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Other Services New Delhi, For businesses and brands, negative, defamatory, or libelous content give a devastating effect. This can impact customer...
#Remove_the_Negative_Content#Online Reputation Experts#businesses and brands#Build Brand Better#removing negative content#google search results#removing negative content from google search results
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#best orm company in delhi#review management company in india#top crisis management company in bangalore#orm agency in hyderabad#top crisis management company in dwarka delhi#best orm company in dwarka delhi#build brand better orm service#build brand better#orm agency in banglore#in dwarka delhi#reputation management companies near me#online reputation#reputation management agency#best reputation management companies#best reputation management#the reputation management company#online reputation companies#seo reputation management#individual reputation management#social media reputation management#orm reputation management#reputation agency#personal reputation management services
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to preface this post i am anti-advertising i think we should explode the entire industry but it's sooo funny when you people make posts like "and they don't even work!!" like. sorry to be the bearer of bad news but yes they do. that's why we have to put up with so many despite everyone hating them and thinking its annoying. because they actually work really well and make a shit load of money
#it actually would be way better if they didnt work and made no money bc businesses would abandon them#this isnt like stocks where everythings abstract and is essentially gambling (i dont understand stocks)#like ppl in the ad industry create things. that make a tangible and quantifiable impact on the business#which is then used in further ad planning. it is NOT all smoke and mirrors#like its fake in that the industry is not providing a necessary service the way like. grocery stores are#but its not the level of fake where everything is abstract like theres deliverables#moreover there is an extensive body of academic work specifically on how to make ads more effective#ALSO i think some of u views ads like. as if they have a win condition. which is you buy product#but in current advertising this is pretty rare and comparatively ineffective#which is why you see MANY ads which dont seem to be selling anything in particular. or which have nothing all to do with the product#the 'win' condition for THAT kind of ad is something more like 'viewers remember our name'#like. ex i would say ads for temu have not been effective on me bc i havent bought anything from them#but temu probably thinks they were SUPER effective on me because i talked abt them like 5 different times at work#and i do in fact know exactly what the company does and what they sell#and they were able to capitalize on the reputations of existing companies (wish shein etc) to build their own brand#good idea generator
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I used to worry people wouldn’t like my silly nsfw stories if they followed me for cute long gay comics and now that two of my sex shop stories are blowing up I’m fretting all the new followers will get annoyed about the long gay comics.
Repeating my mantra: this is my blog and I post what I want to.
#ramblies#had a friend tell me I’m trying to be famous and I was like ??? I don’t think wanting people to see my art or read my writing is the same#I’m happy I’m getting more followers because it means more people interact with my creative works#which feels objectively different to how I think of Fame#I want people to like the final product: the art or story. I’m not necessarily building a brand around who I am as a person#I did originally make this tumblr to post my funny sex shop stories then moved on when I switched jobs and didn’t have an audience#and now that I do I have such a better writing voice to share them with so I’m happy people are enjoying them finally
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Holding the riders at gunpoint to ask them what they think of that new brand, and Pecco going “it was uhhhhhhhh incredible”, yeah we feel you Pecco, we’re just as amazed 😅
#motogp#jorge martin#pecco bagnaia#marc marquez#all that build up for THAT#ugly ass brand#feels very rough#anyone could have come up with that#the past one was so much better…
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The way everyone is feeling about the Nickelodeon documentary is exactly how people are going to feel about exploitive ‘family-bloggers’ in less than 10 years once those kids are old enough to speak out on it.
We have seen it with the TLC Kate plus 8 and Duggar bullshit already.
This abnormal culture of celebrity worship and the perpetuation of this ‘sponsored by late stage capitalism’ lifestyle as one of the only means left to secure a comfortable living is unconscionable.
We banned circus freak shows in like the 20s and it took less than 100 years to rebrand them - except instead of a desperate man biting the head off a chicken to shock a crowd, now we scare small children for engagement on reaction vids on your FYP.
#i mean it’s not untrue#nickelodeon#quiet on set#literally the worst timeline#I will fight every mommyblogger#ruby franke#welcome to the panopticon little susie#better start building your brand at 6 years old
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dave :)
#art#traditional art#watercolour#oc art#ocs#oc group: dave#oc: dave#was testing out a different brand of full cotton watercolour paper that was pretty affordable#(thats why you can see my entire watercolour palette to his right LOL)#i got hotpress cause i was curious and im like so mad because its so good#i think i like hot press better for smaller drawings like this like this is under 10 inches. for something like 15 inches or bigger#cold presses texture is really nice BUT for smaller stuff hot press lets the colour shine through#while the cold press papers ive tried at a small scale they tend to dull down the colours a lot and it takes way more layers to build up#hot press does seem to have funky blooming situations sometimes if you put on too much water at once (like you can see on his arm)#but isnt that the charm of watercolour now that i think about it.... i definitely leaned into it in the bg LOL#but anyway im so excited dude this paper was a DREAM to work with#i am mad tho because now i fully see the light. i understand why everyone tells me to use professional paper. but it is still. Costly#LUCKILY the stuff i got was not tooooooo expensive but still...... It Is Costly hjrkfsjkrfsd
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Here's what you're gonna do.
You're gonna go down to your local Aldi's, buy a 24oz bag of frozen mango chunks, a bag of rice, and two cans of black beans.
If you don't already have them; salt, lime or lemon juice and cumin; maybe some meal prep tupperware. Pouch tuna if you like that stuff.
Once home, put that bag of mango chunks in a bowl full of warm water so they defrost. Don't pen it. The bag needs to stay closed. This'll make sense later.
Prepare enough water in a pot to cook two cups of that rice. Make sure the pot's big. Big enough to hold way more rice than you expect there to be. Add a teaspoon of cumin, two tablespoons lime or lemon juice, salt according to preference. Pat of butter.
Boil. Make sure the butler's melted. Stir to combine.
Add your rice. Cook according to rice bag.
If you have a protein, you can cook that now. 20-30 minutes at your disposal. If not, that's why we got the second can of beans for.
I recommend Aldi's tuna steaks - quick to defrost, 5 bucks for 2-3. Lean protein. Real nice. Creme de la crumb's tuna marinade also works real nice if you have the energy.
A pouch of tuna's just as good functionally.
Less mercury that way.
You can mix it in that if you want, too.
Strain your beans. Conserve a little bean water for the rice if you want.
Your rice is done.
Add your beans. Twice as many if you're feeling like it'll be a bad week. Two or three pouch tunas too if you want a little extra.
If you have the lemon pepper kind you can probably nix the citrus juice.
Now we go back to your mango. If all's worked correctly, the warm water should've thawed them somewhat, the heat warming the air in the bag.
Dump 'em in, turn the burner to low heat. Stir until well combined.
Portion out into Tupperware.
You've got a good couple meals right there. Even more as side dishes if you have the energy to cook chicken nuggets or fish or veggies or whatever.
Lunch. Breakfast. Dinner.
Carbs to keep you awake and moving.
Protein to fuel your muscles.
Bit of fiber to push it all through your guts easier.
Citric acid to avoid the scurvy.
Can be eaten hot or cold, and the shit's good, too.
You're gonna have something tasty to eat whether you can operate a microwave or not this week.
That's what you're gonna do.
#adhd hacks#recipe#depression hacks#cooking hacks#cooking#you deserve better than a simple beige diet.#i had a lot of fun cooking this old favorite with my boyfriend this weekend.#the bag of mango was way bigger than we needed for one meal so they helped me prep cook some emergency dinner#this one is pretty simple in prep so if you can grocery shop and make mac and cheese this shouldn't be too much#it's a bit more pricey the first time around but getting a big bag of rice cuts this cost significantly.#fresh mango works too but frozen is cheaper#more cost effective and requires less spoons#canned beans are thankfully dirt cheap#pouch tuna is also wicked good lean protien-wise and $0.50-1 a pouch for store brand is a great way to eat#take care of yourselves friends. slowly building up the energy to put the effort you deserve into yourself doesn't have to start big.#it doesn't have to hurt. baby steps where you can take them are steps nonetheless.
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a while ago on the discord i brought up the "which desk at the station is forrest's desk" question when the answer should probably have been obvious. he's been at the job for approx. one week, so it's the desk with all the unpacked boxes. it just didnt occur to me because thats Frankly A Lot Of Boxes and my first thought was this is where all the storage and junk are piled on, but no. it's all stuff forrest brought (/hc). he's a heavy packer. he spite packed all the stuff he didn't want his old job to keep even if he doesnt need or even like them all that much but now that he's blacklisted then no one in the entirety of chicago can have them
#killer frequency#forrest nash#i'm also half convinced tbh that the bulk of what he brought in are station supplies lmao#so to disingeniously bring up a further point in the tags again instead of sensibly adding to the main post#the game has this narrative tension btwn audio storytelling vs visual storytelling#especially in regards to forrest's character/impression vs the impression we the viewers have of The Town#environmentally- this town is Filthy lmao i'm so sorry everyone but like#forrest bringing up A Smell after we are Surrounded the whole game by dead bugs left everywhere#and both inside and outside the station just Looking Like That#like he's Not just being mean but he is absolutely not being gentle about it either#this touches on the town being in disrepair perhaps bc of local officials not doing much to promote/maintain upkeep#as well as clive the station janitor being BUSY with other projects lmao#but in the protag's POV where he's been upended from his life and then finds himself in a building infested with bugs#also with a brand new sleep schedule. ok he is going to be A Bit Grumpy About It (better or worse depending how you RP him lol)#but yeah i do like that very subtle tension bc this is largely an audio driven story#and in that sense it's easy to just brush off all of forrest's pettiness to him just being a mean person full stop#ALL THIS TO SAY that i think forrest packed five or more boxes of bug repellent ty for coming to my ted(dy) talk#and also more music/soundbites & tech bc KFAM is a bit lacking from what he's used to#\o/ UNCALLED FOR CHARACTER BUILDING!!
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So, most Daycares typically look after kids ranging from 1-to-5/6 years old, which means that Sun and Moon aren't just looking after babies. Mans looking after Baby-Babies. At least 10+ of them a day. That makes me wonder what their limit is. Do they have a waitlist for the Daycare?? Did they ever have Daycare assistants?? Or just a daytime security guard who watched from behind the desk? I want to know how the ins and outs of this place worked man!!
#sunnydrop#moondrop#just like having a daycare in what is p much a mall with attractions is so wild to me#that should be a separate building with a yard and multiple rooms for the kids to go into for different activities!!#fuck it we start our own daycare! one that passes osha's safety regulations with flying colors! and has a yard to play in!!#i read a fic similar to this idea once and now I'm obsessed with it#you combine the 'buying the old animatronics post-fire' theme from...fnaf 4? i think?#with making a whole new daycare still using the fazbear 'superstar daycare' branding#but with a lot nore safety and much better quality and care for both you the kids and the animatronics
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I’m starting to feel like it’s a legitimate possibility that Wikie and Keijo will end up as the very first orcas to be transferred to a sea sanctuary. Combine the untimely deaths of Moana and Inouk and a financially troubled park with the blocked transfers to Japan (and the new park has already started taking in whales from other Japanese facilities, so I don’t think they’re waiting for them) and a government that’s eager to offload its cetaceans, and you’ve got the perfect recipe.
I hope it works.
#I don’t think it will#but for their sake#I hope it works and I hope they thrive#but they’ve never known a world beyond that pool#if the mla facilities are truly in as bad a shape as they say… tell me how keeping them there for several more years#while the sanctuary is built#is better than sending them to a brand new albeit smaller facility#I really don’t think it is#but please… please build a land based habitat on site#like the beluga whale sanctuary has#if not for it they would’ve lost both their whales#whale sanctuary project#marineland antibes#orcas#killer whales#wikie#keijo
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Ya know, if they ever want to crush me, they will...
This is what allowing a corporation to distribute your shit gets you. Sony crushes a local makeup brand with impunity, and they don't even have to win the case. The legal fees are too expensive. It doesn't matter how you navigate Kafkaesque situations like being asked to prove your makeup does not resemble a cow because the song lyrics in the background mention a cow, and if you're basing your cow makeup off these lyrics that we own, you owe us $18 million. You can't even afford to argue. There goes all your work.
Are the artists who made the music going to get any of that money? No. They got paid when they sold the rights. Maybe a small slice in royalties, but not so much that they don't have to keep cranking out new music and giving it to their contract holders to remain active in creative spaces.
"There are lines" says the legal expert. Yeah. Well. I'm pretty sure the only line you need to cross is: a corporation notices you and decides to incite a hostage situation. If Sony wins this case, it gets even easier for the big guys to take it out of the little guys. And if they don't... It's not like they're going to stop suing people and gatekeeping the use of art.
If humanity remains a going concern long enough for us to come to our senses, there's just going to be this huge hole in our media right around the 20th century. If Sony or Disney or Warner Brothers or Fox or some other huge corporate conglomerate doesn't make it into the fossil record, or just decides to delete everything it owns for tax purposes, future historians are going to be trying to reconstruct a significant portion of lost culture off whatever's left of Internet Archive and AO3. And that's only if the corporations don't obliterate that stuff too.
I guess there are non-zero folks out there who are just doing commission-style work to get paid so they can eat, maybe they don't care what happens to it. But if your art means something to you, or if someone else's art means something to you, you should be upset about this.
You like Nosferatu? The movie? Well, like it or hate it, we weren't supposed to have it. They filed off the serial numbers but it didn't matter - they stepped on Stoker's copyright, they got sued, they lost, and they were supposed to destroy all the copies of that film. A film that's widely considered one of the best movies ever, codifier of many of the vampire tropes you know and love - which you could also call plagiarism, if you had enough money and were so inclined. Yeah, it's in the Public Domain now, but it doesn't have to stay that way (see: Peter and the Wolf). Copyright law destroys art. Period. Artists need to eat, but this is not the way to make that happen!
The makeup company is already dead. If the court case goes against them, it's precedent to kill so much more, just because someone sang a tune, or said words in a certain order, or played notes in a certain way. And, yeah, my work could evaporate on that basis. I reference real music. I don't have to, but it fits the themes and I do not agree with these laws and how they are applied. I'm contrary. I'm protesting. But if I ever get popular enough to make a difference... I could be toast.
#canada news#cbc news#copyright#tell better stories#nosferatu#peter and the wolf#suva beauty#court case#we are going to have to steal this stuff back because they aren't about to give it to us#toying with divorcing the lyric rewrites from the music credits altogether and letting you figure it out for yourselves#not that this would save me if the music industry wanted to kill me anyway#so maybe i should just “steal” even more? while i can?#i mean if they can argue “you used this to build your brand you owe us even if you delete it” i'm already toast
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#orm agency in banglore#review management company in india#top crisis management company in bangalore#best orm company in dwarka delhi#best orm company in delhi#in dwarka delhi#top crisis management company in dwarka delhi#build brand better#build brand better orm service#orm agency in hyderabad#Fake Removal reviews with Build Brand Better#Fake Removal reviews#Remove Negative reviews#online reputation Management
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#obviously OG is my favorite because there are a lot more variety of options for how they are as a character#Prime is legendary too ofc#and the fact that they're a teenager who founds an entire brand new high school#(which is why I can't take it seriously when people say HSS:CA is better than OG trilogy for being “more realistic”)#but I also would have loved more storylines that sort of allowed me to build their character?#and HSS:CA MC is cute and I don't mind playing as a more unpopular average kid#but they were also so much more stiff in their character and choices compared to OG#that I can't help but feel there was a major downgrade#and seeing OG MC so often as a NPC character while playing as HSS:CA MC was just jarring and certainly didn't help matters
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having a tav that's a Lloth-sworn life domain cleric of a noble background who before getting yeeted into the nautiloid was a sacrificial priestess (gn) during one of the cycles of Drow society and had their own altar and temple under their care, means Solune would have the most insane however many minutes they spent interacting with Minthara and I am obsessed about it. As far as I'm conceptualising it, I'm thinking of Lloth as extremely Ungoliant-like. Goddess of hunger, goddess of wanting and consumption, goddess of excess and exuberance, goddess who unmasked the hypocritical gods of starvation, guilt and purity into a society that cherishes a certain kind of clarity about the double standard they impose. For Drow are evil for their wars and their wanting and their taking, but those other people with their other gods kill, warmonger and enslave with no regard and no self-awareness, calling the indignation about receiving scraps from a bunch of silent, unrepentant gods, "guilt and shame". There is violence in denial and her Children will not suffer it.
In the season of Life, they do not sacrifice the unwilling. It is taboo. The only sacrifice that matters is the desire to be devoured and destroyed by the things you love the most.
And Solune sees Minthara and is like fucking finally, someone rational enough to get what I'm going through, that they're losing their mind that their life was taken from them and if they become this other thing, if they transform, if they do not remain Luxe Solune Mizzmyrra, Life Knife of Lloth, they're never going to be able to be reintegrated into that life. They will die away from home, from their temple, from their (first) spouse, from their mother and their siblings and there won't be the day when they too succumb to the knife, when it is time, when the day they no longer feel hunger comes.
And then the parasite gives them an in into Minthara thinking she was raised from the darkness into a FALSE GOD? One thing you do not do is steal from Lady Lloth, and oh my god, there could've been a time, a chance that existed only in ignorance, of Solune lending a hand to Minthara but this to them is unforgivable because Solune is genuinely a good friend to their friends, but if you keep peeking into whatever mindset nobility and religious authority has given them it's like realising your friend is a cesspool of "what the actual and everliving fuck", and when the knife of the morningstar priestess comes down on Minthara it won't be with love but with absolute rage, grief and disgust and I will be thinking about this for evermore. Thanks, I'm not well
#bg3#bg: solune#minthara#i love Solune they're so fun to build with because it's like sometimes organically they will reach the same conclusion as Wyll about sth#(I did NOT expect them to get along but he is their highest approval followed by Lae'zel)#but it's someone who has such an Alien concept of society to literally everyone else in the party. Solune is (fundamentally!!!) land owning#power concentrating nobility and no matter what they do not matter what conclusion their reach this specific brand of social conservativism#and verticality informs them to their very core. however also and cannot be dismissed that bc of how I'm conceptualising Lloth#(sorry but to write a vertical society that just brutalises itself what is this? western europe? fuck off)#Solune is by some contradiction one of the most You Do You people possible. but like. to a weird extreme and a wouldn't thou like to live#deliciously manner. oh you want to be FREE from your past then BE IT. oh you want to find your place in the world? then let that place#consume you and change you forever until the day there is no more than hungers in you and you can truly say you have lived#terrible enabling force but also extreme nurturing capacity#and above all they want that life back and sympathise with those feelings so well#but if there is one thing they cannot stand and that they will maim you on the spot about is heresy against lloth because you were not give#the gift of unmasking the hypocrisy of the gods of the above to waste yourself turning your back against the underdark jewels of Drow citie#there where the darkness does not mean shadows but the glimmering light of jewels. what do you mean some people live unfair lives?#well have they thought living better???#i'm obsessed with Solune and whatever the fuck is wrong with them (it's money. it's having money)
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Mirabel's Super Secret Adventure
Movie AU
Chapter Preview: How many secrets were Tío Bruno and Tía Leandra keeping? First the cracks, then Isabela, now this.
Prologue Prev Next Masterlist
7. Things Bruno Doesn't Talk About
Mirabel’s epiphany made her re-examine her wish to keep the cracks to herself. On the one hand, she really kind of wanted to be the person who fixed all this; on the other, if somebody in her family was really in that much pain…
Shouldn’t Mirabel focus on fixing it fast rather than by herself?
Reluctantly, Mirabel decided she would share what she’d learned with Tío Bruno. He, at the very least, would still allow her to help. If she told Abuela she would be thanked for bringing it to her attention, then told to go rest and let somebody else handle it.
After she finished helping her Pá teach Antonio, she headed over to Tío Bruno’s room and knocked on the door. This time, when she didn’t get an answer, she walked in. Tío Bruno had a tent hidden somewhere in the cave system that ran throughout his canyon, so if he wanted privacy he would just hide in his tent. As such, the kids in the family were always allowed to enter his room and hang out in his storytelling tent in the middle of his canyon’s oasis.
Mirabel ducked under his sand curtain and paused on the landing to shake the sand out of her hair. Octavia was down at the bottom of the canyon, using the sand to practice different gazebo designs. She paused halfway through making an octagon shaped gazebo to wave at Mirabel, then got back to work.
“What do you think?” Octavia asked, holding the sand in the shape that she wanted.
“I like the trellis siding,” Mirabel answered.
“Yeah, I don’t know, feels pretty basic,” Octavia frowned, then she grinned and with a few twitches of her fingers, the diamond shaped holes became hearts.
Mirabel frowned at the hearts.
“What? Too much?”
“No uh, it’s just,” she thought about biting her tongue, but she’d already told Amada, so she might as well keep flapping her mouth, “Isabela doesn’t want to marry him. She’s doing it for the family. Your Pá has a plan to fix things though.”
“Oh,” Octavia paused, then adjusted the hearts so they were in two parts with a jagged line in between them, “so, that better?”
Mirabel couldn’t help a dry chuckle, “Abuela would blow a gasket.”
Octavia giggled, “Yeah.”
Mirabel watched for a while as her cousin made gazebo after gazebo, each one slowly becoming more extravagant. Eventually Octavia was making entire gazebo palaces. It was a far cry from the sloppy houses she’d made in front of the town’s architect.
Most of the time, she wouldn’t have thought twice about it. A gazebo is a whole lot simpler than a house, after all. But with her mind still buzzing away, looking for problems large enough to cause all those cracks, she found herself eyeing the ease with which Octavia molded the sand.
Now that Mirabel was really thinking about it, Octavia seemed to be ten times better at using her gift whenever Abuela wasn’t watching.
“Octavia?” Mirabel asked, slowly.
“Yep?” Octavia chirped, adding another open air turret to the top of the gazebo's right wing.
“Do you… pretend to be worse at your gift when Abuela is around?”
The gazebo palace collapsed in on itself, Octavia slowly turned towards Mirabel, wide eyed. It was all the confirmation Mirabel needed.
She whispered, “Please don’t tell.”
“I won’t, I won’t, but… why?”
“Because I don’t want to end up like Luisa.”
“Like Luisa-? Oh.”
Octavia jerked her shoulders in a shrug, “By the time she was my age, she was already working eight hours a day. Now she doesn’t even get to finish breakfast half the time.”
Mirabel slowly nodded, to show that she’d heard her, then drifted over to the story telling tent. She entered the dimly lit haven and sat down on one of the many floor cushions. The tent flap opened, letting unfiltered light in, then closed and Octavia sat next to her, fiddling with a rock.
There was a long period of contemplative silence.
“Are you happy?” Mirabel eventually asked. Was anyone in their family truly happy?
“I am,” Octavia said, smiling a little, “although, sometimes I feel a bit guilty for hiding what I can do from everybody.”
“So everyday, when you practice with Tía Leandra?”
“We mostly just play around, experiment with my gift and stuff,” Octavia shrugged, “I am actually learning about architecture, I do want to make houses, but I want to be a kid first. You know?”
“When did you start pretending?”
“Pretty much immediately,” Octavia floated the rock in the palm of her hand and began running it through different shapes, “Má has always been-. The first thing I learned was all the ways to make a house poorly, right? Long run it means when I want to make a house well, I just don’t do any of the things I’d do to make it bad. Short term, I know exactly how to make it look like I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“And Tía Leandra has been helping you lie? This whole time?”
“It was my parents’ idea,” Octavia admitted, “well, I think it was Pá’s, but he’s not great at the whole, sneaky subterfuge thing, so Má has been handling it. Oh! Since you know now, you wanna see the Eiffel Tower?”
“Sure,” Mirabel said, faintly, mind still reeling. How many secrets were Tío Bruno and Tía Leandra keeping? First the cracks, then Isabela, now this.
Tío Bruno had said his gift meant he knew a bunch of stuff that wasn’t technically his business, even Amada had learned things through her limited sight that weren’t hers to tell. Dolores was the same way, she knew everything about everyone, and barely ever said a word. As Mirabel followed Octavia back out to the dessert portion of the canyon bottom, she wondered what her life would have been like if she had gotten a gift. Specifically a gift that made her privy to information she wasn’t meant to know.
Would she keep so many secrets too?
“Ok, so! The trick is to lift all the sand up then shape it as it falls,” Octavia said brightly, lifting what must have been a ton or two of sand, she tilted her head, “hold on, that’s a little too much.”
She separated out some of the sand and dumped it, then examined her giant sand cloud. She grinned and nodded and began releasing the sand a little at a time.
“I have to be careful to remember all the big clumps at the top, there’s rooms and stuff up there you know,” Octavia continued to narrate, glancing excitedly at Mirabel every few minutes to make sure she was paying attention, “and then I gotta make all the cross beams. On all four sides, too. See! Then I used to put this part that all the people can stand on half way down, but it’s more like a quarter of the way up. Riiiiiiiiight there! Now the legs are nice and thick, but if I make them too thick it looks really cartoony, so it’s got to be just the right level of thick. And ta-da! The Eiffel Tower!”
She held the tower steady with one raised hand and put the other one on her hip, grinning broadly at Mirabel.
“It’s amazing,” she told her, honestly. Because it was. The tower was about as tall as Tío Bruno’s canyon, and molded with such precision that Mirabel could make out all the little rivets, bolts, and screws holding it together.
“Yeah, I’m really good at this,” Octavia allowed the sand to fall in a controlled implosion, then turned back to Mirabel, “Sometimes I wish I could show off, you know? But I know the second I do I’ll pretty much just be Luisa the Sequel. Má and Pá always do a good job of acting impressed with me, and so do Amada and Gabe.”
“Wait, Gabe knows? And he hasn’t-?”
“Tattled? Of course not, you think he wants the townspeople treating one of his precious baby sisters the way they treat Luisa? Hell, if he could figure out how to get people to back off Luisa, he would.”
“Hold on, am I literally the last to know how overworked Luisa is?”
“Nah, pretty sure that’ll be Luisa herself,” Octavia lifted more sand and started making a statue of the family instead, “and your Má doesn’t know because she’s always working too, and Isabela doesn’t know because she’s always practicing being perfect, and Camilo doesn’t know because he’s always babysitting or entertaining the villagers, and I don’t think Tío Agustín or Tío Félix know because they got so many chores to do around the house.”
“But your parents know,” Mirabel filled in, “and they told you three?”
“Not really, Gabe noticed it by himself, and Má might have noticed it and told Pá. Or Pá told Má when he had that vision. I don’t know. But that’s how Amada and I found out, we saw Pá’s vision-. Wait… I maybe shouldn’t tell you about that.”
“What vision?”
“Um, nothing, no vision. Pá doesn’t have visions, he can’t even see!”
“Octavia, what vision?!”
She waved her hand and suddenly the sand gathered around her in a windowless dome. Mirabel tried digging into the sand, but it actively resisted her hands.
“Octavia!”
The dome didn’t budge.
Eventually, Mirabel put her hands on her hips and looked up towards Tío Bruno’s vision cave. She could barely see it from her place on the ground. Tío Bruno said that it got taller and taller every year, but had slowed down ever since he had started giving weekly story time to the kids.
Climbing up there was still the worst.
Which was exactly why Mirabel suspected that was where he stored any visions he didn’t want anyone to see. Nobody climbed up those stairs unless they had to. Tío Bruno had a secret passageway up there, but, well it was a secret passageway, not a well known passageway.
So, leaving the dome behind, Mirabel made her way to the stairs. She took a few deep breaths, then started the long journey up to the vision cave.
About halfway up, Mirabel wondered if she really needed to see this vision. It was about Luisa after all, not her. It probably wasn’t any of her business.
However, it might be connected to the cracks.
Or, it might give Mirabel some way to help her older sister.
Granted, if the vision could help Luisa in any way, Tío Bruno had probably already tried. But Mirabel would bet good money that the vision was about whatever warning Luisa had been ignoring. Maybe if she knew what was coming, she could give Luisa an extra push.
Three quarters of the way up, Mirabel paused to take a few more deep breaths, hands on her hips.
Almost there, she told herself, almost.
Steeling herself, she kept going.
She had to stop for another breather before crossing the bridge. If telling stories to kids had made the stairs slow in their growth, they needed to start making him tell stories once a day, then the stairs might actually shrink.
The bridge was thin, and felt pretty rickety. It was two lines of wooden planks side by side, suspended by some rough rope. Mirabel was just grateful there was a safety line on either side.
Carefully, Mirabel crossed the bridge, gritting her teeth as it swayed beneath her. She didn’t want to go too fast, but she definitely didn’t linger.
Mirabel could count on one hand all the times she’d been up here. And most of them were before the bridge had slimmed down to its current state. Usually when Tío Bruno gave personal visions, only he and Tía Leandra would come up. If he was giving one of his showy visions about fun stuff, he generally did it in the old river bed, so he could make the sand whirlwind as big as it needs to be to hold everybody in attendance.
As she entered the corridor to the actual cave, her eyes roved over the carvings on the wall. There were shelves full of incense and herbs, and a few vision tablets she recognized as being some of his favorite visions.
None of them featured Luisa.
Next, Mirabel eyed the big circular door. It looked heavy, but when she got her hands on the door knob, it swung open easily enough.
The cave beyond was about as dark as she expected, and, unsurprisingly, filled with sand. The only thing in the room other than sand and stone was a locked trunk. Mirabel propped the door open and walked over to the trunk, kneeling in front of it. The lock was a simple padlock, an old thing with a keyhole.
Mirabel glanced over her shoulder, then reached into her bag. She pulled out two of her thickest embroidery needles and began working at the lock.
Not that Mirabel had any experience with lock picking, of course. She had never ever, for random example, broken into a cupboard Abuela had hidden the good scissors in, or anything like that. It was purely beginner's luck that allowed Mirabel to open the padlock within minutes.
She placed the lock aside and opened the trunk. Sitting inside were three visions, stacked on top of eachother. The first was clearly very old and showed a much younger Tía Leandra wearing very little clothing; Mirabel wrinkled her nose and put that one aside. Underneath it was a vision showing Luisa standing by her pool, easily hefting Mariano over the water with one hand, and Dolores with the other. They were all laughing.
Mirabel cocked her head, she couldn’t think of a single reason why this vision would be hidden. Carefully, she picked it up, but when she held it up and changed the angle, the vision shifted to a much less cheerful image.
Instead, Luisa was now standing among rubble, clearly struggling to lift a section of wall off a crate.
Mirabel gasped as she started shifting the tablet back and forth, watching the happy scene appear and disappear.
Was Luisa going to lose her gift? Why?
Tío Bruno had apparently been telling Luisa she needed to relax, but how could her not relaxing lead to her gift going away?
And what was with the rubble?
Mirabel dropped the vision into her lap, staring into the middle distance. For a few seconds, all she could do was blink dumbly into nothing, trying to figure out what this vision meant. Then something caught her eye.
Was that her?
Slowly, heart beating in her ears, Mirabel reached into the trunk and pulled out the last vision. It was like the one of Luisa, if she held it one way, Mirabel was standing in front of a perfectly intact Casita, if she tilted it the other, Casita was falling to pieces behind her.
This must be how Tío Bruno found out about the cracks. This must be the vision he had that told them Mirabel had miracle magic for emergencies. Mirabel had always assumed the vision showed her fixing whatever was broken, that it ended with a happy image. This vision didn’t look happy, it didn’t even look certain.
She hadn’t even considered the thought that she might not succeed. That she might not fix the cracks. Of course she would, this was Encanto, and she was a Madrigal. Mirabel couldn’t let her familia or the village down.
Suddenly she remembered Dolores’ words of warning, “If you can’t live up to the village’s expectations” she had trailed off but the implication had been that you would end up like Tío Bruno. Hated by many, and blamed for things beyond your control.
After a few seconds of thought, she put the other two visions back, but kept the one about her.
Mirabel re-locked the trunk and hurried out of the cave, closing it behind her. She walked across the bridge as quickly as she dared, and had to struggle to keep herself from running down the stairs. When she was halfway down, she noticed that there were two more people standing at the bottom of the canyon.
Tío Bruno and Tía Leandra.
When they looked up and saw her they both smiled, Tío Bruno raising his hand to wave at her. Then they must have noticed the vision in her hand because Tía Leandra visibly grimaced and Tío Bruno’s hand stopped mid-wave.
To their credit, when she got to them, neither of them bothered to lecture her about snooping.
“I hope that’s not the one of me,” Tía Leandra said, Tío Bruno sent her a look, but she just flashed her cheekiest grin at him and he melted.
“I am honestly trying to forget I saw that, thanks,” Mirabel said.
“I uh I’m guessing that one is-,” Bruno rubbed nervously at his arm.
In answer, Mirabel held up the vision so they could see, “How do I fix things?”
The two adults exchanged a look, but didn’t respond. Octavia leaned as far forward as she could without losing her balance to see the tablet, then frowned, brows wrinkled.
“Do I, I don’t know, pray at the candle? Hug everybody in the family? What? How do I heal the cracks?”
“What cracks?” Octavia cut in. She must have been standing at an angle from which Casita was intact.
“The cracks in the walls,” Mirabel answered, eyes fixed on her Tío, “he’s been patching them for years but they keep growing.”
“You saw the cracks?” Tía Leandra looked a little more surprised then Mirabel would have expected.
“How’d you get past the hole?” Tío Bruno cocked his head.
“I used a ladder to climb down, walked across, then climbed back up.”
“A ladder…? We have a ladder that long?”
“Yeah, it’s not even ten feet deep.”
“Oh.”
They both stared at her in silence for a second.
“Bruno, darling?”
“Sí mi amor?”
“We might be stupid.”
“Sí mi amor.”
Mirabel lifted the tablet again, opening her mouth to insist Tío Bruno tell her more about his vision, but was cut off when Bruno’s door opened and Camilo’s voice bounced off the canyon walls, “Time for dinner!”
#Mirabel Madrigal#bruno madrigal#Encanto#Encanto AU#I have been waiting for 'We might be stupid' 'Si mi amor' for forever#the second I thought of Leandra and Bruno saying that I knew I needed to put it in somewhere#The goal was always for Leandra to make Bruno a better version of himself#but not perfect#so sometimes she's the same brand of ridiculous as him#if Leandra was there when Bruno said 'How do you save a family miracle? You hug a sister'#she would have been nodding sagely as if it was the wisest thing ever said#she may have even said out loud 'That's a good point'#Leandra has watched Bruno build a stage for his rats and her only complaint was that the curtains weren't real velvet
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