#that FIFA are going to say “you know what? You twitter boys are right - let's bring everyone back to Qatar and replay the final”

[getting-messi]

idk if you saw it but the ref for the final had a press conference or smth and he said the french are complaining that argentina's 3rd goal shouldn't have counted bc two arg subs were stepping onto the pitch when lautaro took the first shot but they fail to mention that the french also did the same. they did it twice, once during kolo muani's (i think) shot that emi saved (they were so sure it was going in 😭) and again during mbappe's 2nd penalty. and now people on twt and those dumbass brit tabloids are running with it saying he "admitted he made a mistake". no he didn't lol. people just assume so many things in football bc they watch/have played like?? there's a rulebook. unless you've actually read it... subs wander on the edges of the pitch a lot and unless they push it, refs usually ignore it because!! as long as it doesn't affect the game or the shot being taken, play goes on as normal. argentina's goal stood and mbappe's penalty stood and play wasn't stopped after the shot emi saved because the subs didn't effect anything, it literally doesn't matter. he's not admitting anything lol, he's calling them hypocrites for doing the same thing and then complaining about argentina's goal as if french players weren't on the pitch for mbappe's.

Omg yes i did see that, and the fact that he literally had a picture ready as evidence like😭😭 more refs need to respond back to the media like this💀

And you've explained it wonderfully. It's literally like if you wanted that goal not to count, then France's goal should've have counted either. Regardless, there weren't calls that were ignored that advantaged either side. If people are going to yell about Argentina's penalty, well France should've have gotten that last penalty. If they don't want Argentina's last goal to stand, then Mbappe's penalty should've have stand either.

Hypocrites

[awkward-gay-bro]

A New League

Before the accident Seth Rollins was on top of the world and now he was stuck in this stupid hospital bed. People can say wrestling is fake all they want but these injuries are definitely real. Seth miscalculated a jump during a table ladder chair match and things weren’t looking good. He broke a few bones, pulled a few muscles, a little internal bleeding. Nothing he hadn’t done before. But some news station took it a little too seriously. Then twitter mobbed about it. And now the WWE is taking it way too seriously trying to cover their asses. 

Seth leans up in his hospital bed as Vince McMahon walks into the room. “How bad is it Seth?”

“The doctor said I’m never going to be able to wrestle again. He’s full of shit, though. I’ll be back in the ring in no time.” 

“We can’t do that Seth, not with you in this condition. Your injuries were pretty well documented, and we aren’t going to take the bad publicity if you get hurt further,” Vince said rather coldly. 

“Ten years. I’ve been wrestling for ten years and you are just gonna cut me loose? There are people a decade older than me that are way more worn out still going at it. I’m not ready to be done.” Seth wasn’t about to give up. This was his life and he wasn’t going to give it up without a fight.

“I’m sorry, Seth. Their injuries didn’t make the five o clock news the way yours did,” McMahon said, turning around to leave the room. 

The reality of the situation was really starting to sink into Seth. He stared down at his multiple casts, his hair falling down into his eyes, and with a hint of begging in his voice, he said, “Mr. McMahon, I’ll do anything.”

Stopping in the doorway, turning just his head, McMahon said, “Well, there is one thing we could try. You may not want to go through with it.”

“What is it?”

“Well, we’ve been funding a medical research center who has been doing some interesting things when it comes to physical therapy. We wanted to find a way to speed up the healing process or even better prevent the need for one.”

“Did you find one?” Seth said as the light returned to his face.

“Well they have created a process, and they’ve had some success in their initial trials. Of course, the last few of your peers they tried it on had some pretty severe side effects.” But none of that mattered. All that mattered was that Seth Rollins was going to get out of this hospital bed and back in that ring. 

“I don’t care what the side effects are. I’m in. As soon as I can.”

“Alright, well let’s get it scheduled on the book. How does tomorrow sound?”

It was the morning after the procedure and Seth was laying in a bed in the research center. Another day, another hospital bed. Seth wiped the sleep out of his eyes, stretched his arms out wide, and yawned a massive yawn. That’s when it him. The aches and pains from his recent injury were completely gone. Hell, the longer persisting ache from his old knee injury, from his previously torn ACL, everything, they were all gone. He hadn’t felt this good since he was 18 years old. 

“Good morning, sleepy head.” Vince McMahon was standing at the foot of his bed while a young guy who must have been with the research company started jotting things down on a chart. As the man left the room Seth couldn’t help but notice how nicely the scrubs hugged the guy’s perky little...

Woah, that’s not a thought Seth had ever had before. Nothing wrong with it. He’d caught that closet case Ambrose checking him out in the locker room and it never bothered him. But he definitely wasn’t the one having doing the checking. 

“How are you feeling?”

“I’m feeling great Mr. McMahon. Does my voice sound weird to you? Never mind, doesn’t matter. I feel so great I think I could get back in the ring tomorrow!” Seth said, speaking a mile a minute. 

“Slow your roll there Rollins. You’re going to notice a few changes, so I thought it would be best if I was here to talk you through them all. Some might have already become apparent to you...others might take a little time.”

“Hey the only change I care about is how strong I feel right now.”

“Well Seth, strong might not be a word I would use to describe you anymore,” Vince said with a snide chuckle.

“What is that supposed to mean? I feel better now than I’ve ever felt in my life!” Seth excitedly shouted.

“Maybe it would best if I showed you,” McMahon said. As the 74 year man walked closer towards him Seth started to notice how much bigger and bulkier he was looking than usual. Vince kept in great shape for his age but damn he was looking huge. 

“How long was out for? The gains you’ve got...that had to have taken months,” Seth said as Vince reached down and grabbed his hand. Vince’s hand was massive, too, it was almost twice the size of Seth’s. How was that even possible?

“The initial procedure only took about an hour. Everything else happened while you slept last night.” That couldn’t be right though. Vince was huge. And as Seth stood up he saw just how huge he was. Seth and Vince were the same height of 6 ft 1 but Seth wasn’t looking into McMahon’s eyes anymore. In fact, Seth’s eye line was now level with McMahon’s nipples. 

“Holy shit McMahon, did you have them do something to you? You’re massive. Can they do it to me, too?” Seth said excitedly. What ever made McMahon so huge he wanted in. Shit, was he already going to grow huge? McMahon said some changes may not be apparent yet. 

“I’ve never gone through the procedure, Seth,” guiding Seth to the other part of the room. As he did the cute male nurse from earlier came back into the room, fiddling with something in the closet. From a laying position Seth hadn’t noticed how tall he was either. No wonder those scrubs were so tight around his ass, it must be hard to find ones that fit right. 

“Excuse me sir, how tall are you?” Seth asked, ignoring the part of his brain that was ogling the equally tight front of the guy’s scrubs. 

“Oh, I’m just over five nine,” he said as he pulled a full length mirror out of the closet. 

“That’s impossible, I’m six...” Seth started to say as his new reality started to piece together. Standing there, mouth aghast, Seth finally realized what those side effects were. Seth was a runt. It looked like he had deflated in on himself. He was tiny. His head didn’t reach the top of the mirror. He had to be around five foot four. Being short would be one thing. He could live with short. But he was a twig. His once broad shoulders were now slimmer than this hips. His veiny, hairy, muscular arms were now half the size of what he was used to. When he squinted his eyes he could see there was still a peach fuzz of hair coating them, albeit light, blonde, and sparse. He was just glad that his shapeless hospital gown was sparing him the embarrassment of knowing what the rest of his body looked like. 

Not that his face was any better. His signature scruffy beard was completely gone. His face was smooth for the first time since puberty. His once rugged jaw and manly features had softened into an almost angelic visage. His already long hair looked fuller and fluffier on this shrunken body. His lips were full and rosy and his eyes were the only thing on his body that looked bigger. Well, that was until he turned around to see why the cold air was coming through his hospital gown. 

Seth had always had a nice muscular ass. He’d seen enough pictures of it pop up online. But while the rest of his body shrunk it looked like he lost no muscle mass from his disproportionate globes and gained a small layer of fat. The globes defied gravity the way the stood up like a shelf on his lithe new frame. 

“We don’t want you exhausting too much energy just yet, let’s get you back to bed,” said the male nurse as put his arm around Seth’s hip and guided him back to bed. As the nurse moved Seth across the room his hand brushed against Seth’s cheek which caused both to jiggle far longer than Seth thought they should. Oddly the feeling of another man’s hand on his ass made his wood spring to attention. Seth immediately blushed red as he knew a hospital gown wasn’t going to hide anything and then blushed even harder when he realized it did. 

“How...how could you do this to me?” Seth asked, whimpering.

“I told you there were side effects. You said you would do anything,” Vince said, looking down at the much smaller man. 

“I said I would do anything to wrestle again. How am I supposed to wrestle like this? I’m ruined,” Seth said, tears in his eyes.

“Well you can’t wrestle in the WWE that’s for sure. Hell, Trish could take you down with one hand behind her back. But you can still wrestle,” Vince said, stifling back laughter as he did. 

“Where are on Earth could I wrestle like this?”

“Well like I said, you weren’t the first person to go through the procedure. And with results like these you won’t be the last. Hell, we’ve already made deals with other sports organizations for their injured athletes. The NFL. The NHL. FIFA. Hell even the ATP. And all those athletes are going to want to work somewhere. Soon enough we will have a whole new league for you to wrestle in. Of course, you’ll need a more fitting stage name and costume. Here, I brought someone along to illustrate the look I am going for,” with that Vince stepped out of the room and quickly came back in his arm around a tiny little twink of a man with long curling red hair. The boy had porcelain white skin that was coated with the lightest dusting of freckles from his face down towards under his shirt. His lips were a rosy red made all the brighter contrasted against his snowy skin. His eyes were sparkling an emerald green while his red eye lashes softly fluttered as his wavy curls fell in front of his face.  

“This is one of our first wrestlers in our new league, you may know him as...”

“Sheamus??? Is that Sheamus?”  Seth interrupted. The boy looked nothing like he 6ft4in brick of muscle but no one had seen the behemoth since he’d had an injury not unlike Seth’s own.

“We call him Lucky now. Lucky, why don’t you step into the bathroom and switch into your wrestling uniform?” With one hand Vince picked up Sheamus’ bag and wrapped his other around the slim of his waste. Sheamus could have easily carried it himself or found the bathroom in the small room but Vince loved showing these former monsters of muscle just how small and weak they’d become. 

After a few minutes the new “Lucky” walked out of the bathroom. It was obviously a leprachaun play on the wrestler’s Irish heritage that fit a lot better now that he’d lost over a foot in height. Lucky’s costume had a small little leprachaun hat with an emerald green bowtie. The sparkly green booty shorts rode up showing off the amazing pair of globes on Sheamus’ new body. Sheamus turned around and touched his toes, showing off the glittery gold “LUCKY” that was written across his rear. Seth was used to wrestler’s not wearing much, a pair of black trunks was Sheamus’ old outfit, but this little Leprachaun costume was so much more demeaning...more sexual. Seth had to admit, Sheamus did look pretty sexy standing there, though. Part of him wanted to tear those shorts off and help Sheamus get lucky. But he was realizing a bigger part wanted the old Sheamus to do the same to him. 

“We’ve already got athletes lined up to join the program, some pretty big A-Listers who don’t know the exact side effects that come along with our procedure. But until they are ready we think that you and Lucky will be our head line act. And don’t worry, we’ll still have theme matches like in the WWE. Maybe not table ladder chair matches, but I’m sure tag team will still be popular. Maybe something with oil.” Vince said, his mouth watering while looking at Sheamus who still had not broken his toe touching pose. “Sorry, I trailed off. We will need a new outfit for you. A new stage name if you’d like. I am actually prone to you staying Seth Rollins. And I always loved your leather get up, we could definitely still work with that in this new ring. Maybe a leather fishnet combo.”

Shit. Everything was spiraling so quickly. Seth just needed to breathe. He needed to be away from everyone. “When can I go home?”  

“We find it best if people aren’t alone right after the procedure,” the male nurse said, “There are a lot of things that are going to be different for you now and it’s best to have someone there with you”

“I don’t want anyone to see me like this. Not right now. I can’t deal with”

McMahon interupted him, “You’re alright. We have already set up accomdations for you. Go get dressed your new roommate is waiting out in the lobby for you.”

*******************************************************************************************

The clothe’s Mr. McMahon provided were embarassing as helll but none of Seth’s clothes fit anymore and he didn’t want to keep walking around with his giant new ass jiggling in the wind so it was that or nothing. So there Seth was in a light pink crop top that showed off just how slim his arms and stomach were now. The leather leggings he was wearing reminded him of his normal wrestling attire, albeit they used to bulge more in the front and a heall of a lot less in the back. The only solice he had was that the lacey pink panties were skimpy enough that the leather pants hid them perfectly. 

“Damn that ass looks good,” Seth heard a man say, his voice low and sultry. As he turned around to hear the voice a hand spanks his ass hard, “That jiggle, too! I am so glad I volunteered for this.”

There stood Dean Ambrose. Now a foot taller than Seth and a hundred pounds heavier. Everyone looked big to Seth now, but this was the first time he felt truly intimidated by another man. “Let’s you and me get home Sethy, there’s some things I want to show. I’m pretty minimilistic so I do only have the one bed, but I don’t think you’ll mind sharing, will ya bud?”

“No,” Seth said, drooling as he looked up at he muscular man in front of him. 

“Arlight, nice. Once we settle in, you can meet some of your new competition."

[willowknee]

Crushes and Crazy Hair-Dying- Will fluff

Title: Crushes and Crazy Hair-Dying People: Will x reader, Gee Nelson Word count: 2,600 Warnings: drinking Songs to listen to: idk Prompt/request: Hey! If you’re not too busy please can I request some fluff with Will? Maybe the reader could be Gee’s new mate and Will gets a crush on her and becomes all awkward? Or whatever you feel like writing haha 😂 thank you xxx A/N: I’m so bloody sorry this took like 3 decades to be written, honestly dunno what happened there. Really bad grammar and punctuation in this I'm so so sorry.

You had met Gee in the most bizarre manner, but you were completely grateful that you did, she honestly was one of the most intelligent people you have ever known and crazily funny to match. It was a random sunny Tuesday, you were sitting in front of the mirror at your mother’s hair dressers, you decided for once to do something bold, you were dying your hair. Not any plain natural colours like you’re used to, no, you were dying your hair a bright colour. You weren’t exactly sure what colour as you told your mom to surprise you, but you were sure it wasn’t any ordinary brown, when out of nowhere one Gee Nelson bursted through the door and let out a cry of despair.

“Look what that monster did to me!” She had cried.

Everyone was looking at her, clearly bewildered but your mom just walked up to her and sat her in the chair beside yours.

“What happened?” Your mom had asked, looking at Gee’s hair which was, well, a complete home hair-dye disaster.

“Bloody Will! He convinced me to let him dye my hair for a video and this is what came of it! Last time I let that man come within five feet of my hair I’m telling you now,” She whined and you had let out a giggle before you could catch yourself. She turned to look at you.

“Is it that bad?” She asked.

You looked again and you knew you couldn’t lie to her.

“Horrendous, but don’t worry, you’re talking to a pro and her legendary daughter, your hair will be salvaged and the world will return to normal,” You proclaimed making her smile.

“I’ll hold you to that,” She said and you both had begun talking non-stop as your mom worked on saving her hair from the disastrous work of this ‘Will’ as you sat waiting for the dye to work it’s magic in your hair.

Six months later you were at her apartment which she shared with Will, but you had never actually met him before, only heard the wacky and wonderous stories about him and his childish antics that he and his friends got up to. Gee had actually sent you the link to his youtuber and you came to find him to actually be pretty funny and you and Gee would share memes over text or on twitter about the videos.

“Oi, Gee! What we feeling today, eh? Lazy and slobbish so we get a maccies, lazy yet somewhat classy so we order Dominos or shall we finally decide to get off our arse and go out for lunch?” You say, walking out the kitchen to where she was sitting on the settee.

“Oh, actually I just got a text from Will, he’s invited me to go for lunch with him and the rest of the boys,”

You smile slightly and hand her the cup that she always uses. “Ah alrighty, no problem. I’ll head out as soon as I’m finished with my drink then, yeah?”

She looks up at you and smiles widely, kind of freaking you out considering it was out of nowhere.

“Why don’t you come with me?!” She exclaims.

“Say what now?”

“No seriously, it will be fun! You get to meet my roommate and the rest of the crazy lot, you’re going to meet eventually when you come along to one of our parties, might as well meet them while you’re sober!”

You thought about it but really you didn’t see why not, it wasn’t like you had a valid reason to decline either, what was the worst that could happen? So, you accepted and after borrowing some of Gee’s clothes and makeup so you didn’t look like an absolute slob walking around in your paint-stained joggers and oversized hoodie, you ended up in front of Nandos where you were to meet everybody.

You both walk in, still mid conversation as you made a joke which had Gee in stitches, drawing the attention of everyone in the restaurant, including the table of four boys that you were currently walking towards.

“No way, imagine that,” Gee giggles in response to your joke.

You arrive at the table and greet everyone to which they then greet you back in return.

“Hey everyone! This here is my dear friend Y/N, I invited her along so she can meet you weirdos now and get used to you before being exposed to the pure madness you all are once drunk,” Gee explains to which they all protest before simmering down and introducing themselves.

“Hi, I’m James, it’s lovely to meet you,” the one with soft features says, his brown lock slightly messy but it makes him look adorable, despite his unkempt hair he looked well put together and you could tell he put a lot of effort into his appearance.

“I’m George,” the smaller of the lot says with a soft smile, offering his hand for you to shake which you accept and gently shake his hand.

“‘Ello, I’m Alex,” the one adorning a bright pink jumper with a slogan you couldn’t quite read says, you smile and give him a small wave before turning to the last boy when your breath catches in your throat.

First of all, Will was far more attractive in person compared to in his videos or the pictures Gee has shown you, his hair mainly hidden underneath his beanie but his fringe was poking out, exposing the silky brown locks that looked soft to touch. His brown eyes looking at you, slightly widened and his mouth slightly left ajar. Was he okay? Was there something on your face? George nudges him and he looks like he broke out a trance before smiling widely.

“Hey, I’m Will,” He says, the big voice you’re used to hearing in his videos weren’t present, instead a gentle and soothing voice replaced it.

“It’s so nice to finally meet you all, I watch all of your videos and think they’re brilliant,” You compliment, sliding into the booth so you’re sat next to Gee and across from Will.

A chorus of ‘thank you’ made its rounds and you smiled at them all and began to engage in animated conversations, your arms flailing wildly as you retell the story about the time you met Gee, Will’s face becoming flushed which you found utterly adorable.

Few hours later your food was long finished but you were still sitting in the restaurant with your drinks talking to everyone as if you had been friends with these people for years.

“I need to pop to the loo, come with me?” Gee asks you.

You nod in confirmation and tell everyone you’ll be right back before walking with Gee into the toilets, lifting yourself up to sit on the counter.

“So, how’s meeting everyone?” She asks through a stall door.

“They’re absolutely lovely,” you exclaim, turning to look at your reflection in the mirror.

“Have a liking to anyone in particular?” She asks in a suggestive tone, which makes you look at the stall door through the mirror in confusion.

“I don’t know… a certain Northern lad with brown hair, brown eyes and has been looking at you like a lost puppy for the past three hours.”

Your heart leaped at the thought of Will looking at you while you were busy talking to others, not realising.

“I-“

“Was staring at him too, you’re not subtle either of you,”

You stumble for words while Gee laughs softly, walking out the stall and over to the sinks to wash her hands. You look down at her and curse her for being so observant.

“He’s cute… and funny, doesn’t necessarily mean I have a liking to him, if we’re going by those two adjectives then I must have a liking to everyone sitting at that table. Including you.”

“Oh come off it, you know you like Will, stop being a big baby and admit it,”

“I literally met him three hours ago, this isn’t a Disney film I can’t fall in love with him and accept his hand in marriage just because we’ve got a mutual attraction,”

Gee nods and smiles.

“You wanna marry him, huh?”

You nudge her and shake your head. Both of you head out and back to the table before noticing everyone’s getting up and leaving, you notice you still have almost a full glass of beer so you decide to neck it in one, eliciting whoops and hollers from

everyone and you laugh and shyly wipe away the froth from your face.

Everyone begins to head out but you hang back,

not wanting to have to walk fast so as to not get trampled on.

“Are you coming to the party this weekend?”

You turn your head and see Will standing next to you, looking sheepish which makes you smile.

“I believe I am, yes, Gee would have my head else,” you joke which makes him laugh.

“She is a fiesty one I’ll give you that,”

“Too right she is, damn woman frightens me,”

You both laugh and continue the journey back to Will’s and Gee’s apartment, joking with each other the entire way there. Gee joins in at some point but soon dips to talk to everyone else since you were walking too slowly for her liking.

Once back at theirs you all play a few rounds of fifa which you were absolutely shit at which Will spares no effort to remind you of that, but soon it’s time for you to go home since you still have to clean your apartment and get some studying done.

“See you on Saturday yeah?” Will shouts which you smile and nod at in agreement.

“It’s a date.” You say before walking out the door with a wave.

Will sits there, mouth agape. He turns his head to Gee and points to the door.

“She said it’s a date,”

“It’s not like you had the balls to do it,” she comments before standing up and walking towards the stairs, discreetly watching Will

dance around happily with a smile.

Saturday came around faster than you thought it would, although it seems like it took forever because you are looking forward to seeing Will again. You’ve been texting non-stop since you all went out for that meal but you haven’t had the time to go and meet them, so you are excited for tonight. You want to make sure you looked amazing.

Grabbing your clothes and makeup you shove them into your bag alongside some alcohol for pre-drinks that you had promised. You drive to Gee’s and Will’s to get ready with her while listening to a playlist you had created sometime ago, you had suddenly remembered the password to your Spotify and decided to reminisce with some old tunes.

The drive seems quicker with the music accompanying you and you find yourself walking towards the apartment building and soon enough, you’re knocking on their door.

“Come in~!” You hear from inside.

“Gee!” You greet as you walk up to her and give her a hug.

“Let’s go get ready! We’re late enough as it is!”

Getting ready goes without a hitch, no mental breakdowns, no wardrobe malfunctions and even your makeup goes on well. It’s almost as if things were perfect. Maybe too perfect.

“It’s time to partyyy~” Gee squeals down your ear excitedly.

It turns out the party has moved from Will’s and Gee’s apartment to George and Alex’s because of their next-door neighbours, which explains when Gee walks past she sticks two fingers up in payback and squeals with laughter all the way to the elevator.

You giggle at her childish antics and balance yourself in the lift, cursing yourself for not eating before you both began pre-drinks. You eventually end up at the party, after multiple trips and snapchat videos of each other acting a complete fool. “We are here!” Gee shouted as she threw open the front door. There was a massive roar of ‘welcome’ as you both stumble your way deeper into the apartment. You found the usual friendship group aka the Nandos Lot, and you smiled brightly and you wave enthusiastically at everyone, genuinely happy to see each and every one of them.

“Y/N! Glad you came!” Alex chimes, coming for a hug, which everyone else shortly repeats, not wanting to feel left out.

Everyone but Will, that was, who was sheepishly stood to the side, when he noticed you were looking at him expectantly, arms open, his eyes widen as he began stuttering something about needing a drink before running off towards the kitchen. You shrug his odd behaviour off and began looking for a drink, you quickly whip up a concoction and then after you down the entirety of your red solo cup, you walk back to your friends, grab the closest pair of hands and walk into the middle where the make-shift dance floor was.

Dancing freely to the music blasting through the speakers and barely being concealed through the wide walls of the boy’s apartment, you smile up to your dancing partner and to your pleasant surprise you see Will looking at you in bewilderment.

“Come on! I didn’t drag you here to stand there! Dance with me!” After a lot of convincing and a couple dozen shots, Will finally calmed down and began dancing with you, you both started to have a really enjoyable time. You began to notice how he seemed to have a childish glint to his eyes while drunk, he looked really happy and carefree this way. You loved the way he was constantly smiling and let out a rupture of laughs at your choice of dance moves and even his silliness when he took you up on your offer of a dance battle.

“You should be like this sober! You’re so much fun to be around!” You exclaim, grabbing his hands as you try to twirl around to which he aids you with, not bothering to stop twirling you which makes your head spin.

“I would but I always end up makin’ myself look like a right tit in front of the lass i have a crush on,” he explains, nonchalantly, seemingly not realising what he was saying.

You stop twirling and look at him as much as you could, the alcohol and the twirling wasn’t the greatest mix when you were looking for stability,

“You have a crush on me?” You ask in surprise.

Who would have thought. Will fucking Lenney had a crush on you. Of all people. You were ready to scream with excitement when his eyes bugged out, he looked scared and began to curse himself under the sun for his slip.

“Naw- fuck, I just meant that- no, I-” He began tripping over his words and you giggle over how cute he was.

You raise yourself onto your tip-toe and give him a shy peck on the lips, it only lasted a short few seconds, but it left your lips tingling and you smile wide at him.

“Will, I like you too, dummy,”

He smiles one of the most gorgeous smiles you have seen like ever, and shyly pulls you closer to him.

“How’d ya feel about ditching and coming back to mine? We can watch a movie and get to know each other more,”

You giggle at that.

“Sure, let’s play two truths, one lie, for each wrong answer we take a shot, for every right answer, you get a kiss,” you proclaim with a smile.

“You’re fuckin on, Love.”

[alsparaarchive]

𝑾𝒉𝒆𝒓𝒆 𝑰𝒕 𝑺𝒕𝒂𝒓𝒕𝒆𝒅 / Alex & Sid

Date: July 5, 2015 Location: Vancouver Rooftop Bar; The World Cup Celebration

Summary: The first time they ever met. 

Date Started: January 31, 2021 Date Completed: still in progress

Sidney He was still somewhere in the middle of getting the confetti that had somehow wedged itself into his right earlobe loose, when Gino had snuck in around him; two girls tucked underneath both his arms, and said something about a party? And, since Sid was still half-deafened by half-an-inch of coloured paper he was forced to lean back in and get the Russian to repeat himself. “Did you say a party?” It was confirmed with a nod and a grin that could’ve taken out the two women still standing beside his friend… “Okay… sure.” The brunette had been hesitant to say yes... First, this was Gino... the Russian had a history of getting the boys to go to parties with him only to find out that once they got there it was just a couple of girls, a couch, and a whole lot of trouble just waiting to happen. Second, his recent break-up with Kathy still felt… raw. Which he knew was why Gino and Kris had him in Vancouver right now watching the Women’s World Cup… distraction was key, right? Not something that either one of them had ever said directly to his face or anything, but the tickets that had presented themselves at exactly that time and to a sport he’d never really had an affinity for, definitely had. And yet… somehow… Gino had kept him from backing out… which was saying a lot of the Russian’s powers of persuasion and probably also a lot about why the Cold War had taken so damn long to come to an end. There was a long line out the restaurant door, but Gino said he had the gold ticket… which had Kris asking if he meant the golden ticket? Gino nodded—making Sidney laugh despite the fact he hated doing the line cut thing, but it wasn’t like they were taking up seats in the restaurant anyway. No, apparently there was some private thing happening on the roof top with their invitees tonight. The deal was, somehow Gino had scored himself an invite to the USA Women’s Soccer Team’s celebratory party via Twitter. Which of course had Sidney from the moment he’d found out till the moment he’d walked up the stairs and sighted a couple of the girls’ he’d seen on the big jumbo screen earlier, doubting. /Sorry Gino/. Suddenly, it was like most eyes in the room were on them as Sidney offered up a big of wave and Gino held out his arms and said USA, USA, USAAAAAA… and okay, it was bad. It was really bad, but at least the atmosphere had cracked, and the bouncers weren’t making any sort of headway towards them… still… Sidney couldn’t help but feel out of place as he walked over to the bar and asked for a drink… bumping shoulders with a girl as he did… “uh, sorry…” he stopped. He recognised her. You didn’t have to be a big soccer fan to recognise the face of Alex Morgan… “maybe I should be buying you a drink…” okay that had come out bad… he internally and externally cringed… “I mean for your big win today…”

Alex The aftermath of winning the World Cup was a bit of an emotional rollercoaster, not only for Alex but all her teammates it seemed and almost none of them were on the same ride all ebbing and flowing at different times. There was the high of winning sure but coming to terms with the fact that it was over and finally being able to breathe a sigh of relief after how emotionally and physically taxing the journey had been made for a very strange experience the forward couldn't have possibly prepared herself for. She didn't know what she wanted to do more, party or sleep — for days! "Oh no, baby horse, you're coming!" Her teammate, mentor, and current roommate insisted when Alex even so much as hinted at the idea. She knew she would ultimately end up going but damn was that bed calling her name. "Yeah, yeah," was all she replied with while giving the blonde a smirk Abby could only see through the younger girl's reflection in the mirror as she brushed out her damp hair after showering a little bit earlier to get all the beer and champagne from the celebration in the locker room out of her hair. One of Alex's favorite part about being on the USWNT was how completely badass all the women were and how they could go from being a sweaty mess on the pitch to looking like a million dollars at the drop of a hat. Everyone looked stunning, dressed to the nines as they rolled up to the five star Vancouver rooftop bar that promised to be the perfect backdrop to a crazy evening. She was only on her second French martini when she heard some ruckus going on by the entrance, a man's voice cheering them on but she barely paid it half a mind as she was too busy being amused by Kelley challenging one of the bartenders to a game of beer pong. Only she could somehow finesse her way into getting him to push two tables together and craft the perfect makeshift set up. The defender would go on and on about how she could take out all the guys at the frat parties she went to back in college and now was her time to shine to prove (mostly to herself) that she still had it. Alex only stayed because she somehow got roped into being Kelley's partner while Chaney paired with the bartender. She wanted a chill night, no competitions, but when faced with one there was no way she was going to back down, she WAS Alex Morgan after all. To no surprise they won the first round and in a desperate attempt to get out of playing the second she grabbed their teammate Sidney who just happened to be walking by. "You play, I need to pee," was her lame excuse but at least it worked. It was that time of night where everyone was still on their way to getting drunk so no one was too crazy yet but Alex knew the line would be crossed very soon and she was making bets in her mind on who would be the first to get there as she waited for the bartender from the bar at the other end of the place to make her drink. "Oh —" was her original reaction to being bumped, bringing her mind back from wherever it had managed to go off to. An eyebrow cocked at his words as she tried but failed to let the smirk take over her features. "How very generous of you to offer to pay for me at an open bar," the striker chuckled playfully. It took her a moment in the dim lighting but she finally recognized him and while it was a nice surprise she had no idea how he managed to get himself here, to this party of all places but she figured he was Canadian and must be a fan or something. Who was going to say no to letting Sidney Crosby in the door? He was probably even more of a big deal here then in the states so it made sense, at least in her mind. "Thank you, though... for the sentiment anyway." Her hand was soon occupied by her martini glass and she wasted no time in taking a sip. "So tell me, what's the great Sidney Crosby's poison of choice?"

Sidney For those who knew him, Sidney Crosby was a bit of an anomaly. Unlike most who’d come up through the usual college/junior league pipeline at such a young age to only later be spat out by either the league or themselves for ‘poor’ behaviour choices, the twenty-eight-year-old had remained tied to his past and the straight and narrow upbringing that had come along with it. A lot of journalists had it pinned down to growing up in Nova Scotia, where the population never quite teetered pass 30,000. Or even his father—who’d had his own history with the league. What they all eventually worked out though was Sidney just wasn’t what they’d expected him to be. Young, talented … sure… but the guy that was also going to give them all some sort of titillating headline… no. What Sidney was… was hockey. There wasn’t a moment on or off the ice he wasn’t thinking or breathing hockey. So, when he’d been forced into a bit of a set-up by a couple of friends and met Kathy… things had unexpectedly taken a turn for the young brunette. It was just… one minute there was a hockey and then there was… hockey and her and it had been a lot. His sister Taylor had told him ‘that’s love,’ which was pretty weird because he was almost certain it wasn’t love… at least not yet, but she’d always been a little weird. A comment that had earned him a hit by one of his mother’s handstitched patch work pillows… thanks Taylor. It had taken Sidney a whole year to work out that she was probably right. The words escaping him one night across the dinner table while the two had been picking olives out of a garden salad the two had just ordered with a family size pizza. His stomach had done something that someone less logical might’ve compared to a somersault when Kathy eyes had widened, and her hand had found his neck and pulled him towards her… and for a moment there Sidney had honestly thought that would be it. That would be everything he’d ever need in life, Kathy and hockey… but as the years started to go by and his friends, teammates and family started to expand their families, Sidney realised he wanted more. Kids had never really been a topic of discussion for the two… they’d been young and busy and maybe it was wrong to assume that Kathy would just want them whenever he did. First, she’d pointed out that they weren’t even married yet... which Sidney hadn’t quite got, because wasn’t that all implied with the question? That marriage was part of the package too. Which had really upset her, because after nearly nine years this was how he was going to propose. It was all down here from there and before Sidney even realised what had happened it was just hockey and no Kathy again. There had been a few attempts to make amends and even a couple of goes at trying again... but in the end it was over. All nine years of it. Which is a lot in numbers. One hundred and eight months, four hundred and sixty-nine weeks, three thousand and eighty-five days… it’s a lot and despite Geno and Kris’ best efforts to cheer him up, Sidney was still not-quite feeling it… At least until he found himself next to FIFA World Cup champion Alex Morgan and suddenly there was something to smile about, because right of course the bar was an open one tonight… despite it… Sidney leaned forward, getting the barkeeper’s attention and ordering whatever Alex appeared to be drinking tonight… his hand reaching into his pocket to pull out a twenty and slipping it into the ‘tip jar.’ A smile on his face as he let it fall out of his fingers… “drink bought…” Her question had him debating a little. He’d originally slid up ready to order ‘just’ a beer, but now that he was here and consciously aware that this was a celebration, he settled with a whiskey straight, “what did you have me pegged as? An Apple Martini kind of guy?” He knew a lot of shit got talked about him. He was emotional… passionate... which had its critics. Some of it got to him… most of it didn’t. “What’s got you so hooked on those…” Whatever she was drinking gave off a fruity aroma. Definitely not something he’d usually drink, but the night was a warm one and something about the whole thing was mildly tempting… though thinking about it, if Gino saw him drinking up some pink cocktail… he’d never live it down. He could hear the Russian’s loud laughs echoing across the patio, but where the giant’s exact location was amongst everyone else was still a mystery… besides Sidney wasn’t exactly thinking of leaving his spot at the bar anytime soon. Though, maybe he’d trapped Alex here with his lame gesture to ‘buy’ her drink and all these questions about fruit cocktails when where all she really wanted to be was out there with her teammates on the makeshift dance floor. “Hey, sorry… if you need to go…”

Alex The brunette tilted her head in gratitude with a smile once the second drink was on the bar in front of her and the twenty had fallen into the tip jar. She didn't really know how to take it but she figured just accepting it and not making a big deal was the best way to go. Alex sat there, taking another sip of her martini, silently berating the butterflies in her stomach that she hadn't felt if not since college then honestly, never. She was married, newly, freshly married, the instantaneous spark and magnetism to the man next to her was completely inappropriate and yet there she was taking a step closer to him, closing what seemed to be too big of a gap for two people engaged in conversation. She had never been one to stray from any relationship but especially not the one she was eight years deep and now fully committed to. The striker had gone through what felt like everything with Servando by her side; He saw her career grow from the very beginning of when she started to become a big deal in college. He spent countless nights helping her study before a big test or running drills before a big game. It was easy to do life with him, she enjoyed it, but even at their most passionate she never felt that SPARK everyone talked about and chalked it up to being nothing but superficial and fictional anyway. Love was about friendship, the kind of bond you didn't want to let go of, (right?) and Servando fulfilled those requirements to a T. Alex had her passion and it was soccer, in her mind that's really all she needed, finding that in a man had never been a priority. "Are you making fun of my martini?" she teased after he mocked being an apple martini kind of guy. "No... whiskey. You have yet to surprise me, Crosby." Even she could barely recognize the flirty tone in her voice, which caused yet another sip of her drink. Hopefully he'd just think she was eager to celebrate her win, not that she was someone who drank her alcohol a bit too fast. "Oh, these? My sister got me hooked on them a few years ago, they're great for when you're out and want to pace yourself but still have something delicious. I was tempted to stick to the champagne but I refuse to be the first one wasted and miss out on all the amusement of watching everyone else get there first." The soccer player laughed a little at her own words. Her eyes scanned the crowd for a moment before her green-blue hues were right back on him. "No, don't worry. You're actually saving me from a very grueling game of beer pong. Kel's over there trying to relive her glory days. I think your friend might've taken over the poor bartender's spot." This team was nothing if not a good time, she was sure he would discover that in no time. "Not your thing either? Or am I the one keeping you? Either way..." Alex sat her glass back down on the bar and carefully slid it over in his direction, "you're not getting away without trying it." Her head motioned to the drink waiting to see if he would take the bait.

Sidney He laughed at her accusation. His hand lifting up in apology as he took a sip from his glass, only lowering it once she’d pointed out just how unoriginal he was for his own drink of choice tonight. It was weird but he was slightly mad at himself now, for not going against the grain earlier and ordering one of whatever she was having. Somehow ‘surprising’ Alex Morgan seemed appealing right now. Which was weird because he’d only been standing there beside her for less than ten minutes and it seemed strange to care so much about something like that… He supposed it had been years since he’d slid up next to a pretty girl at a bar and allowed himself to look… and it wasn’t even like he was doing that, right? Right. It was just— he was at a party (somewhat uninvited) and he was being friendly. That’s what this was. “Sorry to disappoint…” his smile twitched up as he watched her start talking about the drink her fingers were currently wrapped around. He heard a few buzz words that would’ve allowed him to stitch together a proper reply if she’d expected it once she was finished, but really, he’d just been watching her talk and get excited about something like a drink and he couldn’t help but think it was all kind of cute really. Here was ‘the’ Alex Morgan the girl he’d just watched own it on the soccer pitch and here she also was rambling about some drink she’d come accustom to ordering… yeah, champagne has a way of getting you to do some pretty outrageous things too…” he thought about the first time he’d filled the Stanley cup with it and drunk more than he’d ever had in his life. That had been a night. His head getting cloudy just thinking about it—though maybe that was less about the champagne and more about the fact that Alex had just said that he, Sidney Crosby, was saving the USA superstar from some game of beer pong? He looked across to where she’d mentioned it was going on... seeing not just Gino, but Kris there and two teammates from Alex’s team on either side of them and the table… of course. The twenty-eight-year-old was about as interested in the commotion happening over there as he was in the weather back home in Nova Scotia… turning his attention back to Alex instead and smiling when she passed her drink along the bar towards him. It didn’t have to travel very far, somehow without even realising he’d been doing it, he’d closed a lot of the previous space that had once existed between them… “well since you’ve had a few drinks now… I know you’re not secretly moonlighting as a Philly fan with the goal to poison me tonight, so…” he scooped it up. The glass dwarfing in his hands as he did… “mmm…” he could’ve avoided the lipstick and drank from the other side, but instead he stuck his mouth on top and took his sip. The hit was instant. The fruity taste covering most of his tongue, but the hint of her lipstick was there too… “yeah, so that’s not too bad…” he lowered the glass, sliding it back over towards her, before doing the same with his own glass… “your turn.” The thing about whiskey if you got the expensive stuff the taste had different notes to it. Something Alex might not have realised and something he decided to add to convince her, “I’m sure you’ve tried whiskey, but this one… this one is really good…” The thing was, he was pretty sure he just wanted her to drink from his glass in order to leave that tell-tale sign of lipstick behind that went ahead and reminded him with every next sip he had coming his way that she’d been there… which was insane. He knew that. He wasn’t crazy. He just… didn’t care.

[inmyarmswrappedin]

Thoughts on each even, you don’t have to answer. You just have some of the better skam opinions on this site.

Hi 🤩💫 First off, flattery will get you absolutely everywhere with me, anon, thank you so much haha. 

I took a few days to think about how best to answer this ask because most of the Evens don’t feel so different to me that I could think of many things to say about each one. But then I thought I’d approach the Evens through their art style. 

I was a bit of an Even in high school— liked 90s hip hop, fell in love a lot, was a bit of a dreamer and a romantic, doodled and tried my hand at different art projects with mixed results, etc. So in talking about the Evens, I’m also going to talk a bit about myself if you don’t mind! 

I’m also not going to rank them this time, let me know if you want me to rank them (or to rank anything else about Skams, idc).

Even - I like Even’s drawing style and I feel it suits him very well. He never had an insta, but Isak’s season banner features a good amount of his drawings, plus the ones we saw on the show. He’s obviously influenced by American hip hop and comic culture, what with the COOLCAT, the weed, the crown, the diamonds… and the dicks. I’m very fond of Even’s Illuminati eye surrounded by boners, lol. It really feels like the kind of things a boy like Even (who loves Romeo + Juliet and Pretty Woman and Gabrielle, but also Nas and Lars von Trier and Stjerner uden hjerner and FIFA) would draw. I like that Even felt inspired by his conversations with Isak and pushed through his own fears to make art directly referencing things Isak said. Even felt scared by the possibility of parallel universes, but in order to show Isak how much he cared, his drawings for Isak all referenced parallel universes. I also like that Even’s art style is not stereotypically cute. It reminds me of the borderline gross style of Daniel Clowes and Peter Bagge.

Niccolò - Okay, so at this point I think we’re all aware that Skam Italia didn’t even have the budget for insta content, and they clearly didn’t have the budget to hire an artist specifically to create Niccolò’s art. He does have lots of drawings in his room, but then he doesn’t really draw anything for Martino? It feels like Niccolò is more of an arts and crafts kind of person, at least to me. Anyway I like that (aside from the red string of fate, which never got a follow up of any kind) the stuff Niccolò makes for Martino all reference Last Man on Earth, the TV show they bond over, in one way or another. The show is really not what I would call epic romance material, which I feel works for them tbh!

Eliott - My thing with both Eliott’s furry thing and Polaris, is that both seem really cute, but ultimately like… they didn’t mine either thing for all it was worth, I guess I would put it. Also, in comparison to other Evens, Eliott’s thing is almost developed (Eliott is after all a fictional character, not a real person) in order to elicit maximum cooing from its audience. Like, no one would say the illuminati boners or Last Man on Earth are objectively cute, not out of context! (And I’m far from a Skam Italia fan, I’m just saying.) But the hedgehog and the raccoon and the cat are all drawn in a very cute style. It feels a little too saccharine sweet for a 18-year old. However, Maxence not looking like a 18-year old might also play a part in my hesitance, because as a 18-year old I legit drew a full on comic about me and my then crush as superheroes fighting against our teachers in order to conquer college admittance tests together. (Like I said, Even and I have some shit in common lol.) And I drew my crush as a cat because he looked like a cat to me. So where the hell do I get off criticizing Eliott, y’know? As for Polaris, it’s like… Okay, so one is afraid of the light and one is afraid of the dark, and they meet and kiss right outside the cave, what else? It’s like, it’s cute and romantic, right, but not very developed as a season long motif.

David - I mean, do I have to say it? I love David and everything about him. I love that he has different art styles and uses different tools, it’s very realistic for someone his age still trying to find what his specific thing is. I love his sketches and his collages and the fact that he has a vampire persona that he draws in thicker lines. I love that he didn’t initially have an insta, and that he only got it because Sara and Leonie needled him about it, and I love that he didn’t post selfies or pictures of himself until he went through his character development. I love that his vampire persona crap is only for Matteo and he doesn’t post those cartoons on his very serious, very aesthetic insta. I love that his vampire persona looks similar to the Magdalene Hanke-Basfeld illustrations for the Angela Sommer-Bodenburg “The Little Vampire” book series. (I have no idea whether it’s intentional/an homage or just me seeing things where I wanna see them, but I loooove it.) I love that his first posts on insta really just seem kind of random (aside from the bird taking flight ofc) and like they don’t have a connection to the s3 storyline, it’s as if David really existed and made art and had ideas and thoughts before he met Matteo. I get such a kick of David’s sense of humor, like he seems kind of angry at the cliche of being barefoot on the beach and having a good time (ZUM KOTZEN!!!). Lol he’s just so delightful. I love that he can’t post a goddamn pic or video without a filter, oh no that’s simply not him!!!!1 And let me tell you about the time he made a highlights folder and named it Nights on Earth, I almost lost it on twitter I had such a great time. Anyway, David’s art and insta really scream that he’s a bit of a pretentious snob who corrects people on proper terminology and will only make cute things for the person he cares about the mostest AND NO ONE ELSE. PERIODT!

Joana - I’m a bit torn about Joana because I’m not into her more anime-esque stuff, but at the same time, god, if that isn’t me. I learned to draw by watching anime and trying to emulate the style, and because I’ve never really taken lessons, my cartoons just scream anime. I’m a bit embarrassed about it, because weeaboos and what not, and that extends to Joana as well lol. Before I revisited the Evens’ stuff for this ask, I had this idea in my mind that Joana’s art is a bit unrealistic because it seems too polished and professional for her character, but really, that’s just the piece that she in character made for the hospital/the BDP project. The stuff on the show and on her insta is actually believable as doodles or pieces she can put a bit more effort into, but aren’t like, art gallery-ready. I like that Joana started posting black and white doodles from graph paper notebooks (ftr this is the kind of notebooks most Spanish students use, lined or blank paper notebooks not so much), and started adding colors and creating more complex pieces as her relationship with Cris progressed. I think it says so much about Joana that the cartoons that represent her are always in some kind of pain, physical or emotional, but the cartoons that represent Cris (including the toads) are always cute, always happy, always desirable. Like, be more in love pls. I love that Joana is a bit of an edgelord, and uses a lot of imagery related to arrows, knives, tears/blood drops. That’s so accurate of girls like her. I love that the season banner has an actual to god vulva on it. Compared to other Evens, Joana seems more focused on drawing than anything else, so maybe that makes her video for Cris’ birthday not plausible, but on the other hand, I feel like Croana shippers could’ve used more cuteness in week 10, so you know what? Imma take that video, copypasta of “Gutten som ikke klarte å holde pusten under vann” as it is. I hope that Joana keeps posting art in s3 and s4, and so we get to see how her style develops. ✨

Sander - I haven’t really watched wtFOCK. 

[an-ephemeral-blog]

What’s standing in the way of women’s soccer?

When chants of ‘equal pay!’ ring through soccer stadiums, men jump on Twitter to explain why, despite performing better internationally than the men’s team, women soccer players don’t deserve equal pay because they don’t earn as much revenue.

Over the past two months I’ve become a big NWSL fan.  It’s very different from being an MLB fan, my only previous experience of passionate sports fandom.  There are a lot of things I take for granted that a professional sports team has, which NWSL teams do not have.  These things absolutely affect revenue, either directly, or by lowering the quality of play or the experience of watching games.  Here’s a list.

1.  NWSL stadiums are less accessible than MLS and other stadiums.

My local team, the Washington Spirit, plays at the Maryland SoccerPlex.  To get to the Plex, if you don’t have a car, requires an hour-plus train ride to the end of the metro and then either a 25+ minute car ride or a 45+ bus ride.  I have multiple friends who’ve expressed interested in going to a game but balked when they found out how long it would take to get there.  Another friend had to cancel because she was working late and couldn’t finish by 5:30pm, which was the time she’d have to leave to make it to a 7:30pm game.

As a trial run, the Spirit are playing a game tomorrow at Audi Field, home field of the MLS team DC United.  Audi Field is about 30 minutes away from downtown and is easily accessible via Metro.  Correspondingly, the Spirit is on track to more than triple their season record at the Plex.  They may even sell out Audi Field.  Surely if they can sell out Audi Field, they deserve to play in it?

Which brings me to the next item on the list...

2.  NWSL stadiums are smaller than MLS stadiums.

The Spirit’s plex sells out at around 5,500 tickets.  For tomorrow’s Audi Field game, they’ve currently sold over 16,000 tickets.

Sky Blue’s regular park also holds about 5,000 fans.  When they played a game last weekend at Red Bull Arena, aka the stadium of their local MLS team, they nearly doubled attendance at 9,000+ tickets sold.

I don’t know the breakdown for every team in the league.  I do know that Orlando Pride, despite having access to a great stadium, tends to draw fewer fans do to their lower quality of play.  (They’re second to last in the league.)  On the other hand, the Portland Thorns already share a stadium with their MLS neighbor team, the Timbers, and also boast the biggest and loudest fanbase in the NWSL.  Portland recently set a league record with 25,000+ tickets sold to a game.

Items #1 and #2 combine to make clear that to grow as a league, NWSL teams need to play in larger stadiums that are easier to access.  (This doesn’t even take into account how stadium facilities might impact quality of play.  Some NWSL teams don’t even have showers in their locker rooms!)  Owners and league managers need to invest in securing these spaces for teams, even if they might not be profitable at first. The experience of Sky Blue and Spirit suggests that managers won’t have to wait to reap the benefits.  

3.  NWSL games are often scheduled simultaneously, decreasing viewership.

With only nine teams in the NWSL, there are four to six NWSL games each week.  Given this small number, you’d think they’d all be on at different times, right?

Nope.  Every week, there’s at least one pair of games scheduled against each other.  Often there’s two.  If you don’t have the ability to tape games, you’re forced to miss at least one game every week.  As I have taken to tweeting despairingly at the NWSL each time this happens: whyyyyyyyy.

Schedule creation is complicated, and there are more factors that go into it than I know of.  But one key element is when teams even have their field available.  Most teams don’t own their own fields, and have to work within a restricted subset of dates and times.  To the extent that this contributed to overlapping games, it’s yet another way that issues securing good stadiums get in the way of fans supporting their teams.

4.  NWSL teams have a lower quality of commentating.

Complaining about the announcers/commentators on NWSL matches is a sport of its own.  Announcers regularly mispronounce players’ names and sometimes misidentify them.  They repeat facts and stories, and use the same turns of phrase over and over until you can’t help but twitch every time you hear them say “she sprays the ball out wide” or “the ball found it’s way to...” The last Spirit game I attended, I sat in front of a woman who, after Elise Kellond-Knight left with a pulled hamstring, briefly explained to her friends why women were more likely than men to have hamstring injuries.  (It has something to do with women having more developed quad muscles, which puts the opposing muscles, the hamstrings, at greater risk.  This also leads to increased ACL injuries among women.)  This random stranger had more interesting commentary than any of the people I’d heard on TV. But why are these announcers so bad?  The answer’s easy: NWSL announcers are barely paid.  They make $300-$400 a game, with no travel or lodging expenses paid, which means unless you live in Fort Lauderdale where the announcing is recorded, you have to pay to announce.   I don’t know how much MLS announcers make, but I bet it’s better than that.

5.  NWSL teams have a lower quality of refereeing.

Oh boy.  Okay.  There have been some issues with NWSL refereeing lately.  As national team star Ali Krieger put it:

We’re putting a good product out on the field and every year we’re getting better and the referees seem like they are not.  So, I beg the NWSL — just the standard needs to be higher. It’s just unfortunate that you feel like the referee is ruining the game. They are taking the fun out of the game because they are not good enough.

How could we raise the standards of referees?  Well, they could stop treating the NWSL like a training ground for MLS:

There are five tiers in the U.S. Soccer refereeing program. The top-level, called “FIFA,” is the highest tier. These referees can officiate in FIFA-sanctioned matches. 

”The second tier is “P.R.O.” These referees can officiate MLS matches and are selected by the Professional Referee Organization.

The next tier down is called “National,” and these officials are certified by U.S. Soccer. These referees can officiate USL Championship and NWSL matches. And therein lies the problem.

The NWSL will never have officiating as good as the MLS as long as this remains US Soccer’s official policy.  It doesn’t get any clearer than that.

6.  NWSL games are not marketed as well as they could be.

I won’t pretend to understand marketing, but I know that it’s hard for people to go to games they don’t even know about: 

[Portland Thorns defender Meghan Klingenberg ] couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed when she saw Fox discuss the U.S. Men’s National Team’s run at the CONCACAF Gold Cup during halftime of the Women’s World Cup final Sunday, rather than preview the upcoming games in the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL).

“I love Fox. I think they did a great job. They gave the Women’s World Cup the attention that it deserves, but I wish we mentioned the NWSL more. [...] We need that to be put into the consciousness of the general public. We need ESPN to talk about the NWSL year-round. We need beat reporters in every single city that has an NWSL team. We need investment in advertising and marketing, in ground support, in make sure that people know that there’s a freaking team in their area.”  [source]

It seems that marketing is another area in which US Soccer is underinvesting in women:

[Soccer United Marketing, the commercial arm of Major League Soccer] handles deals for MLS and the U.S. Soccer Federation but not the NWSL, even though U.S. Soccer runs the NWSL. This fact has long been lamented by the women’s soccer community.

The NWSL marketing team needs the resources to at least let people know that their teams exist and their games are happening.  But beyond that... the NWSL is full of charismatic stars, both current and potential.  Let’s give them the spotlight.

7.  NWSL salaries are, for all but the biggest stars, below average income.

No one goes into women’s soccer for the money, even if a few of the game’s biggest stars have managed to get some lucrative sponsorships.  The league guarantees a minimum salary of $16,538, barely above the poverty line, and caps max salary at $46,200, a bit belong the mean American income.

Talented young women who are making decisions about where to go to college and what to do after college need to take this into account.  If they have dependents, family members with health issues, or significant debt, they simply may not be able to afford to play soccer professionally.  

This impacts the number of women available to play professionally as well as their ability to nurture their own talent by investing in themselves via special camps and training.  For every Megan Rapinoe or Alex Morgan or Crystal Dunn who has made it to the NWSL there’s someone equally talented who stopped playing in high school or college because law school or medical school or learning to code seemed like a more financially viable career path.  

In other words, for all the strides women’s soccer has made over the last twenty to thirty years, the NWSL still selecting from only a fraction of the potential talent pool.

*

I’ve been an NWSL fan for less than two months, so I’m surely missing other ways that women’s soccer has been under-invested in.  But the seven issues outlined above should be enough to convince you there’s a problem.  

Saying that people just don’t want to watch women’s soccer isn’t merely an oversimplification - it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.  The whole point of investment is you take a risk now to reap a payoff later.  The NWSL needs US Soccer and the wider sports community to invest in them, and given time, everyone will benefit.

You know what keeps ringing in my ears?  Research that shows that men are judged on their potential, while women are only judged on their performance.  The NWSL has the potential to be a thriving league with the revenues and fan enthusiasm of the MLS.  The question is whether women’s soccer will be given the support they need to deliver on that potential.

[mtxzone-blog]

Hall of Shame: Star Wars Battlefront II

A while back, we ran a twitter poll asking what kinds of stuff people were interested in seeing on this blog. By a wide margin, the winner was a mysterious, unexplained option labeled “MTX Hall of Shame...” So I suppose we should explain what exactly that is.

The Hall of Shame is an idea we’ve had for a while, about focusing in on a single game and examining its deeds, misdeeds, and relevance to the broader landscape of video game monetization in a bit more detail than we give games on the main site. And what better way to start us off than the most memorable example in recent memory of a publisher getting caught with their hands well and truly in the cookie jar?

STAR WARS BATTLEFRONT II

...or just “BF2″ for short. For a brief overview, here’s BF2’s page on the main site: "Star Wars Battlefront II: A powerful reminder that there is such a thing as Too Much”

Boy, Electronic Arts really messed up on this one, didn’t they? Having released Star Wars Battlefront (no, not that one) in 2015 and discovered that a multiplayer-only game that costs $110 if you want all the maps and game modes was maybe not the way to go, they looked around at the rest of the industry and decided to do what everyone else was doing: put gambling mechanics in the game to nickle-and-dime the player over the course of the game’s lifespan, rather than just demand all the money up-front. It had worked out alright when they did it in Battlefield 4, right? And that game even had paid map packs on top of the loot boxes - why should this be any different?

The answer to that question, it turns out, is many-faceted. The hubbub about BF2 didn’t really start to boil until its closed beta, early in October 2017. At that point in time, press and consumer attitudes towards the concept of loot boxes in major western video games were not exactly positive—Destiny 2 had just released, and was getting considerable heat for taking cosmetic items that used to be permanent unlocks in the first Destiny, and turning them into single-use consumables which could, of course, be acquired randomly through paid loot boxes. Meanwhile, concurrent to the BF2 beta, a number of things were happening:

Other developers were scoring easy PR victories by loudly announcing that their games would not have loot boxes in them.

The ESRB (an organization whose biggest goal is to keep lawmakers from interfering with game industry profits) declared that loot boxes were “not gambling”, which I suppose is a smart thing to say if you’re currently making a lot of money off of them.

The government of the United Kingdom was asked (and responded to) questions about loot boxes and their status as gambling

So when BF2′s beta launched with randomized loot boxes (which were going to be available for money once the full game released) containing literal, objectively more-powerful-than-default gameplay advantages, it was not a good scene. The backlash was immediate: articles were popping up all over with headlines like “Let’s not mince words; Star Wars Battlefront 2 loot boxes are pay-to-win“ and “How loot boxes are turning full-priced PC games into pay-to-win games of chance“.

EA quickly responded to the criticism, but in their response they very much missed the forest for the trees (or maybe they were just too stubborn to see reason and put their tail between their legs). They announced that the most powerful tier of upgrades would be removed from the loot box system, which didn’t really address the heart of the problem at all. And so, the criticism kept coming, famously culminating in the most downvoted Reddit comment of all time when an EA employee tried to defend the absurd amount of hours it took to unlock Darth Vader as a playable character without having to spend extra money. In another example of “too little too late,” another press release went out, stating that the costs of unlocking the game’s “Hero” characters were being slashed by 75%. Eventually, the day before the game’s official launch, news broke that EA was “temporarily” turning off the ability to purchase “Crystals,” the premium currency which is used to buy loot boxes.

By this point, the game had EA in over its head. Mainstream non-gaming news outlets were reporting on BF2, like Business Insider and Fortune. A legislator from the U.S. state of Hawai’i spoke about wanting to legislate loot boxes in video games, specifically calling out BF2 as a “Star Wars-themed online casino”. And so, finally, EA waved the white flag and gave up.

Near the tail end of November 2017, Blake Jorgensen (Chief Financial Officer for EA) said that cosmetic microtransactions weren’t in the cards for BF2, because they didn’t want to “violate Star Wars canon,” and “you probably don’t want Darth Vader in pink.” As should be obvious to basically anyone, Blake Jorgensen was talking right out of his ass, coming up with any excuse he could for why loot boxes (which are much more profitable than direct microtransactions) would be preferable to something a bit less exploitative. After all, the previous Battlefront game had cosmetic microtransactions, and they didn’t lead to any complaints about canon as far as we’re aware.

Another good indicator that Blake Jorgensen is full of crap is that, when the premium currency “Crystals” was re-instated, the only things you could spend them on were cosmetic microtransactions.

Also, we want Darth Vader in pink.

Pictured: The man of our dreams

Wrapping up now

The role of Star Wars Battlefront II in the wider western video games market was mainly to demonstate what happens when you move too far, too fast. BF2′s systems, at their core, weren’t that unique or even that uniquely horrible—it was a question of turning the numbers up too far (“40 hours to unlock Darth Vader”), and doing it in a game with much too high a profile (“the new Star Wars game coming out around the same time as the new Star Wars movie” - people really like Star Wars, don’tcha know).

The video games industry, as far as major western publishers are concerned, has been heading this way for a long time, and they’ve used a slow boil to get here. In 2006, Bethesda were the subject of unceasing scorn for charging $2.50 for Horse Armor. In 2017, the only reason there was any major backlash for BF2 was that its one-armed bandits were planned to disgorge gameplay boosts instead of dance emotes and new colors for your light saber.

In some way, BF2 can be seen as a good thing; it certainly poisoned the well for loot boxes in a big way. Forza Motorsport 7, which sells loot boxes for the in-game currency “Credits”, never got around to setting up a real-money dollars-to-Credits shop. Middle-Earth: Shadow of War recently got a new round of PR when its developers announced they would be removing the game’s premium currency (and the loot boxes that currency could buy), and rebalancing the game to account for the fact that its primary function is no longer to frustrate you into paying for digital orcs. And of course, the government of Belgium (no doubt spurred into action by all the attention BF2 managed to attract) recently announced, at the end of April 2018, that it considers the loot box mechanics in three major games (Overwatch, FIFA 18, and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive) to be illegal gambling. That probably wouldn’t have happened if EA hadn’t gotten greedy and pushed as hard as they did.

In conclusion, there are two important lessons to be learned here:

Nerds really like Star Wars

Where’s our pink Darth Vader. Where is he. WHERE

(If you have any feedback about this article, positive or negative, please do not hesitate to hit us up on Discord, or send an email to contact [at] microtransaction [.] zone - even just “I enjoyed this and would like to read more stuff like it in the future” or “This was a waste of my time, how dare you” would be very welcome)

[wroetominter]

Oblivion - WillNE Imagine

Title: Oblivion Pairing: WillNE x Reader Requested(?): yes thank you! Warnings: smut smut smut

— “I love the boys but sometimes you just need a girl to talk to. You know?” I asked Gee as she poured my coffee into a mug.

“I definitely get you. That’s why all of us girls need to hang out more often.”

“I couldn’t agree more.” The two of us laughed and began talking about our weeks.

“So when are you finally going to tell Will you like him then?” She teased.

“Shhh! Are you forgetting he lives here!” I said in a whisper-yell.

“He sleeps well into the afternoon you’re fine.” I sighed and nodded.

I had been keeping my feelings for Will quiet for a few months now. I was half scared of rejection and half scared of him just laughing in my face.

“I think you should just go for it. You would finally be able to relieve that sexual frustration of yours.” I choked on my drink, laughing at her blunt statement. “I’m serious! How many times have you been sexually frustrated and it been able to do something about it?”

I thought about it for a minute. There had definitely been quite a few times. Especially the other day when we all went out to eat and Will wore that damn green jumper of his, looking like a damn model with his hair perfect and his eyes popping against the green jumper.

“More times than I’d like to admit actually. I just want to ride his dick into oblivion. Is that too much to ask?”

“Then tell him!” Gee said.

“I’ll think about it. Wait shhh, I think I hear him.” We both quit talking for a few minutes and then heard Will’s door open.

“I’m going to head out, Josh wants to go out for lunch. I’ll text you?”

“Georgina I swear to God don’t do this to me.” I grabbed her arm and she shook me off, smiling and running to the door. I sighed when I heard the door slam.

“She was sure in a hurry.” I heard Will’s voice behind me and I jumped slightly, startled at the sudden noise.

“You scared me.” I laughed and he joined in.

“Sorry about that, you sticking around?”

“Uh yeah sure; what else have I got to do?” I shrugged and he nodded. I took in his appearance. A fitting black tshirt and grey sweatpants. This boy would be the death of me.

“Want to get absolutely dominated in a game of FIFA?” He suggested.

“Sure, but I guarantee you’ll be the one losing.” I teased, passing him and heading for the couch. I sat down, crossing my legs and making myself comfortable.

“You’re on.” Will sat right next to me and handed me my controller.

I chose Chelsea and he chose Newcastle, of course. We began our game and I leaned forward in my seat, getting really into the competition.

“Loser buys the other coffee next time we go out!” Will said scoring his first goal.

“You cheeky bastard.” I moved my players, passing the ball around the back for a few seconds before moving for the goal.

I shot and scored, letting out a celebratory statement and feeling the adrenaline pumping in my body.

Will went to score and I bumped his arm slightly, causing him to miss.

“You dirty cheater!” He yelled, shoving me back. I smirked and continued to play, eventually making my way through and scoring another goal. The full time whistle was blown and I smirked, turning my body to face Will.

“How’s it feel being a loser?” I teased him. He rolled his eyes and pulled out his phone.

“How does it feel being a cheater?” He retorted.

“I’m not a cheater you’re just shite at football.”

“Oi football and FIFA are two very different playing fields.”

“And you’re bad at both of them.”

The two of us sat there on the couch, scrolling through our phones. I browsed my twitter feed and I suddenly felt Will’s hand on my knee. It wasn’t a huge deal, he was probably just trying to make himself more comfortable. I couldn’t help the small amount of lust building in my stomach and I rubbed my legs together gently, playing it off as an itch but internally I was screaming.

Will’s hand moved slightly up and I felt myself becoming hornier, sneaking a glance at his crotch. In his grey sweats the imprint of his dick was quite visible and it was causing me an intense amount of sexual frustration. His hand slipped just that little bit more and I was about to burst. His long fingers were right on my inner thigh quite close to my throbbing vagina.

At this point he had to have known what he was doing. I decided to take matters into my own hands, taking one of my hands and pushing his hand right onto my vagina, causing him to drop his phone and look at me with a quite shocked look on his face. We stared at each other for a few seconds before I moved my hand and placed it directly onto his clothes covered penis. His eyes shut in pleasure and I leaned my body forwards, adding more pressure and massaging him through his sweats.

He let out a moan that only fueled my drive. I took his hand and brought it up to my breast, allowing him to touch me.

“Do you still want to ride my dick into oblivion?” I let out a gasp and he smirked.

“You were eavesdropping?”

“I couldn’t help it when I heard you talking about how bad you wanted me. Tell me more.” He squeezed my boob as I straddled his lap.

“I want you to fuck me.” I said using my other hand to touch myself, rubbing over my vagina and causing Will to harden underneath me.

“How bad?” He grabbed my hands and held them firmly behind my back, not allowing me to touch myself.

“So bad." I pushed myself down onto his hardening penis and I let a soft moan leave my body from the small amount of friction. He let my hands go and I quickly reached for the bottom of my top, pulling it over my body and then quickly taking off my bra. Will’s hands found my waist and he laid me down on the couch, slipping his hand into my shorts and as soon as his hand found my vagina I let out a moan. He pulled my shorts and panties down my legs and brought his face down to my throbbing core.

"You’re so wet for me darling.” He whispered, sliding two fingers into me and curling them at just the right angle to make my body react to his touch.

“Don’t tease me Will.” He took his fingers out, licking them clean and then attaching his lips to my clit. I let out a breathy moan as he licked patterns along me and caused my heart to race like no other.

“Please.” I whimpered, placing my hands in his hair and pushing him further into my core.

He sat up, removing his shirt and I sat up, pushing him onto his back and quickly sliding his sweats and boxers down. I immediately wrapped my hand around him and he moaned. I took him into my mouth and hollowed my cheeks, wanting to give him the most pleasure I could.

“If you want me to last you need to stop, love.” He said. I complied and allowed him to take over. “Shall we take this to the bedroom?” I nodded and followed him, making sure we grabbed our clothes in case someone came round.

I wrapped my arms around his neck and brought my lips to his. As we made out he laid me down on the bed, his hand fumbling in his side table for a condom.

“You have no idea how long I have been waiting for this.” I said taking the condom from his hand and rolling it onto him.

“Same. I’ve dropped slight hints but I think they went unnoticed.” He lined himself up with me and pushed in. My back arched into his body and I let out a moan.

“Fuck.” I let out, his hand reaching down and rubbing on my clit.

He was thrusting in and out, the pace making me melt against his skin.

“I’m close.” He said kissing my neck and leaving a mark or two in his path.

He let out a few more thrusts and I reached my climax, him following suit a few seconds later.

He rested his head on my chest and pulled out, disposing of the condom.

“Is this a bad time to admit that I have feelings for you?” I asked, finally gaining the confidence to say something. He looked into my eyes and smiled at me.

“This is a perfect time. I like you too Y/n.” I grinned and brought his lips to mine.

“Let’s get cleaned up and go out for a coffee?” He asked. I nodded.

“And you get to pay, being the loser and all.” He rolled his eyes and laughed.

“As long as I get you I’m still a winner.” He wrapped his arms around me and kissed my forehead.

“You’re so cheesy.”

“You love it.”

“You’re right, I do.” I dressed myself and headed into the kitchen to wait for him.

“Did you tell him?” I jumped at Gee’s voice.

“Yes, and um… I’ll fill you in later.” She raised an eyebrow and Will walked out.

“Ready to go babe? Oh, hey Gee.”

“Babe? Is this a thing? I’m so confused.” Will put his arm around my shoulder and smiled at me.

“I’ll fill you in later, we’re heading out for food.” She nodded and Will and I headed for the door. “Wait I forgot my phone, I’ll meet you at the car.” He nodded and I ran back into the flat.

“We just had sex before you showed up and we’re also dating.” I said quickly.

“What! I need more details!” She screamed.

“I’ll tell you later!” I grabbed my phone and ran back to the door, finding Will waiting for me by the elevator.

“I hope you know she’s going to tease the hell out of me for the next year now.” He said clearly amused.

“Is it worth it though?” I questioned.

“It definitely is.” He kissed me softly and we headed out.

[ackackh]

HBO War YouTuber Headcanons

(SO MUCH MORE under the cut)

BAND OF BROTHERS

George Luz George has a review channel He sits at his computer at his desk where his camera is set up A lot of the time, you can see his (big ass) mic in the shot. He doesn’t care. He’s almost always wearing headphones. Either apple-type earbuds with the cord under his shirt, or giant headphones, one covering an ear, one tucked behind his other ear. He’s really onto hi-fi audio tech, it’s where most of his spending money goes. He reviews music, tv shows, movies, books, video games. Anything popular and anything he likes. 

The reviews are always fair and he tends to review things he likes anyway so there aren’t a lot of negative vibes on his channel. He also does some reaction videos. When he’s feeling up to it, he’ll make fun of Trump (and when he does it’s hilarious) but the boy has his limits. He wants his channel to be a reprieve for himself and for others. He has a lot of followers and they all just fawn over him because George has such an animated face and he gets so excited about things he likes. It’s adorable. Too pure. He also produces some original music! It’s mostly beats and he has a SoundCloud and a Patreon. He uses Snapchat and Vine a lot, in tandem with his channel. What’s on his snapchat/vine you ask? Every. Impression. Ever. And George is really good at them! They’re funny and accurate and his viewers really like them! He also has a million videos of him bugging his friends (mostly on vine). His favorite stunt is to see how long he can film Joe without him noticing. Spoiler: it’s not very long. Most of his vines end with him running away from an irritated Joe or with Joe smacking the phone out of his hand. The phone falls to the ground and you can hear George whine “What’d you hafta do that for?” He loves to do Special Guest Episodes! Sometimes the guest is Perco, sometimes it’s Skip, or Don, or even Carwood. He’s a good friend and if they have a channel he’ll plug for them. BUT he gets the most requests for Special Guest Episodes with Joe Toye! Joe will pull up his own desk chair beside Luz and reviews things with him (George will pick things Joe is actually interested in for the video). Joe has a harder time remembering that there's a camera and a mic to perform towards, and he’s quieter than Luz, but he gives his honest opinions which are always well thought out. Plus the viewers dig his voice. People will comment or email Luz, saying how much they love their banter, their chemistry. How they love how earnest Joe is (he’s a naturally charming guy!) Sometimes they get carried away with the “light” flirting, always smiling and always completely focused on what the other has to say. Joe doesn’t always stay for the whole video because he has shit to do, ya know? So he’ll get up and kiss George’s head or squeeze his shoulder and say “later, Georgie” And George will look at the camera and and yell to him “I LOVE YOU, JOE” and you can faintly hear Joe somewhere else in the house say, “love you, too, idiot!” And George giggles and gives the camera a wink.

Carwood Lipton Carwood keeps a video diary! He just films wherever he feels is right. Sometimes the family room, sometimes the office, sometimes the bedroom. The vibe is really chill, relaxed. You can almost think of Michael Aranda’s What I’m Doing Right Now He has a modest following, but he’s really interactive with the community: frequently answering questions, participating in conversations and debates. His vlog is multimedia! He uses twitter and snapchat a lot too, sometimes incorporating them into his videos. He loves to take candid videos and pictures of himself and his friends, with or without their immediate knowledge. (He always gets their permission before he posts anything) Viewers will often times find his video for that day is a mash up of videos of time spent with friends, Ron, Harry, Kitty, Dick, and Lew, on some small adventure. There’s some pleasant, energetic music playing, spliced with audio of the original video when someone says something particularly interesting or funny. His videos are for his followers, but he also keeps in mind that some of his family watches too, so everything is pretty PG. Ron isn’t super interested in YouTube, but he like’s to watch Carwood’s videos. He lives with the guy, and he always sees the bits and pieces as Carwood puts it together, so he likes to see the finished product. Sometimes he’ll come sit and be in a video, just for a little while if Carwood asks him. And of course they’re super in love, and Ron is so taken with Carwood, that the community comments like, “WE LOVE RON, GIVE US MORE RON PLS.” Ron will sometimes sit down with Carwood and answer questions. Either from the viewers or from a top googled list. It becomes a segment, titled something like Everyday Answers with Ron. And people love it because Ron can’t be anything but himself and he’s so oddly charming and adorable with how straightforward he is. he doesn’t quite understand why people like him so much. Carwood’s most viewed and most liked video is the one of the day Ron proposed. Harry, Kitty, and Nix were all in on it and got the whole thing on video and made sure they got footage of the celebrations afterward. He recorded in their bedroom that night, all sleepy and lovey with Ron, who kisses his cheek and thumbs over the band on Carwood’s finger.

Kitty Grogan Welsh Kitty’s channel is full of really fun things! Like stories, adventures in things like baking or hand crafts, personal make up tutorials. And, maybe most surprisingly, video games. So, she doesn’t do the average let’s plays. She’s not actually interested in showing people the game. Instead, she picks a topic, often sent in by fans, and shares her thoughts and ideas on this topic while she plays whatever games she likes. She plays games like, FIFA, Madden, Overwatch, and random platformers. These are her most watched videos. Maybe about once a month she has Husband Episodes where Harry sits and plays with her or watches her play while they discuss whatever topic they’ve decided on. He’s adorable and she spends a good amount of the time teasing him. Upon many, many requests, she has posted both a “My Husband Does My Makeup” video and an “I Do My Husband’s Makeup” video. I can’t reiterate enough how adorable Harry is here.

Joe Liebgott and David Webster Joe and Web don’t share a channel. Because that would be a disaster. But here’s how they know each other: That Prick YouTuber Whose Opinions Are Wrong Joe’s channel is mostly about music. He reviews artists, albums, and singles. AND he records original pieces and post the videos to his channel. He’s really. really. good. His emotions are so raw, he doesn’t even have to be singing for them to come out and it’s frankly… enchanting. A decent chunk of his viewers started watching because Joe is hot AF™ but they stayed because he’s talented and smart as a whip. While Joe does love The Clash and other punk groups, he one thing that speaks to his soul is an angry John Darnielle. That’s right kids: The Mountain Goats. They serve as a lot of inspiration for his original songs. So Joe plays and talks mostly about music, but he also talks about things like art, fashion, and COMIC BOOKS. Listen, he preorders that shit, he has whole videos just about how excited he is for some edition of some comic. So, Web stumbled upon one of his videos, this particular one about an artist, and ugh, everything about this guy just rubs him the wrong way. He falls down a rabbit hole of Joe’s review videos and he decides he basically can’t stand him or any of his very wrong opinions. Don’t ask him why he hit subscribe. Joe finds Web in his Suggested Videos Feed and listens for maybe two minutes to Web talk about his college classes and all the literature he’s reading and all the things he knows now and he’s like, fuck this guy. Joe just thinks he’s so pretentious. He likes The Catcher in the Rye. Like, come on, dude. Most of Web’s videos are about literature. Books and Poetry he’s read and likes/dislikes. He really enjoys the Transcendentalists. He loves the themes of man v nature and the natural imagery and how they talk about what makes up the human soul. Joe fucking hates Transcendentalism. As far as he’s concerned, they were a bunch of rich, white men who pretended to be one with nature or some bullshit but didn’t acknowledge the privilege of their status or even mention the fact that they could go back to their cushy homes whenever they liked! Eventually they bump heads and get into a few times through comments. They can’t stand one another, can’t see anything from the other’s point of view… UNTIL Until Web listens to one of Joe’s original songs. And it’s so raw and personal and the lyrics! He can’t believe how beautiful the lyrics are! They’re simple and effective and they hit him right in the chest. Until Joe listens to some of Web’s spoken word poetry. It’s not his usually style, it’s flow-y and flowery and romantic. But it’s fucking beautiful and it stirs emotions in Joe he’d forgotten about. Joe also listens to Web go on and on about his ideas for the books he wants to write. And he finds it’s almost impossible not to fall in love with Web like this, so animated and happy. Here’s what happens: they meet sometime in real life, maybe at Vidcon, and after arguing for forever, they decide to try and put there heads together and write a song. Joe on the music and Web on the words. And it’s great. Their ideas are different, but they feed off of each other well, and they find a good balance. They record a video of it, Joe performing with his guitar and Web watching him, taking notes, even. And when the music trails off and they fall into each other, the kiss doesn’t make it to the final cut of the video. Neither does the making out on Joe’s hotel bed.

Babe Heffron and John Julian Their videos are just fun and silly shenanigans. They play games (lots of Cards Against Humanity) and do every youtube challenge. ever. Chubby Bunny and the Cinnamon Challenge are two of their most viewed videos. So many stupid dares. So many ER visits, all filmed and all with an angry Guarno grumbling about how fucking stupid these “kids” are. Julian: I am not a kid! Bill: Come talk to me when your foot isn’t in a boot, alright? They have more than one video of them trying to do parkour. I mean, how do you think they ended up in the hospital? The channel is called Orange Julian and their icon/header image is the two of them, wearing only boxer-briefs, completely covered in orange body paint. They’re standing next to each other, purposefully looking a little awkward. Like, it’s almost album art worthy. All of this for a stupid Orange Julius pun that only like 1/3 of their viewers get.

Renee Lemaire Renee has a small channel about her life! It has lots of sweet things in it! Soft, gay vibes!!! Her dog. Her cat. Her good friends, Gene Roe and Ralph Spina. Delicious food and cooking! Crazy/hilarious/gross stories about working in the children’s ward of the hospital. Her experiences in America as a French woman. French history lessons! French language lessons in modern day/interesting/specific vocabulary! Gene and Spina often come on and they have culture clash videos about France and America at large. Sometimes Gene will talk about Cajun culture or stories or food. And Renee and Spina will sit there just bewildered by everything he says. Sometimes Renee and Gene will trail off in French conversations together, leaving Spina to either complain loudly OR look into the camera like he’s on The Office™ Renee can only upload like every other week or so because she’s so busy. But her viewers don’t mind! Her videos are like little presents!

GENERATION KILL

Rudy Reyes Rudy also keeps a diary! It’s called “Fruity Rudy” and the graphic has a cute lil peach on it. He always films in his living room during the day. The video and audio are both super high quality and he even has a nice front light. He looks fucking beautiful, as always. He just talks about his day, his friends and family, whatever subjects he’s been thinking about recently. And his house is always fucking perfect. 9 times out of 10 Pappy is in the kitchen cooking, slightly out of focus, while wearing an apron. He likes to listen to Rudy do his thing while he prepares dinner or w/e (cooking and baking is a big hobby of his). Every once in a while he’ll comment on something Rudy says or talks about, or he’ll poke fun at someone or tell a joke. Usually the mic picks up what he says, but it’s faint and Rudy adds in little subtitles in the bottom of the screen. And he either reacts with a fond smile of some kind of comment or comeback. The viewers love their banter because they’re HELLA MARRIED Like literally. And also figuratively. Like sometimes Rudy will call back to Pappy to ask him questions, sometimes looking for a real answer, sometimes because he knows the kind of sassy reaction he’ll get, and he’ll just roll his eyes at the camera. He gets like a million comments a day telling him that they adore Pappy. “omg u guys are so cute” “I wish pappy was in more videos!!” “is pappy his real name? if not, what is?” When Rudy hits 10,000 subscribers (“wow, that’s insane, thanks you guys!!!”) as a present, he makes this big reveal video of Pappy’s name. “Drum roll please… *drums on his thighs* it’s Larry.” *in the background* “RUDE, WHAT THE FUCK?” *uncontrollable giggles from Rudy* *the camera is lifted from it’s place by ~~someone~~ unseen and a blurry Rudy can be seen half-heartedly protesting before the footage cuts*

Ray Person Ray is basically iDubbbz/h3h3 He’ll get all of his friends to participate in stupid videos. Mostly it’s Walt, Christenson, or sometimes Q-tip or Gabe. But sometimes he’s by himself, it just depends. So we get lots of these types of gems. (x) (x)  Brad hardcore pretends like he doesn’t want to be a part of it but look, he operates the camera for every video, he’s not fooling anyone. It’s hard to mistake his laughter when he’s right next to the mic. Sometimes Ray keeps in the little bits where Brad comments or calls him an idiot and you can see Ray look behind the camera, laughing and smiling or giving it right back. Ray’s channel is nuts!! but every once in a blue moon Ray will upload a video called “Serious Talk #1” (and so on) where he talks about something he really cares about or is really bugging him. And people are like, I knew you were smart, but oh jeez, this is scary.

Nate Fick The videos started out as study tools for his undergrad students but eventually gained a legit following. So, it’s basically an educational channel, but there’s no company or anything funding him. He tries to be as professional looking as possible, though. He talks about history! All types of history! And guess what, this boy is salty about the many, many important peoples and their accomplishments that are always left out of textbooks and shit. And he’s going to do his best to cover them properly. As in, entire episodes dedicated to shit (most) people don’t know. And he was in the military, so he has… lots of feelings about that as well. If he talks about military history or social issues he puts a disclaimer in the beginning of the video like “This is tainted by my feelings, I can’t help it, but this is my channel and I’m gonna say what I like.” He has some crash courses and some videos that go way too in depth. Like, maybe calm down, boy scout. Brad and Mike are his most frequent guests. He’ll do things like quiz them (on shit he knows they don’t know) or ask them for their opinions or direct the whole freaking lesson just to them. Brad and Mike really like picking on him, but he knows they love him. He invited Ray on the channel once. Once. It was… an experience. But Ray surprisingly, or not so surprisingly, has some really well educated and in depth thoughts on certain subjects. He gets lots of comments from girls/boys being like, “Hello, Professor Hottie.” (He gets the same reaction from many of his undergrads, so he’s used to it.) BUT most of his following watches because they’re interested in what he has to say, so don’t worry.

Poke Espera Poke has a channel with no schedule or organization. The video’s care shot from a cheap video camera and he doesn’t have a proper mic. And you know the Channel name is literally just his name. It’s literally all just videos of him from the chest up with titles like: “THOUGHTS ON ALL THE BULLSHIT” and “I’M GONNA KILL ME A WHITE BOY” and “PAUL RYAN CAN SUCK MY THICK LATIN DICK” They’re always in all caps. You knows the type. Yes, he does have a whole video dedicated to the story of the time he saw a dude get killed behind a Tastee-Freez. He has over 2 mil followers and all the boys are like …how? He just has good things to say, yo. People appreciate the cruel honesty.

Q-Tip and Christenson These cute boys have a let’s play channel! It’s pretty straight forward, they just play whatever games they like the best and sometimes play other games on request. It’s got Game Grumps vibes because it’s these two dudes who are BEST FRIENDS and they spend nearly every episode talking about whatever they want. And usually they want to talk about each other. Because they’re hardcore Bros. They get some of their friends to sit with them and play or just talk, depends. But their most requested repeat guest is Ray. Because Ray sure as hell doesn’t need a camera on his face to be animated as fuck. Also There’s lots of singing. Almost too much singing. At least they have excellent taste in music.

The Lady Marine (Whose Name We Unfortunately Don’t Know) She has a youtube channel that she really enjoys putting a lot of creativity into! Like, it’s great quality, for starters, and she also designs her own awesome graphics and animation!! She’s so talented!! Because everything is so damn quality, she only puts out a video every couple of weeks. But they’re pretty lengthy and always SUPER worth it. It’s about her (current) career in the military and focuses on a lot of social justice themes. Not only does she a) have a lot of interesting/enlightening things to say, but b) she also understands her privilege as a white woman and plugs for a lot of other women of color vloggers when she talks about something a little out of her depth or better said by someone who actually experiences it. She has a very complex view of the military and simultaneously knows how it manipulates/harms people and can’t help but love her job. She feels like she was born to do it, honestly. Idiot men come at her in the comments and she gets a lot of harassment. But let me tell you… She takes those motherfuckers out. You thought she was just talking shit? Bitch, she has 8 peer-reviewed scientific studies! She can cite her sources, all 2 dozen of them! She knows her shit, don’t test her. And if that doesn’t satisfy you, she’s always got her M16. One time she slams a dude so hard it goes viral over night and she gets hundreds of new followers, most of them young women looking for some source of empowerment and encouragement. She takes her new role very seriously. She will always, always listen and talk to young girls who are struggling or need an outlet or someone to talk to who won’t get upset with them for thinking X or Y. I love her, she’s my wife.

THE PACIFIC

Bob Leckie Leckie’s channel is called “Dear, Vera.” Each video is an adorable virtual letter to his wife, who he is just crazy smitten with. They started out as literal messages when Leckie was traveling for his first book tour (very proud of him). Like, he would literally just write out letters and then read them to the camera. Of course, Leckie is the most poetic idiot on the planet, and lots of people started following him because his words were honestly so beautiful. Even if he’s extra as heck. The following isn’t huge, but it’s substantial, and he still addresses each video to his wife. So he talks about whatever he likes. It was updates about his life when he was traveling, but when he’s home he likes to get creative about it. And not every episode is so serious. He invites dudes from Team Leckie to come hang all the time! And the boys are always like, “Hi, Vera!” and wave like she’s actually there. (She’s in the next room doing a Sudoku puzzle or something). Every video, he signs of with, “Yours, Robert.” AND AND AND when Vera tells him they’re going to be parents, Leckie gets extra extra. But it’s so cute, like, he makes a single video about it. He opens it with, “To my future child” And he basically goes on this whole teary-eyed kind of schpiel about how he’s so exited to meet them and how he and Vera are going to love them unconditionally and protect them and do their absolute best to keep them happy. He signs off with, “With love, your father.”

Hoosier Smith Hoosier is literally Cr1tiKal

Eugene Sledge Eugene’s channel is about ornithology, botany, and BEES! He loves bees! He uses the channel to geek out over biology things and it has so many cute graphics and jingles. Like, I mean, it’s hella gay. And he’s kind of awkward, but it’s so endearing. Most of his subscribers are girls and mlm and he’s just like, huh *shrug* He has little segments about current scientific events/findings. He has a birb of the week. It’s just… so nerdy. Like, chill out, dude. (Jk pls don’t ever chill out, follow your passions.) Snafu refuses to be in videos but he shouts at him from other rooms in the house, being a dick on purpose, calling him nerd, telling him to shut up. But Eugene is pretty good at coming back at him. He’s known Snafu too long for that kind of shit to actually bother him. And Eugene is like 70% sass, anyway.

Eddie Jones Eddie has a channel entirely dedicated to his original music!!! All his spending money goes to instruments and high quality recording equipment and audio editing software. He’s so good. Like. He’s got this warbling kind of sweet and broken voice. It’s very similar to jpitts, actually. And there’s so much heart in it. Not to mention the songs he writes are amazing and have clever lyrics. And guess what, boys and girls!!! Andy Haldane can sing. But he’s super shy about it. He and Eddie have had so many conversations that are like “Andy, come on, one video” “Nooo…” “Just one!” “Eddie, I caaaan’t” (Andy gets a little whiny when he’s nervous) So Andy won’t sing in a video BUT his soft voice can be heard harmonizing in some official recordings. Eddie loves listening to Andy sing. He’s not perfect or anything, but his voice is pretty and light and Eddie’s head over heels for him, so he can’t help but love it.

So, like I said. Way too long. But I had so much fun thinking up this stuff, so time well spent! I just did the boys (and girls) who came naturally to me when I tried to think of who would have a YouTube Channel. If anyone feels like adding to this monstrosity, go for it!

[soccerdrawings]

How To Leave Sport Award Ideas Without Being Noticed | Sport Award Ideas

• Neil Warnock, January – asked about Brexit while sitting in advanced of a “Visit Malaysia” assurance put up by a Cyprus-born administrator to advice armamentarium his 11-nationality Cardiff squad: “I can’t delay to get out, if I’m honest. We’ll be far bigger off out of the blood-soaked thing. In every aspect. Football-wise as well, absolutely. To hell with the blow of the world.”

10 Youth Sports Awards Ideas - sport award ideas | sport award ideas • Ian Holloway, August – calling for football to be played beneath WTO rules. “I don’t anticipate that’s our boys authoritative up that new law. I anticipate that’s bodies cogent us what to do with our game. Now they should stop accomplishing that. I achievement we get out, Brexit, because that’s what bodies are voting for. You cannot accept addition cogent us how to do our own game.”Leading on the year’s added hot-button issue: “Extinction of our chase is acceptable added and added acceptable … the apple is a messed up place. Apple leaders are either benighted or don’t affliction about the ambiance at all. Honestly, I feel like giving up… bodies don’t assume to care.” Lewis Hamilton ��� who denied afterwards that his jet, £13m car accumulating and £50m Petronas endorsement took the bend off. “I awash my alike a year ago.”Gianni Infantino in June – acclamation Fifa’s assembly two years afterwards he sacked the belief aggregation investigating him. “We angry it around! Fifa has gone from actuality toxic, about criminal, to what it should be: alike with credibility, trust, integrity, equality, and with beastly rights.”His added big bulletin in 2019: abnegation allocution that it was Fifa’s new assurance on Chinese sponsors that led it to bead all beastly rights checks and accolade China the 2021 Club Apple Cup. “There are problems in this world, everywhere, in abounding countries. It is not the mission of Fifa to break the problems of this world.”• Additionally not affairs complaints from beastly rights and belief groups about sportswashing in 2019 – Uefa arch Aleksander Ceferin:a) Explaining why captivation the Europa Alliance final in Azerbaijan was the appropriate affair to do: “Human rights is a botheration in added places too. Does it beggarly the admirers in Baku do not deserve alive football?” And b) reacting to the Apple Anti‑Doping Agency’s alarm for Russia to be bare of Euro 2020 by adjoin Vladimir Putin in St Petersburg. His bulletin to Putin – Uefa stands by Russia because: “I charge say, the Apple Cup was organised perfectly… I do not allege aloof to be nice: I absolutely beggarly it.”Pushing the Fifa belief boundaries too far in 2019: Central African Republic controlling Patrice-Edouard Ngaïssona – banned for six years from all Fifa activities for arch a militia accused of “mass executions, torture, anamorphosis and rapes”. Ngaïssona, on balloon in The Hague in 2020, denies 111 war crimes charges.Was acquainted by Sepp Blatter - aggressive to sue Fifa in July for not giving aback the 60 affluence watches he larboard in his office. “These are my watches, accord me my watches. It’s important for me.” His bigger question: “Why are they angry me for these watches? There is no respect... I’ve accomplished the end of my temper.”José Mourinho – started 2019 out of work, activity viral with an ice-rink faceplant in Russia and a €3.3m tax artifice sentence; concluded it managing Spurs and commendation Nelson Mandela. “Like Mr Mandela said: ‘You never lose, you win or you learn.’ At United I won and I learned. My time afterwards I larboard United, that was a acceptable time for me.”@realDonaldTrump – responding to Megan Rapinoe’s “I’m not activity to the fucking White House” boycott in June by mis-tagging a alternation of rebukes – cogent @meganrapino, a afraid 21-year-old Starbucks agent from Virginia: “Never boldness our country, the White House, or our flag.”• Additionally accepting to him during the USA’s Women’s Apple Cup run: Rapinoe’s examination of the quarter-final, played in Pride month. “Go gays! You can’t win a championship afterwards gays on your aggregation – it’s never been done before, ever. That’s science, appropriate there!”Israel Folau – suing Rugby Australia for “discrimination”. Folau, sacked in May for angle including “hell awaits homosexuals” and gay alliance causes bushfires, claimed £7.4m for corruption of “religious freedom”. Statement: “Mr Folau wants all Australians to apperceive that he does not disregard bigotry of any kind.”Franck Ribéry – administration the acknowledgment aftermost January afterwards he acquaint a video of himself bistro a steak coated in gold. “Let’s alpha with the jealous, the haters, those alone built-in because a condom had a aperture in: f*** your mothers, your grandmothers and alike your ancestors tree. I owe you nothing.” Bayern Munich: “Franck accepts his words were unwise.”Still acceptable on racism: Serie A – cogent “sincere regret” for the “No To Racism” posters they put up this ages featuring monkeys with corrective faces. CEO Luigi De Siervo: “I realise now these were inappropriate. But what cannot be questioned is the strong, connected accusation of racism by Serie A.”• Additionally continuing close in 2019: a) Uefa, allowance Porto of racism in September afterwards a fan claimed he was apropos to himself as a antic aback he led chants of “monkey” while a atramentous amateur lined up a penalty. The fan said: “Everyone in Portugal knows me as Monkey, it’s my nickname. This is an awkward aberration from Uefa.” Uefa accustomed the defence. And b) Downing Street, 10 canicule afterwards Boris Johnson’s win, borderline why racists were activity emboldened: “Racism has no abode in football, and we charge accost this abandoned behaviour. There is added assignment to be done by the football authorities ... We don’t aphorism out demography added steps, if required.”Jack Leach, charwoman his glasses at one end as history abundant at the other. “They bare cleaning. I apperceive I attending brainless aback I am out there. But it got the job done.” See additionally the slow-mo video of the year:

Fun End Of Year Sports Awards Editable - sport award ideas | sport award ideas Came in July: Liverpool FC aggravating to brand the chat “Liverpool”. The bid was agape aback by admiral due to the “geographical acceptation of the city”; the club said it would “continue aggressively to accompany those who illegally accomplishment our bookish property”.Bernard Tomic – fined for not aggravating at Wimbledon again. Tomic appealed to get his £45,000 award-winning money aback afterwards his 58-minute avenue in July; Wimbledon said no. Tomic: “They’re biting me with what they’re saying. I don’t charge the money. It’s aloof about what’s right.”Out of annual aftermost January, Fulham approved a aggregation yoga affair to about-face assignment anatomy and “find peace”. It concluded aboriginal aback Aboubakar Kamara and Aleksandar Mitrovic had to be “dragged apart” – sources cogent the columnist it was triggered aback “Abou started talking during bashful time – a amenity moment. Mitrovic told him to shut up.”Another big year for poppy annual and sad mascots – but viral retweets of Tranmere’s 2017 abounding anatomy poppy had new resonance in 2019.Sebastian Vettel, 32 – swapping the finishing position cards at the Canadian Grand Prix in June afterwards a five-second amends denied him victory. Vettel, who put “1” abutting to his car, and “2” abutting to Lewis Hamilton’s, said: “This is a amiss world. This is not fair.”Italian Serie C club Viterbese – reacting to a five-year ban for vice-president Luciano Camilli for punching action admiral Giorgio La Cava “and blame his legs away”. The club alleged the ban “squalid” and “slander”, alleging Arezzo’s La Cava affronted it by shouting: “You suck, bits fans.” The ban was cut to 20 months on appeal.Came from Zamalek admiral Murtada Mansour in Egypt: burglary Christian Gross in comedy during a 1-1 draw for actuality “a failure, a bones … I went to the bathrobe allowance at half‑time and told the players to avoid him.” Mansour said critics pointing to his man-management almanac – including his 2016 move to appoint “sorcerers” due to three players “being bewitched”, and the actuality that he’s now on his fourth administrator aback burglary Gross in May – should “know this: I’m not some crazy guy.”1) Ex-Notts County buyer Alan “Big Alan” Hardy – aggravating to betrayal “the arbitrary ancillary of fans” in January by announcement screenshots of two adverse tweets from the aforementioned fan, but accidentally announcement a photo of his penis instead.2) @Cristiano – tweeting a private-jet selfie in January on the aforementioned day he was fined £16.6m for tax artifice and Emiliano Sala went missing in a alike crash. Three emojis: smiley face, alike demography off, thumbs up.3) Adidas UK in July, active its #DareToCreate amusing media attack to advance Arsenal’s new kit: auto-generating images of the band featuring the Twitter handles of users who aggregate the hashtag. Adidas said the aftereffect – their official annual tweeting a alternation of racist slurs with the bulletin “welcome to the squad” – was an adventitious corruption “of a personalisation artisan created to acquiesce aflame admirers to get their name on the jersey. We accept angry the functionality off.”4) Fleetwood armchair Andy Pilley, @capboy70, cogent admirers to vote Tory or he’d shut the club down.5) And Welsh Fire candid drillmaster Gary Kirsten, assuming his best activity in October. “Can’t delay for The Hundred Draft and to aces the band on Sunday at 7pm. #TheHundredDraft.”Was lower alliance clubs live-tweeting the colour as able-bodied as the action:1) @lossiemouthfc, April: “8.20pm: Bold delayed briefly while the adjudicator spews in the centre amphitheater … 8.22pm: That’s him done yakking up his tea and we’re on the go again.”2) Berwick Rangers’ @OfficialBRFC, March: “Cowdenbeath decay a bend and Berwick get the adventitious to bright … Ugly scenes in the dugout as Cowdenbeath’s administrator has aloof told Johnny Harvey to ‘take his face for a sh*te’ #BRFC.”3) @sligorovers, February: “9 min. The brawl is kicked out of play, arresting the box of chips endemic by the fan at the Joma sign. Abounding chips abatement to the ground. (0-0).”

10 Best Sport Certificates images | Certificate, Track, field .. | sport award ideas 4) @AFCFylde, October: “80’ There’s a abeyance in comedy as a rather ample man storms the field, topless, with a boutonniere of flowers. (4-0).”5) And @NuneatonBoroFC, activity for a face-palm emoji afterwards their babysitter Tony Breeden came up to booty a amends in November: “61‘ He’s absent and has bankrupt the lights in the terrace. What accept I aloof witnessed.”Sarah Thomas, September – pond the approach and back, afresh back, afresh aback again. The 37-year-old blight survivor from Colorado did it in 54 hours; the avenue was 80 miles, but flat pulls meant she concluded up pond 130. “I got stung in the face by a jellyfish. I’m ambrosial annoyed appropriate now.”Was Sky spotting Huddersfield’s admission administrator Jan Siewert in the directors’ box in January, and activity in for an absolute interview. “It was bizarre,” said Man City fan Martin Warhurst later. “I was sat in the army and aback I was acquainted of a guy advancing appear me from the right. He anticipation I was the manager; I said: ‘No, no, that’s not me. I’m Martin from Wakefield.’”Billy Sharp’s beat boob ambition anniversary in February – his accolade to WWE brilliant Mick Foley’s “Mr Socko”. @RealMickFoley alleged it “TREMENDOUS” and angry up a ages later. Sharp: “After the bold I had 200 texts afresh God knows how abounding on Twitter. Abutting affair I apperceive Mick Foley is accepting breakfast at my house.”National alliance @AFCFylde - ambrosial in February for three youths who “duped our amphitheater anchorperson into allurement for a white Nissan Micra NE14 ABJ to be confused aftermost night”. The boys came forward; Fylde gave them chargeless shirts.Calling it early: three Spurs fans, missing the Champions Alliance improvement at Ajax in May afterwards abrogation the arena aloof afore half-time, cerebration it was abounding time due to actuality “pretty drunk”. James Perkins: “We anticipation we were abrogation at the absolute time.” He said they were “pretty confused” at the base “when no one was stood about us cat-and-mouse for a train”.Came from New Zealand’s Jimmy Neesham, tweeting beeline afterwards their Apple Cup defeat to England in July. @JimmyNeesh: “Kids, don’t booty up sport. Booty up baking or something. Die at 60, absolutely fat and happy.”Was Coco Gauff during her Wimbledon breakthrough. On her self-image: “Weird. Weird, goofy, and, I don’t know. Yeah, awe-inspiring and goofy, I guess.” On her mum’s anniversary dance: “I didn’t acquaint her, but she’s activity to go viral, I know. She’s activity to be a meme.” And on why the best bit of the summer was rapper Jaden Smith tweeting her. “Obviously the tennis is abundant … but I’ve looked up to Jaden for so long. Bodies who chase me apperceive that’s all I column about. It was ambrosial agitative for me.”Among 2019’s regrets: Abundant Britain actuality butterfingers from the men’s 4x400m at the European Athletics Aggregation Championships in August afterwards allotment assets attempt doodle Youcef Zatat in the calendar by mistake; and Telstar striker Jordie van der Laan actuality sacked in May for calling in ailing so he could biking to London to watch Ajax comedy Spurs. Telstar admiral spotted him in the army on TV; Van der Laan said: “It was not my best decision.”Colorado Rapids – cancelling their post-game fireworks in August due to “plague”. Admiral said “the attendance of plague-infested fleas affecting prairie dog colonies” about Dick’s Sporting Goods Park meant the club “had no addition but to cancel”. A Rapids fan in a affliction doctor affectation told the Denver Post. “I assumption we’ll aloof embrace it.”Solid brawl from David Duval at the Open in Royal Portrush in July: birdieing his aboriginal two holes, extensive the 5th one off the lead, afresh hitting a quadruple bogey, a bogey and a nonuple bogey 14 at the par-five 7th afterwards accident two tee shots afresh arena the amiss ball. He accomplished with a 20-over 91, but said he never anticipation about walking away. “If you play, you column your score. Is there some adumbration of embarrassment? I don’t know. What I shot, I put on the board.”2018: David Beckham accepts the Uefa president’s award. “I’m actual honoured, honoured to be here.”2019: Eric Cantona accepts the Uefa president’s award: “As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods, they annihilate us for their sport. Anon science will not alone be able to apathetic the ageing of cells, anon science will fix the beef to the accompaniment and so we will become eternal. Alone accidents, crimes, wars will still annihilate us, but unfortunately, crimes, wars, will multiply. I adulation football. Thank you.”“Wayne Hennessey is ‘desperate’ to apprentice about the Nazis, says Roy Hodgson” – theguardian.com, April. Runner-up: The Times, aftermost week: “West Ham footballer Michail Antonio comatose Lamborghini while dressed as snowman.”Making it big on Twitter in 2019: @visualsatire’s Football Administrator Beard on Politicians. Including acclaimed works “Henry VIII with the beard and earpiece of Phil Brown”, and “Angela Merkel with the face of Steve Bruce”.

Volleyball Certificate Templates | Softball coach .. | sport award ideas Fallon Sherrock, @Fsherrock: “Really active now.... ! I accept done it again.. ! OMG”. Sherrock said this month’s PDC Apple Darts Championship run was “incredible… the actuality that all these bodies are tweeting me, abnormally Billie Jean King. Oh my god... I mean, this is me. I’m aloof a accustomed person.”Defining VAR’s solid admission season: the official @Premierleague annual – agitation online derision in November afterwards Martin Atkinson begin Roberto Firmino’s appropriate nipple gluttonous to accretion an arbitrary advantage: “The red band was accumbent to Firmino’s armpit, which was hardly advanced of the aftermost Villa defender.”• The year’s absolute VAR decision: Bundesliga 2, October – VAR operators spotting a sub who was abating up abaft the ambition had affected a aberrant attempt with his foot, millimetres afore it had gone out of comedy for a goal-kick. The verdict: a amends and chicken card. Teammate Alexander Mühling: “The boy didn’t apperceive that rule. None of us knew that rule.”Was Luis Suárez – hailed for “reaching aiguille Luis Suárez” in Uruguay’s Copa América win over Chile in June after: a) Seeming to address for a handball in the box by the goalkeeper; and b) Reacting to an adversary benumbed a angle face by active appear the adjudicator brandishing an abstract card.Days afterwards Cardiff Met administrator Christian Edwards was taken ill in November, adolescent son Isaac stepped up to alter him with this teamtalk afterwards an bizarre win over Cefn Druids.Katarina Johnson-Thompson, nine canicule afterwards heptathlon gold in October. @JohnsonThompson: “If anyone wants to apperceive how my off division is activity … I’ve been to two karaoke confined in 48 hours. My called songs are Bonnie Tyler ‘Total concealment of the heart’ and Busta Rhymes ‘Look at me now’.”2.1m wholesome angle for this acknowledgment to England’s Candid Apple Cup win.A appropriate accomplishment from Harlequins’ Joe Marler in November – absolutely committing to his metaphor. “We’ve got addition anniversary to get aback on the horse, and booty that horse to the water. And you can ask that horse, you can say: ‘Hey, horsey, do you appetite to accept a alcohol or do you appetite to swim?’ It’s up to that horse to afresh realise what he wants to do in his life. That horse, at the moment, wants to go out on Saturday and he wants to say ‘hello’ to those fans. And he goes : ‘I’m apologetic about the aftereffect aftermost week, but I’m activity to accord a bigger achievement adjoin Bath.’ He’s a hardly Irish horse. So we are attractive forward, like I say, to accepting aback on that horse.” Interviewer: “And are you attractive advanced to accepting aback on the horse?” Marler: “I don’t like horses, I can’t ride.”Headlining 12 months of viral beastly cameos:• Multiple bodies causing time added on, including at Everton v Wolves in February and a Real Salt Lake bold in July at Rio Tinto Amphitheater in the US, area a avoid pitch-invaded aftermost year. • A ailing fox elimination itself on the Oval in July during Surrey v Glamorgan;• A accumulate abolition the Minnesota Twins alert in two nights, authoritative the Twins’ dugout “scatter in fear”. • A bee army sending players to the accommodation at Sri Lanka v South Africa at Chester-le-Street in June. Faf du Plessis: “It is actual funny actually. It’s like someone’s run a apparatus gun through the players.” • Two stags abolition Fort William’s training this month. @Mocko500: “Fort William approved to action them contracts, but they were two deer.” • A awkward first-half possum dabbling Puebla’s cruise to Veracruz in January. Veracruz said the possum was “treated by vets afore abiding to the wild”. • Half a dozen hippos bistro Letaba’s rugby angle in May. The club told South African media: “These boys aloof came up from the river and started grazing.” • And the purest ambition anniversary of 2019 – a deer hitting the net, afresh dancing away. 20.8m views.Was Freddie, accepting his life-changing aboriginal attending central Goodison Park.Also causing “something in my eye” tweets in 2019:• David Martin adhering dad Alvin afterwards his West Ham admission at 33; • Tearful tennis adept Nicolas Mahut actuality consoled by his adolescent son in June afterwards defeat at Roland Garros to Leonardo Mayer, who additionally larboard in tears; • And Jordan Henderson with his dad Brian in June afterwards the Champions Alliance final. Brian, a blight survivor, said later: “When he was 12 I took him to the Champions Alliance final, and aback they came out to the Champions Alliance music he said: ‘Dad, I’m activity to comedy it one day.’ Not alone already but twice, and now he’s won one. So the tears come, you alpha shaking, you grab the wife, you grab the daughter-in-law, you grab anybody that’s about you. I’m aloof so happy.”Going the added mile: Duncan Ferguson’s Everton ambition celebrators; José Mourinho advantageous Callum, 15, with a pasta cafeteria for his abetment adjoin Olympiakos; and this Wimbledon tennis ballboy who, admitting a sustained, shock assimilation from a rogue sprinkler, backward in place, cocked and straight-faced. Until the atomic beam got out.From Rebekah Vardy, asked if she’d confronted Coleen Rooney afterwards their amusing media advancing calm in October. “That would be like arguing with a pigeon. You can acquaint it that you are appropriate and it is wrong, but it’s still activity to bits in your hair.” How To Leave Sport Award Ideas Without Being Noticed | Sport Award Ideas - sport award ideas | Encouraged for you to my personal blog, in this particular time period I'm going to demonstrate with regards to keyword. 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[thisdaynews]

Megan Rapinoe: Ballon d'Or winner on Donald Trump, arrogance and equal pay

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/megan-rapinoe-ballon-dor-winner-on-donald-trump-arrogance-and-equal-pay/

Megan Rapinoe: Ballon d'Or winner on Donald Trump, arrogance and equal pay

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Megan Rapinoe on goal celebrations, finding her voice and Donald Trump

Lifting the Women’s World Cup, winning countless individual awards and taking on the president of the United States – welcome to Megan Rapinoe’s 2019.

The USA winger, 34, has risen to global prominence as much for her achievements off the pitch as on it. She has taken home the Golden Boot, the Ballon d’Or and the Fifa Best prizes, all while capturing attention for her strong opinions and committed campaigning for equal pay.

In a wide-ranging BBC Sport interview, Rapinoe speaks about quarrelling with Donald Trump, the arrogance of ‘The Pose’ and why she believes in standing up for Colin Kaepernick.

‘I didn’t logically understand the gravity of having a president quarrel with you’ – Rapinoe on Trump

USA president Donald Trump answered Megan Rapinoe’s initial comments on Twitter

In June, US President Donald Trumpcriticised Rapinoeafter she told magazine ‘Eight by Eight’ she would not go to the White House if the USA team won the Women’s World Cup.

Honestly, it felt much less serious than it actually was. I didn’t logically understand the gravity of having a president quarrel with you.

Presidents do not quarrel with people on Twitter, presidents don’t go after members of their own team and put undue pressure on them before their biggest game of the tournament. Presidents don’t bash every single powerful woman he possibly could, so he’s not presidential to me.

The team, they were pretty chill. It was like everybody had my back and it didn’t become a thing within the group.

‘It’s the same group trying to keep everybody else out of power’ – Rapinoe on Kaepernick

Rapinoe was one of the first athletes to joinColin Kaepernick’s protest against police brutalityby kneeling during the American national anthem. After team regulations changed, she now protests by refusing to sing the national anthem and does not put her hand on the badge. She has said she will probably never sing the national anthem again.

Before the 2012 Olympics, I decided to come out. It felt weird that I was not out.

There were so many positive outcomes from that, helping to move that conversation forward, in asking people to be my ally and support me. And that did not mean you were gay or fully understood it the way that I do, but I needed people to be my ally.

Fast forward to 2016 and I’m watching the Colin Kaepernick stuff unfolding and immediately I felt like: ‘I do not know exactly what it is like to be you but I believe you and what you are saying.’

I believe that in order for change to happen it has to be more than the oppressed person’s responsibility. Going through all of the backlash and the craziness and the hatred, that only solidified my understanding of myself and the power in my voice.

I think everyone has a responsibility to do whatever it is they can in the most impactful way they can, to make the world a better place.

Rapinoe does not hold her hand on her heart in a silent protest for black rights

I am a semi-famous person on a semi-famous team – on a very successful team – that has media access every single day in a growing platform. I think everything is connected – whether it is the fight for equal pay, a fight for open access to sport, racial inequalities, police brutality, LGBTQ+.

It is all the same group in power over-lording over everybody else trying to keep everybody else out of power and not really sharing in the wealth – not just in money – but in the wealth of what it means to live a really full life where you actually feel free to live like how you want.

I think it’s still evolving but I realised that it’s all the same just in different ways and people deal with different things but we all need to be in together to get change.

Now there are so many more opportunities and so many more lanes for people to be in that there is an opportunity and a space for you to be exactly who you want to be. Don’t let anyone ever tell you what that is. Never let anybody else define you or your dream or what you want to be.

‘You English are so uptight sometimes’ – Rapinoe on celebrations

Rapinoe has gone from a shy girl in school who did not know she was gay to a public icon who cannot go out without people stopping her for selfies. The USA winger is in an incredibly polarising personality – gaining support for her outspoken approach and being criticised by those who deem her too brash and arrogant. Her iconic but unabashed goal celebration, standing confidently with her arms held aloft, has become symbolic of that split in opinion – charismatic defiance or overconfident? Team-mate Alex Morgan’s tea-sipping celebration after scoring against England also created headlines.

Rapinoe’s goal celebration was a recurring image of the 2019 World Cup

School was a little weird. I am a twin, my sister Rachael was really confident at that time so I literally followed her around. I did not know I was gay so as soon as I figured that out it was so obvious – thanks nobody for telling me!

I also had sport to gain my confidence, that was the place where I got my identity. Being on the USA team gives you confidence – to be able to grow up and mature on a team that has 23 other women who are as elite and confident as you is amazing.

I did ‘The Pose’ [the goal celebration] for the first time against Australia in a friendly. They were one of the more talked about teams going into the World Cup. There was a lot of hype around it and we wanted to stamp our dominance a little bit.

In the beginning it was a bit of a touch of arrogance. Like: ‘I know you are entertained in this moment and I am the one entertaining you.’ In the World Cup it was much more a defiance but a joy as well, it was about not letting people take any of our joy.

Alex Morgan celebrated scoring against England with a ‘spot of tea’

There was lots of talk about arrogance, celebrating too much, but this is what you want. These are the goals you want and this team is giving it to you – it’s defiance but it’s cheeky. I feel like we’re going to have fun. We have a very serious role to play so it is kind of a balance of that. We have always done this – we have done cartwheels, sang into microphones, made snow angels when we played in the snow.

The next level trolling with the tea [by Alex Morgan] is so funny; it’s so funny because you English are so uptight sometimes. It was just so perfect, you know?

I said after the Thailand game [where the USA team were criticised by pundits and former players for their celebrations in a 13-0 win at the World Cup in June] – if anybody wants to come after us for not playing the right way, for not being good ambassadors, then I am happy to have that conversation.

‘Milk comes with four selfies’ – Rapinoe on fame

Going for milk now comes with four selfies – that is the usual accompaniment.

No, seriously though, I can go places but there’s not really a place that I’m going where people don’t recognise me. Even if people don’t come over, you get the glances around you. I’m also a really observant person in general, so I feel like I sort of feel everything that is going on all the time. It’s been totally insane, in the best way, in the most exhausting way. It’s been hard in ways with all the travelling around.

I have a lot of miles on the airlines travelling all over but it’s kind of amazing to have the career where I started at this particular point and it just seems like every year it is getting blown out of the water and the sport is growing so much, so I have this real perspective of where we have come from.

Knowing what we did this summer and feeling that and still figuring it out, you cannot help but feel surreal and awestruck by everything that is happening.

I just got put on a rocket ship. I am enjoying the ride but I’m like this is crazy. In a good way.

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Women’s World Cup 2019: See all six goals that won Megan Rapinoe the Golden Boot

‘It would be a nice little cherry on top’ – Rapinoe on equal pay

The US women’s football team have been fighting for equal pay since spring 2018, when Abby Wambach gave a commencement address at Barnard College. On 8 March 2019 the team sued the US Soccer Federation, claiming “purposeful gender discrimination”. During the Women’s World Cup the usual chant of “USA” was changed to “equal pay” by fans in stadiums and across the world, but since August mediation talks have broken down.

I feel like every team in the World Cup, in a sense we were all on the same team fighting for something bigger, so I feel like I am getting this praise on behalf of everyone else. We were able to transcend sport in such an incredible way.

In sport you always want to win everything, but we’ve been able to have this impact off the field that is changing people’s lives, we are changing our own lives and hopefully pushing the sport forward to get the respect and credit it is due. To be one of the people, to be at one of the teams really at the forefront of that, is insane.

Very early on you realise that it’s not just a national team, it’s not just a team that gets together, it is so much bigger.

Understanding that we essentially are this really unique, travelling team that represents America all over the country, where we are charged with inspiring and motivating young girls, boys and people everywhere.

Equal pay would be a nice little cherry on top of this year. I don’t think any female professional footballer has anything left to prove, it’s just a case of everyone else figuring it out.

BBC Sport has launched #ChangeTheGame to showcase female athletes in a way they never have been before. Through more live women’s sport available to watch across the BBC in 2019, complemented by our journalism, we are aiming to turn up the volume on women’s sport and alter perceptions.Find out more here.

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[druigseurydice]

Soulmate!Ashton au

Summary: When Ashton's soulmate tattoo shows up on his arm, he wonders for weeks when he'll meet her, and he finds out in a....unique way. A/N: So this is my first time ever posting my writing on tumblr, so feedback would be appreciated! Sorry that it's kinda long but I hope you guys like it! ************** Ashton traced the words on his arm again for the millionth time in the past 3 weeks. "You and me up against the great unknown." The words were familiar to him, of course. They were from a song the band had released not too long ago with One OK Rock, Take What You Want. These words were the first words his soulmate would say to him when they finally met. It's said that the words appear on some part of your body when you're going to meet your soulmate soon, but Ashton had a hard time believing he'd find her on tour. They met millions of people on tour, how would he know when he found the right one? What if he walked past her without speaking to her, letting her slip away? He'd been worrying since the words had shown up on his forearm 3 weeks ago and the rest of the boys could tell. Ashton thought they were lucky, none of them had their Soul Tattoos yet, so it looked like they'd have a while before having to think about it. Why'd he have to get the words this early in life? Why couldn't it wait until the band took a break? After another week of thinking and obsessing over the words, the worry became something he didn't think about as often. It was still there, just less prominent once the tour started. He started to worry less and think more about what she's like. Where is she from? Would he meet her at one of their shows, or would he find her while the band was exploring a city on a day off? He figured she was a fan, considering the first thing she would say to him would be lyrics from a song his band was featured in. Almost exactly a month after the words appeared, a month of creating questions in his mind, he finally got some answers. He was relaxing in his bunk on the tour bus, watching some covers of the band's songs on YouTube. He did this every now and then, when he had the time. He loved watching how talented some of the fans were and how much of an impact their music had. After watching a few, he came across one he hadn't seen before. The title of the video was simply "Take What You Want- One OK Rock ft. 5SOS Cover." He clicked on the video since this song didn't have many covers and found that it was a band covering the song, not just one person. As he listened, he noted that they were pretty good, especially the lead singer. She was the only girl in the band and her voice was amazing, almost mesmerizing. He paused the video after the first chorus and walked to the back of the bus where the rest of the boys were. "Guys, I found a cover of Take What You Want and it's really good," Ashton announced, making the other boys pause the FIFA game they'd been playing. "Well," Michael said, "Quit standing there and show us!" He wouldn't admit it, but Michael liked watching covers of their music almost as much as Ashton did. Ashton sat on the couch between Luke and Calum, eager to show them what he'd found. He backed the video up to the beginning and hit play. The girl in the video was beautiful and had a voice to match. Ashton could tell the guys agreed with him as they grew more and more emersed in the video as it went on. It looked like someone was holding the camera and smoothly moving around the band as they played, getting different angles of all 4 of the band members, but mostly the lead girl. At first, the girl didn't look into the camera. Through the first verse and chorus, she sang to herself, squeezing her eyes closed as she sang. The boys could tell she was nervous by the way she kept her eyes shut and they each laughed a little. All but Ashton. He couldn't laugh because he was captivated by the emotion in her voice as she sang. The song was a breakup song and he could hear it in her voice that she was hurting. He didn't recognize it the first time he watched the video, but now it was evident, at least to him. It almost physically hurt him to see this girl, no more than 18, he was sure, singing with so much anger and pain. By the second verse, the part Luke had sang in the song, her eyes were open but she still hasn't looked into the camera. "Still remember a time when you felt like home. You and me up against the great unknown." As she sang that second line, the line that had originally belonged to Michael, the unknown girl stared straight into the camera for the first time and Ashton felt his world flip. He was 22 years old, and yet he had never felt an emotion as strong as the one he felt when he looked into her eyes. He let out a slight gasp, just loud enough for the other boys to hear. They all already knew about the words on the oldest boy's arm, so they could guess fairly easily what was going on. Luke, Michael, and Calum all tried to get Ashton to talk, to pull him out of the little trance he was in, but he couldn't stop watching the video. He watched every little movement the beautiful girl made, listened intently to every single word that left her mouth. The pain in her voice was more obvious now as she sang the bridge and it cut Ashton, cut him deep to hear how bad his soulmate was hurting. It was then that he decided he would find her as soon as he could and make her forget what was causing her so much pain. ************* Two months. It had been two months since he watched the video of his soulmate and he was still no closer to finding her as the day he started looking. He tried to find her online, but the cover video had nothing in the description. No social media links, no names for the band or for the individuals. Nothing. He'd been keeping his eyes open at shows, looking everywhere he could for her. He looked into the crowds as much as he could, though it was harder for him than for the rest of the boys since he was at the back of the stage. His band members tried to calm his as best as they could and he appreciated their efforts, but it wasn't really helping. "Ashton, man," Calum said one night, "you're going to find her. She's your soulmate, you'll probably bump into her when you least expect it." "Yeah, maybe you haven't found her yet because you're looking too hard." Luke agreed. Ashton has been telling them about his idea of just posting a link to the video on twitter and asking the fans if they knew who it was in the video. Surely someone would know her. But he knew the guys were right, the perfect time would come. He was just so ready to see her in person, to hold her and hear her laugh and to learn all there was to learn about her. He knew it would come soon, but he was just so damn excited. The next day, they were in the dressing room after sound check, waiting for their time to go onstage. Of course, without the music to distract him, Ashton was over thinking again. Would she be here tonight? What if one of the other guys was her favorite and she was disappointed that he was her soulmate? How much longer would he have to wait? He was getting anxious and he couldn't sit still anymore. He excused himself from the room and walked around for a while, not caring if any fans saw him. The questions swirled around in his mind until he thought he was going insane. 'This search is going to be the death of me,' he thought bitterly. He was so distracted that he didn't see the girl turning around the corner, going the opposite direction as him. He bumped into her, sending her to the ground before he could catch her. He didn't even think to apologize, more scared of the fact that he had hurt her. When he could tell she was fine, he sighed a breath of relief, offering her a hand to help her up. "I'm so sorry," she apologized as she grasped his and and pulled herself up. She looked at him for the first time and smiled widely once she realized who she had ran into. She opened her mouth to say something, but Ashton beat her to the punch. "I know you," he blurted out, that being the only thing his mind could come up with at the moment. Because it was true. He did know her, she was the girl from the YouTube video, his soulmate. As she processed the drummer's words, her eyes widened slightly in shock and looked at the inside of her wrist. There, in a small font, the words 'I know you' were looking back at her. She turned her wrist to show Ashton, a blush spreading across her cheeks as she understood what this meant. He traced the words on her wrist for a moment before smiling at her and showing her the words on his forearm. She carefully examined the words on his arm before whispering in disappointment, "Those aren't the first words I said to you though." She looked down, not wanting the gorgeous boy she'd loved forever to see her cry. He tilted her chin up anyway and smiled a breathtaking smile. "I know you. I saw your cover on YouTube, I've been trying to find you for weeks." He smiled at her brightly again, happy for two reasons. One was that he had found her. She was there, in person with him. And two, as she smiled the biggest, most adorable grin he had ever seen, he realized that she was happy about being his soulmate. All his worries disappeared as he took her face in his hands. He leaned towards her slowly, running his thumb across her lips. "What's your name?" He asked her quietly, suddenly aware that even though he knew her face, he didn't know her name. She closed her eyes, afraid that this was all a dream and that she'd wake up any second. "Y/N," she whispered, afraid to talk any louder with him being so close. "Y/N," he whispered back before closing the distance between them and kissing her softly, adoringly. He'd been waiting for this for so long. He pulled away slowly and grabbed her hand, smiling at her yet again as he lead her down the hall. "Well Y/N," he began, "since you're my soulmate, you should meet the rest of the band. You guys will be seeing a lot of each other, so you better get used to them." He turned around to wink at her, continuing to lead them to the dressing room. Butterflies errupted in her stomach when he winked at her and she knew she'd never been happier than in this moment.

[pugs-and-cupcakes]

Depressed Ashton

So I decided to turn this blog into a mix of different fanfics. Be sure to send in your requests. I just graduated college so I need something to do when I'm not working! "Have you seen Ash?" Calum asked his two other band mates. The curly-headed boy was nowhere to be found and it honestly made Calum nervous. He knew the drummer had been down lately, and he really did not want him to slip back into old habits. "Haven't seen him all day." Luke denied. They both looked over to Michael. He was playing Fifa and was completely oblivious to the world. Luke reached over and smacked his arm. "What!" Michael yelled, too engrossed in his video game to even hear the question that had been asked. "Ashton. Have you seen him?" Calum asked again. "Have you checked his room?" Michael asked. Calum felt so stupid. That was the most obvious place to look, yet he hadn't even thought of it. He mentally face-palmed before setting off In his search for his older bandmate. "Hey Ash." Calum called, knocking on Ashton's door. It took a few minutes, but the door slowly opened to reveal the tear-stained face of Ashton Irwin himself. "Woah, Dude! Are you okay? What happened?" Calum asked worriedly. Ashton just shook his head. "I'm fine, Calum. Really, I am." Ashton smiled, but it didn't quite reach his eyes. Calum knew that something definitely was not fine, and he definitely wasn't about to let this go. Calum knew too much about Ashton's past. More than He even wanted to know. He had a long history of depression, anxiety, and bad habits That Calum didn't even want to consider. "You're obviously not, Ashton." Calum argued, crossing his arms over his chest. "It's just me, Ash. You can trust me not to tell anyone. Even Luke and Mikey!" "You promise?" Ashton asked hesitantly. Calum nodded his head to reassure Ashton. "Of course. You have my word as a bassist!" Calum promised, causing Ashton to chuckle lightly. "I got a DM from a fan on Twitter..." Ashton trailed off for a moment in order to compose his thoughts. Calum bit his lip, knowing that he probably wouldn't like where this conversation was going. "She basically told me how stupid I was for quitting self-harm. She said I wasn't really hurting if I was able to stop that easily, and that I really only did it for the publicity." "Okay, first off she obviously wasn't a true fan if she said something like that." Calum started off, extremely angry that someone had even considered saying those things to someone as sweet and caring as Ashton. "You've been through a lot and no one can ever tell you that you haven't. I honestly don't know how you made it through all of those tough times. Yes, you self-harmed. I should know, it was such a struggle getting you to stop! You're a strong person, Ashton. Don't let a hater ruin everything you've accomplished." "Thanks, Cal." Ashton whispered with tears in his eyes. The girl had certainly struck a nerve with him, but Calum was right. No one could tell him what he's been through. When he self-harmed, it was honestly the darkest time of his life and he wouldn't want to return to that mind frame ever again. "It really means a lot to me. You honestly have no idea." "Don't thank me, Ashton. Thank yourself. You've done so much for us and everyone you come into contact with. I want to personally give her a piece of my mind!" "Don't do that. I'm fine now really. Thanks for being a good friend. I just got a little depressed because of it." "Well, don't hide from us!" Both boys turned to see Luke standing in the hallway with his hands on his hips, obviously upset that no one had told him that Ashton was depressed again. "Lukey..." Ashton let out, turning to the boy he viewed as a younger brother. "No, Ashton!" Luke raised his voice. "You know that you're supposed to come to one of us when you're feeling this way. It's a band rule, so don't hide. We care about you too much to let you sink down again!" "I'm sorry Luke. Will cuddles make up for it?" Ashton joked, teasing the boy. "Perhaps I could cuddle with you if you need it that much..." Luke trailed off before tackling the oldest boy in a giant hug. Calum watched on, trying and failing to hide his chuckles at his friends. Luke would always be the baby and Ashton would always be the glue that held their band together. Depressed or not.

[everythng-is-blue]

hiiiiiii! can you do this prompt with ash pleaseeeeee? “pfft, i’m not jealous”

sure! here it is i had lots of fun writing it, i hope you like it (:

  Being Ashton’s girlfriend, whenever he wanted to have a chill day and Calum was home, it would always be the three of us hanging out. And for the most part I didn’t mind it, other than when they tried to have farting contests after we had fast food.Today was one of those days, and here we were, sat on the couch while Ashton and Calum played video games.

“Hey, (y/n), wanna play with us?” Calum offered, only taking a quick second to look away from the screen and over at me.

“Nah,” I drawled out. “Wouldn’t want to kick your asses and crush your precious egos.”

Calum scoffed. “On what planet would that happen?”

“Earth, mate.” Ashton spoke up. “She’s beat me a quite a few times.”

“Well, that isn’t saying much.” Calum teased.

It was Ashton’s time to scoff, taking a throw pillow from the couch and hitting Calum in the head with it, causing him to killed on Call Of Duty just as the round ended.

“What the hell, man?” Calum threw his hands up. “I almost had the game winning kill!”

“Oh well,” Ashton shrugged.

Calum shook his head and got on his phone, pouting to himself.

Ashton turned to look at me and kissed my cheek. “You sure you don’t want to play?”

“Yeah, I’m good.” I nodded. “I think I’m going to go get something to eat. Want anything?”

Ashton thought for a moment, then said, “Yeah, bring me some chips, please.”

“You got it.” I smiled as I got up and made my way to the kitchen.

I got a bag of chips for Ashton and grabbed a couple granola bars for me and walked back to the living room. As I walked in, I saw Ashton and Calum looking at Calum’s phone.

“Dude, she’s so hot,” Calum said as he scrolled through what looked like some girl’s instagram pictures.

“Look,” Ashton gasped. “She even plays drums.”

I sat in my spot next to Ashton, throwing his chips at him. “What are you guys doing?”

“Oh,” Calum said as he looked up from his phone. “Just looking at this girl’s pictures. She’s a newfound singer and she just followed me.”

“Why?” I asked.

Calum gave his phone a confused look, ignoring my question. “She came to one of our shows?”

“Really?” Ashton said as he continued to look at the phone.

“Yeah,” Calum responded. “The caption says, ‘Tonight was definitely one of the best nights of my life. I got to see one of my most favorite bands perform live, and Ashton, my most favorite guy ever, made eye contact with me AND gave me his drumsticks. I’ll definitely be using these every time I play drums.’ Dude, she’s so into you.”

Ashton looked around the room, looking like he was thinking about something.

“What’s up?” Calum tried to gain his attention back.

“Oh, um, I was just trying to remember if I saw her.” Ashton mumbled.

Calum gave him a look. “Obviously you did, you gave her your drumsticks.”

“Yeah, I know, I just…” He trailed off.

I’d had enough, to be honest. I was sitting right next to him, yet he was being all googly-eyed over some other girl. Who does that? I sighed dramatically as I grabbed my phone and ate a granola bar as I scrolled through twitter.

“What’s wrong?” I heard Ashton say. Oh, so now he wanted to pay attention to me?

“Nothing,” I said under my breath.

“It has to be something, you look like Calum after I hit him with that pillow.” Ashton said.

“Seriously, it’s nothing. I’m fine.” I lied.

Ashton was quiet for a moment. “Wait, are you jealous?”

I scoffed. “Me? Jealous? Nah.”

Ashton chuckled at my response. “You can’t lie for shit, babe. You’re definitely jealous.”

“Pfft, I’m not jealous.” I lied again.

Ashton took my phone and granola bar out of my hand, sat them down on the coffee table, and pulled me into his chest. “Look, you have nothing to be jealous over, alright? I don’t like that girl. Just because we have one thing in common and she likes my band doesn’t mean I want to be with her. I have an extremely beautiful, sweet, amazing, supportive, and loving girlfriend whom I love very much. You’re the only one for me, (y/n).”

“Wait, did you just say ‘whom’?” Calum spoke up.

“Don’t ruin the moment, mate.” Ashton joked.

“Well, I guess if there’s nothing to worry about then I’m not jealous anymore.” I told him.

“Good, cause there’s not. I don’t want anyone else but you.” Ashton grinned, lifting my chin up and kissing me.

“Ugh, enough of the lovey dovey shit, let’s play fifa.” Calum groaned.

Ashton rolled his eyes. “Looks like Cal wants to get his ass kicked again.”

“What do you mean? You didn’t even beat me last game.” Calum gave him a look.

“Keep tellin’ yourself that, kid.” Ashton chuckled as he patted Calum’s knee, earning a laugh from me and a glare from Calum.

if you want to request anything then definitely do so, requests are always open x

send me prompts from this list and a boy from 5sos or one direction

[sav2880]

The Good, The Bad, and the Salty: Nintendo Switch

Let’s take a look at the Nintendo Switch in three true dimentions. Two you know. The third, you’ll find out. 

First, the topic. Nintendo’s new system, the Switch, a true home/console hybrid that will be released on March 3rd, 2017 for $299. It will contain versions of the console with Gray JoyCon controllers, and with Neon Red/Blue controllers. We’ll leave the other topics for the discussion below. 

THE GOOD

The release price is good. While I would have been thrilled if the price was $249 and really undercut the current systems, even factoring in holiday discounts, I am more than satisfied with a $299 price too. For that price, you get a system that is instantly two-player compatible, can go on the road with you, should you desire that, and has Nintendo’s first-party content. If it was any higher than that, I think it would be panned and people would not be able to look past many of the downsides we’ll get to later. At this price, you can. 

Zelda looks fantastic! Yes, Nintendo made you wait that entire hour, played the very, very, very long tease before you got to see Breath Of The Wild. When you did though, you saw that it absolutely represents the quality you would expect out of that franchise, and is absolutely worth the $60 game price moreso than any game that’s being introduced at launch. Oh yes, it IS a launch title too. If it wasn’t, we might be rioting right now. 

Splatoon 2 looks like it’ll be just as much fun too. This was, I think, the sleeper hit of the entire Wii U library due to the fresh view that it gave first person shooter games with a kid-friendly feel, but still more than enough depth to make it great for all ages. Even if the second game isn’t a graphical improvement, there’s no reason the success can’t be continued going forward. 

Bomberman is back!! If any modern system can properly pull off a good multiplayer game like Bomberman, this is the one. The JoyCon split into its two parts is the perfect number of buttons for each player, and combined with local multiplayer, it could be a sleeper hit on the system. 

Local multiplayer is always good. The world that most other companies have forgotten, local multiplayer, will be strong with this system. The fact it’s essentially a portable that docks helps this a lot too, because it’s easy to have multiple Switch systems in one place, and you won’t need internet connections to play together. Provided companies support this, it’s a win for the system. 

The motion gimmicks are not a bad thing either. Look, this is Nintendo’s niche in the market, and because of how they’re doing it this time, they’ve found a good balance between being able to provide nifty motion-based gaming, but still the ability to have more traditional gaming for more than one player on the same console. The Wii was great for motion, and the Wii U was better for a more traditional gaming experience, but only for one player at a time, a lot of the time. This balances all of that out very well. 

THE BAD

A JoyCon is a set, not two damn controllers. I get it. They need to, for posterity, sell both a “L” and a “R” controller. People will lose them, they’re tiny on their own, and if you need to replace one of them, it’s nice to have the option. However, Nintendo is absolutely treating these as two controllers, and pricing them accordingly. I don’t care how much “HD Rumble” you put in that bad boy, or the IR camera that can now tell distance. They are not worth $50 for one-half of a JoyCon set, or $80 for the whole dang thing! If you priced it commiserate to what a PS4 or XBox One controller would be, that might be workable, and I could see $35 for each side in that case, but the price is too much. 

Those gimmick games also aren’t full priced titles. Arms looks pretty neat. It’s also a tech demo, and passing it off as a $60 game is criminal. 1,2,Switch was supposed to be the title that shows off all the crazy features the system has, but we have to buy that separately for $50? Part of what made the Wii great was that you got a game in the box that you could immediately use to learn all the cool features. Now, I’m gonna have to pay extra, and realistically, at least 75% of the people buying this system will go straight to Zelda; Breath Of The Wild, and leave 1,2,Switch just sitting on a store shelf, because Zelda! I know you want your standard game price to be $60, that’s fine, but your stuff better be worth that much. 

Nintendo Online still makes me nervous as heck, and they’re not off to a good start. They obviously know you and I will be skeptical, because you’re going to get the service for free until the fall. Their presentations have not swayed me so far to put that skepticism away, nor to think that they will offer me a product that compares to XBox Live or PlayStation Plus. Their first act was to say that you get a free Virtual Console game each month. But no, it’s not yours to keep forever (or as long as they run the service). It’s also not yours until you cancel your online subscription. Nope, it’s gone after the end of the month and you have to buy it! If you’re expecting me to pay what I think you’re going to make me pay ($50) for a year of your online, I better get games with it that I get to keep while I’m a member, and while I’d be perfectly fine with that being a Virtual Console game, most won’t. This better either be good, or it better be cheap, because if not, it’ll end up in the .... 

THE SALTY

Upon hearing that EA is bringing FIFA to the Switch: Great, there’s another system that they can whore Ultimate Team packs on! 

From @shipwreck on Twitter about the price of the accessories (LINK):  So if the dock costs $90 and the Joy-Cons cost $80... the Switch is a $130 tablet?

About those translators. Did they get an advance copy of the script, because some of them were not as strong as I would have expected for a worldwide presentation!

Since you’re throwing all these Switch pre-orders out there, think you can print off a few more NES Classic devices while you’re at it?! You know, the freaking single-board Linux device that could make you a small mint?! 

On the Splatoon 2 presenter: This is why developers are, well, developers. 

On their “innovation” comments: Really, the only thing you could find innovative about the GameCube was the freaking handle on the back?! That, and you found so much good innovation about the N64?! Wait, what?! 

Hope you enjoyed the initial run of this, hopefully will have more lists and more saltiness soon!

[thetrumpdebacle]

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Belgium vs Panama: Live World Cup score, goals and updates

Belgium’s so-called golden generation begin their World Cup campaign against finals debutants Panama in Sochi.

Chelsea forward Eden Hazard, Manchester City playmaker Kevin De Bruyne and Manchester United striker Romelu Lukaku are among the attacking options in Roberto Martinez’s squad.

Goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois and defenders Vincent Kompany, Jan Vertonghen and Toby Alderweireld provide strength at the other end of the pitch.

Opponents Panama are the fifth lowest ranked team in the competition and playing in a World Cup for the first time.

BELGIUM 0-0 PANAMA

Belgium XI: Courtois, Alderweireld, Boyata, Vertonghen, Meunier, Witsel, De Bruyne, Carrasco, Mertens, E. Hazard, R. Lukaku.

Panama XI: Penedo, Murillo, Escobar, Torres, Davis, Gomez, Godoy, Cooper, Rodriguez, Barcenas, Perez.

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Belgium vs Panama: Live World Cup score, goals and updates

BELGIUM 0-0 PANAMA

15: Referee Janny Sikazwe makes a fairly poor decision to book Thomas Meunier. And I’m not just saying that because he’s in my World Cup fantasy football team.

14: Close! That would have been painful for Panama’s Roman Torres. His terrible backpass is intercepted by Eden Hazard, who sliced it into the side-netting. Should be 1-0.

11: It’s all looking a bit ominous I’m afraid. Panama are being suffocated by Belgium, who haven’t shifted into second gear yet. Perhaps a bit of stage fright?

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Belgium vs Panama: Live World Cup score, goals and updates

8: Eden Hazard weaves his way forward and spots the overlap from Carrasco, who tamely strikes at Penedo. The goalkeeper is drawn into action a few seconds later by tipping Mertens’ effort over.

5: Huge roar as Panama win themselves a free-kick. Boyata was the culprit. The box is loaded, Davis to deliver… easily cleared and Courtois plucks the rebound out of the sky.

3: Oh, hello Mark Lawrenson. Good to have you in the commentary box this afternoon…

It didn’t take long for Belgium to carve out their opening chance. 59 seconds to be precise. KDB crosses over for Romelu Lukaku, who shanks it miles wide.

1: I’m afraid that I wasn’t totally impressed with the national anthems from these two, but the award goes to Panama for a higher decibel level inside the stadium. We’re underway…

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Belgium vs Panama: Live World Cup score, goals and updates

THE PLAYERS ARE OUT

15:55: And here they come! Belgium and Panama emerge from the tunnel to a reasonably full Fisht Olympic Stadium.

I’m not going to complain about the attendance given Saint Petersburg is located 2,355.8km from Sochi.

Time for the national anthems. I haven’t got a clue what the Panama one sounds like.

THE FINAL COUNTDOWN…

15:50: There’s roughly three hours until England get their World Cup campaign underway folks, and my anxiety level are through the roofe!

I’ve had Three Lions on repeat for the last 12 hours and fully convinced myself that we’re going to win the tournament.

I’ll be here to guide you through all the thrills, spills and bellyaches a little bit later.

GETTY

Belgium vs Panama: Live World Cup score, goals and updates

PANAMA

15:45: Here’s a small fact file on Panama’s national side. I’ve added a few facts about the country that might surprise you too. I’m nice like that.

Coach: Hernan Dario Gomez, Star player: Blas Perez, World Cup best: Debut

What are their chances? Panama have been edging closer to reaching the World Cup finals for the first time in recent tournaments and crossed the line this time thanks to a last-gasp 2-1 victory over Costa Rica in their final qualifier. Little is expected of them and it would be a huge shock to either Belgium or England if they beat them to the second round.

*Panama has more than 976 bird species, which is more than the United States and Canada combined.

*Panama has the second-largest duty-free zone in the world, the Colon Free Zone, second in size only to Hong Kong.

Probably my favourite ever facts.

NO THANKS…

15:40: I believe Gary Lineker has just volunteered Phil Neville, Danny Murphy, Cesc Fabregas and himself to strip naked if Panama win the World Cup.

You would have thought that resenting Match of the Day in his underwear would have taught him a lesson…

Panama’s president (whose name escapes me…) declared a national holiday after Panama sealed qualification in October.

Can we have one of those please?

GETTY

Belgium vs Panama: Live World Cup score, goals and updates

COURTOIS EXPECTS…

15:35: Eden Hazard is in the best form of his life but that doesn’t matter to his Chelsea colleague Thibaut Courtois, who still wants more.

You just can’t please some people, right?

The Belgians are considered a good outside bet to lift the World Cup for the first time and start the tournament against rank outsiders Panama in Group G.

Courtois said his Chelsea team mate Hazard, who scored the winning goal in the FA Cup final last month, was highly motivated.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen him train or play as amazing as in the last three games,” Courtois told reporters. “I think he has reached another level of his game.”

“I don’t think it is only Eden we need at his best,” the Chelsea keeper added. “I think we need Romelu (Lukaku) to score goals, for Kevin (De Bruyne) to play like at (Manchester) City. I think if you want to go far you need your players to be at their best.”

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Belgium vs Panama: Live World Cup score, goals and updates

TWITTER ROUND-UP

Chris: This afternoon’s game between Panama and Belgium is the first time we’ll have seen a proper mis-match of playing ability in this World Cup. Big scoreline inbound…

Tom: Still waiting for one of the World Cup “contenders” to play an impressive opening match. Wonder if Belgium might be the first to do so as they are far better than Panama.

Sean: Time too watch Belgium! Should hammer Panama on paper but not expecting anything after this week. 2-0 maybe 3-0 I’m saying though.

The people have spoken, and they all agree that Panama are going to take a beating.

BIG MONEY…

15:25: I’ve just heard that the 2018 FIFA World Cup is set to become the most wagered event of all time, with as much as £1.5 billion being staked on the tournament.

£1.5billion?! The boffins down at BonusCodeBets.co.uk found that the total amount wagered equates to £4,000 per second.

I don’t know about these punters, but I haven’t won a sausage from my series of mahussive £1 stakes.

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Belgium vs Panama: Live World Cup score, goals and updates

TEAM NEWS – PANAMA

15:20: Now I’ll admit my knowledge of the Panama squad isn’t as strong as my love of the trademark hat would suggest.

Panama, who are playing their first ever World Cup match, start with a 4-1-4-1 formation with 37-year old striker Blas Perez, who scored the goal that secured their qualification, leading the line up front.

TEAM NEWS – BELGIUM

15:15: OK, let’s see what Roberto Martinez has done with this starting XI.

There aren’t too many surprises with Dries Mertens, Romelu Lukaku and Eden Hazard forming the three-pronged attack.

The injured Vincent Kompany is replaced by Celtic’s Dedryck Boyata, while Tottenham duo Toby Alderweireld and Jan Vertonghen are also included.

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Belgium vs Panama: Live World Cup score, goals and updates

PRIVILEGED…

15:05: Roberto Martinez knows he’s a lucky boy to have this star-studded squad at his disposal.

Makes a change from the Wigan days I suppose. Although Gary Caldwell shouldn’t be underestimated…

Anyway, the glittering array of talent has seen Belgium installed as one of the tournament favourites and Spaniard Martinez hopes he can mould his individual stars into an effective team unit.

“We’ve said it for a long time now, we’re privileged to have this sort of group of players, not just with their skills – their skills are essential – but I think it’s more their attitude and the way they are ambassadors for Belgian football,” said Martinez.

“In Belgium we’ve got a population of 11 million and to produce these sort of players is not by accident or coincidence, it’s a lot of work. Now we have got players that are very important at club level and what we want to do is bring them together in the national team.

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Belgium vs Panama: Live World Cup score, goals and updates

THE TEAM ARRIVES…

15:00: And here ate your line-ups , folks. Roberto Martinez makes the big decision to start Celtic defender Dedryck Boyata ahead of Manchester City’s Vincent Kompany.

Belgium XI: Courtois, Alderweireld, Boyata, Vertonghen, Meunier, Witsel, De Bruyne, Carrasco, Mertens, E. Hazard, R. Lukaku.

Subs: Mignolet, Casteels, Kompany, Dendoncker, Hazard, Tielemans, Dembele, Fellaini, Chadli, Januzaj, Batshuayi.

Panama XI: Penedo, Murillo, Escobar, Torres, Davis, Gomez, Godoy, Cooper, Rodriguez, Barcenas, Perez.

Subs: Claderon, A Rodriguez, Cummings, G Torres, Diaz, Machado, Pimentel, Arroyo, Ovalle, Tejada, Avila, Baloy.

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Belgium vs Panama: Live World Cup score, goals and updates

REUTERS

Belgium vs Panama: Live World Cup score, goals and updates

REUTERS

Belgium vs Panama: Live World Cup score, goals and updates

HAVE YOUR SAY

14:45: If you want to vent your frustrations, or discuss any issues in the world of football (within reason), then get in touch!

You can either comment at the bottom of the page or contact me via Twitter using the hashtag #ExpressSport.

WELCOME

14:40: Hello everyone, welcome to our LIVE coverage of the World Cup.

How’s everyone feeling today? Don’t worry if you’ve been working and missed today’s opener between Sweden and South Korea, because the main events are still to come.

England opener their World Cup campaign a little later this evening, but first their Group G rivals Belgium take on the mighty Panama…

Panama are the fifth lowest ranked team in the competition and playing in a World Cup for the first time.

Could we see a few goals? I think it’s a certainty. Standby for team news and line-ups.

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