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ask-spider-man-61610 · 3 years ago

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The Infiltration: Part One of Three

To say that two shapeshifters stood in the basement laboratory of a government building wouldn't be quite accurate. One shapeshifter stood in the basement laboratory. The other could more honestly be described as meticulously sculpted into shape. The particles that made up his body were arranged into the shape of a standing man, held in place by static cling, but that wasn't really standing. It was a rough approximation of standing, just like everything about Flint Marko was a rough approximation of a human being. He'd long since gotten used to the fact, but that didn't make it any less unpleasant.

The other shapeshifter, Reed Richards, leaned against a table that was great for projecting holograms but terrible for holding papers or drinks. Fancy and impractical equipment like this was one of the Cape Code Authority's most well-known features.

A third man stood in this laboratory too, off to one side. He was, in a way, the exact opposite of a shapeshifter. More on him later.

"I've taken some time to look into your request," Richards said as he tapped a few icons on the tabletop. "Here's the basics of my thoughts so far. A shell to house your nervous system and respond to electrical signals."

There was a sound like sand sliding down a dune before Flint began to speak. It had taken him a long time to relearn how to talk after becoming the Sandman; even now, it took effort to hold the shape of those granular vocal cords as he spoke in a deep and raspy voice. "Yeah. Y'said that last time, Doc. What's changed?"

Richards, in response, pinched an image on the tabletop and widened it out, his fingers stretching like rubber bands to expand the picture further. He raised his arm--he seemed to ignore his joints, the entire limb bending like a garden hose--and flicked one finger up, and a hologram rose out of the table's display to cast a soft white glow over the room. The hologram looked like eggshells glued to an Erector set, arranged into the shape of a bipedal form that lay on the table as if it were a stretcher. "What's changed is that I've done some research into actually making that shell. Take a look, I've drafted up a basic schematic for what it'd look like."

"And you decided it'd look like a Phantom?"

Richards snorted, but ignored the question. "The outermost shell is solid-light holography," he continued, making a vague swiping gesture through the air above the image. The eggshell faded out, revealing the bare animatronic beneath, which (judging by the sculpted face made of sand) Flint found even less impressive. Frowning, Richards looked down at the hologram again and added, "We could, given some finagling, calibrate it to resemble an actual human. But generating these 3D models is a pain, so I didn't bother."

Perhaps a more critical mind would have asked why, if 3D models were such a pain, they bothered to use holograms at all instead of pen and paper. But Flint's mind had never been an especially critical one; he was in no way stupid, but for all his life had tended to take things as they came. Instead he asked, "Is that why it looks like a Phantom? 'Cuz you're just recycling a picture you already had?"

"Not letting that go, eh?" Richards replied, the ghost of a smirk on his face as he glanced up at the Sandman again. He waved his hand again, and the computer misinterpreted his gesture and deactivated the projection of the suit. Rolling his eyes, Richards reactivated the hologram and said, "No. Well, partially. It looks like a Phantom because that technology is what a lot of my idea is based on. You see, what you're asking for is very similar to how the technology works anyway--an artificial support structure for a unique nervous system. The only difference is that your nervous system is two gallons of granulated silica, whereas the Phantoms are currently working with--"

And here he stopped, falling silent and stoic. His eyes, suddenly devoid of their smiling crow's feet, glanced Flint's way before his disgusting elastic fingers returned to typing on the touchscreen between them. The pile of sand, insomuch as it could, looked confused.

"What?" he said, in a voice like a seashell crushed underfoot on a beach. "What're the Phantoms workin' with? I thought they were just robots."

This was a common misconception, and Richards, like most of the Cape Code Authority, had a vested interest in upholding it. "Phantoms" were the colloquial name for Perpetual Holographic Avatar/Nano-Tech Offensive Monsters. Bipedal, autonomous drones with light weaponry, they were the foot soldiers of the CCA, the beat cops, the cavalry when an agent wanted reinforcement. They had been in development since the War of the Worlds had brought the Chitauri and all their technology to Earth six years ago, and some of the core technology of the drones was better kept unknown. What Richards had said threatened to jeopardise that secrecy.

The third man in the room chose then to speak. Stepping forward, his black cloak obscuring the entirety of his six-foot-plus form, he spoke with a voice that was digitally altered to be an octave deeper. "They are robots," he said, his white face mask moving like genuine flesh. "Their processors have a unique method of operation, though. They have some of the most sophisticated A.I. in the world, and their microprocessors are similar enough to a human's that it won't require too much tinkering to render it compatible with your...situation."

This was Scrier--or rather, a Scrier; one of many--and he was a champion liar. Nobody quite knew when he had joined the CCA or what level he occupied, but the executives of the organization seemed to treat him as a special case. He never answered distress calls, except to break up protests and strikes. He had no patrol routes, no assigned partners, and the only training courses he attended were the ones he taught--the ones about corporate rights and the agency's responsibility to them. Agents weren't allowed to try and investigate Scrier's identity. For all they knew, he was an undercover boss trying to hear his subordinates' opinions on him.

This was true, but it was a little more specific than that.

"Yes!" Richards said, gesturing towards the man gratefully. "Thank you, Scrier. I didn't know how exactly to put that. Yes, Phantoms run on a very human-like system. In theory, adapting it to suit your nervous system should be far easier than trying to create something out of whole cloth."

"I thought you were like a super genius," Flint said, sounding a bit annoyed. "You've invented flying cars and indestructible fabrics that let you go to space. You have yer own interdimensional portal. Why is this taking so much thought? Why does this need to be made out of other stuff and spit and prayers?"

Richards gave him a blank glare for a few seconds before sighing. "Okay," he said, leaning on the table. "First of all, I am a genius. I'm one of the smartest people to ever live, but that doesn't mean I know everything. I have to research and experiment. Any innovation, even one from me, takes time." He waved his hand again and the hologram vanished. "Second of all, remember: I'm doing this out of the goodness of my heart."

"You're doing this because that was my condition!" Flint shot back, and the pile of sand swelled slightly and grew almost half a foot. He raised his arms; granules fell from the sculptures and scattered across the floor. "That's what I said when I joined this stupid super-cop thing! I hate being the Sandman, Doc! You guys offered to give me this--this job of disrupting protests and taking down unregistered super-guys because your bosses told me you could make me...not."

He glanced down at his hands. And indeed hands they were; years of practice had let him sculpt the sand at the end of his arms into an incredibly realistic form, with perfectly jointed fingers. You could almost see what must have once been his fingerprints. But as he looked at them a small stream of sand fell from them to the ground.

"I'm not expectin' you to make me human again," he said. "But just...something that'll make me feel more human. Something that feels like a body." His features hardened again, sand dunes into sandstone. "If you're just half-assing that--if you're just giving me something that-that makes people treat me like a Phantom and that'll break in like a week--"

And here he stopped. There was more than just a salary that kept agents of the Cape Code Authority in line. You had a lot of wiggle room as a superhero registered under them: you could slack off on the job, you could issue arrests for what you were pretty sure was a crime, you could stop and frisk anyone you liked, you could be sure that the beatings you gave to unarmed suspects were graciously forgiven by your superiors. But one thing you couldn't do was leave. Quitting the CCA was a surefire way to bring the coworkers you had once trusted down on your head; no longer registered, you had no more immunity than a child experimenting with the most basic powers did. Nobody wanted to find themselves imprisoned in Complex 42--stranded inescapably in the Negative Zone, tortured by armed guards and experimented on to replicate your powers, only protected from the hostile, annihilating environment outside the prison by a few wafer-thin force fields. But that was exactly where Flint's line of thinking threatened to take him.

"...Forget it," he mumbled, defeated, and as he slumped down slightly his face and body lost much of its detail.

Richards stared across the table with an uncomfortable air. Glancing down at the table, he tapped a few keys on it and the hologram vanished. With one hand he pushed his glasses up, and then his arm stretched the five feet across the table and patted Flint's semblance of a shoulder.

"Look," he said. "I can't make any promises. You're...unprecedented, Marko. The only shapeshifter of your kind. I'm doing the best I can to help you. But if I can use technology we already have to do it, then I'm going to. You're not my only job in the CCA. But I'm working on it." He took his hand back, and then needed a second to brush off the sand that had come with it. "...It's getting late. We ought to call it a day, I need to head home."

"Have to convince Susan not to walk out on you again?" Scrier suggested, already heading for the door.

Reed just dragged his hand down his face, his features stretching in his grip, and didn't answer. His eyes were bagged and his posture tired. Instead he began to trudge towards the door, each leg bending like it was made of plasticine, and followed by an animate pile of sand.

The light of streetlights and storefront signs shone through the windows as the three of them stepped out of the laboratory. About ten feet away, a custodian looked up from the floor he was mopping and gave the trio a quizzical expression, but the only one who paid him any mind was Scrier, whose expression was hard to parse through the prosthetic mask. Richards and Flint just began to head the opposite direction down the hall.

"Hey! Scrier! Don't you have some skulking to do somewhere else?!" Flint called back.

As the door to the lab swung closed, the janitor adjusted his grip on the mop and looked back down at his work. Scrier, after a second more of staring, turned away and began to saunter off.

It was a long hallway. They kept walking for a good long while before they turned and were out of sight. And for all that time the janitor continued to mop and silently sweated, waiting for them to notice that the security cameras weren't moving like they usually did. Even when the three Cape Code Authority agents were gone, the custodian continued to work. He worked until the vibrations of their footsteps through the floor had faded into the background tremors of the environment. And even longer than that, until the buzz of spider-sense in the back of his mind had subsided slightly, no longer quite so focused on them.

#Spider-Man #Spider-Man AU #Peter Parker #Earth-61610 #Cape Code Authority #Reed Richards | Mister Fantastic #Flint Marko | Sandman #Scrier #story #long #Odyssey Prelude

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specdracers · 4 years ago

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𝐃𝐀𝐘: november 26, 2020 ( thanksgiving ) - november 27, 2020 𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄: evening - early morning 𝐋𝐎𝐂𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍: brooklyn, ny 𝐓𝐋 ; 𝐃𝐑: landon meets his mom for the first time and it goes really well! He almost cries but they’re good. she asks him to come back for christmas. ( and thankfully gets him a new phone because his is awful )

landon takes a bus out of roseville to visit his mother for the first time up in new york.

landon almost misses the bus out of roseville, too distracted by his peers and all the different stores in the small town. he can’t help but to wonder if he should bring some sort of gift to her house, considering it’s the first time they’re meeting and it’s a holiday. but he doesn’t. she’s under the impression that he’s a broke college student, which he is, just not the type that she thinks he is. so he steps onto the bus, showing the ticket to the driver a little breathlessly ( considering he just ran from the entrance ) before going towards the back of the bus. he’s been here before, on a bus to new york city, so it feels a little nostalgic for him even if it’s not for the same reason.

the bus is somewhat empty, and he guesses roseville doesn’t have too many people leaving it, so he’s able to prop himself up against the window with his legs stretched out. for a little bit, he opens up one of the textbooks he had brought to go over some of the content in his driving in harsh conditions course, but that doesn’t last long. the words aren’t making any sense to him, and the low hum of the bus on the interstate is too much for him, even with his headphones in. sighing, he closes the book and decides to just do things on his phone, and that’s until grey ends up texting him that he and his friend are in the room for a little bit before going out again.

for the majority of the rest of the trip, landon’s on the phone with him, and he tries to not dwell too much on the fact that he enjoys listening to grey’s accent far too much and it gives him butterflies. the older couple near him constantly give him looks when grey says something that makes him laugh a little too loudly, and landon’s always giving them a soundless sorry before going back to the conversation. but it’s not long until grey’s getting dragged out to do something else, and landon definitely can’t hide the sadness in his voice when it’s time for them to hang up ( but he still promises to send grey a text when he gets to his mom’s ). by the time they hang up, landon still has a little bit of a drive, so he brings out the textbook once again, trying his best to focus but it really just sits there on his lap while he spends time texting seb.

when he gets to new york, he texts addie ( saying his mom is still weird for him ). and she offers to have her driver meet him at the station, but he declines the offer. he’s spent too much time in new york, and he knows the way to get to her apartment easily. he finds that he misses the crowded streets, the street vendors yelling to advertise their food, and people bumping into him but continuing on their way. it’s refreshing, for him to be somewhere that he loved. not that he doesn’t like gallagher, but he’s just always felt better when he’s in the city.

it doesn’t take him long to reach addie’s apartment, and his first thought is that this can’t be right. it’s a nice apartment, one that his old friends in new york would have had him scope out to see. surely, this can’t be where his mother lives. the doorman clears his throat, getting landon’s attention. “can i help you with something?”

it shakes landon out of his daze, and landon nods his head. “yeah, i’m here to see my mom, sorry.” he offers the older gentleman a weak smile, and his voice comes out more nervous than he would have liked. it’s nerve wracking for him, considering this is his mom, and he never even thought it would get here. the doorman opens the door for him after his explanation, and as he walks in, landon adjusts his backpack as he walks through the lobby. it’s far too extravagant, unlike anywhere landon’s ever lived before. he remembers that the information noah gave him said that his mother had moved up in her company, but he wasn’t expecting this.

he presses the button to the floor that addie told him, and he takes a couple deep breaths as the elevator ascends. landon considers texting his friends, seb, maia, grey, anyone just so they can tell him to relax, but when he checks his phone, there’s no service in the elevator. he gulps as he watches the floor numbers continue to increase until he hears the beep indicating the elevator stopped. he stares at his blurry reflection in the elevator doors, and he considers what would happen if he just presses the first floor button. he says something came up at school and had to go back. his friend needed ... something, seb would probably cover for him. the possible escape plans are going through his head when the doors open, snapping him back to reality. his eyes close, and he decides to walk. one foot in front of the other, he tells himself mentally. you can do this. not to mention, he has no relationship with her. if things get bad, he really can just leave and go back to gallagher. he’s pretty sure he blacks out for a moment because when he looks up again, he sees the door with her apartment number shining in fancy silver numbers.

landon flexes his hand a couple of times, trying to gain the courage to knock on the door. with a deep sigh, he raises his hand and knocks on the door.

when the door opens, he’s met with an older man, and he assumes this must be his mother’s new husband. landon opens his mouth to say a greeting, or an apology if this has all been a joke and this isn’t the right apartment, when he hears from the back, “is that him, john?” he can hear the southern accent in her voice, and she sounds even nicer than she did on the phone. addie, his mother, comes around the corner, wiping her hands on a towel before slinging it over her shoulder. before landon, or this john, is able to say anything, addie walks up to him and instantly wraps her arms around him.

he stumbles backwards a little bit, the surprise of her hugging him causing him to lose his balance. “sorry, i probably should have asked before doing that,” addie says as she lets go, a nervous laugh coming from her.

landon shakes his head, and he can’t deny that even though it’s the first time he’s met her, it still felt nice to be able to hug his mother, and the words still don’t seem real. “no, no, it’s alright,” he tells her, a small smile on his own features. “i’m landon.” he knows she knows that already, both of them probably do, but he still feels like it’s something he should do.

john is the one that speaks next, hand outstretched for landon to shake. “and i’m jonathan, it’s nice to finally meet you.”

landon takes the other man’s hand and shakes it, nodding as a response. for someone usually so chatty and can strike up a conversation with anyone easily, landon’s speechless.

“here,” addie says, offering landon her own hand before she continues. “i’ll take your bag, and i’ll meet y’all at the table.”

landon nods, giving his mother a small smile again because it seems like he’s forgotten how to speak. he follows jonathan into the apartment, and he finds himself taking in all of the opulence of the apartment. jonathan sees this and comments as he’s having landon follow him into the dining room of the apartment, “your mom’s on her way up to become the cfo of the marketing firm here.”

the man’s voice catches landon by surprise once again, and his eyebrows raise because that’s pretty impressive; that’s his mom! “that sounds really cool,” landon says, and he hates how awkward he sounds talking to him. “what is it that you do?”

the two make idle chit chat as addie puts landon’s bag away and once she reappears, she’s setting food down on the table. “i wasn’t sure about what you liked for thanksgiving, so i made just about everything,” addie tells him from across the table, setting down the last of the food for their meal. “you’re not vegan or anything, right?”

the question makes landon laugh as jonathan begins to cut the turkey, and something about it seems like it’s a tradition for him to cut it. “no, not at all. everything looks great,” he tells her as jonathan begins to put pieces of turkey on his plate. and since he hasn’t eaten anything since breakfast at gallagher, his stomach’s already grumbling at the sight and the smell of all the food.

throughout their meal, the three of them catch up. she describes what her job entails, jonathan talks about growing up out in california, and landon has to make up some lie about what his major is, saying that it’s business. when his mom lights up with something resembling pride, he wishes that it was actually business or something similar so he doesn’t have to lie to his mother.

at the end of the dinner, jonathan begins taking everyone’s dishes and cleaning up, another tradition or routine that landon believes is normal for them. addie and landon both thank him, and as soon as her plate is cleared, addie leans forward on the table, and landon thinks he knows where this is going.

“there’s nothing you need to apologize for,” he tells her before she’s even able to say a word, and the surprise is written all over her features. he, of course, knows how old she and matthew were when she got pregnant with him, and while he used to be angry at his parents for abandoning him, now he’s definitely moved towards understanding why they had to do what was best for all three of them. “i turned out just fine, so don’t worry about it.” yeah, he definitely has a little bit of baggage because of some of his experiences, but he doesn’t blame either of them anymore.

he can tell that addie lets out a long breath, making it seem like she was finally able to let go of one that she’s been holding for years⎯⎯ twenty-three to be exact. even from across the table, he sees her brown eyes begin to water as she nods. “i just wanted what was best for you.” her voice is small and it tugs on landon’s heartstrings, and he gets up from where he’s sitting and going over to her, wrapping his arms around her this time.

“and i got it, and we both seem happy, and that’s all we could ask for, right?” he says into her hair, and dammit he’s feeling his own eyes start to burn with tears that he blinks away.

he feels addie nod her head once more, squeezing her son as a way to make sure that he’s real and he’s here in front of her. she lets go, wiping her tears from her cheeks before letting out a shaky laugh. “damn, i really didn’t want to cry today,” she clears her throat, dabbing at her eyes with a napkin from the table. she looks up at him, offering him a small smile. “but i’m proud of you. you seem like you’ve made good choices and have a plan, and that’s all a mother could ask for.”

he gives her a small smile because he doesn’t recall the last time someone’s ever said they were proud of him, and it makes him almost start to cry but he’s able to blink them away. he’s about to respond when jonathan comes from around the corner ( and landon thinks he stayed away on purpose now ). he tells them that there is something that needs to be done at his office, and that he has to leave unfortunately, but he tells landon he’s more than welcome to come back to visit them anytime. after giving addie a kiss on the head goodbye and landon another handshake, jonathan’s out of the apartment.

once he’s gone, addie asks landon about school, his classes, friends, and if there’s a special girl or anything. the last one makes him smile, shaking his head. “um, not a girl,” he begins because it’s always scary to come out to people at first but especially the mother you just met. “his name’s grey and i don’t think anything will come from it, but...” landon trails off with a shrug, but he’s reaching for his phone to show her pictures of all his friends-- seb and him in manchester, alex and landon after finding out they were actually married in berlin, and then she asks for a picture of grey. and he realizes that he doesn’t actually have any pictures of grey ( give him a break, he didn’t even officially ask for his number until a few days ago! ) so he pulls up his tinder account shamelessly, and he kinda goes on a rant about grey and how much time they’ve been spending together and he realizes that this is probably a lot more than friendship so far.

following him talk about grey and his other friends, the two stay up for hours on end talking about everything but also nothing at the same time. he realizes that there wasn’t even an awkward stage between the two of them, and he wonders if addie has this effect on everyone or if it’s just him having desperately wanted someone like addie in his life. it’s when jonathan comes home at almost midnight when they figure they should all go to sleep considering addie and jonathan both have to go to work tomorrow.

addie walks him to his room, explaining that he’s more than welcome to use anything he wants. and it’s different for him, since he can’t remember the last time he’s had his own room. he never had one growing up, and even though he had an apartment to himself, it’s different when it’s in someone else’s home and they tell him it’s his. he mutters a thanks taking in all of the different aspects of the room ( and he’s sure it’s just their guest room, but still! ) “just let me know if you need anything, alright,” she tells him before pressing a soft kiss to his forehead. the gesture shouldn’t bring tears to his eyes as he says good night and she closes the door, but it does! he’s realizing that his mother is probably one of the sweetest people he’s ever met, and he can’t help but to think how lucky he is to have been able to meet her.

early in the morning, landon wakes up to the smell of pancakes and bacon, and he stretches in the bed which is considerably larger than his dorm bed or any other bed he’s ever had. after brushing his teeth and getting ready for the day and to head back to gallagher, he walks out of his room to go into the dining room where addie’s bringing the food to the table again. “good morning, how’d you sleep?” and normally, he wouldn’t want to talk to someone so early in the day before waking up, but there’s something about addie’s energy that helps him wake up instantly. he tells her that he slept really good, better than anything a dorm could provide when jonathan walks in, dressed in a suit and tie before sitting across from him. as the three of them begin to eat breakfast, they all make small talk, and landon finds out more about jonathan’s and addie’s work, and he does find it interesting.

jonathan checks his watch before looking up at addie who gives him a small nod. his brows furrow together at the exchange, and he’s about to ask a question about it when addie begins to smile and holds up a gift bag for landon. “here, christmas came a little early for you,” she says, offering landon to take it.

confused, landon takes it, opening it to find the most recent iphone inside. he shakes his head once he realizes this isn’t a prank and the box is actually empty, “thank you, but there’s no way i can take this. this was way too expensive.” but if their apartment has anything to show for it, the two of them aren’t hurting for any type of money.

jonathan and addie both shake their heads, and addie reaches out for landon’s free hand. “don’t worry, landon.” she tells him, her smile so bright and warm he wishes he could have known it sooner. “it’s our gift to you. i’m sure you’re doing great in school and you definitely deserve it... plus, i saw how awfully cracked your screen was. honey, it was time for a new one anyways.” the last comment makes all three of them laugh and even though landon still doesn’t want to take it, he knows better than to argue with his mother already.

“thank you. for this, and everything.” landon figures they aren’t wanting a thank you, but he feels so grateful that they were willing to open up their home to him with barely even more than one phone call.

the three of them carry on eating breakfast before it’s time for both jonathan and addie to get to the office. landon’s already packed his bag, so he helps them bring the dishes into the kitchen before heading towards the door. both of them say their goodbyes to him and hug him and before he leaves, addie says one more thing. “and in case you need somewhere to go for christmas, know that you’re always welcome here.”

#* 𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐨𝐧 𝐛𝐞𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐭𝐭 / development.#* events / thanksgiving.#yes this is a week late #no i am not taking any questions rn #there was aboslutely no reason for this to be this long #so u literally dont have to read this #like at all falksdj #also no graphic bc i am simply lazy <3

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icasttourniquet · 4 years ago

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Operation Eve, Part II: Secondary Assessment

Scenario

In Part I, Elyssa determined that her patient Babak, who fell off a cliff, isn’t about to die before her eyes, so now she begins her secondary assessment. First, she palpates his skull; checks behind his ears, under his eyes, and his pupils; and looks up his nose for secretions. Then, she gently presses against every part of his body, squeezing limbs with two hands and rolling a flat palm along all four quadrants of his abdomen.

Next, she takes and writes down his pulse. She checks that he has a radial pulse, which he does, and assumes that means his blood pressure is more or less okay. Finally, she counts how many times he breathes in a minute and writes that down as well.

She guides the friend on top of the cliff down to safety and asks for a SAMPLE history of her patient. When she gets to P, she strikes gold–she knows how she needs to help her patient.

Secondary Assessment

The secondary assessment is composed of three parts: 1) head-to-toe exam, 2) vitals, and 3) SAMPLE history.

Head-to-Toe Exam

During the head-to-toe exam, the responder tries to touch / look at every part of the patient. Your character doesn’t need to be an expert to perform one. They’re looking for some pretty obvious stuff, like, say, a bone sticking out of the body, a limb that’s bent wrong, or the patient yelling “ow ow ow!” when they touch that spot. Your character should also note any crepitus, which is a crunchy feeling when they press on a spot—in the words of Mod N’s instructor: “you’ll know it when you feel it.”

We don’t solve any problems during this stage—we’re not making a splint or anything until we’re finished, although I suppose if you found an arterial bleed at this stage, you’d treat that, but really, you should’ve noticed the growing pool of blood before now. There’s two exceptions to the No Problem Solving rule. One, if something feels weird or hurts, the responder should expose it to skin level. That’s how they can spot things like the bones sticking out or open wounds. Two, if a patient says “ow ow ow!” when you touch a spot, you should—shocker—stop touching that spot. (Spoiler: this includes when reducing dislocations! If your patient doesn’t want you jamming their shoulder around like that, you should stop! I’m looking at you, every movie with a shoulder dislocation in it).

If your character is a little more ~advanced~ they can look for Battle’s sign. Yes, that apostrophe is in the correct spot—some guy had the great fortune of being named Battle and he noticed that people with traumatic brain injuries often show characteristic bruising behind the ears. Not only does your character look like a real pro checking behind the ears, they will sound like a total badass if they start throwing around the phrase “Battle’s sign.” (Indeed, there’s nothing wrong with a character who just talks about Battle’s sign all day long—wait, I’m hearing that apparently there might be something wrong with a character like that… if you’re a coward). Have your responder take a gander at the bags underneath their patient’s eyes too—raccoon eyes can also indicate brain injury.

Since we’re already looking at the eyes, why not check out those pupils—here at ICT we try to support all types of pupils, but if they are differently sized, don’t respond to light, or not round, this is a cause for alarm. Why not have your character throw in a peek into the ears, just to check for any secretions too? Ears, you may have noticed, are generally dry. Seeing any liquid, of any color, leaking out of the ear is what we call a Bad Sign. The two most common ear secretions are blood (not ideal) and cerebrospinal fluid (very bad). If your character sees only red, they cannot breathe a sigh of relief because CSF has no color and almost always comes with blood. So, if you see blood, assume bad.

Vitals

There are three vitals that WFRs care about: pulse, breathing, and brain. Wise readers will see that these line up with our three critical systems from the last post, because for the most part, in the wilderness, we only care about three organ systems: the circulatory system, respiratory system, and nervous system. A doctor can mess around with livers and kidneys later.

Vital signs are the closest thing we have to x-ray vision in the wilderness. We want to know what your three (important) organs are doing and this is the best way to find out.

A normal pulse range is 60 – 90, higher for kids or people who just exercised. In general, we care about trends over time, so if the pulse started at 105 but stayed there for five hours, this isn’t too worrying. At the very least, your patient isn’t getting worse. If the pulse starts at a healthy 60 and then skyrockets to 105 and then plummets to to 20, this indicates the patient is probably dying.

A normal breathing range is 12 – 20 breaths per minute. Regardless of the number of breaths per minute, turning blue is not normal. A top secret trick your character might know if they have some training is to take breaths while keeping your finger on your patient’s pulse. As humans, if we think someone is paying attention to our breathing, we naturally start breathing weird. So, it’s better to let the patient think we’re still getting the pulse while we count breaths.

And for brain, your character can just check in on AVPU every so often to see if the patient is getting worse.

If you are a ~fancy~ WFR, you might also take blood pressure in the field.

Remember: normal is relative. If your character’s pulse is 40, but they say that’s totally normal for them, your responder would probably not be that worried.

SAMPLE History

Most medical problems cannot simply be solved by looking at the body. We need to ask the patient. Information like “I have crushing chest pain and, hey look, my doctor prescribed me nitro for just this eventuality,” or “I have terrible stomach and arm pain and also I am pregnant,” or “I have had many seizures before and this is what I need you to do to feel better” is game-changing, and the patient is the gate-keeper.

Let’s start with the S: Symptoms. This one’s easy: what hurts most? When did that start? Does anything make it better or worse? How would you describe this pain? (Mod N’s favorite question: If you had to make feel the same pain you are, what would you have to to do to me?) Anything else bothering you? Your character might remember what to ask by running through the acronym OPQRST, or they might just go with the flow in the moment.

Allergies. Another easy one: are you allergic to anything? What happens if you come into with that allergen? Is there any chance you came into contact with it recently?

Medication. While it is not the job of the EMT or WFR to keep track of medication interactions or prescribe anything, it’s important to know if your patient has medication that is useful in this situation or recently started or stopped medication. In one particularly embarrassing exercise, I spent about 10 minutes doing what was, in my defense, excellent PROP with someone having an asthma attack without once asking her if, perchance, she had an inhaler nearby. Don’t be like Mod E, folks—always ask if there’s an inhaler nearby.

Past Pertinent History. Has this every happened before? If your patient says yes, boom! We’ve suddenly got a subject matter expert on scene. We also want to hit on the DASH here: Diabetes, Asthma, Seizures or Stroke, and Heart Conditions. It never hurts to know your patient has diabetes. Indeed, if your character is travelling into the wilderness with someone, they may ask about the DASH before setting out.

Last ins and outs. When did you last eat and drink? How much and what? When did you last poop and pee? Was it… pretty normal for you? (Note: there is no non-awkward way to ask a stranger you found in the woods what their last bowel movement looked like).

If you think it’s relevant, when did you last menstruate? And let’s all remember, we don’t have x-ray vision, so the only way to rule out pregnancy is to ask. (Yes, even the guy with the big bushy beard—you can’t see his organs, so you don’t know if he has a uterus. If you can see his organs, what the heck are you taking a SAMPLE history for? You should be on the phone calling in a helicopter stat).

Events leading up to injury. What happened? With follow-up questions as necessary.

Scenario

“He has diabetes?” Elyssa asks Babak’s friend.

“Yeah, and he said he was feeling dizzy and light-headed before he fell.”

Elyssa, a seasoned professional, carries packets of sugar with her for just such a situation. She gently rubs them into Babak’s lips, monitoring his airway to make sure he doesn’t choke. 15 minutes later, Babak is sitting up and talking, and Elyssa can work with him and his friend on an evacuation plan.

#ICT #Operation Eve #writing #writing resources #wilderness writing #patient assessment system

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theladydrgn · 6 years ago

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Thanks in no small part to @icibue I just spent the last day crafting RWBY/Pokemon AU headcanons. Please keep in mind that this is 50% funny, 50% serious and 100% self-indulgent!

· Ozpin gives each new student an Eevee egg to hatch and train as part of their course work.

· All the schools give different particular pokemon, Ozpin is just very fond of Eevee because of how much it can ‘change’.

· Mythical and God-like pokes cannot be captured and instead ‘choose’ trainers. Being chosen by such a Pokemon is considered a very high honor but also puts that trainer at risk of being targeted by Salem.

· Xerneas and Yveltal take the place of the God of Light and God of Darkness.

· Celebi chose to be Oz’s partner centuries ago and is always the first to find him again after reincarnation.

· The Xiao-Long family have raised the Kommo-o line of Pokemon for generations and it is customary for a Jangmo-o to be their child’s first Pokemon.

· The Roses were known for raising Roselia and Roserade for show.

· The Honchkrows Ozpin and Qrow have are from the same clutch of eggs.

· Ozpin owns and cares for many pokemon but keeps two teams at the ready. One is a public team that is well known. The other is a private team that contains pokemon he has had through many lifetimes.

· Because of the presence of Pokemon on Remnant, the world is a little safer for everyday citizens, though Grimm ARE attracted to pokemon just like humans.

· The Huntsman Academies teach how to hunt Grimm and how to raise Pokemon.

· Beacon Academy focuses on living in harmony with Pokemon and working together with them. Using pokeballs is optional for Huntsmen who have demonstrated close bonds with their Pokemon.

· Atlas Academy focuses on Pokemon’s use in military tactics and has an extensive breeding program focused on breeding the strongest Pokemon. Pokemon are not allowed to be out of their pokeballs without military sanction.

· Haven and Mistral are well known for their Pokemon Contests and shows. Battling is taught at Haven but definitely takes a backseat to the ‘art’ of raising Pokemon.

· Since law and order is rare in Vacuo, almost anything goes. Having a strong team that can protect you and yours is what gets taught at Shade Academy. Since pokeballs are easily stolen they are very rarely used.

Now for Team Headcanons along with my personal reasoning for why I chose the teams I did. I was getting very tired towards the end of the team building, so I apologize if some teams aren’t as ‘fleshed-out’ as others.

STRQ

Summer Rose

1. Shiny Roserade – Obvious choice honestly

2. Alolan (Menagerie) Cubone – Summer having a poke that lost it’s poke-mom and human mom was too entertaining to not do.

3. Sylveon – Summer being the ‘heart’ of team STRQ

4. Blissey – Since Yang described Summer as ‘super mom’ having a pokemon described at ‘nurturing’ seemed fitting.

5. Gardevoir – The entire Gardevoir line is very sensitive to emotions and I headcanon Summer as being fairly bubbly.

6. Altaria – I didn’t have any super specific reasons for this one. Just seemed like a poke Summer would have ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Taiyang Xiao-Long

1. Jolteon – Jolteon fits Tai’s color scheme. Sue me.

2. Pangoro – A fighting type that doesn’t like it when the weak get picked on

3. Kommo-o – The only fighting dragon pokemon and it just so happens to fit Tai’s color scheme

4. Herdier – I mean, it’s obvious isn’t it?

5. Bewear – Another fighting bear but this one loves hugs

6. Drampa – A dragon that protects kids

Raven Branwen

1. Mandibuzz – Specifically said to hunt ‘weak’ prey

2. Salazzle – Rules over similar pokes and fits Ravens color scheme

3. Weavile – Hunting in small groups to take down larger prey sounds a lot like the Branwen tribe

4. Umbreon – The only Eeveeloution that fit ravens color scheme ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

5. Hydreigon – Brutal and destructive

6. Bisharp – Rules over packs of similar pokes and is called ‘pitiless’

Qrow Branwen

1. Honchkrow – Do you have to ask?

2. Absol – A pokemon said to bring misfortune/bad luck.

3. Umbreon – Fits Qrows aesthetic and the twins having the same Eeveeloution is funny to me.

4. Alolan Marowak – This is actually Summers Cubone evolved and I felt like Summer wouldn’t have brought a young untrained poke on a possibly deadly mission. Also seems fitting that Qrow would take to raising it since Tai would have his hands full raising his own team and the kids.

5. Staraptor – A loner birb that leaves its flock after growing up fits Qrow pretty fucking well.

6. Scrafty – A poke that comes off as rude and actually cares about its loved ones.

RWBY

Ruby Rose

1. Scyther – It has scythes for hands, what’s not to love?

2. Roselia – Wanting to keep Ruby’s family legacy going, Tai gives Ruby a Budew as her first Pokemon

3. Shiny Eevee – I mean silver Eevee… silver eyes… Also, it hasn’t evolved yet cause Ruby and Eevee are unsure of what they want it to be.

4. Rockruff – A pup that turns into a wolf, nuf said (it will probably turn into the midnight form…).

5. Electrike – A speedy boi that gives of showers of sparks as opposed to Ruby’s showers of petals

6. Zigzagoon – Another speedy boi

Weiss Schnee

1. Glaceon – Obvious is obvious

2. Alolan (Atlesian) Vulpix – Pretty snow fox for the pretty ice queen.

3. Dratini – Of course the rich kid would have something really rare

4. Furfrou – Fancy dog for the fancy girl

5. Brionne – A pretty poke that sings? 100% Weiss’s aesthetic.

6. Braixen – You can only have so much blue and white before you need a splash of color and a poke that uses a wand like how Weiss uses her weapon seemed fitting

Blake Belladonna

1. Litten – A cat that like to be solitary and doesn’t often display emotion… sounds like Blake to me!

2. Umbreon – Somehow Umbreon just fits for way too many people but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

3. Purrloin – Cute purple cat

4. Litwick – Blakes shadow clones kinda remind me of a ghosts sooo purple ghost poke?

5. Frogadier – Blake is a ninja. She absolutely needs a ninja Poke

6. Noibat – It’s purple and has great hearing ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Yang Xiao-Long

1. Jangmo-o – It’s a punchy dragon and fits her color scheme ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

2. Makuhita – Yellow, punchy, never gives up

3. Flareon – Yang’s hair literally lights on fire. I would be dumb to NOT give her Flareon

4. Combusken – I mean it’s fire, it’s fighting, and warn when hugged!

5. Rufflet – Ok SO Rufflet and it’s eventual evolution into Braviary fits Yang really well. Rufflet starts out feeling like it needs to prove itself and fighting everything it can (including it’s own parents). After evolving it still fights like a champ, but for more ‘noble’ reasons, aka to protect friends and loved ones.

6. Corphish – JuST hear me out on this one. Corphish are said to be REALLY hardy and able to survive in the worst conditions. They also like to fight a lot.

JNPR

Jaune Arc

1. Growlithe – Friendly and loyal ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

2. Eevee – His Eevee eventually becomes Sylveon because Jaune is a cinnamon roll

3. Buneary – Won the egg from cereal box tops

4. Riolu – Riolu and Lucario are described as loyal and having a very strong sense of justice

5. Honedge – This one has been in has family for a long time

6. Skarmory – Jaune only had a team of 5, but when Pyrrha died her Skarmory was the only survivor and Jaune took it upon himself to raise it.

Nora Valkyrie

1. Jolteon – What did you expect?

2. Rhyhorn – It has the lightning horn ability for obvious reasons

3. Flaaffy – Happy, fluffy, pink, and electric

4. Teddiursa – Cute, loves sweet things, and it’s evolution is a rage bear. Nuf said.

5. Munchlax – They both have bottomless stomachs

6. Woobat – If Nora’s heart cannons are anything to go by, she would love this Pokemon

Pyrrha Nikos

1. Magnemite – Polarity… Magnetism… Magnemite… I’m not very original

2. Eevee – Pyrrha’s Eevee would have become a Jolteon if she were still alive.

3. Skarmory – Steel types really are obvious choices.

4. Nosepass – It’s nose is literally magnetic

5. Victini – With all of the talk of Pyrrha being ‘fated’ for victory, it would be silly to not give her the pokemon that makes that true.

6. Buneary – Pyrrha ended up being given one of the Pumpkin Pete mascots

Lie Ren

1. Espeon – When I think of Ren I think of psychic pokes so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

2. Natu – Calm and cautious like Ren

3. Nincada – Only other ninja poke that isn’t Froakie

4. Espurr – Another calm psychic ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

5. Joltik – A cute little critter to remind him of Nora

6. Zorua – Can hide it’s self which is closeish to Ren’s semblance

Misc.

Ozpin – Public Team

1. Espeon – Espeon’s tail fork is said to be able to sense danger so it makes sense Oz would keep one around.

2. Klinklang – I mean, the gear aesthetic it obvious isn’t it?

3. Mimikyu – I headcanon that Oz can very easily see the worth in literally anyone so giving him a poke that thinks it can’t be loved was a no-brainer

4. Shedinja – Pokemon with no soul VS man with too much soul

5. Honchkrow – Oz having a ‘dark’ pokemon and people think he’s shady? No way! (also, I’m a shipper shhhh)

6. Ninetales – Of course Oz would have a stupidly long lived Pokemon

Ozpin – Personal Team

1. Celebi – Of course the one person who can be found in almost any time period ever would be chosen by the literal time travel Pokemon… Also, Green.

2. Dragonite – Dragonite’s are kind, altruistic, and long lived.

3. Magearna – Man-made poke that has a gear aesthetic ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

4. Metagross – Made from fusing two Metang together.

5. Aegislash – Despite Ozma being a ‘wizard’ he was also a ‘warrior’

6. Zoroark – Uses illusions and would even sacrifice its life to protect loved ones.

#rwby #pokemon #strq #ozpin #jnpr #rwby pokemon au #i spent way too much time on this #but it was fun

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spacebrick3 · 7 years ago

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Wormholes and Multiverse Theory

Some research for Empty Space, as well as a kind-of overview of all this for anyone else who wants to write wormholes or multiverses and do it right.

Wormholes:

Okay! So wormholes are basically an entirely theoretical solution of the equations of general relativity. They’re also sometimes called Einstein-Rosen bridges or Schwarzschild wormholes.

The first wormhole was proposed in 1916 by Ludwig Flamm, who was reviewing the equations for general relativity, and found that one of the solutions described a “white hole”, which was a theoretical reverse of a black hole (a point in spacetime where it was impossible for things to fall in, and which actively repelled matter. Later, Albert Einstein and Nathan Rosen proposed their idea of spacetime “bridges”, which were connections between two areas of space. The simplest way I found to describe it, without going into geodesic coordinate systems and maximally extended Schwarzschild metrics (because I don’t really know what those are) is this: “In normal space it is always possible to shrink any closed surface down to a point. A wormhole is a region of space containing a closed surface for which this is not the case. More correctly, a wormhole is a region of spacetime containing a “world tube” (the time evolution of a closed surface) that cannot be continuously deformed (shrunk) to a world line.” (Rodrigo, 2005).

The theory of how such wormholes would form is that, basically, due to the spin-spin interaction in fermions, matter at the center of a black hole would not collapse down to a gravitational singularity, but instead rebound to form a white hole and create the bridge. Sadly, in 1962 it was shown that this type of wormhole is inherently unstable when connecting two parts of the same universe (more on multiverses later, probably), and that even without that matter or light couldn’t move fast enough to get from one end to the other before it collapsed

However, there are theories that these types of wormholes could be stabilized with negative energy. Based on the Casimir effect, it has been shown that negative energy densities in normal spacetime can exist, and there are some exciting new discoveries that might even be able to produce it. Several prominent black hole physicists, such as Hawking, Thorne, and others have proposed that this negative energy could be used to “hold open” the mouth of such wormholes and allow them to be traversed. These wormholes would allow ultra-fast travel within the same universe, or allow travel between universes. Which brings us to…

Multiverse Theory:

First of all, if you want a really really good book all about this, I’d absolutely recommend Our Mathematical Universe by Max Tegmark. He’s probably one of or just the foremost expert/theorist on parallel universes right now, so I’ll be citing him a lot.

Anyways, there’s two different version of multiverse “levels” - Tegmark levels and Greene classifications, but we’ll just go into the Tegmark levels because they’re a little easier to understand.

Tegmark Levels:

First: inflationary theory. Inflationary theory is the explanation of what happened immediately after the Big Bang (basically, it’s predicted that there was a period immediately after where the universe expanded at many times the speed of light, which explains why it appears topologically flat and why it appears the same in every direction).

However, what they found is that there’s no real way for this inflation to end, and leave us with our normal, regular universe. Eventually, though, Paul Steinhardt and Andrei Linde came up with the idea of chaotic inflationary theory - basically, inflation ends in “bubbles” of hot matter and radiation, while inflation continues outside it.

Level 1:

Alright. So the universe is expanding. And there’s a fundamental volume - the Hubble volume - for any observer at which objects outside it recede at faster than the speed of light, meaning that we generally can’t reach them. That’s what we’re going to call our universe.

Now, our universe (our Hubble volume) is not all there is. It’s likely that due to inflation, it is actually just one of many in the infinite space created by inflation. That infinite space will thus then contain an infinite number of Hubble volumes. These universes will all have the same physical laws, but will have different initial conditions - the quantum fluctuations and position of each particle before it inflated.

The fun thing is, though, that there’s a finite number of initial conditions. And an infinite number of universes. So, there ends up being copies. Infinite numbers of copies, in fact. Because even though there is what is commonly referred to as a “lot” of initial conditions (somewhere on the level of 10^80), that’s nothing compared with infinity.

Level 2:

Now the fun stuff. So, those bubbles I mentioned earlier? Each of those are infinite Level 1 multiverses, each separated by rapidly-expanding space. And each of those bubbles, due to spontaneous symmetry breaking, can have different physical constraints. Not physical laws, but different physical constraints (such as # of dimensions, etc.)

Here’s the best way I’ve found to explain it. The inverse square law of gravity states that the gravitational attraction between any two bodies diminishes as the square of the distance between them. Basically, what happens when the physical constraints are changed is that some constants become variables. So that ’square’ of the distance? It’s actually a variable, which can be expressed as (n-#of space dimensions). Since our universe has 3 dimensions, that becomes distance squared, but in a universe with four space dimensions, it would become distance cubed, and gravitational attraction would drop off much quicker.

Level 3:

Level 3 is…different. It’s based off of Hugh Everett III’s Many Worlds Theory. Essentially, quantum mechanics says that some probabilities can’t be calculated exactly. There’s a range, each with a different probability. The Many Worlds theory basically says that each probability corresponds to a different universe. If you roll a six-sided die, each fall corresponds to a different universe, which splits off from the original.

The funny thing is, the Level 3 multiverse is pretty similar to the Levels 1 and 2 multiverses. Since each universe created by a ‘split’ in a Level 3 multiverse would correspond to some set of initial conditions leading to that, it is the same as the Level 1 multiverses, and the Level 2 multiverses just involve a split when the symmetry is broken. The only real difference is whether these universes exist in ‘real’ space, or whether they exist in a branch of Hilbert space.

Level 4:

This one is controversial - it’s Tegmark’s own hypothesis. The other levels are generally supported, because they tend to arise naturally from theories we can already observe - Levels 1 and 2 are based on inflationary theory, which is held to be true given that it explains the nature of the universe we see now. Still, I’ll explain it, because it’s interesting. Is it true? *shrug* I don’t know. No one really does.

Anyways, the Level 4 multiverse is, in short, a theory of Tegmark’s that physical reality is, at base, a mathematical structure. This encompasses all universes - ones with different initial conditions, physical constraints, or even physical laws. The only constraint, it is argued, is that these mathematical models must be computable - all computable mathematical structures exist.

There’s lots of arguments against it, and for it, but in the end the problem is that this hypothesis is completely unobservable. The universes don’t affect one another, and aren’t casually connected, so we can’t look for any of them.

Also, here’s a fancy visual to help illustrate it a bit:

Some sites!

Wormholes:

http://www.webfilesuci.org/WormholeFAQ.html

http://www.hawking.org.uk/space-and-time-warps.html

Multiverse Theory:

http://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/crazy.html

https://arxiv.org/pdf/0905.1283.pdf

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/multiverse-the-case-for-parallel-universe/

Our Mathematical Universe, by Max Tegmark

Tagging @falkon8888 - here you go!

#empty space #worldbuilding #wormholes #multiverse theory #please #if you're going to write multiverses do it well #weekly science things #physics

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butts-bouncing-on-the-beltway · 7 years ago

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Okay so you reblog these amazing houses all the time but i have to ask, what would your own dream house look like if money was limitless? Also where would it be located?

Oh man. You sure have asked a question to which I have way too well thought out an answer.

I like our city. We moved here because we wanted to be here and I honestly would not give it up. That said, we live in the more crowded part of it and I wouldn’t necessarily object to moving to another section so that we had more land. I grew up out west and so I’ve always really wanted an acre or two to kinda sprawl lazily out on. I’d want to have it planted with lots of local trees and shrubs and other such things that I can just kind of minimally manage and otherwise leave to flourish on their own.

I kinda miss stucco and clay, but Hubby really loves their New England brick, and I’ll be honest I’ve grown fond of it too since we moved into our current place. So odds are we’d either do something brick and clay, or something stone and stucco. It’d probably depend a lot on how flamboyantly we built the actual footprint of the house.

If you’ve followed me for a while, you may have seen the floor plans I draw up and post from time to time when I’ve been fantasizing. But even those I try to keep to a somewhat existent (if indulgent) budget. If money was no object at all?? Oh boy.

Well, to start, I’d want a fully stocked restaurant grade kitchen times two. I cook for armies and I actually would like to be able to keep Kosher at some point when I want to. So my dream kitchen would be huge. At least 20’x20’. It’d have three large pantries (5’x5’ min) and a cellar (8’x8’ min) attached to it. One pantry for each set of cookware (meat and dairy), and one pantry for seasonings and dry goods. The cellar would be for keeping vegetables cool and dry, as well as for the drinks cooler and the deep freezer because buying in bulk is both responsible and spoons efficient. Aesthetically, picture the worst, most offending McMansion style kitchen full of black stainless steel appliances (2 of each), a massive kitchen island with a huge double sink and garbage disposal and bar stools to boot, and a giant hanging rack in the middle of the room with all my most used pots and pans. The major difference between my dream kitchen and McMansion hell is that my cabinets would be this gorgeous dark red-black cherry color wood, and my counters would be gorgeous black (either slate or granite) speckled with red, gold, and white bits. I’d prefer a nice cream-to-tan range for the floor tiles, but I’ve become so fond of my little Spanish missionary tiles, that I’d probably try to do another lovely little mosaic all around my stove insets and my backsplash. Kitchens should be warm colors, huge, and HIGHLY functional.

I didn’t used to care about having a dining room, but I admit that it’s existence is growing on me. I’d still rather have a less ostentatious one tho. Just enough for a big dining table (has to seat at least 8, I like to entertain) and a hutch for dishware. It’d be awfully nice to have a little bar cupboard set up in there too, locked of course because there’ll be kids in the house. I’m still in love with our first dining room table and sad as heck that it had to be gotten rid of. Assume that whenever I’m talking about wooden furniture I’m thinking the same lovely dark red stain as those kitchen cabinets by the way. It’s a thing.

The dining room frankly shouldn’t be much more than an extension of the living room space which absolutely should also be huge. A giant, soft, squishy couch, one of those U-shaped fiascos with the chaise lounges at either end and lots of pillows. Woodsey colors. Deep browns and rich reds and greens. A giant hutch with the TV/computer/video game console/DVD/Cable set up all wired in, with room to put away all our movies and games. A giant TV. I’ve become so spoiled. We bought a 46” (I think? Something around that number) a while back and I just can’t fathom the idea of going back to anything smaller. Did you know they’ve got stuff even past 60” these days???? I can’t even imagine. I think maybe we’d stick with a nice, indulgent 55” most likely. Only TV in the house. I’m old-fashioned that way I guess. I really really hate hardwood floors, but carpet is allergen heavy and hard to clean, so I’ll probably lay that gorgeous fake-wood-looking stone tiles throughout the house. Everywhere but the kitchen and bathrooms I think. That way it looks all fancy and “traditional” but I don’t have to deal with caring for wood floors. Stone is so much simpler, lord.

There needs to be a big laundry room. Two washers and two dryers, a specially made doggie shower that won’t make my baby boy cry, and a small people shower for when folks come home muddy and filthy as they often do. Another big island in the middle of the room for folding clothes on and a big stone dirt sink that I can use for hand washing. Lots of lighting, and preferably on the first floor by the entryway. I hate this whole “laundry room in the basement” thing.

I want a guest bedroom downstairs with it’s own bathroom en suite. Something simple and functional, but pretty. I actually really like the layout for the bathrooms in our house now, a sink and toilet on one side of the room, and a bathtub/shower combo next to a roomy linen closet on the other. I think the main difference is I’d just like to scale them up slightly, make the shower/tub area roomier so it can be a proper tiled in set up rather than one of those plastic pre-fabs. And lots of counter space in all the bathrooms there’s just no such thing as too much counter space.

I’d want one more bathroom downstairs too. Just a half bath, something that can be easily accessed by anyone who’s over regardless of living arrangements.

Upstairs, I’d want four more bedrooms with bathroom en suites, all built around a lovely, open room that can be a playroom when kids are little, a study space when they’re in school, a sleepover kingdom when they have company. Just…..a space where the kids can really be out of their rooms and have creative license, you know?

And then. There’s my suite. This place is my master piece. It is……insane and impossible, but if I had all the money in the world I would do it because it would be like a dream. The Master suite has got to be huge. It’s a whole floor to itself. It’s got so many rooms. The entry to it at the stair’s landing is a little sitting room with some comfy lounge chairs, bookshelves, and okay fine the only other TV in the house. It’s a place where others may freely enter my domain without invading or violating my space. Beyond this point, no one is allowed without it either being their room too or without express permission from someone whose room it is. The parts to this suite are: the bedroom, the bathroom, the spa, the closet, and the entertaining space. The bedroom will be simple and pretty normal sized. 11’x11’. Maybe 15’x15’ at the absolutely maximum. A bed, the night stands, a comfy chair in the corner, some lamps. The bathroom will be like all the others in the house. Practical and functional but pretty. I like sea colors in bathrooms, so maybe some turquoise’s and crystal blues. Lots of counter space. A double sink. The closet will be gigantic for a closet. The size of it’s own bedroom. Maybe 10’x10’? It’ll have fully built in and beautiful wooden shelving systems throughout it. All our clothes will be sorted and everyone will have their own section to the room. But the spa. My god the spa is my sanctuary. It is the size of the kitchen. Huge. It’s got a personal steam room, ready to be filled with heat and scented oils and the feeling of my muscles not crunching. It’s also got a gigantic open shower, maybe 6’x6’, tiled in, rain shower heads and soft lights, and a bench I can sit on while I’m washing my hair. There’s a hot tub. Party sized obviously. Built into the floor of the spa with stone tiles and jets and those colored lights and this gorgeous stone and fire feature hanging down from the ceiling above it - low enough to be stunning but high enough not to risk anyone hurting themselves in it. The whole room would have built in surround sound speakers and colored dimmer lights and there would be potted plants and glass tile mosaics all around. I want it to look like one of those beautiful, ancient Spanish-Persian bath houses. Lots of soft greens and rich golds and brilliant purples. And then the entertaining space. Well. That’s something better left described on my other blog. But suffice to say that it should be very roomy and with lots of custom built-ins to facilitate the sort of entertaining that a passel of adults getting together in the late night while the kids are at the sitter’s house would get up to.

There’s gotta be a nice big garage to park everyone’s car in, especially during the winter. The driveway would be one of those neat half circle drives that people can park along, and it’d be made of that fancy solar panel stuff that they can make roads out of so that even in the dead of winter it never ices. Plus that in combination with solar roofing tiles will make sure the whole house (and the electric cars) are powered cleanly. There’ll be a generator and emergency power storage unit to round it all out, make sure we’re not dependent on the city power grid for any of our power needs. Central heating and air conditioning (fucking hell do you need both in this place), a whole house multi-step water filtration system (not a fan of the city water, it tastes like hard metals), giant cat playgrounds built into the walls of the house so the fur children can romp. A big, insulated and winterized doggie house and play run out in the yard for BabyBug and his friends to race in. A nice stone patio with a built in grill and fire feature and seating. Swings and a clubhouse out back for the kids. A nice big patch of clover and wild flower lawn that has those fancy sprinklers embedded all through it so we can turn them on in the summer and have a little water park afternoon in our own backyard. I think that’s pretty much everything I’d ever possibly want. The only other thing is kind of a toss-up whether we’d want it or not, and that’s a guest house. A little vacation-y type place, two small bedrooms, two small bathrooms, a little kitchen and living room. That way when anyone’s parents come down to visit they can be safely stashed away in their own little world and don’t have to be to be interacted with when folks aren’t ready to. It might just be better never to have the in-laws stay over tho.

Anyway. I evidently have extremely expensive taste, but not the kind of expensive taste that rich people find fashionable. It makes it challenging to find pictures that exactly represent what I would want. Which is why I reblog so very many fantastically lavish house pictures I suppose.

Maybe I’ll give another go at trying to put together my own photo sets tho. Or at least another round of floor plans. It’s been a while.

This was a great question Anon! I really enjoyed getting prattle on about this!

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lsesu · 5 years ago

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Moving in: How to make your uni room a home on the cheap

It’s the big day! A number of you will be moving into your new accommodation this weekend - we hope that it goes as smoothly as possible for you. Now it’s time to unpack and most importantly, get decorating!

For a lot of you, this will be the first time you have lived away from home, and for all our international students, it could even be your first time living in another country.

No matter where you’re staying - halls, private housing or other accommodation – any university room can be transformed with a little bit of creativity.

Plus, if you’re savvy about it and follow our tips, decorating your room doesn’t have to cost you your entire first student loan instalment.

One of the key pillars of meditation is that your bedroom should be a sanctuary, a place of relaxation. This is why it’s important to make your room a relaxing and comforting space where you can chill out and be productive if need be.

Here are a few ways that you can jazz up your new space:

1. Start with your bed

Most likely to be the biggest piece of furniture in your room, and lets be honest, it’s probably the best piece of furniture too as it’s where we get our beloved sleep. So, make your bed the centre of attention by adding an eye-catching duvet cover and covering it with cosy cushions and blankets.

While there are some expensive ones out there, duvet covers don’t have to set you back a fortune! Many stores like Wilko, Matalan and Asda have some nice sets at very reasonable prices.

You can also bag cheap sets online, but be careful with purchasing from shops you don’t know - make sure you do your research on the retailer before buying and read up on trustpilot reviews to see how other customer experiences have been.

eBay and Amazon are typically OK to go with as they have guarantees that protect customers should products not meet the description, but it’s always good to be careful and read up on the seller and their past customer reviews.

Primark is a really good place for cheap (but cosy) cushions or blankets, so you can really load up your bed with the fluffy stuff. You can also try Wilko, Matalan, Asda and other supermarkets as they usually have a large range of cheap homeware stuff too.

2. Light it up

It’s pretty much a fact that decorative lighting immediately makes a room feel more homely. A bit of extra lighting can add a cosy and warm feel to your room, just the thing you need after a long day at uni.

Make sure you check your tenancy agreement and fire regulations of your buildings or houses as some may not allow lights that plug into the mains power sockets. If that’s the case – you can always pick up battery-powered LED lights instead.

Lamps are great for your bedside table, desk or even for different areas of your room if you’re looking for taller ones. Asda, B&M, The Range and Wilko are good places to start for lamps, and won’t set you back much on the cost side either.

Be sure to check whether your lamps include light bulbs as you may have to purchase these separately. Even if there is a bulb included, it’s a good idea to look into getting some energy saving lightbulbs – this will save you money in the long run if you have to pay bills on top of your rent. Wilkinson’s sells cheap energy saving lightbulbs.

For the extra special touch – grab yourself some fairy lights! This form of lighting can really transform the mood and atmosphere of your bedroom. Get some of these and you are well on your way to creating a sanctuary.

Argos, Primark and IKEA sell fairy lights so have a browse to see if any of them take your fancy. If you want to invest a little bit more into getting some really decorative or novelty fairy lights, then you can look at retailers such as Not on the Highstreet and search for other online retailers to get a bigger selection.

3. Put photos everywhere

Sticking up your photos will make your room feel more like your own and can transform it from zero to hero in a matter of minutes.

A quick and easy way to get a load of good photos is to use a company like Super Snaps who can print out a load of your Instagram photos for you. This saves you wasting time and ink trying to do it yourself.

Look out for deals and discounts from online photo printing companies if you aren’t in so much of a rush. Some companies like Free Prints offer 500 photos printed for free if you pay for the delivery, but make sure you double check the terms and conditions.

Get creative with how you stick them around your room too! You could put them on your fridge, create patterns with them on your walls (but be careful how you stick them up so as not to cause any marks) or even peg them to those fairy lights of yours.

Coming to university can get a little overwhelming at times, so surrounding yourself with photos of familiar faces, snaps from home and good times will help you if you are finding it a little tough being away from home.

Don’t go too crazy though! You have to ensure that you leave room for the photos of all the new memories that you will make at LSE!

4. Use everyday objects differently

Think outside of the box! There are so many everyday items that can be used in a different way that can add a little bit of quirkiness to your room.

We’ll give you some examples, but it’s when you find a new and creative use for something yourself, that will really give it a personal touch.

Need a bedside table? Get a cheap wire wastepaper basket, turn it over and hey presto! Alternatively, you could stack a load of old books on top of each other and fasten them together to create a makeshift table and chair.

Who said a shoe organiser needed to be for shoes? You can get one from IKEA or Wilko for around £5, get yourself one and fill it with anything you like! If you are someone with lots of clutter, it’s a good way to store everything, or use it as a decorating piece by putting colourful items in the pockets.

5. Get DOWN with UPcycling

Something that you definitely need to get savvy on! Turn any piece of old furniture from trash to treasure with a bit of creativity and manual labour.

Upcycling is the creative reuse of old furniture and unwanted items to transform them into higher quality, refreshed and re-energised pieces of homeware. This trend is on the rise and we can see why! Lots of people have achieved really stylish and effective results from their upcycling.

The best thing about upcycling is that anyone can do it, no matter how much money you have. You can re-paint, stick and re-fashion any item into something new. It’s a very cost effective and inexpensive way to source cool additions for your uni room or house.

So, get yourselves down to your local charity shop or car boot sale, grab yourself some unwanted things and get upcycling!

Heres a quick guide on how to get started with upcycling

6. Get it smelling lush

Nothing beats walking into a room that smells lovely. Make your room a more comfortable and familiar setting by adding some scents into the mix.

You should be careful when it comes to candles though. While they are awesome, some accommodations and houses won’t allow you to use them as part of your tenancy agreement, so make sure you check up on this.

Reed diffusers are a safer bet and you can get some super cheap ones from the high street! Try having a look in Wilko, Savers or any other supermarket and see if any of the scents take your fancy.

7. Keep all your study things in one area

Remember what we said about your bedroom being a sanctuary? Well, especially when it gets to exam time or assessment periods, it’s important that you try and keep it this way.

We know that you are going to have to do work in your room at some point, but try to keep any documents, notepads or any study-related things confined to one area, so that you can freely move away from it and rest when you’re done.

An easy go to is having all of your study things on your desk, on your pinboard (if you have one) or bookshelf. In the long run, this will hopefully help you keep your things organised and allow you to be able to switch off better after those long study sessions.

8. Washi tape EVERYTHING

Ok, if you’ve never heard of washi tape before, prepare to be amazed. It’s best described as the wonderful cross between masking tape and a rainbow. These magical rolls of tape come in so many colours and patterns and they are SUPER cheap to get a hold of.

The beauty of washi tape is that it doesn’t leave that sticky residue that Sellotape does, nor does it take 4 layers of paint/plaster off the walls, so you don’t have to worry about losing your deposit with washi tape.

The possibilities with washi tape are endless. You can decorate the edges of bookshelves to give them a bit more life. You can use them to stick photos up. You can use it add some flair to your upcycle products. You can use it to make charts, tables and planners. You can get creative and make some washi art on your walls….

One of our personal favourites – keep hold of your toilet roll tubes, cover them in washi tape and put them across your desk…you’ve now got a load of cool and quirky holders for all your pens, highlighters scissors, hair brushes and anything else for virtually nothing!

Trust us, you will not regret buying this. You can pick up some washi tape from The Works, The Range and Wilko. Check out the many ways that you can utilise the magic of washi tape here.

9. Decorate your walls

If you’ve followed all of the above, you will probably have some stuff across your walls by now. Decorating your walls will make a huge difference to the cosiness and personal feel of your room.

Think of your walls as being naked at the moment, so you need to go out there and find some cool, colourful and really “you” things to cover them up!

Always best to have another look through that tenancy agreement and building regulations of yours, as most accommodations don’t allow you to fasten things or blu-tak your walls.

Lucky for you, there are these amazing inventions called command hooks, which are another product that you can use to put things up around your room without it leaving any residue or marks (if you remove it correctly and as instructed).

Tapestries will bring lots of life to your room so why not head down to your local market, thrift shop or charity shop to see what you can find! Posters, pictures and any other decorations would be good for jazzing up your walls as well.

For this, try shopping in the homeware sections of most supermarkets, as well as Wilko, The Range, B&M, IKEA and Primark.

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sketchyscrolls-blog · 7 years ago

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Taehyung x Reader: Chrome Heart is different from Stone Heart. [1]

Tick. Tick. Tick.

The clock was the first thing you heard.

You didn’t know why you could hear, but sound is what registered in your newly booted up brain.

You opened your eyes, only to be attacked with an onslaught of light and colors, words listing across your vision as your eyes focused on different things.

What am I? you thought. You couldn’t be human, could you? Humans were made of organic material, right? Did you have any on you?

You tried to sit up to check and when you did, you saw a fairly normal body. your arms were normal as far as you could tell.You had expected to hear mechanical movements as your body rose, but you heard only the sound of the sheets rubbing against your clothing.

You turned your head to look around the room and saw that it was not as bright as you once thought.

The lights came through the corners between the ceiling and walls, and there was dark grey all around. On the walls, there were streams of hushed blue light. You guessed those were data transport streams.

You looked around more and noticed a robot to the left of your bed. It looked like a mechanical arm of some sort. Probably what had repaired you or modified you. You didn’t know why you’d need repairing, but it was your best inference.

After examining the robot, your mechanical eyes focused on a male being across the room from you. You knew he was male because of his clothing. You wore a simple white robe wish a shirt underneath. His was black. It only made sense.

The boy was beautiful. You didn’t have any other words to describe him as. Your eyes zoomed and focused on his delicate eyelashes, his smooth lips, his soft-looking hair. You saved these in your long-term memory for a reason you couldn’t perceive at the moment.

You stared at him for what may have been at least an hour when you saw his eyelashes quiver.

You raised your eyebrows in anticipation as he opened his eyes, and the first thing you noticed was the fact that his eyes weren’t the same as yours. They had to be a more advanced technology.

The second thing you noticed was that he was moving. He sat up in his bed, just like you had, and he hadn’t made any mechanical noises either.

He looked around, as you had, until his eyes focused on you.

You felt embarrassment. You didn’t know why, but your face felt warm. Ah, so you must have organic matter on you for this to happen. [BLUSH] it said in the lower left corner of your vision. So that’s what the warmth was.

The male opened his mouth and spoke. His voice was most definitely human, and it was very smooth and deep.

“What are we?” he asked. You blinked. He thought the same thing you had.

“I don’t know. I infer that we’re not human. I also infer that we aren’t completely robot,” you speculated. You didn’t know why you were using such robotic terms, but you assumed you just had to go with it.

“You’re not used to slang, eh?” he asked, raising one of his eyebrows and tilting his head to one side. He must be more human than you were. You shrugged.

“I assume it is a part of my programming. I could try to use slang, if you think it would be best,” you offered. You actually really did want to use slang and the regular way of speaking. You didn’t have any reason not to.

“Programming? So, you have some mechanical stuff in your head, eh? Interesting. Oh, sorry for not introducing myself. I’m Taehyung, also known as V. V, as in the roman numeral for five. I don’t know why I have two names. What’s your name? Or some identification I can use to know you as?” Wow. He sure spoke a lot.

“I don’t know my identity. I just know that I’ve woken up and all that you’ve told me. I think they may have wiped my memory.”

“Oh, yikes. So you’re one of those experiments, huh? I’m sorry. Can I call you pumpkin? As a nickname? Or is there something else you’d prefer?” he asked. He looked at you, the intensity of his gaze almost frightening you.

“Sure, that’s okay,” you said. You turned and let your legs hang over the side of the bed, only to be greeted with the sight of metal. Your legs were metal. You lifted your shirt to look further when you heart Taehyung’s voice break the silence of the room.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you, pumpkin,” he warned. You stopped with your shirt halfway up your torso and looked over at him, confused. His cheeks had shifted colors from the pale shade they once were to a darker shade of pink. He was blushing?

“Why not? I would like to see what they have done to me.”

“It’s okay. It’s just that I know what they did and it’s not pretty. And also the fact that you’re a girl and I’m a guy and we’re both in adolescence.”

Your eyes widened in realization and you gave him a sideways glance while your own face heated up. “Oh,” you said.

“Yeah.”

“So, they… didn’t get rid of that…?” you asked.

“Nope. I mean, I don’t think so. I’d check, but like I said. We’re adolescents. We don’t have fully developed frontal lobes. You know?” You were surprised at how forward he was with this. His body was reacting like it was embarrassed, yet he didn’t seem embarrassed at all. You noted that this boy was weird.

“Do you know your age?” you asked him. If he knew that, maybe he’d know yours.

“I’m seventeen. My birthday is… actually today, based on my mental menu. That’s what all that stuff you see is. Like, it has your status conditions in the lower left corner, and the upper right corner has the status conditions of the subject you’re viewing. So if you looked at the upper right corner of your mental map you’d probably see what my physical condition is.”

You looked up there, and sure enough, you saw [HEALTHY. UNHARMED.] You nodded at him, noting his condition.

“It says you’re healthy and unharmed. What does yours say about me?”

“It says that you’re healthy, but that you are harmed but not close to death. That’s why I don’t want you to see what they did. Based on the stuff your eyes are made of, they did to you what they did to me when I was fifteen.”

“And what is that?”

“They took out your original heart and replaced it with a chrome one. When they did it to me, there were parts of my chest that were open in some places. You could see inside me. None of it leaked of course, they made sure to seal it off. But the trenches were deep in my chest. I could see my new heart. It felt wrong. But my chest was okay. It’s like… a huge X over your chest. The center is your heart, and they avoid your pectoral muscles. Anyway, you don’t have ribs anymore.”

“Oh,” you said. “So, they replaced my ribs too?”

“Yeah. They’re not necessarily ribs, but they’re like a titanium shell underneath your skin. Your skin is still healing from the surgery, so that’s probably why you read off as harmed in my mental menu.”

“So, you seem to know a lot more than you did when you woke up. You asked me what we are, like you didn’t know. You must know, right? Based on how much you’re telling me.”

“Oh, yeah. I know. I’ve just always asked that question as soon as I woke up. Because when I wake up in a room like this, I know they did something. I just never know what until I find it. I’ve never woken up with someone else in the room, though. It’s nice to meet you,” he said, smiling a strangely boxy smile.

You smiled back at him, tentatively. “It’s nice to meet you, as well.”

You stared into each other’s eyes for a few seconds until the door in the side of the wall suddenly slid upward. Your head snapped to the new opening in the wall, and you peered into the hallway that laid beyond it.

“Looks like it’s time to go,” said Taehyung. He got out of his bed and gestured for you to join him. He held out a very human hand and offered it to you, and you accepted.

As he dragged you down the hallway, you began to feel pain around your upper torso. When you told Taehyung, he slowed his pace for you. You thanked him, and you kept moving until you came into a huge empty room.

This room had orange streams in the walls, floors, and ceiling, as well as red. It felt like there had been many horrible things done in this room. Taehyung squeezed your hand and brought you into the center of the room, where there was a circle on the floor that was higher than the test of the floor. When he got there, he stood on it, and he gestured for you to do the same.

You got on with him, and the platform began to rise. Taehyung wasn’t fazed by this, however you were, and you lost your balance and had to hold onto him for support. You let go as soon as you regained your balance, blushing.

He simply smiled at you as you both rose through the hole in the surface of the ceiling. The streams followed you up there, in the walls. You noticed that they changed color the higher you got. They eventually went from red to blue, and then to green. Then, the lift stopped.

You and Taehyung were in a room full of very fancy furniture. There was an elegant desk and there were some very comfortable looking chairs along the walls, as well as some very full bookcases.

You looked at the man who sat behind the desk. He was young, yet he had white hair. When he spoke, his voice sent chills down your spine. This man was not to be trusted.

“Hello,” he said. He looked at Taehyung and nodded in his direction. “V,” he acknowledged. But then he looked at you. “Welcome to the facility, X. Your new heart seems to be working well. How do you like your new legs?” he asked, a malicious grin forming on his pale face.

“They work well enough,” you said. You blinked. This man seemed familiar.

“Since you may not recognize me after the memory wipe, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Maxus. However, you may only refer to me as Master. if I hear you refer to me as my name, I will personally destroy you.” You nodded. “Ah, yes. You’ve never really been one for words, have you? Oh, well. Take V with you to get tested. I’m certain he will show you the proper way to the examination chamber.” You nodded again, and Taehyung offered you his hand to take you back onto the circular lift.

“Taehyung, he seemed to know me. Do you have any idea who I am?” you asked.

“Yeah, I do. After hearing your numeral identification. But I don’t think I am permitted to tell you what you did to have your memory wiped. Sorry for that, pumpkin.”

You shook your head. “No worries, Taehyung, I’m sure it wasn’t too bad, right?” you asked. He looked away from you and toward his feet. “Right?” you repeated. “Wait, Taehyung, now I’m curious.”

“I’m sorry, pumpkin, but I can’t tell you what you did in case you do it again. They’ll kill both of us if that happens. So please, don’t ask.” He looked into your eyes sincerely. His status condition said [STRESSED]. You sighed.

“Okay. Do you at least know my name?” you asked. Surely, he must know at least that.

“I don’t. Only a select few people in this facility know their true names, the names they had before they came here. And that’s me and my six friends. I’ll introduce them to you later. For now, we need to get you into testing.”

(people who wanted to be tagged: @taechubs and @oppamansae)

#taehyung x reader #chrome heart #taehyung x reader chrome heart #bts v #bts #bangtan #bangtan sonyeondan #n.o era

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zedkyo · 7 years ago

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Day One Sorta...

Two weeks ago the world was a much happier, though at the same time not as happy place. At least back then they were just trying to screw each other out of a nearly useless currency instead of trying to eat or kill each other outright, or most of the world was. Now we’re standing at gunpoint from some boys that look like they should have either eaten or been eaten this last week, practically skin and bones and barely able to hold up the guns they are threatening us with.

“Which one of you is the leader?” The man nearest the middle of the group steps forward, directing his used-to-be-illegal sawn-off side by side 12gauge at each of the seven of us individually, though in no condition to even start to guess which of us is the leader, or the most dangerous for that matter. His cloths can only be described as grey scraps of cloth, littered with brown splotches from the dirt. It’s only been two weeks, how are people this bad off already? “I asked a question!” He’s obviously getting impatient now so I step forward.

“They call me Zed. I guarantee though, if you pull that trigger the other six will wipe you and your band out faster than they can pull their own.”

“Yea? Wanna bet?” He opens the barrel in a show that it is in fact loaded, though I think he might have forgotten if it actually is. Before he can even close the action on it, two guns are drawn from the closest to me and pointed at the raggedy group.

I point to my left, at a woman that looks no less than thirty, a large caliber, and even larger barreled rifle aimed dead center at the man’s head. “This one’s V, and the one on my right we call Hulk. You can probably guess why.” V, is no small girl for sure, and she holds the twenty plus pound rifle steady for standing up and it being nearly as tall as her five and a half foot tall self. Wiry looking, but faster at drawing then the other.. The second one, maybe three inches below my near six and a half feet tall is built almost like the Hulk himself from the comics and old TV show. In one hand he sports a similarly equipped sawn-off, though this one is easily a 10gauge, wielded like a child might a dandelion. In his other, or rather hanging off his shoulder and the trigger held by the other hand is a triple-barreled chain gun, the button on the side of the reversed pistol grip pressed down to charge the RPMs of the barrels, all three hair-triggers pressed to their maximum reach before they actually let off a round. The minigun seems to have the most effect though, and the man slowly closes the chambers of his and orders his men to lower their guns as well, to which the high pitched grinding sound dies down and all weapons are lowered. Loaded or not, every gun has an intimidation factor, and the way we look compared to the way they look is more convincing that ours are actually loaded. “Now, how about some food? You boys look as hungry as we feel tired.” I motion towards the abandoned hotel in the middle of the flatlands where we are at, the men eye our bags with delight at the prospect of food and hurry in, only the man at front waiting until the big guns pass him to start heading inside with me at his heels, seemingly more restrained than the others. Smart. Dangerous.

Two Weeks, and Two Days Ago: Chaos Begins, T-Minus 52 hours.

V was nowhere to be seen, which was good. If she was seen, we wouldn’t have had the surprise on our side. Hulk and I stopped at the front in our black SUV, looking at the old apartment building that should have been demolished a decade ago.

“Well boss, looks like another job we have to watch our step in.” His voice is deep, but soft. Not showing any of the mental horrors or pain he had stored away for nights light this.

“Aren’t they always? It’s not like simple gang bangers can afford a fancy mansion, now can they?” I replied casually, having done this a thousand times already. He shrugged, knowing I’m at least partly right. If they didn’t spend their money on their own dope, they probably could with the money they make.

V sounded in our ears, her voice was silky and young compared to her age, even two weeks later in the middle of hell, for less appropriate terms. “At least twenty moving around, I don’t see any on the far side.” I confirmed two at the door, watching our car with nervousness mixed with genuine fear. I could only assume word had gotten around about the last six years things had gone awry for people like them and their bosses in the state. Someone eventually made up a name for people like us and word always spreads.

“We have the two at the door, Hulk is going to breach, then you take down as many as you can that you have CLEAN shots for. None of that half-assed, guessing shit like you did last month and left a couple of injured that nearly dropped us.”

“How was I supposed to know there was some angled sheets of scrap metal they had pack-ratted away? Besides, a clean shot would imply not through walls, and you know nobody goes NEAR a window when the shooting starts.”

She knew what I meant, it was just her way of saying she would keep to what she knew was safe to shoot through. At this point, I might as well pause.

Eight years ago. I started out alone, story of boy meets girl, bad guy kills girl and leaves guy alive. Guy takes his shitty, civilian equipment and gets revenge. The twist there is, the story doesn’t end with that. Someone else sees him do it, decides to offer him a job doing it. Starting with only pocket knives, working nights during school time, on weekends, earning money he can’t admit to where he got, and can only show off small bills at a time. Shown where to get black market weapons, to do better. Better knives, a gun or two just in case, REAL equipment. One night on a job, runs into a gang training a girl that was in the slave trade for the last twelve years. He nurses her to health in secret of his family, turns her loose. Eventually we run into each other again, she wants me to train her in what I do, as payback for all the people that bought and sold her since she was kidnapped at 6. A year later, we find a huge man that was probably a bodybuilder before he was beaten half to death chained to a wall in the basement. Free and nurse him after clearing out the warehouse, he joins the team for similar but different reasons. Three people with shitty pasts joining together to try to stop any more people from getting hurt by the same garbage.

Back to the job that night. The hulk of a man opened his door and steps out, followed quickly by me. We walked towards the door slowly, non-threatening, but guns are still drawn on us as expected. “Who are you and what are you doing here?”

“Doing maintenance work. Your door looks pretty busted, like it’s coming off its hinges.” The smartass WOULD say something like that too, and it surprisingly throws these two off and their guns lower as they both stupidly look back at the door. He immediately steps between them in the middle of their, “But it’s fi-”, his burly right hand reaches under and back, pulling a 40lb hammer down from a sheathe across his back, one upward motion hitting the door dead center and blowing it in several feet before the crumpled piece of metal even hits the floor.

The gunmen instantly turn their guns on him, and I draw two solid metal knives from my sides, two blacked throwing knives really, each carved and sharpened from a single dense sheet of steel without any hinges or plastic. Fists up, blades down, Hulk is in the door and I quickly join him, having “punched” past the two guards with the blades slicing their throats clean enough that they probably didn’t feel it until the tips cut between the vertebrae and almost instantly killed them before they dropped.

“More subtle next time, big guy?” I tossed the twin blades, one towards the guard of the next door, sticking it deep into his chest and through his heart before he can even raise the muzzle of his shotgun, the one in my left hand spiraling off to the right immediately after to stick into a second man’s forehead as he rose from the couch near a TV.

V hops on comms again, this time with a warning. “Civilian in the next room, Zed hit that one. Kaden, you get the door on the left. Hit it hard, it’s sturdy but won’t hold because it looks like the frame is rotting a bit, but there’s a guy behind it you won’t have to deal with otherwise.”

“Thanks Vera.” Take note that Hulk is only his nickname as we headed our separate directions while V nags me about hating when I call her that. I pulled my handgun, which is more like a hand cannon, from the holder on my left thigh, aiming it at the left before I even kick down the door. Taking the hint from V, and another throwing knife in my right hand, I pull the trigger on the first guy in the room and using the recoil as momentum from the heavy caliber pistol I launch the knife into the man’s neck, just above this girl’s shoulder. Released from his grasp she drops to the floor. A third, behind the second is practically tore in half from a bullet the size of my throwing daggers that also tears a hole in the two walls to my right and rips a chunk out of the floor before the phosphorous tipped shell disintegrates into the ground. Looks like she didn’t hit any sheet metal this time. The rest of the building was easy, a tip here, an extra hole in the wall there, and the last 15 or so armed people are cleaned up. I walked back through, digging my knives out of people’s bodies in various places, cleaning it on their clothes before restoring them to their proper places on my now slightly hole filled body armor. Those welts are going to hurt tomorrow for sure. It’s a weekend though, nobody to ask why I’m limping from this chunk taken out of my not-so-protected hip at school. As we walk out the front door, all reusable equipment in hand, we see V almost to the vehicle already.

“You have a count?” She asked. I simply shrugged in response, as we all knew the job was the clear the building out, not to care about how many were in it. We certainly weren’t the kind to compete like Legolas and Gimli might either. Everything is stripped off and tossed in the back, knowing in the imperfect world all the gunfire that took place over ten minutes would mean the cops would take less than thirty from the first shot, meaning we had ten minutes to move away from the area before we even heard a siren out here. That doesn’t mean we could properly store them before getting thirty or so miles away though, so we hopped in, Kaden passed out almost immediately in the back seats while I crawled into the passenger side and V slid behind the wheel and started us away.

Maybe an hour and a half later all the gear is secure where it should be, in the safe under the seats, and ten minutes more we’ve gotten back to their motel and I’ve been escorted home by, as some might call, the “.50 caliber chick.”

This next part is not an action movie, and you should be over 18 for it. Anyone underage, please scroll past this, don’t worry I’ll tell you when you can stop.

Veronica ran her hand along my thigh, a thing I might do if I’m stressed, whether to myself or someone I’m close to. She however, has different intentions with the motion.

“Vera, you know how I feel about this.”

She hummed out an uh-huh, her fingers danced upwards slowly, teasingly. I’m driving and I prefer not to take a hand off the wheel. Besides, I drive a manual, so even if both hands are not on the wheel, the second still needs to be somewhere on the car instead of fighting her off. By the time we got to my house and I had parked, she had slid her hand into my pants and was rubbing the growing bulge in my boxers. I practically jumped out of the car, walking inside as she took her time getting out, knowing with my more feral senses she was doing every seductive movement she could while getting out. I opened the door and practically snuck inside to keep from waking the other occupants of the house up, where she walked around to the front of the house where my window was on the second floor, climbing up the gutter with her own silent ease and letting herself in through the never locked pane of glass right as I stepped in the door, not turning the light on as per my usual way of entering my room. I had it memorized, and light just wakes people up anyway.

Before I could respond to her presence, she states in a quiet, innocent, but loving tone. “You’re tired, and injured. Let me help you get those off.” Her hands slid under my shirt, and I woefully lifted my arms up to let her pull it off my torso. Her fingers tug at the button on my pants, then undo the zipper. “These have to come off too, since this is around where your biggest injury is.” Her fingers pushed beneath my boxers at my hips, the wound not even making me flinch as she accidentally brushes against it, being too tired and having too high of a pain tolerance to even feel it. Her thumbs stay on the outside however, allowing her to push both layers down to my ankles as I kicked off my shoes.

I sighed, twisting my body to fall on my back on the bed, where she flicked at my erection playfully. “Well, even if you resist mentally, your body still seems to enjoy my touch. I’ll get to that after I patch that up though.” Two which she pulls a roll of gauze and rubbing alcohol from under my bedside table. One of the things I always keep around me, just in case something happens, accident or not.

V taped the gauze in a large bundle to my side, to make sure I didn’t roll over in my sleep and bleed out through a thin sheet or something. After that, I heard her clothes hit the floor and realize she hasn’t thrown my blanket over me. Instead of a blanket, and before I can realize I was still exposed, she crawled on top of me, my slowly dwindling hardon instantly springing back to life as her warm body pressed against mine in the dark, the heat between her legs rivaling the core of my own body, if rumors of me being a space heater are true.

“Now the fun part, unless you really don’t want to.” She stretched out that “really” as far as she could, so I sighed and wrapped my arms around her back, a hand on her lower back to squish her nethers against mine, and the other at the peak of her shoulder, pressing her chest to mine as I kissed her neck hard enough to leave a definite hickey. She ground helplessly against my body in her sudden lust, and moaned directly into my ear at my unexpected move.

I smirked at her as she cried out. “One, you should probably muffle yourself however you can, and two, you teased me for the last twenty or so minutes and THEN tell me I can say no?”

Her only response was to grind even rougher at me with her hips, my hand keeping her folds away from the tip of my member by pressing them instead against the base of my shaft, her body unable to pull back and reposition. “C-come on. Please??” Great, she’s begging now. Might as well give her what she wants, since she has pushed me this far right?

I relaxed my grip on her lower back, my hand brushed past her ass and gripped her thigh. I’m rewarded this time, a small gasp as I pull her knee towards her side, suggesting she pull the blankets over us just in case someone decides to check if I actually am home, and she does just that right before I lift her cooch into the air and spread it wide and deep by pressing her down on my rod. She did her best to stifle her shocked moan by digging her teeth into my shoulder almost deep enough to draw blood.

“My turn now?” She looks at me pleadingly in the dark and I nod, being able to see quite well in the blackness. My hands both moved to where her legs and hips meet as she sat up on my lap, balls deep in her hot, wet, and rather soft-walled mound. She started slow at first, rocking her hips back and forth, getting used to me inside of her before beginning to bounce on my lap. She bit her hand to keep quiet this time, her walls clenching tighter as she gained speed and momentum. I could feel myself reaching my own peak as well, spurred on by the knowledge she was getting off on me.

Right before we both climaxed, my hands reached up, one cupping the back of her neck to pull her down into a rough but intimate kiss, the other wrapping around her breast. The feeling of her lips against mine, as well as my hand squeezing her tit gave us both a little jump of pleasure, hers more obvious however as her pussy became like a vice, every pulse of our hearts was felt by us both the fitting was so snug by this point. She thankfully didn’t break the kiss, but by her mewls I could tell she was cumming, and so was I. Every time one of her tiny moans was around the same time as the throbbing spurt of my balls emptying into her depths, she squeaked a little, our bodies held tight to each other even in the afterglow. I refused to pull out, even after, and I knew she would hate if I did, so we lay there with her on top, both of us more exhausted than we were from the job.

Ok little ones, you can open your eyes now.

Her body laying on top of mine, she pants, speaking quietly because of our close proximity in the bed. “Why don’t you want to do this all the time, Zed? Why do you not like us being close?”

I sigh at the question. “You know why.” She pouts at my response, so I oblige her for a hundredth time. “I found you in a time of hardship, and gave you a better place. Our relationship started off as a thrill in that way, so us being close like this is just us being mentally attached to the feeling of when we first met, and that feeling is just a memory that is years old.”

“We could make new ones, ones that don’t involve blood or you saving my ass, literally.” Always persistent, but I do have to give her credit for trying.

“All we do is deal with blood and saving each other’s asses. Figuratively OR literally. When this goes away, then we won’t have anything keeping us together.”

She always hates that response to that question, but she’s euphoric at the moment and doesn’t argue. I was too tired at the moment anyway to argue, and she was already half asleep now as her breathing slowed. I hated to admit I loved feeling this close to someone, but it was also scary because I didn’t think it would last either. I could think about that more in the morning anyway, if she decided to bring it up. I closed my eyes and felt myself drift into sleep, knowing full well the horrors and memories that accompany my dreams, but at least there was someone to wake up to tonight instead of a cold empty room, not knowing if I was still in my nightmares.

End of day 1

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denialofspoon · 8 years ago

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all the asks

Mmmmmboy I’m lazy but also I love attention so ty anon!

Spotify, SoundCloud, or Pandora?

Spotify! Pandora sucks and SC got to ad-heavy.

is your room messy or clean?

messy ;_;

what color are your eyes?

Brown

do you like your name? why?

It’s nothing fancy, but I feel like it suits me pretty well, so I like it.

what is your relationship status?

@nottootypical and I have been together for over 2 years now lol

describe your personality in 3 words or less

Witty, driven, creative

what color hair do you have?

Brown-auburn… Also my beard is orange lol

what kind of car do you drive? color?

Silver VW Jetta

where do you shop?

Amazon mostly, also a local outdoor mall. Clothes in my size are tricky to find.

how would you describe your style?

Hipster with accents of streetwear. “Shitty SoundCloud DJ” I guess? lmao

favorite social media account

This one! I love being anonymous enough to be honest. Plus y’all are super nice to me.

what size bed do you have?

Honestly I don’t remember. Full?

any siblings?

Two! They’re very different from me but we’re close.

if you can live anywhere in the world where would it be? why?

I’ve been around and honestly, Austin represents the greatest opportunity for my dreams… Plus it feels like home! I’d love to be able to travel when I wanted to. Would love to spend some time in Reykjavik.

favorite snapchat filter?

That one with the pug! It’s so unsettling!

favorite makeup brand(s)

Don’t wear the stuff, but @nottootypical‘s Urban Decay palettes are awesome!

how many times a week do you shower?

7-9. I need to be cleeeeean

favorite tv show?

Twin Peaks! I’m hype af for the reboot!

shoe size?

American 10.5

how tall are you?

5′10″/180cm

sandals or sneakers?

Sneakers

do you go to the gym?

Not lately. As soon as the semester ends I’m jumping back in.

describe your dream date

We eat like 3 pounds of steak, sit quietly and hold hands, pet like 20 dogs at once, and then get launched into the void of space with all those dogs and start a dog colony on the moon.

how much money do you have in your wallet at the moment?

$100 in cash.

what color socks are you wearing?

Black

how many pillows do you sleep with?

2 personally. In total we sleep with like 50 because Alisa is a pillow hoarder.

do you have a job? what do you do?

I’m an analyst/consultant.

how many friends do you have?

Several? I dunno the quantity. I have maybe 7 or 8 friends, 3 very dear ones.

whats the worst thing you have ever done?

That I’m comfortable telling the internet? Uh, awhile back I let a breakup get the better of me and turned into a pretty toxic, unpleasant person for a few months. I’m pretty sorry I put everyone through seeing me like that.

whats your favorite candle scent?

It’s super basic but I enjoy vanilla/gingerbread scents.

3 favorite boy names

I honestly don’t know

3 favorite girl names

^^^

favorite actor?

Leonardo DiCaprio or Mahershala Ali. Both are brilliant.

favorite actress?

Marion Cotillard is super underappreciated IMO

who is your celebrity crush?

Chris Evans holy shit dude

favorite movie?

Interstellar. I don’t think I’ve ever had another movie fill me with so much wonder or make me feel such a wide range of emotions. I’m also really partial to space operas tho don’t mind me

do you read a lot? whats your favorite book?

I used to read a lot. Less since college. I look forward to returning to reading for pleasure. I really love the Witcher Saga or the Silmarillion.

money or brains?

Brains can beget money.

do you have a nickname? what is it?

Nope!

how many times have you been to the hospital?

5? I think?

top 10 favorite songs

In no particular order:

Shelter- Porter Robinson & Madeon

Pay No Mind- Madeon & Passion Pit

Do I Wanna Know? -Arctic Monkeys

Empty Threat- CHVRCHES

Paper Boats- Darren Korb & Ashley Barrett

Gold Dust Woman- Fleetwood Mac

Running in the Night- FM-84

Everlong- Foo Fighters

Let Them Feel Your Heartbeat- A Silent Film

Destination Unknown- Scandroid

do you take any medications daily?

Nope. I’m occasionally on treatments for asthma or a digestive condition.

what is your skin type? (oily, dry, etc)

Dry, but really reactive and can get oily quickly.

what is your biggest fear?

Dying without leaving a mark on the world. I want people to remember me.

how many kids do you want?

Currently 0. If I have kids, probably 2. I feel like having a sibling is an important part of growing up.

whats your go to hair style?

Somewhere between an undercut and a pompadour.

what type of house do you live in? (big, small, etc)

A small apartment.

who is your role model?

My friends, honestly. I feel like they’re always showing me new ways to improve and kind of exude goodness and ambition.

what was the last compliment you received?

Alisa said I was cute :>

what was the last text you sent?

“ayy lmao”

how old were you when you found out santa wasn’t real?

6ish.

what is your dream car?

Maserati’s Birdcage Concept. It looks like it’s from the future.

opinion on smoking?

Filthy, harmful habit. I worry for my friends who smoke.

do you go to college?

Only for one more week! I’m 15 class hours and a few exams away from a BBA!

what is your dream job?

CEO of a tech company. I want the power and influence to make the world better, and I want to be able to make devices that improve lives.

would you rather live in rural areas or the suburbs?

This is super hard for me. I grew up in a rural area and I love being out in nature, but it can be so dull. I suppose suburbs to be closer to the city, but eventually I’ll need to escape.

do you take shampoo and conditioner bottles from hotels?

yeah lol

do you have freckles?

Yep!

do you smile for pictures?

Yeah, just to counteract my RBF

how many pictures do you have on your phone?

Like maybe 20. Android phone quality.

have you ever peed in the woods?

So many times

do you still watch cartoons?

Yeah lol

do you prefer chicken nuggets from Wendy’s or McDonalds?

Wendy’s hands down.

Favorite dipping sauce?

If salsa doesn’t count, honey mustard.

what do you wear to bed?

Underwear/nothing. I gotta be free man.

have you ever won a spelling bee?

Yep!

what are your hobbies?

I write, draw/paint, make music, and I have a few coding projects on the side. I take a lot of joy from the act of creation.

can you draw?

See above!

do you play an instrument?what was the last concert you saw?

I play trumpet and bass guitar. The last concert I was at was a music festival. Pretty Lights Live was probably the coolest act, but I wasn’t super impressed with anything.

tea or coffee

Decaf tea.

Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts?

Starbucks

do you want to get married?

Yes I do!

what is your crush’s first and last initial?

AY lmao

are you going to change your last name when you get married?

Nah m8

what color looks best on you?

Grey is my go-to. Also dark blue.

do you miss anyone right now?

Yep!

do you sleep with your door open or closed?

Closed.

do you believe in ghosts?

I have some thoughts, but no definite answer.

what is your biggest pet peeve?

People who don’t consider other people in their actions or decisions. If you can’t handle seeing the world from someone else’s perspective, shut up and sit down.

last person you called`

Alisa!

favorite ice cream flavor?

Orange blossom!

regular oreos or golden oreos

Regular

chocolate or rainbow sprinkles?

Chocolate!

what shirt are you wearing?

A Saint Pablo Tour shirt. Mahhhsanoonah.

what is your phone background?

Snowy mountaintops!

are you outgoing or shy?

I’m so heckin shy

do you like it when people play with your hair?

y e s

do you like your neighbors?

Nah they’re pretty dumb. I don’t hate em, but I prefer they leave me alone.

do you wash your face? at night? in the morning?

Yes, at night.

have you ever been high?

lol ye :~)

have you ever been drunk?

l o l y e : ~ )

last thing you ate?

I made a peanut butter/coconut ice cream shake. It was amazing.

favorite lyrics right now

“If I could try a little harder, I would succeed/I’d rather give up and be happy” is super sad but pretty to me, idk

summer or winter?

Winter.

day or night?

Night!

dark, milk, or white chocolate?

Dark as a moonless night!

favorite month?

November is top.

what is your zodiac sign

Libra af

who was the last person you cried in front of?

Alisa pretty much exclusively over the past 3 years. I’m not super good at crying tbh

Thank u for asking me so many things and helping me put off doing work anon! We’re friends now, u and I!

#ask

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ahouseoflies · 8 years ago

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1st Quarter of 2017 If you had told me a few years ago that a sequel to Trainspotting would come out in 2017, and I wouldn’t be able to make the time to see it, I wouldn’t have believed you. But here we are. Work and family life have really started to put the squeeze on my moviegoing. These are the best things I watched in an admittedly light quarter--one of them is a 2016 film that I caught up on. 1. The Lost City of Z- James Gray Knowing that I would see this movie, I avoided reviews, but I have no doubt they're employing the word "sweeping." To me though, that word implies a shorthand of emotion sacrificed at the altar of grandeur, a "they fall in love yada yada" that you have to exchange for scope. The Lost City of Z is not sweeping in that case because every minute of its running time seems essential, and the passage of twenty years only enhances the emotional acuity. It's lean and Lean. "Atmosphere": That's another word that people use for a vague visual texture. James Gray and Darius Khondji extend their collaboration to create visual layers--planes of smoke or fog that makes the images heavy in a literal sense. By the time they shoot the dappled sunlight and the faded green of the jungle, the screen already has a lather of sweat. On a more specific note, I appreciated that Gray found the through-line of such a complicated historical tale, and that through-line is his pet theme of obsession. Driven by the deficit of his ancestry, Percy Fawcett is motivated by risk down to his bones. On some level the film is something that we've seen before--though Robert Pattinson has never been better than he is as the obligatory shrewd guide. But the film taps into such a primal call to adventure that it feels as if it has always existed, as if it's The Story, and that's a compliment even if "sweeping" and "atmospheric" aren't. 2. Song to Song- Terrence Malick If you don't already like what David Ehrlich calls Malick's "twirling horndog" era--I prefer "metropolitan trilogy of self-absorption"--I won't be able to convert you by now. Especially when Rooney Mara is fingering meats in a Costco, this feels like a film made just for me. I do think that, compared to To the Wonder and Knight of Cups, this film's journey of mercy is fairly direct for Malick. (As far as that group of films goes, there might be a loose progression of detachment, wandering, and return/restore.) Fassbender's devilish Cook waves at his possessions early in the film and says, "None of this exists," and his empty promises pervert innocence at every turn, sometimes tragically. For a hedonist, he isn't being-in-the-world in the way that Malick would prefer. It's telling that, by the "end" of the film--and I say that hesitantly since the events seem to loop back on themselves--Faye inverts Cook in her narration. She says: "This. Only this," referring to love. Or at least, like, authentic experience. That's why Weightless is such a better title for this: As an insult for "having no mooring," it describes Cook; as a compliment for "free," it describes Faye and BV. How Malick is this, besides that interpretation of planes of existence? Very Malick. There's a sequence in which Gosling's BV returns home to console his bereaved family, and his brother says something like, "After being so hung-up on Dad for so long, he finally dies and--" Malick cuts to something else, so wary of something that feels like a treacly Movie Moment. And in avoiding those cliches, he creates his own. Characters still fall out of relationships and drift toward other thin, unnamed beautiful girls with hair in their faces, and it has become such a pet trope for him that a woman even gets in on the trend this time. But how many filmmakers have enough style in the first place for you to be able to make fun of their style? If it all adds up to a moment as alive as Gosling sliding in his sock-feet, then make fun of it all you want.

When Malick the classicist first started making films that take place in present-day, it was jarring to spot, say, a Target in the background of a shot. But now that I've adjusted to it, that topicality means...very little at all really, and that's why it's foolish to get hung up on why Mara has blonde hair in this scene or why Gosling is driving a different car in that scene. Austin City Limits or a Longhorns game are specific events, but the relationships are so elemental that they might as well be revealing themselves in a Middle Ages castle or a prehistoric cave. In fact, sign me up for Rooney Mara fingering meats in a prehistoric cave. 3. Personal Shopper- Olivier Assayas A film way more about the language it's told in than the end result of what it's telling. [initiate conceit] These most recent Assayas films feel like fancy cocktails with different levels of separation. There's the base, which is a woman who is stalled and unhappy. One of the sweet liqueurs on top of that is her job--meaningless for her taste--as a shopper for a celebrity, a go-between for someone too famous to interact in public. The Kahlua to balance that is her status as a spiritual medium, a go-between for someone too dead to interact in public. She has a heart condition that tethers her emotions, she has a boyfriend who is absent yet present through Skype, she has Youtube videos as conduits for the past, she has a person who has emerged as a literal replacement for her dead brother's widow. Maybe you just want a beer, but I don't mind paying a little extra to see a real bartender get all of those pretty colors together. [close conceit] The film's elliptical final third provides closure in one sense but not another; it verges on cop-out. Maybe more importantly, the film is a step backwards for Kristen Stewart, who is still magnetic but has slipped back into being mannered. There's a scene with a police officer in which the stammering is out of control. She has earned such goodwill, however, that I'm willing to evaluate anything the character does as a productive choice. Why does she take one sip out of drinks and leave them to make a ring on the table? Why does she type a space before a question mark? Why does she use default ringers and not turn off the clicky-type setting? She always gives me something to do. 4. Win It All- Joe Swanberg It ends abruptly and doesn't get as psychological as it could, but Win It All is designed for maximum pleasure. There are a few inventive gestures that make for a jaunty hang--I loved the superimposed counter that showed how up or down Eddie's bankroll was. Jake Johnson, who co-wrote, has real rakish chops. 5. Train to Busan- Yeon Sang-Ho Have you ever written a sonnet? You have to understand the form before you start writing, and part of the writing is understanding how powerless you are to the form. It's one of the only mediums of art that squelches originality: A great sonnet is one that exemplifies the form, not necessarily one that transcends it. Zombie movies are kind of similar, and Train to Busan gets the form through-and-through. The rules are clear about how people become infected and what the zombies can and can't do. Then we meet fully-realized characters, some of whom we're rooting for, some of whom we're not sure about, and some of whom definitely have a bite coming. The economy with which the film makes those divisions is breathtaking. "Oh, he let the girl go ahead of him at the bathroom. Cool guy." "He told that colleague to straighten her tie. He needs to die." The effects are SyFy channel quality, and everything runs a bit long. But the film barely ever missteps. The central character's journey to, ahem, humanity is a familiar one, but it's not like I would want the final couplet of a sonnet in lines three and four.

#film #movie reviews #quarterly report #The Lost City of Z

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toddrogersfl · 6 years ago

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What to do…if you hate your perfume present? 7 tips to try before you cry!

Well firstly, ‘hate’ is a very strong word. If you’ve been landed with the favourite fragrance of your current partner’s ex, we’re not going to pretend to make you suddenly adore it, so maybe re-gift that one – see tip #7 – and treat yourself to one of our Discovery Boxes of fragrant delights, and perhaps a new partner, instead?

But there are things you can try before you completely ditch a scent – we can’t tell you how many fragrance experts (ourselves included!) and even perfumers have drastically changed their minds about a fragrance by trying some of these top tips…

#1 – Seasonal changes Did you know that the weather, your mood and even what you ate up to *two weeks ago* can dramatically alter how scent smells on your skin? Skin and climate temperature are vital to a perfume’s performance, so even your favourite fragrance will smell different based on the time of year. When perfumers test the scents they’re creating they often use climate-controlled booths to check how they smell in hot and colder conditions (depending what countries they’ll be selling in). Don’t re-gift until you’ve tried the perfume again later in the year, or even on holiday – you can easily decant some into one of the wonderful Travalo bottles we sell, just for this purpose!

– Similarly, strongly spiced foods can change how a perfume smells on your skin, and when testing fragrances under lab conditions, the ‘skin model’ volunteers they use are often specifically asked to refrain from eating such foods up to two weeks prior to testing, so the perfumers can smell a ‘true’ representation of the scent. Though sometimes the reverse is true: if a fragrance is to be mainly sold in a country where people eat lots of spicy foods, the ‘skin models’ are asked to replicate that diet to ensure the scent works efficiently.

– We now know that mood plays an important part in how we select a fragrance – try a scent when you’re feeling a particular way, and it colours how you feel about the fragrance itself. If you’re feeling stressed or upset, a bit under the weather or just overwhelmed, these are not ideal conditions for testing out something new. Wait until you’re feeling calmer, or simply have more time to really explore what you’re smelling. That’s when you can try to…

#2 – Improve your sense of smell Absolutely everyone can benefit from this – we’ve had people from normal perfume-lovers, complete novices to industry professionals telling us how trying these techniques have changed the way they smell for the better (for good). This doesn’t mean suddenly gaining the ability of being able to detect every single ingredient within a bottle of perfume, but rather learning to train your nose the way a perfumer does: by deeply exploring the emotions it makes you feel, colours, textures, places and people it reminds you of.

This is why we developed our so-popular How to Improve Your Sense of Smell Workshops, regularly held in London and, sometimes at independent perfumeries around the UK (let us know if you’d like one near you!) We’ll be adding new dates soon, but if you can’t make it to one of these fun and fascinating afternoons, here are a few simple tips to try every day:

– Spray a scent on a blotter, preferably (you can buy books of blotters in our shop, if you need), close your eyes and keep sniffing for several seconds, then take the blotter away, inhale deeply, and re-sniff the blotter again. Repeat this for a minute or so, and then begin writing a few words in a notebook. It doesn’t have to be a description, and it shouldn’t ‘list’ notes – try to use words that make you think of other things. For example…

– If this scent were a fabric, what would it be? What colour? If you made someone an outfit from that fabric, who would they be, where would they be going?

– If it were a piece of music, what instruments would be playing? Is it classical, rock music, pop, rap or jazz?

Really attempt to get past thinking ‘I don’t like this’ and focus instead on the mood it’s creating. Is it too deep or too fresh or floral for your personal taste? Give it time and then, if needed, move on to one of the tips, below…

#3 – Layer up! Layering fragrances used to be seen as a scent sin, but we’ve all gotten over ourselves a bit (well most of us have). You don’t have to do this to a perfume you already love on its own – why would you need to? – but there are brilliant ways of beefing-up a sadly flimsy fragrance, or adding a zing to something that’s a bit too dark or cloying on your skin. Give it a go, because, as we always say: perfume isn’t a tattoo – if you don’t like it, you can wash it off!

– Add power: ramp it up by adding more base notes like patchouli, labdanum, vetiver, woods or musk.

– Add freshness: look for citrus notes like bergamot, neroli, lemon, lime or ‘green’ notes such as galbanum, tomato or violet leaf, green tea, marine/aquatic accords (synthetic recreations of sea-like, watery smells) and aldehydes (often desribed as being like Champagne bubbles).

– Add beauty: find a scent too ‘harsh’ or clinical? Look to layer it with decadently velvety or lusciously fruity rose oils, the sunshine-bottled scent of orange flower, a heady glamour of tuberose or a luminescent jasmine; try an apricot-like osmanthus flower, the fluffiness of mimosa or the powdery elegance of iris/orris.

– Add sweetness: vanilla and tonka bean can ’round’ a perfume, making it swoon on your skin (and addictive to smell), as can touches of synthetic notes described as ‘caramel’ or ‘dulce de leche’, ripe fruits, chocolate or even candy floss. Try to add less than you think you need, as adding more is always easier than taking away, and a little of these can go a long way!

For layering any of these, you can either try layering over other fragrances you have in which the above notes dominate, with a single-fragranced ‘soliflore’ (one main note) fragrance oil or spray, or try layering the scent you don’t currently like over a differently perfumed body lotion or oil (see below or the added benefits of doing this…)

#4 – Boost the lasting-power If the reason you don’t like a perfume is because it just seems to ‘disappear’ on your skin, you’re not alone. We often find those with dry skin have this problem, and it’s even thought genetics and things like hair colour may play a part. Scientists are still finding this out, but while they do, there are ways you can make perfume last far longer:

– Try using a body oil, rich body balm or moisturising lotion before you put any fragrance on (and even afterwards, too), as scent takes longer to evaporate on nourished skin. This helps the fragrance ‘cling’ to your skin more easily, and so you get to actually smell if for more than a few minutes without frantically re-spraying.

– Spray pulse-points you might not usually think of. Behind your knees is a good example – it’s a warm spot that, once spritzed, will mean you leave a fragrant trail…

– Spritz the perfume at the nape of your neck, even into your hair and on clothes – BUT do check by spraying a tissue first that it isn’t going to mark your hair or fabric a strange colour, or leave an oily residue! We adore this way of wearing perfume, as hair and fabric are porous without heating up as much as your skin, allowing the perfume to stay all day.

Spraying a fragrance on to a scarf is a particularly good idea if you want…

#5 – A part-time perfume There are days we feel the need to try something completely different, but perhaps don’t want to be stuck with that scent all day, so what to do?

– Consider spraying a scarf (preferably not silk or a light colour, unless you’ve patch-tested it as above, first!) with this perfume you’re unsure of, that way if it gets a bit ‘too much’ or you want to wear something different, you can simply take the scarf off and you’re not stuck with it on your skin all day.

Nope? Tried all that and still struggling? All is not lost, don’t give up yet…

#6 – Scent up your life We all have certain scents or fragrant ingredients that, for one reason or another, we might not wish to wear but do like to smell if it’s scenting something else.

– Why not try spraying off-cuts of pretty wrapping paper or tissue paper, and using this to line your lingerie or sweater drawers?

– Or, how about being utterly fabulous by spraying your note paper and insides of envelopes (the fancy ones lined with tissue paper are particularly good for this), and writing a few actual letters or thank you cards to loved-ones you’ve not seen for a while. Everyone loves getting proper post!

– The truly decadent could try scenting table linen – again, PLEASE patch test, as above – for lavish dinner parties to rival Marie Antoinette – spraying on cotton wool and putting inside a deocrative ceramic or pottery vase, on wooden ornaments or ceramic discs you hang over radiators to scent the whole room as they heat.

We so hope you can find a way to try this poor perfume again and give it some love, but if all else fails and you still can’t bring yourself to use it, well at least you tried! Why not…

#7 – Have a perfume-swapping party / re-gift Um, remembering not to invite the one who gave you that particular perfume… otherwise, major awks. Or, if you’re looking to re-gift, have a look at our brilliant Fragrance Finder. Simply put the name of the fragrance into the search box, and it’ll suggest six scents that are similar in character and style, or share a number of significant notes – this way you can see if anyone you know already has one of these, and it means they’ll very likely love to receive this one from you. Genius!

Written by Suzy Nightingale

The post What to do…if you hate your perfume present? 7 tips to try before you cry! appeared first on The Perfume Society.

from The Perfume Society https://perfumesociety.org/what-to-do-if-you-hate-your-perfume-present-7-tips-to-try-before-you-cry/

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beonhome21 · 6 years ago

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My registered address with my insurance and car is more expensive than if I keep it at families address, so can I legally keep the car somewhere other than my registered address in order to have cheaper car insurance? By that I mean give the insurance company my real address and tell them it will be kept at a different address?""

Anyone know any sites I can go to to get life insurance and car insurance quotes? I don't want to give my?

phone number to any company because they hound you forever, I just don't need all the phone calls and presser.""

I just moved and need new car insurance. I also have no medical. Can I cover both through the same company?

I've heard that State Farm and Allstate are now offering some medical packages. My wife and I don't necessarily need a lower copay for normal doctor visits, but we'd rather not go bankrupt if something catastrophic happens; accident, disease, etc. Has anyone had good experiences buying health insurance this way? How much does it cost roughly for your plan(s)? Neither my wife nor I are currently working full time so we don't get health through our jobs. Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks.""

Why such a difference between insurance quotes on a 2011 Challenger?

I got quotes from Geico, Nationwide, and Progressive I chose full coverage 500 dollar deductible on a 2000 Silverado 1500 4X4 3DR and a 2011 Dodge Challenger SE 2Dr Coupe This is for a 20 year old guy with clean driving record. Why are they so different? These are the prices I got Nationwide - $603 a month Progreeive - $450 a month Geico - $187 a month If Geico didn't offer it for $187 I would not be able to buy the 2011 Challenger. Does anyone know if Geico will go up to $400 or $600 a month after my first 6 month's I really need to know cause this is my last deciding factor before buying the Challenger?""

How to get different types of insurance?

Dental, health, medical, etc. Im graduating HS and my parents are taking me off there's. They say it's time to grow up and support myself. I fully understand. And I have no complaints. So that's why I'm asking. I just got a job, so would that help?? I'm taking a break from school (college) for a couple years.""

Baby Insurance at 19?

I doubt it will, but, I am 19 years old and I am still on my mom's insurance plan. So if I were to get pregnant, would the insurance cover my baby's delivery and pregnancy appointments or would I still have to pay the noninsured payments.""

What happens to your insurance once you get married?

I am currently under my parents insurance (I am 21years old), both for car and health/dental. My fianc has no insurance because his family cannot afford it. We are thinking about getting married this summer but want to figure out the details first before we committ to anything. I was wondering, once we get married what happens to my current insurance? Are we going to have to purchase our own insurance? And if so is there any marriage packages that would be pretty low budget? Thanks!""

Do you hav to hav insurance to drive a car?

well i might buy a cheap old car (one that i dont have to worry about scratching or dinting) but do i HAVE to get insurance? and what other stuff do i HAVE to get like tax and what not and how much does all that cost?

Renault Clio insurance for a 17 year old girl in Coventry?

I turned 17 last week, and plan on buying a Renault Clio for less than 1000, (about a 2001 reg). I have trauled all over the internet and cannot really find a decent quote anywhere, so I was wondering what an approximate cost of insurance would be? Thanks! Or if not, what are the best suggestions for a first car? Cheap insurance very important!!""

INSURANCE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!...

How much would insurance cost on a 700 dollar rent appartment?? roughly.. for a calm project.

What is the point of a health insurance plan if you never met your deductible?

I am 22 and applying for my first health insurance. I do not need much medical services, and want a low affordable premium. However, when I look at sites such as Blue Cross, it seems that low premiums go with high deductibles. I don't think I would ever meet the yearly deductible, and thus, cannot get any health services covered. So what is the point of such a plan? Thanks.""

Insurance for young drivers?

I just passed my test im 18 tomorrow and i am looking for short term insurance but fairly cheap. I have already tried to look online but most of the insurance company's require the driver to have a years experience on the road beforehand. I desperately need to drive and i desperately need to have insurance. Can anyone please advise on cheap company's plus how to arrange it all?? Thanks

Insurance for a driver without a license?

I'm getting my license in about a week, and the website said I need proof of insurance to do the driving test... I don't think they'll insure an unlicensed driver, so do I just need to show proof of insurance on the vehicle in general? It's my moms car btw, I can't find a job, so I don't have a car... Also, I'll be 18""

""Roughly, how much do you think car insurance would cost me?""

I was wondering if anyone knows roughly how much it would cost for a seventeen year old girl to get car insurance? All the websites I have tried keep asking me for details about the car I'm trying to insure. I don't have a car yet, all I want to know is if I did, roughly how much would it cost to insure?""

How much would my car insurance be if i am a 16 year old female driver?

i live in indianapolis indiana and i own a 1998 caviler

When do insurance rates on your vehicle go down?

I'm 22. In my 5 years of driving, I have NEVER been in an accident and have never gotten a ticket. My parents are paying around $60 a month whereas I'm still paying $117. I don't drive a fancy car neither. Just an older 2004 Camry. Is it because of my age bracket is why my insurance still hasn't lowered any? I'm with Allstate and in California if that matters.""

Underwriing Problem With Car Insurance?

I have a car Insurance with Autoone and they found out that my sister is making use of the car i called the the company and they told to write a letter stating that she is not living with me and NOT make any use of the car also she has been moved out recently. So i need a nice good lettter . my sis name is Jennifer.

Question about Auto insurance?

I got mylicence recently but got no insurance. Can I drive someone else's car if I do not live with them, nd they have it insured, and their insurance will cover a wreck if I have one?""

Car insurance with teenagers.?

My mom and I have been checking around for cars to buy because I have a scholarship and one college class right now, and I need the transportation so that I can go to study sessions for the college class, and to the meetings for my scholarship. We really don't have a lot of money. I work but only on Saturday because of school. My mom has Progressive right now and she checked how much it would be to have me and a new car on the insurance and it is a whopping $500 a month (her, her truck, me, and my car included).. We need an insurance company that isn't going to cost us a 1/4 of our income. At first we were looking at older cars under $2500. Then my mom was thinking it would be better to get me a new car with good gas mileage so she wouldn't have to worry about me being safe and not breaking down on the side of the road... But we can afford a new car, not with our down payment. The monthly payments are too high. So now we are going back to the older cars, and if we have a fully paid for vehicle, I am sure the insurance won't be as high. But here it, I am 16 years old, took driver's ed and have an insurance waiver that is supposed to bring the insurance down 10%. I also have good grades, a scholarship, a job, etc.. These things should look good to the insurance and bring the cost down.. I am safe driver as well.. Not driving far daily at all. Basically back and forth from school and to those meetings and study sessions every now and then. Any suggestions as to what car to look for and what insurace company we should go with? Thanks, in advance.""

Driving family car with no insurance?

I Drive my sister's car around a bit because i couldn't afford my insurance. Since I don't have insurance but my sister does on her car, would I get a ticket or get car towed if I drive it around without insurance? or would my sister's insurance cover it too? Thanks""

How does homeowner's insurance cover belongings? ?

Maybe this is a stupid question, but I'm new to this. So my fiance and I bought our first home pretty recently. Yes, I'm a bad person and did not read through or understand everything in the giant insurance book. I'm a bit confused as to how homeowner's insurance would cover belongings in the event of a theft, accident or whatever. We chose a low, $500 deductible. Let's say there was a theft. And I estimate the belongings stolen were worth $2000. What's stopping me from saying they were worth $3000? Or more? Wouldn't they want some kind of proof as to the value? I don't have the receipt for the television I bought 3 years ago, for example. I know I can ask my agent these things, but she is too overly helpful and chatters on and on and just ends up confusing me with information overload. :-)""

How to make insurance cheeper?

what are the things i can do to make my car insurance cheaper? i have good grades my car is 97 color gold

Should I have full coverage or liability only for car insurance on a 1997 Honda Accord?

The car is in very good condition with no major problems. The car is almost 13 years old but the re-sale of Honda cars are supposed to be good.

Car insurance so confusing?

i have car insurance just now and i pay monthly.i am changing my car on wed so need to change my policy to fully comp. i would like to pay for my year insurance in a lump sum to cut down on monthly outgoings.problem is i get car on 9th but dont have money to pay years insurance till 15th so can i pay for a month then the year or do i have to pay monthly for the whole year

What insurance companies are in massachusetts?

I believe that insurance in mass is horrible, but I don't know if there are even other insurance companies here where can I find out?""

How much should car insurance cost?

i am 17 and live in London. i have just passed my driving test and i'm looking for a car and insurance. i am not bothered about how bad the car is but i can't find insurance anywhere which i can afford. does anyone have advice?

Would a pontiac grand prix have high insurance?

the car is a 2001 Pontiac Grand Prix SE 4 Door Sedan. I am 24. Would a car like this generally have higher insurance rates than average?

How much information can car insurance companies see when you get a quote?

I let my car insurance lapse about a year ago and have been driving without it (I know, not good) and my girlfriends dad is an agent here in ohio. he asked to quote and i gave him my information... can he see that i dont have insurance? what about my credit report?""

Car insurance: why is a quote for an older car model higher than a brand new car?

i'm 18 and about to get a car. if my parents buy it for me, i'll be getting a toyota yaris 2010 2 door hatchback. if i'm purchasing it myself, i'll be buying a used 2000 toyota echo 2 door. i'll be paying the insurance either way, so i got quotes from desjardins for both the cars. for the 2010 toyota yaris, i got 260 a month, while for the 2000 toyota echo, i got 295 a month! why is this?!? the only information i changed was the model of the car! is this an error?""

How much will my ticket be? I'm a little nervous to see since he gave me 4 months to pay it..?

I got in a wreck about 2 weeks ago. I wasn't at fault but because I had no insurance I got my car taken anyway. It's out of impound now, they didn't hold my tags, and I now have insurance and a nice size scratch/dent going from my front fender to my back door. So now all that's left is the ticket that he gave me for driving a vehicle with no insurance. How much will the ticket cost? And does it cost more because the vehicle was in an accident?""

""Planning on buying a newer car, wondering how much my insurance will go up or if it will at all?""

Right now I have a Ford mustang, and i'm paying about $800 every 6 months, i'm planning on getting a 2006 Grand Prix so since it's not a sports cr but it's newer will my insurance rate stay the same? Will it go up? Or am I lucky and will it go down?""

What kind of insurance will cover rhinoplasty pertaining to broken nose?

My nose broke and now I have what the doctor told is called Saddle Nose. He said there is no rush, but I have some difficulty breathing and it is somewhat deformed. I have University of California health insurance, will this help? How should I get this procedure done for the most inexpensive cost? Any insurance experts?""

Health insurance HELP!?

okay so hears the problem. im 19 just moved away from home no parental support pretty much on my own attending school and working full time. i need to find a cheap health plan any suggestions? no deductible? HELP PLEASE!!

""Is it true that the older the car, the lower the insurance cost?""

My dad has a car that is 4 years old, it is a subaru outback, with 200,000+miles on it (not a typo, he drives it all over the eastern coast). Now would the subarus insurance cost(total) be lower than if i bought my own used car?""

What is the best auto insurance in georgia?

How is 18yr old meant to get car insurance?

I live in London and passed my test in February. I own Renault Clio 1.2 And the cheapest quote i got so far is 305 pounds per month, which is way too much for me. What companies are cheap? What can i do to start driving legally, searching for insurance is frustrating Dont say price comparison websites they suck cheapest quote there was 8k per year""

Swinton Car Insurance ?? Any one used Swinton ?

I have always been insured with either Churchill or Direct Line. Been shopping around this time and Swinton have offered the best quote so far through Highway Insurance.,. Price includes Legal cover, High breakdown cover, courtesy Car ect,, Im just abit unsure what the service is like as I dont know anyone who uses them. Any one used them and what were your experiences? good or bad ? Many thanks in advance.""

Where can I find cheap car insurance for young driver's in Ireland?

I am an 18 year old guy,and I can't find any f****** reasonable motor insurance,because whether I'm 18 or 80 I'm not paying 3/4k a year for a 'in case' situation which is most likely never going to happen-i.e a crash.Because I only see driving as a form of driving,not as 'fun' or showing off.But I need to have a car to travel.""

How much does insurance cost for a 17 year old on a kawasaki ninja 250?

please don't tell me to go to an online calculator or quote site.

Where's the best place to get health insurance?

I was hoping that someone with experience could tell me whether buying insurance through the Maryland offered program or through a direct insure such as united healthcare or blue cross blue shield would be the better deal. Looks like a 80/20 silver plan is about $205/month trough Maryland with a $1500 deductible. I'm hoping to find an affordable 90/10 plan or better. If you have any suggestions or know recommendations please let me know! I'm new to this health insurance stuff...

Can insurance Car repo?

I'm finally able to start getting caught up on my insurance payments (I'm 2 moths behind sadly but getting it caught up), the vehicle is paid off, will an insurance company repo my vehicle for not being up to date on the insurance payment?""

Insurance for 1975 stingray?

What would you estimate the insurance would be for a 16 year old boy with a 1975 stingray?

Car insurance for 16 yo?

Imma get me a car from craigslist.... haha its a 97 honda accord im 16 live in phoenix az nd my moms has bad credit sooo. How much is insurance gonna be ?? Can i get the car in my name at this age? Wouldnit be cheaper to get it in my moms name?? I know nothing bout diss aha. Car has clean title btw.

""I pay more than $10,000 per year for Health Insurance, does that sound reasonable?""

I'm self employed and gross about $105,000 / year. Have wife and 3 small children. (wife stays home) Premium for family is $857.41 / month and increases about 11% per year. M.D. visits have $20 co-pay. Policy through Excellus BC/BS. We live upstate New York and have no health problems.""

What is the CHEAPEST car insurance for a21 year old?

Im buy a car and i would like to no if anybody no what, would my insurances be""

Definition of Fully Comprehensive car insurance (UK)?

Does this mean i am insure to drive other peoples cars (with permission from them) ?? And also, my insurance on my last policy expried in July 2011, and i never renewed it, Does this mean i lose my 2 years no claims, or can i say that i still have 2 years no claims ? Is it still valid if i had no insurance for a month ?""

Income Based Health Insurance in California?

I'm 18 years old and live at home with my dad/step mom. They don't have insurance through their employers, so neither do I and because their combined income is so high (6 figures) I'm not eligible for Medical or Medicaid. Any ideas on what I can do to get affordable health insurance? I have a job too...""

How much would car insurance cost for a 16 year old girl driving a 1997 Ford Mustang GT?

The car is a V8 and has 170+ miles. Please do not post answers with websites linking me on how to figure it out on my own.

Should I have full coverage or liability only for car insurance on a 1997 Honda Accord?

The car is in very good condition with no major problems. The car is almost 13 years old but the re-sale of Honda cars are supposed to be good.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-much-insurance-go-up-bernharda-mulder"

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