#edit: i added the import statements too so now anyone can run it to their heart’s content

[oflgtfol]

import numpy as np

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

T = np.linspace(1e7, 1e10, 500)

q3a = (5.09e11 * (T / 10**8)**(-3)) * np.exp(-44.027 / (T / 10**8))

rho = np.sqrt(10**3 / q3a)

fig, ax = plt.subplots(figsize=(10, 7))

ax.plot(T, rho, color="black", linewidth=1)

ax.scatter(15e6, 150, color='red', marker='*', label='Sun')

ax.set_xscale('log')

ax.set_yscale('log')

plt.xlim([8e7, 8e8])

plt.ylim([10**0, 10**6])

plt.xlabel('Temperature ($K$)', fontsize=12)

plt.ylabel('Density ($g/cm^3$)', fontsize=12)

plt.title('Density vs. Temperature (Helium)', fontsize=16)

plt.legend(loc='upper left', fontsize=12)

plt.show()

[anika-ann]

Just a Human (S.R.)

Type: mini-series turned one-shot, SHIELD recruit!reader

Pairing: Steve Rogers x reader     Word count: 8750

Summary: Being a SHIELD recruit was a dream come true, especially with people like Sergeant Barnes or Captain Rogers offering an input to your class’ training.

It was also hard work for many different reasons. One of them being all those guys around; not all of them were exactly fit to become heroes, simply because they were not good people.

Maybe you shouldn’t have pointed it out so openly though. Then again, what would the world turn into if you kept your mouth shut when feeling like speaking up?

WARNINGS: so-so graphic description of assault almost turned sexual, violence and a bit of blood, boys being boys in a real bad way, language

A/N: Steve Rogers vs assholes, round 2. Also, ‘you’ vs. assholes. And Bucky in the mix.

A/N: This was originally posted as a miniseries on AO3, but now edited, I decided to thrown it in as a long, sort-of three part one-shot. Enjoy and mind the warnings.

(gif source dailymcugifs, divider by firefly-graphics)

A Handful of Spite

“Can you believe the fucking nerve on him?!” Henry hissed, punching the bag harder and catching your attention. The statement was followed by his companion nodding grimly.

You tried to ignore the walking testosterone jerks; you never liked either Henry or Jim. The reason was simple – they were, as you loved to remind people, an advertisement on toxic masculinity. Bullies on top of that. The kind of people you wanted to avoid at all costs.

You weren’t that lucky to have that chance though.

So instead, you scoffed under your breath and continued your sit-ups series. You had more important things to do than wonder about what they were talking about this time.

It was your regular training session with the other SHIELD recruits led by Sergeant Barnes – which--- oh my. When joining the academy, you had no clue that the director’s ‘you’ll be learning from the best’ meant that of all things; trained by the more-than-once-believed-late James Buchanan Barnes. Everyone here knew his story – or at least some of it. The brainwashing. The murders. His heroics to make up for them as much as he could. His everlasting friendship and a nickname that was tied to it. Bucky; the very best friend of the oh-so-praised Captain America.

Oh, speaking of which, he joined the sessions too. You were being trained by not one, but two supersoldiers slash war heroes. You couldn’t believe this was your life sometimes, but you were not one to dwell on it. You just accepted it as a fact. An abso-fucking-lutely incredible fact.

“He’s just a fucker, man. Forget about Barnes, you have Cassie in your pocket. Just ‘cause he’s all sticky sweet on her doesn’t mean she’ll suck his-“

You made a disgusting face, pushing harder to tune out the conversation. You wanted to gag and at the same time, your blood was boiling.

Could there be a jerk who was objectifying women more than Jim? A guy who was using his lower brain more frequently than him? Doubtful. You really wanted to throw up at rubbish that was leaving his mouth.

Not to mention that he was throwing dirt on Sergeant Barnes who absolutely didn’t deserve it.

“-he’s like that to all of them. The chicks. And they fucking dig him, it’s disgusting. He makes the poor brainwashed kicked puppy face, reminding the sob story of his and they’re all dropping to their knees I swear…” Jim continued, practically spitting the venomous words.

You squeezed your eyes shut, half furious and half guilty; the sergeant did have a heart-breaking backstory and many girls were making eyes on him, their hearts softened by the tragedy and his bravery, yes. And you couldn’t say it wasn’t moving you as well, filling you with compassion – but compassion only. Obviously, Sergeant Barnes was objectively a very attractive man too, but what they were saying… ugh.

He didn’t deserve these insults; he was not trying anything on anyone, he wasn’t offering his ‘sob story’, actually being rather secretive about it for obvious and no doubt painful reasons. He couldn’t really couldn’t be blamed for the girls fawning over him a bit more because of it, could he? What was he supposed to do? Stop breathing? Stop doing what he chose to be his job?

It wasn’t his problem – and thank god for that – that these two assholes had egos the size of Texas and couldn’t handle a little competition.

Seriously. Walking testosterone-filled jerks. You seriously considered moving from the station you had been given, eyeing Captain Rogers, checking if he would notice.

“Well, he’s not. Getting. Any. From. My. Chick. Asshole!”

The bag swung wildly under Henry’s blows despite Jim holding it. You laid off, taking your fifteen second break.

“I bet he’s fucking them all on side. Always so… so soft on them. I bet he’s leaving all the hard shit for bed,” Jim snorted, somewhere between angry at him competition and amused at his own crude joke.

You were gonna puke. You were sure of it.

“And he’s too hard on us. Showing off for them. I would fucking want to see him holding up against us without that metal arm-“

You had enough. You sat up sharply, panting, your face flushed, unsure whether it was from the exercise or the exchange you were listening to.

“Are you serious?!” you hissed their way, earning their shocked glances.

And then, Jim’s face twisted in annoyance and disgust.

“Oh geez, you’re one of them, aren’t you?” he snarked, rolling his eyes. “The fangirls.”

More heat burned in your cheeks. You weren’t kidding anyone; both the sergeant and the captain had showed up in your not so innocent dreams, but you were only human, alright. There was only so much time you could spend with two very fine men like them in one room, a bit sweaty and rough (or just slightly gentler with the ladies) until your brain reacted. Mostly to the captain. Not the point.

But actually crossing the line? Being a part of the thing they were describing if it ever existed? Waiting in the line until one of them picked you for the evening with a promise to do it again after they… Jesus what, tried all the others? No, thank you. You had some dignity left.

Also, you simply couldn’t imagine them doing such thing. Raised in a different era, tried by war and pain and lost, yet remaining the great men they were? Just nope.

“No! Jesus, are you even listening to yourself?” you hissed, minding your volume. You hoped that the low hum of voice in the room, of others working out, giving each other pointers and the noise of the machines would offer you a cover from the rest of your companion.

“What, you wanna tell me they’re not going easy on you? On any chick, really?”

“Yeah, well, maybe because they don’t actually want to break our bones during training. Supersoldiers. Superstrength. Does that ring a bell?” you pointed out, reaching for your water bottle, hoping either of your trainers would forgive you when seeing you only took a sec to have a sip.

Henry scoffed, leaning onto the bag. “Sounds like someone has a crush…”

You couldn’t help the motion of your hands, inconspicuously throwing them in the air in frustration.

Why were you even speaking to them? You should have kept your mouth shut!

“Oh go to hell, Ulrich! You’re just jealous and scared that your girl whom you treat like a piece of shit will run off,” you murmured, wiping your forehead off sweat.

“Yeah, because they’re sure pulling their punches with guys too,” Jim complained again, rolling his eyes as Henry now watched you, eyes narrowed in anger – oh you hit a nail on the head, alright.

You couldn’t but mirror Jim’s action, deciding to stick to Devil’s advocate, because…. yeah, because it wasn’t fair to either Rogers or Barnes. They were good people and didn’t deserve this.

“So they’re not beating the shit out of us like they do with you, get over it.”

“They’re humiliating us! Showing off their big muscles, trying to impress all the chicks-“

You chuckled incredulously as they actually admitted the real reason behind their bitching so openly; as if you hadn’t known the whole time. Ego. Ohhh, the ego was bruised. Call 911, CPR is gonna be needed! God, how did they even live with ego this big? Compensating for something?

“They’re doing their job. Training. Yes, they go a bit harder on you, because your physiology can take it. Did it ever occur to you that they have bigger problems than entering a pissing contest with you just so they could steal the girls? Jeez… just… maybe try to be less of assholes and the girls will be into you too… ”

You missed the hard look Henry gave you, laying down again, this time on your belly to work on your back.

You wheezed when a knee suddenly dug into your back, violently and painfully knocking the air out of your lungs. Before you could react, one of your arms was twisted behind your back, Henry’s voice raspy right into your ear, low and dangerous.

“Listen, you little bitch, you don’t get to talk to me like that. Understand? Huh?”

He was so proving your point, but you didn’t have the time You tried to breathe in properly, and free your arm while pushing up on the free one, your muscles burning with the effort. Shit, he was heavy. You wheezed again instead of the answer.

“Can’t hear you, sweetie. What was that?”

Peripherally, you could see heavy boots approaching rapidly, making a quick guess of who that could be. You gritted your teeth, tears of humiliation pricking your eyes. You were not about to give Henry the satisfaction of proving his point of your trainers being sweet on all the girls even if this so wasn’t that.

“Screw. You,” you let out with the last oxygen left, grabbing his left calf and sharply tugging to the very same side. A half-second later when his weight of you eased just a fraction, you threw your body to the left as well, adding a jerk of your legs.

Both of you rolled over, him ending up under you and you quickly spun away, gasping, desperately fighting for air. As it burned your windpipe, it was as painful as welcomed. Little spots danced inf ornt of your eyes, but you quickly blinked them away – luckily for you, Henry didn’t dare to attack you again.

You shook your head before pushing to sit up, only to meet with Captain Rogers’s strict gaze.

“What the hell is going on in here?” he demanded, sharp blue eyes flickering between the three of you.

Maybe you were hallucinating, but he seemed to be murdering Henry with his eyes. Uh-uh. You would have been glad he was, hadn’t Henry been talking about favouritism only few moments ago. You pushed up simultaneously with him and you both stood straight, facing the captain.

“Apologies, sir,” you stated mechanically, his gaze immediately shifting to you. Your heart stopped. Oh wow, you would swear the blue of his irises was on fire. You gulped. “We had a slight disagreement with Mr. Ulrich. I’m aware I shouldn’t have been talking to him in the first place. I’ll take whatever punishment is given to me.”

“Yeah, I bet you’d liked taking a punishment from him, wouldn’t you…” Jim muttered under his breath, making your gut twist in disgust.

Was he ever not thinking about sex? You prayed the captain didn’t hear him and you had to stop yourself from shooting Jim a murderous glare.  

“I don’t think that’s necessary. Consider it a warning. Mr. Ulrich? You have something to add before you take a few laps?”

You could literally hear Henry’s blood boiling. You opened your mouth to ask for the same punishment, not wanting to have his point proved. You never got the chance to speak.

“No, sir. I only don’t understand why I’m the only one being punished,” Henry questioned innocently and you gritted your teeth.

Maybe because you attacked me, you dickhead?

Captain glared at him for a moment before his gaze shifted to Jim. “You’re not. Mr. Larkin is following your example.”

You pressed your lips together, this time to stop a smile threatening to spread on your lips. God, who knew America’s Golden Boy could get that sassy? You cleared your throat.

“If I might speak, sir, I deserve to run the laps as well,” you noted carefully, earning a curious expression from your superior. You could tell he wavered, a strange spark appearing in his eyes.

You desperately wanted him to let you run too even if you breathing was still a bit difficult; because otherwise Henry would be proved right. Yeah, nope.

“Very well, then. Ten laps around the gym, recruits. Then you move to the station free at the moment. Go. Don’t let it happen again.”

The three of you nodded dutifully and picked up a pace. For some reason, you could feel the captain’s eyes on you while he walked back to assisting his friend with hand-to-hand training. You glimpsed the sergeant leaning to him, probably asking what was that about, but the blond just shook his head.

Towards the eighth lap, you were being overpassed by Henry and Jim, who ran together; faster than you, whether you liked it or not.

“This isn’t over, bitch,” his hateful hiss reached your ears and you picked up speed stubbornly, not showing them that they might intimidate you even for a second.

They wished.

Even when leaving the room after the session was finished, you would swear there was a pair of blue eyes burning a hole to the back of your head. You hoped that you’d soon be free of the captain’s attention.

You sure didn’t want him to watch too closely. You didn’t need him behind your back to see mistakes you sometimes made just like anybody else. Also, it would be harder to admire and ogle him; you did that occasionally, okay. You were just a human, after all.

A Handful of Mistakes

Shauna, your roommate and bestie from science division of SHIELD, was very patient listening to your lament about guys being dicks; she was awesome like that.

So you vigorously vented your frustration with male population, rolled your eyes when mimicking the silent threat of ‘this not being over’, had a very unhealthy piece of cake at the cafeteria that afternoon and moved on.  

You should have known better.

Henry’s words came haunting you few days later; which was too bad, because you had already forgotten about them, until the very moment they had punched you to the face.

…or rather to your shoulder and it wasn’t even a punch, more like one of those bumps people did, especially when they were being jerks, shoving you too hard for you to believe it was an accident.

“Sorry, didn’t see you there,” you threw over your shoulder sarcastically, continuing your way to the women’s locker room.

In hindsight, that was probably mistake number one; ignoring Henry and not starting a fight right there, not to mention being mouthy.

To be fair, you had no interest in further interaction; you were exhausted from the training, you were sticky and sweaty and all you craved was a shower. You would have just gone to have one at your dorm, but Shauna was having a hot date and you didn’t want to step on her toes. So you had taken your toiletries with you, using the showers near the gym.

Using the gym shower; mistake number two. It meant all of the students being gone by the time you emerged in fresh homey clothes, hair dripping water, because you hated hair-dryers and avoided them unless they were completely necessary.

You had spent much longer in the shower than needed, allowing your muscles to completely relax under the spray of water. That was mistake number three.

The fourth mistake was your pride. When you saw Henry, Jim, George (at least you thought, you weren’t sure, not having many classes with him) and Frank in the corridor, clearly waiting for you, since they bounced off the wall they had been resting against when you appeared, you should have probably been smarter and scream for help right away.

But no, you were being Miss Future Agent and you weren’t intimidated by four equivalents of high school jocks. Yep, this one was definitely the biggest mistake of yours.

“Fellas,” you beckoned to them, passing them gracefully, your bag over your shoulder along with the wet towel.

You barely made a few steps before a hand gripped your arm, harshly tugging you back. Your heart jumped into your throat, but you tried your best not to let it show. You turned to Henry, looking at his face, head tilted back just slightly due to his height.

“Is there a problem, Ulrich?” you asked calmly, earning a lift of his eyebrows at your tone.

“You know there is. I told you it was not over.”

You tried to ignore your pulse skyrocketing and the panic rising in your gut. You were not that stupid – you understood the implications. You knew that with four guys slowly circling you, you would have to fight bites and nails if it came to it and probably still lose. Sometimes it was just better to walk away and swallow your pride; a concept Henry and Jim clearly didn’t understand.

You jerked from Ulrich’s grip, still hoping you could walk away and call it day.

“It is over for me. Now if you’ll excuse me…“

Yes, you were being naïve thinking it would work.

The bag was torn away from your shoulder, your fingers automatically letting go to stay attached to your hand. You gritted your teeth, blood slowly reaching the boiling point.

Also, maybe you were more than just a bit afraid. Not that you would ever admit it to them.

Henry’s hand reached for your chin and your snatched it away in disgust before he could even make contact with your skin. Amusement dances in his eyes along with a flash of anger.

“Oh, kitty has claws?”

You felt another hand on your backside, sending a shudder up your spine, so you grabbed it, shoving it away as well.

Jim. Why weren’t you surprised? Pigs. What the fuck was their problem?

“I’ll let you know when I meet any. Now get out of my way,” you spat, your gut twisting as a sly grin spread on Henry’s face and he made a step right into your route.

“Or what? You’ll scratch, kitty? Or you’ll scream? Like a little girl?” he mocked you in high-pitched voice, his face lowering to yours so you were only inches apart.

“Bet you’d like that,” you murmured, narrowing your eyes when his breath with an unmistakable hint of alcohol fanned over your face. “No, I’ll offer you a breath-mint, because honestly you should do something about your breath.”

Yep, that was the mistake no.5 and definitely an enormous one.

You heard one of the guys chuckle, but you never got to enjoy the thrill of victory.

Out of blue, there was something around your neck, the weight of the towel shifting (add that to the mistake list) and your body flew backwards, colliding with a male one. George was it?

Your hands went to instinctively grab after the towel crushing your throat, but suddenly they were wrested down and pinned to your sides by strong arms. Jim had caught one, Henry another. Fucking cowards.

With your breath coming out short with both lack of oxygen and rising fear, your pulse thundering in your ears, you tried to jerk from their grip, but they wouldn’t budge, having an undeniable advantage.

Oh fuck, fuck, you were so fucked.

“Sassy little mouth, aren’t we?” Henry hummed, wry expression on his ugly face. “So dirty, feels like we should wash it with something. Who wants to go first, fellas?”

Loud alarm bells rang in your head, icy shiver running down your spine, stomach turning over.

Oh no, you don’t.

Your knee snapped up on instinct to gain the momentum, followed by a swift low kick to Jim’s knee.

He yelped and let go of your arm, allowing you to send an elbow straight to George’s face; and finally, your airways were free as the assault as the towel trap loosened.

You coughed, fighting for oxygen and mindlessly threw the item away to have at least one arm free.

“Bitch!” one of the men yelled; you weren’t sure which one, but you didn’t waste time thinking too much. Survival instinct took over.

Tears prickled in the corners of your eyes and you barely silenced the scream when Henry took advantage of your hesitation, twisting your arm behind your back. Fuck he really had a thing for that, didn’t he?

You tried to kick him, but someone else’s leg somehow managed to swept their leg under yours and you fell on your knees. Sharp tug on your hair caused you to cry out and obediently tilt your head back. Few tears escaped you, but you pushed up in attempt to get up again.

A kick coming from behind threw your body forwards and you nearly fell on your face when Henry finally let go of you. You tasted blood as you bit your cheek, but you managed to at least land on your shoulder instead of face-planting.

It still hurt like a bitch, but at least you still had all your teeth… or you thought so, not having time to check. Catching a movement from the corner of your eye, you managed to roll over before a kick to your side could hit you with full force. Frank’s foot only brushed you, but you were sure you’d have a bruise as a souvenir anyway.

A punch landed next to your face when you dodged it in the last moment, someone grabbing your legs and holding them together. Between your efforts to free them, you didn’t have time to chase away the body suddenly holding your arms as well.

“Fuck--- she’s a handful.”

A ragged battle cry erupted from your throat as you tried to jerk your body from their grip on pure instinct, every self-defence move you had ever learned flying of the window.

“More fun to break her, don’t you think?” Henry purred, his hand sneaking around your waist under the hem of your t-shirt.

Your head spun like crazy at the skin-to-skin contact and nausea hitting you hard. You wanted to puke and scream and punch and you couldn’t make yourself to do either, tears rolling down your cheeks as your body convulsed in a desperate attempt to break free.

There was ringing in your ears, disorienting you, but aware of the hand suddenly covering your mouth you tried to bite it on instinct holding you down.

“Oh-ho, biting!“ you heard, strangely muffled as if you were under water.

“I like them feisty-“

“Playing hard to get!”

“Shit, SHIT-“

The pressure on your legs eased all of sudden and you immediately kicked with all you had, catching the rising figure in the calf, knocking them off balance.

“Fuck!”

You would swear the floor vibrated, but in must have only been your mind playing tricks on you. George disappeared from your field of blurry vision; you only saw a fist sending him flying sideways.

Yep, your mind was fucking making up things, because there was no way he could have been thrown away like this by a single punch. You weren’t complaining; the relief the illusion provided was almost blissful.

Henry’s body weight vanished as well in nearly supersonic speed as if he wanted to escape the illusion. So you did the first thing that came to your mind; with your hands free, you grabbed his ankle, stopping him from running away. Which, thinking about it, was stupid, because only a moment before, you would have given anything to get him the fuck away from you.

He kicked back blindly, but his sole never met with your body – he was dragged away and… and lifted to the air as if he weighted nothing.

Blinking your tears away, your fuzzy mind cleared.

Only to reveal a very muscled and very much pissed off blond slamming Henry against a wall and then letting his suddenly unconscious body slide down.

You gasped, your eyes catching a glimpse of the fourth figure – Frank – several feet away, running for his life.

“Buck?!” came a shout and before you could question it, a metal arm emerged from behind the corner, stopping Frank dead as he rushed straight into it.

“Yep?!” the dark-haired supersoldier yelled back, sounding almost amused.

What the hell was happening? What the hell just happened?!

You blood sizzled in your veins, loud and rapid thump-thump-thump banging in your ears, face damp with several shed tears, body aching and your mind fucking racing.

You heard a whimper on your left, automatically turning to the sound. It left Jim’s lips, his form crumbled on the floor, struggling to stand up.

The captain’s knee seemed to come out of nowhere, digging into Jim’s back and pinning him down again before you even registered a movement.

“Is it fucking over now?”

“Steve, let him be. Not worth it,” Barnes’ voice tried to reason, sounding rather growly, but not nearly as loud as before. He approached your group in rapid pace and Rogers scoffed and let go.

You gulped at sergeant’s angry grimace, crazily convinced he was angry with you for all the mistakes you made that lead to this; but his expression softened when his gaze fell on you.

“Hey there,” he greeted you almost casually, holding out a hand to help you up. “Can you stand?”

You blinked several times at the suddenly dispassionate tone, even if you still sensed something bubbling under it. You shook off the thought and accepted the offered hand – the flesh one. The detail didn’t escape you, your bran in overdrive. Of course he hadn’t offered you the metal arm. He didn’t want to scare you. He was thoughtful like that-

-or not. The strength he dragged you up with was way too much for you, more so when combined with the speed and your state. You stumbled over your feet, a wave of dizziness messing with your balance.

You awaited the upcoming reunion with the floor, unable to stop the fall, but it never happened. Before you could as much as reel, gentle hands supported you in a firm grip, pleasantly warm against your bare arms.

“Whoa, take it easy,” Rogers’ voice warned you, soothing. For some reason, it felt more like ‘I got you,’ instead of ‘take it easy.’

You took a deep breath, Barnes’ hand letting go of yours as he semi-voluntarily handed you over to his friend.  

“You’re bleeding from your mouth.”

Thanks for the reminder, I noticed.

You swallowed the snarky remark, well-aware of the sergeant’s care. You fought against the urge to spit the blood out.

“Is fine…” you muttered, wiping your mouth with the back of your hand. “Bit my cheek. I’m pretty sure I—“ you quickly ran your tongue over your teeth just to confirm your theory, “-still have all of my teeth.”

Sergeant Barnes gave you a tiny smile, the worried crinkle that had found its way between his brows disappearing.

“Whatever you say.”

His gaze flickered to something behind your head, probably in order of exchanging a wordless conversation with your still present crutch. Not that you were complaining. The weight of what had happened was slowly settling on your shoulders and you were grateful for any support – and who were you kidding, Captain America made for a pretty reliable support.

“Why don’t we leave you in pu- Cap’s capable hands while I-“ Barnes’ jaw clenched, pale eyes scanning the four bodies on the floor, calculating. “-take out the trash?”

You nearly choked at the choice of his words, wincing. Captain Rogers’ hands squeezed your shoulders reassuringly and you nodded, not sure what else to do.

You didn’t want to look at Henry. Or Jim. Or their loyal companions.

So when the captain carefully spun you on your heels, you didn’t protest and your feet started moving on autopilot in the direction he had set.

“You okay to walk without support?” he asked softly, a stark contrast to the voice you remembered from earlier or from the training sessions.

You knew that if you said yes, he would let go of you. Honestly, his touch felt damn nice, firm and yet somewhat gentle, a pleasant contrast to harsh fingers of the men who had the nerve to attack you – you had to swallow bile rising to your mouth at the awfully fresh memory. Fuck, it had been so close, just a minute later and--- you shook your head mentally and tried your best to erase this memory from existence.

You decided not to abuse the kindness the captain was offering. After several indulging steps, you quietly confirmed he could release you. You found out that sensing his large frame by your side as if he was your bodyguard was nearly as comforting. Nearly.

You didn’t have the strength admonish yourself for basking the light of his protective persona. Future agent of not, you still had the right to want to feel secure at times.

After all, you were only human.

A Handful of Truths

You didn’t realize you were shaking until a blanket was tossed over your shoulders.

You were sitting on a short couch in what looked like a cosy office, hair still damp, body finally registering the ache caused by previous events, just like your brain was slowly taking in what had happened.

Captain Rogers, whose courtesy was to escort you from the hellhole you had been attacked in, had clearly took it as a personal mission to take care of your injuries; it hadn’t dawned to you until you were seated and your mind helpfully supplied you with ‘This isn’t the infirmary’.

He pulled a swivel chair to sit face to face with you, a box of medical supplies left open on the coffee table at your side. You didn’t realize he had moved the chair or dug the box from god-knew-where until the items were simply there.

“How do you feel?” he inquired, attentive eyes scanning your hunched form. You instinctively curled onto yourself, snuggling further into the blanket. You knew you should come up with an answer, but your brain started to hurt with the effort to do so. “I guess that’s fair. Can you tell me what hurts the most?”

You quickly glanced at his openly kind face, his baby blues still watching for any reaction that would clue him. Your throat went dry at the compassion of display and you had to swallow before speaking – and think. What hurt the most…?

You didn’t know what possessed you to tell him what you did, but it came out before you could stop yourself.

“My pride,” you croaked, causing his eyebrows jump just like the corner of his lips.

“That’s probably fair too. Then again, I’d rather know about something I can fix.”

You felt your body relax a little at his informal tone – you might even say a jovial one, but you could still sense too much worry behind it to call it that. You attempted a tiny smile at least to show him that you were more or less fine – you weren’t – and brilliantly failed.

“Landed on my shoulder. Probably gonna have a bruise on my side from when… when they kicked me. Ribs and arms might be a bit tender for few days, ‘cause they were heavy as they--- they’re heavy,” you voice wavered as you saw the muscles on the captain’s forearms clench and his hands curled up in fists. You sheepishly looked up to his face. “I got lucky.”

His eyebrows rose again in a ‘figures’ manner as he leaned back to the chair.

“Nothing else apart from that, your cheek and your pride?”

“I’m a little cold, but you took care of that,” you admitted, taking a deep breath in as you tugged on the blanket pointedly.

Despite what you were saying, you didn’t feel okay, the tremble never quite leaving your body. It wasn’t hard to figure out why. You stared at your knight in shining armour, gathering courage to do what was needed. You tried your best to meet his gaze, feeling so small and embarrassingly weak in front of him.

“Could have been much worse if you haven’t showed up. Thank you.”

He pressed his lips together, shaking his head. He leaned in, his elbows on his knees.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t faster... I should have kept closer eye on Ulrich,” he muttered under his breath, making you wonder if you only imagined it. “Your pride shouldn’t be hurt. You held yourself against them just fine.”

Your heart skipped a beat at the honestly his voice held – and you were honestly grateful for the slight shift of attention. Oh. Had he forgotten how things had been when he had arrived?

You weren’t sure whether you should remind him. You definitely didn’t want to remind yourself, but before you could solve your little dilemma, he clarified.

“You haven’t started training the combat against multiple opponents yet. Let alone four opponents, all of them having both height and weight advantage. You couldn’t exactly go all Black Widow on them if no one showed you how.”

He accented his words with a reassuring smile and you almost believed him. The shivers finally eased, most likely thanks to the warm treatment you were being given in all senses of the word. The inner cold gradually melted and you were left in nothing but pleasant warmth.

Mentally, you patted your pride gently on its head; you couldn’t quite disagree with him. No matter how helpless you had felt earlier and how ashamed for it you were, the truth was you were still learning. You weren’t a finished agent yet.

You breathed in and out, avoiding the gaze that was still on you. It felt like a freaking brand with how intense it was. You couldn’t say you hated it necessarily, you only wished you at least didn’t look so pathetic. No make-up, probably red with a smudge on blood somewhere, perhaps with some bruising already forming, hair wet and messy. You absently ran your fingers through it in attempt to fix it a bit as if it could help.

What had you been talking about? Right… those assholes being cowards and coming at your four against one.

“I… I just fucking hate bullies,” you grumbled darkly, your hand immediately covering your mouth when you realized what you had said. Oh. Language. Still your superior you’re talking to, no matter how nice. “Sorry. Please, pretend you didn’t hear the f-word. I just hate bullies, period.”

“I might have sworn earlier too, so let’s call it even,” the captain offered, one corner of his lips raised. Oh. He had, hadn’t he? ‘Is it fucking over now?’ What did that even mean? “And so I heard.”

“What?” you yelped, your mind racing again in search for the meaning behind his words.

“I mean… I heard you. When you were defending Bucky, in the gym. I’m pretty sure your exact words were about a ‘pissing contest’.”

“Oh god,” you breathed out, your face no doubt set aflame. He had heard you; that was why he had said he should have kept a closer eye on Henry. Oh. Ohhhh.

Also, did he just say ‘pissing’?

“You weren’t wrong by the way. But… neither were them.”

You blinked in surprise. What? “About?”

You knew he didn’t mean the sleeping around with recruits, your gut was screaming that at you, because they wouldn’t, but still, you rather asked for clarification. If he didn’t mean that part, which one then?

“Ladies do fall over for Bucky,” he hummed with a lopsided smile, a playful twinkle in his eyes. It did something to your belly, a strange familiar shift that was very inappropriate, but hell, people needed to cut you some slack. He was impossible not to ogle and you didn’t have the energy to control your reaction after today’s events. “And I don’t really pull my punches when I’m training those two in particular.”

“Why?” you blurted out before you could stop yourself and think better of it.

His gaze bored into yours, burning with intensity and with a glint of something you couldn’t quite put your finger on.

“I don’t like bullies either.”

Did he lean in even more or were you so focused on his face it only seemed closer?

You weren’t able to look away. His blue eyes simply locked you in, not allowing you to escape. The strangest thing was that it wasn’t scary. It should be, he was— he was a freaking captain, your superior, a superior to a lot of people, which you were constantly forgetting ever since he had saved you from falling on your ass in the hallway and you had to remember that.

Before you could though, your racing mind packed up and let your body, your mouth to be precise, act without supervision.

“Not trying to impress the ladies then, huh?”

His tiny sheepish smile cut off the uprising panic in your chest when you realized how bold of you was to say that. He lowered his gaze, giving a subtle shrug. “Guess I wouldn’t want one falling for guy’s muscles and a show-off of dominance.”

“What for then? Honesty? Sincerity? Kind eyes? Strong moral compass?” you heard yourself prying, internally horrified how far you had come when saying that. Your face was drained of colour when it clicked. You were literally naming things you liked about him, absolutely shamelessly putting them in the open. Oh shit. Fix it, fix it, fix it! “…the sass?”

His eyes went wide and he burst out laughing so loud it startled you for a second, especially as he threw his head back with the outburst. Then you reluctantly joined him, covering your face with your hands in embarrassment.

“The sass!” he howled, unable to hold back another fit of laughter and when you peeked at him through between your fingers, you saw his palm resting against his chest as if it could help him stop laughing.

Just like that, blood rushed back into your cheeks.

“Oh god, I made it worse!” you cried out, wishing for the earth to swallow you, frantically looking around for the fastest escape route. “Oh my god, I have to switch schools now… excuse me-“

You hastily got up from your seat, but a quick hand snatched yours, pulling you back.

You stumbled, landing ungracefully right back in your place, this time without the blanket. Captain Rogers was watching you with the corners of his lips high, his eyes sparkling with amusement.

“Sorry for grabbing you like that. But no, please. Stay.”

Your throat closed off when you heard his soft plea, only traces of humour in it. Yeah, you bet he hadn’t met anyone with such big mouth for a while, so he thought it was better to keep the comic around.

“Captain Rogers, I-I- what I said, it was completely out of line-“ you stuttered, only to be interrupted.

“Were you making it up?” he questioned.

You gulped, your mind screaming at you to say yes to save you the humiliation. And yet, with the cerulean irises staring into your eyes, your mouth did the exact opposite.

“No.”

Dammit.

“Then why would you go?” he questioned softly. His hand still didn’t leave yours, only easing the grip into a kinder one. You felt like a brand was being burned into your skin. A pleasant one, so you didn’t retreat. Oh, you’d never. But what on Earth was he getting at? “We need someone honest like you. People who stand up for others, even if only to defend their honour. That is the kind of people who should be in this line of work. The good ones.”

You opened your mouth, no sound coming out as his speech shook you to your core, tickling your stomach pleasantly along with your pride. His words seemed to be coming from heart, genuine, which was not helping your blood pressure and suddenly wobbling limbs.

“Even when they have potty mouth and put their foot in it? ‘Cause I seem to excel in that.”

“Especially then,” he chuckled and you could tell there was no pinch of a lie in it.

Something was in the air, crackling deliciously, and you liked it. You wouldn’t be able to describe it properly, the feeling simply too unique, but it was tickling your fancy so weren’t about to complain.

“O-okay. Thank you, Captain,” you whispered, revelling in the sight of the gentle curve of his lips.

“You started with the compliments, Agent.”

And just like that, you wanted to run for your life again, drowning in embarrassment.

What were you even still doing here? Complimenting him? Enjoying his touch? Flirting with him?

Were you nuts?!

Him, a captain— no, the captain. And you, an agent--- hell, you were not even an agent yet!

The captain whose eyes flickered to not-an-agent’s lips for the shortest of moments, widening a fraction before returning to her eyes.

Oh, now you were definitely going nuts. You were hallucinating. You must have hit your head too. He wasn’t into you and you being into him was very stupid.

You should go.

…any moment now.

…just get off your ass for god’s sake-

“Can I ask you something?”

You blinked yourself back to reality, shushing the voice in your head, curious smile appearing on your lips involuntarily. The softness of his voice felt better than the blanket before and you wanted to cocoon yourself in it, postponing the leaving plans to never.

“Sure,” you replied, the smile remaining on your face despite your better judgement.

He lowered his eyes to your joined hands, his thumb running over the back of your hand in a feather-light touch. You heart positively stopped at the moment, your breath hitching. Holy shit, what was he doing?

“This, does it… do you hate it?” he whispered the question, not meeting your eyes as if he was too shy, which was… ridiculous. He had no reason to be shy.

It still felt like a shot through your heart – a nice one, though, it that was possible. The words combined with the way they were spoken, it stirred something in your belly, warming it up and you couldn’t deny it anymore.

You really wanted this man; whatever this was, it was getting beyond a silly crush. Also, for some reason, it seemed as if he was trying to tell you he was interested too, which you thought was pretty freaking crazy.

“Stay honest, please,” he pleaded when you didn’t answer right away.

Did you hate it? The chastest display of affection if you dared to call it that? Your mind raced, trying to figure out why on earth he would ask that. Because the only reason you had come up with so far was completely impossible.

“No,” you said simply, earning a brief glance up before he looked down again. His Adam’s apple bobbed.

“Good. That’s good… and would you… I’m aware this is out of line and I—I want you to answer truthfully without fearing the consequences-…“

It was your turn to swallow loudly, because what? What did he want to ask that he considered it out of line? He was your superior – you could think of thousand ways of how you could get out of line, but him? And why should you fear the consequences?! Did he want you to help him to hide a body?

That’s not it and you know it. You know what he wants to ask, you rational side admonished you.

Oh please, shut up. Since when you switched sides?

“O-okay. What— what is it-- Steve?” you stuttered out, freezing when his name left your lips and his head snapped up, his hand giving yours a squeeze. Oh boy.

“Would you possibly say you like it?” he blurted out and your brain went to overdrive at the hope behind his expression.

Huh. He really just asked that. Oh shit. Oh wow. Your jaw fell into your lap – only figuratively, you hoped –, your ears buzzing, your blood bursting in excitement.

Oh yeah, you understood why he mentioned the consequences. Either you could say no and you’d fear he might treat you differently or you could say yes and you’d ‘fear’ he might treat you differently.

The fire in your insides burned hotter at the idea of the latter.

His hand slowly left yours, giving you a simple choice you still couldn’t believe you were given.

Holy shit. What do you even say to something like that? Coming from someone like him? Your brain froze as you only managed to stare.

Did his— did the corners of his lips turn down? Was that sadness pooling in the sea of blue of his eyes?

Oh no, you don’t.

“Y-yes,” you admitted sheepishly, closing your eyes at the heaviness of your confession.

You could feel the weight on your shoulders as silence fell, only interrupted by your soft breathing that sounded ominously loud.

Your fingers twitched when his warm palm covered them again, your lips parting in surprise. You kept your eyes closed, indulging the strange moment. His free hand caressed your other as well, the gentlest of touches, tender, contrasting with rough callouses on his fingers.

“I like it too.”

At that, you gathered enough courage to look at him, only to see him inspecting your face closely, observing your reactions. It shocked you that it wasn’t uncomfortable as you would expect; must have been the kindness and wonder in his gaze. You forced your lips to curl up in a tiniest smile. Steve smiled back with same hesitance, his face lighting up.

He looked like a boy next door (making it to a modelling agency), shining eyes and happy grin forming on his lips. He was more gorgeous than ever.

Still keeping your hands, he raised his right one, his knuckles brushing your unharmed cheek. The gesture was so tender it brought tears into your eyes, causing him quickly retreat.

“Sorry-“

You shook your head with a self-deprecating chuckle, squeezing his fingers before he could let go of you completely.

“It’s not you—I mean… it is you,” you babbled nonsensically, taking a breath to gather your thoughts. “It’s just— that was really sweet. No, that’s not-“ Not the right word. “It was beautiful. I swear I never felt so…” loved “-cared for in my life.”

He frowned, a shadow of pain running over his face. “I didn’t mean to upset you. I know that today was… unpleasant.”

Seeing his reluctance and discomfort, you went for the first thing that came up to your mind. You straightened up and pressed a light kiss on his cheek, withdrawing much slowly because once you were in his orbit, it was hard to leave.

His breath hitched, his eyes glued to you intently, flickering to your lips again.

“You didn’t upset me, Steve. That’s the last thing you could do with that,” you assured him, face still inches from his. His name rolled off your tongue easily this time, even though it still left your heart fluttering.

“And if I asked you to have dinner with me?”

Your stomach twisted in a pleasant knot at that suggestion, your lizard brain already thinking about having a dessert for a second; and you weren’t thinking cake or ice-cream.

Yeah, barely. This was a guy ready to treat you right, you were sure of it. He certainly wasn’t about to kiss you now, not afar what happened today, he might go for it after the dinner and that was only if you got lucky enough. You swallowed the disappointment at the idea, quickly shaking it off.

Make up your goddamn mind, woman. You should be glad that men who weren’t thinking with their lower brain still existed and one of those was clearly interested in you, which… yeah, what the hell, that might take a while getting used to. Add the fact that he was being incredibly considerate of how you might feel after being assaulted and you had a winner of your heart. You realized you were actually happy he wouldn’t try anything even nearly ��funny’.

You were fine with hand-holding and brushes of his fingers on your face, which honestly, the tenderness behind that gesture made you toes curl. You didn’t care much if that made you a freaking sap.

“Still not upset,” you gave an answer at last, deciding he probably liked when you were a bit cheeky.

He offered a closed lipped smile in response, confirming your theory.

“Does that count like a yes?”

You shrugged, the corners of your lips twitching. You had no idea when the change had happened, but all you wanted now was to giggle. And maybe snuggle, but you weren’t about to say that out loud.

“You tell me.”

He licked his lips and shook his head as he retreated. Before you could protest – or have a heart attack, because the motion of his tongue attracted your gaze like a magnet, setting your core on fire –, he sat beside you, leaving enough space in case you didn’t like it.

You liked it, subtly moving an inch closer to his side. Damn, he radiated warmth. Maybe just a bit closer…?

“Cheeky dame, aren’t you?” Steve more stated than asked, reaching for the blanket pooled around you to cover you again.

You didn’t realize you had goosebumps before his hands gently tugged you in, careful not to touch you where you could consider it inappropriate.

Yeah, forget about any funny business any time soon.

You huffed. “Clearly. It did get me into trouble before.”

His eyes darkened a bit, his face noticeably falling.

No, nope, bad move, miss not-an-agent.

“I should walk you back to your dorm,” he remarked, already rising to his feet.

You first reaction was to say no, because you weren’t ready to say goodbye yet. Your second was to say no also, because Shauna probably still had her hot date.

Instead, your hand shot up to catch his, effectively stopping him. He froze before returning to his seat, tiny question mark in a place of his face right next to his soft smile.

You cleared your throat, deciding to give him the latter reason.

“Uhm… my roommate has a date. If I go there, I’ll probably find a sock on the doorknob,” you admitted, biting your lip when he raised an eyebrow and relaxed to the cushions.

“People still do that?”

You chuckled, the fact that not only he was a captain, but also Captain America, which meant he was about hundred years old, hitting you like a train.

“Yeah, people still do that,” you assured him, amused.

He pouted, which you found unfairly adorable and… kissable. Nope, later.

“Sure, make fun of the old man…” he uttered, but a spark of laughter lighted up in his irises, so you assessed he wasn’t too offended. He was most likely used to the teasing.

As an idea of interpreting his words differently popped in your mind, you grinned.

“Is that a permission to make fun of Sergeant Barnes?” you pried playfully, sending Steve into another surprised fit of laughter, not unlike when you had complimented his sass. Your heart swelled at the joyful picture of him and the prospect of seeing more of it in future.

Due to his laughter, you didn’t hear he knock on the door if there was any n the first place. The door simply swung open, revealing the other supersoldier. Speak of the Devil…

Seeing his friend, Steve burst out laughing once more. Sergeant Barnes closed the door with a puzzled look.

You just shrugged in response, opening your mouth without a sound coming out and he took in the scene in front of him again, a smirk appearing on his lips. Under that gaze, you felt your face heat up. You could only imagine how that looked like, Steve cosily close to you, laughing, your hand right next to his thigh as his outburst had sent it sliding from his hand.

The smirk on the supersoldier’s face only deepened when he noticed how flustered he had made you.

“Punk?” he questioned and Steve wheezed once more, raising a palm in the sergeant’s direction, turning to you first.

He offered you a hand to shake. Confused, you accepted as his eyes twinkling in mischief bored into yours.

“Deal,” he mouthed, sending your lips twitching, and only then he shifted his attention to his friend. “Buck?”

The supersoldier had his eyes narrowed, watching you suspiciously.

“I’m gonna regret sending you with her instead of doing it the other way around, aren’t I?” he stated, not actually asking as his gaze flickered between the two of you.

His expression pushed you over the edge and the giggle building up in your chest for the last few minutes finally broke free. You simply couldn’t contain it anymore despite having two superiors in the room. Steve gave you a warm smile as the sound left your lips, clearly not bothered by it.

You hoped you’d be forgiven by Sergeant Barnes as well. After all, you were just human.

“Yeah, Buck, I think you are.”

S.R. masterlist

Sorry for the cavities at the end. Or should I say ‘you’re welcome’? Whatever works for you :))

Thank you for reading! 

[therealvalkyrie]

Painter’s Hands and Guatemalan Coffee: Part 5

very pretty, very beautiful

Pairing/setting: Levi Ackerman x Female!Reader, modern!college!AU

Summary: When you catch your idiot boyfriend cheating, your grumpy roommate is there to pick up the pieces and watch your back as you toe a carefully drawn line in the metaphorical sand.  

Word Count: 3.6k

Warnings: intoxication, swearing, feelings, nightmare, fluff, mentions of a deadly car accident

AN: WHOAH OKAY. So I’ve been thinking about the last half of this chapter every second of every minute for the last two days. It has haunted my dreams, y’all. Thanks to that, you get this before the weekend! Yay! Special thanks to @ghostlightprincess, @anlian-aishang, @cant-spell-slay-without-lay, and @horseanon--simpforall for helping me edit and giving me many encouragements and compliments which, quite frankly, made my head the size of Jupiter. I love you all dearly. As always, let me know what you think in my comments/DMs/askbox!! Don’t be a stranger!! And be kind to yourself and others<3 ~valkyrie

—

(read chapter 4 here)

“I think you’re very pretty.”

I think you’re very pretty?

Fuck. Shit.

“I-I-I mean,” Levi feels his throat tighten and cheeks set ablaze, “You’re very, uh, very beautiful.” He says it because it’s true, and the truth is what Levi relies on when his brain is short-circuiting. You’re more than pretty, more than something as trivial as very pretty, you’re gorgeous and smart and funny and it makes his palms sweat. Recently, you’ve been everywhere: in his bed, in his arms, in the periphery of his life even outside of the apartment. It’s overwhelming, this is overwhelming, how his hands are on you and how you’re looking up at him with insecure, anticipatory eyes. They’re glassy and red-rimmed, pupils blown to saucers.

Oh. That’s right, she’s high.

Levi lets his hand drop from the top of your head. He tries to move his other hand away from your cheek, but you grasp his wrist to keep it there. He can feel his own pulse fluttering under your fingertips.

“Very beautiful?” It’s soft, hopeful.

He forces himself not to retract the statement (because it’s true) out of self-preservation.

“Very beautiful, kid.” He can say it without stuttering this time. It’s important that you believe him, and it’s equally important that this is as far as it goes.

You close your eyes against the pet name and turn your face into his palm for a split second, press a swift kiss to it and then drop your hand to your lap. His heart stutters. He drops his hand, too.

“Thank you,” the words fall past your lips, careful and distant, as he takes a step back.

He needs some space. To get his head on straight, to scream into a pillow, to talk some sense into himself. Can’t risk this, not with you, not with you.

“Your, um, your pajamas,” he points to the end of the bed where they’re sitting in a neat pile, then turns tail and strides out of your room, shutting the door behind him.

In his room, his jelly legs finally give out and he flops onto his bed.

Fucking hell.

“Do you think I’m pretty?”

What kind of question is that? Do you not think you’re pretty? Do you care if he, specifically, thinks you’re pretty, or was it intended more generally? Very pretty, very beautiful. What does that even mean?

Levi may not be eloquent in the least, may not know how to confess that you make his every breath burn in his chest, but he does know how to paint. He stands up, wiping sweaty palms on his flannel pants and examining the painting on his easel. His mom stares back, her eyes sparkling, her hair tumbling over one shoulder in ebony waves. It had taken him the last few days to get the curls just right, and when he added the last highlights of shine, it’d finally felt complete.

“Sorry, mama,” he murmurs as he lifts her to set her against the wall under the window.

A new canvas procured from his closet finds its place on the easel. He sifts through his supply drawers for a moment, setting paints and brushes and charcoal neatly on his desk.

He takes a deep breath, situates himself in his wheelie chair, and leans forward to start sketching.

—

It’s 5 AM when you start screaming in a long, shuddering cry, causing Levi to jolt up in his seat, paintbrush poised over your left temple. It breaks off into sobs that make his gut twist and hands clench. A long moment, then you’re letting out another keening wail and Levi is out of his seat. Paint splatters from the brush where he drops it on his desk and his chair rolls back as he runs, ripping doors open and narrowly avoiding furniture in the dark.

You’re sprawled out, thrashing on the bed, sheets tangled with your legs. Levi sits on the edge of your bed, brows pinched in worry, and reaches for your shoulders. This is okay — he can touch you when you ask for his help. When you whimper and reach for him in your sleep, he can pull you close and smooth a hand across the planes of your back. It’s when you’re looking at him, all trusting and expectant for something, that he’s unsure.

He says your name, low and urgent, once, twice, before your eyes open mid-sob. They’re wide and terrified, your jaw tight, muscles clenched. “It’s me, kid, it’s just me,” he intones, “It was just a dream, you’re safe, it’s just me.”

Your heaving chest slows for a second, hitches somewhere in your sternum, and then you’re launching yourself forward and into him. He catches you there, steady against his chest.

“Breathe.” He sets an example with his own deep breaths.

It’s a long minute before he feels you relax at all, before he feels you sigh against his neck. Your arms are tight around his middle and you must be stronger than you look because after a while it starts to pinch. He doesn’t mind, though, just traces patterns on your back and stares at the pale wall.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

He feels you shake your head.

“Do you want to go back to sleep?”

You hesitate before you whisper, “Only if you stay.”

Levi thinks about the wet paintbrush currently drying to his desk. He thinks about the mess of clothes on your floor. He thinks of the half-finished painting of you in his room. “Okay. I’ll stay.”

You pull back, and he gets a look at your face in the near-dark. Your eyes are still acutely haunted, but they’ve regained awareness. He lets you take a moment to wipe at your cheeks as he reaches to gently disentangle the sheets and spread them more carefully over your legs.

He looks up at you again to catch your sad eyes with his. Your head is tilted quizzically, knowingly, sympathetically all at once as though he were the one who just woke up screaming. It makes him itch.

“What’s that look for?” he grumbles, toeing his slippers off and tucking them under your bed.

“Nothing,” you hum. “Come here, please.”

He blinks at you for a second. That’s my line. But he goes, crawling into bed with you and slipping under the covers. He lets you tug his arm gently so that he’s on your chest. He gets comfortable there, one arm thrown over your waist and head rested over your heart. Your own arms find a home cautiously around him. You exhale with the grounding pressure of his body on yours and let your mind sink into calm release.

—

The knock on your door breaks your attention from your laptop. You sigh, finish typing your sentence, and push your blue light glasses up your nose before standing up to answer it.

You’re not expecting anyone, but maybe Levi is. He’s been holed up in his room all morning, Chopin drifting lazily under his door, probably studying. Like you’ve been trying to. The second series of knocks on your door makes you jog the last few steps to pull it open.

“Hi—” the greeting dies in your throat when you see who’s standing there.

“Hi,” Annie says. She’s standing, nonchalant as ever, in her winter parka and leggings, holding two to-go cups and a pastry bag.

“What?” It’s a breathless question, genuinely confused. It doesn’t harbor the animosity you would expect — you’re not sure you can feel anything other than queasy right now.

“I got your voicemail.” 

You blink in confusion. She rolls her eyes and thrusts the to-go cups at you with a brief “hold these” before reaching into her pocket for her phone. You just stare at her while she taps and scrolls for a minute. She looks the same as before you stopped speaking: blonde hair tucked into a bun at the back of her head and hoodie peeking out of the collar of her jacket. Maybe a little more tired, though Annie always seemed to be tired.

She holds up her phone for you to hear as a voicemail starts playing and, to your further shock, your own tinny voice spills out. It sounds like you’re crying, and slightly muffled.

“Annie, hi, um, I know it’s late but I couldn’t think of anyone else to call, I just,” sniffle, “I know we’re not talking and I’m still mad at you, like REALLY MAD, okay? But I couldn’t think of who else to call and long story short I think I’m in love with Levi and he might’ve just rejected me but I just couldn’t tell—”

“Okay, okay, I get it,” you cut in across your own voice, stepping into the hall with her and toeing the door almost shut behind you. She stops the voicemail. “But why are you here?” You know why she’s here — Annie never backs down from anything, and you had started the conversation, even if you’d been drunk and high and half asleep and you don’t really remember doing it.

“You called, here I am. That’s what best friends do.” Her tone is even.

“Not best friends who fuck their best friends’ boyfriends,” you snap, anger finally bursting from your stomach and into your throat.

She closes her eyes impatiently, sighs, then looks at you again not quite pleadingly.

“Look, if you want me to leave, I’ll leave. But I’m here now and there’s more to the story that you aren’t aware of.”

“What else could there possibly be?”

“Let’s go for a walk and I’ll tell you,” she offers, then holds up the pastry bag. “I brought coffee and donuts. They’re jelly.”

Jelly donuts are your favorite.

You look down at the cups in your hand. You look back at her steady blue gaze. More to the story.

“Fine.” You turn and kick the door open a little too harshly. “Just let me get dressed.”

She follows you in, even though you don’t extend an invitation, and closes the door softly. You put the cups down on the coffee table and watch her sit in her usual spot on the couch to wait for you out of the corner of your eye. You scowl but say nothing.

It only takes you a minute to shuck off to pajamas and pull on jeans, a sweatshirt, and boots. You don’t bother with a bra.

You knock lightly on Levi’s door and call through, “I’m going for a walk, so make sure to lock up if you leave. I have my keys.” You jingle them as evidence and he grunts in acknowledgment. “Let’s go,” you turn and address Annie, who stands.

The walk down your street to the river is short and habitual, your feet carrying you while your mind races. You can feel the anger and hurt, visceral and stabbing, in your chest. But there’s also something tender there, too, something that acknowledges how you missed your best friend. Something that screams at you to tackle her to the ground and feel her stoic comfort. Instead, you shove your hands deeper into the pockets of Eren’s jacket and kick a pebble, sending it skidding down the sidewalk.

The pair of you reach the walking bridge over the river and pause at the railing. The sky is overcast, threatening a snowstorm. A car beeps downtown, reaching you distantly. Annie hands you a coffee and a donut. You lean against the railing and avoid her gaze.

“So. You wanted to talk. Talk.” You bite into the donut.

She sighs through her nose. “I know what you saw. We… we did kiss, but we didn’t do anything else. We never had sex.”

“Hmm.” A sip of coffee.

“I know you have no reason to believe me, but it’s the truth. I’m guessing you didn’t exactly listen to Reiner when you broke up with him?”

“I didn’t have time for his bullshit excuses.”

She breaks off a bit of her donut and stares at it contemplatively for a moment, “I know you don’t owe either of us anything, and this isn’t meant as an excuse, but will you listen to why, at least?”

You press your lips together, sneak a look into her devastatingly blue eyes, and nod. What harm can it do? And you have to admit there’s a large part of you that’s been wondering at the why, even if you’ve refused to hear it.

“Okay. Tell me why.”

She takes a deep breath and leans her elbows on the railing before starting to speak, low and pensive.

“I’ve known Reiner and Bertholdt a long time, since we were kids. We’ve always been this… this odd group. You wouldn’t think we were close if you didn’t know us. But it wasn’t always just us.” She pauses, looking distant. “Do you know Porco Galliard?”

Galliard… “He’s a sophomore on the lacrosse team, right?”

“Yeah. Do you know what happened to his brother?”

“He has a brother?”

“Had. Marcel. He was a year older than us but somehow ended up in our little group. And a couple of years ago, senior year of high school, we were all in a car accident. He was home on winter break and we’d all had a little too much to drink, and we convinced him to take us to Denny’s for midnight milkshakes. And, well, there was a winter storm coming in and it’d been freezing rain that week, and we crashed. Marcel died. It was… I hadn’t…” She pauses, tilting her head back to the sky, blinking away tears. “It was horrible.”

Your eyes have gone wide, cast downriver. You don’t know what you’d expected when you walked down here, but it certainly wasn’t this. It wasn’t Annie, only rivaled in her stoicism by Levi, choking back tears and wiping snot from her nose.

“Hey,” you start, voice gentler than it’s been all day. “You don’t have to—”

“No, no, I want to, just... give me a second,” she interjects, wringing out a hand. She takes a deep, purposeful breath.

“Okay,” you whisper, looking back out across the water.

“It, uh, it hit us all really hard, brought us really close together. That’s why we all ended up at school here, actually. It kinda made us realize that, like, time is limited, you know? We don’t have forever. And Bertl, he…” she smiles, watery and reminiscent. “When he asked me out, it felt like a long time coming. It was just about perfect. He felt safe and like home, and… well, you know how in love we were. But I could see that it alienated Rei, at least a bit. He tried not to show it, but I could tell he felt like a third wheel. He was already drifting away from us, still struggling with all this guilt.”

Your breath catches in your throat. That’s a familiar feeling. Guilt. And yet, you’d never noticed it in Reiner, apparently never got close enough to shine a flashlight into his darkest shadows. He’d always seemed so… sunshiney. You clearly hadn’t given him enough credit to dislodge the aura of jock frat boy he projects so brightly.

Soft dough squishes under your fingertips where you’ve resorted to playing with your food instead of eating it as Annie continues.

“And then he met you and fell in love so fast. I was so relieved, I mean, you and I were roommates and it was just perfect, right?” You look at her and see a flicker of hopefulness still there. “I thought maybe you two getting together would bring him back to us, that maybe we’d be alright after all. And at first, it did. But then you moved off campus for sophomore year and he started drifting away again, though he was at least anchored to you, this time. It scared me, it really did.”

She kicks the bottom of the railing lazily, as if to expend the sadness there rather than in her words. The first fat flakes of snow drift down around you. One dances away on your exhale.

“He’s so withdrawn, sometimes, in his own head, and I never know how to reach him there. I didn’t know if he had told you about Marcel, or anything, so I couldn’t go through you. I don’t… I didn’t know what to do, so I just... let it fester. That night, when we kissed, I hadn’t seen him physically for a month. It hurt.”

She looks at you imploringly, like the weight of everything she’s saying lies on deep hurt. You can relate to feeling as though there’s nothing but hurt and guilt and drifting.

“So I figured out where he was from his Snapchat story, abandoned my group project, and went over there to see him. I didn’t know what I’d say or do when I got there, just that I had to get him back, somehow. He was already plastered, you know how he gets, and he wasn’t listening to me, so I just… kissed him. I don’t know what I was thinking, I didn’t know you were there, I didn’t even know you saw until he called me the next day after you broke up with him to chew me out.

“So, long story short,” her voice breaks on a mournful, almost hysterical laugh, “I fucked up the three most important relationships to me in one night because I couldn’t use my words.” She wipes at wet cheeks, not looking at you. “So, um. Yeah, that’s the why, I guess. I don’t expect you to forgive me, or him, but I just… I needed you to know. It wasn’t like, this elaborate affair.”

You aren’t sure how to right your brain from the way it’s tilted off kilter. It’s so much, so different from what you’d built up in your head. There’s no conspiracy, no grand intention to break you.

Even with all this new information, what stupidly slips out first is, “Did he kiss you back?” You blanch, turn to her with wide eyes, “Sorry, that’s not exactly im—”

“No, it’s fine,” she meets your eyes. “He did kiss me back.”

“Oh. Okay, um…” you trail off, bite your lip. You don’t know what exactly to say. Your skin is tight with the urge to forgive her immediately and wholly, but logic holds you back. Now that you know the truth, you need time to heal and get some perspective. You straighten up from where you’d been slouching against the railing. “Okay. You’ve been honest, so I will be, too.”

She stands up fully as well, facing you with one hand on the railing.

“I don’t know how I feel right now,” you start. “I think I need some time and perspective. But, I… I can see now where I went wrong, too. I assumed the worst, didn’t let any communication happen.” You swallow down the lump in your throat threatening to choke your voice. “And, I wasn’t there for Rei like I should have been. I had no idea — no idea! — what he was going through.”

“Well, he didn’t exactly tell you—”

“And why is that?” Your voice breaks, squeaks with the question. “Did he feel like he couldn’t confide in me? Did I make it too much about me and my trauma? I wasn’t exactly shy about telling him my shit.” You take a long draw of coffee. “Anyway. I should probably talk to him, shouldn’t I?”

She nods. “He’d like that.”

You’re both quiet for a moment, watching the sparse snow flurry around you. Annie finally starts eating her donut.

“I’ve missed you,” you confess into the storm. “A lot.”

“I missed you, too.”

Your chest aches with both the cold air and the conflicting feelings of relief and regret.

“Why, uh… why didn’t you tell me all that stuff about Marcel?”

She leans on the railing again, takes a sip of coffee before answering. “I was still working through it. Still am, rather. I didn’t know how to bring it up, or that it was relevant.”

You hum, nodding. “I get that.”

There’s another silence, but it feels lighter, less charged. There are still questions bouncing around your mind, but you decide it’s better to process through them on your own rather than blurting out something stupid. Perspective.

“So,” she shoots you a look under blonde eyelashes, “what’s this about you being in love with Levi?”

“Aw, shit,” you laugh, leaning your elbows back on the railing and giving her an imploring look. “It really snuck up on me.”

“Is that so? Can’t say I’m shocked.” Her tone is dry, a little amused around the last bite of jelly donut. She wipes her fingers on her leggings and faces you. “And you think he rejected you.”

“Well, I…” you cringe, thinking back to last night. “He called me very beautiful.”

“Doesn’t sound like a rejection.”

“It was the way he said it! Like it physically hurt him to admit, and then he just ran out of the room,” you whine, scrubbing a hand down your face.

“I think that’s just his emotional constipation.” 

You look at her sharply, mouth agape, to catch her eyes dancing and the corner of her lip curling upward slightly. “Annie!”

“What? I’m right.” She finishes off her coffee, tilting back the cup to catch the last dregs of it. “He likes you, or he’s an idiot if he doesn’t.”

You narrow your eyes in doubt, mirroring her half-smile. “Hmm. We’ll see.”

“Yes,” she promises, crumpling up the pastry bag in her fist and stuffing it in her pocket. “We will.”

—

(read part 6 here)

[yoolee]

Actual, real world advice from Lee: Useful corporate phrases

I have no idea if anyone still checks this blog, and if they do, this has nothing to do with what usually gets posted, but I’ve done two of these, so here’s a third!

“Thanks, you’ve given me something to think about.”

Use it: When you get feedback you don’t agree with - especially if you have an immediate emotional reaction to it.

Why: Because it acknowledges but doesn’t agree. Basically buys you time to react privately without damaging the relationship. Immediately (and emotionally) jumping into telling someone why they’re wrong is only going to strain the relationship. When you’re getting feedback, you want the other person to feel heard (science says even having the opportunity to air negative feelings makes people feel more positively about the thing). That doesn’t mean you have to AGREE. This statement lets you acknowledge, while buying you time to process. This also gives you an out on things like opinions people have on presentations or projects: if they bring it up later you can say you thought about it, but decided to keep what you had because A/B/C and by then you’ll have had time to craft an ironclad response. 

“I can’t, I have a prior commitment.”

Use it: When you’re being asked to work hours that your coworkers aren’t, or that you are not part of your regular schedule, or, you know, when you have a prior commitment and don’t want to give details.

Why: Your time is your time and you don’t owe an explanation! Yes, it’s important to be a team player, and it’s important to be flexible and get the work done when it needs to get done, bit if you’re in a situation where, say, a parent isn’t asked to come in the weekend because your boss knows they have kids, and you are because they know you don’t, draw the line. There’s often a temptation to justify unavailability (lie and say doctor’s appointment, family event, traveling) but you do not owe justification for your time being your own, and not wanting to take the burden of additional responsibility without additional compensation in return. Being in the habit of not providing justification will come in handy if you ever don’t want to disclose something later (eg, private appointment, interview at another workspace) - it won’t seem suspicious that you’re suddenly being vague. 

“The goal/outcome for this meeting is...”

Use it: When you’re running a meeting.

Why: You would be amazed how different everyone’s perceptions of their role in a meeting are, and setting expectations so obviously may feel silly but wow it helps. Let’s say I schedule a 1:1 with my boss. I just call it, Lee/Boss 1:1. I walk in and start venting about how Coworker is always late in responding to my emails. What does my boss do? In this case, my boss doesn’t know if I want them to fix my problem, if I want them to just let me air my grievances, or if I want them to give me advice, etc. If they do something other than what I want, we’ll both be frustrated. If I instead I preface it by saying, “I’m going to handle this on my own, but I just need to say it and be heard.” or “I need some advice.” then we both go into the convo knowing our roles. This works on big meetings too, “I’m going to make the final decision but I schedule this meeting to hear your input…” “At the end of the meeting I want to walk away with a budget we’ve all approved…” 

“What is the most important thing for us to accomplish [during this meeting]?”

Use it: When you don’t know the expectations for a meeting, you don’t think you need to be in the meeting, the meeting has a lot of people on it, or you’re getting frustrated because you don’t know why there’s a meeting in the first place.

Why: So that you and the person leading the meeting don’t focus on different things! See the above entry :)  

“Hypothetically, what would the ideal outcome look like?”

Use it: When someone is stuck on a problem (including yourself).

Why: We tend to artificially impose limits on our problem-solving, which stops us from being creative, going into an open-ended hypothetical offers a new vantage point.

A lot of times when we’re stuck, we try so hard to make do with what we’ve got that we fail to consider how much more is actually available to us. Start with the ideal and figure out which components of it are accessible. Then work backwards with what/how/who questions. What/how/who are open-ended. They make you think! Consider: “Can you rent space by this weekend?” this is a closed decision, it limits you to yes/no, and puts limiters on the delivery (what comes to mind are event halls, restaurants, etc) Compare to: “What kind of space do you need?” which could prompt something like, oh, just space for 10 people - what about a park? Open-ended questions are your friend when trying to help someone solve a problem (even if that ‘someone’ is yourself!) 

(not a phrase)  Save ‘I’ for remediation, passive voice for problems

Use it: When you have to communicate a problem that is not your fault.

Why: Because you shouldn’t take responsibility for something that isn’t your responsibility - but throwing someone else under the bus is NEVER a good look. Putting the ‘I’ on action shows you’re working on it. Consider, “I don’t have bandwidth to take on this project right now” vs “This project will require more analysis than that timeframe allows, but I can start on it [later ETA].” The latter is stronger - the fault is on the project, not your time management (or your leadership’s inability to see that your plate is full). Also, “I haven’t finished because Bob hasn’t sent me the graphics.” vs, “The project’s just waiting on graphics. I should be able to wrap up by Tuesday if they arrive Monday. I’ve reached out to Bob, his ETA is [ETA]”. Same thing - it’s communicated that the project isn’t finished, but the fault is left sort of nebulous. You’re not artificially taking it one, and you’re not tossing Bob under the bus. Takes some practice, but definitely makes life easier. Caveat (there’s always one): If you screw up, take ownership and do it fast. It is always, ALWAYS better to control the narrative of failure than for your leadership to find out you failed from someone else.

(not a phrase) KEEP TALKING

Use it: When you’re interrupted by someone being obnoxious.

Why: Because you’re not done, and they’re being rude, and this communicates that without calling them out. Legit, just finish your sentence like you don’t hear them talking. Don’t miss a beat. Not to make this about gender, but this is something I, as a female on mostly all-male teams, have found to be EXTREMELY effective, to the point of other people reaching out to me after like wow that interrupting person was kinda bein’ an asshole, sorry, and me being like no biggie thanks for noticing and taking my back. Has that secondary reach out ever happened when I just meekly cut myself off for them? No. Caveat - maybe don’t do this if the person interrupting is like, a VP/CEO they won’t take it well. Also, second caveat, have some grace for your coworkers if it’s not something they do often and you work with them frequently - we all get overexcited and interrupt unintentionally. This is specifically for use in scenarios where a) you are not being heard  and you need to be b) you are the authority (either by knowledge, seniority, or scheduling) c) to make someone who interrupts habitually aware they’re doing it to you.

Edit: The fantastic and wise @han-pan​ offered as well, “Can I finish?” quoth she: “I find it helpful because it identifies that person has interrupted, it is stark and direct enough to startle someone out of talking louder and louder until you finish, and it’s really hard to be mad at someone for asking your permission when you’ve fucked up.” AND I AGREE. This is a good one to use in those ‘have some grace’ moments, as it’s less likely to damage the relationship.

“Sorry, but I don’t have the decision-making or budget authority.”

Use it: When someone on LinkedIn wants you to try their service...

Why: Because they’ll leave you alone, usually.

“What’s the most important issue for you to solve/question for you to answer?”

Use it: When you’re disagreeing on approach with someone.

Why: Again, expectation aligning!

Sometimes people just dig their heels in on something. There’s usually a reason. Let’s say Coworker A and Coworker B are both working a presentation for Director C. Coworker A is frustrated because they’ve been given strict instructions to keep it to 15 minutes, but Coworker B keeps adding slides, even after A deletes them. By asking B what the most important question for them to answer is, A can use that as a guidepost to focus the presentation. (Likewise, if B asks, what’s the issue, they’ll understand A is really concerned about going over time)

[xiyao-feels]

@hqfeels

Oh man, as someone who loves 3zun, and thinks the mess of intertwining relationships is what makes it interesting, I really should not have read this post - while I think you make some interesting points for a different interpretation of the Nielan relationship, I would also caution against basing your interpretation so closely to the words of what is a translation

e.g. when you discuss LXC not framing things in terms of the sworn brother relationship, you point to the use of “one of his sworn brothers” vs “my” or “our” - chinese doesn’t always use pronouns, so it could very well be the translator having to fill in

I make note of this, not as a nitpick, but bc I think it goes to the heart of the framing of the relationship. Because I think Xiyao is fundamentally framed within the 3zun context - after all, what does JGY call LXC to show they’re close? Er-ge. “2”, not just Ge. NMJ, as Da-ge eternally haunts their relationship. The point of rejection from LXC? You don’t have to call me Er-ge anymore.

So, hey! I appreciate that you said you shouldn't have read my post, but I thought your points were worth addressing, and since you left comments in the notes I figured it was reasonable to respond. If you don't want to read this post, I completely understand, and I've left a bunch of empty lines after this paragraph so you don't have to read it if you don't want to.

The point about relying too heavily on exact shades of meaning is definitely a good one. Reading over my post, however, I think there are only three places where I do that; the point identified, later for one point in my discussion of QHJ's teacher, and actually later in the temple when I talk about the "sob" of Liebing as some evidence for LXC's grief for NMJ.

I think it's worth asking: how much does any one of these points contribute to the argument? They're definitely not irrelevant, or I wouldn't have pointed them out, but even so there's only so much wiggle room. No matter what pronouns he uses, for example, LXC only spends one clause of that speech directly on JGY killing NMJ, and it's in the context of, well, a general lack of reaction of personal grief. If—not even if he actually said 'our sworn brother' or 'my sworn brother,' I do think that would be some evidence of personal betrayal, even if it has to be considered in light of the rest of his reactions and non-reactions. But if, in the original text, the Chinese simply didn't specify the pronouns such that "his" is the translator's best guess—I just don't see that as a serious blow to the argument, given the consistency of the pattern as a whole, and I think it's kind of cherry-picking to suggest that it is.

Second, I don't think the pronoun there is ambiguous as is suggested. Consider the phrasing; it's not just "his sworn brother," it's "one of his sworn brothers." Supposing that "his" wasn't present in the original text. "One of my sworn brothers"? "One of our sworn brothers"? Neither really makes sense. Of course, perhaps they might make more sense in Chinese; but that's a little further than "what if the translator had to pick a pronoun."

Now, I think the above points are worth considering on their own merits, which is why I brought them up first. However, I have to say: I did, actually, check the Chinese, for the "one of his sworn brothers" and indeed in multiple places. I didn't mention it in the post for the same reason I usually try not to rely on it in my posts: because I feel like I'd end up setting myself up as some kind of authority when I'm very much not, and because I'm frequently fairly confused XP I have, what, one term of Mandarin, some amount of self-study, and Pleco installed on my phone. But I do often look at the original text and try to work things out, and sometimes I learn stuff that's been lost in translation, and often I can go well, my best guess aligns with the translation. If you want to confirm for yourself, and I encourage you to do so!!, then you can look at the text here: https://www.kunnu.com/modaozushi/. It's in chapter 64.

This is the clause about JGY killing one of his sworn brothers: 他设计杀害了自己的一位义兄 ("that he planned to kill one of his sworn brothers"). The pronoun before "one of his sworn brothers" is 自己, which is a pronoun referring to the subject of the sentence—in this case 他, he, JGY. Now, could I be wrong? Of course! Should anyone rely on uncited statements from a total stranger? No! I strongly encourage people to check this out for themselves, and if someone who actually does speak Chinese wants to offer some guidance I'd be very grateful. But given that it matched the translation from people who do actually speak both Chinese and English, it seemed enough to allow me to rely on the translation.

On that note, actually, I'll admit I missed a trick. "我父亲的一位恩师", one of my father's teachers—"teacher" there is 恩师, which Pleco gives me as "mentor; one's kind and respected master (or teacher)." So it does have more of an emotional edge, and I'll edit the post to acknowledge this. Even so, I think it's worth remembering both that it's one word, he's not adding lots of adjectives about the teacher, and most importantly that the teacher simply isn't lingered on. The effects of his mother killing the teacher, yes, and the contrast between his memories of his mother and the fact that she did kill his father's teacher...but the teacher himself is just not dwelled on.

(For completion's sake, the "sob" of Liebing in ch 107 is "呜咽", which Pleco gives as 1) sob, whimper 2) (of water, wind, stringed instrument, etc) weep; wail; lament; mourn.)

But again, quibbling over phrasing is to some extent a distraction. The important thing is not so much any one incident as the pattern they form, considered together; this is why my original post was so long, because I was trying to consider the overall pattern, and I think the comment about framing is pointing at the same thing. So it's worth asking: are xi//yao framed in terms of the 3//zun relationship?

In fact, I think this divides into two questions. First: does the text frame xi//yao in terms of the 3//zun relationship? And second: do xi//yao understand their relationship fundamentally in terms of the 3//zun relationship? I think you could make more of an argument on the first one, or at least, xi//yao and NMJ are part of their own narrative in the text and often show up together. But in terms of the actual relationship, it's the second question I'm interested in here, and I think the answer is very much no.

First of all, a note on timelines. In MDZS, LXC and JGY knew each other for about seventeen years; they were sworn brothers with NMJ for about four. To put this another way, they were sworn brothers with NMJ for less than a quarter of their overall time together. Moreover, they had significant time without NMJ before they all became sworn brothers, as well as after his death. Now, much of their relationship is revealed to us through Empathy, which necessarily limits us to when NMJ was alive, and moreover shows us only those of their moments together that he happens to see, so it's understandable that these years dominate our view, but I do think it's important to remember.

Okay, now let's consider what we see of their relationship. Given how much of it we see through NMJ's eyes, it's in fact remarkable how much it isn't about him. In the first conversation we see them have together, LXC is proposing that MY stop being NMJ's deputy and go serve his father in Langya (though only after confirming that's still what MY wants, note—and which he knows MY had wanted because MY literally told him!). When MY says he does want it but he owes NMJ, LXC says he thinks NMJ will understand but volunteers to talk with NMJ himself if he doesn't. Neither of them have told NMJ they know each other; after NMJ comes in, when he seeks to find out how they do, asking LXC and then ordering MY to speak after LXC refuses, they don't tell him. I'm not saying either of them are unhappy with NMJ here—quite the contrary!—but there's no sign they see the other, or their relationship with each other, fundamentally in terms of him. (For a close reading of the scene, as ever, I recommend confusion-and-more's post here.)

Furthermore, in MDZS, after MY flees from NMJ in Langya and becomes a spy, he starts sending LXC letters with information, and LXC works out who it is. As with pretty much everything we see about them, this suggests a quite astonishing intimacy—that MY was able to trust that LXC would work it out, and that LXC did. Not only did NMJ not know who the spy was, in MDZS he didn't know there was a spy at all—LXC concealed it from him entirely. Now, this is obviously very solid practice for spies, but again—you have xiyao together, and NMJ apart. (I'll also note that in MDZS LXC is exchanging blows with NMJ sword to saber until the very end of the post-Sun Palace confrontation, even after MY steps forward; he definitely does not seem to think that NMJ has any sort of right, here.)

At the Phoenix Mountain Hunt, we see them together but, again, not with NMJ, and there's no suggestion that LXC had socialized with him particularly—JGY is aware of how much prey he's taken, but of course JGY is running the hunt. Then when they both go off at the end of the scene to expand the hunting grounds, LXC asks LWJ if he'd like to help, but there's zero suggestion that they're going to seek out NMJ, even though he's part of the reason JGY needs to expand the hunting grounds.

In chapter 73, LXC and JGY are talking after the conference. Then NMJ comes over and comments disapprovingly about JGY. Again, LXC doesn't actually speak a single word after NMJ joins them. This... really does not suggest perceiving him and JGY as fundamentally part of that triad, imho.

The guqin scene: LXC and JGY are very much focused on each other. Only LXC talks with NMJ at all, and only once, briefly, answering his objection. NMJ is described as looking up before his objection, which suggests to me that he/wasn't/ looking up before. Meanwhile LXC and JGY are complimenting each other's playing, LXC is offering to teach him exclusive teachings, and JGY is telling LXC about his mother. You could reasonably say LXC teaching JGY the Song of Clarity is or is partly about NMJ—his desire again for them to reconcile—but in their interactions they are focused on each other to an almost absurd extent, and not NMJ.

The discussion conference mentioned in chapter 30? We're told NMJ wasn't originally planning to go; it seems likely that we would have been told if the same was true of LXC, given that LWJ is the one telling us about it. So, again, we have JGY and LXC together, and NMJ only coming in for outside reasons.

At the beginning of the stairs conflict, when NMJ comes in and calls JGY out, we see that JGY and LXC are discussing something, with "notes of all colours" on the desk before them. WWX is later going to realize they're discussing the watchtowers, which even now, well before he's Jin-zongzhu, JGY is trying to convince his father to build; there's no sign, on the other hand, that NMJ even knows what they're working on.

Their last interaction before NMJ's death /is/ about NMJ, with JGY very upset and LXC defending the idea that NMJ hasn't rejected JGY completely. But again this doesn't suggest that they view their relationship fundamentally in terms of their relationship with NMJ, and as we've seen it's not what they're usually talking about.

I talk here about two patterns of 3//zun interaction in the Empathy chapters: broadly, MY/JGY and LXC talking privately and NMJ coming and interrupting them, and NMJ attacking MY/JGY, and LXC intervening.

Looking over their interactions, the text does not, to me, suggest that LXC and JGYview their relationship fundamentally in terms of NMJ or of 3//zun.

And again—LXC doesn't bring up NMJ in the temple, and he only reacts to NMJ-as-NMJ three brief times.

Now, it is of course true that JGY calls LXC er-ge as a sign of closeness, and that he's 'er-ge' because NMJ is the first brother. However, a few points.

First, I would argue that it's a recurring theme in MDZS (and /especially/ for JGY) that the form of a relationship doesn't necessarily match what the relationship actually is; the form, therefore, might be an interesting point to consider, but it must be considered in light of the evidence we have about their actual relationship.

Second, JGY calls LXC er-ge a full thirteen times in the temple chapters. Once in chapter 99, when he's responding to LXC about JL; twice in chapter 100, discussing NHS; in chapter 105, three times leading up to his explanation of the letter; six full times when answering LXC's questions in chapter 106; and then once in chapter 108 when he is literally asking LXC for protection from NMJ's fierce corpse.

Once and only once, on the last er-ge in chapter 105, does LXC respond to being called er-ge, though we're told he did so earlier off-page. And—well, look at the paragraph:

His tone was more than earnest. Ever since he captured Lan XiChen, he’d indeed been treating him with respect. At this point, Lan XiChen wasn’t able to turn against him yet. He could only sigh, “Sect Leader Jin, I have already said, when you went your own way to scheme such havoc at Burial Mound, that there was no longer the need to call me ‘Brother.’”

This is not only not framed as an essential rejection, it's framed as explicitly /not/ that: "Lan XiChen wasn't able to turn against him yet." And again, as I pointed out in my post, we're explicitly given a reason for it that has absolutely nothing to do with NMJ! 'Don't call me er-ge because you killed da-ge' would be very natural; the fact that it's explicitly not about that suggests strongly to me that they simply don't think of 'er-ge' in terms of its relation to NMJ, despite the form.

[kyidyl]

Kyidyl Explains Bones - Part 4.1

(These are all under the KyidylBones tag.)

Sorry for the pause in this series....it’s difficult to produce these when I don’t have my meds and I ran out.  But I refilled them, so now we continue! 

Anyway, today we’re covering something that is, if possible, even more complex and thorny than sex determination: race determination.  

Ethical Statement: Race is not a biological reality.  Now, hear me out before you run away.  Race isn’t a biological reality, but that doesn’t make it *not real*.  Race absolutely is real and effects how society interacts with an individual.  But between these two statements, which gives you more information about a person: 

“I’m white.” 

“I’m white and I live in 21st century America.” 

The second, obviously.  Because skin color tells us virtually nothing about an individual.  Ethnicity - where they’re from, what social groups they might have interacted with, how society might have treated them, etc. - is a lot more valuable than knowing the color of their skin.  HOWEVER.  And this is a big however.  However, in a modern person’s understanding there is a lot of crossover between race and ethnicity.  And, in fact, as with sex, when a set of remains is being evaluated for identification we must at least attempt to identify the race because that’s how they’ll be categorized in the missing persons’ database.  And identifying race in archaeological remains helps us track human social interaction and migration because ethnicity doesn’t really survive intact outside of grave goods (and those may or may not be present.).  And, yes, if you’re wondering, DNA tests can confirm a lot of the data that we attempt to glean anatomically but for the most part we don’t have the money to do DNA tests on remains, or they don’t have anything surviving that has intact DNA (you can have a nearly complete set of remains and not have any DNA because damage to the outside surface of the bone and/or teeth causes damage to the DNA inside it and causes it to break down.). 

So since race isn’t a biological reality but it is a social reality, it’s helpful to attempt to determine the race of the individual in question.  And, obviously, that’s before you even take into account that people interbreed all the time.  So how can we begin to do this with any degree of accuracy, since the classifications are social and not biological? 

Short answer: we can’t, but we try anyway because of the reasons I mentioned above.  And there’s something that I should have added to the post about sexing a skeleton but I didn’t because I’m human and I make mistakes sometimes: we don’t ever refer to a set of remains as definitively X sex or definitively X race (well, we do when we’re with other scientists who have an understanding of what I’m about to say for brevity’s sake.), we say “this individual has _____ features consistent with or indicative ______ race/sex.” Sometimes the features are very stereotypical and we’re fairly certain that they definitely are X race or sex, but other times they’re not.  And the markers that we use are based on averages, so obviously within those averages there’s a huge amount of variation - that’s why we use so many different markers.  So like with any science, it’s good to remember that there’s always room for change and that it’s all theories.  

Also if you want to do some reading on it, you’ll see that these determinations are still hotly debated among anthropologists because we are well aware of how racist and shitty it all is and we hate that we have to engage in it but at the same time it’s important for the reasons I mentioned above, so we’re always trying to find new ways that are more accurate and less racist.  

Categories

Essentially, we have a list of anatomical features that tend to be similar in geographic regions and we go through these features and grade them according to which race category we think they most closely match.  There are three, sometimes four, categories: 

Caucasoid/White/European depending on what reference you’re using.  

Black/African (Outdated term: Negroid. We all hate it but it’s in the literature, especially older stuff, and if you do any reading you’ll run into it.)

Asian (Outdated term: mongoloid. Same as above.) - This includes Native Americans because their anatomy is so similar to Asians, especially eastern asians, that it’s well-nigh impossible to distinguish without a DNA test.  Mostly we know based on the context the remains are found in.  

Aboriginal - This is specifically for indigenous pacific groups, especially in Australia and Aotearoa (New Zealand. In this lab we use the indigenous name.).  They have some interesting anatomical differences that are only found in that area of the world.  Obviously it’s not going to be as used in the rest of the world tho so it’s often not covered.  Plus their biggest differences are brow bone size and tooth size so while it’s different it’s not AS different as the other three categories.  

So as we go through the markers, we add them to these groups and then at the end average them out to see which one the remains most resemble.  

The Anatomy

There are a lot of markers of race on remains, and more are being studied all the time, so I’m going to cover the most common ones in the interest of length.  Also, pretty much all race markers are on the skull, so I’m not really going to get into the rest of the skeleton, even tho there ARE markers on the post-cranial (means exactly what you’d think: not skull.) skeleton.  And like with physics ignoring friction for the sake of illustration, we’re going to ignore cultural changes to the bones ala the slavic squat and pathologies.  We’re gonna start in on the bone pics in a hot second, so time for a cut.  

I went back and forth on the most concise, easy to understand way of doing this and it took me a bit to figure it out, but I think it’s going to be like this: I’m going to tell you what we look for generally, and then give specific examples in each category as we go through race by race.  So, there are a lot of things that can indicate race in a skeleton, but I’m only going to cover the easiest to digest.  Understand though that there’s a lot of smaller indiciations.  Like with sex, these are graded on a scale in relationship to how stereotypical they are of a given feature.  And, unlike with sex, it’s much easier for the opinion and biases of the examiner to alter the results because a lot of these comes down to “what shape is this thing and which shape is it closest to”.  This is, of course, subjective.  The ones I’m going to cover are: 

Eye orbit shape and sharpness. 

Prognathism (the amount that the “muzzle” area of the face sticks out.  Eg., how flat is or isn’t a face?)

Nasal shape

Nasal sill (this is the bit that sticks out at the bottom of your septum, and the “floor” of your nose/top of your maxilla in your nose.

Nasal bridge

Unique racial features.  

First, I’m gonna use some screenies from my ipad to be very specific about the area of the skull I’m talking about here.  These all were taken by me in essential skeleton and edited.  

Eye orbit shape: 

I think this one is one of the more accessible things to understand without a skull in your hand.  If you think of the way that people look IRL, there are physical features that tend to be more common in various populations, and that translates to the skull (and in case you’re wondering: no, white is not treated as the baseline here, but you’ll see.).  Here it’s the shape of the eye socket.  

Eye socket sharpness: 

When you hold a skull in your hand, if you run your finger over the part of the eye socket between the lines (really, the whole edge, but the effect is more pronounced at the bottom and on the lateral edges), it’s sharper on some races than on others.  Again - this is a skeletal marker of physical features that you can see in a living person.  I’m not going to point this out in the example skulls because you won’t be able to see or feel it in the images, but it’s a pretty easy to understand way of adding another racial marker to your tools.  

Prognathism: 

So the easiest way to understand this is twofold.  First, how far does the chin stick out in relationship to the top of the nose? This shows how far the face protruded in life.  Here you can see the angle is 88 (although honestly i’ve never known anyone to measure this - I’m using it to illustrate the point.), and I only know that because the ruler tool I used to draw the lines told me so, lol.  The easiest way to see this is to look at the curve of the profile like I’ve illustrated with the green line.  

Nasal Shape: 

The shape of the nasal opening varies between racial groups.  We look at the height and width from the places I’ve illustrated above.  Sometimes we also look at the shape of the sort of upside down heart area I’ve outlined, because human variation means that you’ve gotta have a couple of ways of doing things.  

The Nasal Sill gets two images cause it has two parts: 

The top one has a landmark called the anterior nasal spine highlighted (honestly I think of it like the pointy nose thing).  The degree to which it sticks out  varies by race.  It is part of the maxilla, and together with the two portions of the maxilla that i’ve circled forms the nasal sill.  A lot of textbooks refer to the nasal sill as having a “height”.  I found this confusing and I found the pictures confusing too, so I’m gonna try a different tactic with you guys.  So first of all, you can feel some of these bones in your face.  Pinch the bottom of your septum where it meets your upper lip and wiggle it.  Feel how there’s a harder bit under the cartilage? That’s the pointy nose thing...er, nasal spine.  Now - and this is a little gross but it’s ok I won’t tell anyone - if you feel down into the bottom of your nasal passages you can feel where this blends into your maxilla.  The cartilage rises up and that forms your nasal passage.  On a dead person, that cartilage isn’t there.  So the hard bone that you feel there is all we have.  Well, the angle at which that slopes deeper into the nasal passage varies by race (because nose shape varies by race).  In some individuals, the anterior edge of that opening is sharp and lifted, forming a sort of dip in the area I’ve circled above.  This is the nasal gutter.  And if you google that, you will be hard-pressed to find anything that explains it with any clarity, especially because you don’t have a skull in your hand.  But it’s one of those things that’s useful to know because it can be really distinct and easy to see the differences in.  

The Nasal Bridge: 

Because the shape of the nose changes the bones all around it, another indicator is what I’ve shown here.  The angle of the curve of that red line, and the length of the blue line.  That’s basically the length of the nasal bones.  You can also tell with the shape of them, and the shape of the place where they connect to the frontal (the suture that connects them to the brow bone.), but I’m not going to cover that.  We have enough nose things.  

I’m going to cover unique features when I get into the examples of different races.  You might be thinking that this is a lot of attention paid to the eyes and nose, and you’d be right, because although there are distinct differences in mouth shape and size they don’t translate to the bone.  And, fun fact, the most accurate indicator of race is actually teeth - but we’ll cover that in the entry on teeth.  But for now, I’m going to stop here and split that into its own post because this one is long and picture-heavy.  So come back in a couple hours after I’ve finished and posted that one.  

[dbhosting]

Which Is The Best PostgreSQL GUI? 2021 Comparison

PostgreSQL graphical user interface (GUI) tools help open source database users to manage, manipulate, and visualize their data. In this post, we discuss the top 6 GUI tools for administering your PostgreSQL hosting deployments. PostgreSQL is the fourth most popular database management system in the world, and heavily used in all sizes of applications from small to large. The traditional method to work with databases is using the command-line interface (CLI) tool, however, this interface presents a number of issues:

It requires a big learning curve to get the best out of the DBMS.

Console display may not be something of your liking, and it only gives very little information at a time.

It is difficult to browse databases and tables, check indexes, and monitor databases through the console.

Many still prefer CLIs over GUIs, but this set is ever so shrinking. I believe anyone who comes into programming after 2010 will tell you GUI tools increase their productivity over a CLI solution.

Why Use a GUI Tool?

Now that we understand the issues users face with the CLI, let’s take a look at the advantages of using a PostgreSQL GUI:

Shortcut keys make it easier to use, and much easier to learn for new users.

Offers great visualization to help you interpret your data.

You can remotely access and navigate another database server.

The window-based interface makes it much easier to manage your PostgreSQL data.

Easier access to files, features, and the operating system.

So, bottom line, GUI tools make PostgreSQL developers’ lives easier.

Top PostgreSQL GUI Tools

Today I will tell you about the 6 best PostgreSQL GUI tools. If you want a quick overview of this article, feel free to check out our infographic at the end of this post. Let’s start with the first and most popular one.

1. pgAdmin

pgAdmin is the de facto GUI tool for PostgreSQL, and the first tool anyone would use for PostgreSQL. It supports all PostgreSQL operations and features while being free and open source. pgAdmin is used by both novice and seasoned DBAs and developers for database administration.

Here are some of the top reasons why PostgreSQL users love pgAdmin:

Create, view and edit on all common PostgreSQL objects.

Offers a graphical query planning tool with color syntax highlighting.

The dashboard lets you monitor server activities such as database locks, connected sessions, and prepared transactions.

Since pgAdmin is a web application, you can deploy it on any server and access it remotely.

pgAdmin UI consists of detachable panels that you can arrange according to your likings.

Provides a procedural language debugger to help you debug your code.

pgAdmin has a portable version which can help you easily move your data between machines.

There are several cons of pgAdmin that users have generally complained about:

The UI is slow and non-intuitive compared to paid GUI tools.

pgAdmin uses too many resources.

pgAdmin can be used on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS. We listed it first as it’s the most used GUI tool for PostgreSQL, and the only native PostgreSQL GUI tool in our list. As it’s dedicated exclusively to PostgreSQL, you can expect it to update with the latest features of each version. pgAdmin can be downloaded from their official website.

pgAdmin Pricing: Free (open source)

2. DBeaver

DBeaver is a major cross-platform GUI tool for PostgreSQL that both developers and database administrators love. DBeaver is not a native GUI tool for PostgreSQL, as it supports all the popular databases like MySQL, MariaDB, Sybase, SQLite, Oracle, SQL Server, DB2, MS Access, Firebird, Teradata, Apache Hive, Phoenix, Presto, and Derby – any database which has a JDBC driver (over 80 databases!).

Here are some of the top DBeaver GUI features for PostgreSQL:

Visual Query builder helps you to construct complex SQL queries without actual knowledge of SQL.

It has one of the best editors – multiple data views are available to support a variety of user needs.

Convenient navigation among data.

In DBeaver, you can generate fake data that looks like real data allowing you to test your systems.

Full-text data search against all chosen tables/views with search results shown as filtered tables/views.

Metadata search among rows in database system tables.

Import and export data with many file formats such as CSV, HTML, XML, JSON, XLS, XLSX.

Provides advanced security for your databases by storing passwords in secured storage protected by a master password.

Automatically generated ER diagrams for a database/schema.

Enterprise Edition provides a special online support system.

One of the cons of DBeaver is it may be slow when dealing with large data sets compared to some expensive GUI tools like Navicat and DataGrip.

You can run DBeaver on Windows, Linux, and macOS, and easily connect DBeaver PostgreSQL with or without SSL. It has a free open-source edition as well an enterprise edition. You can buy the standard license for enterprise edition at $199, or by subscription at $19/month. The free version is good enough for most companies, as many of the DBeaver users will tell you the free edition is better than pgAdmin.

DBeaver Pricing

: Free community, $199 standard license

3. OmniDB

The next PostgreSQL GUI we’re going to review is OmniDB. OmniDB lets you add, edit, and manage data and all other necessary features in a unified workspace. Although OmniDB supports other database systems like MySQL, Oracle, and MariaDB, their primary target is PostgreSQL. This open source tool is mainly sponsored by 2ndQuadrant. OmniDB supports all three major platforms, namely Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X.

There are many reasons why you should use OmniDB for your Postgres developments:

You can easily configure it by adding and removing connections, and leverage encrypted connections when remote connections are necessary.

Smart SQL editor helps you to write SQL codes through autocomplete and syntax highlighting features.

Add-on support available for debugging capabilities to PostgreSQL functions and procedures.

You can monitor the dashboard from customizable charts that show real-time information about your database.

Query plan visualization helps you find bottlenecks in your SQL queries.

It allows access from multiple computers with encrypted personal information.

Developers can add and share new features via plugins.

There are a couple of cons with OmniDB:

OmniDB lacks community support in comparison to pgAdmin and DBeaver. So, you might find it difficult to learn this tool, and could feel a bit alone when you face an issue.

It doesn’t have as many features as paid GUI tools like Navicat and DataGrip.

OmniDB users have favorable opinions about it, and you can download OmniDB for PostgreSQL from here.

OmniDB Pricing: Free (open source)

4. DataGrip

DataGrip is a cross-platform integrated development environment (IDE) that supports multiple database environments. The most important thing to note about DataGrip is that it’s developed by JetBrains, one of the leading brands for developing IDEs. If you have ever used PhpStorm, IntelliJ IDEA, PyCharm, WebStorm, you won’t need an introduction on how good JetBrains IDEs are.

There are many exciting features to like in the DataGrip PostgreSQL GUI:

The context-sensitive and schema-aware auto-complete feature suggests more relevant code completions.

It has a beautiful and customizable UI along with an intelligent query console that keeps track of all your activities so you won’t lose your work. Moreover, you can easily add, remove, edit, and clone data rows with its powerful editor.

There are many ways to navigate schema between tables, views, and procedures.

It can immediately detect bugs in your code and suggest the best options to fix them.

It has an advanced refactoring process – when you rename a variable or an object, it can resolve all references automatically.

DataGrip is not just a GUI tool for PostgreSQL, but a full-featured IDE that has features like version control systems.

There are a few cons in DataGrip:

The obvious issue is that it’s not native to PostgreSQL, so it lacks PostgreSQL-specific features. For example, it is not easy to debug errors as not all are able to be shown.

Not only DataGrip, but most JetBrains IDEs have a big learning curve making it a bit overwhelming for beginner developers.

It consumes a lot of resources, like RAM, from your system.

DataGrip supports a tremendous list of database management systems, including SQL Server, MySQL, Oracle, SQLite, Azure Database, DB2, H2, MariaDB, Cassandra, HyperSQL, Apache Derby, and many more.

DataGrip supports all three major operating systems, Windows, Linux, and Mac OS. One of the downsides is that JetBrains products are comparatively costly. DataGrip has two different prices for organizations and individuals. DataGrip for Organizations will cost you $19.90/month, or $199 for the first year, $159 for the second year, and $119 for the third year onwards. The individual package will cost you $8.90/month, or $89 for the first year. You can test it out during the free 30 day trial period.

DataGrip Pricing

: $8.90/month to $199/year

5. Navicat

Navicat is an easy-to-use graphical tool that targets both beginner and experienced developers. It supports several database systems such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, and MongoDB. One of the special features of Navicat is its collaboration with cloud databases like Amazon Redshift, Amazon RDS, Amazon Aurora, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, Tencent Cloud, Alibaba Cloud, and Huawei Cloud.

Important features of Navicat for Postgres include:

It has a very intuitive and fast UI. You can easily create and edit SQL statements with its visual SQL builder, and the powerful code auto-completion saves you a lot of time and helps you avoid mistakes.

Navicat has a powerful data modeling tool for visualizing database structures, making changes, and designing entire schemas from scratch. You can manipulate almost any database object visually through diagrams.

Navicat can run scheduled jobs and notify you via email when the job is done running.

Navicat is capable of synchronizing different data sources and schemas.

Navicat has an add-on feature (Navicat Cloud) that offers project-based team collaboration.

It establishes secure connections through SSH tunneling and SSL ensuring every connection is secure, stable, and reliable.

You can import and export data to diverse formats like Excel, Access, CSV, and more.

Despite all the good features, there are a few cons that you need to consider before buying Navicat:

The license is locked to a single platform. You need to buy different licenses for PostgreSQL and MySQL. Considering its heavy price, this is a bit difficult for a small company or a freelancer.

It has many features that will take some time for a newbie to get going.

You can use Navicat in Windows, Linux, Mac OS, and iOS environments. The quality of Navicat is endorsed by its world-popular clients, including Apple, Oracle, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Disney, and Adobe. Navicat comes in three editions called enterprise edition, standard edition, and non-commercial edition. Enterprise edition costs you $14.99/month up to $299 for a perpetual license, the standard edition is $9.99/month up to $199 for a perpetual license, and then the non-commercial edition costs $5.99/month up to $119 for its perpetual license. You can get full price details here, and download the Navicat trial version for 14 days from here.

Navicat Pricing

: $5.99/month up to $299/license

6. HeidiSQL

HeidiSQL is a new addition to our best PostgreSQL GUI tools list in 2021. It is a lightweight, free open source GUI that helps you manage tables, logs and users, edit data, views, procedures and scheduled events, and is continuously enhanced by the active group of contributors. HeidiSQL was initially developed for MySQL, and later added support for MS SQL Server, PostgreSQL, SQLite and MariaDB. Invented in 2002 by Ansgar Becker, HeidiSQL aims to be easy to learn and provide the simplest way to connect to a database, fire queries, and see what’s in a database.

Some of the advantages of HeidiSQL for PostgreSQL include:

Connects to multiple servers in one window.

Generates nice SQL-exports, and allows you to export from one server/database directly to another server/database.

Provides a comfortable grid to browse and edit table data, and perform bulk table edits such as move to database, change engine or ollation.

You can write queries with customizable syntax-highlighting and code-completion.

It has an active community helping to support other users and GUI improvements.

Allows you to find specific text in all tables of all databases on a single server, and optimize repair tables in a batch manner.

Provides a dialog for quick grid/data exports to Excel, HTML, JSON, PHP, even LaTeX.

There are a few cons to HeidiSQL:

Does not offer a procedural language debugger to help you debug your code.

Built for Windows, and currently only supports Windows (which is not a con for our Windors readers!)

HeidiSQL does have a lot of bugs, but the author is very attentive and active in addressing issues.

If HeidiSQL is right for you, you can download it here and follow updates on their GitHub page.

HeidiSQL Pricing: Free (open source)

Conclusion

Let’s summarize our top PostgreSQL GUI comparison. Almost everyone starts PostgreSQL with pgAdmin. It has great community support, and there are a lot of resources to help you if you face an issue. Usually, pgAdmin satisfies the needs of many developers to a great extent and thus, most developers do not look for other GUI tools. That’s why pgAdmin remains to be the most popular GUI tool.

If you are looking for an open source solution that has a better UI and visual editor, then DBeaver and OmniDB are great solutions for you. For users looking for a free lightweight GUI that supports multiple database types, HeidiSQL may be right for you. If you are looking for more features than what’s provided by an open source tool, and you’re ready to pay a good price for it, then Navicat and DataGrip are the best GUI products on the market.

Ready for some PostgreSQL automation?

See how you can get your time back with fully managed PostgreSQL hosting. Pricing starts at just $10/month.

While I believe one of these tools should surely support your requirements, there are other popular GUI tools for PostgreSQL that you might like, including Valentina Studio, Adminer, DB visualizer, and SQL workbench. I hope this article will help you decide which GUI tool suits your needs.

Which Is The Best PostgreSQL GUI? 2019 Comparison

Here are the top PostgreSQL GUI tools covered in our previous 2019 post:

pgAdmin

DBeaver

Navicat

DataGrip

OmniDB

Original source: ScaleGrid Blog

[mumbai-local]

The Mirror Shaped Hole in Our Hearts

So this is it, this is where we get off.

There would be no Mumbai Mirror in our palms on weekday mornings, and even though we’d get it on Sundays and it would have a ‘strong digital presence’, we know they’re just ways to say ‘shop’s shutting, go home.’ For something that we spent no more than ten minutes on every day, it’s going to be a tough loss to digest. If you too have a hole in your heart, let me measure it for you.

At arguably one of the peaks of its 15-year life cycle, Mirror, the ‘compact’ daily from the Times Group, would break stories from IPL 2009 in South Africa that would read like nothing filed on the sports pages of The Times of India (TOI). Mirror held this cut-throat exclusivity as a filter for its news every day, across beats, to build a distinct voice for itself. The parent company, Bennett, Coleman and Co. (BCCL), would routinely fly separate correspondents to the same events, whether at Jamaica or Dunedin, and it was also common for the competing correspondents being friends and even sharing hotel rooms while despatching reports. The cumulative impact of TOI and Mumbai Mirror (MM), bundled together for distribution, years after Mirror’s 2005 launch, was a telling blow on competitors, most remarkably Mumbai’s oldest tabloid, Mid-Day.

At arguably another peak, MM had an extensive, snappily designed 16-page edition dedicated to the 2010 FIFA World Cup, put to bed hours after the main edition, which in itself would be of 56 to 64 pages. All this free-flowing newsprint, a continuously expanding market and most importantly, reams of full-page adverts, seems to be an obscene tale from another era.

To think that Mirror, from those highs, faced such a nosedive is ironically like one of the Bombay stories it loved telling. We know the arc well - the rise, the reign, the plot to bring it down, the fall and the end. It’s almost as if the ghosts of all those exclusive stories - of fallen industrialists, flopped film stars and failed society doyens - that Mirror unabashedly broke day on day, plotted this. BCCL attributes this closure to ‘the pandemic, lockdown and unprecedented economic crisis’ but we as Mirror faithfuls, take this as with a sack of salt. 

This seems more of a jettison, and while not much is public as the BCCL empire isn’t a listed company, it’s safe to say the Jains wanted bleeding pets off their green books. There were reports of BCCL facing a consolidated net loss of Rs 451.63 crore in FY 19-20, a bungee jump from the net profits of Rs 484.27 crore in just the previous year.

Net-net, it’s this: Even before the ‘C word’ took the world economy down in 2020, the ‘bad news’ vibe was strong, and it must not have taken Mirror employees, adept at joining the dots while reporting on Bollywood’s love affairs, much time to update their LinkedIn profiles.

Hence, it’s intriguing that the official statement by The Times of India Group on this would mention a thing such as ‘the economy now officially in recession’. I’m no pink paper reader but to think that a behemoth such as the Times, running entities such as Medianet and Brand Equity Treaties and verticals such as Times Internet (which has brands such as Cricbuzz, Gaana and MX Player in its portfolio), is hurting from an ‘import duty adding to newsprint costs’... seems a wee… bit dodgy, much like Mirror’s famed ‘tailpiece’ blind items - you could only speculate the truth. But hey, what I’m sure of is this - that one primetime anchor going by the initials 'RSS’ on the Group’s alleged ‘news’ channel Times NOW, has not even mentioned the word ‘recession’ in a very long time, let alone cover it. 

So to find out why the most profitable media house in the country with annual revenues of $1.5 billion and an average of over 30 per cent returns on investment in previous years did not want to ride out Mirror’s losses, you’d probably require a seasoned Mirror reporter, ideally from its film or crime beats.

But if you have been a reader of The Illustrated Weekly of India, Indrajal Comics or Times Crest, you are again disappointed, not surprised, that the owners have once again pulled the plug, but this time it’s on Bombay’s boldest voice. And no Saamna, you can’t come close.

In just April last year, MM was the only single edition newspaper to be among the top five newspapers in India, quite a feat given its perennial label of being a sibling to the older TOI beast. This younger one, and every younger sibling from Prince Harry to Hardik Pandya will agree, remained feisty, unabashedly self aware and delightfully anti-establishment through its lifetime, owing to the mother who raised it, the venerable Meenal Baghel.

Some credit this to ‘the nature of the beast’ that tabloid culture is - a naked, annoying, indelible aspect of big city life. But we - and by we, I mean those who got to work with Meenal - know that as the handler of this beast, she fed it meatloaf with one hand and held a whip in the other. That’s how the beast grew stronger every day and mauled the mighty.

The beast emboldened us to ask uncomfortable questions of our society and culture, and not in a Republic-reporter-chasing-Rhea’s-car manner, but in a civil, restrained one where Oxford commas and em dashes had pride of place.  

It made photojournalist Sebastian D’Souza jump out his seat next to mine on the night of November 26, 2008, and dart out with his camera when we heard gunshots within metres of us, only to return with this photo.   

It made us have the bravado to pick up the phone and call anyone in the country for an exclusive quote. “I’m XYZ from the Mumbai Mirror,” we’d say, not from The Times of India. 

Mirror broke stories that stirred us in those ten minutes or less. Stories of blacklisted contractors winning road repair contracts using their wives’ names, of unscrupulous builders who’d unflinchingly steal lifetimes’ savings of retired peons, of principals who’d be sacked for exposing sexual harassment scandals, of everything adulterated - milk, water, air.  

Trigger warnings be damned - don’t like, don’t read if you can dare. While TOI and other dailies touched upon the city’s underbelly, Mirror thrived in it. It kept on showing us what’s under that flyover while we glided to work over it - the blood, gore and heartbreak. Wait, it literally did a story this year on cancer patients living under a flyover (and they promptly got help). Of course, there was gloss and fun and those ridiculous non-news about Kareena Kapoor juggling ‘work with motherhood’, but those were just the mixers to the other potent stuff. 

You know what the real loss for Mumbai is, right? That most of these stories just won’t be reported in print. And no corrupt contractor or conniving criminal may lose sleep over a Sunday paper or a publication with ‘strong digital presence’ exposing them.

The other ‘happy to see Mirror go’ could be Bollywood’s A, B and no-listers, who, once upon a time, would get palpitations if they’d see incoming calls from a certain Vickey Lalwani. “Dibakar, give me a story! Give me a sensational story! Mumbai Mirror has circulation of 750,000. Make it exclusive, okay?” 

But I doubt they’d be too happy too - after all, if Mirror’s calling you, you’re hot currency.  

(That said, there is a negligible number of people who are elated to see Mirror go, and they’re fans of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. It so happened that on the morning of the launch of the much anticipated last book of the iconic series, Mirror carried a spoiler on its front page. ‘First things first, Harry Lives.’ Ouch. Younger siblings, after all, can also be incredibly cheeky and embarrassing at times. But we cannot do without them.)

In July 2019, I had asked Meenal, the finest editor I will ever work under, about just how she found the energy to run a tabloid compact like this every single day for so many years. “As long as the good days outnumber the bad, I keep going,” she’d replied. It was a fair way to convey how she and her team (me gratefully being a small part of it from 2005 to 2011) worked. We went out to battle every day and slept well every night, and the lakhs of readers, in return, gave us a high. 

Now, when the dreaded ‘last edition’ is probably being wrapped around a vada-pav somewhere in Mumbai, all of us - Meenal, us former colleagues, the readers, the haters, the Mahinder Watsa fan club, everyone - will have our heads held up for knowing that the Mumbai Mirror era indeed had way more good days… well, even bloody good days, than the bad ones.

At least we won’t be shaking our heads and eye-rolling while looking at the front page of that old flagship broadsheet daily.

[love-fireflysong]

Day 7: Proposal

Fandom: Until Dawn Character(s): Chris Washington, OC (Toshiaki Ishimura) Words: 1318 Rating: General Author’s Notes: Gonna get this right out of the gate, this isn’t a Chris/OC story. Toshi is actually a character I created to be a classmate of Chris’s for a piece that is still in progress and at this time hasn’t been posted. The reason I’ve decided to use him over any other UD character should hopefully be clear as you read. Also, this is not a style I’ve ever really used, just a warning. Also, this will be the least romantic and most serious fic based around a proposal that you will probably ever read.

Edit: came back to edit, changed the occasional line and added a couple more

“...hey, Toshi?”

“Yeah?”

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Is it about CRUD operations or RESTful APIs?”

“Well, no. But—”

“Then no.”

“.......”

“......”

“..................”

“Fine.”

“What?”

“I’ve been hearing your sticky keys go off like seven times now. Your minds clearly not on the assignment. And it’s a little distracting.”

“Oh. Uh, sorry.”

“So, what’s your question?”

“It’s just, well, um, howdidyouknowwhentherighttimetoproposewas?”

“...yeah, I’m gonna need you to repeat that.”

“Um, how did you know when the right time to propose was?”

“I’m sorry, you were were mumbling a little there. Are you asking me when I proposed?”

“Kinda, yeah.”

“...is this about Ashley?”

“No, it’s about the other girl I’ve been madly in love with since middle school. Of course it’s about Ash!” 

“Settle down, Chris, jeez. I just don’t understand why you’re asking me.”

“I mean, you and Kelly have been engaged for like four years now—”

“Five and a half, but who’s counting.”

“—and I don’t really have anyone else that I could ask.”

“What about your parents?”

“I get the idea that they think that me and Ash have always been this, like, inevitability for them. The moment I ask them they’ll probably get super excited and ask if we plan on kids, when the wedding will be, do I have ring or not—”

“Do you have a ring?”

“Well, no, not yet. But I feel like they’re gonna be overly supportive. You feel me?”

“That’s probably a fair point. Haven’t met any of your family, but even I could tell from the first time you introduced Ash to us that you two were completely head over heels for each other. I can barely imagine what it must have been like watching you two as kids with that same besotted look in your eyes.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“Well, what about that one friend of yours? Josh, I think?”

“He would definitely just tease me. I can already hear him telling me to ‘just go in for the kill!’ and that I’m just chickening out. That it took me nearly ten years just to ask her out, and that it’ll probably take another ten years to ask her to marry me.”

“Lisa? Ryan?”

“Lisa isn’t really the best for things like romance. I mean, she’d support me and listen, but she can’t offer a whole lot in the way of advice. And no offense to Ryan, but he’s had like seven different boyfriends in the past couple of years. And he’s been on-and-off with Jesús for as long as we’ve known him. I get the feeling he’s probably not the best person to ask about serious, long-lasting relationships. So, that left you.”

“Honestly, I’m not the right person to ask either. Kelly proposed to me.”

“No way! Really?”

“Oh yeah, I had just put Juni to bed, and went to the kitchen in order to put her sippy cup back in the fridge. And when I turned around, Kelly was right there kneeling on the kitchen floor with a ring in their hand. Even after they asked, it still took my brain like a minute to connect the dots.”

“Huh.”

“Yeah, one of the best nights of my life. Probably only second to holding Juni in my arms for the first time after she was born. Gotta be honest though, I didn’t realize that you two were that serious.”

“I mean,Ash is the only person I’ve ever really wanted to marry. Has been since before we even got together.”

“And does she know this?”

“What do you mean?”

“Does she know that you want to marry her?”

“I think so?”

“I’m going to need a more concrete answer than that, Chris. It’s a yes or no question. And you need to say it as a statement of fact. You’ve either told her to her face that you want to get married, or you haven’t.”

“Um, yeah. She knows. We’ve talked about it once or twice, mostly as what our plans for the future are. I mean, we’ve never fully discussed it but it’s been pretty implied that we both want a couple of kids in a few more years, once I have a stable job and income and she’s getting money from her books.”

“Alright, that’s a start. Do you know if you’re planning to have a long or short engagement?”

“...that’s a thing we have to worry about?”

“Okay, I’m gonna level with you, Chris. It’s probably a good thing that you came to me first, cause you’re not ready at all to propose.”

“Wait, what? I don’t—”

“Let me finish. Cause if you do propose, if would almost definitely end badly for the both of you. Not right away necessarily, but later down the line. You need to understand something very important here. A proposal is a surprise, an engagement never should be. With an engagement, you need talk things out thoroughly, how long you plan to be engaged, your concrete plans for the future. It’s a process, Chris. And a long one.”

“Oh.”

“I’ll let you in on a secret. I love Kelly with all my heart and soul, but we had only been together barely a year before they got pregnant with Juni. And I was so close to proposing when I found out, and again when she was born. But I didn’t because neither of us were ready for that. I didn’t want them to think that I was only doing so out of obligation, which I would have been, and there was always the chance that I would grow to resent them for taking away my choice of being with someone else. Kelly didn’t propose until we spent months talking about it. Until we agreed that though we loved each other very much, we weren’t ready to get married until I finish getting my computer degree and they finished their oversea’s humanitarian program in Africa. And even then, they didn’t ask propose until Juni was nearly two years old, and we had been together for three.

“And it’s important to talk about how long you want to be engaged for. A lot of shorter engagements end because they can’t handle the stress of planning for a wedding, getting banking accounts set up, changing their tax info, if maybe they should go in for that prenup after all, that maybe they’re moving too fast And just as many longer ones die because both parties start to feel that they other doesn’t want it to happen anymore, that they’re starting to stagnate, that they were moving too slow.

“It’s not that I think you’re not serious about Ashley, or that she’s not serious about you. Because I don’t think that. At all! Any one with half a brain cell can see that you two are madly in love with each other. It’s almost disgusting to be honest. Oh don’t give me that look, you know I’m right. But you two need to talk about this in more depth, more than just future what-ifs. As crass as it is to say, an engagement is a transaction where you both decide if you’re willing to pay what it takes to stay together for the long-run.”

“I-I guess that makes sense.”

“It doesn’t have to be tonight, Chris, or even in this week. Hell, it doesn’t even have to be this month. But you and Ashley need to sit down and talk about it. And it’s gonna take more than one conversation, it’s gonna take a lot of them, and hours upon hours of talking. Do you understand?”

“Yeah. I do. I really, really do love her, I swear.”

“I know that.”

“And I’m serious about wanting to marry her. I can’t think of a single person I would rather spend my life with.”

“That’s good. Now if that’s everything, can we get back to this assignment? These web APIs aren’t gonna manage themselves.”   

[phantoms-lair]

Scooby and the Gang having quirks? That would be cool. Like, four superpowered kids and their probably also superpowered dog are amateur detectives instead of heroes. But they frequently run into other pro heroes, (like Scooby Doo team up) and have to help in anyway they can without breaking any quirk related laws. (Which they probably already do on a daily basis but they dont want to do that around pros, could get arrested.)

The signs had been there for quite a while, but none of them had picked up on them. At the time it seemed like another internet hoax. A baby that glowed in Japan. A woman who could create ice in Italy. But in the age of video editing, no one took them too seriously.

It didn’t become real for the gang until about a year and a half after the glowing baby started the craze of people declaring they had super powers. They had been on a road trip and Fred had been repairing a tire when his lug wrench snapped.

“Oh no,” he moaned. A spare tire he had, a spare wrench no so much. “I think we need to call the auto service."

“Like, let me.” Shaggy made a gesture like he was pulling something from thin air and grasped an identical wrench from the air.

“How did you do that?” Fred asked, impressed. “You’re wearing short sleeves, so you couldn’t have been hiding it up them.”Shaggy shrugged. “Like dunno, man. I want something, I reach for it, and it’s there.”

“Very funny, Shaggy.” Velma plucked the wrench from his hand. “Carbon steel, just like Fred’s old one.”

“You can tell, just by looking?” Fred asked, even more impressed.

“Certainly. It’s not that hard, you just focus on something and you can tell, you know?”

“No.” came the response from all of them.

“Really?” Velma asked, surprised. “It’s really not that hard.”

“It’s not that it’s ‘not that hard’, Velma. It’s flat out impossible.” Daphne explained, leaning out the Mystery Machine’s window.

“No, it’s not. I do it all the time.” Velma argued back.

“Hey, do you think this could be related to that superhero thing?” Fred asked, a note of excitement in his voice. “With people randomly developing super powers?”

“Fred, that’s not a real thing.” Velma rolled her eyes.

“Well, why don’t you test out whether Shaggy’s ‘power’ works while Fred fixes the wheel.” Daphne offered. 

“I’m telling you super powers don’t exist.” 

~

“I can’t believe this exists.” Velma said with tonelessly as she looked at the building in front of her

“Like me either.” Shaggy shuddered. “Like in comic books the government creating a registration list for supers always precedes real bad stuff.”

“At least you guys have it easy.” Fred pointed out “Tell them your power, demonstrate, then you get your registration card. Daph and I have to go through a whole battery to figure out if we even have a power.”

“I guess we meet up back here when we’re done.” Daphne gave them all a hug. “Good luck everyone.”

~

“I have a power!” Daphne ran out, waving a tiny plastic card. “You know how I haven’t been falling into trap doors as much anymore? I have some kind of radar and I’ve been subconsciously sensing the right way to go.”

“That’s great,” Velma said with as much enthusiasm as she could muster for the laws of physics breaking further.

Daphne knew how she felt, though, and didn’t take offense. “Shaggy’s not out yet? I figured he’d be fast, like you.”

“He was. But someone heard Scooby talking and turns out that’s not normal. So now they’re investigating animals developing powers.” 

“What even is normal?” Daphne wondered out loud.

“Not the same as it was five years ago,” Velma agreed sadly.

It was about half an hour later before Fred came out. “Hey, where’re the guys?”“Sweet Freedom!” Shaggy and Scooby all but bounded out of the building. 

“That took a while. They really weren’t ready for a dog with powers, were they?” Daphne smiled.

“Nah, they took that pretty well. Even had a metal working guy who could make a dog tag for him.”

Scooby moved his tag aside to reveal a new one under it, identifying him as a Class C Shapeshifter.

“Class C?” Velma inquired.

“Minor body changes, can’t change color.” Shaggy shrugged. “What kept us so long was the lectures.” he groaned.

“Lectures? What lectures?” Daphne looked to Velma and Fred to see if they had any idea what Shaggy was talking about.“‘Creating cash is still counterfeiting’, ‘Don’t make enough gold to crash the economy’. And like, it was heavily hinted I should go easy on making jewels and stuff.”

“I guess your power is kind of easy to abuse.” Fred admitted.

Daphne put a hand on Shaggy’s shoulder. “Diamond’s values are artificially inflated so make as many as you want.”

“Like, I’d rather just go get a hamburger or twelve.”

“At least something still makes sense.” Velma muttered.

“This is really bugging you, isn’t it?” Fred asked.

“Of course it is! Superpowers make no sense. Everyone in the world getting random ones? Even less sense. This is not something science can explain.”

“Yet” Fred added. “This isn’t something Science can explain yet. They’ll figure it out. Who knows, maybe you’ll be at the forefront of the discovery.”

Velma gave a weak smile. “You always know what to say, Jones. Come one, let’s get Shaggy his burgers before he wastes away to nothing.”

Shaggy and Scooby were in the back of the Mystery Machine before anyone could say anything else.

The others laughed and headed to the van. Fred was secretly relieved that everything had distracted his friends from the small plastic card in his wallet. For the most part it was the same as theirs, Photo, State ID Number, Date of birth. The only difference was next to Power: was the word ‘None’.

~

“I suppose it would become inevitable that the bad guys started using their powers,” Daphne sighed as the illusionist was packed into the back of the police car. 

“But we solved it anyway.” Velma was grinning. “We just needed to expand on what we previously considered was possible.” 

“And, like, we even did it before the heroes showed up.” Shaggy grinned. Probably the most predictable thing in all this were the real life superheroes starting to show up. New laws were being shaped, but right now it was a little bit of chaos. Still, they lived in a world with superheroes and Shaggy couldn’t help but think that was cool.

Two officers approached them. “Looks like everything all wrapped up. We just need to straighten up something on you statements.” The younger one said kindly.

“On your statements you were asked to write down your powers, but one of you didn’t see the need to comply.” The older glared at Fred who shrunk away.

“It’s not that I didn’t want to, I just-”

“Tell me what your power is, now.” 

Fred felt his mind haze over. “I don’t have one. I’m just normal.”

The cop raised his eyebrow in disbelief. “Really? That must feel pretty terrible.”

“It does. I feel like dead weight weighing everyone down.”

“For the love of God, Frank, knock it off.” The younger cop shook his partner and the cloud lifted from Fred’s mind. 

He snapped back into reality and realized the gang had closed ranks around him. Velma and Daphne were on either side, Shaggy behind him with a hand on his shoulder, and Scooby in front of him, hackles raised.  Then he remembered what the cop had made him say and felt shame start to well up inside him. Sure he had been jealous, but it was okay as long as he never voiced those feelings. Only now someone had taken control of his tongue and forced the words out.

“We should be fine, why don’t you kids head on home.” The younger cop waved them off and pulled his partner away.

“You know none of us think you’re dead weight, don’t you Fred?” Daphne asked softly.

“I know. It’s just in my head.”  Fred had never felt so small in his life. “Can we go home? Please?”

~

The Gang never brought the incident up again. They’d never been specially showy with their powers (or quirks as they were coming to be known), mostly out of deference to Velma’s discomfort. Now it was complete radio silence. Fred was grateful on one level that his friends were that considerate over something so amazing, but still wished Officer Frank had never made him say anything. He couldn’t help resenting the man, and had taken to letting Velma do most of the talking to law enforcement. He felt a little cowardly over it, but figured with Scooby and Shaggy scared of everything under the sun he was allowed this.

They had just figured out the mystery of the ‘Banshee’ haunting the old shack and were at Fred’s favorite part - setting the trap.

“Okay, I think all we need is about a foot more twine and I think this trap is set.” Fred looked at his handiwork proudly.

“Like, bad news, Fred. We’re out of twine.” Shaggy said sadly.

“What do you mean out of twine?” Fred asked. It didn’t make sense. Sure Shaggy couldn’t conjure something like an engine, but twine was barely any effort.

“I brought up everything in the Mystery Machine. There’s none left, man.” Shaggy shrugged.

“But can’t you just make more?”

“Oh. I, like, don’t do that anymore.” Shaggy hunched his shoulders a bit.

“What do you mean you don’t do that anymore? That’s your quirk. It’s- wait.” He thought none of them were talking about their powers. What if-? “Did you guys stop using your powers, because of me?”

The silence that met him told him all he needed to know. “Okay, no. We are not doing this.”

“Fred, if our having quirks make you feel bad, then we don’t need them. You’re way more important to us than that.” Daphne insisted.

“Look. Yes, I’m upset that I don’t have a power. I’ll even go so far as to say I’m jealous that you guys do. But at no point did I want you guys to feel like you had to give up your powers. I mean, there’s plenty else to be jealous of. Velma, you’re so brilliant, sometimes I feel like I can barely add two and two together. It’s hard not to feel plain when Daphne lights up a room with her amazing personality and ability to coordinate an outfit to look as amazing on the outside as she is on the inside. And it would definitely be nice to be able to eat twice my body weight and never worry about gaining a pound like Shag and Scooby do.”

“But I would never want Velma to dumb herself down, Daphne to make herself dull, or Shaggy and Scooby to not eat as much. Because those are quirks of being you, and your powers are a part of that now. You’re all so amazing, and now you’re even more amazing, and I don’t want to take any of that away from you. I know my insecurities are all in my head, but if you guys have to give up parts of yourself for me? Then I really am weighing you down and I refuse to let that happen. Ever.”

Before he knew what was happening, Fred found himself in the middle of a group hug.

“Oh hey, What do you know? Looks like we had more twine after all.” Shaggy slipped the couple of feet of twine he had conjured into Fred’s hand.

“Great.” Fred grinned. “Let’s go catch us a banshee.”

~

“They’re approaching fast. Shaggy and Scooby are about ten yards away. The Banshee is a yard behind them.” Daphne had her eyes shut as she concentrated on the image her radar was sending her.

“Let us know when they’re clear.” Fred held one rope and Velma the other. With Daphne’s quirk, it was easy to avoid accidentally capturing the boys in their traps.

“Now!”

As Shaggy and Scooby sailed past, Fred and Velma pulled and the Banshee was launched off the floor and into a net, which twisted around before being deposited in a hay baler, leaving the banshee trapped and unable to move.

“Call it in, guys. We got her.”

Soon enough the police arrived, along with a token force from the Hero’s Union.

“As you can see, we’ve caught the so-called Banshee terrorizing the area. Or should I say, Lanie Mayfair.” Velma pulled the mask off the so-called banshee. “She claimed she’d never gone near Baker’s Shack for fear of the banshee, but the soil on her shoes was the exact composition of the mud outside the shack. The feeling of dread and fear people reported were actually a low level psychic quirk that inspired those feelings.” That’s why they had to call in the Hero’s Union. Any crime with quirks used had to go through them. “The Banshee’s wail was prerecorded, and played over a series of speakers, including one hidden in the Banshee’s choker.” 

“But we checked the records when the reports first came in. No one currently in the area has a quirk like that.” One of the Hero’s Union reps pointed out.

“Because she kept it a secret. I bet if you looked up Lanie’s records her power would be listed as ‘None’. Lanie’s an experienced conwoman. She knew how useful her quirk would be and pretended not to have one during registration. A quirk like that would be easy to overlook since it wouldn’t produce a visible or physical effect.”

“Very good Velma. But you’re wrong on one count.” Lanie grinned nastily. “It’s not a minor psychic quirk.” That was all the warning they got before a wave of pure despair shot out of her.

Fred felt his knees buckling under him. All those insecurities Frank had brought up, his lower self worth, jealousy, and guilt over being jealous, flooded to the surface once more. But he shoved it down. He had laid those demons to rest. He looked up and noticed everyone else wasn’t faring so well, not even the police or heroes. Most looked full of despair, with some weeping openly. Fred thought Shaggy was doing a little better, only to realize that while he didn’t look miserable, he didn’t look anything, as if there was no life in him.

 “See how pathetic you are?” Lanie asked haughtily. “How completely wretched and worthless your life is?”

“Don’t you dare say that about any of them!” Fred snarled, rising to his feet. “My friends are the most amazing people on the planet! They’ve - we’ve put away dozens of low end criminals like you away. I mean, look at you. We’ve got you trapped and your quirk certainly isn’t going to help you escape. Seems we’re doing better than you.”Lanie’s jaw had dropped and the others were starting to rouse from whatever stupor they had been put into.

“We need to get to Fred.” Velma, who had been nearest to Lanie, forced herself up and pushed herself off the baler and towards him. On the way she grabbed Daphne and pulled her along. Shaggy had snapped out of his unresponsive state and he and Scooby were closing ranks too. Fred didn’t think he need the protection, she was still stuck in the bale, after all, but he appreciated having his friends by his side.

“You’re finished Lanie, and your two-bit quirk isn’t going to save you,” Daphne snapped, anger clear in her voice.

“Lanie...Mayfair.” One of the fallen heroes was back on his feet, though shaky. He headed towards the gang. “This is your only warning. Release your quirk.”

“No! How are you doing this?! All of you should be lost to despair! How can you even move!?”

The hero lifted his hand and there was a small zap before Lanie started twitching and the feeling of despair vanished completely. “Alchemist, we’re going to need to keep this one sedated.”

“Right.” The other hero touched Lanie gently. “That should keep her out for the next few hours.” She turned to Fred. “Thank you for your assistance. Without your help, this would have been a mess.”

“I just snapped out of it first.” Fred shrugged. “I was just lucky.”

“Fred, you didn’t just snap out of it first, you drove it back.” Velma corrected. “That’s why I wanted to get everyone near you, you were canceling out the effect.”

“How? I mean I don’t have powers, they ran a bunch of tests to make sure I didn’t have powers. How could I cancel out the effect?”

“We do need a better way to test for Psychic quirks,” Alchemist commented while the police officer worked on getting Lanie out of the bale. “If that’s two missed right here.”

“Two? But I-”

“Fred, you do have a power, it’s just the opposite of that witch’s.” Daphne explained. “I could feel it battling hers, driving away the darkness it was putting in my mind. The closer I got to you, the stronger I felt.”

“Like, no wonder we missed it.” Shaggy laughed. “Feeling better when you’re around just sounds like a side effect of being around you.”

“I...have a power?” Fred couldn’t keep the raw hope out of his voice.

“You do indeed.” Taser clapped his hand on his shoulder. “I think it’s obvious that, unlike Mayfair, you took the tests in good faith. But I think you need to get your registration straightened out as soon as possible.”

“Oh, yes. Yes, Sir!”

~

“I can’t believe this is real.” Fred stared down at the card in his hands. It was identical to the one he’d been carrying around for months, only instead of the word ‘None’ next to Power: it said ‘Morale Boost’.

It wasn’t a flashy or powerful quirk. Certainly not something a hero in a comic book would have. But it was his quirk. Something he had that could help his friends. And he wouldn’t trade it for any other power in the world.

[lizzybeth1986]

Quick Thoughts on The Royal Heir (Finally!), Book 1 Chapter 12

• Sorry for the delay, guys! I had my first spoken word performance in years this week, and since I was pretty rusty from lack of practice I was spending most of my time preparing for that. Which kind of meant I couldn't concentrate much on getting this QT done the way I usually do.

(BUT IT WENT VERY WELL!! :D :D)

• If you don't want these posts clogging your dash, here are the tags to blacklist: #trh quick thoughts, #trh qts, #trh qt reblogs, #long post.

• Honestly the highlight of this chapter for me is finding out that Kiara calls Madeleine an angry poodle behind her back. I bet it was supposed to mean something else and Penelope simply edited it out lol.

• And also Hana's look this chapter, coz Hana always looks so pretty XD

• Soooo like we have one more chapter in Texas left? That's...quite the gap away from the country - from Chapter 5 to Chapter 13, with us returning to Cordonia (by the looks of the summary) by Chapter 14. That's 8 chapters in the States + 1 in Auvernal (9 total): that's roughly 42-47% of our total book. That's how long the narrative took to wrap things up in Walker Ranch, a huge chunk of which added nothing much of value whatsoever to the story.

• In terms of timeline, we've spent over a week preparing for Bertrand and Savannah's wedding, following a possible month-long honeymoon plus barely two days in Valtoria. That's one looooong holiday. And...newsflash...it's not only "King Liam" who's being "irresponsible" (esp if you consider that in a playthrough where you're honeymooning with another LI, he isn't the one spending a whole month frolicking on the beach then running off to Texas shortly after), it's all your favourite LIs as well.

• Screenshots:

Hana: The Universal 77 YouTube channel

Maxwell: @itsbrindleybinch and rash.rec YouTube channel.

Drake: The HIMEME YouTube channel and BizzysChoices YouTube channel

• Sooo the chapter begins where we left off, with Savannah worried about where Bertrand has gone, and the group doing some sort of team huddle like they're discussing strategy for a football game or something.

• Maxwell for some reason thinks the chickens may have taken him hostage. This is not Angry Birds, Maxwell 🤭

Savannah mentions that his tux and wallet are still at home, and therein lies the clue that he isn't abandoning her. He's not taken any money with him.

• Leona gives in her crusty, unwanted input, which Bianca to her credit shuts down. I mean, if Bertrand really needed to turn tail and run, he would have done it ages ago. Like as soon as Drake the Freeloader insisted Bertrand cluck like a chicken last book, just to win the hand of his equally freeloading sister. He could have just muttered "this entire clan is bonkers, me outie" right then. And he'd be right.

• I need Bertrand to ask THE ENTIRE WALKER FAMILY to cluck like chickens or something similar in public once this whole ordeal is over coz istg they deserve just as much humiliation for what they've put them through. That includes Savannah and Drake. Bertrand would be appalled by the idea but yknow, a girl can dream.

• The MC offers to go to the store to find him, and sees Bertrand arguing with the clerk (and threatening curses on him and his progeny). She gets to sock him over the head if she wants...or just scare him. After a couple seconds of arguing coz Bertrand went on this impossible mission just before his wedding, he admits to wanting to get Savannah the Walker saddle.

• The owner of the store doesn't want to give the saddle away because he wants to use it to hold hats. If there is one thing Esther DuPont can appreciate, it's a man who values his hats.

• You have three options to convince Cassidy, the owner: you either plead with him and remind him of the power of friendship, or you tell him the truth about the saddle being Bertrand's fiancée's family heirloom (and because Cassidy is a big softie really, he is moved by both these options).

• The third option is the messiest and the best because you grab the saddle and run while poor Cassidy is just standing there like "what the fuck just happened here":

• Just before the MC and Bertrand got to their respective rooms to change, she gets to ask him why it was so important now for him to get the saddle - and his reasoning involves not only Savannah but Bianca, who Bertrand reveals "has never had a favourable opinion" of him. Which for me technically means buildup for a flashback scene for her before we leave, so the story can highlight why she secretly shares Leona's mistrust of the Crown. There have already been a couple instances where Bianca has hinted at her disappointment, and I'd be kiiinda surprised if it doesn't come up next chapter.

• Bertrand suddenly starts "realizing the importance of parents" with Bartie Sr's return? Really?? How and why? Wasn't he extremely conflicted about Bartie Sr earlier? You'd think they'd expand on that but no.

• Since the MC and Hana are from the bride's side (for no reason) they wear these lovely pink outfits (of course, if the MC decides against that, she can always choose Pepto Bismol!). The men wear blue and white with pink flowers at the lapel, and interestingly Maxwell wears a bowtie rather than the tie Liam and Drake wear (I'm guessing so he could match with Bertrand).

• As with most things on Hana's playthrough, Maxwell takes her place for scenes where an LI is to assist the MC (either in picking an outfit or in choosing for something like the nursery). Here, we meet Maxwell first, then see Hana's outfit afterwards.

• ...Madeleine believing she's "an actual professional", and in fact better than Jess, and Blake Yasuda.

If I had to make a list of how poor a professional you are, it would be - oh wait. I already have a comprehensive list of that. It's the entirety of Book 3.

• Madeleine is not our press secretary anymore (thank goodness) but she still hasn't lost her need to control and criticize and screech at people. Unfortunately, by virtue of being last in the room just when the MC is hit by a wave of nausea, Madeleine ends up sharing the secret of our possible pregnancy with us (eww).

• Because the MC is impatient as hell, Madeleine shoves the test into a desk drawer and waits for the timer to go off, after which we find...two tests (how did she not see this when she was opening the desk). Which one is ours? (the positive one, but for plot purposes the MC is kept not knowing about this).

• I'm not appreciating Madeleine carrying around pregnancy tests. That'll always be a weird thing to do.

• Why the heck was Savannah keeping her negative test in a desk in someone else's room? Why not just throw it away? Like I understand not wanting Bertrand to know but this is just next-level bizarre. What's it supposed to be: "a keepsake of that time when I was not pregnant"?

• So now the plan is to figure out who took the other test and confirm any results from them. The rest of the bridal party (Penelope, Olivia and Kiara) are downstairs making small talk and discussing wedding fashion/traditions. You get references to Lythikos weddings ("all knives and crossbows", which is actually Kiara's disbelieving statement that Olivia confirms).

• Time for the wedding! And the MC needs to ask a woman from the court about this test, and quick.

• You'd think she'd zero in first on a girl who was already in a relationship but nope. Kiara it is. Even after she's told us enough times that she isn't dating nor does she want to. Asking KIARA this question first is a clear sign of lack of common sense.

@ Option 2: The writers seem to forget that this was a woman who didn't mind juggling both work and finding a suitor. Like...sure, she has a position in the palace now and her priorities may have changed but let's not forget that it's just as easy to give a girl like Kiki a phenomenal love interest in the time they took to lovingly plan a "reward" for Penelope 🙄 Just say you're too lazy to even try giving Kiara nice things that she more than deserves and go, PB.

• Savannah finally enters the venue, riding her horse Thunder and wearing a version of the RoE MC's free wedding dress that has wider straps. Bianca notices the saddle, surprised, and Savannah (in the only sequence where she makes 1/4th of an effort to support her partner in front of her shitty family) informs her that it was Bertrand who got it from the store for her. Bianca's way of repaying him for doing this is tears in the eyes and a whispered "thank you".

• You know that isn't enough, Bianca. You and your daughter stood by while your sister treated this guy like shit. You allowed him to suffer when he was the bridegroom in this entire wedding shindig, and let's not forget his money was what was supporting her in Paris when she didn't even keep in touch with anyone - including you. Yet you and your sister let your bias - fueled by other assholes - make it okay to treat him like this?

• Also, Cassidy's shop seems to be nearby and I'm pretty sure Bianca and Leona know him at least a little better than Bertrand or the MC do, if they sold a precious family heirloom to him. Why weren't they going and asking him, even after realizing how important the saddle was to Savannah? Surely they'd understand that he was a softie at heart, or at least they could have made an effort. Sure, pride could be a factor but this was a matter of Bianca's daughter's happiness...I guess actually doing something about it other than mope and brood isn't much of a Walker trait.

• Bartie Sr is yapping loudly without caring how he's disrupting the ceremony by doing so, and the MC needs to make a decision to keep him quiet. She can choose between Madeleine and Penelope:

- Madeleine: is clearly the option PB wants you to pick because they wrote her bit with Bartie quite well. Bartie Sr recognizes Madeleine as "Godfrey's little girl" and it's nice to see her distance herself from her father and reaffirm her authority beyond him. She also shuts the man down so fast he must have gotten whiplash.

- Penelope: is there. And thinks we're playing dumb charades in the middle of a wedding. Her poodles are smarter and eventually get the job done, because if you want something done, Penelope is the last person you should be asking.

• I've also learned from this sequence (and chapter) that the Choices fandom only needs the slightest, flimsiest excuse to like Madeleine. Like that's it. Kiara will be hated by some until the end of all time and have to go through hell to get even a tiny smidgen of respect, even. Forget about getting memes about how great Kiara is and how narrow-minded the people who dislike her are. Nah only the white woman gets that.

• Anyway, Bartie Sr shuts up, and the wedding is underway. Except Chuck decides now is a good time to object.

• It's cliché, it's stupid, it's totally what you'd expect at Savannah's wedding, but at least you get the option to say "fight! fight! fight!" with Olivia gleefully joining you and Liam going all "ffs ladies I'm trying to officiate here" 😂 For that alone this sequence is worth it.

• The option for Bertrand to "rise above Chuck with your eloquence" is nice, because Bertrand then makes it clear that the decision to be with him or not rests with Savannah, and Chuck disrespecting Savannah's wishes and choices is the real issue here. You get a minimal version of the same message with the more aggressive option, but the message is essentially "what Savannah wants is more important". I only wish that message went both ways coz for the most part I just never see the same amount of effort or consideration from her side.

• 🤦🏽‍♀ Jesus Pop-Tarts Eating Christ, Bertrand. YOU'RE NOT PAYING ME WELL ENOUGH FOR ME TO BE YOUR HUMAN-SIZED BACKUP THESAURUS.

• You have one eloquent choice, one cute one. But my favourite one is the one that focuses on Esther rather than the actual couple 🤣

- I miss hearing my duchy by name, okay? It's been said a couple of times in this book but still.

- "Daniel Henney" 😁😁😁😁😁

- This is revenge for that time when Savannah and Bertrand would have taken over the hype of my reception party for themselves except that I didn't pay the diamonds.

- I still don't understand why Esther is the reason this pair works when she hasn't done shit but okay, we'll roll with that. As long as this is the last time I hear about this version of events from either of them.

- Also pls now that they're married, just...let them stew in their awkward silences together for the rest of their lives. I don't want to be involved anymore. It's exhausting.

• Savannah's vows are really more about how she felt Bertrand was out of her league and how he welcomed her anyway etc etc. Hana and Maxwell pass the rings for Savannah and Bertrand respectively. Cue cute Bro-mont moment between Bertrand and Maxwell.

• Marriage solemized (😬). Now it's time to - as Maxwell puts it - PARTAAAY.

• This is not the first time we're seeing someone use Penelope's nickname (in the "she's not my bestie" option in Portavira, Emmeline calls her "Pen"). But it is the first time someone has used it by default in the books. Guess it's kind of a mark of the progress of the relationship, that Zeke has already begun calling her that.

• It's time for the bouquet toss, and as per Madeleine's suggestions also time to find out if this test belongs to either Penelope or Olivia. You have four options altogether:

- Penelope: grabs the bouquet, is happy, everyone believes this means she's next in line, and Madeleine is not very subtle about hinting that she may be pregnant so Penelope laughs at her and says no wonder Kiara calls her "an angry poodle" (somehow I think "poodle" wasn't the term Kiara wanted to be using there 😅...)

- Olivia: Doesn't catch, doesn't care, calls "Maddy" out on being nosy.

- MC: Really likes flowers.

- If the timer runs out before you choose someone, Kiara catches it. She also really likes flowers.

• I'm pretty sure a lot of this sequence is geared towards highlighting where in her relationship with Zeke Penelope is right now, since she is the only one who actually doesn't mind these "you're next" hints all that much. Next wedding for Book 2 must be hers (😑)

• I'm meh about the possibility, but at least maybe (if they're hosting anything in Castelserraillian) I'll get to see more of Kiara's estate and Kiara's parents - with some actual attention given to Kiara this time.

• You get to take your spouse aside and briefly talk to them, either telling them that you've "got it covered", tell them a little of what you're doing without disclosing the possibility of your pregnancy, or tell them it's complicated and can't really be said that quickly. I think the last two options have variations but idk about the first one.

I missed Maxwell's screenshot of the response to "invasive personal questions" thing coz I'm finishing this QT in a rush and wound up not asking anyone (sorry!), but if any of my wonderful Maxwell stan readers are still reading this I'd love to know!!

• I like that the MC can point out how invasive she's being, going around and quizzing people about the status of their uterus after complaining about everyone else doing the same thing. It's nice that you can see her understand that, otherwise it's always been "one rule for me and another for the rest of the world".

• Bartie Sr makes a toast that's all about him and his house and how proud he is of his son, and hardly about the couple. Istg he's worse than the toddler named after him.

• Speaking of Bartie Jr, he gets so excited about the cake he drives straight in, like that dude from Cold November Rain:

(I'm calling it, this is what Bartie Jr might possibly do as an adult, in the series that revolves around our kids all grown up, if there is one. "Kayyyyke!" He is a Beaumont, after all)

• Poor Blake is panicking, Bertrand is sad coz he wanted the perfect wedding cake for Savannah, Savannah is happy coz the writers are desperate to show us she isn't as whiny a person as she actually is.

• LMAO @ the LIs' responses to the MC wanting to scrape cake off a toddler.

• So Madeleine pulls the MC aside to tell her she's not pregnant because she has overheard that Savannah was taking one this morning. How...did she make that leap in logic?

• Overhearing Savannah say she took a pregnancy test only proves that one of the tests belonged to her. NOT that it would be automatically the positive one. Madeleine may be an established courtier but she lacks decent deduction skills and basic common sense. I should have called Olivia for this job gah. It's already canon that her deduction skills are better than Bastien and Drake's combined!

• We go back to our LI, and Bertrand and Savannah check in on us. Jess and Blake step in to alert us to another problem: the DJ's speakers has gone bust, and that means a Beaumont Bash with no dancing.

• Okay so...who are the ones actually staying on this semi-broke ranch, have been around longer, and would know the local bands in the area? Leona and Bianca. Who is the one finally making the effort of calling them to the party? US.

Who was the person who was holding Bartie and didn't manage to distract him before he destroyed an entire wedding cake? Bianca. Sure one cannot always tell with a toddler, but the least you do when that happens is apologize since you were the one in charge, rather than simply standing there and saying "oh dear".

Who sold the saddle to Cassidy? Leona and Bianca. Who probably has had more experience talking to people in that shop? Leona and Bianca. Who made the effort to actually get back that saddle? Bertrand.

Even the wedding planners that they got were because Liam recommended them!

Like I see them putting such little genuine effort into all this, and the nobles they judged so much are ironically the ones who don't shirk away from helping them out even though they're not as well-equipped...yet Leona still thinks she has the right to whine about everything and Bianca is doing nothing much besides letting her sister treat everyone else like trash.

• Anyway, the MC makes the calls that Leona and Bianca should have been making if you choose the options, and you wind up with a band, some fun dancing from everyone else, and a private moment with your LI.

- Begins with everyone dancing and rejoicing, Bertrand and Savannah thanking the MC and if we choose Bertrand and Maxwell can carry us on their shoulders.

- The tune changes, everyone shows a signature step, and the MC can choose to make either Olivia, Bartie Jr, or the poodles dance:

* Poodles: Everyone is doubtful at first, but Penelope has given her poodles dance classes. Merlin and Morgana stand on their hind legs, bob to the music and then do flips in the air. More of Zeke and Pen acting like a couple who have taught these dogs together.

* Bartie Jr: is a Beaumont through and through, you can tell by the way he says "dance! dance! dance!" perfectly.

* Olivia: is skeptical about this and most of her dance moves are marital arts moves, so Hana steps in and dances with her so she can have fun with it. Meh. I know everyone else loved this scene (part of me thought it was cute too, no lie) but I'd rather not see Hana yet again be nice to someone who has held such shitty opinions of her (I'm sure people will jump in and say that Olivia was just "helping" to rile Lorelai up...but no. There were other ways she could have chosen to distract Lorelai, and she chose instead to talk of Hana with disrespect). Especially in Hana's case, Olivia isn't worth the effort.

- You get to choose the music (regal, fun, yeehaw) and get music from either TRR, TF or BSC. Hana also asks you to do a dance move (a high flip, a Dirty Dancing type lift with the LI, or good old faceplanting).

- "Now that's what I call a party!" Leona says. Yeah, Auntie Bitch, no thanks to you.

- Bianca and Drake speak about how much Jackson would have loved a party like this, which means IMO that he's definitely going to be a topic for discussion next chapter!

• Partners are coupling up, and it's time for a little dance with the LI:

- Liam: You start with a cute callback to Coronation Night ("I'm ready to do a lot more than dance"), whiiiich I think the writers show a little selective amnesia for, considering that after Liam says he remembers the last time she said that Esther replies that she wasn't able to act on it back then 😳 (PB I did buy that scene. She did act upon it. An hour after she said that. WTF are your writers smoking). They also joke lightly about how nice it is to see a wedding minus assassins.

- Hana: Very simple. Hana asks for a dance, you choose who leads, and you both dance gracefully as everyone watches appreciatively. The couple notice this, and the MC talks about how when Hana dances everyone talks notice, and Hana sweetly places her head against the MC's shoulder, telling her that the rest of the world falls away in front of her. I honestly wouldn't have minded even a vague reference to the Cordonian Waltz since if you chose that scene that would have been your first dancing experience with her. If you're giving Liam a dance reference, might as well give Hana one too, right.

- Drake: There's one bit I'll address here and another that I'll address a little later. Drake and the MC dance together and are the picture of elegance according to the narrative. This leads the MC to joke about the change in him, but Drake maintains he is still the same simple, rustic whiny asshole guy. The rest is about Bertrand and Savannah (mostly Savannah) which I will get to in a minute.

- Maxwell: The couple dance a little, Maxwell compliments her moves, after which he thanks her for saving this Beaumont party with the music. He then lightly kisses the MC because she makes him so happy. I'll talk about the Betrand Savannah part now.

- Drake and Maxwell: Okay, I'm clubbing these two together because in extension to talking about their relationship with the MC, they also get to talk about their siblings. Which is fair, because they're after all the brothers of the bride and groom:

(First five screenshots are from The HIMEME Channel Drake playthrough, and the next four are from the rash rec Maxwell playthrough)

I don't mind that they get to talk about the couple. They're the family of the couple. They're bound to be personally invested in a way Liam and Hana may not be.

But read these screenshots and tell me you don't see a huge difference in the way these two talk about their own siblings. Tell me you don't see more attention being given to one while the other one essentially gets barely two lines to talk about literally the same thing. Tell me how it makes sense for Drake's wife to make a reference to family, and not for Maxwell's wife who has also seen and learned similar lessons about family in a shorter span of time (esp with Bartie Sr's return).

Drake - for the umpteenth time - has dialogues that are more personal and specific to him, that emphasize more on the importance of family. He's the one who talks about Bertrand never allowing himself to love Savannah, he's the one who envisions (for some reason that I can't fathom because this doesn't sound like the Savannah I've seen in the books) Savannah as this self-sacrificing figure, and he's the one talking about how the couple would have been "heartbroken without music". Maxwell's is pretty much "oh look now they're happy" - when he could have easily gotten a couple of lines about Beaumont Bashes and how parties like these are the only times Bertrand allows himself to let loose for example (it's true).

Someone once asked me how I knew the attention given to Bertrand was really about enriching Drake's storyline...this, among other things, is proof. This family story could have involved Maxwell instead of pushing him so far out of the narrative. This ordeal involved his family too. PB seems to constantly - and conveniently - "forget" that.

• Once this sequence is over, Savannah comes over to thank the MC for the things she's been helping with behind the scenes, and the MC can either congratulate her, or straightout ask her if she's pregnant. Either way, Savannah lets the MC know that she isn't pregnant, and she didn't want to stress Bertrand out unnecessarily with the news.

• Which means only one thing. WE ARE FINALLY PREGNANT!!

• So the next chapter is going to be about disclosing the news to the LIs and the other guests, and possibly to have Bianca's remaining issues aired out in the open, which may possibly lead to another flashback? Whatever it is, it's clear now that we'll be spending our final chapter in Texas this week.

General Thoughts:

• Sigh they just HAD to make Madeleine and Savannah the first to know, right?

• I don't have a lot of thoughts really that I haven't already shared. The next chapter seems promising because it's the big one, and it should be customized so each LI has a different reaction and/or a different story to tell related to how they view babies/family.

• Hana doesn't get a lot of space in this one - besides alerting the MC to stuff that could disrupt the wedding or dancing with people who verbally shit on her or minimal LI stuff (which for once...is okay, like her family isn't here and nor is Liam's which is why their dance scenes don't mention family that much), so she'd better get next-level amazing writing next chapter! So should Maxwell after they've done him dirty especially in the last 2-3 chapters.

• I was very happy to see some of our MCs get their well-deserved revenge by upstaging Savannah's dress with their Ana de Luca special. You guys are heroes and I love you 💜

• Ngl this chapter is one of those that reads better with the messier and more chaotic LI xD

• Sure Leona and Bianca have their own axe to grind with the Cordonian monarchy - and are justified in feeling that - but staying in their house has been painful. Painful. Worse then pulling out teeth. It's like the moment they provided housing and board for the guests they washed their hands off them and hardly put much effort into much else - instead had us do a significant amount of work for them.

• And let's not forget, Bianca/Savannah especially stood by and did nothing (though Bianca would make a few weak counterpoints when Leona insulted him) as Bertrand was being regularly humiliated and reminded of his inadequacies. Whatever problems Bianca had with the Crown, allowing her now son-in-law to be treated that way in her own home - with the barest minimum support - is unforgivable. If she didn't like the idea of him as a son-in-law she should have just refused to entertain the idea of Savannah marrying him, or told the couple to host it elsewhere. Bertrand shouldn't have had to make all that effort to do what Bianca or her sister didn't bother to do for Savannah, just to gain her approval.

• Yet somehow the Walkers are supposed to highlight to us the importance of family. How? All I see are a bunch of people who don't make much effort to look out for each other, and who depend on other people to take any initiative for the same.

• Nonetheless, I hope to see a difference in tone once we return to Cordonia in Chapter 14. (that's 9 chapters, people. Nine). There's other stuff left. More mysteries to unravel, more messy history, understanding what Olivia is upto and perhaps a visit to Monterisso at some point. There's always at least two-three main people we're expected to impress in a certain book (remember how we got our report card of performance from Justin, Francesco and Adelaide in TRR Book 2?). We've already had a chance to do this with the Auvernese, so Monterisso should be up next at some point. There's also some nursery stuff to purchase which I'm guessing will be done either slowly or in one go.

• Because there's so little time left with this book, and we already spent a huge chunk of it on the BertVannah wedding, there are going to be time jumps. Imagine the kind of time we would have had to explore this pregnancy plot properly instead of rushing it, if the writers weren't so busy drooling over all things Walker.

• Well. I can't deny I'm sorta kinda looking forward to this chapter. And the reactions from the LIs and other characters. I'm low-key excited.

• Until next chapter, folks!

[agent-yolk-writes]

Friends Like You and Us - Venom!Reader - Ch. 5

Successfully (hopefully) queued at the stroke of midnight to bring you the latest chapter of some spider shenanigans. Fresh off the back of AO3!

In this episode: The gang throws spaghetti at the wall until something sticks, Noir enjoys playing with the remote, you have a breakdown for five minutes, and your aunt really needs to get her shit together for important business trips.

I also made a master list! Anyone new who wants to start or the veterans who want to revisit that one part in that one chapter!

AO3 Version | Masterlist

”Welcome to the first, and hopefully only, Spider-Persons conference. First off, I would like to thank (First Name) for hosting us and fixing up drinks with what they had to work with. Our main objective tonight: get everyone back to their proper universes before we don’t feel so good anymore…” Ham eccentrically led the charge of the brainstorm session. He managed to clap the lights off and pulled down a projector screen out of nowhere, the screen flashing crude images of the four of you finding a potential solution with lines and circles everywhere. It almost looked like what football coaches had to look at. Staring down on all of you squeezed on the couch he added, ”...any ideas?” Before clapping the lights back on, shooting the screen back from where it came.

Not risking what damage you might’ve inflicted on your phone, you pursued what you were looking for on your laptop while being squished to the side of the couch. It’s loading speeds left something to be desired, but it’s still functional and you can’t complain. Venom does about the heat, but that’s out of your control.

Over the horizon of your screen, you could see Peni, seated in the middle, pulling a projection of your New York out of nowhere and zoomed in on your current location. You weren’t really paying attention to what she was saying as she played around with the map. You were internally arguing with your backseat navigator on where you say the post last, only to find out the mods did indeed removed it from the search bar. Now you’re left in a predicament.

Try finding news archives.

Oh...Oh yea...No wonder I keep you around.

Where was he when you had to take the SATs?

He was right. Spider-Man’s death was the national news! There were so many news choppers around that it almost risked the two of you being forced apart by sound alone. Because of that, as well as the risk of you getting caught, you didn’t feel it was safe enough to investigate it yourself. Thanks to the media, you didn’t have to do the heavy lifting.

“You thinking it could be Osbird?” You heard Ham ask.

“Osbird? Ain’t it supposed to be Osborn?” Noir questioned.

“(First Name)!” Peni calls to you. “Does the Green Goblin exist in this universe?”

Didn’t he...

Died with Spider-Man.

“...Exist

ed

. I think he got killed in the same explosion.” You mentally high fives your companion for being a database for most things super. Good thing your universes are very similar.

Still, that doesn’t help your allies as your enhanced ears heard Ham cursing under his breath.

To alleviate some of the pain you added, “...If it helps, I think he was working for this guy named Wilson Fisk.”

“Kingpin…” Everyone else said at the same time. “What in the Sam hell is he scheming?” Noir grimly added. Glancing at the Wikipedia page for him, apparently he has more money than god. Of course he would be living in NYC. That’s where all the corrupt billionaires live!

You wouldn't happen to know him, right?

Never met him.

Well, there goes your first potential lead. The first news article that pops up is Fisk sending his condolences to the aunt of Spider-Man, May Parker, as well as his wife Mary Jane. He released a sympathetic statement relating what it’s like to lose someone close. A jump to his Wiki states that he had a wife and son that were killed during a high-speed car crash. There were rumors for a while about the wife being the one in the speeding car, but all whispers were quickly squashed before the sun could rise the next day. Money really is an effective superpower these days.

Another article tells you that he’s been heavily involved in Alchemax, a business he acquired a few years ago. His main advisor and the one who looks after the company while he’s away is Doctor Olivia Octavius, a woman with the frizziest hair ever. You vaguely recall watching a documentary she was the main star in during your science class, but you didn’t really absorb what she was saying.

Your fingers rubbed your eyes to relieve some strain. It felt like listening to Hannah yapping non-stop about any villain Spider-man even looked at during lunch. Ever since this whole series of wacky events dragged you into this mess, you have just the right about of knowledge on at least the most popular, infamous really, supervillains.

“Welcome back to Inside Edition-” The new voice almost triggered your fight or flight responses if you didn’t look up and see that the television was on playing tonight’s Inside Edition. Wait, you didn’t turn it on. Looking to your left, you realized it was the only other person left on the couch with you and, thus, the closest one to the table with the remotes.

Squinting at Noir with tired eyes, you asked, “What are you doing?”

The monochrome detective was fixated on gripping the device in various locations. “Interesting...it doesn’t have wires, and yet it calls the huge black mirror to awake. It doesn’t run on steam or heat, not to mention it’s so tiny.” Surely they had batteries back then, right?

“Yea. That’s what remotes are.” You commented. “They were made so we don’t have to get up every time to change the channel. You can even change the volume to hear better...the long ones with the plus and minus on it.”

“And please do.” Ham waved his hand to get both of your attention. “I think something important is coming up.” You didn’t even have to question him as the television had the collapsed remnants of Spider-Man’s final stand being narrated by a blonde woman you can’t piece the name of.

“While the world still mourns the loss of Spider-Man, many are still trying to pick up the pieces of his final moments to paint a picture. Tonight, Insider Edition has gained exclusive footage from one of the first helicopters on sight of the explosion. What you’re about to see is graphic and may upset some viewers. Take a look-”

The camera switched to a shaky camera arriving on the scene. For a few seconds, you could see the East River and the Williamsburg Bridge that connects Manhattan and Brooklyn before it forces the viewers to focus on a trail of smoke coming from a crater.

“What used to be one of Wilson Fisk’s many investments is now up in smoke. There’s no word yet if there are any other casualties in the explosion. It is rumored that this building was used to hold scientific research and experimentations in the medical field. We tried contacting Fisk for a comment, but he has yet to respond.”

It cuts to another angle, and you could see a blur hiding away something red and blue. The original cameraman holding it let out a gasp and said something expletive. “We censored this for the viewers at home, but it was here that the camera crew noticed the body of Peter Parker, better known as Spider-Man, unmoving-”

The feeling in your stomach only got worse as the newsreel goes on. You felt upset to point of nausea. You wanted to tear your eyes away from all this sad news but at the same time, you don’t. You were there when the news broke out, you were at his funeral hiding behind one of the church’s spirals as his widow encouraged others wearing his mask that they too can be a hero. You could still remember the bile burning your throat that night, muttering ‘what-ifs’ to yourself as if you were the cause of his death.

You’ve only paid attention to him because he was your solstice to your new powers, but he’s now gone, leaving the two of you in the dark. You should be over this, but for some reason, you’re not.

“I-We’re going to bed. Goodnight.” With a slam of your laptop, you didn’t give them time to react before you slammed the door to your room shut and placing your desk chair under the knob as a security measure. You needed to be alone right now.

If it wasn’t for your companion supporting your body, you would’ve slammed your head on the bed frame. You were that much of a wreck that Venom had to assume control to get you safely on the bed.

“Talk to me, (First Name).” He rarely calls you by your name.

“I-I…” You got distracted with the tears streaming down your face. “I’m scared. It...It’s all coming crashing down on m-me now.” You grabbed the nearest pillow and stuffed your face in it. While anyone else couldn’t comprehend the muffled wailing through the pillow, Venom could hear you perfectly. “I don’t wanna do this! I never did!” After sobbing in silence for what could’ve been minutes, you let go of it to hug your knees. “Last month I thought about pursuing a career in journalism. How can I do that now? Now that I have a bugged alien in my system tearing me apart with him! Explain that to me, Venom!” You’re trying so hard not to alarm your compatriots outside your door, but you’re too exhausted emotionally at this point to properly check yourself at this point.

You could feel Venom’s tendrils wiping away your tears. His inky forehead bumps into yours like a cat. “(First Name), look at us. Breathe.” His voice rumbles something comforting in your chest. You couldn’t help but close your eyes and breathe alongside him. “That’s it…”

The room was quiet except for your synced breathing and the occasional sniffling. More minutes have passed and already you feel better than earlier.

“I...I’m sorry, Vee.” You whispered. “Everything just...happened, all at once. You, the other Spiders...I think this is what they call ‘imposter syndrome’ kicking in, I dunno.” Forcing out a laugh to ease the tension, you continued. “I just...felt out of place, having to put wool over our eyes to believe we’re sheep too. I hope we don’t have to suffer any longer. If everything works out, I don’t think anyone would have a clue about you...about us.”

Your symbiote friend curled himself around the pillow you were still latching onto. While it doesn’t feel like a genuine embrace, it’s the best thing you can work with.

“Do...Do you think tomorrow will be a better day?” You whisper.

“...I don’t know.” You’re not surprised at that answer. “We’re in a deep bond, we can’t lie to you even if we tried.”

“Do...Do you think it’ll affect whenever we find a way back to your home? The whole bonding thing?”

“...”

“...Vee?” You remembered him explaining about bonding briefly, when you had nightmares from his previous hosts. Symbiotes don’t really exist in this universe, so there’s no real documentation or even a tabloid piece about it.

“It's hard to say for certain. At this rate, we might die if this ’Kingpin’ lead gives us nothing to work on.”

”Yeah...That’s true.” You agreed, letting out a deep sigh. “But he has influence all over the place. He could hide anything if he waves enough money under someone’s nose.”

“Then we’ll eat them. Simple as that.” Venmo’s enthusiasm made you chuckle a bit.

“Well try not to eat their hands if there’s a fingerprint lock.”

“No promises. Now sleep.”

“Yeah yeah…” You snuggled deeper into your hugging pillow. “Night, Vee. Tomorrow’s gonna be better, I hope.”

“Goodnight, (First Name).” With that, you closed your eyes. If you went to sleep any later, you would’ve caught a conversation of two certain spiders from outside and something about a goober.

~

Outside of your room, the others were fixated on what came on after seeing the remnants of the explosion.

“Social media is blowing up over this mystery figure seen all across Manhattan. Blink and you’ll miss it, but it looks like there’s already someone taking the shape of Spider-Man!” It was a set of shaky pictures and so-called ‘tweets’ of people freaking out.

“On person tweeted quote, “Some nightmare version of Spider-Man just passed my window, i think that’s my sleep paralysis demon #fml.” Another reported saying quote, “I think I saw it ate the local drug dealer whole. gross. to think i had to witness vore at four in the morning. stay classy, nyc.””

“Our sources at PDNY say that this mysterious person, if it even is a person, is not believed to be involved in Spider-Man’s death. However, they are a person of interest in multiple disappearance cases involving convicted felons that have been released from prison ranging from drug dealers to serial killers.”

“PDNY reminds everyone that if they see something, say something.”

The trio looked at each other, an unspoken question is trying to be answered. Ham was the only one who looked at the door where you entered for the night before passing air through his lips.

“Pfft, there’s no way.” He says to Peni and Noir. “I mean, what are the chances? They’re too nice and they’re housing us. If they were harboring a murderous symbiote, they would’ve told by now...right? Right?”

~

A surprise pair of glitching and convulsions woke you up earlier that day. Not wanting to feel sick by getting up immediately, you just lied there and drifted up for two hours or so before a series of knocks jolted your sleep away.

“Rise and shine, kid!” Noir yelled.

“We got a mission!” Peni added enthusiastically. A mission? This early? A glance on your phone, however, says it’s almost 10 in the morning. So much for going to school.

You pushed your upper body off the bed with a groan. Venom pushes himself back under your body and into your ‘pajamas’.

“Mmmf...it’s too early for hero stuff..” You grumble, wiping off any remnants of sleep. “Don’t heroes have...unions, or whatever?” Was among the other incoherent grumbles as you washed up and got ready for the day.

Finishing your wakeup routine in the bathroom, you were immediately greeted with your three inter-dimensional companions bustling around as much as they can in such a small apartment. SP//dr’s hanging out on the fire escape ladder, but his visor is lighting up inside so you can barely make out Peni hard at work with something. Noir’s holding the remote, continuously surfing channels and not really stopping at all even at the channels that play classic black and white film. Ham is...stacking a tower from whatever he can find on the fridge. You pray he didn’t see the unopened package of black forest ham you know that’s in there.

Of course, Ham was the first one to notice you staring at him. “What? I’m a growing pig.” Before you could even answer that, he slides the leaning tower of breakfast into his mouth in a single bite. You couldn’t help but be impressed yet slightly jealous.

The mech’s visor slides open and out pops out Peni. “Good morning! Sorry we didn’t wake you up earlier, but the phone rang.” She explains.

“Did you...answer it?” You asked with an eyebrow popped up.

“Well…” She looks down, pushing her pointer fingers together like she’s hiding something she broke. “We tried, buuut...we couldn’t figure out how to actually answer it.”

You looked over at the home phone. It wasn’t anything special, just a wireless phone that you had to press a button in order to answer an incoming call. “...You don’t have cordless phones in your home universe?”

“Everything’s at my fingertips, so I don’t need one at home.” Was her defense.

“Mine has a sleek new design that looks like a candlestick.” Noir turned his head to add in.

You looked over at Ham. “And what’s your excuse?”

“...In my defense, we have cans with a string between them. Reception’s a hit or miss these days.” You shouldn’t be surprised at his answer, but it still doesn’t stop the double facepalm you gave yourself. Peering back to the phone, you noticed that there’s a blinking light indicating someone left a voice message. As you walked over to play it, part of you prayed it wasn’t the school asking for your unexcused whereabouts.

“You have, one, new message.” Don’t be school, don’t be school... “Hi, sweetie! It’s your aunt!” Oh, thank god. “I hope you’re doing okay on your own, but I need your help with something. I...accidentally forgot to send out a file on my work computer, and I need it for an important meeting tomorrow. Would you be a dear and head over to my office? There should be like multiple post-it notes with the file name as a reminder for me to send it.” Mary laughed as her own forgetfulness. “Your visitor pass should still be working, so use that to get in. I’m sure the guards will enjoy seeing your lovely face again. Try not to stumble onto Alchemax’s floor this time. Call back soon, love you~”

“End of message. To delete the message…”

You look back over at the trio sheepishly. “Oh, yea...forgot my aunt works in a pharmaceutical building that neighbors an Alchemax branch...Hahaaa, that’s soo weird…Now what?”

You could hear Venom sighing inside your head. Funny how things seem to go together right when you need it.

[sassycassie-s-series]

All My Fault 33

By: SassyShoulderAngel319

Fandom/Character(s): DC, BatFam - Damian Wayne/Batman

Rating: PG-11/T- (for violence)

Notes: (Masterlist) This one jumps around a bit. Hopefully it’s not too difficult to follow.

Tag List (Open): @batboys-and-other-messes @welovegroot @probsjosh  @spooder-moon @lostredrobin @haylo4ever @na-n-na @rachelmorganroth  @reclusive-chicken-nugget​ 

Ch 1, Ch 2, Ch 3, Ch 4, Ch 5, Ch 6, Ch 7, Ch 8, Ch 9, Ch 10, Ch 11, Ch 12, Ch 13, Ch 14, Ch 15, Ch 16, Ch 17, Ch 18, Ch 19, Ch 20, Ch 21, Ch 22, Ch 23, Ch 24, Ch 25, Ch 26, Ch 27, Ch 28, Ch 29, Ch 30, Ch 31, Ch 32

^^^^^

“So, what do we do, Damian?” I asked quietly as Damian and I sat in my room on the floor across from each other. Jon had left to go home to Metropolis so we were alone to have our private discussion.

Damian reached across the distance between us and took one of my hands in both of his. “I want to be with you more than I’ve ever wanted to be with anyone else. However I don’t believe we should go public with any sort of romantic relationship immediately. As far as the rest of the world is concerned, you’ve been back nearly two weeks less than you have actually been in this future, which would make it seem as though you haven’t been back long enough to be in a romantic relationship—perhaps.”

“What about Bruce?”

Damian’s eyes dropped to our hands. “He returns from Metropolis tomorrow,” Damian said. “As I said earlier, he could look between the two of us and make an accurate estimate of what we’ve done while he was gone if he believed we had something to hide. I can tell him that we’ve fallen in love and intend to pursue a relationship—”

“No,” I interrupted. “Let… let me tell him.”

“Nora?” Damian asked, using my name instead of why?

I sighed. “If I tell him he might… freak out less. You know what I mean? Like, if I say I don’t want to go back to the past and explain why… I doubt he’d drop his coffee.”

I set my other hand on top of Damian’s hand holding my other one. I looked up and met his eyes.

“I love you, Damian Wayne. Strange as our situation is, it’s true.”

He gave me the widest and most genuine smile I’d ever seen from him—or either blood Wayne for that matter. “I love you as well, Nora McCloud.” He leaned forward. I closed the distance and pressed our lips together.

It was a far less heated kiss than the night before. Instead it was simple and tender, full of softer emotions than passion.

Damian pulled away first. “I believe you’re correct. You informing Father would be far safer.” He squeezed my hand. “And in a few weeks—perhaps even a month—we will announce that Nora McCloud and Damian Wayne are officially together.”

I snorted. “Press can finally have their field day about us,” I said.

Damian bounced an eyebrow. “S’pose so,” he agreed.

I smirked. “Let them,” I said.

Damian tutted. “Tt. Alright then.”

“But in private, are we officially together now?”

“Only if you agree to be.”

“I do. Heartily.”

We both snickered.

^^^^^

WHAM! My foot connected to the mugger’s chest—and I was fairly certain I heard a rib separate from his sternum. Yowch.

“Batman’s smitten,” Jason said in the open channel. Tonight it was all of us out on patrol except Tim, who volunteered to be on monitor duty. Dick and Jason had told Cass and Tim that Damian and I were in love and semi-officially a couple while we were in private.

I glanced around to see Damian standing on top of a building that made up one of the walls of the alley I was in, looking down at me. Even from my distance below I could see him grinning. I smiled back at him, whacked the mugger again and effectively knocked him out, and nodded to the man he’d been trying to steal from. “Are you alright, sir?” I asked.

He nodded.

“GCPD is on its way,” Damian supplied to me.

“The cops will be here soon,” I said to the man. “They’ll take your statement.” As I spoke I tied up the mugger. “He’ll be out for at least an hour.”

“Are you leaving?” the man asked me, looking a bit spooked by the mugger.

I gave him a smile. “Not if you don’t want me to,” I said, rocking back and forth on my heels. I realized how that could sound if taken the wrong way and quickly amended, “Not if you feel unsafe alone here with this man.” I didn’t need this guy hitting on me or trying any funny business when Damian was literally only a few stories above me. That being said, most of the creeps and misogynists in this city knew that trying anything rude with a girl in a mask and body armor—Batgirl, the Spoiler, Orphan, Batwoman, Cloudburst, and any visiting female heroes—was a recipe for getting several bones broken and sometimes a verbal smack-down.

Didn’t always discourage them from trying, but I’d dislocated eight shoulders and paralyzed three sets vocal chords in the first two years of being Cloudburst and had since lost track of injuries I’d dealt to creeps who grabbed my backside or hands or other places or made disgusting comments.

As it was, this guy didn’t say anything rude or try to touch me.

I touched my comm-link. “By the way, Hood?” I said.

“Yes Cloudy?” Jason asked.

“Shut up,” I said.

I heard lots of snickering from the rest of the Bat-family.

After a few minutes of waiting, the cops came. Once they turned up, the mugging victim thanked me. I nodded and shot a grappling hook to the roof, whizzing out of sight. Once I swung onto the same rooftop as Damian, I felt his arm ensnare my waist and pull me closer to him. He tapped his comms to mute his microphone and smirked at me. “That was attractive,” he whispered.

I snickered and muted my mic too.

He leaned closer.

I put my hand between our lips before he could kiss me. “Batman and Cloudburst can’t be together, Damian,” I said quietly.

He closed his eyes and sighed with complaint. “Why not?”

“Because as far as civilians are concerned, Cloudburst is still between five and ten years older than Batman. That would be weird. And the coincidence of Nora McCloud returning only a week-and-a-half after Cloudburst can be ignored and forgotten. But Cloudburst and Batman getting caught kissing on a rooftop a month before Damian Wayne and Nora McCloud announce that they’re together is downright suspicious,” I said. “Especially coupled with Cloudburst and Nora’s reappearances.”

Damian pursed his lips and stared at me, his green eyes glinting through the eye holes of his cowl. “Alright,” he relented. “Batman and Cloudburst have a professional relationship.”

“You can kiss me in uniform when we get back to the Batcave,” I said quietly.

^^^^^

“Their mics are muted,” Jason remarked to Dick, Tim, and Cass on a private channel. “I can see them talking through my scope but I can’t hear them.”

“What do you mean, ‘scope’?” Dick asked. “Hood, you don’t have a sniper rifle, do you?”

Jason hesitated. “… No?”

“Hood!” Dick protested.

“Hey, wingding! Now is not the time! They’re being lovey-dovey and you’re complaining about me?!” Jason snapped.

“Okay. So their mics are muted so we can’t hear them. What do you mean, lovey-dovey?” Tim asked, interrupting the argument.

“Well Damian’s got his arm around her waist and she just stopped him from kissing her. She’s got this goofy type of lovestruck grin on her face and Damian is grinning. Grinning,” Jason told the others.

Tim and Dick both “Wow”ed Jason’s description.

“Who wants to bet twenty bucks on how long they date before Damian proposes?” Jason asked.

“Me!” Dick and Tim said at the same time.

“I will too,” Cass added.

“I bet six months and under,” Dick said.

“Whoa. Cutting that one fine, eh?” Tim wondered.

“Well it’s not entirely unheard of—especially if both parties know each other well before becoming a couple,” Dick said, a shrug in his voice.

“Which they don’t,” Jason deadpanned.

“Shut up,” Dick retorted. “Sure they do. Cloudy probably knows Damian better than anyone except B, Alfred, and maybe me. Heaven knows she put forth the effort to do so.”

“Mm,” Jason grunted, unconvinced.

“I will bet six months to a year,” Cass said.

“Hmm. A year to two years,” Tim put in.

“Then I guess I bet two years or any amount longer,” Jason said.

Dick scoffed. “Oh please. I know them. Marriage is an important concept to Cloudy and Damian was raised with the League of Assassins where I'm relatively positive arranged marriages for political reasons aren’t uncommon. I doubt they’ll date that long before getting married.”

“Well twenty bucks says we’ll see, then, hmm?” Jason challenged.

“Guess so,” Dick agreed.

“Yup,” Tim said.

“Yes,” Cass added.

^^^^^

“By the way, we should probably sleep in separate rooms when we get back tonight,” I said. “Because Bruce will be back in the morning and I don’t want to have to edit more security camera footage.” I’d already told Damian that Jason and Dick had taken care of the night before’s recordings. “Plus I don’t know when he’ll be back and I don’t want him to come check on you and find us, y’know, in bed together.”

Damian thought for a moment, still holding me close. “You are… correct. We should probably stay in our own rooms anyway, for as much as we can help it. As though we’re a couple who does not live together yet,” he said.

I nodded. “I agree,” I said.

Damian let me go with a little smirk and jerked his head toward the highest buildings in Gotham. “Let’s go finish this patrol,” he said.

I smiled. “Sounds good,” I agreed. He squeezed my hand before letting go. We took off running over the rooftop and leapt off the side at the same time, unmuting our comms as we went. My hair streamed behind me in the wind as we swung off toward the deeper parts of Gotham. I whooped. I’d never get tired of this.

^^^^^

Damian and I climbed out the Batmobile, beating everyone else back to the Batcave. Except Tim. Who was no longer sitting at the bat-computer and probably up in the shower. Damian and I met at the front hood of the car. Damian rested his hands on my waist, tugging me gently closer. My hands found his shoulders. “May I give you a kiss goodnight, my darling?” Damian asked.

I smiled. “You absolutely may,” I replied.

Damian bent down and pressed his lips to mine. I felt a small grin in his lips. “Everything will be alright,” he breathed when our lips parted but our foreheads rested together. “No matter how Father reacts. Everything will be alright.”

“I know,” I said. “I trust this. I trust you.” My hands slid up from his shoulders and around the back of his neck, my fingers sliding over the short hair on the back of his head.

“I would wait forever to be with you.”

“I would too. But let’s hope that doesn’t happen.” I tilted my head forward and kissed his cheek.

—

Next

[sluttyopinions]

Difficulty in Dark Souls and Why We Can’t Live Without It

April 6, 2019

Written by Samantha, Slutty Opinions

The debate on the role of difficulty in video games seems to, never actually end. It feels like something people talk about literally every year, and for some reason, Dark Souls (and the many games that have followed in its influence) is always the target. It feels like something that doesn’t need much debating in my opinion, but it gets brought up often regardless. For some reason, this topic gets me really riled up and I have a lot of strong opinions on it. It feels like I’m ready to go into a tirade any  time I see it, and lately, I’ve been seeing it way too much. This article is kind of my own way of venting, as well as collecting all the arguments I’ve found in favor of how necessary challenge is, primarily in the new generation of From Soft and Hidetaka Miyazaki games. I think it’s important to address why this issue is truly a non-issue, why it came to be an issue in the first place, and why I even care. For the purposes of this article and keeping it simple, I’ll mostly be referring to one of my favorite games,

Dark Souls isn’t about being really hard

I’d be lying if I didn’t admit to Dark Souls being, pretty damn hard. It’s well above average in the department of making me constantly die and wince and feel tense. It’s not the type of game you can just pick up on a whim and breeze through, yet some people clearly want that experience from it or else I wouldn’t be writing this. For some ungodly reason, Dark Souls, or at least most of Miyazaki’s action games since Demon’s Souls is ALWAYS at the center of these discussions. Dark Souls has been the go to analogy for “hard game” for most gaming writers and journalists for YEARS now to much criticism and booing all around.

It’s hard to blame people who haven’t been exposed to the actual games for having this thought process. When Demon’s Souls first came out, it was a breath of fresh air for many in a time when games were getting more and more “dumbed down” across the board. Bandai Namco, the publisher for Dark Souls, decided to use this reputation to its advantage in advertising, calling the definitive edition of Dark Souls the “Prepare to Die Edition”. Streamers caught onto the game quickly as a very easy way to get views because seeing people die and struggle can be, well, fun!

Despite all this, that’s not even close to all there is to Dark Souls. The reputation can be a bit misleading, and it feels like a lot of the easy mode begging crowd knows not much else other than this reputation when it comes to the game. Probably the absolute best aspect of the way Dark Souls was made was its world. The map design is impeccable, it’s very very difficult to find a map more lovingly designed than Dark Souls 1’s. It has so many interesting rewarding shortcuts, feels completely logical and real in the way it was designed despite being in a fantasy world, feels extremely fluid, and is loaded with detail and character. If I were to recommend Dark Souls to someone, I would start with how much I love the world itself in all its aspects. The narrative, the characters, the detail, the risk and reward. I would never even think of telling somebody “It’s really hard and makes you feel cool at the end” (even if there is truth to that statement).

Nonetheless, Dark Souls wouldn’t be worth playing without challenge

I may have said that Dark Souls cannot be reduced to simply “hard game”, but, without being hard, it wouldn’t be a game I would recommend to anyone. All the goodness and enjoyment you can find in the depths of the game is built around the base of it being not an easy time. As I hinted at in the last section, the world design is very risk-reward in nature.

You often encounter forks in your path where you must decide which path is closest to the next checkpoint, or if you want to risk your current experience for more experience and treasure on the more dangerous route. Finding your way around this fluid map wouldn’t feel like much anything without the risk involved. The reward is only rewarding because you banked your skills on that risk. On an easy mode, any path you take would feel the same. Sequence breaking into a much higher level area would not have the punishment it contains to make the rewards worth it if you could waltz into those higher level areas.

The bosses are designed around persistence and patience. The reason the bosses are interesting is because they are something you learn. Many action games are built around reflex as well as training but Dark Souls’ philosophy of design is around dying as a teacher. Not only the bosses, but you advance slowly but surely through levels each time you come back. You win some, you lose some. Enemy placement is designed in a way so that each time you memorize them more, and in a sense, the game then becomes easy. That is the end goal of your adventure, at least, mechanically speaking. Easiness would strip that functional identity from it.

An easy mode would strip Dark Souls of its narrative identity as well

The idea of people asking for an easy mode so they can see the world and story without having  to put in the time shows me that those asking don’t really know a lot about Dark Souls to begin with. As I already said, mechanically, the world would become uninteresting without the risk and reward. The writing of the game also revolves around this risk and the concept of persistence I described earlier. All you’d be doing on an easy romp is looking at a lot of brown stuff and reading cryptic item descriptions. I can’t comprehend wanting to pay for an experience like that and not just watching videos about it all that you can do for free. VaatiVidya has some great ones seriously, you don’t even have to have played the games to enjoy the videos. But, it would certainly help a lot.

The entire theme of Dark Souls is, patience and persistence. In the world your adventure is set in, humans are cursed to be undead and revived again and again. Miyazaki loves making gameplay have as little conflict with the narrative as possible, which is part of what makes his works so unique. This dying and reviving you do in game is what most people in the world around you do. However, most npcs have, limited purpose. Being a shopkeeper, being a warrior, a scholar, maybe even a cynic. Once their “purpose” they have sought out to find has expired, or they have lost confidence in it, they lose their very minds.

Your duty as the player character is to find the First Flame. Not important what that means for the sake of this article, just, your goal. The goal of many others in this world who are just like you. Because the player character is an extension of yourself, your will to find the ending, to find the flame, is imposed upon your avatar. You deciding to get up and give it another go at your true goal is like your character giving life another shot. Even in a cold, nihilistic world like that of Dark Souls, humans can find purpose and determination. Hope and patience are virtues in human beings, and they can allow us to surmount anything. That determination can even surpass the might of the gods themselves. The will to get up after being knocked down a ridiculous amount of times is what makes humans good and what makes life worth it. If you could run to the ending in 5 hours, you would not have gotten anything out of the writing in the game. All the character arcs, the crushing despair around you, the theme itself, gone. Someone could explain it to you as I am now, but that simply isn’t the same.

As I said earlier, a Dark Souls without challenge is a game I would simply never want to play. Miyazaki didn’t choose to make his games hard so tryhards and elitists could masturbate over their digital accomplishments. He makes them hard because that’s the way he feels he could make his art mean something. The way he could use the medium and the art form to the full advantage of his work in every dimension. It’s insulting to imply nothing would change with an easy mode added. I wouldn’t trust anyone who played the game on a setting like that to be able to give the game a proper analysis or review, especially not a journalist who is supposed to convey the core experience to an audience who doesn’t know what it is yet.

Dark Souls difficulty is overblown and overhyped

The reputation preceding Dark Souls is somewhat a false one. As I had previously said, saying it’s an easy or even moderate experience would be a lie. Dark Souls is definitely a hard experience, and one that serves it well as a piece of art. However, it being the “only hard game ever” as it seems to be conveyed in pop culture is a little ridiculous.

There are, a ridiculous amount of difficult games out there in the market. Many of which are much more difficult than Dark Souls and its sequels and much less forgiving. Many of which also do not have easier modes. Dark Souls gets an irregular amount of attention in the public eye and especially to lazy journalists for not much reason.

The game design in Dark Souls is built off pure willpower and the willingness to retry, not often reflexes and exact timing. It is designed in a way so that every death contributes to your end goal. Maybe on one run you opened a shortcut that makes your route easier, maybe you cleared out a miniboss that won’t respawn. Or you mastered your way around a specific enemy. There is no “game over state” in Dark Souls, and what you lose can easily be won back. The game design is punishing, but it gives you the resources to make sure you’re not losing progress or just going insane in general.

Let the artist decide their own art: Not all media has to be for everyone

In the end, an artist has the right to decide how they create, and what they create. As consumers, we reserve the right to get or not get a piece of work as well. If we feel something just isn’t good, or it isn’t accessible to us, or even just not our style, we don’t have to get it or consume it. Of course, this doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to complain about something. I complain about entertainment all the time and always make sure my thoughts on something are fully voiced even if my wishes are unrealistic.

Sometimes though, a piece of entertainment can, thoroughly not be your thing. That doesn’t necessarily mean it was poorly made, at times far from it. A personal example would be I did not like Zelda: Breath of the Wild as much as most. It was enjoyable, but more on an “average” level of enjoyable for me and I left frustrated not wanting to pick it back up, and just missing the older Zelda formula. While I do have specific critiques of the game and things it could have improved, I don’t think it’s a “bad game”. It’s amazingly made and there was a lot of love behind it. It’s just the exact adventure it was going for was not the adventure I was looking for, and that disconnect pushed me away from it.

I’ve seen people on the other side claim the statement of “not all entertainment is for you” is on its own elitist and gatekeepy but, it’s only an undeniable truth about the world. This statement doesn’t even have anything to do with the difficulty. If you REALLY REALLY didn’t enjoy Dark Souls no matter how many times you tried, making it easier wouldn’t change that. Maybe you disliked the tone, the aesthetic, the characters, the feel of the combat. All of that is valid because not everyone has to like everything. Changing some stats like health pools or damage won’t change the game design (The funny story is, I really didn’t like Dark Souls when I first tried it. I tried it maybe 10 times before it clicked, and now it’s my 2nd favorite video game franchise of all time.)

Comparing Dark Souls to other video games is quite honestly, a dishonest debate tactic. Trying to claim that “X hard game has an easy mode so, so should Dark Souls” is not very fair to it as a piece of art. Art is not homogenous or standardized, it’s art. As I explained very thoroughly before, I feel Dark Souls would be butchered had it had its challenge removed, even optionally. Some games even if designed with being very hard as its normal, can get away with easy settings for a variety of reasons. The story can be viewed through interesting dialogue and cutscenes that someone with less patience and time would want to see, it can offer a fun exploration of the mechanics in a way that makes you feel like you’re on a power trip versus on an uphill battle, etc. That choice is up to the individual game and the creator. It is clear Miyazaki and team have no interest in changing their art for the masses, and I can easily see why.

The claim against easy modes is not inherently elitist

People who stand up for my argument or parts of my argument are often targeted for being elitist gatekeepers trying to keep their precious game away from the masses. Making it easier would allow others to play it without struggling the same as the veterans, which would make the veterans insecure enough to fight against it. They earned their pointless digital trophy already and they want to keep it, all to themselves. Or at least, that’s what the people saying this stuff would have you believe.

“If the easy mode is optional, how does that bother you? You already finished the game, and now more people can play it! It’s a win-win. I can’t imagine a reason for fighting that concept other than to maintain your secret club and the status of it.” The truth is, Dark Souls fans (For the most part at least. I won’t deny elitists exist) desire more people to play their game with them, and will help anyone who seeks it. We just don’t want people playing a bastardized version of the game which as I explained, I wouldn’t recommend to basically anyone. It would be like discussing an entirely different game with people who think there is no difference. It’s not because they’re “weak” or “uncool” for choosing a hypothetical easier setting, it’s because that experience would not carry even near the same identity.

I cannot overstress the fact that Souls fans absolutely love to help. It is possibly one of the most guided games ever made. Video guides, written guides, guides of all types for all different people. The fandom is one of the surprisingly nicest, funniest groups I have known which is surprising due to how toxic the nature of fandoms tend to be, and how dark and lonely the concept of Dark Souls is. I guess this loneliness inspires people to band together in the real world, and try to make things light to contrast the nihilism often found in the world of the game? Just me throwing out crazy theories a little.

I would personally love to help anyone who wanted to try the game, the way it was designed to be played that is. I would sit beside any friend who wanted to get into it and help them until it clicks, if it ever does. The experience requires a lot of dedication and patience, so I would help teach that to others. Honestly, if it weren’t for friendly people in the community and the wonderfully put together internet guides, I never would have gotten into this series. The truth is, Dark Souls doesn’t have a magical barrier keeping gamers from playing it. The barrier is your own determination. Everyone is encouraged to try, and every single one of us as human beings have the potential to overcome it and learn it. It’s not that some people “can or can’t” play Dark Souls. It’s that some will, and some won’t. And any won’t can become a will. It’s an equal opportunity beatdown.

This argument is not actually about accessibility

Strange I had to wait until the end to get to this, since this is what the argument seems to revolve around the most. Is keeping Dark Souls as purely a difficult experience physically preventing disabled gamers from playing it? The journalists and pundits who advocate for the easy mode would like all of us to believe that. Kind of funny how little if any of those advocates are disabled or understand what disability means.

Accessibility is how, well, accessible, something is. It’s a really stupid statement but I can’t think of a better way to word it. Access is if a person can get their hands on something and experience it to the end like the rest of their peers. Is being simply, not easy, an accessibility issue? In my opinion, no, not at all. Accessibility issues include things such as good controllers, customizable visuals and user interface, customizable button mapping, fair game design, etc. None of these categories has anything to do with difficulty. Implying disabled gamers can only play point and click games is kind of insulting in my personal opinion, not that I am disabled myself so forgive any assumptions I may make.

The truth is, disabled gamers CAN play Dark Souls and similar games. As I have basically beaten to death already, the core game design of Dark Souls is patience, and determination. It’s about basic learning and trying, a very human instinct that all of us have and can use or weaponize. The gameplay is fair, and somewhat slow, and more punishes you for not being prepared or for lapses in judgement than simply not being able to press the buttons fast enough. If a gamer has the tools needed to physically play the game in as comfortable a way they can, how hard the game is shouldn’t change their access.

Difficulty, at least in a fair game, is only a test of how many times you are willing to get up and face adversity, a lesson Dark Souls tries to impart in its own story. If anything, disabled people all over the world know this lesson by heart already. It doesn’t matter how unfair the cards you were dealt are, or how oppressive your surroundings are. If you want to keep moving, and if you have reasons to keep moving, you can find, purpose. Regardless of how you were born or what life has done to you if you continue to get up you can essentially win. Dark Souls is easier than life in that way since it does have a definitive “end state” to it. An end that is accessible to anyone of any standing given the patience and drive, and resources to experience the world.

This whole debate is manufactured to an extent

The reason this debate even arose again to begin with, and why it keeps showing up over and over again is you guessed it, games journalists. Even though by writing this I’d consider myself a journalist as well, I don’t hold much high regard for the field as a whole which is not a very unpopular opinion and hasn’t been for quite a few years. The easiest way to get clicks on anything, video game news or news news, is to get people angry at what you’re writing. Hate clicks generate easy revenue. If someone sees something they agree with while scrolling, they may nod and keep going. But if they see something that makes  their blood boil, they’ll screenshot it and read it to make sick burns against it and show the mess to their followers.

Of course then that starts a cycle of people pulling said article up over and over and it generating an internet hate storm with people now defending the original point. This whole mess was the internet falling hook line and sinker for some poorly paid overstressed sap’s click scam. Probably multiple scams coalescing into one bigger mess. I admit I in writing and publishing this have fallen for it, but hey, I enjoy doing what I do, and I feel it’s worth sharing my side.

Another possible motivation for manufacturing petty crises from a journalist’s point of view as I’ve seen many point out is the simple fact that journalists face deadlines. It is a very and I mean very stressful part of their careers, and for game journalists, their deadlines are based on when they can finish a game. It’s why a lot of lengthy rpgs don’t get treated very fairly or have entire sections excluded from review, and why now these same people are begging for notoriously difficult games to be easier. The sooner they can finish it, the sooner the stress is gone and the sooner they can be paid. Having the responsibility of your paycheck based on your patience when you don’t have much time for patience can cause some to snap and write what they wrote. In the end though, I just pray I never have to read reviews of journalists reviewing a From Soft game on easy mode, because that wouldn’t be much of a review at all.

Why I even care

For those of you still reading, thank you, so much. From the bottom of my heart. It may have become clear in reading why I put so much time into this, or why I get so angry every time I see this argument come up, but it may not be. I’d like to make it very clear why. This game series is very close to my heart, and seeing people act all-knowing about it when it’s clear they haven’t touched it at all or for at most 5 minutes makes my blood boil.

On top of pretending to know game design on a game they know nothing about, they resort to cheap tactics such as guilt tripping and shaming. The whole “elitist” route trying to make the opponents seem like pretentious asses is not very mature for starters, and trying to shift the fact that they lack patience or simply don’t like a game onto being about the rights of the disabled makes me angrier than anything. I have seen many many disabled gamers become furious at these people and for good reason. I have been furious about this for a very long time now, and I hope putting my thoughts to paper will calm me, even if only for a little while.

I sincerely hope my thoughts gave you a new outlook on something or other. That is the most I could ask for as a writer. If not, and you still read this far, I hope I made your day brighter.

[amwritingmeta]

Love your take on everything & it really gives me hope for a destiel endgame. I was wondering if you had noticed Dean getting a bit more 'camp'? I don't subscribe to that kind of stereotype normally but as Jensen, a supposedly straight, (let's keep cockles out of this!) actor's interpretation of bi, it seems as though his mannerisms have been somewhat feminised, maybe? I'm thinking mostly of The Face that Mary points out. (also Max's interest in the grenade launcher interests me!) discuss :-)

Helloooo my dear and lovely Nonny! 

Yes, this reply is long overdue and all I can ask is your forgiveness!! Thank you so much, I’m glad you’re enjoying my take and that it gives you hope! :)

I’ve had to ponder this question for a good long while, tbh, because I kind of know what you mean, but I also feel that Jensen’s mannerisms as Dean have had a few wrist flicks and eye rolls that have always felt overly dramatic because Dean can be high drama, right? I don’t know if I’d necessarily label these things as camp or feminised, though.

I mean, I could watch this gif forever. This moment is so fucking awesome! :P

We could theorise into eternity about what’s true and what’s not true about how Jensen claims to play Dean so straight and so uber-masculine, right? I mean… proof’s in the pudding, puddin’ - and even though the editors can change the meaning of a scene by cutting out parts or changing stuff around, there are too many moments that are clearly directed, if not chosen by Jensen in how to be acted out, that are done so in order to be edited in a certain way. There have been these moments of wrist flicking from the beginning, I’d say, because it’s how Dean moves in certain moods or moments. 

Anyone who disagrees with this, please, do jump in! I encourage you adding your thoughts and interpretation!

Now, I know we could debate where Jensen stands until we’re all blue in the face and we’d still be none the wiser. I know a lot of people who believe he sincerely did not know that Dean is meant to be bisexual and that he played him straight as a doornail for eleven or twelve years until someone said, look, we’re deciding to move forward with the love story so, beware, Dean is in love with Cas and this is happening. And I think this is fair enough! Because Jensen has been so outspoken about how he plays Dean and relates to Dean and Dean is s.t.r.a.i.g.h.t.

Yeah, in there lies the problem for me. In what motivation he’s had to make this statement again and again. I find it hard to believe that an actor would work on any project for over a decade and not take an interest or feel curiosity about how the narrative is built. Actually, I find it improbable. Jensen has spoken about how he used to fill every page of the scripts he’d get with thoughts on Dean’s motivation. Does this mean Jensen knew Dean is meant to be bi? Nope. And I can’t argue for or against, merely say that it doesn’t add up to me - at all - that an actor who is so in tune with his craft and who clearly cares about this character would play him - consistently - for twelve years without really knowing him. 

There is this marked pattern with Dean where he’s attracted to a man and immediately overcompensates by chasing a woman and it’s established in 2x02 with Ash and Jo (if not sooner…). It’s fascinating to watch that episode and notice this pattern because it becomes like a subliminal thing. 

It in no way works as proof that Jensen chose to play Dean attracted to Ash, and running after Jo to narratively compensate for it, like it’s a subtextual scale that weighs too hard on one side and then immediately needs to be righted by overtly stating that Dean prefers women. (which looking at the subtext blatantly just is not the whole truth and never was) But it’s a character trait that is brushed at from the start and then becomes the lynchpin for so many important character moments and, looked at that way, even works as foreshadowing for Castiel and the role he’s going to play in Dean’s character progression. But I shan’t go into deeper details on that now because then we’ll be here until Christmas morning. 

What I’m saying is that this has been a conscious part of Dean’s character from the beginning (to my mind) and my mind fucking boggles at the idea that Jensen - who has dedicated such a huge chunk of his career to playing Dean, a performance that will, most likely, be a career defining one - would not know everything there is to know about Dean. 

Okay, I’m crossing over into complete Jensen-behaviour conjecture and speculation and that’s not really what your question was about. (though they do relate, as your question reflected) :P

As for Max and the grenade launcher (god what a lovely choice of topic you throw my way!!) :) –>

Max is gay. Max is hot. Max likes the look of Baby. Max is invited to view Baby’s goodies. Max notices the grenade launcher. 

(that wasn’t meant to come out as the text for a story book for children) (…or was it) ;)

This has been discussed before so it’s very likely that you’ve read up on it a while back because I am so damn late in replying, buuuuut let me still give you the bare bones of this exchange, yeah? I mean, they’re pretty amazing bones.

The exchange between Max and Dean opens with Max saying that Baby is still “major” and Dean offering him the tour. Which consists of what? Max calling out the grenade launcher. And Dean replying to Max’s question of “is that a grenade launcher” with “yes she is” but then immediately grabbing what they need: witch killing bullets. 

I mean, the actual lead into this exchange is Max telling everyone he successfully got a guy’s phone number, right? Dean making this face:

What’s so amazing is how Dean gets a dose of a guy completely and utterly at ease with his sexuality, and then we’re taken to the trunk of Baby - the prop that Jensen says “is a part of me”, speaking as Dean…….. - and shown the phallic shaped monstrosity of a weapon in serious need of release and Dean, aptly, assigns it a sex and, to his mind, it’s a “she”, it’s a female in need of release, as is Dean’s non-performing side. His feminine side, if you will. His yin to his overcompensating, toxically masculine yang.

The beginning of inner balance being found between these two is given to us by Dean launching that grenade into that cement wall in 12x22. 

And here we have a beautiful setup for exactly what that moment means for Dean Winchester. And that he is so extremely subconsciously aware of it all.

“Yes, she is.”

I mean…. seriously, Dean.

And why is it Max asking to dig his nose into Baby’s junk? Sorry, I mean trunk. (….or do I?) Because Max is a reflection of Dean throughout this entire episode. He is our Dean exposition in many many ways. And he ends up making the wrong choice for the right reasons. And I look forward to when Max and Alicia return and I wonder if Alicia will be restored. Come on, Jack. You know you can right this wrong!! :)

Thank you for asking, Nonny! And happy holidays to you!

xxx

[reporting-media-crystal]

Task 1: Part A & Part B

A) Choose two articles:

https://news.sky.com/story/harry-and-meghans-interview-how-much-damage-have-the-couples-claims-done-to-the-royal-family-12243949

https://news.sky.com/story/how-likely-is-it-for-women-to-be-killed-in-a-public-place-12242870

B1) Sky News

Narrative Construction

The narrative construction starts with the headline claiming ‘How much damage have the couple’s claims done to the Royal Family” and then as a sub-headline mentions that a palace insider states “that the hype is often bigger than the event but they had no idea what was coming’.

It starts with a statement that she got from a source of the senior palace. That the “circus” has been running for nearly three weeks.

Starting off with the lead [Explaining the Who, the What, the When, the Where, the Why and How]

The article talks about the recent interview with Oprah Winfrey that happened on the 7th of March, 2021. It includes the conflict between the Sussexes and the Royals, on what it has done to the Royal Family. It explains the interview in further depth with hyperlinks “The Interview” “Harry” (all news) and “Meghan” (all news). Speaking about Meghan describing having suicidal thoughts and mentioning of a racist comment that was spoken in the interview regarding the colour of unborn baby Archie’s (child of Harry and Meghan) skin.

Another quote from a palace insider stating that “The hype is often bigger than the event” and it would take something extreme for the rest of the Royal Family to comment. Which that was the case, they were exposed to as “uncaring, unsupportive, and even racist”. Then keeps on explaining how the interview affected the royals.

A quote from the Royal Family is mentioned that “The issues raised, particularly that of race, are concerning. Whilst same recollections may vary, they are taken very seriously and will be addressed by the family privately” – The Royal Family.

Continuing with the body (the crucial information) - which continues to discuss the racist comment which also includes another hyper-link that prince William was “quick to shoot down those claims”. Then she continues to talk about, how the racist comment affected the royals and a quote from another source that has supported the royals and their charity work for many years has added: “They told me the claims hit them very hard……”

They continue to talk about the Royal Family’s role in promoting equality, diversity and mental health.

Now discussing Harry and Meghan’s life and how “most of us couldn’t start to imagine what it was like for Harry and Meghan living that life (the privilege, nor the spotlight)”. The article also includes other sources like Nelson Mandela’s granddaughter Ndileka Mandela talking about her encounters with Meghan and Harry in Africa (2019).

Later the article talks about how Meghan and Harry were aware of before getting married and wrote; which leads to the question ‘whether Meghan really was so naive and vulnerable’.

The article then discusses the revelations that just kept coming when Harry and Meghan spoke to Oprah Winfrey. Another quote from one palace insider: ’The war has stopped so it’s probably best to stop bombing’. Information from former member of staff said ‘that it is sometimes impossible not to get dragged into misunderstandings between different family members and their offices.

A quote was then added from Omid Scobie (author of Finding Freedom) “What they do want is the opportunity to control the narrative around their own lives and, given we’ve spent the past three or four years talking about them, I think it’s fair to let them have a couple of hours”. Talking about what the Sussexes want.

Then the article mentions that “the couple were careful not to criticise the queen but inevitably Harry has put his grandmother in a very difficult position” (Mills, 2021). We get information from another source this time it is Adwoa Aboah (model and activist) who worked with the royals on their mental health campaign and she explains that “the way Americans and English people present themselves is very different. The way they emote.” (Aboah, 2021).

Ending the body - with information if Meghan and Harry want a totally private life or more control over their public life.

The Tail – Update on their life and a quote from John Hornby (chairman of Sentebale, the aids/HIV charity which was set up by Prince Harry in Lesotho, Africa)

“The reality is they are probably still one of the most famous couples in the world.”

"So I don't think leaving the UK or the UK media is going to change that.

"The world's media are fascinated by this couple and so is the world of social media, so you can never really walk away from these things.

"But I would say that he feels he has taken a step back."

Mr Hornby added: "I think that's actually when you see Harry at his happiest - when he is, for example, in a country like Lesotho, when he's working with a charity where most of the people aren't thinking about him in his role as a prince but more as somebody who is rolling their sleeves up and getting involved in the projects we're doing."

Treatment

o   I think this was first going to be treated as an informative or entertainment (because of their prominence also) news; but as the interview came out, and when comments about racism and inequality were raised, this story become hard news. Which was spread quickly.

o   Sky News have minimal bias and hardly make use of loaded words (wording that tries to influence the audience by emotionally blackmailing or stereotypes). Their reporting is accurate and normally sourced.

o   The article was supportive on both the Royal Family and the Sussexes.

o   From researching on Sky News, I doubt that they would have a hidden agenda because there is no biased involved. It is simply an article talking about the impact of the interview of Prince Harry and Meghan with Oprah Winfrey.

o   The footage came from Sky News, they also had their own interviews with sources.

Quality and depth of subject matter

Since the outcome of this interview is important and troublesome for the UK, I think it has been dealt with in a professional and informative matter.

The quality was excellent we got clips from the interview, various sources which shows evidence, lots of hyper-links to fully understand the story too. The subject matter was done properly with the right tone due to neither upset the Royal Family nor the Sussexes.

Sky News is very reliable when it comes to their authenticity, they conduct their own personal interviews and research.

The role of the presenter/interviewer

The role of the presenter in this story is Rhiannon Mills who is doing the voice-over in this interview and explaining the issue. I can tell that when she is talking about both the Royals and the Sussexes her voice is completely monotonous, which shows that she is not siding with anyone.

Rhiannon Mills works for Sky News as a royal correspondent and delivers exclusive stories and breaking news on all the members of the Royal Family. Her interviews are known worldwide, with interviews with both Prince Harry and Prince William. “Rhiannon has travelled widely with the royals, covering tours to Japan, Africa, Nepal, India, Bhutan, Pakistan, the Middle East, New Zealand and Australia among other” (Sky News, n.d.)

The interviewee as a character in the story

The main interviewee: The Duke and Duchess of Sussex and The Royals

In this story it shows what Meghan and Harry have gone through, good and bad. In this story some people agree with them and others not. It also shows how their interview with Oprah Winfrey has impacted the Royal Family in a damaging way.

In order to not only mention the Royal Family as “racist” nor the villains in this news story, they provided interviews of theirs where they show equality in their work.

Other sources: Provided information regarding the Duke and Duchess of Sussex and how they feel regarding the whole situation.

Technical Elements [mise-en-scene (if any); camerawork; use of sound and/or music; editing]

Colour correction – I think there was some orange hint to the feature. It looks much more pleasing to the eye with a bit of tint.

Different shots – different shots like close up of interviewee’s faces, shots of hands (to show fidgeting). These shots show the emotion of the interviewees.

The reports’ cultural context

This article is mostly targeted towards the UK, since they are the Royals. However, the Royals have always been a prime topic worldwide, discussed in news features and people love to hear about their gossip and make up their own theories. Also, Meghan is American, so for some Americans this might also be important news for them.

This interview of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle with Oprah Winfrey was much for the audience’s interest especially since the previews showed prince Harry saying that his biggest fear was “history repeating itself” which audience speculated that it this is a metaphor regarding Harry’s late mother, Princess Diana. Which various people from the UK and other countries still adore the late Princess Diana till this day.

The intentions of the presenter’s telling of the story

I think the intention of Sky’s Rhiannon Mills was providing fact and there was not an agenda nor biased. As I mentioned earlier her voice is both monotonous when speaking about both Duchesses of Sussex and the Royal Family meaning that she was clearly not siding with anyone.

 B2) Sky News

Narrative Construction

The article starts with the lead – Mentioning the disappearance and murder of Sarah Everard that happened on the third of March after she visited a friend in London, Clapham and the impact it has made throughout the UK and also worldwide, it has increased fear amid women for their safety.

Also quoting from Met Police Commissioner Dame Cressida Dick, while acknowledging women would be concerned, tried to allay fears as she said "it is thankfully incredibly rare for a woman to be abducted from our streets".

*Video* - This feature shows us the statistics and crimes that has happened to both men and women. Explaining to the viewers how a serial killer reacts, showing crime scenes, photos and an interview of a man who had lost his wife and step-daughter.

Now discussing the body - In the article it shows the statistics of women that were killed in England and Whales between April 2019 and March 2020.

Then continuing that “Women are more likely to be killed at home by somebody they know”.

And that 77 percent of the women that were killed in these statistics were all in residential properties. 

“Men, are more likely to be killed in a public place.”

And how “Women are more likely to be killed by their partners or ex-partners”

The tail – To conclude the article, it talks about violence against women from former senior Colin Sutton, who is investigating the officer for the Metropolitan police murder squad had previously stated to Sky News: "There are very few, thankfully, men who commit violence against women in the street, in public places.

"When they do arise, when they're arrested and looked at it's found that not only do they use violence against women in the street but they'll also use violence in the home against their partner."

Treatment

This article was treated as an informative article, to inform the viewers how important it is to increase the awareness on the safety of women in the UK.

It shows the statistics of how women and men are killed and explains how some murderers feel after they killed someone or before it happened.

The agenda is definitely an open one explaining the likeliness of a woman to be killed in a public place and going further into detail about murder of women and men, there would be no hidden agenda in this type of article.

Quality and depth of subject matter

The quality of this article was excellent, the video is highly interesting and includes a number of sources and crime scenes in detail. The depth of the subject matter was dealt with appropriately, it is clear and concise. 

Showing graphs to determine the difference between women and men getting murdered while also explaining the psychological aspect of a murderer. Sky News is very reliable when it comes to their authenticity, they conduct their own personal interviews and research.

The role of the presenter/interviewer

Presenter – voice over (Liv Moloney) Liv Moloney is a senior digital producer who works with Sky News.

The presenter’s tone of voice sounds serious which is appropriate for the video.

She describes the details in depth and presents evidence to back up the information.

The interviewee as a character in the story (analyse how they talk)

Interviewee 1: Detective – Colin Sutton

The role of former murder detective Colin Sutton is to inform the audience about the demographics of murders of men and women in the UK.

He talks about his previous criminal cases on how they happen spontaneously, the use of overkilling and how it starts.

Interviewee 2: Julia Shaw – Criminal Psychologist

Her role is to make the viewers to understand the psychological part of murder and murderers.

She talks about why men murder their partners.

She mentions how “we overly rely on cues of things like attractiveness” and “being more likely to trust someone because they’re attractive and less likely to trust someone because they’re unattractive” (Shaw, 2021)

She talks about the reasons for men being violent and how we tolerate the expression of violence in men more than we do in women.

She also mentions how murder “is this thing that we assume we’re not capable of until it happens” and “how we see ourselves as good people” (Shaw, 2021).

She talked about the importance of how emotions such as anger, jealousy, greed and rage can all leads us into a situation where she thinks that everyone is potentially capable of murder and how it is not an external thing.

Technical Elements [mise-en-scene (if any); camerawork; use of sound and/or music; editing]

This video shows elements of a thriller documentary about murder, including intense thriller music, creepy text, images and videos behind scenes of murders. Also including images and clips of serial killers such as (Ted Bundy and Jack the Ripper)

It also changes the music to a more compassionate song, when there is interview shown with a man who had lost his wife and step-daughter because the step-daughters ex-partner murdered them.

The reports’ cultural context

Recently, there has been a lot of talk about the murder of Sarah Everard, who was killed by a serving Met police officer Wayne Couzens in the UK. This has been spread quickly and there have been posts on social media about how unfair it is that a woman cannot even walk alone in a public place.

How we as women have grown up having to learn about defending ourselves against men. Therefore, in cultural aspects this has been shared worldwide and has definitely brought up awareness and concern to our society.

The intentions of the presenter’s telling of the story

I think the presenter’s intentions (Liv Moloney) was to portray this interview in an engaging way, figuring out the psychology of murderers but also giving us alarming information to create more awareness. I think she wanted to create an impact to give more apprehension for these situations and to hopefully prevent more of these cases.