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witchqueenofthemoon · 6 years ago

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BODY AND SOUL Part 13 (Duncan Shepherd/Mackenzie Stone Millory AU)

BODY AND SOUL MASTERPOST

Author’s Note: I know this keeps happening, but the sexiness of this part consumed my soul (fuck y’all, editing this, I was HOT AND BOTHERED) and shoved out everything else and other stuff that was originally going to be in the second half of this part got moved to 14. I’m not in any hurry to finish this fic and it keeps sort of expanding and becoming this greater thing than I originally intended and I’m continually astounded and moved by it. Writing it is just endless joy for me--spending this time with Duncan and Mackenzie honestly feels like a gift. Madeline’s nod to the song by the Carpenters is, of course, a nod to it being featured in Episode 1 of APOCALYPSE. I use coconut oil as a moisturizer and a lube, hence Kenzie using it for those things also, and if you don’t, I highly recommend trying it in lieu of other moisturizers/lubricants; it will change your fucking life. I listened to Maya Jane Coles’ album Take Flight a LOT for this part; that entire album is an absolute VIBE and has hard #Duckenzie energy, especially their more cosmic-y soulmate sex vibes, heavily featured in this chapter (Unholy and Weak especially, goddamnnnnn). Duncan doesn’t understand this yet, but as I mentioned before, they can hear bits of each other’s thoughts when their emotions are particularly heightened, so the things he isn’t sure if he’s imagining or not are indeed Kenzie’s thoughts. Here is what his Waterford tumblers look like. It was important to me that Duncan wanted to know about Kenzie’s past and share something important about his (I also think it makes perfect sense that Duncan fell in love with an older woman once, Cody clearly idolizes strong women and I wouldn’t be surprised to hear he’d had a similar relationship in the past), that they verbalized their bisexuality to each other (I’m not ruling out the possibility of Kenzie having a romantic rendezvous with a woman in the future, but it wouldn’t be for a long time--their relationship will be monogamous for the foreseeable future in my fic), and that Duncan is at a point where he can cry with Kenzie, his emotional walls coming down. Evan is an Eric AU, Cody’s real-life boyfriend. I used these photos of Billie a lot for inspiration regarding all the moments in this part where Duncan is staring at her, thinking about her (she has perfect Kenzie hair in those too). If it’s not clear already, Duncan and Kenzie’s dynamic in bed will continue to switch (cuz power-switch bi is the ultimate goal, y’all)--sometimes he’s in charge, sometimes she is, but he defaults looking to her for direction, her desires always at the front of his mind. When Kenzie makes Duncan come the second time, she’s channeling her magickal ability, her ultimate self, a divine being of immense power--her nature as a Supreme, as Mallory in that other timeline. Focusing on the romance of this story is very important to me, more important than anything else about it, and I’m glad I could focus on this chapter with the attention I think it deserved. I love how it turned out. By the way, I hate the terms “lovemaking” and “making love” and will never use them in this fic. I just can’t stand that turn of phrase, it’s just so fucking dated. You’re having sex or you’re fucking, y’all.

Duncan leaned over the table, his head hazy; he was four whiskies deep with Madeline Stone (he’d switched to a finger of bourbon on the rocks after the second Jack and Coke, but Madeline had kept on with them), and he felt the fizzy pressure of a burp hovering at the edge of his throat. Fuck, this woman can drink. I love her already. He clutched at Kenzie’s little hand under the table, tracing the outline of her fingers, nodding and smiling at Madeline, and he could feel Kenzie shift quietly every now and then, especially when he pulled the pad of his thumb down her palm; Duncan would glance at her continually to see her staring at him with her eyes shining with desire. The whiskey was making his skin feel flushed and needy, but he was desperately trying to maintain his composure; her mother was sitting across from him, after all, currently telling them the story (Kenzie had rolled her eyes when it began; no doubt having heard it countless times before) of the day she found out she’d won a Pulitzer.

“I was in bed with your father, literally having slept with him for the first time the night before,” Madeline laughed, the whiskey clearly having dissipated any hidden anxiety. “Should have been the last time, honestly, but I think winning made me drunk on power and convinced me he was good for me. Oh, except that you came of all of that, Kenzie Lou, so I suppose it was meant to be.”

“High praise indeed, Momby,” Kenzie replied, rolling her eyes again, and then she slid them onto Duncan, who gazed at her openly, the whiskey drifting through his veins. He squeezed her hand, marveling at the way his fingers enveloped hers; his thoughts flashed to his hand around her little neck, covering it entirely; holding her against his shower wall and fucking her roughly, his arms easily holding her little frame level to him, lifting her onto his countertop, the better to taste her skin, his lips pressed on her neck, his hands totally over her little hip-bones, lifting up to cover her little breasts in his palms...he bit his lip and watched her eyes flicker over him with a hungry glitter behind them, down from his hair and into his eyes for a moment and his mouth and to his adam’s apple and down the buttons of his shirt to his hand in hers and flitting over his crotch (look longer, baby, it’s all for you, every bit of me), her cheeks blushing suddenly, as though she could hear his loud, passionate thoughts.

“Hello, yoo-hoo...calling occupants of interplanetary craft,” Madeline said, her eyes dancing between them, smirking into her tumbler. “Tone it down with the eye-fucking, Kenzie, your mother’s still here.”

“Momby, ugh,” Kenzie pulled her hand out of Duncan’s, turning away from them. Duncan felt a flash of misplaced sadness at the loss of her touch. “Here’s your chance to tell him to cut and run, I’m going to the bathroom.” She stood, pulling down the hem of her little sweater dress, and Duncan couldn’t stop his eyes from falling down the incline of her bare thigh to her leg. “I can’t be bribed with money, so that’ll be futile,” he replied, eyes lifting up into hers again. Madeline laughed, delighted. “Stupidly handsome and funny,” she said, sipping her whiskey again. “You’re passing my Potential Son-in-Law Test with flying colors.”

Duncan watched Kenzie’s back retreat, admiring the way the waves of her sandy-chestnut hair bounced at her elbows, the dip of the back of her knees, her curvy hips and ass in the dress until she turned the corner. He turned back to Madeline, blushing at his inability to be more discreet; Madeline was giving him an appraising stare that made him feel as though he’d just reached the difficult part of a written exam.

“When Annette and I talked,” Madeline said, setting her drink down, her tone suddenly serious, “she told me that if Kenzie came between you and the current course of your career, she would see to it that the relationship ends. What do you think of that?”

“Nothing my mother does or says will make me leave Kenzie. Only Kenzie’s desire to end it would make that happen. You have my word on that too, Madeline.”

Madeline smiled; Duncan could see the glint of warmth and something else (pride? satisfaction?) behind her crimson glasses. As if she won a bet. Maybe one she made with my mother.

“I think you know this already,” Duncan went on, bringing his hands together in his lap, rubbing his fingers absently against his knuckles, his tone quieting conspiratorially, thankful the restaurant was busy and loud and the patrons who had been closest to them had left a few minutes before, so the table was now in a fortuitous pocket of discretion, “but my uncle has terminal cancer. He’s hellbent on pretending he’s invincible, but my mother will need a new business partner when he passes. The doctors say he has six months, maybe a little less.”

Duncan didn’t say anything else; he could see the understanding in Madeline’s gaze, and we’re still in a public place, no less. You understand me. Soon I’ll own 65% of Shepherd Unlimited shares. Madeline was quiet for a long moment, playing with one of the little gold rings she wore; women dressed in gold, high on Olympus, Duncan thought absently. The pantheon of power.

“Annette and I may not get along in any sense of the word, but I can tell you one thing, Duncan: she loves you, fiercely, like a lioness protecting her cub. She wants your happiness, too, even if she’s shit at communicating that. For all her blistering talk, I’m confident your joy is a priority to her. So take heart there. Do you share your mother’s ambitions for the company?”

“No.” Duncan couldn’t help it; the response fell out of him before he’d even really contemplated it; he trusted Madeline immediately, and completely. “I want to build a bridge between Claire and my mother; between Claire and the company. I have my own suspicions about Claire’s supposed “breakdown”; and I want to see if I can arrange a meeting with her, without Annette, to find the hooks to tether us in a deal that’s mutually beneficial. I’m thinking about the future in ways I hadn’t considered before...my desires for my career, and...my life...have recently changed.”

Madeline smiled again, lifting her glass. “Dare I venture a guess regarding the catalyst of this change?”

“I think you know without needing to guess, ma’am. She’s about 5’1” with long golden hair, hazel eyes that look green in certain light, she’s a fearless journalist, and she has a hell of mother.” Duncan lifted his, which was mostly empty now, and clinked it against Madeline’s. “In a few months’ time, I’d love to consult with you on a few matters regarding the future trajectory of Shepherd Unlimited.”

“Ugh, never call me ma’am. Madeline only to you, sweet pea.” Madeline went into her purse, pulling out a ballpoint pen, writing the digits of her phone number on the napkin in front of her, then handed it to Duncan with a languid reach. He grinned at her and grasped it, tucking it in the inside pocket of his blazer as Kenzie came back to the table, eyeing them curiously. She’d applied fresh rosy lipstick, and he was immediately overcome by the need to kiss her. As she sat, still giving him a quizzical look, he dipped a hand around her jaw and pulled her to him, lips brushing hers softly. Madeline was carefully looking down at her phone when he turned back, but he could see her eyes skirting towards them over the rim of her glasses.

“Well, I’ve had too many,” Madeline said, matter-of-factly. “Got carried away, lost in a pair of blue eyes.” Duncan blushed, reaching for Kenzie’s hand under the table again, and she took it, still giving him a curious expression. What were the two of you talking about. “I think I need to leave the Jeep here tonight and take a car home.”

“We’ll take you home,” Duncan said insistently. “Samuel would love to meet you.”

“Samuel is Duncan’s chauffeur,” Kenzie added, “and he is the most wonderful person ever, Momby.”

Madeline waved to the pink-haired waiter who was eyeing them from across the room. He bounced over, beaming. “Ready for another round?”

“The check, please,” Madeline replied, finishing off her drink--and Duncan slipped the man his Black AmEx, while Kenzie was leaning down to grab her satchel, not looking. Duncan could feel the man staring openly at him again; he was used to people recognizing him in public places, but didn’t always feel so clearly that a stranger recognized his personal preferences; could sense his bisexuality. He was getting a heavy hit off the waiter, and it made him think back on rendezvous’ he had had in the past, men and women flitting through his mind. He wondered absently, drunkenly, about Kenzie’s past; who she had been with, her relationships, her flings. He wondered if she’d ever been interested in a woman. He resolved to ask her later, in the quiet of his (their) bedroom. He found himself suddenly desperately curious about who she had loved before she loved him; Duncan watched her as she stood and went over to grasp her mother’s hand to help her up (Madeline was wobbling, tipsily) and he stood to grasp Madeline’s other arm, full of overwhelming affection for both of them. He thought back on the two times he had felt like he’d been in love; once with a woman (when he was 20 and just entering his third year as an undergrad at the Columbia Business School--she’d been older than him, more experienced, and later became a tenured professor there) and once with a man, when he was nearing the end of his 20’s (Evan had been younger, delicately beautiful, and had moved to LA to pursue a career as a model). Neither of Duncan’s relationships had ended badly; they had just ended, the endings feeling natural, and at a certain point, inevitable. He’d had countless sexual experiences in the interim, but the feeling of love had never entered again. Until now. And this feeling…this love...was far more potent than anything he’d felt in the arms of his other lovers. Nothing he’d ever felt towards anything, or anyone, could compare to the way his body seemed to sing when Kenzie came near. The Fates, weaving their obscure cloth for us, whispering the future into its threads, their hands, as ancient as time, pressing love and devotion into the folds. He shivered.

“You okay, baby?” Kenzie glanced up at him over her mother’s head, eyes puzzled.

“Yep, just had a few too many myself, I think.” He grinned at her and she shook her head, smiling softly, and he stared at the baby curls that fell between her ear and her cheek, the crown of her little head, imagining flowers threaded through the waves again. My Persephone. I love you, Kenzie, I love you more than my own life and I’m going to give you everything I have.

Madeline insisted on sitting up front with Samuel; the big man had grinned at her, turning up the volume on the Etta James he had pumping through the speakers (tell mama, all about it / tell mama whatcha need, tell mama whatcha want / and I’ll make everything alright). “I wanna see this ridiculous penthouse Kenzie says you live in,” Madeline insisted, “and then I want this wonderful man to drive me home.” Kenzie had looked exasperated, but Duncan had smiled, putting his hand on her little knee, reassuringly, whispering “it’s fine baby, it’s okay.” Samuel had nodded in turn. “I’d love to drive you home, Ms. Stone. You have raised a daughter who is enchanting in every way, but I’ve heard you are quite a legend in your own right.”

Madeline flicked a hand through her hair, mock-preening. “Honey, you can drive me anywhere.” Duncan carefully pressed the button for the partition that was in the middle panel of the backseat; it drifted up as Samuel and Madeline continued to chat amiably.

Before the edge of it had even closed, Kenzie had clutched his jaw and pulled his face down to her urgently, and Duncan opened his mouth to her, his body flooding with sensation and relief. “God, I’m dying for you,” he whispered into her, the whiskey making his words tumble out, “I want you so much, baby, I’ve just wanted to put my hands all over you for hours--” and Kenzie was moving against him, climbing onto his lap, her little legs stretching to rest against his thighs, the silky feeling of her panties pressing into his crotch through the tailored fabric of his pants (Duncan gripped her ass cheeks in his large hands, squeezing, needy), her head hovering above him, hair falling in the glittering night as she moved gently into him, their tongues pressing together, her breath shallow, his hitching into her, longing, trembling, anticipant. “Later, I’m gonna ride your cock so fucking hard, baby,” she whispered into him, and he moaned into her, feeling his sudden erection press harshly into his tight briefs, feeling her hands fall down his neck, one coming around to let her little fingers bury in his hair, pulling his head back to gaze at her; the other hand gripped onto his throat, tight enough to bring a shadow into the edges of his vision, thrilling him. “I’m gonna sit on it until you can’t see straight.”

“Fuck, Kenzie, fuck, baby--”

“I want you to tie me up again.” She was still gripping his hair, her whisper falling against his lips, forcing him to stare into her eyes, and Duncan was moving his hands up and down her little body, slipping one between her legs and pressing against the silkiness that covered the lips of her little cunt, his hand so large against her that his outer fingers fell against her inner thighs, curling up her skin there, the feeling of her overwhelming and exquisite, his body on fire with her pressed there into his lap, his head tingling where she gripped him, “I want you to tie me up and eat me and spank me and fuck me until I can’t move.”

“Holy fuck, Kenzie, angel, fuck--”

“You better do as I say.” Kenzie grinned at him, and his heart clenched, his throat still tight where she pressed her little fingers into his skin, bringing her thumb over his adam’s apple, sending a wave of coiled heat down his chest into his stomach and then to his groin.

“Yes, Kenzie, I will, I promise, I’ll do anything you want--I wish I could fuck you now, fuck, I want you so fucking bad, baby...”

“Be patient.” She pressed her mouth into him again, her tongue slipping between his teeth, hand still on his throat, and he moaned into her; he couldn’t help it. He loved it so much; loved the way she was commanding him, bringing him so close to the edge of his mad longing for her, bringing him up to a high heat of desire, telling him what she would do, what she wanted. She let go of his neck and Duncan immediately felt a wave of disappointment; keep your hand there, baby, I belong to you; she glanced away from him, out the window, and his gaze followed her, noticing as she did that they were pulling up to the high-rise. Kenzie climbed off his lap, and his heart fell back to his chest from where it had been slamming into his throat, not knowing her little hand had left the thin red outline of her fingers against the side of his neck. He reached for her, his hand going between her legs one more time, his mouth at her ear; she whispered “soon, baby, not yet,” and gently pushed him away from her, and he ached.

The partition floated down; Madeline was saying something to Samuel that made him laugh, his face delighted. Duncan felt flushed and too hot, willing his erection to fade; he pressed one large hand gently over his crotch to hide it, the other coming up to fiddle with his collar near where Kenzie had pressed her fingers into his neck, longing for her hand to return.

“So, lovebirds, let me see this penthouse, then I’ll get out of your hair, I promise. Also, I need to pee, and I need a glass of water,” Madeline said back to them, good-naturedly. Duncan could see the heat that had reached Kenzie’s cheeks; they were pink with the ardency of the words she’d whispered to him on his lap, and she was breathing with a heavy rhythm. She glanced at him, her eyes dark, and he imagined she said fuck baby, I want you, fuck me with that big cock till I can’t breathe and stare into my soul with those eyes like blue fire, put your big beautiful hands on me and fuck me up into a million pieces with them, god, imagined, or heard her thoughts, but that wasn’t possible, and he blushed at himself, wondering if he’d thought of all that himself and projected it onto her somehow, but that didn’t seem quite right; for a moment it had felt as though he’d seen his body, his hands, his cock, his height through her eyes, felt the hot desire she felt when she looked at him as a woman looking on a man who she wanted terribly, felt the pressure of his touch from the perspective of her body, and he felt dizzy and disoriented and confused in her emotions for a moment, then it passed. What was that? Kenzie seemed to recognize the confusion in his eyes, because she gave him a strange look; “Duncan, are you okay?” And he nodded, his stomach jostling a little. “Had a lot of whiskey, I think,” he replied, and heard a “you can say that again, honey,” from Madeline in the front seat.

-------

“Fuck, honey,” Madeline had murmured, moving through Duncan’s spotless kitchen into the living room, her eyes roving over the cool, quiet, spotless, gold-and-black sheen of it. “This is fucking ridiculous.” The resident housekeepers of the high-rise came and cleaned the penthouse for an hour every day between noon and 1 PM, except for on weekends, which Duncan realized he hadn’t mentioned to Kenzie yet, making a mental note to do so later--since she was going to be living here now, too. Kenzie is going to live here with me, he thought again, drunk with the thrill of the reality of it, watching her mother’s stunned expression as Madeline moved through the space, towards where the statues of Dike, Nike and Athena were clustered. She stopped in front of the Bouguereau prints on the wall against the entrance to his study admiringly, hand falling to her chin, her other arm tucked around her. “Momby, oh my god, you have to see, Duncan has a real Bouguereau in his study, come here--” and Kenzie, having kicked her boots off by the front door, ran barefoot to her mother, gripping her hand, dragging her through the doorway to ogle at The Youth of Bacchus. Duncan heard Madeline’s soft cry of amazement and their hushed voices close together; he couldn’t make out their words. He thought of Kenzie’s things, now neatly packed in a row of boxes sitting on the floor in the bedroom; her clothes carefully hung on a wheeled clothing rack; Duncan had insisted on lining them carefully on the rack himself, not wanting anyone else to touch them. We need to go get her other things tomorrow, he made another mental note, I’m going to clear my schedule, the episode can go up without me this time. Mom’s trying to take over our weekend, so I don’t want anyone to bother us tomorrow. Duncan went to his spotless steel sink, pulling a Waterford tumbler from the cabinet, going to the fridge and filling it with cold filtered water, and stepping carefully into the study with it, holding it out to Madeline.

“The water you requested, Madeline,” he said, smiling at her. “Oh, thank god,” Madeline replied, bringing it to her mouth, draining it in one go. “I was dying.” Kenzie smiled at him, sweetly, her cheeks still glowing as they had in the car, her hand resting on her mother’s shoulder, affectionately. “Where’s the bathroom? This glass looks expensive, here, take it back, I’m afraid it’s going to tell me to park its car,” Madeline said, handing it to Duncan; he took it, obediently, stifling a laugh. Kenzie took her mother’s hand again, leading her toward Duncan’s big bathroom, looking up at him as she passed, as if to give him a secret promise; soon, baby, so soon. His fingers clenched around the glass and he pressed a hand through his hair, breathing out quietly, willing himself to stay calm. We should get a mirror for the bedroom, he thought, lust clouding through his mind again. I wanna see her little face while I fuck her from behind. I wanna see our bodies pressed together, I want her to see it, I know she wants to see, I could hear her thoughts, or...something. How is that possible? But I think I did. His heart was back in his throat, pounding at his temples as he blushed at his thoughts, I don’t care, I want her, I love her. She wants me to tie her up again, fuck, I loved that, she loved it and it made me fucking crazy for her, her happiness and her pleasure are the best drug I’ve ever had--

Duncan set the glass on the side of his desk, absently, listening to Kenzie and Madeline’s voices coming back through the bedroom, Kenzie speaking audibly; “I’m just keeping a few things here,” (Duncan balked a little at the lie, but thought, sympathetically, that maybe it was better to break one thing at a time to Kenzie’s mother), “the paps have been waiting for me at work, Momby, and now they found out my address somehow--” “Are you getting a bodyguard like I mentioned?” Madeline cut her off. “Yes, Momby, yes, Duncan’s going to get me one tomorrow.” “Good, fine. Find one that looks like Andre the Giant and nobody will fuck with you.” He heard Kenzie laugh, the sound of it pressing into his heart, making him feel faint with its loveliness, stirring the whiskey in his blood. He moved out into the living room and Madeline gave him a satisfied look.

“Sweet pea, this is the most amazing space I’ve ever seen,” she said to him, and put her arms out. “Give me a hug, please.” Duncan gazed at her for a few seconds; a hug. He felt a strange stirring of overwhelmed emotion in the pit of his body. Annette rarely hugged him; she was not one for physical affection, and he distinctly remembered every time she had taken a moment to hold him--it happened less and less often as he’d grown up. He supposed it was part of the reason he felt so starved around Kenzie; so desperate to hold and be held by her, though the rest was that he felt peace in her arms he’d never felt at any other period or with any other person in his life. He was lost in these thoughts for a moment. Then, Duncan stepped to her, and folded himself into Madeline’s arms, closing his eyes. She smelled like clean sheets and red wine and sweet Coke and whiskey. Her embrace was achingly warm, and he felt tears come into the corners of his eyes. Madeline reached up and ran one of her hands along his shoulders for a moment, comfortingly; “So tall,” she said, “like I’m hugging a fucking tree.” Duncan laughed into her, blinking the tears away.

“Take care of my Kenzie Lou, sweet pea.” Madeline let go of him. “And let her take care of you, for that matter. It can’t be easy having Annette for a mother. But she loves you. I know that for certain. And my Kenzie does too.” She stepped back, pulled Kenzie to her, kissing her daughter’s little cheek (Kenzie’s eyes seemed shiny, looking into Duncan’s as her mother did this). “And now, for that big, beautiful chauffeur to drive me home.”

“I’ll walk you down, Madeline,” Duncan said, holding his arm out to her.

“So fucking handsome,” Madeline murmured again, as if to herself, and slipped her hand through the crook of his elbow. “And you smell like cedar chips and sandalwood. Ridiculous. And that smile!” She shook her head as Duncan laughed again. “Angels singing a heavenly chorus. Take me to my carriage, Prince Duncan.”

He looked at Kenzie; Prince. She smiled at him, her face full of love and her eyes glittering: yes, baby, my Prince.

And I’m going to worship you soon, he thought, eyes roving up and down her, to her little bare feet, one pressed over the other for a moment, then sliding back out in a circle across the floor, her fingers bunched together. If I’m a Prince, you’re a goddess, and I will go to your temple to lay down all my sorrows and my sins and my fear, and all my devotion.

-----

Duncan came through the penthouse door, feeling as though he was vibrating again, his nerves on fire, his stomach jumping, all the whiskey he’d had starting to make him float along the hallway on the way back, float in the elevator, floating up to Olympus, to her. Madeline had given his cheek a little kiss as he helped her into the BMW, clutching his hand for a beat longer than he expected her to; she didn’t say anything, but the glint in her eyes sent warmth along his arms, twisting around his ribcage. You have my blessing. And again, he felt fortunate beyond words; blessed, fate smiling.

He was quiet, coming back; I’ll find her, he thought with a thrill. Kenzie wasn’t in the kitchen; he took his shoes off, discarding them by the door, noiselessly, pulling his blazer off, hanging it on one of the hooks that stretched along the wall beside the door; he imagined Kenzie’s coats and sweaters and scarves hanging there soon, and his heart resounded with an urgent longing, almost painfully. I can’t wait to look at her things every day, her little shoes and her dresses and her bags and jewels; and the smell of her lingering in the rooms and the soft sounds she makes in her sleep. Duncan moved into the living room, in his socks now (cashmere again; he had dozens of pairs), unbuckling his black Movado from his wrist, setting it gently on the long coffee table; the living room was dark, the city lights vaguely visible from this distance through the window, and he thought of her hands pressed against the glass last night, their reflection in it, the cloud of her little breath steaming against it, his hand wide on her neck, covering it, her cries, the wetness that had drenched over him as she came, the way she’d moaned against him when he’d pressed the leather belt into her wrists, his tongue into her clit.

Where are you, angel.

“Mackenzie.”

“In here, Prince Duncan.”

Duncan could see the incline of her arm, the fall of her bare thigh; Kenzie was sitting on his desk in the study, the way she had days ago when he put her there and pressed his mouth between her legs, after that dinner at Le Diplomate; after that dinner where he’d realized he would do whatever it took to be with her, to win her affection, her love, and her everlasting trust. Her hair fell down her shoulders and her back, glittering in the low light of the Tiffany lamp, the only light in the room. Kenzie was naked, and the light threw her shadow against the wall, shadows along her face; her thighs pressed into the mahogany, round and white, her hands stretched behind her, her legs parted just a little, just enough for him to see the bud of her clit between them. She stared at him as he walked to the doorway (dark green, so dark they looked almost black), and he felt himself lift his hand to his jaw, along his bottom lip, unable to stop his familiar tick; that telltale sign that he was nervous, thinking, distracted, desirous. He leaned into the doorframe; leaned his head against it, fingers falling against it, gripping it, his other hand falling down from his jaw to where she’d gripped his throat an hour before; he didn’t know it but the redness from her fingers had not yet totally faded, finger-shaped tattoos along his skin. I never want to stop looking at you, he thought, and he could feel the way his lips were parted in his hunger, could feel the press of his cock into his clothes, feel the tingling at the back of his skull; I’ll worship you as long as you want me to, as long as you’ll have me.

Kenzie didn’t speak. She stared at him, her head cocked just a little, just enough to make him shiver; just enough to make him unsure of her mood. She sat up, lifting her arms so they came around her flat belly, and then he saw that in one of her hands, she had a very long, thick, black velvet ribbon.

“Where did you get that,” he whispered, his voice quiet, his breath shallow, eyes widening in his approval, the lower half of his body beginning to ache. The room felt hot; and Kenzie’s body seemed flushed with warmth in the light; he longed to press his mouth against her, but tried, was determined to try, to hold off for as long as he could.

“The clothing of women hold many secrets, Mr. Shepherd. I have my ways.”

He walked toward her, hands falling to his sides, unable to resist being near her any longer; Duncan reached out with one long hand, and his fingers pressed into Kenzie’s knee, drifting up her leg with aching slowness; he kept his eyes in hers, watching the flickers of gold through them, watching her blink, her lashes seeming impossibly long in the low light, her lips parted, a shiver cascading down from the base of her skull, it seemed, to her shoulders and spine, her nipples growing visibly hard, and Duncan felt the tremble reach her thigh, where his fingers now rested. He brought his other hand up; brought it down over her little one, the one that held the ribbon, and staring at her, into her (green, gold, bronze), he pulled it slowly out of her hand, insistently.

“Do you want me to tie you up with this, angel,” he whispered.

“Yes.” Kenzie’s gaze did not move from him, despite her shivering; she kept her eyes in his, and he felt again that somehow, he could see her thoughts, her desires, indistinctly, but in flashes; could see her need for his hands against her, rough and needy, his cock hard and deep inside her, down her throat, buried between her legs, his hand roughly pressed against her neck, his fingers flush against her sex, his mouth (I love your mouth, she thought, how could he know what she thought, but he knew, your soft beautiful lips, I love the way you taste, your teeth biting into me, your tongue, your longing, the roughness of the stubble on your cheek against mine, the feeling of your breath on my neck) and he thought I love your mouth too, angel, you taste like the rain and the dawn I love the sweetness of your body, your beautiful little hands, your shoulders and your neck, the sighs you make when I touch you, the way your eyelashes fall when you look down, the curve of your hips and your thighs, your hair like a wave of gold in the sea, and you are the most wonderful thing I have ever been allowed to touch, to pleasure, to love--

“Yes, baby. Tie me up and fuck me over your desk and let me ride your cock while we stare at this, which is so beautiful it makes me want to die.” Kenzie nodded to The Youth of Bacchus, stretching behind him, mammoth and full of life and lust and terrible beauty, “...and fuck me with this...in my ass.”

Only then did Duncan notice the two other objects Kenzie placed on the desk beside them; one was a jar of coconut oil she’d added to the list of things from her apartment she’d given him that day (it had been in her bathroom cabinet, as she’d instructed on the paper, written in her tiny loopy handwriting, mixed in among dozens of other things), and the other she was now holding in the palm of her hand; a small silicone anal plug, its bulbous shape coming to a rounded point, black, with a circular white jewel set in the outward handle.

“Oh, fuck,” Duncan whispered. “Kenzie.” His eyes went wide; his head went hazy and red and wild with desire for her and he bit his lip so hard he wondered if he’d drawn blood. Her blush set his groin on fire; her eager smile cracked his composure into fragments; he was rock hard now, painfully hard, so hard he felt his vision blur; she pressed it into his hand (it was achingly smooth) and hooked a little finger around his belt, pulling him flush against her, her hand falling to the rise of his erection through the fabric, their mouths, almost level from where she sat elevated, coming together with a moonstruck, raw lust, tasting each other deeply, immediately, as if they’d been starved of each other for days when it had only been hours. Her little fingers were undoing the buckle of his belt supernaturally fast, and he tried to steel his mind, even it, to help himself last--he felt like he was about to come already, and that would not do.

“Slow down baby,” he gasped. “I want you so much already, slow down,” and she smiled into him, coyly, nodding a little. “Awwww, poor baby,” she whispered, and he grinned into her, full of frenzied joy, elated, ecstatic in her arms. “Poor, poor baby…”

She slipped off the desk, pulling his belt out with a snap, the button and fly of his pants already down before he could blink twice, and her little hand was inside his briefs, achingly small and delicate and warm around his cock; Kenzie pulled it out over the waistband of his (always) black briefs, and leaned her little head down, her tongue falling out and swirling around the head, her saliva dripping down the side, the moisture glittering in the low light. “Fuck me,” Duncan whispered, his head falling back. She was so little standing in front of him this way, he felt as though he could pick her up with one hand and lift her over his head; his hands he saw again through what had felt like her eyes, gigantic and encompassing on her little breasts and body, smooth, long-fingered, his veins stretching through them with sinewy strength, and he had to concentrate again; had to will himself to step back from the edge. In one hand he held the velvet ribbon, in the other, the plug she’d handed him; he put them down on the desk, anxious to hold her, and picked her up easily, cradling her thighs in his hands, lifting her above his hardness, into his torso, against him, his mouth on hers again, her hands coming around to cradle his face. Still tasting her, his arms snugly around her waist and hip, he carried her around the desk so he was facing the gargantuan painting that stretched along the wall now; he set her down there gently, so she was seated in the other direction, and Kenzie grasped the buttons of his shirt, undoing them quickly, as he pulled his pants and briefs away from his body, kicking them to the side.

“I use it on myself sometimes,” she breathed into him, and Duncan moaned into her. “Sometimes I wear it outside, just for a little while, my own little secret, pressing into me. I’ve never told anyone that.”

“Baby, holy fuck,” Duncan closed his eyes. “That’s so fucking hot. Holy fuck, god, you’re so fucking beautiful. You make me so fucking hard.”

“It’s my turn to make you come twice, baby,” Kenzie whispered into his ear, her hair falling around her shoulders, you look like Aphrodite, Duncan thought, the most beautiful woman in the world. “You’ve done it to me for days now, it’s my turn. I’m gonna make you come and then I’m gonna make you come again, I want you to fill me up with your need.”

“Fuck, okay, baby,” Duncan murmured into her mouth, now naked against her. “Yes, Kenzie.”

Kenzie reached over to the coconut oil, unscrewing the top (Duncan could see her hands shake just a little, out of nervousness or excitement or both; both is what I feel baby, I feel unhinged for you, he thought), sticking her index and middle finger into it and scooping some of the sweet-smelling oil out, setting the jar down and immediately sticking the fingers between her legs, carefully soothing it over her cunt and clit, which Duncan knew must be sore still from their endless fucking; she then reached her hand out and soothed some of it down his cock, making him moan into her again, his forehead pressed against the side of her hair.

“Feels good, doesn’t it, baby,” she whispered. “Yes, baby, yes, angel--” he replied, adamant, and she cut him off.

“Okay. Now. You put some on me. You put your fingers (those big dick fuck off beautiful fingers baby--flashes of her thoughts again) inside my ass and fuck me with them for a minute.”

“Yes, Kenzie.” His heart was slamming into the bones of his ribs, fluttering, darkness at the edges of his vision again.

She slid off the desk and immediately turned her back to him, leaning over it; Kenzie brought her arms around her back so her hands rested against her asscheeks, and she pressed her wrists together, trusting, opening to him.

“I’m gonna tie you up now, angel,” Duncan breathed, his cock straining, wet in the light with the oil Kenzie had slathered onto it.

Kenzie sighed; the sound was achingly beautiful to him, contented, and anticipatory. She turned her head to the side so her eyes gazed back at him, and she nodded.

Duncan reached for the ribbon, gripping it carefully, bringing it around the back of Kenzie’s wrists, his hands brushing the sensitive skin of her lower back; he heard her moan, tiny and overwhelmed, and he closed his eyes again, back from the edge, step back. He wrapped it one more time around her wrists and then tied it carefully; a double-knot, and then he thought back to that night he saw her first on the balcony, with her sandals tied in double-knots, thought of untying them and kissing her ankles, and he longed for her, for all of her. He checked the knot, pulling gently at the fabric around her wrists, making sure it was snug. Then he pulled the ends together in one of his hands, twisting it tight around his palm and knuckles, making a fist. Kenzie’s hands pulled back towards him, enough to make her gasp a little, enough for him to see the little strain in her arms; that’s enough for now, he thought. Back from the edge, not yet.

With his right hand, Duncan reached to where Kenzie had left the open jar of oil on the edge of his desk, dipping two fingers inside; he made sure there was a decent lather around them before he pulled them out, and then, slowly, carefully,his other hand still gripping the ribbon around his fist tightly, he trailed them down the small part of Kenzie’s back; she let out a little moaning cry that made him shut his eyes again, desperate to hold on; his fingers continued their trail down between her asscheeks, to the tight pucker of her asshole, and then he slipped one of his long fingers inside her, gently, but insistently. She moaned; Kenzie’s moan reverberated in his skull like the ache of a wet dream, his body beginning to prickle with energy, like a current rested just under his skin, snapping into motion; then he slipped the other finger in, and worked them in and out of her, his cock hovering near the entrance of her cunt, but not penetrating her; not yet.

“Do you like that, baby,” he whispered to her, feeling the frenzy rising under his blood, the hum of the lust building between his temples, in the pit of his stomach.

“Fuck yes, Duncan, yes,” Kenzie’s little voice rang out toward him, insistent, needy. “Put it inside me, I’m ready, fuck me hard like I know you want to, baby, I’m yours, I want you inside me so much, babyyy…”

Duncan couldn’t resist any longer; he pulled his fingers out of Kenzie’s tight little asshole, reaching over her for the plug, dipping it into the oil, carefully using his thumb and his palm to swirl it around the soft, rounded point. Then, he dragged it, softly, down her backside again; Kenzie writhed a little, making mewling, aching sounds that made him bite into his lip to quell the rising tide in his groin, and then he pushed the plug into her ass, demandingly; Kenzie bucked up, crying out, the desire in her voice making him pull the tight ribbon back harder, so she lifted up from the edge of his desk, into him, and at the same time, Duncan pressed his cock into Kenzie’s little cunt, his mouth falling down to her ear, crying into her in turn. She was soaking wet; his cock slid into her with terrible ease as he gasped into her neck, her head turned up, her golden hair tossed against him, her arms pulled back across his waist, his arm behind his back with the tightness with which he grasped her bound wrists, her eyes staring up at The Youth of Bacchus, glassy and full of gold, her mouth open wide with her moaning, and he saw starbursts behind his eyes as he tried to gather the fragments of himself to fuck her; he managed a few hard thrusts before he could no longer hold the gathering threads of his climax, and he came into her, all thought dissolving into whiteness, so hard that a scream tinged his voice, and he pulled his head down away from her ear so the sound wouldn’t hurt her, down her back, into her hair, worshipping the soft waves on his cheek, his nose, his eyelids, his lips.

“Duncan, fuck, fuuuuck, baby, fuck yes--” Kenzie moaned, her eyes fluttering open and closed; he pulled her neck softly back, his lips falling down on hers, his cock still buried, pulsing, dripping, deep inside her, his fist easing to let the ribbon down, his fingers coming around the harshness of the fabric pressed into her wrists, thumb gliding over her skin to soothe where it had chafed her. His hand went down from her neck, around her breasts, down her stomach, around her hip to where the plug was nestled tightly inside her; he pressed it gently, and she moaned again, her mouth open to him; “Sit on my cock now, baby, with this inside you, sit on my cock with my come inside you, tied up, pressed into me, staring at me and at it--”

“Yes,” Kenzie whispered, “yes. Yes, baby.” He leaned his mouth down to her again, and she sighed into him, her body shaking and flushed with warmth against him and so small in his hands and so soft and she smelled like flowering buds and nectar and low, sweet sweat in his arms. He pulled out of her, come falling down his thigh, trickling down the back of her leg in the low light, his hands at her wrists, rubbing them gently in their trappings, then pulled her carefully around the desk by the crooks of her elbows, smoothly so she wouldn’t fall, and he kneeled down in front of her, his back to the huge painting, her facing it, looking up at it with glittering eyes again, and his hands fell down her hips and on his knees, he pressed his face between the folds at the crux of her legs, his tongue probing into her clit, one of his hands coming around to her waist, the other around to where the plug was still snugly inside her ass, and he grasped the jeweled end and twisted it, easing it back and forth so she shuddered and moaned into him, her legs opening a little onto his face, her thighs trembling, her eyes flicking between him (he looked up at her, into her face) and the painting in its Bacchanalian bliss. Then, Duncan eased himself back, pulling his mouth away from her, gripping her hips, easing her down on top of him as he laid straight, back against the Persian rug on the floor of his study, her little knees on either side of his hip bones, her hands still tied behind her, a dazed look in her hazel eyes, her mouth open to him; he lifted a thumb between her lips, against her teeth, and she sucked at it, gently, then greedily, her little tongue swirling around the pad of his thumbprint, and he felt himself growing hard again, hard with the hungry look behind her gaze, hungry at the feeling of her mouth around his finger, the come dripping down her thigh. His other hand came up to press against her clit, wet from his mouth and her arousal and his come and the coconut oil; his dragged his fingers up and down the bundle of nerves there, down around the wetness of her cunt, to the plug in her tight little asshole, twisting it again, then back, and he felt his cock jump up against her backside, against the plug, and she shuddered and whimpered into his thumb. Duncan lifted the other hand back again, let it hover over her ass for a moment, then brought it down with a light slap; Kenzie let out a little half-gasp, half-giggle of glee, her eyes fluttering open and closed. “Do that again, more, baby,” she demanded. Duncan lifted his hand again, his palm and fingers flat, and brought it down again on the blush of her ass with pointed force; a sharp snap reverberated off her skin, and she gasped, more sharply this time, the glee gone out of her voice, replaced with urgency and want.

“I’m hard again, baby,” he whispered, his voice aching, his eyes watering involuntarily, his hands trembling against her impossibly soft skin, rubbing against her ass where he’d slapped her. “I want you.”

“I want you too, baby, I’m gonna ride you until you come again,” she replied, and she lifted her hips so her cunt met the head of his cock, and she lowered herself down onto him until he was buried in her, until he could feel the pressure of the plug in her ass rubbing achingly against his balls; Kenzie crying out piteously as it did, her hips bucking forward, sending white bolts of lighting through his body, into the dark space behind his eyes. She was so soft and so wet and so smooth against him that Duncan was moaning before he even realized; the sounds coming from him involuntary and desperate to have her, all of her. He brought his hand around her arms, gripping tightly around the ends of the ribbon again with his fist, forcing her roughly down onto him, grinding his hips up into her, and his fingers toyed with the plug so she keened and tossed her hair back, her neck bare and glowing in the low light, her nipples hard and her breasts checkered with goosebumps.

“You are more beautiful than any painting, Kenzie,” he whispered. “You’re more beautiful than any art ever created by any person in all human time, you’re more beautiful than anything I’ve ever seen, more beautiful to me than the stars, and I love you, I love you, I’d do anything for you--”

“I love you, Duncan, I love you too, baby--” Her hips were moving harshly into him, and he had to stop speaking, had to stop his frenzied admonitions of passion, his eyes rolling back into his head, his mouth opening at the sensation of her grinding down onto him this way, her head thrown back, her eyes heavy-lidded with her lust, her body gyrating mercilessly onto his cock, grinding him down into nothing, into a shell of himself, her need overwhelming, like an energy field made of the fragments of stars blown to the corners of the universe in their cosmic dust, and he felt as though her hands, or the secret hands of her soul, of her spirit, were reaching down into him and pulling him apart, pulling his soul into languid pieces that she was devouring, her power over him overwhelming in this moment, and he was happy to be devoured, being devoured by her this way was the only thing he had ever truly wanted, he felt, she was the goddess he wanted to be beholden to, the goddess he would lay his passions down at the altar of, until the end of time.

And then Kenzie looked down into his eyes; he could see the power coiled inside them, gold like stars in far-flung cosmic radiance, and she said “come for me, beloved,” and he did, up into the sweetness between her hips, the void of the space inside her, came so hard he left himself behind again for a moment, knowing nothing, unto death, but that she was here with him, and he belonged to her, and he knew with certainty in that moment that she belonged to him, too, as two pieces of the same soul belong always to each other and cannot be kept asunder, and she shuddered as she came, too, down onto him, her cunt gripping his length with a strength that shook every drop of his release out of him, her lips twisting into yes, yes, yes, my love, and there was nothing else.

------

Duncan tenderly untied the ribbon around Kenzie’s wrists, soothing her arms around to him, bringing his mouth against the redness where they’d chafed her, his heart aching at the marks they’d left. “Are you okay, baby, are you okay?” He held the redness against his cheek, up to his face, as if he could soothe the marks away with his skin, with his breath. “I’m fine, baby, it’s okay, I wanted you to do it, it was perfect, it was just what I wanted, you made me feel so fucking good, baby,” she whispered up to him, her fingers falling along his bottom lip. “You did so fucking good, baby,” she said, and he smiled into her, his eyes falling over her, his love for her overwhelming him like a wave crashing onto a vast shore.

“Let’s take a shower, baby,” he murmured into her hand, and she nodded. When they were in the quiet of the immaculate bathroom, Kenzie grasped his hand gently, leaning over the sink, lifting her backside to him, bringing it to the jeweled handle of the plug still inside her--he knew innately to gently pull as she pushed it out of her, and he set it in the bowl of the sink, turning the faucet on over it, using hot water, almost scalding, to rinse it, her hands coming around him, squeezing soap onto her palms and bringing them around his hands, caressing them and the plug gently with the suds until it was clean of all residue and oil.

“Baby...Kenzie. Did you love someone before me?”

The question had slipped out of him before he realized it; her little arms were still around him, reaching up to turn the faucet off, setting the plug gently on the side of the sink, her little wet hands slipping back around him so she moved beside him now, looking up at him, curious, her eyes bright with the residue of her orgasm, sweat at the baby hairs around her forehead, her hair hanging down her shoulders, tossed and tangled in their passion. He could see the glitter of his come, now drying, on the inside of her thigh, under the rise of her round ass, pink from his attentions. She reached out for his hand; Duncan grasped it, and Kenzie didn’t say anything, only continued to look at him as he gently pulled her into the shower, twisting the silver knob, hot water falling down his back and against her thighs as she continued to stare at him with that brightness boring into him.

“I was just...thinking. Today. About the people I’d known before you. And I wondered if you had loved someone before. And how it felt. And how, for me...this feels different.” Duncan gently moved his hands down her frame, soothing the hot water against it, cocking his head just a little, his eyes roving over her face (I want to memorize every detail of it, the little curves of her lips, the dips of her cheeks, the way her nose turns up just a little, defiant, the exact arrangements of the flecks of color in her eyes), hungry for words from her, hungry for those strange flashes of her thoughts he imagined he could hear sometimes. Kenzie turned so her back was to him, to the water, a tiny moan escaping from her throat as the heat seeped down her neck and back and ass, soothing the soreness and the stings of their fucking, washing away the come and the sweat and the oil. Still, she didn’t speak. Duncan pressed his face into the wetness of her hair, hands on her arms now, bringing his mouth down to her ear. She moved back, into him, turning her head towards him over her shoulder, her eyes closed, her hands around her arms, fingers threading through his.

“I did, once.” Kenzie finally spoke, so soft it was almost inaudible, and Duncan held her, quietly, lost in the smell and feeling of her, heart swollen with the intensity of the love he felt for her in this moment, listening to her little voice and the fall of the water and the soft swirl of it around the drain. “Just once. When I was still at college. His name was Tyler. He was going to be a pediatrician. We were together for three years. And--and it didn’t feel like this at all. It was...quieter. So much quieter. It was like...a little stream in a forest. And this is like the ocean. Endless and so deep and so far and so much...and so immediate. So much that it scares me. So much...”

The One, he thought. She didn’t need to say it. My other half. Soulmates. The One. You are the universe, the beginning, and the end. The only One.

Kenzie turned to face him again, looking up into his eyes, to his mouth, down his sex, now limp from post-coitus, to his feet and the shower floor, her hands coming up to press her little fingertips into his belly, softly. “And you? Tell me. Who you loved before.” He loved the little crown of her head, wet and glittering with water, loved the pressure of the little pads of her fingertips, loved her little feet, one pressing against the other for a moment, her little tick, like a ballerina.

“There were two. One while I was at Columbia. Misha. She was a TA. It just...happened. She was older than me and seemed to understand so much more about life. She’s a professor there now. And...Evan. He lives in LA now. Neither really ended badly...they just...faded.”

Kenzie nodded at him. “I had a feeling you...had been with a man before. With men. I...I wanted to tell you, I’ve never been with a woman, but...I think I would have. If I’d met the right one. You know? I just...wanted to tell you that.”

“I understand, baby. If you still want that--”

Kenzie shook her head. “Duncan, I only want you. Because this…”

“This is our destiny.” He pressed his hands up against the sides of her cheeks, pressing his nose against hers, the steam rising around them now, as if to shield them from the eyes of the world. “This is Fate. To have found you, Mackenzie, is a miracle. But it...feels like it was meant to happen.”

“Yes,” and he could hear the tears in her voice, see the trembling of her bottom lip. “Yes.”

He kissed her again, his thumbs coming to the corners of her eyes (hot tears or the water, it doesn’t matter, I want to cry, too, just for a little while), the relief of having found her in a world of billions shaking him to the core again, her little arms cradling into him, and then he pulled her little face into that space under his arm, against his skin, and he felt the hot tears course down his cheek as they held each other, he could feel the soft beating of her heart against his stomach, could feel the hot tears falling from her eyes down his arm, and they stood under the water that way for a long time, only able to hold each other, and to cry, tears mingling and washing away down the drain, melding to the water, down and out to the sea.

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shewhowantsmouseears · 6 years ago

Text

2 weblena fairy-tale au drabbles

TBH I don’t think they’re as good as the last one I wrote, but eh, least I tried.

Lena ignored the exhaustion in her body, with her drooping eyelids being the most difficult to ignore. Despite her body begging for sleep, she continued to flip through the book in an effort to find anything useful she could practice. If she ever wanted to get out from under Magica's thumb, she needed to become a better sorceress than her wicked aunt. Even now, all alone, she could hear Webby gently chiding – Bad spells will lead to bad ends! Just leave the work to me, I'll get you the destiny you deserve! - but after shaking her head, she managed to get the young fairy's voice away. Webby meant well, but Lena was going to find her own way to freedom. Somehow. Eventually.

That's when her eyes fell upon the “Heart's Desire” spell, and the wording of it was enough to interest her. She sat up straighter on her makeshift bed, following the letters with a finger.

Many of us have goals in mind, but they can be vague and obscure. I want to be rich. I want to marry. I want power. But what is that exact definition? With this illusion spell, you can find a solid goal to work towards by unlocking your subconscious desires.

Huh. That... wasn't a bad idea, all things considered. Lena wanted freedom, but when you put it that way, freedom to do what? What would she even do if she lived without Magica? It always seemed like a far-off, distant date so she never figured out the next step. Her eyes flew to the ingredients – along with stealing away any tomes Magica had instructed her to burn, Lena had also gotten away with snatching extra ingredients to several potions. This would work out perfectly, and it didn't take long. Leaves of a four leaf clover, milk from a cow that's given birth exactly three times, two pieces of silver, a little bit of this, a little bit of that, drop of blood... and then the combination would be lit like incense.

Fire spells were easy enough – one snap of her fingers and she could get a decent flame lit. As a small stream of smoke began to shudder forth, she waved it towards her nose, trying to get a good whiff in – and immediately regretted it. Yuck, that smelled worse than the royal stables! She resisted the urge to hack just as she heard her door open, and she froze up – oh, gods, if Magica caught her, she was going to be punished, she was going to be hurt, she was going to be sent to the shadow room -

“Hi Lena.” Webby stood in the doorway, her typically cheerful demeanor not as big or bright tonight.

Lena exhaled deeply, her body sagging. “Sheesh, Web, you almost gave me a heart attack.” She blew out the flame, not wanting the magic to irritate Webby's own fairy magics. “What are you doing here at this hour? If Magica catches you, she'll rip your wings off and place them above the mantle.”

“I know, I know.” Webby slowly closed the door behind her, and then began to fidget, unable to look Lena directly in the face. “It's just... there's... it couldn't wait.”

Frowning, Lena slid off her bed, placing the world's smelliest candle aside. “What is it? What, did Prince Charming turn out to be just a duke?” A lame attempt at humor, but sometimes it was all she had. Even her worst jokes could get Webby to crack a smile, so when Webby went silent, Lena knew it was serious. “Webby? … Everything okay?”

Finally Webby raised her eyes towards Lena's, and there was something in there that Lena couldn't quite name. A mix of confusion, sadness, hopefulness, and... and what? Webby swallowed, wringing her hands together, and when she spoke, her voice was softer than any flower petal. “Lena... will... will you kiss me?”

Lena had heard the expression about eyes bulging out of people's heads, and thought it was always a stupid exaggeration – until now, as she could literally feel her eyes expanding until they almost emptied the sockets. She didn't hear that. She couldn't have heard that. Her mouth formed to say something, didn't, tried again, still didn't, she raised a finger in the air, maybe she misheard! Yes! “Wuh... wuhhh... what?”

“I know it's selfish of me!” Webby suddenly cried out, grabbing both of Lena's hands with her own, eyes beginning to fill up with clear tears. “But... I don't want to let Prince Charming have you! I want you all to myself!”

Hang on hang on hang on - “I-it-when did-” Lena backed up, her entire face reddening.

“I just can't stand the thought of anyone else kissing you, or dancing with you, or being with you!” With every step Lena took back, Webby took one forward, her grip tightening, desperation growing.

“S-since when – Webby – wait a minute-WHOA!” Lena bumped into the side of her bed and fell onto her back, unceremoniously bringing Webby on top of her, who didn't seem to mind this turn of events.

“I love you, Lena!” Webby pleaded, her hands now pinning Lena down – when did she get so strong?! - torn between crying and begging. “I love you so, so, so sooo much!” Without waiting for any permission, she smashed her mouth into Lena's, and Lena felt her mind exploding. What was happening?! She needed a minute to think! Why couldn't she remember how to breathe anymore?! She wasn't even being allowed to recover from the – what was essentially a rather fantastic – initial kiss as Webby now began to cover Lena's face in tearful kisses, repeating over and over how much she loved Lena, Lena was so pretty, Lena was so perfect, I love you Lena, I love you Lena, so so so so so so much!

THUNK.

Lena blinked.

She was laying on the floor, all alone in her room, having fallen off the bed. Her eyes very slowly went to the spell candle that was still burning, and the pieces clicked together in her head.

Her body trembled with anger before finding the strength in her legs to get up, grab the spell book, and throw it across the room. “Think you're real funny, don't you!” she snapped.

Out in the hallway, Magica snapped back. “What's all that noise?”

“Nothing, Auntie.” Lena automatically replied, and went very still so that Magica would believe it. After several minutes of silence passed, Lena felt it was safe enough to go back to bed, and muffle her annoyed screams into her pillow.

~*~

The bad news is that they were being chased by a horde of angry unicorns. The good news was... um... let's see... Webby's mind faltered. She was usually great at finding the silver lining in any cloud, but this was a difficult situation. All she needed was a few hairs, and surely they could've spared that! But, well, Lena hadn't listened to Webby's instructions, thinking that a bunch of “prissy show-horses” couldn't do much harm, so why not take several hairs at once... but there was no point pinning the blame on anybody. It wasn't going to save them now.

“Can't you talk to them?!” Lena shouted as they ran through the forest, not daring to look bad at the army getting closer by the second. “I've seen you talk to all kinds of animals, tell them to back off!”

“Talking to them is one thing!” Webby tried to remind her friend as they scrambled past bushes and trees. “I can't make them listen!” She struggled to think back to her lessons back under Granny's watchful eyes. “Unicorns, unicorns... they fear the darkness and only come out during the day! They only respect creatures with higher magical energy than they have!”

Interesting information, but ultimately useless. Lena did know a spell that could create a giant wave of darkness, but she could only do it once per day – if she missed, they were dead. With they way they were running down, it'd be impossible to nail down the trajectory she needed.

Things only got worse when Webby tripped over a steep cut in the ground, and she squeaked as she hit the grass, her wand rolling away and fall off into a nearby riverbank. “My wand!” She shrieked, trying to get up. “I need it!”

“Leave it!” Lena commanded, trying to grab Webby's hand pull her up to her feet.

“I can't, it's my conduit! I need it to channel my magic into spells!”

“We can't stay here, we'll be mauled to death by 'my little pony'!” Lena could see them in the distance, hearing the hoofbeats echoing. Think, think, come on! There had to be something she learned in the things she stole from Magica, there had to be a payoff for those risks! Webby kept trying to reach for the riverbank, and Lena kept trying to pull her back. A higher magical energy... a higher magical energy...?

Suddenly, a memory flashed back into Lena's mind.

“It's not like regular mortals have no magic of their own.” Webby had said, hanging upside from a tree branch, as Lena was whittling a makeshift voo-doo doll. “The most powerful magic is fueled by emotions. The stronger you feel it, the more powerful the outcome.”

Lena was on and off paying attention, trying to carve Magica's likeness into what would be a failed project. “A-huh. So if you're saying I'm happy enough, I can totally trounce you?”

“Not exactly.” Webby swung back and forth, trying to think of a good example. “The most common display of mortal magical energy is True Love's Kiss.”

Lena stopped carving and glanced up, mostly out of disbelief. “You can't be serious.”

“I am always one-hundred-percent serious.” Webby had said, just in time for her recently created flower-crown to fall off her head. “It's powerful enough to break some of the strongest spells, even when done by an Enchantress! And if it's the first one, that ups the power by sooo much. It's like, a huge explosion of magic!”

“You're making this up.”

Webby looked offended. “I would never lie to you.”

This was true, and Lena winced, because she had certainly lied to Webby about several things. “Okay... I just wouldn't get your hopes up about seeing that in my lifetime. Not really into kissing, or true love, or any of that garbage.”

“Oh, you will be.” Webby easily enough was back into smiles and sunshine, swinging back and forth. “Once you fall in love, I bet your First True Love's Kiss is going to be one for the history books!”

… Lena spared a glance to the heavens, wondering if some deity was having a great laugh at her expense. Desperate times called for desperate measures. She grabbed both of Webby's arms to spin her around. “Webby! That thing about kissing – you said it's super powerful, fight?”

Webby blinked rapidly, having no idea where that came from. “What? I – well, yeah, true love's kiss is mega huge!”

“If you used me as a conduit instead of the wand, would that work?”

“I – I don't know, I've never heard of a person being a wand-”

The unicorns were getting closer, there was no more time for analysis! “I'll apologize later, okay!” Before Webby could ask what Lena intended to apologize about, Lena yanked her friend in close and pressed her lips as deeply as she could to Webby's. Having never kissed anyone before, Lena hoped that there was no magical rules or guidelines to make this count. All she could do was hope that lips to lips was it.

One second passed. Then two. On second three... Lena opened one eye, and had to admit Webby wasn't exaggerating. This sure looked like a magical explosion.

Webby's fairy wings, which were normally the size of her palm, had suddenly grown ten times their size, encompassing all the colors of the rainbow, with stain-glass framework of flowers and falling petals. They flapped once, coating the entire area around them in glitter and pink dust, and suddenly all the grass bowed down in reverence, newly planted roses sprang up with rich red colors, vines hugged the trees and even the nearby river was suddenly clear and beautiful. The clouds had parted and a brilliant beam of sunshine glowed down upon the two girls, and several birds in the branches began to sing the sweetest songs.

Webby, for her part, hadn't moved.

The unicorns stumbled upon this and whinnied loudly, not making any further advancements but still kicking up their feet. Seizing the moment, Lena pushed Webby behind her and held out her hands. “All right, you rejects from the glue factory, go home before I use your horns as toothpicks!” She slammed her hands together, muttering ancient tongues as black sludge began to spew from her palms. She then waved her hands apart, and the darkness rose high above, her, creating the beastly image of the darkest minds, and the unicorns cried out in fear before turning tail and running for their lives. Lena let the fake monster stay in the air for a moment longer in case there were any stragglers, and then let her arms drop – the monster faded, the nightmare was over.

Webby still hadn't moved.

“That was... way too close for comfort.” Lena sighed, running a hand through her hair, and she blinked at the glitter on her fingers when she pulled it back. “Huh... This stuff comes off, right? Not a huge fan of the sparkles.” When there was no reply, she turned around. “Webby?”

Webby, whose wings had just now shrunk back to their normal size, made a sound that could've been a “hee” before falling face-forward into the dirt. Lena wondered if she should've considered that reaction flattering. Now that their lives were no longer in peril, she could think about what she'd done, and she blushed. W-well. It's not like... she planned it, or anything. It just happened. But they definitely had to talk about it, didn't they? She hesitated, then walked to Webby and tried to roll her over.

“I am sorry,” she began, stopping when she saw Webby's deliriously stupid smile. The closest thing she'd ever seen to something like that was when Magica had downed six bottles of the good stuff from Ithaquack. “Webby? Can you hear me? Earth to Webby. You good?” She began flicking Webby's forehead.

“I'M GOOD!” Webby suddenly shouted, sitting up so quickly she almost bonked her forehead into Lena's. “I'M SO GOOD. I'M THE BEST AT BEING GOOD.” If she noticed all the extra flora and fauna around her, she didn't say so. Her mind was, unsurprisingly, on one thing. “That was... that was...” Words failed her, and she made futile gestures with her small hands.

Lena looked away, embarrassed, but she was also starting to smile. “Mmm. It was.” Maybe this wouldn't be as gut-wrenching as she first thought. People didn't make ridiculous faces like that if they hated a kiss, one could argue. She offered a hand to help Webby up. “Can you walk?”

“I can do many things.” Webby felt her intelligent hit a new low. “Including walking.” Once on her feet, she brushed down her skirt. Neither girl could quite look at the other's face just yet.

“We should get your wand.” Lena suggested.

“My wh... OH! Wand. Yes. Wand, I need the wand! Can't do spells without a wand!” With that, Webby raced to the riverbank to fetch it. She found it easily enough, and wiped off the mud with her sleeve. “There we go, no harm done.” Then, after a moment, she looked back at Lena with a new understanding. “You remembered my lesson!”

“I do pay attention sometimes.” Lena leaned against a tree, content to watch Webby. This was a step towards something, although Lena wasn't keen on giving it an exact definition. They could take it nice and slow, they were still young. Even better, they could finally put that whole “destiny” nonsense away, dead and done with. “So... this really says a lot, doesn't it?” She asked as she watched Webby climb back up.

“It says sooo much.” Webby agreed, flipping back onto the grass. “You have no idea how happy this makes me! This is so great!”

Lena's cool demeanor was, as usual, shattered before Webby's sheer adorableness. She felt her cheeks getting redder, and she turned her head away, trying to cover up her smile with her hand. “It... It really is, isn't it.” Her heart began to beat harder. Webby was so cute. So great. So, so so...

“Yeah! If that's what it's like to kiss me, Prince Charming is in for a real treat!”

… So amazingly DUMB.

Lena dropped her hand from her face. “What.”

Webby began to walk back to their original destination, twirling her wand here and there. “He won't know what hit him! Man, when you actually fall in love, that magic will be a real miracle to see! I kinda hope I'm there when it happens. All the other princes of the past are going to be super jealous.”

“You... you... you...” It was a good thing Webby had her back to Lena, so she could miss Lena strangling the air. “I... can't... BELIEVE YOU!”

Webby jumped – she'd rarely heard Lena yell like that before, and she whipped around. “Huh? … I'm serious, he'll like it!”

“I am going home!” Lena shouted, inches close to a full-blown snarl. “And I don't want to see you, or your wand, or anything magical, for a LONG TIME!” With one final stomp in the dirt, she began to march off, smacking away one of the sweetly-singing birdies.

“L-Lena!” Webby tried to trail after her, but Lena's march turned into a sprint, and she was gone. Webby scratched her head, puzzled as to what set Lena off this time. Maybe she could ask the boys, they tended to have solid advice every once in a while. She tapped her wand to her beak. What went wrong? Was this Lena just being stubborn about her destiny again? Why was so adamant about fighting it? She'd be so much happier if she went along with it!

If anything, this told Webby she had to get Lena to kiss one of the princes pronto. Because if someone had been kissed by Lena, and they didn't immediately fall in love with her, they'd have to be a blithering dunce.

#ducktales 2017 #fanfic #weblena #webby vanderquack #lena de spell

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heavenslastcrush · 5 years ago

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About Sunsets

Sunsets never cease to amaze me. The expansive sky, lit up in all of its glory, bursting with beams of light and spectacular color that is magnificent to behold: nature's own fireworks display. The magic lasts just a short while, blessing those lucky individuals that took the time to notice it, and then fades into the night as the world falls into a slumber.

I've been immensely fortunate to see some pretty incredible sunsets in my lifetime. My current apartment, situated on the 42nd floor, faces south west and allows me to view this majestic phenomenon every evening that I'm home in time from work. But, apart from this, I've witnessed sunsets all over the world from Easter Island, to the Serengeti, to the Phi Phi Islands. Each sunset so breathtakingly beautiful, each so unique. Whether the weather, the backdrop, the company I'm with, or the colors that Mother Nature decides to grace us with: from delicate pastels, to fiery reds; sunsets are glorious.

The most amazing sunset I've ever experienced was at the end of last year, just a couple of days before New Years, on board a National Geographic expedition in Antarctica. The upper deck of the ship, which was serving as home to about 110 guests during our voyage, had a hot tub that was accessible to everyone, provided that seas weren't too rough. So, after dinner one evening, two of the ship's staff members joined me in the hot tub as we sailed through the Lemaire Channel on the calmest waters one could ever imagine.

One of the staff members, Karen, was a avian specialist. She had a deep rooted love for nature and animals, particularly birds, that compelled her to travel around the world and study them. The other staff member, Max, was a National Geographic photographer who had explored the far reaches of our little blue planet and had the opportunity to photograph it in all of its wonder. Sitting there and listening to their journeys and experiences was alone enough to make this an unforgettable evening.

As we continued to navigate down the Lemaire, our small vessel carefully pushed small pieces of ice, referred to as growlers, aside as we propelled forward with radiant ice bergs and snow-capped rocky mountains surrounding us. The three of us were in deep conversation about where we spent last New Year, when Karen abruptly stopped and pointed out the stunning atmosphere around us. "Look", she nodded toward the landscape in front of her.

The sky began to transform into the most magical display of light and color that I had ever seen. Tremendous, radiant shades of chartreuse, pinks, purples, and blues that gracefully faded into one another as though it were composing a symphony; each color its own instrument.

We all sat in silence for a moment, listening to the crackling of the ice in the Arctic Ocean, breathing in the crisp, cold air, staring in wonder at the colors as they danced around the mountains, sipping our wine while we remained warm and cozy immersed in the hot water, and genuinely enjoying each others company.

It was Max who finally broke the silence saying, "I'd bet this is the most beautiful sunset in the history of sunsets; that no one in history has ever experienced a sunset quite this beautiful". I literally couldn't do anything but nod in agreement and continue to sit there and soak in that moment with every fiber of my being, letting it completely fill me up so that I could remember it forever. It was a perfect moment, and it was a perfect sunset.

Max did hop out of the tub for a few minutes on a couple of separate occasions to try to visually capture the vista. The funny thing about sunsets though, is even with the best camera money can by (which I'm positive he had), you can never really do it justice. The colors, even if one were to spend years tweaking them in Lightroom or Photoshop, would never be quite the same. As for me? Of course, this was the one time during the entire trip I did not have any of my 3 cameras with me, so all I have is this vivid memory of an experience that I could never capture, or recreate, and no one in history will ever be able to. It was the epitome of bittersweet.

I've thought about this memory and this particular sunset so many times. It's one of those go-to memories for me whenever I'm feeling down, or exceptionally happy, or taking a photograph, or when I've had a little too much wine. Max's words that evening constantly echo through my mind: "No one in history has ever experienced a sunset quite this beautiful."

First off, I can't reiterate enough how powerful that sentence was coming from Max. Here is this person, who has seen more of this world than literally billions of people ever have, or ever will. More beauty. More tragedy. More compassion. More greed. More hope. More despair. More sunsets. More... everything. If he thought this was the most beautiful sunset ever, then I am perhaps one of the luckiest three people that ever lived to have been there to witness it.

Secondly, there are about 17 different ways I've thought about writing this article, because with this one story, this one little experience, this one little dot on the canvas that is my life, there are so many lessons that I could draw from it. I could have written about living in the moment, and putting away technology so that you can fully immerse yourself in experiences. I could have written about being mindful and continuously showing gratitude for things in your life. I could have written about the importance of human connection, and creating authentic, meaningful relationships. I could have written about the transformative experience that is travel, and why I believe everyone should do it. I could have written about how singular moments can change one's entire outlook and trajectory of life. I could have written about the importance of nature conservation, so that future generations can experience similar wonder that I was able to that evening.

All of these topics are important lessons that I hope each one of you consider. But, of the seemingly infinite range of topics and lessons I could have written about, I'm going to write about You.

Yes, you.

Because you, dear reader, are a sunset.

Amazing. Specatcular. Magnificent. Magical. Incredible. Majestic. Breathtaking. Beautiful. Unique. Glorious. Tremendous. Radiant. Stunning. Perfect. You.

Like any sunset, there is only one you, and there will only ever be one you. Yes, others may also be amazing, but you are unique and perfect in the way that you touch people that you encounter along your journey. And, while your time here on planet Earth may be temporary, making way for the next amazing thing, you have the opportunity to show the world how stunning and amazing you are.

Whether you realize it or not, you are impacting the people that encounter you each day. You hold the paintbrush to the canvas that is your life, and you get to decide the colors to use as you paint your sunset and show it to those around you.

It's strange that we humans are so easily amazed by external things, like sunsets, or can easily acknowledge how incredible someone else is, but often fail to recognize, or even realize how amazing we are. And you literally don't need anything to be amazing, you already are. Everything you need it already inside you. (Sure, if you want to get some academic or life experiences under your belt, or have a cup of coffee before you fully unleash all of your amazing, you can. But, it's not required.)

So, next time you're feeling a bit down because you see a colleague or classmate do something awesome while you feel like you're just continuing to ho-hum along; or you're not feeling particularly special, deserving, or worthy, please just stop; because every sunset is radiant, and special, and captivating.

Take a moment. Take a breath. And, take the time to marvel at your own splendor. To give yourself credit for all that you've done. To be optimistic about all that you have yet to accomplish. Then go out there, and show the world the best fucking sunset they've ever seen.

xoxo, H

#travel #inspiration #sunset #sunsets #antarctica #africa

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aion-rsa · 4 years ago

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Assassin’s Creed Valhalla Review

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Despite releasing 12 Assassin’s Creed installments since 2007, Ubisoft is still finding ways to keep the series fresh, and the latest sequel, Valhalla is one of the best titles yet. Is it a revelation for the series? No—there are very few new ideas presented here. But it’s a polished title with solid gameplay and a story that is exceedingly coherent for an open-world AAA title.

In Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, you play as Eivor, a fearsome Viking in 873 AD who lost her parents in battle, a moment that left her literally scarred and hellbent on getting revenge against the warlord who slaughtered them. It’s important to note that the game gives you the choice to play as a male or female version of Eivor at the start of the game, but you’re also given a third option that allows the Animus to “choose” the gender for you based on the memory being recollected. Theoretically, the game is then supposed to switch between male and female throughout the adventure, but despite letting the Animus choose, I remained female for most of my play time.

After an hours-long intro that sees you exploring and kicking ass across the mountainous terrain of Norway, Eivor and her brother Sigurd set out on a longship to start a new settlement of their own in England, where a majority of the game takes place. The game’s story is as violent and unflinching as you’d expect considering the milieu. Eivor and her crew of Vikings go to war with other clans, and she of course carries out missions on her own in traditional Assassin’s Creed fashion. The game centers on you expanding your clan’s influence across England’s four kingdoms, forging alliances and collecting resources to build up your riverside settlement.

“Collecting” is a kind word for what you’re actually doing—Eivor and her clan are brutal warriors who raid any settlement they come across, pillaging and annihilating their way to land dominance. As you travel the English channels in your longship, with a simple button press you can initiate a raid on any settlement you see, which is great fun. As you invade, you work with your crew to find treasures and resources to send home, and the game does a good job of highlighting the camaraderie aspect of the raids via a fluid stream of dialogue between Eivor and her fellow warriors. Conquest Battles return from Odyssey in the form of Assaults and are larger scale raids on gigantic fortresses that feel pretty epic and are tied to the main narrative.

Raids and Assaults are naturally where you’ll engage in the most combat, which is the backbone of this title more than any other in the series. Eivor can wield any combination of swords, shields, flails, maces, axes, and more in her two hands, and you can unlock a host of abilities to unleash hell upon your foes. There are melee abilities, which allow you to rush enemies and slam them into walls or throw them off cliffs, throw a barrage of axes at their skulls, grapple and fling them into other enemies, and much more. And then there are ranged abilities, like one that lets you slow down time to land perfect shots, take direct control of a fired arrow’s trajectory, mark multiple targets for a quick projectile assault, etc. Abilities are unlocked by finding hidden scrolls across the game world or via the game’s sprawling skill tree, whose myriad nodes afford you stat increases and various buffs as well.

Release Date: Nov. 10, 2020 Platforms: PC (reviewed), XSX, PS5, XBO, PS4, Stadia Developer: Ubisoft Montreal Publisher: Ubisoft Genre: Action-adventure

There are a ton of different ways to enact violence in the game, with each weapon and ability bolstered by sweet-looking character animations. The combat is fun and fluid, but it also lacks a sense of tactility, that crunchy, disgusting feeling of impact you get in games like God of War or even Doom Eternal. There’s floatiness to the melee combat that is hard to pinpoint but definitely made combat a little less satisfying than I would have liked.

There’s also stealth gameplay, of course, which is typical Assassin’s Creed fare. I still enjoy sneaking up behind enemies in the tall grass and offing them quickly before their buddies can glimpse me, but the melee and ranged combat in this game is so effective and paramount to the experience that I found myself using stealth far less often than in other games in the series, which I suppose is appropriate since, well, Eivor is a fearless Viking who smashes skulls for a living.

Exploration is a crucial component of any open world game and in this regard Assassin’s Creed Valhalla is fantastic. I loved galloping across the countryside on horseback and drinking in the painterly locales and then splattering the blood of my enemies all over them like a mass-murdering Jackson Pollock. A sign of a great open-world game for me is how much I find myself just wandering around and engaging in whatever quest or activity happens to come my way as opposed to fast-traveling around like crazy just to plow through the main story and get it over with. In Valhalla, I was an avid wanderer, which is a testament to just how compelling a game world Ubisoft has created.

Maybe the best thing Assassin’s Creed Valhalla has going for it is the game world’s sense of continuity. Because you’re constantly analyzing England’s territories on so many levels, it starts to feel like a place that’s not just enormous, but full of people, events, kingdoms, and machinations that all affect and push and pull each other. On an intimate level, you’re exploring the English countryside and its rivers and tributaries on foot. On a more macro level, you’re examining the kingdoms on the alliance map, slowly expanding your influence. And then there’s your hunt for different members of the Order and the many artifacts scattered around the world. Each of these activities connects you to the game world in a different way and deepens your understanding of it, and it can become deeply immersive.

My favorite activities in the game are the various “mysteries” you encounter, little self-contained stories featuring bizarre characters and situations. I loved searching these out because they are so weird and funny and entertaining that they almost overshadow the main story. One involves a confused warrior who has no idea that he’s got an axe buried in his skull (his name is Axehead, adorably); another sees you aiding a ship captain who thinks he’s raiding villages with his crew when, in reality, he’s delusional and alone in a field with an empty longboat, wolves circling him, threatening to eat him alive.

But as for the main narrative, it’s well executed on several levels. It’s a tale of fate, loyalty, glory, and murky morality, with Eivor having to make tough decisions as to how she grows her settlement and how she navigates her relationship with Sigurd and his followers. The characters are really well written and each have a distinctive personality, like the psychopathic but oddly relatable Ivarr and the desperately loyal Dag, Sigurd’s oafish right hand. The joint performances by the voice actors and animators are terrific as well, and the dialogue sounds natural.

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The story takes a strange turn at one point, with Eivor and Sigurd encountering some truly trippy shit involving their Norse mythological roots. It’s really wild stuff that may come off as corny to some, but I dug the hell out of it. The obligatory Assassin’s Creed present-day interludes tie into Eivor’s story in an interesting way as well, with Layla Hassan, Rebecca Crane, and Shaun Hastings unearthing Eivor’s remains and making a real connection with the past in a surprising way independent of the Animus.

Presentation-wise, the game is a AAA title through and through. From the animations, to the assets, to the character, environment, and sound design, the game is a pristine package, which is even more impressive considering its size. I really dig the game’s autumnal/wintery aesthetic, and the character models are absurdly detailed and expressive for an open-world title. Ubisoft is a huge studio with deep resources, and it’s nice to see that Valhalla’s high-quality production value reflects that.

The settlement-building system, which has been absent from the series since Black Flag, is engaging enough, though I didn’t find myself very motivated to focus on it. Adding different buildings opens up new ways to play, like the Assassin Bureau, which tasks you with hunting down members of the Order by collecting clues, and the Valka Hut, which allows you to travel to Asgard and fight alongside the mighty Thor, Freyja, and Tyr. All of these quests are great, but the actual building of the settlement wasn’t fun for me at all and felt more like a chore. The layout of the settlement feels too spread-out and looks a bit ugly.

But expanding the influence of the settlement is awesome—“pledging” to different territories and fulfilling quests for their leaders to gain their loyalty is a fun, immersive experience, and I like how this idea of large-scale conquest ties the narrative together. This game is a cohesive package, and I think this is due to the excellent alliance system.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Assassin’s Creed Valhalla is an enormous game with a lengthy campaign and tons of things to do. It’s not going to blow anyone away who’s familiar with the series, but amongst its peers, I think Valhalla is in the upper tier of the Assassin’s Creed hierarchy.

The post Assassin’s Creed Valhalla Review appeared first on Den of Geek.

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#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

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growinstablog · 5 years ago

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How influencer-approved Wildflower iPhone cases came to dominate Instagram

Butterflies or plaid? Leopard print or flames? Cherries or angels or tie-dye or puppies? These might not be questions you ask yourself most days, but for teen girls everywhere, they can be topics of real concern when you’re about to drop $35 on an iPhone case from Wildflower, a Los Angeles-based company born out of a chance encounter with singer Miley Cyrus.

On Wildflower’s official Instagram page, pictures of teen models, professional and amateur, are interspersed with celebrities, all clutching hold of their iPhones with acrylic nails in endless mirror-selfies.

YouTube is flooded with videos of Wildflower case unboxings, reviews or girls simply talking through their case collections. Meanwhile on Amazon, parents leave reviews, sometimes niggling over the price but ultimately saying their daughters are thrilled with their cases, which are all the rage at school right now.

From middle schoolers to celebrities, a Wildflower case is a status symbol and the perfect Instagram-friendly accessory to be sporting at all times. But don’t let what may sound like a lot of hype lead you to believe their popularity is transient. Wildflower cases are no flash in the pan.

In fact, the company has been growing steadily since 2012, when the Carlson family (mum Michelle, dad Dave and teenagers Devon and Sydney) bumped into Miley Cyrus in an LA restaurant and their lives changed forever.

At the time, Michelle made phone cases by hand for her daughters, which Cyrus spotted when the girls stopped to take a photo with her. She complimented Michelle on the designs and told her she should start selling them. Sydney and Devon gladly handed over the first cases Michelle had made to the first ever Wildflower fan.

Things escalated quickly. On the way home from the restaurant in the car, Devon’s phone started blowing up. Cyrus had tagged her in a tweet with a picture of the cases, and people wanted to know where they could buy them.

“I remember all of us asking, should we create a business because Miley said we should, or should we just pass?” Dave Carlson tells me over the phone from the Wildflower warehouse in LA. Together, they decided to go for it, and from that very first day, they haven’t looked back. They stayed up until 5 a.m. that night to get the Wildflower website up and running, and the orders began rolling in.

At first, the family continued making the cases at home out of fabric, clear plastic shells and decorative studs. They roped in friends and family to help, but it quickly got to the point where their “fingers were literally cracked peeling and bleeding,” says Dave. Next he found a company locally to fulfill the orders, before outsourcing them to a facility in Mexico. Now the cases are made by a team of people in a factory in Shenzhen, China, who he describes as being “like family to us.”

How to win friends and influencers

The company has grown largely organically on a fairly smooth upward trajectory from the beginning. But aside from the fortuitous Miley Cyrus encounter, Dave recalls one other “critical moment” when Wildflower experienced a huge boost. He noticed the site was getting a significant amount of traffic from YouTube. When he investigated, he discovered that a beauty vlogger called Maddi Bragg had been buying and reviewing Wildflower cases and posting videos on her channel.

It was a turning point. The YouTuber quickly developed a friendship with Devon and Sydney, and in 2015 proposed what would be the first of Wildflower’s many influencer collaborations. “We have collaborations lined up through the end of this year,” says Dave. “It’s now just become part of our DNA.”

Big brands famously court the web’s biggest influencers. But while they’re armed with well-funded marketing departments, smaller firms like Wildflower have to use more-personal connections. For the Carlsons, the relationships they have with collaborators nearly always emerge as a result of Sydney and Devon’s friendship network. These days, many influencers approach the company with their own ideas for designs.

As a result, over the past few years Wildflower has partnered with some of the internet’s most influential young women, including model Bella Hadid and YouTubers Tana Mongeau and Hannah Meloche. Perhaps none has had quite the same impact, though, as the collaboration with 18-year-old YouTuber Emma Chamberlain, whom Time included on its 2019 list of the 25 most influential people on the internet, alongside the duke and duchess of Sussex, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Donald Trump.

“Her first collab was two years ago maybe, and her case just keeps selling and selling,” says Carlson. “It’s been a very successful one and she already wants to do a new design, so we’re probably going to be doing another collab with her.”

Chamberlain’s design continues to make regular appearances in her own Instagram mirror selfies, and there’s a sense that for influencers, the relationship with the company is authentic in a way that paid-per-post collaborations with other brands often aren’t.

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heres selfie and im gonna regret it

A post shared by ☆ emma chamberlain ☆ (@emmachamberlain) on Sep 19, 2019 at 12:16pm PDT

Since day one, Cyrus has continued to support Wildflower, and the cases have also been spotted adorning the phone of many a pop girl (Dua Lipa, Halsey and Lana Del Rey are all fans). Last year they were even featured on HBO’s dark teen drama of the moment, Euphoria.

In spite of the number of famous faces spotted with the cases, Sydney tells me via email that she always feels surprised when she sees them in the wild, regardless of who’s carrying them. “Usually when I’m out and about in public and see people with our cases is when I get most excited,” she says. “It always catches me off guard and is so rewarding to see people with our phone cases, whoever they are.”

Mirror-selfies and niche memes

Having a phone case you can show off is great for making your iPhone stand out when they almost all look the same, but the cases became increasingly important during the rise of the Instagram mirror-selfie of 2017. Around the same time, Wildflower cases started to feature heavily in niche memes — an Instagram post format that’s popular among teen girls and that was described by Taylor Lorenz in a 2017 Daily Beast article as “a unique, hyper-specific collage about the creator.”

In the world of Instagram aesthetics, the cases are more than just a status symbol. The frequency with which they feature suggests they’re an integral part of Instagram’s visual language, with the wide array of design options meaning they can be used to contribute to an equally wide array of aesthetics. Examples include Wildflower’s green flame case being featured in a niche meme about being a Billie Eilish fan, or the cherry case (in our header art) being incorporated in a post titled “she always tries impressing her crush.”

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send this to a friend 😊 follow me (@niches.v1) for more 💘 via: @holytortilla.s

A post shared by niche memes 💘 (@niches.v1) on Nov 18, 2019 at 1:15pm PST

Wildflower has a curious relationship with meme culture, in that as much as the brand feeds into it, the designs of the cases often also feel deeply inspired by it. “Devon and I are very into the internet world and can definitely say meme culture has influenced our ideas,” Sydney says. This feedback loop could well explain the continued popularity of the brand, which over the past eight years has appeared to seamlessly evolve and kept pace with Instagram aesthetics and trends.

It also helps that every single Wildflower case is limited edition, according to Dave. Only a specific number of each design iteration is made, and once they’re gone, they’re gone. “That mentality has always created a sense of scarcity,” he says. “We try to tell everyone, get it while you can. And if Michelle decides to discontinue a style, then it’s discontinued and we’ll probably move on to the next trend.”

Michelle, who’s the company’s CEO, still continues to have the final say over designs. She works closely with Devon and Sydney, who have said in their own YouTube videos that they take inspiration from their friends and from fashion trends they observe around LA as well as on Instagram and YouTube. “Our customers have become our muses when designing, and it all comes full circle,” Devon recently told Forbes in an interview.

According to 16-year-old Californian model and TikTok star Nicole Sahebi, who’s been featured on Wildflower’s Instagram page, the biggest appeal of the cases remains the designs, which she says “are perfect to mix and match with different outfits.”

“Coupled with their unique color schemes, each Wildflower case is so beautiful and sleek that I feel the need to have all of them,” Sahebi tells me. “And I almost do.”

Keeping it in the family

The next year holds some exciting developments for Wildflower, with yet-to-be-announced collaborations branching out beyond the influencer world. Already the company has been working with Urban Outfitters, and more partnerships with household names are yet to be announced.

Previously there were also efforts to make cases for Samsung Galaxyphones, but this was dropped after they failed to sell in great enough numbers, according to Dave. The company has added Apple Watch bands and laptop clutches to its stable of products, but otherwise it’s sticking to the core business of iPhone cases.

“One of the things we’ve tried just with a company ethos is to just keep things simple,” says Dave. This includes keeping the business family-run (there are 23 employees in total now), something he says works well for all of them.

When Wildflower started, Sydney and Devon were still teenagers, answering phones, responding to emails, packing up cases. Now as adults, they’re social media manager and brand manager of the company respectively, as well as named co-founders, and they’re used to working alongside their parents on a daily basis.

This story, of a business built by a mother-daughter (and father) team, plucked from obscurity by a global superstar after a chance encounter, is the thing that’s always propelled the company forward, featuring on every leaflet for every single phone case sold.

“We love to share the story in the hope that it inspires other young girls — or anybody, actually — that wants to pursue something and turn it into a business,” says Dave. “I think there are especially a lot of young girls out there that will probably look up to Devon and Sydney and really take a lot away from that.”

https://growinsta.xyz/how-influencer-approved-wildflower-iphone-cases-came-to-dominate-instagram/

0 notes

briteboy · 7 years ago

Photo

stealing @bratsims format because i need a less ugly way to mass answer your messages which will hopefully motivate me to stay on top of this! at least i can say i tried

so if you sent me an anon message in the past...idk MONTH (i’m bad i know) it might be here. (older ones are near the bottom) if not, check my faq because it’s probably answered there. (and if you’re the person/people who sent the twin flame & 7th house asks, i plan to answer those separately because i have a LOT to say. get ready)

game of thrones, nuclear war, real life santis, lou theories, i’m evil, HERE WE GO!! i literally had to cut it off at the last one because it was just too much for now. i’ll try to answer some more later ok

we’re starting off on a great note

Anonymous said: gaddamn rooney's tiddies lookin' hella ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

STOP!!!!!!!!!!! THAT’S MY CHILD soaidfnjds she’s supposed to have like b/c cups (goals for me tbh, the big boob life is not fun) and sims 4 pregnancies just fuckin make them...NYOOM i’m mad you can’t edit sims’ bodies during pregnancy even with cas.fulleditmode on -___- so i let her live with her giant preggo tiddies for now

Ngl I want a kiss between Santi and Gianni (I'm sorry I'm literally trash)

then i’m here to satisfy your desires: they do kiss periodically because gianni is one of those people who’s like “why shouldn’t you kiss your friends?” free love 4 everyone

IM SCREAING AT UR YOUTUBE CHANNEL OK!!!! I LOVEEE IT, WOW

DON’T IT’S UGLY EXCEPT FOR LIKE TWO VIDEOS

hey this is kinda random but i thought joe seaward from glass animals looked kinda like santi? he has quite a weird face too lmao

oMG i actually love that, i know what you mean. that dude reminds me of a bull terrier lmao i actually saw glass animals like two weeks ago!! i didn’t really get a good look at the drummer but now i wish i did. missed connection

i just finished reading santi's story and ugh it almost had me in tears! beautiful, your story telling skills and editing skills are perfection!

ahhhhsdkgkds thank you so much ;____; that means the world to me <333

Unpopular opinion: im so done with game of thrones tbh. It's not even good anymore :/ I liked the first season but since then i've skipped through episodes because they are just sooo fucking boring and dragged out!

see like the first three seasons were pretty good because they stayed true to the books. (actually that’s a lie, littlefinger’s chaos speech in the s3 finale was real fuckin bad because guess what: it was original material LMAO) the fourth season was where it started to get messy and then the fifth season was a fucking shitshow because they completely IGNORED the fourth book and cherrypicked all the “good” parts out of it (read: the most action-y parts, while ignoring all the most important pieces of character development) and they botched the dorne storyline, oh and who could forget the iconic moment of throwing in a rape (THAT DIDN’T HAPPEN IN THE BOOKS) just for fun :) love it! but anyway if you think the show is boring i probably wouldn’t recommend the books, they’re even slower getting through them lmao. but it’s worth it in my opinion. there’s so much they don’t include in the show and it makes me Angery

Okay, game of thrones fan here, I haven't read the books (yet at least, I bought book 1) but I feel like dany is going to practically turn into her father, this season she is already showing traits like his.......

OH YEAH i definitely feel like they’re moving in that direction in the process of revealing jon as the “true” king of westeros and it’s so bad lmfao. the thing is, like...cersei is already mad king 2.0? why do we need another one?????? the entire point of dany’s arc is that she’s constantly trying to deviate AWAY from the way her father ruled, demonstrated by the fact that she freed the slaves (whereas all the targaryens before were slave owners), the fact that she’s not perpetuating the whole incest thing (LMAO GUESS AGAIN BECAUSE JONERYS HAS TO HAPPEN FOR SOME FCKING REASON), the fact that she has dragons which haven’t existed in how many years...like, if she ever ends up being like her father in the books, it’s NOT gonna fucking happen like this. but i don’t think she will anyway, george rr martin has been pretty clear about her trajectory thus far. anyway this show is so ugly, next question

rooney's eye are so BIG

just like her tiddies lmao i kno sometimes i forget how big they are and then she does one of those silly endearing animations and i’m like o ;-; hello big dumb baby cow eyes

Cows? Are you secretly Matthew Daddario?

WHO i had to google him lmao i was about to say “oh the teen wolf guy” but jk @ myself u idiot it’s shadowhunters damn i literally googled “matthew daddario cows” and

tru

I love how fragile Lou looks like but the truth is that she is strong af and you can't play with her bruh

SHE IS ;-; and that’s a huge theme in her story, i’m excited <3

ima leave ur blog and come bk and spam you so you will finally notice me

im part of this online forum of girls that talks about our period and weather or not one of us might be pregnant and once this girl posted saying that her husband invited his mom without telling her to thier honeymoon and she didnt find out until they arrived at the hotel and she was already there. the most recent part reminded me of it. but long story short, her dad moved all her stuff out of his house and her friend came to pick her up and they got a divorce.

OISOJDFAKNLJSD WHAT!!! i’m guessing you sent this because of that thing i said about the reddit post lmfaooo imagine your mom on your honeymoon. why. that’s soooooooooo good 4 her u know. u don’t need to be married to his mom as well

thanks 4 trusting my love santi. he's beautiful

thank u he thinks ur beautiful too 💘

do you have any tips for runing game in good quality and fast?

euhhhhh the only tips i have for you are to merge your cc, close all other programs while you play your game, maybe invest in a cooling pad uhhhhhh yeah idk any other tips you can probably find on google

You told that thing about unfollowing people and I thought you unfollowed me, but then I checked and you didn't and I'm crying omg

lmao omg ;-; i literally cut my following list in half, it was so chaotic and it was making me anxious. so if ever unfollow any of you please don’t take it personally (i know it’s a stupid thing to say, and it’s a lot easier said than done) it’s just my brain explodes when there’s too much going on at once and some content blends into others, i’m trying to only follow people who i’m genuinely interested in enough to keep up with their posts from now on

I haven't been able to sleep in over 72 hours thanks to the constant fear over the looming world war. I'm fine. Completely fine

Oh shit, have you noticed that the media has been putting out more 'what to do during a nuclear attack' kinda articles? This world is slowly going to shit, for real. I'm not even near any of the danger really, but it still absolutely terrifies me to see all of that bc it could very well go wrong and hit my place as well yknow? I have no idea why i send this to you but you seem chill and calm so thanks for reading my freakout askfjsls

YEP it’s pretty terrifying. but at the same time don’t let fear overwhelm you, fearmongering is an ugly, ugly thing and you don’t want to live your life constantly worrying. so just prepare yourself for what might come, but at the same time, just spend as much time with your loved ones as you can, do all the things you’ve ever wanted to do, and then if it doesn’t turn out as bad as we thought it would, you *tim mcgraw voice* lived like u were dyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyin’

@ Jesus anon: I really don't think it's the right time to complain about "using the lord name in vain" when there are people terrified of leaving their homes bc they are afraid to get killed (aka that poor, poor Jewish anon in charlottesville)

yeah idk like i want to respect everyone but it seemed to be in poor taste to bring that up at a time like that lmao. and also i’ve literally never in my entire life met someone who actually takes “don’t say the lord’s name in vain” seriously.

I asked about the poses and HOLY CRAP THANK YOU SO MUCH! I finally have good poses to use for story telling. Thank you soo so so so sooooo much!

YAY i’m glad you found some good stuff <3 and honestly just going through lana’s blog you’ll find a ton of good poses, it’s a gold mine

Idk how much tv you watch, but have you've ever come across a tv show that used music from The Sim? Because once in a while I'll hear Sims 3 build/buy music on some random show and I'll get a lil shook because I find it so weird that the generic music they're using comes from a major game title.

OMG LMAO NO what i wish i’d come across that tho. one time i used sims 1 music in a video i made for school and someone recognized it

I love your stories gosh I check your page "it's everyday bro with femmesim flow" Lol sorry for that awkward Jake Paul "poop" ❤️

lmao thank u i had no idea who jake paul was until my friends started talking about him

yo, I also remember once in french class real life santi asked me what videos games I like to play. When I told him the sims, he looked at me for a while and shaked his head. He was like, "why do you want to watch your sims use the toilet?"

WHY DO YOU WANT TO WATCH YOUR SIMS USE THE TOILET SAME that’s all i care about when i play

that rooney face in the 5 facts is so iconic, its my fave picture of her. You should blow it up and frame it

i should tbh. i should print it out and put it in my wallet to show everyone because she is my child

sorry the bother you, merging cc makes your game smoother? can you explain to me please?

boop

hi i love you ♡ pass it on

I LOVE U

Can I say that hearing a MacBooks fans screaming for dear life as they try to cool down when playing the sims has actually started to haunt my nightmares

SAME my macbook is actually doing it right now for no reason. thanks laptop

Maybe Santi should go to therapy to talk out his issues.

maybe he should 🤔 but tbh he’s already talked out everything, there’s nothing really more to talk out. he just has to cope with it. he’s treated lou like his therapist thus far and that’s not okay

i love ur story and omg i totally get where lou is coming from with being tired of being compared to molly by santi, thatd hurt so much esp with how much she cares about him

thank youuu ;-; i’m glad you understand, this was a part i’d wanted to get out for a loooong time now, and i know you guys were always like “um why does she put up with this” lmao. she just loves him, that’s why. but you’re right, it does hurt.

My theory is very similar to the other anons in that Fiona's dad/Lou's ex had a mental illness (schizophrenia, depression, what have you) but he actually did kill himself and that's why she's not completely losing it on Santi because I feel like most people in that situation would have not handled it as well as Lou did

🤔 you’re right about the last part, and there’s a reason she has so much patience, das all i’m sayin

i started your story from the beginning last night and i am in awe. Its amazing. It inspired me to put a little more effort in learning to edit and write. It was like reading screen caps from a movie! I didn't want to stop reading. Anyway thing was a super sappy ask, but i appreciate your stuff. And i'm bad at putting my thoughts into words.

omg ;__________; when people tell me i inspired them it means the most to me, my brain just can’t process it lmao. so thank you so so much ;-; <333 THE MOVIE THING ESPECIALLY GOT ME IN THE HEART because i feel like that’s my aesthetic with most things i create because i’m such a film person lol. don’t worry i love super sappy, and you did a good job of wording everything because it got me right in the feels <33

Okay I've been snickering for about 43 minutes bc SANTI GOT THAT GRU CHINNN

WOT is that i googled it and the only thing that came up was the dad from despicable me lmfaosdkjfs but ok

Please, please do punk edits of your some of your characters! I'd die.

WHAT DOES THIS MEANNN do you mean like. those 2010 tumblr edits of punk disney characters and then the joker from suicide squad looked like one of them. do u want santi to be the joker. because my boyfriend already relates him to suicide squad joker because of his face tatt lmao

You love to make me cry

i do i’m sorry. if it makes you feel any better i love to make myself cry too. but my biceps grow stronger with every tear

I reeeally dont think those chancla comments were offensive??? Why would they be?? I'm hispanic (born and raised in the sunny Dominican Republic, received a fair amount of chancletazos myself) and I laughed out loud when i read them 😂😂

I JUST WANT U TO KNOW I SHOWED @ichosim THIS MESSAGE AND SHE LAUGHED FOR 12 HOURS AT “CHANCLETAZOS”

whATT my little brothers name is santiago n we call him santi for short!! guess it's not rly that uncommon but we live in a small country and he's also 4 so like,, no other santiagos!! idk why im saying this its completely irrelevant just kinda surprised me :'))

OMG wow hell yeah another real life santi...santi acts like a 4 yr old so he might as well be your brother

Just curious.. Do you play sims or just use it for storytelling? Sorry if thats weird haha

well my recent gameplay pics should answer your question lmao. i do like to play but i don’t have enough time to both play and pose scenes so i mostly just pose scenes for now. :[ i am gonna be off work for like two weeks tho so hell yeah gameplay here i come!!

I'm starting a Fiona appreciation movement because she is the real star of santis story RT and i love her and she is way underappreciated and I love her KThxBi

SHE IS THE REAL STAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i’ve said this before but santi’s relationship with her is the most important to me, out of every relationship he has in this story. i’m so glad you love her so much, sorry about what’s about to come in the next few scenes tho

Oh my heart, Santi is alive, god exist

I have a pretty hard time understanding Santi's story mostly because I'm not English but I'm sure I'll figure it out:)

ahh oh no D: i’m sorry i wish i spoke every language in the world lmao. if you want, you can message me off anon and i’ll help you understand it!!

Lou is an angel honestly

“there are worse things than seeing an angel before you die”

what tablet do you use? or how do you draw hair? it looks so pretty.

omg haha i don’t have one! i wish i did tho. all of the brushes i got from deviantart, i’m trying to find the specific ones but they’re all elusive wtf. i’ll post them when i find them! for now, here’s a good guide to drawing hair, by airi <3

Nah nah I always knew you'd save him.....eheheeh.....THANK YOU FOR NOT KILLING BABBY SANTEEEEEEEEE DNDDNSKANW YOU WOULD HAVE HAD SO MUCH BLOOD ON UR HANDS AS ALL UR FOLLOWERS COLLECTIVELY DIE FROM A BROKEN HEART BUT DW WE DIDNT BECAUSE UR QN ANGEL....but I toooootally knew you'd save him... /sweats/

I’M GLAD U HAD FAITH <3 i know omfg i would’ve expected a mob at my house if i’d actually killed him. if i ever killed him i would just lay down somewhere and die. that’s it for me

Lou & molly almost always have teeth showing, do you draw them on each pic?x

no, only sometimes i’ve drawn them when i felt like their mouths weren’t matching the expression i wanted. but most of the time it’s just the pose.

is it too late to send 16k dollars to guarantee santi's inclusion in a loving home with loving friends

it is absolutely never too late to send me 16k i promise you that

I just bought school books for $550 who knew studying marine biology could be so fuckING EXPENSIVE

EWW WTF...i’ve been lucky and haven’t had to spend a ton on books in my college career (one time i even went to such lengths that i got access to free trial version of one of my school books in a pdf, screencapped EVERY SINGLE PAGE, which was more than 400 pages, just so i wouldn’t have to spend $70 on it. i love cheating the system)

waIT i never saw ur selfie where is it, must see

u could probably just search “selfie” on my blog and find it, or enjoy the ugly closeup drunk snap i posted last night

Hey guys I'm a happy trans man that has no mental illnesses. I'm fucking pissed about Trump's ban. And to any one that says it's logical FUCK YOU! I'm having flashbacks to don't ask, don't tell because this is the same fucking wacked up logic. I'm so angry, like I'm a human, yes I may require testosterone shots once a month but that's it, I even administer them to myself. I pay for them with my own god damn money so fuck you transphobic bigots who say this law is fair. It's not. WE ARE HUMAN TOO Also same anon that ranted. Sorry about that I'm just really pissed and I love and thank you for sticking up for the community. We love you and I love you. And you're right not all trans people transition. We all do what we want to. Some start on T or E and have the full surgery. Some just have top surgery. Some just do testosterone or estrogen. Some never do anything. We're all still trans and we're all valid.

YES ALL OF THIS, sorry i didn’t answer this when it was all happening. but askdkjfas thank you for this message, I LOVE YOU TOO, SO MUCH <333 and i’m glad you feel comfortable enough to voice this in my inbox. yes every trans person is valid no matter what they decide to do with their bodies <3

One of those old hot topic shirts that said " if Darryl dies we riot " but with santi instead of Darryl.

OMG LMAOOOOO NOW THAT’S A CONCEPT who’s making these i want one

your use of references and reaction pics and gifs fucken KILLS ME

Crystal anon here. I googled around my area to find there are none of those y'know, crystal, candle, incense, magic type shops. I have panic attacks when I go outside and I wanted to look into alternative stuff since I'm on meds and w/e. I wanted to know if you or friends had any experience or recommendations for buying crystals online like on etsy or amazon. How can you tell if they're real?x

ooooh ok. usually there are shops like those in cities or even in towns with like kitschy little promenades with independent shops. (i know there’s one around the town over from mine, which is so random lmao) i do have friends that have crystals but i think they mostly just collect them for the ~good vibez~ and don’t really look too far into the healing aspects of them. i would say first go with the one that coincides with your birth because those are the ones that are like specifically catered to you and strengthen your being. as for buying online, hmmmmm i mean i don’t really know any specific trustworthy sellers because i don’t have much experience with this, but definitely read the reviews! those will help you a lot <3

Hello could you please tell us how you edited the pic of rooney in that one post that the anon asked for the unedited version?

i honestly didn’t do much of anything that differs from my usual editing process! i made her eyes a bit bigger by using the clone tool, cloning the top of her eye and applying it a little bit farther up...if that makes sense. it’s hard to explain how to use that tool lmao. and i think i used the liquify tool to bring part of her eyebrow down to look more worried.

there's still a part of me that says she ain't dead and molly is just in a coma lmao end mE

OMFLDKGKJS yeah she’s not dead surprise. i WILL say there is still flashback stuff that will be revealed. well not “revealed” like molly’s death was revealed, like i just still have to showcase some things that happened afterward. because it doesn’t just end with molly’s death, there’s stuff after that as well :~}

I'm Mexican, have lived around Mexicans, have been to Mexico multiple times growing up, just came back from a family trip at practically the border between Mexico and Guatemala and never in my life have I ever heard the word "joder" i had to look it up xD (not hating or anything I just thought I'd mention it cuz I found it funny...lol) k bye...

OK NOT SURE IF the ppl you’ve been around just don’t curse or whatever but...joder is DEFINITELY something i’ve heard mexican people say before lmao

Okay so this is random, but i was telling my sister the name of one your characters in ur story (santi) and she kinda just starts singing his name, and she said "santi high, santi low, santi go." And im just sitting there, like woah.

LMFAO WHATKNJDSKJGD “woah” same

u gonna incorporate fis hat into a really like emotional sad thing in her story huh

oMG i wasn’t planning on it but hmm 🤔

Why no el chingo? NO ME GUSTA (I'm joking btw ily)

LMFAOOOO because i didn’t wanna have to defile my son by downloading the penis mod RIP

let santi grow out dem eyebrows 2kforever

omg he does let them grow out except for the little line he shaved in when he was 14 that never grew back RIP

in ur bio it says "kt" and i know why,, it means killing them as in killing off ur characters slowly i see u gurl

i bet this story was just an excuse for you to see the world burn. well done.

OMG i mean, that was definitely one of the side effects of it all. but really it was just that i NEEDED to get this story out after it had lived in my brain for so long.

ur dead 2 me

I... just.... can't... too much pain Y U DO DIS 2 UZ?!?!!!

#anonymous #nonsims #saviorhide #sunny answers

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j0sgomez-blog · 5 years ago

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By Michael Lanza

Some 200 feet above the shore of Tenaya Lake in Yosemite National Park, on the face of a granite cliff with a name that sets high expectations—Stately Pleasure Dome—I crouch and contort my torso and limbs to squeeze into a slender passageway barely wider than my body. Inside this claustrophobic “chimney,” as this type of formation is known in rock-climbing parlance, I start grunting and panting loudly enough for the sounds of suffering to reach my 17-year-old son, Nate, who’s belaying me at the other end of our rope, below the chimney.

“How’s it look in there?” he calls to me from the relative comfort of his spacious ledge in the warm sunshine.

“Pretty snug,” I call back with feigned calm, beads of sweat streaming off my helmeted head as I scrape, push, and claw my way upward, inch by hard-earned inch, centimeter by blood-letting centimeter.

I’m crawling up through the identifying feature of a climbing route named Hermaphrodite Flake, which literally begins a few steps from where our car sits parked beside Tioga Road, on the narrow strip of flat ground separating Stately Pleasure Dome from Tenaya Lake. Nate and I drove into Yosemite this morning, saw no other climbers on this hugely popular cliff, and decided in that instant to make Hermaphrodite Flake our first route on a planned four-day climbing trip in the park’s Tuolumne Meadows area.

My son, Nate, on Stately Pleasure Dome in Yosemite National Park.

I slither up the chimney behind the giant flake for about 40 feet to reach its exit hole, also just wide enough to push myself through the cramped opening—a scene that must look, to someone watching from the ground far below, like the cliff birthing a fully formed adult human. I then ascend more easily up the edge of the flake to a pair of bolts drilled into the cliff, where I can anchor myself and belay Nate up—getting my turn at listening to him grunt and pant.

“That’s the weirdest pitch I’ve ever climbed,” Nate says as he scrambles up next to me on a foot ledge. He describes how the chimney amplified my grunts and struggles—no doubt bringing stately pleasure to other climbers on the dome.

We linger for a few minutes at our little aerie high above Tenaya Lake’s waters, rippling amid colossal but immobile waves of rock domes and peaks. It’s one of the most breathtaking spots in Yosemite, and on another day, we’d find it difficult to leave this perch. But Nate and I arrived in the park just as this summer’s Ferguson wildfire, outside the park’s eastern boundary, blew up into a sufficiently large conflagration to send smoke billowing across the park. Our view consists of a ghost-like, gray landscape. We rappel to the ground.

I’ve brought Nate to a historical nexus of rock climbing in America to introduce him to multi-pitch, alpine rock climbing and help him expand his nascent lead-climbing skills.

Before the next few days are over, though, I will find myself at a point that every active parent with active, growing kids inevitably faces. And, perhaps just as inevitably for a parent reaching this crossroads in life, its arrival catches me by surprise.

Hi, I’m Michael Lanza, creator of The Big Outside, which has made several top outdoors blog lists. Click here to sign up for my FREE email newsletter. Click here to learn how I can help you plan your next trip. Click here to get full access to all of my blog’s stories. Follow my adventures on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Youtube.

Nate leading the fourth pitch on Cathedral Peak in Yosemite National Park.

Climbing Cathedral Peak

Early on our second morning in Yosemite, Nate and I stand at the base of the Southeast Buttress of Cathedral Peak, looking up at a daunting wall of gleaming, gray and cream-colored granite riddled with cracks and stacked flakes. It rises about 900 feet to the mountain’s arrowhead of a summit at nearly 11,000 feet above sea level. Vague memories pop into my head from the first time I climbed it, with a friend, when my son was almost two years old. I don’t recall it occurring to me way back then that I might return someday to climb it with him.

Two climbers in their twenties stroll over and say hi. They ask us where we intend to start climbing the Southeast Buttress; they want to avoid bottlenecking with us.

Nate below the Southeast Buttress of Cathedral Peak in Yosemite.

One of them looks at Nate and asks, “How old are you?” Nate responds, “Seventeen,” and the other climber simply says, “Awesome.” But I know what he’s thinking: Here’s this kid about to make one of the most-coveted rock climbs in the country, years younger than most climbers had even conceived that they would one day scale cliffs.

Ascending a wall of rock nearly a thousand feet tall is, I would imagine, a bit like eating an entire cow: You attack it in manageable bites.

We alternate leading pitches, with me starting, and both of us going about as far as our 70-meter rope allows before anchoring to the cliff and belaying the other up. With each pitch, we rise some 200 feet, give or take, watching the Yosemite wilderness slowly expand around us and the horizons creep farther into the distance. More distant mountains, more spires and serrated ridgelines come into view.

A multi-hour climb like this one reveals its magic not in how it challenges you to push yourself to harder levels of difficulty—for both of us, the climbing feels relatively easy, almost casual—but in the uniqueness of finding yourself on a soaring wall in the midst of a wilderness so stirring that it literally ignited an environmental movement.

The summit of Cathedral Peak feels like standing on a cloud.

I’ve had the good fortune of more alpine rock climbs like this one than I can probably remember. But Cathedral Peak is Nate’s first. Reliving the experience through his eyes and words, as he talks about each pitch and points out other cliffs and peaks and dreams aloud of future climbs, kind of feels like stepping back about 30 years.

I lead the last pitch to the top. Fittingly, Cathedral’s Southeast Buttress route culminates not in a bland, broad summit, but a thrilling block of stone maybe the size of a king bed, with sheer drop-offs on all sides. It feels like standing on a cloud. I wait for the moment about 20 minutes later—and six hours after we started climbing—when Nate reaches a spot just below me where we can see each other and he first spies the airy perch of Cathedral’s summit. His facial reaction gifts me with one of the visuals I’ll remember most from this trip.

Nate on the summit of Cathedral Peak, with Eichorn Pinnacle below right.

Two other parties that had reached the top ahead of me have now descended off it, so for a few minutes, Nate and I have the diminutive summit of Cathedral Peak to ourselves. The smoke from the Ferguson Fire, which has moved into the Tuolumne area and retreated almost with the regularity of an ocean tide over the past few days, now mostly hovers southwest of us, choking and obscuring Yosemite Valley but only making our panorama a bit hazy. We turn to scan every horizon, looking out over the other jagged peaks of the Cathedral Range.

Then Nate suggests we have one more item of business to complete today.

Eichorn Pinnacle raises a slender, sheer stone finger about a hundred feet straight up into the air, like a freakish growth on a shoulder of Cathedral Peak. We scramble to the base of it, minutes from Cathedral’s summit. Although evening is approaching, the weather remains perfect and we have plenty of daylight remaining. Nate leads the steep and thrillingly exposed pitch to the tiny apex of Eichorn. He beams when I join him up there and tell him that, in almost 30 years of rock climbing all over the country, that was one of the best easy pitches I’ve ever climbed.

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Nate, two summers ago, on the Lost Arrow Spire at Idaho’s City of Rocks.

Watching a Child Become an Adult

At his age, Nate really knows only the excitement of climbing—the sense of achievement in controlling and channeling one’s natural fears into a focus unlike anything we normally experience. I know that feeling well: It’s like erasing everything from your mind, and it’s powerfully rejuvenating.

At my age, I know all of what he gushes about and more, including climbing’s dark side.

But in Nate, I’ve witnessed a steady trajectory that gives me as much reassurance as is probably possible for a parent whose child dives into activities like rock climbing and whitewater kayaking—where the harsh truth is that not all risk factors lie within our control, and accidents can be catastrophic. In our numerous days of climbing together, especially over the past couple of years, he has plied me for all the information I can offer from almost 30 years of rock climbing. He has read instructional articles and learned all he can from the coaches of his indoor climbing team.

As with any beginner, at first, some of his gear placements were a little shaky. But he focused on improving his skills and has been receptive to my critiques. Most importantly, he’s embraced an ethic of safe, conservative decision-making.

Nate (youngest) and friends climbing six years ago at the City of Rocks.

What astonishes me has been the speed of his progress. Just two to three summers ago, he made his first lead climbs on single-pitch sport routes—clipping bolts, the safest form of lead climbing. Only last summer, he made his first traditional lead climbs, placing his own gear on crack routes of beginner difficulty. Just this past spring, he and I spent several days climbing together at Idaho’s City of Rocks, where he upped his game, leading trad routes of solidly intermediate difficulty.

Maybe that’s one of those common threads linking the parenting experience: We watch them grow physically and emotionally. We try to instill in them the lessons we believe they must absorb by the time they leave home as young adults. And during their teenage years, they achieve a rate of acceleration too fast for us to track—what you might call adolescence escape velocity.

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In some aspects of development, they suddenly rocket past us—they get better than us at something. It’s both a symbolic and a real and quantifiable advance, a representation of a kid’s leap from childhood to adulthood.

And as much as we know it’s not true—and that young person still has much to learn—it can feel like it happened overnight.

Nate and me on the Southeast Buttress of Cathedral Peak in Yosemite.

Climbing Daff Dome’s West Crack

Two pitches up a route named West Crack on Daff Dome, another backcountry cliff in Yosemite’s Tuolumne area, Nate and I stand on painfully tiny footholds of pointy rock where he built a belay anchor after leading the second pitch of this final rock climb of our Yosemite visit. I look up at the third pitch, feeling a bit uneasy in my gut.

Nate had volunteered to lead the first pitch, which he protected well with frequent gear up a long, diagonal crack—a pitch that, to me, felt harder than its guidebook rating when I followed him. At the top, he had said to me, “I was totally in the zone on that entire pitch. Nothing else in my head besides climbing it. I got to the top and looked around and remembered where we are.”

My 17-year-old rookie alpine rock climber had then led the second pitch after I failed at my attempt to lead through the steep and strenuous roof at its start. Nate solved the riddle of the roof partly by finding a critical, somewhat hidden handhold that I’d overlooked. And, again, when I followed, it felt harder to me than I’d expected.

Nate atop Eichorn Pinnacle in Yosemite.

Now, looking up at the third pitch’s thin crack splitting a nearly vertical, smooth face, I’m quietly questioning whether I have the stuff to lead it today.

That’s when the shift occurs in my mind.

There come times on the psychological and emotional journey of parenting when how we see a child takes a hairpin turn. I’m guessing it often happens when the child assumes an adult role, crossing a threshold that signals a 180-degree change in direction in the fundamental terms of the parent-child relationship.

In the dozen or so years since I first tied Nate into a climbing rope, I have been the arbiter of what was safe and appropriate for him (as well as for his sister, two years younger and also an avid climber). I have made the decisions. I have led the harder pitches, all to keep him safe.

Today, I’ve come to realize that old order in our little world has shifted. With a challenging pitch looming above us, an understanding washes over me that I no longer have to shield him. He’s the better person to lead this pitch—today, anyway.

“Do you want to lead this pitch?” I ask Nate. “Because I think you’re on your game today and I’m not.”

I can almost see the eagerness erupt from him as he says: “That’s exactly the kind of pitch I’ve been hoping to lead on this trip.”

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Nate, two years ago, climbing the Mountaineers Route on Mount Whitney.

So he takes the rack of gear and I watch him steadily make his way up the crack, sewing it up with gear. He takes a few rests on the rope, but never falls or looks shaky. When I reach him at the top of it, I blurt out, “Oh my god! I think we just got introduced to a Tuolumne sandbag!”—a term meaning a route that seems significantly harder than its rating. He laughs and says, “Yea, they call that ‘sustained 5.7 fingers?!’”

Then I add, “I knew the day would come when you’d surpass me as a climber. I just didn’t expect that to come this week.”

Humbling? Oh, yea, it is. Recognizing symptoms of my own gradual physical decline naturally breeds a little melancholy. It feels like a sort of Rip Van Winkle experience of falling asleep at age thirty and waking up to find you’re over fifty.

But my strongest reaction is pride—and an understanding that, like so much of raising a kid, moments like this are rare and special, and the period of time we get to enjoy them is fleeting. He’s a year from departing for college and an increasingly busier life. There’s no predicting how many years I’ll continue rock climbing. Always in the back of my mind lurks a sense of time rapidly accelerating. I cling tightly to days like this.

On the vast crown of Daff Dome, which looks like it could fit a couple of football fields, Nate and I search for a fixed rappel anchor to descend. Billowing wildfire smoke rolls in, obscuring even the closest domes. We laughingly trade war stories about the surprising difficulty of West Crack.

I know dangerous. Read “Why I Endanger My Kids in the Wilderness (Even Though It Scares the Sh!t Out of Me).”

A young Nate (rear) and his sister, Alex, rock climbing at Idaho’s City of Rocks.

Nate still has much to learn about climbing to continue practicing it safely, well beyond hard skills like placing gear. There are skills one can only acquire through experience—as the saying goes, we gain good experience through bad experiences. He will encounter pitches so difficult to protect that they scare him and force him to stay calm and make smart judgments. He will have bad days and discover that his progress does not follow a reliably upward trajectory—there are many potholes and frost heaves along that bumpy road. He will experience the temptation to push limits beyond what’s reasonable and prudent for him and his climbing partner; and I can only hope that, when that happens, he does the right thing.

In other words, as in every aspect of his life, as a climber, he will have to continue to mature.

I’m not sure I would have predicted this reaction two decades ago, but there’s nothing bad about seeing your kid get better than you. Besides, he still can’t hike nearly as far as I can in a day, or keep up with me on a bike, or ski bumps with me. I still have that edge—for now (and my slim advantage skiing bumps may disappear by this winter with both of my kids).

But whenever my kids do surpass me physically in all of those activities, it will make me feel nothing more and nothing less than proud and pleased beyond words to see them do that.

Tell me what you think.

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neptunecreek · 5 years ago

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FAQ about the Tech Projects Director Role

We're hiring a new Director of Technology Projects. That's the team at EFF that develops and maintains Privacy Badger, HTTPS Everywhere, the Certbot client for Let's Encrypt, and Panopticlick, as well as housing our Threat Lab research group. On top of building and coding, the team also includes EFF's public interest technologists, who use their deep understanding of technology to weigh in on policy, law, and regulatory fights in defense of users.

Since we published the job description, we have had many people reach out with questions about the role. We decided to publish our answers publicly, so that everyone who is potentially interested could have access to this information.

Please note that we are still accepting applications for the Director of Technology Projects role. However, we are starting resumé review this week and we strongly urge interested applicants to submit an application soon!

I am not sure I have all of the experience and qualifications. Should I still apply?

Yes, we think you should.

We get it—lots of people have imposter syndrome, or worry that they may have some of the skills but not every listed qualification. And many people have career trajectories that are complex and don’t line up with traditional paths. So we want to be very explicit: we want to have a chance to connect with you even if you don’t think it’s a perfect fit for some reason.

There are a few reasons for that. First of all, you might be the best candidate for the job even if your qualifications don't seem "perfect," because we also prioritize characteristics like good judgement, strategic thinking, a collaborative approach, and commitment to our mission—which are characteristics that aren’t based on any particular skills or work experience. And even more importantly, once you submit an application, we can start a conversation. It’ll give us a chance to know you, and you a chance to learn more about the job. Often, just getting into a dialogue can help us recognize where we can be flexible and make adjustments so that we can find a way forward that works for everyone.

And finally, it’s useful to submit an application even if you don't think you're a perfect fit because we never know what future roles at EFF might become available. It’s possible this particular role won’t be the right one, but maybe there’s another one at EFF that would be.

If you’re still really on the fence, you can drop a note to [email protected] and she or someone else on the team will be happy to talk more about your questions or concerns.

Is this position based in San Francisco?

This role is based in San Francisco, and that's for two reasons. First, the team doing the work is almost entirely based in San Francisco, and so we want a team leader who can nurture that team's community by being in the office where they all work. And second, the EFF's leadership team (which this role is part of) is based in San Francisco, and we value having conversations in-person, from brainstorming and dreaming up big plans to making critical strategic and policy decisions for the organization. All of this means that our office is a fun, intellectual interesting place where we like to think through problems together as a team, and we want this role to be a part of that.

For folks moving to San Francisco, we recognize it can be a big leap. That's why EFF is committed to supporting the staff members who relocate to the Bay Area for the job: we sort out a timeline that works for your schedule, we offer moving costs benefits to get you here, and we offer innovative benefits like rental assistance and home buying assistance to make Bay Area living affordable. We also try to be really flexible with our employees who have family in other places or enjoy traveling, so it’s not unusual for EFF staffers to take a week working remotely so they can spend time with family or explore the world.

Many people move to San Francisco sight-unseen for the EFF job, and end up falling in love with the city. San Francisco encompasses so many different communities that you’re likely to find a niche that works for you. For starters, the city has an incredible arts community, bike-friendly streets, and is surrounded by natural playgrounds for hiking, skiing, and more. Plus, the coffee is great.

Many, many EFF staffers took the leap of faith to move to San Francisco to work for EFF. Here is a bit of what they have to say about it:

“I moved to San Francisco 5 years ago, and I never want to leave. I’ve lived in New York City, Washington DC, and Seattle, but San Francisco is home. The city is alive, diverse, international, cosmopolitan, adventurous, and new. I think it is one of the most beautiful cities in America, surrounded by gorgeous California at the center of a world-changing industry. You never run out of places to explore, and you never feel like you’re missing something by not living somewhere else. It even has decent bagels and pizza.” -Daniel from EFF, moved here in 2014

“Since moving to San Francisco, it's been amazing to see how vibrant and active the art and music communities are throughout the bay area. The creative community is everywhere you look, it's literally spilling out onto the walls and into the streets. It feels like every weekend there's a festival, a group making zines for an important cause, and an endless amount of workshops being offered if you're looking to try something new. As someone who's been here for less than a year, I wasn't sure where to jump in, but I shouldn't have worried. Everyone has been incredibly welcoming and I've already gone to several casual art meetups to just sketch with other artists; this weekend, there's a picnic planned for sketching at the nearby regional park!” - Hannah from EFF, moved here in 2019

“I moved to San Francisco to work at EFF after eight years in Boston and NYC, and I couldn’t be happier with that decision. With rental assistance from EFF, my apartment here is three times the size of my apartment in NYC. I walk to work past flowers that bloom all winter long. My produce comes from the year-round farmer’s market near the EFF office and the lemon tree in my backyard. And I go hiking every weekend even without owning a car. As a lover of natural beauty and the outdoors, it’s hard for me to imagine a better place to live than the Bay Area." - Naomi from EFF, moved here in 2019

If moving to San Francisco is your biggest hesitation about this role, we encourage you to reach out and we can talk about it.

I’m not currently authorized to work in the U.S., should I still apply?

Due to the complexity, cost, and time involved with getting a working visa or permit, EFF can’t help bring in candidates from overseas who are not permitted to work in the U.S.

How many direct reports will this role have?

The role starts with two direct reports, both of whom are managers for the 16-person Tech Projects team, helping with goal-setting, personnel issues, and day-to-day tasks keeping projects on track. The main management task of the Tech Projects Director role is providing support, mentorship, and guidance to those managers. While there are two now, the number of direct reports for this role could grow to four over time.

If I take this position, what kind of support will I have?

In addition to support from the managers reporting to you on your team, you’ll also have a great deal of direct support from the Chief Program Officer (to whom this role reports) and the Executive Director. They are committed to making sure you and your team are successful.

Nobody expects you to walk in on the first day with everything sorted out. We expect there to be lots of learning and exploring—not just for the first few weeks of the role, but really for the first year. EFF provides extra help to new employees through teach-ins, chat channels geared toward new folks at EFF, and internal events.

How long will the interview process take and what is the process?

We see the interview process as a chance for you to get to know the team and ask questions as much as it is a chance for us to get to know you. You can expect there will be a phone screen, and then potentially a small interview with a few people from the hiring committee. The final interview takes place in San Francisco over the course of most of the day, and we’ll fly out final candidates who are coming from far away. This is a chance to meet directly with your future team, see the office, and do several small-group interviews with the hiring committee. You’ll get to meet and interact with folks from the Tech Projects team, learn about our benefits, and get to know the community at EFF.

In addition, there may be other skills-based assessments, if certain skills weren’t ascertained during the interviews. We end with reference checks.

What kind of things might come up during the interview process?

Our goal is to make the interview process as low-stress as possible. We don’t expect any applicant to have an encyclopedic knowledge of esoteric security concepts. Instead, we talk through the many different types of topics this role will eventually cover. Various topics related to our digital rights work—such as basic Internet infrastructure, web tracking, and encryption—might come up. We’ll also ask about your experience managing people and how you might handle various situations. There are also questions to help us learn more about your preferences in the workplace, like what kind of a working environment you enjoy and what you look for in a manager. We don’t think there’s any one right answer to any of our questions. We also don’t think that not having knowledge in a specific topic means you’re necessarily a bad fit for the role. Rather, we just try to get to know you and get a good understanding of where you happen to be right now, where you’d need to grow to fulfill the role, and how excited and ready you are for that growth. We encourage applicants to just be themselves and, if it’s possible, have fun with the process. You’ll have a lot of chances to ask us questions, so feel free to ask about anything you’re wondering.

Can I bring my dog to work at EFF?

Absolutely. In fact, we’re going to be sad if you don’t.

What are the greatest challenges of this role?

There are lots of challenges, but here are a few of the big ones we can anticipate:

Managing managers: How can the Tech Projects Director be supportive of two managers who are often dealing with complex decisions? Managing managers doesn’t mean jumping in with the quick and easy solution, but being willing to sift through complexity and create space and support for difficult choices.

Not getting distracted by shiny things: Responding to current events is part of our job, but constantly chasing the newest topic can lead to burn-out and ineffectiveness. This role needs to balance responsiveness with moving ahead on long-term goals.

Cultivating a diverse, inclusive, and resilient team: Hiring and maintaining a diverse technical team in the Bay Area has a lot of challenges, especially at a nonprofit where we can’t offer the salaries that big tech companies offer. We’ve made a lot of progress in diversity and inclusion, and we want a director who is deeply committed to that vision and can keep that progress going forward.

Helping EFF think strategically when faced with technical challenges: The new tech director needs to be scanning the horizon and helping us answer hard questions about how we can best use EFF’s resources to create long-term change for users.

Mentoring our public interest technologists: EFF pioneered the idea of the public interest technologist: someone with deep technical knowledge who specializes in weighing in on policy, law, and regulatory fights in defense of users. These technologists spend most of their time thinking, writing, and educating, rather than coding and building. We want to help ensure that concept continues to thrive within EFF, and acting as a mentor and support for our public interest technologists is a high priority.

Ensuring good communication among teams: This role is the glue between our Tech Projects and our other programmatic teams like EFF's legal team and activism team, so we’re looking for someone who can build bridges, systems, and relationships that are rooted in good communication.

Keeping an eye on many different projects: The docket of things Tech Projects works on is very broad, and this role is key to being able to connect them to our big picture-strategy.

What is it like to work on the Tech Projects team?

The Tech Projects team is a diverse group of engineers and technologists who are knowledgeable about many different aspects of EFF’s issue space, and who offer that knowledge freely to their colleagues. Not everyone has expertise in every area, and that’s fine; we see new challenges as a chance to learn and explore. It’s a supportive and curious team, where folks respect the expertise of their colleagues and where it is always safe to ask questions. That trust is really important, and something we want to make sure the next Director can continue to foster. We try to help each other on work projects and with research, and it’s also a very caring environment. Folks are genuinely invested in the well-being of their colleagues. While there is a lot of expertise on the team, there is also a lot of humility; most folks are well aware that we have so much still to learn, and that any new challenge will likely involve doing some research. That’s a big part of the fun for us.

There’s a deep sense of camaraderie on the team, and a sense that everyone genuinely wants their colleagues to succeed.

Interested in learning more? You can send in an application or read more.

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duaneodavila · 6 years ago

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Innovative Thinkers: Martin Felli, EVP, Chief Legal Officer, Chief Compliance Officer And Corporate Secretary, JDA Software

I had an opportunity to visit with Innovative Thinker, Martin Felli currently Executive Vice President, Chief Legal Officer, Chief Compliance Officer and Corporate Secretary for JDA Software, headquartered in Scottsdale, Arizona. In addition to being responsible for overseeing his legal department and management of all core legal functions for the company, Martin leads staff operations for JDA’s Senior Leadership Team. Recently, JDA announced that the SVP and General Manager of JDA’s Center of Excellence in India, Mexico and Poland with over 2000 employees would also report to Martin, giving him indirect oversight of a significant population of JDA’s employees and a larger seat at the executive leadership table.

Prior to joining JDA, Martin was General Counsel and Corporate Secretary of ECOtality, Inc., a company that provided electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure products and solutions used in on-road, grid-connected vehicles, overseeing “The EV Project” the largest US Department of Energy EV infrastructure project at that time. Before that, he was SVP and Associate General Counsel of Clear Channel Outdoor, Inc. and Senior Counsel for Home Box Office (HBO). He started his career as a Corporate Finance and M&A Associate at Latham & Watkins.

From a humble, hard-working start as a financial printer, Martin Felli has navigated an impressive career trajectory to the executive team in one of America’s leading companies and recognition as an innovative legal industry leader. Here’s my interview with Martin:

MZ: Financial Printer? Tell us about that.

MF: My undergraduate major was in political science and I went to school in New York City. I went to school full-time and worked full-time at RR Donnelly, a financial printer. I took the job solely because it was a 4pm to midnight shift. That time was the sweet spot for me because I could go to school in the morning until about three and then jump off to work at four downtown on Park Place. I would get out at midnight and then walk to the subway station at the World Trade Center to get on the last train at about 1am. I’d get home at about 2am, crash and start all over again the next day. RR offered me several promotions which I turned down so I could maintain a schedule that allowed me to fit in my college schedule.

MZ: What led you to your current role? MF: After taking ECOtality through a restructuring and sale, I joined JDA Software and, as Deputy General Counsel, was responsible for key legal matters for JDA across the approximately 38 countries we operate. When my predecessor resigned from the company several years ago to return to the Bay Area, I was appointed Chief Legal Officer and jumped into the role with both feet.

MZ: How do you measure success in your department?

MF: We have various metrics that we use within the legal team to track including turn-around time for contract requests, contract signature SLAs, number of amendments for legal-related errors, meeting our goals and surveys. We also set goals at the beginning of the year that we track as the year goes along to ensure that we are performing in line with the goals that we originally set.

MZ: How is the legal industry changing?

MF: From an in-house perspective, legal teams are being measured and evaluated like business units from an efficiency and productivity perspective. Unlike in the past, legal departments are being more and more challenged to justify every element of their operations and activities. Like all aspects of business today resources are tight and legal teams are also being asked to do much with little which puts a lot of pressure for legal teams to become innovative and creative in the way they deliver service to their clients.

MZ: What effect will the use of big data have on companies from a legal perspective? MF: I think it will have a significant effect. Data is the new gold. How companies acquire and keep their data and the various forms of data they maintain from usage and trade data is already significant but will become even more so. The legality around the transaction of data is yet to be completely defined and will task legal teams across all industries and companies. From a user perspective, legal departments will turn to big data as they try to further become operationally efficient and prove their value.

MZ: What do you think is going to be the biggest game changer in the legal industry? MF: The use and application of Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the in-house environment, allowing legal departments to implement solutions to permit their clients to engage in self-help without having to involve the legal department on every item, such as NDA reviews and processing. This will relieve the in-house departments to be more proactive and embedded in our core business, rather than being consultants on day to day minutia.

MZ: What is your favorite technology right now? MF: Perhaps not my favorite but certainly the most intriguing technology is Virtual Reality (VR). You can literally take a lunch break in 10 minutes and go on vacation via VR!

MZ: What, if anything, is preventing you or your colleagues from implementing more legal tech and innovation? And how do you overcome this? MF: Things may be changing but the legal field has historically been one of the later adopters of technology. I believe the skepticism over some technology and difficulty of use has been some of the impediments to adoption. That said, the practical impact is being able to make the ROI case for technology when budgets are being vetted for value. I believe the way to overcome some of these impediments is through (1) a thorough and disciplined socialization process so that it is clear that the technology being implemented is going to move the needle, will be used and not left abandoned; and (2) a clear business case is made to the leadership along the lines of their organization’s priorities and values that will impress upon them the value to the legal team and ultimately the organization.

MZ: In a perfect world with no limits, what would legal tech look like?

MF: Technology that is easy to use, encourages collaboration, limits and frees individuals from the non-value add administrative tasks, integrates seamlessly with other existing technologies and delivers true realizable and trackable value.

MZ: What are the key metrics you track for your department and what do you see as your top areas for benchmarking with others? Do you see an opportunity to partner with outside counsel (OC) regarding any of these metrics or benchmarking?

MF: Turnaround time on contracts, number of contracts processed in a quarter, amount of disputes that are prevented, and so on. I would definitely like to work with OC to design new ways of looking at our services and creating metrics around them and helping us benchmark against others. We need better ways of tracking metrics and benchmarking against other law departments.

MZ: How are data and metrics changing the decision-making process in legal, if in fact they are?

MF: It is helping us with our decision making on where to focus resources, how to react to matters and how to support initiatives that are proposed to the organization. As we look across our various offices, we use data that comes in from deal-flow activity to determine and assess which legal resources to leverage for certain markets. We’ve also used data and metrics in our hiring to assess legal resources needed in-house based on business growth and tools to help us assess partners’ FCPA compliance and key data points on selections for our alliance program.

MZ: What advice would you give technology companies playing in this space?

MF: There are no laurels to rest on anymore. You must keep an eye on the competition but more importantly you have to innovate and develop the capacity to change in a continuous loop.

MZ: What advice would you give law firms looking to grow their business?

MF: First, tailor your offerings to your clients – one size may not fit all anymore. Second, try as much as possible to understand your client, their business and operations and act accordingly – making them see you as a force multiplier will engender trust and possibly lead to a long-term relationship.

MZ: As automation moves attorneys up the value chain, what other career opportunities do you see for attorneys of the future?

MF: The great thing about being an attorney is that you have the foundation upon which many careers can be built. I can see attorneys moving into business, risk mitigation, operations and similar roles where their analytical skills and abilities will be valuable.

MZ: Some companies and firms are implementing diversity programs with teeth. How do you think this will change the industry?

MF: It will bring more creativity and differing perspectives into organizations that can only help propel many industries forward. Services and products will be better for it as the companies that create these products and services reflect more thoughtfully on the populations they serve.

MZ: In recent years we’ve seen the role of the “non-lawyer” gaining ground, including non-lawyers owning firms outside of the U.S. and the Big 4 getting involved in law. How will this change the profession?

MF: I believe it will push lawyers to be more creative to compete. That said, lawyers have unique roles that cannot be fully supplanted by non-lawyers and over time clients will realize the value that lawyers bring. Personally, I believe the high value work will always be relegated to lawyers for prudent consumers of legal services.

MZ: Now for some serious legal topics: if you were stuck on a desert island, what are the three things you’d want to have with you?

MF: Satellite phone (with a charge), thermal blanket, and atmospheric water-generation unit. I’d probably survive about a day or two with these things then after that, it’s anyone’s guess!

MZ: If you weren’t doing this, what would you be doing?

MF: Modern house designer

MZ: What inspires you the most in your career?

MF: Helping a leadership team develop strategy, deliver on goals, grow a company while increasing morale and building a strong culture that people want to identify with.

MZ: If you could take one “moonshot” for the legal industry for the next 3-5 years, what would it be?

MF: Harmonized legal regime to govern the ethical development and promulgation of AI and robotic technologies or worldwide harmonization of IP laws.

Monica Zent is an experienced entrepreneur, investor, businesswoman and trusted legal advisor to leading global brands, over a period that spans decades. Her most recent venture is founder and CEO of Foxwordy Inc., the digital collaboration platform for the legal industry. She is also founder of ZentLaw, one of the nation’s top alternative law firms. Zent is an investor in real estate and start-ups. She dedicates much of her time and talent to various charitable causes. She is a diversity and inclusion advocate, inspiring all people to pursue their dreams. When she’s not running companies, Zent runs distance as an endurance athlete.@monicazent

Innovative Thinkers: Martin Felli, EVP, Chief Legal Officer, Chief Compliance Officer And Corporate Secretary, JDA Software republished via Above the Law

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j0sgomez-blog · 5 years ago

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