#hence why its less cleaned up than the past 3

[craigularory-joe]

Day 4

[thesinglesjukebox]

CAMILA CABELLO FT. PLAYBOY CARTI - "I LUV IT"

Per our controversy score, it's more iluvit ihateit iluvit ihateit iluvit ihateit iluvit...

[6.47]

Katherine St. Asaph: wtf (complimentary) [7]

Hannah Jocelyn: “I Luv It" is a perfect example of once avant-garde sounds being absorbed into the mainstream -- which is why people hate it -- but the way all involved fail makes it much better than it otherwise would be. Everyone involved doesn’t know how to work outside the lines of pure pop, and it shows. We have a IV-I-V-ii chord progression, normally too melancholic for upbeat electronica outside of “Off-World”, and we have a classic AABB chorus, only the AAs are iluvitiluvitiluvitiluvit and the BBs are Gucci Mane samples. Cabello is much more fun in this mode than crooning nicotine-Halloween-morphine “Never Be The Same” mode, and if she still comes across as try-hard, that adds to the song’s bizarre alchemy. Carti’s dispassionate mumbling nearly kills it, but listen to the beautiful synth arpeggio he’s up against. “I Luv It” is too structured to be incoherent, too clean to be overwhelming, and all those contradictions make the song legitimately captivating, far from the trainwreck intended. [8]

Isabel Cole: I almost admire this track’s staunch refusal to be an actual song; between its near-total disinterest in conventions like “melody” and “structure” and the fact that its hooks sound like they were recorded by a pull-string doll running out of batteries, you could almost call it avant-garde. Unfortunately, none of its repetitive noodling sounds interesting or good, hence “almost.” Carti’s verse (counterintuitively?) comes closest to achieving one of those things (song, interesting, good), although I’m not sure which one, and despite the fact that he is so inscrutable it’s like listening to a rap verse by the Swedish Chef. [3]

Alfred Soto: I like it, but it took getting used to Cabello's voice squeaking ILUVITILUVITILUVIT against a synth arpeggio. Because Cabello's always sounded like a synth anyway, the track's an exercise in harmony. [6]

Mark Sinker: Obviously I should stop trusting the mondegreen as insight generator -- but “I was on the train with the MEKONS!” Enter Greil Marcus to solve the case, in deerstalker like the Inspector in the Pink Panther cartoons, his enormous magnifying glass from our direction enlarging only his own eye (affectionate). Down these so-pretty streets a man must go who is not himself pop, who is neither tarnished nor afraid! He is the hero; he is Playboi Carti, mumblier perhaps than anyone in muttering history… [squeaks: ah!] [10]

Alex Clifton: Am I supposed to understand any of the words in this song? [3]

Taylor Alatorre: "Doctorin' the Tardis" with less self-awareness yet somehow even greater contempt for its target audience, which in this case is Millennial-Zoomer cuspers who assign mystical significance to Project X and Spring Breakers because they first saw those films before being old enough to drive. I'm opposed to it in principle -- but principle hasn't stopped me from listening to it 83 times in the past month. Mainly that's because of how the brute-force Gucci Mane sample tries to hack my brain into thinking it's actually hearing "Lemonade" for those 12 to 24 seconds. No chopping or screwing, no tenuous lyrical tie-ins, just unadulterated 2010 high school cafeteria bliss. It's such a childishly brazen tactic, like a couple of teenagers trying to sneak their vodka-filled water bottles into an all-ages show, that I can't help but nod respectfully toward it. Given all this, Playboi Carti might not seem to be the correct punchline to this joke, and if Camila had been able to wrangle a Riff Raff or Trinidad James onto here, the unified kitsch factor alone would've earned the song's full acquittal. But it's in the parts where he isn't aiming for gibberish-fueled virality that Carti justifies his presence here. "Oh you on a roll now?" feels like a playful negging of all the cheap XCX cosplay we've just had to sit through, and "she says I'm way too young" is such a teasing last-second aside, turning the very act of Guwop-sampling into a vague metaphor for shooting one's shot cross-generationally... or something. What exactly is one supposed to do with that, other than try to unlock some other secret meaning on the 84th listen? [6]

Wayne Weizhen Zhang: You luv it, but she got it.  [6]

Leah Isobel: The Charli XCX Twinks are hyperprotective of their right to feel alternative and unique, so Camila ripping off the cadence and delivery of "I Got It" (not to mention the Hereditary-biting promotional video) would of course send that particular portion of the internet into overdrive. But it's the prerogative of the actual, charting popstar to execute stylistic hairpins, particularly if she's navigated the label system well enough to actually release something as chart-poisonous as "I Luv It," extra-particularly if she's already played around in this sandbox, and extra-super-particularly if the song represents the first time she's found a convincing vehicle for her unbelievably annoying energy. Honestly, I couldn't tell you why I like this so much -- maybe it's the memory of liking the similarly fried-out Lazerproof, or the maturity to recognize that to be cringe is to be human -- but I do. Sorry! If the song slaps, I can't make it not slap!  [9]

Nortey Dowuona: "You two have been saying one bar is lame and the other one is awesome ALL NIGHT, and it's the same BAR?!!!" -- Troy from Community and me after four listens. [2]

Andrew Karpan: Every micro-generation gets the “I Love It” that it deserves. I love it. [10]

Ian Mathers: Look, it's not my fault that the degree of difficulty you've set yourself is "will this make the listener not want to just go listen to the classic Icona Pop/Charli XCX song 'I Love It' instead?" Credit to the post chorus and Carti's digitally slurred moan of a verse for making it a bit of a fight, but... [7]

Michael Hong: The most captivating word here is that sighed "tomorrow" right before the first chorus. Everything seems to go quiet as she breathes into it, the catharsis of having what you want in your reach, the high of forever in your sight. Cabello never sounds like she'll get there -- "I Luv It" is just one big, provocative, braindead pursuit for your attention, for you to see her as a captivating pop star -- but as her tongue darts across her lips and echoes the titular phrase over and over, there's the thrill she's been looking for. [7]

Kayla Beardslee: This is not a song, this is engagement bait. I cannot be bought this easily! Stream La Buena Vida! [3]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: It's odd that everyone is treating this as some kind of oddity; this is a Camila Cabello song, for God's sake! It's the same format as her big hit and the middling replicant (who cares about "Senorita"), just adapted for the current moment rather than the long 2010s; glitchy pop sounds are not some shocking play when it's been two presidential terms since "Vroom Vroom." Even the "Lemonade" sample feels correctly positioned – it's millennial dad rap, the exact kind of respectable pophead interpolation-fodder that Cabello, Carti, and producer Jasper Harris all probably loved as teenagers. "I Luv It" is a perfect showcase for Cabello's admittedly limited skillset; she sounds appropriately wan on the verses and cheerleader-ish on the chorus, comfortable with just being another element in Harris & El Guincho's anachronistic Pop 2 revival. Yet "I Luv It" reaches the mountaintop only upon Carti's arrival – the track pauses for a second before he starts his verse as if it's hard reloading; he then proceeds to duet with a synth solo, do his best Dirty Sprite 2-era Future impression, and go so incomprehensible that I'm not even sure if anyone else on the track knows what he's saying. Glorious. [9]

Dave Moore: I'm confident that everything that everyone who has scored this song a [4] or below says about it is accurate. But a clusterfuck contains multitudes.  [8]

Will Adams: Above all else, it's WEIRD. Strip away the stan chatter and "I Luv It" becomes an appealingly bizarre pivot in which Cabello is enraptured by a frenetic hook, woozy synths and a potentially asymmetric meter. When Playboi Carti's smeared verse arrives, you start to feel delirious. [6]

Julian Axelrod: An unrecognizable Camila Cabello, sounding like she's trying to will herself back to 2012 and secure the Spring Breakers audition she rightfully deserves. An uninterpretable Playboi Carti, facing his biggest moment in the spotlight with a burp and a shrug. An unexplainable "Lemonade" sample, as if producer El Guincho just heard The State vs Radric Davis that morning and decided he was put on this earth to get Gucci Mane a publishing check. None of it gels, none of it makes sense in the same song, none of it even makes sense in the same breath. I can only assume Camila and Co. created this incredible, idiotic Diet Coke and Mentos monstrosity to give guys like me something to be annoying about all summer. [8]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: Was kind of thrilling when it dropped but enough time has passed where this doesn't really hold up. I can only be so amused by Camila sort of just being there (she's not doing anything particularly well, nor is she flailing in any notably outrageous manner). Carti arrives with a decent verse, and then it's over. Music to be momentarily amused by and not much else. [5]

[Read, comment and vote on The Singles Jukebox]

[amazing-info-from-smita]

WALL PAPERS

CHECK OUT MY ARTICLE TO KNOW WHY AND HOW YOU SHOULD PURCHASE WALL PAPERS TO MAKE YOUR HOME LOOK RICH INCLUDING THE DO'S AND DONT'S:

A) BEFORE YOU THINK THAT YOU DONT NEED IT, CHECK OUT 22 REASONS WHY YOU SHOULD PURCHASE?

B) THINGS TO KEEP IN MIND WHIST PURCHASE?

A) USES

1) Have kids who dirty walls.

2) Have sudden Guests coming, and you want to enhance your walls.

3) No time to get it painted.

4) No patience to get it painted.

5) No budget to get it painted.

6) Quick fix needed.

7) Change look of the house.

8) Make walls and House look beautiful.

9) Make each room look different.

10) Change your and your near and dear ones mood.

11) Motivate yourself and your near and dear ones.

12) Its durable.

13) Good quality wall paper lasts for 15 years and is therefore cost effective too.

14) It hides wall fractures.

15) It makes your house look stylish.

16) It makes your house look richer.

17) Since you have choices, you can make your room appear warmer and cosier with dark and luxurious wall paper or if there is a small room then, you can make it appear bigger by choosing a lighter one or even neutral metallic as it brightens up space.

18) Since it can be pasted it hardly takes time, and thus saves energy.

19) If it's hung properly, it can last 3 times longer than the paint.

20) Paint finishes are Matt or gloss usually, however; wall paper textures have more varieties like beads, emboss, metallic, etc.

21) No splatters unlike paints hence not messy.

22) The marks can be wiped clean or washed.

B) THINGS TO KEEP IN MIND WHIST PURCHASE.

LIGHT FACTOR:

Observe the rooms natural light and temperature. If the setting emits lots of window light, then loads of colour range from light to dark, should be chosen. Natural light makes darker colors less sulk.

If there is less window light, then darker colors makes it appear scary. So proper observation and care is crucial.

MAINTENANCE:

Silk screen papers stains can be easily wiped off with wet cloth, thus they ensure long life, while vinyl long coverings should be used for places that have high traffic.

THE OTHER CRUCIAL FACTORS:

The furniture, the rugs, floors, overall color and tones, light fixtures etc should also be taken into the picture and the wall paper color chosen must undoubtedly complement it. The function of the room is also a great additional aspect that should be kept in mind whilst purchasing.

THE PATTERN:

When electing wall papers, you should keep in mind, that a pattern should be planned, so that repetitive choosing and matching gets easier, and there is no boggling as it leads to waste of time, energy and also avoids mishandling, complications thereby easing the whole process.

Matching has 3 types, they being; Linear, Plunge, Randomity.In linear type the same pattern has to be matched at the same height. This is because, the left and right edges of the first strip has to match with the left and right edges of the next strip.

In case of plunge, the strips have to match horizontally and vertically, with whatever the design may be. Randomity as the name indicates does not need worrying about the pattern at all.

Basic understanding is enough to choose the right option, so that the chosen wallpaper flows nicely in the space.

DOS AND DONT'S:

1) An expert advice is crucial to estimate the exact amount required. People dont do it on your own please.

2) The paste should not leave any residues, it should be dried clear, so do a test in advance, and don't use it directly.

3) All 4 sides of the wall, especially the ceiling is neglected by most, however; if done the impact is awesome.

SHOPPING TIPS:

1) Quality doesn't come for cheap, so stop looking for cheap stuffs, if you want your house to stand out.

2) Try samples before ordering the whole.

3) If you have art, then think big, and buy adventurous wall papers keeping the colors in mind.

4) Professionals keep bubbles, bad trims and uneven matches at bay, so don't hesitate to invest, as doing it yourself can be a big mistake, also they will take care of professional techniques like sanding, skim coating and primers if required.

5) Extra is recommended, just in case any of the walls are damaged or stained or may get damaged or stained in future.

ADDITIONAL KNOWLEDGE:

WALL STICKERS:

Wall stickers are also called wall tattoos, and wall vinyls and wall decals. These stickers are fastened on a wall to smoothen, or decorate the surface and also for informational purposes. Wall decors have to be cut, so that we can use them according to our requirements. Thus, the machines, that are used to cut them are called the vinyl cutting machines.

KIND AND SHAPES:

It comprises, of the wall borders, and cut outs to larger murals or designs covering the entire wall. The design consists of words, pictures and shapes of course. They can be small or large, based on necessity. Usually it is somewhere between 30 Cm X 50 Cm and 60 Cm X 100 Cm, larger ones may be 100 X 100 or even larger.

Most of them are not resuable, though few are. The adhesives can be adjusted a few times before the vinyl actually dies. Larger sizes are actually difficult to use, as they can be torn, stretched out, or even get stuck on its own, thereby making it difficult to be removed, adjusted and stuck again.

Wanna Purchase, check for great varieties below, also send a mail to shuchishoppingzonessz@gmail.com for discounts.

https://myshopprime.com/smitanaidu1/mfumtp4

[wizkiddx]

work with me

this is for @worldoftom 'lolbrosgetsicktoo' challenge event thing - go check it out bcos lots of much better writers have got involved too✨! I'm v new to these things but I tried :) the prompt was: 'would you quit whining and just get in the bath' . (also look at me acc posting sort of regularly, who'd of thought?!?!)

warnings: sickness / fever (more dramatic than it needs to be) / LOTS of medical inaccuracies

summary: when tom doesn't take advice and ends up very ill, very far from home, there's one person whose stuck dealing with it

“Please Tom… I need you to work with me!”

It wasn’t his fault he was being a complete nightmare, though your patience was wearing off somewhat.

For context, you were in Morocco, where he had been filming part of his next film, which only made trying to take care of him that bit harder.

Everyone got ill sometimes. It wasn’t his fault.

That was the mantra ringing through your head, even if you had a more challenging time believing it. Tom wasn’t stupid, as much as he liked to joke about it. HOWEVER, what he was less good at was heeding warnings. He was a white boy in Morrocco; the health and safety briefing had literally been aimed at him. Had he taken the advice not to eat any dodgy looking meats at the market?

Of course not; that’d be boring.

Everyone else was fine. You’d all sampled Morroccos culture without giving yourselves the worst case of food poisoning you’d ever witnessed. But not Tom - possibly one of the only ‘indispensable’ people on the set. If you, or one of the minor characters, or even the director, had got ill - the show could continue.

When you’d been rudely awoken by your phone going off, you’d known instantly. It was as if you’d told him not to take a bite out of the weird burger once you were away from the eager view of the street vendor. Sure enough, with bleary eyes, you hissed at the brightness of the phone screen before seeing ‘Tom H’ on the screen.

“Y/n?” His voice was croaky, but just from the single call of your name, it was clear he was feeling sorry for himself.

“Are you okay? It’s late T.”

“Um I… can you come over? You…you might need the key I’m - um- in the bathroom.”

As his stylist, it technically wasn’t part of your job description to also be mother when he was sick, but (unfortunately for you) after the 3 years working side by side with him - you were also friends.

Which you were almost regretting by the second time rinsing the toilet bowl clean after he’d evacuated what seemed to be the majority of his vital organs into it. Honestly, it was impressive how he managed to keep going.

That had been at around 4 in the morning- the doctor had been called at 8, coinciding beautifully with his 5th toilet extravaganza. Once the doctor had confirmed your original, if completely unqualified, diagnosis of food poisoning - you hadn’t been able to bite your tongue. Perhaps an ‘i told you so’ might’ve slipped past your lips, but Tom was a bit too out of it to argue back.

You’d been given firm advice from the doctor - he said little sips of water, rest and control his temperature. It all had seen pretty simple - though the action? Not so much.

It wasn’t his fault, yet Tom was not super compliant. You and Harry had both been taking turns in practically forcing him to take sips of water, having to turn off ‘modern family’ till he did. The blackmail had put you both in his bad book.

Honestly, thank the lord Harry was here too. You’d woken him up at seven, begging for help and since then, you’d tagged teamed. While one was looking after Tom, the other was phoning the director, the doctor, and the crew to inform them of the current situation.

Again, of all people. Why’d it have to be Tom?

Mainly because you knew how mortifying he found this. He didn’t like people fussing over him, never had. He liked to work hard, liked to make people happy - definitely didn’t like to feel a burden. Perhaps what made him feel ten times worse was that he knew he was inconveniencing the whole production team massively.

And yes, as you’d unhelpfully reminded him, it was ‘his fault’.

The lavish hotel room, big bathroom and pretty efficient AC still didn’t manage to mask the pungent in-the-back-of-your-throat smell from the bathroom. At the doctor’s advice, who had been a little concerned at Toms fever, Harry had cranked the AC on high. It had forced you to steal one of Tom’s big hoodies and a pair of joggers- you hadn’t left his room since he first called you, still wearing your tiny pyjama shorts and an old tee.

“Please turn the air con off.” His little voice whined from where he was lying, huddled up under the covers. Perched on the other side of the double bed, but over the covers with your laptop on his lap, you could actually feel him shivering with the chills. It felt like you were torturing the poor boy.

“T you know I can’t. It’ll make your fever worse.” The way he looked up at you, like a little Labrador that you were refusing to pet, actually pained your heart.

Okay, so yes it was his fault, but you weren’t mad, you just felt so awful for him.

“Please I’ll- I’ll pay you more.” His voice was hoarse; though he denied a sore throat, it sounded like the constant sickness was burning his windpipe.

“Tommm” you pouted, sticking your bottom lip out “I don’t want your money, want you to get better.”

Apparently giving up, brown eyes shot you the filthiest look in disappointment, rolling to face away from you. You thought he was giving you the silent treatment in a huff, but instead, he was praying on the weaker one.

“Harry, I’ll buy you that set of golf clubs-“

“NO!” You had to interrupt before Harry would say yes - because from the way his younger brother shot up from the arm chair, he was about to. Scowling eyes slowly focused back on you in annoyance, making you huff - shutting the laptop and kneeling on the bed to face him. After pressing the back of your palm to his forehead, which was scorching hot, you sighed. “I know you feel shitty and I’m so so sorry but I’m trying to make you better. So shut up, drink this and go to sleep!”

Like a child scorned, you received another death glare however, then he complied, taking a sip of the water you offered before lying back - huddling even tighter.

And it had been relatively peaceful for a few hours; Tom seemed to be getting some sleep - even if he was tossing and turning. Eventually, a prescription that the doctor had requested worked its way through the system, Harry getting a text to say he could go pick it up. The nearest pharmacy was probably a 30 minute drive from the hotel, so he left as soon as.

This left you alone with Tom, where the situation only descended into more chaos.

Almost as soon as Harry had left, Tom had stirred with a grunt. All it took was one look at his face for you to know. Both of you leapt up and flew into the toilet, Tom once again getting very familiar with the Moroccan toilet bowl.

This time though, when he had leant backwards, he’d sort of lost control and flopped most the way - you catching him before he could hit his head on the tiled floor.

“Woah, easy there!” It wasn’t like he’d passed out, but the look in his eye as he slumped into your lap… he wasn’t all there either. “Hey Tom… you with me? Tom?”

Lazily he blinked up at you, not really replying except for groans of half-formed words.

Deciding this had all got a bit direr, you almost sprinted back into the room, grabbing your phone and returning. He was still on the floor, his thumb and first finger pressing into each eye - groaning again.

“Hey Tom? I’m gonna call the doctor you need anything?” He whined in response, stopping only when you stroked his sweaty hair back, most of your attention on dialling the correct number.

The solution he’d given wasn’t pretty: Tom’s fever was too high hence why he was all woozy and groany. Until the doctor could get over with the stronger medications, you needed to lower his temperature in other ways or take him to hospital. He’d absolutely hate hospital, but the other choice? Boy, was he not going to like it either.

Ignoring Tom’s croaked question of what you were doing, you busied yourself switching on the bath taps. You let the water run until it was the right (very mild) temperate, then turned back to Tom, who’d managed to work himself up to sit against the sink unit.

“The doctor says you need it.” His brain was foggy, his mind was slow but your tone told him enough to know something was wrong with the bath. “Just take your clothes off and then I’ll help you-“

“Absolutely fucking not.” Good. He was still with it enough to argue.

“I am just as uncomfortable as you are Tom, but we both know you can’t stand up without fainting, so you are going to need my help.”

“Y/n!”

“Keep your boxers on and it’s just like a fitting! I’ve seen you have those before!”

It was clear as day just how emasculated he felt, especially because he knew you were right. Sitting up at this current moment was a push; there was no way he was getting in the bath without some help. Defeatedly he nodded, but gave you a piercing look to turn around before he started wiggling himself out of the flannel pyjama trousers and light cotton t-shirt. Most confusingly, he still felt freezing cold, yet he had long since learned not to argue with you - especially when your justification came from the advice of a doctor.

Your cue to turn around came in the form of an extra angry-sounding grunt- the look you got when you did wasn’t much better either. It was a weird contrast, though, having someone who physically appeared so indestructible (a superhero for crying out loud); to have been absolutely beaten to a pulp by a few mouth fulls of weird meat. You had seen his bare torso before, although it still wasn’t something easy to get used to - making you clench your teeth together just slightly. A very welcome view.

Perhaps you looked just a little too long at the man who was technically your boss, hunched angrily on the floor in nothing but his calvins - another grunt shaking you out of it. By now, the bath was almost full and you hurried to shut off the water, feeling your cheeks heat up as you cursed silently to yourself.

“Okay come on, gimme your arm.” Begrudgingly Tom followed your request, slinging his arm heavily over your shoulder as you crouched beside him. As strong as he looked, you knew right now he felt powerlessly weak - all that muscle was just going to be almost dead weight.

Now it was your turn to grunt and groan as you pulled Tom up to stand, him focusing on blinking away the headrush he got.

“Come on T work with me here.” Getting him to the side of the bath wasn’t too difficult, the issue came when he stepped with one foot into the bath and yelped, instantly withdrawing as if it was a literal ice bath.

The sudden movement had you both losing balance, ending with Tom sitting on the edge of the bath and you leaning over him, in between his legs, and slapping your hand on the wall opposite purely so you both didn’t end up in the bath.

“Tom!”

“It’s like ice water!”

“Its lukewarm like the doctor said!”

“It is not its from the fucking arctic!”

“Oh for god sake!” Exasperated, you paced up and down the bathroom shaking your head at his ridiculousness. This was ALL. HIS. FAULT.

You came back to him with an ultimatum.

“It’s this or the doctor said I had to drag your ass to hospital.”

“Nooooooo.” The 25 year old seemed to convert into a whiny three year old again.

“Those are the two options. So will you PLEASE quit complaining and get in the bath.”

Keeping up the toddler persona, Tom huffed but reluctantly nodded in agreement - you had come up trumps. It didn’t stop him yelping when you helped to lower him in. His breath was shaky, as a response to the ‘cold’, but he was firming it. At least when you felt his forehead after a couple of minutes, it certainly seemed as though the fever was starting to ease off .

“You can go if you want.” His voice was murmured and as you looked up at him, he did his very best to avoid your gaze.

“Not a chance, if you drown on my watch, Nikki will never forgive me.” At the very least he seemed to appreciate your joke, scoffing a little with a small nod. “If you don’t want me here I get it. As soon as Harry’s back, I’ll swap with him.”

“No! It’s not that its… I’m just an ass when I’m ill.”

“A self aware ass, though.” Again he chuckled a little, as you folded your arms on the edge of the porcelain tub, resting your head lying to one side. “You had me pretty scared there for a moment, you know?”

He nodded a little, creating a wave of ripples in the water which you watched to avoid his gaze - which you knew was tracing all your features inquisitively.

“Hey it’s in the job description, always a bit dramatic... I’m sorry though I should never of called you- don’t know why I didn’t just get Harry.” In response you tutted, taking a moment to lean up and push his sweaty curls back a bit.

Just because you could, it was allowed in this moment.

“’m glad you did.”

“Yeh me too” He sighed, eyes fluttering shut in the easy silence of the bathroom. You kept a vigilant eye on him for the next 20 minutes, checking the temperature of his forehead using the back of your hand, whilst he seemed to finally get a bit of proper restbite, appearing like the worst had passed. You had no idea what was taking Harry so long; in fact it was the doctor that arrived first- who you ran to let in (not wanting to leave Tom asleep in the bath one bit).

Whilst the doctor did all his checks, taking his temperature properly this time, satisfied that it was much more manageable. He still wanted to set him up with some oral rehydration rescue packs to get his hydration status a bit better and give some anti-sickness tablets and antipyretics.

Having actually been getting some rest before all the prodding and poking, Tom was back to being a grumbling dick - now not wanting to leave the bath (the irony was real - making you roll your eyes). Once again, he appeared embarrassed to have you see him like this, so you left the doctor to help him get out and changed- instead going down to reception to get a fresh set of sheets, as he’d done a pretty impressive job of sweating through the old ones.

Even if tired and grumpy, when Tom exited the bathroom, he looked much better - he was walking himself without the doctor’s help. Which honestly was such a relief because when he had passed out on you, you genuinely were terrified. Thankfully the doctor stayed for the next 20 or so minutes, which was just when Harry returned with a bag of medications - which were now wholly redundant, given the doctor had already supplied everything.

“What happened?” Harry asked you in a hushed voice, whilst Tom was distracted with getting his medications. Recounting the story of Tom pretty much passing out, Harry grimaced for you, then launching over to give you a tight hug.

“Are you okay?” That was a novel idea, you hadn’t really thought about yourself at all - but honestly, you were a bit shaken, having been running on adrenalin for most of the night.

“I-uhm… yeh I think so… just-just was a bit scared, I guess? Felt bad too because he didn’t want me there but-“

“I can promise you Y/n, he did want you there. Just probably embarrassed he wasn’t all manly and that…” With a nod, you smiled softly at the frizzy-haired boy.

Whilst working with Tom, it also meant getting pretty close to his younger brother. The two Hollands were almost attached at the hip, which you were very much okay with.

It was weird though... your relationships were completely different. Harry was just your brother, through and through. He wound you up like a sibling but also knew you as if he had your whole life. With Tom… it wasn’t that. Arguably, you were closer to Tom, but on a different level. It was more exciting, more nerve-wracking and heartwarming all at the same time. Honestly, you couldn’t get your head around it properly.

“Hey, you’re probably shattered. Why don’t you go back to your room and get some sleep? I got it in here.” You knew Hary was trying to offer something nice, and now all the excitement had worn off, you were unbelievably shattered. But you didn’t like the idea of not being there, as a just in case.

“Uhm, I think I might just stay, you know?” And he did, with a deliberate, knowing smile, he nodded.

He knew you were worried. He knew Tom had really really scared you. He also knew how much you cared about his brother.

Just like how Harry knew Tom wanted you there, even if he felt embarrassed. Well, anyone would- when you are passing out half-naked in front of the one person that really matters.

It was just at this point that the doctor was done, giving Harry instructions about the rest of the day, when you made a beeline for the bed. Tom was propped up against the headboard, still with a pale sullen look and tired eyes, but a bit less clammy and more human. He cracked a smile as you crawled up onto the other side of the bed, kneeling next to him.

“How’re you doin’?”

“All drugged up, just feel fucking exhausted.” Instinctively you reached up to feel his forehead, really appreciating the fact it felt almost normal.

“Join the club mate, I had a 5am wake up call too.” You almost whispered, intending to make Tom laugh, but instead only getting a pout.

“I am sorry, a-are you going to go back to your room?”

“Nah” Tom’s eyes didn’t light up, except the fact that they very much did. “Can’t trust you not to get into trouble while I’m gone Holland.”

“Thanks.” He laughed weakly before shimmying down on the bed, so he was much more comfortable. “And thankyou, I-I’m sorry I’m a dickhead and made your life-“

“Shut up Tom!” Laughing, you lightly slapped his arm, also leaning down on the bed, so you were lying facing him. “You’re all feverish; go to sleep before you say something stupid.”

There was a long pause, Tom just gazing deep into your eyes, because he was pretty sure what he was thinking was nothing to do with the dodgy unidentified meat he’d had the evening before.

“What... like asking you out?”

…..

“Maybe that wouldn’t be so stupid.”

~~~~im really not sure how I feel about this one, let me know what you thought ;) ~~~~

tagging: @lovehollandy12 @hallecarey1 @crossyourpeter@hollandfanficlove

[thatsassyhufflepuff]

Hello!

It is currently past midnight. I decided to make a post where I’d put all my favorite Dramione quotes so I can look back on them and squeal. That’s all.

✨✨✨

1. “You love fighting with me just as I love fighting with you, that’s why we do it so well.” He smirked down at her and pressed a kiss to her lips. “This house is just as much yours as it is mine, I’m sorry I made you feel anything less than that.” His thumb traced the edges of her lips before she reached up and took his hand in hers.”

2. “Hey, hey, none of that.” He gently admonished, “Granger, I can’t tell you whether or not we moved in too soon. I can say that this feels right, waking up with you, going to bed with you, even cleaning up all the hair you shed in the shower- how are you not bald? I am convinced your hair has magical properties all on its own-'' He grunted when she smacked him in the side. “What I mean is Granger, I want you for a long time, longer than I’ve ever wanted anyone else if I’m being honest. I’d have been kidding myself if I thought falling in love with a swotty pain in the arse Gryffindor would’ve been easy.”

Transformation

happy_valley

—

1. “Expecting a challenge--some tired but emphatic refusal to take Muggle medicine--I braced myself for the inevitable argument. He turned his head to my hand resting on his shoulder, kissed a knuckle, and went back to sleep.

I didn't stop shaking until I reached the Boots.”

2. “and given how I feel about you, you'd think I'd do everything in my power to ruin your marriage. Having him believe it was you acting on his behalf, seizing an opportunity that was tailor-made for him will not get me what I want. Sadly, the opposite is also true. I know you don't believe me, but I actually thought making him happy would make you happy.”

3. “I am not most women," I pointed out. "Hence the slapping."

"No, I admit they broke the mold when they made you. That's why I'm absolutely madly in love with you. Head over heels. Dizzy with desire. Crazy--”

4. “He shrugged and his mouth flattened into a line. "It's been a grim few months. I'm only human. Have I told you that I love it when you're stern with me? Your mouth gets all prissy and adorable. Like you've eaten a sweet lemon. A silly metaphor but somehow apt." He pursed his lips”

5. “Someday I hope you'll look at me, and I won't see that half-second of disgust with which your gaze always greets me. Anyway, it's not true. I want you because I love you.”

6. “He kissed me on the forehead and then despite his previous admission, he wrapped me in an embrace, his breath hot against my ear. "I love you. I know you don't believe me, but I do. And aside from the fact you are beautiful and smart and articulate and sexy, most importantly, you're the only person I know who has the guts and determination to stop me from becoming my father."

The Politician's Wife

pir8fancier

—

1. “After what felt like a lifetime and at the same time a split second, they parted, gazing into one another’s eyes with the passion they both felt. Hermione’s eyes implored him to say what she wanted him to say – that this wasn’t the end, that they would have another chance, that he wouldn’t give up – but he couldn’t lie to her. He would never lie to her.”

2. “Hermione just stared at the floor, biting her lip and feeling as though every dream she had ever had had been crushed. Maybe it had. “I wanted to save you,” she whispered, finally meeting his gaze. “I wanted to save you.”

Draco stepped forward, taking one moment more to touch her face with the back of his hand and memorize the deep brown of her eyes. “You did,” he said simply.

And there was no more to be said”

3. “Draco didn’t let her finish. His hands cradled her head as he kissed her, softly as first just like the night before, and then harder, with more passion and intensity. She returned the kiss with everything in her might, trying to say what she wanted to say – “I love you” – without words”

4. “She wasn’t going to give up though. Hope was in front of her now, and she had almost been afraid that such a thing was lost to her forever. Draco may have given up on saving himself, but Hermione wasn’t about to do the same. She loved him – that she knew for sure – and she was going to make sure Draco got his second chance.

She’d die before she let anything tell her otherwise.”

5. “I’m not leaving without you,” she said firmly. He didn’t reply, just set his mouth in a firm line. She wished she could make him feel what she felt – a certainty that this wasn’t the end for him, that she was going to fight until her last breath to give him the freedom he had suffered for. She wanted to reach out and hold him, to cradle his face in her hands and tell him that they would make it to the end together.

“This is your time, Hermione,” he said, reaching out and taking one of her hands in both of his. ��This is what you’ve been waiting for.”

“It’s your time, too,” she said, and she hoped she sounded as confident as she felt. “This is your second chance.”

6. “Draco gave her an imploring look, gripping her upper arms and forcing her to look right into his eyes. “Hermione, you know how I feel. I’ve never told you, but you must know. So when I tell you that dying for you and your cause and my cause is the closest I’ll ever get to being whole again, believe me.” He paused, reaching his hand up to push the straggling bangs out of Hermione’s eyes. “You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me, Hermione Granger, and I can never thank you enough. So just let me help you in the only way I know how.”

7. “Hermione could feel tears forming in her eyes, and she quickly reached up to pull Draco into her arms. He held onto her tightly, trying to memorize every detail of her for the last time. When they pulled away, Draco swallowed the lump in his throat as he looked into her warm brown eyes. There’s never enough time for us.”

8. “You may not have forgiven yourself,” Hermione whispered to him, laying her face against his shoulder as he shook with sobs. “But we already have. One day, you’ll learn to see yourself the way we do.”

Bittersweet and Strange

UndiscoveredQueen19

—

“Hermione, I love you." She didn't smile, she didn't say anything back either. She just kept looking up at him. He wondered she even heard him. He knew it was wrong to say it in this moment, but he didn't know if either of them would survive. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you until now. But I love you. So much." He kissed her forehead.”

A Future Uncertain

LightsWrites

—

“Suddenly, Draco laughed, a bitter, self-deprecating laugh. “You’re going to make me say it, aren’t you? Well, I guess it’s the least I owe you.”

He leaned closer to her, looking straight into her eyes, and she suddenly felt the urge to draw back and run away. She made herself sit still.

“I love you, Hermione. I think I have for a long time,”

Seven Years and a Day

Dark Rose

—

“She was half expecting him to just walk through the door but Draco surprised her when he suddenly turned around and returned to her side. She lifted an eyebrow but before she could say anything, Draco drew her into a hug.

“Goodnight.” His whisper tickled her ear.

She could barely return his hug when Draco pulled away with an impish grin. She knew he knew she was going to think of him for the rest of the night. ‘Darn it. Bloody Draco Malfoy.”

A cornucopia of noncoincidences

muffin_reverie

—

“Draco..." She felt a little uneasy.

"I love you." He had said it before, but the words had never sounded so fierce. "I won't let him hurt you.”

Alternate History

Furare

—

“You’re beautiful and compassionate and funny and… I know you probably hear it all the time but you’re brilliant and I plan on telling you that every bloody day. You make me want to buy a shop and sell potions and make my own way in this world doing something I love and something I excel at, but it’s more than that it’s… it’s…”

She waited him out.

“It’s bells on a hill with you, Granger.”

Bells on a Hill

HeyJude19

—

1. “Draco opened the door the rest of the way and pulled her into his arms; he held her tightly as if he would never let her go, as if he could push all the hurt away. She could feel his heart beating and its constant rhythm soothed her, as did the steady rise and fall of his chest. Gradually her sobs slowed, then stopped. She pulled away from him, wiping her eyes.

"Do you want us to stay?" he asked quietly. She shook her head, and he tilted her chin so their gaze met. "Hermione, will you be okay today? Tell me the truth. I hate that we're leaving you alone today."

She looked into his eyes and saw deep concern and worry. "Yes," she said weakly. "Thank you."

Draco wrapped her in his arms again, then released her and leaned down and kissed her forehead. "See you soon." He turned and left her standing there before he lost the ability and the resolve to leave.”

2. “Harry scrunched his nose in distaste. "How can you watch that rubbish?"

"It's actually really good, Potter."

"Whatever." Harry studied Hermione. She looked so peaceful that it hurt him to think of what was ahead for her, for all of them, really. "She's beautiful."

Draco looked at her as well, and without thinking about what he was doing, said, "Yeah, she is.”

3. “Hermione scowled and continued to hit him, but stopped yelling. Draco carried her into the house, up the stairs, and into her room. He set her down on the bed. She tried to get up; he grabbed her wrists and held her down.

She struggled, but when she looked into Draco's eyes, she saw they were wet. She lay still, holding his gaze.

"Don't make me Immobilize you."

She nodded. He released her wrists and took one of her hands in his. "I promise to come back, if you promise to stay," he said softly.”

4. “He kissed her with everything he had, all the fear, longing, pain, and joy he felt. He kissed her because he was scared to die, and he too wanted to see where this would go. He kissed her because of the secrets he kept from her, willing her to trust him, to believe him, to know that he would tell her. He told her he loved her, he would do anything for her, would die for her, would even try to live for her.”

We Learned the Sea

floorcoaster

—

1. “You are mine, Hermione, I don’t want anyone mistaking you for single again or even thinking of trying to coax you away from me.” He laid his hand on her cheek, his thumb brushing over her bottom lip. “Granger…Hermione…I love you.”

2. “The look of shock on her face matched his own. He hadn’t meant to say that, hadn’t even realized that he had those feelings for her, that he would recognize them as such. He was in unfamiliar waters and suddenly scared to death. He meant them, he loved her, and it terrified him because he had never loved anyone before.”

Something In the Way She Moves

Snapes_Godess

—

“Draco leaned forward, pressing their foreheads together and nuzzled her nose.

“Take it. Take my heart, and take the remainder of my soul as well. You can even filet my heart and crush my soul if you wish. It doesn’t matter, since in actuality, they’ve probably been already yours to break for a very long time.”

5 am, waking up

mysterious_intentions

—

“The deflated bits of his countenance inflated with her admission, until he felt as though he would float through the air. Moving his hands along the curves of her sides, he pulled her flush against his chest. "I love you, Hermione."

The admission left him in a single breath, causing Hermione to arch her back so that she could look him in the eye. She searched his depths, seemingly inspecting for any sign of deception. Finding none, a smile spread across her face. "I love you, too.”

I Carry Your Heart

TheMourningMadam

—

[dorevenge]

where ignorance is bliss - chapter 2: where grass was green

SUMMARY: Obadiah is off to Washington to assist with the war in Vietnam, and Peggy and Maria grow closer, as Maria learns something she wishes she didn't. [AO3 LINK]

CHAPTERS: 1 [2] 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 ☆

November 15, 1959 – Bronx, New York, Obadiah’s Apartment

Struggling to find ways to pass the time after the war, Peggy frequented my apartment. The Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division (or, S.H.I.E.L.D., as everyone says to save precious time) has been involved in the fight with Vietnam for a few years now. Obadiah left for Washington right after the Stark Expo to give weapons consult in the war, and I haven’t seen him in almost three months. We would write letters sometimes, and phone even less. I moved into Obie’s apartment to take care of the place while he was away for an indeterminate amount of time, and Peggy crashed in the living more times than she would care to admit.

“Did you love him?” I ask, fixing the two of us another round of Old Fashions. The empty Chinese carryout containers are scattered across the coffee table before us. There’s a good restaurant between the S.H.I.E.LD. Headquarters and the apartment, and Peggy will frequently grab something on the way here.

“I only knew him for a couple months,” Peggy replies, taking the glass. I curl up next to her on the couch, our heads leaning in towards each other. “So it’s hard to say. It could have been. We were both young, thrown together during some of humanity’s darkest days. We were all looking for something to believe in.”

She swirls the glass in her hand, lazily watching the whiskey fall back down the side before continuing.

“What about you and Obadiah? Is this love?”

“I don’t want to talk about him.” The corners of my mouth curl downwards on their own. Peggy notices. Peggy always notices.

“Trouble in paradise?”

“It’s more like paradise when he’s gone rather than when he’s here.”

“Why is he your boyfriend if you don’t even like him?”

“He’s not my boyfriend,” I take a large gulp of my Old Fashion, the whiskey burning the back of my throat. “He’s my fiancé.”

Peggy sits up, and my head slides off her shoulder to the cushion of the couch.

“Your what?” She takes my left hand into hers and finds my ring finger bare.

“I keep it in my sock drawer. Whether out of safekeeping or embarrassment, I’m not sure.” I sit up.

“When did this happen? And why did you say yes?” She looks at me with a tight expression, concern and worry on her face. Her red lipstick is all but gone, a faint imprint of it left on the rim of her class, and her usually tight curls hang loose around her neck and chin. If she weren’t so upset, I’d reach out to tuck one of them behind her ear.

“The last day of the Expo. He… He’s comfortable. We have our routine. We play chess together, I straighten his ties, I smile at the men he wants to invest in his company. I get some of the profits for my charities, and we make each other look good.” I frown at the empty glass in my hand and contemplate fixing another.

Peggy sets down her unfinished drink and looks at me. She has a way of effortlessly shifting her gaze from disapproving to comforting in a second. I never know if I’m going to be talking to the “unrelenting founder of S.H.I.E.LD.” Peggy or the “let’s go shopping and day-drinking” Peggy.

“I’m sure there’s a man out there that complements you and makes you feel good. You just-”

“-haven’t found him yet,” I finish her sentence. I’ve heard it from everyone – my parents, coworkers, strangers who learn I’m 23 and still unwed. 24, I remind myself; my birthday was on the fifth, less than two weeks ago. I feel the effects of the whiskey settling in, my eyes growing heavy and my weight shifting to my stomach. “You’re lucky to have experienced two great loves.”

“Daniel is far from a true love, hence why I stay with you the majority of the week. I’m also fourteen years older than you and have had more time to find them. I was 24 when I met Steve; there’s still plenty of time.”

“There doesn’t seem to be many men like Steve left.”

-

Peggy was gone without a word the next morning, and I am left alone with a pounding headache. By the time I wake, its well past noon on Saturday, and the mail’s already been delivered under the door.

I rifle through the envelopes once my toast is done, the coffee pot almost full, and the majority of the mail is addressed to Obadiah. Bills and letters of interest from inventors that I’m supposed to forward to him in DC. There’s a letter addressed to me in his precise, meticulous handwriting, but the one that interests me most is from Roxxon Oil Company, a large, thick packet with “CONFIDENTIAL” stamped across it. Naturally, I open it.

Maybe it’s the lingering hangover or the knowledge that Obie would forgive me for anything under the sun, but I rip open the envelope as I sip on my morning coffee, pouring all its contents out on to the table.

Most of the information doesn’t interest me, talking about drill efficiency and rigs and pipelines, until I find the balance sheet and investing information. I did get my master’s in accounting, as Obie tends to forget as he relegates me to a trophy wife. As I drift back into sobriety, the pieces start falling into place. Roxxon isn’t investing in Stane International; Stane is investing in Roxxon, and they were already profiting, working together, inventing together. The copies of the blueprints are of Obie’s design, seeking to create clean energy to replace gasoline down the road. In the last two years, Obadiah has made hundreds of thousands of dollars, with deposits and withdrawals from countless accounts, and reinvesting it, the paper trail deliberately as confusing as possible. I’d call it embezzlement if it weren’t his own company.

I get a scratch piece of paper and start doing the math. It isn’t adding up. Nothing is adding up, the dates and locations, let alone the cash, with several documents addressed from Russia. I sit up, my heart in my throat, pulsing so hard it feels like the world around me was shaking.

Obadiah is not a sneaky man by nature. I knew that he was interested in me before he realized it; I knew when he was going to ask me to go steady with him; I know when he is on the brink of a great new idea. He tries his best to hide things, but every move of his body betrays him. I’ve caught him sticking things in the back of his closet and under his bed more times than I could count, and I’ve never had the opportunity to check with him there. But seeing as he’s away…

Kneeling, I fumble underneath the bed frame until my fingers find purchase on a briefcase, and I slide it out. I wrestle with the knobs until I realize there’s a four-digit code keeping it locked. Before I mess with the dials, I notice the number. 0213.

“Oh, Obie. Do you have to be so predictable?” February 13th was our first date; he chose the day before Valentine’s Day because he believed the holiday of romance should be reserved for people already together, and he made a spectacle on 14th because we were together at that point, by his logic.

The top of the briefcase pops open at my touch, and inside I find numerous telegram slips, copies of both those sent and received. I sift through them quickly, none of them really catching my eye, filled with code words that I didn’t have the motivation to try to decipher. One of them caught my eye, and this is one of the only times Obie’s over-organization paid off because the telegrams were in chronological order.

RECEIVED

September 21, 1957

To: Stane, O.

O., I am glad to hear you secured the trust-fund. Let me know what day you’ll tie the knot, and I’ll tell you where to wire the funds. I might just send you a gift to celebrate.

NEFARIA, G.

SENT

September 28, 1957

To: Nefaria, G.

I’ll be traveling for work extensively the next four months. Please send files to Location 2. She can’t know anything.

STANE, O.

RECEIVED

September 30, 1957

To: Stane, O.

O., safe travels. Remember the end goal – the reactor that threatens our future. It cannot be manufactured by anyone but us, for our sake.

NEFARIA, G.

Prior, my heart had felt like it was running a mile a minute; now, it feels still in my chest. Dead in the water, like a stunned minnow tossed in to attract larger fish. “The trust fund.”

I had been courted before for my parents’ wealth. In college, a boy had pursued me relentlessly. He made me feel beautiful, special, and like the only star in his sky. He had convinced me that love was this roller-coaster rush of emotions, one collision after the other, until his dormmate clued me in on his intentions. That’s why I try to keep Obie in the dark about what I’ll inherit, how big my trust-fund really is. Growing up, I was unaware of how good we had it; all my friends in boarding school were from the same social and financial class, we all vacationed at the same spots and shopped at the same boutiques. It took a lot of eye-opening experiences at university for me to realize life was different for others, and it honed my ability to detect insincere motives. Too little, too late, but I won’t let it happen again.

With shaking hands, I put the papers back in their order, and I snap the briefcase closed, pushing it back under the bed with a force. I return to the kitchen table where I had spread the other documents out, collect them, and place them back as they were. I’m not sure if I need to try to seal it to make it look unopened, or if I should destroy the whole thing. He hadn’t asked me about forwarding this one specifically, so he might not be expecting it. Under the documents, I find the letter addressed to me again. Obie’s handwriting hits me differently now. How well do I actually know the sender?

Mar- (God, I hate it when he calls me Mar.)

I am writing to you with success here in Washington DC. We have made valiant efforts with the war. We expect Vietnam to concede soon. Our troops are vigilant and the best America has to offer, and their farmers pose no threat to us or the hope of victory. I expect to return home to you Friday the 15th of November. I’m sorry, darling, that I missed your birthday, but perhaps I can make it up to you.

See you soon at home,

Your Obie

Friday. Today was Friday.

The living room was a mess. Peggy’s and my drinks and dinner dishes scatter the room, the mail on the table, and I look equally disheveled. I know Obie would be disappointed, as the apartment is always speckless when he’s here.

I am a flurry around the house, collecting garbage in the bin and dishes in the sink. I tie the heaping garbage bag and leave it by the door, and rush to check my appearance in the bathroom. A scarf around my hairline will make the windswept, frenzied style look intention, and I change into a simple blue sundress. Obie didn’t have a dishwasher, so I put an apron on to protect my dress from the dishwater.

As I was setting the last glass out to dry, a knock resounded from the front door. I could feel it reverberate in my chest, and my heartbeat pulsed in every finger in my hand. Shaking, I set the glass down, wiped the water off my hands, preparing myself to smile and wine-and-dine the man I’ve already committed myself to.

[bobbystompy]

91 Quotes I Enjoyed From 2020

Below are my favorite quotes from 2020. Though most occurred throughout the year, some took place before but were encountered during.

1) “You don’t have to be new to make new.” - Rick Rubin

2) “He put the beat on and go to sleep then wake up with a verse.” - The Lox

3) “Every opinion is bad.” - Blink-155

4)

(via Twitter)

5) “At the start of every disaster movie, there’s a scientist being ignored.”

6) “Be brave enough to suck at something new.”

7) “Comedy is the only job you can have where you can use everything you know” - Robin Williams via Dave Chappelle

8) “What’s the worst swear word where you live?” - Josiah Hughes

9) “Cookies are a really great way to get everybody to like you for a short period of time” - YSAC

10) “The worst dancer at a wedding is the one who’s not dancing.” - John Mulaney

11) “I never saw the end of the tunnel. I only saw myself running out of one." - Kobe Bryant

12) "A good movie begins as you're walking out of the theater" - Ethan Hawke

13) “When I was young and starting in cinema, there was a saying that I carved deep into my heart which is, 'The most personal is the most creative.’ That quote was from our great Martin Scorsese.” - Bong Joon-ho

14) “Run to the rescue with love, and peace will follow” - River Phoenix via Joaquin Phoenix

15) “Thank you -- I will drink until next morning.” - Bong Joon-ho

16) “Men will bury their emotions for decades and then take it all out on children tubing while they drive the boat.” - @krauter_

17) “They help you with the dumb face stuff, but they don’t tell you how to fix it” - Adam (Nate’s friend), on having older sisters

18) “We all had our connections, but it’s not the details themselves that matter, it’s the feeling behind them. There are a million coming-of-age tales. Lady Bird’s secret sauce is how deeply its creator gave a shit. The older I get, the less I care about anything but the sense of a filmmaker’s personal connection to the material. It doesn’t matter what it’s about, what genre it is, or whether it’s genre at all. I only really care that it feels like something the filmmaker had to tell me, and that it was that filmmaker in particular who had to tell it. It has to answer the ‘why are you telling me this’ question, and not just why are you telling me, but why are you telling me.

Lady Bird is a movie that feels like only Greta Gerwig could’ve made. And it’s only because it’s so specific to her that it can be so meaningful to so many people.” - Vince Mancini

19) "I have cast some lonely votes, fought some lonely fights, mounted some lonely campaigns. But I do not feel lonely now.” - Bernie Sanders

20) “Ever hear a Beatles song you haven’t heard before?”

21) “Drinking is an emotional thing. It joggles you out of the standardism of everyday life, out of everything being the same. It yanks you out of your body and your mind and throws you against the wall. I have the feeling that drinking is a form of suicide where you're allowed to return to life and begin all over the next day. It's like killing yourself, and then you're reborn. I guess I've lived about ten or fifteen thousand lives now.” - Charles Bukowski

22) “You shouldn’t have to hear a band to know if they’re good or not” - Josiah Hughes

23) “I was raised by OGs.  Some of you were raised by IG.  I understand.” - Ice-T

* * *

[Here is where I note the line of demarcation that was the COVID-19 pandemic hitting the US, pushed forward by Tom Hanks’ announcement, the NBA and NCAA shutting down, and, then, the nation itself.]

* * *

24) “There are decades where nothing happens, and there are weeks where decades happen.” - Vladimir Lenin

25) "Taken together, this is a massive failure in leadership that stems from a massive defect in character. Trump is such a habitual liar that he is incapable of being honest, even when being honest would serve his interests. He is so impulsive, shortsighted, and undisciplined that he is unable to plan or even think beyond the moment. He is such a divisive and polarizing figure that he long ago lost the ability to unite the nation under any circumstances and for any cause. And he is so narcissistic and unreflective that he is completely incapable of learning from his mistakes. The president’s disordered personality makes him as ill-equipped to deal with a crisis as any president has ever been. With few exceptions, what Trump has said is not just useless; it is downright injurious." - Peter Wehner

26) "Epidemics have a way of revealing underlying truths about the societies they impact." - Anne Applebaum

27) “A funny thing about quarantining is hearing your partner in full work mode for the first time. Like, I’m married to a ‘let’s circle back’ guy — who knew?” - Laura Norkin

28) 

(Jojo Rabbit)

29) “The world ends when you're dead. Until then, you got more punishment in store. - Deadwood: The Movie

30) “All bleeding stops eventually.” - Deadwood: The Movie

31) “Our Father, which art in heaven… / Let him fucking stay there” - Deadwood: The Movie

32) “It’s like a power outage, but we still have power” - Ryen Russillo, on the pandemic

33) “Whenever Sox baseball returns, it’ll be weird to not have Farmer on the call any more. The relationship between a fan and longtime announcer is always built in the little moments. One afternoon, he’s the soundtrack as you clean the garage. On another night, he’s your bookmark for the game as you stand in line for churros or walk down the ramps at Sox Park to try for better seats in the 100 level. A voice like Farmer’s becomes so familiar that you only really notice when it’s no longer there.” - Kevin Kaduk, on the passing of Ed Farmer

34) 

(via Twitter)

35) “In my songs, I try to look through someone else’s eyes, and I want to give the audience a feeling more than a message” - John Prine

36) “Observe everything. Admire nothing.” - Generation Kill

37) “Trump, by that definition, has always been a wartime president -- always willing to sacrifice people he doesn’t know to things he only sort of cares about” - David Roth

38) "Whenever they speak Michael Jordan, they should speak Scottie Pippen." - Michael Jordan

39) "Fiction is a bridge to the truth that journalism can't reach." - Hunter S. Thompson

40) “Airlines sending me “we’re in this together” emails. When my suitcase was 52 pounds I was on my own.” - Mike Dentale

41) “Sometimes you can be the worst source of your own story” - Ryen Russillo

42) “Family is not necessarily blood, but instead who you would bleed for.”

43)

(via Twitter)

44) "This is the deal that Jordan made, knowingly or unknowingly — that he would trade everything he had for everything he wanted. And then, when he won all those things, he found that he had nothing but that.” - David Roth

45) “I’m brand loyal, but the brand doesn’t matter” - Caitie Miller, on why she doesn’t like generic peanut butter

46) “NOBODY shitposts Gene Hackman!!” - Mark Dehlinger

47) “When a man concludes that any stick is good enough to beat his foe with—that is when he picks up a boomerang.” - G.K. Chesterton

48) “You can be appalled forever, but shocked only once.” - Jeff Weiss, on early Eminem

49) “Whether I’m pessimistic or optimistic, the fight’s the same” - David Simon

50) “Freedom can never be completely won, but it can be lost.” - Bernard Simon

51) “Racism in America is like dust in the air. It seems invisible — even if you’re choking on it — until you let the sun in. Then you see it’s everywhere. As long as we keep shining that light, we have a chance of cleaning it wherever it lands.” -Kareem Abdul Jabbar

52) “In a racist society, it is not enough to be non-racist -- we must be anti-racist.” - Angela Davis

53) “Start as close to the end as possible” - Kurt Vonnegut, on creative writing

54) “You can’t stay woke all the time — that’s insomnia.” - Dr. Cornel West

55) “No, I get it. I’ve dated a lot of Geminis.”

56) “The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.” - John Krakauer, Into The Wild (via Tyler Keller)

57) "I couldn't show them my For You because it's pretty much just lesbian stuff and depression memes" - Maggie Loesch, on showing TikTok to her coworkers

58) "It's 1 a.m. in Slovakia and I've already had one bottle of wine and I don't know how long this press conference will go, so good luck to me." - Marian Hossa, following his NHL Hall of Fame announcement

59) “All I want in life is to go on an Anguilla group trip” - Mandy Gilkes

60) “You miss old friends when you don’t see them, but you miss them more when you do.” - Chuck Klosterman

61) “The only way to appreciate the present is to pretend it’s already the past.” - Chuck Klosterman

62) Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth, oh, never mind You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth Until they've faded, but trust me, in 20 years, you'll look back At photos of yourself and recall in a way you can't grasp now How much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked

(”Everybody's Free [To Wear Sunscreen]”)

Second time that essay’s been quoted on this list.

64) "I mean, it's just human nature to suck up to the people above you, crap on those beneath you, and undercut your equals” - Brian, Family Guy

65) “You never quit a job. You quit a manager.” - Brian Bedford

66) “All the pictures in my house are of people I’m not friends with” - Tracy Cunningham

67) “In order to leave something behind, you have to leave.” - Dr. Herman, Grey’s Anatomy

68) 

(via Twitter)

69) “You can obsess about death if you don’t have to obsess about dying.” - Brendan Kelly via “White Noise”

70) “If it’s right to do, it’s wrong to wait.” - Andy, doorman 

71)

72) “When I'm sometimes asked when will there be enough [women on the Supreme Court] and I say, 'When there are nine,' people are shocked. But there'd been nine men, and nobody's ever raised a question about that.” - Ruth Bader Ginsburg

73) "America is mostly people who’ve never left their state saying we have the best country in the world." - Billy Wayne Davis

74) “A writer is someone who knows at least 80% of their writing sucks.” - Gabe Hudson

75) 

(via Twitter)

76) “You’re dead twice” - Brendan Kelly

77) “Perfect is the enemy of good” - Voltaire (via Zach Lowe)

78) “I don’t want to be a savior, I want to be a mirror.” - Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

79) “I get bad Twitter FOMO but not real life FOMO. That just goes to show I need to get off the Internet.” - Josh Thomas

80) “Is there anything you love in life that you engage with seriously that you don't also engage with humor?" - Sam Sutherland, on his relationship with Blink-182

81) “My favorite genre of music is my friends' bands" - Josiah Hughes

82) “Let’s fall in love like both our parents aren’t divorced.”

83) “Seabiscuit may be the only earthling that was on both sides of the stamp.” - Brendan Kelly

84) “There’s no shame in coming in second, except in, like, wars.” - Family Guy

85) “I feel like I experience writer’s block 100% of the time, and when I do write, I have impostor syndrome.” - Phoebe Bridgers

86) “We teach based on what we most need to learn.” - psychologist on Grey’s Anatomy

87) “Having too many choices is the leading cause of stress” - Grey’s Anatomy

88) “I think we've all gravely underestimated the extent to which this year has changed all of us, permanently” - Kelli Maria Korducki

89) 

(via Twitter)

90) “I wonder if people understand why they don’t have polio” - Sandra E. Garcia

91) “Ending songs is terrible, so let’s keep singing” - Dave Hernandez

[extravagantliar]

The Team from Kirkwall and Scars;

So I should preface this with this is something that is highly researched in a purely speculative sense, and while I am not an MD nor do I claim to be, I have worked in specialty veterinary hospitals for the last eleven years of my life. I earned an associates in veterinary technology and medicine, before working for the past seven years in a surgical and orthopedic service while assessing wounds of all kinds, scars, and healing tissue, observing and monitoring anesthesia, before transferring to one of the biggest and the busiest ER facility in the coastal Carolinas, working partially for the surgery service and the ER/ICU unit attached. I have just very recently transferred to a dermatology and holistic clinic to round out my specialties.

While I am not a licensed nurse, due to my licenseture I am required to keep up with my more than basic share of first aid. I was also a sick child, leading to my fascination with medicine -- however, my compassion for animals won out. This is also well researched with sources and grading scales cited at the end of all of this!

Please enjoy my ramblings!

Scars are normal in the healing process. Almost every system can scar, besides bone -- those we can typically break and if we get all the pieces, we can even put those back together. However, with skin -- it’s a weaker form of collagen than what makes up our skin, a fibrosis crisscrossing in pronounced alignment in one direction forming the scar rather than flat, unblemished skin that forms in a randomised pattern. Hence why your skin has the distinctive blemish that can sometimes remain red for months after healing has completed, sometimes they remain injected and flush for years. 

When it comes to crew that travelled from Kirkwall, all their scars look fairly newish --- and many think they must have gotten them separately, I posit a very different theory. I believe they all got them around the same time. You see, wounds heal based on a myriad of factors from immune system to the actual vascularity of the respective site. Facial wounds heal quicker on average. 

With the crew from Kirkwall I do need to state that Varric, Cassandra, and Cullen have different immune systems. While we do not know exactly how lyrium works in the most practical of senses, I’d theorised that lyrium is something that had to be stopped slowly over time to prevent terrible side effects and and rapid, dangerous detox. It would also be something that could have lingering effects, due to how it is potentially metabolised by the body, but that being said --- 

i. cullen

Cullen’s scar does look one of the oldest and most well healed, which may be due to his body still having some lyrium in it, his age and general prior good health help with that, while his trauma and stress from Kirkwall being a factor against rapid healing. However, the scar is in a place of great vascularity. It does still look like a very new scar from a healed wound, done with a knife of moderate sharpness or fist with a blade holding a blade. This is a moderately shallow healed wound. It is a clean cut and straight forward, but it looks much more settled than the rest, due to no inflammation. It looks like it received excellent medical attention with the potential for an argument that a Surgeon or Healer even tended to the wound at Kirkwall. It looks like the skin could have healed on his lip own its own, but due to jagged nature down by the lip, it could have been crudely apposed in the field by a novice or by Cullen himself, however it does not look magically tended to.  Scar scale: Healthy, healed, mildly jagged, weak to strong uv due to placement, could heal further with strict skin care, no inflammation 0/5, appox age: 10 mon. to 1 yr before the start of DA: I ( care dependent )

ii. cassandra

In the case of Cassandra, her scars are a little more complex, but fairly uncomplicated. 

The smaller of the two does look the newest as it looks more inected than the larger one. Of course, it looks finer, a graze with a sharp knife or a very close call with a sword, more likely an axe, if not a sharp curved blade due to the placement on her cheek. It has received excellent medical attention, however it looked shallow by nature, most likely a close call that is situated in a place of good vascularity, and the wound does not look to have cut into any deep layers of the dermis or into the muscle. It could have been apposed in the field, but most likely by an experienced doctor or healer. It is not unreasonable to think that if it was a deeper wound than my estimation, that it could be cleanly healed by a very experienced mage healer. Scar scale: Healthy, 80% healed, mild inflammation 2/5, good healing, good apposition of tissue, no obvious sutures, no degranulation present, very mild scarring, could possibly heal further with strict skin care, approx age: 14 days to 1 month before the start of DA: I ( care dependent )

 As for her larger scar, it l would argue that it is the oldest of the bunch. It is much more settled and much less inflamed than the other. It looks moderately cleaned, crudely. It is hard to ascertain if the apposition of skin was crude, the blade in question was dull, or if Cassandra simply pulled whatever sutured it together out with her hands. It does look like it cuts into the dermis, however with how animated Cassandra can be, it does not look like it affects her muscles at all. It still does have some underlying redness in most images, however some scars can remain red and inflamed up to a year after the wound, but I would argue that the scar is mostly settled and it could just be darker pigmentation at the site of the scar which is not uncommon to have some discolouration ( lighter or dark ) on a scar. It looks afflicted by most likely a sword or a knife pulling away, due to the length of the wound. The wound looks well healed and is healthy overall. I cannot rule out magical healing due to Cassandra’s ranks. Scar scale: Healthy, healed, moderately jagged, weak to strong UV possibly causing it to looked more inflamed, mild inflammation 1.5/5, well healed overall, approx age: 8 months to 14 months before the start of DA:I.

 iii. varric

Varric’s look the most recent. When we meet Varric he’s in the middle of a brawl. The wounds on his cheek look like scruffage from the fight. The underlying rounder wound also looks very recent. It looks like it could be from hand to hand combat or being hit with something blunt. If it scars, it will because of lack of care and continuing to shave over an open wound, leaving a small amount of discolouration. It looks clean, with good circulation, it is not actively bleeding and needs no major care. As for his nose scar it looks fairly fresh as well, however sits on top of a broken nose. It seems very shallow, from hand to hand combat, most likely from someone looking to break his nose again.  Scar scale: Healthy, open fresh wound, first aid required, possibility for scarring if it continuously reopened, inflamed 3/5, approx age: 15 minutes to 30 minutes before the start of DA:I

I would state that based on the way that Varric’s wound look in this image, the way Cassandra’s look in this image, and the way that Cullen’s look in this image that my best estimate is that they were obtained reasonably around 6 to 18 months before the start of DA:I. 

All of these images have been captured by me and colour corrected by tinting down the red and correcting with Varric’s main PSD.

 ALL OF THESE IMAGES ARE FROM THE START OF DA:I. I cherry picked these images due to the look that you get at the scar and the minimal amount of colour correction, allowing as much of DA:I gradient to be seen without the OVERSATURATION OF RED OR BLUE. I am open to questions, criticisms, and anything in between! 

[1] - This is the grading scale I used alongside my own wound rubric that I would be happy to post if needed [2] - Link to the paper my department was in for our study on ligament vascularity in dogs with CCL disease ( i will try to find my PDF, it’s a cool study ) [3] - PubMed Journal on Maturation of Scars  [4] - Paper on scars and healing from Yale, published in 2000.  @chantlight

[f107group4]

ɴᴏᴡ ᴘʟᴀʏɪɴɢ: Fireflies by Owl City

───────────────⚪───────────────────

◄◄⠀▐▐ ⠀►►⠀⠀ ⠀ 1:17 / 3:48 ⠀ ───○ 🔊⠀ ᴴᴰ ⚙ ❐ ⊏⊐

Can you believe that these glowing light in the waters are sea fireflies? Everything is indeed never as it seems.

I bet you were awestruck[cod]! 

 Now, these millions of sea fireflies would like to wave “Hi!” as you go through the blog and get to know the bioluminescent ostracods under genus Vargula. 

CLASSIFICATION

          Kingdom: Animalia  

                Subkingdom: Bilateria                

                   Infrakingdom: Protostomia    

                      Superphylum: Ecdysozoa    

                         Phylum: Arthropoda    

                            Subphylum: Crustacea  

                               Class: Ostracoda          

                                  Subclass: Myodocopa            

                                     Order: Myodocopida

                                        Suborder: Myodocopina  

                                           Superfamily: Cypridinoidea        

                                              Family: Cypridinidae  

                                                 Genus: Vargula

                                                       Species Name: Vargula annecohenae

(ITIS nd ; Cohen and Morin, 2010)

BIOLOGY

Cod you see me?

Ostracods can be found in basically every aquatic environment ranging from marine, freshwater, and estuarine habitats. These organisms are either swimming in the surface waters or crawling on the sea bed and moist land. Their distribution depends on their adaptations to environmental parameters, mainly salinity and water temperature. Vargula species inhabit the Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea coastal landmasses (Wilkinson, 1996; Ogoh & Ohmiya, 2005). 

Although they are everywhere, ostracods rarely grow to a few millimeters long; small but (Pechenik, 2015). A single organism can’t be easily seen unless we look closely. Still, they’re small but widespread. 

What do you mistake me as?

Ostracoda is an ancient group of crustaceans. Surprised? 

The unsegmented external feature separates them from other crustaceans (Pechenik, 2015). Besides this, they resemble bivalves by having their entire body laterally enclosed inside a pair of partially calcified carapace or shells held by adductor muscles, even during early development; hence, the common name — mussel shrimp (Moore, 2006). 

They are also similar to branchiopods Conchostraca (clam shrimps) such as water fleas, but the appendages, lack of growth rings, and smooth swimming of mussel shrimps gave it away. Another feature that differentiates both is the carapace formation. Clam shrimps add material to their carapace as they grow, while mussel shrimps shed their carapace with each molt (UC Museum of Paleontology, 1995). 

Mussel shrimps are mostly head which means that the other body parts are greatly reduced. Their trunk is merged to the head. Usually, they have seven pairs of appendages adapted for locomotion, grasping, feeding, cleaning the carapace, or as sense organs. Vargula uses two pairs of antennae for swimming, some species only utilize one pair or the other. Notably, they have setae or tiny hairs protruding through the carapace pores that function for sensory mechanisms (Wilkinson, 1996;  Pechenik, 2015). 

A light show to remember

Bioluminescence is often used, but only by males of the species V. annecohenae, for mating displays. Males of each species, like fireflies on land, use distinct patterns of light flashes (seen as a series of dots) that only attract females of the same species. By performing brief dances in which they release short bursts of light as they pass towards the surface of the water, males show off just how sparkling they can be. They start their "dance," which lasts 45 minutes on average, with a stationary period in which brief (second-long or shorter) flashes of bright blue light are produced, attracting the interest of possible female mates. Then in the next process, males spiral up the water column vertically, producing quicker light bursts that are less bright (Gonzales, 2017). 

(Courtesy of Gretchen Gerrish)

We compete to procreate

The male grabs onto his newfound partner with his antennae if a male is successful and an interested female arrives, and the pair will mate. Competition is intense, sometimes a woman's attention is won by the brightest male, but males can also impress by synchronizing their lighting display with other males or creeping up and taking a mate from another male (Gonzales,2017).

Life cycle

V. annecohenae has a long life cycle of up to about 1 year. It typically develops slowly for 3 months before adulthood. It has several broods of a few offspring numbering between 10-15, and has no free-living larval stage (Gerrish and Morin, 2008).

Five juvenile instars constitute the life cycle of Photeros annecohenae The life cycle of an ostracod in the genus Vargula (now Photeros) are divided by molts (that occur by the ecdysis) as well as an adult instar that is followed by a final molt (Gerrish and Morin, 2008).

The total growth period of ostracod eggs and embryos in females was 26 days, with an average of 7.84 days for the interval between mating and brood deposition, and an average of 18.4 days for the eventual release from the brood chamber. Eggs initially become evident within the female's body during development. While inside the mother's body, eggs increase in size but exhibit no other noticeable morphological changes. Females discharge fertilized embryos as translucent, spheroidal, or ovoidal masses into the marsupium or brood chamber (Gerrish and Morin, 2008). 

(a) One egg of this female has been released into the marsupium and the four remaining eggs are visible in the female ovary. (b) The eggs are extruded into a marsupial brood pouch after 7-8 days. Each egg consists of a large yolk mass at this stage, and the cells inside are barely visible. C) Cell division has created a defined, cloudy cellular mass that fills the egg by day nine in the brood pouch. D) The first apparent structures include the naupliar eye, a red speck, and the intestine as the embryo develops its organs. E) The embryos appear as A-V instars with a large brown eye spot and a fully developed and functioning light organ just before release (Gerrish and Morin, 2008). 

 I have a sperm bank?

Female V. annecohenae can produce several broods without male re-exposure. suggesting that sperm is stored between broods (Gerrish and Morin, 2008).

 I’m a natural

15-17 days after a previous cohort was released new broods can be formed (Gerrish and Morin, 2008).

ECOLOGY

Ostracods are considered to be useful paleoenvironmental indicators because their ecology is often reflected in the shape and structure of their carapaces and also considering their wide distribution in aquatic environments. They can range from warm waters of the tropics to very cold environments such as polar seas and are found from intertidal zones to many thousands of meters depth in the deep sea. They can also thrive in freshwater niches such as rivers, lakes, and even temporary ponds (Brandão & Karanovic, 2020). Generally, ostracods are characterized as omnivorous scavengers because they mainly feed on tiny organisms like algae, diatoms, bacteria, molds, and pieces of organic detritus that are present in the water or on vegetation. Some ostracods are also predatory. Being relatively smaller, they attack their prey in groups so that they can eat organisms larger than them. However, ostracods are also often preyed by small fishes (MESA, 2020).

Freshwater ostracods usually have smooth, thin, weakly calcified simple bean-shaped carapaces and feed on diatoms, bacteria, and detritus. On the other hand, pelagic ostracods may also have thin, smooth shells but they have long powerful swimming appendages or antennules. The formation of rostral incisures at the anterior of the carapace of pelagic ostracods allowed freer movement of these appendages. Furthermore, benthic ostracods are commonly detritivores or filter feeders. Their carapace is usually smooth, small, robust, and sometimes elongated because they tend to burrow into the substrate. Epifaunal ostracods have flattened ventral surfaces sometimes with projecting alar wings, frills, keels, or lateral spines while those found on coarser substrates in higher energy environments tend to have more robust heavily ribbed or reticulated carapaces (Olney, 2002).

RELATIONSHIP TO HUMANS

Generally, ostracods are useful for scientific purposes. According to Boomer et al. (2013), ostracods are being used in studies of earth science and related disciplines such as archaeology, ecology, and genetics. This is because ostracods are widely distributed and are easily preservable. Their assemblage and morphology are some of the important ecological proxies. For instance, in recent research conducted by McCormack et al. (2018) wherein ostracods are being used as a bioindicator. Their research has shown the sensitivity of ostracods’ faunal assemblage (Candona sp.) to changes in water salinity and alkalinity in Lake Van.

Next, valves of ostracods are also being used in paleoenvironmental studies. Valves of ostracods are said to absorb trace elements from host waters (Palacios-Fest et al., 1994). This characteristic makes these microcrustaceans ideal models for reconstructing and analyzing past environments that could range from deep-seas to small lakes. Aside from this, the diversity and variety of reproductive modes of ostracods are also one of the main reasons why they are being used as model organisms for laboratory and research studies (Martens & Hornes, 2009).

Moreover, laboratories have started culturing bioluminescent ostracods. The culture of these organisms is done to determine the biosynthetic pathways of bioluminescent substrates that could lead to the discovery of new tools for biotechnology and biomedicine. For instance, in the study conducted by Goodheart et al. (2019) wherein they cultured California Sea Firefly (V. tsuji) for studies regarding the biosynthetic pathway of cypridinid luciferin and genomic manipulation of an autogenic bioluminescent system.

Serve the Teaaaaa!

The T in Osctracod means Teaaaaa! 5 amazing facts you need to know about ostracods.

1. OLD BUT GOLD

Colymbosathon ecplecticos, a species of ostracod, holds the record of oldest known fossil penis. The historical penis was discovered from a 425 million-year-old rock in England. It was said that a wide variety of animals living in the sea 425 million years ago were killed by an ash fall from a volcanic eruption. However, the ash preserved the animals, including their soft parts. Through technology, the painstaking 3-D reconstructions of a preserved male ostracod revealed amazing details such as the hairs on limbs, gills, and a penis.

2. LIGHT IT UP LIKE A DYNAMITE

Some species of Myodocopida ostracods produce a bright blue light. These are known in Japan as Umi-Hotaru or sea-fireflies. The light is produced by mixing two chemicals together in the presence of oxygen and is for mating displays. Each species flash at different rates to stop any confusion in the dark. Japanese army collected Umi-Hotaru in baited traps during the Second World War. They dry them out and ground them down to a powder. Adding a small amount of water to the powder produces a low-intensity light used by soldiers to read orders or maps without giving their position away to the enemy during battles.   

3. ULTIMATE SURVIVOR

Ostracods can survive being eaten by fish. Experiments with the ostracod Cypridopsis vidua showed that 26% of specimens eaten by small bluegill sunfish came out the other end alive and unharmed. This is possible because ostracods can close their shells very tightly inside their carapace to survive passage through the gut of the fish eventually to be excreted out by the fish.

4. OSTRACODS ARE OMNIPRESENT

Ostracods are found in almost every aquatic habitat, even in some very small and isolated places. They are found deep in the sea, on the shore, on wet leaf litters, springs, groundwaters, puddles, small pools, rice fields, ponds, lakes, and rivers. Some species have a global distribution and are found from the subarctic to the tropics. Their dispersal abilities caused this massive distribution of ostracods. For example, the eggs and adults can hitch a lift on the feet of birds and are displaced because of migration.

5. WE DON’T DIE, JUST DRY

The ostracod eggs can be viable many years after being dried. This is the reason why many freshwater ostracods can be found in temporary water bodies, such as puddles and rice fields. These eggs start to develop and hatch when water is already available in their environment

References

Boomer, I., et al. (2003).  The Use of Ostracods in Palaeoenvironmental Studies, or What can you do with an Ostracod Shell? The Paleontological Society Papers. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1089332600002199

Brandão, S.N.; Karanovic, I. (2020). World Ostracoda Database. Accessed at http://www.marinespecies.org/ostracoda on 2020-11-15. doi:10.14284/364  

Cohen, A. C.; Morin, J. G. (2010). Two New Bioluminescent Ostracode Genera, Enewton And Photeros (Myodocopida: Cypridinidae), with Three New Species from Jamaica. Journal of Crustacean Biology. 30(1): 1-55., https://doi.org/10.1651/08-3075.1

Gonzales, M.R. (2017).  You Light Up My World! Smithsonian. https://ocean.si.edu/ocean-life/invertebrates/you-light-my-world

Goodheart, J., et al. (2019).  Laboratory culture of the California Sea Firefly Vargula tsujii (Ostracoda: Cypridinidae): Developing a model system for the evolution of marine bioluminescence. Research Gate. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/334600678_Laboratory_culture_of_the_California_Sea_Firefly_Vargula_tsujii_Ostracoda_Cypridinidae_Developing_a_model_system_for_the_evolution_of_marine_bioluminescence

Gretchen A. Gerrish, James G. Morin, Life Cycle of a Bioluminescent Marine Ostracode, Vargula Annecohenae (Myodocopida: Cypridinidae), Journal of Crustacean Biology, Volume 28, Issue 4, 1 October 2008, Pages 669–674, https://doi.org/10.1651/07-2934.1

Horne, D. J. & Smith, R. J. (2004). First British record of Potamocypris humilis (Sars, 1924), a freshwater ostracod with a disjunct distribution in northern Europe and southern Africa. Bollettino della Societe Paleontologica Italiana, 43 (1-2), 297-306.  

Laessle, A. M. 1961. A micro-limnological study of Jamaican Bromeliads. Ecology, 42, 499-517. 

Martens, K., and Horne, D.J. (2009). Ostracoda. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-012370626-3.00184-8

McCormack, J., et al. 2019.  Ostracods as ecological and isotopic indicators of lake water salinity changes: the Lake Van example.  Biogeosciences, 16, 2095–2114, 2019 https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-16-2095-2019

MESA. 2020. Ostracods. Marine Education Society of Australia. http://www.mesa.edu.au/crustaceans/crustaceans03.asp

Moore, J. (2006). An Introduction to the Invertebrates (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press.

Morin, J. G. and Cohen, A. C. 1991. Bioluminescent displays, courtship, and reproduction in ostracodes. In R. Bauer and Martin, J. (Eds.), Crustacean Sexual Biology:1 16. New York:Columbia University Press. 

Ogoh, K. Ohmiya, Y. (2005). Biogeography of Luminous Marine Ostracod Driven Irreversibly by the Japan Current. Molecular Biology Evolution, 22(7):1543-1545. https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msi155]

Olney, M. (2002). Ostracods. Microfossil image recovery and circulation for learning and education. https://www.ucl.ac.uk/GeolSci/micropal/ostracod.html

Palacios-Fest, M.R., et al. (1994).  Use of ostracodes as paleoenvironmental tools in the interpretation of ancient lacustrine records. Revista Espanola de Paleontologia 9(2):145-164. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/291990499_Use_of_ostracodes_as_paleoenvironmental_tools_in_the_interpretation_of_ancient_lacustrine_records

Pechenik, J. A. (2015). Biology of Invertebrates (7th ed.). McGraw-Hill Education.

Sars, G. O. 1895. On some South-African Entomostraca raised from dried mud. Skrifter i Videnskabs-selskabet. I. Mathematisk-Naturvidenskabs Klasse 1895 (8): 1-56.  

Sars, G. O. 1896. On some west Australian Entomostraca raised from dried sand. Arch. Math. Naturv. 18, 1-35.

Seidel, B. 1989. Phoresis of Cyclocypris ovum (Jurine) (Ostracoda, Podocopida, Cyprididae) on Bombina variegata (L.) (Anura, Amphibia) and Triruris vulgaris (L.) (Urodela, Amphibia). Crustaceana 57, 171-176.  

Siveter, D. J., Sutton, M. D., Briggs, D. E. G. & Siveter, D. J. 2003. An ostracod crustacean with soft parts from the Lower Silurian. Science, 302, 1749 - 1751.

UC Museum of Paleontology. (1995).  Introduction to the Ostracoda. https://ucmp.berkeley.edu/arthropoda/crustacea/maxillopoda/ostracoda.html

[brooksnnuk147]

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[davidmann95]

All-Star Superman #3

This is gonna be a tough one.

Not the toughest, mind you - that’s probably going to be #7. But after two issues of establishing the tone, aesthetics, and thematic concerns of the series, this is one of the pair of issues in All-Star that for the most part functions as a ‘normal’ Superman adventure story, though in this case one following up on the themes established by the previous issue, while #7 will set up the one coming after it. It’s also likely the most commonly critiqued issue of the series in retrospect its use of Lois Lane as an essentially passive figure to be fought over, and while her characterization here lends some interesting dimension to that choice, it’s hard to disagree it’s the series’ most unfortunate framing and substantial missed opportunity. None of that however can overrule that on examination, there’s still considerably more going on in here than the traditional tale of Superman beating down monsters and showing up bullies, the harsh slap to the face of reality for Clark after his actions last issue and his redemption in the form of showing what makes him different from his predecessors as the strongman-savior template.

So I haven’t talked the lettering much in this series - it is, they say, the invisible art - but Phil Balsman absolutely kills it here with KRULL WILL EAT YOU!, and the decision on the next page to render the ZEE ZEE ZEE ZEE of Jimmy Olsen’s signal watch in the font of the title pages is absolutely inspired, nevermind what he does with the Ultrasphinx later on. The bombast of the bastard lizard prince of the underworld and his cronies wreaking havoc aside though, what this page succinctly does is set up the entire conflict of the issue. It’s not just a monster, it’s a monster out of the past mimicking the cover of Action Comics #1, and apparently by way of terraforming Metropolis via steam clouds, trying to take control of Superman’s ‘world’. From Krull to Steve Lombard (“You tell me what a spaceman flying around in his underwear can give her that a good old hunk of prime American manhood can’t?”) to Samson and Atlas to the Ultrasphinx, this is a story of Superman up against dinosaurs in his image.

Ironically, however, it’s this Superman vs. Bros comic that has perhaps the most Bro sensibilities in the series. Per Morrison on the subject, “For that particular story, I wanted to see Superman doing tough guy shit again, like he did in the early days and then again in the 70s, when he was written as a supremely cocky macho bastard for a while. I thought a little bit of that would be an antidote to the slightly soppy, Super–Christ portrayal that was starting to gain ground. Hence Samson’s broken arm, twisted in two directions beyond all repair. And Atlas in the hospital. And then Superman’s got his hot girlfriend dressed like a girl from Krypton and they’re making out on the moon.” That’s not unto itself a problem; it’s a precursor to Morrison’s t-shirt and jeans reinvention in that sense (which leapt back from the 70s to the 30s for inspiration), and when Superman himself finally gets his own back here it’s more than deserved. But it becomes a problem when Lois at theoretically her literal most empowered does little with her new powers and is framed narratively as a prize to be won in this ‘game’ of godlings, with Superman literally muttering “What do I have to do to make you keep your hands off my girl?” Morrison seems to be somewhat aware of the problems given Lois’s reasons for playing along (which are actually rather significant to the point of the issue) and her amused distaste at the suggestion of being ‘won’, and the issue is ultimately something of an argument against the macho storytelling tropes that drive that thinking. But it’s a far cry from the nuanced look at her and Superman’s relationship last issue offered, and there’s no virtue in overlooking it. As will be demonstrated again later on in the series in less structurally-embedded but more pointed ways, this was written almost 15 years ago, and mistakes were made.

Now we get to the book’s superheroed-up takes on Samson and Atlas, who are such delightful assholes. Occupying the Mxyzptlk/Prankster/Bizarro-in-his-friendlier-moods role of being the enemies to make Superman go ‘oh god, this guy’ as much as direct counterparts to him, they’re basically fratboys tooling around history and getting into trouble together, and Superman’s clearly had to clean up their messes before. They’re the champions of myth who operate by a morality that in no way precluded thievery, deception, and murder in pursuit of their grand ‘heroic’ conquests, the alpha male swaggering dipshit dudebro operating on Superman’s scale. And as much as they’re a pair of craven dumbasses who literally compare cock-sizes in here who Lois has no real interest in, their appearance is also the first and one of the only times in the series Superman puffs his chest out and does some traditional iconic posing, and he has good reason to be threatened - they’re trying to ply her with gifts and tales of miraculous feats basically exactly the same way he did last issue. He may have started to come clean with her, but he’s still playing his old Silver Age nervous bachelor games, and now that she’s got powers and costume to match his she’s showing him exactly where that bullshit is going to get him, teaching him a lesson just like he tried to teach her so many once upon a time.

As we’re around the midpoint of the issue, let’s talk the art. Quitely and Grant aren’t as showy with the tricks and effects as the first two issues; the one real noticeable structural thing is a consistent rhythm of zooming in-and-out on our four leads throughout the issue to keep a sense of momentum to a story mostly driven by conversation, culminating in the hyper zoom-ins of the Ultrasphnix sequence. But GOD there are so many perfect little details in here. The bow coming undone on Lois’s present, the glow of the super-serum (it feels so right that it literally glows, the ultimate alchemical potion), Lombard’s bouquet for Lois’s birthday party while Jimmy is bringing a conch of some sort as a presumed gift to whoever they’ll be meeting at Poseidonis, Jimmy’s happy-meal looking signal watch WHICH HAS A WRISTBAND SHAPED LIKE AN S, more beautiful Metropolis architecture and a good look at how the Daily Planet globe actually works, poor dopey-lookin’ Krull bursting through the satellite twirling around like a cat in a half-second of freefall, the Chronomobile, the far-off monumental stone towers of the Subterranosauri, the glow of the lava fading out as Samson reveals Superman’s fate, the bioelectric crackle around Atom-Hotep, mermaids waving up at Superman and Lois, and of course the pinup. It’s such a damn pretty book.

Just before the arrival of the Ultrasphnix, we have the mythic architecture of the series explained to us, naturally by the figure out of myth:

As noted by Morrison, the exact nature of the 12 challenges are never explained within the story because it’s only in retrospect that history will declare those specific feats as being of note in light of them being Superman’s last accomplishments before his ‘death’; Superman himself isn’t sure how many he’s done later on. It’s an apt if seemingly out-of-left-field bit of commentary on the way epics of the kind this story itself aspires towards are reinterpreted over time, but hindsight being 20/20? That this is a story of a massively iconic, archetypal take on Superman being brought out of the public eye to his physical and emotional lowest at every turn (hence the ACTUAL structure of the series being a solar arc across the sky, from day to a nighttime journey through the underworld and back again), that is now generally thought of being a fun fluffy story of how great and perfect Superman is, entirely bears it out. The 12 Labors of Superman are what Clark’s roughest year looks like to the awestruck onlookers, both in and as it turns out in large part out of text.

After Samson and Atlas seemingly show nobler colors by offering Superman aid in a genuinely stirring moment before Superman accurately dismisses it as the empty machismo posturing it is, Ultrasphinx - yet another super-champion of the past, this one an amoral god rather than a ‘hero’ on a quest - poses the unanswerable question of what happens when the unstoppable force meets the immovable object with Lois both alive and dead until he does (one of those unions of opposites Morrison loves), basically creating a high-stakes literalization of their relationship. Superman and Lois Lane had been playing will-they-or-won’t-they for almost 70 years at the time this was published (culturally at least), her trying to pry into his secrets while he screwed around with her in turn, running in circles until we finally reach the acidic psychodrama of Superman’s Forbidden Room and something has to break one way or another. And Superman answers that it’s time to surrender. Has he inspired the car ad we see at the end of the issue, or vice-versa? Either way, it’s illustrating by example what the deal is with the super-labors.

Superman, learning his lesson as he has and showing his greater heroism stems from his nobility, intellect, and willingness to transcend his worst instincts, still takes a minute to teach Samson and Atlas a well-deserved lesson (paired with that absolutely perfect shot of the rock cracking on Lois’s head), before taking us to my absolute favorite statement on why Superman loves Lois Lane which also connects back to the idea of surrender, and the iconic moon shot. And as Superman holds her as she falls asleep, his Clark voice in all its vulnerable humanity manifests itself as he tries to propose; the tough guys of the past wanted Lois for a day when she was finally operating on ‘their level’, Superman ‘lowers’ himself to his most human alongside her reassumed mortality as he tries to tell her he wants her for what lifetime he has left. We’re only halfway there at most, he still hasn’t admitted his condition and she still can’t accept that he’s Clark, but this is Superman taking his first step along his quiet character arc.

Additional notes

* Interestingly, the original solicitation for this issue declared “Meanwhile, Lex Luthor's plans simmer as the criminal mastermind exerts his charisma and intellect over the hardcore inmates who share his maximum-security prison.” One of many bits that changed in the process of actually putting the book together.

* Perhaps this story of very manly men out of time doing manly stuff and getting their asses kicked for it across generations is represented in part by Krull being the son of a king whose battle cry is KRULL WILL EAT YOUR CHILL-DRUNN! That might be reading a *bit* much into it though. That Morrison describes Krull in backmatter however as ��the living embodiment of the savage, swaggering ‘R Complex’ or reptile brain” definitely plays into the ideas of the issue as I understood them.

* Jimmy’s declaration of “Ms. Grant, Mr. Lombard, I’m taking immediate steps” is a perfect little moment for him - he’s calm and on top of things, but there’s also that little touch of naive ego in thinking that it’s thanks to him that Superman’s going to notice the dinosaur invasion of Metropolis.

* In backmatter and interviews Morrison had substantially further fleshed-out backstories for several of the new characters here. Samson is indeed the original champion, plucked from his era by a pair of foolish time-travelers searching for a savior; instead, enamored and corrupted by future culture he stole their malfunctioning Chronomobile and went on adventures to slake his lust, for fortune, flesh, and adventure alike. Atlas meanwhile is the boisterous yet quietly burdened young prince of the New Mythos, a society of super-godlings torn between New Elysium and Hadia, Morrison’s vision of a Jack Kirby Olympian saga for DC following in the wake of Thor’s Norse myths rather than the full-blown invention of the New Gods. And the Ultrasphinx “is the super-champion of a lost Egyptian Atomic Age in the 80th century BC. When he crashed to Earth his otherworldly science founded the advanced, ancient dynasty of Atem-Hotep [sic], a civilization eventually destroyed by the nuclear war that left Northern Africa a desert”. A. Morrison backmatter rules and you should read it whenever you get the chance, and B. This notion of proto-civilizations mirroring the eventual legends of a mere handful of millennia past is one he followed much further in Seven Soldiers of Victory with Shining Knight and its antediluvian Camelot.

* The main inspiration for this particular story was the frequent use of ancient strongmen as rivals to the Man of Steel in the Silver Age, which Morrison noted preferring to the use of analogue characters like Majestic for their broad cultural standing, culminating in this:

...though with Atlas swapped in, as Marvel already had the definitive take on Hercules in superhero comics (and, one imagines, since putting Hercules in the comic where Superman gets 12 labors would have had to be addressed), though he’d tackle him later on in the...controversial Wonder Woman: Earth One. Morrison’s analysis of this cover in Supergods basically lays out the thesis of this issue quite cleanly: “This was what happened when you couldn’t make decisions or offer any lasting commitment. Samson pounced on your best girl. And for Superman, it was a horrific challenge to his modernity. Was he really no better than these archaic toughs? Or could he prove himself stronger, faster than any previous man-god?” Fun fact: I myself hate this comic because it’s an entirely standard issue that fully returns to status quo by the end, sullying the good name and promise of Imaginary Stories for nothing more than fooling readers into thinking this was one of the issues were anything could really happen. Shameful false advertisement.

* Worth noting this is a rare instance where the glowing-red angry heat vision eyes work for me. Those two were real dicks and had it coming, and for that matter Superman looking for all the world a wrathful god promising banishment to a very different sort of underworld more than underscores his relative position next to the suitably abashed adventurers.

* It’s an interesting choice to use Poseidonis here, the capital city of Aquaman - it’s a sensible place for Superman to travel (though the real implications regarding the Justice League in this world won’t be for awhile yet), but it’s Tritonis that’s the undersea home to Superman’s onetime love, the mermaid Lori Lemaris. Perhaps Morrison just didn’t want a subset of readers in the know and pining after all these decades for Clark to find succor in the arms of his fishy love to dwell on that particular what-could-have-been; either way, Atlantis in general as what sprung up from a devastated ancient civilization is a perfectly logical inclusion for this issue in general.

* Lois’s description of her super-senses is not only lovely, but sets up the victory of #12 right in the first act. Additionally Lois keeping a cactus is such a perfect little bit for her character - it’ll prick ya, but she’s working to keep the thing alive.

* The journeys to the moon and ‘underworld’ for this issue, but in playful and romantic contexts, marks this issue as the (depending on whether you read it as a 4 or 6 issue arc) final installment before All-Star Superman begins its structural descent into the night.

* A very happy birthday to Justin Martin (and a day-before-birthday to myself) with this, annotations of the issue of All-Star Superman about a birthday. Birthdays themselves being a signpost of time and evolution, a forward march, making it a potent occasion to highlight in this series in general and this installment in particular.

[amazing-info-from-smita]

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A) USES

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18) Since it can be pasted it hardly takes time, and thus saves energy.

19) If it's hung properly, it can last 3 times longer than the paint.

20) Paint finishes are Matt or gloss usually, however; wall paper textures have more varieties like beads, emboss, metallic, etc.

21) No splatters unlike paints hence not messy.

22) The marks can be wiped clean or washed.

B) THINGS TO KEEP IN MIND WHIST PURCHASE.

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Observe the rooms natural light and temperature. If the setting emits lots of window light, then loads of colour range from light to dark, should be chosen. Natural light makes darker colors less sulk.

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MAINTENANCE:

Silk screen papers stains can be easily wiped off with wet cloth, thus they ensure long life, while vinyl long coverings should be used for places that have high traffic.

THE OTHER CRUCIAL FACTORS:

The furniture, the rugs, floors, overall color and tones, light fixtures etc should also be taken into the picture and the wall paper color chosen must undoubtedly complement it. The function of the room is also a great additional aspect that should be kept in mind whilst purchasing.

THE PATTERN:

When electing wall papers, you should keep in mind, that a pattern should be planned, so that repetitive choosing and matching gets easier, and there is no boggling as it leads to waste of time, energy and also avoids mishandling, complications thereby easing the whole process.

Matching has 3 types, they being; Linear, Plunge, Randomity.In linear type the same pattern has to be matched at the same height. This is because, the left and right edges of the first strip has to match with the left and right edges of the next strip.

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Basic understanding is enough to choose the right option, so that the chosen wallpaper flows nicely in the space.

DOS AND DONT'S:

1) An expert advice is crucial to estimate the exact amount required. People dont do it on your own please.

2) The paste should not leave any residues, it should be dried clear, so do a test in advance, and don't use it directly.

3) All 4 sides of the wall, especially the ceiling is neglected by most, however; if done the impact is awesome.

SHOPPING TIPS:

1) Quality doesn't come for cheap, so stop looking for cheap stuffs, if you want your house to stand out.

2) Try samples before ordering the whole.

3) If you have art, then think big, and buy adventurous wall papers keeping the colors in mind.

4) Professionals keep bubbles, bad trims and uneven matches at bay, so don't hesitate to invest, as doing it yourself can be a big mistake, also they will take care of professional techniques like sanding, skim coating and primers if required.

5) Extra is recommended, just in case any of the walls are damaged or stained or may get damaged or stained in future.

ADDITIONAL KNOWLEDGE:

WALL STICKERS:

Wall stickers are also called wall tattoos, and wall vinyls and wall decals. These stickers are fastened on a wall to smoothen, or decorate the surface and also for informational purposes. Wall decors have to be cut, so that we can use them according to our requirements. Thus, the machines, that are used to cut them are called the vinyl cutting machines.

KIND AND SHAPES:

It comprises, of the wall borders, and cut outs to larger murals or designs covering the entire wall. The design consists of words, pictures and shapes of course. They can be small or large, based on necessity. Usually it is somewhere between 30 Cm X 50 Cm and 60 Cm X 100 Cm, larger ones may be 100 X 100 or even larger.

Most of them are not resuable, though few are. The adhesives can be adjusted a few times before the vinyl actually dies. Larger sizes are actually difficult to use, as they can be torn, stretched out, or even get stuck on its own, thereby making it difficult to be removed, adjusted and stuck again.

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[pricechecktranslations]

TTDS: The Ring of Evil; Chapter 1

Torture Tower Doesn’t Sleep: The Ring of Evil infomine under the cut

Scene 1

Scene opens up with Rack, cleaning the tower (and that she does it partially to alleviate boredom). She likes to clean most at night (because she doesn’t sleep anyway, and in fact feels more energetic at night, as do the rest of the girls). Maiden sometimes lectures her though, saying she misses things because she doesn’t clean when there’s light to see by.

Gibbet is out tonight. Rack hears someone scream upstairs, thinking it’s Maiden executing their last prisoner, who’s been there for a month. They’ve been getting less and less prey lately, so Rack has mostly been cleaning despite being a torturer.

Little recap on the girls, Beritoad, and why they do what they do. Rack actually has faint memories and sensations from when she was a torture device, apparently (things like Hank smiling as she tortured people, him cleaning the blood off her afterwards, etc).

She’s cleaning the dining room, that has the now-sealed secret passage. She notices that a cupboard has been moved a little. This brings her thoughts to the passage, wondering on who the original tower’s owner was and why they made it.

She sees an iron plate in the spot where the cupboard used to be. She tries to move it, or pry it up with her spikes, but it won’t budge. Her spike falls to the plate and then won’t come off, like it’s been glued down. She considers getting Maiden to help her with her powers of moving through walls, but she wants to find out what it is before anyone else. In the process of trying to break it open, she gets a spike stuck in the wall.

In getting the spike out, she breaks a hole in the wall. Moonlight gets in, and illuminates the iron plate.

A disturbance in the air forms above the plate, getting bigger and taking shape into the form of a person. It’s male, and about her height. She’s shocked, but pretends not to be for her pride. He greets her, and she demands he put some clothes on (as he’s naked, though still in a state between ghostly and corporeal).

He apologizes and immediately transforms to have clothing on, a white shirt with a black vest and necktie, and a yellow tailcoat. His outfit reminds her of a man named (kuramuzeru—Not sure how to romanize this) who came to the tower once (when Hank was still alive and Rack was just a rack). He was a servant of a General Carax (karakkusu). He was rugged, though, whereas the boy here is feminine in appearance.

The boy calls her “princess” (different word for princess than Riliane though). This is because, though, he thinks she’s the lord of the tower. She tells him to call her Rack, and that she’s not the lord here. She thinks he’s dangerous. He tells her she can call him Amo.

She asks if he’s a familiar of their “god” Beritoad, and Amo reacts strangely to that (basically, he knows of Beritoad, and not as his servant). Despite his polite manner he’s a little bit of a gadfly, it seems (ex, Rack asks him what he (Amo) is, and he says “I could tell you but I won’t”).

Rack gets annoyed and throws her spikes at him, but he doesn’t flinch or react at all when they sail past him. He’s a mere illusion, after all, and thus non-corporeal.

Rack declares he must be a ghost of someone who died in the tower. But Amo points out she’s never seen him before. He also denies being the ghost of someone from before she was made. He still refuses to admit what he is to her, though eventually relents and says he’ll tell her if she does him a favor.

He says a part of him (vague on what) is in the basement under the metal plate, and he wants Rack to take it out. She’s not sure how to get in there, of course, and so decides to take some time to think on it.

Amo departs, asking that they don’t patch the hole in the wall in the meantime, as it’ll stop him from being able to talk to her (he shows up when the moonlight shows through). Rack decides to go tell Maiden what happened.

Scene 2

Maiden is in the chapel reporting that she’d killed the last prisoner to Beritoad. They don’t notice Rack enter. They discuss how Rabiah and Gibbet have been having trouble due to outside interference, when it comes to gathering new prey. Maiden is having doubts, as they are torture devices who have hardly been torturing anyone lately.

Rack makes her presence known, and soon they get to talking about the outside world. Rack has no memories of when she was made outside the tower.

At one point after they were awakened, another wraith sealed (magically I think) the entrance to the tower (according to Beritoad). This lasted for fifteen years until “someone” (it doesn’t say who) arrived and unsealed the entrance. Then there’s a bit of recap on the stuff with Raymond and the others.

The point of the conversation is that basically this is not the first time the girls had a drought of torturing people, so Rack isn’t put off by it.

Maiden asks how close they are to restoring Beritoad. He says about 20-30 people (depending on how much they suffer first). He warns them that Raymond and Romarius (and Tsukumo) are sure to get in the way, though.

Rack brings up the situation with Amo, but Beritoad tells her to drop it, and get the hole in the wall fixed pronto. Maiden has one more thing she wants to ask, but Beritoad leaves for the day.

Scene 3

Maiden and Rack return to the first floor dining room, and she shows her the metal plate from before (with her spike still stuck to it). After a bit of inspection Maiden determines that it’s magnetic (which makes helping lift it tricky for her). Even if she used her ability to pass through things it still might draw her in.

While Rack puzzles over this, Maiden inspects the hole in the wall. Rack insists she not repair it, wanting to find out Amo’s secret. She says she’ll meet with Amo secretly when Beritoad sleeps. That still leaves the issue of the hole in the wall. Maiden has an idea, but wants to ask about something else first.

She had a letter addressed to her. Ordinarily the only letters they get are from Gibbet, but this is different. It says only: “I’m going to meet you soon”, from someone called Garnes (Ganes? Garneth?) Elsebert (gaanesu eruzeberuto).

Rack knows who he is, and is surprised Maiden doesn’t know (Maiden professes to have a bad memory). Rack tells her in exchange for her handling the situation with the wall, but the scene cuts off before she says who he is.

Scene 4

The scene is a large info dump on Benji, so there’s a lot to write. The “Kemp Clinic” was founded sixty years ago by Benji’s grandfather Olaf Kemp (oorafu), set in the northern region of Lion City, on Vinyl Hill (bainaru). Olaf is turning 82 this year, and four years ago he passed the director’s seat on to his son and retired (having suffered from an illness in his retinas). Benji and his father are the only doctors working there, but it wasn’t that big a clinic to begin with so it’s fine.

Benji’s great grandfather was a famous architect who worked in the royal capital, and apparently he worked on the large Sell Cross church (seru kurosu—I think it maaaay be a pun on kurosuseru, meaning “cross sell”?).

The clinic was originally founded to heal coal miners (coal mining being an extremely dangerous and illness inducing job)

Apparently, during the diamond boom his father and grandfather got depressed when more and more doctors from out of town (more educated than the country doctors they were) showed up and started taking their patients. Wanting Benji to become a better doctor than himself, his father made him study medicine very rigorously. Benji liked study and wanted to do his dad proud, and so eventually was allowed to attend college in the royal capital.

There, he became distracted by all the amusements there that he couldn’t experience in Lion City. He started drinking, and got a girlfriend (he didn’t smoke because she didn’t like it). He shirked his studies. Despite this, he was still top of his class—and there he realized he was a prodigy. Once he realized that he could achieve such high marks in medicine without even trying, he lost all interest and drive in being a doctor.

He even got tired of all the amusements in the capital city, wanting to find a way to challenge himself. He dropped out of college (not because he failed, but because he spent all his college money on nightlife amusements). Fortunately, you don’t need a license to be a doctor in this country.

Benji wanted to work in the capital, but his father forbid it, viewing him as a failure who wasted all the money that he’d worked hard to provide for him. As such, he wanted Benji to stay right where he could keep an eye on him. Hence Benji working with him now (which he doesn’t mind). He also broke up with his girlfriend on returning to Lion City (which he also seemed to take in stride).

The only problem is that Lion City is much more boring than the capital, and he doesn’t have the head to earn money to leave on his own. This is why he was able to tell there was something to Raymond when he first met him in Stella’s bar, that made him different from others. He became a fast acquaintance, wanting info on the disappearances and Benji having been reading up on them out of interest. Which led to the events of the first novel.

Benji is convinced there’s something else about the tower—that the wraiths and Beritoad only came in after the fact. He’s wondering why it was built in the first place. Apparently he did become an attendant physician on the Chamberlain family after all, and he’s used it to broaden the scope of his research on the matter (his father was very proud of him for doing that).

The Benji family has a warehouse to their name as well, full of various antiques and stuff. Benji’s room is on its second floor, as a quiet place to study. He also has a room in the clinic, but he doesn’t stay there because it’s too close to where he works.

Right now, in that room in the warehouse, Benji and several men and women are assembled for a secret meeting (one of whom is a wraith).

Scene 5

There’s a wooden desk in the middle of Benji’s room, and on it is a candle that is the sole source of illumination for everyone there. In the room is a blonde haired young man, a girl with short hair painting on nail polish (Luna, spelled runa), a muscular older man (Garnes), and a boy who looks younger than everyone present (Isaac, spelled aizakku). Romalius is also present (since the wiki’s seen fit to rename Romarius to Romalius fitting his name inspiration of Andromalius, I’ll refer to him as Romalius as well).

Benji begins the meeting by reporting on the current situation. They’ve hindered Gibbet’s plans in Mercerie City, but that doesn’t mean they’ve fully averted the tower gaining more victims. She’s just operating more carefully so as to not get caught.

The last disappearance was a month ago, the son of a Lion City council member. This brings up discussion of what happened half a year ago in the previous novel, where Gibbet made the mayor into a puppet to get more victims. The people here were the ones who stopped her by killing the mayor. Strictly speaking Isaac did it—he’d intended to kill Gibbet too, but she’d gotten away.

About a month after that, Lion City’s mayor suddenly died. There was an election for a new one—everyone thought Mr. Walt (woruto, as in ウォルト), who had long served as vice mayor, would be chosen. However, a young politician named Blood Asterisk (buraddo asutarisuku) who had recently appeared in Lion City stole the victory. Blood is originally from the Melbiland (merubirando) region to the north. According to Chamberlain, there was a fair bit of corruption going on during the election. And ever since Blood became mayor, Lion City has had more disappearances.

Isaac asks if he can’t just kill him like they did in Mercerie, but Benji points out that it was only with Romalius fixing things for them that they didn’t get caught last time.

Benji isn’t even sure that Blood is connected to the Torcia girls, but Romalius confirms he is. He wants them to meet with the man personally. Benji thinks he can set something up using Chamberlain, and Romalius offers to send Raymond with him to help.

The blonde young man steps forward, bringing up the topic of the mayor’s family—supposedly he has a wife who doesn’t come out in public, who they think might be Gibbet. He offers to investigate into that matter.

Luna says she is making preparations for the “performance” relating to Torcia Tower. (just a disclaimer it is hard to infomine this scene because the narrative is being really vague about who they are and what they’re doing so as to not spoil the rest of the story).

After some prodding, Romalius declares that whatever it is they’re preparing for, they’ll do it in a month. All the investigations and preparations should be done by then. Benji almost draws the meeting to a close (to meet again in two weeks), but Isaac demands to know what he should be doing, with Benji saying that while he doesn’t have much to do in the leadup, he’ll be essential for the “performance” itself. Isaac humphs and storms off.

Luna comments on how much Benji has changed (implying she knew him before). Benji brushes it off as growing up, and then closes the meeting.

Scene 6

Romalius is the only one to remain, looking at the tower to the south out the window. He knows who built it and why, all those centuries ago. He seems to be reflecting on his place in the world (how humans rule the land now instead of wraiths, how humans and wraiths are both pawns in the grand scheme of things, that he is a particularly frail pawn at that. He wishes to reject that destiny, etc).

His butler arrives to take him back to the castle. While on the road they discuss the meeting and Benji, Romalius mentioning that he doesn’t seem much like Will or Henry (wiru and henrii—in context I think he’s talking about Benji’s ancestors). Bateau is Romalius’ loyal and long-standing familiar, as a note (I suppose that makes him a wraith). Apparently, Romalius is involved partially because he wants to get at Benji’s documents on the tower, and is sticking with them because he finds them useful.

Romalius starts trembling (seems he’s actually a bit sickly, but hides it for appearances sake). Soon enough he recovers himself, and then switches topics to having Raymond sent back this way. Bateau wonders if Romalius might have any feelings for Raymond as an adoptive son, but Romalius brushes him off.

Scene 7

A new intruder has appeared before the tower, Beritoad’s powers having recently extended to seeing a few meters outside of the tower in addition to its interior. He has arrived at the tower’s back, and starts climbing up it using irregularities in the brick rather than walking inside. Beritoad recognizes him from this (apparently he didn’t recognize him at first because he’s gotten older). It takes some time for the narrative to get to it, but for the sake of clarity, this is Garnes. Beritoad doesn’t think it likely he’s out to kill him, so waits patiently for Garnes to reach him.

Garnes reaches the roof and goes down the stairs to where Beritoad is. He greets him like a casual friend, not seeming tired out from climbing the tower in the slightest. He has a hammer on him, but Beritoad knows he’s not a fighter. They banter a bit, before Beritoad gets to why Garnes is here.

Garnes has unfinished business (having put it off until hearing rumors of Beritoad lately). He’s here about the “Iron Maiden” that he made, having heard that Beritoad made her a person (which makes Beritoad suspicious, because not many people know that the girls are torture devices). They talk a little about Maiden, Garnes saying he’s here to fix a defect in Maiden.

At this point, Maiden drops an iron maiden on him, which he catches and tosses aside. Maiden demands he leave Beritoad alone. Garnes is ecstatic to see her, recognizing her as his creation even in her new form (amusingly, he asks if Beritoad made her a cute girl out of his own preferences, and Beritoad says, “No comment”).

Maiden realizes he’s the one who wrote her the letter, and he introduces himself (presumably, Garnes was employed by Hank in the past. Nonetheless, he is a torture device craftsman).

[joie-university-rp]

Dear DANTE NOIRE,

It is with great pleasure we invite you admission to Joie University! Welcome to the Thunderclap family!

-

Congratulations, JUSTIN! Please be sure to check the New Members’ Checklist and send in your character’s account within 24 hours from now. We cannot wait to see all that you will bring to this roleplay! We love you already!

OOC INFORMATION:

Name/Alias; pronouns: Justin, he/him

Age, Timezone: 20, MST

Activity, short explanation: 3-4 hours a day, after work.

Ships: Dante/Kurt since I am filling the connection. Dante/anyone.

Anti-Ships: Nothing.

Triggers: None for me.

Preferred photo for Character’s ID (please give a link): https://media.gq-magazine.co.uk/photos/5d138d392881cc034d0a7267/master/w_1280,c_limit/Adam-Driver-04-GQ-12Dec17_Dante-Brookes_b.jpg

Anything else: I’m filling this connection. https://joie-university-rp.tumblr.com/post/189809373804/requested-connection-for-kurt-hummel-suggested

IC INFORMATION:

Full Name (First, Middle, Last): Dante Matthew Noire

FC: Adam Driver

Age/Year at University (Freshman [1st Year], Sophomore, Junior, Senior, or Graduate Student): 24 years old, freshman/first year

Birth date (MONTH DAY, YEAR): August 13th, 1995

Hometown (please be sure to check the hometowns listed for characters your muse is related to!): Los Angeles, California

Gender/Pronouns: Male, he/him.

Sexuality: Pansexual

Major(s): Philosophy

Minor(s) [optional]: Songwriting/Music

Housing request (remember, only the president of a Greek Organization is required to live at a Greek House to be in it!): Schuester Dormitory Single Dorm 205

Extracurriculars (Click here for the list. Be sure to specify any executive board positions [i.e. president, secretary, etc.] If something isn’t listed, please put it here and we will add it to the masterlist!):  Glee Club Member, Fencing Team Member

Greek Life Affiliation [optional] (Please be sure to specify any executive board positions [i.e. president, pledge educator, etc.] or if your character is not yet a member, but plans to rush): None.

CHARACTER PROFILE (TW; Alcohol abuse, suicidal tendencies):

Dante was born into a relatively normal upper-class family. His parents were a very successful pair, his mother a lawyer and his father a banking executive. He lived in peaceful comfort, went the best private schools for teaching, yet when it came time for him to start building towards a career path, he couldn’t seem to pick one. He was a joy in the classroom and had a knack for tutoring other students that struggled as well. Alas, he didn’t want to be a teacher like his mother recommended, or a social worker like his father suggested. He found his true home in the music room. His parents had him learn piano and other various instruments, including vocal lessons, much to their detriment. When it came to his senior year of high school with not a single college application submitted, Dante came clean to his parents; he wanted to be a musician.

He moved away from L.A. when his family rejected his selected career path, especially after they cut him off from his allowance. When he got to New York, he was dead-broke, but found a job quickly as a jazz -ballad singer and pianist at a couple bars around the city. He sang in parks and street corners, releasing self-written songs online, hoping one day he would get noticed. It wasn’t until he actually took a piece of his father’s advice that he started to gain fame; “Dress as if you already have the job when you go in for the interview.” So, Dante gave himself the new look, dressing like the jazzy, big band singers and performers of old, promoting his image as well as his music.

Dante’s relationship with Kurt ran along with his quest to fame. He met Kurt during one of his nights working at an underage-friendly jazz bar near NYADA’s campus. Due to his talents, the students that came in would tip him well. It was in September of 2016, one year into Dante’s tenure in New York, did he spot the other man in the same seat once a week. It didn’t take long for Dante to introduce himself. Kurt and Dante together felt like they were two puzzle pieces, making a complete picture. When Dante started to gain a small following online, he made efforts to separate his professional life from when he was at home. Kurt made him feel like he could be his true self, open and free, yet while he was on stage, performing for an audience of strangers, he was putting up an act. He knew Kurt’s voice was magnificent, but he never wanted Kurt to think he was using him like that to promote his own career. Dante loved Kurt, and he wanted to keep Kurt far away from his growing spotlight. Let Kurt find his own dream, his own claim to fame, with Dante supporting him the entire way. At least, that was the promise Dante proposed to Kurt with in 2017.

As his fame began to grow and explode, the lines between his face to his growing public and at home began to mix. Dante would come home shitfaced from some party, or a concert, or PR event. Photos online with him holding fans close, kissing their cheeks, and being flirtatious would come out in the tons each time he stepped outside. Kurt would have to sober Dante up, thwarting his attempts to get into his pants. Kurt never obliged while he was drunk, which would result in a heated argument. It wasn’t until the next morning that he would apologize. Trust became very thin, very quickly, turning into a vicious cycle, over and over. It was Dante returning from his first 3-month tour, as drunk as ever, that ended the relationship for good. Another argument had broken out, this time Kurt demanding to know why there were clips online of him running around some party with his hand in some girl’s back pocket. Dante became furious Kurt would think he cheated, yelling up and down it was just for PR. Kurt didn’t buy it, eventually locking himself in the bathroom when Dante threw a glass at him. It wasn’t until Dante woke up the next morning, somehow in his bed, that he realized just how badly he had fucked up. Kurt left him, with the ring on the kitchen counter, the glass cleaned, and fresh coffee brewing in the pot.

The depression that followed Kurt leaving had Dante near suicidal. He tried to find Kurt; his number was blocked, and when he contacted NYADA to find him, they said that he had dropped out. He was blocked on social media, using dummy accounts to find out none of them were being updated. Kurt had disappeared, and there was no way Dante could find him. He gave up, vanished for months from the public eye, nearly destroying his career in its infancy. In that time, Dante wrote songs, poems, and love letters for Kurt he could never send. When his agent demanded work from him, he just tossed the papers on the table in frustration, that having been his only work during that time. It was a good thing his agent had more business sense than Dante, recommending he commit his works to the studio, to audio, to music. And hence, his chart-topping, record breaking, radio dominating album, ‘To Kill the Canary’, was born. It tore away from his jazz swings of the past into a ballad genre, featuring less sax and more acoustic guitar. The day the album released, he saw the crowds form at his feet, resonating and praising his work. He was determined to live despite what happened, even if he couldn’t seem to move on.

With all this success, why attend Joie for a degree? He was set for life, he didn’t need more education. Dante’s agent thought the opposite. With the influence he held, and with him turning twenty-five in August, they thought it would look great for his image if he wasn’t just some good-looking musical flounce, doomed to fail when he was no longer dominating the public. They opted for the Emma Watson route; go to college. Get a degree. That way, he was a cut above all the others in his industry; he wasn’t just a talent, he was educated. He chose philosophy as his major over music because he already mastered music. He didn’t want college to be a complete waste of time, so he decided to learn something completely new. Joie was an easy choice for a university; it was a world-renown college, one his fans would recognize. The fact one of his dummy accounts notified him of a post to Kurt’s Instagram had absolutely nothing to do with this college selection. Nothing at all…

STUDENT CENSUS SURVEY:

(Please answer the following questions IN CHARACTER. Responses can be as long or short as you see fit!)

What made you want to attend Joie University?

The prestigious nature of the school seemed the perfect place to both earn my degree and gain life experience I have been lacking. The administration seemed accommodating considering my current position and gave the impression that I would be treated just like everyone else. Overall, I felt very welcomed and fell in love with Joie instantly.

What are at least 3 positive or neutral and at least 3 negative traits that you believe you possess?

My most positive trait would be my unwavering determination. Even in the face of my family being nay-sayers in the quest for my dreams, I went after them anyway. Now, I wish to prove there is more to me than a pretty voice, exceed my own expectations. Perhaps that is my second trait; ambition for a new challenge. No mountain is too high for me. And that ties into my third best trait being creative problem solving. I simply cannot take no for an answer. If there is a will, there is a way, and I have a lot of willpower.

As far as the negatives of my personality, every positive is a doubt edged sword. For all my determination, it is very difficult for me to know when it is time to stop, reflect, and take it what is around me. I am always pushing for the next goal, leaving me often forgetting to savor the moment. I don’t know when to stop pushing for more, for better. This has had my personal relationships suffer in the past as well, and I do plan to remedy this. Apologies are another weakness of mine. For all I try to correct any wrongs on my part, simply saying ‘I’m sorry’ seems to escape my mind. A third flaw… I am frequently told I am too generous with my money. It isn’t like I could possibly use it all, so I use it on others. This has lead to a few personalities latching onto me simply for my wallet or my fame. I suppose that makes me a sub-par judge of character.

Which of your traits do you value most?

My ambition, by far. Taking on the impossible and making it believable is something I enjoy doing, both in music and in life. I wish to up the ante by studying for my degree, see what challenges I can tackle next.

How can that trait benefit the University (or its student body) as a whole?

Being I am a special case, it would be no lie to say my experience in the school could lead to positive press. I would also be interested in investing in the school through funding scholarships and such, once I am no longer a student. I do believe in the power of education, so on the same hand I do not wish to distract from other students attending. Making a show of myself here is not the goal. I wish to meld into the student body just as a regular attendee, no special treatment. That is what I could bring.

What do you hope to gain from your experience at JU?

The typical college experiences. The ups and downs of dorm life, the stress of finals, the development into a greater person leaving than you were when you arrived. I want all these things.

What is a quote or song lyric that describes you?

“I wanna take you high up, Let our hearts be the only sounds, I wanna go where lights burn low, And you’re only mine.” -James Bay, ‘Wild Love’

[sims2shrine]

“This soulless game isn’t really ‘The Sims’ for me”

I am starting off this blog with a review for The Sims 3 from Amazon.com user Valentinegirl. Why The Sims 3 on a blog dedicated to The Sims 2, you ask? Because this review details just about everything about The Sims 2 that makes it so special and endearing. Whenever I come back to playing The Sims 2 after a long break, I like to re-read this review because it always excites and inspires me to play this game that I am so passionate about. Note that the opinions expressed in this review do not necessarily correlate with my own -- I do enjoy all of PC versions for the most part. I just believe that The Sims 2 is far superior to the others, hence why this blog was born.

“Like many of the other reviewers here, I have been a HUGE fan of The Sims franchises, losing many pleasant hours to The Sims 1 and its wonderful sequel The Sims 2. Even before The Sims came out I was a Maxis fan, playing games like Sim City and Sim Tower with pleasure. I can't say that The Sims 3 has ‘disappointed’ me because the more I heard about the new game over its development period the more I thought to myself ‘why are they including this feature or dropping that feature? It sounds like they are tampering with the heart of the things I enjoy about The Sims’. But I bought the game anyway in good faith. Needless to say I am now back to playing The Sims 2. The Sims 3 has no interest for me at all in comparison. Despite all the ‘improvements’ - and I admit there are some surface ones - the heart and soul of what The Sims means to me is absent from this game. Unlike other reviewers here, my negative review of this game is not due to any technical difficulties. Perhaps I haven't played long enough to experience any, and at any rate - every hard-core Sims fan has learned to live with the bugs shipped with the game and love it anyway. The modding community has always done a sterling job of cleaning up our games and making them more playable and enjoyable. So my negative rating is not due to bugs or crashes - it is purely based on my perception of the game's enjoyment factor, especially when compared to The Sims 2. To be fair, I will sum up what to me are improvements to the game compared to The Sims 2: - the ‘open neighbourhood’ - the ability to go from one place to the other without a loading screen is a fine idea and works well in principal. But I found that it really didn't impact my playing habits as much as you might think at first. While playing a large, busy family there would be very little time to go rushing off to the park or elsewhere and I found I was ‘household’ focussed in my game playing just as much as in The Sims 2. I actually prefer in some ways the way community lots worked in The Sims 2. If you could organise your sims enough to go off to a community lot, time would actually stand still in the meantime, taking the pressure off your enjoyment of this change in pace for your sims. - No doubt about it, the ‘Create a Style’ colour wheel/pattern maker is the one thing that is far superior to recolouring in The Sims 2. It's great fun and so easy to go through and match up clothing, furniture, wallpaper, etc in an obsessive fashion that suits my type of playing down to the ground. But even here is a caveat - there is no Body Shop type program to truly customise textures. You can recolour only which is hardly satisfying in a creative way compared to being able to extract a texture and import it into Photoshop, thereby putting your own personal stamp on the texture. For example, in The Sims 2 you could export a dress texture and by pasting on a texture of your own you could make the outfit appear to be a cardigan and skirt instead. I am sure custom content creators in time will come up with ways of importing new meshes/textures into The Sims 3, but it is obvious that EA is trying to limit this type of thing to the ‘regular’ user right from the beginning by eliminating a ‘Bodyshop’ program from their development tools. - The ease of angle rotation is an unmixed blessing in this game - something that I wish had happened in The Sims 2 - The outdoor scenery in The Sims 3 is gorgeous from the beach, the shimmering water, to the parks, rolling hills etc. But the limitations put on being able to make this neighbourhood your own again shows up the inflexibility built into this game. Whereas in The Sims 2 you could completely customise your neighbourhood, building it up from a terrain created in Sim City, to decorating it and laying out your lots etc, in this game, EA gives you this beautiful scenery and then severely limits your ability to customise it. You cannot create your own terrain, the community lot buildings are the same everywhere and are not even properly functional, and there are a limited number of lots for your houses. It feels like a ‘dumbed down’ version of a neighbourhood to me that even the ‘open plan’ of the game cannot make up for. - There are a lot more surface details to gameplay in The Sims 3 by the way of person and object interactions and the little missions/opportunities that pop up. I do appreciate the amount of thought that has gone into a lot of these things, like adding depth to the career paths and making such things as painting a picture personal to every different type of sim. But again, when playing a busy family (six kids!) I found that I would just click the opportunities away as an annoyance without even reading them. There was no way my busy mother or father could go running off to the town park for a chess tournament when they were caring for screaming toddlers at home! - The lighting of the new game is a nice update and beautiful. It is also flexible if you have the time or inclination to mess around with the many options provided So even the improvements included in The Sims 3 are mostly mixed blessings for me! Here are the things that have decided me against the game: - The sims themselves. Try as I might, I cannot bond with these weird looking people and that bond between the player and their ‘Simmies’ is the major factor that holds many Sims fans in thrall. For a start, these creations just don't look like sims to me. It is laughable that the creators of this game are claiming that the sculpting tools given to create a sim are more flexible and customisable than in The Sims 2! In fact the sliders are very limited in their scope and have less points of difference than those provided in ‘Bodyshop’. That round-faced, chinless look that we all noticed and wondered at in preview pictures of this game is there for the very specific reason that you can't provide your sim with a proper chin and all of them look blobby and quite fat in the face. The noses look like they are just stuck on anyhow and look very unfortunate in profile. And the empty-looking eyes roll in a very disconcerting and unappealing alien manner. The sims toddlers and children - one of my prime delights in The Sims 2 - all look very ugly and all look exactly the same. One couple I played had six children, just to check out the genetics and all of them looked like peas in a pod until they got to their adult years, and even then the differences were minimal. It was very unsatisfying spending so much time and energy raising these unappealing little clones! - Obviously, I have had trouble creating sims I like to look at. That wouldn't matter as much if I could love the way these sims act and interact. If you think back to The Sims 1 and The Sims 2 what charmed fans of these games was how cute, quirky, funny, unexpected and unique all these characters seemed to the player. I don't accept the criticism the developers of this new game kept stating that ‘all previous sims games had sims who were all the same and all they wanted to do all the time was go to the toilet!’ Well really - do they think The Sims 1 and 2 would have been such world-wide successes if this were actually true?? Of course not! Our sims charmed us, made us laugh, surprised us and often took their own little lives in their own hands and pulled the game in a direction all their own. The two things promised by The Sims 3 creators about how the new sims would behave were 1) There would be a lot more time to attend to the sims' lives and less need to run around after them caring for their basic ‘needs’ - such as sending them to the toilet or to bed; and 2) the new ‘traits’ system would ensure truly unique behaviour from the sims and open up entirely new vistas of personalities and interactions for sims fans to enjoy. I'm sorry to say, but I have to rebut both of these stated improvements. 1)I think every Sims 3 player, no matter how dedicated a fan they are will admit that you spend more time waiting for your sims to fulfil needs than ever before. You spend ages just watching them sleep every night. They seem to have bladder and hunger needs that are never satiated, and you spend more boring time staring at their work building while they are off at work. So between taking them to work, watching them sleep, fulfilling their needs and trying to skill up, there is actually zero time left in a sims' busy day to take them to the park, the beach or visit a neighbour! How is this the ‘new balance’ of life over needs that the developers were so proudly proclaiming?? 2) As for the ‘traits’ system - that has to be the biggest disappointment of all. Sure, picking different traits for your sims will give them some very superficial differences, such as different interaction possibilities with other sims, or different animations. but at a deeper level, each and every sim seems the same over and over again. I think the main reason I say this is if you watch a household full of sims who all supposedly have a unique set of traits, you don't see them acting differently unless you tell them to. In fact they barely interact with one another at all if you don't tell them to. They ignore one another and spend their time being boring - fulfilling the endless needs or perhaps using a skill object. They don't care to interact with one another at all! It is quite possible to have two sims living in the same house forever and they remain total strangers to one another. You have to force them to interact which I find really annoying - I had hoped that they might work out their own relationships as they did in The Sims 2. Another annoying thing is the lack of familial affection between sims. Unlike The Sims 2, you never see a parent hug, kiss or play with a child unless you tell them to. You just don't feel that these sims love/care about one another at all, and I remember that feeling that ‘love is real’ between sims being the primary and most striking point that charmed me when The Sims 2 came out. I am sorry to say, if I compare the depth of personality of a houseful of Sims 2 and 3 sims, the Sims 2 sims would win hands down. In Sims 2, they would take one another in like or dislike, be attracted to some and repulsed by others. The parents would hug their kids when they got home from work, and kiss them goodnight. Husbands and wives would find a quiet corner and canoodle in a very romantic way. In Sims 3 they all coldly ignore one another and act in boring and one-dimensional ways, totally uninfluenced by their so-called ‘unique traits’. This lack of true feeling for my sims and between the sims themselves is my primary reason for calling this latest instalment ‘soulless’. How can you feel attached to these ugly, alien-like people who all look and act the same? - I do not care for one of the key selling points of The Sims 3 - the so-called ‘story progression’. Which sim fan really wants to leave their playable family for a little while only to come back and find they've moved out of the neighbourhood, or had a family while you're not looking with kids you didn't get to name? Where is the appeal in that? Most sims fans love to micro-manage their sim's lives - who they love, marry, have kids with, what they name their kids, where they choose to live, etc. Even more frustrating, the ability to turn story progression off is broken!! Good one, EA!! Another one of my criticisms is that EA has written out some of the most enjoyable and endearing elements of The Sims 2. Eliminating these things really proves to me how little the developers of the game understood the things that true Sims fans love about their games. Here are some as an example: - Story mode is gone. Yes I know there is a camera and yes I know they have all this fancy equipment that enables you to easily upload stories and movies onto the web to share. But I bet 90% of Sims players are not all that interested in sharing stories on the world wide web. The Sims has always been a highly personal game - a fantasy world unique to each sims player, and making up and sharing sims stories is not the driving reason to play the game for most. It is to get lost in your own little self-created kingdom and fall in love with the little pixels that people it. In Sims 1 & 2, using the camera as I played and building up an album for each little family became a mainstay of my playing style over the years. Most of the time I would not even add text to the pictures. They would be safely stored in each family's little album and every once in a while I would choose to browse through this visual record of my sims' little lives and enjoy again the sentimental, surprising, funny little incidents that marked the passage of that family's life. I would record the unexpected or charming little things that made my sims seem unique, like when my prim little sim teenager fell in love with the neighbourhood ‘bad boy’ all on her own and against any of my expectations. Or when my shy, nerdy sim who lived with a party animal room-mate spent all her time in her room reading on the bed or, of all things - washing the windows! whenever her room-mate threw one of her wild parties! Not having this record at hand of the family's little story in Sims 3 is definitely a contributing factor to the feeling of the game having little forward progression - every day seems like the one before. - Eliminating memories from the Sims is another way EA has wiped out the sense you might have of the family's story and history. I know memories caused all sorts of trouble in The Sims 2 if you moved sims indiscriminately from one neighbourhood to the next, but I think for many of us, having that sim's little milestones recorded in their memories really gave the sim a feel of individuality and personal growth. After not playing a particular family for a long time the first thing I would do would be to flip through the family's album and check their memories. This would put me back in touch with where the family was in their own particular life story. - Another charming Sims 2 feature that was wiped out was the attraction system. I know the original Sims 2 game did not ship with this, but it was added early on in one of the expansion packs and I am sure every Sims 2 fan absolutely loved it. It was another way to differentiate sims from one another. You could create down to the finest detail two sims who you thought would be ‘perfect’ for each other, only to find they couldn't stand each other! Then two of the unlikeliest sims would get together all of their own accord, making you feel that these little people had minds and hearts of their own. I loved this feature so much that my playing style was to resolutely let each sim choose his or her own mate with no help from me. There are other reasons for me not to like this highly polished, highly superficial instalment of The Sims franchise. But in the end, it came down to these basic feelings about the game - I don't care how gorgeous it is to look at if the gameplay is shallow and boring - I feel like EA is really dumbing down long-time sims fans by trying to eliminate custom content, charging like a wounded bull for their sub-standard stuff and doing their best to stifle the creativity of the custom content community - The sims are cookie-cutter clones of one another, and have no charm either of physical appearance or personality. The life and soul has been sucked out of these pixel-people - There is no sense of story, no unexpected interactions, no story mode or memories to record the sims lives. They no longer care about one another at all - parents, children, lovers, room-mates, friends - it doesn't matter what relationship the sims have to one another, there is no desire for these people to interact or develop their relationships unless you force it. I am mad at EA for ‘missing the boat’ on this franchise upgrade. In fact, it no longer feels like The Sims at all to me. All the charm and spontaneity has gone out of the game. I suppose it's not surprising I feel this way - Will Wright and his unique Maxis team of developers are long gone and EA has taken over. EA have no idea, and do not care what made The Sims beloved of fans the world over and instead are forcing something on them that has only a surface relationship to previous games. Much in the same way they ‘improved’ Sim City out of all recognition of the original game (’Sim City Societies’), they have done this to The Sims and that, I think is unforgivable. Fortunately, The Sims 2 will always be here and I am gladly getting back to my cute, funny, irreverent, surprising little sims with the huge added bonus of all the expansion packs and custom content I have built up over the years. I doubt if I will ever come back to The Sims 3 even if they bring out boatloads of expansion packs. If the game has no soul, it cannot be loved.

This review was written on July 27th, 2009. Source: Amazon.com. Link to original review: https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/RCEHMW5QIIA7B/ref=cm_cr_getr_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B00166N6SA

[trueloveseyeroll]

The Dancing Thief (10/13)

Summary: Pretending to be a noblewoman might be the dumbest thing Emma has ever agreed to do. And she’s not sure if meeting Lord Killian Jones made the whole thing better or worse. (Better. Definitely better.)

Rating: T (language and mild violence)

Beta: The wonderful @forget-me-not-s​

Artist: The lovely @captxinswans - check out her amazing artwork for chapter 1, chapter 2 and chapter 8!!

Word count: 3995 (62k words in total)

Chapter 1

AO3

Snow sent her several knowing looks throughout the morning. Emma pretended not to notice. She kept stifling yawns, however, as even after she came home from her “midnight run”, sleep had been all but impossible.

“It’s quite cold this morning,” Snow said, putting on a kettle while Emma finished up her porridge. “It must have been cold all night.”

“Probably,” Emma said, quickly stuffing a spoonful of porridge in her mouth. The long sleeves of her carefully chosen shirt hid the purple colour of her knuckles, but at least they didn’t hurt. (And at least she hadn’t gotten a black eye like the last time she was in a fight.)

“I hope you didn’t leave your window open. At least not too much.”

Emma swallowed, knowing very well that Snow was on to her. But she was kind in her implications, choosing to wait until David was out of the room.

“Just a sliver,” she said, eyes on her porridge.

Snow hummed. “And did everything go well?”

Emma thought of lying, pretending nothing had happened, but she knew there was no point. Instead, with a mouth conveniently full of porridge, she nodded.

She thought maybe Snow would let her off the hook there, but after a moment she asked, “You really like him, don’t you?”.

A blush was well on its way, Emma could feel it, and tried to fight it off with a mumbled “maybe”. It didn’t quite do the trick.

“You know it’s okay to like someone, Emma.”

“Even him? ‘Cause you haven’t seemed very fond of him so far,” Emma shot back.

“Which was wrong of me,” Snow said. “I’ve never met him before, only heard of him. And all the questionable things I’ve heard don’t matter compared to the trust you must have in him to save his life.”

“I’ve been wrong about people before,” Emma said lowly, almost more to herself than Snow. “I didn’t tell him, by the way. About you and David. I just let him know I was working for someone worth working for.”

“And how did he take that?” Snow asked.

“He was alright. He just wanted to be sure I hadn’t been forced into doing anything I didn’t want to do.”

“Well, he sounds like a lovely young man to me,” Snow smiled, and if Will hadn’t entered the kitchen just then, with a big and loud yawn, Emma imagined Snow would’ve started asking for details like any girlfriend would. Though probably less raunchy than the questions Ruby would come up with.

“I’m more than lovely, Snow, you know that,” Will said cheekily, headed straight for the pot of porridge, still warm over the embers.

“And humble to the bone,” Snow joked.

“No doubt about it.”

---------------

After he’d finally been able to go to bed, the assassin quietly handed over to his friend and locked up in the keep dungeon, there was no hope for sleeping. He tried reading instead, hoping the words would tire him out, but he couldn’t maintain focus long enough to even finish a sentence. She’d been right there. She’d been in his bedchambers, she’d saved his life on the balcony, punched the daylight out of a trained killer... and Killian had kissed her, right there. At the foot of his bed.

He would have been surprised if he had been able to fall asleep.

Only an hour before dawn, his lips still tingling with the memory of Emma’s, sleep finally came for him. However, it didn’t stay for very long. Just four hours later, he woke again, his head spinning with thoughts of golden hair and fair skin. He partly feared it had all been a dream, but the salve on the top of his dresser reassured him that Emma had actually been there. And she’d told him the truth. (And she’d kissed him.)

He lay in bed for a long while, enjoying the warmth of the covers and recalling the warmth of having Emma in his arms. He truly hoped he didn’t have to wait long to hold her again. Or to talk to her, ask her about her life - her real life - and to make her laugh... He’d love to hear more about her beginnings. He cared not that she was a thief, only that life had dealt her such terrible cards that thieving was the best way for her to get by. Meanwhile, he’d never wanted for anything. He’d had food every day, a loving brother for most of his life... But Emma wouldn’t want his sympathies, Killian knew that. And he didn’t pity her as much as admire her.

She was an absolute marvel.

Thankfully, whoever she worked with seemed to be good people. Perhaps they were simply commoners, wanting to know what was going on in the enclosed circles of the nobility. Perhaps they were trying to make a better life for themselves, as Killian knew quite well that King George’s laws didn’t make for good lives. At least not for the vast majority of the population.

An hour went by, with Killian doing nothing but lie in bed. That’s when he knew he had to get out of his chambers and out of the keep, lest he waste the whole day, lost in thoughts of Emma. Though it wouldn’t be a bad way to spend the day. Not at all.

Bloody hell, just get out of bed.

He wondered if she’d still be staying at the townhouse. In fact, as he put on his clothes and locked the door to his bedchambers, the question was at the very front of his mind. He should’ve asked her when he could. But she did say she wasn’t leaving Misthaven...

No. He’d go somewhere else, visit the assassin in a few hours after he’d been left to rot for a little while, and then maybe, maybe he could take a walk to the townhouse.

The harbour was a tempting destination for his morning walk, but Killian realized he needed someone to distract him. And so, he soon found himself at Maurice’s Bookstore.

“Something awfully good must have happened since last I saw you, Lord Killian,” Belle greeted him, a mere two seconds after spotting him amongst the books. “I haven’t seen that smile in forever.”

“Perhaps it’s merely the joy of being in your presence once more, Lady Belle.”

As always, Belle knew that Killian’s charm was only friendly meant.

“Or perhaps it has something to do with that friend of yours,” Belle said, sending Killian a knowing look before returning her attention to the broken spine of a book on her desk. “I forgot to ask if she liked the paints you gave her?”

Killian actually didn’t know whether Emma had liked them or not. She’d never acknowledged them, and fearing that she’d found his gift unfavourable, Killian had never asked. Now he wondered how she’d come about painting as a thief... Or perhaps she’d only mentioned painting as a hobby because her true pastimes weren’t fitting for a lady of any station.

“I’m not sure,” he answered. “But I don’t think she was overly averse to them.”

“Hence the smile on your face?” Belle teased.

“I suppose so,” Killian said, his face no doubt resembling a proud and happy puppy. He didn’t see a reason why he shouldn’t let Belle see that though. In fact, he’d very much like to tell everyone he knew - and everyone he didn’t know - that Emma Swan liked him! “You’ve had a faraway look on your face for the past few weeks as well though, Lady Belle. Care to share the reason for your smiles?”

Belle stopped fiddling with the wrecked book, seemingly debating whether or not to tell Killian the secret he knew she’d been harbouring. Not two seconds later, she let the corners of her lips curl. “I suppose they’re much the same as yours.”

“I do hope it’s a different friend than mine,” Killian joked.

Belle rolled her eyes at him, picking up the book once more. “I’d be highly surprised if it wasn’t, Lord Killian.”

Walking towards a shelf, browsing the books it held, Killian asked, “so how did you and this lucky lad or lass meet?”

“In a tavern, actually,” Belle answered. “He was there with his friend.”

“Beat him at a drinking game and he fell head over heels for you, did he?” Killian said, knowing very well that the short, book-loving lass wasn’t to be underestimated.

“No, he accidentally spilt some of his drink over me while telling his friend a story.”

Killian raised his brows. “He’s very lucky indeed then. I wouldn’t usually define that as a clever way to woo any woman.”

“Well, he apologized quite nicely. And I like that he’s such a lively storyteller,” Belle said, and Killian could hear the fondness in her voice. He was happy she’d found someone who made her smile like that. And then he thought of Emma, his own special smile widening once again.

“But how did you meet your friend?” Belle asked while Killian continued to study the countless books on the shelves. They were quite lucky to be the only two people in the shop. “I thought you didn’t care much for the ladies at court. At least not enough to pursue any of them.”

“She only arrived a few months ago,” Killian said. “In the beginning of spring.”

And she’s not really a lady, he thought of saying, the words just at the tip of his tongue. But while he trusted Belle with his life, he didn’t think it was his secret to share. He was just about to say more, describe how wonderful and witty Emma was, but the bell chimed over the door as another customer entered. So much for being the only two people in the store.

“Will!” Belle greeted from behind the desk, and Killian turned around at the familiarity in her voice. It was quite similar to the fondness that had shaped her words just moments before.

The bloke in the door had his own doting smile. He looked charming enough, Killian supposed, his clothes clean if a bit ruffled. “Morning, love!”

“Is everything alright?” Belle asked, the broken book completely forgotten.

“It’s more than alright! Just poppin’ by to ask if you’d fancy some dinner tonight? With me, I mean,” the bloke, Will, asked, adding the clarification with a hint of shyness that didn’t quite fit the confident way he carried himself. But Killian supposed the right girl could make any lad feel unsure of himself. He knew it all too well, actually.

“I’d love to!” Belle answered. And then, suddenly remembering Killian’s presence, hurried to introduce the two of them. “Lord Killian, this is Mr. Will Scarlet. And Will, this is Lord Killian Jones.”

Will’s face took on an odd expression that Killian had trouble deciphering. Surprise? Enlightenment? Perhaps even a bit of judgement as well. “Ah, so you’re the Lord Killian bloke! I’ve heard about you.”

“Huh?”

“Oh, Will’s a coachman,” Belle quickly began explaining, but she sent Will a brief look that made Killian wonder if she was hiding something. “He works for a young Lady Emma Swan, she just came to Misthaven a few months ago. In the beginning of spring...”

Belle trailed off, puzzle pieces falling together inside her head. Meanwhile, Killian’s head had already connected the dots, and he stared at Will, unable to quite comprehend this new piece of information.

Belle’s sweetheart worked with Emma. This Will must know why Emma had been spying on the nobility, and he’d helped her do it.

What could Killian do with this information? Did Belle know Will’s true job? And was he a good person, or was he lying to Belle, perhaps even exploiting her trust?

“They’re some of the best people I’ve ever known,” Emma had said. And Killian had believed her. He did believe her. Still, meeting Will Scarlet was throwing him for a bit of a loop.

“What was the name of your friend?” Belle asked, hesitantly.

Will answered before Killian could, perfectly chipper, “Emma Swan, I imagine.”

“Aye. Small world, is it not?” Killian said, half-heartedly trying to make light of things.

“She saved your life last night, didn’t she?” Will asked, and the frankness of the question surprised both Killian and, especially, Belle.

“What?”

The three all looked at each other, each knowing bits of the story that the others didn’t, and each clearly aware of it.

“Perhaps some explaining would be in order,” Killian said at last. And he was quite right about that.

---------------

For an hour, Belle, Will and Killian tried their best to wrap their heads around the full story. The explanations were made difficult with the odd customer entering the store, rendering all three of them silent. Well, Belle was quick to help said customer. And Killian wasn’t sure if Will even knew how to be entirely silent.

However, Will did know the true cause for his and Emma’s work - and their employer. Upon hearing that Emma had elected to wait with telling Killian, Will decided to do the same. “You might as well just meet them yourself, eh? You too, Belle.”

It seemed Belle had known about Will’s purpose for the last week, after the guilt of sharing her gossip of the nobility without her consent became too much for him. But she, too, was in the dark about the person he and Emma worked for. She only knew he was important towards giving the people of the Enchanted Forest a better future, and she’d therefore offered to tell Will some more of what she knew of the nobility. But so far, as their relationship was still new, Will didn’t want her to feel he was exploiting her.

Killian appreciated him a bit more for that.

“I suppose that’s why you’ve heard of me then,” he said to Will.

“Actually, I haven’t talked about you at all,” Belle said. He couldn’t help but feel a little wounded. “Well, I have talked about you, but not by name. I don’t gossip about my close friends.”

“It’s good we’re all such a loyal bunch,” Will said cheerfully, although Killian detected a hint of sarcasm. He couldn’t help but agree though; it was nice to know that everyone was loyal to each other, although when it hindered communication, it did get infuriating.

Another customer - an elderly lady with a large hat - entered, and the conversation took a break once again.

“Emma’s been the one talking about you,” Will told Killian, as they waited for Belle to return.

He didn’t know why, but his ears turned pink.

“Good things, I hope.”

“Compared to what others say about you, she made you sound like a bloody saint,” Will said, causing Killian to frown. It was nice, of course, to know that Emma wasn’t speaking ill of him (it was more than nice, it was absolutely elating), but for once, his poor reputation was getting to him.

When Belle returned, Will seemed to have had enough of all the explanations. “Just come over for dinner. Things oughta straighten themselves out there. And I wager you wouldn’t mind seeing Emma again.”

And well, Killian couldn’t argue with that.

---------------

As he left Maurice’s Bookstore with newly acquired dinner plans, Killian pondered an unasked question. Why did Will and Emma feel the need to keep their friend secret? They both claimed the person had nothing but good intentions, and yet they wouldn’t let Belle or Killian know who this person was.

Killian had an idea though.

Two weeks ago, stories of the exiled prince’s return had begun to spread through Misthaven. Some believed the tale more than others, and up until now, Killian hadn’t given it much thought. But he knew that Liam had always thought Prince David would be an excellent king. And when George had exiled his own son, Liam hadn’t agreed with the decision. Loyalty towards his monarch had kept him from speaking up though.

“I can’t claim to know everything, Killian, and it would be unwise of me to make any protests without knowing the full story,” Liam had said. After that, Killian had stopped thinking much of Prince David at all.

But if David really had returned, and Liam was right about him having potential for being a good king, perhaps he was the person Emma and Will wanted to keep secret.

I suppose you’ll find out tonight, he thought. But now, he supposed, it was time to needle some answers from the man who had tried to kill him a mere twelve hours ago.

---------------

The last time all the furniture had been pushed to the walls in the drawing room, Emma hadn’t been too happy. Learning how to dance just hadn’t been her favourite. Though she did enjoy dancing at balls, she supposed. Still- it wasn’t her favourite.

Practising sword fighting, however, put Emma in a much better mood.

David had been feeling restless lately, staying inside more than before - an expected downside of spreading the rumour of his return. When Emma found him polishing his sword in the living room, he’d looked a bit embarrassed.

“Sorry, I’m not usually so particular about shiny swords, it’s just, well,” he had sighed, “there’s really not much to do around here.”

Emma could definitely agree with that. Everyone else seemed to have things to do in the city, and she had just been on her way to kill time at Ruby’s (and hopefully stop thinking of Killian), but a much better idea popped into her mind.

Snow would probably have a fit if she saw them now. Or join in. You never really knew with Snow.

“Another go?” David asked, after Emma landed on the carpet for the second time. She would have bruises for sure, and she was already feeling sore from her “midnight stroll”, but she couldn’t exactly tell David about that. Not yet, at least.

“Give me a go with a pair of daggers and we’ll see if you’re still smiling like that,” she grumbled instead.

David merely laughed, saying he didn’t doubt that one bit. “But it doesn’t hurt you to learn something new.”

Emma raised an eyebrow at that, silently pointing out that he could learn something new with the daggers.

As she got up from the floor, raising the blunted sword and ready to beat the exiled prince, the door to the drawing room opened. Emma and David turned their heads, both looking sheepish.

Robin looked back at them, seemingly questioning if he even bothered to ask them why on earth they were sparring in the drawing room.

“Might I suggest a bow and arrow next?” he said at last, in jest of course. “Aim for that fine painting over there? Or the vase?”

Emma and David lowered their swords as one.

“We’ll find something else to do,” David said, sounding very much like he’d been caught red-handed by his parents.

They set about pushing all the furniture back in place, and Emma couldn’t help but smile at the fact that they’d really been sparring inside. She really hoped David ended up as king soon; it would certainly be a story to share at the taverns if he did.

It was nearing lunchtime as they finished tidying up the drawing room. Once again, Emma thought of going to Ruby’s. There was the odd chance that Killian might be there with his friends again... but the odds of that were very slim, so Emma resigned herself to visiting his balcony again if she couldn’t fall asleep in the evening. At least just to establish a way to see him again. And perhaps kiss him again... The sword practice had only just been enough to get that kiss out of her head.

Robin and David had started preparing some lunch in the kitchen when Snow came home, and she quickly joined in. Emma, however, had been barred from any kind of cooking since a certain incident during her first two weeks in the townhouse. It wasn’t her fault she’d never had a kitchen before. Or a fire stove.

As if it were a sixth sense of his, Will came home just as lunch was finished.

“Out visiting Miss Belle again?” Robin asked. He’d told them all about Will’s new lady friend a few weeks ago, after his half-promise to keep her a secret wore too thin.

“Yep,” Will said, sitting down and pulling his chair in with a few scuffles. “Ran into a fellow there, and not just any fellow.”

“Who?” asked Snow.

“Why, Lord Killian Jones! Alive and handsome - though lookin’ a bit on the sleepy side of things.” He sent Emma a knowing look at the last part.

“Yes, Snow’s contact informed us he hadn’t been harmed,” David said, apparently oblivious to the way Emma bowed her head to hide her blush. “Though I’m sure Emma could’ve told us the same.”

“What?” Emma asked, a bit too quickly. Apparently he wasn’t so oblivious after all.

“Emma,” David said, and she couldn’t quite tell if he was angry or offended that she’d think he wouldn’t have guessed what she’d done. “You’ve been pulling your shirt over your hand all day, but I’ve seen the bruises on your knuckles. I know you went to help Lord Killian.”

Emma thought he might say more, chide her for putting their plans at risk. She would’ve let him speak out and then say her part. Both of them deserved to have their say. However, it seemed David had nothing more to add, biting into a piece of bread.

“I didn’t tell him about you. He knows I’m a spy, but I didn’t tell him anything about you,” Emma said. She needed to make it clear, that while making sure Killian was alright was important to her, so was David and his plans.

And his trust.

“Me neither,” Will said, and everyone was a bit surprised about him joining in. “Though I did tell him and Belle to come over for dinner.”

He popped a piece of chicken - leftover from last evening’s dinner - into his mouth. No one said anything. Looking up to see everyone staring at him, he shrugged. “What? It turned out they were good mates. And if I trust Belle and she trusts Killian, and we all trust Emma, and she trusts Killian – well, we always planned to make new friends, right? I’d wager these two are about as good as we can get.”

“I suppose so,” David said, hesitantly. “But maybe you should’ve asked us all before inviting someone over.”

Will just shrugged again. “It’s not like they don’t know where we are. We could just bar the doors and windows if that’ll please ya.”

“I’m sure that won’t be necessary,” Snow cut in.

Emma could see David considering it though. “Maybe just keep the bars up for him,” he muttered.

Snow sent him a pointed look at that. “You haven’t seen Lord Killian in seven years, David - even then, I’m certain you didn’t know him. So you have nothing to judge him for except rumours. But from what Emma’s told us, I think he deserves a chance - he could be a big help to us as well.”

“Well, there’s no stopping it now,” David said, simply. Emma wanted to say something, reassure him once again that Killian was a good man - he was even reading books on political theories aligned with David’s ideals!

But maybe it was better to let Killian speak for himself.

Emma finished her lunch with an odd feeling. Obviously, she was excited about seeing Killian again soon - and that she wouldn’t have to climb a balcony to do so. But she had no idea what might happen when David and Killian were in the same room, and she wasn’t quite sure if she wanted to find out.