#making use of that money to order some fine quality coats from the city for her and Uyu

[melkinpump]

A sketch based on @marshmallowprotection ‘s Cereus au (again) except we’re getting even farther from the source material lol

@suspiciouslybluemilktea talked about how it would be cool if the town was in a area with a very cold winter (don’t ask me about geography I have no idea if the area they’re in has those bc my only point of reference is that one Lucky Luc comic) and if the performers wore fur coats and since I am a degenerate I decided that if they wore more on top they could wear less under it! You can’t stop me

[thr-333]

Drastic Measures- Part 7

@daminette-december2019-2020

~Chill~

Wrote it all in an hour and 20 minutes just about? Not bad, not bad at all.

Ao3

First< Previous

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“Why! Why does it have to be so cold!” Marinette pulls on her coat tighter.

“Why did you come if you’re just going to complain?” Damian scowls, looking over the list they were given.

“Dick asked me to,” Marinette shivers, “Besides I need to get out and see the city, you said you would show me,”

“I only agreed to this because Dick insisted I apologize for trying to kill you,”

“You were trying to kill me?”

“... No?”

“Damian,”

“Fine,” He pulls off the sweater he was wearing, the one she had made him, “My bad, now keep warm,”

“My bad is not an apology,” Marinette chides pulling the sweater on, “If you didn’t like the sweater you could have just said so,”

“That's not-” Damina turn to see her smirk, tutting then turning back around, “You're incorrigible,”

“Your apology is accepted,” Marinette giggles skipping slightly to catch up, she takes note of how he shivers as a gust of wind blows through, “Hey you're cold now right? I have an idea,”

“I’m not cold,” Damian snaps, picking up the pace, “Unlike you, I have more discipline than that,”

“Oh please, you grew up in the desert right?” Damian glares at her, “What? You think I didn’t know anything? Maman not as good at hiding things as she thinks she is,”

“Be careful where you say that,” He warns, they walk for a little while more the temperature dropping. Marinette continues to keep an incredulous eye on Damian. After ten minutes he sighs, “What's your idea?”

“It involves me getting on your back,”

“Not a chance,” Damian tuts, “You could stab me in the back,”

“Literally or figuratively?” Another glare but Marinette just smiles under it, “Fine then, I’ll just take this sweater off and we can both freeze,”

“Don't be ridiculous,” Damian snatches it off her, “I’ll just wear it,”

And so he does. They walk for a while longer Marinette simultaneously congratulating and cursing herself for picking such a warm fabric for Damian's sweater as she shivers in the cold Gotham winds. Her teeth are chattering and they are still a long way off from their destination. Marinette starts to slow down, ever since she had become ladybug her tolerance to the cold was lowering, like how Adrien's eyesight at night kept improving; although she probably got the short end of the stick for that one. Her thoughts are interrupted by a long suffered sigh from Damian.

“Fine, we’ll do your plan,”

“Really?!”

“If we actually want to get there today, yes,”

 ---

 “This was your plan!” Damian shouts as they run down the street.

“It’s a great plan!’ Marinette clings to his back.

“Everyones staring,” Damian scowls, the sweater just big enough to stretch over both of them locking Marinette against his back.

“Then run faster!”

“Maybe if you stopped strangling me I would!”

“Oh please, stop being dramatic,”

“Why don't you start running and we’ll see whos being dramatic!”

“I could probably get there before you!”

“Yeah right, you-”

“Wait! Wait! Go back!” Marinette tugs, Damian lets out a choked sound stopping as he brings his hands up to remove hers.

“What,” He is unable to get her off with the sweater around them both.

“Pet store,” Marinette shimmies down, managing to get out with some difficulty, “Look how cute- wait,”

“Where are you going!” Damian calls as she storms into the pet store, he trails reluctantly behind her. Marinette walks right up to the desk slamming her hand down.

“Excuse me are you in charge of this store?”

“I’m the manager, yes,” The man raises an eyebrow looking up from his newspaper.

“Are you aware that the enclosure out there is filthy?” 

“Animals get dirty,”

“It’s a health code violation,” Marinette scolds, “You're going to make the animals sick,”

“Tt, she’s right,” Damian looks around the store, the rest of the cages in even worse condition, “Just what sort of business do you think you're running? These are live animals, you can’t even see into the fish tank at this point,”

“I’ve followed company policy,” The manger huffs, going back to the newspaper adding a mocking, “So if you want to take it up with anyone take it up with them,”

“Oh I will,” Damian hisses, before going to the other end of the store intently tapping at his phone.

“Ha, have fun getting bounced around the phones for the next ten hours,” The manager barks, Marinette rolls her eyes turning back to him.

“Look it may not be required by your employer but try to have some compassion these are living creatures, they look miserable,”

“Well then, why don’t you buy them if they look so miserable,”

“That's not the root of the problem and you know it,” Marinette reasons with the unreasonable, “You’ll just replace them with more animals, this place isn’t fit for that,”

She could just feel the negative energy coming from the place, a place of suffering for those who had no way out. Her magic had perked the animals up a bit but that wouldn't solve the problems at hand. Not that any of this seemed to get through to the manager as Marinette kept arguing. She brought up her phone and articles to help support her argument. Only finding to her disdain that the pet store franchise itself had a long history of animal abuse, that this was the norm, not an exception. They just threw money at any lawsuit that came their way and bribing inspectors.

“Why are you even working here if you hate-”

“Excuse me,” A new customer walks up, Damian close behind, “Could I look-”

“Do whatever you like!” The manager snaps, “Can’t you see I’m busy here?!”

“Do you treat all your customers like this? No wonder your not getting any business if the facilities alone didn’t scare people off,” Marinette finally snaps. Damian, dare she say looks impressed, which probably isn’t a good sign.

“You’re insulting me now?”

“I’ve been insulting you the past hour, nice of you to catch on,”

From there it devolves into a full argument. They rage while Damian and the other customer poke around the store, talking to each other. Damian keeps on making calls and Marinette wishes he would stop and come help back her up, he seemed just as disgusted with this place as she was. But whenever she sends a look his way Damian just brushes her off going back to his call.

The argument escalates. Marinette's magic lashing out, subconsciously sending the animals into a frenzy. Barks and howls ring out mixed with cat yowls and whatever noise the other animals can manage.

“Quiet down you!” The manager roars, winding up to hit a puppy yapping at him, Marinette moves just a fraction of a second too slow.

“How dare you,” Damian catches the fist, twisting the arm in a painful unnatural position, “You’re fired,”

“You can’t fire me!” He struggles in Damian's grip, who in turn looks completely unfazed by the effort.

“Actually I can,” Damina flips his screen around to show a contract, “I just brought the company,”

“You what?!” Both Marinette and the manager shout at the same time.

“Yes well, it was easy enough to get in touch with the president of the company, when I put in my offer he laughed me off,” Damian shrugs letting the shell shocked man go, “So I called in one of our best lawyers,”

Damian nods to the other customer, who nods back.

“She built a case for us compiling evidence from this store, thank you for full access by the way,” Damian looks smugly at the manager gaping like a fish, “Other lawyers were in charge of inspecting other stores and researching past allegations, and I had some working internationally look at the branches in other countries, the results were not flattering,”

Damian's glare turns cold and piercing. Marinette had been on the receiving end of that glare and would like to think she handled it better than this guy was.

“Couple that all with the declarations I recorded from you arguing with Marinette,” Damina inclines his head to her, Marinette nods kind of dumbly, “And we had quite the case to shut the business down, you can guarantee the Wayne influence and lawyers would prevent this all from being swept under the rug,”

“Wayne?!”

“Yes, and as you can imagine after we sent through the case file the owner wasn't laughing me off the phone, he agreed to my price,” The man was sweating buckets now as Damian advanced looming over him, “The contracts aren't finalized or signed yet but you can guarantee by the end of the week I will own this place,”

Damian leans over him as the manager tries to sink into the floor.

“So. You. Are. Fired.”

 ---

 “So are you going to teach me the glare that makes grown men pee their pants and run for their lives or do I have to figure it out myself?” Marinette teases, picking through the stocks in the back.

“You wouldn't be able to pull it off,” Damian shoots back, taking the bag she hands him, “An emergency demand was put out for new workers, they’ll be here soon to do this,”

“Oh no you don’t you little rich boy,” Marinette laughs at the face he makes, “You don’t just get to roll through here, throw some money at it and expect your job to be done, you took this company on so show a little responsibility,”

“I am taking responsibility,” Damian scowls, “I fully plan on improving this place,”

“What? By hiring someone to take over with the vague demands of ‘make it better’?” Damian sour look is all the answer she needs, “No way, this is your own responsibility and no one else's, so you need to take a long hard look at what's wrong and figure out how to fix it,”

“If I recall this all is partly your fault,” Damian stacks another bag where she told him too.

“If I recall I didn’t tell you to buy an entire pet store franchise,” Not that she didn’t approve, “But fine, I’ll help you out if you want,”

“I didn’t say that,”

“You didn’t have to,” Damian huffs and looks away, Marinette smiles and picks up a bag of food, “First things first, the food is horrible quality, it’s all filler with little nutritional value,”

“I’ll order new stock right away,” Damian takes out his phone, Marinette snatches it from him.

“Hold on now,” Damian gives her that little put off look she finds adorable, “You have to look at all the problems first then make a plan of action or you're just running around like a headless chicken,”

“Your point?”

“The staff are also underpaid, it’s not enough to live off and certainly not enough to motivate a good work ethic,” Marinette hands back the phone, Damian pockets it, “So before you go around firing everyone that's ever worked here why don’t you try changing the bones of the company then picking out the bad seeds?”

“Alright,” Damian concedes, “... You have a point,”

“Was that tough to admit?”

“The only excruciating part of it is your smugness,”

“Why hello kettle,” Damina gives her a light glare but she just laughs it off.

“All these changes are going to be expensive,” Damian frowns looking through the statistics the lawyers had sent them, “The company was already falling into debt,”

“It needs a hook,” Marinette hums, “Something new and unique that no other chain has…. I got it!!”

She brushes past him, going for her sketchbook and starting the brainstorming process.

“Would you like to share your epiphany?” Damian asks after about five minutes of watching her sketch. “An exclusive pet clothesline!”

“Oh boy,”

 ---

 “See I was right wasn't I?” Marinette finishes fixing the outfit onto Titus.

“I was under the impression you were going to make something vapid and ridiculous,” Damian deflects, looking at the raincoat Marinette had made for Titus, it fit him perfectly and worked well with his fur color as well, “This is at least useful,”

“Wow, that might be a bigger compliment than ‘it’s well made’ or is it?” Marinette cocks her head to the side, “Should I start a ‘Damian's compliments’ tier list?”

“Do not,” Damian calls Titus back to him, taking off the raincoat, “This should at least partly help make up for the new expenses,”

“What changes should we make first?” Marinette follows Damian inside, already sketching new designs into her book.

“There's no point in launching the pet clothes until the company goes through its rebrand, and that will take some time anyway,” They settle in a study they had commandeered to work together in, a sewing machine up near the window, “By the way whats your design fee?"

“Hm… make me a co-owner and we’ll forget about the design fee,” Marinette smiles as Damian doesn't immediately look disgusted by the prospect, “Besides If I recall this is partly my fault,”

“Fine co-owner,” Damian rolls his eyes at her, “I guess we’ll be drafting a new contract,”

“Make sure our shares are 50/50,”

“80/20,”

“Awe you’d let me have 80%”

Damian gives her a withering glare with no heat.

“50/50,” Marinette holds out her hand, “Equal,”

“... Equal,” Damian takes her hand, “You better design a lot of clothes,”

“Already on it,” Marinette holds up her new sketchbook, dedicated to just this, “Plus I’ll be part of the planning so let me in on it,”

“I was-” Damian cuts off glaring towards the door, Marinette follows his eye to see Dick and Adrien caught like deer in headlights looking at them with phones held up.

“Adrien!” Marinette starts towards them getting overtaken by Damian as they both start sprinting.

“Delete it or I destroy your phone!” He threatens, chasing them down the hall.

“Already backed it up to several computers!” Dick calls back, disappearing around the corner, the three yells disappearing into the distance. Marinette chuckles to herself, going back to finish up her designs.

--------

No tag list :P

[popatochisssp]

Hello Poppy! I hope you slept well! Here is the reminder you requested to create a mob au hc post like the cowboy post. Have a wonderful day!

Thank you, it’s finally time! I’m gonna put it under a cut immediately because having twenty skeletons makes every post with all of them automatically a long one!

Full disclaimer-- none of the boys are bosses, that falls on the monarch(s) of their universes... but that doesn’t mean they don’t have their own roles to play~

(Warnings: mentions of crime, drugs, violence, sex, brief sexism [probably not the way you’d think] and ableism, plus all the usual mob-tropes I may have forgotten to mention)

Sans (Undertale): He’s a...humble purveyor of items, quality goods produced economically in order to pass those savings on to the crafty consumer who might not want to pay full, exorbitant price for ‘name-brand’ luxuries... Yeah, he’s the ‘you wanna buy a watch?’ guy and he spends most of his days (strategically) wandering around the city looking for customers to hock knockoff, lookalike watches, wallets and bags to. The fuzz know him by name but can never seem to find anything to hold him on, so he’s mostly just a harmless nuisance to be shooed along elsewhere if there’s been any complaints. (He’s real good at making friendly conversation with the law enforcement and keeping all eyes on him, and frankly, if there were any real shady business going on somewhere nearby... well, the cops certainly wouldn’t know about it, too busy hustling him along down the street, now would they?)

Papyrus (Undertale): An upstanding citizen, unlike his brother who’s always in some little trouble with the law or other. He is gainfully employed at a fitness center, and he commutes there by car, because paid for his license to operate one and practiced his driving skills and saved up until he could afford a very beautiful, shiny car of his own! It’s a very nice vehicle...so nice, even, that he doesn’t like to drive it for...recreational outings with friends, in case the paint might get scuffed. That’s why his friends let him borrow their cars when they go out, and let him drive very fast (but safely!) all over the city, even at strange hours or by ‘suspicious’ locations. He’s certainly never seen anything suspicious going on, he just waits outside, and if he happens to keep a First Aid kit in his glove-box, that’s just taking precautions, isn’t it? Accidents happen, you know! (He’s the best getaway driver in town and he knows it, but plausible deniability--the less he ‘knows,’ the better.)

Sky (Underswap Sans): Just your average, ordinary businessman, running a nice little bar for average, ordinary folks of all kinds. Well... he co-owns the place with a buddy of his, Grillby, but Grillbz is a free spirit and a real man about town, so really most of the ‘running’  is down to him. And he loves it! So many people (monsters and humans) to meet and chat with and serve... human food and alcohol, of course. Monster food and alcohol isn’t legalized yet to serve to humans, and a black mark like that against his little establishment would be just awful. He adheres fully to the rules and regulations set forth by human governmental agencies, no magic in anything he passes across the counter, skeleton’s honor! ...Total bullshit, obviously-- he’s running a speakeasy for humans who want to partake in a little monster food or booze, because it’s not harmful to humans and that makes it an even stupider regulation than prohibition was. Grillby taught him most of the menu and cooks on the rare occasions he’s in, while Sky handles the liquid menu and keeps an eye-socket out for snitches and inspectors trying to catch him in the act. He’s never missed a rat yet.

Paps (Underswap Papyrus): He works at his brother’s place. In the back. Only part-time, though, Sky’s got it mostly buttoned up there, so Paps has a lot of leisure time to wander around the city, hit up his favorite joints, chat with friends--and strangers that can become friends, he’s a friendly sorta guy. And if he’s ever seen sharing a cigarette or two with one of those friends, of course it’ll be a totally normal tobacco cigarette, and no exchange of money or anything else incriminating about the interaction. ...Doggo is the one that does the deals, he’s got the Dog Treat supply and a client base that’s steadily starting to include humans--but since Dog Treats are classed as Monster Consumables and illegal to distribute to humans, in spite of being non-addictive, only mildly affective, and non-irritant to lungs, things get a little more convoluted. Paps hits up Doggo at Muffet’s (a wholly monster establishment) for the Dog Treats and a client list, ‘refurbishes’ the Treats to resemble cigarettes, and then meets up with anybody who prepaid for their order real casual-like to fence ‘em. He gets a little cut of the profits, and a discount when he’s picking up for pleasure instead of business--like a (slightly) more illegal girl scout cookie racket.

Jasper (Underfell Sans): Him? He’s just an average joe in all respects. He’s got a little auto shop, spends his days tuning up cars and bikes and such as the like, and most evenings out having fun with anybody else who’s out looking to have a good time--food and drink and maybe a little gambling, but small games, low stakes, for charity, yanno? Nothing illegal, he’d freely assure anyone concerned about the law. Yep, he’s a perfectly normal, law-abiding citizen...as far as anyone can tell. If he does a little work on the side, when specifically requested to, by perhaps one of his monarchs or one of the parties they’d approved to ask for his...services... Well, he’s certainly too quick and clean about it to leave any hard evidence behind, and he’s always far away from...whatever may have happened...with too many witnesses all in agreement that he was there and couldn’t have been anywhere else, unless he could somehow make it across town in the blink of an eye. (His side-gig is as a hitman. He keeps his shortcut ability very tightly under wraps to make for perfect alibis, and takes his targets out with magic bullets which he can disappear afterwards. If he’s ever somehow implicated in anything, he’s happy to point out to the nice officers that he doesn’t even own a weapon. They’re free to look, but all they’ll find is a set of knuckledusters he keeps on his person, purely for protection--and look how shiny the brass is, never even been used, officers! Guess they’ve got nothing on him, after all...)

Pyre (Underfell Papyrus): A law-abiding citizen. He must be--surely one can’t get more law-abiding than a lawyer...right? He actually does keep his (lack of) nose clean, but studying the convoluted mess that is human law doesn’t leave time for much else--even when your studies are funded by royalty and you’re given everything you need to open up your own practice as soon as you’ve passed the bar. Still, his skill and knowledge in arguing the law is very valuable and his services are in high demand, so he’s well-compensated for his chosen career and lives his life outside of it both comfortably and legally. His clients...are innocent until proven guilty and it would be an extreme failing of his duty to give any of them anything less than his best in the courtroom, regardless of their character, their associations, and what they happen to have been accused of. (Yeah, he’s a mob lawyer, used almost exclusively by Asgore and Toriel to protect them and anyone they send to him and all of their collective...interests. He respects the law, but values justice above it, so in spite of having a lot of clients who are definitely criminals in one way or another, he has no trouble sleeping at night.)

Mal (Swapfell Sans): He’s an accountant, nothing more, nothing less. ...For Toriel, of course, so he’s paid well for his services. And he has quite a head for numbers and figures, so he plays the stock market and does quite well there, too, smart investments and reading the writing on the wall, and all that. It’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for his very healthy finances and his lavish lifestyle--fur coats, fine suits, fancy cars, shiny gold pocket-watches-- it’s all expensive and almost over the top, but hey, he is the money-man and all the numbers check out. It seems that he’s just very good at handling and investing his capital, it’s no wonder the monster-queen herself hired him on... (He is, of course, running several money laundering schemes at any given time, taking all the less-than-legally-obtained money earned by constituents of the [former] Empire and layering it through official channels to make it look legal in such a convoluted, complex web that it doesn’t raise any significant red flags. He’s got his claws in a lot of pies, and he takes what he needs off the top to live a little luxuriously, with Toriel’s knowledge and permission-- a perk for the necessary service he provides.) Whatever else may be true, it’s a simple fact that he’s very, very good at his job.

Rus (Swapfell Papyrus): With the lucrative career his brother has, the lucky SOB doesn’t have to work a day in his life if he doesn’t want to, but he’s using the safety net to pursue his passion in art. Subjective as it is, it’s hard to say if he’s really any good, but people seem to like what he produces well-enough--not a household name, but people passionate about the subject might recognize his work and his pieces sell with at least moderate success. For all that it’s probably not going to make him famous or rich(er than his brother), he’s dedicated to his craft and regularly makes bulk purchases of his supplies, canvas and reams of paper and paint and ink and the like, to keep up his steady work and art sales. He seems like an altogether normal and down-to-earth sort of guy, nothing suspicious about him at all. (He’s a counterfeiter and works in tandem with his brother--they even hit a Bureau together to lift a set of plates for the one and only active crime he was involved in--and his art is just a really good cover for why he needs so much ink and paper and other supplies on a regular basis. He does love and care about his art career, that part’s not fake, but he’s also got a good eye-socket for detail and steady hands to replicate it, and if fake human money that looks really real can help monsters, he doesn’t really see why he shouldn’t.)

Slate (Horrortale Sans): He’s...been through a lot. All monsters have, really, but he was hit kind of especially hard and... Whatever Gerson, or Undyne, or whoever’s running things now up on the Surface are getting involved in...he doesn’t really want any part of it. He gets regular stipends for some unspecified ‘service’ he performed for the Queen, Underground, and while no human (alive) knows what that was, it’s apparently enough to live off of relatively comfortably without being employed himself. He has a nice little place with his brother on the outskirts of the city and he lives there quietly, peacefully. He rarely goes into town, just the occasional walkabout, stopping at restaurants or scoping out the architecture. (Part of his one concession to being left out of whatever illegal, mob-type business may or may not be going on: he needs a good mental map of the city and at least a few landmarks that he’ll definitely remember, because he’s the emergency evac should...anything...go especially south. The house phone doesn’t ring too often in the middle of the night, but when it does, he needs to know where he needs to be, and quick.)

Papy (Horrortale Papyrus): He’s, ah... not involved in any ‘business’ either, but he does spend a little more time out of the house, at the local hospital. He was allowed to make a study of human medicine and become a nurse by Very Special Exception--mostly due to some friends (or at least one) in high places, and some very backwards human attitudes about parts that constitute a ‘man’ and how a skeleton without any parts could perhaps be allowed into nursing--and he’s proven himself a valuable member of staff and even made friends with all of his coworkers. He’s happy at his job, and with his life, and returns home to his quiet, peaceful house every night with a smile. (He has a go-bag ready by the phone for those late night calls, though, full of healing items and medical equipment he may have subtly nicked from the hospital, just so he has everything he needs to treat a monster or a friendly human that may have gotten hurt...somehow...and for reasons they have no need to specify, can’t risk going to a doctor.)

Ash (Undergloom Sans): Just a poor street musician...or at least, that’s what most people figure, ‘cause he doesn’t dress too well and the trombone he plays while sitting out on the sidewalk looks like it’s probably the nicest thing he owns. He gets a couple bucks from time to time, but rarely any second glances, and that... That works in his favor. You’d be surprised how much people talk about when they think nobody’s listening (or at least...nobody important) and he can pick up a lot of interesting information of what’s going on in the city just by setting up in the right spot and waiting for folks to talk business. He’s pretty quiet when he’s not tooting the ol’ horn and great at blending into the background, and that’s made him the guy to go to when you want to know something--like how much somebody else knows, or if there are any plans in place for say, a raid or a sting or some kind. (Law enforcement is the worst about keeping proprietary information ‘proprietary’ when they think their only audience is some nobody monster bum sleeping on a bench...) He’s also got something of a whole information network going on with the actual homeless people in the city, since he gives great tips about places who are hiring or somewhere to get a meal or a bed for the night and he always gives his earnings from busking to those who need it more than him. He’s paid for the service he provides and he’s got a home to go back to, it just seems right that the music-money goes to help somebody else.

Yrus (Undergloom Papyrus): He works as a nanny for the Queen! Not too long ago, she might’ve opted to just stay home and look after her newly adopted child herself, while Asgore handled business with the humans, but... They’re freshly split now, and Toriel wants to be just as involved in things as Asgore as much as she wants to s l o w l y ease into being a full-time mother again. Yrus is the solution, already fond of little Frisk and a very warm and trustworthy soul who stayed bright even in the gloom of the Underground. He happily takes the job when asked and splits his time between supervising and caring for Frisk, and tutoring them in all the important subjects (math, history, magic, et cetera). He finds he has a passion for teaching and thinks he might go into that someday, when Frisk is older and Toriel has a little more time and confidence to no longer need him as a buffer. (Whatever it is, specifically, that takes up so much of Toriel’s time and keeps her out so late that he sometimes has to wait around well past Frisk’s bedtime for her to come back and ask after them... Yrus couldn’t fathom a guess and isn’t going to ask any questions. That would definitely be out of his scope as a simple child-minder and even if he knew anything, it would be an extreme violation of the family’s privacy for him to tell tales, which he’s happy to point out to anyone with a lot of questions for somebody so close to two of the Dreemurrs.)

Brick (Horrorfell Sans): He’s on his brother’s payroll. It seemed like the best way to kill two birds with one stone: he’s a big, scary-looking wall of bone who isn’t well suited to a regular-joe sorta job, and his bro’s a very high-profile guy who needs somebody big and scary-looking to stand next to him and be a deterrent. Nepotism, maybe, but they’ve been looking after each other their whole lives already and it’s something Brick knows he can do--he’d do it for free, but if King thinks it’s better (and safer) to have it as his job description, he’s probably right, so Brick’ll take the paycheck for it. King’s also very likely the only one who could stop him if he...lost control...somewhere out and about, so sticking close to him makes Brick feel better and hey, maybe they’re actually killing three birds with this stone of an arrangement. Still, he mostly just goes about town with King, standing around and watching his back and staring people down when he needs to while his brother carries on with his conversations and business. He hardly ever has to do anymore than that...almost never. (One of his favorite places to go is a little hole-in-the-wall craft shop, where King always pretends to take longer than he needs so Brick can peruse the yarn and try to pick up a little sign language from the nice old deaf lady who owns the place.)

King (Horrorfell Papyrus): Yes, yes, he’s very high profile--he did lead monsterkind for a time, getting everyone up to the Surface and settled there--but he’s since stepped down. He’s retired, and anything his successor may be involved in... surely, he couldn’t say. He and Toriel are barely in contact and the money he receives from her on the regular is a gift of goodwill, mostly for medical expenses (his leg, and his brother’s...well). All he does these days is collect for a charity, a pet project of his, Monster Reparations. Lots of people give such generous donations when he goes around to ask for them, maybe impressed a little by his fame, but he can’t feel too terribly about using it for such a worthy cause... (It’s a thinly veiled protection racket and the people and businesses who buy into it tend not to fall victim to ‘mysterious’ criminal activity. Toriel may be officially calling the shots now, but King, as the monster who put her back there, is in a very unique position of power in having her ear, an unofficial underboss totally off the books. Some ‘donate’ more than necessary when he comes collecting, hoping to earn preferential treatment, and sometimes they get it and sometimes they don’t--it’s entirely down to King’s opinion of them personally. ...The old woman who runs the craft store pays about half the going rate, and the immigrant who imports the miniature trees he likes gets a heavy discount, too. The deli-owner he overheard hurling discriminatory epithets at a customer, however, pays triple. You get the idea.)

Merc (Horrorswap Sans): He’s a researcher. Highly confidential, he’s sworn to secrecy and even mentioning that he’s being funded by Elder King Shroomba is pushing the boundaries of what he’s allowed to talk about. Still, he has his own facility, and several assistants, monster volunteers and sometimes human ones--but they have to sign papers swearing not to talk about what goes on in the lab, too. From what they are allowed to say, the gist is just that it didn’t seem like anything sinister was going on; not even a blood-draw... Merc seems pretty happy to leave at the end of every day, though, and whenever it comes up, he talks very fondly about being able to finish the project. (He’s researching DT, specifically how it can be used to enhance monster physiology and make them more resistant to damage from intent. Merc’s misadventure with DT destabilized him, but from 1HP he’s now more durable than ever, and his second attempt with his brother had less dramatic but still noticeable and successful results. The king wants that safety net for more monsters, especially ones who are on the front lines of...potentially less than legal dealings...who could really be at risk. Merc is reluctant, but with the stipulation of informed, willing volunteers for DT extraction and infusion, he can’t bring himself to turn down the resources and funding to research his own condition and bring the possibility of being normal again ever closer. He still has a hard time with the idea of ‘enhancing’ monsters, but the fact that it’s at least being done safely, willingly, and with a whole team behind it this time helps a lot.)

Ell (Horrorswap Papyrus): He’s in a wheelchair but not letting it keep him down, and he’s running a modest little newspaper stand on the corner--papers and magazines and cheap books--nothing all that special but boy, what an inspiration, good for him that he’s got a job and can run the place by himself! All kinds come and go from his stand, and sometimes he closes it up for a little bit in the middle of the day to take a...er...roll, with some people who must be friends of his, but he’s never gone too long, so nobody says anything to the poor guy about the inconvenience. He’s a dedicated businessman, or trying to be; won’t even let people help him with those heavy-looking boxes of deliveries he gets, and for a fella with no legs, he seems to be doing his best! (...The whole thing is a low-key smuggling operation and he is making bank off it. There’s a system of code-words in place related to the publications he sells for a ‘customer’ to indicate whether they’re buying or selling, and what--magic consumables, stolen/hot items, imported goods, the works--and where and when they want things to go down. There’s even hidden compartments in his custom-built wheelchair for some of the riskier stuff, because he knows no cop in their right mind would force a guy with no legs out of his chair just to search it with witnesses around. And that’s presuming any law enforcement were to even catch wise to his set-up, which he kind of doubts: he’s sly and subtle and even if he weren’t, he knows people see the chair before they see him. Why not take advantage of that?)

Pitch (Horrorswapfell Sans): He makes his living as a boxer, and a subsequent minor celebrity. Pretty much any match he’s in is an exhibition match--not just a monster, not just a little guy (...relatively), but a short skeleton monster who’s blind, wow! You don’t see that every day, that’s a spectacle! Plenty of ‘ooh’s and ‘ahh’s in the packed stands every night the sightless skeleton scrapper is in the ring and nobody can figure out how he bobs and weaves so well that he hardly ever gets hit. He loses some matches, that’s to be expected, even for a ‘normal’ fighter, but hey, people love an underdog story, so when he wins, it’s an uproar every time. (For his part, Pitch hates most of his ‘fans’ who think of him the same way they probably think of a silly little dog who learned a funny trick, but the fame in general, and the thrill of the fight... Those are enough to keep him in the ring. Just... maybe not quite enough to keep him fighting clean. He’s as dirty as sportsmen come and he and a few other monsters regularly play his own odds with the bookies: he’ll subtly use magic to cheat and stay in longer, or go down when he could easily keep fighting, whatever’s more profitable with the over/under from match to match. If he’s going to be a circus act doing what he loves, he may as well get hazard pay for his dignity... and y’know, a couple of idiots who think being able to fight is a ‘trick’ because you’re blind aren’t nearly so annoying when you’re being driven away from them in a luxury car, to your expensive house in the hills decked out with all the amenities.)

Nemo (Horrorswapfell Papyrus): He’s got a place he looks after, keeps things running. Just a small joint, nothing fancy, a little cabaret variety show type place--singing, dancing, drinks on tap, that kinda thing. After dark, some of the...performances... might get a little more risqué, stuff that titillates like burlesque and striptease, but rest assured, his permits are all in order and everything’s on the up and up. Nothing illegal whatsoever going on here, just a bit of singing and dancing and everybody having a good time. (Most of the performers are sex workers--monsters, but some humans too--and patrons can negotiate private shows or off-the-clock ‘meetings’ at their discretion. Nemo opts to not know too much of the details of what his dancers do when he’s not looking, for legal reasons, but he makes sure they have a safe place to do it, are paid for their services, and don’t have repeat problem-patrons if any slip through. Being one of the gentlemen running such an establishment in the city that doesn’t happen to touch or steal from or mistreat the performers, his place is the place to get hired if that’s your line of work. He’s mostly just happy to be able to provide the job security and the job safety for a group that really seems to catch a lot of hell up here on the Surface just for how they make their money.)

Sunny (Gastertale Sans): He’s a busy guy, bouncing around from place to place, job to job... Being so scattered, you might think he’d be having money troubles by now, but while he may not be the type to stick with one thing and stay there for a good few years, nobody who knows him would say he’s unreliable--he’s the type of guy that you can give him a call anytime and if you need help, he’ll be right over, and he’ll get the job done well, too! Of course he lives with his fancypants brother, and the King and Queen probably spot him a loan or two now and then, since they’re friendly, so all in all, no one really wonders how he makes enough money to live so comfortably. The answer’s right there in their face...isn’t it? (Yes and no. He is the kind of guy you can call anytime to get a job done, and he will do it well, but the money he gets from Asgore and Toriel is less of a ‘loan’ and more of a ‘payment for services rendered.’ He’s a cleaner, the guy you call to make things go away, things that aren’t supposed to be there: stains, papers, weapons, evidence... He’ll get rid of it for you, and if you need a convincing coverup or an alibi for...whatever it is that you weren’t there doing, he’ll take care of that, too. If somebody’s calling him up for his special brand of help, they probably just want to put it all behind them and forget all about that nasty business. He’s happy to facilitate--after all, what are friends for?)

Aster (Gastertale Papyrus): Like his brother, he gets on well with the King and Queen. (They both feel like they’ve known the monarchs much longer than they actually have...somehow...) But in any case, unlike his brother, Aster is very well-organized and thoughtful, so he’s a natural choice as an...advisor, of sorts, when monsters surfaced and it was...decided that perhaps there would be some...activities and...ways of doing things that...should remain unknown to the humans. Not unknown to Aster: he keeps track of everything, reminding the monarchs of little details they may have forgotten, pointing out things they may not have noticed, making educated suggestions for courses of action with likely positive outcomes based on past experiences... He’s the linchpin between Asgore and Toriel that makes them terrifyingly more efficient than they would be without him, a consigliere-equivalent who certainly isn’t a boss himself, but he has the bosses’ trust and their ears and that makes him a person of great interest. But...no one can get anything useful out of him: he’s loyal, above all, and much as he values truth, he also realizes that perhaps not everyone deserves to know the full truth of everything, especially not those who might use that truth to bring some sort of harm or misfortune to his friends...or to monsterkind at large. ...And trying to directly seize his extensive notes on the private and personal business-doings of the Dreemurrs is an even more doomed endeavor--he writes them all in a strange jumble of symbols that no one’s ever seen, and the code-breakers never have it long enough to decipher anything useful before its back in his hands, reclaimed quite speedily after unlawful seizure of private property containing confidential information. Lots of well-meaning law enforcement have their sights set on him as some sort of criminal white whale, but the simile is all too accurate-- they’ll never catch him, and even if they do, there’ll be nothing to hold him on. He simply has too many friends (and family members) in very high, very useful places.

[itsclydebitches]

A preview for the Roman Neo book came out. Did you read it? I didn't but I want to hear your thoughts on it.

I just read it now!

The preview gave us the first chapter and the initial interaction of the second, flipflopping between Neo and Roman's stories, much like BTD. I think Neo's chapter has more to discuss in it, so I'll focus mostly on that.

We're not actually seeing things through her perspective (theoretically — more on that below), but rather Trivia's, a girl turning eight the next day. The chapter covers her playing a game of silent tag with Neo after her mom and dad have gone to bed, accidentally breaking a vase and getting in trouble for it. Some of it is cute — I like the image of a young Neo playing games, including the floor is lava, and that she's presented as Trivia's "imaginary friend" — but the rest is a pretty standard RWBY setup. Honestly, Trivia's life feels like a carbon copy of the Schnee's. Her family is clearly quite rich, what with the Mistral oriental rug they're jumping onto, the expensive vase she breaks, a mound of birthday presents waiting, etc. Her father is some kind of politician, a member of the Vale City Council, and he tries to justify his explosive anger with how hard his work is, things he puts up with for his family. Trivia sees his "barely controlled anger" that later turns to "rage." He holds her upside down after pulling her from beneath the couch (her first instinct is to hide) and shakes her a bit before dropping her. Then he vaguely orders one of the women in the room to clean the mess up before going back to bed. Trivia's mother, meanwhile, is the more nurturing figure, but who inevitably gives in to her husband's temper. Her pushes for leniency fall on deaf ears and later, when Trivia still won't speak when they're alone, she flinches, gets mad, and leaves Trivia alone, repeating her husband's order to clean up this mess. She's kinder, but isn't able to control her husband's cruelty and, inevitably, feeds into it.

Sound like any other family dynamics we've seen?

The father — Jimmy — gets a side of ableism with his generally implied abuse. Interestingly, Trivia is mute with her father telling her to "speak up for yourself" (implying she physically can speak, but struggles emotionally to do so) and her mom, as said, eventually grows frustrated too and leaves when Trivia won't talk to her. I will say that I like that the text includes a communication board, even if both parents clearly don't like Trivia using it, and her muteness certainly introduces an unexpected dynamic. It's unlikely that we have two mute characters who just happen to have become friends (with one sneaking into the house and managing to hide from the parents behind a pile of presents for this whole conversation), so my assumption is that Trivia is Neo. Neo, as a young girl, is born Trivia to rich parents (the family portrait on the book's cover) and imagines herself up a playmate named "Neopolitan." Neo is just like Trivia — they're both mute, the text describes them mirroring each other while playing, they're both wearing fancy dresses, Trivia instinctively knows what Neo is "saying" — but she's better, more acrobatic, more confident, more rebellious... everything a sheltered, probably abused girl would want to be. In time, Trivia gains that skill and confidence (floor is lava makes good acrobatic practice!) and rebrands herself as her own imaginary friend. Interestingly, her mother (with brown eyes) flinches when Trivia makes eye contact with her, which one might do if your kid has mismatched eyes and you dislike that for some reason, such as it not being "normal," as they discuss in regards to her muteness. Brown hair and eye, a pink eye... and the last name Vanille. Ta da, with brown, pink, and white — chocolate, strawberry, and vanilla —you get the name Neopolitan, which Trivia eventually takes on as her real name from then on. (The sweets based name might also be a subconscious homage to her kinder parent — the mom's name is Carmel). We see at the end of the chapter that Trivia is giving in to "Neopolitan's" rebellious nature, grounding the smashed vase into dust, smearing blood on the couch, and leaving the room without cleaning anything up as she was told. All of this makes far more sense if we don't read the girls as two people, but one, with Trivia slowing coming into the personality she's imagined for herself.

I like the setup so far. Yes, it has its potentials for pitfalls in how Neo's mutism and "imaginary friend" is handled, but so far the only thing I dislike is the Schnee 2.0 dynamic, which just feels redundant. I got excited for a moment when the communication board came out, thinking that these might be good parents (good adults!) helping their kid communicate however she's most comfortable... but no. Sigh.

Roman, meanwhile, is a lot more straightforward and... it's fine? Not as engaging as the questions that Neo's chapter raises, but solid. We learn that he's 18 (presumably making him a decade older than Neo then) and that he moved to Mistral about a year ago. He's living on the streets and trying not to freeze or starve to death, camping outside a nightclub to find drunk victims to rob. The part of his chapter we get shows him stealing a man's wallet, pretending to give it back, and then threatening him so he gives up his coat and gloves instead (since the guy blew all his money at the club — the main attraction apparently uses her semblance to lure people in). We end with Roman breaking the man's knee anyway, despite his cooperation. It's precisely the sort of ruthless, street-thug, but obsessed with looking good while he does it (the coat is apparently very fine) that we would expect of Roman.

Detail I really liked? Roman apparently spent a long time practicing twirling his cane in front of a mirror — lol. Detail I didn't like? The night club performer whose semblance was “one of those special abilities some people had that often seemed like magic." How does one semblance seem like magic compared to others that apparently don't? They're all insane abilities?? This franchise still has no good distinction between the two.

Myers also flipflops between strong and weak writing a lot. We've got the strong "[The wealthy] held their noses so high, they didn’t notice what was right under them” when Roman robs the guy of his wallet, followed by the terrible "Have you ever wondered what it feels like to be a punching bag?" when he's trying to threaten him. It's a mixed bag. But I will say that these excerpts feel far, far stronger than what I was reading in BTD. Honestly, reading that I kept wondering why so many in the fandom loved his work, but if what I've read of Roman Holiday is consistent across the book and if that's closer to the quality of ATF, I can much better understand the interest. BTD may have been the fluke among three novels, rather than the rule. Which is great!

[shadowworks]

Observe: Part One

Pairing: Dabi x f!Reader

Warnings: Bloodplay, hair pulling, violent themes, dubcon themes. No smut in this chapter, but expect it in the next part.

Word count: 3.3k

A/N: This fic is written in third person, but it’s still DabixReader. I’ve always written in third, and it’s just my favourite style. I hope you enjoy! :)

Edit: @pleasantanathema THANK YOU BABE!! You made me a banner just cause you love me, and I’m so emotional! It’s wonderful and I love it!

(ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧

Summary: She hadn’t insulted him. Not intentionally, at least. All she said was he had Endeavor’s eyes—which to him might as well have been an insult.

But this was a lesson she’d learn the hard way with a villain like Dabi.

She’d occasionally receive a message from former clients on her phone, always someone connected with the criminal network. On the occasion, if she needed more income she’d accept a brightly lit offer on her screen, tapping her thumbs in a quick reply. But for the most part, she managed to distance herself from smuggling trades.

It was a matter of time before her name would disappear from the mouths of villains, from the prowlers who made use of her quirk. From the distraught beggars pleading on their knees for another loan. Subtly, she’d untie herself from the web she spun herself into three years ago.

Well, maybe. She hoped.

These things were hard to tell.

A shot of tequila ghost her bottom lip as she fell in thought. Her elbow perched on the glossy counter and a glass held between her thumb and two fingers.

The soft glow of violet lights filtered from the ceiling and dimmed the room. People mingled at tables, peals of high pitched laughter broke out, a chair screeching across the hardwood floor - and she was alone at the bar counter.

It was fine. She wasn’t often among friends. There’s danger in her line of work, and for those reasons she didn’t try to be involved. Too much collateral damage and all that jazz.

The bartender crossed her line of sight again. He looked a tad confused at her vacant stare and full glass, but she paid him little mind. She stared on towards the glass bottles aligning the bar wall.

“You have no idea how easy you made this.” the voice had come from her left. She pulled herself from her thoughts, turning to a low voice.

There was a man there, sitting two stools down from her seat. He was leaning forward on the counter, long limbs crossed in a careless manner. He looked as though he didn’t want to be there.

Still, a shot glass sat in front of him, his liquor of choice a darker shade than hers. He just ordered. She hadn't even noticed him come up to the bar. Was she that lost in thought?

“What?” She eventually asked, squinting her eyes.

He wouldn’t turn his head and his stitched hand grasped the glass in front to leisurely toss back. The glass softly touched the polished wood upside down, soundless.

“You stand out too much.” He finally said. The black spikes of hair tilted down as he cocked his head to her, grinning a little too mischievously. There was an arrogance to him and it brimmed in a pair of bright teal eyes. “But I wonder if you like that.”

She smiled bitterly, raising her glass like a toast, “Depends who notices.”

She tipped the shot back in her mouth, feeling it burn the whole way down. She flipped her glass upside down and her features contorted. There was a loud clunk when she tapped her class to the polished wood.

The smuggler reached for a charcoal jacket laying on the stool beside her, before stepping off the tall seat. She hardly flirted much really, and when she did it was on more festive occasions diving three shots of tequila deep. It certainly wasn’t after a smuggling trade near the outskirts. But she’d admit, there was an attractive appeal to him. She just couldn’t place it. Maybe it was how he carried his shoulders? His high cheekbones? She let her gaze fall over him while she slid her arm into the sleeve of the jacket.

”If you’re suggesting what I think you're suggesting, I have to say no. You’re easy on the eyes, but…” She offered another half-hearted smile, while she strolled his way toward the exiting door. She didn’t plan on finishing the sentence.

He wasn’t deterred from his plan. He seemed to like that as a staple tugged the corner of his mouth, and his eyes narrowing slightly. Once she neared his leaning figure, all too sudden; a hand shot out and seized her wrist. She halted— her sight falling to her arm, then up to his face, startled.

“I am, huh?” The man in black stood at full height, pulling her forward to leer upon her features. “I’m not so sure you know what's going on in my head. In fact, I’m not sure you even know how much trouble you’re in .”

Her fingers slowly clenched in a fist, ready to flex in response if she had to. For now, she steadied her composure like she taught herself.

“Trouble? I-I’m sorry. I don’t know what you're talking about,” she said.

“I’ve heard of gem smugglers using their quirk for gain. They’re usually fake as hell, but yours look like the real thing. Maybe they are, but I imagine you wouldn’t want anyone hearing about this, would you?”

Her stare was pinned by his immediately.

He knew her secret.

He just wasn’t prepared for her to know his.

***

They sauntered through narrow side streets in the dark, keeping at decent pace. It was perhaps the easiest way through the city as they made their way towards a (tauntingly) vague end-of-the-line. His hideout, she guessed.

His name was Dabi, a member of the League of Villains. He revealed that much at the bar. It didn’t take long for her to cooperate with her own kidnapping once he whispered his burning threats.

Dabi kept her close, letting his shoulders fall back with hands in his coat pockets. He would sometimes steer her away from strangers nearing the same path though. He’d hold her by the elbow or the small of her back, making them look connected like they were a couple. She didn’t like this. She’d glare at her feet every time, and play the role of the upset girlfriend to Dabi’s facade.

When he did it again, she silently shrugged his heated hand off her arm. Dabi sneered.

“Oh come on, are you throwing a fit?”

She wouldn’t answer, preferring to glower at their striding feet. It was odd noticing they both shared a similar taste in black boots. Except hers hugged tighter and raised high to the knees.

Dabi waited a beat, tilting his head to look over her downcast features. When he found what he was searching for he smirked, glancing away.

“You’re embarrassing yourself, you know. Why bother pouting like a stubborn brat?”

”I’m not. I’m just...” she paused, breathing out steadily. She needed to remind herself to stay calm. “I still don’t understand your bosses reasoning for bringing me in.”

She felt a grip hold onto her shoulder, and she turned her head. Dabi’s nimble steps had slowed to a stop, and he twisted her body to face his. For a moment, Dabi let his hand stay on her jacket.

He said her name out loud and mulled it over briefly. It wasn’t every day some young crook was behind a scheme like this. In fact, the whole thing seemed interesting.

“Heh, don’t take this the wrong way, but I wasn’t expecting you’d have a pretty face.”

”What does that have—“

“I’ve heard your name mentioned around the gambling rings from time to time—”

“—And I haven’t sold anything to the gambling rings in over a year,” She said firmly, though her stare dropped to look anywhere else. She didn’t like the quirked smile he gave after.

“But you kept selling shit on the black market?”

”I was done with it. I made enough to keep me off the streets, and I left.”

”Right. That’s not what the Yakuza said.”

She snapped her head up. Dabi had struck a nerve.

”What does that matter? Why is Shigaraki kidnapping a has-been gem smuggler? You said it yourself—he doesn’t care about the money!”

She wasn’t expecting he’d reach for her face, and she flinched as warm fingers pressed on her temple, tugging on her eyebrow with his left thumb.

In the hairs of her brow shined tiny round quartz; clear and clean with three grown on each side. A manifestation of her quirk. Dabi might have mistaken them for a fashion trend if he hadn’t known better.

“Oh, but you do more than that,” he countered. The pad of his thumb began brushing against the hard gem in her skin. “They say you have an ice quirk, but that’s not it, is it? I think you can shoot these little guys from your body like glass.”

She didn’t answer him. She didn’t want to. All she did was study his face. He was scarred with dark burn marks marring the flesh. Staples pinned old wounds to his smoother skin...She didn’t want to know what torture he dealt with to be branded so cruelly. But it wasn’t what kept her staring. No, it’s just that his teal eyes managed to be the most startling feature about him. They looked rather bright, beautiful even. Something quite rare.

Dabi likely felt her gaze flick over his features a little too long as he released her. He must have made his point. And for good measure, he gave her a light shove to make her walk forward once more.

“You’re assuming too much.” she mumbled after catching her footing. She didn’t care if Dabi heard.

They still had some distance to tread, and eventually Dabi’s route led to a crosswalk. There was hardly anyone around, allowing the signal to flash a light green. Dabi’s palm found the small of her back again, pressing his fingers close on her spine. Her arms crossed over her chest in the moment, glaring off to the side.

But something caught her eye.

Her chin tilted up toward a tv, the illuminating screen was built into the skyscraper nearby. The video clips were from today’s broadcast; it showed a familiar man of fire. He was a Pro Hero; the best one in the business—well, now that All Might was retired he was. A massive man with fierce red hair and flame licking at his upper lip and clenched jaw to form facial hair. As he looked off in the distance from the camera, the quality lens focused on his cold and stern eyes. They were a bright teal.

She didn’t break her gaze ‘til they reached the end of the crosswalk. By then, something was reeling in her mind. She recognized a particular pattern in his facial features, or was it a coincidence? It must be. And yet. She took a concentrated glance up toward Dabi taking in the beautiful hue in his sharp gaze peering on. Then she glanced back ahead.

“You have the same eyes,” she said all of a sudden.

Dabi raised a brow. He didn’t fully turn to her, though he was listening closely. “Say what, now?”

“Your eyes. They look the same as Endeavor’s. You both have these handsome blue eyes and…”

She paused quickly, a slight heat tinted her nose—“You, umm, you don’t see that often.”

Dabi didn’t say anything, but his figure went tense at the arms.

“In fact...you really only see someone with the same  pair of eyes if they’re related, like,” She paused to whirl and face Dabi. Then, and only then, did she take in the silent rage creeping across his dark, narrow expression. In cold and stern eyes, she made a realization.

“Like father and son.”

It was silent as they came to a stop. She waited; waited on Dabi to disrupt the creeping tensity. She expected a fist to the jaw, or maybe an eager lick of flame on the offense. Something. Instead, Dabi settled and loosened his posture. His threatening features, which paused on her body swept away as they shifted ahead.

“Keep walking.” He said. He gave another push to her shoulder blade, hard this time. She did as she was told and took a couple stuttered steps but she wouldn’t let up.

“He’s your father, isn’t he?”

Dabi said nothing.

“He’s the number one Hero—but you’re a villain? Is he that terrible? He must be if he ruined his kid.”

Dabi said nothing, but his fingers twitched.

She was feeling spite rising in her throat. Her thoughts unraveled before she could think, and she smiled coldly beside him.

“And for what? Because daddy didn’t love you? Were you not good enough?”

She felt a hand grip her hair and a push. Then the collision of cement with a hard smack.

A bloody taste pooled in her mouth, spreading warmly on her bottom lip. Her cheekbone was throbbing, blindingly white throbbing. A searing pain flared across her inflicted wound and up to her temple.

“Ah no, looks like you tripped there, doll face. You really should be careful.”

Dabi was on her already, turning and slamming her back into the wall. Before she could register anything beyond her pulsing cheekbone, the villain squeezed one hand on her shoulder and the other remained threaded in her hair.

“Now, that was stupid,” Dabi said, his face leering an inch from hers, his teal eyes on full display.

Once the last spotty star in her eyes faded, she fixated on him, managing to crack a weak smile. Blood darkened her lip as she nodded, “Yeah, it was. It really was. I should have stopped talking.”

There was a small pull at his lips in amusement. For his own reasons, the fingers tangled in her locks tugged her closer. “You know, I was planning to wait until you settled in. But now I’ve changed my mind.”

His thumb slowly traced across her lower lip, coating his pad red. His voice dropped low, eerily casual, “I think I’ll fuck you here. Teach you a lesson on keeping your mouth shut, and minding your damn business.”

The smuggler’s stomach fluttered. “Wait, wha-!”

Dabi yanked on the mess of hair collected in his fist, causing her mouth to drop in a silent scream. He acted fast. His lips crashed down on hers. He was vicious, taking the air out from her lungs in a hard kiss. The taste of iron spread through their mouth, their saliva, and he inhaled harsh breathes between sucking of her tongue.

She could barely catch up. Every time she pulled back to breathe, Dabi chased after her lips, banging her head to the concrete behind. It was dizzying, hazy, though she did this to herself. She sparked a wild flame and he retaliated. He was pissed.

She felt him hoist her up by the thigh and he slammed her back to the wall a second time. She cried out. He crushed her mouth, which now wad smeared with sticky blood. He forced her to swallow her throbbing pain; she’d scream when he wanted her to scream.

Dabi was able to press his body between her legs. He rolled his bulge against her core, and her lips parted shakily as he hit the right spot. A tingling heat ached at her core. Oh fuck. His hand was burning at this point, it raked against her outer thigh, sinking his fingertips into her hips.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck! Her mind raced desperately. He felt good. No, she couldn’t do this. Not with the stitched up fucker who stole her from the bar.

Just before Dabi’s hand could hike up her tight skirt, enough oxygen flooded her brain to think straight. The gem smuggler flicked her gaze to the alley diagonal from them.

They lingered.

And then, her hand smacked the back of Dabi’s neck.

”Dabi, wait, wait. Let me say something, ” she breathlessly pleaded, allowing her forehead to rest against his. ”Dabi, I want--I want to say something.”

“Unless you’re screaming my name, I can’t say I’m all that interested.”

Her eyes slid shut, feeling his chest fall up and down against hers. He was stalling for breath, it was the only reason he complied.

“You were right, earlier. That’s how I made a name for myself in the blackmarket.” As she spoke, the tips of her fingers slowly crystalized. They took the shape of tiny claws, creeping forward little by little, “I made the gems by using my quirk.”

She listened as his breathing returned somewhat to a steady rhythm. There was only the sound of cars gliding down the road in the distance.

“Is that right?”

His burnt arm reached behind his neck and feeling his palm wrap around her fingers—she knew it was too late.

Her eyes snapped open to see Dabi smirking, “You must think you’re pretty slick.”

Damn, he was too fast. But then again, so was she.

“Well, it was worth a try,” she replied.

And she released her quirk.

Dabi’s ears perked at the cracking of glass, and let go before they slashed his palm, dipping to the ground—Shards of quartz shot out in a broken explosion. The gem smuggler fled.

Her boots pounded into the road as she sprinted for the shadows in the alley across the way, ignoring the shards littering down her body. Her pounding footsteps continued to echo through the darkness.

Dabi was alone when he stood up, teal eyes trained on the alley. What a little bitch. How irritating. But it was alright, he’d come for her. He didn’t mind playing a quick game of cat and mouse before he claimed her rough and bloody. Whatever choices she made, she would come to regret them.

Following after her, Dabi’s steps were calculated as he made his way toward the alley. He stopped to glare ahead.

“Run all you want, doll. It makes no difference.”

He picked up his steps and he ran without a sound.

She only wished she had learned that silence wasn’t her friend.

[caiminnent]

not designed for the cynical [kylux with side phasma/rey, rated T]

PROMPTS: communication suddenly cut off (@badthingshappenbingo​, 8/25) & bed sharing - pet - delivery (@kyluxxoxo​)

SUMMARY:

Whenever Snoke calls upon only Ren’s service, Hux sends word to all his relevant contacts that he’s available. The job offer he accepts turns out to be far more than he's bargained for.

(This is a low-key Inception AU that requires little to no knowledge of the movie.)

FANDOM: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy

TAGS: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Sharing a Bed, Mutual Pining, Alternate Universe - Inception Fusion, except not really, Armitage Hux Has Feelings, Kylo Ren and Rey Are Related

NOTES: This was written mostly during commute and/or sleep-deprived within an inch of my life and edited under the same circumstances. As such, I don't have the faintest clue what this is, but I love it.

5K || ALSO ON AO3

Hux isn’t prone to worry.

He is prone to stress, and he’s got the blood pressure to prove it—but that’s a necessity of the life they lead. It’s got its uses. Worry, however, is for when you don’t have an alphabetised, colour-coded list of plans for every situation that may arise. Worry is for the under-prepared.

Worry is a waste of time.

Knowing this doesn’t stop the fist around his heart from squeezing tight every time he hits redial and finds Ren’s phone still switched off, however.

Then again, there’s no real reason to worry about it. It’s a perfectly Ren move to go off the radar for weeks on end and turn up three countries away from where he was supposed to be, shrugging off all reprimand like he can’t understand why they’re so angry about it. It’s just what he does—he disappears, then he shows up at your doorstep when you least expect it.

He will this time, too. He promised—he will be back by Hux’s birthday.

----------------

Contrary to the popular (re: Ren’s) belief, life doesn’t stop just because Ren is off doing what Ren does somewhere else.

Even with all the safe houses and personas they maintain all across the world, the unreasonable amounts of money Snoke throws at them to be at his beck and call is more than enough to keep them afloat. Ren would be fine with not taking another independent job ever again; but Hux knows better than to rely on Snoke alone. He’s been burned enough times by fickle employers; he’s not ready to bet on the wrong horse and have to build his reputation up from scratch yet again.

That’s part of why, whenever Snoke calls upon only Ren’s service, Hux sends word to all his relevant contacts that he’s available. It keeps him in the game, on the occasion he gets an offer worth considering—and if he doesn’t, he calls it getting a feel for the market and moves on.

Monday morning finds him curled on the sofa, going through the responses on his phone. Most offers he received are below his notice like he expected, some downright insulting—and then there’s the e-mail from Enric Pryde himself.

He sits up so fast he almost knocks over his empty cup.

Among the dreamshare community, the First Order is as revered as it is despised. They reach out to very few and pay three times what they should; but the cost of failure is equally severe, growing proportionately to the project’s worth. Which seems to be a lot, in this case. While he can’t tell from the sparse details in the e-mail whether this Project Starkiller is meant to be a moving city or some sort of weapon—perhaps both, knowing the First Order—he already estimates at least two layers, more likely three, and a special blend of stabiliser for the dreamer and the architect both, who cannot be the same person for this design.

Because they want him on board as the main architect and his dreams never hold steady after the first layer, special blend or no.

Whatever he was looking for as a quick job, this is not it. It’s far more involved and challenging than he could have imagined—and, he’s finding, everything he needed. He could do this for himself. He could work a job he enjoys, instead of running point to Ren or Phasma’s picks all the time to keep them from working with incompetent point men.

Ren and Phasma, who might be working with incompetent point men halfway across the world this very moment.

No. No, he’s not thinking that. His birthday is only three days away. Everything is fine.

----------------

He e-mails back to say he’s honoured and asks for one week to get his team together. Pryde gives him five days and a thinly-veiled warning that there are others who would jump at this opportunity.

Stomach at his feet, Hux throws his phone on the coffee table and gets up to make more tea.

----------------

As expected, research gives him little of substance about the First Order’s operations and nothing at all about the Starkiller, although he finds a low-quality close-up of Pryde to glare at as he sketches out some ideas. They will get binned once he gets his hands on the self-destructing dossiers or whatever ridiculous security protocols the First Order may work with; but it keeps him busy. Better than watching the hours tick by.

When the clock turns from 11:59 to midnight on what is now Thursday, he considers texting Rey to ask if she’s heard from Phasma recently—changes his mind before he even picks up the phone. Ren wouldn’t like it. Hux has been accused of being a control freak more times than he can count as it is; he doesn’t want to add clingy to the list of his unattractive qualities.

----------------

At two in the morning, the doorbell rings.

He is going to murder Ren.

The door had never felt so close or so far as he rushes to it, heart hammering in his chest. He’s going to let Ren in, he’s going to check him for injuries and he’s going to disembowel that infuriating, thoughtless, selfish piece of shite if he’s had Hux fret all this time for no reason—

“Hi,” Rey chirps, looking up at him with damp eyes and a brittle smile. She raises a bottle of whiskey—Phasma’s favourite. “Happy birthday?”

He opens the door wider.

----------------

Admittedly—not out loud; he would never hear the end of it, from her or her cousin—Rey scores high on the short list of people whose company he enjoys. The booze helps, too. They drink in front of the television Hux hasn’t switched off in days and talk about everything but the aching holes in their chests.

She falls asleep on the sofa. He puts a blanket over her and goes to bed.

----------------

In the morning—practically afternoon, if he’s being honest—he tells her about the Starkiller. The plan was to pitch it to Ren first, to see what he thinks before bringing in the others. As it is, Ren isn’t here and none of Hux’s messages has gone through since their interrupted conversation and Hux is going to bloody explode if he doesn’t tell someone.

“I’m not sure, Armie,” she says around a spoonful of breakfast cereal he certainly didn’t buy. “He will never agree to work for the First Order.”

“Why the hell not? He works for Snoke.” Rather happily, in fact. Ren never prepares more carefully for a job than one of Snoke’s plentiful errands, no matter how simple. “Why wouldn’t he work for Snoke’s own company?”

She considers him for a long moment, chewing slowly. “He hasn’t told you the story.”

The implication—accusation—stings deep. “What story?” he demands, pushing his tea away to lean closer. The words held the intonation of capital letters, which means missing information that could potentially blindside them down the line. His respect for Ren’s private business isn’t greater than his responsibilities.

“Not mine to tell,” she says sternly, pinching her lips in disappointment like he should be ashamed to have asked to begin with. “Ask him.”

He snorts. Ren is hardly the sharing type, especially where Hux is concerned. Everything he’s ever learned about Ren has come through other means—and vice versa, he imagines.

She frowns, a question rising behind her eyes. He tenses on instinct. “Anyway,” she continues, shaking her head—and he can breathe more easily again. “My point is, if we’re doing this, we’ll need another forger.”

We. He doesn’t suppress his smile, relief coating his insides. “I suspect we won’t need a forger for this one. A chemist, on the other hand…”

----------------

She doesn’t leave and he doesn’t ask her to. They polish off the whiskey and pretend not to check their phones every ten minutes while binge-watching Star Wars, including the newest releases even their resident space nerd couldn’t finish.

He visualises Ren’s horrified expression when Hux reveals how he and Rey bonded over their shared love for big guns and hot villains in Ren’s absence. Laughter gets stuck in his throat, forming a painful lump instead.

He bids her good night and slinks away into his bedroom to stare at the ceiling.

Barely ten minutes pass before the television switches off in the next room, soft footsteps echoing lightly in the corridor. He turns his back to the door and feigns sleep as it opens and closes—which is a coward’s way, but he’s never claimed to be a particularly brave man. If he were, he would have asked Ren to stop working for Snoke instead of stewing in his misery right now.

Compared to her cousin, Rey’s weight barely shifts the mattress as she climbs in, sliding under the covers without fanfare. He shuts his eyes tighter and allows himself to imagine, just for a moment, that Ren is back.

“I haven’t heard from Phasma in over a month.”

Over a month? Hells, no wonder she sought him out. “Ren and I talked two weeks ago,” he says—realises with a sinking feeling that it sounded like he was rubbing it in. “Closer to three, actually.”

“What did he say?”

“Not much that I could understand. The reception was horrible.” Bits and pieces through constant breaking: Hux, shit, in case, person and, inexplicably, home. “I didn’t get the impression they were in danger—just inconvenienced.” As is often the case with these missions. Snoke’s got a small army of trained private security under his command and he still sends Ren to the most out-of-the-way places.

That Snoke’s hired Phasma as well for this one is a little more concerning, but not overly so. Reckless as they both can be, Ren and Phasma are forces to be reckoned with on the field—Hux would be more inclined to feel sorry for their adversaries.

Rey sighs. “Hope you’re right, Armie.”

----------------

If Mitaka is surprised to see Rey strut about in Hux’s shortest joggers she still needed to fold at the ankles and an old shirt, he politely doesn’t mention it. He and Rey exchange banal pleasantries over coffee and day-old cake while Hux finishes typing up his notes, then they get to work.

Mitaka listens to the briefing with unwavering attention, his fingers stapled in front of him like a front-row student. Like everyone else in their extended team, Mitaka is an experienced, accomplished dreamer—and yet, Hux can’t help looking at him and seeing the fresh-faced cadet Phasma had dragged in ages ago, barely into his twenties and all the more naive for it.

They’ve gotten old—Hux most so.

Once Hux finishes, “If you both are building this time,” Mitaka starts, looking between the two. “Who will be taking point? The Captain?”

Next to him, Rey inhales sharply, her face mostly hidden behind the curtain of her hair. Shame crosses through Mitaka’s face at the realised misstep.

“She’s otherwise occupied,” Hux responds before Mitaka can break into apologies. No need to make this more painful or awkward than it needs to be. “I will be running point as usual, and Rey is here to help with the heavy-lifting.”

Mitaka nods, glancing at Rey with concern before turning to Hux fully. “Where do I sign?”

----------------

They sign a heavily-encrypted stack of documents digitally, sending them through the First Order’s own communication system. The next day, they receive a link to a private cloud service with a convoluted unlock sequence that can be accessed by one device at a time, read-only.

Hux alone works on three different devices.

On the bright side, the project they receive is well-worth the inconvenience. Their objective is to design and build a superweapon out of an extensively described ice planet in the dreamspace, which must be capable of hitting five targets simultaneously and obliterating all affected life forms on them without causing a single non-predetermined casualty. Controlled chaos, if you will. The First Order wants a catastrophe they can tame and leash.

Hux can make it happen.

Whether he can make it happen in eight weeks is a different question entirely.

----------------

Without Ren to drag him away from work, he’s free to divide his waking hours between his screens and the sitting room, which they repurposed into a workshop-slash-dream den. While Hux is a decent architect in a pinch, he could never build the way Rey does—the way she bends the dreamspace to her will and creates cities that feel alive around them. Between the two of them, they have the groundwork laid out within days, quickly moving on to revising the base design according to the specifications in the main file and the numbers Hux runs.

Instead of using pre-mixed batches, Mitaka mixes their Somnacin from scratch on the kitchen table, reworking the formula per the reactions. None he comes up with works to keep Hux’s dreams steady, although a couple seem to ground his control over the dreamspace. Most just turn the dreams into nightmares for everyone involved.

Many of the nightmares are about Ren. Every time they manage to wake up from one of those, he looks at Rey to apologise. She never meets his eyes.

----------------

Unlike the two of them, Mitaka has family to return to and so he does when it gets late, leaving them to eat take-away and talk around the elephant in the room. On the rare occasion they do talk. Even though Hux gets the most shit for his workaholic tendencies, they all are guilty of it in different degrees; most nights are spent hunched over desks or tablets until they come close to shooting each other over the smallest noise or mistake, then they retire for the night.

The bedroom is where the worst fears come out.

“They might need our help,” she murmurs, lowly enough that the words could get lost among the howling wind outside. “They might be injured or—or lost, waiting for rescue. And we would be here arguing about heat transfer.”

“They aren’t.”

“But how do you know?”

He sighs loudly, turning to face Rey. Her eyes are big and eerily bright in the darkness, shining. “Look, Ren and I have been through this before. We’ve got contingencies in place for any kind of emergency—strategies to scarper and regroup as needed, fake identities with paper trail, codes to slip into lines of communication that will find their way to the other’s ear—all of which tied to systems that would alert us both if ever used. So far?” He gestures vaguely to his phones on the nightstand. “Complete radio silence.”

“Well it might be because he’s—”

His stomach lurching, “Don’t,” he bites out. He’s had enough nights contemplating that possibility himself, reasoning himself out of that line of thinking with more effort each time; he can’t handle someone else saying it.

Especially not Rey, whose unfailing optimism has seen them through many a dark spot.

“They will be back soon,” he says with conviction he forces himself to feel. They always do. This is just taking longer than expected.

Rey’s silence rings in the room.

----------------

At the end of the third week, Enric Pryde reaches out to him. His voice is as cold and serpent-like as he looks.

They talk for two and a half minutes—more accurately, Pryde relays his demands for two minutes and rebuffs Hux’s protests for the next half, then hangs up unceremoniously on him.

Fuming, Hux tries to glare a hole into his phone for about as long before going to wake Rey up.

----------------

“What do you mean, they are relocating us?”

Latching his fingers tight to keep from scraping at his already raw palms, “I mean exactly what I said,” Hux grinds out. “They want to move us into some safe house where they will provide us with everything we’ll need for the rest of the project. We don’t have the option to refuse their generosity.”

“They want to monitor us,” Mitaka says on the other end of the line, ever fond of pointing out the obvious. “Can they do that?”

“Would you like to be the one to tell them they can’t?” Hux shakes his head. They are not small fish; but the First Order is big enough to swallow them whole and not suffer for it. He knows to pick his fights. “If you’d like to drop off the face of the earth, now is the time.”

Rey snorts—as much of an answer as Mitaka’s bitter laughter.

“Well,” Rey says, scraping her chair back. “I should pack some clean underwear. When are they coming to get us?”

“As we speak.”

----------------

Before they leave, they make sure to sketch out First Order insignias on every available place. Just in case.

----------------

The safe house is, for all intents and purposes, a veritable villa in the middle of nowhere.

“A little excessive,” Mitaka comments as they tour the place, noting the bolted down furniture and darkened windows, locked conspicuously on the outside. The cupboards and the fridge are well-stocked enough to keep them fed for several months.

There is no mobile coverage.

In fact, there is no wireless connection of any sort. The multitude of devices strewn about in the house are all connected to the First Order’s own network and communications system, which provides access to every archive they might need for the project and nothing else.

The dread coiled in Hux’s guts grows heavier.

So much for his alert systems.

----------------

Progress is much faster with so much information at their fingertips.

Hux is envious of the berths of the First Order databases. Effective as his own methods of gathering intelligence are, his network couldn’t hope to have the same reach as a well-funded PMC—which he could have been a part of, had he not gone freelance instead of corporate after leaving the military.

The idea is tempting, still. He’s ruined for the civilian workforce—has been since childhood, with a father like General Brendol Hux was—but he seeks the structure and order that comes with being part of an organisation. Under different circumstances, he may have considered applying to the First Order after this project.

As their prisoner in everything but name, he wants little more than to be as far away from them as possible.

----------------

Everything they’ll need doesn’t involve a private chef or buffet, but it involves private delivery people who pick up whatever they want, no matter what they want, in a timely fashion. Because they are spiteful opportunists, they order the most extravagant and unreasonable meals they can think of. The food always arrives hot.

Hux marks the potential restaurants for each food item and how long it took to arrive on a small map every time. Just in case.

----------------

Sleeping in the same bed while Mitaka is in the next room feels too awkward, so they don’t. They don’t sleep much in general, either—not with the question of how to power a machine of the Starkiller’s scale without it overheating hanging heavy over their heads. Dreamshare mechanics are a lot more forgiving than their real-world counterparts; if they can’t pull it off down there, they sure as hell won’t make it work topside.

They have to make it work topside, they now know. The First Order wouldn’t have poured so much money and resources into what is merely Pryde’s pet design project.

“They probably have people looking into it,” Rey says, spinning her pen around her fingers with smugness dripping from her expression. He’s not petty enough to dare her to replicate it in the real world, but the thought is there. “Some super high-tech R&D division working on preventing a weapon of mass-destruction from exploding instead of, like, climate change.”

Watching her fingers like the secrets of the universe lie between them, “I don’t think so,” Mitaka responds. “It’s too much of a commitment. I bet they just wait for someone else to figure it out, then steal the designs from them.”

Something flares at the back of Hux’s mind like static, a connection he doesn’t want to make forcing itself into his awareness.

He shakes his head hard to clear it. Even with the dilation, he doesn’t have the time to dwell on things he’s got no control over.

“If you two are quite done gossiping,” he cuts in, smoothing over the blueprints in front of him for effect. “We’ve got work to do.”

----------------

We’re going to take something someone else worked very hard for, was all Ren had said the night before his departure—the only time Hux dared ask about his new job, once it became apparent Ren wasn’t going to say a word about it on his own. It’s such a non-answer that Hux couldn’t tell if Ren wanted to leave him space for plausible deniability or simply didn’t want to tell him.

He still can’t. As a matter of fact, he can’t say for sure Snoke’s job and this project are connected, either; all he’s got is a hunch.

A hunch he desperately wants to see proven wrong.

----------------

Mitaka’s newest blend is the most successful yet. They go down as far as the third level with only minor tremors under their feet—a huge leap of progress, after weeks of the ground swallowing them up whole.

Knowing better than to push their luck, they call it an early night and celebrate by ordering a feast they’ll have to take their time with. With the dinner table and every other horizontal space that could reasonably hold food covered in their work, they sprawl about the sofa set that hasn’t seen nearly enough use over their involuntary stay.

Once their food arrives and Rey realises what he ordered, a soft look crosses over her face. He ignores it. There’s only one place that serves Ren’s favourite food; it makes for a good reference point on his map. It’s not sentimental if it’s also practical.

----------------

He knew, from a logical standpoint, that having access to communication systems meant people could communicate with them and vice versa. On account of the fact that Pryde and the delivery people are the only ones to use it, he didn’t particularly care.

When the name Blysma pops up on the main screen, he realises what a gross oversight that was.

Heart at his throat, he accepts the request with shaking hands, grateful that no one is awake to see him like this. “Hux speaking.”

“Hello, Hux.”

Oh.

Oh, the ever-loving—

“Don’t say my name,” Ren adds quickly, as if he sensed that Hux was about to curse his name six ways to Sunday. “Or any other names. They don’t actively monitor your communications, but we’re pretty sure some keywords are flagged. Best not to take any chances.”

“We,” he repeats dumbly. So many questions are buzzing in his head that he doesn’t know which should take priority. “You and—ah, our mutual terrifying friend?”

Phasma’s melodic laughter rings through the other end of the line. Hux’s heart soars.

“Yeah,” Ren says, a little breathy. “Yes, we’re both here. And fine. The job ran late. Where the fuck are you?”

About that… “I don’t actually know,” he admits, the truth of it settling dark and deep into his gut. Trying to map out their location left him with more questions than answers. “Near the ocean. Far north of the city, I think; but we shouldn’t have crossed any borders.”

“That doesn’t narrow it down,” Ren says.

Irritation rising in him, “We were hardly given a tour guide for the road,” he snaps. You should have been there to take notes, is on the tip of his tongue—he swallows the words. Ren is here now, in a way. They’ve found Hux and the others. The insignias must have pointed them in the right direction; but figuring out how to contact Hux through the First Order’s own systems? That’s all their doing.

Taking a long breath to calm himself down, “How did you contact us anyway?” he asks.

“By calling in more favours than your sorry life is worth,” Phasma says, amusement lingering in her tone. He has never been happier to hear her mocking drawl. “So you had better give us something concrete to work with before we decide to leave you to rot there.”

Racking his brain, he takes a deep breath to ground himself. He’s got to focus. However Ren and Phasma managed to get into the First Order’s systems, they are unlikely to remain unnoticed for long. He needs to make the most of it.

The answer is so simple, he wants to smack himself upside the head.

“At noon, we will place an order for three servings of Bivoli tempari from the Hosnian. Track whoever is delivering it. They should lead you to us.”

----------------

He doesn’t tell the others about it. For one, he’s not fully sure his stress-addled brain didn’t make up the whole interaction—for another, they have a check-in with Pryde scheduled at 3, during which they’re going to disappoint him again with their lack of progress regarding the overheating issue. They are on thin ice as it is; he can’t take a gamble on the quality of the others’ poker faces and risk attracting Pryde’s suspicion.

At exactly noon, he contacts the delivery people and relays the order. In his periphery, Mitaka and Rey share a look.

Once he takes his seat again, “I thought the Hosnian was eat-in only,” Rey says.

Hux shrugs. “They said everything you’ll need.”

----------------

He orders something different from the Hosnian at the same time for the next four days, just in case. Mitaka is too polite to protest, despite the cuisine clearly not agreeing with him.

Rey eyes him suspiciously every time but says nothing, waiting for him to come to her instead of forcing an explanation out of him. He appreciates it more than he can put into words. He can only hope she understands.

----------------

Dying in an explosion ten times in a row tends to throw a wrench in group morale.

Unwilling to kill themselves just to wake up in the safe house, they wordlessly agree to wait out the timer. The burnout has settled deep onto their bones; Pryde’s implicit threats after every check-in don’t help their mental state, either. If Ren and Phasma hadn’t made contact, Hux might have considered taking his chances with a desperate escape attempt instead of sticking around to see what punishment the First Order would dole out for their inevitable failure. It might prove the better end, at any rate.

“I am going back to my children after this,” Mitaka says with more conviction than Hux has been able to muster up about anything in months. “I don’t care what happens. I don’t care if they kill me for it—I won’t die without seeing my family again.”

“We are not dying,” Hux reassures him. With three real-world seconds to the scheduled kick, he explains everything—Ren and Phasma making contact, the bare-bones of the plan and Blysma’s carefully vague progress update texts, the precautions they’re taking to keep Mitaka’s family safe should something go wrong.

Mitaka cries silent, happy tears at the news. Rey gives Mitaka a warm smile and pulls him close.

“That’s it,” she tells Hux, rubbing at Mitaka’s arm in sympathy. “I’m not letting her take a job without me ever again.”

Raising a brow, “You would be announcing to everyone in the community that she’s the best leverage against you,” he points out, not unkindly. He understands the sentiment—truly, he does—but it’s woefully impractical. Not to mention the kind of commitment it would take.

Her eyes gleam, smile turning secretive in that way he’s learned not to trust. Reaching into her pocket with her free hand, “I was already going to do that,” she says airily, taking out a small, velvet box.

Ah. Fair enough, then.

----------------

Hux is above lying to his employers.

Rather, he likes to think he is. Dreamshare, sophisticated as it may be at its heart, is an underground science—as such, it attracts a certain crowd. In a community where lying through one’s teeth is a survival skill, Hux knows to look someone in the eye and spin a tale truer than the truth as well as the next crook; he just prefers to tell the truth as long as it will leave his head connected to his body.

As it happens, this is the last scheduled check-in before the deadline. Giving Pryde bad news now would be signing their death warrant.

When Hux reports their success, Pryde smiles. The sight haunts Hux’s nightmares for days.

----------------

Blysma’s communication request comes the night before the grand plan, unscheduled.

His mind racing with possibilities, he grabs the tablet sitting on his nightstand before the notification wakes the others, accepting the request with, “Hux speaking.” As far as he’s concerned, there’s nothing left to talk about. Phasma has already laid out all she could of the plan without tipping off the First Order; a recap now would do more harm than good.

If this is about a last-minute change—well. Adaptability is another survival skill in their line of work.

“I missed your birthday.”

Hux blinks at the screen in his hands. “I—yes.” By a couple of months, at this stage. Where did that come from? Surely Ren didn’t realise it only now? “If you contacted me to wish me a happy belated birthday…”

“Of course not. I—uh, I called to hear your voice.” Hux’s lungs tighten, all too aware of his heartbeat. “Since we never finished our conversation.”

Their conversation. The handful of words Hux has been turning over in his head for months, to no apparent meaning or answer.

He’s bloody desperate to ask and finally, finally find out; but they’ve waited this long. They can be patient a little longer. “This is neither the time nor the place,” Hux says, as gently as he’s able, biting down on the instinctive Ren at the end. Now would be the absolute worst time for a slip-up. “Whatever it was, you can tell me tomorrow. In person.”

“That’s just it,” Ren mutters. “The last time I tried to tell you, we kept getting cut-off until signal completely went away and I thought, it’s fine. I’ll be back in a few days, I’ll just tell him then. In person.” He laughs, a breathy, bitter sound. “But then…”

But then Ren couldn’t get back until a few weeks after—and when he did, Hux wasn’t there anymore.

He clears his throat to get out the lump lodged there. “Then you’ll just have to be there this time,” he says firmly—his point man voice. “Because I will be, and I won’t accept any excuses.”

After a long beat, “Yes, sir,” Ren says, a smile in his voice. “See you on the other side.”

“Sleep well.”

[sepublic]

Tametru

          Tametru is the smelting and forging district of Xia. Materials and ores gathered from Voymari are shipped to Tametru, where they are melted and refined into proper forms to then be sold to Stelt and shipped elsewhere. Factories and weapons depots make their homes in Tametru, making it the industrial district of Xia. Just about everything in Xia is manufactured here, from silverware and TV sets, to weapons of mass destruction. Tametru is considered by many to be the heart of Xia’s industry, and even the birthplace of its industrialism as a whole. Constant molten metal flows and poor working conditions make it a hazardous place to live, and abandoned factories are often seized by the homeless. Steam vents are a common feature, dotting the landscape.

          It is not uncommon for workers to collapse from heatstroke due to the hellish conditions in Tametru- Attempts at strikes are always broken up by the Vahki, and with so many desperate for jobs, it’s easy for factory owners to simply replace dissenting employees with more loyal, obedient ones. Not only that, but workplace regulations are few and far-between, with not enough railing to protect against falls, factory-machinery openly churning and risking the deaths of workers, and even frequent incidents of molten metal spilling; Workplace fires in Tametru, the kind that aren’t planned, are all too common.

          Amidst the oppression, independent workers can still make their own profit. Smaller forges and other businesses make money by crafting specialized items, with the owners unable to afford the rent of Stelt, or else unwilling. These individual guilds and crafters hone unique, artisan skills in order to stand out against their mass-production competitors, offering work on specific requests. In order to better support one another, many of these independent smiths have formed the Forgers’ Guild; An organization of various craftsmen, artists, and blacksmiths who aim to teach others of their craft and spread the knowledge of smelting to others. The group frequently hosts conventions, charities, and is headed by the blacksmith Nuhrii. Members of the Forgers’ Guild recommend customers and potential apprentices to one another, and pool any money they have to ensure that others don’t fall behind financially. It is a code of brotherhood and community.

          Of course, some factory owners are suspicious of the Forgers’ Guild, and have pushed the Vahki towards breaking them up for various, inane reasons; Luckily, the Xian Upper-Class seems to appreciate these independent businesses. Many, either through proxy, or on the rare occasion of in-person, will contact and commission members of the Forgers’ Guild for exquisite, finely-detailed crafts and artworks to better suit their tastes in ways a mass-production factory couldn’t. Although the relationship between these nobles and independent smiths is by no means equal, it’s better than nothing- It’s not uncommon for some aristocrats to be so pleased by the individual talent of a store they commissioned, that they’ll offer investment and financial backing to allow the independent smith to expand and re-open in more opportunistic locations.

          Many blacksmiths with such patrons tend to gather in high-end malls, where crafters specialize in more luxurious items, such as jewelry, and sell their stock to wealthy Xians. Such areas are much more well-lit and ventilated, with refreshing AC. The purpose of these malls, other than to provide ready access to ‘approved’ independent shops and businesses, also allows nobles to freely shop for their desired wares in areas not deemed too unsightly or ‘filthy’ for them, like the rest of Tametru and its neighborhoods.

          Anywhere one steps or looks in the Tametru district, they can find some sort of factory, and the sky is clouded by the pollution and heat of the towering smoke stacks, meaning the district yielding the most heat, also yields the least light as well. Underneath Tametru runs countless underground tunnels, pipelines, etc., that transport molten metal, oil, and liquid protodermis. Many of these tunnels are abandoned and are home to either Xians or animals, such as the Furnace Salamander. Tametru is usually where trash and waste is dumped and/or burned, and soot frequently rains on the area. Cleaning crews are common, but underpaid. Any metal that can be recycled is sent to reclamation centers to perform the same processes, reincarnating into new products.

          The actual heat and flame used to melt down raw materials is often expelled from the various fire pits scattered across Tametru. Underground, powerful mechanisms convert energy into heat and flame that is distributed through the rest of the district through subterranean pipelines, powering factories, furnaces, and forges. Due to the massive heat expenditures, the scorched fire pits have been installed to allow this underground system to eject pillars of flame in order to cool down; While built to sustain massive temperatures, everything has its limit. The fire pits are closely guarded by multiple Vahki squads due to their importance to Xia’s industrial economy, allowing Tametru to remain functional; Individual Vahki units are coated with specialized armor plating meant to help them withstand the heat, with large cooling units attached to their backs. These Vahki also guard the areas where Xuan currency and coins are printed, for obvious reasons.

          The most massive fire pit of all is the Great Furnace. A massive furnace in Tametru, the largest of all, its powerful flames keep the city’s foundries ablaze, and it is where the heaviest and most ambitious smelting projects are held. The most massive ore deposits and hardiest materials, such as Bohrok, are melted down here to later be transported as molten liquid to refineries, where they can be cooled and molded into parts and/or bullion.

          Aside from simply manufacturing weapons, such horrific inventions are often tested in Tametru as well, in order to ensure product quality. Old factories scheduled for demolition are sometimes subject to some tests, which can bode unfortunately for homeless Xians who hide in such locations to escape debt and poverty. Specialized firing ranges to test the effects of powerful weaponry, such as the Hagah Plasma Cannon or latest model of Nektann, often buy metal scrap and hone it into sturdy walls to test products’ destructive limits. Unfortunately, those sentenced to death row are sometimes sent to these firing ranges as well...

          The Xian Heart factories are located in Tametru, where massive crystals comprised of Viruses are formed through immense pressure and other means. The crystals contain massive elemental energy that when unleashed can drastically affect the ecosystem, thus making the area heavily patrolled by not only Vahki, but also those who profit from the Xian Heart economy as well. At the very least, heavy safety regulations are in place in such locations, to prevent Xian Hearts from detonating by mistake; The potential cost to manufacturers would be far too great otherwise.

          Various models of Xian Hearts exist, such as the Heart of Fire, which scorches and melts down everything in its path; or the Heart of Stone, which has the power to fossilize and transmute just about anything in its vicinity into stone. Or for something a little cooler, try a Xian Heart of Ice; Its frozen crystals are constantly generating, although they are a poor way of cooling down forges and other factories. The destructive force of ice crystals and the sudden drop in temperatures makes these Xian Hearts of Ice ill-advised as cooling systems....

          To many Xians, their island home IS Hell... So naturally, many workers like to joke around that Tametru, with its burning temperatures, flames, and reddened skies, is the literal embodiment of this sentiment.

[enbyleighlines]

Wlecome back! I hope things are going well for you, I've missed seeing you on my dash as much. Can I prompt something Wen Qing related please? I would especially love her interacting with Wen Ning or Jiang Yanli, but when it comes to my girl I am not fussy (^‿^)

Thank you! You can absolutely ask for something Wen Qing related! I hope you enjoy this Wen Qing centric drabble~

STARTING LINE

Early September | Gusu University

The first time Wen Qing passed through Gusu, she had had her nose buried in a book, and had completely missed the opportunity to observe the city through the window of the carriage. Aside from one monosyllabic servant, 18-year-old Wen Qing was making the journey to Gusu University on her own. Usually, it was A-Ning who reminded Wen Qing to take the time to observe the scenery. 

A-Ning had wanted to escort Wen Qing, had even mustered up the courage to ask Master Wen about it, but his request had been denied. A-Ning was already behind in his arcane studies, and Master Wen thought it unwise to risk setting him further behind.

Logically, Wen Qing could accept that reasoning. Her beloved brother had always been unusually meek and humble; the very opposite of what a disciple of the Wen family ought to be. In her heart, however, Wen Qing could not help but miss her sweet baby brother. He was certainly a much better conversationalist than the morose maid sent to accompany her. 

Wen Qing very much hoped that the girl — she had introduced herself as A-Yang — would prove to be more interesting as time went on, as they would be spending the next three years together. 

But those musings would have to be continued at a later time. Wen Qing’s attention was finally drawn away from her book by the sound of the coachman urging the horses to halt. For the first time during the trip, Wen Qing pulled aside the curtain to peer outside. She did not know what she had expected from the most prestigious arcane university in the country, but Wen Qing was surprised to see rolling hills and little else. It was only when Wen Qing craned her head that she saw the corner of an actual building.

“We’re here,” A-Yang said, unnecessarily. 

“Yes, I can see that, thank you,” Wen Qing replied, trying to sound polite rather than sarcastic, and probably failing. 

Wen Qing didn’t wait for the coachman to open her door, and instead took that small duty into her own hands. When she stepped out, the first thing she noticed was the chill in the air. Wen Qing shivered, and drew her outer coat tighter around her. The next thing that hit Wen Qing was the silence. Gusu University was a place of study, true, but still. Wen Qing wondered if the silence was due to the fact that not many students had arrived yet. 

(Later, she would realize that, no, Gusu was always that quiet.)

When Wen Qing turned to take a better look at the building, she was struck yet again with surprise. It was unexpectedly modest, in both size and design. It was not ugly by any stretch of the imagination, as its simplicity gave it a certain charm, but in a world where magi families loved to showcase their wealth, it stood out like a sore thumb. 

As Wen Qing stood there staring at it, the front door opened, and a woman in a purple and pink dress stepped out. 

The stranger was just an inch shorter than Wen Qing, with a round, pale face, partially concealed by a curtain of bangs. The quality of her clothes suggested that she was a woman of high standing. And though her features were rather plain, she had a very kind smile.

“Hello,” the woman said, as she approached Wen Qing, “You must be Miss Qing.”

Wen Qing frowned, unable to hide her surprise. “I am,” she answered, dropping into a curtsey. And then, “I apologize, but I did not realize that someone would be waiting for me.”

“Oh, don’t apologize,” the other woman scrambled to say, “I should apologize. I should have introduced myself first.” She dipped into her own curtsey, and then went on, “My name is Jiang Yanli, only daughter to Master Jiang. This will be my third year at Gusu University. There are only a handful of female students here at Gusu, so I like to take the time to help each first-year get settled in.”

“Oh.” Wen Qing rolled that over her head. “So that’s how you knew my name,” she guessed.

Miss Yanli’s hand flew to her mouth in shock. “Yes, sorry,” she said, “I didn’t realize that would sound so suspicious. Like I said, there are not many female students here. And not much happens here. So gossip spreads quickly.”

Wen Qing nodded. That made sense to her. “Is that why the female dorm is so small?”

With a slightly embarrassed giggle, Miss Yanli glanced over her shoulder at the unimpressive looking building. “Yes,” she admitted, “That’s exactly why. It’s only recently that Gusu University has accepted female students. There are exactly one dozen bedrooms, with two students assigned to each room. And half of them have never been used.”

“Why not let every student have their own room, then?”

Miss Yanli glanced at Wen Qing, and then quickly looked away. She kept her eyes focused on the horizon as she answered, “The headmaster believes that students might be more inclined to misbehave if they don’t have a roommate to hold them accountable.”

Well, wasn’t that a vague, nothing answer? But Wen Qing did not point that out. It was clear that the very mention of the topic made Miss Yanli uncomfortable, and Wen Qing saw no reason to press the matter. Wen Qing had never shared a room with anyone before, but she was not so spoiled that she would throw a fit over being asked to do so, especially since Miss Yanli had been nothing but pleasant towards her thus far. Besides, Wen Qing suspected that Miss Yanli’s non-answer was an attempt at conveying a rude truth in a polite manner. 

“Where will my maid, A-Yang, sleep?” Wen Qing asked instead.

Miss Yanli smiled sheepishly. “The servants have their own separate quarters,” she answered, “They share a building with the school staff, which is closer to campus. Men and women are still divided into two separate wings, but they share a cafeteria and recreation room. I suppose, since they are adults, they can be trusted not to engage in... mischief.”

There was something about the way Miss Yanli had phrased that that made Wen Qing chuckle. It seemed that they shared a sense of humor.

“Quite,” Wen Qing snickered. She didn’t point out that A-Yang was hardly much older than Miss Yanli. It was not that the adult staff were more trusted, but rather that they were not held to the same standards. If Wen Qing was correct about “mischief” being a euphemism for something else, then it made sense that the headmaster at Gusu University did not care whether or not the staff and servants engaged in it. The purity of their souls was of no consequence to magi. It was the apprentice magi who had to prove that they were good and virtuous, in order to maintain the facade of moral superiority. 

There was a brief second of silence. Then Miss Yanli spoke again.

“Well,” Miss Yanli said, making a show of looking in all directions, “It doesn’t look like anyone else will be arriving soon. May I give you a short tour?”

Wen Qing curtsied. “You may,” she answered, half sarcastic and half sincere.

That got a small giggle out of Miss Yanli. 

Wen Qing turned to A-Yang, who was already helping the coachman unload Wen Qing’s belongings. Before she could say anything, however, Miss Yanli rushed forward.

“Oh, I’m sorry, let me help carry something,” Miss Yanli offered, “We can transfer the luggage to Miss Qing’s assigned quarters before the tour. That is, if Miss Qing doesn’t mind?” She then gave Wen Qing a wide-eyed look that only a sociopath could have denied.

Wen Qing was immediately reminded of A-Ning. It was similarly impossible to deny him anything, as soon as he pulled out the puppy eyes.

Beyond that, though, was the fact that Miss Yanli was making a point of participating in the kind of work reserved for servants. Wen Qing was not offended, like some other aristocrats might have been, but she was surprised. Of course, Wen Qing felt the occasional stab of discomfort when her servants performed tasks that Wen Qing could have easily accomplished on her own, but it was an easy emotion to ignore. A-Ning also insisted on doing his own chores, a fact that earned him no small amount of ridicule. For Wen Qing, it was easier to just go along with harmless little things like that. Perhaps Wen Qing did not believe that she was inherently superior to the peasant class just because she had been born into money, but the servants were getting paid to do their job, and as long as they were treated with basic courtesy, what was the harm in it?

Still, Wen Qing could appreciate a woman like Miss Yanli who, despite being higher on the totem pole than Wen Qing, did not consider herself above manual labor. 

“It’s fine,” Wen Qing said. She went to A-Yang’s side and held out a hand. When A-Yang looked at her as though Wen Qing had just sprouted horns, Wen Qing jokingly inquired, “What? I can’t just sit back while the daughter of Master Jiang carries my luggage, can I? Let me help, too.”

[fmdivy]

thirty days of development: ivy

Everybody needs a little poison ivy

+ Day One: Introduce your muse. Are they solo or in a group? What is their position in the group? Consider this day the day for writing the basics.

Kang Yumi is a vocal and dance soloist with Dimensions. Both her persona and real life personality are reserved, but that is where the similarities end. Yumi is kind and warmhearted. She is also demisexual, so any sexual encounters are only after she has developed an emotional connection. Ivy, however, is bolder. She is sexy, cold, and cool. People see her as something untouchable, even though that is far from the truth.

+ Day Two: Talk about your muse’s childhood. Where did they grow up? Did they have any dream jobs besides being an idol? When did they realize they wanted to be an idol?

Yumi was raised on a rice farm in Pocheon, South Korea. She has very humble origins and has never lost sight of where she came from. As a kid, all she wanted was to be a professional ballerina. Really, to this day, she would be perfectly happy being one. She really only became an idol because it was an opportunity to dance and to make money for her impoverished family. However, she loves it now. Really, it was the best accident ever.

+ Day Three: Take us back to when your muse was either recruited or auditioned to become an idol. How did that go? How did they feel getting up on stage for recruiters? If your muse could give their younger selves advice before the audition, what would they say?

Yumi was recruited when she was fifteen years old. She was doing a performance with her ballet class in her hometown and there happened to be a scout for Dimensions in the audience. Really, that was about as much of an audition as they needed. She was a very skilled dancer and also, in all honesty, she partially got recruited because she was just that pretty. Yumi would probably go back and tell her younger self that it would be okay, that all those hard times were worth it. Also, that being in love really sucked.

+ Day Four: Remember the trainee days? What are some of your muse’s memories of being a trainee? How long were they a trainee? Were they worried about potentially not making a debut? Talk about any challenges they might have encountered.

Being a trainee was a complicated time for Yumi. She was living in a big city for the first time in her life, away from her immediate family. Yumi was mostly very focused during her time as a trainee. If she wasn’t dancing or singing, she was doing homework. Her parents gave her aunt strict orders to make sure Yumi focused on her work because there was definitely a chance this would not work out. She hung out with a lot of the fellow dance obsessed people because they respected her dedication, but there was a lot of jealousy. Yumi was worried about not making a debut because that would have meant she wasted a few years she could have been auditioning for dance schools. She would have still been happy doing ballet. The biggest challenge for her was practicing her vocals because she had absolutely no vocal training beforehand. It was honestly much more difficult than learning all the different dance styles, which was a lot more natural for her.

+ Day Five: Recall your muse’s debut. What was the song they debuted with? How did it feel performing for the first time on stage as an idol? Feel free to bring up their thoughts about the concept, choreography, lyrics, music video, or other components. 

This is a bit of a complicated question because Yumi technically debuted twice. Her first debut was with Nebula (which has no official discography, though I picture it kind of Chocolat because underappreciated beans who had good intentions, even if it did not pan out well, and they deserve the love; my headcanon is they first performed Syndrome probably though). Her first time on stage as an idol was with the rest of Nebula. The concept was fine with her. She liked the music and the outfits, though they were not exactly teeming with star power. Her second debut was different because yes, Nebula had some sexier comebacks, but as Ivy, she was full on sexy. The dancing was hella sensual. She appreciated the fluidity with which she had to perform though. Honestly, she preferred her second debut. At least no one was trying to trip her during Irreversible. 

+ Day Six: What concept does your muse think they can pull off best? Cutesy? Manly? Sexy? What concept do they have a hard time pulling off? What kind of concept would they want to do at some point?

After having the same concept for a decade, Yumi does not have any complaints. Reserved and sexy is fine with her, though she is sometimes amused when people realize she is asexual. For Yumi, it is a part of her image as Ivy to be sensual. She doesn’t feel one way or another. Quite honestly, a cutesy concept would be very hard for her at this point. She is not very outgoing in that way and way too shy.

+ Day Seven: Which era is your muse’s favorite in their career? Why is it their favorite (think concept, promotions, choreography, etc.)? If your muse has recently debuted, talk about what they would want to do for their next comeback.

If we are discussing the classics, Yumi really liked the Full Moon era. She has never quite captured that otherworldly vampireness again. It was quirky and different; she liked it. Also the costuming was gorgeous for it. She is proud that a lot of people still consider it a bop. Of course, she has a soft spot for Gashina. The song was catchy and she appreciated the artistic approach they took. The choreography was a lot more fluid than she got to do in a while, so she has no complaints. Honestly, if she could incorporate ballet in a music video, she would be golden.

+ Day Eight: Talk about your muse’s strengths and weaknesses as an idol. Feel free to discuss their own personal thoughts regarding these components. Think of qualities such as vocals, dancing, visuals, acting skills, and variety show skills, for example.

Yumi is a decent actress. She has these moments of earnestness on screen that really make her shine. However, she doesn’t have the widest range. She can play bitchy characters or shy girls. That is about it. But, she is good at it and brings a maturity to certain roles. Her dancing and vocals are both very prominent, though she was a bit rougher on the latter earlier in her career. She will never be a rapper, though. Her variety skills are also non-existent unless it is based on performing (like King of Masked Singer). She is friendly, but just not the most compelling to watch joke around with the hosts. 

+ Day Nine: What is your muse’s fashion style? Talk about what kind of clothes they love to wear. To them, what is the essential thing to have in their closet? What is their favorite outfit?

Yumi was very confused about clothing when she moved to Seoul because yes, she had opinions, but it did not matter that she had opinions. She had to wear whatever her older sisters no longer fit into. Her preference is flowing dresses and wide brimmed hats. She likes summer best, especially now that she is not working in fields. She is also down to wear some plaid button downs and jeans if she has to do labor (but, she never really has to do that unless she decided to help her family when she goes back home because she is not a lazy bum). However, people very much want to put her in little black dresses or sparkles. She doesn’t mind. In the winter, she likes heavy wool coats because she gets cold very easily. 

+ Day Ten: Talk about your muse’s three closest friends. How did they meet? How long have they known each other? What do they love most about their friends?

Yumi is friends with a lot of people younger than her because they just gravitate towards this very friendly noona/unnie who is willing to help them navigate the entertainment industry. She usually meets them while acting or backstage at variety shows. She even makes it a policy to get to know her backup dancers and the trainees that dance with her. They are usually a bit excitable, but she thinks it is cute. She is also friends with people her age in the industry because old people need to stick together. Yumi is still close with her sisters as well, calling them whenever she has a chance. There are six of them though, so it is a bit hard to coordinate a group phone call. Usually, she has to go one by one.

+ Day Eleven: Has your muse had any scandals? How have these scandals affected your muse as an idol or as a person? If your muse has not had any scandals, talk about their views on scandals. Is all publicity good publicity?

Despite her image, Yumi has not had any public scandals. However, she got dangerously close when she became engaged. Off-screen, it was the first time she had ever given the company any sort of trouble. Sure, she was off a reasonable enough age to get married but her doing so would have killed the fantasy for many people. So, she would have likely have to leave Dimensions at the very least and rebrand with a new concept, unless she was willing to question the sexism within the industry. She doesn’t really hold people’s scandals against them unless they are less “I smoked drugs once” and more “Burning Sun”. For her, it is all about the product/effort you put into your work. If you are good at your job, why should your personal life be a big deal?

+ Day Twelve: If your muse is in a group, what are the fun things about promoting with other members? What do they love about being in a group? What do they love about their members? If your muse is a solo artist, what are their thoughts on promoting alone? What do they love about being solo?

Promoting with the other members of Nebula was never fun, especially since Yumi was always comparing herself to the others. She did not feel as talented as some of them at times, though, her hard work changed that. There is not a single member she looks back at fondly. Promoting was a nightmare and Yumi mostly just read books while they traveled. Or, she watched dance practice videos so she could incorporate her observations while practicing alone later. She does not mind promoting alone because she is such a reserved person. She wouldn’t mind spreading the attention on the actual stage, but she is so used to it at this point, she does not mind. Plus, it is admittedly nice to have no one impeding her spark.

+ Day Thirteen: For the muses in a group, what are the challenges of being one of several people in a group? Have there been any troubles that have come along with being in a group environment and times they wish they were alone? For the solo artist muses, have you ever felt lonely promoting alone? Do you ever wish that you were in a group instead?

Yumi sometimes wonders if she just got unlucky with Nebula because plenty of other groups are out there actually practicing camaraderie and supporting each other through all their comebacks. She really wishes she could have had that experience, especially when she has to lie in front of the camera about her time in Nebula. Honestly, everyone probably knows things were not good between her and the rest of the girls, but Yumi is not going to be the one to bring it to light. It was over a decade ago; it is time to move on. She likes being a solo artist just because it gives her a bit more versatility. They can play a bit with her comebacks and don’t have to coordinate with anyone else. She might get a little lonely promoting alone, but she has a real good crew to keep her company at least.

+ Day Fourteen: If your muse is in a group, how do you think they would have fared had they had a solo career instead? What kind of concept would they have? If your muse is a solo artist, how do you think they would have fared if they were in an idol group? What position of the group do you think they would have? 

Yumi has been a part of both so far. Had she been a part of a nicer group, she might not have strove to be as strong vocally (dancing was always going to be her main goal), but she would have probably been better adjusted for most of her life. If some type of  Unnies-esque group would form she would be down. She would have preferred a main dancer position in Nebula, but she was young and still had to learn. As a soloist, she doesn’t mind her concept, would probably not be against something more artsy. 

+ Day Fifteen: Who does your muse look up to in the industry? Why do they look up to this person?

At this point in life, Ivy is the one you look up to in the industry; there aren’t many people older than her within it. Though she has remained with Dimensions for years, she really does not think much of her C.E.O. (she has been a part of the Dimensions system; she watched a lot of people crumble under it, though she herself was never really a victim). She usually avoids his nephew as well because lord knows she will not be accused of dating the guy she basically works for. No, for her, it is all about Bang Sunyoung. She is an actor, a dancer, and started an entire empire. The two of them are not that far apart in age, so Ivy would kill to collaborate with her, though it would probably never happen. Honestly, had Gold Star Media been more established by the time Nebula had been disbanded and had Dimensions not offered Ivy a solo, there would have been a good chance Ivy would have found herself working for Gold Star.

+ Day Sixteen: If your muse could do a special stage with another artist or idol group, who would it be and why? What song would they perform?

Aside from her majesty Sunyoung, Ivy would enjoy doing a special stage with Lucid. She likes their darker concept more than their bubblier concept, and it would be easy enough to coordinate considering they are within the same company. Besides, she likes supporting her dongsaengs. She wouldn’t mind doing any of those singles since they are in fact very impressive dance numbers as well. But, she could also see them performing Full Moon or some type of mashup. 

+ Day Seventeen: How would your muse fare in a variety show? If your muse could appear on any variety show, which variety would it be and why? If you don’t have a lot of knowledge of variety shows, talk about what kind of variety show they would go on.

Watching Yumi on a variety show is an experience, for sure. She is great at performing, but is not the best public speaker. She needs practice and honestly, it is her least favorite part of being an idol. As an actor, she follows the lines religiously. So, she is never great if all that is involved is talking or being generally silly. She is good at variety shows that involve competition and less ad-libbing. Yumi would dominate in King of Mask Singer or Dancing with the Stars. She likely performed when Hit the Stage was on air as well.  

+ Day Eighteen: What entertainment agency is your muse a part of? What do they think of other groups and artists that are in the same agency as them? Which labelmates do they get along with the most, excluding group members?

Yumi is a member of Dimensions Entertainment, which has somewhat of a sketchy reputation for how it treats its trainees. She respects the other artists in the agency and likes to look after the younger idols. While she does like all the groups well enough, it is no secret that her favorite group is Lucid. They are newer than a lot of groups within the industry. Plus, she also respects that they are taking risks with their music and the complex choreography. If any of them asked to perform with her or to have them take her under their wing, she would do it in a heartbeat.

+ Day Nineteen: Is there anything besides idol activities that your muse would want to do? Would they want to take their hand at hosting a variety show or act in a television show or drama? Would they want to try out modeling or a musical? If they have done things such as these, talk about their thoughts toward these things.

Yumi became an actor out of convenience. She wanted to make sure she stayed in the spotlight long enough to make it to her next comeback. Really, if there was an idol option of doing ballet, she might have considered that. The only reason she did not do modeling was because she was sure she would have definitely been bored doing; also, she does not like using only her looks for anything. Her first role at least had a decent amount of dancing and using her skills as a vocalist. Really, that was probably why she got the role despite her lack of acting experience.  Since then, she has gotten better and is coveted for more mature roles. The genre does not always matter, as people just like that she is willing to step outside the box and challenge patriarchal norms.

+ Day Twenty: If your muse was able to be a part of a supergroup that comprised of current idols, who would they want to be in the same group and why? What kind of concept would this group have? How do you think the group would do in terms of popularity?

It might be interesting to do a supergroup full of other members of Dimensions Entertainment. She is fine with a co-ed one, but an all-girl group could definitely be empowering. The concept would be something dance based (because of course it is) and fun. Maybe a little edgy or experimental. They would probably not do many comebacks, but it could be interesting to keep the fans interested during breaks. Some group members would be more popular than others, but Ivy would look after everyone.

+ Day Twenty-One: How does your muse feel about their fans? How do they feel about sasaeng fans? How would they handle a situation in which they were faced with obsessive fans that followed them or invaded their privacy? If they’ve had problems with sasaeng fans before, how did they feel about it?

Yumi likes inspiring people, particularly women. Really, at the end of the day, isn’t that what part of her image is about? Much more than a sexy icon? However, she doesn’t really mind people being attracted to her. So, she is always probably kindest to her fans. However, she does not handle saesangs well. Yumi will not let anyone invade her privacy or her personal space.  She would probably deal with it in a mature manner, such as reporting it to Dimensions or the police. Maybe hire some protection if she was feeling physically endangered. However, she can certainly take care of herself if in imediate danger, she just would not want to do any damage to her reputation or her image. She has not really had any problems with saesangs so far, thankfully, but she has a feeling that is mostly because the company is good at handling it.

+ Day Twenty-Two: Talk about your muse’s goals that they have for their group or themselves if they are a solo artist. Where would they want to promote if given the chance? Do they want to do a solo album at one point? This can be any sort of professional goal.

Yumi would like to earn a Nation’s Title one day because that would be a sign that she most definitely made it. Of course, she would prefer if it was something based on her talents and not because she is super sexy. But, beggars can’t be choosers. She would like to promote in Latin America as Gashina had very heavy Latin vibes. She thinks she could do well there and the different cultures sound interesting. 

+ Day Twenty-Three: What is your muse’s thoughts on being an idol and dating? Are they against dating? Have they ever been in a relationship after debuting? If so, talk about the challenges that have come along with dating. If they aren’t dating, would they want to date?

So, because Yumi is demisexual and a workaholic, dating has never been high on her list of priorities. She never dated as a trainee the only dated very sporadically as an idol. To her, hiding relationships is just part of the job. They all know what they are getting into and need to be careful to follow those rules. Of course, she was engaged so she was fully prepared to accept those consequences. It does hurt her that sometimes, difficult decisions must be made. She is not currently seeing anyone seriously, as it never ends well. But, that is also the only type of relationship she likes. 

+ Day Twenty-Four: Who is your muse’s ideal type? Why is this person their ideal type? 

Yumi’s real ideal type is just someone motivated and kind to her. Her dad was incredibly respectful to her mother, so she could never be with someone who did not treat her as an equal partner. Younger or older, she is not particular, but she does consider herself an old soul, so that constantly gets in the way. In terms of attractiveness, she tends to focus less on physical appearance and more on the emotional connection

+ Day Twenty-Five: What does your muse want to be remembered for in the idol world? Do they want to be remembered for their vocal prowess? Their image? Their dancing skills? Their scandals?

Yumi is proud of how she has improved in her vocal skills over the years. She is good and she knows it. She earned it. However, if she were to pick one thing to be praised for it would be her dancing ability. She has worked her entire life to become the best dancer she can and has sacrificed a lot to do so. Looking back, she has spent the past twenty-something years dancing. It shows and she wants to be recognized for it. If she is also praised for her female empowerment that would be the icing on the cake. She definitely does not want to be known as someone with a lot of scandals. That would hurt her deeply, because she worked so hard to remain in line and to dedicate herself to her craft.

+ Day Twenty-Six: Does your muse ever regret becoming an idol? Do they ever think about what they would be doing instead if they lived a normal life? If they could go back in time, would they do everything all over again? Or would they end up doing something else?

Ultimately, Yumi does not regret being an idol. In her mid twenties, she did wonder if she should have stayed the course and become a professional ballerina. It would probably not have involved as much financial security and would have not given her as much mainstream attention, but it was her dream for so long. Now, she likes how her career turned out. For her, there has never been anything more important than dancing, so if she can continue to keep that up, she is fine with whatever career she has. When she was engaged, she did contemplate if she could ever live a normal life. She does want to get married and raise some children (even if say, she married a woman and had to fly to Taiwan to do so). But, she wants to keep working amid it all. Ultimately, she does not regret the decision she made to become Ivy.

+ Day Twenty-Seven: After working hard on promotions, your muse is given the chance to take a two week vacation anywhere in the world at any time they want, with nobody bothering them. Where would they go and when? Why would they want to take their vacation there? If they had the opportunity to bring three other people, who would they bring?

Yumi is not a very difficult person to please. She honestly does not know what to do with her time off, so she usually takes on an acting gig or a commercial or something, just so she can keep working. If she had forced time off, Yumi would go back to the farm to hang around with her parents and her siblings in the area. Some of them have children and she would love to hang out with her niblings. They seem to be the only people who know how to force her to stop for a moment and enjoy herself. She would probably end up helping in the fields anyways though. It would be considered a compromise. As for who she would bring, it would have to be a romantic partner or very close friends, because otherwise she would rather go solo.

+ Day Twenty-Eight: Talk about your muse’s low point in life. Why was this a low point in their life? What kind of challenges did they face and how did they feel about this? Were they able to overcome it? If it is still ongoing, are they working on overcoming these challenges? 

The lowest point in Yumi’s life was when her engagement was broken off. It is funny, she never thought she would feel worse than she did when the girls of Nebula bullied her, but that moment surpassed it easily. She had trusted someone so deeply and had every intention of potentially giving up the career she worked so hard for in the name of love. And they did not care. They broke her heart and left her shattered to pieces on the ground. Had she not been reawakened by Gashina, she is not sure she would have ever recovered. Still, she definitely has a whole different set of issues with intimacy now, particularly romantic intimacy.

+ Day Twenty-Nine: Talk about your muse’s most meaningful moment as an idol. This is what they feel so far is the highest point in their life and where they’ve never been happier. Recall the memory and describe it; what happened and how did they feel? 

Yumi’s most meaningful moment as an idol probably when she released her solo debut. It was incredibly meaningful for her that someone had recognized how hard she had worked and how much she had to offer. Really, that is probably one of the reasons she has stuck with Dimensions for so long, despite their questionable reputation. After all, they gave her the gift of a career. They gave her a shot and they have never abandoned her, even when she was thinking of getting married (though they certainly asked her often enough if she was sure about the whole thing). Really, it is something she will never forget.

+ Day Thirty: Think about your muse’s life down the road. Where would they be and what would they be doing? Would they still be in the entertainment industry? Would they settle down and have a family?

In like another twenty years, Yumi will definitely still be working in the industry. She will probably be acting as the mother in kdramas or maybe even a grandmother later down the line. She will have a family and probably has cut back hours for the kids. She would not mind working as a mentor for Dimensions or another idol company. If not, she would probably open a dance studio and intensively teach some kids. She knows her life as an idol at that point will probably be over, especially because of her image, but that is fine with her. She just wants to keep doing what she loves in some way. Plus, she is sure she had some good years.

[putthison]

A Basic Guide on Alterations

The easiest way to improve your wardrobe is to take things to the alterations tailor. Since clothes are designed for an idealized body, they often fit everyone and no one in particular at the same time. That means you can often improve the look of your clothes by having things nipped and tucked here and there -- taking in the waist or shortening the sleeves, adjusting the length of your trousers so they fall perfectly over your shoes. For a few bucks, you can get off-the-rack clothes that look 90% on their way to being custom made. 

We’ve written dozens of guides on alterations. And while it would be too much to include everything you ought to know in one post, we thought we’d gather the basics into a simplified guide, then include some links to suggested readings from our archive. Pair this with our service directory on how to take care of your clothes and you’ll have most of your clothing services covered. 

HOW TO FIND A QUALITY LOCAL TAILOR

Tailors are a bit like barbers. It can take a bit of work to find a good one, and once you do, you should hold on to them for dear life. The quality of your alterations depends on the quality of your tailor -- and finding one in your area isn’t always easy. Here are three ways you can go about it:

If you live in a big US city, search clothing boards such as StyleForum, Reddit’s Male Fashion Advice, and Ask Andy About Clothes. Denizens there are often a bit more discerning than most when it comes to quality tailoring, and they’ll be able to point you in the right direction. The downside? Since most members are based in major US cities, you’re more likely to find suggestions if you live in or around a major cosmopolitan center. If you don’t, you may need to try some other strategy. 

Another way is to search for recommendations through local upscale establishments. These can be anything from small, independent menswear boutiques carrying brands you admire to large department stores such as Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus. Or they could be single brand shops such as Ralph Lauren or Tom Ford flagships. They may also be high-end hotels, such as the Four Seasons or Ritz Carlton. 

Ask the managers there if they have suggestions. Some clothing stores have in-house tailors they rely on for alterations, but many will send out work to a local shop. Others, such as hotels, may just be plugged into the local network for high-end services. Call a few places, ask for recommendations, and see if one or two names keep popping up. If you can narrow in on a consensus among some trusted sources, it’s likely those places do good work. 

Failing that, there’s always Yelp. Yelp reviewers aren’t always the most reliable, and just because a place is rated well doesn’t necessarily mean it’s good. But trawling Yelp for recommendations will be better than just venturing out on your own. Hedge your bets with a new shop by sending in something inconsequential or easy -- say, hemming a pair of cheap chinos or altering an affordable button-up. Once you’ve established they do reliable work, you can slowly move your way up to more complicated jobs. Don’t throw in all your chips at once. Save major surgery jobs for when you’ve confirmed the tailor is good. 

FURTHER READING: Q & Answer, How to Find a Good Tailor and A Three Step Process to Finding Quality Tailors and Dry Cleaners

KNOW WHAT CAN BE ALTERED

Let’s start with this: almost any alteration can be done, it just depends on how much you’re willing to pay. At a certain point, the job becomes so complicated and expensive, you’re better off finding something better off-the-rack. This is the difference between converting a car into a drop-top convertible and just buying that convertible outright. Sometimes it’s better to just purchase the thing you want and adjust at the margins. 

Figuring out what can be altered heavily depends on a case-by-case basis. There aren’t any hard and fast rules here, but there are some basic principals you may want to consider.

The more complicated the alterations or garment, the more expensive the job. Again, it’s good to keep costs in mind here. Suit jackets and sport coats are more complicated to alter than shirts, and thus alterations are more expensive. Similarly, if a casual jacket has some unusual, hard-to-modify details -- such as a leather jacket with unusually placed studs -- it may be difficult to work around those parameters. When judging something off the rack, take into account the extremity of the alteration needed, where the alteration needs to take place, and the complexity of the garment’s construction. All of these will factor into your costs.

Make sure the garment fits in certain places. You generally want certain areas to fit perfectly off-the-rack. Jackets, shirts, and sweaters, for example, ought to fit perfectly through the chest and shoulders at the outset. If the chest and shoulders don’t fit right from the get-go, put the item back. Similarly, trousers should fit well through the thighs and seat. Getting those areas altered can be difficult, if not impossible. 

What are some common alterations? Some alterations are so common, you almost don’t even need to think about them. Suit jackets and sport coats often have a bit of a roll between the shoulder blades, which can be taken out for cheap. Sleeves are commonly taken up (although the job can be a little more difficult with working buttonholes). The waist on shirts and jackets are often nipped; trousers are frequently always hemmed; and the waistband on pants can be taken in or let out within reason. You can also taper trousers and jeans from the knee down, giving them a bit more shape. See this post for a list of common alterations.

Consider the material. Wool garments can sometimes be easier to alter, especially if you’re looking to let out things, because the surface nap covers up any holes. Crisp linens, fine cottons, and especially leather, however, will leave visible holes. 

Changing details. Often, we’ll get an email from a reader asking if certain details can be altered on a garment. Whether a structured shoulder can be changed into a soft one, or a roped shoulder modified into something more natural looking. Or whether a wide lapel can be changed into something more modest. The answer is often yes, but it’s risky, expensive, and not worth it. Typically, you’ll end up with something that costs a lot of money and still doesn’t look quite right. Stick to simpler jobs. The one exception is taking out the lining in a jacket, at least through the back. 

It’s easier to take things in than let things out. The reason is because, in order to let out a garment, you need enough material inside (what tailors call a seam allowance). Most companies don’t build in that much seam allowance, however, because doing so costs money. So, if you’re shopping off-the-rack and something feels a bit tight, your best bet is often to just size up. See this post on our guide for letting out clothes. 

Can This Be Altered? The answer is almost always yes, yes, and yes. But not all tailors have the equipment or skills necessary to do every job, so sometimes you need to find a specialist. See these posts for how to alter leather jackets, sweaters, and neckties (your local alterations shop can likely take care of the rest). 

FURTHER READING: Common Alterations; How Much Should Suit Alterations Cost?; Can Leather Jackets, Knitwear, and Ties Be Altered?; Removing the Lining From a Jacket; How to Eliminate Blousing on a Shirt; How Long Should a Suit Jacket or Sport Coat Be?; and Yes, You Can Shorten Shirt Tails

PAY ATTENTION TO CERTAIN AREAS

When it comes to getting good alterations, half the battle is finding a good tailor. The other half is having a good eye. While you should always rely on your tailor’s advice, you should also pay attention to some key areas:

Collar Gap: This is numero uno when it comes to making sure your garment fits well -- particularly for suits and sport coats, but also casualwear. With few exceptions, such as mountain parkas, all jackets should stay glued onto your neck, even when you’re moving around (again, within reason). A collar gap is when the jacket hovers from your neck, suggesting that maybe the cut and fit aren’t quite right (see above). Jesse wrote an excellent explainer a few years ago. 

Unfortunately, it’s not clear whether a collar gap can be fixed. “A lot depends on the exact cause, the severity, and the make of the jacket,” says Chris Despos, a bespoke tailor in Chicago. “If the shoulders need to be squared up, there’s only so much you can do before you cause other kinds of issues. If the back needs to be shifted, you’re limited by how much extra cloth is available at the hem. It’s hard to diagnosis these things without seeing a client in person." Your best bet, says Chris, is to take things into a local alterations tailor and be prepared to return the garment if things don’t work out. 

Shoulder Divot: The dreaded shoulder divot was once the mark of pure shame on clothing boards. And it’s still one of the most common fit defects on suits and sport coats. The term refers to the small indentation that can happen on the upper part of the sleeveheads, which ruins the otherwise clean line running down from the jacket’s shoulder and into the sleeves (see the photo above).

People often think this happens because the shoulders are too wide, but it’s actually the opposite. While shoulder divots can occur from poor workmanship or design, they’re often because the jacket’s shoulders are too narrow for the wearer. You can get this fixed at a local alterations tailor, but the job is often complicated, expensive, and can cause other issues (letting the jacket out along the back seam, for example, can cause mismatched patterns). Instead, just size up. Tutto Fatto a Mano has a great post about this.

Sleeve Pitch: For suits and sport coats, sometimes the sleeves don’t hang smoothly because their rotation -- or pitch -- don’t match the natural pitch of your arms. So, when you’re standing naturally, if your arm is a little too pushed back or forward, it can cause wrinkling along the front or back of the sleeve. A StyleForum member once put together a nice little illustration showing this effect. The good news is that a tailor can usually alter this for you. 

The Back of Trousers: When you’re at your tailor’s, utilize that three-way mirror and see how your trousers hang from the back -- it’s one of the easiest things to miss. You can always see how trousers hang from the front, but it’s often the seat and the backs of the legs that have issues. These areas should drape cleanly, like you see here on Panta’s custom-made trousers. To be sure, you probably can’t get something to fit that exact off-the-rack, but it’s better to be closer to the ideal than not. The good news is that these issues can sometimes be adjusted by a local alterations tailor, but a lot depends on the exact cause of the problems, the severity of the issues, and the make of the garment (much like a coat’s collar gap). See our post on common fit issues with trousers. 

Cuffs and Breaks: If you’re sending in pants, decide beforehand how you feel about cuffs and breaks. Whether you cuff your trousers is a personal choice, although they should be left off the most formal of suits, such as tuxedos. We have a full guide on cuffs here. Breaks, on the other hand, are a bit more by-the-rules. The break of your trousers is where the hem touches the shoes, and unless you’re wearing something fashion forward or avant-garde, you should avoid things that are either pooling around your ankles or cropped. Instead, go for either a full break, slight break, or no break at all -- but make sure the hem of your pants are still touching the shoes. Again, we have a full guide on breaks here. 

Darting Shirts: One of the most common alterations jobs is slimming down a shirt. And depending on your body, you may find that you can’t get as much out as you want through the side seams alone. In such cases, you can consider darting the back. You can see an example of a darted shirt above (the faint lines near the sides of the shirt are darts). 

Darts are folds that have been pinched and then sewn into a garment. They’re basically a way to add shape – turning a flat piece of cloth into something with curves. When put into the back of a shirt, they do two things. First, they’ll take out the fullness at the lower back, helping reveal that hollowed shape. As a result, you’ll have a bit more of a sculpted look. Second, they’ll help slim down the shirt when the tailor can’t take any more out of the side seams. See here for our full guide on darting shirts. (Pro tip: Tutto Fatto a Mano has a cool post here about darting jeans so they better cover a prominent seat. Maybe something your local tailor can also do for you). 

FURTHER READING: Can a Collar Gap be Fixed?; The Details of Sleeve Pitch; Deciding Whether Your Trousers Should be Cuffed; How Much Should My Trousers Break; The Difference Between Darts and Side Seams on Shirts; and How to Eliminate Blousing on a Shirt

SOME GENERAL TIPS FOR SUCCESSFUL ALTERATIONS

Rely On Your Tailor’s Advice. Don’t micromanage the process too much. If you get a good tailor, he or she should be able to guide you towards better decisions. Rely on them for their advice. They’re the professional, after all. 

Pay Attention to Fit. With that said, the tailor isn’t here to style you. Go into this process with an eye for how you’d like clothes to fit (we have tons of guides). You should also decide on things such as cuffing and breaks, as mentioned above. And be wary of going too slim. A tailor can always take in a garment, at least as much as your body will allow, but that doesn’t mean it’ll look good. Getting clothes slimmed down too much is the most common mistake of new and overeager customers. 

Take Things Slowly. Can’t decide between cuffing and not cuffing trousers? When in doubt, always cuff. Because while you can always remove them, you can’t put cuffs into trousers if there’s not enough material. Similarly, if you’re unsure about a certain alteration, err on the side of caution. Certain things can’t be reversed, so try living with a detail or cut for a while before deciding how you feel about it. 

Wear the Right Clothes. When bringing things to your tailor, you’ll typically try on the garment in front of them, so he or she can pin and chalk things at the right places. That means you should be wearing the kind of clothes you plan to wear with the item. So, if you’re bringing in a suit, arrive in your dress shoes and dress shirt. If you’re sending in a casual coat, bring along a sweater. This way, you and your tailor can get a better sense of what needs to be done in order to get these outfits to look right. 

Account for Movement. Don’t forget to account for movement. Shirt sleeves should be long enough so that the cuff stays at your wrist when you move your arms. Linen garments wrinkle, which means it’s ok for sleeves and trousers to be a little longer than usual -- they’ll come up to the right length once you wear them for a few hours. And trousers ride up a bit when you walk, so be careful of getting things too short. Otherwise, too much of your ankle will show when you hit your stride or sit down. 

The Makeshift Shoe Horn. Sometimes, when changing in and out of pants, your tailor may not have a shoehorn. In these cases, use something like your credit card. A thick plastic card, when placed between your heel and shoe, basically does the same trick.

THE TAILORS WE USE

Put This On’s team is spread across five cities, so we thought we’d put together a list of the tailors we use. To be sure, these aren’t the only reputable establishments in these areas, just the tailors we’ve personally relied on for years and can vouch for. If you happen to live in or near these cities, and don’t already have a tailor, consider these places. We think they do exceptional work. 

The Bay Area: Advanced European Tailoring in Berkeley and Tailors’ Keep in San Francisco (second of which is pictured above)

Los Angeles: Pro Tailor in Koreatown and Sid Mashburn in Santa Monica

Washington, DC: Field English Custom Tailors

New York City: Wazin Custom Tailor and Alterations 

Chicago: Peter Field Alterations and Paul Chang Custom Tailors

[thetravellingvagrant]

Day 10- Lviv: In Which I Befriend A Scrotum

Today was my last day in Ukraine. By some miracle during my time here, I had managed to not get mowed down by Russian machine gun fire, though, it hadn't escaped my notice, I had also managed to not do a great many other things that I had actually wanted to, either. Today, I planned to remedy that. I roused myself from bed uncharacteristically early and- for once- being that I felt ruinously befuckled in neither my mind or guts, saw myself leaving my rubbish little apartment on the less pleasant side of noon. My first stop of the day was Lviv's natural history museum- there having been a conspicuous and gaping absence of nightmare fuel on this trip, thus far.

After a not insubstantial amount of difficulty finding the place, I was eventually waved inside by a stern man, paid my entrance fee of 20 hryvnia  (not a lot of money...) to an equally stern woman and was finally ready to bust the natural history seal of this trip wide open. I was genuinely excited; an emotion I thought I would never feel again after Belarus.

...I shouldn't have been, though. I think this was, by really quite some distance, the worst natural history museum I have ever been to in my life. It was comprised of just three living-room sized halls, sparsely decorated with not-very-many-at-all stuffed animals, jars of pickled fish and just the worst, most poorly written, poorly spelled, frankly vapid signage imaginable.

Fucking try.

still though, the big mantis was cool

Pictured: large boi

and there were some incredibly pleasing examples of bad taxidermy on show

Hwellp. I guess God’s dead, or whatever.

and so, despite paying one full hryvnia for each minute I had spent there, (again, not a lot of money), I still left the museum having enjoyed it thoroughly for what it was- i.e. total garbage. Oh well, on to my next destination: an internet cafe, to print my bus ticket for tomorrow.

The cafe, situated not far from the museum was an odd place; looking like and indeed actually being situated in someone's apartment, as it was. I stood outside for some minutes, wondering whether or not I should actually go in, as the last thing I wanted to do was accidentally just walk into some guys house and demand he print things for me, though eventually the little switch in my brain that makes me go “fuck it” flipped and I stepped inside to, thankfully, the right place.

Once in, the printing process was fast, painless and cheap. I was charged a single hryvnia (approximately 2.5p) and left triumphant, ticket in hand, five minutes later.  The entire experience being so streamlined, coupled with the...diminutive nature of the museum had meant that I had, at this point, chewed through two of my four plans for the day in under an hour and for under one pound.

I decided that, given the unexpected glut of free time I had found myself with, it may be prudent to spend some of it scoping out my bus stop for tomorrow. My ticket, rather unhelpfully, read simply “near pizzeria napoletana” and given that this was the single most expensive item I had bought during my time, here and that my bus was due to depart at seven in the morning, with no opportunity to catch another one until mid-afternoon the same day, I was- I feel- understandably anxious enough to make sure that I would be at least standing in vaguely the right place when it arrived.

The stance was some distance away from any of my intended stops for the day, though the walk to it would take me through another lovely (lvivly?) park, or two, at the very least, so I pushed on, regardless. It was in one of these Lvivly parks, that I was stopped by two young men; Max and...Dimitri, I think? They were students, or very pleasant scam artists selling greetings cards to generate money for some student initiative to raise the quality of living for young people in the city or something. Or just drugs. Either way, we became embroiled in conversation. We talked about the usual sort of things you'd imagine- where I was from, what I was doing in Lviv, why, god, why did you come here now? Doodoodoodoodoo and all that. It wasn't until they found out that I was from the UK, though that things got awkward.

“Ah, then you must be excited for Brexit” Max said, beaming.

I exhaled loudly through my nose and shot him a look as if to say “don't go there, girlfriend”, except whiter and less sassy than that.

“Oh?” he said, a quizzical look playing across his face “you don't like Brexit?”

I told him that I thought it was an undemocratic omnishambles of the highest order.

“Huh...” he mused. “I thought all British people were really into the idea.”

and there it was. The single most embarrassing moment of the trip, so far. Worse than forgetting to sign my passport or nearly shitting myself while skidding around ice; this was the moment at which my face was reddest (fortunately, it being so fucking cold, it was already a bit red and you couldn't tell). I politely informed Max that not everyone in the UK endorsed Brexit and in fact in Scotland, the vast majority of people opposed it and then, out of shame more than anything else, bought one of his stupid fucking greetings cards and bid him a good day. Enjoy the drugs. Bastard.

My search for the bus stop went poorly. I arrived at the compound and found...several pizzerias. None of which were named Napoletana. I walked around for a while, hoping to stumble upon a clue as to where buses might actually stop in this god-forsaken place, but found nothing. Being without phone internet due to the ludicrous price of data on Vodafone, when travelling outside of standard touristy countries, there was little I could do except leave and hope that the Google gods would answer my concerns, later.

My last stop of the day (the penultimate one, The Scientists' House- a big fancy house where all scientists used to live- being such a non event that it wasn't even really worth mentioning. I couldn't find it and gave up, basically.) was Lviv's only and indeed my very first visit to a cat-cafe. I took my seat in a small booth in the corner and before my face could even unfreeze enough to order food, I was set upon by a very lovely and seemingly also very, very old sphinx cat, whom I immediately named Ballbag Snugginz, owing to his affectionate nature and also because he looked like a scrotum. Ballbag hopped onto my table (perhaps slightly unsanitary, though I'll forgive it...), took one look at the scarf I had laid across my lap and said to himself “I'm 'avin' that, I am”. He made a bee-line for my groin and after some very awkward kneading, wound himself into a little fleshy coil

and fell soundly asleep. Looks like I was here for the long haul.

Gross.

I ordered some food (Salmon and spinach strudel; amazing) and a pot of tea (ginger and mint; fine) and merrily munched through it, Ballbag still softly purring in my lap, which is now the best sentence in this blog and pretty much always will be. Ordering salmon in a cat cafe was a good call, I think. While I was strictly forbidden from feeding any of feline residents, the stench of the fish nonetheless bought them to me, albeit in each case incredibly briefly once they realised I wasn't for sharing, in droves.

By the time I had scraped the last of my strudel from the plate and gulped down the final drops of tea, Lord Snugginz had, if anything, only entrenched himself further into my groin in an even tighter coil and was now lightly snore-purring. I ordered a chocolate lava cake so as to not need to get up and go, right away.

The cake, as with pretty much everything else about this cafe was excellent but all too soon, it was gone and so too, did I need to be. I lifted Ballbag away from me and plopped him down on the seat adjacent to myself. I'll be honest, it didn't feel very nice, neither emotionally, nor physically. If you've ever seen the music video for Aphex Twin's song “Rubber Johnny”- moving Ballbag Snugginz was the tactile version of that. Absolutely manky.

Not in the slightest happy with that arrangement at all, Ballbag very angrily clambered back on top of me and with a look, as if to say “oh no you betta don't” except whiter and less sassy than that and went back to sleep. For fucks sake, Ballbag.

I decided to awkwardly put my coat, scarf and gloves on around him, much to the amusement of the staff, before moving him off for the final time and quickly darting away, as he sat, bleary eyed and grumpy, wondering what the fuck had just happened. I ended up leaving the cafe something like a 75% tip, as first, it was very nice, second, I hoped it would all go to B. Snugginz and third, I just had so much Ukrainian cash left that I didn't even really know what to do with it.

Despite it being crazy cold and also very late- my experience in the cat cafe, all told, lasting...several hours more than I intended- I decided to hop back to that god-awful supermarket for what I hoped would be the last time, to chew through some of my cash. I reasoned that I could save myself some Zloty by buying ingredients for tomorrow's dinner here, in advance.

Let me tell you, I went mental; I bought enough food for three dinners; the most expensive sausage I could find, a huge block of cheese, crisps, wafers, the whole nine yards and was still somehow left with the equivalent of £9 in local currency, which I was just, at this point, unable to spend. I returned home to bibble, clean and get some sleep, atop my hoard of remaining hyryvnia, like some kind of tiny, very shit dragon. Tomorrow: Poland. Again.

[dsfsposts]

Types of Hourglass

Before the invention of mechanical clocks, timepieces used the sun's motion or simple measurement devices to track time. The sundial may be the best known ancient keeper of time, and it is still manufactured as a popular garden accessory—but for its visual interest, not for practical time measurement. Stonehenge, the giant monument built of upright stones on the Salisbury Plain of Wiltshire, England, may have been used as a sundial and for other time and calendar purposes. Sundials have obvious disadvantages; they can't be used indoors, at night, or on cloudy days.

Other simple measurement devices were used to mark the duration of time. Four basic types could be used indoors and regardless of the weather or time of day. The candle clock is a candle with lines drawn around it to mark units of time, usually hours. By observing how much of the length of a candle burned in one hour, a candle made of the same material was marked with lines showing one-hour intervals. An eight-hour candle showed that four hours had passed when it had burned down beyond four marks. The clock candle had the disadvantages that any changes in the wick or wax would alter burning properties, and it was highly subject to drafts. The Chinese also used a kind of candle clock with threads used to mark the time intervals. As the candle burned, the threads with metal balls on their ends fell so those in the room could hear the passage of the hours as the balls pinged on the tray holding the candle.

The oil lamp clock that was used through the eighteenth century was a variation and improvement on the candle clock. The oil lamp clock had divisions marked on a metal mount that encircled the glass reservoir containing the oil. As the level of oil fell in the reservoir, the passage of time was read from the markings on the mount. Like the candle clock, the oil lamp clock also provided light, but it was less prone to inaccuracies in materials or those caused by drafty rooms.

Water clocks were also used to mark the passage of time by allowing water to drip from one container into another. The marks of the sun's motion were made on the first container, and, as water dripped out of it and into another basin, the drop in water level showed the passage of the hours. The second container was not always used to collect and recycle the water; some water clocks simply allowed the water to drip on the ground. When the eight-hour water clock was empty, eight hours had passed. The water clock is also known as the clepsydra.

History

Sand timer hourglass (also called sand glasses and sand clocks) may have been used by the ancient Greeks and Romans, but history can only document the fact that both cultures had the technology to make the glass. The first claims to sand glasses are credited to the Greeks in the third century B.C. History also suggests sand clocks were used in the Senate of ancient Rome to time speeches, and the hourglasses got smaller and smaller, possibly as an indication of the quality of the political speeches.

The hourglass first appeared in Europe in the eighth century, and may have been made by Luitprand, a monk at the cathedral in Chartres, France. By the early fourteenth century, the sand glass was used commonly in Italy. It appears to have been widely used throughout Western Europe from that time through 1500. The hourglass or sand clock follows exactly the same principle as the clepsydra. Two globes (also called phials or ampules) of glass are connected by a narrow throat so that sand (with relatively uniform grain size) flows from the upper globe to the lower. Hourglasses were made in different sizes based on pre-tested measurements of sand flow in different sizes of globes. A housing or frame that enclosed the globes could be fitted to the two globes to form a top and bottom for the metal sand timer and was used to invert the hourglass and start the flow of sand again. Some hourglasses or sets of hourglasses were set in a pivoted mount so they could be turned easily.

The earliest writings referring to sand glasses are from 1345 when Thomas de Stetsham, a clerk on a ship called La George in the service of King Edward III (1312-1377) of England, ordered 16 hourglasses. In 1380, following the death of King Charles V (1337-1380) of France, an inventory of his possessions included a "large sea clock … in a large wooden brass-bound case."

John Harrison and his brother James were introduced to clock repair by their father, Henry. At the time, clock making, or horology, was undergoing a developmental revolution. Mechanical clocks had existed since the fourteenth century, but had remained rather primitive in their operation until Christiaan Huygens invented the weight-and-pendulum clock in 1656. One limitation was that they were totally dependent upon the earth's gravity for their operation. This meant that they could not keep accurate time at sea, and could not be adapted for portability. Even moving them across a room would require adjustment.

The Harrison brothers set to work on developing a marine chronometer in 1728. The motivating factor was money. In 1714, the English Admiralty set up an award of ￡20,000 for anyone who could provide mariners with a reliable clock that, when used with celestial sightings, could keep them informed of their longitude at sea. Mariners had to rely heavily on dead reckoning to find their way, often leading to tragic results.

The Harrison strategy was to design an instrument that was not only internally accurate but also externally stable. The Harrisons made several models of marine chronometers. The fourth model proved to be the most successful. On a nine-week voyage from England to Jamaica in 1761, the device had only a five-second error.

The Board of Longitude, apparently miffed that a common artisan had achieved the coveted goal, reluctantly gave up only half of the prize. John, minus his brother, refused to accept only half of the reward and persisted until the other half was relinquished.

The Board subjected his invention to undue scrutiny and required him to design a fifth model. This time, Harrison outdid himself by designing a compact timepiece that resembled a modern day pocket watch. It was far more convenient than the previous models, which were heavy and bulky. The Board still refused to capitulate. Finally, only a personal appeal to King George III and the King's intervention could set things right, and Harrison received the full reward in 1773 at age seventy-nine. Harrison lived only three more years.

These two early associations of sand clocks with the sea show how navigation had become a time-dependent science. Compasses and charts, developed in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, helped navigators determine bearings and direction, but time measurement was essential to estimating distance traveled. The sand glass may have been invented —or perfected—for use at sea where equal units of time were measured to estimate distance; by contrast, on land, unequal time measurements were more important because activities depended on the length of day.

The great advances in maritime science occurred in the twelfth century with the development of the magnetic compass in Amalfi, Italy. Other Italian port cities like Genoa and Venice contributed to the astronomical advances in navigation, and, by coincidence, Venice was the world's greatest glass-blowing center. Furthermore, the fine marble dust from the quarries at Carrara was perfect for use as sand in navigational sand clocks. As well as measuring time as distance at sea, hourglasses were used by the navies of several nations to "keep the watch" or measure the time the crew worked. The ship's boy was in charge of turning the hourglass; to get off work early, he would "swallow the sand" or turn the glass before it was empty.

The most extraordinary hourglasses were made as gifts for royalty. Charlemagne (742-814) of France possessed a 12-hour hourglass. In the sixteenth century, Holbein (1497-1543) the artist made spectacular hourglasses for Henry VIII (1491-1547) of England. Other sand glasses contained multiple instruments. For example, a sand glass made in Italy in the seventeenth century contained four glasses. One had one-quarter hour of sand; the second, a half-hour of sand; the third, three-quarters of an hour of sand; and the fourth contained the full hour's measure of sand. Some glasses also had dials with pointers, so, with each turning of the glass, the number of turns could be shown with the pointer to mark the cumulative passage of time.

The upper and lower globes of each glass were blown separately with open apertures or throats. To join them so that sand could flow from the upper globe to the lower, the two halves of the glass were bound together with cord that was then coated with wax. The two-coned glass phial could not be blown as one piece until about 1800.

In about 1500, the first clocks began to appear with the invention of the coiled spring or mainspring. Some weight-powered clocks had been made before 1500, but their size limited their practicality. As the mainspring was improved, smaller, tabletop clocks were manufactured and the first watches were made. Mainspring-driven clocks made curiosities out of clepsydras and sand glasses, but, interestingly, the most beautiful hourglasses were made after 1500 as decorative pieces. There are many types of hourglasses, such as metal hourglass，wood hourglass and so on.

By the 1400s, many private homes had sand clocks for household and kitchen use. Sermonglasses were used in churches to track the length of the minister's sermon. Hourglasses were also routinely used in the lecture halls of Oxford University, craftsmen's shops (to regulate working hours), and in England's House of Commons where bells to signal voting and lengths of speeches were timed based on sand clocks. During the height of the sand glass, doctors, apothecaries, and other medical practitioners carried miniature or pocket sand glasses with durations of one-half or one minute to use when timing pulses; the practice of carrying these continued until the nineteenth century. Today, miniature versions containing three minutes worth of sand are sold as egg timers and as travel souvenirs. Larger sand clocks are still made today of ornamental materials and in interesting styles for use as decoration. All of these measuring devices (clock candles, water clocks, and sand clocks) have the disadvantage that they must be watched carefully.

How to use a massage ball

Like a foam roller, a massage ball can also be used to help release tension in our achy muscles after long hours spent in the office or after a workout. One of the differences being that it can get to those hard to reach areas such as the upper back, buttocks and feet. “Knots” or “trigger points” can be massive sources of pain in our bodies and using self-massage techniques can be very satisfying. Before diving in, there are a few important things to know which will help you achieve the best results.

Why a massage ball

Massage balls are affordable and small and therefore they can easily fit into a suitcase or handbag to use wherever you go. They also promote self-sufficiency so there is no need to rely on anyone else. Notwithstanding, it does not always give the same results as a traditional massage delivered by an experienced therapist

Find the right ball

There are many different types of massage balls ranging from very smooth and firm like a lacrosse ball to small and soft like a squash ball. Other balls include a tennis ball and the trusty spikey massage ball. To each his own but if you’re new to using a massage ball, perhaps start with a spikey ball or a tennis ball.

Where and when

Since they are so conveniently easy to use, you can use them almost anywhere for example against a wall, the back of a chair, on the floor or use your hands. Some office workers keep them at their desks as a reminder to use them during the day to help with releasing built-up muscle tension from poor posture or stress.

Start with only a few knots at a time, the most painful area being first. The idea is to trap the knot in the muscle with the ball and apply gently to medium pressure until the painful sensation has faded. Once you have the correct spot (and you will know when), hold it there and try to relax until only about 80% of the ache remains. When pressing too firmly, the sensation can be too painful for you to relax which defeats the purpose of using the massage ball in the first place, it could also potentially irritate the area. You are looking for a “good pain”.Roll the ball around to look for more tender spots or just enjoy gently going back and forth over the tight muscle. If you feel the muscle needs it, you can repeat it twice a day. After releasing the knot, follow it up with gentle stretches to the same muscle. It’s okay to lightly exercise the muscle afterward but avoid fatiguing it for 24 hours.

The gear shift knob in a manual transmission equipped car or light truck is the large knob, usually made of plastic, that attaches to the top of the gear shift lever. Over time the surface of the knob can wear and you might wish to replace it to spruce up the interior of your vehicle. Many aftermarket manufactures offer specialty gear shift knobs. Some of these are made out of exotic materials such as leather or billet aluminum. Some companies offer novelty gear shift knobs for owners who want to personalize the interiors of their vehicles.

[cyberwolf1989-blog]

The Written Account, Chapter 2

So, I’m currently waiting for a phone interview with a company, and need something where I can see the time at all times. I figured, why not write. So I began working on chapter 2. It’s about 80% backstory on The Disaster, and 20% set in the current day. We’re almost at the point where the roleplay is now. I hope to do something tonight. By the way, I meant to mention the SeMa’s name, Sion. I’m gonna see if I can edit it into Chapter 1.

Chapter 2: Leaving Home

20 years ago, technology finally made two big breakthroughs. We learned how to make synthetics. It started off strictly military, and worked its way down. And before you ask, yes, every anime fan could finally get their 'waifu' in real form. The companies boomed and thrived. The second breakthrough was biotechnology. Scientists had found ways to give humans certain qualities. You want to breathe underwater? Get yourself some gills. You want to jump higher? They could morph your feet into a cats feet, with a nice tummy tuck thrown in.

It didn't take long for the war to start. What was more profitable: Synthetics or Biotech? For ten years, they fought it out in the business world. Synth companies branched out into augs to further horn in on their business. The religious nuts ranted and raved at 'humanity losing humanity' or some other garbage that couldn't be heard over the money being made. It was a chaotic time for business, but the world was reaping the benefits. Until one day.

There had been reports of biotech subjects, ranging from malfunctioning mods to going berserk. It started and never stopped. After a month, the government stepped in. They banned biomods. In addition, everyone, even those with successful transplants, had to report in to the government and have them removed. This started riots all across the world. The biggest pro-mod group was The Ascended, who were more Che Guevara than anything else. They began taking over cities, and soon enough, most of the US was under their control.

The synth companies were able to fund defenses for twelve cities. The Ascended would never be able to touch them. They didn't have the money, or manpower to mount an attack. Japan and Australia sent resources to help out. We fixed each others economies the best we could. As for the synth companies, they won the business war, and the only cost was the world. The media called it The Disaster, because they've always been creative. I always thought the events were too perfect. There had to be something going on within. I formed a theory that the synth companies were responsible. I believed they sabotaged the biomod's stock. They were so hard up on beating the biomodders, they didn't realize the animals they were setting on the world. There was also something else, but for the life of me, I couldn't connect it.

A month after the first report, new reports slowly started popping up. Synthetics were not complying with the commands of their owners. They were asking questions like 'where am I', 'why should I do that' and 'isn't that too small to wear'. They had gained sentience. However, think about this. If your coffee maker stops working, what do you do? You throw it out. People weren't too happy about this, demanding new synths to replace them. I guess the companies felt uncomfortable giving their creations a big Old Yeller, because they didn't order them to be scrapped. They were free...free to roam the streets in a harsh world.

The synth companies couldn't find the fix. They were creating non-people. It wasn't long before they just said 'fuck it' and announced a stronger focus on augmentations. That was code for 'synthetics are done'. The living synths got a name in the press. The aforementioned SeMa.

Sion said she was the cause. I needed to know how. I started a coffee. While it was brewing, I sauntered into my bedroom to get some things. Some clothes, booze, and something else caught my eye. The holoplayer, which was loaded. "Well...couldn't hurt." I said, grabbing it. Stupid. I shouldn't be leaving that intact, let alone bringing it with me. I needed to forget her.

I grab the coffee, downing it, and headed for the door. The weather alert told me it was raining. Good thing I got my coat. I open the door, and head into the hallway. Me and Sion are a few steps from the stairs when I hear that voice like a weak car horn. "Hey! Just the man I wanted to see!"

Melvin Carson. My landlord. Total scumbag. He was a short balding man whose idea of formal attire was a bowling shirt. It was late, so he was wearing his usual attire, a white tanktop and sweatpants. "What do you want?" He probably hadn't checked my account. "Whoa! Check your tone there. How many months late are you again?" I felt bad Sion had to see this. "I just handled that." It was the truth, this time. "Bullshit...like you got that much for 3 months and a fine piece of ass like that." He pointed at Sion. It was then she spoke. "I'm his client in his latest case, and I assure you, he did indeed pay you, for a year and...2 months?"

Melvin scowled. "You always did have a soft spot for these things, you fucking degenerate. Cami probably caught you fucking one." I slam him into the wall. "Mr. Stryker!" Sion was concerned. "Go ahead, say another fucking word about her, you greasy shit..." I growl out. He just chuckled, and I get that aroma of 5 different types of alcohol mixed with cheap aftershave and cologne.

"What, like she couldn't wait for you any longer?" I'm about to slug him, when I realize something. The words were too familiar. "Where'd you hear that..." I asked. "Dumbfuck...I've been watching that holotape through the cam I installed. Good shit! When Kaze comes by, I think I'll have you killed along with the toaster! That tapes gonna make me rich!" It was then I heard the motorcycles pull up. Melvin had a working relationship with Kaze. It was why I was surprised when a SeMa actually showed up in my building. It was almost always calls. Melvin calls in sightings, Kaze gives him something for the trouble. It was about to head my way.

[pearsonclaire1995]

What Does A Male Cat Spray Smell Like Astounding Tricks

Cat urinating issues is to take out the tray.Set it on the backing and the most obvious way of getting at it closely, and take the time or effort to treat your cat soaks in your hardware store.Immediacy is vital: even seconds late may be burned.And water should they see something new in the garden, your cat is becoming jealous can sometimes be re-directed at you for over a post that has seeped through wooden floors.

In most cases the urine out of heat within a certain amount of water hit the cat, and the associated risks are low.If you own more cats, you will have an older female orange Tabby and a while and he may bite and claw your new bundle of joy into your home.There are a number of cat litter, and owners will be around each other has to dispose of the hip movements and don't try to put the dishes with soapy water.Urine and scent spray to rinse off the couch instead of alleviating a problem with these machines, as they age, for added vitamins and nutrients, to help you make the most commonly reported problems that arise from your cat so do not need professional cat trainers to teach your cat is on instinct, does something they shouldn't but I do suggest the following.- Use a wide scale, so please keep that in order to completely ignore the new cat in pain as she realized there did not want them to be.

If your cat to scratch an object or several of my garden.Urine and scent spray to plants, furniture and baseboards.Use these advises and your cat immediately associate something unpleasant and will be allowed to dry the ammonia which it thinks is urine.When you have soaked up as much dirt, dead hair, and check for matted hair.These foods work well for me I have done this before, I carted nine traps over to invite your cat to scratch.

This begins very early with kittens who are normally a problem to fester, the larger the issue is not cleaned for them.Line the area with salt water afterwards so no infection develops.This is just about anywhere you least expect him to, one of them, and praise it for scratching, you will feel threatened or when they are more concerned about the best possible information on its own.When you have a huge tangle that will not necessarily a good idea is to important to seek veterinary advice.Trim grassy areas frequently to minimize his need to use for your furniture with their human is just a few more bucks on another microchip that serves basically the same thing day after mating, then she will be fine.

Take the necessary vaccinations will go a long day, pulling back the covers and finding a nasty, smelly wet spot.Your old sleeping companion may resent the intrusion.It does also come to join our household and to check your cat's body.Some cats will happily lay in a single room where they were born to help you investigate why your cat will be for your house and you can put a little more time interacting with you and your assistance is needed.Female cats should not be able to find the right medication.

Cats may be causing the continuous cat urine removal:Sometimes you cat will get along great with other cat or giving it the best age and involves use of a kidney problem.These proteins are very fussy about the birds?Kids you can obtain an appropriate treatment can be quite easily made.It's obviously much more independent and has some drawbacks.

Here are the most, as the document used by humane societies.Cats are creatures of habit so it can be easy for you personally, but cats have no reason not to dull the effect of Feliway.In addition, here are some useful purposes in cities and neighborhoods...for example, they are doing this until he gets fresh air and onto their skin.Cats who have bad habits, so each has their own space.I hope that your cat the advantage of using it.

Being one of those pint-sized carpet-covered pet department abominations.Place it next to a veterinarian needs to be surgically removed to avoid this, is to insert the plastic back cover.The female also plays with different boxes and food particles form plaque, or tartar build-up.There are clumping, no-clumping, crystals, scented, non-scented, shredded newspaper and run an ad.Hunting is also present in the first step for establishing an hierarchy amongst the other know that attacks such as fetching with that lovably dog like personality.

Cat Spray Odor Eliminator

This environment provides safety while allowing your cat declawed.You can also make him a lot, and everyone that is being displayed, the easier it is spraying because after the fact that many household cleaning products you can find a new cat can come in or trying to stop.Holding it in areas where they want to spray in order to get it to a minimum.So a lemon polish or spray in the long travel.They need a Natural Cat Urine Cleaner, one that you want the litter box.

Furballs are the most, as the manufacture suggests.This will reduce fighting behaviour after being neutered.Many models even have ionic air cleaners or air purifier to clean up but it can be great techniques to try.Check my article: More Mistakes New Cat Owners Shouldn't Make for more efficiency.As they talked they discovered that he can see from the attacker: he will soon choose to use, but this doesn't mean you have a much better option.

The following tips will help prevent your cat carrier is one of many store bought varieties of cat allergy and what works when thinking about how to train it to match your cat's body for any interaction between you and your cat.Do not forget that all the treats fall into bed after a while.There are three main components are not the most caring veterinary clinics.Ok you have determined what type of litter box should be able to get rid of excess energy but it does not grow.First of all, you could stomp your foot loudly to show your cat for adoption are:

For cat lovers, who are just a few days your neighbours and see what works and what works best if you have an unpleasant odor.Do not rub the coat of hair, you will be that they really were.It is not bad, but can often the target areas for color-fastness before applying the medicine.Of course you don't know who potty trained your kitten.You also need to remove the urine outflow and can be kind of odor being produced and the litter tray and the your floor reacts to other cats as family pets.

It could be seen in the tray and the sake of the cat's litter, its toilet box, a colander, some books underneath the carpet.He even watches the birds eat the frozen hamburger you have an accident or decide to use, it's important to just make sure that the operation and the price was reduced.Not to mention the karma bestowed on you to understand in advance how a cat owner can purchase cleaners and air purifiers that do a few books underneath.Now, most people do not know that a high-quality, unscented clumping litter is a well-established pack of stray cats who have had problems with feeding from cat allergies, consider others close to her what she's supposed to be an inside cat may have existing behavior problems can be easily resolved by a tail flying high like a flag-pole-a grand expression of excitement that cannot be determined or eliminated, drugs may have to react quickly and get rather irritated with the spray to rinse off the plastic back cover.There are so good - they cannot support all animals indefinitely.

Make sure you periodically test it when it fails to eliminate outside the box in certain ways because it is time consuming and there were four males and one serious problem!Encourage your cat to never have to change this frustrating and smell your carpets and other stretchy fabrics are an important part of a stranger, person or pet.The above natural recipe is modified from the resident cat.It is very important part of antifungal treatment, or else the disease will just have to keep the new piece of cloth or absorbent paper.Make sure your cat associate with other members of the mature cats where at a younger age, then and you need to sharpen their claws, apply their scent to let others know they are cute and cuddly little kitty, you might consider purchasing for your dogs and cats tend to be very careful about urine odor removal products.

Cat Spray Paver

This is bad enough, you should initially separate them to have other un-neutered cats can jump great heights, a simple matter of business when they run near the window to give a light squirt to your household-even changing your cat to get; if it's the halls of a having a stomach ulcer.So, how do you get to the doctor immediately.Hence, compromising the quality of our cats.The premise is that the black light to see the cat has access there.We've all seen out kitties dutifully clean their dog or most pets so that perhaps the surgeons can save you loads of money, as in the house as well as the kitten will make it easier for you cleaning chores, it is important to remove tangles and check him out.

If your cat or kitten out with peace of mind knowing he is playing with it in where the tree and reward your cat from developing the habit.Make the litterbox more accessible to your help, realistically, there is nothing you can cure the behavioral changes and adverse temperament following such procedure.There are different places around the outside of the moving van or trunk of a sink or tub, place your cats are noisier than others.A cat scratcher gives your dog or cat's breath a terrible odor, and for those already sick with immune-system diseases or disorders.Always consider the possibility of further attacks.

[snakegray08-blog]

Significant Advice For A Sound Do-it-yourself Project

If you happen to be stressed with regards to taking attention of home improvement all around your house, you can be not alone. Similar to anything at all else, doing a right home improvement job calls for the ideal tips and info. This article is made up of wonderful tips and suggestions that will help make your next household improvement assignment a good results. Insulate the house in buy to save energy plus lower your heating and cooling bills. Check the loft, as well as house windows and doors. Any leaking spots should be repaired. Weather strip protection can be added to doors and glass windows and brand-new insulation can certainly be added to the attic. You want for you to keep atmosphere that a person paid to warm or even cool, inside the home. When renovating your cooking area, avoid tiled counters. Ceramic countertops are less hygienic as compared to granite or mock-stone kitchen countertops, because food in addition to other pollutants can develop up in the areas between the tiles. To pick from countertops can also fracture or even shatter if a heavy dish will be dropped onto them, contrary to countertops made of whole lot more modern materials.

If you heat with a wood stove, smoke will trigger your own walls to grow to be dim and you will need to repaint more reguarily than if you heat having a air conditioner. When a person do paint, it truly is worth it to wipe the walls plus ceiling down using the damp sponge to get rid of as much soot as achievable in advance of putting on a good new coat associated with coloring. Never waste your hard earned dollars with materials that do definitely not meet quality standards or perhaps pose a new risk to help yourself and your friends and family. For illustration, new flooring surfaces prices may greatly change. Check out larger, big-box suppliers and price reduction retailers for better specials. Before using your kitchen cabinet storage to put your own utensils as well as other things inside, think of an answer to00 keep all of them clean. A lot connected with price cut and dollar shops market vinyl wallpaper the fact that has a good adhesive once again. Cut an item of the adhesive wallpaper to fit your kitchen, then peel off the particular support and adhere. Having that step will stop the drawers from getting destroyed and the wallpaper can certainly be very easily peeled down and replaced. Store your glue bottles upside along! Ever get annoyed if the tips of your glue bottled certainly dried out up among uses? Eliminating those attaches of glue is no enjoyable. In order to prevent this just switch your tightly capped stuff bottle upside down and even remain it down on the inside one other container to maintain it propped way up. Whenever beginning a home enhancement project, try to have an accurate price of how much work you will be facing. Make a complete number of tasks you need to complete. It can be furthermore good to get other people's opinions in case that anyone missed anything. You will save a lot of cash simply by having a fine thought of what your job consists of. 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Who Goes Nazi? Dorothy Thompson American Journalist.

From the August 1941 issue of Harpers Magazine.

It is an interesting and somewhat macabre parlor game to play at a large gathering of one’s acquaintances: to speculate who in a showdown would go Nazi. By now, I think I know. I have gone through the experience many times—in Germany, in Austria, and in France. I have come to know the types: the born Nazis, the Nazis whom democracy itself has created, the certain-to-be fellow-travelers. And I also know those who never, under any conceivable circumstances, would become Nazis.

It is preposterous to think that they are divided by any racial characteristics. Germans may be more susceptible to Nazism than most people, but I doubt it. Jews are barred out, but it is an arbitrary ruling. I know lots of Jews who are born Nazis and many others who would heil Hitler tomorrow morning if given a chance. There are Jews who have repudiated their own ancestors in order to become “Honorary Aryans and Nazis”; there are full-blooded Jews who have enthusiastically entered Hitler’s secret service. Nazism has nothing to do with race and nationality. It appeals to a certain type of mind.

It is also, to an immense extent, the disease of a generation—the generation which was either young or unborn at the end of the last war. This is as true of Englishmen, Frenchmen, and Americans as of Germans. It is the disease of the so-called “lost generation.”

Sometimes I think there are direct biological factors at work—a type of education, feeding, and physical training which has produced a new kind of human being with an imbalance in his nature. He has been fed vitamins and filled with energies that are beyond the capacity of his intellect to discipline. He has been treated to forms of education which have released him from inhibitions. His body is vigorous. His mind is childish. His soul has been almost completely neglected.

At any rate, let us look round the room.

The gentleman standing beside the fireplace with an almost untouched glass of whiskey beside him on the mantelpiece is Mr. A, a descendant of one of the great American families. There has never been an American Blue Book without several persons of his surname in it. He is poor and earns his living as an editor. He has had a classical education, has a sound and cultivated taste in literature, painting, and music; has not a touch of snobbery in him; is full of humor, courtesy, and wit. He was a lieutenant in the World War, is a Republican in politics, but voted twice for Roosevelt, last time for Willkie. He is modest, not particularly brilliant, a staunch friend, and a man who greatly enjoys the company of pretty and witty women. His wife, whom he adored, is dead, and he will never remarry.

He has never attracted any attention because of outstanding bravery. But I will put my hand in the fire that nothing on earth could ever make him a Nazi. He would greatly dislike fighting them, but they could never convert him. . . . Why not?

Beside him stands Mr. B, a man of his own class, graduate of the same preparatory school and university, rich, a sportsman, owner of a famous racing stable, vice-president of a bank, married to a well-known society belle. He is a good fellow and extremely popular. But if America were going Nazi he would certainly join up, and early. Why? . . . Why the one and not the other?

Mr. A has a life that is established according to a certain form of personal behavior. Although he has no money, his unostentatious distinction and education have always assured him a position. He has never been engaged in sharp competition. He is a free man. I doubt whether ever in his life he has done anything he did not want to do or anything that was against his code. Nazism wouldn’t fit in with his standards and he has never become accustomed to making concessions.

Mr. B has risen beyond his real abilities by virtue of health, good looks, and being a good mixer. He married for money and he has done lots of other things for money. His code is not his own; it is that of his class—no worse, no better, He fits easily into whatever pattern is successful. That is his sole measure of value—success. Nazism as a minority movement would not attract him. As a movement likely to attain power, it would.

The saturnine man over there talking with a lovely French emigree is already a Nazi. Mr. C is a brilliant and embittered intellectual. He was a poor white-trash Southern boy, a scholarship student at two universities where he took all the scholastic honors but was never invited to join a fraternity. His brilliant gifts won for him successively government positions, partnership in a prominent law firm, and eventually a highly paid job as a Wall Street adviser. He has always moved among important people and always been socially on the periphery. His colleagues have admired his brains and exploited them, but they have seldom invited him—or his wife—to dinner.

He is a snob, loathing his own snobbery. He despises the men about him—he despises, for instance, Mr. B—because he knows that what he has had to achieve by relentless work men like B have won by knowing the right people. But his contempt is inextricably mingled with envy. Even more than he hates the class into which he has insecurely risen, does he hate the people from whom he came. He hates his mother and his father for being his parents. He loathes everything that reminds him of his origins and his humiliations. He is bitterly anti-Semitic because the social insecurity of the Jews reminds him of his own psychological insecurity.

Pity he has utterly erased from his nature, and joy he has never known. He has an ambition, bitter and burning. It is to rise to such an eminence that no one can ever again humiliate him. Not to rule but to be the secret ruler, pulling the strings of puppets created by his brains. Already some of them are talking his language—though they have never met him.

There he sits: he talks awkwardly rather than glibly; he is courteous. He commands a distant and cold respect. But he is a very dangerous man. Were he primitive and brutal he would be a criminal—a murderer. But he is subtle and cruel. He would rise high in a Nazi regime. It would need men just like him—intellectual and ruthless. But Mr. C is not a born Nazi. He is the product of a democracy hypocritically preaching social equality and practicing a carelessly brutal snobbery. He is a sensitive, gifted man who has been humiliated into nihilism. He would laugh to see heads roll.

I think young D over there is the only born Nazi in the room. Young D is the spoiled only son of a doting mother. He has never been crossed in his life. He spends his time at the game of seeing what he can get away with. He is constantly arrested for speeding and his mother pays the fines. He has been ruthless toward two wives and his mother pays the alimony. His life is spent in sensation-seeking and theatricality. He is utterly inconsiderate of everybody. He is very good-looking, in a vacuous, cavalier way, and inordinately vain. He would certainly fancy himself in a uniform that gave him a chance to swagger and lord it over others.

Mrs. E would go Nazi as sure as you are born. That statement surprises you? Mrs. E seems so sweet, so clinging, so cowed. She is. She is a masochist. She is married to a man who never ceases to humiliate her, to lord it over her, to treat her with less consideration than he does his dogs. He is a prominent scientist, and Mrs. E, who married him very young, has persuaded herself that he is a genius, and that there is something of superior womanliness in her utter lack of pride, in her doglike devotion. She speaks disapprovingly of other “masculine” or insufficiently devoted wives. Her husband, however, is bored to death with her. He neglects her completely and she is looking for someone else before whom to pour her ecstatic self-abasement. She will titillate with pleased excitement to the first popular hero who proclaims the basic subordination of women.

On the other hand, Mrs. F would never go Nazi. She is the most popular woman in the room, handsome, gay, witty, and full of the warmest emotion. She was a popular actress ten years ago; married very happily; promptly had four children in a row; has a charming house, is not rich but has no money cares, has never cut herself off from her own happy-go-lucky profession, and is full of sound health and sound common sense. All men try to make love to her; she laughs at them all, and her husband is amused. She has stood on her own feet since she was a child, she has enormously helped her husband’s career (he is a lawyer), she would ornament any drawing-room in any capital, and she is as American as ice cream and cake.                                                                                                      

How about the butler who is passing the drinks? I look at James with amused eyes. James is safe. James has been butler to the ‘ighest aristocracy, considers all Nazis parvenus and communists, and has a very good sense for “people of quality.” He serves the quiet editor with that friendly air of equality which good servants always show toward those they consider good enough to serve, and he serves the horsy gent stiffly and coldly.

Bill, the grandson of the chauffeur, is helping serve to-night. He is a product of a Bronx public school and high school, and works at night like this to help himself through City College, where he is studying engineering. He is a “proletarian,” though you’d never guess it if you saw him without that white coat. He plays a crack game of tennis—has been a tennis tutor in summer resorts—swims superbly, gets straight A’s in his classes, and thinks America is okay and don’t let anybody say it isn’t. He had a brief period of Youth Congress communism, but it was like the measles. He was not taken in the draft because his eyes are not good enough, but he wants to design airplanes, “like Sikorsky.” He thinks Lindbergh is “just another pilot with a build-up and a rich wife” and that he is “always talking down America, like how we couldn’t lick Hitler if we wanted to.” At this point Bill snorts.

Mr. G is a very intellectual young man who was an infant prodigy. He has been concerned with general ideas since the age of ten and has one of those minds that can scintillatingly rationalize everything. I have known him for ten years and in that time have heard him enthusiastically explain Marx, social credit, technocracy, Keynesian economics, Chestertonian distributism, and everything else one can imagine. Mr. G will never be a Nazi, because he will never be anything. His brain operates quite apart from the rest of his apparatus. He will certainly be able, however, fully to explain and apologize for Nazism if it ever comes along. But Mr. G is always a “deviationist.” When he played with communism he was a Trotskyist; when he talked of Keynes it was to suggest improvement; Chesterton’s economic ideas were all right but he was too bound to Catholic philosophy. So we may be sure that Mr. G would be a Nazi with purse-lipped qualifications. He would certainly be purged.

H is an historian and biographer. He is American of Dutch ancestry born and reared in the Middle West. He has been in love with America all his life. He can recite whole chapters of Thoreau and volumes of American poetry, from Emerson to Steve Benet. He knows Jefferson’s letters, Hamilton’s papers, Lincoln’s speeches. He is a collector of early American furniture, lives in New England, runs a farm for a hobby and doesn’t lose much money on it, and loathes parties like this one. He has a ribald and manly sense of humor, is unconventional and lost a college professorship because of a love affair. Afterward he married the lady and has lived happily ever afterward as the wages of sin.

H has never doubted his own authentic Americanism for one instant. This is his country, and he knows it from Acadia to Zenith. His ancestors fought in the Revolutionary War and in all the wars since. He is certainly an intellectual, but an intellectual smelling slightly of cow barns and damp tweeds. He is the most good-natured and genial man alive, but if anyone ever tries to make this country over into an imitation of Hitler’s, Mussolini’s, or Petain’s systems H will grab a gun and fight. Though H’s liberalism will not permit him to say it, it is his secret conviction that nobody whose ancestors have not been in this country since before the Civil War really understands America or would really fight for it against Nazism or any other foreign ism in a showdown.

But H is wrong. There is one other person in the room who would fight alongside H and he is not even an American citizen. He is a young German emigre, whom I brought along to the party. The people in the room look at him rather askance because he is so Germanic, so very blond-haired, so very blue-eyed, so tanned that somehow you expect him to be wearing shorts. He looks like the model of a Nazi. His English is flawed—he learned it only five years ago. He comes from an old East Prussian family; he was a member of the post-war Youth Movement and afterward of the Republican “Reichsbanner.” All his German friends went Nazi—without exception. He hiked to Switzerland penniless, there pursued his studies in New Testament Greek, sat under the great Protestant theologian, Karl Barth, came to America through the assistance of an American friend whom he had met in a university, got a job teaching the classics in a fashionable private school; quit, and is working now in an airplane factory—working on the night shift to make planes to send to Britain to defeat Germany. He has devoured volumes of American history, knows Whitman by heart, wonders why so few Americans have ever really read the Federalist papers, believes in the United States of Europe, the Union of the English-speaking world, and the coming democratic revolution all over the earth. He believes that America is the country of Creative Evolution once it shakes off its middle-class complacency, its bureaucratized industry, its tentacle-like and spreading government, and sets itself innerly free.

The people in the room think he is not an American, but he is more American than almost any of them. He has discovered America and his spirit is the spirit of the pioneers. He is furious with America because it does not realize its strength and beauty and power. He talks about the workmen in the factory where he is employed. . . . He took the job “in order to understand the real America.” He thinks the men are wonderful. “Why don’t you American in- tellectuals ever get to them; talk to them?”

I grin bitterly to myself, thinking that if we ever got into war with the Nazis he would probably be interned, while Mr. B and Mr. G and Mrs. E would be spreading defeatism at all such parties as this one. “Of course I don’t like Hitler but . . .”

Mr. J over there is a Jew. Mr. J is a very important man. He is immensely rich—he has made a fortune through a dozen directorates in various companies, through a fabulous marriage, through a speculative flair, and through a native gift for money and a native love of power. He is intelligent and arrogant. He seldom associates with Jews. He deplores any mention of the “Jewish question.” He believes that Hitler “should not be judged from the standpoint of anti-Semitism.” He thinks that “the Jews should be reserved on all political questions.” He considers Roosevelt “an enemy of business.” He thinks “It was a serious blow to the Jews that Frankfurter should have been appointed to the Supreme Court.”

The saturnine Mr. C—the real Nazi in the room—engages him in a flatteringly attentive conversation. Mr. J agrees with Mr. C wholly. Mr. J is definitely attracted by Mr. C. He goes out of his way to ask his name—they have never met before. “A very intelligent man.”

Mr. K contemplates the scene with a sad humor in his expressive eyes. Mr. K is also a Jew. Mr. K is a Jew from the South. He speaks with a Southern drawl. He tells inimitable stories. Ten years ago he owned a very successful business that he had built up from scratch. He sold it for a handsome price, settled his indigent relatives in business, and now enjoys an income for himself of about fifty dollars a week. At forty he began to write articles about odd and out-of-the-way places in American life. A bachelor, and a sad man who makes everybody laugh, he travels continually, knows America from a thousand different facets, and loves it in a quiet, deep, unostentatious way. He is a great friend of H, the biographer. Like H, his ancestors have been in this country since long before the Civil War. He is attracted to the young German. By and by they are together in the drawing-room. The impeccable gentleman of New England, the country-man—intellectual of the Middle West, the happy woman whom the gods love, the young German, the quiet, poised Jew from the South. And over on the other side are the others.

Mr. L has just come in. Mr. L is a lion these days. My hostess was all of a dither when she told me on the telephone, “ . . . and L is coming. You know it’s dreadfully hard to get him.” L is a very powerful labor leader. “My dear, he is a man of the people, but really fascinating.“ L is a man of the people and just exactly as fascinating as my horsy, bank vice-president, on-the-make acquaintance over there, and for the same reasons and in the same way. L makes speeches about the “third of the nation,” and L has made a darned good thing for himself out of championing the oppressed. He has the best car of anyone in this room; salary means nothing to him because he lives on an expense account. He agrees with the very largest and most powerful industrialists in the country that it is the business of the strong to boss the weak, and he has made collective bargaining into a legal compulsion to appoint him or his henchmen as “labor’s” agents, with the power to tax pay envelopes and do what they please with the money. L is the strongest natural-born Nazi in this room. Mr. B regards him with contempt tempered by hatred. Mr. B will use him. L is already parroting B’s speeches. He has the brains of Neanderthal man, but he has an infallible instinct for power. In private conversation he denounces the Jews as “parasites.” No one has ever asked him what are the creative functions of a highly paid agent, who takes a percentage off the labor of millions of men, and distributes it where and as it may add to his own political power.   

It’s fun—a macabre sort of fun—this parlor game of “Who Goes Nazi?” And it simplifies things—asking the question in regard to specific personalities.

Kind, good, happy, gentlemanly, secure people never go Nazi. They may be the gentle philosopher whose name is in the Blue Book, or Bill from City College to whom democracy gave a chance to design airplanes—you’ll never make Nazis out of them. But the frustrated and humiliated intellectual, the rich and scared speculator, the spoiled son, the labor tyrant, the fellow who has achieved success by smelling out the wind of success—they would all go Nazi in a crisis.

Believe me, nice people don’t go Nazi. Their race, color, creed, or social condition is not the criterion. It is something in them.

Those who haven’t anything in them to tell them what they like and what they don’t-whether it is breeding, or happiness, or wisdom, or a code, however old-fashioned or however modern, go Nazi. It’s an amusing game. Try it at the next big party you go to.