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horrocious · 1 year ago

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various character notes for my nanowrimo project; these names and characters will probably shift around quite a bit but I thought it would be fun to jot down some notes here and there and see how things progress as time goes on.

Belmont & Lake Agency (formerly Sabat & Sabat)

Monserrat Belmont

“Only the most daring, tenacious, clever, and gorgeous licensed investigator in all of Jilicia! And probably all Europe, for that matter.”

Our hero. After her then-girlfriend and erstwhile-soulmate burned her apartment building down (long story), Monserrat began taking security jobs for Estelle Bastien, a wealthy and well-connected widow. Despite her reservations for working with a French aristocrat, the money's keeping her afloat, and she accepts an invitation to join Estelle aboard the Kelpie. Her boldness gets her into and out of all kinds of scrapes.

Simon Lake

“He's very reliable, actually, despite being a big, clumsy Yankee. I trust him completely, even if he shaved off his mustache.”

Le Rapace

Monserrat's junior partner who she frequently foists work upon delegates legwork and assignments to. He's lived in Jilicia for years after fleeing America. His seeming laid-back attitude belies a penetrating intellect. He's not invited on the boat. Sorry, pal.

Salvador [Surname unknown.]

“She has a reputation for being a criminal, but I only ever see her sitting on her ass gambling, boozing, and flirting with the beautiful women who follow her everywhere. Maybe she used to be somebody. Anyway, I want her life.”

Allegedly an enforcer for Le Rapace, one of many crime rings active in Jilicia. Allegedly involved with the Marais family and may have had something to do with their return to financial stability. What's known for certain is that she loves drinks, cigars, and pretty girls and is never seen publicly without at least one of each, and is always ready with pearls of wisdom. She's also not on the boat, which suits her fine.

The Bastien Family & Associates

Estelle Bastien

“No, I don't like working for a wealthy French family, and I don't trust her at all, but the money spends. Say... if I suck up enough, maybe she'll leave me her fortune.”

The matriarch of the Bastien family, who lives in Jilicia after a disgraceful exit from Parisian high society. She has a forty-six year feud with Nadia Marais. Stone-faced, calculating, paranoid, and the owner of a limitless supply of extremely stylish suits.

Veronique Bastien

“She's pretty, obviously, but even FJPA goons are easier to talk to. I don't know why Phoebe puts up with her.”

Estelle's 25 year old granddaughter. She idolizes Estelle and hates most other people. She likes to invest in unusual things, such as financing Phoebe Moreau's racing career. Living in the lap of luxury, she's extremely hard to please and very communicative about her various displeasures.

Mr. Fredkin

“Whatever they're paying him, it's not enough. But I guess guys like that think of themselves as being part of the family.”

Veronique's manservant who has the Sisyphean task of meeting her mile-long list of needs. He must accompany her aboard the Kelpie because she doesn't like to go even a few days without his cooking. Then he gets murdered.

Phoebe Moreau

“Poor girl gets really flustered when I try to talk to her. Hard to believe she's a race car driver, but I'm led to understand she's a different person behind the wheel.”

A race car driver from rural Jilicia who suffers from severe social anxiety; a Jilician but given a French name to integrate with 'the winning side.' Veronique, at Estelle's insistence, financed her construction of her car, Bellepheron. Phoebe is being introduced to society by Veronique and both terrified of and deeply dependent on her.

The Marais Family & Associates

Nadia Marais

“I hope she fucking dies.”

The matriarch of the Marais family, who recently experienced a reversal of fortunes. Sometimes affable, other times venom-tongued, she has been feuding with Estelle for reasons nobody will say aloud. A firm, outspoken believer in the inherent superiority of Europe over the rest of the world and France over the rest of Europe.

Gabrielle Souchon (formerly Marais)

“She doesn't seem like she's all there – either she's hiding something or she has to be doped up to spend time with her mother.”

Nadia's daughter. Easygoing and optimistic despite her mother's best efforts. She has an ominously good attitude about everyone around her and never seems bothered by anything. She's married to Marcel Souchon, who won't be appearing in this story, but they do talk about him.

Vivian Barker

“What are the odds that a murder would happen on a yacht with two detectives aboard? Obviously she's not going to get to the bottom of it before I do because I'm smarter and hotter... not that she's not smart in her own right, anyway. Also hot.”

A close friend of Nadia Marais and a consulting detective from England who has been invited aboard the Kelpie as a reward for solving a mystery for Nadia. Meticulous with an eye for detail and a flair for the dramatic. Her ego might even be bigger than Monserrat's.

Dr. Harriet Filmore

“She said she's a famous psychologist, but I've never heard of her. Considering Nadia and Gabrielle, how good at it could she really be?”

A discredited academic who, supposedly, treats Nadia and Gabrielle after being drummed out of her field due to scandalously callous experiments on rhesus monkeys. Gabrielle invited her along to “snap her out of her moodiness.”

The Crew of the Kelpie

Captain Nicolas De la Croix

“He fought in the Great War and now he drives a boat around for spoiled rich freaks. Honestly, after I talked to him, I think he should teach at a university or something instead, but he seems happy enough here.”

An experienced captain who now pilots yachts for wealthy French residents of Jilicia. Too much of a professional to indicate how he really feels, but he has the respect and admiration of the crew. An erudite man who reads as much as he can on all manner of topics.

Engineer Sebastian Lopez

“He was more than happy to talk about the technical details of the Kelpie and all the cutting-edge technology that make it such a marvel... y'know, I think he and the Kelpie make a great couple.”

An engineer who constantly cracks little jokes even in extremely grim situations. Although he's worked on many vessels, his heart belongs to the Kelpie. Carries himself with the swagger of a man who's living his ultimate fantasy life.

Chief Steward Lily March

“She's professional enough to work around these rich assholes, but I can tell from the way she shakes a cocktail that she's a time bomb on her last couple ticks.”

The workaholic chief steward of the Kelpie who constantly serves food, refills drinks, makes beds, and everything else required to ensure that every guest aboard the vessel is having a lovely time. Harbors intense bloodlust.

Steward Isaac Brodie

“Too bad Lake's not here, they could talk about America. I wonder if they knew each other back then?”

A young man who left America while he still could, he sails the seas sometimes as a steward, other times a deckhand, and always seems to be the one everyone asks to lend a hand. Polite to the guests but never without something world-weary and cynical to say.

Steward Maxine Shepherd

“She's very charming – everyone loves her. Within five minutes of talking to me one-on-one, she offered to sell me cocaine. If I didn't have a job to do... hey, I'm kidding, God damn it!”

A young woman of unclear origin who tells different people wildly different things about herself depending on the situation. Eager to earn her fortune by any means necessary.

Bosun Carles Palou

“Big guy, Jilician too, although he was too busy to talk to me much. But I noticed he pushes Florry and Oriol around like he's some kind of petty tyrant, so fuck him. That's no way to treat your loyal juniors!”

The short-tempered bosun of the Kelpie. Aside from Captain De la Croix, who he sucks up to, he has no time or respect for anyone. His unsociable nature gets in the way of his high level of nautical expertise.

Deckhand Oriol Vilar

“I don't think he's really old enough to be a deckhand on a yacht, but maybe he's just got a baby face. However, he's not as slick as he thinks he is. I can tell he was staring at my chest the whole time I talked to him.”

An inexperienced young man from Jilicia, he does a poor job keeping up with the hard-working, hard-drinking lifestyle of the others, but he tries his best. Painfully awkward.

Deckhand Florentin LaRue

“They call him Florry. Unfortunately I didn't get to hear the end of his shipwreck story, but this is a man who's clearly seen some shit in his day.”

Deckhand and self-appointed older brother figure to Oriol. Uncanny nautical tragedies follow him wherever he goes but that hasn't stopped him from going to sea again and again.

#nanowrimo #monserrat belmont #the setting is an alt history; things are loosely-explained. Jilicia is a country which France has conquered (along with others).

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0nlinejournal · 2 years ago

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04.19.2023 10:52am

I don't remember the first half of yesterday. I think I laid in bed until 1pm and only got up because Frank messaged me and I decided I was going to go over. Liz, Frank, and I had made plans the night prior to hang out, but they were loose plans and after viewing Liz's location to see that she was home (in the next town over), I figured nothing was going to happen. By nothing I do mean "official" plans, because I still wanted to just pop over to Frank's and chat for a bit. So when he texted me I got up and headed over.

I might've actually gotten up before that? I think I did. The bf and I definitely made fried rice before I left. So, I did get up at some point to stand in the kitchen and then eat some fried rice.

Anyway asked the bf if he wanted to go, he said yes but then no because he really did need to study. After just a couple of games of Overwatch. Ha.

Frank's was nice. Seb was there, too. We all three kind of talked out navigating other people's emotions while trying to do right by them but still trying to do right by yourself. Seb and I are in similar boats where our partners just... react so differently than we would to handling emotions. His gf has a tendency to be reactionary, and also feel like there are underlying messages in what people say or do that are spiteful towards her. So he's been falling into that place where you feel like you have to walk on eggshells a bit so as to not set the other person off, even though he knows (and he's right) that he's not doing anything wrong or anything warranted for passive aggressive guilt tripping. And, ya know, my partner isn't good at regulating negative emotions. And part of me still feels like he intentionally holds on to negative emotions until I'm around so I can see him pout.

Ah, don't need to go into too much of that conversation, because we talked for a couple of hours. Frank contributed as well, but had a different perspective to offer that would make this entry twice as long. And his gf, Liz, rules so whateverrrr!! We get it!! Haha. I love Liz. They obviously have some quirks to work out, but not in the same vein as what we were discussing right then.

Anyway, toward the end of my stay. Seb had already left so it was just Frank and I chatting for a bit longer and he was like, " Oh! By the way were going to [pretty bar] to surprise and celebrate John passing his level 1 sommelier test! I meant to tell you and [my bf] earlier." Oof. I texted da bf, with no response. I left Frank's when there was about 30 minutes before everyone was going to meet up at the bar. Came home to him NAPPING. He needs to be studying! He didn't study later on in the night either even when he said he was going to. I'm a bit upset with him. He's going to be so sad when he fails his exam. Anyway, I told him the info and very much wanted to go.

So he showered and we rushed over. I thought we were decently late, but we were there before everyone other than our friend who had planned the celebration. It was also bingo night! More people trickled in, John was late, but he didn't know it was a whole surprise obviously. We all played bingo, but none of us won anything.

It was a good time.

Back home I started my journey studying Japanese. My bf is taking a class and really wants to learn because he'd like to live there at some point, annnnd I just like learning so I thought I'd learn with him. My sister also just told me that she'll be moving to Japan. She has been studying Japanese on her own for a few years now and she said that she'd like to take it seriously, so she's going to attend a language learning school in Japan. The school sponsors the visa and I guess she has the money to pay for school? So off she goes! She's also been wanting to live in Japan for years now.

I'm going to eat an egg before work. I work today. Until around 8:30pm. I go in at 1pm. Sigh. I do work with Frank today, though. So it'll be fun at least.

11:25am

#april #2023 #journal blog #online journal

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frommybookbook · 10 months ago

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OK, @emi--rose and @epersonae, this has been bouncing around in my brain for nearly a month now and I spent the morning at the art museum with my partner today and accidentally rambled at him while standing in a tiny little corridor of mid-19th century French prints and drawings and then realized that I should have been recording it so I could finally write this post.

That said, here we go.

First off, I am an art lover and consider myself an artist. I have always loved art and art history but am largely self-taught. I don't have a degree in any of this and have taken very few formal classes. I just love the subject and read a lot.

OP of this post and the second reply make some really good points. Art museums originated from a fundamentally different mindset to the science/history museum. Those institutions, for the most part, were always meant to be places of educating and informing, where art museums grew out of the private salons and showcases of Owning Stuff. They were never meant to educate and while they have improved in the last century or so, they're still Not Great.

The biggest deficiency, imo, of most major art galleries today isn't that they're primarily focused on displaying The Collection or their Centerpiece Works, but that they lack context. Every single piece of work in an art museum, even the famous ones, takes on more meaning and more relevance when it's placed in context to not only the other works around it but the time in which it was created. Art has always been a part of the historical record and social commentary—always. What humans create and how they create it and why they create and who likes or dislikes it says as much about a society in a given moment as a daily newspaper from the time. (Sidenote: this is why I hate the term "modern art", all art is modern/contemporary to the time in which it was made, Rembrandt was modern in his day.)

Most museums do make some effort to provide this context and from what I've seen in the last decade or so, are improving. But these improvements take time and money.

Often times, special exhibits will be the best at doing this because of their transient nature. These exhibits bring many disparate pieces together from many different sources—The Collection, storage, private ownership, other institutions—to tell a cohesive story. The curators have the time and resources available to highlight that connective tissue, to provide the relevant historical and societal and technical context to really make the pieces sing. And they have the freedom to change the text on the walls and order new placards and have brochures printed. It's hard to go through the permanent collection and do these things. Think of your own home and think of the things you have on display. Are all of your photographs and houseplants and records organized perfectly? Do they all have the best frame or cutest pot or ideal placement? Or are they good enough, the best that you could do at the time, and as you have the time and resources when you bring in new things, you make those look nicer and more put together? In other words, the picture you've had of you and your college roommates for a decade is in a kinda cheap frame and a little crooked on the wall because it's been there for ages but now that you have a little more money because you have an adult job, you put new art behind properly sized mats with real glass and actually use a level to hang it.

For example, this morning I saw the new Mary Cassatt exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. It was an incredible experience and very well researched and displayed. The works were laid out in a logical, chronological order and surrounded with contextual information about Cassatt's upbringing and family life and financial background. Her subjects were placed in the historical context of life for women in the early 20th century and within the greater context of the Impressionist movement. There were placards on her methods and techniques and explanations of how modern advances in print making and pastel composition impacted her work and the work of her contemporaries. I saw artworks that I'd seen dozens of times, at this museum and others, in a whole new light because I saw them in a new context.

Going into the exhibit, I was already very familiar with Cassatt's work and her background as she's always been a favorite of mine (there are so few women represented in major museums, I've always been a fan of those that are but that's a different ramble for a different post). But even still I learned a lot of new things and thoroughly enjoyed the experience. And more importantly, my partner, who didn't have nearly the familiarity I did going into it, also enjoyed the exhibit and infinitely more so than he would have without the context he learned along the way. Anecdotally, I would say the same seemed to be true for other patrons, based on snippets of conversations I overheard along the way.

And yet as great and informative as the context around the Cassatt exhibit was, the rest of the museum is still severely lacking. As I've said before, this is largely due to the entropy of leaving well enough alone when it comes to long-term/permanent Collection displays, but even smaller, non-Special Exhibit, new displays suffer from a lack of context, presumably due to a lack of funds.

For example, just across the lobby from the Cassatt exhibit, in a small section of corridor between galleries—not even a proper gallery itself—I noticed a new display of prints and drawings (we're museum members so we're there pretty regularly and I notice most changes like this). There was a placard describing the works, and it did a decent job. It explained that they were all created in France in the late 1800s/early 1900s and largely born from the class dissent and social uprisings common of that time. It even pointed out that these works and their subject matter might be at odds with what people imagine when they think of the Impressionist art "synonymous" with that time and location—presuming the average museum-goer has enough context to know that the Impressionist movement originated in France at the turn of the 20th century. But what it didn't say is that the reason this small handful of prints were pulled out of storage and put on display was because they were created using the same techniques in print making that Mary Cassatt had been experimenting with at the same time in the same place and could be seen also on display just a few hundred feet away. The curators didn't have the time or the space or the money or the whatever to provide this additional bit of context that would have made this little passthrough bit of hallway more relevant to 90% of visitors who just came to the museum this day to see the Mary Cassatt exhibit.

This is the point of our visit where I got frustrated by the lack of context and essentially word vomited this post all over my partner. He enjoys art and had enjoyed the Cassatt exhibit but he hadn't paid much attention to the additional prints; they were just something different filling a couple walls on the way to the much larger room of the more famous van Goghs and Cezannes and Monets. After I told him of the connection, he went back and studied them more closely and appreciated them more. He commented unprompted on the differences between the subject matter and presentation of those pieces and the Cassatt works from the same time and place. By giving him the context, he was able to engage in his own critical thinking about the art and make connections that will make those pieces remain in his memories and thoughts.

tl;dr: context is key, especially when it comes to art. If we want people to be able to truly appreciate and engage with art, regardless of its time period or style, we need to give them the context to do so.

I would be very interested in hearing the museum design rant

by popular demand: Guy That Took One (1) Museum Studies Class Focused On Science Museums Rants About Art Museums. thank u for coming please have a seat

so. background. the concept of the "science museum" grew out of 1) the wunderkammer (cabinet of curiosities), also known as "hey check out all this weird cool shit i have", and 2) academic collections of natural history specimens (usually taxidermied) -- pre-photography these were super important for biological research (see also). early science museums usually grew out of university collections or bequests of some guy's Weird Shit Collection or both, and were focused on utility to researchers rather than educational value to the layperson (picture a room just, full of taxidermy birds with little labels on them and not a lot of curation outside that). eventually i guess they figured they could make more on admission by aiming for a mass audience? or maybe it was the cultural influence of all the world's fairs and shit (many of which also caused science museums to exist), which were aimed at a mass audience. or maybe it was because the research function became much more divorced from the museum function over time. i dunno. ANYWAY, science and technology museums nowadays have basically zero research function; the exhibits are designed more or less solely for educating the layperson (and very frequently the layperson is assumed to be a child, which does honestly irritate me, as an adult who likes to go to science museums). the collections are still there in case someone does need some DNA from one of the preserved bird skins, but items from the collections that are exhibited typically exist in service of the exhibit's conceptual message, rather than the other way around.

meanwhile at art museums they kind of haven't moved on from the "here is my pile of weird shit" paradigm, except it's "here is my pile of Fine Art". as far as i can tell, the thing that curators (and donors!) care about above all is The Collection. what artists are represented in The Collection? rich fucks derive personal prestige from donating their shit to The Collection. in big art museums usually something like 3-5% of the collection is ever on exhibit -- and sometimes they rotate stuff from the vault in and out, but let's be real, only a fraction of an art museum's square footage is temporary exhibits. they're not going to take the scream off display when it's like the only reason anyone who's not a giant nerd ever visits the norwegian national museum of art. most of the stuff in the vault just sits in the vault forever. like -- art museum curators, my dudes, do you think the general public gives a SINGLE FUCK what's in The Collection that isn't on display? no!! but i guarantee you it will never occur, ever, to an art museum curator that they could print-to-scale high-res images of artworks that are NOT in The Collection in order to contextualize the art in an exhibit, because items that are not in The Collection functionally do not exist to them. (and of course there's the deaccessioning discourse -- tumblr collectively has some level of awareness that repatriation is A Whole Kettle of Worms but even just garden-variety selling off parts of The Collection is a huge hairy fucking deal. check out deaccessioning and its discontents; it's a banger read if you're into This Kind Of Thing.)

with the contents of The Collection foregrounded like this, what you wind up with is art museum exhibits where the exhibit's message is kind of downstream of what shit you've got in the collection. often the message is just "here is some art from [century] [location]", or, if someone felt like doing a little exhibit design one fine morning, "here is some art from [century] [location] which is interesting for [reason]". the displays are SOOOOO bad by science museum standards -- if you're lucky you get a little explanatory placard in tiny font relating the art to an art movement or to its historical context or to the artist's career. if you're unlucky you get artist name, date, and medium. fucker most of the people who visit your museum know Jack Shit about art history why are you doing them dirty like this

(if you don't get it you're just not Cultured enough. fuck you, we're the art museum!)

i think i've talked about this before on this blog but the best-exhibited art exhibit i've ever been to was actually at the boston museum of science, in this traveling leonardo da vinci exhibit where they'd done a bunch of historical reconstructions of inventions out of his notebooks, and that was the main Thing, but also they had a whole little exhibit devoted to the mona lisa. obviously they didn't even have the real fucking mona lisa, but they went into a lot of detail on like -- here's some X-ray and UV photos of it, and here's how art experts interpret them. here's a (photo of a) contemporary study of the finished painting, which we've cleaned the yellowed varnish off of, so you can see what the colors looked like before the varnish yellowed. here's why we can't clean the varnish off the actual painting (da vinci used multiple varnish layers and thinned paints to translucency with varnish to create the illusion of depth, which means we now can't remove the yellowed varnish without stripping paint).

even if you don't go into that level of depth about every painting (and how could you? there absolutely wouldn't be space), you could at least talk a little about, like, pigment availability -- pigment availability is an INCREDIBLY useful lens for looking at historical paintings and, unbelievably, never once have i seen an art museum exhibit discuss it (and i've been to a lot of art museums). you know how medieval european religious paintings often have funky skin tones? THEY HADN'T INVENTED CADMIUM PIGMENTS YET. for red pigments you had like... red ochre (a muted earth-based pigment, like all ochres and umbers), vermilion (ESPENSIVE), alizarin crimson (aka madder -- this is one of my favorite reds, but it's cool-toned and NOT good for mixing most skintones), carmine/cochineal (ALSO ESPENSIVE, and purple-ish so you wouldn't want to use it for skintones anyway), red lead/minium (cheaper than vermilion), indian red/various other iron oxide reds, and apparently fucking realgar? sure. whatever. what the hell was i talking about.

oh yeah -- anyway, i'd kill for an art exhibit that's just, like, one or two oil paintings from each century for six centuries, with sample palettes of the pigments they used. but no! if an art museum curator has to put in any level of effort beyond writing up a little placard and maybe a room-level text block, they'll literally keel over and die. dude, every piece of art was made in a material context for a social purpose! it's completely deranged to divorce it from its material context and only mention the social purpose insofar as it matters to art history the field. for god's sake half the time the placard doesn't even tell you if the thing was a commission or not. there's a lot to be said about edo period woodblock prints and mass culture driven by the growing merchant class! the met has a fuckton of edo period prints; they could get a hell of an exhibit out of that!

or, tying back to an earlier thread -- the detroit institute of arts has got a solid like eight picasso paintings. when i went, they were kind of just... hanging out in a room. fuck it, let's make this an exhibit! picasso's an artist who pretty famously had Periods, right? why don't you group the paintings by period, and if you've only got one or two (or even zero!) from a particular period, pad it out with some decent life-size prints so i can compare them and get a better sense for the overarching similarities? and then arrange them all in a timeline, with little summaries of what each Period was ~about~? that'd teach me a hell of a lot more about picasso -- but you'd have to admit you don't have Every Cool Painting Ever in The Collection, which is illegalé.

also thinking about the mit museum temporary exhibit i saw briefly (sorry, i was only there for like 10 minutes because i arrived early for a meeting and didn't get a chance to go through it super thoroughly) of a bunch of ship technical drawings from the Hart nautical collection. if you handed this shit to an art museum curator they'd just stick it on the wall and tell you to stand around and look at it until you Understood. so anyway the mit museum had this enormous room-sized diorama of various hull shapes and how they sat in the water and their benefits and drawbacks, placed below the relevant technical drawings.

tbh i think the main problem is that art museum people and science museum people are completely different sets of people, trained in completely different curatorial traditions. it would not occur to an art museum curator to do anything like this because they're probably from the ~art world~ -- maybe they have experience working at an art gallery, or working as an art buyer for a rich collector, neither of which is in any way pedagogical. nobody thinks an exhibit of historical clothing should work like a clothing store but it's fine when it's art, i guess?

also the experience of going to an art museum is pretty user-hostile, i have to say. there's never enough benches, and if you want a backrest, fuck you. fuck you if going up stairs is painful; use our shitty elevator in the corner that we begrudgingly have for wheelchair accessibility, if you can find it. fuck you if you can't see very well, and need to be closer to the art. fuck you if you need to hydrate or eat food regularly; go to our stupid little overpriced cafeteria, and fuck you if we don't actually sell any food you can eat. (obviously you don't want someone accidentally spilling a smoothie on the art, but there's no reason you couldn't provide little Safe For Eating Rooms where people could just duck in and monch a protein bar, except that then you couldn't sell them a $30 salad at the cafe.) fuck you if you're overwhelmed by noise in echoing rooms with hard surfaces and a lot of people in them. fuck you if you are TOO SHORT and so our overhead illumination generates BRIGHT REFLECTIONS ON THE SHINY VARNISH. we're the art museum! we don't give a shit!!!

#art #art history #i do think most museums try their best #and when they hit the mark they hit it well #but there are a lot of historical and systemic blockers in place to keep this from being the norm rather than the exception

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sugrbugz · 4 years ago

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ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ

𝐹𝑜𝑟 𝑦𝑜𝑢: 𝐵𝑜𝑘𝑢𝑡𝑜

hiya!! i originally wrote this on wattpad but decided to post it here too!!

story contains: impact play, bdsm, dumbification, & daddy kink ;)

bokuto shows you just how much you mean to him.

——————————————

you were a constant in bokutos life ever since you met shortly after his graduation from fukurodani. he relied on you to be there for him when he lost or even when he won. of course he could turn to akaashi but since he never continued volleyball he never wanted to bother him.

however you came into the picture on a whim. bokuto and the rest of the msby boys ended up taking a team getaway at the hot springs you just so happened to work at. you two got chatting and hit it off right away!

that was a year ago and now you two are head over heels in love with each other. everyone kinda saw it coming but you two honestly. as of right now you sat in the stands, watching your boyfriend and his friends play their national playoffs.

you knew how hard he'd been working for this. how many hours he put into the game. you two would sit up until the early morning going over plays and techniques he'd been working on. through bokuto you started learning how volleyball worked, you knew what to cheer for now and what certain words meant.

by the end of the game you realized something. they were one point away from a win. that being said you upped the ante on your cheering. you thought about calling his name out and wishing him like but he was definitely in his own world right now. watching his concentration was actually rather hot. it reminded you of how he would stare at your body before absolutely devouring it.

you shook those thoughts out of your head, now wasn't the time. you gulped and pressed your thighs together, focusing the best you could on the game. suddenly the ball was up in the air, everyone in the stands went quiet just to see who would win. this last point means everything...so when bokuto ran for the server, smacking it down hard and fast against the other side of the court everything went silent for a moment before there were loud cheers.

the whistle was blown. they'd won. you quickly jumped up, running out of the stands and straight to the court, attacking him in a hug. "BOKUTO YOU DID IT!" you smiled, laughing some more when he picked you up and spun you around. "did you see that?! i was fucking amazing!! and it was all thanks to you my sunshine!" he hugged you close, kissing the top of your head.

you suddenly were engulfed in another hug but this time from two more sweaty boys, hinata and atsumu. "good job out there guys!" you smile to them, gently ruffling their hair. "you all played amazingly! you could feel the energy from all the way over there!" you added, laughing when bokuto pouted at them hugging you.

"you're the best person ever y/n! are you coming to the post game dinner with us? you should! you played a big role in keeping bokuto in shape" the little orange smiled, his face practically begging you to go. "if you guys will have me!" you hummed which earned a symphony of "yes!" from all the boys.

—————————————

after everything was said and done you ended up in the car with bokuto, driving to the restaurant kyoomi had chosen. "you really did amazing today koutarou" you smiled gently grabbing his hand off your thigh and kissing it, taking the time to notice how much volleyball had an effect on his hands.

"ah..thanks babe, you know you don't have to flatter me so much! i'm okay! i'm just happy knowing you had a good time today" he smiled wide, taking his eyes off the road for a moment to gaze at you. "but let's face it bo, you're destined for something greater..an amazing career in volleyball doing what you love..i'm just enjoying our time while we have it" you stated making him pull the car over and look at you.

"what are you talking about?" he asked raising an eyebrow at you. "when you have to move around a lot for volleyball..or maybe you find some really skinny model who has money and can give you beautiful babies" you now met his eyes, "i feel like one day i won't matter anymore..so i guess i just want to make sure that i love you as much as i can until then." you explained watching how his eyes reacted to everything you were saying.

"you don't understand it do you? the way i play and the way i live my life is all because of you. i play with my heart because i get so excited just to see you proud of me, i wake up every morning with the goal of making sure i fall asleep with you. everything is for you. i wouldn't want anyone else. i want to be married to you someday, i would leave everything behind just to—" you cut him off by kissing him. it was a kiss driven by passion and love for him.

"prove it." you whispered on his lips. you knew where this would get you, you both were aware of it actually. "get in the back." he stated before starting the car back up and driving to a more secluded place. he knew he could've just taken you back home but what was the fun in that.

by the time he was in the back seat with you, you had already undressed and were gently playing with yourself so eager just to be with him. he thought this was cute so he watched you with sharp eyes, his goal was to intimidate you which definitely worked. "hey baby?" he asked before gently gripping your neck in one hand, his other holding both of your cheeks squished together. "who the fuck put the idea in your head that you weren't good enough for me? was it yourself? you're so cute when you're stupid" he smiled, treating you like a child as he talked to you.

you blushed knowing exactly what he was doing so you played along with the act, "it was me..i really am stupid aren't i daddy?" you could say his name but it would ruin the moment because that's exactly what he wanted from you. "so that's the game you're playing huh? okay. that's fine darling." he smiled so sinister it was almost terrifying before his hands dipped into your waistband, pulling your pants off your body.

"what are you doing?" you commented noticing how after your pants were off he just stared at you. "i'm admiring you and how delicious you look. wondering how i'm going to absolutely ruin you till you're fucked dumber than you already are." he hummed casually before starting to undo his pants. his favourite part about topping you was getting to tease you more than he already did outside of the bedroom.

you were still flustered from his previous words that had your mind racing to even notice how he simply picked you up so you were on your hands and knees in front of him. "open your mouth." bokuto's hand found your hair and tugged you forward harshly so your mouth was pressed against his shaft. you immediately got to work sucking on his cock, tears pricking at your eyes from the size adjustment.

"that's it..you can't take all of me can you? you need to try harder than that honey." he teased you before thrusting his hips up into your mouth, smirking at the choking noises that came from you. soon he became less focused on teasing you and more on his own pleasure.

"ah fuck~b-baby you look so pretty when you t-take all of my cock-" he stuttered out, his hips getting sloppier with their thrusts made you know he was getting close. this motivated you to do anything and everything for him. you pulled your mouth of his dick, giggling when you heard his whine of protest turn into a loud moan of pleasure while you jerked him off quickly.

"come on bo...cum for me so i can feel you inside" you moaned knowing that would get him right where you wanted him. you knew it worked when he was matching your hands movement with his thrusts, loud moans and whines leaving his mouth until he finished, getting it all over your hand and his lower stomach. without a single word he laid you down on the back seat, hovering over you slightly he pushed a single finger inside you, moving it slowly so you could get used to it before speeding it up when you relaxed around his finger.

"tryna make me cum before i even get inside you? that's fine baby i'll just do the same." he winked, "did you think you'd just get off free like that? oh no baby you've got to be punished for talking so badly about my partner like that." bokuto smirked before slipping one more finger in, practically drilling it into you.

you were too lost in the pleasure to hear him, hands grasping at anything they could find. your nails dug so deep into his arm it drew blood but he didn't mind. "what's the matter hun, is it too much? do you need me to stop?" his fingers stopped moving which made you rolled your hips. "n-no! please don't stop they felt so good.." you whined softly. hearing your whines made him laugh softly before moving them again quickly.

with your head against the seat you arched your back slightly while you felt your orgasm approaching. bokuto picked up on this and began to kiss at your neck, "good baby..let it wash over you, let it start making you even more of a dumb slut for me" he whispered in your ear before nipping at it softly.

that was all you needed to hear before cumming, your hands gripping onto his biceps while moans just tumbled out of your mouth. this is what he loved to see. he felt so good knowing he put you in so much ecstasy. "good..good baby..you did so good" he softly praised before kissing your cheeks to help you calm down from the intense high you just felt.

he waited a couple moments to make sure you were okay, stroking himself softly in the process. "are you okay? can i ruin you now?" he smiled, earning a small breathy laugh from you. "yeah of course daddy, i want you so bad" you whined, wanting to keep him in the mood. you loved when bokuto showed no mercy on you, treating you like nothing but a toy until after where he showered you in love and affection.

bokuto didn't say anything as he pushed your knees up to your chest slightly before sliding into your hole with ease. this made you gasp and cry out in a mix of pain and pleasure, "since you're so impatient, i'll just have to go fast right? show you just how stupid you are." he smirked before practically slamming into you, hands finding your hips. "fucking christ bo!" you moaned loudly, earning a smack across the face from him.

he never hit you hard and it never happened outside of a consensual bdsm scene so it didn't phase either of you. "shut the fuck up, you know damn well that's not my name. did you forget who you belong to? sucha stupid pet" he laughed loudly, loving torturing you with the fact you had made a stupid decision.

what was minutes truly felt like an eternity with him, feeling him slam into you over and over while soft praises and degrading sentences slipped out of his lips. "such a good pet" "dumb slut" "so good on my cock" "i'm going to fuck you so good"

they left his mouth like a song, getting so lost in the moment of making you feel so fucked out you went dumb. slowly his plan had worked as you felt your head start to go fuzzy, suddenly the only thing on your mind was him and how good his cock felt. your eyes went hooded and your mouth hung open slightly, not even realizing you were drooling slightly. "oh no..is my little angel all fucked out? daddy fucked you stupid didn't he? you probably can't even talk can you? good. pathetic bitches like you don't deserve to use their words. you gunna cum? yeah? go on my sweet dummy, cum all over daddy-" you didn't need to hear anything else before you came, hard.

your whole body twitched and loud moans slipped from your mouth as he got you there. "good job lovely.." he whispered before groaning at how tight you clenched down on him during your high, resulting in him pulling out and stroking himself quickly, his cum splattering on your tummy. "fucking shit" he whined leaning down to pant against you neck.

quickly he sat up and cupped your face, "angel? are you okay? if you can't talk that's alright i just need to see a thumbs up or down okay?" he spoke softly watching as you nodded and help your thumb up to him. "perfect..come on, i'll tell the others you weren't feeling so good..we can order in our dinner and i'll run us a bath okay? oh! what do i always say?" he smiled watching your lips move to say it but the words never coming out.

bokuto laughed softly before running a hand through your hair, "what happens in bed is for fun. you are smart, kind, loving, beautiful, handsome, and important." he smiled kissing your cheeks.

"come on my baby, let's go home."

#haikyuu #haikyuu!!#sports anime #haikyuu smut #bokuto #bokuto koutaro #bokuto smut #hq imagines #hq x you #hq x reader #haikyuu x reader #haikyuu bokuto #hq bokuto

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hanoella · 4 years ago

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Affettuoso- With Feeling (Part 3)

Pairing: Bucky x Pianist!Reader

Set after the events of TFATWS: In an effort to start over and make a home in Louisiana, Bucky meets a friend of Sam’s who ends up being his landlord. With only a driveway to separate them, he finds that he’s not the only one looking for a fresh start.

Series tags/warnings: Slow Burn, Eventual Bucky x Reader, Mentions of Domestic Abuse, Canon Level Violence

Part 3 Word Count: 3k

A/N: Can you tell I don't really have a posting schedule? lol. I also introduced links to the specific pieces I had in mind. I'm using soundcloud because I don't think everyone has access to spotify. Trying to be reader friendly! This can be read with or without the audio, as I do my best to still convey the thought in the fic. Though if you can, I highly recommend :)

Thanks again for all your support! Every heart and comment motivates me and is just so wonderful

Read Part 1; Masterlist

---

A few days had passed since the night that Bucky had overheard your troubles. It had been quiet since, and you hadn’t left the house. The curtains were opened during the day and closed at night, the only telltale signs that you existed.

Doesn’t she have to work? Bucky thought to himself. He speculated all the different possibilities as he used the riding mower around the property. Maybe you were an heiress? You seemed pretty down to earth though. Or maybe you sold a patented idea for a ton of money. All this land had to have been expensive. And to not request actual money from him?

He eyed up the width of the gate for your fence. The riding mower couldn’t fit so he would have to use a push mower for your fenced off yard. He hadn’t seen one in the garage. Maybe the old shed at the back of your yard had one? Bucky parked the mower in the garage, taking a moment to make a mental list of everything. Depending on if he found anything in the shed, he might need to buy a few basic tools and a chainsaw for that fallen tree.

He walked out of the garage and over to the shed. The leaves were changing color and it brought a whole new atmosphere to the secluded forest area. Opening the gate of the weathered white fence, he looked around to see if you were out. No signs of life. Entering the yard and closing the gate behind him, he started walking to the back. Halfway through, he stopped at the fire pit. The grey stone blocks were starting to crumble, with a few of the bricks having fallen off. It would probably be really nice if he got a little bit of cement mix and filled in the gaps. Bucky made another mental note.

The shed had no padlock so he was able to open it with no problem. Amongst the cobwebs and bags of soil, was an older green push mower that looked like it might work. He gave the gas a pull and got no response back. Looking underneath, Bucky saw what might be the problem. He’d have to take a closer look later. Putting the lawn mower back onto its wheels, he pushed it across the yard, pausing when he saw movement though the glass doors of the back patio.

Craning his neck to avoid the glare, he saw you sitting at your fancy full keyboard. The way the piano was against the opposite wall, your back was to him. You had big over-ear headphones plugged into it, so he couldn’t hear the sound but he saw the flurry of keys being pressed down. Whatever you were playing, you played passionately. Hands and arms gracefully moved despite the speed at which they were moving. Enhanced hearing coming into play, he heard the muffled clicks of the fluttering keys. Suddenly, you pressed down forcefully, holding whatever chord you had struck as your shoulders gently relaxed. A deep breath. Arm creating a graceful arc as if you had studied ballet, you pressed gently on another chord. And another. Bucky counted three more times you did this before you let your hands gently fall from the keys to your lap. Several moments passed before slid the headphones off of your ears to sit wrapped around your neck. Another deep breath. This time as the breath escaped you, you stayed slouched, head tilting up to stare at nothing on the wall.

A buzz broke Bucky from his trance.

“Call me, new mission” The text from Sam on his home screen said.

He pocketed his phone, glancing through the glass one more time. There you still sat.

Unmoving.

---

The roar of the plane’s engine was just loud enough to drown out Bucky’s thoughts without being annoying. If it weren’t for the adrenaline of the recovery mission under the cover of nightfall, he probably would’ve been lulled to sleep. Beside him sat Sam, looking on his phone for the exact coordinates of the politician they had been sent to rescue.

“Here it is. I’m assuming there’s some sort of underground base since there are no heat signatures anywhere within the radius where he was taken. It should take us about ten more minutes before we’re directly over it.”

Bucky hummed in acknowledgement.

Sam raised an eyebrow. “Earth to Bucky.”

“What does your friend do?” Bucky asked suddenly, sitting up straighter and turning towards him.

“… What?”

“What does she do? I’ve never seen her leave the house. Is she okay?”

“If you’re asking why she doesn’t leave the house, it’s because her contract doesn’t start for a while. She’s technically still supposed to be in physical therapy but she hasn’t found a place yet. You know, your whole routine gets messed up when you move.”

“For her shoulder?”

Now it was Sam’s turn to look at Bucky, trying to decipher the motive behind these questions. Bucky shifted his weight in the chair, antsy under the scrutiny.

“Never mind, I-”

“Yes, for her shoulder.” Sam said, cutting him off. He stopped himself from asking why Bucky wanted to know. There was an awkward pause before Bucky explained himself.

“I just wanted to know. I’m not used to seeing people so…”

“Similar to yourself?”

“I was gonna say isolated but fair point.” Bucky admitted. Sam leaned back in his chair, looking straight forward.

“She’s been through a lot… I know you heard some of it.”

Bucky blinked in surprise.

“I realized the window was open when I could hear you drive off.”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to-”

“It’s alright, it’s good that you know.” Sam said as he held up his hand to cut Bucky off.

“She’s just trying to get a fresh start. She’s in a raw emotional space and in the meantime is a little skittish. Just like someone else I know.” Sam jabbed his elbow into Bucky’s side as he enunciated the last sentence.

“Okay, okay, I get it. I’m trying!” He shouted as he held one hand up defensively and using the other to block the second jab Sam was trying to get in. Sam chuckled and then stood up, grabbing a parachute pack and tossing it at Bucky, who caught it without even looking.

“Figured you might wanna try an actual chute this time.”

Bucky rolled his eyes and mouthed Sam’s words mockingly with a grimace as he put the backpack on. Clipping it into place, he joined Sam at the side door of the plane.

“She used to play in an orchestra you know.” Sam said wistfully. “The piano. That’s actually how we met. She had volunteered to play a small concert before the dinner. It really helped raise a lot of money for the VA.”

Bucky stayed silent, prompting him to continue.

“Then that bastard she was engaged to beat her and then shoved her down a set of concrete steps when she tried to leave him. It was like a month after we all came back. She was in the hospital for a while. Broken ribs, broken shoulder, and a nasty concussion to boot. Neighbor saw the whole thing and called the cops but the courts were so backed up and the case fell through the cracks. Wouldn’t leave her alone after he got out. So, I pulled some strings and helped her move down here on the fly.”

“… That’s terrible.”

Bucky didn’t know what to say or how to react. They stood in silence, taking a moment to pay a respect of sorts to the trials you have been through. Then Sam broke the silence.

“She just needs time to heal in more ways than one. But she’s strong. Resilient.”

Putting a hand on Bucky’s shoulder, he squeezed it lightly with reassurance.

“Reminds me of someone else I know.” Sam said, finishing the conversation and pulling his goggles over his eyes, giving Bucky the opportunity to take the compliment without feeling too on the spot.

Pulling the door open, Sam shouted over the wind.

“Ready?”

Bucky nodded. Sam jumped from the plane and deployed the wings, the shield shining in the moonlight. Bucky jumped right behind him, using the glint of the silver star to guide his descent as he followed the man that gave the shield its meaning.

---

You laid with your head down on the kitchen table, letting the last golden rays of sun warm the side of your face. You were exhausted from going to physical therapy, especially since today had been the first appointment. All the measurements, all the exercises, all the stretching.

All the questions.

“So, how did you break your shoulder?” the young blonde physical therapist asked.

“Ah, I… fell down some stairs.” You said, looking down at your hands in your lap.

She didn’t look up from the papers, instead just raising an eyebrow.

“You also cracked some ribs and had a concussion?”

“… They were concrete.”

She looked up from the papers at you, analyzing. Her gaze softened and she asked no further questions on how these serious injuries had been obtained.

“Let’s look at your range of motion.”

You had practically stumbled into the house, kicking off your sneakers and plopping down at the kitchen table. Minutes passed by as you regained your breath, heartbeat steadying. The house was slightly cold since you had turned the heat down this morning. As your sweat cooled, you wrapped your arms around your legs in an attempt to keep you warm without getting up.

The sun feels so warm… You thought to yourself drowsily, feeling slightly less lonely. The sun was a cheap substitute for the warmth of a partner…

---

You jolted upright, the kitchen dark and cold. Neck and shoulder stiff from the awkward position you had dozed off in. Feeling the dryness of your mouth, you got up, stretching your neck gently while you walked to the fridge to get water. Chugging about half the bottle, you squinted at the clock. You had been asleep for about forty-five minutes. Groaning, you put the bottle down on the counter and walked into the living room to close the curtains. Grabbing one in each hand, you went to pull them together when you hesitated, noticing that Bucky’s apartment was dark for the third day in a row. The sleek motorbike that was usually parked under the slight overhang of the garage was missing as well.

He was probably on a mission, right? Not that it was any of your business. You shut the curtains and turned off the lights before lightly padded down the hall, stopping to adjust the thermostat. The heat kicked on, sending a puff of cold air your way. You shivered as you walked with a quickened pace to your room, shutting the door and heading into the master bathroom, turning the hot water on with just a tad of cold.

Waiting for the shower to warm up, you leaned over the sink and looked into the mirror. Dark circles under your eyes. Small scar on the bridge of your nose. Running your hand through the roots of your hair, you felt for the scar where the stitches had been. When was the last time you had a haircut? Or put on some makeup?

Some higher being must’ve felt pity for you since the steam from the shower fogged the glass, preventing you from tearing yourself apart any further. Stepping underneath the warm stream, you let the warmth seep into your muscles, then bones, filling every fracture and break with a temporary sense of wholeness until the emptiness of your heart and home caused it slowly to drip out until it, along with you, was gone.

---

The next morning, you weren’t motivated to do anything. You lounged around the house, sipping on coffee and browsing on your phone for furniture, clothes, even sneaking a peak at some pianos. Wanting to invest in one you’d use for the next several decades, you had put off buying one until the money from your contract with the orchestra started in a month. You were still well off, nowhere near struggling and probably wouldn’t ever be unless you decided to buy a mansion (which was a no). You just wanted to be careful.

In the afternoon, you popped a pain killer and muscle relaxer in preparation for the few hours you wanted to practice. Thirty minutes went by and the ever-present ache in your shoulder calmed enough to let you practice with relative peace. Sitting on the bench in front of the keyboard, you pondered what you might play to warm up.

Hmm, maybe a Chopin prelude? Short, emotional, familiar.

Your left hand held the soft deep chords as your right hand softly flitted around the higher notes. Breathing in and out with the music, you tried to ignore the ache that start to surround your shoulder.

Playing the last few notes, you paused before reaching over to the bottle of painkillers.

---

Shortly after finishing up, you dragged a small table outside next to the wooden bench swing that was hanging on the porch. Bundled up in a soft sweatshirt, long-sleeve shirt, wool lined leggings, fuzzy socks and slippers, you brought out your hot tea, several blankets, a pillow, and a book you had been meaning to read for months. You were determined to do something besides practice, watch TV, and scroll on your phone.

You settled onto the bench, wrapping the blanket around you, nice and toasty from the layers trapping in the heat of a thorough practice session. The extra medication had really helped keep the pain at bay. Tentatively sipping the steaming cup, you closed your eyes to further appreciate the sweet tones of peach and honey. Setting the cup in your lap with one hand, you used your other hand to flip open to the first page.

---

Bucky hadn’t expected the mission to get so complicated. Finding the base was one thing, navigating in and out of the expansive maze was another. It took a few days to successfully get the target out and back to the embassy. He hadn’t properly slept during that time due to taking shifts with Sam. Not that it was any different from how he slept at home.

The sun was letting its last few rays bless the earth when he turned onto the driveway. Taking it easy on the gravel, he eased his posture and slowed the bike. He put pressure on the brakes as he made it past the final wall of trees that hid the water that was reflecting the last bit of color left in the sky. Rolling casually into a stop, he parked and let out a deep breath, shoulders sinking.

A stray bird calling out turned his attention in the direction of your house. The porch light was on. That’s new, he thought. Squinting his eyes, he saw a bundle on the porch swing. Was that you? Quietly walking over while taking his leather gloves off, he confirmed his suspicions. There you were, lying on your side propped up by a large fuzzy pillow. Eyes closed and breathing rhythmically. Scanning the scene, he noticed the mug on the side table, empty except for the used teabag. Your book was closed, the page you were on marked by one of your fingers. You must’ve fallen asleep while reading.

“Hey…” Bucky said gently. No response besides a small nose scrunch.

He repeated himself a little louder, squatting to be at eye level while gently setting his hand on your arm and shaking you lightly. You groaned this time, eyes fluttering open, taking a moment to focus. You squinted and pushed yourself up into a sitting position, losing your place in the book and attempting to blink the heavy drowsiness from your eyes.

“Bucky?” You questioned hoarsely as you met his eyes. He was still crouching so you were looking slightly down at him. Brow furrowed, you searched the blue of his eyes before looking around to see how dark it had gotten. As you turned your head back to him, he stood back up, scratching the back of his neck just to occupy his hands.

“It’s starting to get cold. I didn’t want you to spend the rest of the night out here.” He explained, choosing to look out at the water, now dark. When he turned his head back, you had also turned your head to look at the water, exposing the side of your neck, the tendons and clavicle accentuated by the strain. Bucky swallowed and your eyes met his, oblivious.

“Ah, thank you. I must’ve fallen asleep reading. I just started going back to physical therapy so I’ve just been so wiped… Anyway,” you said, dismissing yourself mid-thought. He didn’t want to hear about all that. “…did you just come back from a mission?” You eyed the diagonal cuts of leather on his jacket, noting the missing sleeve that exposed the glint of the metal.

“Yeah. I was gone for a few days.”

“Okay. I’m glad you’re home safe.” You mindlessly said, picking up the book and other various items strewn about.

Home safe. What an unfamiliar phrase.

As the words echoed in his mind, you had opened the door and stepped in, turning your head slightly to look back at him.

“Thanks again… Good night.”

“Good night.” Bucky replied, watching as you shut the door softly behind you.

Slowly walking down the porch steps, he crossed the driveway to the garage. Turning his head just in time to see the last light turn off in your house, he stood with his hand on the knob, meditating on the effect that one short sentence had on him.

Glad you’re home safe. Was this what it was like when you had someone waiting on you at home? The tired eyes and gentle smile. Would that be what it was like when he came home in the middle of a night from a mission when he had someone to share a bed with? Gently shaking them to let them know he was home? Or would he try to sneak into bed without waking them? He tried to imagine what that sort of intimacy would be like as he entered his apartment and then his room. Unzipping his jacket and tossing it over a chair, he stripped down to his boxer briefs and climbed into bed, wondering what it would be like if it was already warm.

#bucky x y/n #bucky barnes x you #bucky barnes angst #bucky barnes fanfiction #bucky barnes x reader #bucky x female reader #bucky barnes fic #bucky x reader #bucky x you #bucky imagine #SoundCloud

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inknopewetrust · 4 years ago

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In Another Universe Part 4 (Marcus Moreno x Reader)

Summary: The reunion you've both been waiting forever for.

Pairing: Marcus Moreno x Fem!Reader (We Can Be Heroes/MCU Crossover)

Word Count: 2k

Warnings: None.

A/N: This is it! Thank you all for showing interest in this series and being so enthusiastic about it. @jupitersmooneuropa, this is for you! You're idea was so wonderful, I just couldn't resist making it into a mini-series and I hope I did you proud. Requests are currently CLOSED but will be open again soon. Check out my MASTERLIST for all other works!

Being a hero meant a lot of different things to a lot of different people. Some loved the fame, the recognition, the money that sometimes came with, while some just wanted to be helpful and loved for their work. But one quality heroes had in common was that they were able to calm their nerves in the most crucial moments.

For Marcus Moreno, that crucial moment was now, and he could barely contain his nerves.

Clint could feel the anxiety radiating off the man. Marcus tried to play it cool because he had everything that made him seem cool: the swords, the tactical gear, his stoic face, but it wasn't enough to mask emotions from a world-class spy. Though Clint was able to sense it, he wasn't sure what exactly to say. He had only heard about Marcus through you, he only knew what little you told him, and that was how he determined Marcus wasn't some alien but the man you've been waiting for.

It was an awkward silence. One filled with the quiet roaring of the engines and every now and again, the sound of alerts from the computers around them. Clint kept his eyes on the sky while Marcus took peaks at the landscape below. The world looked so much like his own... just not as technically advanced as his own. The clouds swallowed the sip and his eyes drifted forward again as he took in a deep breath and exhaled.

"Nervous?" Clint managed to crack Marcus a smile and glanced at the man sitting to his right. Marcus chuckled, nodding his head with a nonchalance.

"You could say that."

"There's no reason for you to be."

"There's always a chance for something to go wrong."

Clint shrugged and flipped some switches as the quinjet began to descend.

"Are we there already?"

"Almost. About 5 minutes out."

Another uneasy silence fell over them but Clint wasn't contributing to it. Marcus just wanted everything to be like it was before. You, Missy, and himself in a home that felt like home. He couldn't have asked for a better partner in life and work, and it was taken away from him just like your life was taken away from you, but he wasn't going to say his life was better without you because it wasn't. Marcus just feared that maybe this life here was better than the one you had built with him. No one's reassurance except your own could tell him otherwise.

"Can I ask you a question?" Marcus glanced at Clint before returning to look forward again, a little embarrassed to be talking about you with someone he didn't know. But he knew you loved Clint like a brother, just as Natasha had been a sister, so he understood there was a level of trust there. Clint mumbled a 'go ahead' but his attention wasn't entirely on Marcus.

"Is she happy here?"

'Loaded question, but alright Mr. other world.' Clint thought before answering with the only truthful answer that could be given. He has watched the progression of a quiet depression become one of reclusiveness and a bitter happiness. You weren't happy here, in this world, with him or any of the Avengers. Natasha was gone, Steve was gone, Wanda was MIA, Bucky and Sam were on their own adventures. No one was here except him and that wasn't nearly enough to support someone who lost everything and then some because of a greedy man with glowing stones. This wasn't your home anymore.

"Was. She was at one time. I don't think this is where her heart is anymore."

Clint gave him a flat smile but Marcus did not return it. The thought alone of you avoiding social contact because happiness was ripped away from you in every direction was heart-wrenching. He never wanted to bring you any pain and a part of him couldn't help but believe that if he tried harder, if he hadn't wasted time being upset with your arrival years ago, things may have been different.

"We're here."

The announcement sent shockwaves through him. A thunderbolt of pure, unexplainable fear and anticipation of seeing you again struck his core. This was it; this was his endgame and the farm that slowly made itself clear out the window was the destination.

"Let me go in and see them first, make sure they're home, and then I'll come back. Is that alright?"

Marcus could only nod and watch the man grab his bags and bow and leave the jet. Marcus unbuckled himself because there was no point in staying in the seat. The back was left open and while Clint had told him to stay, he couldn't help but walk down the ramp and stand just to the side of the jet. He ran his hand over the side of the matte gray finish, slightly impressed by the time it took to get there. It was faster than he thought even if it felt like an eternity.

The house was a nice weathered white. It had seen better days and as Clint approached the door, he noted all the fixes needed. The rusted door handle, the broken pot in the corner, an abundance of yard toys and broken bicycle parts laid around him. He managed to open the door with limited squeaking, but Laura heard it and so did Lila. The boys weren't home because if they were, they would have tackled him to the ground the moment they heard the ship land in the yard.

"Clint!? What are you doing here? I thought you weren't supposed to be back for two weeks." Laura said as soon as she came around the corner from the kitchen. Lila was right behind her with a smile and hug for him–which he gladly accepted.

"Emergency. Where is Y/n? I have something I think she'd want to see."

Laura furrowed her eyebrows and moved to the window. Outside, beside the jet, stood a man who could have been a new Avenger for all she knew. She turned back to Clint, moving away from the window so Lila could sneak a glance too.

"What is it? Who is that man out there?"

"That man is Marcus. That Marcus. He just appeared at the compound looking for her. They apparently have been trying to find a way to bring her back and whatever he did, it worked."

Laura let out an audible gasp, returning to the window and looking at the man. Slowly, just as Clint had hours before, she began to piece together the man before her eyes from the stories you had told her about.

"Oh my God! OH MY GOD!" She almost yelled so loudly the neighbors two blocks away could hear her. Clint shushed her but she couldn't keep the smile off her face. Laura ran to the staircase and yelled up it.

"Y/n! Get down here!"

"Oh my God, Clint! She had a great day today and wow-I just can't believe it."

You had heard Laura's loud enthusiasm from the room you had been staying in. You thought you'd leave her be until her voice trailed up the stairs again and she called out to you. It wasn't like you had any idea of what was going on. You heard the quinjet, figured Clint was back, and it was around dinner time so maybe it was time to eat? It was the first time in a long time that your thoughts hadn't been cluttered with death or sadness, but those feelings lingered. You exited the room, walked down the stairs and smiling at Clint when you saw his face.

"How's the girl?" Kate Bishop.

"She's a real hero." Clint replied and you nodded your head in reply. Doing so, you managed to turn toward the window from your place on the second to last step. Outside sat the quinjet that had taken so many of you and your friends on missions that could have well been your last. But it wasn't the vehicle that caught your undivided attention, but the body beside it. Standing tall in black.

Your eyes had to have been deceiving you.

"What is going on?" Your voice was barely a whisper, but Laura caught it, smiling and grabbing your hand. Your attention never left the window. The man was pacing slightly, a nervous tick you were sure you knew.

"Laura-"

"Go and see for yourself, Y/n." Her voice was quiet too but reassuring and warm, like a mothers should be. The man outside didn't know what was going on, but he left your sight because you descended the rest of the steps and ran out the door.

The door squeaked loudly this time and with a bang, fell shut. You barely made it to the steps before you stopped on the gravel. about 20 yards away, the man heard the door and turned.

Even if the entire world was watching the scene unfold on Clint's lawn, many could not recall who moved first. Laura would say Marcus because that's who she could see, but you were slightly convinced it was your own feet. Nevertheless, after the door had slammed and the two of you met again, the universe drew you together like magnets. You ran, he ran, and with the collision, you both wrapped your arms around each other and soon your feet were off the ground.

You could barely say a word with your blubbering tears, and he wasn't about to make his obvious either so instead of talking, he just pulled away enough to look you in the face. Your eyes the same, your nose the same, your lips still perfect to him. Your hands moved from around his neck to his face. You gently held his face in your hands as you tried to control yourself.

"You're really here?" It was a broken ask but he managed a smile and moved a piece of hair out of your face.

"Yeah, I'm here."

"I missed you s-so much." Marcus couldn't help but grin at the admission. It was everything and more than he wanted to hear.

"I love you. I love you so damn much." His hand rested on the back of your neck and he pulled you to him. His lips were just as you remembered.

Perfectly him and as if they were made for your own.

Reunions were sentimental and good. But they were followed with a series of questions that were often difficult to hear. Marcus had held you for a long time. You weren't sure how long and you weren't exactly complaining either, but there was a linger question: how did he get here and how in the world are you getting back?

You had been adamant in telling him 'yes' the moment Marcus asked you the question about returning to his world. That was the plan for you. There were no other options because life with Marcus and Missy was your life now and whoever was left that loved you like family had to accept that. Marcus had explained the machine built to travel through worlds over dinner with Clint because perhaps he could be the one to help. He had travelled through time before so what is traveling through universes, right?

But later that night, when the reunion had settled and everyone had gone to bed, Marcus sat on the edge of an unfamiliar bed in an unfamiliar room with a woman he loves. Clint could help you, but he needed time. So, he left with the jet while you stayed with the family and Marcus. He went to go see Stephen Strange because he managed to pick up the phone late that night.

"Do you think they'll be able to get us back? I don't want to leave Missy there all alone." Marcus voiced his worry with a sad reflection. You sat up from your reclined position and waddled over to him, running your hands up his back and then around his shoulders before he gently took them and tugged them around him. He missed your touch so much.

"You've never seen Dr. Stephen Strange do his 'magic' so I think there's a chance."

"Are you sure this is what you want?" He turned his head just enough so he could look at your face. You may have been a spy, but your eyes never lied to him. He knew you better than any interrogator could ever wish to have known you.

"Yes, I want to be with you and Missy and all those heroes with weird names." You laughed for the first time in a long time and it was music to his ears. He smiled to where his eyes crinkled in the corners as your fingers played with the nape of his neck where his loose hair sat.

"I just want you to be happy, Y/n. Your happiness means everything to me."

"I am happy with you. I am happy in our home. This makes me happy."

That was enough for him. The next day you both waited... and waited... and waited for even one word from Clint, but nothing came. Sometime in the afternoon, the heavy engine of the quinjet could be heard in the yard so you dropped the puzzle pieces on the table beside Lila, grabbed Marcus' hand and ran out the door. Clint had a small smile on his face, but it was the sharply dressed Doctor that you focused your attention on.

"Doctor."

"Agent."

"I trust there is a way home if you're here. You wouldn't come all this way to bare bad news."

"Your skills on reading people alarm me, though I would expect nothing less from an Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D."

Stephen nodded and then extended his hand to Marcus who shook it in return. They introduced themselves to one another and Stephen put a gold bar on his fingers before extending his hand to the wide landscape of the farm.

"What are you doing?" You asked with a furrowed brow. This wasn't the way Marcus had come, they were supposed to fix the control pad he had on his arm.

"Do you really think the Sorcerer Supreme can't open portals to other universes? There are so many worlds you don't know, but you found the one you were meant to be in, so let me get you both home."

With a circular movement of his fingers, Stephen opened a yellow portal that slowly became an image of a world you had known before. A house, perfectly structured in the suburbs was on the other side. The grass perfectly mowed and the bushes trimmed, the mail box accidentally left open which you knew was Missy's fault. The curtains were open and the sun shone brightly into the home. Marcus grabbed you hand, squeezing it tightly as you took in the sight. Months had gone by where you dreamed of this moment, of that house and all its residents. Your dream was here now with the man holding your hand to support you.

"Y/n." Clint called out to you, breaking your stare. You turned around and he approached with his family in tow. He held out a small envelope which contained a note from them and a series of pictures that you would later cry over, but it was a final goodbye from your life here on this Earth.

You hugged them all with tears in your eyes but when Marcus re-took your hand, it felt like it meant something more than just running off into the sunset together. It felt normal and needed and necessary to move forward in your life.

"Are you ready?" Marcus asked you to which you could only reply with one word:

"Yes."

Tag list for series: (thanks for the support!!)

@pasckles @jupitersmooneuropa @agingerindenial @karnita-mexicana @mcueveryday @shadowolf993 @computeringturtle @roxypeanut

#we can be heroes #we can be heroes netflix #marcus moreno x reader #marcus moreno #marcus moreno x fem reader #marcus moreno x you #marcus moreno x y/n #pedro pascal #x reader #x you #x y/n #final part #fanfiction #self insert #fanfic #requested #pedro pascal x reader

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justforthesakeofitt · 5 years ago

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How You Like That (M) Chaelisa (top rosé bot lisa)

Chapter 1

hi. this story contains many mature and adult themes that can be triggering and are just for fictional use. i don't condone any of this in real life, and this is pure fiction. so, therefore, if you can't handle that, please just leave this. but don't report this story.

enjoy 🤍

///

(warning. contains strong language, human trafficing, mentions of degradation, corruption, meansé, topsé, idek but the story in general is dark and mature. so if you can't handle that please don't read!!)

🌸

roseanne smirked and swirled her glass around that was filled with her favorite champagne. the armand de brignac brut gold, which cost a mere two thousand two hundred dollars, had made it into the woman her favorite lists, when she tasted it for the first time when she was in France, at the age of nineteen. it made her feel as if she was drinking creamy silk with a lovely flavor, and she was all for that.

her silver hair, with a blueish undertone, was straightened and hung down

her back and over her perky breasts. the tint of her hair matched perfectly with her lamé velvet jacquard mini dress by one of her favorite brands, saint laurent. the dress was a perfect size, as it had been custom adjusted, and hugged her slim waist yet pretty wide hips quite well.

she was seated alone in her comfortable chair, her three bodyguards surrounding her so that she was protected at all costs. being rich had its many perks, but it also came with lots of downsides, such as constantly being exposed to the cruel world that was playing underneath everyone's feet. normal people usually weren't aware of half of the things that were going on behind the scenes of the portrayed world.

the dim and sensual lights that were present in the room, contradicted quite a lot with the chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. it seemed as if a night club had meet merged with a dining hall in an expensive mansion, yet they somehow made this entire look and vibe work.

and it was dangerous to know these secrets. behind all the glimmer and glamour of being rich, a lot of dark poison was hiding. and simply being aware of the poison, and knowing about how everything was really being run, was dangerous.

it was dangerous knowing which big companies, who were known for their customer service, actually had ten thousand upon then thousands of illegal so-called 'contract workers' working for them. people in the normal projected world thought that the people working for the minimum wage were being treated as slaves and inhumane, but they never saw the layer of people that were working even lower up than the minimum wage workers. and those were plenty.

billions upon billions of dollars would go down the drain if someone were to reveal that the biggest vegan chain in the world, also owned one of the biggest meat industries. if the companies that were known to fight climate change and induce eco-friendly ways of making products were owned by the same person that was one of the biggest carbon emitters.

if people know, that you know their secrets, your life is at great risk. and since the richest people in the world, all play the same game, you always had to be on your watch. this was no soccer game, where you had a theme behind you. this was like wrestle mania. only the strongest and smartest could survive. and the people that you would think are your friends, are the ones that wouldn't even hesitate to hire an assistant the moment they find a weak spot in you.

"number 603 thirty thousand dollars! going once. going twice. sold to miss kang!"

roseanne chuckled as the blonde girl got pulled off of the stage by her leash that watched attached to her neck. her head hung low and tears were streaming down her face as you could see them shimmer in the dim lights, which made it all more amusing for the woman.

all of them looked like pathetic little lost puppies, getting pulled one by one to the stage where their new fate would be laid out for them. it all depended on who they ended up with.

her best friend, jennie, had found her own little pet this way and had suggested it to her. after years of being alone, and watching her best friend with the girl, she decided to finally come and see for herself. maybe she'd find something interesting here tonight.

jennie's pet, who's name was jisoo, was quite a lucky girl. while jennie was quite a mean and tough person on a daily basis, she had developed a soft spot for her pet. it wasn't that she let the girl get away with shit, but she treated her well. better than these girls usually got treated.

jisoo had behaved so well and served her so graciously, that after one and a half year of her possession, jennie had granted her the privilege of being addressed by her name, which was quite rare for the girls that came from here.

not may of the owners ended up granting their pets the status of being called by their actual birth-given name, and rosé wouldn't be one of them either. while jennie was more of a dominant woman who loved for jisoo to worship her and take care of her, roseanne was the sadistic type.

where jennie received pleasure by letting jisoo worship her feet and have the girl smothered underneath her wet dripping slit, eating her out until her thighs were trembling and she was panting heavily, roseanne wanted the girl to be laying at her feet, whimpers escaping her cracked lips as bruises and cuts were layered on her skin.

the twenty-seven-year-old woman's eyes gravitated towards the podium once again, before she slightly shifted when she saw the girl that got pulled by the thick leather leash.

her black lingerie contrasted beautifully with her pale skin, and her black hair had been put into two sideways ponytails with big red bows attached to them. that could only mean one thing.

she was a virgin.

girls with their hair loose were previous prostitutes or whores that they picked up from the streets, giving them the lowest value in the entire lineup.

girls with ponytails were normal girls that they managed to kidnap but weren't virgins anymore.

but girls with their hair in this innocent style, and cute bows attached to it to give

them an even more pure look, were virgins.

and they sold for the highest prices.

almost everyone wanted a little virgin pet. it was a thrill knowing that all they would associate sex with was their owners. no previous partners or experiences to draw

comparisons from.

just them.

when roseanne saw the girl's face, her doll-like features with her big doe eyes, and her plump pink lips, she knew that the girl was going to be hers.

"number 209! her price starts at a mere five hundred thousand dollars. who bids higher

than that?"

chaeyoung immediately held up her bidding board that had her slim fingers wrapping around the wooden part, "one million!"

another voice rang through the room, a few seconds later, with an offer of one and a half million dollars. but this girl was going to be hers. no matter the cost.

the bidding went on for a while before her offer rang throughout the room of "twenty-five million dollars."

the man, that previously was bidding for the same girl, chewed on his bottom lip before shaking his head.

a smirk grazed roseanne her dark blue colored lips, "number 209 twenty-five million dollars! once! going twice! sold to miss park!"

her eyes locked with her newly bought pet, and she mindlessly licked her lips. the girl's eyes were glossy and looked with a terrified gaze at her.

"yes...--" chaeyoung muttered to herself with s grin, "--be scared, doll. you aren't ready for what I have in store for you."

there were only a few girls left, so she patiently sat through it all, satisfied with her purchase of the evening. non of the girls could top her pet. and for once, she was glad that she had listened to jennie's advice.

after the auction was over, she walked to the back and got handed two briefcases by one of her bodyguards, which she delivered to the woman that was behind all of this.

"you made jessie very happy. i hope the girl will make you happy too."

roseanne hummed and watched as the men were counting the money, before turning her attention back to the woman in front of her, "everything is clean right? no traces. no record and no evidence."

jessie nodded and smacked her bright red lips together, "everything is clean. we tripled checked. the police have already been paid to drop the missing person case, so she has been declared dead. the parents are quite poor too so they won't be able to afford to search for her or take any legal actions. she's dead and has been reborn the moment you bought her."

roseanne smirked and, with a firm handshake, greeted the woman before she made her way into a dark hallway that led to where the girl should be.

she opened the door to a room and saw a black wooden crate, which had been sealed by a lid at the top, sitting on the floor in the middle of the room.

when she saw that it was the correct one, she snapped her fingers, making two of the three men quickly make their way over to the side and lifted up the top.

she once again, almost immediately crossed eyes with her toy, and saw how panicked and vulnerable she seemed. this made her feel only more in control and boosted her ego.

there were soft pleading whimpers coming from the bound girl, but she ignored them completely.

after a few seconds of further inspection, the crate got closed again.

"deliver her in an hour to my address. make sure that she keeps whatever bodily fluid she has inside of her. i don't want her to arrive in filth at my place."

she got helped into her thick fur coat, and flicked her hair back, before putting on a peeked black cap.

the men nodded in understanding and turned their attention on the crate. one of them followed her, also functioning as her driver, while the other two stayed behind.

there were two small holes on the top of the crate in the cover, which made sure that the girl got enough fresh air to stay conscious, but not enough to make her feel great, so the chance of her throwing up or peeing herself was a big possibility.

she just hoped that the girl could hold it in, as she was sure that she wouldn't hesitate to hose the poor thing down immediately.

she climbed up the stairs before walking outside.

\\\

it was dark, already around the one at night, so the streets were fairly empty. these illegal legal things, were mostly done at night, just to give extra security and privacy. "ready miss?" her chauffeur asked making her nod, "yes. take me home."

she stared out of the window, the snow slowly cascading down while the streets of Seoul were already covered in a thick layer of the frozen crystals.

it was only november, yet the heavens had sent them snow already. and to be fair, roseanne wasn't complaining.

she smiled as she started to move up the hills, knowing that she was approaching her lovely home.

her and her best friend, jennie, were actually neighbors, which was quite fun. this meant that she could show her new purchase off very soon, as all she had to do was go to the mansion next door. even tho it was a five-minute drive.

the moment the car stopped at the entrance of her house, she got out, hugging her black fur coat tighter around her body, before grabbing her purse and made her way inside.

"the room is ready right?" she asked one of her maids, who nodded and bowed slightly, before helping her out of her coat "yes ma'am. it is exactly like you wanted it to be."

she grinned and stretched herself before yawning a bit and walked inside.

"good. now, all we have to do is wait."

///

\\\

#writeblr #fanfiction #fanfic #blackpink #blackpink smut #lisablackpink #lalisa manoban #jennie #rosé park #roseanne park #kpop #kpop smut #kpop au #chaelisa #dark fantasy #chapter one #how you like that

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mochuelovelli · 5 years ago

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Some Alt. Jobs for the Kids in the Future:

Mainly doing this as just a thought experiment. Usually people are of one mind on what the kids will *probably* be when they are older(myself included) so I wanted to give some alts that could fit their personalities.

Louie-Manger/Agent:Making this list mainly for him because I recalled Princess Carolyn from BoJack and how her job could fit Louie pretty well. Ik a lot of people headcanon Lawyer! Louie, I do too, but I think this would be a fun idea.

A manager's job is basically finding ways to get their client's hired or trying to tailor a client's project in order for it to be marketable. We already seen Louie do this in his ep this season but I think it be cool if became a legit job for him. He's still a McDuck ward so nothing with his business would be "normal" and he would have to do similar "schemes" to get his clients jobs, especially if they are inter-dimensional goat demons.

Louie would probably say the reason he became a manager would be "because I've been trying to convince people I am good enough my entire life, might as well make a career out of it". Edgy ik, but this is Louie we are talking about of course he say some dumbshit.

Dewey-YouTube Personality: this is probably just a less popular hc rather than one that's not talked about at all like the Louie (or the next couple examples). For me, I can't see Dewey being anything but some kind of globe trotting adventurer who would also record it for views. But in the case that DIDN'T happen, I think he'd become a youtube personality and make shows with his friends and family. I think it be really cute, that even as they grown older and become more independent, Dewey can still find ways to bring them all to his house to be apart of his youtube show(s) where he and a guest try to guess obscure history facts Webby comes up with (Watchers know what I'm talking about) or where he and some friends try to solve unsolved mysteries or try and bake without a recipe (im really showing what content i watch).

His Youtube channel would be sporadic like, "series" but he doesn't make actual playlists (Huey or Violet do) and uploads whatever he wanted to do that week. Good thing is, he never misses an upload date. Almost.

Huey-Military Engineer/Tech Guy (IE better Beaks): I had the hardest time with figuring out Huey since like Webby, he can pretty much be in any field to me (as long as its stem related). This suggestion to me is the least chill out of all of them but I picked it because 1. Huey likes structure and chain of command and 2. Science and defense systems.

Out of his brothers, Huey isn't the most WORRIED about safety but he definitely is the one who would do something about it to fix it. I can see him making some intergalactic defense systems and various prevention junk. Maybe he works under Gosalyn's administration[see gos] or he makes "unnatural-natural phenomenon" protection stuff. Kinda like the seawalls in Venice but like, stuff to make sure the Earth doesn't get destroyed because of all the crazy shit the duckverse has. Like ghost forcefields or the reversal of timephoons. I don't think he would be a Tony Stark character tho so I am not 100% with this one.

He could also just be a tech guy, but yknow, better than Mark Beaks. He accidentally has more followers than him would crush him in twitter fights (an example would be something along the Logan Paul vs Chris D'Elia). I find this just really funny, Huey would actually be what all those "good guy billionaires" claim to be (also he wouldn't be one just as a matter of principle). Owlson would probably be his mentor or maybe just business partner.

Webby-Comic Artist/Cartoonist: Webby, to me, can pretty much go into any field and I would be like "yeah makes sense". However I know in my heart she'd be some kind of spy or detective. Thinking about her being anything else was honestly kinda hard but then I realized she DOES have another hobby which could be turn into a career - her drawings and stories. Webby is definitely a creative person, maybe the most creative so far in front of or slightly behind Dewey, so I think she would like to make comics and cartoons.

If you want to be angsty, maybe she chooses this mundane route because she was somewhat conditioned by her granny (or her creators if theories are to he proven right) to be a super spy; choosing to be a cartoonist is something she was never trained to become and yet she still did because it's something SHE wanted to do for herself.

Lena-Poet/Song Writer: okay another one that might not be uncommon but I like to just see it thrown out there. Lena is cool in large part because of her magic but in a possible similar motivation to Webby, she wanted to be a poet not only because she was good at it but because she wanted to be. This doesn't have to be her main hussle, usually I don't see it as such, but I also think it be cute if she became a new Robert Frost (this is the only poet ik sorry).

Violet-Cosmologist: Most people see Violet as either some kind of chemist, professor, or occasionally a witch. I think another good alt tho would be cosmology since Violet herself wants to understand the world around her, which is a bit different from Huey who wants to obtain knowledge for knowledge sake in the case it might come in handy though not extremely. Cosmology as field in the dt universe must be WILD too since im pretty sure most scientists know of all the magic and junk, in fact I wouldn't be surprised if there was a legit subject on it or multiple. Trying to make sense of YOUR universe while knowing others exist along with time travel, possibly multiple after lifes? Its a lot. Perfect job for Vi.

Boyd-Therapist/architect: I feel like this isn't such a niche hc, but I do see more folks make him into his own superhero and/or an accountant. I might be playing into the Baymax stereotype of robots being good mental health assistants but idc, I think it's warranted since he has gone through and understands trauma. Maybe he focuses on those who need rehabilitation or are unable to get paid treatment. Maybe he just helps those who have committed crimes. Another alt is that he becomes an architect, building well planned buildings and public spaces in a flash by utilizing his vast abilities. He might even be commissioned to make space colony housing.

Gosalyn-Politican: Alright so, Gosalyn being a superhero like her dad is like, canon but again in an alt universe where it WASN'T (or maybe later in her life) I can see her becoming political. Frank even laid out some of what inspired this iteration of Gosalyn which included notable political activists, so as of rn its not that far of a stretch to say she might be interested in that. I have a feeling its happens because she gets riled up for something in particular rather than she always wanted to be a career politician or whatever. She would definitely be a less polished politician and that be her appeal, she'd kinda be like an AOC in that regard(im sorry I tried really hard not to name drop political figures but-). An example of her "abnormal" diplomacy tactics is where she stopped Ragnarok semi permanently by absolutely wrecking their shit. (She be dramatic about it like her dad, coming in her normal President wear and then throw it off to reveal some crazy wrestling shit. Louie would also make a lot of money that day.)

#ducktales #dt17 #ducktales 17 #ducktales 2017 #huey duck #louie duck #hdl #dewey duck #webby vanderquack #gosalyn mallard #lena saberwing #violet sabrewing #boyd gearloose #boyd drake #boyd

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blissfulalchemist · 4 years ago

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FULL CLEAR for the top chefs, if you don't mind! 💋

Ah my dear thank you! I love these two! I am leaving numbers out of it cause it’s a Full Clear!

- How do they fall asleep? Wake up? Any daily rituals?

Well see Cat tries to fall asleep with herself cuddled close to Raf as much as possible but he eventually always ends up on his back and she on her side most of the time. In the winter though she’s stuck on him cause it gets too cold in the night. It’s to hard to have daily rituals when one person sleeps in more than the other, though since he wakes up earlier than her Raf tucks Cat back into bed. - How’s their team work? Do they share well?

They have very great team work! .....when you don’t bring cooking into the mix. Then it’s not so great...However! You put them in a competition as a team and they can work perfectly in sync! If you would like to see examples as to how this may look please click here and here - Are they open about their relationship? How do they feel about public displays of affection?

They are very open about their relationship to a point where it makes people sick to their stomach. Cat can’t help herself by there being PDA but they are under control of it, there is a time and place for everything. There is always an arm being slung over the other or a hand being held. - First impression of each other? Was it love at first sight?

Cat it may as well have been, she just couldn’t get him out of her head. Though she felt a bit sad for him since he was lamenting on the state of the food and how some ingredients were harder to come by so he could cook. Raf wasn’t ever a love at first sight kind of person, though he could very much tell how nervous she was and how she liked him. But she was nice and helped him out so he was very appreciative of that. Though the nerves and her comment on not making a nickname around her height was exactly how she got her nickname Conejito or Little Bunny in Spanish. - Nicknames? Pet names? Any in-jokes?

Raf always calls her Conejito or mi amante(but that’s for more private times). Cat has yet to find a single nickname for him, though she opts to try and give him pop culture names, she really tried to get Poe to stick but sadly no one saw what she saw. She settles to call him love most of the time in both english and spanish.

In-jokes: Their first kiss, the debate is still up as to what their first kiss is since Cat had to kiss him on impulse before they ever dated. There is also the running joke of who’s the worse cook between the two of them. Both will give more and more ridiculous reasons as to why the other is the worse on. Raf’s favorite is based on the comment Cat made about channeling her ancestors to get the recipe right, she meant it as a small joke but he never let it go. - Any tasks that are always left to one person?

Cleaning tends to get left on Raf most of the time because she can “never clean right”. She can’t meet his level so she just lets him do it most of the time since he’ll just go back over it anyway if she does. - What annoys them the most about their partner? Would they change it if they could?

Cat tends to get annoyed by how bossy Raf can be. It’s not always bad and she acknowledges she can be bossy but sometimes he takes it too far, or it feels that way at times. She also gets annoyed over how closed off he can be with some of his emotions, she’s used to have a partner that was open with her so its a bit of an adjustment.

Raf gets annoyed with how loose she can be about some things despite needing to be in control. It did also annoy him at first when she would spend the whole day sleeping in bed and how she would deflect some questions about her past with him. - What do the like best about their partner?

Cat loves how much like home he feels to her. How he’s so fun and open to the world. The loyalty and sense of family he has. He complements her. His cooking. How sensitive he is to who she is and never once seeing her for who she was before they met.

Raf loves her heart, passion, and how similar they can be. She’s listened to him and never judged him for anything he was. The hope she can have for the world despite how much it hurt her. - Do they discuss big issues? Religion? Marriage? Children? Death?

They do. They were friends before they started to date and had these conversations before a bit. Talks about death and religion more so. Once they get together these conversations come up more and it’s hard for Cat to really open up on her feelings about marriage and children given her past. She expresses that she wants those things but that’s about it for the longest time. Religion is one the two talk about seriously since Cat isn’t religious like Raf is. It is very important to him and understands it but they come into agreeance in how it will be handled in their futures together. This becomes a major talk since she cannot get married in the catholic church like Raf and his family would like since she never did her confirmation or communion. - Who drives? Cooks? Does the handiwork? Cleans? Pays the bills? Handles the public?

Raf’s the safer driver but Cat likes to drive a lot more. Don’t even ask about the cooking with these two. Handiwork falls more to Raf or Wes cause he seems to be around a lot, Cat does try and she knows some tricks. Cleaning goes to Raf again. Bills is an even split, both have the ones it’s their job to keep up on. Handling the public goes to Raf more because he’s just more charismatic than she is and she tends to have more nerves than him. - Do they celebrate holidays? Anniversaries?

They celebrate major holidays in big ways! Christmas, Halloween, Valentine’s Day, Easter once they have kids, and Thanksgiving always expect there to be something from them. There are even religious holidays and traditions that are observed in the house and practiced by Raf, Cat will try and join him for what she can, though lent still doesn’t stick for her no matter how much she tries but their menu changes during that time.

- Is there a wedding? What was the proposal like? Any kind of honeymoon?

There is a wedding and depending on the universe it can be a small one with just the closest people to them or big! There will be entertainment, dancing, good food, church bells, the whole nine yards! The proposal was weeks of planning and secret talks and dropping Cat off at friend’s houses to keep her occupied while Raf took care of everything he needed. Trying to make the dinner party seem like any other was the hardest part as he wanted her taken completely by surprise. Honeymoon would be either a secluded place in the mountains or by the coast. If they could and had all the money in the world I expect there to be a world tour of cuisine. - What do they do for fun? Do they have a favorite activity or do they like to switch things up?

As much as they fight about it they both love to cook together. Watching movies and shows is something they both enjoy also. Trivia games and board games in general are a past time for the two of them. They also try new restaurants while going to the theatre for operas, musicals, ballets, etc. Trips to the museums and other places of knowledge and art. - Anything they both dread?

Certain emotional blocks they both have. Neither wants the other to leave but from different perspectives. Raf would fear she’d runaway if things got bad, given that she did in a way and it’s why she ended up in Montana, its not a far fetched idea. Cat worries about him no longer being there and getting that call again. A conjoined fear they have is for Wes though, they both worry so much for his well being and maybe hang around him too much because of this. - How adventurous are they?

Outside the bedroom? They like to try new things now and again. They’re smart about it but like to see what’s new. In the bedroom? They are pretty adventurous. - Do they keep secrets? Lie? Cheat?

Neither cheat or outwardly lie in a malicious way. The secrets though, those they do keep from each other for a while. Cat especially, she doesn’t open up about what happened to her first marriage for fear that she would be met with everything she left behind, the looks, whispers, sympathy, misunderstanding of her feelings, being only known as the widow, etc.. She also loved living in this little fantasy world where none of that happened but like all things she had to confront it again and accept the consequences. - What would make them break up? Would it be permanent?

They do break up for a little bit(like 2 weeks max) there because again Cat refuses to open up about her past and well that’s really frustrating. At one point she’s given a slight ultimatum about it. Basically being told that if she chose to walk away from the fight to not come back. This isn’t permanent as there is outside help(See Wes) encouraging forcing her to open up and just accept whatever happens because it would also help her despite him not knowing what it is either. - What are their dates like? How long do/did they date? Do they ever feel the need to take a break from each other?

Their dates in canon start off as casual times, mostly at Wes’ place cause it’s easier for Cat to sneak away too(sorry man you gotta be part of this). Them hanging out together starts off with trying to out cook the other and then attempts to bring things like broadway, ballets, and operas to the comfort of home. Cat brings over any nerdy movie and she can find, lots of game nights, especially once she ropes John into finally coming over cause she had Wes and John pegged from the get go(she lives with John how could she not know). Other calmer universes, their dates kind of start extravagant cause Raf does most of the planning of them but when she plans them they are more casual and laid back, going out to the woods, playing video games at the Pizza Bar, and good old movie dates.

- What do they fight about? What are their arguments like? How do they make up?

Okay these two look like they are fighting most of the time because of how much it happens in the kitchen, however it never gets super loud and angry. It is also their foreplay a lot of times. Beyond that though when they do fight it is more lecturing and short words but never yelling at the other. They can both be guarded still with certain things but they work on it. There is also make up sex that happens after there is comfort, compromises, plans made to be better and fix the issue, and sorrys passed around. The amount of time this lasts is anywhere from an hour to all night. - What does their home look like? Their room?

There is enough decor to give the lived in feel that Cat loves but it is also very neat and clean. If there are books and magazines on the table you can expect them to be stacked and arranged in a specific way. There is color in almost every room in the house and their room follows suit though expect there to be one room in the house that Cat is allowed to be messier in cause it’s just her space. The kitchen though! That is their pride and joy! The one place that is kept impeccable and Cat actually keeps up with it as much as Raf does. - Do they share any interests or hobbies?

Other than their love of cooking, both are academically inclined people and have a love for the arts, though Cat is more interested in the pop culture arts she has a love and appreciation for Raf’s more refined arts. - Does their work ever interfere with the relationship?

Canon a little. This has to do with the fact that Cat is publicly married and a part of Eden’s Gate and Raf well isn’t. Though her specific work at the outreach center helps in making their meetings and getting to know the other easier. It also helps Raf in getting more people a second chance if they want to leave Eden’s Gate since, despite the giant signs(Thanks John) her place is made to be neutral ground. Though they watch how friendly they get at first until Cat finally spills to Wes and John she knew about them for a long time.

Now friendlier universes his work does. Being he has dreams and a plan for a military career there are times at first before they are married that he is far from her. Even after they are and she’s traveling with him, there are times she can’t be with him. When this happens though she stays near their friends back home. It makes it a little hard but much easier with modern technology to keep in touch. - How do they hug? Kiss? Tease? Flirt? Comfort?

Raf is more of the one to tease Cat for just about everything, all in good fun, but she tries to keep up and does get her way with him every now and again. Cat is big on showing affection when she can, so hugs, kissing on shoulders hands lips cheeks just about anywhere safe in public is something she does a lot. He is okay with this also and lets her and will initiate touch a lot of times too. - Any doubts about the relationship?

Raf took more time to get into it or even play with the idea of them together so there’s little doubts from him really. Cat has doubts stemming from the long and yet short lived previous relationship. She also doubts herself as being good enough for him, and meeting expectations of his family. Despite sharing the same culture the two grew up differently and there are some things she missed out on due to that. - How much time do they spend together? Do they share their feelings, or hold things in?

They spend a lot of time together, even if they aren’t doing the same things they are together. In most all universes Cat tends to move in with him first and it kind of just happens, like they look around are just like well hey this happened. They share feelings because this is something big for Cat to have in a relationship but again there are some things the two of them keep back but eventually those things come out and they can work through them. - How do their friends feel about their relationship? Their families?

Their friends are happy for them, and love them together. Cat’s friends form back home are happy that she found someone new even though all are hesitant to accept him, but with that charm of his it doesn’t last long. Raf’s family accepts and loves her even though they do wish she was a little more religious, but she’s got good morals and values. Cat’s family, well that charm isn’t enough and it takes more time. Mostly from the idea that she seemed to just shack up with the first guy to take interest in her. And there’s the notion that he can’t beat her first husband. Her sisters are the most critical with Raf and warm up once they can confirm that he’s not someone taking advantage of their sister. Dad is easier but there are things that Raf has and does in his life that makes it easier to identify and communicate with Raf. - Do they have kids? Grow old together? Split up?

They do have two kids of their own(Great genes you know?) they have a daughter Lizette about a year after they marry and then her little brother Daniel “Danny”(They would have named him Wes but he doesn’t like his full name) about 2.5 years after her. It is up in the air still about adopting another one but one never knows. They do grow old together and have grandkids and live such a full life really. - What are their vacations like?

Depends on what they are going for really. Family vacations are more structured while couple getaways are more laid back. They go international a few times, get a cabin cut off from everyone (See Wes trying to cook pancakes), the coast, or even areas with major museums and theatres. - How do the handle disasters or emergencies? Minor injuries? Sickness?

These two have plans in place for many things and are handled calmly and efficently. Minor injuries can be treated at home most of the time, with both knowing a basic CPR and first aid due to their careers. Sickness well there is a mixture of what doctors say and old family tricks, like almost anything having to do with the throat if its minor can be solved with Lemon honey tea. Both though become very attentive to the other when one is sick and sometimes it looks like too much. - Could they manage a long distance relationship?

I think they could honestly. Both are very loyal people and with technology involved now a days it’s so much easier to keep in contact. It’s also something that is acknowledged throughout their relationship even in canon universe when they talk about life after the whole Eden’s Gate is over. He still has his plan and she doesn’t want to stop him form that.

- Do they finish each other’s sentences? Pick up any phrases or habits from each other? Know when the other is hiding something?

Depending on the context Cat tends to get a little over excited and will interject finishing Raf’s sentences, but the main thing she picks up from him is Spanish. She already knew some but becomes more fluent in it as their relationship progresses. I think he would pick up on some phrases or references she says a lot, his imitations of her become really spot on. Cat can figure out if he’s hiding something but never what specifically all the time. He can tell a lot more often and can pinpoint it but some things she’s good at keeping by just redirecting most of the time. - Do they ever get into trouble? Is it serious, or are they just mischievous?

With each other? Raf does cause he’s the one to more so pull pranks and tease her. Nothing ever to serious all in good fun. She tries but they don’t always work out and sometimes others coughwescough get caught in the crossfire of those ones. With the law? Might be Cat more likely because drunk her couldn’t help but get involved in a fight and Raf was just a little late in stopping her. - What kind of presents do they get each other? Do they only do it on special occasions?

See I feel they give presents all the time to each other because they both cook the other’s favorite dishes pretty often, but I also count food as a gift so that may just be a me thing. Material things one can’t consume Cat more so. It’s always little things here and there, like a flower or something he mentioned needing even if it’s boring like shaving cream. I mean their whole first meeting stemmed from her leaving a gift for Raf. When it comes to special occasions she puts more thought and time into gifts, this is where she could plan some event or make sure there’s meaning behind what she gives. It’s a toss up of what she will give. Raf though likes to go extra and so he more so sticks to special occasions and events but don’t think for one second that he doesn’t put a lot of thought into it and care. Everything is well planned and perfection with him. If he does bring home gifts on non special occasions it tends to be junk food she loves or the flowers that would be thrown out, because she likes having someone appreciating their beauty before they’re just tossed out. - Do they have any pets?

“Pleas it’ll be good practice for kids.”

“Wes is practice enough.”

“Okay but hear me out though. Wes is lonely and needs a friend.”

“Fine one dog and that’s it.” *Cat opens to protest*”And don’t try to press your luck with it, Conejito.”

Jokes aside in all reality though maybe one dog and/cat. - Do they bring out the best in each other, or the worst? Do they have a fatal flaw?

They bring out the best in each other. They both find a peace with the other and help the other heal. If they have a fatal flaw it’s the fact they are both pretty bossy. - What’s their greatest strength as a couple? Their weakness?

Their values. They permeate in how they interact with the world and the two of them together can be a force to be reckoned with. Weakness I would put their protective natures. Individually this isn’t bad but together it can be a lot. - How much would they be willing to sacrifice for the other? Any lines they refuse to cross?

For the other’s happiness they would sacrifice almost everything. Cat especially, but she always this idea of what does she have to lose and negative self talk still. There might be a point where Raf would stop, but this could change. See these questions become hard because when it comes down to it how you say your answer is and when it happens can become two different answers. - What are they like in the bedroom? Any kinks/fetishes/turn-ons? Anything they won’t do?

Bedroom is very active and a lot of being bossed around on Cat’s end. She tries, she really does but what can I say? Raf is bossy af! They dabble in different things and try new kinks and things to see what they like and don’t like. They don’t get bored in that department. Cat will not take anything up the ass, she’s tried it before but it’s just not for her. Now pegging Raf on the other hand is on the table. - Who initiated the relationship? Who kissed who first? When did they realize they were in love?

Raf initiated the relationship because it takes him longer to feel that is something he wants. Cat kissed Raf first, though it is still a debate on what their first kiss was. Realizing they were in love Cat fell hard first and she felt love within a few months of just knowing him, but really feeling that true deep emotional connection with him, that real love, came about a month after she opened up about everything with her first marriage once they dated. Raf fell in love a few months into the romantic relationship and told her as such almost naturally. Cat had said it to him before that but he had to make sure you know. - Any special memories? Do they have a special place they like to go to?

I’m putting various universes in this because I love them. As embarrassed as Cat is with that drunken kiss it becomes a special memory for the two of them. The dinner party engagement. Their first real date, where their first kiss was in the rain after an opera. When their kids were born. Their wedding, the smaller one they did behind their families backs. Meeting face to face the first time. Just a lot of little things, each have their own list but these are the mutual ones. They always go back to Hope County because that’s where it all began for them. - Are they party-goers? What are they like when they’re drunk? Does it happen often?

Cat isn’t one to actively look for parties but is very content with gatherings of her friends. Raf is the more social extroverted one. Though get Cat drunk and she can give him a run for his money, there is a reason why you never get Cat and Wes super drunk in a room together. Raf doesn’t get drunk to affect him but he can start to be a downer when he gets too drunk. They all drink in more social settings, Cat doesn’t drink as much because she’s such a light weight but will go big when she does. - Do they let each other get away with things that would normally bother them?

Yes. Though there is a limit to this and both of them know where that limit lies. Cat let’s Raf get away with a lot though, gotta love those rose colored glasses. - Do they talk often? What about?

In the beginning they talk a lot about just anything and everything. Sometimes conversations get deep, sometimes they get educational, or they just stay at surface level. As the relationship progresses though both can be content with not talking all the time, just being near each other. After awhile words never need to be said between a couple and by then kids take over the conversation silence. - Are the comfortable with each other? Anything they have to have their privacy for?

They are very comfortable with the other and because of this they know when the other needs space or have their privacy. I don’t think there’s anything too specific they always need privacy for. They become that couple that tells the other everything, but when they say they need privacy it’s given. - Any special dreams or goals they have as a couple? Any heartbreaks? Regrets?

Having a family, keeping a heart that’s at peace, grow old together. Must there be an end goal really other than to feel love from another person and fulfil the human need to not be alone. Heartbreaks there was one and that was the same reason there was a bit of a break between them. Cat just is so scare about opening up with her past. After a while there is no regrets because life works in weird ways to put people together.

#x: top chefs #These take a while but I love doing them

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melodiouswhite · 5 years ago

Text

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde rewritten - Ch. 36

36. Tension

Jekyll thought that, since Hyde now had a partner in crime, it should only be fair that he'd have one as well.

Turned out that for someone who was always the voice of reason, Lady Summers was quite mad herself. And she was delighted to share her own scientific discoveries with him.

Sometimes they spent the evenings in her cellar or his lab, experimenting on her samples or working on his formulas.

One evening, it was her lab they were in and she was showing him a dark powder in a vial.

“So I have identified the impurity that made your formula work.”

He beamed at her. “Really?!”

She grinned sheepishly.

“Well, to be fair it was actually my butler. I managed to separate it and when I showed it to my servants, Sameer recognised it as a drug from his homeland India. He said that Indian sages use it for meditation. Together with a few other compounds it's supposed to enable you to access the wisdom of the cosmos or something, I don't know. Ask him, he can explain it better. Anyway, it's a spiritual, transcendental thing, so it should interest you more than me.”

He laughed. Yes, no doubt it would.

Despite being a medium, Lady Summers was sensible and pragmatic. Rising higher than anyone else, she remained a woman of the world. She never lost touch to reality.

Jekyll had no idea how she did it, but he envied her for it.

She smiled at him. “You give me too much credit, Doctor. Now, do tell me of your discoveries about the blood samples I lent you.”

The Doctor blushed awkwardly. “It sounds a bit far-fetched, Milady, but …”

“But what?”

Seeing her intrigued mien, he continued: “It seems that your blood indeed has rejuvenating qualities. I don't know why, but it's different from normal blood. That would explain why I suddenly looked much younger, after you donated your blood to save Hyde and me last autumn.”

She beamed at him.

“Eureka! So this is why I'm not growing older!”, she cried in delight, “Now all we have to do is to find out what gives it its rejuvenating powers! I have failed to find the answer for thirty years, but now it's within my – pardon, I mean our, grasp!”

Jekyll enjoyed the times when he cooperated with the Lady.

But the time he had was limited by the fact that he had a surgery to run.

Which was a bit complicated by the fact that Hyde was being particularly fidgety for some reason.

After seeing off his last patient and retreating to his office for the paper work, he found that working was going to be hard.

Why?

Because Hyde had to choose now of all times to appear in the mirror, because he was bored and … well, being his shameless, attention-whoring self.

Namely, he was nagging and flirting.

After he somehow, miraculously had got a considerable stag of paper work done (in spite of Hyde's nagging), his patience was on the verge of snapping. He still had work to do, he couldn't concentrate and all the whining was giving him a headache. Not to mention he was still sour about-

“Hyde”, he growled slowly. “Shut. The fuck. Up! I have work to do and I really don't feel like putting up with your nonsense! Not now, not here, not anywhere else and definitely not any time this week!”

Hyde frowned. “Whoa, Jekyll, warn me next time you're in your red phase!”

“I don't care, just shut up!”, Jekyll snapped. He was just so done right now. “You're really in no position to whine into my ears!”

If anyone is, it's me!

The brunette puffed his cheeks. “Don't be so snappy. I don't complain, when you beg for my attention, when I'm out.”

The blond's eyes narrowed. “That's because you're a fucking attention-whore, who sucks up any kind of positive attention he can get! And I don't ask for your fucking attention nearly as much as you for mine. Now if you would just shut the fuck up already, because for just one day – one fucking day! – I want to be able to do my work in peace!”

The younger man frowned: “Got out on the wrong side of the bed? Jekyll, what's the matter? It's not like you to say 'fuck' so extensively. Or to insult me so harshly, for that matter. I wasn't asking to be let out, just for you to spare an hour for me.”

Oh, that was too much!

The Doctor jumped up and slammed his hands onto the table.

“You want to know what the problem is? You want my attention so badly? Alright, fine! If that's what you want, you'll get it, you brat! You're pissing me off! After the terrible things that happened to us, I tried to take it easy, but do you have the faintest idea how hard that is, when you constantly nag and whine into my ears, when I try to get work done?! Just a kind reminder, you live on my wealth, but my wealth isn't infinite! I've had no income for several months! Almost half of my fortune is gone! I pay for everything! The money on your bank account? It's mine! And on top of that, I pay Lady Summers 1500£ per month for our therapy!”

Hyde lifted an eyebrow. “Are you finished-?”

“DOES IT LOOK LIKE I'M FINISHED???”

The brunette winced.

Jekyll took a deep breath and growled: “I'm just getting started! You have no room to complain, you brat! I've been letting you out more often than usual, and not just because I wanted to get drunk and laid! You know that, Hyde! It used to be so, but I find myself doing it for your sake just as for mine these days! You're the one who gets to go wild and free and now you have even more fun, because there is someone who's just as crazy as you are! Hasn't the fun been doubled for you, thanks to Miss Donovan?! Does it not feel great to have a partner in crime?! Do you think that I don't feel how ecstatic you are, that someone likes the things you like, thinks the way you think and even joins you in your – in our – debauchery?!

And don't even get me started on your interaction with Gabriel lately! I can understand, that he chose to give you his first kiss, because in that moment you fucking needed it! But now you had to go and steal his first French kiss too! What will come next? The entirety of his body?! His heart?! His soul?! His first confession of love?! Why is it that you get to be first in everything, while I always come in second?! Why you?! You don't know about the emotional depth Gabriel puts into the things he does! Every time he lets you have one of his firsts, he gives a part of himself to you! But you don't understand that! It means nothing to you! You don't love him, you don't even know what love is! Every single of his affections means the world to me, but you … you …”

His voice failed him. He sank back into his chair and buried his face in his hands.

It wasn't fair!

Hyde didn't love Utterson. Utterson didn't love Hyde.

So why, why did he get to be first in everything?

It was just all too much.

He broke into sobs and cried into his hands.

“Jekyll …”

The blond winced, when he suddenly felt his alter ego's icy hands pry his warm ones away to cup his face.

When did he leave the mirror?

“Come now, my Doctor”, Hyde cooed, “I know that you're jealous, but this is ridiculous.”

“Shut up!”, Jekyll sobbed, “It's not like you actually understand my emotions!”

“Jekyll …”

“I hate you, Edward Hyde! I hate you so m–mmph!”

Hyde kissed him.

“No, you don't”, he mumbled against his lips, “Don't lie to me, Henry.”

Then he kissed him again, more forward this time.

Jekyll tried to push him back, but the smaller was holding his head in a vice-like grip. He sobbed against those icy, chapped lips.

He wanted to kiss back, but at the same time he did not.

I hate him … I love him … why is it so hard for me to make up my mind?!

Finally the little bastard broke the kiss completely and let go.

“You're too emotional”, Hyde remarked, shaking his head. “Acting like a child right now, are you?”

Jekyll glared at him: “No, Hyde, you're just not emotional enough. Also, you're one to talk. You were being childish earlier!”

The brunette shrugged: “Well, to my defence, Henry: as Edward Hyde, I'm technically less than nine years old. At the same time I'm both legally twenty and your age. But you're simply a fifty-years-old man. You're supposed to be the mature one, not me.”

Jekyll laughed joylessly: “That's no excuse, Hyde. Also, thank you for reminding me, that wanting to screw you makes me a bloody paedophile! As if I wasn't already vile enough!”

The younger man sighed irritably: “It's not paedophilia, if I'm not a minor. Goddammit, Henry, we already had that discussion! It's not a child's body you're lusting after. We both know, that you didn't make me twenty, just so I could legally screw around!”

“When I created you, your legal age was eighteen”, Jekyll reminded him drily. “You only told me two years ago, that you didn't want to stay like that forever.”

“Your point? You just could've decided over my head, that I'm fifteen or younger. Look at all the people who believe that I'm thirteen or less!”

The blond stared at him in horror. “That's disgusting, Hyde!”

“Exactly. Now remind me, why did you make me older?”

Jekyll reflected for a moment.

That was a good question, actually.

Why had he decided that Hyde should be older?

At first sight, the brunette looked rather androgynous and definitely very young. He was thin, had narrow shoulders and an effeminate face. And he often acted like a hobbadehoy*.

Then he thought of how Hyde's body actually looked under his clothes and remembered.

“Because your physique is too mature to belong to someone so young. And because you can judge a situation and act accordingly. You're impulsive, but you know what you're doing.”

Hyde smiled and nodded in satisfaction. “Exactly. And because you're – at least in this regard – not a total pervert. The fact I don't want to fuck minors either proves it. So don't worry your pretty head about it, my dear soulmate.”

Then he kissed him again.

This time the older man kissed back and wrapped his arms around the younger, pulling him onto his lap.

Hyde chuckled against his lips and wrapped his arms around his neck in return.

They didn't go further, not this time.

Yet it was oddly intimate.

It wasn't one of those heated, rough battles of dominance filled with anger and hateful lust.

It was tenderness and reassurance and the promise that everything would be fine, one way or another. That they would always be there for each other.

Henry Jekyll loved and hated Edward Hyde, but in that moment, he could forget about the latter.

When the make-out session ended, he felt renewed and alive.

“Edward …”, he whispered and leaned his forehead against the other's.

I'm sorry for lashing out at you earlier …

“Forget about that, Fairest”, the brunette responded to his thought. “You're exhausted. Go to sleep. I'll take care of everything for you.”

Hyde shooed his creator over to the couch and then turned his attention to the paper work.

Jekyll had finished a considerable amount, but there was still a lot to be done.

Hyde frowned.

Oh dear … that sure is a lot of bills and letters to answer!

He decided, that he would do the letters first. Mathematics would be a relief after wrecking his brain over Jekyll's correspondence.

There was just one problem: like Jekyll, he was naturally right-handed, but he had taught himself to write with the left to distinguish himself from his creator. Jekyll's handwriting wasn't his.

I have to forge it.

The brunette took an empty piece of paper and tried to write a few sentences with the right hand.

At first the writing was a bit shaky. But a few attempts later, the autograph resembled that of his creator perfectly.

Note to self: practise writing with the right one again. Better to be able to write with both hands equally.

That decision being made, he went to work.

His hand started hurting after a while and he was tempted to do the rest with the left. But no matter how hard he tried, he wouldn't get the exact slope by writing with the left. Whelp. He would have to suck it up and deal with his cramped hand later.

After finishing the last letter, he sighed in relief.

Oh, how he hated that part of Jekyll's work! Not only was it the most time-consuming, but writing the letters just the way Jekyll would, with the exact same wording, that was torture!

Thank goodness, now I can finally do the bills!

That was child's play.

At least to Hyde it was.

To many people – Jekyll included – mathematics was dull and boring, but not to him. It was like himself – cold, practical and flexible. There weren't a hundred ways to interpret mathematics. There were many ways to come to the same conclusion, but not the other way! The calculation was either right or wrong. It was that simple!

If only people were as easy as mathematics …

Hyde had just finished the finances, when he felt his corporeal form begin to weaken.

Good timing. He had feared that he wouldn't be able to keep it up long enough to finish all.

Fuck, that was exhausting!

A soft moan got his attention.

Jekyll was sleeping on the couch, out like a light.

Hyde sighed tiredly and floated over to him.

The older man shifted a little and mumbled incoherently in his sleep.

The younger crouched down next to the other's head and listened. Just like himself, Jekyll talked in his sleep sometimes. What would he say this time?

“Edward …”

Hyde frowned. That was oddly coherent. Was the blond not asleep after all?

“I love you …”

The brunette's eyes widened and he felt his cheeks heat up. Alright, the blond was dreaming. There was no way he would have said that while awake!

“Please don't go …”, the other whimpered in his sleep. He was having a nightmare, that much was clear.

Hyde grew concerned. “Henry, I'm right here.”

“I'm sorry …”

Alright, what the hell was the other dreaming?! The young man held his hand to the sleeping man's forehead. Pictures flashed before his eyes.

They were separated. He was there, wearing his black raincoat, carrying a travelling bag. There was an argument between him and Jekyll, a nasty one. He saw himself look at Jekyll with a cold mien, then turn his back and leave.

Oh, Jekyll …

“Henry”, he whispered, “Can you hear me? I'm not leaving you. I'm right here.”

The blond sniffed. His arms twitched, as if he wanted to hug him.

“Really?”

Hyde sighed and stroked his creator's blond, tousled hair. “Really. It's just a dream. I'm not going anywhere.”

“Just a dream …”

For a second the brunette thought that he'd wake up. But he didn't.

“You'll never leave me, right? Not even, if I separated you completely?”, the other choked.

“Shhhh”, the younger cooed. “My dear soulmate, don't start bawling on me again. I'm here. I will always be there. For better and for worse.”

He didn't know what compelled him to promise that. But he meant it.

Jekyll leaned into his touch like a cat.

“I love you …”

“I know”, Hyde answered sadly.

He would never be able to say it back, he knew. Whether he loved his other half or not.

And Jekyll would never say it consciously. He had no qualms telling him that he hated him, but he would never tell him that he loved him. Not when he was awake.

I can't say I love you, Jekyll.

---

*hobbadehoy - Victorian Slang: a youth who has ceased to see himself as a boy, but is not yet regarded as a man.

#The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde #Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde #Dr. Jekyll #henry jekyll #Mr. Hyde #edward hyde #oc #jekyde #jekyllxhyde #Jekyll is a jealous idiot #hyde is frustrated #everyone needs a hug

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sportsgeekonomics · 6 years ago

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Don't let the NCAA off the hook for Zion Williamson's exploitation

Zion Williamson’s (thankfully minor) injury on Wednesday night launched a flurry of activity from the hot-take industry. There were the obvious ones (in which I participated) like “gosh, I hope Zion Williamson has loss of value insurance.” And then less obvious ones like “isn’t it an outrage that NCAA rules prohibit Duke from providing that insurance with Duke’s own money (they have to use a special NCAA fund and if that’s empty, no go).”

These were generally pro-athlete and more or less correct.

But the worst of the bunch, the absolutely most suit-sniffing, barely-whisper-truth-to-power-and do-so-while groveling sort of take is the “this is not the NCAA’s fault, not at all” approach.

The NCAA itself took this approach, because of course they would.

https://twitter.com/NCAA/status/1098995124741332992

https://twitter.com/NCAA/status/1098995126117064705

So if you are a journalist, and a billion dollar industry claims to have no role whatsoever in denying athletes their market-rate of compensation, you have a choice. You can dig in and see whether that’s true, a bad spin of a barely true thing, or a bald-faced lie. Or you can just adopt that approach, more or less un-researched. Unfortunately, the latter was all too common among the hot-take sports crowd.

But besides these sorts of journalists being complicit in the exploitation of athletes by perpetuating the propaganda of the NCAA, here’s why it’s also just plain false that the “real problem” is the NBA/NBPA rule known as one-and-done. It's important to recognize that while many parties are arrayed against the economic welfare of athletes, when people say this is all the NBA's fault, it's missing the crux of the issue to focus on a side effect.

First, the NCAA is not telling the truth when it claims to have nothing to do with one-and-done. One-and-done is a legally validated rule, tested in the courts through the NFL equivalent rule (which is basically three-and-done). That rule was declared illegal by a federal court in 2003, but the NFL appealed and had the ruling reversed. During the appeals process, the NCAA decided to inject itself into the legal process. It could have stayed neutral. Or it could have supported athletes’ rights to go to the NFL and the NBA whenever they want. And if they had done that then I guess I’d agree that they were not at all responsible for one-and-done. But they did not do that. Instead, what they did was actively tell the courts that college sports NEEDED rules like one and done, and please do not make them illegal.

Don’t believe me? I’ve got receipts.

On April 12, 2004, the NCAA filed what is known as an “Amicus Brief” – a “Friend of the Court” statement where a party that is not a part of the lawsuit nevertheless advises the Court what it thinks. Sometimes courts ask for amicus briefs, to get a sense of what the ramifications of a decision might be. Other times, parties just volunteer them. Here’s what the NCAA told the court:

If you can’t read through the legalese, let me translate for you: Please make it legal for the NFL (and any other league like the NBA) to tell 18 year olds they cannot play professionally. If you don’t, we might lose our best athletes unless we pay them and that would really suck.

And so, with this advice from the NCAA in hand, the appeals court struck down the ruling that three-and-done (and other rules like it) was illegal, and declared it totally legal for a league to collectively bargain with a union to make rules like one-and-done.

So that’s how false it is to say the NCAA had nothing to do with one-and-done. Nothing to do with it other than going out of its way to tell the court that made one-and-done illegal that it ought to make it legal, and that the future of the NCAA hinged critically on making rules like one-and-done permissible.

So fast forward to today, and the NBA and the players’ union, the NBPA, have a valid collective bargaining agreement (a CBA in the labor law jargon) that says you must be one year removed from high school to play in the NBA. Like it or not, the law has blessed this. And yes, the NBA and NBPA can change this rule (and in my view should change it) but (1) it is the subject of actual bargaining between owners and athletes, and thus (2) it is a legal rule, and of course (3) the NCAA went out of its way to make it legal.

But more importantly, this NBA/NBPA is not the main reason that college athletes are being exploited economically. Far more harmful to the athletes, both for those who would have gone to the NBA directly from college and those who might never play in the Association at all, are the NCAA rules themselves, the ones that say schools cannot compete for athletes using payments above a fixed level, with that level equal to a scholarship plus $2,000 to $6,000 dollars in cash.

Note – I am not saying college athletes don’t get paid at all – quite the opposite. They are paid. They get a value in the form of a scholarship and on top of that they get paid in cash, around $3,500 a year on average. What I am saying is they are not paid what the market would pay them, if schools like Duke didn’t agree, every single year, with schools like Kentucky that they will not compete for talent like Zion Williamson with the full vigor of a real, uncapped market.

And unlike the sort of caps the NBA and NBPA collectively bargain, the NCAA cap is not bargained at all. Rather, one side of the equation – management, in the form of the schools and conferences that make up the NCAA – colludes among itself and presents the price cap to athletes as a take-it-or-leave-it offer by a monopolist.[1] Which, on its face, is an anticompetitive act, suppressing the payment that thousands of athletes would get without the cap.

Don’t believe me? Well, let’s remember back all the way to 2015, when an appeals court confirmed the 2014 ruling in O’Bannon which said that the cap the NCAA had in place from 1976 to 2015 was illegal. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled (and the Supreme Court chose not to overrule) that in the NCAA rule was “patently and inexplicably stricter than is necessary” and “an antitrust court can and should invalidate it and order it replaced.” In other words – the cap was illegal.

So the NCAA adopted a new, slightly more generous cap, which is why college athletes now get paid in cash as well as in-kind. That $2K - $6K I mentioned above? Yeah, you can thank the antitrust laws for that.

But the thing is, the court didn’t say that just because the cap was looser now that it was automatically ok. And so four years later, the new cap is back in court, awaiting a ruling from the same district court where O’Bannon was heard. In that case, we’re just waiting for the ruling but the judge (Judge Claudia Wilken) has already told us what she thinks:

What I think Judge Wilken meant was that it was clear that the current cap on compensation had an “anticompetitive effect” on thousands of athletes. What does that mean? It means there was lots of evidence that thousands of athletes had gotten less money under the current rule than they would have if there had been no rule (or a less restrictive rule).

And one of the experts in that case, my friend and business partner, Dan Rascher testified to that exact effect. He explained his conclusions recently to the New York Times.

And this is what I think the real story is. Namely, that without the NBA/NBPA rule, which is legal, a dozen people or so would each earn millions of dollars more for one year. But without the NCAA rule, which is likely illegal, thousands of athletes would each earn tens or hundreds of thousands more – which is a far larger extraction of wealth – and the only parties responsible for that are the NCAA and its member institutions.

So when the hot-take crowd gets confronted with these sorts of facts, it’s fairly typical for them to fall back onto “ok, well, hot shot, you can complain all you want but no one has proposed a viable solution.” This is what I call the “what’s your plan” fallacy, namely that it’s not enough to point out where the real blame lies, it’s the requirement of the people who see the problem to also lay out, in full and glorious detail, how to fix it, or else the current rules get to stay in place forever. It’s something like the economic version of that tourist t-shirt, “the economic exploitation will continue until someone outside the system invents the perfect solution.”

But the “what's the plan” framing – where we have to agree on a fix before we can even entertain the possibility of ending a bad system – is bogus. You don’t keep letting a company pollute a river just because you haven’t figured out where they can properly send the pollution. You tell them to stop polluting and let them figure out what to do.

But even though it’s not the responsibility of the people who point out the problem to propose a solution, the secondary hot-take that “no one has offered a solution” is also just plain wrong. I myself have laid out at least three plans that would all fix the problem.

Eliminate the NCAA cap and let each conference set its own cap in competition with one another. This is the requested relief in the current case in front of Judge Wilken and was first proposed by me and Daniel Rascher (the professor quoted by the New York Times above) in 2000. This would allow each conference to decide how much they think makes sense to offer in pay but require them to put that offer into a market where other conferences could pay more, and let the market decide, for each athlete, what a fair exchange of benefits for services is. It’s basically, you know, the way all markets work except it treats the conference as the unit of decision making rather than each school (and rather than allowing the NCAA to create a cartel[2] of all conferences, like they do now).

You can do a half-measure and end the cap on third-party payments to athletes. This is an inferior solution, because it opens up half the market – the market for athletes name, image, and likeness rights, but it leaves in place the cap on the other half of the market, the market for athletic services. In the long run, athletes will do about as well, but as appealing as this solution is – sometimes it’s called the Olympic model because it’s how Olympians are primarily (though not entirely) paid for their participation in the Olympics – it has problems. The biggest is that if compensation moves outside of the university environment, it is more likely to skirt Title IX. That is, if athletes were paid for their services by schools or conferences, as in Plan 1 above, it’s very likely that the pay would be subject to Title IX matching. Roughly speaking, this would cut the market rate for male athletes in half and push up funding for female athletes accordingly. But if it’s Nike hiring Zion Williamson to do a shoe deal, it is much less likely there would be any need for a Title IX match. If you think Title IX is good, you should prefer Plan 1 to Plan 2, but either way, you’ll get to a market outcome that is less exploitative than the current system and works more efficiently to boot. At least two States are adopting this approach now, Washington and California. You can read about these efforts here: CA:https://theathletic.com/800397/2019/02/04/thompson-new-law-seeks-to-allow-california-collegiate-athletes-to-get-paid-for-use-of-their-name-image-and-likeness/ WA:http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2019/feb/21/outside-pay-for-college-athletes-gets-committee-ok/

There can be competitive entry by a rival college basketball league that considers “Amateurism” to be a problem that needs solving rather than a positive element of the sport. This is why I am proud to be a part of the executive team of the Historical Basketball League, the HBL. Because Amateurism is a Con.

I can already hear some of you asking:

WHAT IS THE HBL?

In June 2020, the HBL will launch in 12 cities across America and will work with the HBL Foundation to provide full scholarships to the cream of the crop – the top 150 or so college basketball players – to play for the HBL. In addition to those scholarships, which cannot be cancelled for injury or even if the athlete leaves for the NBA, the HBL will also pay athletes $50,000 to $150,000 and allow athletes to fully commercialize their name, image, and likeness. In other words, if the courts and society can’t force the NCAA to adopt Plan 1 or 2, the HBL is going to do it for them, buy up all the best talent, and show the world that labor markets aren’t exactly rocket science – the league that pays the best is going to get the best talent and they get the best ratings and then get the most revenue.

Now, to be clear, there is a lot more that is cool about the HBL. We are thrilled that fifteen-year NBA veteran David West has taken over our basketball operations, and Ricky Volante, Keith Sparks, and I are eager to work with David to make the league a success. Please check us out at HBLeague.com.

We’ll be playing our games in the summer to minimize the conflict between school and sports. Our athletes will be true students from Labor Day to Memorial Day, and then professional college athletes during the summer. We’ll focus on appropriate high-performance training, professional nutrition, and proper strength and conditioning. We’ll play by NBA rules and teach NBA schemes. We’ll be working to provide our athletes and their parents with financial literacy courses, public relations training, business courses, etc. We will holistically develop the whole person and send our athletes to the NBA and to other professional leagues across the globe – far better prepared for life on and off the court, and far better prepared than anything the NCAA provides today.

And no, the HBL is not going to ask the NCAA for permission to compete against them, or to agree on the optimal salary. The biggest fallacy of the “what’s your plan” hot take is that it assumes we need a plan at all. It implies athletes can't be subject to the same rules as everyone else. They can. By entering the same market as the NCAA – the college basketball market – what the HBL is saying is let’s just let the market do its thing.

In some sense, that's the common thread for all of the solutions, which is to recognize that we don’t have a plan for how we pay athletic directors, and no one worries why not. Just treat athletes like all other humans. It will all work out fine.

[1] Ok, to be technical it’s actually a monopsonist, which is just a fancy way of saying a monopolist when the monopolist is making the payments – like when it buys supplies or pays workers -- rather than charging the money. But that’s not important, I just want to make it clear I know the difference

[2] An economic cartel is not a drug cartel. To be an economic cartel you just have to get together with your potential competitors and agree not to compete on price. For example, you could get all 350+ D1 schools to agree on how much to pay athletes for their services, and this would make you a cartel. I’m looking at you, NCAA.

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theclearestbluejp · 3 years ago

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"Tied to the shifting ground..."

I guess I don't fully know why I'm here. I've had a lot on my mind lately and I thought it might help if I were to write those thoughts down somewhere where I don't really expect anyone I know can or will see them.

Like it has been for most people, life the past couple of years has definitely been pretty challenging. I "lost" my job at the very start of the pandemic with the federal government and spent the next several months surviving off CERB (I live in fear every day that they'll decide I didn't deserve it and come to collect) until I finally decided to return to my previous job, which I... did not love. Then I immediately got laid off again! Only for a month, though, then at-home work began. In October of last year, I finally managed to obtain a position with a company that specializes in what I actually went to school for! I really did think everything was going to change for the better. And in some ways, it has. I'm able to afford to live alone for the most part, but I've had so many financial issues since this started. I wish I had gotten this job when my roommate still lived with me so I was able to save up more money, but life just always wants to challenge me, so here we are.

It feels so silly to say, but with the release of "Heartstopper" last week, my emotional state has really been thrown into chaos. I'm 34, so there's a part of me that feels a little embarrassed to be so affected by a show that, let's face it, was probably aimed at teenagers or young adults. But... it has. Profoundly.

The last time I went on a date with someone was probably back in 2017? Maybe 2016. I have it in my head that I was 28 (so, 2016) but somehow that feels too long ago. I guess I don't know if I can fully say it was a date... we agreed to meet for dinner, then the next day he came over to my place and things... happened. And we kinda kept seeing each other like that. He was closeted, so I never wanted to push the idea that we should be seen in public together. I was starting to enjoy spending time with him and it went on for a couple of months like that. But I ultimately wasn't able to be emotionally honest with him and things just sort of... fizzled. Now, I don't know if this was all on me being unable to say "I like you and I'm interested in seeing where this goes." It could just be that he wasn't feeling it either way. I guess both of those options sort of suck, though. Either way, I got the good ol' "I'm really busy these days" message, and I've been in the game long enough to know what that really means. I backed off, wanting to not seem like a psycho, and I never saw him again. Well, that's not true, I saw him coming out of a building once, and I'm pretty sure I saw him walking down the street with a friend (he turned to walk the opposite way from me, as if I'd ever say anything).

After that, I decided it was time to... stop. I'd never had a very serious relationship and it just always seemed like dating never worked out. Either I couldn't commit, or I was into it more than they were, or I'd get scared, etc. All the cliche bullshit. The only person I ever loved was David when I was 18, and some days I worry that David doesn't look back as fondly on those memories as I did. I'm thoroughly over him now, but I still cherish that time. It was really probably the happiest I'd ever been in my life.

But after everything, I started thinking that maybe I don't actually want a boyfriend? After all, it seems like it just never clicks when it seems to click so easily for everyone else. Maybe I just told myself that's what I wanted because we're told to partner up for life and to not do so is sad? Maybe it's just not for me? And I was fine believing that for these past 5 or so years. Truly, I got so accustomed to being alone that I couldn't imagine allowing someone to break my patterns.

But then this show came out. And it made me realize that I do want that. I do want a partner. I want someone who I get excited to see and spend time with and be my true self around and be comfortable with and go on adventures with and make memories with. I want to love someone and I want to be loved back. I don't expect a story book romance and I know that TV =/= reality, but that's not what I'm asking for. I know it's not perfect, it can never be ideal, but I want someone to go through this life with. I... don't want to be alone anymore. I want someone to make happy and who can make me happy in return. And it's a huge, massive fucking deal for me to put those words down, because truthfully I feel like I've known this all along, but I didn't want to say it anymore because saying it and feeling like I couldn't have it almost hurt more than anything else.

I've decided I want to genuinely seek out a therapist. I don't really know where to begin, but I know I need help. I want help overcoming my anxiety and inability to be emotionally honest. Honestly, I think I'll know I've had a breakthrough if I'm able to cry in front of someone else. It will be a long journey, I think, but maybe a necessary one.

Well, I think that's all I wanted to get off my chest for now. I'm not sure when I'll write in here again. I don't even know how seriously I'll take this whole thing. I guess we'll see.

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stephengjme442-blog · 7 years ago

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10 Things Most People Don't Know About best anti snoring device

Hello, I'm going to be giving an honest overview of the good-morning snore solution product supposed to help you stop snoring and you're, probably viewing this video, because, like me, you've scoured the internet looking for any type of honest overview of This product and I've come to appear essentially empty-handed because just about everything they have some kind of ridiculously good online advertising campaign continue right now, because almost every website you go to is some type of advertisements, and I don't think that's very best for consumers. Trying to make a decision about whether they need it this product. So I wanted to give a genuine review and my purpose is to give the review over multiple times to get my actual experience, and I believe that will help help folks make a decision as to whether to buy it. Which means this is the the device the following. Your tongue goes in this little knob thing here and then the rest. The others goes in in the middle of your gums as well as your lips and the materials.

It'S like rubbery plastic material and I've a daughter, she's, five years old, but when she was a baby, she had she drank out of a bottle and that's the nipple of containers is that's essentially the same kind of materials as this the following. So it is nice and soft. The reason I am going through this is because, within the last few years I am overweight for a long time, but within the last few years I am snoring so loud which i wakes up my partner and she actually kicks me in the center of the night time to Try get me to change positions, because easily change positions, sometimes I'll stop snoring, you understand it'll allow her to return to sleep, but simply a couple weeks ago, she woke me up by hitting me over the head with her cushion, because I just wouldn't normally Stop snoring, therefore i made that decision it was kind of a wake-up call. You must do something about your snoring. In my own specific case, I believe the snoring is exactly what the best solution for me would be one of those job displacement dices. I don't know what they're called specifically but they're. Those are essentially mouthpieces that hold your jaw ahead and I think that the reason why I understand that is because if I just lay back again and relax my tongue and my jaw, I get much better airflow. If I press my jaw ahead, but I'm just a little afraid to really try one particular, because I've seen some reviews that they harm your gums and they may be your teeth, get a little loose. And - and I must say i don't want to undergo that, if I can make it so I'm going to give this thing a try and if it works great, if it doesn't work, then I'm likely to have to go to the next phase with the mouthpiece.

So, third , video, this portion would be the day 1 review. Thank you for viewing hello. This is day 1 or your day after night time, 1 of using the good-morning snore solution device, and I could let you know that I'm about ready to go ahead and come back. This thing to the manufacturer for the entire refund, but I am going to give it a little bit more time. The issue after i first laid down with it was that there was it was unpleasant on my tongue. I stick. The tongue sticks between your tooth and my jaw tends to close a little bit so, as well as the tongue being squeezed into this little knob here, I was also biting down a bit on my tongue. That'S a little bit uncomfortable. Also, there was the the edges here: they they touch the gums therefore there's a little bit of discomfort there. But I think that's not so bad that I can't get past that within snoring aids the first few evenings and I don't see that as a major show stopper. But what was a major show stopper for me personally yesterday evening was the saliva: I'm not the kind of person that can drool forever if there's an excess. If there's any amount of saliva coming out between my lips, I'm I must wake up. I must clean it and I simply I just cannot wake up with a wet pillow. I can't offer with the saliva. It will keep me awake forever, just similar to it did yesterday evening after 2 or 3 3 hours of putting on this thing.

The saliva began to freak me out and I simply couldn't deal with it anymore, therefore i took finished . out: rinse it off and still left it out by the kitchen sink for all of those other night if, regarding to their documentation, so unwanted saliva is one of the Side results that they expect plus they also say that it goes away within a few nights. So, in order to give this product a fair shot, I'll I have chose. I will carry on and wear it for at least a few more nice to see if the amount of saliva falls and if it can, I think this product actually could finish up working pretty much, because I believe that actually did assist with my snoring last night. A little bit it's not going to eliminate soaring, they never claim that it will eliminate it, but I think it do reduce it to a spot where my wife's not going to be kicking me in the middle of the night, and that's actually the whole point. So again, I'm going to be offering this a try for at least the next few more nice to find out if the quantity of saliva falls and keep tuned in for the review after day two. Thank you. One thing that I forgot to mention after i made the video this morning was that I woke up in the morning with some nose congestion and it kind of worries me because if you look at this device, the way its device works and almost every other Snoring snoring device works. You really can only breathe through your nose and can get most. Congestion is going to cause a real problem. So I visited the store today and I acquired some nose strips to hopefully keep my nose passages open.

THEREFORE I can breathe better. We'Ll observe how that works tonight. The other thing I needed to say - I probably should have talked about this in the first-day video - was that first there's a 30-day reef, money-back assurance, were you if you're unhappy within the first three times of buying this thing you can return it for a full refund. Well, that's not entirely true, because you need to pay the shipping and handling to send it back again to them, but at least you get most your cash back and the other thing is looking at the records. It says that thing will only last one or two years, which is actually a tiny bit disappointing if you ask me because I'm 35 and I'm going to be probably snoring for the others of my entire life. So will that mean I have to fill up on like 30 of the things, in order for you know, make sure that if it works, make sure that I don't, I don't keep my partner up for the others of my life. That'S a that's a little unsatisfactory. Hopefully, ideally, this thing will last much longer than those promises well, anyways, stay tuned for day, #2 2 review. Well, it is the day after night time #2 2 and I've some good news and bad information to report. The glad tidings are, I was able to keep the mouthpiece in every night time yesterday evening and my tongue is a bit more sore than last night as a result. But again it isn't stopper.

The other good news is my partner reports, not hearing we snore whatsoever. Yesterday evening, which is unusual, she hears me even more almost every evening, so on the snoring side of things, it seems to be Glee. Well now the downside is which i still had a saliva problem. I laid down a nice gentle towel on my cushion hoping to try to fight any saliva issues, but I was still, I still woke up at least a six times working with slightly leaking around the mouthpiece and again, that's not something that I could really. I can't get used to that. I don't think I woke up this morning. It felt I sensed like from it was just disgusting. I put to clean my face, as you know, right away. So again, I'm really hoping that the saliva situation works itself out. After some more times, I also used the respiration strips the ones they go over, the bridge of your nose to help you breathe better and I experienced like I had been breathing effectively last night. I know that one of the problems with snoring plus some sleep apnea is simply a feeling of failing to have not having the ability to breathe well and yesterday evening. I didn't have that concern at all, and so I think I had fashioned a fairly good nights sleep. Last night, aside from the saliva issues, and I'm just going to keep going with this and keep tuned in for the survey after evening number, 3, it's the day after evening, 3 and yesterday evening was a pretty terrible night time asleep. I woke up at least 15 times with the saliva problem and I'm pretty tired this morning. So again I'm expecting it gets better because last night had not been fun whatsoever. My tongue is also a bit more sore than it was the previous two nights. I guess because just the do it again use is leading to a bit more soreness.

So again, I hope that also increases night amount. Four was fairly abysmal. I spent about an hour . 5 laying there with the mouthpiece in looking to get to rest dealing with the saliva issues. They continue and dealing with some new distress which I'll enter ina moment, and i quickly had taken out the mouthpiece wishing to access rest again, but I laid there for another 45 minutes because I used to be worried. I was going to wake up. My partner was snoring, so not a very good night time. Now the distress is there are a couple few things that are taking place. I this irritation has hour, has existed re for the passive for all the evenings, but it was more extreme last night and that's part of what held me up these sides right here. They lay against the gums, but they also touch the connective tissues between the lip area and the gums, as they're called the frenulum leave, and it was annoying those two where it was keeping me awake. The other part is, I believe, I messed up in night amount, two, where I I've stuck my tongue much into this little knob and that's more than is essential to keep the tongue ahead, but it triggered it was too way too much suction there and it triggered.

My tongue to get a little natural and when I say natural, the way the best way to spell it out it is if you were to burn your mouth your tongue with with hot coffee. It isn't the burning sense, but afterward your tongue feels just a little fresh. That is the same kind of feeling and right now, it's more extreme because of the previous few evenings of by using this thing. So I think, in order to keep this test, I'm going to have to take a few nights off, not use the mouthpiece. I am hoping that my tongue heals a bit and I'll get back in to it. Probably I'm still worried. The saliva concern is merely never heading to disappear completely. Hopefully, I'm incorrect, but hopefully by simply taking this rest I'll, be able to at least minimize reduce the amount of distress that I have to offer with. So I'm not laying there in bed for 90 minutes wishing to go. Rest will call yesterday evening night amount five and I don't think I slept so well. I put the mouthpiece in after mind started to nod off and then at that time I felt like I used to be laying there awake for at least another around 30 minutes just getting used to the mouthpiece and then I know I woke up at least one or two Times drooling and required care of this I had once or twice. I woke up because of tongue position. I don't really understand that so well, and I believe I might have woken up. My partner snoring, I'm nearly sure I'll, have to ask her, but I feel pretty exhausted. Today, I've developed a fresh symptom. I've soreness in my own jaw the following. That isn't something I've experienced before in virtually any of the previous nights, and my lip break up could continues to be a concern, but that's it for night time number, five night time number six was a comparable as night number five. So I'm kind of wondering, if maybe I'm in more of a staple kind of situation right now, it's reasonably restful sleep with interruptions for saliva issues and I'm uncertain that's really something that I want to kind of offer with long-term. So I'm going to keep attempting it out for another week and if I actually am in a well balanced situation, this is worse rest than what I acquired before. So it is probably not heading to be the perfect solution is. For me, night time amount seven was a amazingly decent night of sleep.

I still had the saliva problem, which woke me up many times last night, but a couple occasions when I woke up, I was feeling like I needed this nice long and deep rest, and this morning hours I feel pretty much arrested. So ideally that is clearly a positive indicator that it's heading to start getting better. I don't. I really don't believe this live concern is ever going to go away at this time and I might have to offer with it, but it was a good night of sleep and that is really what I am looking for anyways. So I hope that continues. I still have a few more days still left of the trial before I have to make a decision, but again, if this is any indicator, maybe this will continue to work out. Night amount eight went pretty much, I think I understand I woke up at least several times with the saliva issue, and I now woke up at least one time with my tongue falling out of the tiny suction thing by the end of these devices. But aside from that, I don't really keep in mind waking up at all. Maybe changing positions a little bit, but that is the same as it was before. The saliva thing still concerns me which i I don't like that feeling in any way, but maybe it's starting to get a little better. Maybe I'm getting more used to it, the distress, the pain. You know, the tongue pain, that's just about all gone. It generally does not bother me at all yesterday evening I could fall asleep fairly quickly.

So that's not really concerned any longer, but I still have a few more nights to produce a ultimate decision so we'll observe how that runs. There'S no major difference between night 8 and 99, therefore i think I've got it to relatively of a pattern. So tonight it'll be my last evaluation night time and I'll decide tomorrow. Yesterday evening was night time number 10 of my test of the nice morning. Sleep solution device and I'm running up close to the deadline for the thirty day, money-back assurance. So I'll need to make my Altima decision today which decision has really drop to the wire, because yesterday evening falling asleep. I had fashioned no idea what I was going to decide today same thing today, kind of no idea. But after speaking with my partner, she said she's been said that I have not been snoring. I'Ve not been keeping awake, and that means the device is working, therefore, even though I've been through quite a bit of distress, I've made the decision I am eventually going to keep carefully the device and continue to use at least so long as I could stand the discomforts. Just what exactly kind of distress am I talking about? Well, the first couple nights. I had formed this this moderate amount of panic, because I had formed worries that I wasn't breathing well, the device restricts you from reaffirm respiration through the mouth area, so I was worried that I wasn't quite getting enough air through my nose. I visited the store I bought. Some of these breathing strips that go over the bridge of your nose and that has worked pretty much. I have not had that feeling of panic, anymore um. The next area of irritation is was the tongue and the next night.

I stuck my tongue too much in to the little pocket which caused quite a bit of pain for the 3rd and fourth evenings. To the stage where I required, I believe it was four nights off from using these devices merely to let my tongue heal and my tongue do heal and it since then, I've been using the device properly sticking my tongue into the pocket sufficient to where there's Enough suction to keep it kept in place, and so I have not got enough got much pain and I am able to fall asleep quite easily. My principal area of this Comfort is the saliva and, if you're like me, and the idea of slamming slinking out of your mouth in the middle - and i disgust you and will keep you awake well, you might have some problems with this product. The instructions say that the amount of saliva is meant to go down after the first couple of days, and I did so not find that to be the case. I'M drooling just as much as ever and it continues me awake and it's really disrupting my sleep cycles to the stage where I don't feel just like I'm getting completely restful night of sleep.

However, because I am snoring less, I'd estimate that my sleep is about on par using what it was in advance, but now I simply have this drooling problem instead of a snoring problem, despite the saliva issue, I personally went ahead and push through it. What this means to me is that I really don't see this as a long-term solution. I believe really, eventually, I'm just going to have to get to the main of the problem, which is me carrying excess fat and fixed that, and then which means that really this, this device will be doing work for me just as long as it takes for me personally to just Stop snoring, naturally, so an added thing to notice is that there's some additional expense that I'm going to be incurring for this I'm going to be buying those nasal strips so that I could inhale well and I'm you have to use it by those cleaning tabs that Soak in with these devices for ten minutes a day and that is probably a cost of between 15 and 20 dollars every month, so that's that's an additional cost on top of the device itself. Well, I am hoping my review has been helpful and beneficial. I'Ve tried to offer my experiences to attempt to give you a concept what you may expect if you have any additional questions that I have not solved in this review. Please just leave a comment below and I will try to get back to you. Good luck.

http://query.nytimes.com/search/sitesearch/?action=click&contentCollection&region=TopBar&WT.nav=searchWidget&module=SearchSubmit&pgtype=Homepage#/stop snoring

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alexafaie-asd · 3 years ago

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I've not yet been able to access a diagnosis, but am pretty sure that I have ADHD in addition to autism since I do meet the criteria.

For me, as a kid the things I struggled with were stuff like homework (couldn't focus on doing it, just couldn't start it) and tidying my room (was always told to "tidy" but not how to tidy nor how to break down tasks into smaller ones). And I struggled with RSD and trauma from the punishments (verbal and physical) I got from the above difficulties. Also struggled with time (noticing it passing) and remembering schedules like the school timetable.

I was an early & voracious reader, and naturally intelligent/a quick learner of class material (just a sponge for stuff that interested me, not for anything that didn’t though) and in an exam could always do very well (could not work out how to revise though) so they ignored my not doing homework for the most part in secondary school, partly because I was easy to teach, partly because I think they laid the blame at an unsettled home life (parents got divorced thankfully, but still got a lot of abuse over the phone from my dad) so unlike other kids I never got detention for not doing it. Either way the actual cause got totally missed and the assumption was it was a "not putting effort in" thing right up until my A Levels when my history teacher started realising it was way more than that (but too late at that point to do much but salvage where I was).

So it sucked, but there was still some external structure to things to keep me somehow bumbling along. And daydreaming made me feel better. This started to change in early adulthood when I attended university. Their approach was that you had to attend a certain amount of the lectures in a module to pass it, and reach a certain mark to get a pass in the assignments, but if you chose not to turn up (or had difficulty with time management to miss lectures)? Not going to say or do anything about it. Your money, your choice of how you spent it was their view. So there was no external support from the university or the lecturers, no checking you were doing ok, you were expected to come forward with issues (which I'd always been told off for doing so much as a kid so thought you weren't meant to). I had a ton of mental health issues which remained undiagnosed (years later got diagnosed as bipolar disorder). Only reason I passed/scraped by was my partner at the time approached the lecturers and student services on my behalf to get me extensions on deadlines and a resit for an exam I totally blanked in after a PTSD flashback to childhood trauma the morning of the exam (lets just say re-experiencing watching your pregnant mother get punched in the stomach & pushed down the stairs doesn't help your ability to complete an exam).

After finishing university I struggled with finding a job (yay 2008 economic collapse) and retaining what I did find. My partner split up with me & that caused a lot of trauma and when I tried to do a masters degree everything really fell apart and has never really recovered.

Nowadays I still struggle with time (what even is it other than made up?) and I struggle with task switching and ordering, and keeping anything remotely like a routine. I'm unable to work (due to how my disabilities combine) and can barely manage self care tasks without external prompting. I also need help breaking down tasks and managing to do housework stuff. My current partner is also my unpaid carer and they help me as best they can. I've been self medicating with caffeine tablets (don't consume food/drink with caffeine) and my sensitivity to meds seems to be helping in that regard at least as it has helped quite a bit. The difference between a day I take them and a day I forget is huge, even though the stuff I manage to do is still not a level which is really useful for maintaining an environment I can do ok in.

I very much feel like I have a harder time as an adult because the things it affects are very much things expected of you as an adult (or which you kinda have to do like eat, drink, & use the bathroom). When I've tried to hold down jobs I had such bad issues with time management that I'd frequently be late. Whilst I'd stay late or skip lunch break to make up for it (couldn't afford the food for lunch at the time so what was the break even for?) that wasn't enough to make up for not being able to be consistent. I do joke that the one thing that is consistent about me is my inconsistency.

I probably would do a lot better if I could take the medication, though I'm doubtful they'd want to prescribe with my diagnosis of bipolar disorder (they don't count being stable on CBD oil bought by myself as being stable on medication, so will likely want me back on the meds which made me terribly ill and had a fun effect of reducing dopamine, which I'm sure you can guess does NOT help if you already don't get enough because ADHD brains don't produce it properly).

Oh and my partner has called up saying that I really need to come down for dinner as its going cold and they've called me a few times already (I can task switch so well oh yes). So guess I need to stop this mega long wall of text?

hey I'm sure this can be hard to answer but was adhd harder for you as an adult or as a child

Sent January 19, 2022

It is a hard question to answer. I wasn’t diagnosed until I was an adult, so for sure some stuff was harder because I didn’t know why I was struggling. It’s hard to feel okay about yourself when it seems like everyone else can do things that feel impossible, and you don’t know why!

I still have these expectations of myself, though, and that can be rough. I feel like I should be able to do all these things that my neurotypical friends can do, and it’s a huge struggle. What’s really weird about it is that I’m much better at giving myself grace in the moment—I recognize that I’m having a Bad Brain Day—but later on I’ll feel down on myself—I shouldn’t have struggled and I should have had this all under control already so that having a Bad Brain Day wouldn’t matter anyway.

In a lot of ways, it’s harder for me as an adult, because the things I struggle with are particularly tied to being an adult woman in our society. When I was a child, and even as a teenager, I had difficulty with social stuff and organization, but my home life was really supportive and my parents just naturally parented in an ADHD-friendly way (at least one of them is probably ADHD, and the other has at least one undiagnosed autistic sibling). I was also academically gifted, so schoolwork wasn’t too hard for me.

Followers, do you feel like life as an ADHDer was easier when you were a child, or is it easier now?

-J

#actually autistic #actually bipolar #probably ADHD

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