#but in a general sense ? hes just not skinny. ESPECIALLY not in late seasons of the show | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

bringinghometherain · 1 year ago

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This new OFMD season has me wondering more about how Hollywood treats actors' bodies, because just within this cast it's already striking me as inconsistent. CW for talking about body types, weight, body image, stuff like that y'all.

Just to start us off, we here at BringingHometheRain Blogging Inc. believe no body type is inherently good or bad. Fat, skinny, doughy, jacked, whatever. Bodies are bodies. I believe that, but obviously the people who make movies and tv shows don't believe that, or movies and tv shows would look a lot different in the year of our lord 2023.

OFMD started off, like, actually pretty progressive for a romcom in 2022. Your romantic leads are skinny/doughy guys in their late 40s! A fat Black man is also portrayed as a romantic interest, with no derogatory fat jokes! The other pairing is two gay guys who are not jacked dudes, they're just dudes! One of them has a speech impediment and it's never played for laughs! We're doing great!

And coming into this I had already noticed a divide between actors based mainly in the UK and actors based mainly in the US. My experience of British television is that the actors tend to look more like average people, and US-based actors tend to be skinnier and more muscular. Especially over the last decade-ish, actors in US films and tv have gotten noticeably more muscular, to a level that "normal" people don't tend to reach unless their main hobby is Gym (and even then). I haven't spent sufficient time watching NZ/Aussie tv and movies to really have a feel for what the general expectations for actors' bodies seem to be in that region of the biz. Also this is not, like, a hard-and-fast set of rules I'm proposing here, it's just a trend I've noticed from watching a lot of tv and movies.

So last year with season 1 we had our Stiddies moment and all that stuff I mentioned above and that was great for everyone. And I imagined to myself around the start of season 2 when Con started posting workout stuff on insta that they were making a good portion of the cast work out for season 2. I pictured it as some some beginning of the shoot all-cast meeting where they were like "yeah so uh, several of you are now sex symbols? In light of this we've written in more nudity and the following cast members now have workout plans:" and so on and so forth.

(Not really, but not not really)

And I didn't think much else of it until Con's birthday post on instagram and the trailer came out with Con shirtless, and then I thought as far as "ah, yes, Con sure did work out. He looks good!" (Note: That's a lie, I thought "OMG WHAT A BABE.")

And starting the new season yesterday, it looks like Nathan's lost some weight and/or put on some muscle. And again, that lined up with about what I was expecting. Vico and Madeline's arms are hella muscular, which makes sense given what the body norm is for AFAB people in tv right now. Most of the rest of the cast looks pretty similar to how they looked last season, which did not surprise me. Taika looks like he might've upped his workout routine a little, but he's a Real Hollywood Celebrity so he probably actually has a personal trainer and shit, he left average working actor/screenwriter life behind a long time ago.

But then!

We got our merStede fever dream come true, and Rhys's body type is almost exactly the same as it was last season. Which is fine! I'm not pointing this out to be like "how dare this man not make his muscles bigger for us." The man CLEARLY already has buckets of sex appeal without needing to work his pecs 4 days a week. He's doing just fine for himself, the proof is in the fan art.

So, because I am a person who loves thinking about process and logistics and all of the little moving pieces that go into something like OFMD, I am now wondering: why did Con have to build muscle if Rhys didn't? Or did he not have to, was he just told he would have some shirtless scenes and he was offered the personal training if he wanted it? How does this decision-making process work? Are there differences between UK/US/NZ studios on this? Is this all settled during contract negotiations? Do actors push back on this kind of thing ever? Is any of this being covered under the SAG-AFTRA contract negotiations? Should it be?

I understand why it's not really talked about, but given how extreme Hollywood likes to take their actors' body types I do wonder about the behind-the-scenes aspects, especially on smaller shows like OFMD where a lot of the cast are closer to middle class than the cast of Marvel movies.

#ofmd season 2 spoilers #ofmd spoilers #if you are a person who knows about these things please hit me up i am very curious #and again NO BODY SHAMING #BODIES ARE BODIES THEY ARE NOT A REFLECTION OF MORALITY OR CHARACTER #THEY JUST ARE

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mistydeyes · 1 year ago

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Hi, I hope you're having a good day! 🥰

I'd like to ask for a cod pairing pls ✨️

(I hope this ends up being coherent because I did just get back from spending several hours in the blazing sun lol)

as for appearance: I'm 5"4', have wavy brown hair that goes just past my shoulders, green eyes and I'm pretty pale with some freckles. as for body type I guess I'm more on the skinny side but I do have some curves and have been building some muscle lately.

personality-wise, I'm a fellow infp 👋🏻 I tend to be shy around people I don't know yet but once I get to know someone enough to be comfortable I get very talkative and make (sometimes really bad) jokes. my sense of humour bounces from silly to pretty dry or even sarcastic/cynical sometimes. I try to be kind to everyone unless they give me a reason not to, and I very rarely get angry or loud. I also try to always give my friends a sense of reassurance that I sometimes wish someone would give me. I do struggle with generalized anxiety disorder but I've been working on it, trying to live with it and move out of my comfort zone one step at a time.

in terms of interests/hobbies, I love playing video games, especially story-driven or open world adventure/fantasy games, as well as reading and writing, and going for hikes in the woods (I also do a bunch of nature photography). I work out twice a week and am pushing to get to a third time. this is definitely something I need since I work in office administration and sit a lot haha. but I do also like getting physically stronger, it helps my confidence quite a bit.

okay this is starting to get long so I'll cut it off here lol

thank you!💖

Kyle "Gaz" Garrick

How you met: Civilian Hikes in autumn were some of your favorites. You loved the crisp, cool weather and always had your camera on you to capture the changing of the seasons. You zipped up your fleece jacket as the soft breeze flowed gently through the trees. Your camera roll was filled with pictures of the wildlife making preparations for the winter and the silhouette of birds against the colorful leaves. The ground crunched under your step as you walked the nature trail. Eventually, you came across a man who was enjoying the beauty of the forest. He wore a warm flannel jacket and his bright smile was picturesque. You shamelessly snapped a picture of him as he was perfectly contrasted against a collection of yellow, red, and orange foliage. You weren't going to say anything until he approached you with a friendly wave. "Was it a good picture?" he asked and you blushed in embarrassment. You looked at your camera and it was, his smile perfectly capturing the enjoyment of fall and the leaves descending elegantly behind him. You sheepishly showed him it and he awed in response. "You have to send me a copy!" he exclaimed and quickly handed his phone over to you to exchange numbers. "I'm Kyle, by the way," he said as you sent yourself a text, "being a model is just a hobby of mine." You both laughed at his comment and said your goodbyes as you continued in opposite directions. You wouldn't find out until months later but he saved your contact as "the pretty photographer."

A peek into your relationship: "My turn!" you exclaimed as Kyle finished playing through another character's unfortunate demise in What Remains of Edith Finch. You had a tradition when he was on leave to play a game you each picked and trade off controlling the main character. It had taken you months to get through the Borderlands series as your boyfriend was terrible at making quick decisions and completing dialogue branches. He pushed the keyboard and mouse to your direction as you continued to direct Edith through the sprawling maze of a house. You had started the game this morning and after many breaks (Kyle was so upset after certain character deaths) you were finally approaching the ending. You had just played through Lewis' story and both were heartbroken at his fate. "This game is so twisted," Kyle said as you finally navigated to Edith's great grandmother's room. "I know but the art and the story is just so good," you said as you sat back and watched another tragic cutscene playthrough. "You are something else," he joked as he gently held your hand to pull the mouse away. By now, it was only Edith left and the plot twist left you both yelling and screaming at your pc. "WHAT DO YOU MEAN SHE WAS PREGNANT?" Kyle yelled as tears pricked your eyes. "Why did she have to die in childbirth?" you sobbed and shut your computer off as the cut scenes rolled. Kyle picked you up and placed you in his lap to comfort you. "Next time I pick the game," he joked and you could even see he was getting a little glossy in the eyes. "Deal" you said as you wiped at your cheeks. "Can we watch something silly like FNAG reaction montages or something?" you asked and he nodded as he carried you off to your living room for some much needed laughs.

#izziespairings #madebyizzie #cod mwii #mw2 imagine #task force 141 #kyle gaz garrick #gaz x reader #mw2

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genderbinaryisforlosers · 4 years ago

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everyone on the carte blanche for the ask meme

everyone? oh boy this is gonna get long ajfhdsf

JUNO

First impression: i, like a lot of people who get into the podcast without knowing a great deal about it, was expecting at most an ambiguously bisexual angst machine with a closely-guarded heart of gold. juno being an explicitly bisexual genderqueer angst machine is perhaps the most pleasant surprise of my life. the angst machine heart of gold characters were kind of my type at the time, so i loved him right away

Impression now: every time i think about juno’s arc from depressed mess held together by bad coping mechanisms, safety pins, and a few good strong puns into someone who can talk about his feelings, feel comfortable about being happy, and recognise when he needs to change, i want to cry about it a little bit. the depth of my love for juno steel has only grown along with him

Favourite moment: juno has a lot of great one-liners and i’m still a big fan of the “on the other hand i wasn’t wearing a watch” bit and who can forget such classics as juno finally deciding to stop moping over nureyev and move on only for him to open the door to his apartment and find nureyev sitting in the dark dramatically, but honestly nothing will ever hit me harder than his sudden, pissed-off declaration of “i can’t die yet, i still have shit to do!” in promised land. god.

Idea for a story: oh i have so many and i want to write most of them so no spoilers, but juno accidentally kidnaps a baby during a carte blanche heist and shenanigans ensue

Unpopular opinion: obviously we all know he’s dummy thicc but i feel like a lot of people forget he’s an actual genius, like the stuff he notices and how he strings it together is sometimes so obscure and he’s almost always right. oh, also juno is not skinny and i will not be taking criticism on that

Favourite relationship: this is so tough because every dynamic is so good, but i think it has to be juno and rita. those two are so good! the best best friends in the world!! i’m really a sucker for any dynamic that’s ridiculously in-sync so i loved these two as soon as juno saw rita’s notes in prince of mars and went “makes perfect sense to me” (which it probably didn’t, because rita, but he trusted that she knew what she was doing which is the important part)

Favourite headcanon: this isn’t really a headcanon but i still think about how juno is (was?) deathly afraid of heights but when he heard rex glass coming he still attempted to climb out of the window. either his aversion to working with dark matters/other people in general was so strong is overrided his fear, or his office was actually on the ground floor. not sure which of these is funnier.

NUREYEV

First impression: we’ve all seen the memes about nureyev knowing juno steel for one (1) day and deciding to Risk It All by leaving him with his name, look at this Hopeless Romantic, this utter DISASTER of a homosexual. the fact the very next time we hear from nureyev (at least directly) he’s patiently waiting in juno’s dark apartment to surprise him with a heist definitely supports this image.

Impression now: even after literally being inside peter’s head, i feel like we didn’t get a real sense of who he is until man in glass, where we find out he aggressively compartmentalises everything that causes him stress. he’s also distinctly someone who’s had his heart broken before, i think, which makes those first appearances of his very strange. but it does remind me of what juno says about diamond, and how he decided to provide the trust first and wait for the trustworthiness to grow in (only to get severely hurt), and i think that’s exactly what nureyev did. i am also... very uneasy with how suspicious he’s behaving this season because obviously i want to believe he’ll sort it all out and not betray the crew but... oof

Favourite moment: the beginning of what lies beyond pt1 where he’s affectionately bullying juno into taking care of himself? cleared my crops watered my skin etc etc etc

Idea for a story: i’d love to hear more about his past as a young thief idolising buddy and vespa (i can’t actually remember if that’s canon or fanon but anyway i wanna read it!)

Unpopular opinion: i think people often cling to an image of him that more resembles his first impressions in season 1 instead of seeing the depth that we’ve been given about his character in season 3

Favourite relationship: him and juno but honestly it’s a close call between them and his budding friendship with rita. even though she learned it by accident, his name is still a point of intimacy and it’s one less secret to keep around her which has to be a weight off his shoulders, at least a little? they seem like they could be really good friends once ultrabots is out of the way. juno steel love (and also bullying) zone activates whenever they’re together

Favourite headcanon: i’ve said it before and i’ll say it again - nureyev has never done a household chore in his goddamn life. he doesn’t know the water needs to be hot when you wash dishes.

RITA

First impression: honestly i’m not sure? i don’t remember having a big awareness of her in murderous mask but i remember loving her “note-taking” in prince of mars, i thought she sounded really fun and cute

Impression now: rita is really fun and cute, she’s also an extremely hardworking and dedicated woman who had the guts to throw in with a detective fired from the force and then invest all of her time and money into helping him help people.

Favourite moment: Rita Gets A Knife. enough said

Idea for a story: i don’t know honestly! i really struggle to write rita because her thought processes are so wild and i don’t think any story i could come up with would match mega ultrabots of cyberjustice.

Unpopular opinion: this shouldn’t be unpopular because juno steel himself shares this opinion but all future-jupeter headcanons are incomplete without rita also being a huge part of their lives

Favourite relationship: rita + franny 4ever obviously.. jk it’s juno & rita have you heard rita minute 3 they’re too adorable for this world. im still Soft over their conversation at the end of soul of the people when he said he couldn’t stay in hyperion anymore but he wouldn’t leave with the carte blanche if rita wasn’t coming because he was done leaving her behind, and she threw out all her hesitations on the spot and said call the big guy. speaking of, rita & jet are a close second. instant best friends i love them.

Favourite headcanon: i think this is basically canon now but rita being literally half the height of jet is so good

JET

First impression: “haha lorge funny man puts juno in the trash”

Impression now: jet sikuliaq is one of the dearest characters to me out of anything ever. he is a huge, menacing, polite, kind, sincere man who i would very much like to give me a hug. he’s the best aro ace in outer space and while being generally very levelheaded and straightforward, also takes every opportunity to fuck with juno because it’s very easy and very hilarious to him personally. he is everything my autistic acearo ass needed and i’m so glad to have him

Favourite moment: all of them every single one. him putting juno in the trash is of course a classic and every moment jet chooses to be funny makes my heart happy, but also every piece of genuine advice he gives. i’m a particular fan though of buddy recounting her years in the lighthouse and him saying he became concerned when she didn’t come downstairs at the usual time. “you took the door off its hinges.” “i was deeply concerned.” king of understatement

Idea for a story: again no spoilers for you but..... tools of rust time loop au

Unpopular opinion: this isn’t “unpopular” as much as it is unknown but jet is buddy’s queerplatonic partner and i will keep saying it until everyone believes it

Favourite relationship: jet and buddy,,, just everything about them. the way he suspects when she’s lying, the way she makes tea for him when she expects him to drop by. the fact he comes to check on her when she is 41 seconds late to the family meeting because it’s unlike her to be late and the last time she was late for something her brain was turning to radiation soup. but most especially the way she snaps at him to stay out of her business and he said he could not because he made her promise eight years ago to never stay out of the business of her health, no matter how many times she asked. they r literally in a qpr

Favourite headcanon: i don’t think this is true but i still think it would be funny if the ruby-7 used to be painted red but when jet got it he had it painted green because he Just Really Likes Green (as evidenced by his hovercycle). it’s very funny to me.

BUDDY

First impression: it’s been a minute since i relistened to time gone by but i’m pretty sure the first thing she ever says in the podcast is sliding up to depressed accidental whiskey thief juno and say “that’ll be ten million creds,” scaring the shit out of him, so needless to say i was in love instantly.

Impression now: my love for buddy aurinko has only grown and if it sounds like i already said that in this post it’s because i did about juno and it’s appropriate because the parallels are astounding. the heart of it all gave us such depth to buddy’s internal monologue and why she always sounds like she knows exactly what to say and what that’s like and honestly will i ever be over the heart of it all as an episode? unlikely. i think i’m gonna have a little piece of it in MY heart forever.

Favourite moment: everything she’s ever said is iconic as hell i especially like “in an impressive fit of hubris i’ve decided not to prepare my words for this vow” which made me laugh out loud but once again i must give it up for her iconic “I WANT TO LIVE” moment. honourable mentions to her taking rita out for ice cream and giving juno shooting lessons while she’s in her actual wedding gown. i love her

Idea for a story: buddy and vespa as sun/moon dieties.... that’s all

Unpopular opinion: stop drawing her with a fancy high-tech eye like the theia!! it canonically looks like garbage and it’s described in detail, please, i’m dying, also don’t minimise her scars you bastards

Favourite relationship: buddy and vespa invented romantic love and the entire carte blanche crew’s relationship to her is great but you know by now i’m a slut for buddy & jet out-of-this-world queerplatonic partners. the way she checks in on him during tools of rust to make sure he’s not relapsing and he comes to find her when she is 41 seconds late in the heart of it all to make sure she’s not having a heart problem!! it’s the trust,, the devotion,, the mortifying ordeal of being known

Favourite headcanon: she can sing. absolutely tears it up at karaoke. i’m right

VESPA

First impression: knife lesbian goes STAB. she will heal your wounds but she will be threatening to give you more the whole time

Impression now: she is extremely strong, heart-rendingly tender, and despite being in the older half of the carte blanche crew somehow has unmistakable little sister energy which makes her downright hilarious. i’m so glad she got to marry buddy and they’re official space wives now they’re so good for each other

Favourite moment: both from shadows in the ship, either “GUN!!” “KNIFE?!” (iconic) or when she clocks the dark matters drone pretending to be juno because it called her crazy and juno wouldn’t call her crazy. i’m always a sucker for “shapeshifter fails to fool mark because they Know Each Other Too Well” and it was just *chefs kiss* so good

Idea for a story: i really want to write something about when she was first staying at the lighthouse with buddy post-reunion, and getting to know jet and stuff. i think it would be cute

Unpopular opinion: i know vespa doesn’t canonically have lots of scarring but people who don’t draw her with scarring? cowards.

Favourite relationship: once again, although buddy and vespa invented romantic love, i just love the dynamic between vespa and juno so much. they’ve come so far with each other and their weird sibling dynamic gives me life. at the end of what lies beyond when juno says “we’re not gonna kill her, vespa” and instead of sounding full of Rage and Suspicion she’s like “whyyy notttt?” and he’s like “because i said so!” and that’s just good enough for her even if she’s a bit grumpy about it. i love it.

this took.. a hot minute to do! jshkfjsdgsa thank you dyl ily <3

#michaelburnnham #riley replies #be gay do crimes in space #the penumbra #juniverse

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dumb-hat · 4 years ago

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Character Sheet - Evander Winsome

—————- Link to blank template!

Rules: Things in brackets are meant only as guidelines, to be erased and your answers written in place of. Things separated by | are for bolding and italicising.

Tagged by: No one! I saw this reblogged by @mooglemeet, so I went ahead and grabbed it directly from @bluespiritfire. Link to the blank template is up above! Tagging: No one specific/anyone who wants to. Feel free to tag me back so I can see it!

Name: Evander Winsome Age: 26 Pronouns: He/him Birthdate: 12th Sun of the 5th Umbral Moon

~~PLACE OF ORIGIN~~ Race: Hyur From the First: Interracial heritage:

Hometown/city: Limsa Lominsa Current residence/popular haunt:Ul’dah

~~APPEARANCE~~

Favourite/commonly used clothes:

Any difficulties with magical/physical disciplines? Nothing in particular

~~RELATIONSHIPS~~ Parents/Legal Guardian/Parental Figure: mother | father | aunt and/or uncle | grandparents | adoptive | foster | mentor | family friend/godparents | other Siblings: One older brother; deceased Children: None that he knows of Romantic: single | unrequited | crushing | dating | engaged | married | divorced/separated | widow/widower | recently split | it’s complicated (I mean, not to him. To him, it makes total sense. Well, most of it does.) | other (…) Friends: Evander tends to befriend and trust people fairly easily, though it can take him a bit to really open up. Once you’ve hit that point, you’ve likely got a friend for life. Rivals/Enemies: To the best of his knowledge, he’s left these all behind somewhere or other, thanks largely to his restless need to wander. That said, there’s surely a few lurking in the past and there’s always room for more, of course!

Any special gestures of affection they have with people in their life? He’ll often make complaining noises about paying for drinks and dinner, but he’ll do it every time and would be slightly hurt if people didn’t let him.

How are they dealing with the most prominent of the above? How does it affect their in day-to-day life, if at all? Poorly, typically.

~~ODDS AND ENDS~~ Notable Weapons He doesn’t have any particular bond with any of his weapons, really. He sees them as tools, and ones that he uses only reluctantly. He sometimes enjoys tinkering with the ones he builds, but that’s more of a hobby than anything.

Notable Mounts He has various vehicles and machines he likes to fuss over and drive around, but he’s particularly fond of his SDS Fenrir.

In addition to his chocobo—a particularly stubborn beast named Doreen—he’s also fond of his battlesheep, Doctor One and a colossal crab he’s dubbed St. Barnabus.

Notable Minion/s Besides Doctor One and St. Barnabas, Evander is especially fond of various clockworks, automata, wind-ups and models that he’s put together. His favorite is a drone modeled after a Magitek bit that he’s named Valencia.

Keepsakes/Mementos

A pendant in the shape of a swan, a few too many flasks

Chronic Illnesses or Disabilities Evander lives with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. I’ve written about it a few places, most notably at length here and in brief here. How do they deal with these? Depends on the day, really. This isn’t really a thing he has a name for, so it’s not a thing he can easily address. He’s got a sloppily slapped together set coping mechanisms that work about half the time, if he’s lucky. Other than that, he mostly hopes for good days full of things he can convince himself he’s interested in.

Education Level He likes it when people underestimate him, so he’s not always quick to admit to the formal Ishgardian education afforded to him by the family that took him in when he left Limsa Lominsa. He’ll often try to pass it off as eclectic, self-driven studies... Which, admittedly, also played a big part in shaping him.

Habits There’s a lot of excess in his life. He drinks too much. He eats too much. He stays up too late, too long, and then sleeps too late, too long. He’s almost always got a flask or four on his person, and he often finds that he’s picking up the dinner or drink tab wherever he goes.

Other Nothing immediately springs to mind, but I’m sure there’s like a dozen things I should put here. This thing has been sitting in my drafts for god-knows-how-long, so I’m just glad to finally get it out there.

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toxoiddiamond · 4 years ago

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T H E B A S I C S Given Name: Seong Ki-mun Nicknames: He briefly went by the name Kyle in middle school because he was tired of people teasing him about his “weird” name. But by the time he got to high school he didn’t care anymore and was back to going by his real name. (He also started purposely mispronouncing the names of anyone who made fun of his name– think A-a-ron.) Age: 30 Birthday: November 23rd Zodiac Sign: Sagittarius Birthplace: Anaheim, California Current Location: NYC, New York Speaks: English, Korean (fluently, but his family teases him about his “American accent” all the time) Dominant Hand: Right Education: He got his Associates Degree from LaGuardia Community College, then transferred to NYU and got his Bachelors in Arts & Sciences. He cheerfully refers to college as the most money he’s ever wasted in his life. Occupation: Teaching Assistant in the English department at CUNY Hunter College. He mostly assists with the Writing and Poetry classes, but also helps out with various Literature classes and acts as a substitute teacher within the department if a professor is out sick or anything. He sometimes ends up being treated more like a personal assistant– sent out for coffee or lunch, asked to type up notes or sort paperwork, but he doesn’t mind. Vehicle: Ki-mun’s aunt and uncle bought him a white 1998 Honda Prelude when he graduated from high school, and he still has it to this day. He doesn’t drive much since it’s so impractical in the city, but he likes having it around as an option for longer trips, road trips, etc. Worldly Possessions: Tons of random art supplies– pencils, charcoal, sketchbooks, clay, paints, brushes, etc. Notebooks completely filled with poetry (with many of the poems scribbled out). A fancy smart TV. A bunch of bean bag chairs. A super nice tablet (Ki-Mun may have a bit of an obsession with having the latest technology~). Tons of socks– like, way too many socks. He has an entire dresser drawer just for his socks. Pet(s): A super adorable calico munchkin kitty named Bugsy.

A P P E A R A N C E Height: He says 5’8”, but he’s closer to 5’7”. Hair: Dark black. Very full, soft and shiny. Always seems to fall perfectly into place even with the bare minimum of effort. He usually just puts a bit of pomade in it and tousles it. Facial Hair: His facial hair is very patchy, so he doesn’t bother growing it out. Eye Colour: Brown Skin Tone: A makeup artist friend of his, Andi, occasionally asks to put makeup on Ki-mun as practice (and also for fun) and has informed Ki-mun that his skin tone is “warm beige.” She also informed Ki-mun that he is an Autumn– Ki-mun doesn’t know what that means, but he likes to share it as a fun fact anytime he has to introduce himself to a group of students. Clothing: Ki-mun dresses like a pretty typical hipster, honestly. Skinny jeans, oversized sweaters, band tees, peacoats, cardigans, leather jackets, etc. He usually wears contacts, but occasionally wears big ol’ glasses. Distinguishing Marks: Does being adorable count as a distinguishing feature? Face Claim: Justin H Min

H E A L T H Physical Health: Not bad. Ki-mun was born HIV positive, but has been taking antiretroviral medications since he was a kid. At this point, his viral load is basically non-existent and he is considered to be in remission, with a very good prognosis. Because of the medication he takes, his immune system is not the best, and he is much more susceptible to getting sick as a result. During cold and flu season, Ki-mun will often wear a mask when he’s out in public– his aunt and uncle ingrained that habit in him from a young age (and also wore masks themselves so he wouldn’t feel like the odd one out). Physical Abilities/Limitations: He’s decent at almost anything to do with art, but is especially good at drawing with charcoal. He also likes doing speed-sketches, figure sketches, etc. He is also weirdly good at baseball, and plays on the New York City Metro Baseball Team as part of the NY Blacksox during the season (June through August). Also, he is great at tossing food directly into people’s mouths– popcorn, M&Ms, etc. He hardly ever misses. Addictions: Definitely caffeine, but no serious addictions. Allergies: He gets a mild rash when he eats or touches strawberries. Mental Health: It’s not horrible? It’s not great, but not horrible. As much as he denies it, Ki-mun is pretty lonely, partly because he has such a hard time letting anyone in. He’s not the most trusting person, and tends to keep people at arms’ length until he’s sure they can be trusted. At the moment, he only has one person in his life that he would actually consider a friend. Everyone else is just an acquaintance to him. Ki-mun has sort of “accepted” the idea that he may end up being alone forever, even though that’s not really what he wants.

H I S T O R Y Summary: Ki-mun was born in Anaheim, California, and got off to a pretty rough start. His mother had AIDS, and unfortunately, it was passed on to Ki-mun. He was fine and had no symptoms for a few months, but eventually began to get sick, though thanks to swift treatment, he recovered quickly and the HIV never progressed. As Ki-mun got older, his mother’s health began to deteriorate, until finally they moved in with Ki-mun’s aunt and uncle so they could help take care of her. She eventually was bedridden and had to stay in the hospital full time. One of Ki-mun’s earliest memories is of visiting his mother in the hospital for the last time, which is absolutely one of his worst memories. After his mother passed away, Ki-mun’s aunt and uncle took him in and raised him as one of their own children. They love him like crazy and were amazing parents to him, and Ki-mun has always been grateful to them– not only for raising him, but for loving him as much as they love their actual children and never making him feel like he mattered less. He had a relatively happy childhood in spite of everything. After high school, Ki-mun decided to move to New York– he wanted a change of pace, and wanted a chance to start over and reinvent himself. He found a job and began taking classes at the community college, managed to get his associate’s degree after a year and a half, and transferred to NYU to get his Bachelors. Ki-mun was a very dedicated student and didn’t spend a lot of time getting to know any of his fellow classmates, going to parties, making friends, etc. Still, he ended up being roped into a friend/study group, which is where he ended up meeting Spencer. Spencer was the first person that Ki-mun had serious feelings for. They were friends for the better part of two years, each attracted to the other but both too nervous to say anything. Finally, a week before graduation, Ki-mun got up the courage to confess how he felt, and they became an official couple for all of one day. Unfortunately, once Ki-mun explained to Spencer about his diagnosis, Spencer flew off the handle and accused Ki-mun of being deceptive, being a liar, being manipulative, etc. He told Ki-mun he was disgusting and to never contact him again, and that was that. Shortly after Ki-mun’s heart was smashed to pieces, he packed up everything he owned and moved to a new area of the city, wanting to put at least a little bit of distance between himself and his old friend group. It was here that he met Andi and became close friends with her, and also found a job at CUNY Hunter College. Although Ki-mun feels that his life is generally good and happy– he enjoys his job, has a really good friend and coworkers he likes, he has gotten really into his poetry lately and has been reading it at open mic nights– he can’t help but feel that something is missing from his life. Job History: He worked in his aunt and uncle’s restaurant from ages fifteen to eighteen. When he moved to New York, he did a little bit of job hopping before finally settling on a job at a grocery store– he stayed at that job until he graduated from college and took his job at CUNY Hunter. Fondest Memories: Despite the fact that his childhood was pretty rough at times, Ki-mun has a lot of great memories as well. Family trips to Korea, various birthdays, his graduation day. He also has fond memories of his job at the grocery store– as much as he didn’t enjoy the work, he really liked his coworkers. Plus, all the various spur-of-the-moment adventures Andi has dragged him into. Worst Experiences: His mother dying when he was four years old. Finally getting to be with the person he’d been hung up on for two years, only to be broken up with after less than a day.

C O M M U N I C A T I O N Speech Pace/Style: Sarcastic. Often sounds like he might be annoyed. He speaks in monotone with most people, even when he’s not in a bad mood, so people often think he’s angry or doesn’t like them (and to be fair, they are sometimes correct). If he’s talking to a friend, he’ll definitely be more animated and not so grumpy. And if, by chance, he’s talking to someone he’s attracted to (*coughDODGERcough*) then he’ll get a little tongue-tied, like he wants to flirt but he doesn’t really know how. Accent: American. When he speaks Korean, his American accent does come through a bit, something his family likes to tease him about. Favorite Phrases or Words: When he’s done listening to someone and wants them to stop talking to him/stop telling him a boring story, he will just say “cool” in the most monotone voice he can manage. It usually works. Usual Curse Words: He says “Jesus Christ” and “oh fuck” a lot.

P E R S O N A L I T Y, M I N D S E T, A N D B E L I E F S Personality Type: ISFP-T Sense of Humor: Definitely sarcastic and dry. He can be mean at times, but usually only if the person deserves it. As a result, Ki-mun has been described as “sassy” more than once. When he’s with people he actually likes, Ki-mun is a lot more lighthearted and not so sarcastic. Habits: Twists his lips a little when he’s thinking hard. Rolls his eyes when someone says something he thinks is dumb. Also rolls his eyes and sighs if he’s stuck in a conversation he really doesn’t want to have. When he’s reading his poetry out loud, he never looks up at the audience/whoever is listening because he’ll get too nervous if he sees everyone looking at him. Fears/Phobias: As much as he tries to act like he doesn’t care what anyone thinks of him, Ki-mun is very secretive about certain aspects of himself, and is very afraid of someone finding out more about him than he wants them to know. He can’t stand having his privacy invaded, and it honestly makes him feel sick to think of the wrong person knowing too much about him (he still hates that he ever let himself be so vulnerable with Spencer, and blames himself for not seeing more clearly what kind of person he was). Strengths: Ki-mun is very creative and has a knack for all kinds of art. Although it’s hard to get to know him, once he becomes friends with someone, he is fiercely loyal and would do anything for them. As a teacher/teaching assistant, he is exceptionally patient– much more so than in other aspects of his life. He is always happy to answer questions and help anyone student who needs it. Underneath his harsh exterior, Ki-mun is a kind person who just has trouble opening himself up to others. Flaws: He has built up a lot of walls around himself in an effort to try and keep himself from getting hurt. Every time he’s let those walls down, he’s ended up regretting it and building them back up even higher. Anyone who wants to get to know him has to be very determined. Ki-mun is also not the type of person to be nice just because social conventions say he should– if he doesn’t like someone, he won’t talk to them. If he thinks someone is boring, he will tell them so. He can’t stand small talk and will never willingly engage in it. This makes him a very difficult person to interact with. Hopes/Desires: He is not entirely sure what he wants to do with his life, but right now, he’s happy just working and exploring his options. All he knows is that he wants to keep writing poetry, possibly get some published, and keep working in a field that lets him play to his strengths. Wildest Fantasy: A cure for HIV/AIDS being found. Self-Esteem: It’s a little complicated. On some level, Ki-mun is confident in himself and proud of all he’s accomplished in his life. But at the same time, he has it in his head that he doesn’t deserve some of the things he wants, such as a romantic relationship, marriage, a family, etc. He kind of views himself as damaged goods, unfortunately. Religion: He was raised Protestant, and his family used to be fairly devout. He went to church every Sunday, they read scriptures and said a family prayer every night, etc. But the older the kids got, the less active in the church the entire family became. His parents and siblings are still casually religious, and Ki-mun has held on to certain aspects of it, but he doesn’t care about going to church or reading the bible or anything.

R A N D O M Sleeping Position: Usually on his stomach, occasionally on his back. Boxers or Briefs?: Briefs Day or Night?: He’s okay with both. He works during the day, which he likes, and in the late afternoon/evening he goes to the cafe and hangs out or reads his poetry. Top or Bottom?: Bottom, but he’s willing to switch if his partner wants to. Partying or Relaxing?: He likes parties, but he really prefers relaxing when it comes right down to it.

R E L A T I O N S H I P S Closest Friend: Andi is currently the only person Ki-mun would call a friend. He has a lot of acquaintances, but no one else that he’s really close to. Relationship History: He dated a couple of people in high school, but it was just puppy love and nothing serious. He had a couple of flings in college as well, just short-lived, purely physical relationships, and the only sexual encounters Ki-mun has ever had. And then there was Spencer. Ki-mun has not even been on a date since that whole debacle. Sexual Partners: Just the two guys Ki-mun had brief flings with. Thoughts About Sex: He enjoys it. He’s also pretty sure he’s never going to have it again, and has come to accept that.

P A R E N T S Name(s): His mother’s name was Seong Bo-ram. His aunt and uncle are named Park Min-ji and Park Kang-dae. Age(s): His mother passed away at the age of 28. His aunt is 57 and his uncle is 60. Social Standing: His mother was very well-liked, but was shunned by a lot of her friends after she not only became pregnant out of wedlock, but ended up contracting HIV. His aunt and uncle are well-respected in their community, and also well-off financially, firmly in the upper middle class. Occupation(s): His mom was a flight attendant. His aunt and uncle run a small Korean restaurant which is extremely popular– on weekends there’s often a line of people outside waiting to get in. Religion: Protestant-ish. Quality of Relationship With Their Children: Ki-mun’s mom loved him a ton– the reason she left him to her sister and brother-in-law is because she knew they would love Ki-mun as much as she did, and she was right. Ki-mun is still very close to his aunt and uncle. Living/Deceased: His mother is dead, but his aunt and uncle are alive.

S I B L I N G (S) Name(s): Park Kang-min, Jang-mi (aka Jamie) Sanders, and Park Bo-ram (named after Ki-mun’s mother). Age(s): 33, 31, and 27. Social Standing: They’re all doing quite well in life and are upstanding members of society. Occupation(s): Kang-min is a commercial airline pilot, Jamie is currently a stay-at-home mom but plans to go back to work as an RN once her kids are a little older, and Bo-ram is a violinist with the California Symphony. Religion: They’re all sorta Protestant, but Jamie is the only one of them who still goes to church now and then. Quality of Relationship with Character: Even though they are technically Ki-mun’s cousins, they always refer to him as their brother. They’re all pretty close; they don’t talk all the time or anything, but when they do, they get along very well and have always enjoyed each other’s company. Living/Deceased: All living~

D A I L Y L I F E Living Arrangements: Ki-mun lives in a modest studio apartment fairly close to both his work and Central Park. The apartment is well-decorated, with a lived-in, cozy sort of look. He’s very comfortable where he is, not at all bothered by living in a small space, especially considering how much more expensive it would be to upgrade to a one-bedroom.

#character: seong ki-mun #character sheet #ship: moondog

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sims-psycho · 5 years ago

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Let's see... Basics for Andie, Personality for Maya, Physical for Alex, Environment for Luna and Misc for Billie! 😁💕

OKAY, so i realise you sent me this actual months ago, but i’m answering it now okay, ily (below the cut cuz it be looong)

What is their gender? Female

What is their sexuality? Gay

What is the meaning behind their name? Do they have any nicknames? Her father's brother was called Andrew and he wanted to honour him, therefore; Andie. She has a few nicknames, back home she got called ‘Little Fish’ a lot, but recently shes acquired the name ‘Siren’.

Do they have any siblings? How many? Are they older or younger? Which sibling are they the closest with? Kit is her only sibling, and even though she acts a lot younger than her age she’s actually older than him.....by about 10 minutes, and they’re really close

What’s their relationship with their parents like? What about other relatives? She has fond memeories of her birth parents, although she visits them less and less now, secretly she doesn’t want them to see what she’s ‘become’. She is however incredibly close with her brother Kit, they argue and fight a lot but deep down it’s because of how strong their bond is

What would they give their life for? Literally anything. Being immortal means that you can ‘die’ for as many things/people as you want with no repercussions, which means for her at least giving her life for something isn’t as special or meaningful as it would be for a mortal.

Are they in a romantic relationship? With who? How did they meet? She’s single, although canonically within my story she’s also not (but I’m not going to give anything away cuz spoilers hehe)

What do they believe will happen to them after they die? Does this belief scare them? Honestly, she doesn’t think about dying

What is their favourite colour? Favourite animal? Pastel pink and blue are her favourite colours; and she loves spiders and lizards

What are some of their talents/skills? She can surf, skate and ride a horse. She’s also a skilled fighter, and is pretty good at the guitar

If they could make a mark on history, what would they like it to be? She doesn’t really think about stuff like this

How old are they? When is their birthday? Technically she’s 59 (her birthday is 7/6/1960) but she was turned by Erik in 1980 so physically she’s stuck as a 20 year old.

What do they do for fun? Literally, whatever they want, whenever they want. Mostly going out late at night, partying, feeding and being loud about it

What is their favourite food? How often do they get to eat it? Any kind of cookie dough, and she eats it all the time

What was something their parents taught them? Trust your gut instinct

Are they religious? No

Where were they born? Horrocks, WA

What languages can they speak? Where did they learn these languages? She was raised speaking english and that’s the only language she’s fluent in. Over the years she’s picked up a few words and phrases in many different languages, but nothing significant enough to hold a conversation.

What is their occupation? It’s complicated, I guess the best way to desribe what she does is that she’s a glorified body guard/hit man

Do they have any titles? How did they earn them? No titles, but through her work she has aquirred the name ‘Siren’ which she kind of likes in a twisted way

21. What is their favorite thing about their personality? Her determination and persistence

22. What is their least favorite thing about their personality? Her paranoia

23. Do they get lonely easily? No, she likes being alone, and whenever she does get lonely she sits with Erik

24. Do you know their MBTI type? INTP

25. What is their biggest flaw? Her over-confidence

26. Are they aware of their flaws? Not really

27. What is their biggest strength? Manipulation

28. Are they aware of their strengths? Yes

29. How would they describe their own personality? Confident, Charismatic and Engaging

30. When frightened, will they resort to “fight” or “flight”? It depends on the situation, contray to popular belief, she’s fled more than she’s fought

31. Does this character ever put somebody else’s needs before their own? Who do they do this for? How often do they do this? In her own head she believes everything she does if for other people, but in reality she has tunnel vision for what she wants, and only what she wants

32. What is their self esteem like? Too high

33. What is their biggest fear? How would they react to having to face it? Her biggest fear is probably losing control of everything around her, but she doesn’t ever see that happening so she doesn’t think about it facing it.....she probably should tho js......

34. How easily do they trust others with their secrets? With their lives? Having the ability to make most people forget things whenever she wants means she has a very twisted definition of the word ‘trust’, but she’d only really trust Erik and Tegan with actual important things and her life, but doesn’t do that often

35. What is the easiest way to annoy them? Exist in her life when she doesn’t want you too...

36. What is their sense of humor like? Give an example of a joke they would find humorous. She has quite a sadistic and situational sense of humour, conventional jokes don’t really make her genuinely laugh

37. How easy is it for them to say “I love you”? Do they say it without meaning it? She can say it without meaning it very easily, but hasn’t said it sincersly in a long long time

38. What do others admire most about their personality? Her ability to apear calm in every situation

39. What does their happily ever after look like? She doesn’t really see her life ever getting to a point where she can settle, theres always going to be something else to do. She’ll only be happy once she owns the world

40. Who do they trust most? Is that trust mutual? Erik is probably the only person she fully trusts, and it might be mutal, you’ll have to ask him

41. What does their laugh sound like? Do they snort when they laugh? How often do they laugh? Surprisingly it’s actually quite soft and breathy, occassionally they’ll snort, but if something really makes them laugh they just roll around with their mouth open holding their stomach, although they don’t laugh a lot (unless they’re with Elliot, they make each other howl sometimes)

42. What is their favorite thing about their physical appearance? Their hair is about the only thing they actually like about themself physically

43. What is their least favorite thing about their physical appearance? Everything else

44. Do they have any scars? If so, what are the stories behind those scars? No scars

45. How would they describe their own appearance? Edgy

46. How easily can they express emotions? How easily can they hide emotions? They’re not very good at hiding their emotions, although they think they are. They tend to bottle things up and then they explode, and they’re not very good at talking about their feelings either, much too their friends annoyance

47. What’s their pain tolerance like? Very high

48. Do they have any tattoos? What are the stories behind those tattoos? No tattoos yet, although they definitely want to get loads in the future

49. Do they have any piercings? They have 6 piercings in each ear, a lip piercing and also a nose piercing that they don’t wear anymore.

50. How would you describe their style of clothing? How would they describe their style of clothing? Kind of stoner grunge, Alex would probably just say a lot of black and band tees

51. What is their height? Weight? They’re 5′7, and I don’t know about weight

52. What is their body type? Are they muscular, chubby, skinny, etc? Very skinny, but deceptively strong, especially in their arms and legs

53. What is their hair color? Eye color? Skin tone? Dark brown hair, grey eyes and pale skin

54. What is their current hairstyle? What have been some of their past hairstyles? Which was their favorite hairstyle? They’ve had short hair for as long as they can remember and never want it long, might dye it in the future but can’t decide on a colour

55. What is their alcohol tolerance like? What kind of drunk are they? How bad are their hangovers? They have a pretty high tolerance, they’re basically the same drunk as sober, except they’re a little more open and extroverted, but only a little. They don’t get hangerovers

56. What do they smell like? Why do they smell like this? (Is it the things they’re around or a perfume they wear?) Most of the time they smell of hemp, because thats what their body wash is

57. How do they feel about sex? Are they a virgin? They definitely more of a giver than a taker when it comes to sex, mostly because of their own body image issues, they’re not a virgin

58. What is their most noticeable physical attribute? Probably their general sense of style

59. What does their resting face look like? Do they have RBF? They mostly just look dead inside when they relax lol

60. Describe the way they sleep. They don’t really sleep, when they do they normally just crash in whatever position they’re in at the time

61. Which season is their favorite season? Summer

62. Have they ever been betrayed? How did it affect their ability to trust others? Never been betrayed

63. What is always guaranteed to make them smile? She’s very easy to make smile, but just being around her friends makes her smile naturally

64. Do they get cold easily? Do they get overheated easily? She doesn’t get cold often, but when she does it takes her forever to warm up. She overheats fairly regularly but never for very long at a time

65. What’s their immune system like? Do they get sick often? How do they react to getting sick? She has a very strong immune system and doesn’t get sick very often, when she does tho she can be a bit of nightmare, especially due to her wanting to just get on with things even when she’s ill, so she gets grumpy when she’s forced to just lay in bed and recover.

66. Where do they live? Do they like it there? She lives in Great Bear with her mum, dad and two younger sisters. She does like it, but also can’t wait to move out and experience more of the world, it’ll always be home to her though

67. Is their bedroom messy? What about their bathroom? Kitchen? Living room? Her room is incredibly neat, and so is the rest of the house seeing as her mother is also very organized

68. How did their environment growing up affect their personality? She grew up in a very loving, but also very strict household. The rules have loosened as she’s got older, but because of this she holds herself to very high standards and has a strong worth ethic.

69. How did the people in their environment growing up affect their personality? Like I just said, both her parents were quite strict, but also really supportive and loving. They were always willing to talk through any issues and compromise where they could resulting in her being very understanding and mature. What also added to this was the fact that she has two younger sisters that she feels very protective over

70. How do they feel about animals? Do they have any pets? She loves animals, her family have a little white cat called Beanie (Luna named her as a kid and she’s basically her cat tho)

71. How are they with children? Do they have any? Do they want any? She does like children and is good with them. She definitely wants some when she’s older, but not now.....

72. Would they rather have stability or comfort? Comfort

73. Do they prefer the indoors or outdoors? Outdoors

74. What weather is their favorite? Do they like storms? She loves sunny days with a nice cool breeze the most. Also snow, just not not for any extended amount of time cuz she gets sick of the cold real quick. She likes thunderstorms when she’s tucked up cozy inside

75. If given a blank piece of paper, a pencil, and nothing to do, what would happen? Probably just lots of little doodles, maybe a couple lists of different things and some dress designs

76. How organized are they? Extremely

77. What is their most prized possession? Either her moon necklace Kane gave her, or her first spellbook

78. Who do they consider to be their best friend? Kane

79. What is their economic situation? She still lives at home with her parents, so she doesn’t really have to worry about this stuff yet

80. Are they a morning person or a night owl? Morning person

81. Are they bothered by the sight of blood? bothered by it yes, but also used to it

82. What is their handwriting like? curved and neat

83. Can they swim? How well? Do they like to swim? She’s a pretty good swimmer, but only casually, she doesn’t do it much but enjoys it when she does, she has to be in the mood for it though

84. Which deadly sin do they represent best? Anger

85. Do they believe in ghosts? Yes

86. How do they celebrate holidays? How do they celebrate birthdays? She’s very low key with celebrations, she only really spends it with their closest friends and family, normally doing something chill like going out for a nice meal. Sounds boring I know, but she’s very intoverted and doesn’t like being the centre of attention or being around lots of people so it’s an ideal way to celebrate to her

87. What is something they regret? She regrets not being honest with her mum about why she moved away, but she also can’t even begin to think about how to explain it to her

88. Do they have an accent? British northern accent, her official voice claim is Corinne Bailey Rae

89. What is their D&D alignment? Chaotic Good

90. Are they right or left handed? left handed

91. If they were a tweet, what tweet would they be?

92. Describe them as a John Mulaney gif.

93. What’s the most iconic line of dialogue they’ve ever said? “Yeah, I know she’s a bit of a bitch, but she knows she’s a bitch, and you kinda gotta respect that at least”

#andie #maya #alex shift #luna steel #billie #oc's #character development #ask #answer #reply #chuskasims #<333

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kiwi-cake · 6 years ago

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Mated Part 3

Werewolf!Luke

A/N: Halloween is over but werewolf Luke can hang around a bit longer since he’s so dear to our hearts -megan

Masterlist

Michael walks in to Y/N hanging upside down from her bed. They were supposed to have a movie night, but she had forgotten. There was a lot on her mind lately, which seemed to push out things like movie night, or really anything that didn’t have anything to do with Luke. It was weird how much she popped into her head lately. It started about a week after she went to his house a second time. Of course, she had been thinking about him beforehand, but more in a ‘woah this dude and his friends are werewolves’ sense. Now it was just stupid stuff like how it felt when he was holding waist her to keep her calm. It was manageable at first, but once another week had gone by, she was miserable. It felt like she constantly had an itch, but like in one of those places you can’t reach yourself, like the middle of your back.

“What are you doing?” Michael says, dropping a grocery bag undoubtedly filled with junk food for their movie.

“I’m trying to get the blood to rush to my brain,” she said, sitting up.

“Uh….. why?”

“No reason,” she shrugged. She couldn’t tell Michael, he was infamous for being incapable of keeping a secret.

“Alright, who’s this mystery guy that you’ve been seeing?” he plopped down on the bed next to her.

“Um, what? I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she was infamous for being a terrible liar.

“Likely story. You came back from your ‘run’ wearing clothes twice your size and smelling like some bloke’s cologne. I was going to let it go, let you have your one night stand and be done with it, but you’re clearly not over it.”

“I told you, it was laundry day and Rebecca’s boyfriend left his clothes at our flat, so I wore that rather than my dirty clothes.”

“That’s bullshit. We both know Rebecca’s boyfriend reeks of axe. You didn’t smell like axe, it was something nicer.”

“Fine! I had a one night stand. Happy?” she surrendered, hoping he would leave it at that.

“Who was it? Must have been something special to have you this worked up over him. I’ve never seen you act like this over a guy. Always staring off into space dreamily and shit.”

“I don’t stare off into space dreamily!” she screeched, “whatever, I don’t want to talk about this anymore. Let’s watch a movie.”

Seasonal allergies are the worst. It’s like, you’re just trying to enjoy the pretty leaves and pumpkin flavoured things, then BAM you wake up feeling like a scarecrow shoved it’s hay fingers down your nose and throat. And it’s not like it’s a real illness, so there’s no excuse to not go about your day. That was how Y/N woke up. She had been feeling a little queasy earlier in the week, but now she definitely had a fever and a scratchy throat. But she told herself that she just had to get through her lecture at noon then she could mope around at home. So she bundled up in her warmest pajamas, stocked her backpack with tissues, and headed out the door. It’s ironic to be sitting in a lecture about human consciousness when you’re feeling like someone let a tank of hot air out in her head. Her professor was very strict about attendance, so even when the kid next to her offered to take notes for her if she went home, she refused and waited for roll to be called. She would probably have to get notes from him anyway because for some reason she was seeing double anytime she focused on the board.

“Y/N, you don’t look so good,” said the other kid next to her. She had absolutely no idea what his name was. Y/N had only passed out twice in her life, once during the dissection of a fetal pig (she’s not squeamish, formaldehyde just smells terrible) and again when she forgot to take advil on the first day of her period. It’s hard to miss the signs of fainting. The first sign of dizziness can escalate quickly into blurred vision, ringing ears, and dissociation. It was good that Y/N knew these things because she was able to ball up her blanket as a barrier so her head didn’t hit the hard desk. She didn’t need a concussion on top of all this.

“Young lady in the front, this is not nap time,” said her teacher. It was the last thing she heard before it all went dark and she inevitably conked out on the table. She supposed the teacher felt like shit saying that right before she passed out. She couldn’t remember what happened in the next few minutes, but she was glad her university had a nurses office so they had somewhere to dump her. The nurse was an older lady wearing a fluffy cardigan. She stuck a thermometer in Y/N’s mouth and made a disapproving ‘tsk’ noise when she read the temperature.

“Your fever is much too high for you to be out and about today dear,” she said as she helped Y/N up from her chair, “A good rest and some fluids will fix you right up though. On your way.” The nurse helped her walk to the exit with shaking legs and promptly shut the door as soon as she passed the threshold.

She hobbled down the steps of the main building. The news must have travelled fast since every student she passed veered a good five feet from her. It seemed nice and all that the school insisted she go home to rest, but since they didn’t offer her any other transportation except for walking back herself, she assumed that they just didn’t want a lawsuit on their hands if she passed out in another class. She cupped her hands above her eyes, trying to see where she was going in the bright afternoon sun. To her surprise, there was a familiar jeep parked in front of the school with an even more familiar man leaning up against it.

“Luke?” she approached the car, “what are you doing here?”

“I’m picking you up, god you look terrible,” he stepped closer and put a hand on her forehead, “you have a fever! Why did you even get out of bed today?” He didn’t look so good himself. His usually glowing skin was now rather pallor, accompanied by dark circles around his eyes. He even ditched his typical attire of skinny jeans and expensive boots for joggers and trainers.

“I can’t afford to miss class,” she rasped. He seemed very concerned over the state she was in, and maybe it was her weird sick-brain, but the worried crease in between his eyebrows made tears well up in her eyes.

“Hey, none of that,” his large hands moved to cup her flushed cheeks and wipe at the tears now pouring down her face, “I’m going to take you home and get you feeling better.” This somehow makes her crying even worse, the overwhelming emotions were buzzing through her veins. She sobbed and pressed her face into his chest to hide her crying. Y/N didn’t need a mirror to know that she looked dreadful. This wasn’t the cute sniffling cries you see in the movies. No, she had somehow landed herself in a full on meltdown. Her sinuses that had been congested for days decided this was the perfect moment to let her nose be snotty. She was hiccuping and the lack of oxygen was definitely causing her face to become blotchy. Luke didn’t seem to care though. He pressed his hand against her head and softly stroked her hair. They stood in front of her university for a few minutes, definitely getting weird looks from any passing students. His cologne smelled very nice to her, almost seeming to have a calming effect. She would have to ask him if it had lavender or some other aromatherapy in it.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered to her. She almost detected guilt in his voice, although she didn’t know why. It’s not like he gave her seasonal allergies.

“Let’s get you home,” he pulled her away from him to wipe at her damp cheeks once more, then opened the passenger door for her.

“How did you know what happened?” she asked once she was buckled and the engine was on.

“Wolves have kind of a sixth sense of their surroundings, we can hear anything happening within a 20 mile radius if we concentrate. It’s like positioning an antenna on one of those old fashioned TV’s to focus on a certain channel.”

“So you just happened to be listening to my channel?” she asked. It sounded unlikely, but then again so do humans that can turn into wolves whenever they please.

“No, uh, I’ve been especially sensitive to your ‘channel’ so to speak lately. I think it’s because of your sudden proximity to our pack,” he didn’t turn his eyes from the road, but even if he were looking at her his probably face wouldn’t give away anything. He was very good at keeping a blank face, which frustrated her because she liked to be able to read people. They swiftly passed the entrance to where her dorm was, which surprised her because she thought he would know where it was since he said he took her sleep-walking ass home a few times.

“Oh, uh you passed the entrance,” she pointed out.

“I know, I’m taking you to my place. I’ve seen the chaos you call your room, and there’s no way your immune system can handle one more night in that environment.”

“Hey!” she hit his arm lightly, “I’ll have you know that just last week I made my bed.”

When they pulled through the gates of the property, she was shocked to not see any wolves roaming the grounds like last time.

“Where is everyone?” she asked, taking a moment to wipe her still-runny nose on her sleeve.

“Probably inside,” he shrugged as he parked in the massive garage, “did you think I lived in this huge house alone and made them all stay outside in their wolf forms?”

“Uh, no, of course not….” she laughed nervously as he led her inside. The kitchen was empty and he instructed her to wait there while he got some cold medicine for her. He was only gone a minute before she heard a door in a nearby hallway open and at least ten people filed into the kitchen. All of them were imposingly tall, even the women. They looked to be around the same age as Luke, if not younger, which makes her wonder what happened to the older generations. Were werewolf lifespans short like dogs?

“Hey Y/N! It’s been awhile, glad you’re back,” said a curly haired guy towards the front.

“Sorry, do I know you?” she peered over the group and can’t recall meeting any of them during either of her visits.

“Oh, right, you don’t know our human forms,” the guy laughed, “I’m Ashton, and that’s Calum.” He gestured over to the guy next to him. Now that she thinks about it, their hair color does exactly match the wolves she met. Calum gives her a shy wave while Ashton lists off the names of everyone else. She tried her best to be polite even though all she wanted to do was eat some chicken noodle soup and sleep for 48 hours.

“Guys, really?” the chatter stopped the moment Luke stepped back into the room, “I said not to bother Y/N. She’s sick and she doesn’t need you lot pestering her with questions.”

“It’s okay Luke,” she put a hand on his arm and his gaze softened a little, “they were just saying hi.”

“C’mon, you need to rest,” he put a hand on the small of her back to lead her upstairs, and threw a warning glance back at his pack. When they arrived in his room, she was overwhelmed with the scent of him. It made her eyes heavy and she practically floated over to the big bed. He handed her a measurement of cold medicine and she was so stuffed up that she didn’t even have to plug her nose when swallowing it. She got cozy under the puffy comforter and looked up at him drowsily.

“Need anything else?” he asked. She shook her head and he started turning to leave before she grabbed his hand.

“Don’t go. I don’t like to wake up in unfamiliar places alone,” she whined. She knew she was being childish and he definitely had better things to do than play nurse for her, but her sick brain was inherently selfish and she couldn’t help it.

“You’ve slept here twice already, it’s not unfamiliar,” he said, but he didn’t seem as firm in his resolve as he usually was about things.

“Please?” she gave him her wide pleading eyes and she knew she had persuaded him. He sighed and crawled onto the other side of the bed, sitting up on top of the covers.

“Happy?” he asked as she frantically turned to face him.

“Yes,” she said contently, shuffling a little closer to him, “You look tired, you should stop giving your bed to strange people.”

“It’s alright, I just want you to get better.”

“You can rest your eyes if you’d like. I won’t tell anyone you took a nap, it’ll be our little secret,” she said, patting his arm reassuringly. He nodded at her with the same sleepy look she probably had and a lazy smile. Feeling she had accomplished her mission, she closed her eyes and quickly drifted off, feeling like she had finally scratched that itch that had been nagging her for weeks.

Waking up in someone’s arms was not a common occurrence for her. Lately her romantic life has consisted of quick hookups at parties, and her last boyfriend, Brad, always said cuddling is for ninnies in romantic comedies. Their relationship obviously didn’t last long. She wasn’t angry that she opened her eyes and had two arms around her and a steady heartbeat resting against her ear. It was a nice change to waking up alone in the twin-size bed in her dorm. She shifted her head up slightly, expecting to see his intense blue eyes looking down at her, but instead saw that they were closed. It was weird to see him sleep. He had always seemed so alert and guarded around her that she was almost surprised he sleeps at all. Since she was feeling worlds better after her nap, she gave herself clearance to take in his features in a way she would be too intimidated to do if he were awake. She sat there for god knows how long, eyes tracing over the freckles she didn’t realize he had and the soft curve of his nose and the way his eyelashes rested on his cheeks and how his mouth was slightly open to let out quiet snores. The sun was setting through the blinds, but she was in no rush to go home. It was only the rumble of her stomach that stirred him from sleep and forced her to think about the reality of the situation. He seemed to do the same for a moment once he opened his eyes, looked at how she was tucked securely into his large frame. Who initiated the cuddle, she didn’t know, but she hoped Luke didn’t have the same negative stance as Brad if she were the one who subconsciously started it. She watched a smile twitch onto his lips and was relieved that she wouldn’t have to move from his warm embrace.

“Hungry?” he asked after a few minutes when her stomach growled angrily again. He had started lightly combing through her hair like he had when she was crying, but this time it seemed to be for his own enjoyment rather than her comfort. She internally scolded her stomach for not shutting up so she could stay like this. It was weird how normal it felt to be so close to a dude she met three weeks ago. Somehow, it was like they already knew each other on a molecular level, like every fiber of her being was trying to be close to his. She knew virtually nothing about him besides what he is, but the way he held her you would think they had been best friends since childhood. It was kind of dizzying to think about because she never felt this way for any guy so quickly, but something about him was the exception to everything she had previously known.

“Don’t want to move,” her voice was muffled by his shirt, and she thought she heard his heartbeat flutter at that.

“C’mon, I can hear your stomach growling. What will the police say if a girl dies of starvation in a house full of food?” his voice was light and carefree like she had never heard it before. He finally got her out of the bed when he mentioned that the others had ordered pizza. She relished in how he looked as they walked downstairs, his clothes rumpled and his hair messy. The kitchen was chaos. There was at least one large box of pizza for each member of the house. Everyone had a slice of pizza in one hand and a beer in the other except for a few guys who (she hoped) were brawling for fun. It was exactly like any college party she had been to if frat houses were unisex and had expensive furniture and appliances.

“Heyyyy feeling better Lukey? Did you get your fix?” one of the guys whose name she didn’t remember shouted from across the kitchen. Luke only gave him a dangerous glance before handing her a plate.

“You can have whatever you like, I think we bought up the entire town’s supply of pizza,” he joked, but he still seemed more guarded now that they weren’t alone, like he was afraid one thing would send her running. She filled her plate with sausage pizza and moaned at the taste. She hadn’t realized how hungry she was. Someone came and whispered something to Luke and his face changed to completely serious. He told her he had to go take care of a few things, but that he would be right back, leaving her alone in the routy kitchen. She was starting to feel a bit out of place until a girl with pretty braids in her long hair approached her with a smile.

“Hi, Y/N, I’m Claire. I’ll show you somewhere less turbulent to eat,” she pulled her out of the way before the wrestling dudes knocked over the entire kitchen table. She followed Claire down the hall to a living room sort of area with lots of couches. This environment was much more relaxed, she recognized Ashton and a few others who seemed to be a few years older than the less mature wolves fighting in the kitchen. Ashton gave her an encouraging smile and patted the seat beside him for her to sit. Claire sat next to her.

“It’s a lot to take in, isn’t it?” Ashton asked. She nodded.

“This place is great, but it’s a little…” she trailed off, not knowing how to get her point across without offending them.

“Reminiscent of a frat house? I know, that’s the disadvantage to being older. All work and no play. Although most of that falls on Luke, poor bloke,” one of them interjected.

“What happened to everyone else? I mean, isn’t there anyone else who could be in charge besides Luke? He’s so young…” her curiosity bubbled up all at once and she couldn’t help asking. A somber pause fell over the group and she realized she had said something wrong.

“A pack is like a family. The wolf gene is hereditary, so we stick together and live as a community. Most packs are much bigger, with hundreds of wolves at one time. But… a few years ago, our enemy pack that lives south of us attacked us in the middle of the night, breaking a centuries’ long truce. They killed everyone they could find, our parents and grandparents. Only 23 of us survived because we hadn’t gone through the change yet and wolf law prohibits any wolf from killing a human. Luke was only 14, but since he had the alpha gene his change came early when our old alpha was killed,” Claire finally explained. Tears welled up in Y/N’s eyes imagining the story unfold.

“He went through the change all by himself, then helped the rest of us through it when we changed. He’s never been able to lean on someone for support, always has to shoulder the entire burden himself. I think that’s why he’s had trouble accepting the situation between you two. But every time he sees you, he’s a little closer to being how he was before the tragedy and---”

“Wait, what situation between us?” she interrupted Ashton. They all turned to her with shocked looks.

“You… you don’t know? He hasn’t told you?” asked one guy, she thinks his name might be Glen.

“Gale, leave it, it’s not our place,” Ashton warned the other guy.

“Ash, we both know he’ll never get around to telling her anytime soon with how cautious he is, and she deserves to know,” Claire added.

“Know what?” Y/N demanded. The suspense of three weeks of confusion was finally building up to something, and they couldn’t leave her hanging now.

“You’re his mate Y/N….” Ashton lowly, as if the words themselves might set off an alarm if said too loudly.

“What? Like his friend or…?”

“No, like a soulmate, a life partner. That’s why you trailed after him like a lost puppy when you were sleepwalking. And why you got sick after not seeing him, and magically got better after a few hours with him. It’s your subconscious reacting to what you didn’t know yet in your logical brain,” Glen explained. She sat stunned for a moment, just trying to process the information. It made sense, in hindsight. Thinking about him nonstop, and being so dependent on his touch when she finally saw him.

“But then why---” her question was interrupted by heavy footsteps coming into the room. Luke was back in his skinny jeans and boots, and the uninterested expression had resumed its hold over his face. The people around her stiffened.

“Ashton, go talk to Kevin and Jenna, they’ll fill you in on the situation. Y/N, I’m taking you home,” Luke said in a stern voice. She noticed the keys in his hand and said a quiet goodbye to everyone before following his imposing figure to the garage.

The car ride back reminded her of the first time he ever took her back to campus. It was silent and his hands were tight on the steering wheel. When they were rounding the corner to her dorm, she finally gathered the courage to speak.

“You really have nothing to say? I know you heard what they told me,” she said.

“It doesn’t matter,” he replied quietly as they pulled in front of her dorm.

“What do you mean it doesn’t matter?”

“I mean we’re not going to be together, we can’t,” it was the first time he had ever raised his voice at her, “A girl died in the woods last night, that’s what happens when someone like you is around someone like me. I’m sorry you got mixed up in all of this, but I’m going to fix this and it’ll be like we never even met.” A cold chill ran through her body at his words and what they suggested. She didn’t know what ‘fix’ meant, but she assumed it involved breaking the tie between them.

“Has it occured to you that I might like some say in something that so heavily involves me? I’m not some ragdoll you can toss around whenever you like. You could have at least told me what was going on so I didn’t think I was going insane,” she opened the car door roughly and stepped out, “If this is going to affect my health and god knows what else, I should have just as much say in it as you. Keep that in mind next time you want to keep a secret from me. But since my human-ness is such a bloody nuisance to you, then I’ll leave you to your miserable self from now on.” She slammed the door and stomped into her dorm, not daring to look back at his reaction.

Request for part 4 :)

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nancydrew65 · 6 years ago

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SKAM NL Season 2 Episode 1 Recap

Time for my favorite remake! I love Liv and the Dutch girl squad, so I am excited for this season!

Good Morning

Well, this has got to be the best season 2 opening sequence ever. It’s also a completely new scene, so yay! I love the comparisons between Liv and Noah’s morning routines.

Aaaah, the parallel shots of them painting their nails. Noah really is the epitome of an artsy fuckboy.

And then the music cuts out when Liv sees Noah. “What the fuck are you doing here?” Liv is already more aggressive than Noora, and not gonna lie, I am here for it.

Also, how does Noah know where Liv lives? Isn’t that slightly creepy?

The older lady, walking in between them just made my day.

Awww, they flipped each other off? Are they going to be like Mia and Alexander where using middle finger becomes their sweet romantic gesture? I hope so!

And damn, Noah had to really run down those stairs to catch Liv. He is out of breath. I wonder if the actor (is his name Monk?) actually ran down the stairs. If so, props to him.

Liv rides off into the distance on her bike, and so begins Season 2.

Too Late

Those opening shots were everything! And then it cuts back to the reality with the bell.

Oh, Kes. I see you winking at Isa, I see you.

Again with the story about Imaan and her oma. Do we know what happened to the actress? Because that is a really obvious excuse, and I remember last season she wasn’t in as many of the scenes. Please let us not lose Imaan. Pleeeease!

Another ignorant remark on behalf of Engel. But I can kinda tolerate it with her. She was the Vilde who seemed more interested in connecting with Imaan, even if she went about it the wrong way.

Janna’s weird conversation about flashers made me smile so much.

Oh, Noah comments of Liv’s hair and she immediately takes her hairband out.

Engel thinks he’s looking at her. Oh, how I wish we wouldn’t go into this storyline. It’s awful for everyone, except maybe William/Noah.

Who is this Jayden guy? Was he the one who came to the cabin trip? Why does he need to move somewhere? I guess he ends up living with Liv. It still feels kind of weird. I wish Skam NL would have given us a little more information on that matter.

Skinny Bitch

Wow, that is one hopping house party! I’m with Liv, “on a Thursday?”

We see Dutch Eskild, his name is Ralph.

Isa and Kes check out girls on a dating app. Oh, they are so drunk. So, I guess this is kind of like that scene from Season 2 in OG, but ..... not.

Jayden trying to pick up a girl in his closet of a room is kinda funny.

Oh, dear. Skinny Bitch. In Season 1, Skam NL didn’t really go into Engel having an eating disorder, so I wondered if she would develop one this season. I guess, she will.

Isa and Liv spy Lucas and a random girl making out. “I guess he was just curious?” I don’t think so, Liv, I don’t think so.

Liv takes out the garbage and promptly drops it right outside of her door. Is that a thing in the Netherlands. Like if you live in an apartment complex, is there someone who picks up the garbage from your front door? I hope so because she just left it there.

I do like that moment where she just gazes out at the city. I wonder where Noah and Liv will go for that whole “first date” because Liv already has a fantastic view from her apartment. Or maybe they won’t go with that storyline? Please, please.

Aww, Liv happily watching all the girl squad out on the floor like a proud mom. And then she goes to join them to dance. What a sweet clip.

Brakkiekakkie

I won’t even pretend to understand what the title of this clip means.

Janna spitting nuts into a planter box while all the other girls are just trying not to vomit.

The girls are waiting for Jayden. That’s sweet. He is a new addition to the story, so I wonder how he will fit into Season 2 madness.

We meet Esra! Look at SKAM NL, casually throwing in diversity. I’m proud of my little remake. I’m guessing Esra is the equivelant of Linn? She seems cool and way more helpful than Linn ever was.

Was there a spark between Esra and Janna? Am I imagining things? That would be a really interesting storyline to pursue. A lesbian romance with a Muslim.

That far off shot of the girls at the balcony, the camera sliding across all the girls in the classroom. SKAM NL is experimenting with all these stylistic shots and I am loving it. They give the show a very distinctive feel, while still remaining very authentic. Just how SKAM should be.

So, the girls need to throw together a benefit to raise money for their city trip. Cool, gives the season a focus. Also, Isa correcting her pronunciation of Talinn was a cute callback to season 1 when Imaan schooled all the girls in how to pronounce it. But that just reminds me of how we are missing Imaan. Bring! Her! Back!

Oh, that text from Noah. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there this morning.” It is kind of stalkerish that he is showing up at her door every morning, but also kind of sweet? Like William only ever harassed Noora through texts. Showing up at someone’s house, day after day, seems more sincere. Or just more like a horror movie, IDK.

Lucas being smooth with the ladies. Although I’m not quite sure why Engel had that face when he walked over to the girls. Was it because they were talking about him?

“He’s a chick magnet” “I wouldn’t be so sure of that” Damn, that was savage Isa.

It Will Be Alright

Isa, Kes, Lucas, and Jayden killed me with those whale sounds. They are so stoned; at least its a Saturday.

Also, Isa is actively participating. So, I guess she was only mad that Kes and Jayden dealed Ritalin last season. I mean that makes sense. Dealing prescription drugs is a lot more dangerous than smoking weed.

This is more of a relationship with her parents than we saw from Noora. Her dad seems more interested in the state of Liv’s music career than he does about how his daughter is doing. Maybe he’s a big shot in the music industry and that’s why he has no time for her?

Oh, clearly Liv’s dad thinks she has already submitted her music to the record company, but Liv is too afraid of rejection and has held off on it.

I think this is really interesting. We get to see more of Liv’s passion for music. I really hope they develop this storyline more, especially considering Zoe Love Smith, Liv’s actress is a singer in real life.

Almost Finished

Aww, that quick glimpse of a photo of the girl squad. I can’t wait to have more scenes of the girl squad.

That shot of Liv fractured in the two mirrors while speaking along to the lyrics was so beautiful! The cinematography in this show is on point!

Is Ralph in a bunny one-suit? He doesn’t even close the door when he pees. But I agree with Liv; it’s worse that he doesn’t wash his hands afterwards.

Damn, Noah’s twirl! Those were some high-class moves.

Liv is so done with him.

The older lady makes another appearance. She is quickly becoming my favorite character. Theory: She represents the audience and how we should feel about Noah (aka sympathy). Nah, I’m just kidding.

General Thoughts

I really enjoyed this episode! I’m really glad they haven’t got into Noah manipulating Engel to get to Liv. I hope they won’t ever go into that storyline, but that might be too much to hope for. I will say, though, without that element of the story into play, the episode doesn’t have as much of a dramatic arc. Not that I wish they put it in; I much prefer this mellow episode to Noah acting shitty towards Engel. SKAM NL changed up a lot of things. I love that; I am all for remakes exploring new avenues and doing their own thing. I hope they keep changing things up; it makes the viewing experience more exciting. So far, I am not feeling like I want to throw a book at Noah, which is a plus. He seems better than some of the other Williams. I hope he keeps up his good behavior. So, as I was watching I was thinking, “Where’s Noah?” and I saw that a lot of people in the comments of the clips felt the same. And I was struck by a terrible epiphany. We, as a fandom, have come to associate Season 2 with Noorhelm, rather than Noora herself. And I think this is partly due to OG SKAM because they didn’t do a good job making a distinction between the two. Just comparing this episode to SKAM Austin (which I am also watching live), there is an appearance or reference to Daniel in every single clip of episode 1. In SKAM NL, there were two whole clips where Noah was not mentioned once, and one clip where the only reference to him was one text he sent Liv. I think this is great progress and hope that SKAM NL continues this trend and focuses more on Liv as a character rather than her as on half of Lioh (or Noliv. What is their ship name?). I think bringing in her music is a great start. I can’t wait to watch more of this season.

#skam #skam remakes #skam reaction #skam nl

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hannahhostofheaven · 6 years ago

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Angels in Colonial America

This is a new fic based off of an RP I’m doing with @spooky-racoons. It gets pretty steamy and a little smutty at the end, just to warn you, and this is just chapter one, and it’s a bit of a rough draft. If anyone is interested, I love Hanstiel and I love time travel and I have a lot more time travel verses to play with if you are interested in RPing with me or even collaborating on a fan fiction with me. Anyway, I hope everyone likes it:

Chapter One

Castiel gazed out at the ocean as he walked the long road towards town. Three tall galleons hung in the harbor bearing British flags. More soldiers. They were arriving every day now. It seemed the redcoats were all that filled the streets sometimes. These were certainly trying times in Massachusetts colony.

“Damn, I hate this place,” Dean complained as he and Sam walked with them. “If we ever get back to our own time, I promise to never complain about the bunker again.”

Getting back to their own time seemed unlikely at this point. They’d been living in this 18th century world for a few months now. Castiel could smell the change in the season since they first arrived. It had barely been summer when he, Dean, Sam, Jo, Eileen, and Hannah first arrived in this time period and now the cool, crisp breeze in the air told him that autumn had arrived.

“It’s not so bad,” Sam said. “You know except for the slavery and the lack of rights for women. Its kind of beautiful here. There’s lots of wilderness and the slow pace of life.”

“And the diseases, and working in the mines, and the stupid hats, and having to grow your own food,” Dean continued to list out all the things he didn’t like about the 18th century. “Oh and we still have to be hunters!”

Castiel was only half listening to the Winchesters. He was anticipating getting home to the old barn that they had called a home since arriving in this time period. It was a large but drafty two story barn that the landowner had rented to them in exchange for their service in working in the fields and in the mine.

When they arrived home finally, Castiel could smell the aroma of onion stew cooking on the stove. The Winchesters stopped their bickering once they caught the smell. The three of them let themselves in the back door.

“Hannah?” Castiel found the dark haired angel sitting in front of the fireplace while Jo and Eileen argued about the stew.

The makeshift house was barely a shack. One large open space houses the kitchen, the fireplace, a small table, and a small scattering of chairs. A few rugs covered the creaky wooden flooring. Upstairs, there were three tiny utility rooms which had been made into bedrooms.

“The farmer’s wife permitted us to take a few onions for dinner,” Hannah said as Castiel sat down next to her. She looked very pretty even in her plain cotton dress and white apron. Her dark hair was wavy as it fell past her shoulders, dancing about her face as she moved her head. Her large blue eyes seemed to darken with her mood. “She wasn’t very happy about it but Jo explained the validity of not allowing us to starve to death.”

“How considerate of her,” Castiel commented sarcastically. The landowners who owned the barn were not kind. They had only agreed to allow the Winchesters to live there if they worked in the mines and if Jo, Eileen, and Hannah agreed to be servants to some of the wealthy women in town.

“How was the orphanage?” Castiel asked as the Winchesters, Jo, and Eileen mulled about behind them. Castiel and Hannah didn’t need to eat quite yet. Castiel knew it would only be a matter of time before their grace drained away and they were required to eat and sleep like everyone else, but for now, they were still angels and their main priority was to take care of the Winchesters. Castiel had worried about how skinny Dean and Sam had become lately as food and currency was scarce and the greedy landowners seemed unwilling to share much.

“Mrs. Metford is a cruel, stern woman,” Hannah said as she spoke about the all girl’s orphanage where she had been hired as a cook. “The girls spend their days doing chores and preparing for the day that they are old enough to find husbands. If they make the smallest mistake, she hits them with a stick.”

“This was a troubled time in human history,” Castiel replied. “Full of war, disease, injustice, and prejudice. The wealthy control and dictate the laws and the poor are at the mercy of everyone else.”

“I’ve gotten close to the children in the orphanage,” Hannah said thoughtfully. “Especially Mary, one of the younger girls. She helps me cook the meals.”

Castiel smiled at that. He was glad Hannah wasn’t too miserable here. With both of their grace fading, it would be harder and harder for them to get back to their own time and it was likely they would live here forever, much to Dean’s chagrin.

“It will get better, Hannah,” Castiel encouraged before taking her hand. “Come,” he offered. “Watch the sunset with me?” Hannah nodded and took his hand and the two went upstairs, leaving the four humans to finish their dinner.

Castiel and Hannah had taken the room with the largest window because it was drafty and the humans would have a harder time with it. Castiel worried it would be a problem when their grace was gone, but for now, it provided them with a scenic view of the thick forests of New England.

The room was very tiny, barely enough room for their straw filled mattress sitting directly under the bed. Castiel settled down on it and faced the window, waiting for Hannah to join him. She laid down against, her head against his chest as they watched the fading glow of the sunset over the top of the trees.

“This may be a troubled time,” Castiel said after a while. “But in this era there are still many places that humans have not yet spread. The world is largely unexplored. If we must live here, it would be quite easy to disappear.”

“I don’t like fences, Castiel,” Hannah murmured. “There were a lot of fences and walls and barriers in the 21st century. They blocked the natural world, caused disruptions, and do not allow people or animals to pass about freely. It makes no sense.”

“I know you have had a hard time living on Earth in general,” Castiel replied calmly as he held her tight. “But I think you’ve managed to learn to more important aspects of humanity.”

Hannah lifted her head, propping herself on her side to look at him. “What aspects are those?” she asked curiously.

To that, Castiel only responded by leaning forward to kiss her gently on the lips. “That’s one of them,” he said, gazing at her face in the warm glow of the fading sun. Hannah smiled leaning in close to kiss him again.

Castiel began to feel the sweet sensuality building inside of him as he deepened the kiss, closing his eyes to savor the moment. He gripped her cheek, brushing her soft skin as he kissed.

The angel let himself venture a little lower, kissing the side of her lip, then her chin, and moving down to her neck where he kissed, pulling at the skin a little. Hannah responded by letting out a soft sigh and falling back onto her back, pulling him over her. He pulled back to gaze down at her, meeting her eyes. Her eyes darkened and glistened, subtly betraying her desire.

Castiel moved in for more kisses, kissing her forehead, her cheek, her chin, and then, meeting her lips in a deeply sensual open mouth kiss. The kind of kiss that sparked the heat between them, that was sure to evolve into something more.

His hands probed down to the back of her dress, feebly but urgently pulling at the fastenings while he kissed her face and neck. After a moment, his efforts were rewarded when her dress suddenly gave way. Castiel sat up to pull the garment off of his lover’s body and toss it to the ground.

He admired her now naked body, glad there was still a little sunlight left coming in through the window to highlight the delicate curves and shapes of her body. He never really got tired of looking at her.

“You are only looking,” Hannah’s voice cut through Castiel’s thoughts and he smiled, realizing he’d gotten lost in his admiration of her. He smirked, eyes flicking up to hers.

“Sorry,” he said. “I like what I see.” He touched both palms to the skin of her lower torso, slowly moving upwards, rubbing deep for a sensual front massage. His effort enlisted a soft inhale of breath as her body trembled underneath his hands. He knelt over her, kissing the softness of her breasts.

She squirmed underneath him as he kissed and caressed every inch of her body before digging his hands underneath her to hoist her into a sitting position against him. She settled onto his lap as he propped himself against the wall, letting her hands slip under his tunic. He lifted his arms as she pulled off his shirt and immediately went for his pants, working them off of him.

Castiel buried his hand in the thick hair of Hannah’s head as he gripped the back of her head and put his other hand on her hip. Their lips met again, forcefully, greedily as she braced herself against his chest then slowly lowered herself into him with a soft breathy moan.

The way she moved, slowly at first, made him grunt and the heat between them. He gripped her hips with both of his hands while eagerly receiving her deep, sensual kisses while she moved up and down on top of him, her movements picking up speed as her breathing quickened.

She whimpered, gasping hard at the pleasure building in her body as he suddenly shifted, causing her to topple off of him. She lay there on her back as he crawled over her, slowly pressing himself deep into her, keeping his eyes locked on hers as he moved in deep, smiling a little at the gasp she uttered as she squeezed her eyes shut, arching her back against him.

He felt her fingers dig into his back, clawing down the length of his back as he moved teasingly slow at first, causing her to moan. “Please…” she begged breathily, biting her lip in ecstasy.

He gripped her torso, rubbing it and caressing it as he quickened the pace. “Oh…” she muttered, over and over again, and then. “Oh! Oh!” her sudden cries as she suddenly clenched around him made him chuckle as he watched her face in anticipation as she gave in to her release. He let himself do so soon after, grunting as he crumpled down onto her, bracing his face against his shoulder and holding her tight as the release of pleasure nearly took his breath away.

A few more jolts of pleasure and he rolled off of her, gathering her tight into his arms and hugging her close. She panted and heaved against him, face buried in his chest as he held onto her, not daring to let go, kissing the top of her head lovingly.

“Castiel…” she breathed into his chest as she lay there, motionless, before lifting her head to look down at him.

“Mmm?” he hummed, smiling at her, brushing a strand of hair out of her face.

“I love you,” she whispered. “Don’t ever…” Castiel pressed a finger to her lips.

“Shh,” he said, knowing what she meant to say. “Just make sure you do the same.” She smiled, laying her head back down on his forehead, the two of them content to lay in one another’s arms for the rest of the night.

#Hanstiel #Castiel #Hannah #Castiel/Hannah #Hannah/Castiel

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queernuck · 6 years ago

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The goal horn went off. Streamers fell from the ceiling. For the first time, the first time since Shawn Bates, there was something to celebrate.

When John Tavares, “JT”, was drafted, it seemed to be a change. It was meaningfully something else, because it was a meaningful chance at a number-one player. A top prospect. A generational talent, or something like it. This was not a repetition of the Yashin trade, or DiPietro going first overall and ending up on a Bobby Bonilla buyout after breaking enough bones for an entire team. Tavares was a guarantee, a promise, was the cup coming back to Long Island.

Despite the name, the Islanders are not a New York team, much like the Mets. The Yankees are global, are a name of note like Manchester United and FC Barcelona and the Montreal Canadiens and the Pittsburgh Steelers, but there is a certain singularity to them as emblematic of New York, a city of the World, a continually reterritorialized and renewed space subject to more interpretations than interpreters, overcoded by more layers of the hyperreal than even Los Angeles. Los Angeles is a city that was created as a simulacra, is constituted by it, while the “Real” New York has been found and lost so many times, in so many ways, that one begins to wonder if New Amsterdam is nothing more than a colonizing fiction. New York is profoundly violent, colonial, neoliberal, and yet represents decolonization, solidarity, radical potentiality in America like no other place. The singular event, the radical restructure of potentiality that came on 9/11, the Absolute Event contrasting with a decade of non-event after non-event, the hyperreal entirely preempting the Real, making the Real a mere artifact, creates a sense of that which New York is. New York is the Yankees, perhaps with the exception of the Cocaine Mets and Piazza’s home run of a return in September 2001. The Islanders logo does not include Brooklyn or Queens, leading to a strange circumstance when they relocated to Brooklyn and retained a logo with a vital visual cue toward their now-abandoned arena. The Rangers are a New York team. The Islanders, even in Brooklyn, have always been on the Island.

This has been part of what has made them lesser, subjected them as a franchise to an Oedipal act of naming, reduced rooting for them to an exercise in Oedipal trauma. The Islanders have always been an incredibly Oedipal team, an expansion in a market already saturated by the Rangers. They are caught in the past because they have been a team of the future for twenty-five years. Their rivals are an Original Six franchise, a cornerstone of the NHL and whichever of the Flyers, Penguins, or Devils are closest to them at the standings. The Penguins always presented a certain special opposition: a player can get traded, sign with another team, retire, but your hatred of Crosby can’t. So, getting a jersey that says CROSBY SUCKS over an 87 is like wearing the number of a retired player, guaranteed to last as long as the jersey itself. The Islanders have been continually proving themselves to be good, but not nearly good enough. Wild card appearances, lucky playoff spots, and shining moments isolated from crushing defeats have been their historic moments.

This was true for a long time, and it was no less true for JT. With the Islanders, Tavares missed an Art Ross by the luck of a secondary assist, finished as a nominee for a Hart trophy, won only one playoff series. Immediately after that win the Islanders lost to the Tampa Bay Lightning, in part boosted by Victor Hedman, the Second Overall pick in JT’s draft and a cornerstone of a team that had been built around the rejected core of the Rangers repurposed into one of the best teams in the East. Hedman’s time with the Lightning has been relatively successful, about as good as one can get without winning the cup and with plenty more chances at one to come. JT, however, was marked to achieve individual success in service of a team that could do nothing for him. So long as the assemblage of the team around him remained as awful as it had been, as awful as management allowed it to be, he was part of that Oedipal prophecy, doomed to find himself named as lacking, wanting, lesser so long as he tried to make the team better. And so, on July 1st, he left.

When announcing the decision, JT tweeted out a picture of himself with a Star Wars alarm clock above his head, sleeping in Maple Leafs bedding. A starfighter from Naboo, to be specific, a mark of a certain sort of childhood at a certain point in time drawn from a certain product of consumption held in stasis by the photograph. When asked, the story was that he had a hockey tournament beginning early the next day, and had been so scared that his parents’ alarms would fail to go off that he insisted on setting his own as well. He said that it was a “childhood dream” and indeed, it seems, he is living out a dream of childhood. His regression into this childlike state, the way in which it has been rendered the image of note in JT’s decision, is in part a sort of Oedipal turn on the part of the Leafs: they are asserting themselves as Canada’s Team, as the team so many NHL players grew up rooting for, as the one that will eventually see Toronto’s players taking pay cuts to go home, become offhand references in Drake songs that the NHL’s snow-white fans could take or leave, positioning themselves as having preempted the NHL itself, married the mother of the Hockey Goddess, skinny and blonde like any NHL player’s girlfriend. Now, Toronto is a destination, is built on something far more than hope, a culture of accepting losing so long as the brand stays strong. Two years earlier, Stephen Stamkos had been in a similar situation, a young superstar from Toronto at the end of his contract, with Toronto a possible destination. When, after two stunning trades involving Canadian teams, Stamkos quietly re-signed with the Lightning around the end of the work day, it turned TSN into a kind of Winter Palace, a player firmly Canadian resolving to stay on a team that rejected all sense of what it meant to be a hockey team, a team with postmodern aesthetics and a young history whose peak involved stealing a cup from a Canadian team.

Even as the talks went on, JT was coming back. He always was, he was going to stay on the Island. He had been talking to the team all season, sources said. He declined a trade, wanting to stay with the team. He said he was waiting for the Islander’s arena situation to settle, and it did for at least a moment. Josh Bailey, an aging player made All-Star by being on JT’s wing, was given a generous contract as a sign of good will, a kind of fetishistic representation of the deference Tavares would be given in shaping the team. Two head coaches were let go over two seasons, replaced by a man less than a month removed from a Stanley Cup win, and a backup goalie turned GM was replaced by one of the best-regarded GMs in league history, a GM who had lead the Devils to multiple cups while the Islanders were helmed by a TV broadcaster who once beat a fan with his own shoe and an owner who freely offered friends the world, while actually owning all but nothing. The continual cycle of collapse was over, but it was far too late to keep him. What is it that a lover wants from infidelity? A confirmation of a certain sort. That there has been a consummation, generally a penetrative act, which serves to signify a certain flow within the relationship, within the potential of the relationship, such that the previous modality of relating is unviable. Cheating to force a break, as part of an act of justifying leaving, is in that way an embodiment of both partners' desires: the phallogocentric signification of this break is merely an expression of the underlying tension, the Oedipal burden of a relationship, the means by which the relationship is held as an object of uncertain structure. A radical break, the decision to not request a trade, to actively ask to stay with the Islanders, followed by the turn to the Leafs, the acceptance of a new contract, was a confirmation of what was already clear: an apparently new team was not enough to create a new situation, for him to repeat a mistake he had already made in taking an incredibly team-friendly contract and staying with the Islanders so many years previously. He would not allow himself to owe anything to the ideology of a few capitalists over a sweater, especially when he preferred a different sweater. Rooting for laundry being what it is, he decided he may as well sleep in his childhood sheets again.

LeBron went on the same day, of course. July 1st, he went home. Or at least, to one of his homes, not the one back in Akron. This was not the first time he left the Cavaliers, but this has a certain difference to it, one that resembles Tavares signing such a large contract with Toronto far more than it does LeBron’s original move to South Beach. The Lakers were a decent team with some promising players, who have to now deal with the fact that their entire team history has, effectively, become part of this signing. LeBron is perhaps the greatest player of all time, and is not staging a comeback like Jordan’s time with the Wizards. Instead, having just dragged an atrocious Cavaliers team to a Finals where they were comprehensively outmatched by the Warriors for all but half of a game, he decided that he wanted something different. LeBron had already gone home once, returning from Miami to lead Cleveland to four consecutive Finals appearances, including the most unlikely Championship in NBA history. Still able to compete, still showing himself more and more to be the Greatest of All Time, he decided to create the ultimate destination team, the team that best fits Los Angeles. They have had good teams before, but the singularity of LeBron in LA exceeds even that of the Warriors, is a simulacra of a team that many would not have dreamt of a decade prior.

For obvious reasons, there is quite a bit more attention given to LeBron going to LA than to Tavares going to Toronto. Both in North America and around the world, basketball resonates in a fashion that nears that of soccer, that represents the complexity of late capitalist signification in post-socialist Europe, balkanization and basketball two expressions of a singular neoliberal hegemon, American culture as global culture. The NHL’s Hockey, meanwhile, is a game of the Global North: on the borders of The Orient one finds the KHL and national teams far more appealing, while in Europe most nations give at least some prestige to their own leagues alongside the NHL. The NHL is international, surely, but not in the same fashion as the NBA. The NHL operates far more locally, much like the Islanders within it. “On the Island” is a tell, a kind of shibboleth for Long Island life: anyone from Long Island knows that while one can be “in” Nassau or Suffolk, Hempstead or Huntington, in a bar or in a bind, one is always “on” Long Island. The transition from being in Queens to being on Long Island is about where the Islanders have planted their new home, and it was in the continual confusion over the exact term, the insistence of speaking of Long Island incorrectly that the uniqueness, the small-market quality of the Islanders became clear yet again. The Islanders had survived so many things, survived even more while holding on to JT, and just as a future seemed to form, it finally became clear that nearly a decade of thrashing for relevance and flaming out, a rocky road that often pointed toward Kansas City or Quebec, had shaken JT off. Spending so much time trying to find a reason for him to stay had been the exact reason he left: if the Islanders had truly wanted him, they would have changed when they said they would, would not have wasted some of his best years on basement teams.

It is not a decade unmarked by success, but punctuated instead by a singular one: John Tavares wrapping an OT game-winner around on Roberto Luongo, a former Islander himself, to win the Islanders’ first playoff series in 23 years. He would not win another: the next round was a 4-1 defeat against the Lightning, and the next two seasons saw the Islanders fail to make the playoffs as his contract ran out. Perhaps he genuinely wanted to stay as much as he said, perhaps he is merely a better actor than he was previously credited as. Maybe he is something different from either of these fantasies of him. Whichever it is, he is no longer an Islander.

#New York Islanders #John Tavares #hockey #Toronto Maple Leafs

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svartalfhild · 8 years ago

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Legends of Tomorrow - The Long-Winded Review No One Asked For

This starts with a little bit of a story.

I discovered this show through Netflix. I had no clue what it was really except that it was clearly about superheroes and the preview images looked really cool. I had no idea that it was a spinoff show of Arrow and The Flash. For some reason, I thought it was a standalone thing. I hadn’t touched anything DC since The Dark Knight Rises, so I was pretty far out of the loop.

Then one morning while I was twiddling my thumbs before class, I decided to have a look at what shows I had on my Netflix List that I might feel like watching. In the mood for superheroes and something that had one short season, I started watching Legends of Tomorrow.

Very quickly, it became apparent that this was a spinoff of shows I’d never watched, but I kept going, because I wanted to give the writers the benefit of the doubt that they would make it possible for a total noob to watch. They did - to an extent. It was still hard to follow a few things, because so many of the characters backstories had been fleshed out on other shows, but I still managed to get to know the characters well enough to get attached to them.

The plot was admittedly a little hard to follow at times, as was the time travel (which was sometimes even more of a mind fuck than half of Doctor Who), and I wasn’t used to the over-the-top dramatic style of DC after so many years of exclusively consuming Marvel content, so I almost dropped the show a few episodes in. My need for completionism won out, however, and I’m glad it did, because by the end of the season, I was fully invested in the story and the characters and I didn’t really care that a lot of things didn’t make too much sense.

I knew before I even started watching that Ray Palmer was going to be my favourite, though. I took one look at the preview images for the show and was like “that one right there; he looks like my Type™”. Goddamn was I right. Cheerful scientist boy is Pure and every time DC makes him suffer, I suffer.

Anyway, after finishing the first season, I decided to go watch Arrow so that I could get all the shit I missed. I admittedly did not enjoy it as much. It very clearly comes out of the same grimdark trend as the Dark Knight trilogy and I found it somewhat on the relentlessly depressing side. None the less, I powered through all four seasons and now most things make sense. It certainly enhanced my enjoyment of the new season of LoT, which I watched this week.

I have to say that I liked Season 2 a whole lot more than the last one. The humor got me in all the right places. There was much punching of Nazis. There was deep discussion about the moral implications of time travel. Some of my most favourite historical periods and figures were featured. It was a damn good time. The ending got about as mindfucky as the last season, if not more, but that’s okay. That’s in line with DC’s style and the point of the show.

What really struck me about this show, though, is how its handling of social issues differs from Marvel works and even other DC ones. Marvel, as you may well be aware, has been having a ton of problems with representation and with just plain not being offensive, both on the screen and on the page, which has done a lot to turn me away from the vast majority of their content in the past year. DC has been marginally better about this lately, although they’ve had some serious problems with how they portray mental illness and abuse, among other things. In Arrow, their depiction of familial relationships often bothered me. As someone who has experienced emotional abuse at the hands of family, I was really not here for the notion that you have to care about someone or let them into your life just because they’re your blood.

Then there’s Legends of Tomorrow. While by no means perfect, this show has done a lot of things others like it have been too damn chicken to do.

There’s serious and important discussions of race. At least three of the major reoccurring characters are poc and the fact that they are such is acknowledged in a meaningful way. For example, when other characters make assumptions about their experiences as poc or otherwise commit microaggressions, it gets called out.

There are multiple queer characters, including one of the main characters, who later becomes the ship’s captain and leader of the team. Much like Brooklyn-99, there are gay jokes about her, but instead of making fun of her, they make fun of the fact that other people expect her to be straight, dragging heteronormativity. On top of that, her queerness isn’t treated as central to her character. She’s far more complex than that.

In terms of the general make-up of the team, it’s got all kinds of people. There’s a bi woman with a preference for women, two black women with very different personalities and backgrounds, a young black man who doesn’t have a stereotypical thug background, an elderly person, a hemophiliac, a coeliac, a couple of working class ex-cons, and one (1) skinny white Englishman who is shown to actually be pretty incompetent as a leader. That still comes out to mostly white dudes, but it nonetheless feels like a much better spread than I’m used to seeing.

In the second season especially there’s an emphasis among all the titular characters on found family in their dynamic, which is A+ and actually plays an important part of certain character development arcs and the plot as a whole. I am all about that.

Then there’s all the little details of how certain things are handled in the second season that I really appreciate. (It’s about to get pretty spoilery here.) There’s a plot involving Nazis and going undercover in a Nazi establishment. A Nazi officer gets suspicious of Ray and demands he do the Nazi solute. He could have just done it and avoided trouble, but he won’t and punches the Nazi instead, jeopardizing the mission rather than giving in to the pressure to do something so immoral. Mick, the most morally dubious member of the group, later expresses a particular fondness for killing Nazis.

In an episode set in the American Civil War, the South is not shown a lick of sympathy. White southerners are represented as either ravenous zombies or cruel rich people. No quarter given to that “states rights” bullshit.

In a much later episode, the President of the United States is shown as a black woman.

These details strike me as very intentional fuck yous to the current administration/political climate and I love it.

Anyway, Legends of Tomorrow has it’s flaws, but I find it a rather refreshing and enjoyable show in the face of all the gross shit going on elsewhere in the genre.

#Legends of Tomorrow #DC #long post

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junker-town · 7 years ago

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How Pacers fans fell in and out of love with Paul George

Why is it hard for Pacers fans to get over how the Paul George era ended? Because they went through a lot together.

After seven long and emotional years together, Pacers fans and Paul George had a fast and public breakup in the summer of 2017. There were rumors that both sides were unhappy with the relationship long before the news became official, but neither party ever said it out loud. Neither party ever really wanted to.

It wasn’t until Pacers fans learned that George wanted out from Adrian Wojnarowski that reality set in. He would leave once he became a free agent, and he preferred to go to the Lakers. Even if many suspected it, it was a gut punch for everyone involved.

Pacers fans felt close to George. After all, we grew up together. We knew his idol was Kobe Bryant — that’s why he wore no. 24. We knew he loved to fish on Geist Lake, something only those from Indiana would understand. We knew he referred to WNBA star and Indianapolis legend Tamika Catchings as “Big Sis.”

After a Most Improved Player Award, back-to-back Eastern Conference finals appearances, four All-Star games, an Olympic gold medal, and a return from one of the most gruesome injuries we’ve ever seen, the relationship between Paul George and Pacers fans came to a screeching halt last summer. The feelings are still raw, and they will be on full display when George returns to Bankers Life Fieldhouse Wednesday for his only visit of the season (7 p.m., ESPN, WatchESPN)

This how Pacers fans fell in and out love with Paul George.

The beginning of something special

Frank Vogel took over the Pacers in the middle of the 2010-11 season. Right away, he began to unleash two forces that previous coach Jim O’Brien never did: a lumbering big man named Roy Hibbert and a skinny kid from Fresno state named Paul George.

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By the end of the 2012 season, the Pacers were third in the Eastern Conference. The team still had their leader in Danny Granger, Hibbert was anchoring an impressive Pacers defense, and David West had come in to be the vet presence that was so badly needed.

But there was something different about Paul George, and everyone knew it.

Paul George was about to be a huge part of the Pacers’ future.

Could Paul George finally be the one?

Superstars don’t walk through the door in Indiana often. So when Pacers fans sensed what Paul George could become, it was one of the best feelings in the world.

While Pacers fans already knew it, 2013 was George’s coming out party for the rest of the league. It solidified everything Pacers had been whispering. It was the moment we could speak it out to the masses.

Remember Game 2 of the 2013 Eastern Conference Finals? Pacers fans will for a long time.

There was the Paul George dunk over Chris Andersen at the end of the 3rd quarter. He dunked on Andersen, but that was after he first blew by LeBron James. As Pacers legend Reggie Miller bellowed on the broadcast: “We’re seeing a superstar in the making here in Paul George.”

LeBron immediately nailed a three-pointer in George’s face, reminding us quickly us that James was still King. But the handshake immediately after was all we needed to see. It showed LeBron James acknowledging what Pacers fans already knew: Paul George was legit.

The Pacers eventually lost that series in seven games, but it was a defining moment in the history of George and the Indiana Pacers. It was a time where Paul George emerged as the true future of the city and maybe even the league.

And no, the Pacers never won actually won a playoff round against the Heat. But the bond between the team and the fans was special during those years. Above all, it was fun. Pacers fans felt this was something that could last for a long, long time.

Things got hard, but we worked through it anyway

The 2013-14 season was the first time George and the Pacers faced any real adversity. A fast start put the Pacers in pole position for the top seed in the East, with George emerging as an MVP candidate.

But all that success came with a cost. The team hit a rough patch, so team president Larry Bird made two bold moves that backfired. He traded away franchise mainstay Danny Granger for Evan Turner, and picked up the mercurial Andrew Bynum to help (and maybe replace) Roy Hibbert. Both moves disrupted the delicate chemistry George’s Pacers had built over the previous few years.

The collapse was so brutal that at one point George had to post a picture of him fishing with Hibbert and George Hill in a desperate attempt to prove the team still liked each other.

These rumors have got to stop! Its gettin old now and all you that believe them are ignorant! #Brothers

A post shared by Paul George (@ygtrece) on May 6, 2014 at 4:46pm PDT

In the end, the Pacers fell meekly to the Heat in the playoffs, sniping at each other along the way.

That summer, Lance Stephenson was the first to leave the core of the Pacers that once had so much success. Instead of returning to Indiana, as most expected, he signed with Charlotte. Losing Lance hurt Pacers fans, but it was something we thought we could get over. We had Paul George, after all.

Then, Aug. 1, 2014 happened.

Pacers fans tuned in to a meaningless Team USA exhibition on a Friday night just to watch Paul George play. Instead, we saw George snap his leg in half on live television.

No one could possibly feel the hurt George felt in the coming days, weeks, and months. But Pacers fans were hurt too. We hurt for not only the Pacers, but we hurt for Paul George the person.

It was easy to doubt the future of this relationship. Just months after a second straight conference Finals appearance, the Pacers stared irrelevancy back in the face. Stephenson was gone, and George was missing, maybe for good. Would he make a full recovery? Would he ever be the same player he was before? Was this it for Paul George in Indiana? In the NBA?

But after the Nike commercials, the Instagram posts, and the banners that hung outside of Bankers Life Fieldhouse Paul George and the Pacers got through it together.

George amazingly returned eight months later, against the Heat of course. The Pacers were on their way to missing the playoffs, but Bankers Life Fieldhouse was full. Full of Paul George jerseys. Full of signs that read, “Welcome back, PG.” Full of hope.

Photo by Andy Lyons/Getty Images

George scored 13 points in 14 minutes that night. He checked in to the game, to a roar from the fans. He hit the first shot he took. He hit two late three-pointers to help put away the Heat. It was like a scene from a Hollywood movie. A script you could only make up in your dreams.

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"(The reception) was probably the greatest moment that I've had,” he said after the game. “It was so hard to not get caught up in the moment."

Pacers fans loved Paul George again. The relationship was back on track.

But nothing was the same after that

George returned to a Pacers franchise that was moving on without the other elements that made their previous teams successful. Hibbert’s game fell off a cliff, and he fell out of favor with Bird. West, angered by the Pacers’ treatment of Hibbert, declined an $11 million player option to sign a minimum contract with the Spurs.

The Pacers did not crash quickly. In fact, it was a long slow burn, as the remaining vestiges from those great Pacers teams left. Vogel and George Hill lasted one more year, then departed themselves, leaving George as the only holdover. The Pacers finished seventh in the East the following two years after George’s return, never finding their 2012-14 success again.

Small cracks slowly appeared in the relationship. Cracks that illustrated something just didn’t feel right.

One was George’s reluctance to play power forward in his first full season back. Bird wanted to refashion the team into a small-ball juggernaut with George dancing around slower defenders, but George didn’t feel comfortable changing positions. He had valid reasons, but the animosity between the Pacers and George was strong. So strong that Bird even said, “Well, he don't make the decisions around here,” when asked about George’s reluctance.

There were moments of hope every now and then. In the 2016 playoffs against the Raptors, George played out of his mind, forcing the Raptors to seven games and re-establishing himself as one of the best players in the league.

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But the Pacers didn’t win that series. They didn’t win a playoff series again after 2014.

The cloud of doubt that hovered over the Pacers, their fans, and their players was becoming more stressful every day. The team just wasn’t good and Bird’s moves to reshape the team weren’t working. It was clear George wasn’t happy.

But you never want to admit it’s time to break up with the generational talent that you snagged at no. 10 in the draft, especially after you watched them grow up right before your eyes.

Sometimes in relationships, you hang on to things long after you should have let them go. That’s exactly what happened to the Pacers and George in the years after he returned from injury.

The inevitable break-up

At his charity softball game last summer, George he said wanted to be a Pacer again.

“I’m under contract as a Pacer. That’s all that needs to really be known. I’m here. I’m a Pacer. Again, what I’ve been dealing with is stories. You guys talking or teams talking. I’m a Pacer. There’s no way around that. This is my team, my group and this is where I’m at.”

It wasn’t the most inspiring declaration of love, but George has often unintentionally mixed his words. Most fans took it as a positive heading in the 2017-18 season. They still had their guy.

Three days later, the report of him telling the Pacers he wanted to leave surfaced.

George claimed he was declaring his intentions in advance out of respect of the organization so they could plan ahead for the future. But he also made it clear, through his agent, that he would only play for the Lakers long-term. George not only wanted out of Indiana, but he reportedly knew where he wanted to be. And it wasn’t anywhere close to Indiana.

How were the small-market Pacers supposed to find a trade partner for a player that only wanted to play for one other team. Why would the Lakers give up anything substantial? Why, after all these wonderful memories, was George making it more difficult for the Pacers to move on, even if he insisted he wasn’t?

Less than a month later, new GM Kevin Pritchard snatched a trade out of thin air with the Thunder, one panned by nearly every expert. After all that, it was done.

On the night he was traded, George left one small message for Pacers fans. It was an Instagram post that read, “I can go on and on with pics and comments but INDIANA.. THANK YOU”

I can go on and on with pics and comments but INDIANA.. THANK YOU for all that you've been for my family and I! I've met and worked with some of the most unbelievable human beings I think I will ever meet! You all know who you are.. Indy you'll be in great hands with the future! Love you all

A post shared by Paul George (@ygtrece) on Jun 30, 2017 at 9:26pm PDT

Except he didn’t go on and on with pics and comments. He was quiet.

Was it silly for us to get upset over an Instagram post? Yes.

Did it feel disingenuous from George after seven years and everything he had been through with Pacers fans? Yes.

How could you break up with someone in an Instagram post?

Paul George had the right to move on from the Pacers and do what’s best for himself and his career. But by that same token, fans also have the right to be hurt by his decision and the way it ended.

Luckily, Pacers fans have been given the ability to move on quickly from the George breakup. Victor Oladipo, acquired in Pritchard’s much-criticized trade of George, is legitimately making a case to be an All-Star in 2018. Third-year big Myles Turner is a joy on and off the court. Even Domantas Sabonis, the other player in the George trade, has turned into a critical piece for these new-look Pacers. It sure helps that as the Pacers have thrived, George’s new team has been the league’s biggest disappointment to date.

It’s easy for an outsider to only remember the good things Paul George did for the city of Indiana. He led the Pacers to back-to-back conference championship appearances. He won that team a ton of basketball games. And he was in Indiana for a seven good, nay great years.

But Paul George is always going be that ex Pacers fans think about, even if we don’t want to admit it. That’s OK. That’s not necessarily rational. Just understand that Pacers fans will always be hurt by how things ended with George. We went through a lot together, and those memories, good and bad, will linger for a long time to come.

The sad end of this relationship will be hard for us to get over, no matter how great this new relationship with Victor Oladipo and friends is.

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flauntpage · 7 years ago

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Your Friday Morning Roundup

Rhys Hoskins did it again.

Enjoy. ⚡️ http://pic.twitter.com/N1k3wujGjv

— Phillies (@Phillies) September 15, 2017

He hit a homerun in his third consecutive game. For the third time this season. It’s also his 18th of the season, three behind Tommy Joseph’s 21.

Rhys Hoskins spotted Tommy Joseph and Maikel Franco 111 games for the team lead in homers and is right on their heels. He's The Freeze. http://pic.twitter.com/zjvs5nTmAJ

— Ben Harris (@byBenHarris) September 15, 2017

Incredible:

Clip and save this Rhys Hoskins chart and follow along through the rest of the season — https://t.co/pvAjRXKfGV http://pic.twitter.com/SboX6bxQqM

— Bob Vetrone Jr. (@BoopStats) September 15, 2017

Oh, and the Phillies crushed the Marlins 10-0, thanks to a seven run second inning.

Since August 18, the Phillies are 14-12, and they no longer have the league’s worst record at 57-89. That belongs to the Giants, who are 57-91.

As much as the recent success has been great, I don’t want the Phillies to become the ’68 Eagles, and not get the top overall pick and miss out on a future hall of famer like the Eagles did. Pitcher Brady Singer would be a good get.

Phils take on the city’s former baseball team, the A’s, tonight at Citizens Bank Park. Mark Leiter Jr. takes on Daniel Mengden.

The Roundup:

With a couple days until his NFL debut with the Eagles, kicker Jake Elliott is getting comfortable after his quick turnaround from the Bengals.

Tim McManus writes on the similarity between “The Don” Andy Reid and “Skinny Andy” Doug Pederson.

“It’ll be fun to see Big Red on the other side. But at the same time, I know that he wants to kick my tail, and I want to kick his,” Pederson said of Reid, who is 8-3 against his former assistant. “Listen [that’s a Reid crutch — everything starts with ‘listen’], Andy Reid teams are well-prepared as we know, and we’ve got to do the same thing this week. We’ve got to be ultra-prepared. That’s a tough place to play now [another one — Reid loves to add ‘now’ for emphasis]. It is a loud, loud place, and we’ve got to be able to handle that crowd noise. … It’ll be fun to get out there, but once we tee it up and kick it off, it’s all about the business and all about the game.”

Reid is ingrained in Pederson. How could he not be? Their relationship spans more than two decades. As the primary caretakers of the Chiefs’ offense, they were constantly together during Pederson’s three years in Kansas City.

“For the most part, it was just he and I meeting. You get to kind of see the interruptions that you have as a head coach with the different things going on, and you’re just exposed to a few things when you’re in that seat,” Reid said.

Speaking of Reid, here’s the real story behind the former head coach having three steaks at Del Frisco’s.

Love someone like Andy Reid loves steak.

Del Frisco's Regional VP Rich Furino's eyewitness account on Reid interview dinner w/3 steaks: http://pic.twitter.com/LGocCDavTg

— Marshall Harris (@mharrisCSN) September 14, 2017

Alshon Jeffery is due for some big plays this week against the Chiefs and other fantasy football tips for Week 2.

Speaking of fantasy football, Trey Burton went undercover at Chickie’s and Pete’s during some drafts.

What can't @TreyBurton8 do? He recently went undercover at @ChickiesnPetes while fans held their fantasy draft. #FlyEaglesFly http://pic.twitter.com/flA3O0WRTR

— Philadelphia Eagles (@Eagles) September 14, 2017

Marcus Hayes’ column from a couple days ago based on comments made last week stirred the pot on Twitter. And the Eagles’ Twitter account had to chime in. Torrey Smith had some thoughts as well.

He is actually very educated about certain issues. The writer of that article did a piss poor job. Go look at his actual quotes https://t.co/AihixpGGRF

— Torrey Smith (@TorreySmithWR) September 14, 2017

Actual owner comments:

"A lot of people are staying away from (Kaepernick) and they don't want the controversy," Dolphins owner Stephen Ross says.

— Chad Livengood (@ChadLivengood) September 15, 2017

Back to football, we’ll have Eagles-Chiefs game predictions later today.

—

More Phillies: Larry Anderson explains why he’s lessening his radio workload for 2018.

—

The Flyers have sent four forwards back to their OHL junior league teams:

Morgan Frost (Sault Ste. Marie – OHL)

Isaac Ratcliffe (Guelph – OHL)

Matthew Strome (Hamilton – OHL)

Maksim Sushko (Owen Sound – OHL)

—

Reviewing the new Sixers red jerseys.

Our Kevin Love saw head coach Brett Brown at the Philadelphia International Airport before going to Chicago.

—

Philadelphia announced details regarding their new indoor lacrosse team.

North Philadelphia’s Jesse Hart is preparing for his September 22 bout against Gilberto Ramirez for the WBO super-middleweight title.

—

In national sports news, Odell Beckham Jr. is dealing with a six- to eight-week injury.

Some late game heroics gave the Cleveland Indians their 22nd straight win.

Raiders running back Marshawn Lynch was fined $12,000 for his double middle fingers in last week’s game against the Titans.

Football was boring without Marshawn Lynch http://pic.twitter.com/gPYypDgdDD

— Sports Illustrated (@SInow) September 10, 2017

Alex Ovechkin admits his 2018 Olympic dream is dead, but is hopeful for 2022.

NBA Commissioner Adam Silver wants games on TV to resemble more like video games. That might be the way things are heading, especially with younger generations becoming more familiar with games such as Madden and NBA 2K and their use of live stats. It’s worth a shot.

The Houston Texans took away Josh Innes’ media credential.

They also beat the Bengals in a really bad Thursday night game. But this happened.

Offensive lineman: GAME ON THE LINE…BALL COMING TO ME…MY TIME TO SHI— http://pic.twitter.com/DD8hxjOsAz

— Pete Blackburn (@PeteBlackburn) September 15, 2017

Next week’s game features the Rams against the 49ers.

Former USC Trojans running back LenDale White says he had about 20-30 concussions in his NFL career.

White estimates he sustained 20 to 30 concussions, about one every other game. But he can’t be sure. Only one was diagnosed, he says.

“You lose consciousness and then all of a sudden it’s like shoooo-ooooof,” White says, making a slurping noise, his eyes growing wide as he described the sensation. “Like, that’s how it sounds, like shhhhhhloooof, and then all of a sudden you hear the play again.” He’d wander around in a haze, Young directing him to the right spot until he regained his senses.

His head throbbed. His body ached. When his career began to slide, he slipped into a funk. Pain pills, he found, dulled the misery.

FC Koln (Cologne) fans caused early chaos before a match with Arsenal, but they traveled really well.

FC Koln fans are going absolutely mental at the Emirates tonight http://pic.twitter.com/9lLAdnzffA

— Pints and Pyro (@PintsandPyro) September 14, 2017

Arsenal home section at the moment http://pic.twitter.com/ueEMiWaAuz

— Alex (@AlexTasker12) September 14, 2017

FC Koln have completely taken over the Arsenal home end tonight. http://pic.twitter.com/unCj1inek5

— Pints and Pyro (@PintsandPyro) September 14, 2017

WENGER OUT.

Someone also may have spotted Phil Jackson on the New York subway.

@TheClemReport @KFCBarstool –@al_bert_la_go spotted Phil still trolling NY on subway http://pic.twitter.com/5pZcQeyVHl

— Andrew (@andrewfrnndz) September 14, 2017

Floyd Mayweather had some thoughts about some of Donald Trump’s comments that were discovered last year.

—

In the news, a new ping pong lounge has opened up in Center City.

An IED was detonated on the London Underground during rush hour. About 20 people are being treated in hospitals for injuries.

North Korea launched another missile over Japan.

A British newspaper reporter was killed by a crocodile in Sri Lanka.

Larry King has lung cancer.

A high school near Sacramento warns that the “USA” chants could send a wrong message. This is new.

Martin Shkreli’s $2 million Wu-Tang Clan album might not even be a Wu-Tang album in the first place.

Your Friday Morning Roundup published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv

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bigdatanewsmagazine · 7 years ago

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Doppelganger Discovery: How Baseball Sabermetrics Inspires Predictive Analytics – The Predictive Analytics Times

By Seth Stephens-Davidowitz

This author will present at Predictive Analytics World, Oct 29 – Nov 2 in New York. This article is excerpted from his book, Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are. The book delivers a fresh overview of big data with an emphasis on the intriguing insights revealed by Google search trends. The book also draws a new perspective on the power and peril of deployed machine learning (calling it “doppelganger discovery”). Click here for information about Seth’s upcoming PAW New York presentation.

Here’s how Bill Simmons, a sportswriter and passionate Boston Red Sox fan, described what was happening in the early months of the 2009 season: “It’s clear that David Ortiz no longer excels at baseball. . . . Beefy sluggers are like porn stars, wrestlers, NBA centers and trophy wives: When it goes, it goes.” Great sports fans trust their eyes, and Simmons’s eyes told him Ortiz was finished. In fact, Simmons predicted he would be benched or released shortly.

Was Ortiz really finished? If you’re the Boston general manager, in 2009, do you cut him? More generally, how can we predict how a baseball player will perform in the future? Even more generally, how can we use Big Data to predict what people will do in the future?

A theory that will get you far in data science is this: Look at what sabermetricians (those who have used data to study baseball) have done and expect it to spread out to other areas of data science. Baseball was among the first fields with comprehensive datasets on just about everything, and an army of smart people willing to devote their lives to making sense of that data. Now, just about every field is there or getting there. Baseball comes first; every other field follows. Sabermetrics eats the world.

The simplest way to predict a baseball player’s future is to assume he will continue performing as he currently is. If a player has struggled for the past 1.5 years, you might guess that he will struggle for the next 1.5 years.

By this methodology, Boston should have cut David Ortiz.

However, there might be more relevant information. In the 1980s, Bill James, who most consider the founder of sabermetrics, emphasized the importance of age. Baseball players, James found, peaked early—at around the age of twenty-seven. Teams tended to ignore just how much players decline as they age. They overpaid for aging players.

By this more advanced methodology, Boston should definitely have cut David Ortiz.

But this age adjustment might miss something. Not all players follow the same path through life. Some players might peak at twenty-three, others at thirty-two. Short players may age differently from tall players, fat players from skinny players. Baseball statisticians found that there were types of players, each following a different aging path. This story was even worse for Ortiz; “beefy sluggers” indeed do, on average, peak early and collapse shortly past thirty.

If Boston considered his recent past, his age, and his size, they should, without a doubt, have cut David Ortiz.

Then, in 2003, statistician Nate Silver introduced a new model, which he called PECOTA, to predict player performance. It proved to be the best—and, also, the coolest. Silver searched for players’ doppelgangers. Here’s how it works. Build a database of every Major League Baseball player ever, more than 18,000 men. And include everything you know about those players: Their height, age, and position; their home runs, batting average, walks, and strikeouts for each year of their careers. Now, find the twenty ballplayers who look most similar to Ortiz right up until that point in his career—those who played like he did when he was 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, and 33. In other words, find his doppelgangers. Then see how Ortiz’s doppelgangers’ careers progressed.

A doppelganger search is another example of zooming in. It zooms in on the small subset of people most similar to a given person. And, as with all zooming in, it gets better the more data you have. It turns out, Ortiz’s doppelgangers gave a very different prediction for Ortiz’s future. Ortiz’s doppelgangers included Jorge Posada and Jim Thome. These players started their careers a bit slow; had amazing bursts in their late twenties, with world-class power; and then struggled in their early thirties.

Silver then predicted how Ortiz would do based on how these doppelgangers ended up doing. And here’s what he found: They regained their power. For trophy wives, Simmons may be right; when it goes, it goes. But for Ortiz’s doppelgangers, when it went, it came back.

The doppelganger search, the best methodology ever used to predict baseball player performance, said Boston should be patient with Ortiz. And Boston indeed was patient with their aging slugger. In 2010, Ortiz’s average rose to .270. He hit 32 home runs and made the All-Star team. This began a string of four consecutive All-Star games for Ortiz. In 2013, batting in his traditional third spot in the lineup, at the age of thirty-seven, Ortiz batted .688 as Boston defeated St. Louis, 4 games to 2, in the World Series. Ortiz was voted World Series MVP.

As soon as I finished reading Nate Silver’s approach to predicting the trajectory of ballplayers, I immediately began thinking about whether I might have a doppelganger, too.

Doppelganger searches are promising in many fields, not just athletics. Could I find the person who shares the most interests with me? Maybe if I found the person most similar to me, we could hang out. Maybe he would know some restaurants we would like. Maybe he could introduce me to things I had no idea I might have an affinity for.

A doppelganger search zooms in on individuals and even on the traits of individuals. And, as with all zooming in, it gets sharper the more data you have. Suppose I searched for my doppelganger in a dataset of ten or so people. I might find someone who shared my interest in books. Suppose I searched for my doppelganger in a dataset of a thousand or so people. I might find someone who had a thing for popular physics books. But suppose I searched for my doppelganger in a dataset of hundreds of millions of people. Then I might be able to find someone who was really, truly similar to me. One day, I went doppelganger hunting on social media. Using the entire corpus of Twitter profiles, I looked for the people on the planet who have the most common interests with me.

You can certainly tell a lot about my interests from whom I follow on my Twitter account. Overall, I follow some 250 people, showing my passions for sports, politics, comedy, science, and morose Jewish folksingers.

So is there anybody out there in the universe who follows all 250 of these accounts, my Twitter twin? Of course not. Doppelgangers aren’t identical to us, only similar. Nor is there anybody who follows 200 of the accounts I follow. Or even 150.

However, I did eventually find an account that followed an amazing 100 of the accounts I follow: Country Music Radio Today. Huh? It turns out, Country Music Radio Today was a bot (it no longer exists) that followed 750,000 Twitter profiles in the hope that they would follow back.

I have an ex-girlfriend who I suspect would get a kick out of this result. She once told me I was more like a robot than a human being.

All joking aside, my initial finding that my doppelganger was a bot that followed 750,000 random accounts does make an important point about doppelganger searches. For a doppelganger search to be truly accurate, you don’t want to find someone who merely likes the same things you like. You also want to find someone who dislikes the things you dislike.

My interests are apparent not just from the accounts I follow but from those I choose not to follow. I am interested in sports, politics, comedy, and science but not food, fashion, or theater. I follow shows that I like. Bernie Sanders but not Elizabeth Warren, Sarah Silverman but not Amy Schumer, the New Yorker but not the Atlantic, my friends Noah Popp, Emily Sands, and Josh Gottlieb but not my friend Sam Asher. (Sorry, Sam. But your Twitter feed is a snooze.)

Of all 200 million people on Twitter, who has the most similar profile to me? It turns out my doppelganger is Vox writer Dylan Matthews. This was kind of a letdown, for the purposes of improving my media consumption, as I already follow Matthews on Twitter and Facebook and compulsively read his Vox posts. So learning he was my doppelganger hasn’t really changed my life. But it’s still pretty cool to know the person most similar to you in the world, especially if it’s someone you admire. And when I finish this book and stop being a hermit, maybe Matthews and I can hang out and discuss the writings of James Surowiecki.

About the Author:

Seth Stephens-Davidowitz is a New York Times op-ed contributor, a visiting lecturer at The Wharton School, and a former Google data scientist. He received a BA in philosophy from Stanford, where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa, and a PhD in economics from Harvard. His research—which uses new, big data sources to uncover hidden behaviors and attitudes—has appeared in the Journal of Public Economics and other prestigious publications. He lives in New York City.

This article is excerpted from the book “Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are.” Copyright ©2017 by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz. Reprinted by permission of Dey Street Books, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

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junker-town · 8 years ago

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The 2017 NCAA Tournament has revealed a lot about the top NBA Draft prospects

Who’s impressed us through the first weekend, and who has a longer way to go? Plus, a Lonzo Ball argument.

The NCAA Tournament field has been sliced from 68 to 16, and gone are many of the top NBA Draft prospects we wanted to see. In that spirit, this week’s Flanns & Zillz focuses on our thoughts on the draft class after the first weekend of madness.

ZILLER: Just like most NBA writers, we're using the NCAA Tournament to cram on the top prospects for the 2017 draft, which is just three months away. But before we get into what happened over the weekend, let's discuss the two elephants not in the room: Markelle Fultz and Dennis Smith are two elite prospects whose teams didn't make the tournament.

Nothing Fultz did at Washington this season dropped him down the big boards. The Huskies were bad, but Fultz showcased exactly what put him atop mock drafts for a couple of years. In fact, he improved his stock by showing he could shoot the long ball. So many recent hyper-athletic point guards lacked that piece when entering the league. He proved he can shoot.

So Fultz missing the tournament shouldn't hurt his case, just as it didn't for Ben Simmons last year.

But the knock on Smith at N.C. State was that he lacked focus and intensity, and he didn't disprove that when the chips were down for the Wolfpack. He's smaller than Fultz and a worse shooter, and I think not reminding teams who makes him a top prospect here in March could cost him a few spots. Small guards tend to drop in the lottery without massive Marches.

What do you think about the fate of the prospects who missed the Madness?

Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images

FLANNERY: I think Markelle Fultz will be the No. 1 pick even though people will talk way too much about Lonzo Ball over the next few weeks. Fultz is the guy and it wouldn't surprise me if someone -- maybe Duke's Jayson Tatum or Kansas' Josh Jackson -- overtook Ball for the second spot. But let's not get too far ahead of things yet.

Smith is an enigma. He has major physical talent with obvious holes in his game that can be developed with more experience. That's the hope anyway. Talent evaluators would really like to see him spend another year in school and work on his point guard skills, but he's going to be a lottery pick regardless. NC State is also making a coaching change, so there's no reason for him to go back.

I would have liked to have seen more of Jonathan Isaac. I'm still not sure what to make of that guy.

ZILLER: I've moderated somewhat on the NBA age minimum, but Dennis Smith is one of those guys for which one-and-done did absolutely no benefit for anyone (not even Mark Gottfried, his now unemployed college coach). Smith is still will go super high in the lottery without any assurances he'll pan out.

Isaac did help himself -- he considered entering the 2016 NBA Draft through a loophole but went to Florida State instead -- by showing decent three-point range for the tall, skinny prospect. I am concerned about whether he can actually be a combo forward in today's NBA or whether he's a pure center. Small forwards usually aren't this tall, and defense could be a major concern if he's asked to play the wing instead of the pivot. He's also not much of a playmaker. He's intriguing, but he's also going to be compared to the more skilled Tatum and Jackson.

Should we talk about Tatum? I know we both love that dude.

FLANNERY: Tatum is really good. I watched a lot of his work in the ACC Tournament and came away impressed. He's not a great long-range shooter by any means, but he's got nice footwork and he can score in isolation. He just looks like an NBA player and the upside, as they say, is strong. Tatum's almost a year younger than Josh Jackson. That matters when we're talking about draft babies.

Jackson's the other guy who's almost certain to crack the top five. He's a live wire on the court, but he can really pass and he plays so hard. You like what you've seen from him?

ZILLER: He's an exciting player on the court, for sure. I especially enjoy his playmaking ability.

His off-the-court issues of late really can't be ignored, though. He admitted to kicking the car of his teammate's ex and is alleged to have hit it repeatedly in an apparent attempt to intimidate her after a public fight between her and Jackson's teammate. Teams are rightfully sensitive to off-the-court issues and so Jackson's spectacular on-court potential cannot and should not be seen in a vacuum. (Kansas in general is basically impossible for me to watch -- there's too much unspoken context and all of the credit for overcoming "distractions" makes me ill.)

Like you, I think Tatum absolutely looks the part of an NBA player and a modern NBA small forward, more specifically. In that sense he can slide right in. He had some spectacular blocks in Duke's Round 1 win and was the Blue Devils' best player in their Round 2 dismissal, but I do have a few questions about his face-up defense and playmaking.

I have far fewer questions here than I do about, say, Isaac. It seems inconceivable to me that one mediocre team will nab Tatum and one will grab Isaac and they'll both actually be competing in the NBA next year.

Speaking of Duke, do you think Luke Kennard or Grayson Allen are NBA players? And do you agree that Harry Giles would be served extremely well by staying at Duke, provided his family doesn't have financial pressures? (It's really unfortunate that, because the NCAA refuses to pay players, we have to mention that as an important consideration.)

FLANNERY: I like Kennard, am decidedly ehhhh on Allen, and think Giles should go back to school for another year. I long for the day when some kind of workable system can be set up that will allow pro prospects to develop on their own timeframe while enjoying the university life and not being exploited for their services. I actually think this may be attainable in our lifetime, but we'll see.

Kelley L Cox-USA TODAY Sports

We should probably talk about Lonzo Ball now. I remain unconvinced that he's worthy of the hype. I think he's good, I just don't believe we're watching Jason Kidd 2.0 here. What do you make of him?

ZILLER: We are relatively young and we're talking about the NCAA maybe paying the athletes that collectively make them billions "in our lifetime." Our expectations are super low and super realistic.

I don't think Grayson Allen is an NBA player despite his shooting stroke. One-trick shooters need the right attitude to survive and thrive in the NBA (see: J.J. Redick) and Allen hasn't shown he has that.

However, we DO NOT agree on Lonzo Ball. I am all the way on this train.

How often do we see this combination of brash self-assurance and wily basketball IQ? It's rare, man. Kidd was a special, special player -- one of a kind despite our inclination to compare big pass-first point guards to him every third year. Ball is different. Ball is going to come into the league trying to score and pass and control the floor. In that way, I see him more like a Deron Williams type, but with more pizzazz and less weight.

I'm not saying Ball will be Curry, Harden or Westbrook. But we're in the golden era of these dual-threat fearless, playmaking point guards. Who better than Ball to carry the torch?

FLANNERY: I am willing to concede that I may be wrong here and that everyone else is correct when they see Ball as a transformative figure. Again, I'm not saying he'll be a bad pro. I think he'll be a good, even All-Star level player. I'm just not seeing greatness.

I know one thing: his father isn't going to make a damn bit of difference in where he goes and I refuse to get all worked about him one way or the other. Let the man have his 15 minutes.

I wrote last week about embracing the Tournament from a player perspective and a lot of those guys are out: Miles Bridges, Juwan Evans, Semi Ojeleye (my personal fav), Monte Morris, John Collins, Donovan Mitchell. Thank god for Kentucky. I need more De'Aaron Fox and Malik Monk in my life. I also want to see Lauri Markkanen against Gonzaga's front line. (That Xavier club looks primed for an upset, though.)

What else do you have your eye on this weekend?

ZILLER: The Kentucky kids and Markkanen are the biggest draws other than Ball, but I'd like to get a better sense of Justin Jackson, even though he's a junior. These UNC upperclassmen so often look better in college than they do in the league, but he'll go in the top 20 with decent expectations. We won't know if he can meet them until he gets to the league, but I need to see more.

Switching to the basketball itself for our final thoughts: any sense of who will win this thing?

FLANNERY: I haven't a clue, to be honest. I will note, as have many college basketball aficionados, that the seedings seem to have been thrown together by a team of circus seals. That said, half of my Final Four is already out (thanks Nova and Louisville) and I'm not feeling great about Arizona or Kentucky either. The most impressive teams I've seen have been Michigan, West Virginia, and Xavier. So, Carolina? Maybe?

You have any better feel for this?

ZILLER: UCLA is winning this. Let the legend of Lonzo begin!

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