#i downloaded so many other movies by now but all I will gif are my faves lol aka my blorbos

[mystery-star]

Russell Crowe as Ben Wade in 3:10 to Yuma (2007)

[jpmarvel90]

Saved

Masterlist Nat Masterlist

Relationship: Natasha x Reader

Summary: A girl with no memories but her time as a prisoner at Hydra, is found by the Avengers. Natasha instantly wants to help the girl to recover and enjoy a normal life.

Word Count: 6396

Nat's POV:

Another day, another Hydra base. This one was the home of their super solider programme. It's where the Winter Soldier was created. So, this base was personal. Steve had initially wanted Bucky to stay behind on this one, but he was determined to come and take down the base which had destroyed his life.

Whilst Steve and Bucky worked their way through the building to plant the explosives, Tony and I were exploring to get as much intel as possible. Tony had found their offices and was downloading as many of the files as he could whilst also collecting anything that looked of value.

I meanwhile had stumbled across what I can only describe as a hospital from a horror movie. I can see rooms with hospital beds, but they all had straps on them, medical tools filling trays alongside the beds. I try not to think about what had gone on here. I eventually reach what looks like a prison. There are a number of cells, but they are all empty. Well, I thought they were until I reach one in the farthest corner of the room.

I had to do a double take when I saw a young woman huddled in the corner of her cell. Her eyes were filled with absolute terror. I manage to unlock the door and slowly make my way towards her, but she shrinks back further, trying to get as far away from me as possible but the wall is preventing. "P-please. No. I-I can't take anymore." She begs, tears filling her eyes. My heart breaks for her. Looking at her body, I can see dark bruising and some lacerations. "It's ok. I'm not here to hurt you." I try to reassure her, keeping my distance so she can see that I'm not a threat.

"I'm here to help you. To get you to safety." I try once again, hoping that she can see that I only want to help. "Bombs are planted." Steve confirms through the comms. "I've got everything I can. Nat are you done?" Tony asks, but I ignore it, not wanting to scare the girl more. I felt like I had to help her. I have to save her. "My name is Natasha. What's yours?" She asks me. I activate my comms so the others can hear. That way they'll know I'm safe and that I can't talk.

"I. I don't know. I don't remember." She starts to cry at that and all I want to do is wrap my arms around her and protect her. "That's ok. We can help you with that. Can you come with me, and we can protect you. Make sure you're safe." I ask her, reaching out my hand to her, but keeping my voice as soft as possible. She looks between my hand and my eyes. The pain and fear are swirling through her blue eyes. "I promise we won't hurt you. Me and my friends are the good guys. We just want to help." I say with a smile, hoping to put her at some ease.

She goes to reach out, but she hesitates. "It's ok. You're safe now." I promise her. I can see those words have an effect on her and she reaches out her trembling hand to take mine. I slowly stand up and use my other hand to help her to her feet. She stumbles and I can see how weak she is. When was the last time she had a good meal or saw the sun?

"I've got you. You're ok." I continue to reassure her as we make our way slowly out of the base. As soon as we reach the outside, she holds her hand up to cover her eyes as she squints at the bright light. But I notice that she takes a deep breath too, as if she is savouring this moment. She surely can't have been kept in that cell the whole time, could she?

We get closer to the jet and her body tenses as she sees the three men waiting for us. "It's ok. They are my friends. They won't hurt you." I encourage her to carry on walking. Her grip on my hand tightens, but she trusts me enough to follow me onto the jet. Sensing her fear, all three of the men keep their distance. Even Tony is being considerate. I see her eyes go wide as we board the back of the jet. "Wow." She whispers as her eyes take it all in. "It's pretty cool huh. This is our quinjet. It's going to take us back to our home where we can get you checked out and looked after." I tell her.

She looks exhausted but I can tell that she's too scared to even attempt to sleep. I guide her to a chair and strap her in. I then grab a bottle of water and take it over to her. I had noticed how chapped her lips were, suggesting that she is dehydrated. "Here, drink this. We'll get you some nice food when we get home. I just need to go and talk to my friends. But I'll just be over there. You'll still be able to see me ok." I tell her with a soft smile. Her panicked eyes dart between me and the three men waiting for an explanation. But she nods, slowly bringing the bottle up to her lips. A relieved sigh escaping as she swallows the cool liquid.

I stand up and make my way over to the others. "Who's that?" Tony asks straight away. "I don't know. I found her alone locked in one of the cells in what seemed to be a medical area. She doesn't remember her name and she's clearly been mistreated for a long time." I explain. I can see pain on Bucky's face as he observes the young woman. "Do you recognise her?" I ask but he shakes his head. "No. But I know that they did some pretty horrible things to people in that place. She's probably been through hell and back." He says, pain radiating from his eyes.

"I'll start going through all the files we have to see if I can find anything on her whilst we head back. I'll also get Cho and Bruce ready for the new arrival. She'll need a full medical. Just from observation she's severely malnourished and has had some injuries." Tony offers up, heading to the other end of the jet, knowing that she needed space right now.

I slowly make my way towards her and take the seat next to her. "How are you feeling?" I ask her, but internally scold myself at such a stupid question. "Who are you?" She answers my question with one of her own. "We're the Avengers. We try to stop the bad guys." I explain loosely. "What are you going to do with me?" Her voice is so timid as she talks, her tone laced with fear. "We just want to help you. We'll help you heal and start a new happier life. No more being locked away or fearing for your life." I tell her with a wide smile.

She doesn't speak again, lost in her thoughts. But I can see that she is completely aware of her surroundings. At any noise, her eyes flick to the source, a small flinch appearing. I stay sat next to her as Steve flies us home. I want her to feel some comfort and know that we're not going to hurt her.

After a couple of hours, we start to descend into the compound. Her whole body tenses as we touch down and the door slowly begins to open. Wanda and Yelena are both waiting like they always do when I return from a mission. But they can instantly see to keep their distance at the added presence of our new guest. "The red head is my best friend Wanda, and the blonde is my sister Yelena." I explain to the girl as I help her out of her seat, showing that they are not a threat to her.

She nods slowly, but her gaze is searching every new thing that she sees. She was exhausted when we found her, I can't believe that her body is still functioning now when she's been so alert for the entire flight. Her body is in flight or fight and I can tell it's taking every ounce of her to be aware in case she needs to protect herself.

I guide her to the medbay where Bruce and Cho are waiting. I can feel that Wanda and Yelena are following behind, but the others have left to give us space. Thankfully, they don't follow us into the bay, choosing to observe from outside. "This is Bruce and Dr Cho. They are here to help you. They won't do anything to hurt you. I promise." I reassure her, directing her to the bed in the middle of the room. But her breathing is becoming ragged, and her eyes are frantic, full of fear.

"Hey, look at me. You're ok. You're safe. They won't hurt you." I reiterate, cupping her cheeks so her gaze is focused on me. "I'll be here every step of the way. Ok." I smile and she nods slowly. "Hi, Dr Cho is going to examine you if that's ok. We can get an understanding of your physical condition and how we can help you." Bruce explains, his soft voice seeming to calm the girl slightly.

Bruce leaves the room, pulling the curtain to give us privacy as Dr Cho begins her examination. I have to fight off a gasp when the girl's shirt is removed, and I see that her torso is covered in scars and new wounds. "Did they do this to you?" I ask her, an anger bubbling inside of me. Her gaze drops to her hands as she nods. I look at Cho who's got a look of sorrow on her face.

She carries out the rest of her examination and we both help her into a clean pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt. I take the girls hand and give it a squeeze. "You're doing great. You're being very brave." I comfort her and I swear I see her lips turn up ever so slightly. I look through the window and see Cho and Bruce talking before they both re-enter. "Ok. We just need to do some blood tests and then we'll clean up your wounds." Bruce explains, turning to get a needle.

But as soon as the girl gets a glimpse of it in his hands, she starts to panic. "N-no. No. You said you wouldn't hurt me." She cries, looking between me and the needle in Bruce's hand. "He's not going to hurt you. He just needs to take some bloody to make sure you're not sick." I try to explain in an attempt to calm her down, but she continues to shake her head. "No. No more needles." She states at whisper. I look to Bruce who is unsure how to proceed. But we're interrupted by Tony entering.

"Wait." He says and we all turn towards him. Bruce places the needle back down on the tray and I feel the girls body relax. "I found your file." Her says looking directly to the trembling girl with a warm smile. "Your name is Y/n. Do you remember that?" He asks softly. She thinks for a moment but shakes her head. "That's ok. At least we know what to call you now. Are you ok if I share what I have here?" He asks her and she slowly nods.

"Y/n here is 22. She was taken by Hydra when she was 12." He explains to us, and I let out a small gasp. She's been in that hell hole for 10 years?! "She was a subject in their medical testing. Though it doesn't go into too much detail as to why. It just states that they were successful in removing all memory of her past." I feel such a sadness for Y/n. For her only memories to be of that base, being tested on daily. "They tested serums." Y/n's voice breaks the temporary silence, making us all look to her.

"Go on." Tony encourages. I've never seen him like this. He's so paternal towards her. It's warming to see. "There was a group of us. They tested the serums they wanted to use on their super soldiers. The serums I was given were meant to induce self-healing." She continues to explain, her gaze firmly fixed on her feet. There's a shocked silence to hear that. She was there purely as a test subject, presumably only there until they had succeeded, or she died.

"That's how you got these injuries? They were testing to see if it worked?" I ask when it finally dawns on me why she has so many injuries. We all watch as her head slowly moves in a nod. "After each test they would burn, cut and bruise me to see if it would generate any healing." She explains. I feel like I could cry. She was tortured for ten years. It's a miracle that she is even here with us today. Her body must have taken a hell of beating.

There is complete silence in the room as we take in what she just told us. We've seen horrible things in our time, but never seen one person go through so much for so long. Tony clears his throat and takes a careful step forward. "Y/n. I can promise you that we will never hurt you. We just want to help you, but we need to make sure you are healthy. If they injected you with a serum, the only way for us to ensure you're ok is to take some blood. I know you have had enough of needles, but once this is done, we'll take you to your new room." She speaks calmly and clearly which works.

"Ok." She agrees quietly. "I can stay with you if you like?" I offer. I want to be here for her. I want to help her heal, to protect her and never let her go through anything like this again in her life. "Please." Another whispered reply. I take her hand once again and give it a squeeze. "Keep your focus on me. Ignore what Bruce is doing. When we're done here, I can show you your new room and you can have a shower if you'd like?" I offer, trying to distract her. It only partial works as her eyes scrunch up as Bruce puts the needling into her arm. "You're doing great. Y/n." I tell her, squeezing her hand to offer her some comfort.

Once Bruce is all done, he cleans up Y/n's wounds and clears her to go to her room. She'll have to come back daily to get her dressings changed and her injuries checked and cleaned, but otherwise she was free. Something that obviously was alien to Y/n. "Come. Let me show you to your room." I tell her, standing up and waiting for her to follow. She does so slowly, her body clearly starting to shut down without her consent.

Thankfully, it's not far to her room. "Here it is." I say, opening the door for her. "My room is next door and Wanda's is across the hall." I point to the doors so she can see. I then step inside the room but she doesn't follow. "You can enter Y/n. You are free to come and go as you please. This is your home, not a prison." I explain to her, realising that she probably has no memory of her own room. Assuming she ever had one in her childhood. "There are some clothes in the wardrobe and draws, but we can go shopping to get you something you like in the coming days." I explain, opening the doors and draws to show her.

"This is your own bathroom. There is shower gel, hair wash, a toothbrush and toothpaste." I point out and then show her how to work the shower. I'll leave you to get cleaned up. But I can come back to get you for some dinner later this evening if you'd like. Though you are free to leave the room before hand if you want to." I say, trying to make it clear that she doesn't have to wait for command here. "Thank you, Natasha." She gives me the faintest of smiles and I find myself getting a little lost. She really is beautiful. "Please, call me Nat. All my friends do." I tell her and her smile grows slightly.

After leaving Y/n, Wanda and Yelena are quick to question me on the new addition to the compound. I struggle a little to hold back the emotion when telling them how I found her and what she's gone through. What has she done to me? I normally have complete control of my emotions, but when it comes to her, my feelings are so much stronger.

They both promise to support Y/n as much as they can without overwhelming her. Wanda is probably best placed to help her. She's been through something similar, although not to the same extent. I hope that in a few days when Y/n has settled more, that she might be comfortable to talk to her.

I speak with Tony, and we agree that it is probably best that we don't throw her in the deep end with a team dinner. Instead, we keep it to just four of us. Tony and I, who's she's familiar with, and Yelena and Wanda, who we want her to feel comfortable with. As she is so malnourished, Bruce has given us some indication on the foods and portions she should have over the coming weeks until she's able to regain her body weight. Wanda takes this as her mission to cook her the tastiest of meals with the limited ingredients.

Y/n is very quiet during dinner. Only talking if directly asked a question and only moving or doing anything if she is given approval. It's going to take time for her to realise that she doesn't need to have permission to do anything here. That she isn't confined to her room until someone tells her she can leave, or that she can't eat until she is given permission. But I know that I want to be there for her through every step of the way. Supporting her as best I can.

__________ 

Y/n has been here for a little of three weeks now. She's starting to look a bit healthier. Her wounds are healing nicely, she's putting weight on and she's getting colour back to her face. She loves spending time outside, basking in the sunshine. I guess if you've not seen it for 10 years, you don't want to miss out. She's slowly becoming more comfortable with the team. Everyone is great with her, not pushing her and understanding her boundaries.

She's probably closest with Tony, Wanda, and myself at the moment. But she's getting better with Yelena and Bucky. She still won't do much of her own accord. We make sure that she's not cooped up in her room or missing meals because she's waiting for someone to say it's ok for her to do so.

One night, I'm not able to sleep. My mind is lost in thought of Y/n. She fills most of my thoughts each day. We're getting glimpses of her true personality and I love it. She has a quick wit, though I can tell she is hesitant to use it. Scared of any repercussion. But it's becoming more apparent as the days go by. She's also extremely kind. She's so thoughtful of others. She's making such an effort to learn about everyone on the team.

Wanda and Yelena tease me. It's very clear that I like her. I tried to hide it after the first week, but it's no use. Wanda can literally read my mind and Yelena knows me better than anyone. Besides, I don't want to hide those feelings. Not from them anyway. I think it's far too early to even broach that topic with Y/n. At the moment, I want to be the best friend to her that I can be. We have time.

Whilst my mind is replaying Y/n's laugh on loop, I hear a muffled cry. I focus on the sound and notice it's coming from Y/n's room. I jump up and make my way next door. I knock on her door but get no response. "Y/n, it's Nat. Are you ok?" I question. Again, I don't get a response, but I can hear muttering and crying. Worry taking over, I open the door to be greeted by an empty room. The bed perfectly made.

I rush through the room to check the bathroom, but as I pass the bed, I hear her voice. My head turns and I see Y/n lying on the floor with a thin blanket draped over her. She's having a nightmare. I kneel down next to her and carefully place my hands on her shoulders. "Y/n. It's Nat. You're ok. You're just having a nightmare. Come back to me." I say as calmly as possible. Which is hard when I'm seeing her in such a panicked state. Not a split second later, her body shoots up and she starts to gasp for air, her eyes flicking around the room, trying to find something to ground her.

"Hey, Y/n. Look at me. Focus on me." I tell her, cupping her face so her eyes land on me. "You're safe." I remind her. "Try and take a deep breath with me." I instruct her, doing exaggerated breathing myself to guide her. It takes a while, but eventually she's able to copy and her breathing become less ragged. I slowly run my thumb over her cheek to help calm her as her eyes flick over her room once again. "The bed too soft?" I question and she nods, looking at her hands in shame.

I place my finger under her chin and raise it. "Don't be ashamed. I was the same after I got out of the red room. Took me a few months to get used to sleeping in a bed. I always felt like it was suffocating me." I share. She's listening to me intently as I speak. "I feel the same. I'm used to the hard floor." She mumbles. "How about this. Why don't we lie together in the bed. You don't have to sleep. We can just talk." I suggest. This helped me when Clint would sit and talk with me.

She nods and I help her to her feet. I then move to the bed and pull the duvet off. I grab the blanket and lie on the bed and tap the space next to me. I know the quilt will be too much to start of with, but she needs to keep warm. She takes the spot next to me and I hesitantly place my arm around her shoulders. I smile to myself when I feel her relax into my hold. I lay the blanket over us both and we spend the rest of the night just talking. It was probably the most I've heard her talk. She would ask questions about how I adapted after the red room, and I would offer tips on what might also help her.

After that night, our relationship only grew. She still slept on the floor at night, but I would always go to bed with her, and we'd lie in the bed until she was feeling like she was drifting off. I would leave and she would get comfortable on the floor. As time went by, she started to sleep a little. I was so proud of the progress she was making. "It's ok Nat. You can go to your own room tonight. I need to start doing things myself and it's not fair to keep you from your own room." She tells me which makes me frown. "But I like this time with you Y/n." I admit easily.

She smiles widely at that. "I do too Natasha, but you're not always going to be here. I need to get used to doing this on my own." She makes sense but I still pout at her. "Doesn't mean we can't still cuddle." She says shyly. "One more night?" I request and she sighs. "Ok." She chuckles, opening her door for me.

I'm loving the person that Y/n is becoming. Or returning to be, I guess. She's finding herself and it's a journey I'm proud to be a part of. Her and Wanda have grown close. They have a sisterly relationship. Wanda has helped her come to terms with what happened to her whilst she washeld captive by Hydra. They have a shared experience and I'm glad she's got someone that she can share that with.

She's grown more confident, and I was so proud of her when she started doing things of her own accord. We were sat watching TV and I noticed Y/n's gaze kept going towards the kitchen. I paused the movie and look to Y/n. "Everything ok?" I question and she quickly nods, returning her gaze to the TV. "You can tell me." I assure her and she huffs. "I uh. I want a snack." She admits as if she's just admitted to a felony.

"The kitchen is there, and Tony did the shopping this morning so there is plenty on offer." I encourage her, trying to motivate her, not giving her the go ahead to do it. This was the first time she shared a want, and I was keen for her to take it without needing permission.

I watch as she hesitates, Wanda and Yelena's gaze also on her. Slowly, she pushes up off the sofa and makes her way into the kitchen. She's in there for about 10 minutes before she comes out with a small KitKat bar in her hand. I was so proud as I watch her eat the chocolate bar. When she was done, I wrapped my arm around her and held her close. "You never have to ask to get food." I remind her and she slowly nods before resting her head on my shoulder.

__________ 

It's been three months since Y/n joined us and it has genuinely been the best three months. She's a completely different person to the one that arrived with us. She's still shy, but she understands her freedom and she is finding her footing. She spends a lot of time with Tony in his lab. Turns out she's got a technical brain and loves working on his gadgets. The whole team have fallen in love with her. She's like our own personal ray of sunshine. Which, considering how she was when she arrived, is a miracle.

I think it is safe to say that I am in love with her. I want to spend all my time with her. She's the last thing I think of before I go to sleep and the first thing in the morning. I'm infected by Y/n, and I love it. I just don't know how to approach her about it. I don't want to scare her away. But I'm like 90% sure she likes me too. We've had a couple of moments where we've almost kissed, but it's never resulted in anything, and I never want to pressurise her to do anything.

Our little bubble is burst though when I'm sent on a week long mission. I've been away for day missions, but nothing longer. I've always been home by the evening, having a snuggle with Y/n before bed. I'm going to miss being with her and I can tell that there is an anxiety for her too. But maybe this will be good. It'll give me time to think clearly about how I'm going to approach this whole situation.

Y/n's POV:

The first couple of days of Nat not being here were hell. I realised that she was my security blanket. I knew I was safe if she was around. Don't get me wrong, I know none of the others would hurt me, but with Nat, I feel completely safe and protected.

It's been a bit of a whirlwind three months. I never knew that life could be like this. All I knew was the darkness of the place I was held. The pain and fear that I lived in constantly. I don't know why I kept fighting to stay alive. The easier option was to let go. But I didn't. Now I think it's because deep down, I knew I hadn't met Nat yet and she was meant to change my life.

She has been so patient with me, helping me acclimatise to being 'normal'. She's always there to support me, allowing me to find my way in my own time. In the odd moments that I'm not with her, I crave to be with her. It's a feeling I'm not familiar with. I don't have it with anyone else here. Yet I like all of them. They have become a family, something I didn't know about. Or at least didn't remember. But with Nat it's different. It's like everything I do is for her.

Seeing her smile and laugh is my favourite thing. To most people she has this tough exterior, but I've never seen that directed at me. I've never felt anything but kindness from her. She's a big softy towards me. Though I've learnt not to say that to her. Sam made a joke about it and he was swiftly on his ass. Much to everyone else's amusement.

After Nat had been away for a couple of days, I decided that I couldn't mope around without her. She wouldn't want that. Instead, I spent time with Wanda and Yelena. They both had become like sisters to me. Both protective, but also quick to make fun of me in a light-hearted way. I love the relationship that I have with them, and it's them that keep me sane for the rest of the week.

It's Friday and we've been notified that Nat and Steve are returning from their mission. I jump off the sofa and run towards the Quinjet landing pad. But as I get closer, I see Bruce and Cho waiting. "What's wrong?" I ask Tony who's just joined us. "Nat's hurt." Is all he says. I feel like someone has just kicked me in my stomach, making all the air leave my lungs.

I just stand there as I watch the jet land and Nat be rushed off the jet on a gurney. As she passes me, I rush to keep up, not wanting to be far from her. She looks in a bad way. There is so much blood. Too much blood. I watch as Bruce and Cho rush around trying to fix her. I can see from the machines that her heart rate is becoming thready.

I step forward and hold her hand, feeling her cold skin which sends a wave of panic through me. "Please don't leave me." I beg her as tears start to fall. "Y/n, we need you to stand back." Bruce asks quietly, but I don't want to let her go. I can't lose her. He asks again and I know I need to let him do his job. My mind is focusing on her being with me, alive and healthy. She has to survive. I go to drop her hand but there is a soft glow which makes Bruce and Cho stop in their tracks. "Y/n what's going on?" Tony asks me with a panicked voice. "I-I don't know." I respond, fear washing over me.

"Oh my God look." Tony points out towards Nat. I turn to see what he's pointing too, but I start to feel lightheaded. My sight starts to blur and all the sound around me becomes muffled and the next thing I know, I'm surrounded by darkness.

_________

"Please wake up." I hear a distant, pleading voice. But I still only see darkness. "You told me not to leave. I'm asking you the same thing." The voice begs. Is that Nat? Is she ok? Confusion washes over me as I try to figure out what's going on. Sounds become more prominent, and I can hear the slow beeping of a machine. "Y/n?" The comforting voice calls. "Her heart rate is changing." I hear a male voice now speak. "Is that a good thing?" Nat questions. Why can't I see anything? "Yes, very good. It's getting stronger." The other voice confirms.

I start to feel a pain in my head, and I squint my eyes to stop the pain. "She moved." Nat points out. Slowly, my eyes start to open, but the bright light only aggravates the pain in my head. "The lights. Dim them." A third voice says. As the glare of the light reduces, I open my eyes further and they land on Nat. I quickly sit up, shocked that she's beside me, conscious. "Whoa! Stay down Y/n." She tells me, gently pushing on my shoulders. "You're alive." I whisper and she nods. "I am. But you need to take it easy." She tells me in a warning voice.

I look around me and see that there are wires attached to a drip and a heart monitor. I then meet the concerned gazes of Tony, Wanda, and Yelena. "What happened? Last I remember you were the one in the medbay." I say, trying to sit up. "You healed me." Nat says with a look of disbelief on her own face. "Excuse me? I what?" I question, not sure that I heard her properly. "You healed me. But it drained you and you passed out. You've been unconscious for two days, your heart barely beating." She explains.

"How are you feeling?" Bruce asks, stepping forward. "My head hurts, but other than that ok." I admit and he nods. "It seems like one of the serums they injected you with enabled you to heal others. They were so focused on self-healing, that they didn't even think to check for that." Tony says. "I healed you?" I turn back to Nat asking for clarification. "Yeah. Not even a scar left on me." She says holding up her shirt to show where two bullet wounds once were. I reach out and run my fingers over her abs in disbelief.

"I thought I lost you." I agonised, remembering the fear I felt that she was slipping away. "I can't live without you." I admit through tears. "And you don't have to. I'm here. Safe and sound because of you Y/n. You saved me." Nat says taking my hand. I hadn't noticed that everyone else had left and it was just the two of us now. "I owed you after you saved my life." I tell her through a watery chuckle. "I would save you ten times over Y/n. You have changed my life. When I woke up and I saw you on the bed next to me barely clinging to life yourself, my heart broke." She expresses, her own eyes glossing over.

"Y/n, you mean so much to me. You have changed my life since you came into it. I can't hide my feelings from you anymore. I love you. I'm in love with you. I know you might not feel the same, but I have to tell you. I can't bare the thought of something happening to one of us and you not knowing the depth of my feelings." I'm in shock as I listen to her speak.

Is this what I've been feeling for her too? Love? I can see pain start to grow in her eyes as I don't respond, the shock almost incapacitating. Tears fall down her cheeks as she goes to leave, but thankfully, my body reacts, grabbing her hand and pull her back. Before she can even say anything, I cup her face and bring her towards me so I can connect our lips.

The sensation is electric as if the world had disappeared and it was just the two of us in this moment. Our lips move in perfect harmony. Nat's hands rest on my hips, giving them a gentle squeeze. My whole body feels a warmth rush over it, butterflies erupting in my stomach as our lips dance together, sharing every feeling we need to share in this moment. As our movements stop, I rest my forehead against hers. "I think I love you too. I've had this feeling I've not been able to understand for a while. But that kiss just explained everything." I say with a laugh as Nat's smile grows.

She leans in and kisses me once again, this one more hungry as my back hits the hospital bed. She deepens the kiss, our tongues exploring each other's mouths, as the passion and desire between us intensified.  I let a small moan out into the kiss as she presses her body against mine. That noise causes her to pull back slightly, and I let out a little whine. "Patience my love. This is all new for you and I want to do this properly." She tells me, which causes me to raise an eyebrow at her in confusion. "I want to go on a date with you." She smirks.

Thank God, she made me watch endless rom coms these last few months or I'd have no clue how this whole thing was meant to go. But over time we grew together, not rushing our relationship. It was perfect to me. When I looked in her eyes, all I saw was pure love and I hope she saw the same in return.

She made me unbelievably happy. There was a time that I never thought I wouldn't get a happy ending. A time when I questioned my purpose. But now, led here in Nat's arms, feeling safe, protected, and loved. I finally understood why I had to keep fighting. I needed to get to her and live our lives together in happiness. 

[boromirswife]

How I Make Gifs ~ For Anon ❤️

An anon asked me if I would ever consider doing a tutorial for how I make gifs! It's very flattering that you like my gifs enough to want to know exactly how I make them, so here is a little tutorial using my favourite character from my favourite movie ❤️

I might also make a separate tutorial for giffing dark scenes later 😌

Here's a download of my gif in PSD form if you'd like to get a better look at the settings I used.

Programs used: PotPlayer, Photoshop.

First, you need to get your screencaps. I would suggest using a high quality recording of whatever movie/TV show/video you want to make gifs of. My recording of Fellowship is in 1080p, and the quality looks incredible!

I use PotPlayer to get my screencaps. To do this, open the video file in the program and find the moment you want to gif. It's probably best to go back to just before that particular moment, and then press Ctrl + G. This will bring up the consecutive image capturer window. Below are the settings I use to get my screencaps:

Then, press start and wait for your moment to be captured! Once you've got everything you need, press stop and navigate to the folder that you indicated under storage. Here you will find all of your screencaps! You probably ended up with way more than you need (I know I certainly did 😅). Now, delete all of the screencaps that you don't want in your gif.

For the actual gif making, I use a cracked version of Photoshop. I don't exactly remember where I found it unfortunately, but I'm sure that there's people out there who might have some links handy if you look around! Once you've got PS open, navigate to File > Scripts > Load Files Into Stack... and click on it! That will open the Load Layers window.

Now, change Use to Folder. Then, click browse and navigate to the folder that contains your screencaps. Click select folder, and after a few moments of loading your window should look more like this.

Then, press OK, and wait for your layers to load. Depending on how many caps you have, it could take longer. Once it's finished loading, you need to decide on your gif dimensions! For this, I decided on 268px x 225px. Once you've chosen your size, use the crop tool to get your gif to that size. Now, you should have a smaller image, like this:

The next step I do is to use this Photoshop action by @maziekeen. They have a little tutorial on how to use this action there, so I'll just say that once you've loaded it into your program, use part 1 / load into stack. Press the play button, and then the OK button on the two windows that pop up. Now, your gif will be nice and sharpened, and you'll be able to see it move for the first time! Here's what mine currently looks like, without any other edits:

Now, it's time to start on colouring. Every gif (or scene, sometimes you can reuse the same colouring if you're giffing an entire scene) is different, so it will have different needs. However, I tend to always use the same layers in the same order for all of my gifs — it's just the settings that change. I think the colouring of this particular scene is lovely, so I don't want to change it drastically, I just want to enhance it.

First, I create a Curves layer. At this point, I also like to make a group to hold all of my adjustment layers. This makes it easier for you to switch your adjustment layers on and off if you want to compare with the original colouring!

Going back to your curves layer, pick the little white eyedropper tool in the Properties tab. You want to find and click on the whitest area in the gif and make it a bit brighter! I picked the white in one of Boromir's eyes.

This is what my gif looks like now with the Curves layer:

Next, I use Levels. It's a very subtle change, but you can notice a slight darkening of the blacks in the image. Here's my settings for this layer:

And here's the gif with this step applied. Like I said, it's a very subtle change:

Up next is Brightness & Contrast. This layer is just a case of messing around with the settings until it looks right for you. You don't want to make it look too bright or too contrasted, though, because it will make the colouring look weird.

A bit more of a change this time! We're getting there:

Next, I like to do Colour Balance. Sometimes I wait and do the Selective Colour layer first (it'll still be above Colour Balance though), but with this gif, I decided to do it first. I want Boromir in the foreground to contrast more with the watery background, so I upped the Red in the Midtones. I think Midtones is the most important part of Colour Balance, so the Highlights and Shadows are more minor adjustments here.

Here's the gif with the Colour Balance layer!

Now, we have Selective Colour. Like I said before, I sometimes like to do this layer and then go back to the Colour Balance to make minor adjustments. For this gif I mainly focused on slightly reducing the cyan in the reds and yellows to add a little more colour to Boromir's tunic and hair.

I'm a big fan of bright, vibrant gifs, so I like to use the Vibrance layer copiously.

I upped the vibrance to max, but it's left Boromir's face looking a bit too red and his neck is a little pink, so I went back and did some minor adjustments to the Colour Balance and Selective Colour layers to fix that. Then, voila!

Now that we're done with colouring, go back to the beginning of the timeline at the bottom the screen. Then, go back to Actions and scroll down to the bottom, and look for the action called part 2 / finishing. Just like with the first action, press the Play button and it will work its magic!

Press Ctrl + Shift + Alt + C, and try playing your gif from there. Sometimes, the gif will be too fast and you'll need to slow it down, and you can't always tell until you play it in the 'Save for Web' window. I ended up slowing mine down from 0.05 to 0.07.

Once your gif is looking just right, press Ctrl + Shift + Alt + C again. These are the settings I use to save my gifs, and I think it makes them look really nice! Then click Save, and save your gif wherever you want.

Now, once you've saved your gif, you can post it to Tumblr (if that's what you're wanting to do) or simply keep it to yourself! But I'm sure that others would love to see your creations :D

***

A little extra info - this gif doesn't have text because there's no dialogue, but these are the settings I use for gifs with text (the text size depends on the dimensions of the gif):

Sometimes I use white text, sometimes I use yellow. And if there's more than one person talking I use both!

I hope that this tutorial was helpful, and if you have any more questions, feel free to ask!

[pensat-i-fet]

Ask me first (Rúben Dias x Reader)

**I got this request a while ago. Sorry about taking so long. But basically just a bit of angst and I couldn't come up with the reason for the fight until one of the answers Rúben gave to the questions on that app he's a part of now inspired me. Hope you like it ❤️**

Word count: 1047

Masterlist

Wattpad

"What are you doing?", you said, sitting down on the sofa next to Rúben and opening a bag of crisps.

"Answering questions on this app thing".

"Any good ones?"

"Yeah, I guess a few".

"Want one?"

"No, thanks", he answered without even looking at what you were offering. "I want to get this done quickly. We have movie night today".

"I might eat all the snacks before that".

"It wouldn't be the first time", he laughed and you hit him with the bag.

He kept typing on his phone and you got curious. What were people asking? So you downloaded the app and started to read through his answers right when he stopped answering.

"Five children. Good joke".

"It wasn't a joke".

You looked at him, eyebrow raised. "Oh, are you planning on becoming the first man in the world who gives birth? Because I'm not having five children".

"We can talk about it…".

"You can talk while I say no. Ask your mum how easy it's to have a single baby…five! You men are hilarious".

"Other women have more than five", is he for real?

"Good for them. I'm not them".

You got up, picking up the empty bags of snacks to throw them to the bin on the way to your room.

"The kids topic is more serious than this, don't you think?"

"Rúben, don't push it".

"I just don't see why you have to react like that".

"Because you didn't even ask me before announcing to the world I'm a baby making machine".

"That's not what I said", he rolled his eyes.

"It's what anyone would understand reading that answer".

Grabbing your phone, you went into the bathroom. And there you saw your friend's group chat was moving fast. What happened?

"Anyone can sum up the almost 100 messages I missed?"

"We're going out tonight. Wanna come with us?"

It was movie night but… "Sure. Who's picking me up?"

When you went back to the room, Rúben was waiting to try and talk to you but you just walked to the closet and started to get clothes out to see what looked cute.

"What are you doing?"

"Going out with my friends".

"What?", he couldn't believe you were saying that. "It's our movie night. And I haven't been able to spend any quality time with you for like a week".

"Yeah, too bad you messed up being an idiot".

"Come on", he tried to stop you from moving around the room but couldn't. "Don't be like that. I miss you".

"You can see me when I get back".

"At 4 am?"

"I might make it back by 3…does this look good?"

Rúben shook his head, not because he didn't think you looked good but because he knew what you were trying to do wearing such a short dress.

"Call me if you need anything", he said, defeated and you felt bad but…he needed to understand why you were mad.

So you picked up your bag and left.

**

Movie night without you there was boring so Rúben ended up logging off Netflix but left the TV on as background noise while he made a sandwich in the kitchen.

BBC news was on, of course. You were a news freak who loved watching that channel. And while he mindlessly spread some tahini on a slice of bread, he heard a familiar name.

"...there have been two stabbings in a fight. We can't give an official number of injuries but the ambulances have just arrived and are attending all the people here. Many tried to leave the club and hurt themselves on the way out…".

That club…was the club you always went to.

Rúben ran to the sofa to pick up his phone and tried calling you. But you couldn't hear the phone due to the loud music at the club.

"Pick up, pick up …".

Nothing. He tried calling twice and couldn't reach you. The TV reporter said the two people stabbed were male, so at least he knew you weren't seriously injured but why weren't you answering.

"Tanya…she always has her phone in her hand!"

He remembered that fact about one of your best friends and called her instead. When she picked up, he couldn't hear much because of the music.

"Rúben!? You got the wrong girl!"

"I didn't. Tanya, where are you? Are you ok?"

"What?"

"For God's sake".

He hung up and texted her instead, telling her to tell you to call him.

A couple of minutes later, his phone rang and when he saw your name on the screen, he let out a sigh of relief.

"You ok?"

"Yes, why wouldn't I be? Listen, I feel bad about our fight. I overreacted…".

"I don't care. You're fine".

"Wasn't I supposed to be?"

"I saw there was a fight at the club you always go to and worried you could be injured".

"Yeah, we don't go to that one anymore. Dodgy people and all that", you said, casually.

"Where are you then?", when you told him the name of the club, he wrote it down so he could find it on Google maps later. "Can I go pick you up? I…I need to see you're fine".

He couldn't see your smile but could swear he heard it when you spoke again. "Sure. I'm a bit bored anyways. I rather cuddle with you than be here".

"I'll be there soon".

When you found your friends again, you told them about what had happened.

"That place had such bad music anyways".

You shook your head. Only your friends could have that reaction to the news.

And then you kept your phone in your hands, waiting for Rúben's message saying he was there, which didn't take long.

"Gotta go, my loves!", you said, kissing them all quickly before going to meet Rúben.

You spotted him immediately and started to walk towards the car but he met you halfway there, engulfing you in a big hug.

"I was so worried".

"I'm fine, don't worry".

"Also…am I forgiven?"

You laughed at his words and his face. "I guess. But I'm still not having five kids. Let's just adopt five cats instead!"

"That's a lot of cats".

The look you gave him told him enough. "You can't be serious!"

[queer-ragnelle]

So, regarding your novels, what made you write backwards? I'm so curious about it.

TL;DR I started writing in Mordred and Galahad perspective. I then became possessed by the "older" characters and went "back" in the timeline to write their origins (starting with parentified Agravaine). I did this several times until I ended up with Ragnelle/Gawain as book 1, "the beginning," of what turned into an Epic many books long.

Let me give you a timeline...

1900s: I am born and develop Arthurian brain worms.

21st century: The worms declare Ragnelle/Gawain are my favorites and I write their Wedding multiple times for fun based off what can be gleaned from Wikipedia and retellings as I have no medieval resources at my disposal.

February 2020: I think Mordred and Galahad would make neat narrative foils and write a short story about them playing chess.

March 2020: The plague. I'm furloughed from my job. Writing becomes my full-time focus. I write 60,000 words in Mordred and Galahad perspective, plotting their story to be a trilogy.

June 2020: I'm back to work but I'm still writing. With money and curiosity at my disposal, I begin hoarding Arthurian books. Local quirky secondhand bookstore owner had an Arthurian fixation in his youth—I clear his shelves. He asks if I'm a medievalist major and I have to break it to him I'm just a High School drop out at the mercy of the Tell-Tale knights chattering in my head. I learn more lore. I splurge to buy the Vulgate cycle. I'm forever changed.

Late 2020: Reading medlit and retellings and watching all the movies super charged the brain worms. The Vulgate especially. I develop an obsession with circumventing the Orkneys/Welshmen blood feud with the power of gay sex. (Joan Wolf did it first in her 1988 book The Road to Avalon with Agravaine/Lamorak.)

January 2021: Historical research shows that Islam didn't exist yet during the 5th/6th century I'd been writing in. I order Zoroastrianism by Mary Boyce to make sure I'm depicting Ragnelle and Gromer's religion properly. But it's nbd their page time is minimal as background characters right? ....right?

2021 continued: The Agravaine/Lamorak brain worms take on a life of their own as I'm hospitalized and bedridden. Chronic pain and isolation become my themes. I write endlessly on my phone from bed. 2/3 novels are completed and readable straight through with a third book in pieces. These are currently at a combined total of nearly 140,000 words. (Plus the notes file with scenes I haven't moved yet...whoa.)

Late 2021: I rediscover old Ragnelle/Gawain stuff and decide to write about their wedding. Again. But this time with legit sources. Except Ragnelle isn't some ambiguous character of color, she's now very specifically Persian [Iranian] Zoroastrian. So the whole thing takes place in Persia and research goes crazy. Someone gives me their college log in so I can download and hoard essays and textbook PDFs. I do beta-read trades with people in facebook groups (bad bad idea) and yet...

End of 2021: I get sample edits from various editors including one guy who insulted my "lack of education" and said emulating J. R. R. Tolkien's old style didn't work anymore and I should take inspiration from The Hunger Games....for my queer romance in Persia. Right. Anyway I pay the $100 for the pages edited so he'll go away and continue searching for my unicorn editor....

2022: Ultimately facebook group scouting finally yields results as I stumble upon a fellow Ragnelle/Gawain enthusiast who would become my editor!! Editor says I have to cut the giant book into thirds, so what is now book 1 ends up chopped.

2023: I'm still revising book 1, now titled The Moonlit Knight, with my editor. All the while I'm drafting book 2, sporadically cheating to write in other books including an Elaine and Perceval book that appeared out of no where, and scouting out beta readers. One beta reader came via a tumblr mutual who connected me through instagram. A second beta reader discovered in a discord server. Another beta reader from a different discord server. So on and so forth.

Early 2024: Beta reading continues, until I have readers for every angle I require; queer people of all flavors, Zoroastrians, Arthurian enthusiasts, Jewish readers, people with DID knowledge etc! Slowly but surely I work through revising the book with all these wonderful people to a final 95,000 words!

Mid 2024: But now...it needed a cover. I commission a tumblr mutual and work for weeks with them on that, still editing/revising and having betas read book 2, Sunshine's Lady, which is currently almost 132,000 words long and half edited/beta read.

September 2024: I still haven't published. lol. But the process takes a long time and has a lot of moving parts!

So why do I actually recommend this method? Well, this has been hugely helpful to write foreshadowing. Forgetting for a second the blueprint drawn from Arthurian Legend itself, I know how my story with my version of the characters is going to go, so I can set all of that up way in advance. It's all well and good to know (spoiler) Arthur dies at the end, but it's never been about the conclusion so much as the journey there and the unique perspective of whichever character the author has chosen to focus on. I mean, Godfrey Turton's The Emperor Arthur is Pelleas point of view. He's instrumental at the battle of Camlann. It's the same with Bernard Cornwell's Warlord Chronicles and our one-handed friend Derfel, the reasoning for which isn't revealed until book 3. The world is your oyster! Fixate on your special character and set that shit up and pay it off!!!

Knowing what you're writing toward is extremely helpful during the drafting process. Even if it's only vaguely shaped it'll develop detail as you revise. Other than Derfel's missing hand, the best example of this I can think of is in Realm of the Elderlings series by Robin Hobb. It has a huge fanbase on tumblr for a reason, it's just an insane amount of set up you're not even aware of until the impact slams into you many books later and you're left going, "Whoa.....it was there the whole time." Mind blowing. I want have half as much narrative resonance as that.

Another thing that came of this is, since I wrote Agravaine/Lamorak first, and I'm obscenely Ragnelle obsessed, she pops up in their pov as a hag, only for them to not realize she's one and the same as Gawain's bombshell wife they "meet" later. I wrote this as the lads first, but it's extra funny now that, actually, the reader will experience Ragnelle's perspective first. Hottie uncursed Ragnelle does know she met them before, but feigns otherwise. So it's very fun to see the same encounters happen a second time a few books later. Agravaine is like, "Okay granny whatever. Bye... :^/" and Lamorak is like, "That granny was weird but I like her! :^)" meanwhile the reader is like, "AHHHHH! I KNOW HER!!! YOU FOOLS DON'T KNOW HOW IMPORTANT SHE'LL BE AHHH!!!" At least, that has been the beta reader reaction, which is gratifying. Even better, the books can be read out of order, so actually if you read Agravaine/Lamorak before Ragnelle/Gawain, it works in reverse, too. So if the reader knows who Agravaine is from reading his perspective, when Ragnelle or Gawain runs into him, the reader will realize who he is before it clicks for the point of view character. I had a lot of fun developing all of this across the series for multiple characters, it certainly happens more than once.

Wow that was long but I hope it makes sense and gives you an idea how it all went down. Thanks for taking an interest and I hope you enjoy my books when they're out. Take care! :^)

[yesloulou]

hello! i absolutely love your gifs and recently started making my own. your tutorials have been AMAZING especially the one ab creating super smooth gifs!! i was wondering two things if you wouldn't mind going into more detail. how do you go ab using topaz? I downloaded it (video ai) and when I try to use the frame interpolation, the video comes out looking super weird and staticky. My other question is unrelated, but was wondering if u could talk a little more ab neutralizing colors in gifs which you mentioned in one of ur tutorials? Thank you so much for all the beautiful gifs and amazing tutorials!! <3

hi anon. thank you for the kind words!! this actually just reminded me to update my lil gif speed management tutorial bc im doing something different now (avoid converting into smart object at the end which always made my gifs less sharp). i think it makes a pretty big difference &lt;3

Re: smooth gifs by neutralizing colors (from this tutorial)

basically the concept is that since gifs only allow at most 256 color entries, the more neutral in color a gif is, the more detailed those colors can be represented. here are two gifs whose only difference is the color on the big screen behind daniel. the first gif has more saturated greens and blues, and from the color table we can see PS utilized a lot of the 256 color slots to express greens and blues. the second gif is more neutralized, as a result we're seeing more skin colors in the color table, ie more efforts are made to express the main subject of this gif (daniel <3).

at this size, it may look like the first gif looks better bc of vibrancy. but the problem will expose at full size. taking a closer look we'll see the skin tones in the 1st gif are not as well expressed as the 2nd gif. the 2nd gif is a lot smoother, less pixelated, and less splotchy, especially around the highlight areas.

this comparison in gif:

obviously, nobody will look at a gif this closely. but in my opinion this is what makes the difference between 'smooth' and 'butter smooth'. vibrancy and smoothness are both important to a gif, but unfortunately they are a trade-off. it comes down to the gif maker's personal preference. to me personally, the first gif is eye-catching bc of its bright colors, i totally see why some ppl might prefer it. but there is a smoothness and real-ness in the second gif that the first gif just doesn't have. as a result, the more neutral coloring would be what i prefer for this particular gif

in application, this can go both ways:

1. if i feel a gif has too many colors and is pixelated bc of it, i will try to neutralize some of them for smoothness. example: here the very blue background that we're all familiar with was neutralized to an almost baby blue. the bright yellows on sharl and max's race suits were warmed up and desaturated to a peachy yellow color. this will be particularly useful if your gif is too big and you have to use even less than 256 colors.

2. if a gif feels too dull, i will either try to make some of its existing colors more saturated (using Hue/Saturation Adjustment), or add some hues to the whites or blacks (using Selective Color), so that it will have more vibrancy. example (left): the blue on the red bull can is almost the only cool color in this gif, so i made it more saturated for contrast; example (right): the gif had virtually no cool tone so i made the whites (see prints on sharl's shoulder) more cyan than reality. (ps this is why i think sports gifs are challenging. in tv shows or movies the colors in every scene would've been designed and arranged, but in sports we won't have that)

3. colors/vibrancy may be the only thing i want. pixelation can be a style in itself

4. i might not care about colorfulness at all and just want the gif to be as smooth as possible

Re: interpolation

speed coming out weird after interpolation is almost always bc your original video contains dup frames, esp if the footage was screen recorded. topaz does provide a "Replace Duplicate Frames" option with interpolation but imo it's not reliable at all. in my experience automated frame dedup requires more configurations than the one topaz lets you customize (sensitivity). which is probably why their dedup doesn't work as well as their other features. making sure your original video is free of dup or missing frames should solve your problem <3

ohh also interpolation works best in doubling or quadrupling! ie 25fps -> 50fps, 30fps -> 120fps etc etc

hope this is helpful!

[miyamiwu]

Super, super late reply, but I was tagged by @variabels to list 5 anime/manga recs. Thanks for the tag! (I also love Durarara and Baccano ヾ(•ω•`)o)

I’m gonna list mainly Chinese media in this list, though, because that’s what I consume more. And ha! How brave, asking an ND person like me for recs. Prepare to be bombarded by my rambling!

Starting off with the media currently featured in my header (excluding Blue Lock coz most of my mutuals already know that)...

1. The Earth is Online (danmei* novel)

* Danmei - Chinese boys love stories

The plot basically: Everyone on Earth is pulled into a death game.

A good intro to the unlimited flow* genre. Each instance is thrilling and complex. The boys love aspect is not much, as it focuses on plot, but it’s definitely not subtle. The characters are also quite diverse. Most UF novels just focus on the Chinese characters and revolve around what happens in China, but this one actually features those from other countries. I also like how the protagonist isn’t treated as the entire world’s savior. Other people around the world are also doing their part.

Where to read: An official English release is coming out in 2024. Translations will be done by luckkoi, the fan translator. As such, they've taken down their translations online. There's an alternate translation by @leonsrightlations , but only a few chapters are out right now. There are several completed translations online, but they're all edited mtl (machine translation). If you don't mind that, you can go google it. I recommend the one by Rainbow Mushroom. Their translations require a password, though, and you can find that on their Discord server.

* unlimited flow - Chinese genre of web novels where the protagonist is pulled into different instances to complete challenges which, if failed, would result in punishment or even death. It’s basically the death game genre, but instead of just one game, there are multiple.

2. Legend of Hei movie + Legend of Luo Xiaohei series sequel (donghua*)

(I downloaded this video from YouTube years ago. I can no longer find it there, so I’m reuploading it here…)

* Donghua – Chinese anime

A story about the young cat demon Xiao Hei and his quest to find a new home after humans destroyed his old one. Cute cat + cool powers + awesome fighting scenes + clean and crisp animation.

You can watch this on Netflix, but it’s not available in all countries. There’s an English and Japanese dub available, but I strongly recommend watching it in the original Chinese. (I can send you the full movie with English subtitles if you want). The series, which takes place after the movie, can be watched on YouTube. S1 of the series is more slice of life, but s2 is action-packed.

3. Low Tide in Twilight (BL manhwa)

That BL trope where the bottom has a mountainload of debt, while the top gives him a way out… except, not really, coz the male lead Taeju is partly the creditor, and he’s forcing Euihyun into a relationship with him in exchange for money.

Typical BL story with an initially toxic couple, but better. Complex characters, and a manhwa that relies more on the art to tell the story instead of the words. Also, Taeju gives off that same annoying but hot vibe as Kaiser. What more do you want?

4. Link Click (donghua)

The title (时光代理人) would be literally translated as “Time Agents.” I have no idea why the official English title is Link Click.

The plot basically: Two guys with time-related powers run a photography shop, where they accept orders from clients to dive back in time through a photo.

Funimation did this donghua so dirty by not promoting it more back when it aired in 2021. The English subs were also terrible.

Did you know that it used to rank #20 in MAL, surpassing MP 100 S2, Jujutsu Kaisen, and many other mainstream anime? Now, it’s ranked #41 on MAL, lower than before, but still pretty high for a donghua on MAL. That’s just how good it is.

Here’s a link to the blu-ray version with fansubs. Just pick the normal English track option and not English (CR).

Edit: OKAAAY, it turns out that link has the episode order all mesed up. Just ask me if you need an HD copy with good fansubs.

5. White Cat Legend 2020 (donghua)

Title (大理寺日志) would be literally translated as The Journal of Dali Court.

Another cat boy donghua! Can you tell I just love cats?

The plot: Chen Shi travels from the countryside to the big city to search for his missing brother and inadvertently ends up working at Dali court under the cat guy Li Bing.

Slice of Life + Comedy + Drama + Supernatural + Mystery + Action

Baiting you with a hot guy gif~

It's a historical show btw, so expect some references to real-life events.

The animation is also really smooth in this one! You can watch it on YouTube. Here's a link to episode 1.

Season 2 is also out! I'm yet to watch it, though. I should really do some time...

----

Tagging some mutuals to check these out, and also to list 5 recs (no pressure)~

@potato-longsocks @echarie @takeunknownroadnow @gachagon @bachirasbodyguard @blonde-batgirl @oo-mi-ru-oo @www98vikitoo @whiteapplesandblackblood

I recommend creating your own post instead of adding your recs in a reblog. My post is already pretty long. Turn this into a long thread, and we'll be a menace on the dashboard haha

[astro-royale]

「🪷What you probably

didn’t know about KARMA

By Amaryllis

How Karma actually works…

Now.. here’s what we don’t really see on the internet, unless we really look past mainstream media.

Even for those of us who do look into spirituality, it’s sometimes hard to look beyond the surface.. because a lot of the time we don’t know what is beyond the surface, and we don’t actually know what kind of information to research.

As I do A LOT of research, and have done over the course of many years in relation to topics like the occult, spirituality and metaphysics; I have been lucky enough to stumble across teachers that have shared this secret knowledge with me,personally or through material I have read, as well as my own personal insights and downloads, and I’m happy to share that with you.

NOW… What we are really here for.

Karmic Law

There are two things to take into consideration when thinking about karmic law. One of those things is consent.

Which I would like to explore in this particular post, I will speak on the other aspect of karma in the future.

Let us digest this first.

Now many of us wonder why some people who do really bad things, just seem to get away with it.

The truth is... there is something called the law of consent, which is rarely spoken about, but once you learn about it, it's pretty life changing.

1. Energetic consent is simply given by tuning into something. The simple act of attention, and then choosing to keep your attention on something, it creates an energetic pathway between you and that which you are focusing on.

It is no secret and many of us are aware of the fact that where your energy goes, it flows, and that’s especially true with MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT.

Now here’s something to dwell upon, have you ever thought about who produces certain means of entertainment, like movies and shows, music,,

and why they’re so often laced with suffering, and dark concepts, which many of us have accustomed our subconscious minds to find as relatable.

Well, nevertheless, I am here to tell you that there is a high possibility for you to manifest that which you focus on because you place so much attention on it and that’s true with media as well.

When you watch things such as scary movies, movies which perpetuate the concept of abuse, movies with very dark themes and concepts .

Have you ever thought that it’s someone’s morbid way of telling you what they have done to others?

Satanists are very aware of the law of consent; and thus have used it to their advantage for many, many years .

Often times in our media and entertainment, the dark themes that we see and come across , are not just works of fiction, but it is someone telling their truth.

And here’s how this ties to karma, when something is shown to you, and you choose to accept it (by tuning into it, not rejecting it) , then it is no longer against your will, therefore it is no longer karmic .

It is instead something you choose to accept , because you, with your own will, decided for whatever reason, consciously or unconsciously; to accept and tune in to what is being shown to you.

And of course it has been extremely advantageous to satanists that people have been kept in the dark about this knowledge, because now they show you the horrific acts and crimes they commit in “works of art” and people believe it is simply an expression and nothing more, and continue to let it happen.

But I am noticing more and more people are starting to wake up; as our media becomes more and more laced with grotesque concepts and themes of sexual abuse.

Pay attention. The truth has been in front of you all this time.

Some may say,” even if it is, I can’t do anything about it”

Yes you can, your attention is where your energy flows. Instead of spending your precious time on negative media outlets, spend that time working on yourself, your own creative energy, focus on things which build you up as an individual.

I want to be realistic, a lot is built on the backbone of horrific acts, but what we can do is at least minimise how much we interact with those things which take away energy from us and which make us feel depleted and dead inside.

And maybe someday, when you have built an empire for yourself you can then focus on the world and help those in need.

Your attention is so powerful; and if we each collectively chose to tune out of these negative frequencies, the less we manifest it, because there are less people giving away their consents to this.

_If you have to study something with a darker concept to be aware of it, set your intention to keep your emotions detached and set your intention that you are only interacting with this portal for research purposes only. Dwelling is what keeps the consent going. But always set intentions, clear your space_

I believe even your regular Narcissists practise this law of consent very well even though they may not be aware of it. Narcissists will often tell their victims who they are , and what they do.

Unfortunately, victims are usually stripped of their right to consent from early on, and therefore struggle with boundaries.

So they have no clue they are giving themselves away unknowingly, because there is no concept of a self, and of the fact that boundaries are something they can apply, it is all normal and comfortable behaviour to them sadly.

AMBIGUITY: By disguising truths in art, it is very easy to mix in the truth with some sort of lie and that’s where people get caught up and they can no longer discern the truth. The half truth and half lie.

You can choose to further your research on satanists and how they apply this, there are a handful of people who have spoken about this and other details in the process.

I am here to make you aware of its existence and how it is tied into consent, so you can at least take your power back.

Your consents, can be taken back. It is not set in stone. Heavier forms of consent would be contracts and that’s where things can get a little difficult.

But there are consents which are easy to take back, I have shared some examples in my post of “How to remove evil eye” & will share more in the future.

Karma means ACTION, and energetic chords, pathways, consents , create further energetic ACTION to be perpetuated.

Wether physically, mentally, emotionally. It is still action and therefore KARMA.

So we can at least work on one level, because working on any level wether it is

- Mentally

-Emotionally

-Physically

It will create a ripple effect in your reality , since everything is spiritual energy in different states of matter.

Taking your energy back is something I hear a lot in spiritual circles, what that actually means is, taking your energy back SO THAT karma is no longer happening, being perpetuated, from wherever you have taken your energy back. You have ended a cycle by doing that.

So yeah energy instigates realities to be created.

Be careful who, and what you give your time and energy into.

Your Will-power, Imagination, Intuition, these all matter so much more than you think, because they create MATTER.

⚡️⚡️⚡️⚡️

HOW CONSENT IS GIVEN AWAY:

- CONSENT & WILLPOWER are intertwined.

Good example: Marriage contract. “I Will”

——

- handshakes

contract formed when you introduce yourself.

mentally tell yourself that you revoke and denounce any contracts given away by you consciously or unconsciously and send away into aether now and immediately.

- attention

the more energy you put into something the more it accumulates, attention is how thoughts, ideas, concepts and beliefs enter your mind

Therefore you have consented to someone else’s will when you accept foreign ideas, so be careful who you listen to.

focusing on yourself builds up your own energy.

- SEX

Unconscious sex can lead to taking on someone else’s emotions, especially as a woman, your womb stores emotional trauma passed down from generations and when you have sex with someone, they often unconsciously trauma dump in your womb.

Many times this leads to women feeling physical discomfort and pain, their body will communicate that they have taken on someone else’s pain.

- Social media

Following and unfollowing is a way to create and break contracts, it creates a pathway between you and another person.

The internet is energy too.

- ——

Not creating intentions for yourself allows someone else to do it for you.

Use your conscious mind to create intentions for your subconscious, not the other way around.

Hey guys! Please keep in mind a lot of time and energy goes into this research :) I love being able to share it with everyone and I want to keep sharing my knowledge unconditionally which is why I haven’t created a Tumblr+.

If you resonated with this & found this helpful, consider to support me from the kindness of your heart so I can keep doing what I love and also provide you with life changing knowledge, you can leave a Tip , by clicking the Tip button in my bio or you can cashapp me £astroroyale

Thank you and much love to you all.

Don’t let yourself take on someone else’s pain (karma)

Protect yourself.

Liz briefly speaks on consents in this video she has and it literally took me by surprise, but as she mentioned she paid a lot of money to get this information. I have elaborated on that concept in this post.

[aceofwhump]

Hello @crispyliza !! So I'm replying in a separate post because this is too long for a reply on the post. Hope you don't mind. I also think it might benefit others who have asked me in the past and those wishing to start gif making. Especially with whumptober just around the corner.

So here's a full look at how I make my gifs. This got very long so I put it under a read more

A quick thing before I start: I use windows and google chrome. If you're a mac or firefox user I'm not sure of this will work for you in terms of programs. The techniques I use in photoshop should though.

Okay for this demonstration I'm going to show you how I made the gifs for this gifset

To start we need a video. I don't torrent because my internet connection will cut out a random which makes using vpns rather pointless. I've tried. My internet would cut out halfway through a torrent download and then my internet provider was notified to what I was doing. It was just not great. So I found a new way to download videos off the internet! You can use torrents though. If you've got a vpn, go for it.

There are several streaming sites that I go to to get my videos. 1movies, and bstsrs are my go to right now since soap2day is gone (rip i miss you).

Now there are three ways I can get a video depending on what website I'm using. Bstsrs is the easiest because they have a whole bunch of links available. I always go with mixdrop because it has an easy to use built in download button. Unfortunately this site doesn't have movies. Just tv shows and sometimes it's not the best quality or there aren't links available. That's when I go to 1movies. Once you've found your video I use the chrome extension Cococut to download it. Click the extension button to open, then the download button. Then you just have to wait until the video is rendered. Click save. Wait until its downloaded.

Okay we now have our video! The next step is to turn the scene you want to gif into frames. For this we're gonna need KMPlayer. This video player makes it really easy to turn scenes into frames/screencaps. Open your video. Find the the scene you want and pause the video. Type control-g to open this screen:

Here you choose the destination you want your frames to be saved. Decide what to name your frames and match up your settings with mine. You want to continuously extract frames, original size, and I stick with every 2 frames. Then, and this is important, choose video images only.

Now click start then start playing your video until the scene you want to gif is done. When you've got everything you wanted, pause the video. Hit ctrl-g again to reopen that screen and click stop. You now have all the frames you need so go ahead and exit out of KMPlayer. You don't need it again unless you need to redo frames or get the dialogue or something.

Next up we are gonna open Photoshop. I use Photoshop CC 2014.

Click on File -> Scripts -> Load files into stack -> Browse.

Go wherever you saved your frames and select the ones you need. Click okay and let the frames load completely before doing any thing else. Depending on how many you've selected this could take a while.

Once all of your frames are loaded, click "Create Frame Animation". Next click the little arrow button on right followed by "Make Frames From Layers" so we have all of our frames laid out. Now we need to reverse the frames because they're backwards so click that little button again and then click "Reverse Frames"

Okay you've got your frames loaded and all set to go. Time for all the cropping, resizing, setting the speed, and editing.

First thing I do is set the speed because otherwise I forget and it's important to do and a pain in the ass to do after all the editing is done. So do it first and get it out of the way. Select all of your frames. Click the little button beneath a frame where it says 0.0 and pick your time. I usually go for .1 seconds but .05 is also a popular speed. Just test one out and see which one you like best for your gif. You can hit the play button at any time to test your gif.

To set speed:

After this I do one of two things. Either I go into cropping and resizing or I separate frames. Depends on how many frames I uploaded. If I uploaded all the frames needed for an entire gifset this is the part where I separate them out onto individual gifs. So let's do that.

Originally I was just gonna do one gif but I have 115 frames uploaded which is waaaay too many for just one gif. I like to keep my gifs between 30 and 80 frames. So I'm going to split this into 3 gifs I think. It'll make a nice balanced gifset.

Select the frames you want for the first gif and copy them using the copy frames option in the same menu as the make frames from layers menu. Open a new document with the same dimensions as your current document. Click "Create Frame Animation" and paste the frames over the selected frame. Make sure that first frame is the same speed as all the other frames. Repeat until you have your desired gifs.

Next up I crop and resize. For this gif I'm going to first crop out the black bars above and below the image because we don't want that in the gif. Use the select tool to pick what you want to keep then "Image" then "Crop".

Now I could leave it as it but I think for this gifset I'm gonna focus more on Geralt so I'm going to crop it in a bit more.

Once cropping is all set i'm going to resize the gif to tumblr dimensions. Click "Image" then "Image Size" and change the width to 540px. The height can be anything and best not to mess with it so your gif keeps it's proportions. 540px is the width of a tumblr post and I plan on making these gifs stacked one on one.

Okay the gifs are all cropped and sized. Now it's time to do some editing. Go back to your first gif. We'll do all the work on this first gif and apply the same things to the other ones later because the scenes are the same. If they were different each gif would be colored and edited individually. First thing to do is turn it from frame animation to timeline. Timeline mode makes applying things like sharpening and brightness much easier and smoother.

So just click this button in the bottom left corner to go into timeline mode. Next up select all your layers. They're on the right side. Make sure you've selected ALL of them. Then click on "Filter" -> "Convert for Smart Filters" THIS IS AN IMPORTANT STEP! We can't edit until this is done.

This button to switch from frames to timeline:

First thing I do is sharpen. You can use one of the presets or try to do manually do it with smart sharpen. I use the preset labelled "sharpen" because I'm lazy and this one does a fine job for my gifs. I also add a layer of surface blur to smooth things out. Just a small touch. Like barely any blur but I think it smooths noise a bit and makes it look better.

Next up: Editing!! This step is going to be different for each and every gif you make. It all depends on the colors in the scene your giffing so you're gonna have to do a lot of experimenting to get the right look you want. Personally that's what I like about it. Makes it fun.

All your adjustments can be found found on the right side of the screen:

I almost always start with the "Levels" layer to brighten up the image because as we all know, every freaking whump scene is sooo dark. So with levels you just slide the little arrows around until you get a look you like.

Then I add a layer of "Curves". I love curves. With curves you can select the whitest white and the darkest black and the middle tone to change the brightness and colors of your gif. Or you can use this part and just brighten or darken a specific part. It's really versatile and i love it. It does take some practice and experimenting though.

Now a layer of "Contrast" and a layer of "Vibrance".

After this it's all about the selective colors, photo filters, and color balance to work on the colors and brightness. For this gif I'm only doing a tiny bit of editing cause I like the coloring but sometimes I'll have multiple layers of these to create a good coloring.

Once you're satisfied with how your gif looks it's time to save it!

Click "File" -> "Save for Web" and wait until it's all loaded. Important thing too look at here is the size of the gif. You can't upload any gif that is larger than 10mbs so make sure it's under that. Sometimes even 9.8 is too big because tumblr is a butt. I go for anything below 9.8. If your gif is too big try resizing it or removing a few frames. Make sure you gif is set to loop forever. Otherwise it'll just stop after a little bit. Don't forget to change this!

Here are the rest of my settings:

After that you can click save.

And that's it! You've made a gif! Congrats! If you have any questions or want clarification feel free to message me :)

[mndvx]

Sorry if you’ve answered this question before, but how do you make your gifs?

With an outdated version of photoshop and a lot of patience 😤 my messy process under the cut

let's say i have this movie downloaded in .mp4 i open it in windows movie maker - or any other software that lets you do quick and easy edits and whatnot but me i use wmm even tho it's obsolete i knoooow leave me alone - cut the scene i want to gif out and save it into this tiny little file

then i open photoshop and go into import > video frames into layers (i may be a little bit off in how things are called on PS in english, but they should be in the same places anyway)

this little popup will open

since my file is exclusively the thing i want to gif i don't need to bother with the little arrow-ish things underneath the video player, they're there if you need to shorten your thing or like cut into it.

this bit here needs to be checked like this, it'll set up the gif animation or whatever. so yeah then click Ok

bim bam boom photoshop will open like this

big scary image with many tiny scary images, so first of all what i do is get on the cropping tool

this will show up in the toolbar up top

and in there you set the dimensions of the gif, 1 gif in a gifset that takes up the whole post has to be 540px wide for 2 gif next to each other it's 268px wide and i can't remember 3 by 3 but i never do that so whatever who cares.

once you've set up the dimensions you want, you got this grid thing to move around and set however you want it to be

and then you wait as it painstakingly takes its time to do it

boom! it's done!

so that's your gif raw and unprepared without any filters or whatever, no length, no speed, nothing!

down there you've got the frames of the gif, depending how long is it'll be either a lot or very very short, in this case it's 277 frames, so already you know it's not gonna be just one gif but probably two or three - which i knew btw that's on purpose!!

first thing i do when all the cropping and setting up is done is scroll all the way through the frames to see if there's a bit that won't make it into the gif, and here, there is

these last four frames show a different bit of the scene because i cut shit very messily and don't check before opening photoshop but you know! trust the process! so make sure to select the unwanted bunch and delete them

so now hurray the gif is 273 frames and it's only the one scene i want

and now the fun not fun starts!

to the right you got these, the layers

so you gotta scroll all the way up and NOT forget to click on the very last layer before you start playing around with filters and all that

this little guy right here is my bestien he's the only one i use when editing gifs, fuck everybody else on that row. when making gifs i mostly just use a combination of those three things, brightness/contrast, vibrancy and photo filters

so anyway, let's fool around with those little things and make a gif (i realize now the scene is very dark and it will look very ugly but never mind! we carry on) so there a bunch of random settings added - you gotta make sure they are all the way on top of everything or else they just won't appear on every single frame

what i do then is probably very stupid and there's probably a better way to do it, but MY PROCESS, so i divide the amount of frames i've got by the number of gifs i want to make in a set, so 273/3 that's 91 (thank you google), so we look back down at the frames

and then scroll aaaaaalllll the way back to frame 91 (if you hold shift and use the wheel it'll be much faster) and while still holding shift pressed down click on frame 92

that will select every frame from the last to that and we delete that shit

so now we only have 91 frames and that's one gif. so let's save it! but wait, no you forgot to do something! see the 0.03s? that's the gif speed or whatever, idk how it works but 0.03s is too fast, me i usually use 0.05s so what you do next is select every one of those frames you've got left and click the little pointing down arrow, that'll open that

click Other... and then set it as the speed you want

ok so your gif is at the correct speed NOW you can save it so it's file > export > save for web

this new popup will appear

currently as of 2024 gifs can't be bigger than 10Mb/Mo, this one is 4mo

so we're good we're fine. so then you just click save, name the file whatever you want and VOILAAAA, a djeef!

(and then undo the delete and repeat everything for the other two gifs you'd want to make in that set)

[camaro-and-smokes]

Eve

Chapter 2: XNQ-377

Chapter summary: Billy didn't like the situation. At all. Eddie and Steve could be anywhere. He hoped they wouldn't be in the military section of the station. The evac should be partially easy. He had a map, an AI and a robot dog covering his six. But he also had a monster on a leash, and he and the monster weren't on the best of terms.

MIND THE TAGS - S E R I O U S L Y. This is a horror/scifi/creature movie crossover and loyal to the film. If the image below makes you queezy, this is not for you. Unless you like that queezy feeling, then, happy reading :)

Rating: Explicit Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence Categories: M/M/M Relationship: Billy Hargrove/Steve Harrington/Eddie Munson Tags: MetalSandwich Movie Mania, Movie: Aliens (1986), Aliens AU, Horror, Body Horror, Blood, Blood and Gore, Gore, Xenomorphs, Aliens, Metalsandwich, Mungrove, Harringrove, Science Fiction, Military Science Fiction, Crossover

Notes: Written for Metalsandwich Movie Mania 2023 @now-showing-at-the-hawk-events

Read on AO3 >> Read other chapters on tumblr >>

::::::::::

Billy rushed to the lower deck and towards the armoury. They had not at all small arsenal of weapons at their disposal, they did this shit for living. Handguns, pulse rifles, plasma rifles, grenade launchers, flamethrowers, sonic disruptors - you named it, they got it, and then some. But the most precious weapon to Billy was Steve. They never went to the battleground alone.

Or hadn't gone. Now he had no choice.

He was certain that Steve had no other weapons on him but a handgun, if even that. He carried nothing else on space stations when they weren't working. And Eddie carried nothing with him, ever. Well, maybe a Swiss army knife. Neither of those would help against what they were facing.

He strode through the massive doors to their armoury. He walked past the gun racks and gear boxes, collecting weapons with him as he walked. Plasma rifle was a must on a space station. It didn't puncture walls but only after heavy fire, so it was safer in this situation. Also, it didn't run out of ammo, but its battery would run out at some point. So, as many batteries with him as he could reasonably carry.

He knocked at one of the metal gear boxes with his knuckles. “Spot, let's go!” he said. The cover opened, and a yellow four-legged robot stepped out. “Hello, Billy,” it said, stretching its lone long grabbing arm up. “How may I help you?” “We're going to find Steve and Eddie. They're stuck somewhere on the station. Download the station map from Sis once I put her online. Gear up with the sonic disruptors, you're going to take care of my six. But ensure to avoid Eve with it. She'll be pissed off if you hit her with it.” “Acknowledged,” the robot said, and walked to the gear rack that held the disruptors and mounted one on itself.

Once he had his weapons of choice ready and laid out on the table in the middle of the room, he went to his armour closet. He opened the door and thought for a moment about the situation. They were on a space station, so he'd have to prepare for loss of atmosphere in addition to the normal bullshit of one set of normal sharp teeth, one set of high-speed teeth, in case he got too close, and of course the always as lovely acid blood. Also, on a military station like this he might encounter some friendly fire with the exception that the friendlies might not count him as a friendly anyway. So, he also needed something that would hold stray bullets.

Fuck. Normal hunting suit, then.

He didn't want to have his ass kicked by a stray marine who hadn't seen the chitin suit he had. It was Eddie's design and he had patented and licensed it, and suits made on the license were worn by an increasing number of space corps.

However, on a backwater station like this, it would be likely that no one had seen one before. But it was the only armor he could dodge at least some bullets with, so he didn't have a choice. He would've preferred something less straining, but the situation was what it was, so.

Although he was pretty sure that his worries about encountering any human weapons' fire would be among the least ones once he walked out of the ship.

The armour was shiny and black, made of thousands and thousands of small chitin shields. It glistened in the bleak light of the armoury and for a moment Billy felt unease, like he always did when he had to put this suit on. There was always something wrong if it was his only choice.

Their stop on the station was supposed to be just a regular stop, but of course, things had to go south just as everything had looked better. As usual. He just hoped that he wouldn’t be too late, for anyone’s sake.

He turned around and stepped backwards inside the armour, leaning to the back of it and greeting the AI that was operating it. “Hello, Sis.” “Hello, Billy,” the AI replied with a pleasant female voice as the armour quietly hummed to life. “Going hunting?” “Not hunting, but doing an evac. We’re leaving base.” “Acknowledged. Please remain still. Armour closing in one, two, three.” The armour knitted itself closed around Billy like a second skin, part by part starting from the boots. The helmet was the last one to lock itself in place. Billy followed from the heads-up-display of his helmet screen how Sis automatically linked all his chosen weapons to the armour and, one by one, the statuses of the weapons and other systems turned green. “Anyone else joining you today?” the AI asked. “I'm taking Spot with me,” he said. Then he paused and let out a deep breath, shaking his head. “No. It’s me, Spot, you and Eve.” He grimaced. “Link her to my suit as well.” “Do you want all reins over her?” After a short pause, Billy spoke. “Yes, please.”

Billy hated himself a little for having to link Eve to himself like that. Yes, she was huge and lethal, but after spending time with her - albeit from a safe distance - he couldn’t think but that there was intelligence like no other behind all that teeth and will to kill, even though that kind of intelligence was the source of a lot of bad things in the galaxy. But Eve was still a living creature that should have a certain level of freedom. Not that they could provide any of it to her since their ship was small-ish.

“Link to Eve established. She is not happy,” Sis remarked. “Yeah, I thought as much," Billy replied, taking another deep breath. "Maybe she changes her mind once she understands what’s at stake.” “What is at stake?” the AI asked. “Please go through the security feeds from the whole time we’ve been docked at the station. We’re in the middle of a shit-storm and Eddie and Steve are in the heart of it. Oh, and send the map of the station to Spot.” After a brief pause, the AI spoke. “I concur that your analysis of a shit-storm-like situation is accurate.” Billy snorted. “You’re starting to get the hang of deadpan humor, I see.” “I am doing my best,” the AI replied. “All systems have been activated and Spot has the map. You are ready to go.” “Thanks, Sis. Let’s put this show on the road.”

With all his weapons sorted to their places in his armor, Billy grabbed Eddie’s shirt he’d brought down with him from the cabin, took yet another deep breath, and walked to the cargo hold door, followed by Spot. He peeked in through the window in the thick door, but the space was dimly lit and quiet as it always was. However, it didn't mean that there wasn't something to be concerned about in there.

Billy hit the release button, and the door slid up, activating the lights in the hold. The temperature around him fell by 30 degrees and the heaters inside his armor kicked in. He cursed to himself. “I fucking hate this suit, I hate this fucking ship, the situation and I especially hate...”

A low hissing he could hear through his helmet’s outer mics interrupted his inner monologue. He stopped to take a breather. Approach her cautiously, never ever show that you are afraid, Eddie had said. She’s all bark and no bite as long as you don't show her you’re afraid. If you do, all safeties are off. Billy took a deep breath. “Rise and shine, Eve,” he said through the speakers in his suit and walked towards a terrarium-like habitat built in the back of the cargo hold. The closer Billy got to the habitat, the louder the hissing became. And not just because the distance grew shorter. “Yes, I know I woke you from your beauty sleep, princess, but I need your help. Your favorite person in the whole wide universe is in danger, and I need you to help me find him.” A dark shadow stirred in the habitat's shade as Billy got close.

No matter how often he came down here, it got no less nerve wrecking. He had to close the outer speakers so that his rugged breathing wouldn’t hint of his hesitation. Finally, he arrived in front of the habitat. Even though he was terrified about what he was about to do, a small part of him - very small, tiny even - was always in awe of what they were doing. And especially, that they actually could do it. It was unheard of, and yet, here he was, about to take one of the most horrifying creatures in the whole fucking universe for a walk.

-oOo-

Sample XNQ-377 was a genetically modified embryo that had been waiting for plantation to a host when Steve and Billy had broken into the science station in deep space. Not really knowing where they had been sent to but only told that this sample was what they were to locate and return to its 'rightful' owner in return for a hefty amount of money, they’d quickly learned that the science station they’d been sent to had been a fucking hive at that point. Xenos, mutated and disfigured in ways Billy and Steve had never seen, running around every corner, and all the staff spent as hosts.

The fact that there was only a limited amount of the bastards running around had been the only good thing they had going for them in that situation, really.

The science station had been doing other research as well, so once they’d found the lab and what they were told to fetch, they looted the rest of the laboratory, too, taking everything they could carry with them.

A great gig haul-wise, in every other sense a horrible one. They'd barely gotten out alive.

After returning to their ship and in a safe distance away from the station, they’d decided that sample XNQ-377 wouldn’t go to any other owner but the one who’d pay highest price of it on the darknet. And the gig had turned out to be very lucrative. Though not because they sold the embryo - not that there weren’t buyers, mind you.

It was because of what the embryo turned out to be.

Munson, the ever crazy scientist and a friend - and later also something more - who'd created Billy's and Steve's hunting suits, had known what it was: an embryo of a Xenomorph queen and one of a kind in a very special way.

She’d been genetically modified to alter her need to reproduce. If she was held in a habitat that filled certain atmospheric requirements, she wouldn’t develop the need to produce eggs until she would’ve been released into a suitable atmosphere. So, no need to send a massive number of Xeno eggs on a planet, just deploy her and let her run rampant until everyone was dead. Easy deployment of a hive as big as needed wherever you needed to get rid of a colony or just unfriendlies in general. So, since Munson knew what she was and had the equipment - Billy didn’t want to even start thinking where he got it all - they decided they might make more money by using her themselves.

But not for overtaking planets.

Some alternative research had suggested that if there was a situation where another queen was introduced to an active Xeno hive with a queen already laying eggs, the latter would stop producing them and fight the new queen. Of course, a queen that hadn’t spent a day laying eggs would always be more likely to win the fight than an old one who’d been stuck in place and producing eggs ever since it matured. And stopping the queen from producing new eggs would mean that once all the Xenos were killed, including the old queen, and all eggs destroyed (and the new queen returned to the ship before she could become fertile, of course) the planet was available for a new human master.

So, ever being able to seeing an opportunity to make money from outside the military - since not all conquerors were military, galaxy-sized tech businesses or even legal entities and the knowledge of Xenos wasn’t exactly common knowledge either - seeing the endless possibilities for hefty income from a very niche field of business, Munson had suggested the craziest idea and, well...

Her name was Eve.

-oOo-

Billy reached out his hand and placed it on the transparent resin wall of Eve’s habitat.

A black maw twice the size of Billy's head with long pin sharp teeth surged from the shadows and hit the other side of the wall, startling Billy and making him fall on his back on the floor. “Fuck! Eve!” he barked through the speakers when he caught his breath. “Behave!” He got an ear tearing screech as a reply and a new hit to the other side of the wall. He stared at the ceiling for a moment and carefully, once again, tried to remember the one crucial mistake in his life that had brought him to this exact moment in life. Then he sat up and glared back at the habitat.

The transparent wall was smeared with snot, drool, and mucus, but otherwise undamaged. Through it, he saw the fifteen feet tall Xenomorph queen crouching in front of it, now fully out of the shade of her habitat.

Billy couldn't help but to admire the beast for a moment. Her black exoskeleton was shining in the bright lights of the cargo hold and her skeletal tail that ended into a lethal spike was curled around her feet in an almost cat-like manner. Her two sets of hands were calmly in her lap, the tinier ones resting over the larger ones.

She was gorgeous in a very creepy and horrible way, Billy couldn’t deny that.

However, the freely moving part of her head, the maw, now with her lips closed to hide the angler fish like teeth, was pointing at him. She didn’t have eyes - she used echolocation to find her prey - but Billy was sure she was glaring at him. He was sure she always did that, since they definitely weren’t on friendly terms. But the scales of her six-feet-long creatine crown were wrapped around each other, an ability given to her with her several genetical alterations, and the tube they created was settled between the several tall spikes on her upper back. If she’d been pissed off, the crown would’ve been spread high above her head. But since it wasn’t, it meant that she wasn’t really agitated at all.

She was just playing with him. The fucker.

“Eve, we don’t have time for our normal dance. Eddie and Steve need our help. We need to get going right now.” He waved Eddie’s shirt in his hand and sent a message through Sis to Eve. The queen tensed up immediately. Billy nodded. “Yeah. Father. Missing,” Billy repeated the words he'd send to Eve. “We gotta go find your father. And Steve.”

[takemyopenheart]

Your manips are so beautiful and REALISTIC it kinda scary, I'm curious how do you make them?? (If you're not comfortable sharing I totally understand you can ignore this ❤️)

TYSM, NONNY 💕 this means a lot! I really enjoy making them and sending them to the fandom immensely!

This is pretty much my step by step process (hope it’s not too confusing). If you, or anyone, has any other questions pls feel free to drop any q’s in my inbox or via dm!

tutorial:

Apps I use: Picsart and Snapseed (both are free)

The secret to a good manip is couple pictures, e.g. your FCs next to another person and I just overlay their face, which makes it easier.

Step 1: I search through Pinterest or instagram to collect the pictures I want to use. I try finding pictures that are somewhat similar in lighting, although this isn’t too important since that can be fixed later using Snapseed.

Step 2: Open Picsart and the main picture you’ll be using. In tools, choose clone. From here, you’ll be erasing part of or the entire face of the person where you’ll be editing your FCs face over. This is so no part of the other person’s face shows.

Step 3: Next you’re going to click on add photo to edit in your FCs face. This is optional, but you can edit the lighting so it’s similar to the other picture by clicking adjust and messing around with the settings there. This can be skipped though since the same can be done later in snapseed. From there you’ll click cutout to cut around the face, it doesn’t have to be perfect. You can flip the picture under crop if you need to, like I did here.

Step 3: Adjust the size and move it around where you’d like the face to be. From there, click on the eraser at the top. Now you’re going to be erasing around the face. Lowering the hardness prevents it from having a superimposed look.

Step 4: Resize the picture, movie it around, and use the eraser tool until you’re satisfied with how it looks. If there are any imperfections, such as part of the og picture’s face showing a bit, like my example, use the clone tool again to erase it. But this can also be done in Snapseed using the healing tool as well, so it’s not often necessary. Now feel free to click apply and the download button at the top to save your picture.

Step 5: Open Snapseed, choose your newly edited picture and click on selective under tools. This is where you’ll be fixing the lighting. The picture of Aimee was taken indoors, making it darker than the one of Tom, which was taken outdoors. In order to fix this, click on either face and mess around with the settings as you see fit. Feel free to use this in any part of the picture to your satisfaction. Snapseed is my fave editing app with many useful tools to explore!

And there it is! If neither of these apps are available for you, look for any other apps that provide similar tools to these. Like I said, the secret is finding the right pictures and simply superimposing your fc’s face!

If all else fails, I’d be more than happy to help you out!

[pixiedustperspectives12]

#9 Moana

Moana is a more recent disney movie released in 2016. I remember watching this movie for the first time and falling in love with it immediately. the amazing plot and sound track really made this movie as popular as it is.

To start, the beginning of this movie is really what hooked me into watching the rest. If the beginning doesn't hook me it's hard to make me wanna finish the movie but the start of this movie has an amazing hook. Starting with the legend of Te Fiti was a great way to interest me in the movie and perfectly explain the backstory of the movie. Showing us that the water chose moana as a baby is great to foreshadow that the water will help her later on in the movie. Once her dad told her she couldn't go near the water I was very interested to see how it would affect their relationship. We do see her respect her dads wishes but soon enough she does turn against him which I knew would happen but it still had me a little bit excited to see what would happen after.

Maui is by far my favorite character , he doesn't fail to make ma laugh, he has an amazing character development and casting Dwayne Johnson as his voice actor was the perfect choice. To start, the scream he does when he first meets moana had me choking on a chip the first time I heard it since I just laughed so hard. He had some great one liners like 'Boat snack' while grabbing her chicken, 'You're not selling it 'you're measuring the stars not giving the sky a high-five' and many many more. Something that really made this character as amazing as they are is Dwayne Johnson being the voice actor for Maui. He was already a very funny actor all of his movies make me laugh, he has the perfect delivery and his voice fits the character so well. Finally, I believe he has one of the most emotional character development in the disney franchise. He starts as an arrogant and cocky person who over time grows close and starts to care for others and not only himself. One of the most emotional parts of this development is when he trusts Moana enough to tell her about how his parents abbonded him as a baby and how he wonders why he wasn't good enough for them. That scene leaves me in tears every time, watching it in my bed for the first time and crying because of how emotional it made me is all I can think about when it comes to this scene.

One of the best songs in this movie is 'How far i'll go'. After this movie was released this song was trending almost immediately It's an amazing song. I still wish I could experience listening to it for the first time again, I remember loving this song right away and downloading it on my phone immediately. The story behind the song is very inspirational talking about finding your way into your own world, it honestly had me take another look at life and showing me that no one can make any desisions for me and I make my own at the end of the day.

My absolute favorite song is this movie is Shiny. This song is just about how much he loves shiny things. However I love this song because of how catchy this song is, I normally find myself humming to this song because it just has that catchy beat. I also love his voice it goes perfectly with the song it rolls off his tongue just right. Finally I love that he gets so passionate while singing this song that Maui and Moana were able to escape while he was singing makes me laugh just thinking about it right now. This is just a fun uobeat and happy song that boosts my mood every time I listen to it.

The reason this movie isn't higher up on the list is because it's a little more recent and doesn't exactly have that disney feeling. This is a great movie that I love watching it just dosen't exctly seem like a disney movie.

In conclusion, this movie is no doubt a favorite in many peoples eyes, with the emotional aspect, perfect casting and the amazing soundtrack how can you not love this movie.

#1 movie hint: This movie was released in 1998!

[simbelmyne20niniel]

*has a small heart attack upon reading that you're reading my fic* OH, you were the guest leaving a kudo the last time?! Okay, I'm curious about your opinion *sits like on needles*

Good that Collins wasn't in the top 10, God I swear, I am not someone who hates musicians, but Phil Collins is a big exception. I hate this guy 😂

"OH LORD!!! That Zeppelin concert with Phil was a disaster…. I feel sorry for every person that was present at that concert." - oh Christ, that's harsh, but my bestie's reaction wasn't any better!

I have to disagree, but it's only because I don't like Collins' music. I've never seen anything interesting in it, and I'm not saying it because I don't like him. I was tiny when I watched "Brother Bear" and as much as I always loved music in movies I've watched, I couldn't get into this one. Years later (now) I know why.

DO! OMG, "In the City" is such a good album! "Art School", "Slow Down", "Batman Theme", "In The City", best songs from this one, I'm telling you - the drummer, Christ, the drummer does his job so well!

I would love to give you recommendations for "Red Rose Speedway", but it's a similar case to "Quadrophenia". I would have to dump a list of every song off this album, I love it this much!

I HADN'T SEEN MV TO "SO LONELY", I'M GONNA WATCH IT NOW! This was so random, hahahahaha, Stewart literally got the goal to hit as many things with his drumsticks as he could, hahahahaha. But there's also the "Don't Stand so Close to Me" mv and the moment with that stepladder. I keep wondering why Stewart climbed it 😂

Oh, your interpretation of "The Bike" makes so much sense! Especially if the music had to recreate the LSD effects. Yeah, the music is weird, but I do have three songs I like from Pink Floyd's first album. They are: "Lucifer Sam", "The Gnome" and "Scarecrow" - guess they are the most normal ones. But I also remember listening to "Interstellar Overdrive" and God, I couldn't listen to it. I've send it to my bestie, her head started hurting and then she send it to her boyfriend, saying "he'll like this, he loves such weird shit" and a few hours later I got a thank you from him, because he loved it 😂

Simon and Garfunkel were not chill towards each other? How come, tell me more! "Child of divorce", that's a good one 😂

Could be actually - what a cute photo of Bolan tho! "Get It On" is such a vibe, omg, I might actually start listening to T.Rex after this srs!

Way to go, Zombies, choosing a name that they didn't know the meaning of. I'll check the song this weekend and let you know my opinion on it. In the meantime, could you perhaps give me some more recommendations by them?

I see that you're a big fan of Rory, even putting him on the list higher than Jimmy Page, damn. Could you give me recommendations of his songs to listen to as well?

Oooohhh, I would recommend to write a fic with Rory. I take it that you want to write a self-insert with him? If so then go for it. I'm speaking from experience as I took first steps in writing self-inserts stories more than a year ago and honestly, writing self-inserts with your favorite musician is so fun!

My weekend was not so good. I have a lot on my head to do on university and while Saturday was all okay, I had a breakdown at Sunday. Cried three times, felt sadness during the entire day. The only good things happening at Sunday were: time spend with mom, downloading albums on my phone and making "Surf Jam" my ringtone 💜

How about you? How was your weekend? And do you have any plans for Christmas, perhaps?

I have no other artists I listen to, I'm sorry 😂

Okay, so I'm finally on vacations!!!!

I don't know why but when you said "Years later (now) I know why." I imagined you like this

The Gnome is such a happy song. "He'll"he'll like this, he loves such weird shit" A man of culture, I see. hahahahhahaha 

I just listened to "Red Rose Speedway". What an amazing album. I can see why you like it that much!!! Paul never disappoints. Now I'm on my way to listen to The Jam

Simon and Garfunkel. They met at a very young age in high school and started their career at that time. They had some singles playing on the radio and, you know, having big dreams. Together on stage, they have this beautiful connection, they're good together. Their harmonization is one of the ones I like the most in music. But what I remember, what started their friction was that Simon dropped a solo single and Garfunkel was mad about it. Even years later he was still mad about it. 

Although both composed the songs and the music, in my opinion, Simon was the one more focused on music, because at some point (If I'm not wrong) after their single for the film The Graduate, Garfunkel got movie roles. They were heading in different directions. That's why "Bridge Over Troubled Water" is their final album. From time to time, they had some comebacks, but only for special events. But just that, they still had arguments about the past. They toured together 2 more times, but working together on a new album was a big NO for both of them.

Okay, from The Zombies the songs I recommend you, are:

Sumertime

The Way I Feel Inside

Beechwood Park

This Will Be Our Year

Time Of The Season

Can't Nobody Love You

What More Can I Do

It's Alright With Me

Maybe After He's Gone

From Rory:

A Million Miles Away

Shadow Play

Easy Come, Easy Go

They Don't Make Them Like You Anymore

Follow Me

Bad Penny

Just The Smile

Wave Myself Goodbye

Moonchild

Laundromat

Do You Read Me

And for the fic!! Yes!! I really like the self-insert fics. I'll try to do it! mybe a one-shot.

I know how it feels to have a breakdown and hope that you're doing better by now. It's okay to cry, it helps to get out many things. So I send you a lot of hugs and never give up. Better days are coming!

My last three days of working were weird. I felt like they were very long days. But, winter break has started!! So I'm enjoying my time sleeping longer hahahhahaha. For Christmas, we often go to celebrate it at my mom's family side. Everyone brings food to share like tamales, chicharron, asado, carne asada, etc..., we always play loteria, so we must bring presents for the winners. 

What about you? What do you do on Christmas with your family?

[thevoicefromanotherworld]

"LET'S GET DOWN TO BUSINESS"

This is a story based on Hugh's character on the movie Swordfish AKA Stanley Jobson

I decided to write one story of him since I saw many users saying that there weren't enough stories about him.

So, here's one. I hope you like it!

Stanley typed a few times on his computer to hack into the city bank's website. Some friends had asked him to tap into the cameras and unlock the vault so they could rob it. They promised him a lot of money for it, so he agreed.

It was actually pretty simple. He would introduce a firewall disguised as a computer virus. He would trace the IP address of the website where they kept the passwords for the safes and bingo! The perfect heist, with no injuries, no police getting in the way and nothing to worry about.

The alarms wouldn't go off, people wouldn't know what was going on in there except them. Everything was going well, until Stanley tried to hack into the firewall. A message appeared on the screen. THIS OPERATION CANNOT BE PERFORMED, PLEASE TRY AGAIN

-You have to be joking- he muttered as he re-entered the firewall, the same message appeared again-

He called Marvin, the leader of the group, who at that moment was with the others in front of the bank entrance, in a standard black van.

He answered on the second ring.

-Stan, is everything okay? – he asked, he shook his head- -I'm having trouble entering the firewall – he confessed – I need a couple more minutes

-Okay, but hurry up – he indicated – the sooner we do it, the sooner you'll have your money

-I know – he muttered – I'll call you now

He hung up and cracked his fingers, preparing to try again.

-Okay – he whispered – let's get down to business

He slid his fingers quickly across the keyboard trying to insert a stateful inspection firewall, more powerful than the one he was trying to insert before.

A message appeared in the right corner of the screen. A question. She frowned and clicked on it.

“Very clever, but I’m afraid you’ll have to try a little harder.”

He frowned in surprise

“Who are you?” she typed, the answer was not long in coming-

“A hacker, like you” he said- “although not as good, of course.” “I’m surprised you haven’t managed to insert the firewall yet, Jobson.”

“How do you know who I am?”

“You always try to insert the same type of firewall in each of your cyber-attacks” she wrote before adding “I’ve done my homework, plus you’re the most famous hacker in the country, the best at what you do, of course I know you.”

“Under any other circumstances I’d love to keep talking to a fan, but you have to let me into the bank’s system” she typed “there are people who depend on me.”

“I know, I’ve seen the black van that’s been parked for twenty minutes on the sidewalk opposite” she wrote making Stanley smile.

It was good, very good

“I can’t let you do that, Stan” he added “I’d lose my job, and as you can see I’m passionate about my work”

So Stanley knew exactly what he had to do. He inserted a USB drive with a powerful virus downloaded and uploaded it to the computer’s desktop. Then he went back to the computer.

“Then you leave me no choice” he wrote as he pressed the enter button to insert the virus into the bank’s network “try to bypass that”

He quickly picked up the phone to send a message to Magnus NOW – he wrote in capital letters-

The virus had worked, so Stanley went into the security cameras to see how his friends took the money.

He made a mental note to delete the evidence from the cameras when they left the premises.

A few seconds later, they left the bank with the bags full of money up to where he was. No alarm had gone off and no one had called the police. Everything was fine. A new message appeared in the corner of the screen.

“Nice trick Stanley” she admitted making him smile “a shame, I would have liked to play a bit more”

“Next week I will be hacking into the website of another one of your branches” he wrote half jokingly half seriously “you better have all your electronic weapons ready by then”

“A strange way to ask me out” she replied “but I accept, I will be waiting for you with my weapons loaded and ready to fire, Jobson”

[soshiharin]

challenge?

summary: in which harin learns something new

set: 17 june 2021

word count: 1.1k

warnings: none that i can think of

an: a cute little thing of idol!harin. feedback and reblogs are much appreciated 💐

harin’s masterlist

Harin looked up from her laptop when there was a knock on the door. “Come in!” She called out, pressing pause on the movie she was watching. The door to her green room opened slowly, revealing Jihyo and Momo from TWICE.

“Hello,” they greeted, bowing to Harin and the other staff in the room.

Harin stood up from the couch, also bowing to the idols. “Hello.”

Momo nudged Jihyo, causing the leader to clear her throat. “We… came to give you our album.” Stepping forward, Jihyo handed Harin their Taste of Love album.

“Thank you.” Harin bowed as she accepted the album. She placed it on the nearest table. “My hairstylist is a big fan of you,” she told them.

Momo’s eyes widened. “Ah, thank you.”

“I don’t have any albums on me right now, so I can’t give you my one. I’m sorry,” she apologised.

“No, no. It’s okay.” Jihyo cleared her throat. “Can we do a challenge?”

“What challenge?”

“Alcohol-Free challenge.”

Harin hummed, looking away from the two idols. “I don’t drink, though. Or not that often, so you could say I am Alcohol-Free,” she said, not noticing Momo and Jihyo’s confused expressions.

“Pardon?” Jihyo asked.

“Excuse me?” Harin asked, focusing again on the women.

Momo tucked her hair behind her ear. “The Alcohol-Free challenge is filming a video dancing to the song,” she explained. “So we’d just dance to the chorus.”

“Ohhh,” Harin gasped. “Is that why everyone’s always doing dances in the hallways?”

Jihyo chuckled. “Yes. It’s a new way to promote the song because now we’re also doing challenges with different artists so many fans are hearing our song. It’s also a way to make new friends.”

Harin turned to face the staff members in the room, who were laughing silently at her obliviousness to the latest trends. “Why didn’t we have this back then? We’d either give them our album or… slip them our number secretively.” Turning back to face Jihyo and Momo, she gasped. “This is so smart! Who thought of this? Wah, they’re really smart. What the hell?”

Harin’s manager, Iseul, noticed how the TWICE members were watching Harin with strained smiles on their faces. “Noona, they’re still waiting to film the challenge,” he told her.

“Oh, right. Sorry,” Harin apologised. “We can film the challenge.”

“Thank you,” Jihyo said as she and Momo bowed.

“Where do you want to film it?” Momo asked.

“We can film it in the hallway,” Harin answered. The three women left the waiting room to go to the hallway. Standing against one of the walla was one of TWICE’s managers. Upon seeing the idols come out of Harin’s room, he stood up straight.

“We need to show sunbaenim the dance,” Jihyo told the manager. He passed her his phone, which was open on a video of one of the solo TikTok’s Momo did. Playing the video, Jihyo showed Harin the dance.

“It’s doable,” she said.

“But you’re a great dancer, sunbaenim,” Momo complimented. “You can do many dances.”

“Sshh.”

They went over the choreography, Harin surprising the two members by already knowing some of it. I’m a great dancer after all, she had bragged, I should know this much. Within no time, they had filmed the challenge and, after monitoring it, posted it to TWICE’s account.

“Should… I be filming challenges with people?” Harin asked the idols.

“Uh, some people don’t do challenges and some people do. It’s up to you,” Jihyo answered.

Harin nodded as she considered the options. “I should do challenges. What do I need?”

“Your phone.”

Popping back into her greenroom, Harin soon returned with her phone in hand. “What else?”

“Um, actually I don’t know,” Jihyo admitted with a laugh. She turned to their manager. “What does sunbaenim need to do?”

“You need to go to the App Store and download TikTok,” he told her, stepping close to the idol.

“What the hell is a TikTok?” Harin muttered under her breath. “This one?” She showed the screen to the manager.

He nodded. “That’s the one.”

She downloaded the app before looking up at him. “What’s your name?”

“I’m Oh Ilhwan,” he told her.

“Oh Ilhwan,” she repeated to herself. “I’m Jang Harin,” she introduced herself, bowing to him, Ilhwan following suit. “Nice to meet you. Ah, it’s done downloading.” She clicked on the app.

“Now you sign up.”

She groaned. “This is so much work,” she said, causing Momo and Jihyo to chuckle lightly. After signing up and setting up her profile, Harin sighed in relief. “Now what do I do?”

“You have to search for pporappippam in the search bar and it should give you the audio of the song,” he explained. “Then you click on the audio and do the dance.”

“Ah, thank you.” She looked up at Jihyo and Momo, who were standing against the wall. “Do you want to do the chorus or the post-chorus?”

“Since sunbaenim did the whole chorus of Alcohol-Free, we should also do the whole chorus of pporappippam,” Momo reasoned.

Harin nodded. “Okay. Should I teach it to you?” The TWICE members nodded their heads and Harin began teaching them the dance. They picked up the choreography fairly quickly. “Do you mind filming it for us?” She asked Ilhwan.

“It’s no problem.” He took her phone from her.

“Our manager-nim is a fan of yours,” Jihyo told Harin. “When we were asking the managers to come with us, he volunteered before we even finished asking.”

“You’re my fan? I’ve captured your heart?” Harin teased, causing Ilhwan to blush. “I’m flattered.

Clearing his throat, he counted down. “Filming in three, two, one.”

The women began dancing, doing the Alcohol-Free ending pose when they finished. After monitoring it, Harin posted it to her TikTok account.

“Thank you,” Momo said as she and Momo bowed.

“Thank you.” Harin bowed back. “I’ll prepare albums for you next time.”

“You don’t have to do that,” Jihyo started to wave her off.

Harin pursed her lips, staring at Jihyo. “Jihyo-ssi, I say this with respect, but I am not going to listen to you. You have nine members, right? I’ll also have an album for Ilhwan-ssi.”

“Thank you.” The members bowed again, Harin doing the same. She watched as they walked back to their green room, bowing as they left. Returning to her room, she sat back down on the couch with a sigh.

“You tired?” Iseul asked her.

Harin chuckled. “Yes. I should do more challenges with other artists.” She was silent for a beat. “Why wasn’t this a thing when we were still promoting?” She asked, referring to Girls’ Generation.

“I don’t think TikTok was a thing then,” her hairstylist, Marie, answered.

She quirked her eyebrow in agreement. “Let me finish this movie while I wait for my stage.” She said, opening her laptop once more.

©️ jang harin