brother Ingo.

Sorry if I'm ranting here, it really has nothing pertaining to the au at all but I hate this concept, especially the societal concept that the older brother takes care of the younger one. Twins especially since they are usually born minutes from each other and that really doesn't mean anything different in experience.

Yes, Emmet is younger but I've always pictured him as the headstrong one that stands up for Ingo more often than not. (Honestly that's the vibe they give off collectively). I like to think of them as not in a big brother, little brother dynamic but a "we been through so much shit together we support each other fully" dynamic. I do understand why people like using it though.

Wait, what was this post about again? I swear I'm not trying to negatively rant right after bringing up stuff that plagued my mind while reading. I guess all I want to say is thank you for hosting this wonderful community au on your blog.

Expect Tumblr crabs in your blog later on. This is a warning.

Hey there OP! Glad you like it, I do too!!! (Still working on that masterpost ^^;) and apologies with tumblr mobile, I know it’s not the best with optimization!

I’m putting a readmore below because I got a lot more detailed than I intended to, regarding Ingo and Emmet’s sibling dynamic.

I like your views because it really isn’t as black and white (ha) as all that. I am a twin myself, the younger between us (and also by a few minutes) and throughout our lives it certainly has gone back and forth with us, but there’s really no definite position of looking after the other, just like with any other sibling relationship.

Given how Ingo and Emmet are, I imagine their dynamic very similar to what you’re talking about, being each others’ full supporters. Multiple lines in Masters EX show this, like these few from Emmet:

"Ingo and I are twins. We're both Subway Bosses, and we're each other's closest rival! We always challenge each other to get better. That's the kind of relationship we have! It's always a lot of fun when we're together!"

However, I feel like Ingo might feel… I don’t want to say obligated, because it’s certainly not work, and he knows very well Emmet can fend for himself, but perhaps inclined (pressured? By himself??) to carry through with what’s normally expected of an older brother. He might feel like he should look out for Emmet when he can:

“My younger brother, Emmet, would always entertain passengers on the Battle Subway... Now he is enjoying being a host here on Pasio. However, he's still new to this style of hospitality. Would you mind keeping an eye on him?"

And this might be somewhat spurred by the fact that Emmet looks up to Ingo, which I am sure Emmet has made Ingo aware of - he just might not want to let Emmet down:

"Do you have any siblings? I have an older brother, Ingo. He's verrrry strong. He hardly ever loses in Pokémon battles. Even though I also hold the title of Subway Boss, I really look up to him."

I do feel Emmet is very ready to support Ingo as well, seeing as how in their story event in Masters EX, Emmet was trying very hard to help Ingo with a project of theirs:

"I want to make Ingo’s idea a reality! Please, let me do this!"

And regarding your thoughts that of the two, Emmet is more headstrong, I feel similarly, and think he would always very clearly stand up for Ingo when needed.

I do headcanon that growing up, Emmet was more outgoing than Ingo (and that this led him to meeting Elesa, the new exchange student at their school, and taking her over to Ingo to introduce her to him, since he was more reserved and shy - not terribly so, but more so than Emmet)

ALL IN ALL - both Ingo and Emmet fully support and help each other out whenever they need it. And while Ingo might feel pressured by himself to look out for Emmet as the older brother, Emmet naturally does it for Ingo just as much, if not a little more, simply due to his outgoing nature

To try and tie this back to Train of Thought AU, I’m sure Akari and Irida would see a lot of moments expressing this dynamic of theirs in the many memory traincars throughout the mind station.

AND MG Emmet himself is pretty much a monument to this. MG Emmet is doing everything he can to keep Ingo safe from the Remnant and to protect him, even at his own expense to some degree. MG Emmet might only be a mental projection of how Ingo sees his brother, but the fact that MG Emmet is doing that means Ingo knows Emmet would do things like that for him, and he would.

Thanks for your ask OP!!! Very glad you like the AU, and happy you gave me a chance to go into all of this - I did not expect to dissect things like I did haha.

(And tumblr crabs? oh boy!!! Those would be my first!!)

#train of thought au #<-loosely #all lines are from Pokémon Masters EX #and I know that game isn’t canon to the Pokémon lore it is its own thing #but I really do appreciate the characterizations #and stick to it a lot #Emmet looking up to Ingo is reciprocated by the way #Ingo really admires Emmet both as a battler and as a person

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remyfire · 11 months ago

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20 Questions For Fic Writers

I was tagged by @quordleona03! Thank you so much for the tag I know lots of people have already been tagged, so consider this a formal request that if you have NOT been tagged, you please come play! But off the top of my head, @onekisstotakewithme @cuddleswinchester @dreamingofspring :D

How many works do you have on Ao3?

40.

2. What's your total Ao3 word count?

I think we might officially be leaving 2023 with 300,842 words. Not a bad count for only publishing since April! That's a novella a month right there.

3. What fandoms do you write for?

MASH. :D

4. What are your top five fics by kudos?

Scratching The Itch, Can't Take My Eyes Off You, To Have and To Hold, Anything You Say Can and Will Be Held Against You, and Tear Out All Your Tenderness. Good morning beejhawk nation I see you all hkdfds

5. Do you respond to comments?

I try to! Sometimes they pile up and I get overwhelmed and just click that "Mark All As Read" button while hiding behind my hand. But I really try to circle through nowadays even just for a "Thanks for reading!!" because I really appreciate every single one!!

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

I feel like ...With Too Many Miles Between Us was a pretty rough one. There's maybe optimism that you can read through the cracks, but it was a damn agonizing prompt fill (affectionate) all around. The Good Ones Always Seem to Break is another. Sorry that I keep putting you in situations, Beej.

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Oughhhh, just about anything that suggests they don't end here, so to speak. I think To Have and To Hold probably tops the list, but I Intend to Hold You For the Longest Time and Soft Place to Land also come in hot just by nature of being established postwar situations.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

Not yet! I've had a couple of people not understand what I was going for and who were not afraid of saying so, but it wasn't outright hate. They were probably just not the intended audience.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Ahh yes. 65% of my current fics are rated E for a reason, and the 5 M ones are flirting with that line.

I categorize myself as an erotic romance writer, meaning that typically if you remove my sex scenes from my fics, you are losing integral information or character/relationship development that would otherwise make the fic not stand on its own. I also have a handful that are just pure erotica—sex for titillation's sake rather than development. I adore writing smut!! It's a lot of fun, it's exciting when you know you've landed it exactly like you wanted to, and it's a way for me to reclaim all those years I spent being forcibly repressed due to my religious upbringing. I love every minute of it.

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written?

I do not!

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I know of.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Not that I know of.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

The Famous 4077 Dog Tag Party certainly counts! Many of us authors randomized a list of pairings for both eras of the show, and then we were responsible for picking a pairing, writing the characters going on a date (platonic or romantic), and seeing what happened. Extremely fun way to get some rare pairs we might not have expected. For example, I got to write Margie/Klinger for it!

14. What’s your all time favorite ship?

Hey now I am too fucking polyam to answer this and you know it. Mcpunnihawk probably tops the list, warring with margbeej and sidbeejhawk.

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

I am not taking this defeatist energy into 2024, how dare you. One day, my pretties, I'm coming back for all of you and we are crossing that finish line OR ELSE.

16. What are your writing strengths?

Smut, capturing character voices accurately, physicality, spinning relational scenarios on the fly.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Genres like mystery or sci-fi or horror, repetition of comfort words/phrases, putting my characters through significant levels of pain (I am too empathetic, I can and will cry over my own fics).

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

Things that I do not feel comfortable doing myself because I am not familiar enough with any other language to know I'm doing it accurately.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

The kid wizard one.

20. Favorite fic you’ve written?

How dare you make me pick from my children. Scratching The Itch, Anything You Say Can and Will Be Held Against You, I'd Give Up Forever to Touch You, and Desperate Times Call for Desperate Measures. Notably this could all change by this time tomorrow. I'm very fond of my fics.

#ty for the tag!!#ask meme answers #my ramblings

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sparring-spirals · 2 years ago

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Road trip with the Bells Hell's! Who's driving, who's in front, who has control of the music, who insists they stop every 10 minutes for photos? Etc. Etc.

My genuine apologies for this answer also being a million years late. Here's hoping you see this answer somehow.

anyway, im honestly pretty bad at these kinds of modern-au fanfic style hypotheticals. (my brain is kind of bad at putting the characters into alternative universes?), so im not really going to claim accuracy to characters here. but some rough, purely-for-fun thoughts, assuming a modern AU with like. A car. multiple cars. I started just vibing with it by the end, so its a bit long. enjoy?

- Orym drives at least a part of it, of course! That said, he actually doesn't drive the bulk of it- he spends a nice amount of time sticking his face out the window and enjoying the ride. Napping while leaning against Fearne. Makes sure people are hydrated and stretch their legs, but ideally chills out too. ideally. (its so hard for me to imagine orym in a modern setting, much less an orym without his hypervigilant survivors guilt and protective instincts going haywire. orym on a roadtrip mostly makes me want him to be relaxing a little, Orym PLEASE).

- Ashton actually drives a solid chunk, and is also one of the primary people to ensure there are sufficient stops for people to get out and stretch their legs, uses the bathroom, gets food, and also has some absolutely wild fixes for carsickness that??? work????? he'd be instigating rowdy car games the rest of the time, maybe napping.

- F.C.G found a manual on roadtrips and is SO excited about it. He's figured out optimal times for breaks based on human needs and also Every Single Significant Landmark from here to there. His desire for Exact Breaks and constant enquiring is tempered by Ashton's pretty-solid instincts for these things, but they DO end up stopping for all the landmarks and photo ops. Its for all of them, obviously (its for F.C.G).

- This is okay because Laudna is ALSO extremely excited about these landmarks and photo ops. Look at those WILD ROCK FORMATIONS!!!!!! Look at this ghost town! Wow!!!!!!! :O :D Laudna is excited to drive, but I'm not sure she does so for very long. she also does puppet shows to help pass the time during travel.

- Fearne is also benefitted by the frequent stops. and the puppet shows. its not that she gets antsy but... she gets a little antsy. everyone is in the car with her. you know. she has a good time though! she also offers to drive. the offer is not accepted.

- Look, lets be real, Imogen might have a pretty rough time stuck in SUPER close prox (car if we're putting them in modern times) with everyone, as much as she might love them. Im almost certain that due to the universe's love for tormenting her she would be more prone to carsickness. sorry imogen. that said, everyone's collective efforts probably even it out somewhat. she ends up in shotgun out of kindness, and probaboy has a lovely time at the stops and seeing the wilderness and whatnot. maybe less fond of tourist traps.

- Chetney calls shotgun based on seniority, but throughout the trip ends up ceding it to the others who might benefit from it- Imogen if she needs the space, Ashton if the squished backseats and touching are doing a number on him, Fearne for her height. He also drives for a portion, citing that he doesn't want the whippersnappers to drive them to their deaths (and giving everyone a break as needed). He WILL complain about everyone else's music taste but lets them change it around.

- I have no idea about the aux honestly. Driver gets dibs but usually ends up ceding it to someone. They cycle through everyone's music. It is usually drowned out by rowdy behaviour and excitement unless everyone is napping. Then Imogen or Orym's music gets put on because Ashton and Chetney's would be too aggressive for that and Laudna and Fearne's scares people slightly. F.C.G's playlist is just top 20 pop hits and whatever Dancer would have listened to. Disaster lesbian stuff probably.

- Roadtrip games include:

-- various forms of fuck marry kill verging from hilarious (gus is IN A RELATIONSHIP), to concerning/trauma based (should we be suggesting delilah here????), to deeply philosophical (can you fuck ruidus as a concept?).

-- i spy but with multiple arbitrary rules tacked on

-- ghost stories (no one said it was ONLY a campfire tradition)

-- a few rounds of what the fuck is up with that

-- therapy session probably

-- "can you light this on fire?" a game suggested by Fearne and immediately vetoed by everyone, the cowards

-- rowdy and excitable singing

- This is a modern au so i guess they won't be attacked by monsters but they need to have at least 1 flat or something during the trip. it all works out though.

-- chetney has one of those travel sets of chess with meticulously carved pieces. half of the party doesn't know how to play chess. its very fun.

-- puppet shows. IMPROVISED puppet shows. its a disastsr.

- oh my god the stories that pop up from the rest stops they visit though

#i did a very long drive to somewhere recently so i might be pulling from that rather than a proper roadtrip but i hope i got the vibes down #i think the bells hells would be kind of stressful to travel with but also like. surprisingly good about accomodating people so it evns out #and the number of people who would be mindful of travel logistics and everyones comfort is. surprisingly high!#critical role #bell's hells #spar speaks #ask away!#this is essentially fic i guess? in the most generous sense. not really meta #my fic #fanfic #shitpost

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welcome-to-roomba-fazbender · 1 year ago

Note

Charlie read us the bee movie script

"FUCK YOU"

"I'M READING THE ENTIRE"

"MY OCTOPUS TEACHER TRANSCRIPT"

WARNING: VERY LONG POST

"A lot of people say that an octopus is like an alien.

But the strange thing is, as you get closer to them,

you realize that we're very similar in a lot of ways.

You're stepping into this completely different world.

Such an incredible feeling.

And you feel you're on the brink of something extraordinary.

But you realize that there's a line that can't be crossed.

It's quite a long time ago now, that day when it all started.

This place on the tip of Africa is known as the Cape of Storms.

My childhood memories are completely dominated

by the rocky shore, the intertidal and the kelp forest.

We had this little wooden bungalow,

literally below the high-water mark.

So when those huge storms used to come in,

the ocean used to smash the doors down and fill up the bottom of the house.

So it was incredibly exciting as a child

to literally live in the force of that giant Atlantic Ocean.

Most of my childhood was spent in the rock pools,

diving in the shallow kelp forest.

That's what I most loved to do.

As an adult, I'd been separated from that.

And that was fine at first.

Until I went to the central Kalahari about 20 years ago.

I was making a film called The Great Dance with my brother.

And then I met these men

who were probably some of the best trackers in the world.

To watch these men...

go into the incredible, subtle signs in nature,

things that my eye couldn't even see,

and then follow them, sometimes for hours,

and find hidden animals in the landscape

was just extraordinary to witness.

I mean, they just were inside of the natural world.

And I could feel I was outside.

And I had this deep longing to be inside that world.

I went through two years of absolute hell.

I had been working hard for a long time,

I'd just worn myself out.

I hadn't slept properly for months.

My family was suffering.

And I was getting sick from all the pressure.

My mind couldn't deal with all that stuff.

And I didn't wanna see a camera or an edit suite ever again.

I couldn't even face that.

Your great purpose in life is now...

just in pieces.

And you've got this young child that's growing up.

Tom.

I just couldn't, in that state, be a good father to my son.

I had to have a radical change.

And I took inspiration from my childhood,

and I took inspiration from these master trackers

I worked with in the Kalahari.

And the only way I knew how to do it was to...

be in this ocean.

In the beginning, it's a hard thing to get in the water.

It's one of the wildest, most scary places to swim on the planet.

The water drops to as low as eight, nine degrees Celsius.

The cold takes your breath away.

And you just have to relax.

And then you'll get this beautiful window of time

for 10, 15 minutes.

Suddenly...

everything feels okay.

The cold upgrades the brain because you're getting this flood of chemicals

every time you immerse in that cold water.

Your whole body comes alive.

And then, as your body adapts, it just becomes easier and easier.

And eventually...

after about a year...

you start to crave the cold.

What's so amazing about this environment

is you're in a three-dimensional forest,

and you can jump off the top and go wherever you want.

You're flying, basically.

You might as well be on another planet.

You naturally just get more relaxed in the water.

You get to be able to hold your breath for longer.

Having a scuba t*nk in a thick kelp forest

is not optimal for me.

I want to be more like an amphibious animal.

Instinctively, I knew not to wear a wet suit.

If you really wanna get close to...

an environment like this,

it helps tremendously to have no barrier to that environment.

And I suddenly realized I've got energy to take images and film again...

and then picked up my camera again

and started doing the thing I love and what I know.

The animals are extremely exotic and strange.

It's, like, much more extreme than our maddest science fiction.

I remember that day when it all started.

I found this very, very special area

that is protected with a big piece of kelp forest,

'cause the forest itself actually dampens the swell.

And the whole forest around there

is absolutely murky, and you can't see a thing.

And in this little 200-meter patch, you can dive

and observe.

And it's an incredible place.

And I remember there was this strange shape to my left

and just going down...

and seeing this really strange thing.

The fish even seemed to be confused.

And then, suddenly...

At the time, I didn't know

I'd witnessed something extraordinary.

I'd come in at the end of a whole drama.

You think, "What on earth is this animal doing?"

And I think she was a little bit afraid of me,

so she lifted this incredibly slippery...

piece of algae that you can hardly hold with your hands

and just wrapped it in this extraordinary cloak around her

and then stared at me out of the little gap.

And then, boom, you know, she was gone.

It's a hard thing to explain,

but sometimes you just get a feeling,

and you know

there's-- there's something to this creature that's very unusual.

There's something to learn here.

There's something special about her.

And then I had this crazy idea.

What happens if I just went every day?

What happens if I... I never missed a day?

And, initially, she was clearly being affected by my presence,

so I thought, "I'll leave the camera there,

and then that will record her going about her business."

She sees this shiny new thing in the forest.

Coming at it with a shield,

just in case it att*cked, and put up the shield.

This is something different. This is interesting.

Touching it, feeling it, tasting it.

If she was in a playful mood, you couldn't leave it there for too long.

She'd just pull the thing over.

It took going in every day to really get to know her environment better.

Initially, it all just seems like much of the same thing.

But then, after a while, you see all the different types of the forest.

You get the old-growth forest.

You get the forest with a lot of different algae growing in the bottom.

You get the misty forest.

As I started to map the environment around her den,

it was shocking to see small caves really close to her,

packed with pyjama sharks.

And they really are her most serious predator.

Their skin is striped. That's why they're called a pyjama shark.

They're not visual predators.

But they have an incredible sense of smell.

And they are particularly aggressive.

They can shove their noses into a small cr*ck.

So they are deadly little octopus predators.

And I was thinking, "Well, how long before something happens with these animals?"

After visiting her more and more and more,

there was a definite moment where...

that fear had subsided tremendously.

She'd see big movement,

and she'd be slightly afraid and then look, "Oh, it's him."

And she'd come out and be very curious.

Very interested, very curious, but not taking stupid chances.

Keeping all the other arms attached to the den

and the suckers in place.

And then it just happens.

I put my hand out a tiny bit.

Something happens when that animal makes contact.

But, at some point, you're gonna have to breathe.

So you've got to very gently

prize off those suckers

without disturbing her,

so that you can actually go up and take a breath.

By far the most powerful

is when it comes out the den

because that's when you know there's full trust.

There's no holding the arms back just in case I have to pull back.

It's like, "I totally trust this human,

and I'm coming out of the den,

and I'm gonna go about my business."

I started to see pretty extraordinary things.

They can look spiky. They can look smooth.

Grow horns on their heads.

They can match color, texture, pattern, skin.

It's beautiful.

Most of the time, she's jetting or crawling or swimming.

But occasionally,

two legs come out.

She walks.

And off she goes, striding away,

walking bipedally.

She puts her body into this strange posture that kind of looks like a rock.

And then two of those arms underneath slowly moving,

so the rock is just slowly moving away.

And then she changes

into this extraordinary, wobbly, flowy old lady in a dress.

Perhaps she's trying to mimic

kelp or algae moving in the swell...

and, at the same time, is slowly moving away.

And this is how she works.

This incredible creativity to deceive.

An octopus is essentially a snail that's lost its shell in evolution.

A very fragile, liquid, soft animal

that relies on tremendous intelligence.

She's got no mother or father to teach her anything. She's alone.

'Cause you've got all these different types of predators, all hunting her.

So, over millions of years, she's had to...

come up with the most incredible methods to deceive them.

And she's got to learn fast because

she's only got just over a year to live.

When you're diving alone, everything about my kit has to be perfect.

And I've gotta be prepared for all eventualities.

I can't be fiddling around. It's gotta be instinctive.

But, at that point, I was making a lot of mistakes.

One day, she was following me.

And that's the most incredible thing, is to be followed by an octopus.

You know, you're just backing away, moving backwards,

and this incredible animal is coming towards you.

And there's not a lot of fear in it at all.

It's curious, and there's trust,

and it's like this fantastic feeling.

And then, bam!

I dropped one of my lenses,

and that thing falling quickly just startles that animal.

And then it turns and rushes, and it's got a huge fright.

And you just... you wanna kick yourself, because it's, you know...

That could have ended in the most incredible interaction and deep trust,

and you've ruined it.

Now, you know, have you ruined it forever?

Uh, is that animal ever gonna trust you?

Has that... has that experience freaked it out too much?

And then I approached her too fast.

And that's when she left the den and got a real fright...

and didn't come back to that den.

And I thought this was over.

She was gone.

I'd had this experience with these incredible San master trackers.

I just thought, "I wonder if anybody could ever track anything underwater?"

This animal has spent millions of years learning to be impossible to find.

I had to learn what octopus tracks looked like.

And that was very frustrating at first, so difficult to discern.

What's the difference between octopus tracks

and heart urchin tracks

and fish tracks...

and worm tracks?

And the predation marks.

The egg casings.

I needed to learn everything.

And then you have to start thinking...

like an octopus.

It's like being a detective.

And you just slowly get all your clues together.

And then I started to...

make breakthroughs.

"Okay, those are the animals she's k*lling."

So I'm looking at kills. I'm looking at little marks, diggings in the sand,

little changes in the algal patterns where she's been moving.

And then knowing, "Okay, this animal is very close now.

It's close. It's within one or two meters."

And then focusing on that small space.

And then, bang!

She's there.

Finally, after looking for her for a week, day after day,

there she was.

It's like a...

a human friend, like, waving and saying, "Hi, I'm excited to see you."

And I could feel it, like from one minute to the next,

"Okay, I trust you. I trust you, human.

And now you can come into my octopus world."

And she's moving towards me.

And my natural instinct is...

to gently back away.

And then I just wanted to keep still, so I held onto a rock.

She just kept coming...

and then covered my whole hand.

I'd been underwater for quite a long time,

so I just gently pushed for the surface, thinking she would move off my hand.

But she didn't. She just rode on my hand right to the surface.

There I was, just staring into the eyes of this incredible creature.

It was difficult to imagine at first

that she was getting anything out of the relationship.

Why would a wild animal, doing its thing,

get anything out of this

strange human creature visiting?

And this is where it gets interesting.

I think quite stimulating for that huge intelligence.

Somehow, she realizes this thing is not dangerous,

so you go and you interact with this human.

And perhaps it does give you some strange octopus level of joy.

When you have that connection with an animal

and have those experiences, it's absolutely mind-blowing.

There's no greater feeling on earth.

The boundaries between her and I seemed to dissolve.

Just the pure magnificence of her.

All I could do at the time was just think of her.

In the water and on land.

I mean, it just became a bit of an obsession.

You just want to visit her every day and see what's going on.

You can't wait to get back in the water.

What goes through her mind? What's she thinking?

Does she dream? If she dreams, what does she dream about?

She just ignited my curiosity in a way that I had not experienced before.

It's very useful to come back home

and try and read as many scientific papers as possible.

She's a common octopus.

Octopus vulgaris is the scientific name.

Two-thirds of her cognition

is actually outside of her brain, in her arms.

Her entire being is thinking, feeling, exploring.

She's got 2,000 suckers, and she's using all of them independently.

How do you do that?

Imagine having 2,000 fingers.

You can compare her intelligence to a cat or a dog

or even to one of the lower primates.

A mollusk shouldn't be this intelligent.

So many times I'd go and search through the scientific papers,

looking for the strange thing I'd seen.

And then you'd just come up absolutely blank. There's nothing.

You're going into a place that's under-studied,

and, almost on a weekly basis, you can find out something new to science.

According to the literature, octopus are supposed to be a nocturnal species.

Now, was she more active at night?

It was a little bit scary in the dark.

These incredible sounds of the humpback whales

coming through the water.

You're on hyperalert.

I couldn't find her. She wasn't in her den.

I'd kind of given up and was going back to the shore.

Something just made me veer slightly to the left.

And there she is...

right in extremely shallow water.

Can't see what she's doing.

These lightning-fast strikes.

Using her arm like this strange w*apon.

Just rolling it up in this fraction of a second.

And I saw her catch three fish like this.

I'd never seen her catching a fish during the day.

Super dangerous out in the deeper forest at night,

so this incredibly clever animal retreats to the shallows,

where it's difficult for these sharks to get to,

and takes advantage of all the wonderful food available there.

The first instinct is to try and scare the sharks away.

But then you realize

that you'd be interfering with the whole process of the forest.

She was out of the den, moving around near the edge of the forest.

I noticed...

the shark.

Body was slightly hunched forward and was following the scent trail.

This is not good.

I think, "Thank God she's safe. She's right under the rock."

These things are coming right into that cr*ck.

And the next minute, the shark is actually clamped down on one of her arms,

doing this terrifying death roll.

And I can clearly see...

her severed arm in its mouth.

You had that terrible feeling in your stomach.

And thank God she managed to get really deep in that cr*ck.

She was moving very badly, slowly, very weak.

She's bleeding. That smell's in the water.

There's quite a distance to the den.

Are these sharks gonna pitch up again?

I thought about helping her back physically to the den.

But, luckily, I didn't need to.

I didn't know...

what was gonna happen to her or if this would make her weak and vulnerable,

and they'd finish her off that night.

And I couldn't help feeling...

had I been responsible for this?

Was she out because I was there?

I felt very vulnerable.

As if somehow what happened to her had happened to me in some strange way.

And then this almost felt, psychologically, like I was...

going through a type of dismembering.

You start thinking about your own death and your own vulnerability,

worried about your family, your child.

I hadn't been a person that was overly sentimental towards animals before.

I realized I was changing.

She was teaching me to become sensitized to the other.

Especially wild creatures.

A scary feeling, going into the water early the next day.

I was very relieved that she was alive, breathing.

She's so weak that she can't make those vibrant colors of a healthy octopus,

and she's just dull and white.

And now I'm worried, "How is she getting food?"

You are crossing a line

when you interfere in the lives of animals.

But I was just too overcome

with my feelings for her.

I don't think it really helped.

And she's right at the back of the den, you know, just not moving much.

I was just checking every day to see if she was okay,

wondering, "Is this the last day? Am I not gonna see her?"

The big relief came a week or so later,

and I could see it had sort of healed over pretty fast.

And then the most amazing thing, to see this...

tiny little miniature, perfect miniature arm...

starting to grow back.

And it gave me a strange sort of confidence

that she can get past this incredible difficulty.

And I felt, in my life, I was getting past the difficulties I had.

In this strange way, our lives were mirroring each other.

My relationship with people, with humans was changing.

My son, at this stage, was very interested in everything underwater.

And every day, I'd tell him the stories.

He'd seen her. He'd met her.

I'd taken him so many times.

The arm becomes pretty functional,

even when it's half grown.

And then, slowly, as the arm grew, she grew her confidence back.

Eventually, about 100 days later, that arm had fully regrown.

An amazing feeling to think that this animal is capable of that

and can withstand such an att*ck and fully recover.

After a while, she was just carrying on with her normal activities,

so I then started a whole new development

of seeing even deeper into her world.

It was a nice, calm, clear day.

She comes around a corner and spots a crab.

The problem when you're a crab,

you're being now hunted by a liquid animal.

She can pour herself through a tiny little cr*ck.

And the crab seems to sense her

and goes and hides underneath a big, poisonous anemone.

And then she waits and hides.

And then the crab thinks, "Okay, everything's all right,"

and makes the mistake of leaving that anemone.

She's quite a messy eater.

Bits going everywhere. The smell's going out.

And then you just look around, and you see these brittle stars,

surprisingly fast, just being drawn to her.

Just a mass of them sort of overwhelm her,

and she doesn't seem sure of what to do or how to deal with them.

So I thought, "Yeah, this is like a real problem now.

She's always gonna have this problem of brittle stars taking all her food."

Not that long in the future,

she's thought, "Okay, brittle stars are stealing my food,"

and has this amazing method of just picking them up with her suckers

and gently just throwing them out the den.

Now she's completely the boss.

She initially adopted the same method to crab hunting with lobster.

You just suddenly see...

lobsters just sh**ting out of the reef.

I'm thinking now, "She's definitely gonna catch this one."

Time and time again, they just evade her.

And then, a couple of weeks later,

watching her coming round the side,

corralling me so that

she can then get between the lobster and myself.

Using me as part of her hunting strategy.

And instead of that messy lunge...

throwing her web over the top.

And then there's nowhere for it to go.

This is an animal that is strategizing

and working out very quickly how best to hunt a very tricky prey.

A lot of her intelligence is built

from the sheer number of prey that she has to catch.

All sorts of animals.

All the mollusks she is capturing, they're quite easy to catch,

but they've got these incredibly hard shells.

Now, how the hell does she k*ll and eat them?

At the base of all those arms,

there's a drill that can drill through hard shell

and then drop venom in there, like a snake,

and see how that mollusk reacts.

But some of these mollusks will only relax

if that drill is precisely in the apex of the shell,

on the abductor muscle.

She basically has to do geometry

to work out exactly the precise spot where she needs to drill that shell

in order to get her food.

This is high-level invertebrate intelligence.

Her ability to learn and remember details.

And it h*t me how she was teaching me so much.

You just can't wait to get up in the morning, 'cause there's so much to do

to understand every little tiny mark,

every little behavior,

every species and what they're doing, how they're interacting.

People ask, "Why are you going to the same place every day?"

But that's when you see the subtle differences.

And that's when you get to know the wild.

So when these thousands of threads going off from the octopus

to all the other animals, predator and prey,

and then this incredible forest,

um, just nurturing all of this.

And now I know how the helmet shell is connected to the urchin

and how the octopus is connected to the helmet shell.

And as I draw all these lines,

all these stories are just being thrown up.

It's almost like the forest mind.

I really could feel it. That big creature.

It was thousands of times more awake and intelligent than I am.

This is like a giant underwater brain operating over millions of years.

And it just keeps everything in balance.

Everything seemed, at this point...

sort of perfect in the forest.

And, of course, you know...

...you've forgotten...

those predators are ever present.

Just have this...

burnt in my memory, this, like, huge shark just suddenly approaching her.

She kept still and tried to hide.

Then you just saw the shark swimming on the periphery, picking up her scent.

And I thought, "Oh, no, this is this whole...

nightmare happening again."

She jets up in the canopy,

and she's wrapping many leaves of kelp tightly around her body

and then just peering out.

All the smell's on the kelp,

so the shark's now biting and snapping at the kelp.

She's sh*t out the back.

She just climbs out over a rock, leaves the water, and I was like...

I just, you know... almost can't believe my eyes.

But the problem is, of course, she's gotta come back.

On the other side, the shark picks up her scent again.

And this crazy chase is on.

And then, I see her,

in a very quick movement,

picking up maybe close to 100 shells and stones...

and then folding her arms

over her vulnerable head.

And in that moment,

I realized, "This is this crazy thing I saw...

so long ago."

Next minute, the shark grabs her.

But I had to breathe.

Rush to the surface as fast as you can.

Straight back down again.

And it's like, "Okay, now, this is too crazy."

Somehow she's managed to maneuver herself into the least dangerous place,

and that's on the shark's back.

The shark tries to shake her off and is swimming away.

Takes a few seconds to figure out,

"What the hell's going on here?"

But you can immediately tell

she's now got the upper hand.

As the shark goes near some of the thick kelp...

she just pushes off the back...

drops the remaining shells

and jets away.

And the shark, it's just been completely outwitted.

The shark comes, does one pass,

but she's completely safe. There's nothing it can do.

And it leaves.

How she can think that quickly and make those life-and-death decisions,

uh, it's just, yeah, pretty, pretty incredible.

I was around for a good 80 percent of her life.

Each moment is so precious because it's so short.

There was this one incredible day.

A big shoal of dream fish.

Fairly shallow water.

Suddenly, she's...

reaching up for the surface like that.

Initially, I thought...

"She's hunting the fish."

Then I was like, "Hold on.

When she hunts, she's strategic, and she's like...

focused.

This behavior doesn't feel predatory to me."

It took a long time to actually, like, process it.

But I couldn't help thinking,

"She's playing with the fish."

You see play often in social animals.

Here's a highly antisocial animal playing with fish.

It takes that animal to a different level.

Oh, then she completely lost interest in the fish,

rushed over...

grabbed hold of me.

And that was the last time we had physical contact.

If I think back,

and I remember it was a very rough day, very turbulent.

Sediment everywhere.

Go down and whoa,

there's another big octopus right next to her.

It's very, very rare to see two octopus close together.

"Oh, my God, what's going on?"

And then seeing that both animals are pretty relaxed

and realizing, "Okay, and then the mating is beginning."

By this stage, I knew quite well the stages of an octopus's life.

So while I was very excited that this mating was beginning,

there was a sort of...

this dread in the bottom of my stomach.

She wasn't coming out of that den.

There was no more feeding, no more hunting.

A huge part of her body is actually given to those eggs.

So she drops in weight, and she loses an enormous amount of strength.

The eggs are laid right in the back, in the dark.

It's impossible to see them.

I just keep going every day and just check.

She's oxygenating the eggs with her siphon, looking after them.

She's just slowly dying

and timing her death exactly for the hatching of those eggs.

I mean, it struck home so hard for me.

Here's an invertebrate, essentially a mollusk,

sacrificing her own life

for her young.

All those eggs hatched.

They're tiny, and they go into the water column.

Hundreds of thousands of them.

And the next thing I saw, she's washed out the den, barely alive.

And the fish, you know, feeding on her.

A lot of the scavengers coming to feed on her.

It was just heartbreaking.

A part of me just wanted to hold her and chase them away.

But I didn't do that.

The next day...

a big shark came...

and just took her away, you know, into the misty forest.

Often, I go to the place of her main den.

And I just float above it and feel her there.

Of course I miss her.

Um...

But, um...

I mean, in some crazy way, it was a relief.

It was a relief, because the intensity of going every day and tracking her, um...

and trying to capture, it was...

It was tough in a way.

I mean, I sort of slept, dreamt...

this animal.

I was... You know, I was...

in my mind, thinking like an octopus.

And... and it was all so taxing, in a way.

Um...

But underneath that,

this incredible pride for this animal

that's been through impossible odds to get to this place.

I mean, an unimaginable life.

One of the most exciting things ever in my life, taking my son,

walking along the shore

and just showing him the... the wonders of nature

and the details

and the intricacies.

I was getting so much from the wild, and I could actually now give.

I had so much energy to give back.

He's like a little marine biologist now. He knows so much.

And very powerful swimmer.

And as he gets older, he seems to want to do it more and more.

To see that develop,

a strong sense of himself...

an incredible confidence,

but the most important thing,

a gentleness.

And I think that's the thing

that thousands of hours in nature can teach a child.

A few months later, after she'd d*ed,

he actually found this tiny little octopus.

It's very rare to see an animal that small.

They have up to half a million young. A handful survive.

So it's a pretty tough road they have to walk.

But that's their strategy, live fast and die young.

We kind of imagined that it might be one of her young.

It was kind of the right size, the right time.

And it was joyous. It was like, "Well, there she is."

She'd made me realize

just how precious wild places are.

You go into that water...

and it's extremely liberating.

All your...

worries and problems and life drama just dissolve.

You slowly start to care about all the animals,

even the tiniest little animals.

You realize that every one is very important.

To sense how vulnerable these wild animals' lives are,

and actually, then how vulnerable all our lives on this planet are.

My relationship with the sea forest and its creatures deepens...

week after month after year after year.

You're in touch with this wild place, and it's speaking to you.

Its language is visible.

I fell in love with her

but also with that amazing wildness that she represented

and... and how that changed me.

What she taught me was to feel...

that you're part of this place, not a visitor.

That's a huge difference."

#charlie the phone guy #charlie the cursed phone guy #dsaf #dayshift at freddy's #classic verse #very long post #long post #this is your fault anon #you wanted him to read a script #YOU GOT THAT WISH #IT JUST AIN'T BEE MOVIE

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