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earlgreydream · 4 years ago

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i hate you.

| 1940s!bucky x reader | fluff | smut |

requested. greaser!bucky au. enemies(?) to lovers. @fitzfiles and i are shamelessly indulgent

bucky made up his mind, he was going to win you over.

Bucky Barnes was the asshole across the street with the stupid loud motorcycle and white tees and leather jackets. You hated him.

“Hey, doll.”

You heard it every day when you came walking home from school, books in hand. And every day, it irritated you. You would scowl at Bucky, and he would flash his stupid smirk and wink at you.

You’d see him shirtless at night, smoking out on his porch. Once, he caught you staring out the window, and he’d teased you about it the next day on your way off to school.

“Checking me out last night, doll?”

“Don’t call me that. It’s Y/N. And no I wasn’t checking you out. I was watching you die slowly of lung cancer,” you snarked, making him throw his head back with laughter.

“If smoking doesn’t kill you, I will,” you muttered before going inside of your house.

“JAMES BUCHANAN BARNES!” You screamed, throwing your front door open. You were wrapped in a blanket over your thin pajamas, and you were infuriated.

“What?” He called with a stupid amused look on his face.

“It’s five in the fucking morning! Stop revving the engine on your motorcycle! You’re waking up the whole neighbourhood!”

“You’re the one screaming.”

“I hate you,” you seethed.

Without breaking eye contact, he revved the engine again. You were so irritated you could cry, and you resolved yourself to go back inside, refusing to let Bucky get the satisfaction of seeing your reaction to his antagonizing.

This had gone on for months. You were able to ignore him most of the time, but he was persistent. Your friends joked that he was in love with you, but you couldn’t imagine it. Bucky was delighted to get you worked up, and he was proud of himself for it.

“You’ve all lost your bloody minds,” you assured your friends, dragging them inside as Bucky whistled at you from across the street.

“He’s just my annoying neighbor.”

Bucky seemed to be always washing his yellow car in his driveway. You’d come home and see him shirtless, in low-rise jeans that showed off v-lines, bent over the hood of his soapy car. If it wasn’t the car, it was his motorcycle. He always winked at you or blew you a kiss, making you shake your head or roll your eyes.

You hated to see him washing his car, because it made it that much more difficult to deny how incredibly gorgeous he was.

Bucky delighted in getting you worked up. He loved to see your cheeks flush pink and the way your nose scrunched up at his banter. He had a crush on you, ever since he moved in, and he always loved your attention, even if he got it by antagonizing you.

Bucky did intend to get in your good favor, but you had made up your mind that you didn’t like him. Bucky was determined, and loved a challenge.

Bucky decided his opportunity to win you over was when it was pouring down rain. The morning had started out sunny when you’d walked to school, but the weather had turned rapidly mid-morning.

He got in his yellow car, and drove to the college in town, parking outside and going into the lobby with an umbrella. He leaned against a railing, waiting for you to get out of your class, to give you a lift and keep you from getting soaked and ruining your books.

As soon as it started to rain, you’d fretted about getting home. You didn’t have any friends that drove, and you had been debating whether to wait out the rain or just brave it and get wet.

You definitely didn’t expect to see your neighbour leaning against the railing in the front lobby.

“Hey, doll.” He grinned, standing when you approached him. He had ignored the stares of the other girls, everything else disappearing when he saw you.

“Bucky, what are you doing here?” you sighed, blushing at the stares you got, everyone hearing his term of endearment for you.

“I brought my car, I didn’t want you to ruin your books and get wet by walking home in the rain,” he answered honestly, surprising you.

“You drove here to pick me up?”

Bucky nodded, and you fought off a small smile. You didn’t like him, and you were annoyed, but the gesture was thoughtful, and much appreciated. You rationalized the soft feelings by claiming it was basic decency, and it was necessary that you had to take him up on his offer.

“Okay.”

You took his arm and he opened his umbrella, keeping you dry as he helped you into the passenger seat of his yellow car. You set your books on the dash, leaning back against the leather seat. As he drove, the radio played smooth jazz, surprising you a bit, as Bucky didn’t seem like the jazz type.

“Bucky, you’ve missed the turn.” You said, and he only smiled, biting the inside of his cheek. Your heart rate increased as he drove into the city and you whipped your head to look at him.

“Where are you taking me? I thought you were taking me home!”

“I am taking you home, eventually,” Bucky grinned, and you could’ve screamed.

“You can’t just abduct me! Where are we going?! I will throw myself from your moving car!” You snapped, panicking.

“I’m not abducting you! I’m taking you to have some fun, because all you do is study and it’s made you wound tight!”

“You’re kidding me. I’ve got to write a paper!” You cried, and Bucky just laughed, shaking his head.

“Just relax, Y/N.”

You gave him a scathing look, crossing your arms over your chest.

“You’re insufferable.”

“Most say charming.”

You followed Bucky into a roller rink, rolling your eyes but secretly excited about rollerskating. You slipped your feet into white skates, thankful today you had chosen to wear pants.

You stepped onto the rink with Bucky right behind you. It had been a while since you skated, and you were a bit unsteady on your feet. You pushed forward, putting your arms out for balance as you tried to get used to the feeling of the wheels under your feet.

“Careful!” Bucky exclaimed when you nearly fell, catching your waist to steady you. You gasped, your hands going to his arms for balance. A blush spread across your cheeks, butterflies erupting in your stomach at the gentle, caring way he touched you.

“Thanks,” you smiled, pushing off his arms and skating smoothly around. He fell in rhythm beside you, skating to the music.

He tried to show off by skating backwards, but lost his balance and fell, making you shriek. You moved toward him quickly, and held out your hands to help him up.

“Are you alright?” You asked, and he nodded, biting back a smile.

“I’m fine, I’m okay.”

You decided you’d had enough then, and the two of you resorted to eating pizza at a parlor down the street, Bucky insisting on you needing dinner before you went home. You shivered as you stepped into the air-conditioned restaurant, coming out of the warm summer evening. Bucky slipped his black leather jacket from his arms and put it on you when he noticed. You whispered a soft thank-you, pulling it tightly around your smaller body. It smelled faintly of smoke and castile soap, like him.

Bucky couldn’t take his eyes off of the sight of you wearing his clothes, his heart stirring as you hugged it around you.

“Feel better?” Bucky asked as you bit into a slice of pizza.

“I’m not going to let you take credit for loosening me up.”

“Oh, I haven’t even tried to loosen you up yet.” He joked, making you choke on your water. You glared at him for the suggestive comment, and he smirked.

You blushed at the insinuation, images of intimacy with Bucky flashing through your mind. He didn’t take his eyes off of you, and you shifted under his gaze.

“Smartass. You still abducted me.”

“And you’re enjoying it.”

You took another bite of your pizza, finally breaking the intense eye contact.

Even though you had enjoyed the night with Bucky in the city, and you’d gone home full of butterflies, he had quickly managed to get back on your nerves.

Bucky’s friends came over to party, and they were loud, obnoxious, and kept you (and half the neighbourhood) up with their partying the night before you had a presentation at college. You were infuriated when you complained to Bucky, and he told you that you should’ve just come to party with them, since you were up anyways.

Then there was the fact that Bucky kept revving the engine of his damned motorcycle. You hated it, especially early in the morning when you were trying to peacefully trying to pour a cup of coffee.

You couldn’t stand him, and he just made you mad.

You hated his motorcycle, and you hated his arrogance. You hated how everyone dropped to their knees at his every whim. You hated when you’d see him painting his fence or working on his car outside, and he’d pull his shirt off when he saw you looking. You hated that Bucky smoked.

Mostly, you hated how everything Bucky did gave you butterflies.

Bucky adored the way your brow knit together when you glared at him. He adored the blush of your cheeks and the way you huffed in annoyance. He loved to see your eyes glitter with emotion whenever he got under your skin. He adored the way your eyes lingered on him whenever he was shirtless in the yard.

Bucky adored you.

The night was particularly warm. The summer heat had everyone on edge, and you and Bucky were no exception. The moon was the only light in the starless sky, a dark stillness settling over your neighbourhood. It was incredibly late, but you couldn’t sleep like everyone else. You had been enjoying the quiet loneliness of the night when Bucky had gone outside to the sidewalk. He was shirtless as he lit a cigarette, grinning at you.

“Hey, doll.”

“Don’t call me that,” you huffed, feeling like a broken record.

“C’mon, don’t be like that,” he blew smoke into the air, and you stood up off your porch swing. You walked across your small lawn quickly, until you were standing in the street.

“You shouldn’t smoke, it will kill you,” you quipped, making him roll his eyes.

“Don’t stand in the street, a car can come and kill you.” Bucky said back, though there was a tone of seriousness to his voice.

“It’s the middle of the night, no one is going to-”

Bucky suddenly grabbed you and yanked you toward him, making you shriek. Less than half a second later, a car without its headlights on came flying down the street.

Your eyes were wide with fright, unable to process that Bucky had just pulled you from in front of a car. His eyes blazed with emotion, and you tried to shove off of him.

“You almost fucking died! I told you not to stand in the damned street!” Bucky snapped at you, raising his voice.

“Don’t yell at me! I wouldn’t have been in the street if you weren’t such an asshole!” you shouted back, your eyes and throat burning, making your entire body tremble.

“Why are you so fucking difficult?!” Bucky’s fear at seeing you almost get hit by a car in front of him fueled his emotion, and he didn’t mean to yell at you, but the feelings were boiling over.

“Because you make me so mad, and because I love you, you idiot!” You screamed before you could stop yourself. When you said the words out loud, you realized you meant them, more than you meant any of the anger.

There was a deafening silence, and it was too late to take it back.

“Bucky, I-” you stammered, but he cut you off by crashing his lips against yours, pulling you into him.

Passion lit like a fire between you, and you reached up and held his face, kissing him back with force. You parted your lips and he slipped his tongue into your mouth, moving in sync with you, swallowing your small noises. He cradled your jaw as his mouth moved with yours, drawing you even closer.

The heat practically suffocated you, and you were completely lost in Bucky. He tasted like smoke and coffee, and his body was pressed against your own, overwhelming you with need. His hands slid down to squeeze your ass, and you rolled your hips against his as you moaned.

“I love you, Y/N,” he whispered when the two of you finally broke for air. He wasted no time before mouthing along your jaw, pressing kisses down the column of your throat.

Your hands ran down his toned chest, before hooking your fingers in his belt loops and tugging his hips closer against yours, wanting to feel him hardening against you. The heat between your legs was spreading, and you were aching for him.

Bucky groaned against your neck as you ground against him, and he backed you up against his car, needing to ground the two of you. He could hear your small, breathy pants by his ear and you were practically shaking with need.

“Bucky, please touch me,” you begged, months of sexual frustration pouring out all at once. Who was he to deny you? He kissed you deeply, and you wrapped your arms around his neck, pressing him against your front.

Your breath hitched when he slipped his hand into your waistband, cupping your sex. You spread your legs a bit, and he slipped his fingers through your folds, tracing the shape of you.

He hardened at the sound of your soft moans and the feeling of you twitching against his fingertips. Neither of you cared that you were outside, on display for anyone who woke up in the night.

He found your clit, stroking it softly while you made out, swallowing all of your sexy noises. You were overwhelmed by what he could do with just his fingers, and you somehow needed him closer, even though your bodies were pressed against each other. Your body was buzzing with pleasure from his small touches alone, and you were having the same effect on him.

“Fuck, Bucky,” you breathed, lightly biting down on his shoulder to silence yourself as he eased a finger inside of you. He pumped slowly, and you took him in easily with how turned on you were.

“I know, doll, but I gotta warm you up first so I don’t hurt you.” He kissed your jaw, and a short laugh escaped you.

“Cheeky,” you hummed, palming over his crotch, making him push two fingers into you all at once. The air caught in your throat, but you kept feeling him up as he curled his fingers forward into your g-spot.

The way you were moaning his name was driving him wild, and he couldn’t draw out the foreplay anymore. You pulled your shirt over your head, thankful you had forgone a bra. Your shirt was discarded in the driveway, and Bucky tugged your bottoms down easily before lifting your nude body up onto the hood of his car. You leaned forward, undoing the button on his jeans and helping him out of them, your eyes widening when you saw how big he was.

Bucky grinned at you, able to read your mind, your thoughts evident in your startled expression. His ego definitely didn’t need the boost, and you blushed when you realized he was grinning at your observation.

Your tongue nervously darted out over your lips, and he couldn’t take it anymore. He lowered you to lay down on the cool metal, making you shudder when it came into contact with your hot skin.

You exhaled softly as his hands skimmed down your body in an attempt to ease your nerves. He leaned down and kissed you gently, bending your legs up to your chest.

“I’m going to make you feel so good, doll,” Bucky promised, and he meant it. You nodded, your head falling back as he slowly rocked into you.

Your vision focused in on the moon hanging above you in the sky, and you didn’t care about being outside, even as the warm breeze ruffled your hair.

“Bucky... fuck,” you whined, arching your back, pushing yourself further onto him. Your knees went over his shoulders, his hands coming to rest on either side of your head as he rocked his hips against yours.

The slow, deep rhythm had you struggling to breathe, pleasure rolling through your body in thick waves. Bucky was overwhelmed by the feeling of your velvety walls squeezing around him, tight as he fucked into you all the way.

“That’s my girl,” Bucky praised you as you pushed down to meet his powerful thrusts.

Your eyes rolled back at the praise, and you felt pressure building low in your belly as he repeatedly hit the spots inside of you that had you seeing stars. You were moaning his name and writhing below him, the sight making him nearly explode.

“Y/N,” Bucky gasped out, fucking into you roughly, one of his hands rubbing your clit to help you along before he couldn’t fight off his own orgasm any longer.

With the added stimulation, the pressure snapped inside of you, making you squeeze around him and come with a scream, not caring if you stirred the neighbours.

Let them see Bucky taking you on the hood of his car.

Your name fell from Bucky’s lips like worship, the feeling of your orgasm washing over you and forcing you to contract around him pushed him over the edge. He came inside of you, painting you with his release and prolonging your own pleasure.

You looked down at him once the buzzing pleasure started to subside, a sleepy smile on your face. He grinned at you, pulling you up into a sweet kiss.

“Still hate me, doll?”

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fruitcoops · 3 years ago

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So this is sort of similar to the people writing fanfic about the lions but can you imagine the YouTube edits? Like the videos that are just "Cap having heart eyes for Loops for 10 minutes straight" or "Loops lovingly dragging Caps name through the mud for 3 minutes" like those kinds of things and I can just imagine them doing reaction videos and it just being funny and the world just loving coops

Okay so this wasn't a specific fic request but I got carried away with imagining videos and....here you go. SW credit goes to @lumosinlove, but Grace and Anna are mine! Bonus points to anyone who remembers the easter egg in this one!

Message From: Gracie

ANNA HOLY SHIT

Anna frowned at her phone screen, squinting to read around the spiderweb crack decorating the upper corner. She had tried to convince herself that it was cool, goth, edgy, but in the end she had to admit that it was just irritating. In a tragic turn of events, packing tape couldn’t fix everything.

Message To: Gracie

Wtf did I do

Two weeks of radio silence, then unexplained accusations. Anna shook her head as the grey bubble disappeared for a third time and turned back to her computer. Grace may have been her favorite cousin—and favorite person, if she was being honest—but very few things came between Anna and video editing. Especially editing for a Lions meme video. She had a whole 2,341 followers to attend to, after all.

Message From: Gracie

DID YOU SEE THE FUCKING INTERVIEW???

Message To: Gracie

Wow thank you so helpful

Message From: Gracie

Skip to 2:45 bestie

A link popped up just as Anna cut a segment from the sleep study video, where Loops’ heart eyes were in full effect. It was a rare, precious find for fan editors like herself.

“Come on,” she groaned. Maybe introducing Grace to the deepest parts of her hockey obsession was a mistake. But, really, what else was she supposed to do when she learned her cousin, who didn’t even live in Gryffindor, got to meet her favorite players just by chilling in a café? What kind of cosmic joke was that?

She narrowed her eyes at the embed of the link, then stifled a shriek. Impossible. How had she missed an upload?

As if on cue, her computer pinged with a new notification from the Lion Pride channel. “Oh, fuck me,” she muttered, scrambling to save her half-done video and pressing play.

The interviewer asked basic questions, ones she had heard the answers to a million times while curating her content. It always felt funny to hear people refer to Cap as ‘Sirius’—it was too official, too formal. She had spent countless hours on the compilations of his softer moments, and they were her most popular videos. Cap Having Heart Eyes for Loops for 10 Minutes Gay. Cap Being an Actual Puppy for Six and a Half Minutes. Everyone Wanting Cap Cuddles for Fifteen Minutes. Every Time Cap Smiles When Someone Mentions His Godson. The list was endless. She loved it.

She did a silent fist pump when she saw the interviewer had snagged both Cap and Loops; that would give her a whole new stream of workable content. If she was lucky, she could expand on her series of Loops Lovingly Roasting His Friends, part…fuck it, who was even counting anymore?

Anna was so caught up in her excitement that she nearly forgot about Grace’s suggestion. I’ve never skipped through a video on the first watch before, she thought hesitantly. But maybe just this once…

Her cursor hovered over the 2:45mark. She closed her eyes, and clicked it.

“—have you been adjusting to life as a celebrity?” the interviewer asked. Anna nearly rolled her eyes when Loops laughed. That question had been used far too often to be interesting anymore.

“It’s had its ups and downs,” Loops said with a smile. “Mostly, though, the fans have been incredible and just knocked my socks off with their support.”

“Really? What’s your favorite part of the Lions fanbase?”

He didn’t miss a beat. “Their creativity, for sure. There was a video a while back where we reacted to some of the comments people left, and this person on Twitter made an absolutely beautiful collage of photos.”

“I have it saved to my phone,” Sirius added.

One more clip for the simp video. Anna made a note on the small corner space of her European History notes. The degree can wait for ten more minutes.

“Do you have a favorite creator?”

The interviewer was clearly teasing, but Loops’ smile was genuine. “I don’t know about a favorite, but there’s this person on YouTube who makes a shit ton of videos and they’re hysterical. I saw one the other day about—god, what was it again?”

“Every time I smile when people mention Harry,” Sirius answered around a laugh. “Can you blame me?”

Anna didn’t hear the next question. A ringing noise filled her ears as she sat, frozen, on her shitty dorm mattress and listened to her literal heroes talk about her dorky little channel. “Holy fuck,” she blurted after a moment of silence. “Holy fuck.”

“—subscribed?” The man’s voice snapped her back to reality.

“Of course I am!” Loops said. “You think I’m passing up a chance to watch a compilation of my friends making stupid decisions for the entire internet to see?”

A noise that would have been a shriek if Anna had any breath left in her body escaped her lungs; she clamped a hand over her mouth and shakily exited from the video before going to her YouTube account. 800 new notifications. 700 new followers in the last quarter hour. She was pretty sure she blacked out for a second from sheer shock and joy.

Message To: Gracie

What

Message From: Gracie

You’re famous!

Message To: Gracie

What

Message From: Gracie

I bet he knows your stuff better than he remembers me tbh

“They know me,” she whispered, staring at her computer. The unfinished video showed a perfect frame of Loops’ soft smile as he watched Cap get his toothbrush stuck in his pajama shirt. Somehow, the thought was both exhilarating and horrifying. What if they thought she was a creep? She wasn’t, not really, just a bored college student with not enough free time for a job but too much to keep herself busy with schoolwork. Her 2,341—no, 3,052—followers were just other hockey nerds looking for time to kill.

And the subject of those videos was one of her subscribers.

Anna slipped her headphones back on and began to edit like it was her last day on earth. Her fingers flew across the keyboard on muscle memory while her brain fizzed. Perfect, she thought. It has to be perfect.

In four hours, it was done. She sat back, panting, then hunched over again and began tapping out a title card.

Hello. Idk if anyone saw the new Lion Pride video today (linked below if anyone wants to see why I’m dying right now) but apparently Remus Lupin is subscribed to this channel and has been for a while.

Hi Loops. I’m Anna. You met my cousin once and she said she liked your sweater.

Now that that’s out of the way, please enjoy the next five minutes of our new rookie being the sappiest mf in existence (except for his fiancé). Mr. Lupin, please tell Hattie I say hello.

She pressed upload, peeled her headphones off, and collapsed backward on her bed.

Message To: Gracie

If I die here, tell the world I did it doing what I loved

Message From: Gracie

Will do

OH FUCK YOU FOR BRINGING UP THE SWEATER I SOUND LIKE A CREEP

Anna covered her itchy eyes with her forearm and settled in for a long, long nap. Her brain still needed to repair a few circuits.

#remus lupin #sirius black #coops #anna #grace #sweater weather #lumosinlove #my fic #fanfic #ocs #hattie #lion pride

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whump-town · 3 years ago

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Counting Down The Days

The real kicker here is that I don't even like Christmas and I don't know at all why I thought of this...

Fluff, not really sad

No Pairings

Spencer has never liked Christmas.

As a child, December rolled in and cast over the city an impossible task. His thin wrist grabbed as he tucked pudding into his sweater and his ears tugged at when he bolted for the door, knowing getting caught one more time would mean child protective services would come back. And each time he picked his mother up off the floor, every time he tucked himself in the coat closet to try and hide from her wailing and shouting, he knew they would see through the veil. His mother wouldn’t survive having him taken away. No one else can get her to take her medication. No one else could read her books in their original forms. German and Arabic and Spanish. And what was the point in reading Don Quixote except to do so in the original Spanish?

But not getting caught shoplifting in December, when all of the staff of every store was watching for just that, is impossible. December met icy cold fingers dragging through his stomach and lying to his mother that he had eaten something while he made her ramen. He can go one more day but she can’t take her meds on an empty stomach.

As an adult, these things have changed drastically. Christmas is great. He really can’t complain. He loves dressing up for Dave’s fancy dinner and turning into a bragging point. The feeling of Dave’s heavy arm around his shoulders, showing him off to his friends. Finally being able to understand what it must feel like to have a parent bragging about you to other adults, even if at a certain point they’re just trying to show up to their friends. That doesn’t change the flush in his cheeks or how nice he feels smiling and stuttering around an explanation of his PhDs. Stomach twisted up and cheeks hurting when Dave finally leans in and relieves the guests with a “see? Kids so damn smart I don’t even understand what he got a degree in!”

He misses Morgan and Hotch.

They’ll come around for Christmas, he knows.

Hank is getting so big and he’s carrying on the tradition of all of Spencer’s other nephews and calling him “weed” but there’s nothing like that big baby smile when he comes in through the door. Tottling steps and an armful of baby. It just makes him want his own kids but for now, he’s content with his nephews. Jack calls him a lot. He got the ability to do math from somewhere but certainly not from his parents -- Haley was an English major and Hotch uses a calculator for basic math. So Reid is generally the only person that he knows who can talk math. Christmas will bring Henry and Jack home from college. There’s speak of a boyfriend but Emily knows only minimally about this from what she’s heard from Hotch and what Jack has told Hotch is also minimal at best. Henry is… JJ gets a lot of radio silence from him but Hotch is quick to assure her that is just typical. Jack did the same thing but now he’s a senior in college and Hotch is lucky if he goes three consecutive hours without some sort of text or call.

“Who is my doctor at home?”

“Do you think Uncle Derek can change my oil? Wait, can I go that long without checking it?”

“What year was Aunt Jessica born? Don’t tell her I asked you that.”

“How old are you again? 53? 60?”

Spencer is just excited to have everyone under one roof.

Hotch and Emily grew up under the kind of parties that Dave throws for Christmas. Tokens to be shown off by their parents and ignored under every other circumstance. Both having been shipped off at least once during their childhoods when they no longer fit a certain look. Emily was no longer young enough to attract her mother’s friends, breast a little too formed, and acne that could not be tamed. Hotch with shadows of bruises that would not heal. Dead eyes that no longer raised from the floor.

Dave’s parties bring out the worst in them. Emily is a very bad influence on Hotch and together they have considerable tolerance for alcohol, they can do some damage. But they’re not loud. Spencer loves to watch the two of them, the way they ease into the night. Hotch warm now, his edges softened to pleased little smiles and thoughtful hums. Emily is chatty, leans into touch, and stretches out like a cat bathing in the sun. The night ends with their soft arguing. Spencer could butt in at any time to the subjects that they talk about but he finds himself far more content to sit and watch. Emily’s toes tucked under Hotch’s thigh and his head turned on the sofa, lazily listening to her speak.

They always approach every subject as if it’s the simplest thing. Let it be Marx, spending the hours in front of Dave’s parlor fire speaking in hushed tones about surplus-value and what makes a commodity. About the ins and outs of Cormac Mccarthy, Hotch loves The Sunset Limited and Emily does not. Whitney Houston and how poor Hotch’s Spanish is and if that’s his fault or hers.

Garcia loves the parties even if it does create a little cognitive dissonance for her. Her parents would hate this but she feels pretty in her gown and no one lets her forget it. She keeps track of the kisses placed on her cheeks. Derek smelling of something woodsy as he leans in with a wink, “you’re very beautiful this even, mama.” And Savannah smells warm and inviting and she gives the very best hugs. “Green,” she whispers, “is very much your color.” How Hotch hums along to songs and always gives in to her request for one dance, his smile growing wild as she steps on his toes.

And Spencer loves that she always asks him to match her. So he’ll proudly come in with his matching bowtie or pocket square. Lending her his elbow as they step in, stepping just out of the way that the right people come to greet him and no one else. Morgan is warm and tight, always squeezing just a little too hard. JJ fussing with his hair.

But it’s only September.

He’ll have to pass through Halloween. Jack and Henry are too old these days to run through the bullpen dressed as whatever fictive hero they have grown obsessed with this fall. Coming up to his desk knowing he’s hidden the largest bowl of candy, that he’ll sneak into their pockets whole-sized candy bars to eat as they trick or treat. At best he might get some pre-game pictures from them both, neither having grown out of their love for Halloween. Jack is still very into dressing up but Henry will still throw something together.

There will be Thanksgiving, a holiday choppily shared between them all. Just showing up at Dave’s randomly or Morgan’s depending on who wins that argument this year. He’ll be lucky to see them all under the same roof. If it’s at Dave’s then he’s guaranteed warm and cozy Hotch and Emily. Both bothering Dave in the kitchen, their lost childhoods always burning the brightest around one another, and exasperating Dave. Maybe Garcia will win her favorite game and Dave will teach her to cook whatever he’s decided they’ll have this year. If it’s at Derek’s then at least he’ll get to see Hank. JJ and Savannah will be there, they’re pretty good friends. Garcia will certainly be cooking something and Derek will be manning the grill.

But it’s months out until December.

And all Spencer wants is unabashed affection.

Dave’s arm around his shoulder and his high sung praises.

Emily snagging him up to dance to “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” and kissing his cheek for the trouble.

To see Matt and Luke interact with the team. Dave’s attention turning to point out his other boys, “knuckleheads but they mean well”. How Tara will take up the empty space left on the couch and butt into Hotch and Emily’s argument, turning warm and comforting like the other two. And Spencer can’t wait to see how similar the three of them are-- you just have to see through the layers.

Until it’s nearly two in the morning.

Jack and Henry are missing, Luke thinks he might have seen them on the back porch.

Emily is sleeping, head in Tara’s lap and feet in Hotch’s. The other two blinking slowly into the fire, glasses of wine warm in their hands and dangerously close to falling.

Matt is sitting on the floor, children spread out around him.

There’s the buzz of conversation still coming from the kitchen. Garcia, JJ, Savannah, and Kristy giggling over wine and gossip they’re certainly not supposed to know.

Spencer looks up at the calendar sitting above his desk and crosses off the day.

He always hated December. He never got to appreciate Christmas. They represented everything he didn’t have, all the things he thought he could never have. But as mid-September leaves a crisp edge to the air, he finds himself counting down the days tell what used to be a measure of his insignificance.

Now it’s the only day that seems to matter. The only day he feels like he matters. Surrounded by the warmth of familiarity. By love.

He misses his family.

#criminal minds #criminal minds fanfiction #spencer reid #emily prentiss #penelope garcia #savannah morgan #derek morgan #aaron hotchner #jack hotchner #david rossi

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bixisarusher · 4 years ago

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Bix Reviews: Call Me Kat (Season 1, FOX 2021)

I thought a lot about how I feel about this show, and there are lots of words, so it’s gonna go under the cut.

In summary: I didn’t enjoy it quite as much as I hoped to, and i discuss why I think that was. BUT there are great things in this remake, and I want to name them as well!

There are two ways to look at Call Me Kat: As it’s own thing, and as a Miranda remake. As a Miranda Hart stan, I’ll have a lot more to say about the latter, so let’s start with the show itself.

On It’s Own

That felt appropriate, nvm me

It’s a cute show. It’s not a groundbreaking concept, and it’s not re-inventing the genre, but it has some really good things going for it:

Kat is happy and confident in her quirks, but doesn’t have it all together - so she has room to grow and is very sympathetic, all the while encouraging the viewer to celebrate their own quirks. Lovely! Also Mayim is a treasure and it’s great to watch her perform.

The show openly discusses “taboo” topics, like using anti-depressants and their side-effects, freezing your eggs, comparing yourself to a hallucinated version of your crush’s ex... The show isn’t a trailblazer, (partly because there have been many great shows in the last couple years) but I thinks it’s awesome to see them further treading out the ground and normalizing these topics.

It has a nice set of characters that go through their indepent stories, I found myself excited for any new episode and enjoying the varying storylines. (Most of them Randi.)

And, although the last episode dragged it right back into the romantic territory, Kat has a genuine friendship with Max and I value that a lot. Neither of them harbours secret feelings, instead they are open and honest about it. The only thing they overdid here was to have an exchange of “Do you remember, when we were in college together and [blank] happened?” in at least every other episode.

Another thing on the down side: Neither the writers nor Mayim seem to fully know what to do with the fourth wall breaks. I don’t mind the thing, it just doesn’t feel fully rounded out - like how much they want to use it, what purpose it really has, ...

I think it’s due to the circumstances of the filming (pandemic restrictions and all), but more on that later. So much for the show itself.

As a remake

First of all: Do I love Jim Parsons for looking at this absurd british gem of a TV show and deciding “the world needs more stuff like this”? Absolutely! Because I agree! There were two or three moments that leaned on Miranda a little too much for their own good, but overall: it is content inspired by Miranda, but neither correcting, it nor copying it. More power to this concept.

More power to celebrating the silly joys in this live, to celebrate not being normal, more power to amazing friendships and women who find their own path. Call Me Kat does all of these things.

However, it doesn’t quite live up to it’s Mothership. Let me elaborate.

There is a myriad of reasons why Miranda works and I will not attempt to list them. However there’s one thing that does stand out to me in the original, and that I really miss in the adaptation: Miranda didn’t just write “a plot” and salt it with “a few jokes”. She carefully built tensions and different storylines to culminate together. Sometimes it’s a funny word that the character hears in the first act, and later nervously blurts out in the wrong moment. Sometimes it’s a parade of characters she met through the episode that all meet in one spot at the end. Or there is a throw away comment in the beginning of an episode that sets up a revelation toward the end.

I could swarm you with examples, a good one is in 1x03 Job: trying to impress Tilly, trying to deny waitressing, and then: the multiple “You weed in a ball pool?” and Gary in uniform walking in right on time to sell the lie about being an undercover commander. Another one of my personal favorites is in 2x04 A New Low, when Miranda in the end tells Gary that he lost her trust, and he’ll “never get to see her naked sweep” - and then he find’s the portrait Tamara did of Miranda’s “naked sweep”. Just hit’s right.

That is a testament to how well crafted the episodes are. In Call Me Kat? All Nighter and Gym had moments like that, and Double Date very early on set up Kat’s dream to use the sound system, but it just never reached that same level of mastermind.

But, in defense of CMK: Miranda was crafted over ten years with a full of 20 episodes airing (21 if you count the radio series) and the cast worked together a good year before they filmed the first series of 6 episodes. Compared to that, work on Call me Kat started around 2018, the cast was assembled in the first half of 2020 and started shooting in late October. They then shot 13 episodes in their first season. (which is more than half of the total episodes of Miranda, just saying) Sources: english wikipedia articles for Miranda and Call Me Kat, as well as Mayim’s Youtube. (Jep I did research for this.)

Also the CMK episodes were written and directed by a variety of people, while the Miranda episodes have all been at least co-written by Miranda Hart and all except for the last two were directed by Juliet May.

These are - as much as I as a humble consumer with a bit of wikipedia knowledge know - basic differences about how shows are made in the UK vs. in the US, and neither formula is any way of guarantee for the quality of the final product. However I think somewhere in those facts is the reason why the Miranda ship feels a lot more in shape and ... coherent. The pilot that we know and love is the fourth time they recorded the script, and I don’t even want to know how many times the script had been edited in between. The cast knew each other well, the material had been tested in front of multiple audiences. Call Me Kat had neither of these luxuries. On the contrary, CMK has been put together under restrictions due to the pandemic.

So on the one hand, I am majorly grateful that this show even got to see the light of day! That means that a full cast and crew had jobs in these trying times, and it means that we were provided with good entertainement.

On the other hand, the circumstances are showing in the final product. The cast had an awkward chemistry with each other, and the comedic timing, though not horrible, could have been a lot better.

This may be an unpopular opinion, but I think studio audiences can be a blessing. There is something about the actors having a genuine connection to real time observers that helps me as a screen audience connect to it. And for this staged multicam show that includes glances at the camera? I think a real audience would have grounded the concept. And it would have given the team a direct feedback as to which moments were working comedically and which weren’t.

What I’m trying to say is: they had big shoes to fill, and the odds were not really in their favor, and so it doesn’t really hold up in comparison.

That’s sad. But that doesn’t mean that it’s a horrible show. As I said in the beginning, I love that this show is done in the spirit of Miranda, even if it’s not just as good.

I have no idea how the show’s chances are to get a second season. If they do get renewed - I’ll keep watching.

-----

Now, let me finish with a few gifs that I feel like they can be applied to the whole “they remade Miranda and it went both ok and less then ok but at least the word is being spread, right?”-situation.

because Kat/Max is good but could anything ever be Miranda/Gary?

Not really...

ok that one’s a bit rude. but you thought it, too.

Jim turning in bed at night overthinking if Mayim was the right choice. But she was. Much like Stevie was for Miranda.

Honestly a very good part of the remake is Mayim and Cheyenne performing together! I personally think this moment above is responsible.

Trying to match the CMK characters to the Miranda characters like: I thought Phil is supposed to be the Customer but turns out Phil originally was supposed to a Phillys? So Phil is Stevie, but then who is Randi? Tilly? So many questions.

And with that, dear Caller, back to you.

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prepperjournal · 4 years ago

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Building Your Survival Food Pantry

When I was a child, we had a bomb shelter. My parents didn’t build it – it was there when they bought the house. But they did stock it with what they believed to be the most important survival items, should we ever get “hit.” I remember several battery-operated items – radio, flashlights, and such – and of course, clothing and bedding in a trunk. But then there were the food and drink items - our survival food pantry. There were all sorts of canned goods, of course, and large bottles of water (only glass in those days). Foods that normally came in boxes (e.g., cereal and powdered milk) were put into glass jars. Times have changed. Now that we have plastic and bagged items with long shelf lives, bomb shelter food would look very different today (except for the powdered milk, I suppose, which I always hated). And there are plenty of ways to keep food items water-proof. A nuclear event is not the only disaster for which we need to be prepared these days. Earthquakes, fires, floods, hurricanes, and tornadoes are all on the rise, as well as real threats from people both within and outside our country. Then there are blizzards, pandemics, and long-term power outages as we recently saw in Texas. And the Boy Scout motto of “Be Prepared” should still guide our preparedness. So, let’s take a look at what a survival food pantry should look like today. Whether we face a short-term or long-term disaster, it is best to plan for a long-term food and water shortage at the onset. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9J31WXxAEwY Survival Food Pantry Basics – The List - Water: It’s the “rules of threes” here. You can survive three minutes without oxygen, 3 days without water, and three months without food. If you are breathing, then water is the next priority. If you are planning a pantry for “bug-in” survival, you will want between ½ - 1 gallon of water per day, per person. This also presupposes that, if you have a means of cooking, you may use some water. And there is personal hygiene to think of too. In short, water must be your top priority. If the public water supply is disrupted, then any tap water will have to be purified once that supply is restored. A few drops of household bleach per gallon will do the trick and save you from the necessity of boiling if your power is out. If you are thinking in terms of a “bug-out” survival, water will be too heavy to carry. What you want instead is a water collection device and filters. And, if you have access to wood and bring matches, boiling water is always an option here. FIFO Can Tracker | Stores 54 cans | Rotates First in First Out | Canned Goods Organizer for Cupboard, Pantry and Cabinet | Food Storage | Organize Your Kitchen | Made in USA - Organize Your Food Pantry - Our patent designed FIFO Can Tracker keeps your kitchen organized by storing and rotating your canned goods on a First In First Out model saving you from expired food cost and waste! Designed to store cans from 4 to 15 ounces. Perfect for diced chili cans, soup cans or standard vegetable cans. Holds up to 54 cans. Perfect to organize your food storage. - Sturdy Design - Made in the USA, this product is built to last and will be a permanent solution to your kitchen organization problem. Easily connect multiple units together to expand your storage. - Easy Installation - Put together in just minutes following a simple 4 step process. - Fits on Existing Shelves - Product dimensions are 12" H x 16" W x 16" D allowing you to organize your pantry, cabinet and cupboard. - 100% Customer Satisfaction Guarantee - If you are not satisfied with your purchase and feel this product has not solved your pantry organization problem simply return for a full refund. $38.99 Buy on Amazon - Canned Goods: These are absolute staples if you are sheltered in place in your home. And they will provide a variety of foods so that you don’t face “food boredom.” Think in terms of canned meats, beans (a great source of protein), fish, fruits, and veggies. Variety is the key here so that you and your family members have choices. And these can be eaten without cooking. After all, your instant pot may not be an option right now. Canned soups are a great option if you buy those that are not concentrated. They can be eaten right out of the can without the need for water or cooking. Ensure you have a good rotation plan also. - Food in Jars: Here’s where the advent of plastic comes in. There’s a huge list of food and drink that now comes in plastic jars that prevent breakage and are less in weight. Think peanut butter and jelly; think bottled juices; think fruits. They, too, have long shelf lives and can provide a good variety. - Snacks: Snacks can provide a bit of a respite from the boredom that comes from lack of electricity and Wi-Fi. Crackers and chips come boxed and bagged. If humidity is an issue, then it can be stored in plastic bags. They have a long shelf-life and will not have to be “changed out” too often. Dips are obviously out to “dress up” these items, but there are freeze-dried meats that will do, as well as peanut butter. If you can’t cook popcorn is out, but nuts are not. Stock up on a good variety. - Dried Foods: These were not around when I was a kid, but just go through any grocery store and look at all the possibilities. There are dried fruits and meats galore – everything from jerkies to fruit leather, to banana chips. Stock up on plenty of these – lightweight and nutritious. - Granola Bars: I put these in a separate category because they are a source of almost every nutrient we need – protein, carbs, a bit of fat, and even that need for something sweet. If you should have to “bug out,” they are lightweight, have a long shelf life, and can provide the energy you will need. Look for those that are high in protein – this provides long-term energy, while carbs and sugars are only for the short-term. - About that Powdered Milk: Fortunately, powdered milk now comes in cans, as opposed to those traditional boxes. You do not have to take measures to protect it from water damage. When reconstituted with water, it can be used on cereal and for cooking (e.g., mashed potatoes) if you have an alternative cooking method during power outages. If you have children who cannot tolerate the taste, then have a supply of canned chocolate or strawberry syrup to “sweeten the deal.” - Pasta, Rice, Noodles: These can be temporarily filling because of their carb content. But here’s the thing: they must be cooked, and that will require using your supply of water. If you are sheltered in place with your public water supply still available, then all is good. You can cook these up as much as you wish. But if your water supply is cut off, or you have to use alternative methods for cooking, these are probably not good options. Still, put them in your pantry on the chance that they can be prepared. - The Debate About Couscous: Yes, this is a type of pasta, made from small grains of a specific type of wheat flour. The beauty of it is that it is steamed rather than boiled and takes far less water to cook. Unlike traditional pasta, couscous cooks in about two minutes. On the other hand, it is extremely high in gluten. So, if you have family members with gluten sensitivity, it is not an option. Planning for Long-Term Survival in Place As mentioned above, your food pantry should be planned for long-term survival, even if an immediate event is only short-term. Our goal for long-term survival in place is to have those food items that: - Provide solid nutrition - Can be prepared using as little fuel and water as possible - Will be “damage-proof” - Are as compact as possible - Have a variety of flavors and consistencies, so that “food boredom” doesn’t set in Here are some things to think about as you stock that survival food pantry: - Avoid dried beans. While they are a great source of protein, they take lots of water and fuel to cook. Items like navy beans and great northern beans now come in cans. Opt for that alternative. - Water is still the highest priority. Have ½ - 1 gallon per person per day for about a month. Beyond that, you will need a water-collection device/process and water filters to purify that water. - Rely on canned goods as much as possible, but remember they have lots of sodium and sugar, so are not as healthy as other options. - Freeze-dried fruits and veggies are a must. They don’t take up much space, and they are sources of essential nutrients and antioxidants. They are also important to keep your intestinal functions operating properly. You will get the right amounts of vitamins and minerals through these freeze-dried items. - Honey has no shelf-life. It can last forever. Have lots of it to use as a sweetener, and it does come in plastic containers. - Instant oatmeal packets. Place these in plastic bags to preen water damage. They are reconstituted with a small amount of water and heat. Use honey for sweeteners. While sugar lasts forever too, it does not have the health benefits of honey and is susceptible to humidity. - A variety of oils can add “spice” and flavor to foods. And most come in plastic containers now. If you can cook, use them liberally. They are caloric heavy and can provide energy as well as better taste. - Ramen: This is a common survival food for college students on tight budgets, but there are survival benefits too. They are good sources of carbs and take only a small amount of water to cook. - Freeze-dried and dried meats: these can last over a year. - Canned tuna in oil: perfect source of protein and Omega-3. - Granola and protein bars: Perfect for snacks and well-rounded nutrition. One Keynote here: make certain that all foods that are packaged in boxes or paper-type containers are stored in water-proof packaging, such as mylar bags that are vacuum-sealed. If You have to bug out When you have to evacuate, you face unique challenges. Of course, you cannot drag jugs of water and canned goods in backpacks. A wheeled cart is certainly a short-term solution, but it will not house everything you may need for a long-term bug-out situation. Your options are limited, so focus on these items: - A water collection device and filters - Survival Matches - Flashlights with new batteries or headlamps - Fully lightweight nutrition bars and other freeze-dried items You Can do This... Planning ahead is the best scenario for survival. Water and food are key factors in that planning. Make a list of items for both short and long-term survival, get to your grocery store and other retailers with the right supplies and equipment. You can be prepared for any disaster, and that brings a lot of peace of mind. Author’s bio. Jessica Fender is a professional writer and educational blogger. Jessica enjoys sharing her ideas to make writing and learning fun. You can check her last review here. Read the full article

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shiberpostshere · 5 years ago

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The Kiss Thief - Park Seonghwa Social Media AU

7. Chapter Three: Dark History Reunion✨ (Text below images)

Previous Part✨ Next Part✨

Masterlist of the AU✨

The Next Day (05.09.19)✨

The moment Jongho entered Cafe Utopia, he could feel the intimidating energy coming from the table where the much praised music technology senior, Kim Hongjoong and his friend are seated. The person who he texted yesterday, Seonghwa, is missing.

Thanks to San and Wooyoung, he now has an opportunity to befriend them.

He approaches them with heavy steps without realising how aggressive-nervous he's appearing on the outside, the expression that Yeri always mimics to mock him.

They greet him with inviting smiles. The other guy, in burgundy red sweater and black beanie, Yeosang, scriptwriter, offers him the script to read. However, the only thing he can focus on is Kim Hongjoong's mullet.

How can he even pull off a mullet like that? Is it real?

"Your voice sounds bold and clean." Hongjoong leans towards his clasped fingers, a gentle smile on his lips, "You seem a little nervous at the moment but we have enough time to practice."

Yeosang nods, "He has a great control over his voice. I feel like we've finally found someone who'll do my script justice."

Jongho's shoulders rise up with confidence.

"Wait, thank you but does it mean I get to be the announcer?" He looks expectantly at the duo.

Hongjoong settles back, adjusting his glasses. "Of course! I'm honestly surprised at how quickly I could decide."

Yeosang pushes the script further towards Jongho. "Take it with you and practice as much as you can, we'll have discussions and rehearsals before our first show."

"Thank you so much for this opportunity!" He bows gratefully, eyes glinting with happiness.

Hongjoong and Yeosang exchange glances and giggle making Jongho squeeze his brows in confusion.

"You look adorable for someone so well built but you're so tense, relax." Hongjoong winks.

"He IS cute." Yeosang adds.

Jongho is taken aback by their sudden compliments. "I just feel excited to work with you all, I've heard so many good things about you." He confesses.

Hongjoong waves his hand in the air. "The professor only tells you the good things, he doesn't reveal that I don't get enough sleep, it's a trap." He points at his now visible eyebags.

"Don't scare him away before Seonghwa comes." Yeosang says with a side eye directed at his mullet friend.

Jongho is reminded of the missing person, Seonghwa, who he messaged yesterday.

"You were going to bring along someone who's interested in audio engineering? Did they decide otherwise last minute?" Hongjoong asks with a subtly evident worry.

"Oh! Yes, (Y/N) had a class till 5 pm, she'll be here anytime now." As Jongho finishes, the cafe door opens, the bell chiming and indicating your arrival.

The class ended a little later than expected and like a mess, you had collected your things and rushed towards the cafe.

After hitting it off with San and Wooyoung so quickly you feel like you can seize anything at this point except the will to attend classes after only two weeks of college.

Dazzling Night appears like a safe getaway from the continuous routine of being stuck with studies.

"Jongho!" You call out rather loudly, grabbing everyone's attention including the two boys sitting with Jongho, wait does that guy have a mullet?

Your friend gestures you to come, you smile sheepishly. "I'm sorry, I had a class." A little panting can be heard as you speak.

"It's alright, Jongho informed us. I'm Kim Hongjoong, music technology, final year." He offers you his hand and you stare at it for a minute before realising what you're supposed to do.

"Oh right!" You shake his hand. "I am (Y/N), I'm studying law."

The other boy offers you a small smile. "I'm Yeosang, English major, second year."

You return him the same expression as his. "Nice to meet you."

Wow, this is awkward.

"You're interested in assisting our audio engineer, are you aware of any basics?" Hongjoong crosses his arms and you can detect the anime gleam on his glasses while he looks at you, awaiting an answer.

You glance at Jongho then at the two boys. Their gaze is fixated on you intently, emitting strong energy.

You gulp.

Okay, they're strangers anyway (Y/N), keep calm.

"No, I don't know much but I'm interested in learning." You answer honestly, fingers fideling on your lap.

"Can you manage your studies and radio commitments? We don't want anyone leaving halfway through." Yeosang continues his friend's query and suspicions.

Ha-ha, perhaps this was a bad decision.

Jongho squeezes your hand beneath the table.

"Yes, I think I can manage well once I begin, you don't need to worry about me dropping out halfway through." No matter how certain you wish to sound, the way they have their eyes fixed on you causes you to speak in an uncertain tone.

"Okay Hongjoong, we can tone it down now, she looks like she's gonna run away." Yeosang states before sipping his drink. "We just want fixed commitment, Hongjoong is critical when it comes to decisions regarding the show, so is Seonghwa."

Seonghwa? That's a name you know.

Hongjoong clears his throat. "Wait, I haven't used my intimidating voice for a while now, I am sorry if I sound like I'll kill you but I'm just sleep deprived." He vigorously rubs his eyes.

"They called me adorable after intimidating me." Jongho rolls his eyes.

"Now now, young man, watch your attitude." Yeosang comments playfully.

"Could've told me sooner!" You gently shove Jongho, "Also, yes, please tone it down, my left leg is ready to sprint out any moment now." You eye the door and then the mullet guy.

All the boys laugh at your remark.

"Don't worry, if something important comes up, you can leave, studies shouldn't be compromised with but otherwise we want your full attention when working with us." Yeosang smiles warmly at you.

You return to a comfortable state before studying their now relaxed postures. "So? Can I join?"

Hongjoong pushes back his hair. "Of course, if you're up for it but you need to meet the rest of the team. I'm the composer, Yeosang is the scriptwriter. Our team leader and audio engineer are still missing." He checks his ridiculously beautiful vintage watch.

"Okay" You breath out with a chuckle, eyes trailing back to his mullet. Unable to hold back your curiousity about the unusual hairstyle, you ask. "Are you wearing clip ons or is that really a naturally grown mullet?"

The owner of the mullet is taken aback by your question for a moment before breaking into laughter.

"God! I've been dying to ask that." Jongho mutters beside you, doubling Hongjoong's laughter.

You and Jongho blink expectantly.

Yeosang shakes his head, "These kids."

Hongjoong tugs his hair at the nape of his neck, huffing a sigh. "It's a real mullet. You two have been eyeing my hair since ever you came here, I was just waiting for you to ask."

Jongho scratches the back of his neck. "To be fair no one has a mullet these days but you pull it off well."

You nod at your friend's statement.

"What are we laughing about?" A heavy voice grabs the table's attention and you turn around along with Jongho.

An extremely familiar tall boy appears in your vision with another one following behind and your eyes go wide.

No way, no way, no way!

"Hey! You made it! Meet Jongho and (Y/N), our newest members that is, of course if Seonghwa approves." Hongjoong greets them both and the moment he says the name, it clicks in your head.

Park Seonghwa, Horizon High School.

"Hey, we were-" Seonghwa abruptly halts in his tracks.

(Your Full Name), Horizon High School.

You unknowingly shoot up from your seat.

"Um, (Y/N) is everything okay?" Jongho glaces from behind at the newest arrivals.

"Wait!" Mingi takes a good look at you and turns to Seonghwa before he starts giggling to himself, confusing the other three boys seated at the table.

Song Mingi, Horizon High School.

Warmth is taking over your face like a pressure cooker ready to burst merely at the sight of the boy standing in front of you, he too blinks at you as if confirming that you're actually standing in front of him.

"What's the matter? Why do you two look like you've seen ghosts." Yeosang asks whilst Mingi continues his snickering.

The giggling boy takes a seat between his friends, looking at your frozen figures amusingly.

"This is a dark history reunion." He nudges Hongjoong and Yeosang.

"Mingi!" Seonghwa glares and steals another glance at you before taking the remaining seat, the one beside you.

Jongho looks around, lost. "Dark history reunion?"

You turn around and almost slam yourself down on the seat.

Hongjoong and Yeosang are wearing mirrored puzzled expressions.

You clap your hands with over enthusiasm, "I just remembered that I have a meeting with a project partner at the library, I gotta go."

No, you don't.

"No wait, What's going on here?" Hongjoong's gaze continues shifting between you and Seonghwa while you two are busy avoiding eye contact with each other.

"Dark history reunion." The amusement still hasn't faded off Mingi's face and now he earns a death glare from you.

Seonghwa taps the table, grabbing attention. "It's nothing, she's free to leave if she's done."

You get up the moment he speaks.

Oh, this has just become way worse, way worse.

Mingi raises his brow, "What if she's here for the announcer's position?"

"No, Jongho's here for that, Hongjoong already talked with (Y/N), she's free to leave." Yeosang intervenes noticing your sudden urgent movements.

You internally thank him for that.

"I uh, well I think, I think I'll talk to you guys later." You grab your belongings in a big swoop.

"Aw no, you're leaving so soon? We just came here!" Mingi wears a wicked wide smile as he speaks.

"We can talk later, Mingi. It's not like I'm dropping out of college tomorrow! (I just might!)" You answer with a loud, fake laugh, trying hard not to grit your teeth.

Mingi hasn't changed at all. He is as you remember.

"Wait, you two know each other?" Jongho looks at you, his expression demanding an explanation.

"She knows Seonghwa too, very well!" The mischievous one strikes again.

"Oh, Seonghwa and (Y/N) are acquainted?" Hongjoong chimes in.

"Yes we are, we went to the same school." Seonghwa leaves his seat to give you way. "See you later (Y/N)."

You feel strangely assured looking at his stark red ears.

"Oh yes, yes, Seonghwa--" You take him in briefly before looking at the rest, "--and others I'll see you guys later, gotta run!"

Keeping your eyes straight ahead, you walk out of the cafe like you never even went there, half walking and half running towards your dorm room.

Song Mingi, I'm going to get you.

Pairing: College Student! Seonghwa x College Student! Female Reader

Genre: Fluff, A teeny tiny bit of smut with a pinch of angst

Synopsis: High school crushes are often silly and forgotten. However, you cannot forget the one senior, you "borrowed" once a kiss from. Years have passed and it's a memory you laugh at but what will happen if you're to encounter the same senior in a much different setting and situation? Especially during your first year of college.

A/N: THEY'VE FINALLY MET! What are your thoughts on this chapter? It's been a while since I've written so please excuse any mistakes, I will edit it for sure. Btw I am Mingi, Mingi is me.

Let me know if you want to be added to the taglist! 💫

🌸Tags:

@mingiibabieee @enigmaticsal @missiopk @stardusthyuck

🌸

Please do not repost, modify or claim these images.

#ateez #ateez sm au #ateezsmau #ateez social media au #ateez fake texts #ateez fanfic #ateez scenarios #ateez fluff #ateez imagines #ateez seonghwa #ateez hongjoong #ateez yeosang #ateez Yunho #ateez san #ateez wooyoung #ateez mingi #ateez jongho #thekissthief

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devourer--of--books · 4 years ago

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Some time ago (and by “some time” I mean a long ass time, oops) Kate (@pumpkinpaperweight) posted an analysis of gold rush by Taylor Swift tracing parallels to Agatha, which this post is clearly inspired by.

(Go check that one out after you finish reading this post, it’s really good.)

Ever since, I’ve had an entire tagatha x taylor playlist/unfinished post that I don’t think will ever see the light because I’m too lazy to actually finish it. But now I have some spare time and I noticed that,,,, invisible string wasn’t on it.

And that's cause, well, despite the obvious gold fingerglow motif which is very tagatha … you already read the title of the post. It’s more like my own version of of what I would have had happen post-otk (will my epilogue version ever see the light, I wonder) than anything else, but this is my account, in which I am correct all the time and accept no criticism so,,,,

Green was the color of the grass where I used to read at Centennial Park

I used to think I would meet somebody there

Basically, these first two lines are about how Sophie’s egocentrism isolated her and kept her from making genuine connections with people from very early on, until she becomes friends with Agatha and even after that.

Okay, so have you guys ever seen those tiktoks that are like ‘13-year-old me, in black jeans and sneakers, at the beach, reading a book mYstERioUsLy so that when Harry Styles showed up he’d know I’m dIfFeRenT'?

This is the energy I get here.

Like, Sophie in the start of book one doing all those ‘good deeds’ so set herself apart in the eyes of the school master hoping that he’d bring her to the school where she would meet *drumroll* The One.

Most of us have, at some point (I hope, otherwise it was just me and that would be so embarassing), tried and failed to channel that main-character-energy to manifest ourselves into a story much more interesting than whatever is going on in your life at the moment. I feel like at the very core, that’s sort of what Sophie was trying to do? It’s a very juvenile feeling and shows just how little Sophie knew about love overall. Love as it is in fairytale books, as opposed to as it actually is.

She thought herself as above everyone else and thought she was entitled to true, unconditional love, which ended up holding her back and isolating her from everyone in the town, save for Agatha, give or take.

This mindset is what really keeps her from seeing Tedros (and Agatha, and everyone else) as people, rather than characters in her story, and actually connecting with them on a non-superficial level.

Teal was the color of your shirt when you were 16 at the yogurt shop

You used to work at to make a little money

I don’t think this part needs much explaining?

On surface level, Nicola canonically started working at her father’s pub at a very young age to help with family expenses.

If you think about it a little more and contrast it with the previous line, though, it highlights the differences between Sophie and Nicola:

Nic works to help her family, learning responsibility and duty, while Sophie barely ever did anything for her father, both out of vanity (and a superiority complex) and out of spite (which is honestly undeserved all the way up to book 3, when Stefan let Callis die and fucking tried to blame Agatha for returning without Sophie and then guilt-tripped her into going to save her, after which he was dead to me lol). Sophie grew with a princess-like mindset, despite being just slightly better off than Nic, given all the villagers save from Callis and Agatha (due to them being outcasts) seem to have a similar income (with the exception of the beggar which I don’t understand and am probably overthinking about, but honestly, it’s a impossible to leave town and people die on the mill all the time, there's no college or whatever, did none of these assholes offer the beggar a job- I’m getting carried away), while Nicola has to shoulder most of the responsibilities due to her dad being sick.

Also, given the *misogyny* I’d be surprised if Nic didn’t have to do all the housework, as the only girl in her house.

I doubt that the uniform of the pub was teal and given the book timeline she wouldn’t have been 16 in any instances in which Sophie and her met in Gavaldon, but I digress.

Time

Curious time

Gave me no compasses

Gave me no signs

Were there clues I didn't see?

Also kinda self-explanatory in a way?

On one interpretation, it takes Sophie an awful long time to mature and grow into an okay person. She lashed out after Tedros’ rejection because her desire was, when you get down to it, to be loved, even though she didn't understand what love was or how to go about it. She was already loved both by Agatha and by her father but she couldn't see it because the idea of love (romantic, loud, grand-gesture) was so embedded into her, but the clues to it were there all along.

On another, you could argue that Nicola also did not see this coming at all, specially if you consider canon!Nicola rather than fanon!Nicola (why would you, but okay, ignore my Hunter post, go on, stomp on my feelings). Nicola, whose purpose in TCY was to be the new hort-love-interest no one asked for, ending up with her *gag* love-rival? Unexpected, iconic, never done before (never actually done in canon), amazing, mind-blowin-

Bad was the blood of the song in the cab on your first trip to LA

You ate at my favorite spot for dinner

Bad Blood was a smash hit on Taylor’s career, playing on the radio non-stop during the 1989 era, arguably her peak in terms of mainstream pop and radio plays.

The Tale of Sophie and Agatha was the equivalent in this context, as it was all the rage in Gavaldon after book 3; Sophie’s persona as the Dean Of Evil is solidified and everyone in The Woods knows who she is and read her tale, including Nicola (who already knew who she was, but now had a another version of her to compare to the version she already knew, which hm, did not favour Sophie either way).

I think it’s kind of fascinating how parasocial relationships work in the context of SGE because like, the storian is there as an omniscient narrator, but it doesn’t write everything. Like, does it just expose what the people in the tale feel and think only if it suits the plot or do the tales look just like the SGE books, in some sort of fourth wall break or is it like an actual children’s fairytale, where you just get told actions and have to sort of assume motivations? How does that affect public opinion? I don’t think most people would be too keen on stanning Sophie after reading The Tale Of Sophie and Agatha (cause damn, Sophie does a lot of questionable shit there) but canonically, they do, despite her being the villain, which is something I have opinions on (do I ever not have opinions on things?).

Like, sure there would be Nevers stanning her, but honestly, if they read the tale, wouldn't they be more likely to stan Hester or even Agatha? Cause Sophie almost got both Evers and Nevers killed, doomed everyone in The Woods for a guy, and was overall a horrible person with no regard for actual Good or Evil as balanced things? Isn’t this why The Coven sided with Agatha, like, I don’t get it- Is it stanning out of fear? Cause that’s the only sort of explanation I have, specially for people in Gavaldon, but that’s something I’ll go deeper into in another time.

Anyway, I wouldn’t be surprised if Nic’s first class at SGE was about The Tale Of Sophie and Agatha, given she was originally placed in Evil, due to Dovey and Sophie’s bet, and Evil’s school curriculum was under Sophie’s control, so if you think those classes were anything other than the Sophie-Show, you are wrong.

Now, on to headcanon territory, wouldn’t it be poetic if during her first lunch Nic sat at that tree in the middle of the clearing where Agatha and Sophie used to sit? Not only for ship reasons, but the tree is right in the center, which could relate to how Nic was supposed to be half/half?

Bold was the waitress on our three-year trip getting lunch down by the Lakes

She said I looked like an American singer

It’s a real shame that I don’t remember most of TCY. (But is it really?)

This is kinda of my own personal interpretation of what the OTK epilogue should have been like (and so, it's kind of a spoiler for my ever unfinished rewrite sksnsksn).

Imagine if, instead of that horrid school wedding (kill me now, please), they actually held the respective funerals for all the people lost in the Camelot power-struggle (I’ll take a school funeral, but don’t come at me with school weddings or I’ll lose my shit).

Tedros and Agatha, poor traumatized children, are on their way back to Camelot to try and get stuff back under control and do royal things. Sophie is pretty much on her own, with the remaining faculty of the school, as well as the new kids (yeah, Hort’s staying dead, boo hoo, I’m not sorry sbfhbsdb). Nicola will be returning home to Gavaldon soon, since the school schedule is already messed up beyond repair and everyone is taking some time off anyway. She was only staying there until christmas originally, so might as well.

Public opinion on the main trio is kinda weird at the moment:

Tagatha suffered a coup, then a while laterTedros killed the brother of his usurper, whom had been more popular than him, and well, they do tell people that Japeth killed Rhian, but it’s not like they have receipts? Like, there’s no way to fact check that. They could very well have killed Rhian, we, as bystanders, wouldn’t know? You can bet rumors like these don’t just go away.

And Sophie?

Well, I think public opinion on Sophie was already fear-based rather than coming from a place of admiration for her acts. People aren’t sure of her alliances anymore, and don’t really know how to behave around her so they mainly avoid her. Now that Dovey and Hort are dead and everyone else is resuming their quests, she’ll be pretty much on her own to deal with the aftermatch, which is not only sad, but also probably not healthy. She considers staying with Agatha, but she doesn’t want to add more scandal to the Camelot situation.

So she decides to go back to Gavaldon. Not permanently tho. Just to visit her father and take some time off to decide who could balance her well enough to be appointed as Dean Of Good.

She'd choose Agatha, but you know, Agatha is kinda busy. Plus, it'd be good to see her father. Watching most of your parental figures drop like flies really puts things into perspective and maybe (just maybe) there's still something to salvage there.

Not many people know she's at Gavaldon, and that's on purpose. For once, Sophie just wants to be left the fuck alone, so she just tries to lay low and not bring unnecessary attention to heself. It's so unlike her to do so that when she walks in to have lunch at Nicola's pub, no one but Nicola even recognizes her.

And if Nicola keeps her company and accompany her on walks, well, it’s no one’s business. Bonding time? Bonding time.

Time

Mystical time

Cutting me open, then healing me fine

Were there clues I didn't see?

You know what these kids need after this Camelot shitstorm? Therapy, that’s what.

There’s no therapy in The Woods, so friendship will simply have to do. Please sir, let these kids heal.

Nicola was dragged to SGE while her father was sick and knew no one there personally, then got dragged again, now into a power struggle where she almost died multiple times, dated a guy, broke up with a guy and I can’t even remember what else but that sounds like a stressful time considering how close together the events from TCY are compared to TSY. What does she want to do now? Will she become a knight? Will she remain in Gavaldon? Does she have to finish school? How have Hunter and her dad been? Whatever went down with her brothers? Why was she important in the first place? Lots to reflect and self-search.

And Sophie. Oh Sophie.

Sophie fell once again for a ‘get-love-’quick’ scheme, not once, but twice! That is not something easy to look in the face and forgive yourself for.

With Rhian, it backfired by hurting everyone she loved, and after the shit Rafal pulled on her, she should have known better. But can you blame her? It’s not like the Rafal thing left her unscratched: you try being in an abusive relationship with a predator, see if you don’t get some trauma. And instead of doing the hard thing and keeping up the work she had been doing on herself she threw her progress out the window the moment Rhian said what she wanted to hear!

After that went belly-up, she at least managed to help her friends, but then later that backfired and she got brain-washed (are we gonna talk about this? disturbing much?). Then, she got fragile enough for her to attempt to find purpose in her life within Hort’s feelings for her, even if she didn’t actually reciprocate those feelings, simply because she was sure of them and they were familiar.

And later, even Hort was taken away from her.

(Probably for the best, given their attachment had been… precarious, to say the least.)

Therapy, I’m telling you.

A string that pulled me

Out of all the wrong arms right into that dive bar

Something wrapped all of my past mistakes in barbed wire

Chains around my demons

Wool to brave the seasons

One single thread of gold tied me to you

These two would be so good for one another.

I think that being alone when you’re going through something is literally the worst you can do, but when you have someone who just…. gets it, you know? They were there too. They understand. It forms a connection.

After OTK, both of them (Sophie mostly) have enough on their plates for them to go down a dark path to a horrible place. But they don’t. Cause they are here for each other and have their support system to help them.

Does that translate into late nights drinking together after the pub shuts down? Maybe. Keeping tabs on each other to make sure they’re sleeping and eating right? Yes. Keeping secrets and confessions? You got it.

And then my friends, begins the pining.

Cause, you know, they’re just gals being pals, gals being gay- wait what.

Nicola probably comes to terms with it first, but thinks Sophie is not interested in her like that (she also suspects that Sophie only sees her as Agatha’s stand-in and will drop her eventually once Agatha is no longer in such high demand.) Sophie is, in classic Sophie-fashion, neck-deep in denial, she’s not a lesbian right? she’s boy crazy, she’s not a lesbian-

Except she never felt like this with any of those boys. The only comparison she has is what she feels for Agatha, this feeling of being heard and seen and understood, but-

But Sophie doesn’t want to kiss Agatha.

And in retrospect, she never wanted to kiss anyone like this either. Tedros who, Rafal who, Rhian who, Hort who, these bitches could never.

Eventually they attend the official tagatha wedding, HELD AT THE CASTLE, as each other’s plus-ones, and well, maybe consider checking my eventual OTK-epilogue for more on this, once it eventually comes out.

Cold was the steel of my axe to grind for the boys who broke my heart

Now I send their babies presents

Very self-explanatory, Tedros may be Sophie’s favorite ex, but he’s still an ex and they will be killing each other if left unchecked for two long unsupervised.

Nicphie as the tagatha baby godparents. Please, YES.

I’m not gonna go into detail because children make me uncomfortable, I wish this was a joke, haha, but yes, Sophie and Nic pic the presents together and they attend the baby shower together. Are they dating, are they just married but don’t know it yet? I wonder. They're just together and no one really knows what's going on.

Gold was the color of the leaves when I showed you around Centennial Park

Hell was the journey but it brought me heaven

You know what’s funny? I didn’t tell you anything between the wedding and the baby shower. Remember how there was an opening for Dean of Good?

Yeah, too late to send in your resumes, position is already filled.

Sophie shows Nic the ropes of being Dean, or at least that’s how she’ll present it, but they’re still sort of figuring it out together. And that's okay.

They spend summers traveling around, christmas in Gavaldon, new years in Camelot and all is well. Their fingerglow colors now match. But it’s, unfortunately not gold.

Time

Wondrous time

Gave me the blues and then purple pink skies

And it's cool

Baby, with me

Yeah, it’s fucking purple.

I can’t remember if Nic has a canon fingerglow color, but I don’t really care much for canon, do I? I just really like the imagery of it, so it’s blue and pink mixed together. Because, you know I’m a symbolic bitch.

And isn't it just so pretty to think

All along there was some

Invisible string

Tying you to me?

Anyway, I am correct, this is the post.

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space-fey · 4 years ago

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I am so livid at my teacher right now

Lots and lots of complaining about a privacy-violating and inaccessible exam below the cut.

So, due to current events, some of my classes are online and some are hybrid (one is fully in-person). I’m in my last semester so almost all my classes are upper division and rather specific. Probably in consideration of current events, most teachers are being relatively lax right now: almost all my tests this term are take-home open-book essay exams. I have one lab class that will probably be an online multiple-choice test.

And then there’s the one stupid 100-level lab I never got to before and have to take now even though nearly all the material has been covered in several other classes I’ve had. There’s a lot of busy work, with multiple quizzes and discussions per week, but there’s also a lot of extra credit. And then I just got to the midterm, and it upset and frustrated me so much that after I had to take a moment to just cover my ears and rock. I’ve heard of these awful online proctoring things, but mostly my teachers are too cool (and lazy) to bother.

Instructions include:

not open book (really I think as a rule open book should be allowed, but fair enough)

no notes (see above)

no scratch paper (why? it’s not a math test but still might help some people think, especially with Punnet Squares and inheritance charts)

no restroom breaks (I might be sneaking away during my timed test to...goof off? look something up in the textbook?)

no calculators (again, not a math class but there is some minor math and it might help some people)

no headphones (why?? music might help some people concentrate, or silence. Am I...listening to the answers??)

no hats (.....?)

cannot be in a “public area” (which seems to include any room with another person in it. @great-lakes-selkie has their office set up in the same room where I study so I had to go use a lap desk in the non-air conditioned back room)

no background noise (what even counts for this? tv and radio? air conditioner? what if someone had kids at home they had to watch?)

no talking to another person (it’s clearly recording you--which is creepy by the way--so it would know if they were giving you answers or asking what you want for dinner. again, why?)

So you have to add the extension and then start the test, right? Except there are like five more steps.

You have to let it take a picture of you. I looked so angry and grumpy and felt so awkward.

Then you have to let it take a picture of your ID. I had to go get my driver’s license to take a stupid exam for anthropology 121. Because I guess, I might ask someone to take this basic test for me? For some reason?

Then you have to let it take a panorama of your work area (to check for people) and your desk (to check for scrap paper and notes). Featuring me looking very unimpressed. It was probably really jerky, I scowled and may have accidentally stuck my tongue out at the camera, and just turned it upside down to show my lap desk. Not only was it a bit embarrassing--that room has a lot of laundry in it--it feels like something they have no business knowing.

It insists on closing all your browsers, even though it won’t let you switch windows or tabs anyway. I have several open for a research paper and actually switched computers to avoid this.

And, finally, it records your screen. Again, you can’t change windows. You can’t open a calculator or new browser. But it has to watch in case you, a first year college student, have chosen to somehow hack it and cheat on this 100-level exam.

You’re supposed to keep your eyes on the screen and it probably likes you to sit still (because suspicious body language). I did not do these things. I was so uncomfortable at being watched that I kept losing focus and had to read questions again, I did some rocking and played with my necklace, and I kept shifting around.

To make matters WORSE. I’ve had this teacher before, for a higher-level class last spring. Other than insisting on reading her slides verbatim, I thought she was pretty cool. She’s also the teacher working with me to put together a presentation to improve accessibility in a building up for remodeling. Yet this test is not accessible, is a violation of privacy, is paranoid, and is unnecessary. Honestly, who cares if students need to look up a few details? A timed test alone ensures they can’t look up every question, and example problem questions ensure they have to know some concepts. I really don’t ever want to work with her again, but I think I’m going to anyway because this accessibility project is important and if I finish it, it will look good on my CV.

I really want to tell her how upsetting and wrong this is, and I’m not sure if I should wait until the class evaluations or not.

#my life #school #disability #accessibility #ableism #education #October 2 2020

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stillness-in-green · 4 years ago

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MLAWeek Coda: The Lore Post

Sorry this is a few days late! To the surprise of absolutely no one who has read some of my longer meta posts, I just don’t know how to shut the F up. (Spoilers: this post is only a few hundred words away from being as long as everything else I wrote for the week put together.)

Anyway, hit the jump for, in order:

A quick breakdown of the Liberation Army’s general structure.

A list of members, broken down by broad generation, including the ones we have gotten explicitly IDed in canon, the ones I based on figures we see in canon, and the ones I completely made up.

The basic tenets of the MLA and some discussion about their views on quirk supremacy. (feat. fandom salt)

An overview of the way the Advent shook up the political landscape in Japan and the Hearts & Minds Party’s place in that landscape. Pretty much the same material Trumpet’s victory speech from Day 4 covers, but modestly more in-depth, removed from the need to play well to a crowd, and with some added explanation about the structure of the Diet for readers who are less familiar with it than Trumpet’s audience would be.

A timeline (with only moderately arbitrary dates!) covering the birth of the glowing baby up to the first year of the manga. Mostly concerned with detailing the events the MLA would care about, but with a few other points of reference to contextualize things for the rest of us.

Bonus Fun Facts: discussion of the considerations that went into the timeline, a look at All For One’s actions re: the MLA, and some miscellaneous blurbs on terminology, worldbuilding and characterization.

A smattering of asides in the form of footnotes.

Note that while this material is based in and accurate to canon as much as I could remember at the time that I was doing my notes on my fills for the week, there’s a lot in here that is based entirely on supposition, interpretation and, at times, just plain-old guessing.

Thanks to @codenamesazanka and @robotlesbianjavert for their assistance in naming, brainstorming, and just generally putting up with me while the Liberation Army was completely devouring my attention.

@red-the-omnic Somewhat belatedly, here’s that list of MLA members you asked for back during the middle of the week. Sorry to make you wait so long!

Enjoy!

———– ———– ———– ———–

ORGANIZATION

Grand Commander: Destro and Destro’s line of descendants.

The First Families: Those who fought at Destro’s side and escaped to continue the fight, and their descendants. Veritably all high-ranked within the MLA, their tie to the original incarnation of the Army marks them as elites, whether or not their quirks would do so otherwise. The elders of the First Families do a certain amount of collective decision-making when and if the Grand Commander is unable to do so and has left orders otherwise.

Sanctum: “Sanctum” is a special position in the Army. The name denotes the person who’s tasked with remembering the MLA’s history, practices and lore—the position is considered contiguous, so even when someone is new to the name, they’re still considered “the longest-serving member of the Liberation Army.”. When they’re getting on in years, they select an appropriate protégé, to whom the name will pass upon their death/capture. The name must always go to a member of the First Families (though in truth, they’re only on their third one, so it’s more of a pattern so far than a hard rule).

Commanders & Lieutenants: People in charge of major operations, liberated districts, etc. Frequently, though not always, members of the First Families. Have discretion over their own assignments, but may not have much influence in the Army’s operations on the whole, depending on who they’re connected to otherwise.

Advisors: This title denotes those who are specifically tapped to give advice and aid to the MLA leadership. Levels of authority vary depending on who they’re advising. Advisors of lieutenants, if any, are a step above the rank and file, advisors of commanders are about on par with lieutenants, and advisors to the Grand Commander are considered commanders in their own right, regardless of any other rank they may hold.

Rank and File: Pretty much everyone else.

———–

KNOWN MEMBERS [1]

The original MLA—

Destro: Yotsubashi Chikara. Established the Meta Liberation Army in his mid-30s in response to the development of what he felt were overly restrictive laws on the usage of meta-abilities. Having observed evidence that meta-abilities grew stronger generationally, he was particularly concerned that no oppressive laws could be enforced by the generation that established them because the next generation would always be more powerful. Thus, he believed that establishing the use of meta-abilities as a fundamental right was the only way for society to avoid indefinite intergenerational strife. He was particularly incensed by the government co-opting the message that got his mother murdered to put a pretty, self-congratulatory sheen on laws that did the exact opposite of what she wished for. Allegedly committed suicide after some months in prison. The MLA is highly suspicious of this claim—they’re correct to be, but not for the reasons they think. His quirk, which his entire line would inherit, turns a key emotion into enhanced strength and resilience in the form of a characteristic ink-blot marking. While it would develop over time, the basic nature of the quirk remained the same. Chikara’s driving emotion was resolve.

Fathom: Destro’s lover, she dedicated a decade of her life after his capture to building up the survivors he’d left behind. It’s said her son got his drive from Destro, but his anger from Fathom. Had a large hand in raising her son to be the sort of man he was, particularly in her decision to commit what many considered to be suicide-by-hero when he was in his teens. A large part of that choice was wrapped up in her never-fully-assuaged grief over Destro’s loss (and, she believed to the end, his murder), but there was also a cold calculation to it—her making a big show of it would lead the police to believe that her attack was the last gasp of the Liberation Army, ending their investigations into MLA activities. It would also stoke the fires of her son’s rage, honing him into a stronger weapon against their enemies. Her judgement in both cases proved broadly on-point, though her death did serve to make her son more cautious than she might have hoped. Meta-Ability: Antennae. A pair of insectile feelers emerging from her forehead that give her a passel of sensory boosts, particularly in the taste and smell categories, and which also make her able to detect shifts in the air from quite some distance.)

Cascade: A man whose meta-ability lets him turn body parts into loosely controllable masses of water. Can’t transform fully. A quick-thinking type able to make hard calls.

Sweeper: A woman with a radio-scanning quirk. Caught by police in the same fight as Destro.

Sanctum I: The first bearer of the codename. Had a protective ability of some sort.

Sanctum II’s father: The same quirk as his daughter; see below. Known for getting some eight people safely out of a police raid by carrying them all out at once despite not actually having superhuman strength of any kind. (Probably tore several muscles in the process, but adrenaline is a hell of a thing.)

The Second Generation—

Destro’s son: Raised to deeply resent heroes and the government that put them in place, but he was also very cautious of them. He was profoundly aware that his death would mean the end of the dream that his father had begun and his mother had cultivated, so he was very meticulous in spreading the MLA’s influence underground, rebuilding their numbers before he even began to consider starting to make attacks again. Destro’s army had been a guerilla force; his son’s would be something much more dangerous. His driving emotion was anger, and he had two children before being killed by a cerebral aneurysm at 43. Was able to use his power to make his body larger.

Sanctum II: A woman with an unusual fondness for the traditional Japanese arts, particularly tea ceremony. Meta-ability: Stride. Teleport to any location she can directly see by taking a single step forward. Can take whoever she can carry under her own power. (First Families lineage)

Anchor: An advisor to Destro’s son. Prominent bull horns. Meta-ability: Immobilize. Similar to Lock Rock’s Lockdown quirk, except it only works on his own body. Very good at wrestling holds (and holding his breath), he tends to fight with backup that can deliver finishing blows to opponents once he has them pinned down. (First Families lineage)

The Third Generation—

Yotsubashi Kyouyuki: The elder child of Destro’s son. Deemed an unsuitable Grand Commander for his driving emotion of joy. Always presented a façade of being cheerful and upbeat, but the ever-present rhetoric that the MLA pushes about the ongoing suppression of quirks and the misery and injustice it leads to left Kyou always struggling with guilt. In college, it finally got so bad that he resolved to run away, enlisting the help of a friend with a swap-based teleport quirk to get him out of a party undetected. His fate thereafter is a secret that’s been taken to the grave by the MLA members involved in it, but given the typical reactions of illegal underground cults to members wanting to leave, it’s unlikely that he’s living somewhere in happy anonymity. (Name means Unyielding Happiness, following in his grandfather and nephew's patterns of having characters in their names meaning power/strength.)

Yotsubashi Yukie: The younger child of Destro’s son, and Rikiya’s mother. With a driving emotion of sorrow, and having been steadily losing family her entire life, Yukie wrestled with depression for most of her life. The presumptive heir to the title of Re-Destro, she spent considerably more time in training than her older brother, but she never much had the temperament for it. When her father died only a few scant years after Kyouyuki’s disappearance, she expressed her fears that she was incapable of being the leader the Army needed. This led to her becoming a mother at a relatively young age, continuing the bloodline rather than picking up the banner. For all her struggles with her grief, Yukie was very determined to at least be there for the son on whom the weight of leadership would fall. The world of My Hero Academia is a dangerous one, however, particularly before All Might established himself as Japan’s pillar, and Yukie was a casualty of the chaos of a villain attack when Rikiya was ten. (Name means Glittering Conqueror, ditto the note above about the family pattern for name kanji.)

Rampart: Guardian and general caretaker for Rikiya in his younger years. Hand-picked for the role by Yukie, who had considered him a close friend since their school days. Meta-Ability: An earth manipulation power akin to Pixie-Bob’s, though less powerful. (First Families lineage)

Shinseigi: Trumpet’s uncle, unspecified code name. Also in politics, though of a more local variety. Meta-ability: His speaking voice makes listeners suggestible. (The phonetic pronunciation of his name sounds like “New Justice,” but the kanji are “Sleeping Voice Technique.”)

The Fourth Generation—

Yotsubashi Rikiya: The current Re-Destro (42); CEO and President of Detnerat. He took up the former title when he was only 6 years old. With the succession of losses that were his uncle, grandfather and mother, the MLA has been fairly careful with him, grooming him with care and rarely leaving him without some form of supervision, be it Rampart when he was young or Trumpet in college. An extremely dutiful child grown into an urbane man whose good humor disguises a morose—and occasionally volatile—inner character. Always under a lot of stress (his MRIs are clear so far, though, haha!), but there’s only so much effort dedicated to mitigating that, since stress is his key emotion. The first in the family line to be able to separate his power from his own body, in the form of his Stress Bomb attack.

Trumpet: Hanabata Koku (44). One of Rikiya’s advisors and party leader of the Hearts & Minds Party (see below); has known Rikiya since their preteen years. The Hanabatas were a political family of old, but largely saw those fortunes crash and burn when they started manifesting quirks a few generations into the Advent. They’ve been clawing their way back into politics ever since and were an early target for the MLA’s project to infiltrate and/or start their own political party. It was decided very early on that Koku’s quirk and his family connections made him a good choice to groom for leadership of the HMP, so he and Rikiya bonded over their similar positions. They would go on to attend the same university, during which time they became romantically involved. In truth, Koku’s university was functionally chosen for him on the basis of which one Rikiya would be attending; the First Families were not about to lose another Yotsubashi to college life. Koku is more aware of this particular fact than Rikiya. Still a little wistful about their college days, his opinions regarding Re-Destro’s big starstruck crush on Shigaraki are borderline unprintable.

Sanctum III: Twice’s No. 1 advisor, the dude with the big imperial handlebar moustache and what looks an awful lot like a dress uniform for the Japanese navy. A few years older than Trumpet. (First Families lineage)

Curious: Kizuki Chitose (36). RD advisor and Shoowaysha Publishing Executive Vice President.[2] From a relatively small liberated district up near Sendai; the MLA connections plus her own profound ambition got her moving very quickly up the MLA chain of command. Daughter of a wlw couple; got her blue skin from her bio mom. One younger sibling, a sister. Masterminded the dinners we see the group having in Chapter 218, originally to make sure Rikiya was getting at least one well-apportioned meal a week and a chance to socialize with the closest thing he has to peers, but also because it proved to be an invaluable opportunity to swap information and rumors.

Skeptic: Chikazoku Tomoyasu (31). RD advisor and Feel Good Inc. board member. On the bottom end of the generation age-wise, a prodigy in every sense save his broadly terrible people skills. Recognizes Rikiya’s stress tells because he shares several of them himself, and is also the only person of Rikiya’s generation with the confidence to verbally push him around a bit. It’s regarded as borderline scandalous by their elders, but Rikiya himself finds it bracing, and anyway, Skeptic’s ability to organize a schedule for maximum efficiency is nothing less than miraculous. Got Rikiya onto fidget toys.

Toryu: Toryu is the family name of Galvanize (aka Taser Face aka Kaminari’s Dad). Mr. Compress’s No. 1, the dude who strolls out onto the lawn after Cementoss rips the hotel a new one and immediately gets his smarm repackaged and returned to sender by Kaminari and Edgeshot. Great for morale before that, though! In Rikiya’s age group, his mother’s side of the family (from which he gets the electricity powers) has been in the Army for at least as far back as her school days. (The name comes from the characters for leaping/rising and current/flow.)

Slidin’ Go: Tokoname Tatsuyuki (37). He’s Slidin’ Go! Skeptic’s No. 2, possibly because Slidin’ Go strongly resembles the puppets Skeptic is so used to barking orders at and there’s comfort in familiarity.

Aozono: Family name for another of Rikiya’s childhood peers, nothing is known but that green skin runs in the family as far back as her father. May or may not be related to Curious’s family.

The Fifth Generation—

Geten: Real name unknown. Family status unknown. Age unknown, but I’d peg him in the 18-23 area. Seems to be allowed to attend the weekly dinners without contributing anything but his incredibly terrible table manners. Can talk an impassioned game about the Liberation Army’s goals (though he pushes the quirk supremacy line a good deal harder than anyone else in the Army is shown to; it’s not even close), but it’s fairly clear that he’s more personally dedicated to Re-Destro than he is the MLA’s cause in and of itself. I’ll be honest; I have no idea what Geten’s deal is. My tentative headcanon is that he’s an orphan—the English meaning of his name, Apocrypha, refers to sacred writings of uncertain authorship/authenticity—who’s in some kind of Batman-and-Robin guardian-and-ward situation with Re-Destro, but I didn’t wind up writing enough about him to come up with much beyond that.

Nimble: Spinner’s No. 1, the woman with the weird paper-strip-esque hair who doesn’t seem to be in possession of a nose or mouth. (She absorbs air through her skin like a frog, which is why no one has ever seen her with that sweater covering both of her shoulders.) Nimble is a friendly sort, though she regards her outgoing good cheer as being a simple matter of social networking. Ambitious, but sensible about it. Meta-ability: Sky Write. Allows her to project letters and pictures into the air around her, giving her a way to communicate she would have otherwise lacked. She can create words in air she can’t see, but it takes some concentration, and the closer the better.

Scarecrow: Spinner’s No. 2, 21 years old. Born with amelia (see link in Day Two’s author’s notes) that disfigured his face and severed his arms in the womb. His quirk-based forelegs—a pair of spider legs emerging from his shoulders—can do a certain amount of basic object manipulation, but it tends to wig people out, so they push him to use his prosthetics like he’s “supposed” to (see Stray Notes section for more on this). He was viciously angry about it even as a kid, and his parents were frustrated, making them easy pickings for cult indoctrination. A family friend recommended that they look into Detnerat, where it wasn’t long before Re-Destro himself took an interest in their situation (or at least in making a good impression on them). Scarecrow joined the Army as quickly as he was allowed to—16. Meta-ability: Webbing. The bug legs can project silk like a webspinner (the insect on which he’s based), allowing him to do anything you might broadly understand Spider-Man to be able to do with his webbing, though he certainly lacks Spider-Man’s strength.

Red: Named in passing in the manga, he’s the laid-back dude with the fluffy hair who serves as Skeptic’s No. 1 post-merger. Probably invaluable in helping Skeptic maintain what bare vestiges of chill he can muster. (First Families lineage)

The Sixth Generation—

Every child currently under the age of 10 being raised in MLA households with a picture of Destro over the mantle. It’s not a small number, representing a group that neither the fandom nor the Hero Commission seem to have even realized exist.

———–

CORE TENETS & THE MATTER OF QUIRK SUPREMACY

Re-Destro is not (contrary to popular fandom belief) in favor of full-throated, might-makes-right, survival of the fittest Quirk Darwinism.[3] Destro’s will was for people to be able to use their meta-abilities as they saw fit to the extent that that freedom did not interfere with the freedoms of others. He was against the regulation of meta-abilities, but he was not—to the best of our knowledge—against the regulation of crime. His belief was that one murderer with a fire ability killing people did not justify barring everyone else with fire abilities from using those powers to fire clay, start campfires, engage in fire-themed performance art, use fire to char wood in artistic patterns for money, help park rangers set and direct controlled burns, coordinate explosions for the movie industry, light cigarettes in public, or any other of dozens of possible uses for a fire ability that don’t involve burning people alive.

The MLA do believe that meta-abilities have an impact on one’s personality, but they also believe that that’s okay; that it should be understood and accepted, not feared and repressed—Curious would not have wanted to turn Toga into a tragedy about the consequences of repression if she didn’t think that a spree of bloodletting murders was a tragedy. Their belief as an organization is that people should be free to use their powers as they see fit in the same way that they would any other natural talent or cultivated skill. They believe that people will, if free to do so, naturally gravitate to ways of improving their own lot in life via use of their meta-abilities.

Freedom from regulation and freedom from discrimination—these are the core tenets that the vast majority of the rank and file hold to. A great many of them are laborers, blue collar types who just want to be able to better support themselves and their families. Many others are those who suffered discrimination because of their quirks and want better for both themselves and their children. Of course, the further back their connections go, the more likely they are to both be higher-ranked in the cult (with attendant greater resources) and to have grown up soaking in generations’ worth of resentment, groupthink, and radicalism.

Geten, a particularly virulent and single-minded MLA attack dog, has parsed the tenets to mean that people with strong, well-trained meta-abilities will naturally be able to use their powers to do more and raise their status in the MLA’s ideal society, and thus that those who can’t or don’t choose to will not be able to live lives that Geten personally thinks are worth living. Likewise, Trumpet doesn’t fault Spinner only for his weak ability, but also for his anti-social tendencies. Of course a politician who’s deeply invested in a narrative of people uniting to throw off their chains and better themselves would be disdainful of someone who locked himself in his bedroom for years and emerged only to violently lash out at society. (Spinner’s right to call Trumpet a huge hypocrite on this, mind; terrorist cult members have no business lecturing other terrorists about the correct way to violently reform society.)

The MLA does have a problem with quirk supremacy, but it’s not quite the problem fandom thinks they do, and it’s certainly more nuanced than fandom thinks.[4] Frankly, I could write a whole post dissecting this, but rather than analyzing the canon at length in a post intending to be about my fanon for a series of slice-of-life MLA fics, let me just lay out some issues I think the MLA have. Note that these opinions may vary member to member, particularly as you work your way up the chain of command.

Many in the MLA believe that people with poor quirks are less capable of asserting their will and becoming whatever they want to be. They are not, notably, alone in that that sentiment—we hear versions of it not only from villains like Trumpet and All for One, but from the paralleled parents of Midoriya Inko and Shimura Kotarou, the would-be hero Bakugou, and even the iconic hero paragon All Might. While it’s not universal, My Hero Academia’s Japan is full of people who believe to some extent or another that people with weak or no quirks are inherently less capable of making their mark on the world. The MLA is just more blatant about it than most.

The MLA are, as a group, not concerned about the fate of the quirkless. My suspicion is that this is because they think quirklessness as a trait is on its way out—that the touted 20% of the world population that’s quirkless is hugely weighted towards the elderly, those who are from generations when quirklessness was more common. Think about it: 20% is two out of every ten people. Statistically speaking, that’s a huge portion! You only have to look at Deku’s middle school classroom in Chapter 1—thirty kids, exactly one of whom is quirkless—to begin to suspect that there’s something a bit off with the 20% figure.

Further, the MLA follows Destro’s beliefs, and we know from Destro’s manifesto that he believed meta-abilities were growing stronger over time. So to their mind, not only is quirklessness becoming a thing of the past, but so are weak quirks in general. While their clear disdain for both is damning—and certainly discredits them as a group suited to decide how society should be structured!—please understand that, “We’re not very concerned with the rights of the quirkless because we think that there won’t be any such thing as quirkless people within a few more generations,” is not the same statement as, “We are A-OK with 20% of the world’s population being second-class citizens for the entire rest of human history,” and it is really not the same statement as, “People with no quirks, or bodies that can’t handle their quirks, need to be proactively removed from the gene pool and we are actively advocating for a systemic, organized culling.”

That said, their disdain, if blown out to society at large, would absolutely lead to discrimination and, undoubtedly, incidents of the same sort of violence that the MLA themselves were forged from. That they haven’t thought or don’t care about this is one of many things that make them villains.

Further, there is an ugly strain within the MLA that still recognizes quirk marriages. Because the MLA values freedom, they’re not as ubiquitous as you might think (at least if you think the MLA is a bunch of quirk supremacists with no other goals or values)—“freedom” does nominally include the freedom to marry who you want rather than let your own meta-ability trap you in a life you hate. However, it’s equally true that in a group that believes very strongly in the value of quirks, the power of quirks in the future, and the necessity of fighting a war to bring about that future, there will obviously be members who support the practice. There are absolutely men and women who have been bullied and guilted by their families into loveless marriages for the sole purpose of producing children with powerful, desirable quirks. How likely this is in any given location mostly depends on the commander’s opinion on it, though it’s a very rare one indeed who would go so far as discouraging it entirely.

———–

THE HEARTS & MINDS PARTY

(Considerations on Japan’s political landscape.)

The current monolith of the Diet, the Liberal Democratic Party of Japan, managed to hold onto power for a full century after the Advent, but their grasp grew shakier and shakier over time. Initial measures to bar meta-humans from voting proved increasingly unpopular as the percentage of the population with meta-abilities grew both larger and older. People with easily-concealed powers gained office, sometimes being outed, sometimes not, but on the whole, decades of oppression and violence led to an ever-more-popular opinion that the LDP had mishandled the whole mess. They lost their supermajority in the Diet when their longstanding alliance with the Komeito party splintered, regained it again for a few electoral cycles, lost it again when Komeito itself fractured, and so on, their once implacable numbers shrinking year by year. Still, they managed to hold onto a coalition majority right up until Saneki Yuuichi was elected to the House of Representatives.

Saneki headed up a small party based almost entirely on the issue of meta-human basic rights. Like many meta-humans of the period, he believed that the best way for meta-humans to attain those rights was to live like so-called “normal humans,” to show that meta-humans were just like everyone else. His party advanced the ideology that meta-humans should only use their powers to help others or better society, not to advance their own self-interest. They pushed stringently for metas to be allowed equal recognition under the law as any Japanese citizen, but also supported measures such as requiring licenses for the use of meta-abilities and limiting those licenses to those actively engaged in assisting police. Deeply tied to respectability politics, Saneki’s party contained virtually all emitters, a scant number of transformers, and no heteromorphs, who the party felt were an impediment to reaching their legislative goals, but whose particular needs could be brought back up at a later, more receptive time.

Saneki’s politics gained him many supporters, but also drove many into the arms of the Meta Liberation Army, who vocally loathed him and everything he stood for. The confluence of public dissatisfaction with the spike in violence represented by the MLA, Saneki’s coalition gathering popular support among both metas and non-metas, and the rise of named, organized hate groups trying to roll back what few advances had been gained in meta-human rights finally spelled the end of the LDP’s majority.

The LDP falling apart prompted a scramble for power that would stretch on for nearly half a century. Old alliances whose only common ground had been opposing the LDP found themselves free to seek groups with more compatible goals. Young single- or dual-issue parties leapt at the chance to address their issues with more fervor. New parties sprung up across the country. Not only meta-humans, but minority groups of all kinds saw new avenues to press for substantive positive changes that had been dead in the water under the LDP. Voting numbers surged as they had not for decades.

The old, conservative elements of the Diet were not gone, of course—they remained a substantial powerhouse!—but no longer could they muster the undefeatable veto-proof numbers that they had once enjoyed.

Like everyone else, the remnants of the MLA saw opportunity in the new, ever-shifting status quo. With the place of metas secured for the time being, there was no longer a need for metas to form coalitions in the Diet merely to get their basic needs addressed. A single-issue party from its inception thirty years prior, Saneki Yuuichi’s party was fragmenting, unable to decide on a single direction now that their uniting issue had been resolved to their satisfaction. In recognition of meta-humans reaching population parity, the MLA launched a project to begin seeding the ideals of Liberation at the highest levels yet—the Hearts & Minds Party.

Beginning as a local party in a prefecture in which the MLA had gained significant underground support, the HMP campaigned on a platform championing individual freedoms and a wide range of improvements to Japan’s battered and overworked social safety nets. They made an effort to showcase diverse representation in their leadership and gave impassioned speeches promising to reach across party aisles in searching for nuanced solutions to the various difficulties facing the country.

It’s impossible to say exactly how large the Hearts & Minds Party is compared to the Meta Liberation Army, which is claimed by Re-Destro to have 116,000 action-ready warriors (the “warriors lying in wait, ready to rise to action” description presumably indicating that his count does not include uninducted children).

On the one hand, one can presume that everyone who’s a member of the MLA is voting for the HMP on every ticket they can, but not every member of the MLA—who induct combat-ready warriors as young as 16—is old enough to vote, and many probably live in districts or prefectures where the HMP has yet to establish a campaign-ready foothold. On the other hand, while the HMP certainly serves to funnel people towards the MLA, it doesn’t require membership—indeed, it’s far better for their goals for them not to do so. Therefore, it’s also probable that the Hearts & Minds Party has many supporters who are not (yet) counted among the Liberation Army’s number. Thus, for the purposes of ballparking estimates, I opted to simply suppose that the two areas lacking overlap (MLA members who can’t vote for the HMP and HMP supporters who aren’t members of the MLA) are relatively equal.

That established, we’re working with a party that has 116K voters/supporters/members. The closest thing to that number that I could find numbers for is the Japanese Communist Party (JCP), which counted 300K members as of 2017. Using their total membership compared to their representation in the Diet (as well as a willingness to viciously bastardize anything resembling reliable political math), I plugged in my estimate for the HMP’s membership and wound up with the Hearts & Minds Party holding four seats in the House of Representatives, five seats in the House of Councillors, and sixty-odd assembly members in various prefectural positions.

For some context to those numbers, the House of Representatives (more powerful, but more vulnerable to sudden electoral shifts) has 465 members, 233 of which are required for a majority, and 310 of which are required to override vetoes imposed by the House of Counsillors. The House of Counsillors (less powerful, but serving longer terms and unable to be dissolved for general elections like the House of Representatives can be) has 245 members, with 123 required for a majority.

As you can see, the HMP holding a handful of seats isn’t going to tilt the My Hero Academia world on its axis. Still, it’s more seats than any number of real-life Japanese political parties hold, and right up until the one-two punch of Shigaraki taking over the MLA and Hawks outing Trumpet’s allegiances to the Hero Commission, the Hearts & Minds Party was well on-track to continue growing its power and influence.

———–

TIMELINE

(For ease of calculation, most dates are rounded to the nearest five years.)

1980: A glowing baby is born in Qing Qing City, China, heralding the Advent of the Age of the Extraordinary. For almost two decades, meta-abilities remain rare and poorly understood—incidents are widespread and show huge variance, so most people write them off as anomalies or hoaxes. As the years go on, however, meta-abilities become more widespread, moving out of the realm of the odd headline that many people think is an elaborate hoax into an alarmed spotlight as it gradually becomes apparent that this is a thing that all humanity is undergoing. Most major technological development pivots to trying to understand, undo, document or control this new phenomenon.

2030: The child who will become All for One is born. By this time, society is breaking down into chaos. Across the globe, measures from outlawing all meta-ability use to internment are seen. Eugenics laws are discussed or put in place. Communities attempt to run out metas and, in response, groups of metas attempt to form their own communities. Infanticide rates are rising alarmingly.

2060: Yotsubashi Chikara and Ujiko (original name unknown) are born. Japan is in complete disarray, awash in mob violence, with organized groups of both metas and non-metas attacking victims indiscriminately. Developing an ability can get you disowned. Divisions among the meta minority are developing a noticeable strain of respectability politics rhetoric.

2065: AFO forces an ability on his younger brother, unintentionally creating One for All. Chikara’s mother is murdered by an anti-meta mob for attempting to speak out in defense of the normalcy of her child’s ability.

2085-2090: Saneki Yuuichi becomes the first meta-human to attain a seat in the Diet. Despite nearly a century of violence, meta-humans are becoming a larger and larger percentage of the population, and the people of Japan are tired. The prevailing sense is that it’s time to make peace; however, the peace that is being forged involves laws sharply restricting the use of meta-abilities for those who haven’t been formally licensed. These restrictions see markedly mixed reactions from metas. Chikara rallies the most vehement dissenters to create the Meta Liberation Army, calling himself Destro. Disagreement over how to handle the MLA finally finishing the job of rattling the Diet free of the death-grip of the LDP. Many years of fractious elections will follow as new coalitions form to try and seize majority power.

2095: Japan signs an international accord acknowledging the fundamental rights of meta-humans. This gesture begins to splinter both internal support and public sympathy for the MLA.

2097: Destro is captured by police and their newly designated Quirk Unit. Other surviving members of the MLA are hunted down or go into hiding.

2100: The term “Hero” is formally adopted, having been casually in use for some time. A Hero is one who is licensed to use their power to fight quirk-based crime in accordance with local and federal laws, assisting the police when requested. The Hero Commission is established as an agency with oversight in the licensing and regulation of Heros. Destro dies in prison. Though the matter is questioned, no proof of foul play is ever brought forward, and the death is ruled a suicide.

2110: Ujiko presents his paper on the Paranormal [5] Singularity Theory. The paper suggests that the power of quirks is continuing to grow with each generation and will, in time, become more powerful than the human body can control. His evidence is inconclusive, however, and his citation of some of Destro’s observations on the phenomenon becomes a particular sticking point. In a country that is finally beginning to get its feet back under it, no one wants to see another widespread panic. Ujiko is stripped of his position; having been living on campus at the time, he’s left functionally homeless and is approached by All for One not long after.

2120: The population of those with quirks and those without reaches parity in Japan. Seeing an opportunity, the MLA launches the Hearts & Minds Party as a local political party, intending to grow it over time.

(2125: Yagi Toshinori is born.)

2138: Yotsubashi Rikiya is born.

(2148: Debut of All Might.)

(2165: Shimura family tragedy.)

(2174: All Might “defeats” AFO.)

2175: Hanabata Koku is elected to the House of Representatives. He’s not the youngest party leader in the Diet, but he’s close.

2180: The events of Deku’s freshman year at UA lead the MLA to turn their attention to the League of Villains.

———–

STRAY FACTS

Why 1980/2180?—

It’s an even number for ease of calculation, triangulated between a few considerations.

Firstly, tasers are mentioned in the One for All dream, so the events of the dream (which themselves are happening far enough into the Advent that society’s had time to slide into all-out chaos) must post-date the invention of the taser, which was in 1993.

Secondly, Spider-Man’s silhouette is seen amongst the group of characters who represent the “fantasy” that became reality. If we assume that those media properties existed in-universe (since the narration is delivered by Midoriya) and were assumed to be fantastical at the time, they must predate the Advent—Spider-Man is the newest of them and his first appearance was in 1962, his material being translated into Japanese by the 1970s.

Lastly, technological and societal development crashed to a halt with the Advent. The world of My Hero Academia generally reflects a modern-ish Japan, so I wanted modern technology—and modern social reforms—to still feel modern to the characters. Thus, the point at which society stopped developing needed to predate the Digital Revolution, which really began to hit its stride in the mid-80s. Hence, 1980.

The opening period is, admittedly, fairly generous on my part, and does assume a certain amount of modern advances were probably underway, but then were lost, sidelined or rolled back as the chaos spread. You could probably trim off twenty years by stepping up how quickly quirks begin to appear and spread, but the very beginning is the best window to do so. I’d still peg the Advent at 1980 based on the calculations above (again, it has to fall somewhere between the mid-70s and 1993) but, for example, maybe All for One is from that first generation, and society only takes 30 years to reach the lowest point of its collapse instead of 80.

As to the 2180, the older characters introduce several requirements for the post-Advent timeline. Ujiko was 50 at the time that society was beginning to stabilize, while AFO dates to its days of utmost chaos. AFO also needs to be running on at least one anti-aging quirk prior to meeting Ujiko; if the only one he were running on was Ujiko’s own, then based on his appearance and the mechanics of Ujiko’s quirk, I’d peg AFO at merely 85, and he needs to be not only over 100, but far enough over 100 that he’s described that way rather than as “a century-old evil” or something to that effect.

Meanwhile, All Might can’t really be any younger than 50, and seven generations of OFA bearer predated him, even if they did all die relatively young. Destro’s mother was killed in those early chaotic days, while Re-Destro (himself no spring chicken) is told as a child that the MLA has been in hiding for generations. “Generations” implies at least two; I further suppose that Rikiya needs to be at least the original Chikara’s great-grandson for him to describe himself simply as Destro’s descendant, rather than use a more specific relationship term. All of this points to a fairly lengthy stretch of time, much more than is glossed over by Midoriya’s series-opening narration.

AFO and the MLA—

I mention in the very first story of this series that the MLA’s contacts all go “mysteriously missing” after the capture of Destro. While the police certainly did their own measure of work in tracking down the Liberation Army’s members and allies, there was another figure with a significant hand in the MLA’s downfall.

All for One, then in his early sixties, had watched the rise of the MLA in some interest. On a personal level, he admired Yotsubashi’s charisma and resolve, and, of course, he wholly supported the free use of quirks (well, his own free use of quirks, anyway)! On the other hand, All for One also sought to restore order to society, albeit order as he himself envisioned it. While he was confident that there was no one who could stand up to him no matter whose ideals won out, Saneki Yuuichi’s way promised a more stable society, and bribable and/or blackmailable bureaucrats seemed easier to manipulate than ideal-driven zealots ready to give their lives for the cause. Thus, AFO decided to help the police a bit behind the scenes, offering a few tip-offs and hints to guide their efforts to end the threat of the Liberation Army.

Of course, as long as Destro was alive, the cause of Liberation still had its focal point. And AFO was still a bit curious to meet this man, who’d inspired so very many loyal followers. It was an easy thing to arrange. An interesting man, and an interesting quirk.

Destro did commit suicide in prison. A man who had always embraced his meta-ability for motivation, and whose ability transformed that motivation into power in turn, AFO stripped him of in the same moment. Isolation from other contact, separation from his lover, his friends and allies, and his cause, a gap in his psyche like no pain he’d ever experienced--all of these piled up on one another into a fatal despair. After AFO’s visit, there was no need for anyone to arrange a convenient death for Destro.

(And if in later years, the monstrous Noumu, who are driven entirely by pre-programmed, single-minded resolve, are flint-skinned from head-to-toe, well—who would ever even think to connect those dots?)

The Mother of Quirks—

An interesting thing I observed from Re-Destro’s confrontation with Clone!Shigaraki is that, based on their exchange, it doesn’t seem to be common knowledge that the Mother of Quirks is the mother of the Meta Liberation Army’s leader? Re-Destro’s apology for assuming Shigaraki wouldn’t recognize the story suggests that it’s a matter of fairly basic historical education, but he then goes on to explain her connection to Destro at some length—if that connection were taught at the same time her story was, surely he’d see no need to do this? Clone-a-raki’s response backs this up—unlike the general existence of the Mother of Quirks, which was such basic knowledge that he was insulted that Re-Destro thought he wouldn’t know about it, her connection to Destro was unknown to him.

Re-Destro describes the connection as “an inconvenient truth.” This, in turn, suggests that the connection has been actively obscured. The MLA’s place in history is taught; the originator of the term “quirk” is taught, but the two are not connected to each other. Kids in school aren’t taught that the very child whose mother was murdered for her words hated what his country was using those words, that message, to do. It’s naked appropriation that continues to this day, and it’s no wonder that the MLA is furious about it.

The Quirk Unit—

An early term for the group that would, in relatively short order after their formation, officially be dubbed Heroes. Composed of both meta-humans already on the police force and vigilantes willing to remit themselves to legal oversight, they fought quirk-based crime in many forms, from the common mugger to the terrorists of the MLA, and even former allies in vigilantism. Well-regarded by history thanks to their efforts in reining in crime and disorder, but quite a controversial group in their early years.

MLA Age of Induction—

Being raised in the MLA means being raised with the goal of eventually being assigned a codename and tasked with supporting the Great Cause in whatever fashion your superiors think you best suited. The minimum age for this is 16, though 18, being the age at which students graduate from high school, is more common. At no point is there really a safe way to leave once you’re involved; they are, after all, a secret army. There’s no aging out of the MLA—it’s a lifetime tour—but disability, injury or general decrepitude can get you assigned to work that generally won’t expect you to see open combat. The Army is composed of a great many lifetime-of-service families, after all, which means they need teachers and caretakers; another option is dedicated work for the Hearts & Minds Party, who always have room for community organizers.

Liberated Districts—

Settlements that are at least 85% MLA-inducted. At their largest, they’re small towns; rural villages are far more common. Without exception, they’re isolated or out of the way. Tend to have unusually good access to city services compared to similarly-sized settlements. Deika was one of the largest districts the Army had, chosen for the Revival Celebration due to its combination of a sizable population and a particularly closed-off location. The MLA knew they’d need many warriors to fight the League of Villains, but they also needed a site that was not merely remote, but that had controllable points of access.

It can take well over a decade to hit the 85% saturation mark in even small villages; Deika and the MLA’s handful of other full-fledged towns are the work of generations. They begin by moving people into an area and setting up gatherings on some useful pretext or another, enthusiastically welcoming newcomers and very, very gradually indoctrinating people further into the ideology. Financial support, an accepting environment for difficult quirks or those with patchy legal histories, the odd homeless shelter or food kitchen, a robust presence in the foster care network—the MLA is very, very good at making themselves a warm, sincere, reliable presence in peoples’ lives, a group that encourages everyone under their banner to be their best selves. They think everyone deserves that kind of support!

They are also willing to shed quite a lot of blood to make sure that everyone can get it.

On the Intersection of Disability and Quirk Suppression—

There are a few factors contributing to why Scarecrow can’t use his quirk to do things others would. First, his quirk is the kind of off-putting that gets Gang Orca ranked third-most villainous-looking hero and leads Shoji to wear a mask because his face disturbs people. So Scarecrow’s quirk is already the kind of visible that makes people look at him askance. Compounding this, his prosthetics are obvious, visible to any old person, and people have a very ugly tendency towards bootstrap, “you can do it if you try” mentalities around people with disabilities. These two factors mean that people who are disturbed by his creepy articulate bug legs would much prefer that he use his significantly less-creepy prosthetics, to the degree that they’re willing to suggest that he’s being lazy if he doesn’t. They cite the quirk-use laws as a deflection tactic, but Scarecrow—whose pattern recognition functions just fine, thanks—is keenly aware of the underlying mindset.

Nimble is in much the same boat—she literally can’t talk without falling back on a visual representation of some kind (sign-language, a text-to-speech reader, etc), and why on earth shouldn’t she be able to use the fastest and most convenient one without people getting up her ass about it?

None of this is the kind of thing that would likely get either of them arrested (though Scarecrow’s creepy enough that the odds are higher for him, “villain quirk” bias being what it is), but the laws-as-written, nonetheless, are discriminatory, and that makes people justly angry. Angry people are easier to radicalize, and the Liberation Army has been working that angle since their very inception.

Re-Destro and Trumpet’s College Days—

RD’s an Engineering major with a focus in Manufacturing; Trumpet’s in PoliSci. They’re two grades apart, with Koku being the older. Those two years of greater experience shift the power balance between them significantly when Rikiya arrives for his freshman year, facing a new place, a new workload, an entirely new rhythm to his life. For the first time, Koku is not merely a friend in similar circumstances who is still—as they’re both reminded near-constantly—subordinate to Rikiya’s every word. Rather, he’s a senpai, someone with specific experience in every aspect of this new stage of life—and someone who’s had two years to become more eloquent, more well-studied, more confident, more mature.

Removed from the immediate supervision of the First Families for the first time in his life, Rikiya allows himself to lean on Koku in ways he never would have back home. Koku, for his part, has had his responsibilities here impressed on him by the First Families at some length, and has spent his entire life being groomed to devote himself to his Grand Commander. Having said Grand Commander looking to him with such glowing esteem in his eyes—well, there’s no denying that it’s pretty enticing. The two of them enter a romantic relationship that will endure for several years until Rikiya gets his head back around the idea that Koku’s ability to say no to him is fundamentally compromised.

The Bindi Connection—

I had no reason to develop them any, and thus I don’t have names to assign, but it seems that Twice’s No. 3, the smiling old woman with the gingham dress and the rough-and-ready attitude to combat, and Geten’s No. 2, the short-haired woman whose face is being devoured by her out-of-control sweater neck, are related. Note the bindi on both of them, as well as the similar hair color, particularly in the page introducing all the advisors. Mutual connection to Dabi’s No. 3, the guy who got into a fight with a hole punch and lost, is uncertain but possible based on the confronting-the-heroes page spread in which Hole Punch dude’s hand lays familiarly on Grandma Bindi’s back while Big Sis Bindi turns partly towards him as if to whisper some sarcastic observation about how lame Cementoss’s ponytail is.

———–

FOOTNOTES

1: Regarding codenames, the first generation of the MLA tended to have names that reflected their meta-ability in some way. From the second generation on, at the behest of Destro’s son, the codenames have become less literal, and thus less revealing.

2: Viz renders the job tile “Executive Director,” but having checked the raw, the Japanese term, senmu, is associated with a fairly specific level of executive authority, and it’s lower than I would peg “Executive Director,” which to my ear sounds synonymous or slightly below Chief Executive Officer. Executive Vice President is wikipedia’s translation; Google returns Senior Managing Director. In any case, she’s near the top, but not at the top.

3: At least, he wasn’t prior to meeting Shigaraki. Now he’s pretty much in favor of a very organized and coherent belief structure that can be summarized as, “Watch Shigaraki tear down the world ‘cause he’s beautiful and I love him,” and honestly, mood.

4: I’ll just come out and say it: fandom blew Geten’s words way out of proportion because a bunch of people got mad that he was being mean to Everyone’s Favorite Serial Killer Dabi.

5: An archaic term by this period. Even “meta-human” saw more use in academic parlance, while the term “quirk” had become much more widespread among the general population since its official adoption during the period of legislation twenty years prior.

#MLAweek2020 #meta liberation army #boku no hero academia #bnha #bnha spoilers #bnha meta #so much meta #my writing #my hero academia

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nvcturnes · 4 years ago

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rafa... it’s okay king ... go into the light

good evening to bilingual short kings, soccer haters, aerosmith cover bands, owners of orange 1972 competition fender mustangs, Gays™, bicons, ghosts that are in a band, band members that are not ghosts, radio assistant hopefuls, sad boys, rock fans, mechanics who will change your oil for a bag of doritos, supportive parents ( deceased ), and supportive parents ( alive ).

i’m emily & in addition to spending my days as a bio research tech, i will be ur host for the evening. i’m 22 for for 13 more days, i use she / her pronouns, i’m from the est timezone, & i am deeply sorry in advance.

u can find rafa’s full app here & his pinterest here if ur so inclined ! trigger warning for death bc he is, as we know, dead.

THE BASICS !

skeleton. nocturne.

full name. rafael medina.

age. twenty-four.

gender / pronouns. cis man, he / him.

faceclaim. taylor zakhar perez.

THE BACKGROUND !

now it’s time for what you missed on glee <3

baby rafa was born to a single mom named beatriz in london & she was a dancer for the royal ballet ! p much as soon as she was cleared to dance after giving birth, she dragged him along, so he grew up watching ballet

he was always a lil bit of a scamp but he knew to be polite around the dancers and musicians, Especially during rehearsals

one day he wandered into the pit while they were playing and was in Awe of the first chair violinist

his name is alexei and we love him <3

five yr old rafa asked a million questions abt his violin & basically said okay magic man ur coming to my house for dinner to show me more of your crazy techniques... but lemme ask my mom first

beatriz debby ryan hair tucks and says yes 😌

spoiler alert they get married 🥺 a happy family 🥺

rafa grows up... gets better at the violin... makes first chair in high school... has a gay awakening when he sees abs in the locker room for two (2) seconds

strike one: the teen magazine that rafa stole off some girls told him his crush is “hot like burning” and he got so stressed he threw it away. strike two: his crush kissed him in the MIDDLE OF GYM CLASS. nasty. strike three: when rafa tried to talk to him in the hallway he said ‘do i know you’. ouch

so anyway ladies theydies and gaydies never trust a man

i’m so sorry to do this to y’all but just when rafa is about to play with the royal ballet orchestra for the first time as part of an internship... his parents die before ever making it to the performance :/

rafa... does not take it well and i do not blame him

he moves to the US to get away from all the memories & buries himself in as much work as possible to distract himself from his grief

some of the only things he brought with him were alexei’s violin & beatriz’s pointe shoes but he can barely look at them 😔

fun fact he gets fired from his job at the times square olive garden ( also known as the ninth circle of hell ) for telling a customer to go fuck himself after ordering his 15th round of unlimited breadsticks. king shit

anyway he eventually moves from nyc to la to get even Farther away and after making some friends, he eventually stumbles upon photography !

he’s surprisingly good at it, and he especially loves combining it w his love of music when he starts photographing shows and music festivals

eventually he meets this big indie artist named phoenix, whose music style is, as i recently described to admin a, “absolute hipster asshole fedora bastard” bc this was 2013 after all

*tolerate it by taylor swift plays*

spoiler alert: we still don’t trust a man :/

rafa gets caught up in all the allure of fame and thinking he’s in love, even though phoenix is the Worst kind of self-absorbed asshole who won’t even call him his bf

eventually he’s like hey ! this is bullshit ! and decides to break up w phoenix after a show that he’s shooting that night

except he uhhhh gets robbed at knifepoint but refuses to give up his camera and d words

but it gets WORSE bc phoenix writes a whole ALBUM about it and goes on TOUR for that album while rafa’s ashes sit in a cheap urn in a closet in his house in la

this dude is shitty i’m telling u

final edition of Rafa Gets Bamboozled: he gets SCAMMED out of his soul bc this kind-looking dude that reminds him of alexei promises to help him figure out his unfinished business but just straight up steals his soul instead

so sorry to that man... i know i did this to him but at least i’m sorry abt it

THE PERSONALITY !

GAY. big gay. yes this is a personality trait

usually Gruff and Not Fun but like... can u blame him damn

he does have a heart underneath it all but every time he’s attempted to have a connection with someone it’s ended in disaster so he’s not really trying to do that anymore :/

absolutely not a fan of opening up to anyone for any reason ever. if he had ever gone to college i think he would’ve physically fought his orientation leader for like... asking where he’s from SDGDSLKJG

sarcasm and dry wit r the name of the game babey. if u catch him making a pun the rafa u know is dead and gone ( for real this time )

in conclusion he needs to be loved

congrats u made it through the chaos ! now it’s time to plot xoxo

#if u want a serious explanation of who rafa is ... i linked the app SKLDJGSD #intro? exclusively for the funnies #✶ — 𝒏𝒐𝒄𝒕𝒖𝒓𝒏𝒆 › intro.#phqs.intro

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muse539 · 4 years ago

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We Don’t Know What’s Out There

So my friend M is a bad (fantastic) influence, and when I shared an instagram post that was basically a prompt with them, they encouraged me to write it. So, I did. Read it on Ao3!

Summary: While Mike Newton is waiting for the semester to start at his Sacramento college, he finds himself turning to the TV show "Ghost Adventures" to keep himself entertained. He knows it's all fake, of course. At least, he thought he did, until he finds himself looking at a familiar face.

....

“The ghost we’re hunting tonight is Edward Anthony Masen Jr. He was a patient at this Chicago hospital during the Spanish Influenza in 1918, until he vanished without a trace.”

"Is that... Cullen?"

After finally, mercifully, at last leaving Forks in early August, Mike Newton found himself without much to do. His parents had insisted that he move down to Sacramento before the semester started.

That would make sense, except that the semester didn’t start for three weeks, and Mike was bored out of his skull.

So, like anyone might in his situation, he turned to the TV to occupy his time. It was a small thing, but it would get the job done.

Huh, wonder what’s this about, Mike thought, pausing his rapid flipping on five guys in a dark hallway, decked out in night vision equipment. The banner in the bottom of the screen said “Ghost Adventures.”

“Elizabeth, speak to us, ” one of them said, holding out a radio.

Huh. Might as well see what this is about.

---

It was a quiet evening in the Cullen house. Renesmee was visiting Jacob on the reservation, much to Edward’s chagrin.

“If you keep frowning like that, your face might get stuck that way.” Bella used her thumb to smooth out the skin between her husband’s eyebrows before cupping his cheek. Bella didn’t like being away from Renesmee any more than Edward did, she was just better at hiding it.

Edward sighed, leaning into Bella’s hand.

Dude, you’re pathetic.

Edward shot a glare in Emmett’s direction before meeting Bella’s eyes. “It’s hard, her being where we cannot.”

“I know.” Bella sighed. “At least we know Jake would protect her, if anything happened.”

“Hmm.”

---

Man! Who knew a communications class would be so hard! Mike turned away from his homework. Spring semester had been kicking his ass for weeks now.

At least he lived on his own. Mike couldn’t imagine what it would be like, having to share a room the size of a shoebox with another person. Especially since they probably wouldn’t let him watch his favorite show!

“Ghost Adventures” had pretty quickly become Mike’s latest fixation. He’s never missed an episode, a fact he is shamelessly proud of.

From the corner of his desk, his phone buzzed. Jessica, of course.

Mike has been trying to shake her off for months, to no avail. He sighed.

That’s it, that’s enough for today. Mike pushed away from his desk and turned on the TV. Ghost Adventures would be on soon.

---

“Don’t ‘hmm’ at me,” Bella smiled, “use your words.”

“Yeah, Edward, use your words .” Emmett guffawed.

“ That’s it.” Edward started to rise out of his seat, and Emmett happily took a defensive stance.

They launched at each other.

From upstairs, Esme’s voice rang out, “You boys better mind my furniture!”

---

A few miles away, in La Push, Jacob and Renesmee had just gotten back to Billy’s house. The Pack had gone cliff diving, and Renesmee insisted on attending, even if it gave Jacob a heart attack.

“I’m just as durable as you are,” she’s said, in that special way of hers.

“I know, I know. But you’re not even one yet, Nessie!” Nevermind that she was already the size of a 10-year-old at just 9, almost 10, as Nessie enjoyed reminding him, months old. “It’s the principle of the thing!”

Renesmee just pressed her desire into his skin harder. Jacob was powerless.

“Okay, okay!”

And so they’d gone. They had a fantastic time, once Jacob “got over himself,” as Seth has put it.

Now, they were nestled on Billy’s couch, flipping through the channels. Renesmee stopped him on one.

“Oh, Ness, you probably won’t want to watch this. It’s scary.”

There were questions in Nessie’s hands.

“It’s about ghost hunting. Or, at least, that’s what they think they’re doing. We both know ghosts don’t exist, but they play a lot of scary music, and they try to freak you out. Frankly, I think it’s kind of funn-”

“The ghost we’re hunting tonight is Edward Anthony Masen Jr. He was a patient at this Chicago hospital during the Spanish Influenza in 1918, until he vanished without a trace.”

Nessie’s hand pressed insistently to his cheek. “Daddy?”

Jake was in shock. “Uh, yeah. That’s your dad. Hold on-” he reached for his phone.

---

Breaking away from Emmett, Edward picked up his phone when it started to ring, heart sinking when he saw Jacob’s name.

“Jacob? Is everything okay?” Every eye in the room turned to Edward, each vampire holding their breath.

“Turn on Ghost Adventures right now! They’re talking about you!”

Bella had the TV on before Jacob finished speaking.

“ Will Edward be among the spirits we talk to here tonight?”

---

“The ghost we’re hunting tonight is Edward Anthony Masen Jr. He was a patient at this Chicago hospital during the Spanish Influenza in 1918, until he vanished without a trace. His parents, Elizabeth and Edward Masen Sr., were also patients, and their bodies were recovered.”

During Zak’s monologue, a blurry photo of the Masen family was shown. Mike dropped his hot pocket.

“Is that Cullen?”

---

Mike Newton watched the rest of the episode, growing increasingly nauseous with each passing minute.

The guy in the photos, Edward Anthony Masen, looks almost exactly like Edward Cullen. But there’s no way, right? Even if that Edward had survived the Spanish Flu, there’s no way he’d still be alive now. And even if he was , he wouldn’t look like Edward Cullen. He’d be a wrinkly old man!

Yeah, yeah, Mike told himself. There’s no way. That’s crazy though, Cullen is a dead ringer for that guy. Wow.

---

After that night, appearing on ghost shows became a bit of a running joke in the Cullen household. They had a white board set up behind the television, keeping tally. Given how often paranormal TV shows enjoy venturing into abandoned hospitals and psychiatric wards, Edward and Alice had the most marks, with Alice in the lead, to her unending delight.

One of Emmett’s favorite pastimes, whenever one of them appeared on an episode, was to sit in front of the TV shouting “they’re right here, you idiots!” and “boo!”

Renesmee erupts into giggles whenever he does it, so no one has asked him to stop.

---

Mike Newton has yet to move home from Sacramento. He’d visit Forks during school breaks, and stay for most of the summer, but he kept his apartment in Sacramento until he graduated.

Once it was time to move out, however, him never moving home for the summer came back to bite him.

“ How have I accumulated so much crap ?” Mike sighed as he looked over the haphazard piles of things he needed to shove into boxes. His parents would be here in a few hours with a trailer.

Resigned, Mike sighed and grabbed the first box.

He got distracted, naturally. He had found a box with old high school memories, and was laughing at a picture of himself and Bella “playing” volleyball in the yearbook.

Beneath the pile of yearbooks, there was a thick, nicely printed envelope addressed to him.

Huh. What’s this? Mike thought, as he pulled it out.

“This” was a wedding invitation. Bella’s, actually. Mike smiled. He wondered how she was doing, and resolved to check in with her when he got home.

Over the next few minutes, Mike found his eyes repeatedly straying back to the wedding invitation. Something about it was nagging at him, but he didn’t know what.

I mean, I’ve always thought it was weird how people put their full names on their invitations. Michael Welch Newton? No thank you. He shuddered, and his eyes strayed to the invitation once again. Isabella Marie Swan. That has a nicer ring to it, I guess. But Edward’s is a mouthful. Edward Anthony Masen Cu-

Mike paused. Why did that name sound so familiar? He pulled out his phone. This is probably a long shot . He typed Edward’s name into the search bar.

No results for ‘Edward Anthony Masen Cullen,’ two million results for ‘Edward Anthony Masen.’

Mike dropped his phone.

---

The banner stretching across the windows in the back of the house read “Happy Fourth Anniversary!”

Bella clasped her hands together, and silently thanked that she couldn’t blush anymore. “Aw! You guys are so sweet, thank you!”

“And of course, we have gifts!” Alice beamed at the couple, only Jasper’s hand in hers stopping her from bounding across the room to pull her siblings into a hug.

That, after all, was Renesmee’s job.

“Happy anniversary, Mom and Dad!” Ness threw herself into her parents arms. Now almost 4-years-old, Renesmee was the size of a 16-year-old, but had a maturity far beyond her years.

Bella and Edward smiled at their daughter, and simultaneously pressed stone kisses to her flaming cheeks.

Soon after, Jacob’s pack arrived. Over the years, Leah had warmed to the Cullens considerably, though she still scrunched her nose for the first few minutes she was inside. She, Jacob, and Seth each greeted Edward and Bella with a scorching hug.

“Happy anniversary, guys!”

“Thanks, Seth.” Edward smiled while Renesmee went and claimed a couch for her and Jacob.

“Okay, gifts!” Alice flitted around the room. Bella sighed.

Jasper raised an eyebrow, smiling. “You should be proud she lasted this long, Bella.”

Bella laughed. “Yes, heaven forbid Alice learn restraint .”

“ Hey! ”

Bella stuck her tongue out at Alice, Emmett guffawed, Renesmee stifled her laugh in Jacob’s shoulder.

Alice bounced back towards and thrust an envelope into Bella’s hands. She opened the envelope and pulled out 4 plane tickets, round trip, to Ireland.

“Wow, Alice. Thank you, this is too much.” Bella stood and pulled her sister into a hug.

“Well, I wanted to make sure that it was a place that was cloudy enough for you all to go outside during the day, and also spoke English. As fantastic as your German is, Bella, I’m not sure how long you could survive.”

Bella playfully snarled at Alice; Alice cheerfully stuck out her tongue in response.

“I’m just glad you’re getting out of the country so we’re no longer in the blast radius of your hot, passionate -”

“Emmett!” Bella shot a glare in his direction before glancing at Renesmee.

Then, there was a knock at the door.

---

Mike Newton was only staying on the Cullen’s front porch out of sheer force of will. Hell, he was only standing out of sheer force of will. He’d barely slept the last few days, hell, months . Mike had become obsessed, reading everything he could about Edward Anthony Masen, which wasn’t much, and then about the Cullen family--which was somehow even fewer. No social media, no public marriage licenses. He’d found just enough to suggest they existed, not much more. He was no private investigator, but it still rubbed Mike the wrong way.

Dr. Cullen opened the door. “Mr. Newton! What brings you here? Are you alright?”

Mike tried not to throw up. “Yeah, uh, hi! Dr. Cullen. I, uh, well, here’s the thing,” he took a deep breath. “This is probably going to sound ridiculous. I think I’ve actually gone insane, lost it, like my gran. Ha ha! Yeah, uh.”

WIth each word, Dr. Cullen looked more and more concerned. Over his shoulder, Mike could see a ‘Happy Anniversary’ sign.

“So, um, if you could just confirm something for me real fast, that would be great. Spectacular really.”

“Of course, what do you need, Mike?”

The words rushed out of him. “If you could just tell me that Edward is not actually a ghost that somehow has a physical body that would be great.”

The man himself walked into Mike’s field of vision. “Ah, you saw the ‘Ghost Adventures’ episode too, did you? It’s amazing, how much we look alike. Edward Anthony Masen is a cousin of mine, on my biological father’s side.”

Mike blinked dumbly. “Oh. Huh. That, uh, makes a lot of sense. Huh. Okay. Um, thanks, I guess.”

“Of course.”

Smiling, Dr. Cullen closed the door.

---

“What the fuck was that ,” Jacob asked.

Edward pinched the bridge of his nose. “It seems, rather annoyingly, that Mike Newton is more clever than I gave him credit for.”

“This is dangerous, Edward,” Carlisle looked nervous. “These shows, and their digging into the past… people that have seen us are starting to recognize us.”

“Surely there is something we can do?” Esme placed a calming hand on Carlisle’s arm.

“You just saw it,” Alice chirped. “Play it off like we’re our own long-lost relatives. We’ve all seen it before; humans want to accept the most reasonable explanation.”

They lapsed into silence, lost in thoughts.

“Edward may want to lose the middle names, though,” Rosalie drolled.

“Yeah,” Leah scoffed. “Probably.” Renesmee laughed.

The tension broke, and their day resumed.

“So,” Jacob swung a fist and bumped Bella’s arm. “When do you want to go to Ireland, bestie?”

Bella groaned.

#twilight #mike newton #bella swan #edward cullen #ghost adventures #jacob black #renesmee cullen #alice cullen #fanfic

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lanaisnotwool · 4 years ago

Video

youtube

422 Get a College Education for FREE - Interview with Grant Aldrich

https://moneyripples.com/2020/09/15/422-get-a-college-education-for-free-interview-with-grant-aldrich/

Is it possible to get a college education for FREE?

Grant Aldrich is on a mission to make college more affordable and accessible for everyone.

http://OnlineDegree.com has now become a leading educational platform to help millions of people go back to school who’ve been unable to take that first critical step.

Grant firmly believes in the benefits of utilizing open source or Open Educational Resources (OER) for students. By using OER in higher education, student’s costs of learning are kept to an absolute minimum.

OER has given OnlineDegree.com the ability to achieve its goal of making the offering completely free for students and sets a positive example to encourage the adoption of these materials worldwide.

Basically the mission is to make college more attainable for everyone. Learn more about this in the episode.

BLOG TALK RADIO

Chris Miles (00:05): Hello, my fellow Ripplers! This is Chris Miles. Your Cash Flow Expert and Anti-Financial Advisor. Hey guys, I’m welcoming you out for a wonderful show. A show that’s for you and about you. Those of you that work so freaking hard for your money, and you’re ready for your money to start working harder for you. Today! You want that freedom. That cash flow. That prosperity. Right now! Not 30 or 40 bazillion years from now, but today. So you have that life that you love. To be able to do what you love. To be with those that you love. But on top of that, it’s just not about prosper yourself, right? It’s much, much deeper than that because as you become financially prosperous, you can create your own ripple effect through people’s lives. You can be a blessing in the lives of others. And that is the world I’m here to create. So thank you so much for allowing me to create a ripple effect through you with this show.

Chris Miles (00:50): And, and of course, thank you guys for also keeping that ripple effect going. Cause you guys keep sharing. You keep bingeing and everything else. So thank you so much for joining us today. You guys are a big part of this I couldn’t do without you. Hey, as a reminder, check out our website, MoneyRipples.com There is an ebook, Beyond Rice and Beans, Seven Secrets to Free Up Cash Today. That you can download for free. And by the way, it’s like a whopping 28 pages because I put page breaks in it. So it’s like a 15 minute read. Great stuff in there, but you also check out on our blogs. There’s actually some of our YouTube videos that are up now of this very show. So if you actually want to watch the show, you can actually start watch on YouTube as well. So check it out.

Chris Miles (01:29): Alright! So today I’ve got a special guest and you know, I keep finding some interesting people and this is definitely no exception. You know, this was somebody who reached out and said, Hey, you gotta have Grant Aldrich on your show because you know, it’s funny, my wife had actually even brought up about, you know, doing online degrees, but even like having ways to have it paid for. And I thought that was intriguing. And within the same week that she said that someone says, Hey, you need to have Grant on your show. So that’s what I got. Guys. I have grant here with us and just to let you know, grant actually runs a company OnlineDegree.com and now he founded this one. It was a real purpose driven mission, right? The mission is this, to make college more accessible and affordable for everyone.

Chris Miles (02:13): Now, after graduating college with an overwhelming amount of debt. Grant was actually determined to change how students embark on their college education. He has spent his entire career working at startups with nearly 15 years of experience and two prior exits to a publicly traded company. He’s also been a board member and donor to a number of non-profits and advisor to many public traded companies and a guest speaker at seminars and graduate school courses. And today, well, especially when I bring him on and say, all right, whether you’re someone you’ve got kids or whether it’s yourself and you’re thinking about going and get your degree again, how can you do it in a way where you don’t have to go to pay millions of dollars to make crappy amounts of money? And so that’s why we have a Grant here on our show today. So grant welcome!

Grant Aldrich (02:54): Hey, Chris! Thanks for having me!

Chris Miles (02:55): Absolutely, man. So tell us about your story and what inspired this. Like you mentioned that you went through a lot of debt, right? You know, tell us more about that.

Grant Aldrich (03:03): Yeah. I left college with just an immense amount of debt and I seemingly made all of the right choices. So I took a traditional path. Graduated high school. Went to the best school I could get to. And I even came in with AP courses and all kinds of things that had me graduate as a sophomore. So I had a year already finished and I still graduated with just a ton of debt. And that left a real mark on me for many years because I didn’t pay it off until my late twenties. And I was in a position recently where I had exited my last company and I really was sitting around trying to figure out, what do I want to do to make a big difference and enjoy my work far more than I had before?

Grant Aldrich (03:50): And I just kept coming to higher Ed. My parents were teachers and a bad taste in my mouth that had been sitting there for so long and everything just kind of came together to try to make higher education, more affordable, more accessible.

Chris Miles (04:04): Yeah. How did that even come to be for you guys?

Grant Aldrich (04:08): You know, this was definitely a meandering approach. I just started with the mission. And I think that’s a really cool thing to do as an entrepreneur. You just start with a mission. I want to make college affordable and accessible. And I didn’t know how we were going to do it. It was definitely something I stumbled upon and tried to figure out. And finally, we came to, we’re going to create a modern alternative to the community college. And so people can come on the platform. Get started in 60 seconds. Take as many college level courses as they’d like. Earn credit towards their degree at universities across the country. We do it all for free.

Chris Miles (04:44): Now, how is that possible?

Grant Aldrich (04:45): It was just to kind of complete it. Not only do we provide all this for free, we provide support services. We organize discounts for our students on their behalf. So for example, you come in, take a bunch of units that can lower the cost of your degree, but then we go above and beyond that and get the universities to give you another discount. So you may get 10%, 20% off the cost of your degree just from coming through our program. And so to answer your question, how do we do it, you kind of have to look into the dynamic of how the system works. So the benefit for the student is probably obvious, right? I’ve got, instead of just making this big leap to go back in getting your degree, paying full price and having to just figure it out on the go, we provide an option to wait in the pool where you could save a bunch of money sometimes up to 30% 40% of your degree.

Grant Aldrich (05:34): And to give it a kind of, you know, kick the tires a bit, see what classes are of interest, you know, get used to learning in an online format. Prove you’ve got the time management, all that. That benefits probably obvious. What people don’t realize, it’s an immense benefit for the universities as well. So for the universities, it’s a little known fact that they are desperate for good students. And when I say good, I mean, students who will finish their program. Who are prepared when they show up. Who don’t need a lot of orientation programs on how to learn online and how to make sure they work courses into their daily life. It’s really valuable. So inherently when you’re going through progressing through the courses, you’re making yourself a better student. So the entire platform is sponsored by the universities to make it a true win-win for the student and the school.

Chris Miles (06:26): Interesting. Yeah. I can see when they’re college, that’s a big deal. Especially if they want that, the impressive numbers show that people actually graduate and finishing complete. Right? Versus, you know, it’s like, you know, University of Hawaii, where people used to go on vacation, then drop out. You know.

Grant Aldrich (06:41): Yeah. I wish we all could go to University of Hawaii and just skip class all day.

Chris Miles (06:45): That’s the one place you won’t go to do online education.

Grant Aldrich (06:48): No! Definitely not! Yeah. More like, you know, upstate New York where it’s nice and cold. Right? But yeah. So the whole process, getting people back to school and doing it this way has just been really successful. It’s just really worked because it’s really created a whole new paradigm.

Chris Miles (07:05): Yeah. And who funds this? Like how is this funded?

Grant Aldrich (07:08): All by the university partnerships. So, you know, when I first started, I looked at doing a non-profit. And the problem is, is that, there’s actually a lot of rules on how non-profits were able to generate revenue. And so I didn’t want a system where we would be, couldn’t do tuition. Right? I wanted no tuition. That was a key thing. And I didn’t want to be dependent upon donations. And so if you’re non-profit, you take revenue in certain ways you can lose your non-profit status. So I decided, Nope, we’re just going to keep it. We’re a benefit Corp. And we’re going to make it funded completely by the universities.

Chris Miles (07:41): Great! And now, I know what you have as a tagline says, The First Years For Free. Is it just the first year or is it the entire college experience? And how does that work?

Grant Aldrich (07:50): It could actually be more than the first year. You know, we’ve tried, because we’re a new concept and it’s a little different. And you know, I made that comparison to a community college, which is something everybody knows. But we are different because you know, when you come on our platform, you could take one course. You could take all 15 that we offer. And you could then still get the discount on different schools. So it’s far more flexible than a community college. In terms of that flexibility, you don’t have to go to class. It’s all online at your own pace. So the goal was to make something where I looked at the community college systems thing. This is a very rigid system. What if I don’t want to get my full associates degree? What if I just want to get a little bit, save, and then go to the right school of my choosing? Or what if I want something that’s more accessible from my heavy work life and my family life and all these things. So really that’s what I tried to design a better system for. And so, yeah, I mean, anybody can come in, they can take one class or you can save up as much as 40% on your degree, depending on the school you go to. And the discounts that we have.

Chris Miles (08:52): Wow! That’s incredible! Well, like you said, it’s great that people have working schedule if they already have their own business or they’re already going, you know, they’re working all the time. Like they don’t want to spend a lot of time. They want to be able to do at their own pace and that sort of thing. Right? It sounds like you’ve definitely provided a solution for that.

Grant Aldrich (09:07): That’s it. This is built for the working adults. So something people don’t realize is that working adults have become the real students in higher education. Not the 18 year old. And there’s an estimated 35 to 40 million of those adults who are not taking that first step. So I really tried to create a solution that just met all the impediments that were stopping people from getting started. And yeah, you’re right. One of them is that, Hey, we’re busy. Adults are busy. We’ve got kids, got jobs, you’ve got responsibilities. We can’t leave all of that three times a week to go to class in the middle of the day. Not conducive for what we’re doing. It’s gotta be 30 minutes while we’re cooking dinner. 30 minutes on the couch at night. That has to be conducive to that learning environment. And then of course the cost. If you’re not 18 years old, you can’t amortize the cost of a degree over your lifetime like you can when you’re young. We’re thirties, forties, we have to be able to get an affordable degree that will actually help us get a better career. That’s not going to break the bank. And so I think really what we’ve done too, is balanced the ROI of getting a degree now. And the cost.

Chris Miles (10:13): Right! Exactly! And that’s been one of my biggest hangups with school, right? Cause I dropped out of college with what, not even a class. It was a project, one project away from getting my bachelor’s. Right? And then I decided to go into being an entrepreneur just to gain that experience that was going to go to the business consulting. So I was going to finish my MBA. And by after I went to the business, I said, well, what the heck? These degrees seem worthless, you know. In comparison to how much time and money I have to put into this, versus I can just go out and make money no. You know, as an entrepreneur. And that definitely was more enticing. And this kind of seems like it’s a good hybrid between the two. It’s like saying, Hey, do I want to get the ROI? Plus the time I have to put, by the way, I did try to actually go and finish my degree. Five years later. And they said, all right, great, well, you just have to take another semester and a half of full time credits. Cause it had been over five years. I said, well, forget that, you know, there’s no reason I should get a sociology degree and have to spend a year and a half going full time to school when I was already retired, you know? So, Oh yeah. Make logical sense at that point, right?

Grant Aldrich (11:17): Oh yeah. Well, you know, the other problem is, Is that so many schools out there are not adult friendly, which is what you’re kind of touching on. And so the other thing that we’ve done is we’ve tried to only partner with schools that are adult friendly. And so to that point, you know, what does adult friendly mean? These are schools that aren’t going to give you a lot of sweat for being five years out of the classroom. They look past that. They’re far more accommodating to the modern adult or working adult. And so they view a lot more support for working adults. The classes are online. The restaurant pays, you know, all those things that help and not give you the experience that you had. But you’re right, you know, for a bigger perspective, not everybody needs to get a degree. Some careers, you should have it because you had the edge for your job and you can get that big promotion.

Grant Aldrich (12:01): Or if it’s a necessity. Like if I want to be a teacher. But for you and I, you know, we’re both entrepreneurs. What’s great is that what we’ve now branched out to is into certifications. And so in addition to degrees, we offer discounted certifications with credit universities that are better than anything else out there. Where, let’s say you want to be a bookkeeper. Well, you can get a certification with a certificate from the university, for your clients in book keeping with Quick Books and all of this. To basically just prepare you for a career as being your own boss. So that way, you know, you’ve got something. You don’t have to be a CPA. You’ve got something. When you go into that room, when you’re pitching your new clients, you know, I’m certified by University of X and it looks really good. So I’m glad we’ve really added that. So I think it’s complimented the situations that you’re talking about, where not everybody needs a degree.

Chris Miles (12:50): Right. That’s true. Now you mentioned, of course it’s perfect for the working adult. What about for those that are the typical young adult college age? You know, is this a good fit for them? Cause I know again, a ton of people that will say, how do I pay for college? How do I save for college, all this kind of stuff. And so I guarantee you there’s many, many listeners saying, all right, I may not need a degree, but what about my kids?

Grant Aldrich (13:12): Yeah. You know, it is. Although it hasn’t been open for them. I’ll explain why. When we first got started, I had the working adult in mind. So we purposely excluded it to anybody who was under 18 or any international students. And my logic was, was that I wanted to make sure we came out of the gate for our first MVP product, that we had a really good experience for that core demographic. And since then it’s just exploded. And so now we’re going back and saying, okay, we can expand now and go into high school students international because we get so many students knocking on the door saying we want it. In fact, for every one adult now that we have in, three knock on the door that we turn away who are either international or under 18. And so it’s a big problem. Yeah. So we’re working on now working out the intricacies of now opening up the platform for all those people. It’s not ready yet. Soon!

Chris Miles (14:07): Soon. So if they got somebody who’s in their mid teens, this is probably the perfect time.

Grant Aldrich (14:12): Yeah! So I would say, you know, check back maybe after the summer. We’ll be good to go.

Chris Miles (14:16): Okay. That’s pretty soon.

Grant Aldrich (14:17): Yeah, yeah, yeah. Very actively working on it.

Chris Miles (14:19): That’s great! Awesome! Well this is fantastic! I know it’s a, just like incredible niche, you know, that just to see that that’s even available and even possible for people to even get, you know, the ability to even take some courses and essential, not only have they come out of pocket initially. Right? I think that’s just incredible. So if people want to learn more about it, where should they go?

Grant Aldrich (14:40): Well, Chris, thank you man! And you know, it really is trying to just spread the word about it that, you know, in addition to what we do, there are a bunch of other little known secrets on how you can save college. You know, cause I think so many people fall into the trap where they just go in the front door and they just accept the fact, that’s it got to pay full time tuition. And the only ways to save previously were scholarships or community college. And both of those have tons of problems. They’re terrible options for an adult to try to do. And I can go into that later, but anyhow, yeah. So to come on, just go to OnlineDegree.com you can follow the project if it’s not something that, you know, if you’re not interested in certification or degree and we’ve got all kinds of info there on ways you can save. It’s really cool. So let’s say that would be a good one. And I’m also available on LinkedIn, you know, people want to connect.

Chris Miles (15:24): Great! Okay. We got to open it up for a few more minutes for sure. So grants or whatever you’re talking about right there. Like what are the non traditional ways that people might miss out on? You don’t have to give all the details, all the secrets, but just give us a few.

Grant Aldrich (15:38): Yeah. You know, you almost have to look at going back to higher ed as like you’re hacking your way through. And I mean that in a good way. Yeah. Cause you’re taking pieces off the shelf from numerous destinations. So what’s kind of good by starting in our platform is that we provide a good base. So, okay. Let’s say we aggregate all the adult friendly schools. So you know, which ones are the ones that are going to treat you the way that you would assume you’d be treated, going back to school. And so you start there and then we can map out what courses you can take for free. Then we can look at what kind of discounts are available that you can take advantage of at the different institutions. And then from there, we also compliment that this is something that most people don’t know, there’s these exams you can take where it’s not like an AP exam.

Grant Aldrich (16:23): It’s not as hard as that is, but they’re all about subject matter expertise where you can test out of a course. And so you can take, instead of taking, let’s say a full semester, long class on, you know, we can make this up, but history one. You can take, we have a history course. So this isn’t exactly the same. You can knock it out with our history course. But to give the example, you could take a prep course, right online, just short term. Take this exam and then remove the requirement when you come to school. So little techniques like this, just chip away at the amount of units you have to take at the actual university. Cause at the end of the day, you have to get, let’s say 120 units to get your bachelor’s degree at a college. And each course is three, four units, et cetera. The more that you can finish for free or at a discount rather than paying full price for tuition at that school, the better.

Chris Miles (17:13): That’s true. I remember, cause I lived for two years in Japan during my college years. Right? So I came back my sophomore year of college and they said, Hey, you can test out of this. And so I essentially got like 16 language arts credits. You know, for no charge. I was just able to get that knocked out. Right. And you know, kind of accelerate a little bit to the bachelors. I still had to take a bunch of more courses, but at least I was able to say, all right, well that’s off the list now. I’ve got plenty of, almost had too many credits by the time I was getting my bachelors, you know?

Grant Aldrich (17:43): That’s fantastic! Yeah. That’s a good example actually. Right. You know, you don’t take a language class if you’re comfortable enough with the language. You could test out of it. Yeah. Great example.

Chris Miles (17:51): Yeah. Awesome! Well, great! So again, everybody check out OnlineDegree.com you know, just, yeah. If that’s something that either for yourself or for someone you know, check it out. See what resources are available. Reach out to them and see if that’s something that’s a fit for you and something that could actually be the very thing you’ve been looking for. So Grant, I really appreciate your time today. It’s been awesome!

Grant Aldrich (18:11): Chris, thanks a lot for having me on!

Chris Miles (18:13): You bet, man. And everybody else, make it a wonderful and prosperous week and we’ll see you later.

#Chris Miles #Anti-financial Advisor #Cash flow #Cash flow Expert #Debts #Entrepreneur #Financial Freedom #Money Ripples

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