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ryuyejiho · 2 years ago

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"Will you be my girlfriend?" - Han

Pairing: Han Jisung X Reader

Genre: Fluff

Warnings: School

Summary: It was supposed to be the perfect date for a confession of feelings but something went wrong. However, that didn't stop Jisung from his plans

Word Count: ~1.1k

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There are exactly three minutes left until the end of the last lesson. It was already a few minutes before I packed up all my belongings to get out of the classroom as quickly as possible and run to the school exit.

My friend Jisung was even already sitting sideways to the bench to get off his chair evenly with the bell.

Which is exactly what he did at that moment.

He literally ran out of the classroom and I followed him trying to catch up. Behind me I could still hear the teacher's voice shouting that the lesson wasn't over yet, but I honestly didn't give a damn because a bell is a bell. Information about the end of the lesson.

When we ran outside the school grounds we only saw our only bus just leaving the bus stop. We were supposed to take the same bus an hour ago to a festival where our favorite singer was supposed to be. Since it was at the other end of town the bus there was only one and every two hours or so so so there was no chance we would make it.

"If it weren't for that stupid lesson we would have been there long ago" said an angry Jisung kicking a pebble that was lying by his leg.

"if we hadn't gone they would have lowered our grade" I replied being equally angry. They should have told us about such a lesson at least a week before and not an hour before.

"and what do we do now?"

"I don't know, maybe let's walk somewhere. We can go to the skatepark" the park was literally next to the school. There were always a million people riding there on bikes, rollerblades, scooters or skateboards like Jisung did.

I always admired him for his skills but whenever he wanted to teach me something I refused.

"okay then, let's go " he said and shrugged his shoulders as if he didn't care. I felt very sorry for him because I knew how much he wanted to go there and how much he cared about this concert.

"hey, don't be sad. If not now, then some other time" I ran up to him wanting to catch up with him and put my arm around his shoulder.

"you know how I cared. It was supposed to be a perfect evening and as always something had to go wrong" he said overwhelmed, resting his head on mine.

"I know, but we can't do anything anymore. We can't afford a taxi all the way there, the bus got away from us. We can go there by bicycles if you want" I said with false enthusiasm at which the boy looked at me like I was crazy.

"do you want to bike 35 kilometers to the concert and then ride back the other 35 kilometers while drunk? I doubt it" we sat down on a wall at the entrance to the park and thought about what we should do next.

Not even five minutes passed as Jisung suddenly jumped down happily from the wall and looked at me. We looked at each other for a long moment, me at him like he was crazy and him at me as if he had just won a million at least.

"get up! Let's go to my place! We don't have anything to do anyway so we can go get ramen at my place or something" he made a perverted face at which we laughed and I carefully jumped off the wall.

****

We went into his room where the boy immediately went to the bed and threw all the pillows he had on the floor. I sat down at his desk wondering what was going on in his head sometimes and he went out to the kitchen and brought two chairs with him. He ran again and brought two more which he set at equal intervals to the previous ones so that together they formed a square. On their backs he put his big quilt which was probably to serve as the roof of this contraption, on the floor between the chairs he arranged a blanket and inside he threw all the pillows he had. He walked over to the desk and took his laptop from it, disconnecting it from the charger before.

Satisfied, he placed the laptop deep in that structure and quickly walked back to the kitchen singing some unfamiliar song under his breath. I started laughing at him when I heard the banging of two glass things and after a while a bunch of curses. After a while he came back with two bowls and two glasses which he placed on the floor next to the chairs. Then he looked at me and with theatrical gestures invited me inside.

Happy, I went inside and sat down between the pillows. Jisung threw another blanket inside and came in, sitting down next to me. He smiled at me and covered us with the blanket, earlier pulling the laptop and bowls closer, one with popcorn mixed with chips and the other with fruit. On the laptop he turned on Netflix on which he searched for one of our favorite anime.

"may this evening be as romantic as if we were at a concert" he said looking deeply into my eyes and smiling. At his words I just nodded my head and snuggled into his side.

In the course of watching the already fourth romantic movie, we cried about ten times. We lay cuddled up to each other and tried to calm our emotions while the movie's credits were already flying in the background.

"are you all right?" he asked in a deep voice from crying to which I nodded and raised my head to look at him.

"why do you choose such movies? Because of you, I've already used up my tear limit for the whole next month" the blond man laughed softly and gets up leaning on his elbows.

"that's good. I don't like it when you cry" he smiled broadly but after a while he got quite serious. Strangely enough when I just happened to lick my lips dry from the salt on the chips.

"why such a face?"

"I have something for you" he suddenly said and walked out of our shelter. I heard him walk over to the hanger where we hung our hoodies when we came in and after a while he came back to sit next to me. I looked curiously at the medium-sized box he held in his hands.

"what is this?" I asked, seeing how his hands had begun to shake and how he was getting stressed.

"I wanted to give it to you after the concert well, but.... I'm giving it to you now" he put the box in my hands and looked at me calmly. I opened it and to my eyes appeared a lovely necklace with a heart that had a key-shaped hole in the middle. I pulled it out from inside and admired it when he pulled his necklace from behind his shirt. It was shaped like a key.

Surprised, I looked alternately at his necklace, at mine and at him.

"do you like it?" de asked nervously at which I laughed.

"of course I like it. It is beautiful. But where did you get so much money to buy it?" I asked, looking at the brand name on the box.

"I saved some money and finally bought it" he shrugged his shoulders and smiled.

"you could have bought something for it. A new skateboard, a game. What's the occasion anyway?"

"no occasion at all" he said quietly and then after a long moment added taking a deep breath "I wanted to ask you something"

I nodded my head waiting for his question, while continuing to admire our connecting necklaces.

"what is it?" I finally asked when he didn't say anything.

Jisung, saying nothing, suddenly moved closer to me and touched his lips to mine. I sat in shock not knowing what to do but when I felt him pull away I quickly grabbed his shoulders and brought him back closer, deepening the kiss.

We sat like that for a long moment until we ran out of air. When we moved millimeters away from each other the boy spoke up whispering.

"will you be my girlfriend?" saying nothing, I moved closer to him again and kissed him once more, putting all my emotions into this kiss.

I knew that Jisung understood what I meant because he started smiling and put his arms around me, putting us on a pile of pillows.

#stray kids reactions #stray kids imagines #stray kids #stray kids fluff #han jisung #han skz #kpop #kpop scenarios #kpop reactions #changbin #bang chan #felix stray kids #hyunjin #i.n stray kids #lee know #seugmin #jyp stray kids #fluff

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ofanswereddreams · 21 days ago

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It’s been so long since he’s seen his brothers - or anyone in his family - that Rhysand is half-worried that neither of them will speak to him. He knows their love for him, their brotherhood, isn't that weak or shallow, but he also knows that he's probably pushed it to its breaking point now.

Still, as he races down Highway 35 on his Harley, Rhys can't help but smile. This feeling of freedom, with the wind whipping past his face, blowing his raven curls all over the place. The thrill of flying down the blacktop, hugging every curve of the road. It's been almost three years since he's been on his bike, and he isn't sure how he went so long without it. Just add this to the long list of "never again" lessons that he's recently learned.

He pulls off the highway into the parking lot of a weathered wooden building, with the name Windhaven marked in neon letters over the doorway. It's just before lunch on a Sunday, so the place is quite crowded. He didn't exactly check with Azriel or Cassian about their whereabouts before he left the city. He's merely assuming they'll be here with the rest of the Illyrians, because it was their habit three years ago when he actually acted like their brother. Although he's not a member of the biker gang, Rhys does enjoy riding with them sometimes, when he's not away for business on the weekends or otherwise occupied.

After parking his bike and tossing the keys into the inner pocket of his black leather jacket, Rhys strides through the front door of the bar and looks around for @ofbloodshcd and @darkslautr. To his relief, he spies them across the room, near the dart boards. His heart begins to pound in his chest. What can he even say to them after all this time? He has a few seconds to think about it as he shoves his hands into the pockets of his jeans and ambles across the room. By the time he's standing behind them both, he hasn't thought of anything clever to say, so the words just tumble out of him. "Long time no see," he drawls, trying to maintain some of his carefully cultivated nonchalance. "I ah... broke up with Amarantha. Thought I should come tell you guys in person."

#{ verse: modern }#{ ft: cassian }#{ft: azriel }#{ ofbloodshcd }#{ darkslautr }

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sillylotrpolls · 1 year ago

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If you recall, a little while ago I manually scraped data regarding popular LotR ships from Ao3 using an extremely rough methodology. I had a request for the data, so what the heck, here you go.

Now, these numbers are ridiculously rough. In fact, you might even say they're bad. The first 10 are approximately correct. But, as explained in that link, every group of 10 after that is undercounted by more and more because I excluded fics from my search that contained the ships already on the list. Also, anything tagged in the Hobbit movies/book but not LotR was really, really undercounted.

Let this be a lesson in data sources! In fact, the best use of this data is to use it as a starting point for getting good data. Instead of checking every permutation of ships (like idk, Merry/Elrond) for proper numbers, you would start by checking the top 50 on this list. This is of course assuming you didn't have a better method of getting data out of Ao3 than using the work and tag searches like I've done here.

(The second-best use of this data is to go "lol, really?" which is what I assume/hope you're here for, because otherwise you're probably gonna be disappointed.)

(The third-best use of this data is to note that because the Hobbit movies came out 2012-14, right when Ao3 had achieved critical mass, it is much, much easier to find Hobbit-related fic on Ao3 than LotR, the films of which came out in 2001-03.)

For ships that intrigued me I've included the "actual" results in purple. But even those numbers are probably undercounting because some people don't use tags that map to the canonical tags.

Anyway, the top 140 ships for "Lord of the Rings - All Media Types" on Archive of Our Own using a Very Bad counting method are:

1 Frodo/Sam (2207) (2,250) 2 Gimli/Legolas (1918) (2,121) 3 Aragorn/Arwen (1509) 4 Aragorn/Legolas (1492) 5 Éowyn/Faramir (1055) 6 Bilbo/Thorin (996) (12,085!!!) 7 Erestor/Glorfindel (955) (1,158) 8 Aragorn/Boromir (766) 9 Celebrían/Elrond (752) 10 Galadriel/Halbrand (688) (691) 11 Legolas & Thranduil (439) 12 Legolas/Original Female Character (347) (539) 13 Legolas/Thranduil (308) 14 Merry Brandybuck/Pippin Took (305) (488) 15 Thranduil/Original Female Character (294) (653) 16 Legolas/Reader (269) (328) 17 Gimli & Legolas (248) 18 Elrond/Lindir (244) 19 Éomer Éadig/Lothíriel (233) 20 Thranduil/Thranduil's Wife (232) (512) (this tag cracks me up) 21 Celeborn/Galadriel (216) 22 Frodo & Sam (196) 23 Boromir/Faramir (157) 24 Aragorn/Frodo (155) 25 Boromir & Faramir (153) 26 Rose Cotton/Sam (147) (331) 27 Morgoth Bauglir | Melkor/Sauron (145) 28 No Romantic Relationship (128) 29 Elrond/Thranduil (123) (325) 30 Thranduil/Reader (114) (620) 31 Elrohir/Legolas (122) 32 Aragorn & Legolas (119) 33 Original Female Character/Original Male Character (117) 34 Aragorn/Faramir (99) 35 Aragorn/Reader (89) 36 Kíli/Tauriel (80) (2,604!!!) 37 Elrond/Reader (78) 38 Elrond & Maglor | Makalaurë (75) 39 Haldir of Lothlórien/Legolas (71) 40 Thorin/Original Female Character (68) 41 Merry Brandybuck & Pippin Took (82) 42 Denethor II/Finduilas of Dol Amroth (80) 43 Elladan/Elrohir (78) 44 Haldir of Lothlórien/Original Female Character (77) 45 Boromir/Original Female Character (70) 46 Bard the Bowman/Thranduil (67) (1,727) 47 Bilbo & Frodo (64) 48 Minor or Background Relationship (60) 49 Elladan & Elrohir (58) 50 Éomer Éadig/Faramir (57) 51 Elrond/Ereinion Gil-galad (72) 52 Éomer Éadig/Reader (59) 53 Celebrimbor/Sauron (55) (783!!!!) 54 Fingon | Findekáno/Maedhros | Maitimo (51) 55 Éowyn/Gríma Wormtongue (48) 56 Other Relationship Tags to Be Added (48) 57 Celebrimbor/Talion (Shadow of Mordor) (47) 58 Frodo/Faramir (46) 59 Arondir/Bronwyn (46) 60 Elrond/Legolas (45) 61 Arwen/Éowyn (52) 62 Aragorn/Éowyn (49) 63 Glorfindel/Original Female Character (48) 64 Legolas/Original Character (43) 65 Aragorn & Elrond (39) 66 Thorin/Reader (37) 67 Elendil the Tall/Tar-Míriel (34) 68 Legolas/Original Male Character (33) 69 Aragorn & Boromir (33) 70 Elrond & Elros Tar-Minyatur (32) 71 Durin IV & Elrond (37) 72 Ecthelion of the Fountain/Glorfindel (32) 73 Legolas/Harry Potter (30) 74 Original Character/Original Character (29) 75 Haldir of Lothlórien/Reader (29) 76 Glorfindel/Legolas (27) 77 Boromir/Reader (27) (85) 78 Legolas/Tauriel (26) 79 Elrond/Erestor (26) 80 Boromir/Legolas (26) 81 Frodo/Rose Cotton/Sam(25) 82 Diamond Took/Pippin Took (23) 83 Thorin/Thranduil (23) (723) 84 Sherlock Holmes/John Watson (22) (48) lol 85 Thranduil/Original Character (21) 86 Boromir/Théodred (21) 87 Éomer Éadig/Legolas (21) 88 Merry Brandybuck/Éowyn (20) 89 Aragorn/Original Female Character (20) 90 James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers (19) 91 Éomer Éadig & Éowyn (25) 92 Elrond & Glorfindel (22) 93 Éomer Éadig/Original Female Character (20) 94 Sean Bean/Orlando Bloom (18) 95 Éowyn/Legolas (18) 96 Erestor & Glorfindel (18) 97 Sean Bean/Viggo Mortensen (17) 98 Frodo/Merry Brandybuck (17) 99 Fëanor | Curufinwë/Nerdanel (17) 100 Elladan/Glorfindel (17)

101 Éowyn/Tauriel (20) 102 Frodo/Boromir (17) 103 Isildur/Valandil (17) 104 Elrond/Glorfindel (16) 105 Aragorn/Elrond (15) 106 Legolas & Original Female Character (14) 107 Lindir/Reader (14) 108 Elrond/Original Female Character (14) 109 Arwen & Elrond (14) 110 Elladan/Legolas (13) 111 Arathorn II/Gilraen (16) 112 Aragorn/Haldir of Lothlórien (16) 113 Galadriel/Sauron (16) 114 Elrond & Ereinion Gil-galad (14) 115 Human/Orc (13) 116 Sauron/Original Female Character (13) 117 Aragorn & Gimli & Legolas (13) 118 Witch-King of Angmar/Reader (13) 119 Bungo/Belladonna Took (12) 120 Frodo/Original Female Character (12) 121 Elendil the Tall/Reader (17) 122 Fíli/Kíli (15) 123 Frodo/Legolas (14) 124 Fíli/Original Female Character (13) 125 Ratbag the Coward/Talion (Shadow of Mordor) (13) 126 Estella Bolger/Merry Brandybuck (12) 127 Elladan/Elrohir/Legolas (12) 128 Celebrimbor & Talion (Shadow of Mordor) (12) 129 Loki (Marvel)/Thranduil (12) 130 Imrahil/Legolas (12) 131 Orlando Bloom/Viggo Mortensen (15) 132 Tom Bombadil/Goldberry (12) 133 Halbarad/Maglor | Makalaurë (12) 134 Frodo/Merry Brandybuck/Pippin Took (11) 135 Goldberry/Lady of the Blue Brooch (11) 136 Celebrimbor/Narvi (11) 137 Sauron/Reader (11) 138 Beren Erchamion/Lúthien Tinúviel (10) 139 Erestor/Reader (10) 140 Aragorn/Arwen/Boromir (10)

#admin #data #good fun with bad numbers

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bryan360 · 9 months ago

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Fintie Slim Case for my Samsung Galaxy Tab E 9.6 - Full Item Review

Time for another round of bringing today’s review on April 2024. I’m thankful enough after getting through some secret art trade errands later, but for awhile working some art projects in secret like always. For now though, it’s time to focus on bringing this before saving two item reveals later. This here’s my new slim tablet case branded from Fintie. You’ll probably remember back where I’d had the first branded one from last year. This time, it’s for my Samsung Tab E device that may surprise you. Never thought I’d brought back with this older tablet for so long, but mostly few years back where I’d had to turn off due to an unfortunate incident for its USB charging cable. (Link Here)

I don’t wanted to running off its battery life if I’d continued to use it afterwards. Well lucky for me, the wait is finally over as I’m planning to save for my next review soon.

⬆️ (1st to 3rd Images) (March. 27th, 2024 from 5:20 to 5:21 A.M.; two days ago after receiving my slim tablet case from my mom.)

I’d unboxed from its packaging, but sure bring back that time for my first Fintie tablet case unboxing we’d ordered by mistake last year. Let’s just say I learned a lesson not to rush in before ordering the wrong item with my mom. At least now I have with the JETech tablet case(s) for my 5th gen iPad later….twice. 😅

(Link Here #2)

(Link Here #3)

(Link Here #4)

Thankfully after careful consideration through Amazon.com searches, I found the right size for my old Samsung tablet to fit in; hopefully.

⬆️ (4th to 7th images; from 5:23 to 5:25 A.M.) (Edited)

Continuing on with my first iPad Air tablet case from Fintie, I just wanted to make a quick comparison between with the slim tablet case to give it a better look. Seems that the iPad Air case was bigger than the slim case I’d topped with. Though no surprise for having their different designs that were made for specific tablet sizes. Having said that, at least I’d gotten this shown unless if I can have my own iPad Air to bring; whether or not for this year later.

⬆️ (8th and 16th Images; from 5:27 to 5:30 A.M.) (Edited)

Just before I can move forward, I wanted to bring my previous tablet case for this review. Unfortunately, this is exactly where I'm about to move on after with my previous tablet case showing its age. if you wanted to refresher your memories, this is my ProCase Galaxy Tab E 9.6 Case I'd had with me since Oct. 21st, 2020. I've talk about it throughout my previous review that trying to secure my android tablet for recent years. It does came with its own stylus pen, but rarely use even after covered up in the first half segment. 🤷

(Link Here #5)

(Link Here #6)

However as of 2024, it's time for my ProCase tablet case for retirement. Despite having to hold on; at least while with my Samsung tablet device temporarily turned off for so long. Though being said, it finally to show its age as I took photos with my 5th gen iPad. There's even some tape I'd tried to patch on the top; from the inside as I opened the case itself. As much it was disappointing to see, but that’s exactly where I’m saving my new tablet case already. At least knowing it’ll be kept safe into my drawers as my choice. Not before I can use it for another comparison later though.

⬆️ (17th to 22nd Images; from 5:32 to 5:34 A.M.) (Four edits; two separate own images)

Now we’re getting into my new slim tablet case a closer look. It’s gonna be different than what I did with my ProCase tablet case; after years of using. I’d even check around with its slim back shell design to the magnetic clip-on every time of open and closes. It doesn’t have sleep/wake function with my Samsung tablet, but at least does secure to protect its touchscreen I was thinking of. 🤔

Having said that, it was a nice slim case to show. 🙂👍

⬆️ (23rd to 28th Images; from 5:35 to 5:37 A.M.) (Four edits; two separate own images)

I went on making another comparison with my ProCase tablet case afterwards. It was pretty obvious both cases had made with different materials and fitting sizes when inserting my android tablet. Though my new slim case well be slightly lighter, but alongside with its hard shell design as I’d mentioned before. Not bad, however it seems my older case was a bit bigger than the slim case in my opinion.

⬆️ (29th to 37th Images; from 5:40 to 5:44 A.M.) (Four edits; five separate own images)

I’m now finally set up with my android tablet into this new slim case that you’d been waiting for. As expected, it fits neatly as I’d hoped that it was advertised. It also do in angles to make like a keyboard stand for typing; except while my android tablet turned off for now. Looks good still.

My Experience/Overall Thoughts: ⬇️

I’m very good after owning this new slim case that I wanted it for my old android tablet. I’m gonna miss with my previous tablet case that did the job of secure years later. With this new one though, at least its something I can get used to.

Hope you guys like my full review I’d worked on. It took days to get there from the beginning, but at least I’d tried my best of giving thoughts for my new slim case. Of course I’m not done as I’m saving my next review with two items to reveal. For now though, it’s finally break time for me. 🙂👍 Link down for more details with the Fintie Slim Case Tablet if you’re interested. ⬇️

Also….

‼️(NO COPYING OR PLAGIARIZING FROM ME AND ONE OF MY CLOSEST FRIEND’S WORK! THAT INCLUDES OUR CHARACTERS, DESIGNS, STUFF, ETC. IMPOSTERS AND SEXBOTS ARE NOT WELCOME TO FOLLOW MY BLOG WHATSOEVER! 😡 That will be all….I mean it.)‼️

Tagged: @murumokirby360 @shadowredfeline @alexander1301 @rafacaz4lisam2k4 @paektu

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snowdice · 2 years ago

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Big Bang Editing Story [Day 112]

I started writing this fic while editing my Big Bang story years ago, but am going to continue doing it for other things now that Kill Dear is out. I will write and publish 100 words of the story every time I finish doing whatever task I’m doing. If you’d like to block these proceedings, please feel free to block the tag ‘proofread stories.’ I will reblog this post with the parts of the story I do today. Edited chapters are linked; everything else I’ve done so far is under the cut.

My Master Post Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Part 12 Part 13 Part 14 Part 15 Part 16 Part 17 Part 18 Part 19 Part 20 Part 21 Part 22 Part 23 Part 24 Part 25 Part 26 Part 27 Part 28 Part 29 Part 30 Part 31 Part 32 Part 33 Part 34 Part 35 Part 36 Part 37 Part 38 Part 39 Part 40 Part 41 Part 42 Part 43 Part 44 Part 45 Part 46 Part 47 Part 48 Part 49 Part 50 Part 51 Part 52 Part 53

I have a couple of things to do tonight, but probably won't be on very long.

Chapter 54 (Patton)

“I still can’t believe he’s allowing this,” King Thomas said from next to Patton. The two of them were standing at the edge of the arena outside the horse stable, watching from a safe distance.

“If he hadn’t tried to bite me earlier, I’d think he was a different horse,” Patton agreed.

“He doesn’t even let Logan ride him,” the king said. “At least not ride him and give him directions.”

Patton was very aware of that. Logan did on occasion choose to get up onto Mr. Apples’ saddle. However, Mr. Apples was always the once who got to decide where they went after that. Logan had no say.

With that in mind, Patton, Logan, and every stable hand who’d heard about the prospective riding lessons had tried to convince Virgil to learn to ride on a different horse. Virgil was just as stubborn as Mr. Apples however and had insisted. Logan, being the only one who could be around Mr. Apples without risking being kicked, had become his de facto tutor.

Not even Logan could have expected that within a week, Virgil would be able to control Mr. Apples. Though perhaps ‘control’ was the wrong word. Nothing could control Mr. Apples, but for some reason, Mr. Apples seemed willing to do as Virgil asked.

Even right now Mr. Apples was trotting around the training arena like he was a well-trained trick horse warming up with his rider.

“Logan told him we could go on an actual ride today if the lesson went well,” Patton told the king. The lesson seemed to be just getting over because Logan said something to Virgil and Virgil started to climb off. Mr. Apples was patient and still as he dismounted.

“Do you think he’d mind if I went with you?” King Thomas asked.

Patton shrugged. “Mr. Apples might.”

“Mr. Apples definitely will,” the king replied. “I’ll come anyway.”

Logan had walked over to where Patton and the king were standing while Virgil fed Mr. Apples some apple pieces as a reward.

“I hear you’re going to go riding today,” King Thomas said.

Logan nodded. “Mr. Apples seems to listen to him well enough,” he said.

“I might join you if that’s alright. Where are you kids going?” the king asked.

“I was thinking the main forest path,” Logan replied. “It’s not a particularly difficult route, but it’s also a part of the castle grounds Virgil hasn’t been able to see yet. Loraine told me it has been recently cleared after the winter.”

“That sounds like a good idea,” the king said. “Are you going now?”

“Once Patton and I saddle up our horses,” Logan said. “You can come.”

“Great,” the king said with a smile. “I’ll ask for Bella’s saddle to be brought out. I haven’t gone on a ride yet this week.”

He turned then to walk towards the stables leaving Patton and Logan alone.

“Do you think he’s been acting weird?” Logan asked, turning towards Patton.

Patton frowned. “No,” he said. “Not really.”

“I’m just wondering why he wants to go horseback riding with us.”

“He likes spending time with you?” Patton guessed.

“Yes,” Logan said, “but typically in a setting that doesn’t involve Mr. Apples.”

Well, that was fair.

“I mean, it’s not too weird,” Patton said, thinking back through the last couple of days. King Thomas had been a bit… clingy.

“He’s been hanging around a lot,” Logan said, echoing Patton’s thoughts with narrowed eyes. He glanced back at Virgil. “You don’t think Virgil let something slip, do you?”

“He didn’t say anything,” Patton said. “I think your dad would say something if Virgil let slip he was an assassin somehow.”

“Unless he let slip something that didn’t quite implicate himself but invited suspicion.”

“Your dad doesn’t seem suspicious,” Patton said. At least, Patton didn’t think he did. He hadn’t been acting mean in any way. In fact, he might have even been acting nicer.

Logan frowned. “We should keep an eye on him, especially around Virgil.”

Patton bit his lip.

“What?” Logan asked.

“Are we ever going to tell your dad about Virgil?” he asked.

Logan hesitated. “I don’t…” he trailed. “I’m not sure.”

“It just feels weird lying for so long,” Patton said. Patton didn’t lie a lot. Sure, maybe he’d pretend to not know what Mama was talking about when sweets went missing from the kitchens or he’d pretend to not know what Logan’s birthday gift was, but he’d never lied about anything serious before now.

“I know, but,” Logan glanced back at Virgil once again, “even if we did decide to tell, we’d have to convince Virgil everything would be alright beforehand. I don’t think we’re at that point yet. He was terrified of Father until a few months ago, and he’s still cautious around him sometimes.”

Logan was right, of course. Virgil was getting more and more comfortable around the king, but he figured any of the progress made would go down the drain as soon as they brought up telling King Thomas about where exactly Virgil had come from. Patton didn’t know if Virgil would ever be comfortable enough.

“We should go get our own horses,” Logan suggested, and Patton nodded.

Patton and Logan’s horses had already been saddled by the stable hands in anticipation of their ride and it didn’t take long for the king to saddle his own horse, Bella.

The forest path at this time of year was very pretty, Patton thought. The tree branches now had small green leaves on them after having been barren for the entire winter and flowers were starting to grow. In a few weeks’ time it would be even prettier, but it would also be harder for the groundskeeper to maintain as well as it was right now.

Virgil really did seem less anxious around King Thomas now. The path was only wide enough for two horses to go at once, and he didn’t seem to mind that he and the king ended up next to each other while Patton and Logan lagged behind. In fact, he and the king seemed to be having a nice conversation about the local wildlife.

However, if Patton looked close enough, he did sort of see what Logan meant. Virgil may not be anxious talking to the king now, but the king himself seemed just a little bit nervous at least at the beginning of the ride.

He seemed to relax a bit as they rode (even laughing when Mr. Apples tried to bite him when he got too close).

Logan had been teaching Virgil the basics about things like animals, but there was still a pretty big gap in his education when it came to anything that wasn’t about training to fight and kill. King Thomas seemed more than willing to answer any of his questions when it came to the animals and plants around them even if they were sometimes a bit silly.

He’d seen a bird that looked like a dove. (It may have even been a dove, but Patton hadn’t seen it.) This had been a source of endless confusion for him.

“But shouldn’t it live in the dovecote?” Virgil asked.

“Not all birds live in a dovecote,” the king explained again.

“But it’s a dove,” Virgil said with a frown.

“Not all doves live in a dovecote,” the king replied.

“But it’s a dovecote,” Virgil argued. “It’s for the doves.”

“Yes, but there are also wild doves,” the king said.

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Virgil replied.

“What about it doesn’t make sense?” the king asked with a laugh in his tone.

“Doves go in the dovecote,” Virgil said.

Patton was starting to have trouble following this argument.

“Dovecotes are made for doves,” the king said, “but not all doves go in dovecotes.”

“Why?”

This seemed to stump the king momentarily, but he still answered after thinking for a bit. “Doves existed before people got to them,” the king explained. “People caught and trained some of them, but there was no way to catch all of them. So, some stayed in the wild and continued with their lives like they had been before humans. Plus, sometimes domesticated doves fly off and never come back. Sometimes they might die, but other times they may have just gotten lost and had to build a new life somewhere far away. Or maybe they even decided that being a trained dove working for humans wasn’t for them, so they decided to go off on their own.”

“You let them do that?” Virgil asked.

“We can’t really stop them in the end,” the king said. “People can try, but it never ends up working as long as they can fly.”

Virgil thought about this. “I still don’t understand,” he said, “but okay.”

“We should take you to the cliffs,” the king suggested.

“What are the cliffs?”

“The castle grounds were built for defense,” King Thomas explained. “The edge of the grounds to the North is a large river and overlooking it is a huge cliff. It’s a good place for picnics and for birdwatching. It’s a bit of a trip, but now would be a good time of year to go.”

He glanced over his shoulder back at Logan and Patton. “What do you boys think about going to the cliffs sometime? Maybe in about a week?”

Logan squinted at his father suspiciously. It wasn’t so much the fact that the king was asking them to go to the cliffs. They did that every so often. However, this time, it only supported Logan’s claims that the king was hanging out with them a lot recently.

“Sure,” Logan said, after a moment.

“Sounds fun!” Patton said cheerily right after, trying to cover for the lack of enthusiasm in Logan’s voice with his own. Judging by King Thomas’s expression and Logan’s tight-lipped scowl, he may have overcompensated.

“Great,” the king said. “”I’ll make sure to make arrangements when we get back to the castle.”

Chapter 55 (Logan)

Virgil was beginning to be able to read some of the common instructions in magic books, but Logan still made sure to read out the instructions to him at least twice before setting him loose. He’d started to jot down notes to himself about things, though these notes were not words, but various symbols that only made sense to the boy himself.

Logan had asked about their meaning at one point and received an answer that, while earnest, was unintelligible. The symbols were mostly just pictures of things to represent certain steps in spell casting, but they were filtered through Virgil’s rudimentary penmanship and often bizarre perception of the world.

Though, despite the fact that Logan could not often decipher his chicken scratch, it did seem to help him produce impressively quality charms even as Logan began to introduce more complicated processes to make them. He was a very good student even if he didn’t have the best foundation for learning.

“I add lavender for the next step, right?” Virgil asked, his finger on a word in Logan’s magic book.

“That is correct,” Logan confirmed.

Virgil looked back at the book and mouthed the word ‘lavender’ to himself before turning back to his potion. He grabbed a few sprigs of lavender and threw them into the cauldron.

The liquid popped and bubbled violently, but Virgil didn’t flinch as he once would have, prepared for it now.

After the lavender, Logan knew that it would have to simmer for 5 minutes. Virgil looked down at the boiling liquid, contemplating it for a long moment.

“Can I soak a knife in it?” he asked.

“What?” Logan asked.

“Can I soak a knife in the potion once it’s done?”

“In that potion?” Logan clarified. “In the emergency hand warmer potion?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I think a hot knife would be useful,” Virgil said.

“For what?”

Virgil shrugged. “Cooking food on the road,” he said, “burning wood, stabbing someone and immediately cauterizing the wound.”

“That is… not a standard use for this potion,” Logan said.

Virgil titled his head at him. “Would it work though?”

“Well, I don’t know,” Logan contemplated. “Perhaps. The potion can cause burns if one uses too much of it or if it is used without an appropriate layer between it and the skin. If one were to pick a knife with enough surface area and let it soak long enough, it could in theory get hot enough to do as desired. Hmm…” he thought about it. “There would perhaps be the problem of the potion not sticking to the knife very long as it is intended to soak into fabric. However, cardamom could solve that issue as long as it doesn’t interact with any other ingredients. Let me see that spell.”

Virgil stepped out of his way so he could study the page. “Yes,” Logan said after scanning through all of the ingredients. “I think coriander would work for something like that. Let me go find some.”

He turned to walk towards where he kept his supplies of potion ingredients. Virgil followed on his heals.

“Can we use a serrated knife?”

“Oh, that’s a good idea, Virgil,” Logan said, nodding as he searched through the cupboard that should hold the coriander. “The knife being serrated would help keep the potion stuck to the blade after many uses and would increase the surface area.”

“That was certainly my intentions,” Virgil said smoothly. There was something odd about the tone that had Logan turning to him and blinking at him. Virgil just smiled at him innocently and Logan turned back to the cabinet finally locating the coriander.

“So how are we going to use that?” Virgil asked.

“We’ll put it in right before the last step and let it sit for about 3 minutes,” Logan said. “If it doesn’t quite work, we may need to make another batch. There are options other than coriander, but that’s the first idea that comes to mind and it a lot simpler if it works.”

81310

He continued to speak of the many other options they could try as they returned to the caldron as well as how they could test the hot knife. It was already about time for the next step and Virgil did it without interrupting Logan’s rant.

Virgil listened to his suggestions with interest all while still making sure the potion he was making was progressing well.

Logan did eventually take over to finish the potion with the revised steps he’d come up with and they ended up with a potion that looked perfect except it was a few shades darker than the one they’d originally been planning to make.

#proofread stories #not writing

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gendervapor14 · 2 years ago

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gen's work in progress list!

here's a little list of every story i have that's either posted but incomplete, a rough draft, or even just a little concept! it is loosely organized by priority. feel free to poke me about any of these. sometimes i need a kick to the pants to get them going. i'll try and keep it updated too!! 👍

also there are spicy themes in here so minors, DNI. thank you

titles listed in large font, italicized, and underlined, are fics that are posted on ao3! titles that are just italicized are confirmed, working titles for a rough draft. titles that are neither italicized nor underlined are still in the conceptual/early development stage. it's likely the ratings, warnings, genres, etc may change as i continue to work on them. more than happy to talk about any of these tho, regardless of their status! 💕

last updated: 11/26/23

CURRENT PROJECTS

two fights for freedom

rating: M warnings: graphic depictions of violence category: F/M, gen status: ~10 chapters posted, updates every week, ~35 chapters, ~70k-100k words tags: canon divergent, fix-it, everybody lives, pre-arlong park, angst with a happy ending, angst and feels, fluff and humor, hurt/comfort, suggestive themes, sexual tension, limes (yes i'm bringing limes back), eventual smut, romance, slow burn, arguing, financial issues, broken bones, references to depression, alcoholism, mental health issues, canon backstory, mentioned doflamingo, non-canon backstory (giving bell-mere a backstory), found family, medical inaccuracies, blood and injury, trafalgar d. water law is a little shit, developing friendships, past child abuse, nightmares, more tags to be added later (?) characters: rosinante, bell-mere, law, nami, nojiko, genzo, arlong relationships: rosinante x bell-mere summary: freedom for one means adventure. exploring all the world has to offer, while avoiding the occasional haunting. freedom for another almost costs an arm and two daughters. a home, a village. perhaps freedom is best sought back-to-back. {a cora and bell-mère lives au} wip notes: got like 80% of this mapped out so despite my busy schedule, i'm pulling this out of the woodworks! XD thank opla arlong park for giving me a kick in the pants

speechless

rating: E warnings: none category: M/M status: ~11k words, oneshot, complete, not posted genre/cw: modern au, romance, parties, awkward meetings, hidden scars, angst & feels, hurt/comfort, smut, gender dysphoria, trans croc, lgbt+ themes, first time characters: crocodile, rosinante, donquixote parents, doflamingo relationships: crocodile x rosinante, past rosinante x bell-mere conceptual summary: at a christmas party gone sour, crocodile decides to put an end to his hiding. wip notes: my desire for soft crocorosi led to this story. hopefully i'll have it ready for christmas!!

a lesson on co-parenting

rating: E warnings: none category: F/F status: drafts of 2/3 chapters written genre/cw: modern au, nanny au?, miscommunication, humor, drama, suggestive themes, smut, moral conflict characters: sora (oc), bell-mere, rosinante, law, nami, nojiko relationships: sora x bell-mere, background rosinante x crocodile conceptual summary: sora is hired as a nanny for a busy, catastrophic family. what she assumed to be an easy, generous gig turns into disaster when the matriarch openly flirts and coaxes her into bed. wip notes: i started writing this ages ago on a whim and i do intend to finish it, but i got stuck on the smut XD as soon as i finish that tho, the fic is done!

ON THE BACKBURNER

trans corabelle fic

rating: M warnings: creator chose not to use archive warnings category: F/M, M/M, gen status: 75% of the first chapter drafted, will probably be ~12 chapters genres/cw: modern au, childhood friends, class struggles, angst, gender/sexuality, bullying, suicidal thoughts/actions, toxic relationships, hospitalizations, infidelity, child custody mayhem, ftm rosinante, mtf bell-mere, drama & romance, implied sexual content characters: rosinante, doflamingo, donquixote parents, bell-mere, crocodile, law relationships: rosinante x crocodile, rosinante x bell-mere endgame conceptual summary: sometimes you have to crawl through hell to reach your happy ending. wip notes: this has become the recent brainworm. i chip away at it when i have the energy. it's gonna be fucked up, hopefully.

lost in walmart

rating: gen warnings: none category: gen, F/M status: purely conceptual genres/cw: modern au, humor, fluff, domestic bliss characters: rosinante, law, nami, nojiko, bell-mere relationships: background rosinante x bell-mere conceptual summary: bell-mere drops off rosinante and the kids at a walmart while she runs some errands elsewhere. rosinante ends up losing all the kids and struggles to relocate them before bell-mere gets back. wip notes: this idea came to me from the heavens. i'll work on it once the nanny fic is finished 👍

all that glitters

rating: M warnings: graphic depictions of violence category: gen, F/M...? status: purely conceptual genres/cw: canon divergent, donquixotes never left mariejois, angst & feels, moral dilemmas, slavery, humor? but more of a dark humor, not sure about romance/smut yet characters: bell-mere, rosinante, doflamingo, donquixote parents relationships: either none, or bell-mere x rosinante conceptual summary: what if instead of accepting death on cocoyashi, arlong sells bell-mere into slavery for a taste of irony? bell-mere would accept - she can easily escape and get back to her kids while still complying with arlong's demands. meanwhile, the donquixotes granted their youngest son his own manor. doflamingo decides the best kind of housewarming gift for his beloved brother is a pretty young slave who can keep the place tidy and prepare some meals for him. if only that gift was a bit more cooperative. wip notes: YEAH so this idea rotted my brain pretty fast once i thought of it. and i pitched the idea to a few friends, expecting to have it get shot down, but they encouraged it so, i will be writing it at some point. it'll likely be multiple chapters, and there are a lot of story holes, so i'll have to iron those out first.

sublime > perish

rating: M warnings: graphic depictions of violence, major character death category: gen status: rough draft of chapter one finished? chapter two almost finished genres/cw: canon-plausible, backstory, steampunk, angst characters: gladius, oc parents, doflamingo (at the very end) conceptual summary: “Life on this island guarantees a fatality rate of one-hundred percent. You’ve defied those odds so far. Are you willing to keep risking your life for this measly place? Or would you rather have this entire world in the palm of your hands?” This was not a difficult choice to make. If only it was. wip notes: backstory fic for gladius! put this down for a while to tackle the rarepair event in feburary, and i really need to get back to it!! 😅

the heart of art

rating: gen warnings: none category: gen status: a few little paragraphs 😔 genres/cw: modern AU, fluff, humor, slice of life, artist cora AU characters: rosinante, law conceptual summary: maybe he had no gross motor control, but if there was one thing rosinante was a master with, it was art. wip notes: i promised @flashily i would write this story ages ago and i have absolutely no excuse as to why it isn't finished yet. i am so sorry. it is up here on my list!! see!! i will get to it, i swear!! 😭😭

all bark and no bite - part II

rating: E warnings: none category: M/M, gen status: purely conceptual genres/cw: modern AU, humor, suspicions, fluff, romance, smut? characters: rosinante, crocodile, bell-mere, potentially law, nami and nojiko, but idk yet relationships: rosinante x crocodile conceptual summary: crocodile invites rosinante on one of his trips overseas. rosinante sees it as the perfect oppertunity to get his second wind and dive into his dark secrets. wip notes: received overwhelming positive feedback on the first part of this, so i've started planning a second part. but idk when i'll get around to it! i need to do a lot more plotting.

sticky fingers

rating: E warnings: none category: multi, gen status: purely conceptual genres/cw: modern au, humor, smutty but nothing you can bite your teeth into, sex toys, heists, scheming, financial issues characters: bell-mere, rosinante, various background characters relationships: bell-mere x various background characters conceptual summary: bell-mere is hankering for a reliable, human-free source of fun, but the price of sex toys is far too exorbitant for her wallet. her solution? hook up with as many rich people as she can to pocket their best toys on the way out. wip notes: i was researching sex toys for ANOTHER fic and i couldn't help but notice the prices?? i was like "christ, bell-mere could never afford these" and then i got me thinking of her sitting on a thrown of stolen sex toys with a dildo crown. and i thought. i should write that.

donut miss your chance!

rating: T warnings: none! category: M/M, gen status: one chapter posted on ao3, 5300 words genres/cw: modern AU, fluff, humor, slice of life, blind date, awkward date, anxiety, reference to selective mutism characters: rosinante, bell-mère, katakuri relationships: rosinante x katakuri summary: bell-mère sets rosinante up with "a cute baker." a 7'2" punk-goth behemoth is not exactly what rosinante had in mind. wip notes: planning at least one more chapter for this! (but probably more) i'll get around to it after i find the time to watch WCI 👍

nami sewing

rating: gen warnings: none category: gen status: purely conceptual genres/cw: canon compliant, flashbacks, nostalgia, character study, canon-typical violence, blood and injury, angst & feels characters: nami, bell-mere, arlong, strawhats pirates conceptual summary: nami remembers her mother teaching her how to sew. wip notes: sometimes when i look at my hands, i see my grandmother's hands when she would teach me how to sew as a child. i wonder if, even though they weren't related by blood, nami sees her mother's hands in her own when she sews.

rainstorm

rating: E warnings: major character death...? category: F/M, gen status: a few ficlets half-completed genres/cw: angst, romance, canon compliant, smut, humor, tension characters: rosinante, sora (oc), possibly sengoku & tsuru relationships: rosinante x sora conceptual summary: a ficlet collection for sorazon. wip notes: basically a dumping pile of scenes i scrapped or wrote in a sad, sappy stupor.

physical therapy au?

rating: M warnings: none category: F/M status: purely conceptual genres/cw: modern au, physical hurt/comfort, rehabilitation, injury, humor, awkward sexual situations, awkward flirting, mutual pining, dating, romance, secret relationship characters: rosinante, sora (oc) relationships: rosinante x sora conceptual summary: sora gets assigned a "highly-temperamental" case of a very injured marine vet. after expecting an irritable, violent older person, sora is thrown off when her patient turns out to be a kind-hearted young man. wip notes: this story is like a little bug nibbling at the back of my brain. i might bump it up after i grab lunch with a friend who is an occupational therapist. miiiight just annoy her with 100+ questions XD

babysitting

rating: T warnings: none! category: gen status: one chapter posted on ao3, 2,737 words genres/cw: humor, domestic fluff? as domestic as the donquixote family gets at least, canon-compliant, dark humor characters: gladius, dellinger, doflamingo summary: “What’s the matter, Gladius, are you afraid of little Dellinger?” “Horrified, sir.” wip notes: i posted this ages ago and got a few comments kindly requesting the second chapter so. yes. it is coming. i have a loose plan. gladius is going to end up taking dellinger to that grocery store. the grocery store will not remain standing by the end of the story 👍

corazón de oro

rating: gen warnings: none! category: gen status: complete, oneshot, 2,785 words genres/cw: hurt/comfort, grief/mourning, nightmares, canon-compliant characters: rosinante, law summary: “Love, it’s…kind of like a leap of faith. You take your dive, you give them your heart. And you can only hope they’ll catch it when you land.” worth clarifying, not a ship wip notes: adding another chapter soon! i have this idea in mind revolving around this idea of rosi and law discussing religion 👀 (outside of my field of expertise tho, so i may take a bit with this one)

dofladile story

rating: M warnings: none category: M/M status: one and a half chapters of rough draft written, but idk where i'm going with it genres/cw: canon-plausible, humor, angst, maybe light smut? idk characters: doflamingo, crocodile relationships: doflamingo x crocodile conceptual summary: somehow, doflamingo convinced crocodile to take a visit over to dressrosa. his lovely guest is not as lovely as he was anticipating. wip notes: i'll go through phases of working on this and adding like, 1000 or so words at a time, and then i'll take a huge break. they're both very difficult for me to write in a canon-plausible setting. so much thinking.

band au?

rating: ??? warnings: none category: ??? status: purely conceptual genres/cw: modern au, band au, uhhh. sex and drugs i dunno characters: rosinante, bell-mere, smoker, hina, others. probably relationships: ??? conceptual summary: ??? wip notes: SORRY i have nothing for this other than a band (the four listed characters) and a few lyrics in a little notes document on my phone. might turn this into more of an art project than a story. yet to be determined.

01746 sequel

rating: M warnings: graphic depictions of violence category: gen, M/M, F/M status: fragment of the first chapter written, mostly conceptual genres/cw: canon plausible, angst, mental health issues, alcoholism, pirates are evil, especially doflamingo, dark themes, unhealthy relationships characters: doflamingo, donquixote family, crocodile, sora? (oc) viola conceptual summary: the death of the heart left a gap for many. some filled that hole with shovels and dirt. others used lead. wip notes: uh, yeah, pretty much the label on the can. picks up directly where 01746 left off. doflamingo is making his way towards dressrosa, trying to pick up the pieces. idk if sora's going to be in this. if she is, i think she might join baroque works. we'll see. this one's going to require a boatload of planning, so i'll get around to it next century.

make sure you check out my #gensbthb tag too, for details on upcoming projects for the bad things happens bingo event. i write those very randomly so there's no saying when another will pop up.

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wrestlingisfake · 2 years ago

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Forbidden Door preview

Kazuchika Okada vs. Bryan Danielson - Danielson issued the challenge for this match on June 4. It's a dream match, and expectations are running high. The entire build for the match is that you know it's gonna be good, so it'd better be.

Danielson has not wrestled since May 28, and that was his first match since March 5. He's reportedly banged up and clearly saving himself for big matchups like this. Conversely, Okada has been working a regular schedule, and after this he's headed into the G1 Climax, where he'll have anywhere between seven and ten grueling matches in a month.

Bryan turned heel a couple of months ago, with the gimmick that he's embarrassed by wrestlers that act like "amateurs" and wants to teach them a lesson in violence. Meanwhile, Okada has been acting more heelish this year, acting like he's too good for the young guys who challenge him, and beating the fuck out of them when they piss him off. So I'm figuring Danielson, 42, will treat Okada, 35, the way Okada treats Kaito Kiyomiya and Ren Narita, and Okada will flip out and go apeshit on Bryan's ass. That should be a good time.

Okada almost has to win. Even when he isn't the world champion or factored into the main event of the next Tokyo Dome show, protecting Okada is always paramount for New Japan Pro Wrestling. Danielson, on the other hand, has already settled into an aging legend role that can be pushed as a top guy but mostly gets used to put over younger top guys. I guess there's a small chance of Danielson winning, but it'd be a huge story, and everyone would be scrambling to figure out when they'll do a rematch.

Kenny Omega vs. Will Ospreay - Omega won the IWGP United States title from Ospreay on January 4 in the Tokyo Dome. On June 4, Ospreay won a tournament to earn this rematch.

The last Omega-Ospreay match was easily a match of the year contender, with Will bleeding all over the place and desperately trying to hang with one of the best of all time. Ospreay has been leaning into that, saying that match "broke" him but he's coming back for more. Omega is from Winnipeg, so Ospreay has made a big deal of beating Omega in his home country, and heeling on Canadians. It's kind of basic, but it'll probably work.

The x-factor in this match is Don Callis, who cornered Kenny in the first match but turned on him on May 10. Callis is clearly planning to assemble a new faction to square off with Omega and the Elite. I don't sense that Ospreay will be a part of such a faction, but Don is clearly trying to get his hooks in. Even if Will wants nothing to do with Callis, you can bet Don will stick his nose in this match just to screw over Kenny.

I think Ospreay has to get the belt back. The simplest way to book this is to have Callis cost Omega the win, so that Will gets his revenge and Omega is more interested in chasing Don than getting a rubber match.

MJF vs. Hiroshi Tanahashi - MJF is defending the AEW men's world title. One of the many facest of MJF's gimmick is that he acts like he's too good for New Japan, and he has no idea who those guys are and he thinks they're overrated by the internet. So the money is in convincing us that Tana will kills this little pecker as soon as he gets his hands on him. Except MJF will pull a cheap shot or something and Tana will end up selling the whole match to build sympathy.

MJF has to retain. I just can't picture his title reign ending here, against someone from another promotion. And anyway, Tanahashi is already scheduled for the G1 Climax, so that would mean AEW has to go a month without any appearances by its top champion. The only question is whether the finish involves a nutshot, a foreign object, or a basic headlock takeover.

SANADA vs. Jack Perry - Sanada issued an open challenge for the IWGP world title, and Perry answered. I was hoping Sanada would get a more impressive challenger from the AEW locker room, but at least it advances the story that Perry is fixated on winning his first singles title. Jack asked HOOK to be in his corner for this match, so I assume that'll play into things somehow.

The intrigue around Perry right now is that he almost tried to win the main event of the May 28 main event with a belt shot. So everyone figures he's this close to a heel turn. I don't think we'll see it during this match. But a loss to Sanada would go a long way to increasing his frustration.

CM Punk vs. Satoshi Kojima - This is a first round match in the Owen Hart Cup men's tournament. It's also Punk's first singles match since September 4, when he won the AEW men's world title, tore his triceps, and got into a backstage fight with the Elite. By the time Punk healed up from surgery and negotiated a return to the ring, most of the better opponents from New Japan were booked, so Punk ended up with 52-year-old Kojima, who is basically a jobber to the stars at this point.

These two have 16 world titles between them, so I'm sure they can have a good to great match. But the outcome is in little doubt--Punk is stil riding high off his return, and Kojima is so far off NJPW's radar that he's been primarily on loan to All Japan Pro Wrestling. Punk is the heavy favorite here, and probably throughout the Owen tournament.

Sting & Darby Allin & Tetsuya Naito vs. Chris Jericho & Sammy Guevara & Minoru Suzuki - Sting and Allin have been encouraging Guevara to re-evaluate his relationship with Jericho. Suzuki has teamed with Jericho before, for whatever reason, so that's why he's here. Last year Sting and Allin teamed up with Shingo Takagi from Los Ingobernables de Japon, so now their partner is the faction's leader, Naito.

The big story in this match is the first in-ring action between Jericho and Sting. The problem with that is it makes Suzuki and Naito feel secondary to the match, which is counterproductive on an AEW/NJPW supercard. It should be at least as big a deal that Sting is across the ring from Suzuki, and teaming with Naito.

The Sting/Allin team has never lost a match, and I don't expect that to change here.

Orange Cassidy vs. Zack Sabre Jr. vs. Katsuyori Shibata vs. Daniel Garcia - This is a four-way for Cassidy's AEW international title, so whoever scores the first fall on any opponent will win the match and the belt. Sabre is the NJPW World television champion, and Shibata is the ROH pure champion; their titles are not at stake here.

This whole thing started because Sabre wanted a title shot against Cassidy, but Garcia has been trying to challenge both Cassidy and Shibata. So Cassidy proposed an Orange/Shibata vs. Sabre/Garcia tag match, which led to Garcia pinning Shibata when Cassidy accidentally punched out Shibata. So now Shibata is kind of pissed at Orange too, and everybody wants a piece of him.

The storyline for Cassidy is that he's been defending the international title at a grueling pace, and he's never given his right hand time to heal. Sooner or later that's going to cost him the title, although I'm not convinced that will happen tonight. My pick is for Cassidy to pin Garcia to retain.

Toni Storm vs. Willow Nightingale - Storm's AEW women's world title is at stake; Willow's NJPW STRONG women's title is not. New Japan is just barely starting to establish a women's division so even though both of these ladies are primarily based in AEW, this is as close to an AEW/NJPW women's match as we're going to get. Toni is 2-0 against Willow in singles matches, and in their last tag team encounter Willow's partner pinned Storm's partner. So I'm not exactly sure how Willow got this title shot, but okay.

The direction all year has been for Britt Baker and Jamie Hayter to feud with Storm, Ruby Soho, and Saraya, with other women like Willow kind of vaguely orbiting the main storyline. So unless there's been a big pivot in the booking, I don't see Willow capturing the AEW title before Baker or Hayter get to it. Then again, Willow is catching fire with the live crowds, so maybe they decised to hot-shot her to the top. There's only one way to find out, but try not to be too disappointed if Willow loses.

Jon Moxley & Claudio Castagnoli & Wheeler Yuta & Konosuke Takeshita & Shota Umino vs. Adam Page & Matt Jackson & Nick Jackson & Eddie Kingston & Tomohiro Ishii - Mox, Claudio, and Yuta represent the Blackpool Combat Club; Page and the Young Bucks (Matt and Nick) represent the Elite. The two groups have been feuding for months. Since Kenny Omega and Bryan Danielson are busy in other matches, they're bringing in reinforcements.

Takeshita had been an ally to the Elite until he turned on them to align with Don Callis on May 28. Umino has been Moxley's young sidekick in New Japan, and on June 4 he brought in Moxley and Claudio in a bid to take the NEVER trios titles from Okada, Tanahashi, and Ishii. Kingston doesn't really like anybody on his team, but he loathes Castagnoli and will happily fight his old buddy Moxley to get to him.

Technically, standard tag rules apply and only two men can be in the ring at any time, while the other eight have to stand in the corners. But I expect this one to break down into a wild brawl real quickly. There's way too much going on for anyone to meaningfully enforce the rules. Either team could win, but if I gotta pick I'll go with Moxley's team to build heat to whatever blowoff match they're planning.

Adam Cole vs. Tom Lawlor - AEW recently announced MJF and Adam Cole have to be tag partners in an upcoming tournament, and after Cole badgered MJF into accepting the title match with Tanahashi, MJF returned the "favor" by requesting this match for Cole. Lawlor's affiliation with New Japan is mainly through their US-based STRONG brand, so you'd have to be a pretty hardcore NJPW fan to even know he's there. I'm sure Lawlor can project the image of a legit MMA fighter who doesn't sweat a scrawny flippy-superkicky guy like Cole. But he's nowhere near Cole on the pecking order, so Adam has to win this one.

Athena vs. Billie Starkz - This set for the pre-show, and it's a first round match in the Owen Hart Cup women's tournament. Athena is the ROH women's world champion, but the belt is not at stake here. As far as I know Starkz is not under AEW contract but this is still largely an AEW vs. AEW match. I figure Athena will get knocked out of the tournament by someone who will be her next challenger, but I'm not thinking Starkz is the one who will get that spot. Athena wins.

Kyle Fletcher & Jeff Cobb & TJP vs. Shingo Takashi & Hiromu Takahashi & BUSHI - Another pre-show match. All of these guys are New Japan regulars; in fact I wouldn't be shocked if this exact match has already happened on a New Japan show. The only hint of an AEW connection is that Fletcher recently signed with AEW and works for both promotions. I assume the main idea here is to get Hiromu on the show after he was forced to miss last year's. I hope his team wins.

Stu Grayson vs. El Phantasmo - Yet another pre-show match. Well, at least it's AEW vs. NJPW, though I can't say this is a matchup I was hoping for. I guess both guys are Canadian so they wanted to give them both spots on the card. ELP's storyline is that he got kicked out of Bullet Club and doesn't have any friends right now. Grayson's storyline in ROH is that he defected from the Dark Order to the Righteous, but I'm not sure what that really means. Phantasmo should probably win.

Swerve Strickland & Bishop Kaun & Toa Liona vs. Rocky Romero & Trent Beretta & El Desperado - More pre-show action. Romero and Despy are the only New Japan guys in this match, and Romero appears in AEW semi-regularly, so it feels like he shouldn't count. Swerve and his Mogul Embassy faction seem to be going nowhere fast, but they ought to be able to at least win this match.

#aew #njpw #forbidden door #bryan danielson #kazuchika okada #kenny omega #will ospreay

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heavyasafeather · 10 days ago

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2024

1. What did you do in 2024 that you’d never done before?

I went to Seattle. I started playing Ghost of Tsushima.

2. Did you keep your new years’ resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

I told myself to workout during lunch or take the stairs more, and I barely did that. I usually don’t make resolutions, I don’t even know why I tried.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?

–

4. Did anyone close to you die?

My sister.

5. What countries did you visit?

–

6. What would you like to have in 2025 that you lacked in 2024?

Joji.

7. What date from 2024 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?

September 3 - my Manangjoymon passed away.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?

I mean, so far I have a 4.0 GPA?

This may have she been from mourning, but I lost 5 pounds.

9. What was your biggest failure?

Not visiting as often when she was still around...

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?

I don't know if this counts as an illness, but I developed some liver thing.

11. What was the best thing you bought?

A new phone, I guess.

12. Whose behaviour merited celebration?

Is this ever a thing?

13. Whose behaviour made you appalled and depressed?

Literally everybody. Fuck all of you.

14. Where did most of your money go?

Bills, school.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?

Getting assigned Port Angeles for externship (and then my school notified me that site was unavailalble, so that sucked).

16. What song will always remind you of 2024?

This seems hard, because I feel like I've listened to music the least this year.

Ceramic Animal, "Sweet Unknown"

Motorama, "Heavy Wave"

Tempesst, "Walk on the Water"

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:

i. happier or sadder? Sadder.

ii. thinner or fatter? Fatter.

iii. richer or poorer? I feel poorer.

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?

Skating. Taking pictures.

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?

Being alive.

20. How did you spend Christmas?

Christmas Eve, Adam and I were just at my place watching movies. Christmas Day, Adam and I went to see Nosferatu.

21. Did you fall in love in 2024?

22. How will you be spending New Years?

Probably just at Adam's, watching movies.

23. How many one-night stands?

24. What was your favourite TV program?

Kim's Convenience. House of the Dragon [even though this season was not that great]

25. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?

Yeah, coworkers.

26. What was the best book you read?

–

27. What was your greatest musical discovery?

I mean... I only really like about 3 songs by her, and haven't actually tried listening to much else - but Chappell Roan I guess?

28. What did you want and get?

A new phone?

29. What did you want and not get?

For her to beat cancer. To go to Port Angeles, WA for externship.

30. What was your favourite film of this year?

Nothing's really standing out to me... Nosferatu?

31. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?

I turned 33. It's was only a month ago, and I don't remember what I did. I think I went to Outback with my parents?

32. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably satisfying?

Having the balls to tell people to shut the fuck up. And for Manang Joy to have beaten cancer.

33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2024?

Scrubs.

34. What kept you sane?

Nothing; physics stressed me the fuck out.

35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

36. What political issue stirred you the most?

37. Who did you miss?

I don't give a fuck anymore.

Manang Joy.

38. Who was the best new person you met?

Did I meet anyone new?

39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2024:

–

40. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.

I have emotional motion sickness, somebody roll the windows down. There are no words in the English language I could scream to drown you out.

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survivingcollegeonefanficatatime · 6 months ago

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unit 3 baby

just as uneddited as everything else. I'm tired.

Ahsoka rocked on her feet for a moment, her arms tucked across her chest. She worried about her lip for a moment before she spoke. “Look, I have a good excuse this time,” she explained

“For yet another last minute lecture?” Rex gave the little padawan the flattest look she’d ever received

“In my defense, I had an exam less than a ten-day ago and I’ve got another one already! I didn’t have TIME to set up a class!” Ahsoka insisted, rocking forward to stand on her toes. Rex raised an eyebrow. “And I only have a few days until the final! I have five days until my final and one day until my next exam. I know we’ve got a campaign coming up but I still have classes!”

“Alright, Commander, we can do a lesson. Most of the boys are busy preparing for our next deployment right now, that includes myself. I'll see who’s available, but it’ll be a small class this time, most of the boys will be sad they missed it.” Rex sighed and rolled his shoulders as he relented.

“That’s alright!” Ahsoka announced “I’ll record it for them!” her captain could only shake his head as she smiled.

In the end, Jessie, Kix, and Echo had shown up, although they’d been forced to take a room near medbay to compensate for the chaos of getting ready for the campaign.

“Alright, we're dealing with animals! And how they work”Ahsoka chirped “all animals are similar in terms of how they exchange materials, obtain energy, synthesize complex molecules, detect and respond to signals and reproduce themselves. There are differences in the overall systems but they do those things. There’s a general pattern which goes, "cell, tissue organ, organ system.”

Kix muttered under his breath “cells make up tissues which make up organs which make up organs systems”

“Yeah, exactly. You’re probably going to know a lot about this unit already Kix because it’s a lot of stuff that’s fairly useful for medical… uh medical stuff” Ahsoka amdited, the clone in question nodded

“Well that just means I can help you memorize it all.” The pair smiled and Jessie gave Kix a playful shove.

“Do you know the four tissue types Kix?”

“Uh, whas it muscle, nervous, epithelial, and connective?”

“Yup!!”

Echo muttered ‘show off’ under his breath, but refrained from saying anything further on the topic

“I know what each tissue does too. Muscle tissue is for movement, nervous dose signaling, epithelial dose transport and connective tissue is weird because it includes stuff you think of as connective tissue, and also blood and stuff like that.”

“Right again Kix, do you know what a normal temperature, heart rate, and blood pressure is?”

“Stop asking questions only Kix knows the answer too.” Echo muttered

“Really, I’m supposed you don’t know that one Echo, seems like the bit of random information you’d have,” Jessie admitted

“Yeah, I do know it, but the question was directed to Kix and I wouldn’t be surprised if most of us don’t know these things, even though we’re supposed to.”

“I do know them!” Jessie insisted

“Wanna answer the question for me then?” Kix called, cutting off the argument at its head.

“Oh yeah sure, uhh average resting body temperature is 35-28 or 95-100 depending on the temperature scale, resting heart-rate is 60-100 BPM, and blood pressure is about 120/80, for humans at least, I think we have a slower resting heart-rate, and blood pressure, and I’m not sure at all about togruta, but I’m sure Kix knows.”

“It’s in your file, Commander, I make it a point to read all the medical files of every species on the ship.”

“This class is on Naboo so we’re focusing on humans and gungans, but I’ve got the gungan stuff memorized since it was easier than humans.” Ahsoka admitted. “Anyways, we’re going to cover the heat exchange now. There's four ways to exchange heat with the environment: radiation, evaporation, conduction, and convection. The first two are easy but conduction and convection is something I mix up a lot, conduction is heat exchange through direct contact whereas convection is a transfer of heat through a fluid, so air or water or something like that.”

“Ah, I’m afraid I don’t really have a good mnemonic to help with that one, I just sorta had to practice it.” Kix admitted

“Yea, I was afraid of that, anyways there’s something called countercurrent exchange which is a fairly easy concept to understand. They put two blood tubes next to each other and have one carrying the warm blood, and another has cold blood so the warm blood constantly cools. It can be used for other stuff as well, like for transfer of oxygen. Do you know the fluids in human blood?”

“Yeah” Kix cut in before anyone could “extracellular fluid, plasma, and intercellular fluid, you’ve got those liquids two, Commander, the extracellular fluid is outside, and has plasma and interstitial fluid, intracellular fluids are separated by cell membranes. Blood is also made of red blood cells or erythrocytes, white blood cells leukocytes, and platelets”

“That's true, although the details about blood cells are coming later. For now we cover the fluids and now we talk about fish, freshwater fish do not drink because they’re in a hypotonic environment, and the saltwater fish drink seawater because they’re in a hypertonic environment.”

“Which one are gungans?”

“Well… they live in oceans, but they’re amphibious so… neither?” Ahsoka shook her head “anyways next lecture.”

“Next lecture already?”

“This unit has both the easiest and most complex stuff in the class, or at least, the easiest and most complex stuff so far.”

“So what’s this chapter on?”

“Circulatory system tms, an open circulatory system as hemolymph, and what happens is that the creature basically dumps their blood into body cavities. It's got a low energy requirement but it also means they can't direct blood to specific areas. Blood is a connective tissue, as Kix mentioned previously, but it's got nutrients that wastes oxygen and carbon dioxide. Arteries carry blood away from the heart, veins carry blood towards the heart, so arterie away is a good way to remember it! Capillaries are exchange sites so blood can flow through a tissue or organ.”

“Arterie away is a great way to remember it, I didn’t think of that” Kix admitted, and Jessie and Echo cheered. Causing Ahsoka to blush as she continued.

“Single circulation vs double circulation, in single circulation which happens for fishes has a heart with a single filling chamber and a single exit chamber, the filling chamber is atrium and the exit is the ventricle, I need to remember that for later. Anyways in double circulation which is crocodilians, birds, and mammals, has four chambers and two circuits, the pulmonary and systemic circulation, amphibians and most reptiles have an intermediate type of circulation so it’s a mix of both, I’d bet this is what gungans have, but I’m not entirely sure.”

“Are you not going in depth on gugnans?”

“To be honest, we’re not going that in-depth about any species, the only reason I even know what applies to humans and what's generalized for mamilains is that everyone ends up learning a little human biology by proxy. Besides, there’s a lot of debate about the taxonomy of nonhumans…. Anyways this is where we get to the parts of blood Kix, wanna help me with this?”

“Sure commander!”

“There’s 55% what in blood?”

“Plasma”

“And 44%?”

“Erythrocytes, or red blood cells.”

“The two remaining ones are both less than one percent.”

“Leukocytes, white blood cells, and platelets.”

“Perfect!” Ahsoka chimed and the other two clones muttered that Kix was a show off and huffed in playful faux irritation. Kix preened despite himself and continued right along.

“Platelets stick to each other and broken vessels to make a plug if there’s a hole, and thrombocytes are intact cells used in formation of blood clots but those are other vertebrates not humans, well, it depends, Togruta have platelets.”

“While you’re showing off, do you want to go over the path blood takes in the heart?”

Kix smiled wryly “of course, deoxygenated blood goes to the superior and inferior venae cavae, and then to the right atrium, then to the right AV valve, then the right ventricle, semilunar valve, pulmonary trunk and then to the lungs. By contrast Oxygenated blood goes through the pulmonary veins, the left atrium, the left AV valve, the left ventricle then the semilunar valve, aorta and to the body.”

“Perfect, I’ve been having trouble with that, I think it’s just something I need to memorize. Anyways, wanna know something interesting? Vertebrates have a myogenic heart, it receives signals from the SA node and the pulse is taken in the AV node, and the heart can keep beating after you die, or outside the body if you do it right.”

“Creepy” Echo muttered

“Cardiac cycle next.” Ahsoka muttered “there’s two phases, another thing I just need to memorize, the diastole is when the muscle relaxes and the chamber is filling, and the systole muscle is contracting and the camber is emptying.”

“Yeah, we were just trained for rote memorization, I’m not necessarily one for mnemonics' ' Kix admitted.

“Pressure is highest during the ventricular systole, and the lowest during the diastole. And we’ve gotta talk about electrocardiograms now or ECG or EKGs so that’s exciting. The P wave is the atrial excitation, the QRS complex is ventricular excitation and the T wave is resetting the ventricles back to their resting state.” Ahsoka took a breath. The lymphatic system returns interstitial fluid to the blood, and the lymph nodes act like filters. Veins have valves so vein valves. Oh now we have math! Blood flow is equal to the change in pressure over resistance. Arterioles have smooth muscles in walls that are under the control of the autonomic nervous system. And we move on to respiration.”

“Wow you’re just going over all the topics in this unit.” Echo muttered

“At least it’s not plant sex again.” all three shuttered, that unit was a nightmare Ahsoka cleared her throat “alright, so the exchange of O2 and CO2, t depends on how soluble glasses are in water, if there’s partial pressure it’s the proportion of the total pressure exeter by a gas in a mixture and partial pressure is the force behind diffusion. On Naboo the air is composed of 78% nitrogen 21% oxygen 1% carbon dioxide and other gasses. At sea level the atmospheric pressure is 760 mmHg, pressure and volume are inversely related and this is called Boyle’s law, supposedly someone on Alderon came up with that a few thousand years ago, but no one’s quite sure who Boyle was. Alright! The path of air through the mammalian system, Kix wanna try it out?”

“Mouth or nose, pharynx, larynx, trachea, bronchi, bronchioles, alveoli; the alveoli are where gas exchange happens, and each lung has a pleural sac which is a double layer of thin connective tissues to protect the lungs. The inner layer is attached to the surface of the lungs and the other layer is attached to the chest wall. Humans aren't great at using their whole lung capacity, and tidal volume is the mount of air breathed in and out at rest it’s about 0.5 L”

“Thanks Kix! Ok, oxygen is dissolved in bloody fluids, and respiratory pigments are oxygen binding proteins, in vertebrate hemoglobin has four polypeptide subunits, each unit has heme molecules and an atom of iron is bound to the heme. Breathing is controlled by the respiratory center in the brain, so if you die your lungs won’t keep going, and while most of the time breathing is automatic we can also control it, unlike what happens with the heart which we can’t continuously control, thank the force.”

“Yeah, that’d be a nightmare,” Jessie agreed

“Yeah, speaking of nightmares, the digestive system. We need organic and inorganic substances to survive, and digestion happens in four phases: ingestion, digestion, absorption and egestion. There are five organic nutrients, five macronutrients and two micronutrients. Anyone know what they are?”

“Macronutrients are carbohydrates, lipids and proteins, micronutrients are nucleic acids, and vitamins!” Jessie called before anyone could interrupt him. Echo huffed and Kix rolled his eyes.

“Extra energy is stored in glycogen for the short term and triglycerides in the long term. Most long term energy is stored as lipids which are fats and oils, saturated lipids are solid at room temperature and unsaturated lipids are liquid at room temperature. Catabolism is when the subunits are released by digestion into circulation and anabolism is when cells use these subunits as a building block to assemble the macromolecules. Does anyone know the types of essential nutrients there are?”

“Essential amino acids, essential fatty acids, vitamins, and minerals” Echo cut off, a little too proud of himself.

“The essential amino acids are Methionine, valine, threonine, phenylalanine, leucine, isoleucine, tryptophan, lysine, and histidine.” Kix interrupted

“Ok wheel there’s two essential fatty acids, Linoleic acid and alpha linoleic acids.” Jessie cut in

“Boys” Ahsoka muttered

“There's two types of vitamins!” Echo interrupted “water or lipid soluble.”

Kix spoke over his brother “the water soluble vitamins are biotin, folic acid, niacin which is B3, pantothenic or B5, vitamin B1 and B2 and B6 and B12 and vitamin C”

“Boys” Ahsoka said a little louder

“The lipid soluble ones are vitamin A, D, E and K” Jessie bragged

“Boys!” Ahsoka sighed

“Ok well-”

“The required minerals are Calcium, Magnesium, Phosphorus, and Sodium which are needed in large amounts!” Ahsoka cut off, and her trooper ducked their heads in embarrassment.

“Sorry commander” they all muttered, although they glared at each other from the corners of their eyes as they spoke

“The minerals needed in small amounts are Chromium, cobalt, copper, Iodine, Iron, Manganese, and Zinc” Ahsoka continued, she shook her head but couldn't help the smile that lit up her face. “You guys can participate--I want you to participate, but I do need to explain things, that’s how I’m learning this by teaching it, it’s one of the best ways to learn.”

“I know Commander,” Echo huffed. “We just got… competitive”

“I know, and I’m impressed by how well you guys know this, I’m sure you would ace this exam. I’m not so sure about myself, but I know you don't really need this class, I do.”

“If I’m being honest Commander…” Jessie trailed off “I went over some of this stuff before the lesson, because I wanted to be able to participate more.” Echo made a face and nodded.

“R-really?” Ahsoka asked.

“Oh yeah, the boys have been in and out of med-bay for the past week, they all wanted to be more active during your lectures.” Kix confirmed, “it’s been useful for me too.”

Ahoska flushed, she hadn’t realized just how much her troopers looked forward to this. “I-I appreciate it, just… maybe don’t get carried away with it next time” she cleared her throat “uh-anyways, most animals have alimentary canals which are tubes with special regions and openings at opposite ends, they have smooth muscle, epithelial cells, and regions with acidic environments that can be separated from the non acidic environments. If you want to show off, can anyone tell me which parts of the digestive system are accessory structures?”

“Tongue, teeth” Kix started

“Salivary glands, liver, gallbladder” Echo continued

“And the pancreas” Jessie finished.

“Perfectly, the accessory organs are the mouth, pharynx, esophagus, stomach, small intestine, large intestine, rectum and anus. Birds have something called a crop, this allows them to store food, they’re in most birds and a lot of invertebrates, the food is softened by a watery secretion and then later they can actually eat it. Pepsinogen is secreted in its inactive form and is changed to pepsin in the stomach. Birds have two parts of their stomach, the gizzard which grinds food, and the proventriculus which secretes acid and enzymes.”

“Birds are weird,” Jessie squinted.

Ahsoka nodded. “Unfortunately we need to move onto something that’s mildly gross, ruminant animals, which sort of digest things twice, tis allows for the digestion of cellulose which vertebrates cannot break down, the rumen and the reticulum act as storage and processing sites, the osman absorbs some water and ions, and the abomasum is the ‘true stomach’ where avid and stuff happens most digestion and absorption occurs in the small intestine, and it's covered in cillus which are little hairs that increase the surface area.”

“That makes it so it can better asrob stuff right?” Jessie asked

“That’s right, the Duodenum is acidic, the arrival of chyme triggers the release of hormones that regulate the pancreas, then the cholecystokinin stimulates the pancreas and liver to secrete a mix of digestive enzymes into the intensten, secretin stimulates the pancreas to release bicarbonate. In omnivores most ingested carbohydrates are starch cellulose and glycogen. Pancreatic amylase digests nearly all starch and glycogen. The liver secretes bile salts that emulsify lipids into small drops, most ingested lipids are formed of triglycerides, and they break down in the pancreatic lipase.” Ahsoka huffed “does anyone know what Insulin and Glucagon does?”

Kix smiled “regulates blood nutrient levels. When blood glucose rises insulin is released and stimulates cells to take up glucose.”

“Perfect, and now we more unto the excretory system,”

“And you said the rumen was gross.” Echo muttered

“This isn’t that bad, don’t worry” Ahsoka muttered “ok so the excretory system includes all tissues and organs of animals that function to remove soluble wastes from the body and to regulate water and iron ballance so it includes the gills, lungs, skin and kidneys. Nitrogenous wastes that are usually found in either ammonium, urea, or uric acid, they go from most toxic to lease toxic, but inversely they also go from least energy necessary to most energy necessary, most aquatic animals have ammonia, where mammals have urea and birds, insects and most reptiles have uric acid.”

Ahsoka continued “the kidney filters organs that eliminates wastes in all vertebrates, and in mammals the urinary system includes the kidneys ureters, urinary bladder, and urethra. We’re going to talk about filtration that occurs in the renal corpuscle, then reabsorption and secretion which occur in the renal tube. There’s a thing called a bowman's capsule, and it’s uh a little ball thing in the center of the sture, the tubule is organized into the proximal tubule, loop of henle and distal tubule. There’s some useful solutes that are reabsorbed from the filtrate, like Ca Na K, Cl, and HCO3 as well as nutrients like glucose, amino acids and vitamins. Aldosterone is a hormone produced by adrenal glands that regulates Na and K levels by stimulating Na reabsorption and K secretion. Antidiuretic Hormone ADH acts to increase the number of aquaporins which lets more water in.”

“That’s a lot of chemicals, that seems like a lot to remember for your exam Commander.” Jessie muttered.

“That’s alright, we’re onto the last section which is the easiest, and it’s population ecology.”

“What exactly is ecology again?” Jessie asked

“It’s the scientific study of interaction, well interactions between living organisms and living stuff and their environments. It goes in layers, individuals, then the population which is a group of individuals, and a community which is all the interacting populations of different species in a specific area. Populations have different grouping, Nabboean water wolves travel in packs, but mose forage alone. Their patterns affect the ability to count them which means we don’t always know how many individuals are in the area.”

“That seems like that's inconvenient.”

“Yea, it is, so scientists do a lot to try and figure it out, like the mark-recapture method, pitfall traps, mist nets and baited traps. Animals can learn to avoid traps or may be drawn to food bated traps which ruins the randomness of the trapping methods. Mark recapture involves a little math” all the troopers groaned you have to capture tag and release animals, then reset the traps and see how many recaptures you get, then you multiply the number of marked individuals by the number caught the second time and divide it by the amount of marked individuals caught. The mark recapture method relies on three methods, that those marked are random and still reenter the population to distribute themselves randomly, that the animals will not lose their marks, and that no one will be born or die or leave between rounds.”

“Those seem like some very strict assumptions, not all of them seem feasible” Kix muttered

“No, but we have to do our best, there’s no perfect way to do this, anyways there’s also demography which is the the study of figuring out birth, death and fertility rates.there’s also different types of growth, where the exponential growth just goes up for ages and the logistic growth goes up and then bounces around a line. One of the more confusing topics in this entire unit is the density dependent, density independent thing, where if something is density independent the population will be more affected when the population gets bigger, the reverse which is just inverse density dependent is a measurement of mortality so if the mortality decreases its an inverse density dependent factor. And now we have species interactions, competition is -/- commensalism is -/0 mutualism is +/+ commensalism is +/0 and predation is +/-, I think we all know what a habitat is but does anyone wanna explain it?”

“It’s the place where animals live. Their ideal environment.” Echo chimed.

“Correct!” Ahsoka chimed “resource partitioning is when different species have different areas of resource use, interspecific competition can reduce the overlap of resource use. And that’s the last of it.”

“That’s it?” Kix asked

“Yeah, I’ve gotta study on my own now, wish me luck.” Ahsoka beamed.

“Good luck commander!” all three clones chimed.

#study fic #college

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the-eternal-quest-for-balance · 9 months ago

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Life Changes and Life Lessons.

Monday Mutiny

April 8th, 2024:

Happy Monday. Below are five things that challenged, motivated, or entertained me this past week—hopefully they will do the same for you.

(1) For starters, I spent most of last week in NYC, where I was a guest on Elvis Duran and the Morning Show (you can listen to my segment here if you’re interested; I believe I come on around 1:35:20). Even though I’ve taken a step back from social media, I haven’t become a total hermit (yet). All in all, I had a good time in New York—and, yes, I felt the earthquake that everybody was talking about—but the most memorable part of my trip was the night before the quake, when I met up with a relatively new friend. We’d never actually met in person, but we connected online a year or so ago because we’re both writers and we talk often about books, ideas, serial killers, travel, and just random observations about the state of the world.

Monday Mutiny is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Anyway, the reason why going out that last night in NYC was so memorable for me was because it was so familiar—eerily so. For a moment, it felt like I had stepped back in time, and everything that has transpired over the past five years of my life was non-existent. It was dream-like, and I don’t know that I’ve ever felt something quite like that before.

There, in the commotion of a Midtown bar, I was sucked into a time-warp. I was immediately taken back to my life pre-2019, back to a time when I, myself, lived in New York City and spent the majority of my nights out and about—hopping from bar to bar as the life of the party, drunk and without direction, having short encounters and conversations with individuals that I’d never see again—all while trying to conceal the fact that I was dreadfully lonely in a city with a population of more than eight million. And, for a few hours last week, I felt exactly as I did back then, the same way that I had felt throughout most of my twenties and early thirties: alone.

So, when it came time to call it a night, as I walked back into my smaller-than-remembered Manhattan hotel room, I wanted nothing more than to be home, lying on my couch, with my son snuggled under my arm, watching a show about dinosaurs.

I had a taste of my old life, and I didn’t want it. Not even a little bit.

Over the years, my life has gone through a series of profound changes—as I’m sure many of you have experienced as well—and, currently, I’m going through another significant change, a change that wasn’t planned or chosen (at least not intentionally), but I’ve never wanted to live the same life forever. And, when I allow myself to step back and look at the bigger picture, I’m grateful for every change and interruption that has come my way—the good, the bad, the great, and even the downright painful—because they’ve all led me to a new life, a new chapter, and a new version of myself, a version that is almost always better than before.

(2) On my flight home, I watched this movie called “The Lesson” from 2023. And, if you enjoy movies that are a slow burn, more thematic than action-packed, you’ll probably like it. Personally, I thought it was a super original premise regarding the emotions of grief and envy—but it also happens to be a story about writers, so perhaps I’m more connected to it than the average viewer.

However, regardless of my personal draw to the movie, I can say with confidence that it was ten times better than that terrible “Road House” remake. I mean, I see what they tried to do with it, but it’s absolutely unwatchable shit. The original works too well. Name a better duo than Patrick Swayze and Sam Elliot—that’s right, you can’t.

(3) I read this passage from a book, and it hit me like a fucking brick.

“Nothing in this world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty. No kind of life is worth leading if it is always an easy life . . . I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life; I have envied a great many people who led difficult lives and led them well.”

—Theodore Roosevelt (American Ideals: And Other Essays, Social and Political)

(4) While I waited in the airport lounge at JFK—lying on a couch with my face covered because, well, let’s face it: I was hungover from the night before—I was asked by an older gentleman if he could join me. The lounge was pretty full at this point and I was taking up a lot of space, so I sat upright and we got to talking.

Turns out, he was a retired Broadway actor—and although our lives were/are separated by more than thirty years—we had a lot in common. We talked for two hours (I almost forgot that I had a flight to catch) about pretty much everything: food, architecture, dogs, horses, tattoos, social media, travel, and, most importantly, the power of good storytelling.

My favorite book as a kid, The Count of Monte Cristo, just so happened to be his favorite play to perform on Broadway—he, himself, playing the main character, Edmond Dantès—betrayed by a best friend and driven to seek revenge.

As he and I talked, I thought to myself, “Damn, what an interesting life this dude has lived.” Chances are, he may have thought the same about me. And, that right there, is the reason why I love airports so much: you really never know who you’re going to meet—especially when you’re willing to move your feet in order to make room for somebody else to take a seat. I think life works the same way: If you create space, you never know who will show up to fill it.

(5) Well, one of the cats just caught a bunny in the backyard while I was writing this—and the contractor showed up to replace some dry wall above the kitchen cabinets—so, I need to go handle some “life” stuff now . . . You know the saying: “Life, it comes at you fast—and even faster when you have a bloodthirsty cat.” But, seriously, if there’s one thing that I’ve learned over my thirty-seven years on this planet, it’s the fact that life changes when you least expect it. And, when it changes, your expectations of life, and yourself, are what make all the difference.

Thanks for subscribing,

-Kyle, aka “The Capt.”

P.S. If you find yourself in Florida later this month, I’ll be at Dunes Brewing on April 25th for a book signing, Q+A, and whatever else we can fit into the schedule. You can get your ticket(s) HERE—and I hope to see you there.

P.P.S. I will soon be removing my book Speech Therapy from Amazon. So, if you’ve been wanting a copy, you’ll want to buy one before the end of the month.

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ontauthority · 1 year ago

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How To Inverse Losing In Trading

Inverse losing? That sounds like a strange thing you think about. But actually it's not.

When we look at or try to find at least the causes of what gets us to consistently lose then you have to ask, what we do the opposite? There is a story of a daytrading firm, a couple decades ago, who noticed a trend with their begin her students. Even though they thought there be in her students a bunch of principles to go by when their money was on the line they just went every which way. And they had an extraordinary rate of losing up near 90%. So one of the members at the broker firm had the idea to develop software that would automatically take the opposite direction of their begginer student's trades as an expiriment. So they did and the story goes up to the point I was told about it, they made $4 million by doing the opposite of their begin her students trades! You would think brokerage firms would be doing this as well. Now I don't know if that was impinging on any sort of rules or laws but I thought that was super interesting on the inner game psychological approach to trading. This daytrading brokerage firm essentially inversed losing! Now they didn't achieve losing and reversal in themselves they just piggybacked the consistent losing of their beginner students who refused to follow correct principles and got their emotions or egos involved. Hopefully they shared some of those profits with their students later but I don't know. What I found in over 35 years in the markets is that there is that psychological reasons to whty a person loses. If one can deal with those psychological reasons they can do much better. Additionally if one can and use all of the losing triggers that would motivate and gets you to actually click on the wrong trades and use those mental emotional triggers as an alert, a cerebral alert, to then go and do the opposite as much as possible, then winning probability can be increased dramatically. Yes it's insulting to the ego to basically do the opposite of what you think is right in trading, but doing so could be a great learning lesson today correct your thinking. You may want to start doing this type of concept, demo account or old-fashioned paper trading where you use a pen and paper and write down or type it out in a word document etc. Walk through the thoughts that come in your head while watching the charts and write those down. Try to figure out where those thoughts came from and analyze everything. Find the triggers stacked are associated with you actually taking action on losing trades. Now when you find the root issues you can do something about it. Now you can find what triggers losing and start to do the opposite or other things that trigger winning. Winning in the markets usually does not feel comfortable and exciting. It's can feel strange especially when you first get started converting from loser trader to winner trader. But that's just the transition you need to make. We all have to learn one way or another sometimes. To help you out on this journey here are several courses and Masters programs that can help you get started right away. - Swing - Trend - Day Trading - Signals - Courses - Products - MASTERY Coaching Programs Additionally if you can work up the ability to trade a system, a trading system that will fit your personality and that will be really simple and fun to trade, then a trading system can certainly can instantly put you on the path towards making the correct decisions in real time and dramatically increase winning percentage. Read the full article

#HowToInverseLosingInTrading #howtowinmoreintrading

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survey--s · 1 year ago

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584.

1. Can you remember what you were doing at 8:15 this morning? Finishing my coffee and/or getting sorted for work.

2. In your phone’s contacts, who is the first person listed under the letter ‘R’? When did you last see that person? Rachel, though I haven't seen her in over a year. I used to walk her dog but she moved months ago and I just never deleted her number.

3. If someone is sticking their nose into your business where it isn’t wanted, how would you deal with that? Would you say something to them? It depends what they're saying and why. I'd either awkwardly change the subject or tell them butt out lol.

4. What did you have for lunch today? Or, if you haven’t had lunch yet, what do you think you will have? Ramen, crackers with pate and a chocolate bar lol. I'm just trying to get through what we have in the cupboards to try and save a bit of money.

5. Is there someone you desperately want to see/speak to atm, but you can’t? Nah, I'm good.

6. Do you and your significant other have a special song? What is it? I guess so. Truly, Madly, Deeply by Savage Garden.

7. If you HAD to sing something on karaoke, what song would you choose? I have no idea, something fun. Maybe Mr Brightside?

8. Can you remember the last time you felt ill? What was wrong with you? About ten days ago when I was due my period.

9. What time is it now? Are you tired? 4.04pm and no, not particularly. It's been a really chilled day.

10. If you wear make-up, do you take it with you, to reapply throughout the day? I don't reapply it unless it's a really long day and I'm going somewhere special, which isn't very often lol. Most days I don't wear any.

11. What if you found the last person you kissed, in bed with the last person you texted? Seeing as they're uncle/niece then that would be pretty fucking disturbing lol.

12. The last person you held hands with - have you ever kissed them? Yes.

13. Can you remember what your parents bought you for Christmas last year? My mum paid for a 2hr beach ride and a riding hat. My dad gave me money which was supposed to pay for a year of riding lessons but then my instructor quit so now it's sat in my bank account lol.

14. Think about the person you fell hardest for. Why do you think your feelings for this person were so strong? How is he/she different compared to everyone else you’ve had feelings for? We just clicked, I guess.

30. Have you ever caught your friend cheating on their boyfriend/girlfriend? If you have, what did you do about it? If you haven’t, what do you think you would do? Yeah, and I didn't do anything. It's not my business.

31. When your last relationship ended, how long was it before you felt ready to think about being with someone else? I was single for about two months after we broke up.

32. Has any of your friends ever had a boyfriend/girlfriend that you found attractive, and you would secretly have liked to have for yourself? Attractive, yeah, but I wouldn't have ever thought about dating them.

33. How many guys do you know named Matthew? One, my friends' husband.

34. Think about the last person that made you cry. Would that person be there for you if you needed help? Yes, he would be.

35. Who was the last person you talked to before you went to sleep last night? Do you remember what you talked about? Mike and no, not really. Probably just the dog or something?

36. Has someone of the opposite sex made you cry at any point during the last 24 hours? Nope.

37. Is there anything you would like to say to your most recent ex? I'm good.

38. If your friends are sexually active but you aren’t, does that bother you? Have you ever felt pressured to have sex before you were ready, because your friends had done it? I really don't give a shit about other people's sex lives.

39. In your opinion, what is the difference between having a crush and being in love? Have your own experiences helped you to realise that there is a difference? Ugh.

40. Did the last person you hugged have any of these letters in their name: T, R, K, P, J? In their last name, yeah.

41. What’s the most unhealthy thing you’ve eaten in the last 24 hours? A whole bag of white chocolate covered raspberries.

42. What was the last compliment you received from someone of the opposite sex? I can't remember off the top of my head.

43. Who did you last say ‘I love you’ to? What colour are that person’s eyes? Mike, blue/grey.

44. If you took away the first and third letters of your name, what would you then be called? Ia.

45. Name 7 things that make you happy: Well I think the second part of this question is obvious – it’d make me less happy, so here are seven things at random: - animals, sunshine, a good night's sleep, the ocean, horse-riding, food and family.

46. Think about your Facebook profile photo. What kind of assumptions do you think a stranger might make about you, from seeing that photograph? Would any of these assumptions be correct? They'd assume I have a black cat. They'd be kind of correct but the one in my profile picture has died now. We do have two (soon to be three) more black cats though, plus a ginger kitten.

47. You buy a bar of chocolate, but you decide that you don’t want to eat it now, and put it in the fridge. When you go back later, half of it’s gone - someone else has started eating it! Who are you most likely to blame? The only other person is Mike lol. He wouldn't dare to eat my chocolate without asking hahah.

48. Choose 5 friends, and talk briefly about each person’s longest/most serious relationship. Who was the relationship with, and how long did it last? Nahhh. That sounds like too much effort lol.

49. Do you think it’s wrong for someone to commit themselves to a long-term relationship at a young age? Explain. People can do whatever they want.

50. Is there something happening in the near future, that you’re looking forward to? Having two weeks off work lol. I'm also puppy-sitting on Friday afternoon which is always fun!

#survey #surveys

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theorist-influencer-untitled · 2 years ago

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6.21.23 Wednesday

12:27 am

My pelvic is still aching and I feel a bit numb on my legs... I NEED A MASSAGE THERAPY :(

6:37 am

I have windblow trap... Wanna leave the hometown... I need money and job angels... In a lil while I will be 42....

I need a self-fulfillment...I feel frustrated....Someone damaged my life...

Hoping to get a colored alien bf or we don't know the future or only time can tell but I want mature and supportive... I need someone who is willing to be my support system but of course with mutual feelings... So, difficult to find a bf coz of my poorish situation....

Sometimes, I don't wanna have a partner coz I wanted to do some stuff for myself but I can't escape this windblow trap... But I love sensitive men and men who speak English... My deep within is over-lapping... I have complex...

I still need to remove my "deep smile lines"... I need collagen...I wanted someone sensitive coz I'm aging for nothing...

I hate being with someone and that monster is just trapping me... How can I tell???

Argh! My sciatica/ priformis / pelvic still aching...

7:35 am

Uncle Jun is up already... From the past weeks he consistently arranged his sofa-crib ( something he didn't do from the past years )...

7:55 am

Uncle Jun is sitting again in the kitchen and he always lowered the chair coz it is adjustable, probably cleaning his shoes or his morning mantra... He is just on his towel, wrapped around his waist line, apparently coz he is man not a lady boy ;)

8:10 am

Uncle Jun went to the bathroom and still the door is open for 5 seconds and he closed it...

Now, in the bathroom (this Uncle Jun )...

8:27 am

Now, in the kitchen ( this Uncle Jun ), applying his "Silka deodorant" & talking on someone over the phone... I thought it is over the phone but Nuno in the kitchen..

8:32 am

Nuno is here wearing black shirt ( A superman letter S )...Talking to Uncle Jun in the kitchen...

8:38 am

Uncle Jun is preparing going to Georgia'Z forest Zombie'Z land...

9:15 am

Uncle Jun went out already, 30 minutes ago...

My comic strip in my head:

I was really thinking of this windblow trap and my life since this windblow trap came into me year 2007... A lot thought ,we thought and most specially I thought, I could go back and live my life the way I had it when I was on my teenage years... I thought the windblow spins on us to give us all a lesson, a lesson probably a very difficult lesson.

But! No one has the right to judge anyone that you don't even know the real deep within of a particular person. Sure! You can just describe and put everything on pages like this, to remember everything and see beyond things that you can't see...

It suddenly pop-up in my head that I had and still have aunt who is part of NBI ( National Bureau Investigation ) she is my Aunt Rowena or Aunt Wena... She is the first cousin of my biological mother here ( Beth ) and my adoptive mother ( Aunt Teresa) and my 2 uncle's ( Uncle Jun and Uncle DD ).

Aunt Wena is a tall woman, I just suddenly remember her coz I'm watching "Dead or Alive-Missing Person". This Aunt Wena she is beautiful most specially during her younger years... She is as well fierce! I knew her since I was 8 or 9, the first time I met her and I wasn't on my body that time but I'm alive but dead.

Now, I remember everything but I couldn't speak... It is clear in my head now...

9:34 am

youtube

11:21 am

My sinigang pork and with 1 chicken for John (My son-dog )... This cooking is just to chill nothing serious and my hobby... In a way I enjoy cooking and looking forward to be with someone who is very supportive of my cooking as my hobby. I want more lots of imported ingredients such as wine and other herbs for foreign recipes... I love eating so much and I do believe in work and eat! ( I miss going to gym or hoping we can have gym here in the village or will jump on other places or I dream to have 1 ).

12:06 noon

A repeat recipes but looking forward with a colored alien bf who wants to eat soul food. I love eating salads! But for now this unbeatable Chicken MechadohZ!

1:04 pm

Thank God for today though I still pray for more... I really wanna have my own pet store though there are so many pet store here but I still want to have my own pet store...

What else? Still, wanna remove my "deep smile lines"....I wanna perfect my nose but on the least on my things to do coz I wanna have first my own self-fulfillment.... I wanna leave the hometown coz I can't get a bf here who is on the upper bracket, I'm a college graduate angels...I'm a product of De La Salle.. I feel low for 16 years..

I want a very supportive bf and I badly need money.... A bf who can eat salads though a lot of complexities these days... Sometimes I wanna be on my own if I can't find anyone who will accept my original entity...Coz these days we are facing a hard time, but if those judgemental people saw us here decade decade ago... This old house here was really hypnotizing and beautiful to look at... Now, this house is barren and needs a lot of renovation to do...

3:46 pm

I still have windblow trap... I feel bitter...My self-esteem is very low,I need money and a job. Some Monkeya'Z FilipiNOSE damage my life since 2007...

I wanna have new friends mainly men... I chose women coz I feel jealous if I can't get any special treatment... Women are meant to compete... I need new set of friends and I feel bitter I can't find new friends...

But I also love the thing the I will have women friends coz I also need that for my individual image that I'm also a good gf...People will also adore you if you are a kind of girl that also love by women..

6:01 pm

I hope he can be my good warlock,angels...

A warlock! Just a warlock? Too beautiful to be mine.... I feel ugly and fat these days but I need a warlock.... ( But that's not the reason why I'm liking colored alien it is the fate and situation and maturity....Plus, yeah! Colored are pretty as well like the white'z ).

A warlock is fine... I CAN'T EVEN HIRE HIM AS WELL, TO BE MY PARTNER...

Bankruptcy :(

6:53 pm

For my good angels here...

Try this ... You will feel the burn...

youtube

This yoga it is about timing of sex and giving birth... ( A lot of ministers here in Cavite in my hometown in Dasmarinas, they thought that I was evil coz I told some of the church of christ members to do yoga. I'm just joking that it is about sex position "the kama sutra" but partly but that's not the shallow explaination. It is symbol of Life --Yoga! ).

But it is fine to do it just for the pain of your sciatica/priformis/ or pelvic pain... Just explaining this yoga exercise...

youtube

8:03 pm

8:23 pm

youtube

9:41 pm

John is sleeping already, it is just weird that he is crying lately on his deep sleep than I will caress and kiss him ( then he will stop crying). I wonder why is he crying???

#Youtube

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snowdice · 2 years ago

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Big Bang Editing Story [Day 112]

I don't have a lot of time on Mondays to work, so you'll probably only get 2 rounds of this. However, I'm trying to get back into the habit so...

Maybe you'll get some this evening, but no promises. I had a busy weekend and am tired lol. I might just go to sleep at 5 when I get home. XD

Chapter 54 (Patton)

“If he hadn’t tried to bite me earlier, I’d think he was a different horse,” Patton agreed.

“He doesn’t even let Logan ride him,” the king said. “At least not ride him and give him directions.”

Even right now Mr. Apples was trotting around the training arena like he was a well-trained trick horse warming up with his rider.

“Do you think he’d mind if I went with you?” King Thomas asked.

Patton shrugged. “Mr. Apples might.”

“Mr. Apples definitely will,” the king replied. “I’ll come anyway.”

Logan had walked over to where Patton and the king were standing while Virgil fed Mr. Apples some apple pieces as a reward.

“I hear you’re going to go riding today,” King Thomas said.

Logan nodded. “Mr. Apples seems to listen to him well enough,” he said.

“I might join you if that’s alright. Where are you kids going?” the king asked.

“That sounds like a good idea,” the king said. “Are you going now?”

“Once Patton and I saddle up our horses,” Logan said. “You can come.”

“Great,” the king said with a smile. “I’ll ask for Bella’s saddle to be brought out. I haven’t gone on a ride yet this week.”

He turned then to walk towards the stables leaving Patton and Logan alone.

“Do you think he’s been acting weird?” Logan asked, turning towards Patton.

Patton frowned. “No,” he said. “Not really.”

“I’m just wondering why he wants to go horseback riding with us.”

“He likes spending time with you?” Patton guessed.

“Yes,” Logan said, “but typically in a setting that doesn’t involve Mr. Apples.”

Well, that was fair.

“I mean, it’s not too weird,” Patton said, thinking back through the last couple of days. King Thomas had been a bit… clingy.

“He’s been hanging around a lot,” Logan said, echoing Patton’s thoughts with narrowed eyes. He glanced back at Virgil. “You don’t think Virgil let something slip, do you?”

“He didn’t say anything,” Patton said. “I think your dad would say something if Virgil let slip he was an assassin somehow.”

“Unless he let slip something that didn’t quite implicate himself but invited suspicion.”

“Your dad doesn’t seem suspicious,” Patton said. At least, Patton didn’t think he did. He hadn’t been acting mean in any way. In fact, he might have even been acting nicer.

Logan frowned. “We should keep an eye on him, especially around Virgil.”

Patton bit his lip.

“What?” Logan asked.

“Are we ever going to tell your dad about Virgil?” he asked.

Logan hesitated. “I don’t…” he trailed. “I’m not sure.”

“We should go get our own horses,” Logan suggested, and Patton nodded.

Patton and Logan’s horses had already been saddled by the stable hands in anticipation of their ride and it didn’t take long for the king to saddle his own horse, Bella.

He seemed to relax a bit as they rode (even laughing when Mr. Apples tried to bite him when he got too close).

He’d seen a bird that looked like a dove. (It may have even been a dove, but Patton hadn’t seen it.) This had been a source of endless confusion for him.

“But shouldn’t it live in the dovecote?” Virgil asked.

“Not all birds live in a dovecote,” the king explained again.

“But it’s a dove,” Virgil said with a frown.

“Not all doves live in a dovecote,” the king replied.

“But it’s a dovecote,” Virgil argued. “It’s for the doves.”

“Yes, but there are also wild doves,” the king said.

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Virgil replied.

“What about it doesn’t make sense?” the king asked with a laugh in his tone.

“Doves go in the dovecote,” Virgil said.

Patton was starting to have trouble following this argument.

“Dovecotes are made for doves,” the king said, “but not all doves go in dovecotes.”

“Why?”

“You let them do that?” Virgil asked.

“We can’t really stop them in the end,” the king said. “People can try, but it never ends up working as long as they can fly.”

Virgil thought about this. “I still don’t understand,” he said, “but okay.”

“We should take you to the cliffs,” the king suggested.

“What are the cliffs?”

He glanced over his shoulder back at Logan and Patton. “What do you boys think about going to the cliffs sometime? Maybe in about a week?”

“Sure,” Logan said, after a moment.

“Great,” the king said. “”I’ll make sure to make arrangements when we get back to the castle.”

Chapter 55 (Logan)

“I add lavender for the next step, right?” Virgil asked, his finger on a word in Logan’s magic book.

“That is correct,” Logan confirmed.

Virgil looked back at the book and mouthed the word ‘lavender’ to himself before turning back to his potion. He grabbed a few sprigs of lavender and threw them into the cauldron.

The liquid popped and bubbled violently, but Virgil didn’t flinch as he once would have, prepared for it now.

After the lavender, Logan knew that it would have to simmer for 5 minutes. Virgil looked down at the boiling liquid, contemplating it for a long moment.

“Can I soak a knife in it?” he asked.

“What?” Logan asked.

“Can I soak a knife in the potion once it’s done?”

“In that potion?” Logan clarified. “In the emergency hand warmer potion?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I think a hot knife would be useful,” Virgil said.

“For what?”

Virgil shrugged. “Cooking food on the road,” he said, “burning wood, stabbing someone and immediately cauterizing the wound.”

“That is… not a standard use for this potion,” Logan said.

Virgil titled his head at him. “Would it work though?”

He turned to walk towards where he kept his supplies of potion ingredients. Virgil followed on his heals.

“Can we use a serrated knife?”

“So how are we going to use that?” Virgil asked.

Virgil listened to his suggestions with interest all while still making sure the potion he was making was progressing well.

“Well, it looks good,” Logan declared. “We will need to acquire a knife to test its effectiveness, however.”

“There are a few good ones in the kitchen,” Virgil pointed out. “I especially like the one 10 inch one with the black and white handle.”

“You have been eyeing up the kitchen knives?” Logan asked.

Virgil rolled his eyes as though that was not a perfectly reasonable question to ask him. “We should steal that one,” Virgil said.

“Do you think we’ll be able to sneak past Ms. Heart to steal a knife from her kitchen?” Logan asked.

“We can’t,” Virgil said.

Logan almost didn’t believe him… and then he remembered the water pouch incident. “It’s the dinner rush,” Logan said. “We should probably wait for a bit.”

Virgil was shaking his head. “The dinner rush is the best time,” he said. “Everyone will be distracted, and all of the knives will be out and in prime stealing position.”

“And if Patton’s mother catches us messing around in her kitchen during her busiest time of day, she will have Father ground us for a week.”

“Then we just won’t get caught,” Virgil said.

“I’m not sure if it’s that simple,” Logan said with a frown.

“You can stay here if you want,” Virgil offered. “I’ll just go by myself.”

“No, I’ll come too,” Logan relented, though he did still have some reservations about the idea.

He let Virgil lead him towards the main dining hall. By now, Virgil knew the kitchens and dining hall very well.

“Stay here,” he said. They were in a hallway a few feet down from the staff entrance to the kitchen. “I’m going to do some reconnaissance.”

“What type of reconnaissance?” Logan asked, but Virgil had already disappeared before his very eyes. With a blink, Logan looked up and saw a dark figure disappear onto a balcony overhead.

#proofread stories #not writing

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