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cosmeticpackagingdesign40 · 1 year ago

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Cosmetic Packaging Design Ideas 309+ Greatest Magnificence Brand Id Designs 2023

The rebranding of merchandise could have an effect in your goal market. This would imply that people will now not be succesful of join with your new model when you don’t do it proper. Contact Aventive Studio right here to speak with our inventive director about how we are ready to align your brand strategy, packaging design, and visual id to your revenue goals. BRAND ARCHITECTURE — The product assortment and group of the merchandise you provide ought to reflect your beauty branding goals in a way that's appealing to your target audience. What are the gateway merchandise that new users try when learning about your model for the first time

Make certain your salon web site is user-friendly, SEO oriented and contains all of the related data. Create a space branding which can calm area, mild soothing colors, gentle lines and simple furnishings that isn’t too busy. Make positive correct house branding and its environment will all the time create a positive experience for your shoppers. The model name depends upon the character of the beauty parlour if it is high-end, stylish or budget-friendly. But total, the model name of the salon ought to convey a brand story of why they exist, quirky but straightforward and sensible names are most popular.

Successful loyalty applications are about extra than just discounts; they provide exclusive beauty branding, early entry, and personalized recommendations. Brands are ensuring that their elements are ethically sourced, emphasizing truthful commerce practices and supporting native communities. The magnificence business is steadily moving past gender binaries, recognizing and catering to the wonder needs of all genders. At first glance, it appears like some other lettermark logo however observe intently and you’ll discover that it’s strewn with fascinating details. It additionally consists of optimizing the website for search engines like google and evaluating the efficiency of all advertising initiatives. A thorough understanding of those factors will allow you to make informed choices about product development and positioning.

We additionally contemplate what has become the trade standard that we have to offer so as to be at parity among the competition. This step involves making a cohesive and distinctive visual and verbal illustration of your model. This consists of designing a singular brand logo and deciding on acceptable colours, typography, and graphic components that align along with your model character and resonate together with your target market.

To improve your beauty brand’s engagement, you must come up with completely different social media campaigns like giveaways, challenges, and polls that provide audiences rewards and incentives for participation. Building a novel and memorable name in your magnificence establishment brings more advantages than simply brand recognition. It plays an necessary function in setting your beauty firm aside out of your rivals and provides you a aggressive benefit. Cosmetic branding is the artwork of crafting an enchanting persona for a beauty company or product line, entwining aesthetics and emotions to create an unforgettable expertise for customers. As a beauty brand, one of the most important things you are capable of do to make your brand stand out is to create a unique and attention-grabbing design.

Influencer collaborations aren’t just about product endorsements anymore. Social media isn’t only a platform; it’s a powerful influencer shaping beauty developments, preferences, and buying decisions. Named after its founder François Nars, NARS Cosmetics is a daring and exquisite brand with a daring logo that complements its philosophy. [newline]The overlapping letters type the distinctive and distinctive function of the NARS Cosmetics logo. The lightweight sans-serif font used in the emblem ensures that the legibility of the letters stays intact regardless of the overlapping.

Certain products do higher than others in numerous channels because of the mindset and values of the target audience buying there. For instance, the product providing, positioning, and pricing bundles for merchandise ready for a consumer at Whole Foods would possibly look different from the assortment at Ulta Beauty. This does not mean big modifications to your beauty branding, but small strikes that still uphold your brand architecture could make a giant distinction.

Packaging is the first thing prospects see when deciding whether to strive a new magnificence product, so it’s important that your product packaging captures consideration and stands out from the competitors. When Fenty Beauty launched, it immediately stood out and attracted consideration by creating foundation colours in 50+ shades for customers. This stuffed a market need and aligned with the brand’s inclusive “Beauty for All” tagline which positioned Fenty Beauty as different from its opponents in a constructive way. Attractive packaging design is a motivating drive in encouraging individuals to make impulsive choices. Taking advantage of this reward-seeking conduct with a good design can have a powerful influence on customers’ receptiveness to your products. If you want a tremendous cosmetics model that stands out from the competition, work with knowledgeable designer.

With consumers becoming extra ingredient-conscious, brands are focusing on “clean” formulations—free from parabens, sulfates, and other perceived harmful chemical substances. It’s about pioneering formulations that cater to evolving skincare or beauty wants. Showcasing before-and-after photographs or transformation videos of real shoppers using the products could be extra impactful than any professional commercial. Successful collaborations are these rooted in authenticity, the place the influencer genuinely resonates with the brand’s values. Influencers typically collaborate with manufacturers to launch curated collections, including their private contact and increasing the brand’s attain.

So, there are tons of issues that have to be accomplished to start branding. Notably, some simple questions that help you present a transparent perspective about your branding prospect. They will provide priceless insights on your way to developing influential branding within the mainstream. A beauty brand's brand is certainly one of its most necessary advertising instruments aside for the packaging design.

In this realm the place aesthetics and emotions reign supreme, every little thing begins with a wonderful model identification. If you want your cosmetics brand to succeed, your audience must have a constant expertise of your brand wherever and however they encounter it. Your brand needs to be consistent across your website, social media, influencer partnerships, packaging, product quality and brand. Every component that represents your brand must be aligned with a consistent brand technique. The reply starts with brand positioning and ends with objectively evaluating the brand values and stories communicated visually versus verbally.

Customers need to know what components are concerned and the place they’re coming from. The extra natural or natural they're, the extra probably they're to be coveted by the sweetness market. Today, many beauty patrons spend a lot of their time within the digital market. We cover this extensively in our information on how to start a clothing model or clothes line.

Online, customers yearn for content material that gives schooling, trust, and intrigue. Ensuring that your beauty branding touches upon all three of those areas not solely removes limitations to buy, however it could possibly also construct white space on your magnificence branding among the many competitors. A well-developed brand identity creates consistency throughout all model touchpoints, builds brand recognition, fosters emotional connections with customers, and units your cosmetics brand apart in the market. To create a marketable model identity, think about creating a unique and memorable model name and designing a visually interesting and recognizable emblem. The very first step in building a brand is to outline your new purpose.

Solitaire Jewellery is a independant manufacturing jeweller who has two areas in Victoria Australia. We pride ourselves on ensuring our purchasers receive only the most effective service offering and expert diamond advice. Our product providing consists of high finish luxury engagement rings, wedding bands and different jewellery wants. See our instagram @solitaire_jewellery and facebook for merchandise and designs. Beauty branding is born by figuring out what unique positioning and providing you've available in the market. A distinctive model positioning, or Brand Value Proposition, emerges from the distillation of a model audit, aggressive audit, and consumer research.

A fun, quirky, energetic brand that desires to create an city comunity for town woman that loves a coastal vibe. Witty, relatable, sensible and with a candy tooth for a great pun and an additional glass of wine. This includes providing exceptional customer service, personalizing interactions, and actively participating with customers through varied touchpoints. By nurturing relationships, you can foster buyer loyalty, generate repeat business, and profit from positive word-of-mouth suggestions. The mark combines the modern twist of PP Editorial New Ultralight, a traditional serif with a contemporary flair, with slight modifications to the 'K' for enhanced distinctiveness. Adding PP Mori Regular contributes to sophistication and clarity, ensuring that informative text on the packaging stays legible.

All of those elements are a key a half of launching a successful cosmetics model. Before you launch your cosmetics line, you need to have them all designed and in a position to go, guaranteeing they’re all an correct representation of who you might be as a brand. Nothing says "unique" like customized magnificence branding designed just for you by an expert designer. We’ve collected some wonderful examples of beauty model identities from our international community of designers. Get inspired and begin planning the proper beauty brand design at present. To create high-quality products, contemplate investing in research and improvement to create progressive, high-quality, protected cosmetics merchandise that meet your customers’ wants and expectations.

The typography reflects timeless elegance and fashionable aesthetics, mirroring the brand's ethos. Each winner drove beauty's expansive development of their specific market segments, from Charlotte Tilbury to P&G Beauty's prolific hair brand portfolio. Choose from our assortment ofresults-driven product formulations and unique textures that can delight your clients and keep them coming back for extra.

This may be tough to do at first, but it's the very basis of successful rebranding.Your new function will help you define what your products need to be in order to obtain your new brand’s goals. It is the reason why folks will buy your product and why they may keep coming back for more. Attention to detail is crucial in cosmetic branding; even the most minor details can considerably impact a brand's general feel and appear.

Find and rent a designer to make your imaginative and prescient come to life, or host a design contest and get ideas from designers all over the world. With all of the components in place, constructing a profitable brand becomes easy. As a player in the cosmetics market, you need to learn to be both constant and flexible.

The price of launching a make-up brand varies depending on your particular wants. Factors such as the dimensions and scope of your project, sort of product you might be creating, price range for advertising supplies and different sources will all have an effect on the general price. • Social media campaigns – Utilizing influencers and creating content material on social media platforms to achieve more potential clients. Nowadays, it is important to have a strong advertising strategy to build brand consciousness and attain more clients. You might wish to think about hiring knowledgeable graphic designer to create the packaging design for your new cosmetics model.

In 2020, every model wants a presence on social media, however it’s especially important for magnificence brands. Once you’ve answered the core questions on your brand the subsequent step of the branding course of is constructing your brand identity. The first part of that process is to define your design building blocks.

Brands that adapt thrive, while those that resist typically discover themselves fading. Selena Gomez’s Rare Beauty emphasizes self-expression and redefines magnificence standards, resonating with a lot of her followers and past. Fenty Beauty’s launch revolutionized the business, not solely due to its inclusive shade range but additionally because of Rihanna’s highly effective affect and commitment to the model.

We goal to become a family name that people look ahead to inviting into their properties each month. In the long run, we plan to add whole-food, natural dietary supplements as nicely. DISTRIBUTION CHANNELS — Where your products can be found for purchase is as essential because the product assortment itself. Today’s beauty branding consumer is purchasing throughout all channels and a savvy magnificence brand company is aware of tips on how to develop product and consumer demand to assist all channels.

Nothing says "distinctive" like custom cosmetics branding designed only for you by a professional designer. We’ve collected some superb examples of cosmetics brand identities from our global neighborhood of designers. Get impressed and start planning the proper cosmetics model design today. Both brands are in the same area but have fully totally different approaches to building their model identity. The model on the left makes use of bright and heat colours to project a way of liveliness whereas the brand on the proper makes use of clean and monochromatic designs to level out a way of purity. Successful beauty brands perceive the significance of fostering a group and nurturing an ongoing relationship with their prospects.

By creating engaging co-branded beauty campaigns, you'll have the ability to leverage the strengths of the partnerships to grow your loyal audience base and model visibility. Creating a gorgeous and powerful cosmetic model design could be important to the success of a cosmetic product. The beauty industry is an evergreen trade that is booming, and much cash is being made in the magnificence markets. The preferences of your target will influence your packaging, colours and fonts, content tone, and the marketing efforts you use to get your brand in front of your audience. VIVA SKINCARE is a model of premium cosmetics specialised in skincare and sweetness of women with a spread of merchandise of the very best high quality.

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kimyoonmiauthor · 1 year ago

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In Search of Antigone’s Plot structure (the fake one.)

Assertion that Antigone’s plot structure was conflict: Sophocles' Ajax and Sophoclean Plot Construction James Tyler The American Journal of Philology, Vol. 95, No. 1 (Spring, 1974), pp. 24-42 (19 pages)https://doi.org/10.2307/293816 p 40

He’s focused on conflict, as we established came from Percy Lubbock, 1921, though amplified, but not given credit by Barthes in the 1960′s, translated in the 1970′s-1980′s into English. (lol I’ve memorized it) William G. McCollom College English, Vol. 19, No. 2 (Nov., 1957), pp. 51-56 (6 pages)https://doi.org/10.2307/372701 The whole paper manages to misunderstand Sophocles by putting it towards character being the most important, and that’s second to last on Aristotle’s list. He gets one part right.

He gets part 3 right, that Aristotle said everything was left up to fate, But four on tragic flaw isn’t something that existed in that time period in the same way. The whole point wasn’t character-led. It was events create character. Fate informs who the character is and the chorus is the most important part. The action comes directly from the fate of the characters according to Aristotle and there should be a singular long plot that’s continuous. The whole point was negative reinforcement to make people feel bad about themselves so they would morally behave. Layered plots are later in history from what I dug up, mainly coming in Elizabethan plays for Europe.

Not all hope is lost: Someone who actually paid attention to the original story structure: "Why Should I Dance?": Choral Self-Referentiality in Greek Tragedy Albert Henrichs Arion: A Journal of Humanities and the Classics, Third Series, Vol. 3, No. 1, The Chorus in Greek Tragedy and Culture, One (Fall, 1994 - Winter, 1995), pp. 56-111 (56 pages) And says things like Chorus and Stasimon. Someone who actually read Poetics through. OMG. This is 1995, though, and looks like someone is trying to do a correction to the literature, but failed. I went through most of JSTOR and still couldn’t find the diagram. I also asked archive if there was a way to search their database by images or if they would invent one for the system and they said no. (flat no, wouldn’t even consider it). The NYPL could only find an earlier one through google books. So I’m down to limiting the date range and then plundering the Library of Congress or NYC library, since the large local library doesn’t have books before 1990′s, I think. Really trying to find the origin of the bad diagram is hard with no name, but an approximate date. But I think in combination with the whole false diagramming from the 1920′s-1930′s, I’m getting closer. I still think it’s the 1970′s-1980′s that the understanding of the plot structure turned and changed to the wrong diagram that was drawn on the board for me because academics didn’t check their work before being published and went with the grapevine error instead of reading the full original source.

I think this shows problems in academia very well--because of the time pressure people often rely on other academics, who then cite other academics, but if they never read the original source material and tangle with it and find the errors within the larger context, then it causes issues with wrong information being diluted and passed down. Because no one has paused to ask if Gustav Freytag was a pre-Nazi by celebrating The Ring before and rather say things like, “it was the times.” and in putting down PoCs and women what that implies about later structuralists. But I think academia needs to do this work and not just conveniently cut out 95% of the work and focus only on the diagram. There’s clear context to what Freytag is saying. And so it’s true with everyone else I’ve read so far. Stop cherry picking. You might miss something.

#antigone #plot structure #scholarship #the problems with scholarship #in search of antigone's false story structure #problems with academia #academic grapevine sucks

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my-jokes-are-my-armour · 3 months ago

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@astaldis what is your English dictionary I want the same 😅! Because I struggled to find the good meaning. Now here is the story of my fucking search 😅

On my first try, this is what I got for Cambridge and Oxford online dictionaries at first.

The Oxford one is the worst 🤣🤣. This is the full entry I have in the English part. It sounds less and less poetic.

In Cambridge, this was better but it was confusing. There was only the French to English entry with no definition but examples. The only mention of "the antipodes" is a non clickable text. There is no English to French from what I have seen.

But it got the figurative entry I was searching.

The figurative entry us ok but "antipode" is not used there in the examples. So I had the feeling it was not used at all.

And that's what I aimed for : a definition of the figurative use of "antipode(s)" in english or at least used in a sentence so I could see if this was used like in French.

Something like this.

I found my salvation with Wikionary. Who had thought 😅 ?

Searching more this way, I found that there was another word in English that was synonymous : "antipous". There was a reference but this was a dead end on Oxford dictionary.

Searching antipous in conjunction with Orford dictionary, I found the correct entry.

It was simply that the plural form isn't in the results in google search if you don't put the "the" before... like it is so far away from the singular 🤣.

I feel so old when I look at the dates 🤣. But now I am certain that I can use the word the way I intended.

Bloody hell, dear readers, I hope you'll like my use of the word "antipode" in the next chapter 🤣 !

Writing in another language is sometimes infuriating. When they have the one word your language need a full sentence to translate, it's a golden moment. But when this is the other way around, this is 😩.

I took the real dictionary out because I didn't trust the online dictionary when I found no direct translation for "antipode". Man, I had to put "diametrically opposed" in the mouth a poet. This is so wrong lol. It sounds like a mathematical rule about acute and obtuse angles.

It's driving me crazy, I might have to change a whole dialog to make it sound right.

Also : note to self. Use the real dictionary more often. In these couple of pages, there are words that remind me of our sad world, but also you can have "antirides" and "anus" just a few words appart and giggle alone in you room. Silly me.

#the fabulous story of the girl searching for a word #not worth the effort #but that is funny

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scriptstructure · 3 years ago

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part 1 I have multiple alien planets, but the things is I want to to be similiar in earth as in 200 countries, 5000 ethnic groups, 6500 languages, varied climate/terrain/politics. Part of the story is still on earth and obviously as a whole, 99.9999% of stuff on earth isn't even getting used, but we know there is more and sometimes there are little hints. That is stuff we know from real life and generally doesn't need explanation. Example, a character says "We borrowed this from the Russians."

Part 2 Regardless of what is really important, what we know and doesn't need explanation is a lot because we figure readers generally understand--or they can google. Hell, there could even be lots of subtle culture references as well. Anyway, depending on the reader's knowledge, it can enhance the reader's understanding in various and subtle ways. But when I do things similiar in alien planets, it makes no sense and requires extra explanation to fill the details. So, basically useless.

Part 3 Thus it seems I'm unable to fully give the type of experience as when using earth as pretty much everything needs to be important to the story. Unless there's another way to do this so I can make my alien planets seem so much more than what's actually focused on without the needless exposition? It feels like at best I could try to mention a few things but it could never feel as vast as earth does. Perhaps maybe I just need numbers?

Reminder that if your question doesn’t fit in a single ask box, you should use /SUBMIT instead.

I have had a few questions in the past which are very similar to this one, [HERE] is about how to introduce invented elements of secondary worlds (stuff that doesn't exist in the real world but has been made up for the story), [HERE] is about how and why we might include extra details about the places that a character is visiting, [HERE] deals with establishing what a 'normal' day in an invented setting is like, and [HERE] is about ways of thinking about worldbuilding, and how much you need to know vs how much the characters know.

So it is a fairly common shortcut, in scifi writing, and scifi film writing in particular, to portray alien planets as kind of 'one thing' settings. Here is the desert planet, and there is the dessert planet, and over there is the Evil planet, and there's the cute jungle teddy bear planet moon. This can be useful if you're making a film or story where you just want the different worlds to work as shorthand for certain ideas 'shitty home world', 'the seat of democracy', 'the swamp where Yoda lives' etc.

But it is very simplistic, and obviously looking at Earth, as you've said, there's a vast array of different climates, cultures, people, languages etc. We do tend to simplify the way that we portray Earth in film and stories, as well--think about, say, Australia being largely signified by the Opera House/ Harbour Bridge, and the Outback™, or the UK being Big Ben and the houses of parliament, or the USA being a vast stretch of corn fields between New York and Hollywood.

So how do we effectively give the sense of a world being bigger than the particular spot that we happen to find ourselves in?

First off, you need to have background information about the world that you're building. If you know what the major cities are, what the main continents are, if your alien world has countries, or if it has a singular centralised system of government--or is it divided into city states? or is it divided into time zones? or is it divided into... etc

Think about how your characters conceptualise their world, and their place in it. Do they think about the world, with all its variety, as a single vibrant whole? Or do they think of 'us on this continent, and them over on that continent'?

How does trade work on this world? Do they have extensive trade networks among the various cities/ countries/ regions? Or do they rely on off-world suppliers for various things?

What kind of cultural exchange is common among these different areas, and what are the cultural touchstones that your characters might be familiar with, or interact with on a daily basis?

As with the examples I gave in the first linked post above, it is less about providing the readers with an exact view of how the politics and interactions of the various places function, and more about demonstrating what that means in practice for the characters.

Say there's a certain kind of fruit that is PROTAGONIST's mother's favourite, and she spends all day searching the hypermarket for one to surprise her mother with for her birthday, but turns out there's none of that fruit available because it's all from OTHER REGION, and there's a war on, or a volcano has erupted and interrupted trade, or the shuttle crews are on strike and so the fruit can no longer be transported down from the moon.

If your protag's favourite pop group is from a polar region and only produces music six months out of the year, because the other six months they have to work with their community to produce supplies for the long dark winter, that tells us something about the way that polar community is organised, and how it interacts with the rest of the world.

What else can we think about when constructing alien planets/ secondary worlds?

It can be difficult to think 'outside the box' of the culture that we're immersed in. It's very easy to slip into thinking that we're doing things the 'correct' way, and if someone else somewhere else does stuff different, that's weird, wrong, or sinister. Often it can be just a different way of doing things that gives the solution that the person is after.

I think it can be very helpful to read books about ancient history, especially stuff about societies that no longer exist, because a lot of the assumptions that we make about the way the world currently works are less useful when we look at ancient history. There are some extremely varied ways of approaching society and culture and a whole lot of stuff which isn't immediately obvious, but which we can understand by looking at the vast differences between ancient societies.

Well written history books can really help you get the sense of how societies form, and how culture develops, and some of the forces involved in cross cultural relations. Also, there are some great examples from the ancient world, of, for example, the various different Ancient Greek societies, and how each of them thought of themselves as 'doing culture the best', of their neighbouring hellenistic states of 'doing culture not quite as well' and of everyone who didn't speak greek properly as barbaric outsiders.

At the moment I'm reading Philip and Alexander: Kings and Conquerors by Adrian Goldsworthy, and I think one of the things that has struck me as super interesting is the difference between how the Greeks vs the Persians organised their societies, and the way that they thought about and approached warfare.

So what are the basic questions we're working with?

-What is the protagonist/ focalising character's relationship to the world? Were they born on-world? Are they adult settlers? Are they traders passing through? Has the character travelled to other places on the world, or have they mostly stayed in their home city/ area?

-How do the protag/ focalising characters think of the other places in the world that they are not currently visiting? (ie, I am in Sydney, Australia, what do I think of Boston, USA, or Paris, France? Big cities with a Reputation, I probably know something about. Small towns or cities I may or may not be familiar with, depending on my life experience or interests)

-How do the material goods which are needed for daily life pass around the world? Are certain goods only available from certain areas? Are there Events happening which may disrupt supply routes? Are there cultural elements which may cause friction in trade?

-What kinds of cultural export or exchange happen on this world? Is there a particular city which is well known for its entertainment production? (Hollywood, California--movies, New York City--the print publishing industry) Does this mean that portrayals of the rest of the world are skewed by the perspectives of that place? (Remember, Australia is just a bridge, an opera house, and red dirt!)

There's always going to be a gap between what your characters know, or are aware of, and what is 'actually' happening in the world of your story, but as long as you have the information decided, and can write the world consistently and with sensory and suggestive details, the reader can and will pick up the puzzle pieces and fit them together.

It's a complex problem, but it's one that can produce interesting complex settings.

I hope this helps!

#writing #worldbuilding #world building

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coffeeshoptalkks · 4 years ago

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the cognitive functions explained by an extremely sarcastic and caffeinated entp

because literally why not

ah yes, cognitive functions. those things that are apparently supposed to be in a stack and you might think that you’re special and yours are out of order but really even if you’re on the fence the strength of the first two functions (maybe the third) are gonna determine your categorization

yes i’m looking at you my Ne, Ni, Ti dom ass who could theorhetically be an INTJ but cause my Te isn’t near as developed i get slotted into entp

tbh if you’re reading this im assuming ur already down the rabbit hole of mbti and understand the concept of cognitive functions but if you do not do a google search and return in approximately a month once you understand them

i cannot emphasize this enough, the following explanation is absolutely useless and just every function in solidarity so nO its not gonna be balanced but i find it entertaining so *insert shrug*

i literally just reread this and realized that how much i like each function is give or take the order of which an entp stack should theoretically work and i find that absolutely hilarious

-> Ne, Ti, Fe, Si, Ni, Te, Fi, Se

and yes i proofread but barely

Extraverted iNtuition

think of a spiderweb, and then multiply it by infinity, and then make it 4d and you have Ne.

its the computer system that has every single file type and information categorized perfectly within a singular system based on seemingly unrelated information and connections that if you remove even one piece from it falls apart

connects absolutely RANDOM things together and sometimes its batshit and just stored for that person’s own use but sometimes its literally the most innovative and impressive thing you’ve heard in a year and can cause a paradigm shift with understanding a concept or seeing how a system works

all the possibilities and not enough time

take one piece of information and all of the sudden Ne has crafted it into an entire universe with ever potential outcome known to man and alien

Introverted Intuition

think of that crazy ass spider web but then put it in a like, a tunnel or something, and you’ve got Ni

it takes all of the external information and focuses it in a direction

if you need a problem solved go to an Ni dom

stupidly good at solving problems

if Ne is a universe, Ni is an omnipotent god of the universe looking for that one specific planet that they know they put somewhere and taking all the information before finding that one planet

tbh this one isn’t in my stack i’m still kinda confused about how it works but uh

you’re good at solving things and finding the singular most correct answer to a problem

its v useful when dealing with theory

not so much when it comes to implementation

Extraverted Thinking

there are your mutterers

not really but probably

my father is like this

its so fking annoying like if im trying to do something with airpods in and you’re constantly moving your mouth and im worried you’re saying something

but i guess ur good at actually putting things to into place?

but tbh systems are never good so do ur job bEtter Te doms

it’s fine, rules were meant to be broken

Introverted Thinking

hello spending too much time in your head!

to this day i have 0 clue how Ti doms get anything done because when i say everything happens in your head

i mean everything happens in your head

and because your entire personality revolves around learning arbitrary bits of information with no direction in mind

idk how u function within society cause you don’t wanna do anything but live inside your head

actually i do know, you scrape by on sheer intelligence enough to self preserve

i’m kinda ambivalent about you otherwise

like, i’ve got Ti aux and it filters through the random shit Ne throws at it but it also leads to people never seeing me think per say and cause i’m throwing random shit around everyone just assumes i’m a dumbass (and like, yes i am but also i’m smarter than you) and is extremely surprised when i turn my game face on and start to get shit done

its fine, i like to surprise people anyway

tbh i really see Ti as a super selfish function and its just the way that i process things and i’m okay with that but outside of processing, alone, it means that you’re not gonna get anything done in the real world cause you’ve figured it out in your head but then u run into problems cause like eating

still don’t know how Ti doms function

Extroverted Sensing

thrill seeking

bungee jumping

doing incredibly stupid things at 4am because literally why not

hi Se :)

living in the moment

frat parties

regular society

surface level care about anything and everything

blah blah blah

no i do not like this function

Introverted Sensing

it’s doing everything the way it’s been done cause it’s the way that it’s been done before

or doing incredibly mundane things because u need some sort of stability in ur life and somehow cleaning the bathroom is that

oops my inferior Si popped out

i’m really just @ ing myself lmao

it’s not my favorite way to live, Si doms can sometimes annoy me cause they’re so rigid when it comes to old rules

but honestly, u mind ur own business and don’t try to control me so thanks

ur like the comfort of home after a long and stressful day and i can appreciate that

Extraverted Feeling

did someone say caring more about other peoples emotions and wellbeing than your own!

did someone say not really caring about other peoples emotions but understanding each persons and knowing what to say or do and by proxy knowing how to absolutely destroy someone?

hello tertiary Fe lol

at least you’re useful when it comes to avoiding topics you don’t have energy to deal with that day

i guess peer pressure does have its uses

as long as its not basing your entire self-worth off of other people’s perception of you we’re gonna be fine and dandy

Introverted Feeling

crying crying crying

getting ur damn feelings hurt

at least you understand your emotions i guess?

but feelings can also make u end up in really shitty situations because you didn’t think this through

also stop taking things PERSONALLY JESUS

but plz help me figure out my own emotions i am a rock lol

but also dont tell me cause i don’t like dealing with them anyway and would prefer to be a robot but unfortunately i am not so here we are

aH wait i forgot

you’re actually kinda nice cause you don’t try and force ur own opinions on me which i like so thanks!

#mbti #myers briggs #16 personalities #cognitive functions #entp #intp #entj #intj #enfp #infp #enfj #infj #estp #istp #estj #istj #esfp #isfp #esfj #isfj #cstks #mine #this is a MEME please

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unohanadaydreams · 4 years ago

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Can you do 💍 and 💦 with Unohana and a fem!partner please!

YETH!! Unohana, ma’am pls let us adoring fans be carried away in your strong embrace. I was thirsting so hard that this is almost 2k words, so to everyone in lesbian with miss Unohana: come get your mf JUICE.

Also forgive me for using a non-manga cap, but google said only blood thirsty unohana and i cried.

RETSU UNOHANA + Arranged Marriage AU

“Will you marry me, despite the thorns?”

Proposal:

When Yamamoto summons her to the 1st division, she assumes the purpose is clerical error. On his part--of course. Her underlings know far better than to hand in faulty reports. She’s relaxed and unassuming in the soft morning light, not yet brought rigid by disrespectful patients and the unskilled hands of Academy interns. Yamamoto takes his time getting to the point and comments on the good old days--the uncertain future--the pretty bird song outside the window. They sip at delicate white tea, steeped perfectly, at ease.

Only once she’s thanked Yamamoto for the relaxing chat does he lean forward with a heavy sigh and spill the bitter truth of the visit. Unohana knew his plan to arrange the marriages of eligible captains—to garner a secure future with stronger children—but she had thought herself getting entangled in such a plot unthinkable. The strength he sought could not be manufactured. Only the most prejudiced adversity churned out the strength of Hell itself. The monster that wore her skin in youth could not be born in comfort and raised by loving parents.

Nonetheless, he persisted. Yamamoto raised his voice in that insufferable tone that spoke of ‘noble causes’ and the ‘good of everything’ and demanded her cooperation. Unohana gave him a wonderful back and forth—made him endure the arguments of every devil’s advocate she could summon. Backing down without an enjoyable fight (or performance) was beyond her. The mix of free flowing tea and frustration in Yamamoto’s voice made for a wonderful morning spar.

But all swords must be drawn, eventually. After all, Unohana had chosen this as her lot in life. She was the captain of the 4th division and would aid the Gotei 13 to the best of her ability, for as long as she was able. Her only terms of surrender were: that she be able to propose and that she marry a woman. Not that Yamamoto could force her to marry a man on his best day.

Explaining the exact process of artificial insemination--to a man so entrenched in tradition there was a monthly fight between he and the other captains over the banning of soul phones—was enough for Unohana to leave smiling despite the bitter news.

Unohana has never considered herself a romantic. Considering her peers—like Jushiro and Shunsui--, she might be considered hostile to the idea of relationships. Avoiding romantic entanglements had been self preservation when she first joined the 4th division. Plants don’t properly grow when forced to share space.

She was thankful for her conviction to wait, too. Unohana has planted long, lush roots over the years. Marriage might be nice at this point. Someone to share her thoughts and frustrations with--someone to kiss in the mornings and hold at night--someone to grow in love with. The thought of growing roots with someone was only…somewhat daunting.

The manila folder sat on her desk the next day contains only sparse details. A glossy photo of you, draped in the beautiful silks of an expensive kimono, is on top. She stares at it for some time, trying in vain to parse how well you’ll fit into her life purely from the superficial, before being rushed to the side of a shinigami lucky they weren’t torn completely in half by a hollow.

It’s after the sun has set that she finds time for the singular page of written information in your ‘file’. There’s more sentences dedicated to the accomplishments and pedigree of your noble family than your self. But she takes earnest note of your listed hobbies and passions, even if they are sanitized into one unfeeling list, and smiles at what you both have in common.

The proposal is awkward, considering it’s also your first meeting. A calm face and gentle voice can only ease someone so much when their entire life is in upheaval and Unohana isn’t sure for who’s benefit she’s being purposefully placid for. She suggests a short walk, away from the shinigami chaperones that accompanied you. The smile she gives them when they start to follow churns your stomach. But she asks easy questions and you give expected answers and she is perfectly wane while addressing you.

When you start to smile back, your shoulders no longer up to your ears, Unohana invites you inside. The room she escorts you to is in full bloom. Rows of vivid flowers are paired in well-made arrangements behind a pile of haphazard lain blooms on towels. Two cushions sit with empty vases prepared, between the piles. You can only stare--all of this for you?

Her smile is serene when she directs it toward you. “I find occupied hands do well to ease tensions.” With an easy grace, she gestures to a cushion and does not move to sit until you’ve taken the wordless invitation.

Your tensions rise at the change of pace, despite her words. You feel confused and your sentences are stilted as you stumble over them. You know how Unohana came to sit here, in the Gotei 13—any good noble knows the pedigree of important figures. This—casually arranging flowers--was not what you had expected. All day, you had been prepared for a thin veil of manners concealing a fierce and unknowable menace.

Unohana stops your hand from falling victim to a thorny rose with a gentle hold of your wrist. You start, wrestled from your thoughts by the touch. Eyes wide, mouth gaping, you watch her don thick gloves and de-thorn the stem with practiced sweeps of a pairing knife.

The pale yellow rose seems like a peace offering when she hands it back to you, “you’re nervous.” Flushed, you apologize. She hums, continuing as if you hadn’t, “It was careless of me to leave the thorns.” You settle the rose into your arrangement and your nerves slowly settle with it.

It’s there, trading bits of conversation and odd silence, that she asks. As though she even needs to. “Will you marry me, despite the thorns?” There’s no expensive ring or desperate declaration of love. Just a vase of flowers, beautiful in its riot of colors, that she turns for you--so you may see its best side. Remembering her diligence in protecting you, you say yes.

Wedding Night:

You’ve heard whispers of what misfortune can take place in a marriage bed. Despite the oddity of your marriage, you still feel the tickle of fear slide down your back upon entering Unohana’s bedroom—well, your bedroom. She wears a beautiful kimono, like you, but her hair is free and her face is bare beyond a kiss of eye shadow and blush. The gruesome scar trailing the top of her kimono had taken much of your attention during the ceremony. Now, your eyes are transfixed on the large bed.

“On the chair there,” Unohana pointed toward a simple wooden chair to your right, “put that on, if you will. The bathroom’s to your left.” Nodding, you unfolded the black clothes on the seat of the chair to find…a shinigami uniform. You turned to ask why, only to find the room empty.

The more you were around Unohana, the more you realized how much of a captain she was. Never really asking questions so much as telling and always assuming it would be done. Nonetheless, you donned the uniform, taking off your wedding kimono with some regret—it really was a gorgeous creation of silks and embroidery. You assumed the bathroom was for your hair and make up to be taken down and off. It felt odd being bereft of all your wedding trappings when finished. Hours of preparation undone so quickly, with so little fanfare.

You didn’t have time to analyze how it all made you feel. Unohana was in the room again, when you shuffled out of the bathroom. “Come this way,” she smiled. “Unless you’re ready to sleep?” Did she mean sleep or…? Actually. You didn’t want to find out yet. “Where are we going?” “My dojo.”

The room was smaller than you expected. And barren, compared to the image you’d conjured in your mind—a few cushions, a thick mat on the far side, and some wooden swords resting against a wall were what greeted you. The walls were decidedly barren of wicked, complicated weaponry. Unohana went for the wooden swords. “I prefer katas over meditation before bed, nowadays.”

You’d never done a kata. You said as much. The sparkle of mischief in Unohana’s eyes ensnared you--enough to agree when she offered a lesson.

First, you observed. Her body moved slow, focused. She was beautiful to behold and your eyes danced from place to place, observing the small ways her graces manifested as she commanded her body from form to form.

“There,” she said. “A simple set to start. Come here.”

Leaving the cushion on shaky knees, you took the wooden sword she offered. The first two stances weren’t hard to find, but to keep. Your arms were wobbling as you searched for the third stance. Unohana chided you, like she’d seen the mistake a thousand times, and slid behind you, her front pressing to your back until you felt molded into the correct position. Even her arms, her hands, seemed a second skin over yours.

You looked back and instantly regretted it. Her face was inches away. Flushed, you couldn’t help but think how scandalous this all felt. The intimacy of her strong form guiding yours into the fourth stance and the feeling of her muscles flexed, keeping you from collapse dizzied your thoughts. “Is this our wedding night?”

“It is,” her voice was steady--frustratingly unaffected. “B-but. Is that allowed,” you whispered. Her face was so, so close. “We make the rules. It’s our marriage.”

The idea of an unconsummated marriage filled you with dread. You had no desire to fulfill your wifely duties tonight, but your family had always emphasized its importance. Spluttering just that—the importance of consummation—you insisted on…well, something!

“You’re sure?” It was her first real question. Too overwhelmed by the press of her body to resist, you said yes. With a clatter, the wooden sword dropped from your flimsy hold as her arms circled your waist. The first kiss was like an attack, sudden and firm. You were certain her grip was the only thing keeping you from collapsing. Especially when her tongue slid between your lips.

The confident way she conquered your mouth, as you were sure she conquered everything, left you buzzing. You opened your eyes, gathering yourself enough to put substantial weight on your legs again.

Unohana’s pupils were blown wide, her face flushed. The physical proof of her affected state made you feel pleased--almost giddy.

“Do you feel consummated?” “Y-yes. But I don’t think I can do anymore katas.”

Laughing, she lifted you into a bridal hold in one smooth motion. “It wasn’t a bad wedding night, then.”

#retsu unohana #retsu unohana x reader #bleach #imagines #bleach imagines #bleach headcanons #mars made it #unohana said: IM A LESBIAN HAROLD #i dont wanna talk about how long i spent on this #laksdjf;laksdjf

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youarejesting · 5 years ago

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BTS Seoul mates: Monochrome couple.2

[MASTERLIST]

Pairing: Taehyung x Soulmate!Reader

Summary: It was you he was sure of it. In a world void of color. He finds you can paint him a thousand pictures with mere words. But are you the one he is looking for? Video chats filled with hope that every time your eyes connect your world will bloom with the colors of love

The boys woke getting dressed for the day. It wasn’t long until they were heading to the hot springs. There muscles unwinding in the heated water. Taehyung looked out at the scenery that was New Zealand feeling the artist in him wanting to capture the perfect moment on camera. As he sat with his fellow band members he was left with his memories and the dejected feelings at failing to find his soulmate. He remembered the joy that coursed through him with the thoughts he was actually going to meet his one and only.

The feelings pulsed through him and you were so nice and absolutely stunning he couldn’t hide the excitement and love from his eyes. He saw his emotions written all over his during the video call. But as high as those feelings had soared around him they fell just as hard and heavy in his chest as he never got to see the colors he was promised.

The despair resonated through him. That moment replaying in his mind, the disappointment flooding your features as you realized you weren’t each others soulmates. The boys were moving on to the second location of the day the Nevis swing. He decided at the last minute to join the small group jumping, anything to forget the scene replaying in his head.

The first swing he took with Namjoon and his heart was racing and the only he could think about was not dying. The taut cord holding them to the platform was released and they were free falling. He saw a blur of the black and white mountains. The closest thing Taehyung will ever get to flying. As the swing pulled up at the end he felt like it might be possible to touch the sky. The blue sky. He was told it was blue, but what does it mean.

As the swing slows and they are gently lifted back onto the platform, Taehyung starts to remember further into his childhood. Sitting at his desk drawing a picture of his family and the farm he grew up on, to him he tried to match shades of grey to the ones he remembered but when the ground and grass came out purple and blue and his sky was yellow and tan. He thought the black and white picture and the shades of gray he had used were correct. His teacher thought differently, she scolded him in front of the class and tore the picture in half.

He had worked so hard and she ripped up his masterpiece, talking about how skin isn’t green and that clearly there was something wrong with him if he believed that. The children took to calling him an alien. He frowned these were some of his most heartbreaking memories, that he had locked away.

After the swing he wanted to chase the feelings away again, he asked to go on the catapult and after being harnessed in, he was in position and he felt his heart racing once more and he was shot through the sky the blur greeting him once more. Wind brushing past his face like it was brushing away all the negative thoughts and worries. In this moment he wasn’t less than the other members. But all to soon the experience was over and though he was happy he knew like before those feelings would return.

You were at work, an hour until you finish your shift and something strange happened. You couldn’t explain it, you lost your surroundings. All you saw was different shades blurred together. It made you feel sick and dizzy and you tried to walk to the staff room while blinded by this odd vision. You had never had anything like this happen before, but it was like watching a first person shooter game but they were on a roller coaster.

Unable to balance and unable to see you fell hitting your head and blacking out. Hearing a familiar name. ‘Taehyung’. Was it wishful thinking? He had said he saw a vision of you, maybe you really wanted it to be him. You woke up in the staff room your friend had come to take you home. Reviewing the events as your friend drove you home you pulled out your phone and did a quick google search. ‘Does the soulmate blindness link work through video chat?’. With an answer in hand that made your heart race. The connection didn’t work through anything but looking into the others eyes directly. You thumbs started flying back and forth on the touch screen of your phone as you wrote out a message.

[Hey, Kim Taehyung...]

[Did you go Sky Diving today?]

[I saw some weird vision, like you said and I heard someone say your name.]

[The soulmate link doesn’t work through a phone, only direct eye contact.]

[Y/N sent an attachment: Soulmate Blindness Study]

Taehyung ran to Namjoon who was buzzing around the camp trying to help. He handed him the phone asking him to read it. Namjoon stated that he should try and he assured him he had already and was trying to confirm that what he had read was correct. Namjoon sighed reading the texts and translating them into Korean. Unable to contain himself he snatched the phone back into his hands and started a video call.

Kim Taehyung would like to Face Time?

[Answer] [Decline]

You laughed stepping into your house and answering. His face appeared taking up the whole screen his thick brows, smoldering eyes and tiny nose freckle all on show. You blushed hiding behind your hand as you put your stuff down in the corner of your room.

“Yoboseyo” he smiled causing you to giggle and he brought the camera closer as you placed your phone on the dresser to unpack your work bag on your bed. “Hello. You look cute”

You froze and walked over to your phone, “I look tired and I am covered in batter from work?”

“Where you work?” He grinned

“I work in a waffle house, do you like waffles?” The conversation went well and when ever there was a language barrier he would run and whine for his hyung. You were sitting in front of google translate on your laptop trying your hardest to ask and say things you knew he would understand.

You took your laptop, some clothes and phone into the bathroom and ran a bath while he was talking with another of his friends in Korean. He acted very cute sometimes and it made you smile. You turned your phone away as you undressed and got into the tub and you had your phone sitting on a bath caddy so it only showed your face and wouldn’t get wet.

He came back and looked at you confused and you blushed explaining you were in the bath. He blushed as well covering his face in his hands. “I didn’t want you to leave we were talking, I want to know more about you?”

“You know BTS?” someone asked over his shoulder and Namjoon was quick to explain that they were a band”

You asked them if they had any songs online and they laughed, typing on your laptop which sat on a stool beside the bath you found them and froze, “ah what song should I listen too?”

“Singularity” One of the boys giggled over his shoulder Taehyung frowned smacking him on the shoulder.

“The first one to come up is DNA is that a good song?” he was acting really shy and you laughed turning on the subtitles and pressing play, you watched a smile breaking out on your face the more you saw the more the smile grew and eventually turned into shock. You were amazed by the dancing, singing, music video and lyrics it was a whole experience and you loved it.

Once the song was over you asked about the lyrics and they explained they wrote it for their soulmates, the one made just for them in every past and future life they would always be together. “That’s really good, it was a really good song, Holy hell you have thirty one million subscribers and this song has had over nine hundred million views, who are you?”

“Ah Joesonghamnida we are a little famous” he bowed his head to the phone.

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digitalgorkhaa · 4 years ago

Link

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badbookreviewclub · 5 years ago

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Empress Theresa, Chapters 11-20

Disclaimer: This contains spoilers. If you haven’t read the previous post you can find Chapters 5-10 here.

Yay! After a while, the next Review of Empress Theresa is finally here! I hope that you all enjoy because I sure as fuck didn’t. These chapters have some pretty fucked up logic, and Theresa does some pretty fucked up things (nothing worth a trigger warning). As such, I plan on having this review of these chapters be a bit more well researched than other chapters solely because I’m bored in quarantine, having gotten my assignments for my classes done early and I feel like fucking Norman Boutin’s logic up. This is the second to last review I’ll be posting for Empress Theresa (aside from a possible final one with a wrap up of feelings and thoughts I wasn’t able to express in these reviews). Like I’ve mentioned before I’ve got a few other books in the line-up to read and get through afterward. I doubt I’ll be doing much more in this style (considering how bizarrely long Empress Theresa is), though I hope you enjoy it nonetheless. Remember, if you have any books you want me to review, shoot me a message! I’ll look into them as soon as I can or let you know if that one is already on the shelf and waiting! But enough procrastinating, on with the chapters!

Chapter 11

Despite the fact that last chapter, Theresa went on a week-long vacation to France and Ireland (which if I remember right, I grew very heated about), this chapter it has been nearly a month since that trip and Theresa is already growing “depressed” from the “oppressive work” she’s being “forced to do”. So she takes another trip, this time by herself. She heads to a small village and basically parties with the people there. After the party, she heads back to start working and we finally learn what Theresa’s code is. It’s a substitution code, basically. Now I’m not good at code, I’ve never taken any training in it, but I’ve been told that it’s a substitution code. “The code was triplets made of three characters: AB2, AB3, AB4, CAA, DBB, and so on. Only I knew the code. It couldn’t be broken by all the intelligence agencies in the world because they represented actions and locations, not words. Besides that, I threw in some useless dummy parameters to confuse anybody looking over my shoulder. To pound the final nail in the coffin, I randomly surrounded the parameter codes with tiny circles, squares, rectangles, and arrows that meant nothing” (pg 189). Now I may not know how to break code myself, but that sounds like it would be pretty fucking easy to break into anyways. Aside from that, we learn that Theresa is basically just going to end up using a chessboard or wire twisted and pinned to pieces of plywood to ‘target’ or ‘tag’ things so HAL can follow them. I’m still not quite sure how that works, but I guess HAL can really only work with three dimensions, so it works with this three-dimensional code and applies it to something? Fuck if I know. But to test HAL’s abilities she raises a pointless 10-foot-wide column of water off the Gloucester coast. It went up at 200 miles an hour, which is 3 miles a minute (which is pretty fucking fast, I would think). You’d think this would displace a lot of water, but I guess not. She repeats the same thing in the Pacific ocean but with six water columns, and instead of ten, they’re one hundred feet wide. In 45 minutes they reached 150 miles (which is still 3 miles a minute, so at least Norman is consistent on that front). And then, at 150 miles in thE FUCKING AIR SHE JUST LETS THE SHIT AT THE TOP FREE FALL. Apparently, the impact of the atmosphere just turns that shit into steam.

Steve suggests that he should go to the UN to give the program that Theresa is working off of (I think), to quell the world’s fears and anxiety. Theresa agrees but only because “This might have been a little grandstanding on Steve’s part, but that was forgivable. This could be his last chance to hold the spotlight” (pg 194). Theresa constantly says that she doesn’t want to hold the spotlight, yet she constantly brings up that nobody will get the spotlight but her, and she never seems upset about it. Even later on, when someone in parliament stands up to question her, she gets pissed off because they took the spotlight from her. They spoke out against her and she becomes a toddler and throws a big fucking fit about it. Theresa says she doesn’t want to be in the spotlight and that she doesn’t like it, but her actions sure as fuck don’t show that. Chapter 12

North Korea is launching a missile at the water towers. For what purpose? I don’t fucking know. It says later on in the chapter that by doing this they think that they’re destroying HAL, and as such, will economically destroy everyone when the huge tsunamis hit the coastlines. I don’t know how they know that Theresa is sending HAL out there to control the water columns, but I guess she is? The problem is she’s not sending all of HAL out to control the column. She can still do other shit with it, so I have no idea what the logic is in this chapter. She’s also controlling his actions with a chessboard because I guess the plywood and metal wire was boring as shit. We also learn that everybody is fucking terrified of Theresa. “In other words, everybody was afraid of what I would do next” (pg 202). Which is followed shortly by, “Don’t piss me off!” (pg 202). Theresa clearly enjoys that people are scared of her. She gets a kick out of it because it puts her as the one in control and nobody can do jack shit about it. The entire world is terrified of her, and for some reason, Theresa loves that. Theresa is a fucking monster, and that point will only be proven even more later on! Nobody knows what Theresa will do next, because she was going to raise the water columns up in the thousands around the world, but she can’t do that anymore. So instead, she clears out a giant fucking area in the North Pole, and she’s going to raise up water columns there. The first thing she does is create splash barriers so tsunamis can’t come out and kill everybody, and I guess those work just fine. Theresa is able to easily raise these splash barriers because “The Arctic Ocean was only half a mile deep which made this piling up of rock easier for me to do then it would be in the three mile deep Atlantic” (pg 204). First of all, this is really wrong. It takes a really quick and easy Google search to realize that the Arctic isn’t necessarily half a mile deep. At its deepest, it’s 3.4 miles. Sure, where Theresa could be doing this, it may only be half a mile deep, but that would be fucking stupid and wouldn’t give her nearly enough water for what she plans to do. At the Atlantic, at its deepest, is 5.3 miles. Once again, a quick and easy Google search proves Norman wrong.

But, besides this faulty logic, we get even more bad logic. Theresa raises four water columns in the North Pole at 1,000 feet each. For reference, the International Space Station on most given days is only ~250 miles from the Earth’s surface. I know 1,000 miles seems really impressive, but it’s just really impractical. The water (now ice) would be so far out of the influence of earth’s gravitational pull that it would just orbit around the Earth, not come crashing back down. Please, feel free to correct me if I’m wrong about this. I’m just a history major, not a physics major.

Chapter 13 Theresa uses a chessboard to raise up 56 columns of water in the North Pole. Because of the amount of water that’s rising up (5,012 miles exactly) which you know, goes out nearly as far and further than most satellites. Space technically starts at 62 miles above the earth’s surface (average sea level, I think), so Theresa has giant fucking columns so far from earth that there is no way in fuck that they’ll be able to fall back down to earth (source). Yet somehow, these columns can still come crashing down and throw water back into the atmosphere which causes it to rain. And when the water comes crashing back down to earth, it’s akin to “eight million tons of TNT every second” (pg 213). So you know, Theresa has just effectively ruined the North Pole forever and ever and ever. The largest atomic bomb ever detonated by the United States, Castle/Bravo, let off the energy force of about 15 tons of tnt. This was a singular explosion, Theresa’s explosions are happening every. Single. second. (source)

But aside from this devastation to a really important ecosystem on Earth, it created rain. Nearly 100 inches a year, everywhere, for as long as the water columns are active. Theresa has flooded the earth. The earth’s average rainfall is about 39 inches a year (source). There are obvious exceptions, like the Amazon Rainforest, which can get 100-200 inches of rain per year, depending on the area (source). This means the entire world is essentially going to drown because of how much rain Theresa just gave them. Wait to go, Theresa, you just “saved” everyone.

Oh but that isn’t it, to put a sweet little cherry on top, Theresa decides that she needs to tilt the earth so it’s straight up and down and the earth no longer has a tilt to it. This effectively rids the world of seasons, making it summer all year round so people can grow crops all year round (hint: you really can’t do that). There are plenty of crops that grow in summer, but Theresa effectively wiped out all seasonal crops, so way to fucking go, Theresa. Not to mention that because there will be no more snow or winter because she doesn’t think we need it, there goes the entire industry having to do with skiing and snowboarding. There also goes most places supplies of water. In the region that I live, we rely really heavily on having enough snow during the winter times so that when spring comes around and the snow starts to melt off of the mountains it will run down and our reservoirs will be filled again. Then we don’t have to be concerned about not having enough water for the summer and fall months. There are also areas in my state where it’s harder to get water to, so people have to put out basins on their property to collect snow so it melts and they have enough to water crops, yards, and sometimes, even just so their water bills don’t absolutely skyrocket. So thanks for sending people into poverty too, Theresa. Oh wait? She doesn’t care? She donates a tiny portion of her trillions later on to the world poor fund as we learn later on. How generous and benevolent of you Theresa. However shall we repay this debt that we owe you?

Chapter 14

In this world, rather than Theresa having killed off the entire population of the earth, she just saved everyone. How wonderful and heroic of her. Everyone is celebrating her and who she is. Norman decided that it was absolutely important to add into just how the Chinese were celebrating her too, “They were holding my photograph in their hands and yelling Tah-ee-sah! Tah-ee-sah!” (pg 219). I don’t know about you all, but that seems pretty racist to me because Norman had to specifically include that. He didn’t talk about how everyone was chanting her name, nor point out how it was being pronounced. He specifically did this with China.

Anyways, besides supposedly being in hiding and nobody being able to find her, she has to leave the Parker estate because they expect half a million people to visit the house by the day’s end and can’t have her there. So you know, guess she wasn’t all that well in hiding. Because she leaves though, Theresa decides that she needs to go to Parliament to talk and put her two cents out there. We also find out that she’s not a public speaker in the most brilliant way, “‘I’m not a public speaker. I never wanted to be. I’m talking to the media and the people on the street. Excuse this little piece of paper. It reminds me of the points I’ve been thinking of a long time’” (pg 222). Does this remind anyone of the familiar little phrase ‘Show don’t tell’? There are better ways to introduce that she’s not a public speaker, like stuttering over herself, fidgeting, not looking at the audience, mumbling and then speaking too loud. The microphone could peak because she’s not used to using one, she could knock something over out of nervousness. We could see her fidgeting with the notecard. Norman doesn’t do any of this because he has no idea how to show and not tell us exactly what’s going on.

Nonetheless, she continues on with a long and boring speech just saying that she doesn’t want to be mobbed in public. Someone in the House stands up though and asks why she’s there, which is a perfectly reasonable question. Theresa doesn’t see it this way, however. “I could single him out because he had stood up when he said that. I suppose it was a House rule. I stared at him with no attempt to hide my contempt. How dare he interrupt me! In answer to his own question, why had he spoken if not to attract attention to himself? This hypocrisy had to become plain to everyone as I stared his political career into oblivion. “‘You interrupted me” I said. “Nobody interrupts me. I don’t need you’” (pg 223). I thought you didn’t want attention, Theresa? I thought you just wanted to be treated like everyone else? I thought you weren’t special. Not to mention she says it’s hypocritical. The man did absolutely nothing to be hypocritical. Theresa is so unaware that it’s painful and it makes me angry. She follows this up by claiming that there’s a new sheriff in town (hint: it’s her). Yet she continues with the notion that she doesn’t want attention. :) :) :) :) :) :) :):):):): ): ): ): ): ): ): ): ): I fucking hate this book

We find out what happened to Jan. Apparently despite the fact that she could say she was working with the government, she’s been unemployed because the ‘eight-year gap’ in her resume made her unemployable. This is just bullshit. She obviously worked for the government, there are records of her working for the government, she had a supervisor. Not to mention, an eight-year gap doesn’t make someone unemployable. I’m sorry, but it just doesn’t. But Theresa sends a message out on the ‘All Theresa All the Time’ channel to let Jan know that she’s not angry at her and wants to meet with her. So you know, Despite the fact that there’s a channel dedicated to her on TV, one that she obviously uses, she definitely doesn’t want the attention and wants to be treated like a normal person. Definitely. Fuck you Theresa.

Chapter 15

I had to walk away and watch YouTube for a few hours but I’m back, and somewhat more relaxed again. So let’s get started on chapter 15. Essentially because of thermal expansion, because Theresa fucked up the entire earth and its tilt, they expect that the oceans will rise two or three feet in a year. Norman also says that parts of the ocean are 3 miles deep, as if that’s the deepest part of the ocean, but the deepest parts of the ocean are 7 miles (Challengers Deep, the deepest part of the ocean, is ~7 miles down) (sorry for saying ‘deep’ and ‘deepest’ so much). The solution? Lift a lot of cubic miles of water out of the oceans and yeet them out of the earth never to return. Brilliant. Because of all the rain they have to find protective headgear as well so they don’t get soaked. Theresa and Co. (Steve and Prime Minister Blair) get traditional American Firefighter helmets. These are such a slam hit to see everyone wearing that companies start making fake knock-offs so people can be like Theresa. They also decide to travel around the world to take a break. Their break is so rudely interrupted because the wind is slowly returning, and that will cause massive and destructive hurricanes that the world just can’t afford to deal with. We also find out that the earth hasn’t completely lost its declination. It’s 5 degrees now, which you know, is so much better than 0. Theresa is such an amazing person though for not wanting to right the word again because the Asians can’t afford to go through winter, and if they went through winter they would lose half a billion people. Because you know, it isn’t like all of this isn’t her fault in the first place and this whole thing could have been avoided if Theresa hadn’t cherry-picked problems to solve in the first place.

Chapter 16

Theresa spends the whole night crying. I’m so sad for her :(:(:(:(:(:(::) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) Steve decides to fix this. And the way he fixes this? They need to go and grab elements from the sun and bring them down to earth to stop the hurricanes. The elements that they grab? Xenon, and per the request of the British military, helium. After a month of attempting this, Xenon now accounts for two ounces of atmospheric pressure. Xenon is an inert noble gas that’s traditionally used in lighting. Xenon is also classified as an asphyxiant. Inhalation in excessive conditions can cause dizziness, nausea, vomiting, and loss of consciousness. “The first symptoms produced by a simple asphyxiant are rapid respirations and air hunger. Mental alertness is diminished and muscular coordination is impaired. Later judgment becomes faulty and all sensations are depressed. Emotional instability often results and fatigue occurs rapidly. As the asphyxia progresses, there may be nausea and vomiting, prostration and loss of consciousness, and finally convulsions, deep coma and death” (source). A concentration of 75% Xenon inhaled can be fatal in minutes. All Theresa is using it for is to cool the air because xenon has a cooling effect on the environment. However, in the process, she is also killing all the asthmatics and people with other respiratory conditions. Congratulations, Theresa. She’s probably killing more people than that too, because she’s putting a fuck ton of helium into the atmosphere and air. The atmosphere, after a month, became 10% helium. It’s true that at the current time, we are having a helium shortage, but considering that Norman claims this is a million times what our current atmosphere’s helium content is, that seems like it’s a terrible idea. An increase in the helium in our atmosphere increases the atmospheric pressure. This isn’t a terrible thing and not everybody dies, but asthmatics and people with other respiratory issues are sure as fuck going to have a terrible time.

She also fucks up the gravity of the entire solar system by taking Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons, and making it orbit around Mars. Do I even need to explain why this is a bad idea? Why fucking up the gravitational orbit of the solar system is the absolute worst idea I have ever fucking seen?

Then she goes and crashes the entire economy and puts the world into a global depression by flooding the market with gold and silver. They claim it’s a monetary stabilizer, and sure, it is, if you want your money to be stabilized at like .02. This has absolutely no consequence on anything or anyone in Theresa land though, which is fucking stupid and so unrealistic. Norman tries to paint this book like it’s realistic and something that people could actually work with, but you really can’t. At the disclaimer at the very end of the book, the only thing that he says isn’t realistic is the way that President Martin acted (wanting to blow up Theresa). Anyways, Theresa hires Jan as her financial manager (because that makes sense, and Jan definitely has experience with finances [she doesn’t]). And the chapter is ended off with “I wonder what my old BC boyfriend Jack Koster was thinking of all this!” (pg 253). Was all of this just to get back at Jack? What the fuck Theresa? Why? I thought you were happily married to Steve? So why the fuck are you thinking of Jack? I’m so confused. Chapter 17

God I am so fucking close to being finished with this review and then I can finish the fucking book, write the final review, and be out and never think of this fucking book again. This chapter though, oh god this chapter is something else. Theresa is a horrible human being in this chapter and honestly is akin to a monster in this chapter. So all of the people who held stocks in Gold Bullion have just lost all of their money thanks to Theresa (see, she has sent people into poverty, wiping out their retirement funds, college funds for their kids, et...c). As such, they’re filing a class-action lawsuit against Theresa, headed by Connie McKesson. Reasonable, right? They’re asking for 35 billion dollars in damages which I guess is far less from what she’ll get in her gold sales. Someone claims that Theresa may spend most of her life in courts (which makes sense).

Theresa gets pissed at Steve because the idea to get the gold was his idea so she storms upstairs and leaves him downstairs. Mrs. Parker comes up and reassures Theresa that nobody is to blame when couples have problems, “The world is to blame” (page 256). So now she makes up with Steve. Despite that Norman claiming that there’s no swearing in the book, Steve says “We’ll get this lawyer bitch” (page 257). Even though Connie is just doing her job, Steve and Theresa come after her without relent. They find out where she is and stalk her. HAL targets and tags Connie, and they follow her home from her workplace. She lives in a single-family home, and apparently this is something that’s funny to Steve and Theresa, like it’s a bad thing. They confirm that Connie has two little children and yet they’re still absolutely awful and mean to her. Despite the fact that she’s just trying to do her job, and earlier they stated that the people who were filing the suit would just go to another law firm, Theresa still goes after Connie. “Any vehicle she entered would not move. I wasn’t going to allow her to go anywhere except on foot” (page 261). She does this for the other eight (male) lawyers in Connie’s firm as well. Apparently, this is somehow better because “The crybaby media couldn’t say I was making it hard for mommies to take care of their kids as they said about Connie McKesson” (page 262). More than that, I don’t think Norman thought about single fathers or families who rely on the men to be the primary breadwinner in the household. This is 2020, yes, but there are still plenty of families where men are the primary breadwinners. She’s keeping people from being able to go to their jobs, to make money, to support their families. She’s forcing them to do whatever the fuck she wants because she’s mad that they have to do their jobs.

And if they had a medical emergency, Theresa would have to look them over to confirm that they weren’t buffing, otherwise they couldn’t go anywhere at all unless it was on foot. However, you can’t always know someone has a medical emergency just from first glance (e.g. like an exploding appendix). It’s cruel and disheartening. What if one of their children had a medical emergency? What then? What if they needed to get across town quickly because a family member was in an accident or had an emergency? Theresa said she wouldn’t let them take any transport aside from walking unless she deemed that they could. And nobody can do jack shit about this. Why? Because although everybody knows it’s her, there’s no physical evidence that it is. “So! I could do anything I wanted to anybody and nobody would dare do anything about it! I kind of liked that” (pg 262). How horrible is Theresa? She can do whatever the fuck she wants, she can ruin peoples lives, crash economies, kill people, and so long as she does it with HAL, nobody can do shit against her. Not to mention all of this was so unnecessary. Everybody knew that Theresa would win the suit anyway, so why the fuck did she feel the need to go to all this effort? Why the fuck would she be willing to ruin their lives until they dropped the suit? It’s cruel and it’s inhumane. When they finally drop the lawsuit she lets them go so they could finally travel in ways other than via foot. “Don’t mess around with Empress Theresa” (pg 263).

They decide that they can use this grounding trick with terrorists too. Because you know, not being able to use a vehicle will definitely stop a terrorist. Definitely. But in Theresa-land it will. Though by targeting these terrorists with the grounding trick (despite a million better ways that she could target terrorists with HAL), she apparently is setting a target on her back, but she’s going through with it anyways. We get another line that absolutely proves just how horrible of a person I think Theresa is and how little empathy she has, more specifically, how little empathy or care I think Norman Boutin has. “The Parkers made no effort to hide their disappointment. Their darling Theresa was more important to them than nameless bombing victims” (pg 265). What if it was your family? Your mother, your brother, your sister, your father, your cousin, your aunt, your uncle, your grandparent? What if it was your friend? Your best friend? What if it was you? Just because you don’t know them doesn’t mean that other people didn’t. For someone that was their family member. That was their friend, their best friend. That wasn’t just a nameless bombing victim. That was a person.

Chapter 18

Once again I had to get up and walk away and do something else for a little bit. But I’m back now and somewhat more ready to keep writing, so let’s just keep trudging on, I guess.

The news is filled with stories of terrorists being grounded, Theresa brags about how she could have killed the lawyers if she wanted to. The US decides to mint silver coins with Theresa’s face on them because she’s just that fucking important. One again she brings up Jack, which is completely and utterly pointless. I don’t know at this point if she’s still in love with Jack or if she loves Steve because she brings up Jack so fucking often it seems.

We meet the main bad guy of the next few chapters, I guess. OPEC, or the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. And rather than delving into this, Theresa just fucking moving on and straight to meeting President Stinson, the new president of the United States for the first time. Theresa brings Prime Minister Blair along as a representative for the rest of the world (because the Prime Minister of England can totally do that). All they talk about though is OPEC, and apparently how OPEC thinks that “they can make you cave in and turn you into a slave. That will give them the power they always wanted” (pg 272). I’m still not really sure where this came out of considering that OPEC held absolutely no role before and Theresa had never shown an interest in petroleum. Now, however, I guess she does. I guess it’s because she’s going to bring carbon into the atmosphere to try and beat them (she never does as far as I’ve read in the book). I guess they quickly scrap that idea though because now Theresa is going to bring land up to the surface so they can have an entire petroleum mining business from the ocean floor. It would be hers though because you know, it’s not like another country would be able to lay claim to it, but whatever.

President Stinson also goes to Congress so they can make it so Theresa can’t be sued because she definitely needs that power too and fuck you, you can’t lay a single fucking finger on our perfect little Theresa.

OPEC and Theresa have had like 0 contact up until this point, but they come out on TV with their demands “We seek justice on the world stage. If it is not given to us we will take it. We demand the operation known as grounding to be removed from all freedom fighters [terrorists, according to Theresa]…. We demand that Theresa Hartley put ten billion dollars every month into a fund for the world’s poor. We demand the land known to the West as Israel be returned to the people who lived there before 1947. If these demands are not met we will sell no oil to the United States or the European Union” (pg 276). Yeah, so turns out, Theresa wasn’t even fucking donating to the world’s poor all along, let alone out of her own volition. We’ve learned at this point that she has fucking trillions in the bank and yet she can’t be fucked to donate to people. The money is still rolling in for her and yet she can’t donate to anyone. Also, OPEC isn’t associated with terrorists as far as I know? If I’m wrong please correct me, but it seems more like the terrorists attack OPEC more than not.

But apparently these demands are too outrageous for Theresa and send her to tears. Despite the fact that you know, apparently none of this was a problem before (especially on the oil part). But we’re supposed to pity Theresa here. I’ll let you in on a secret, I really don’t pity Theresa. In fact, I really hate her guts and I hope those assassins do finally come after her and kill her :) Theresa moves on anyways, not willing to give into OPEC’s demands and picks a rectangle near the arctic where she’s going to pull up a bunch of land to mine for petroleum on. She doesn’t do that just yet though because she has to go and meet with Prime Minister Scherzer (the prime minister of Israel). She gives him two options, Plan A is that they move the entire fucking country of Israel and stick it smack damn in the Mediterranean between Italy and Greece. Prime Minister Scherzer doesn’t like this so they move on to Plan B, where Theresa just raises an entire island for them all to live on. Originally it was going to the in the shape of the Star of David, though Sherzer points out this is kind of unconventional, so he changes it and it’s really fucking complicated and basically a bunch of islands with harbors to protect it. Theresa also agrees that she can just move Jerusalem to the island without a fucking hassle.

Then we come back to the island that Theresa is raising to mine petroleum from and to sell at $20 a barrel, which is anywhere from ~4-10 dollars below the general crude price of oil as of today (4/7/2020) (source) And because they’re still worried about assassins, this time coming after the Israeli people while they’re moving across the land bridge that Theresa will be making as a temporary way to get to the island she’s creating for them, Theresa decides that the best way to avoid it is to make 24-hour sunlight. Fucking Wonderful. That definitely won’t fuck shit up.

Chapter 19

I am so fucking close. I just want to be done. I fucking hate Theresa so much. I hate this stupid fucking book and its terrible logic. Theresa basically starts blowing up an area where she wants to raise the ground to make her giant oil mining operation and predicably the world freaks the fuck out. Theresa blows the hole so deep in the ocean that it should be in the earth’s mantle, but somehow it fucking isn’t. Oh well, I guess. Theresa also just decides in this chapter that she’s fine being a god among men. “How quickly people forgot my benevolence when fear took control of them!” (pg 292). “It wouldn’t do to have the World Empress blow her top” (pg 293). She also seems to forget everything that she’s done to attack the lawyers who were just trying to do their job by refusing to let them go anywhere unless it was by foot, “I’m still waiting for an apology for the attempt on my life, but I haven’t done anything to anybody, have I?” (pg 293).

People are pretty upset she’s just ripping up the ocean and the ground and not telling anybody about what she’s doing, which is understandable. England sets up tanks and Gatling guns (for the drones) and soldiers with rifles to shoot anyone who gets close because I guess people are just so upset about what Theresa is doing in the middle of the Arctic ocean. And the reason why she’s making this giant rectangle so deep is for the overflow of the ocean when she raises up that giant fucking piece of land so she can make companies mine oil for her. Theresa also brings a fuck ton of carbon to earth and compresses it into diamonds so she can make a giant diamond ring that will reflect the sunlight and give the earth 24-hour sun. Apparently, people are super fucking pumped about this. That honestly just sounds like hell to me. I can’t even be bothered right now to research why that’s a terrible fucking idea and would throw so many people and things off and would just ruin everything.

Chapter 20

Theresa has to meet with ‘a Saudia Arabian’ instead of OPEC, which she’s pretty fucking upset about. “It didn’t matter to me what his name was. And to be honest, what he had to say didn’t matter much to me either unless he was prepared to give up all his demands” (pg 313). So this man is a representative of OPEC, but apparently that’s still not good enough for Theresa because she’s a childish brat who needs to have whatever the fuck she wants or else the rest of the world is going to suffer for it. Way to write a super relatable and lovable character, Norman. Anyways, Theresa meets with this man in Geneva, Switzerland, where they have a Swiss representative for the government or military, or something, there. Not to be a mediator or anything, but just to throw herself in the way in case they start throwing knives because that’s definitely going to happen. Anyways, Theresa basically says if they drop their demands she’ll make all the countries in the middle east more like Europe, with mountains and rain and forest and without the deserts. So essentially, Theresa is willing to destroy an entire VERY IMPORTANT ECOSYSTEM. All just so she doesn’t have to deal with OPEC anymore. Wonderful. Fucking. Wonderful. And we’re supposed to believe that Theresa isn’t a horrible person? Anyways, after the meeting where nothing is resolved or agreed on, Theresa, I guess, has already lifted the island for the Israeli people. She starts making the landbridge so they can get to it, which you know, is fuckin mint. She then sends up her diamond ring to give the world 24-hour daylight, and people were super happy about it. Which is so fucking stupid and unrealistic. So much shit would get fucked up.

Apparently crime rates drop because of it, which I have a hard time believe considering that a lot of crimes happen in daylight, specifically when people are at work (break-ins).

And to end off the chapter, the Exxon Maria, the petroleum boat that’s carrying the petroleum from the mining operation happening on the island that Theresa was making blows the fuck up after a 55-foot long ‘fishing’ boat rams into it.

This entire book is just… something else. And I hate it. Get fucked Theresa. Chapter 21-28 will be the last review for this book, and then I can move on with my life. I hate this book so much. So, so fucking much. It’s so terrible and you don’t even know it until you try and read it yourself. Until then, I hope that you enjoyed this review.

#bad book reviews #bad book #review #reviewblr #bookblr #empress theresa #theresa is a monster #fuck you theresa #i want to die #I hate this book so much #this was torture #nearly done

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frogmanwritings · 5 years ago

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Chapters: 5/? Fandom: Teen Titans (Animated Series) Rating: Explicit Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence Relationships: Beast Boy/Starfire, Garfield Logan/Koriand'r Characters: Garfield Logan, Beast Boy, Starfire, Koriand'r (DCU), Slade, Slade Wilson, Deathstroke, Robin, Robin (DCU), Dick Grayson, Cyborg (Character), Victor Stone, Raven (DCU), Rachel Roth Garfield Wilson has lived with his adoptive father, Slade, since his parents died. Finally, after 5 years, Slade is sending him out to try and take down his rivals, the Teen Titans. How will a dark and mistreated Garfield react to them upon meeting them? How will he deal with their bright alien bringing a shine of positivity and joy to his life that he had hidden from him behind angst and abuse? Links: Archive of Our Own Fanfiction.net Wattpad

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Cyborg was in a good mood, whistling up a fancy tune while he carried his glowing blue and silver battery over his shoulder like an 80s high-schooler did with a boom-box, a nice bounce in his step as he went into the common room. While he had recently had to power-down and recharge after he dropped his precious metal power source, things weren't as dangerous as that seemed, and after an hour of rebooting, his power levels were returning to normal. And he estimated that he wouldn't need to carry around the recharger for any longer than a day now, which was a blessing.

While he had come to terms with his robotics a while ago, it was still tough, made even tougher by the fact that he had to heft around a goddamn battery just so he could be conscious. Malfunctions were annoying, but they never really restricted him like carrying a 30lb power source in his arm that had to stay attached to his chest. Not to mention the fact that he only had one arm to carry it around with, given how he had only just now developed an exoskeleton for his destroyed limb during that encounter with Garfield.

Speaking of whom, Victor had taken a bit of time researching the deadly disease that he detected on the villain, and so far, things were frustratingly, but understandingly slim on the Internet, and there were no medical records in the U.S. of 'Sakutia'. So he was simply going off of flimsy reports that he found via Google Search, and the only somewhat credible source he found was about the disappearance of two rangers that went by the names of Mark and Marie Logan. They had a son that had contracted the deadly disease, but.. that was all there was. A singular news article in a foreign language that described the boy with the disease. Nothing about him surviving or dying, nothing about how he got it, just "Son of rangers contracted Sakutia".

Raven herself was recovering nicely, her natural powers made her heal much faster than a normal human, and thus her nose was practically as good as new, while her ribs didn't do much more than ache than she put weight on them. She'd be good to go by tomorrow, and really the only reason she didn't go up with Robin and Starfire to check out the crime-scene of Professor Chang's murder was that she wanted to make sure she was at 100% in case of an emergency.

And it seemed that it was a good decision, as Cyborg's robotic eye and Raven's orbs on her gloves and belt went off not long after their leader and their leader's crush left. Victor figured he'd check just what the danger was, and a grim look crossed his face when he saw the location of the crime, a laboratory in the same block of the lab that Garfield robbed and... murdered a police officer.

He still felt terrible about it, reaching out to the family of the cop's and offering his deepest condolences and apologizes to them for not being able to save the husband and father. They were very forgiving and insisted it wasn't his fault, but the pain in their eyes, the distant cries of their daughter stuffed away in her bedroom... No one said that superhero life was easy, that you weren't going to be able to save everyone, and that there would be casualties, but...

"Cyborg, Raven! I require medical assistance!" The blaring voice of the resident alien broke up his thoughts, and he looked over towards the center entrance to the main-ops, his human eye widening at the sight. Starfire was levitating, her sunglasses and earplugs missing, but it seemed that she cared more for the bodies she was carrying over her shoulders. Not body, but bodies. Raven shot up from the couch she was sat at, zooming over to grab one of the bodies, their own leader's in Robin. His ankle was twisted at an odd angle, blood ran down his thigh and there were scratch marks on his face.

But there was another body, and Cyborg could barely believe it. Garfield Logan was over her right shoulder, and he wasn't in good shape. Both his arm and his side was pouring with scarlet red, and while Robin was stirring in Raven's hold and his domino mask was scrunched up in pain, the apprentice was completely limp, and the only sign that he was alive was the occasional heave in his stomach. But Victor was hesitant, why would he want to help a murderer? As much as he DID blame himself for the cop's unfortunate demise, the changeling was the one who pulled the trigger.

"Star, what about you, are you-" "I am fine! But Garfield is losing lots of blood very quickly and needs your help!" Starfire was many things. Assertive was certainly one of them, and Cyborg reluctantly nodded his head, following the Tamaranean as they headed to the medical bay, letting out a grunt as he thought of the implications of this. He was really going to nurse a villain, and a murderer at that, back to health. Curse Kori's heart.

"And Cyborg.. you mentioned that this Garfield has 'Sakutia', correct?" Her bright voice asked, and after the half-robot nodded, she had another question. "And this 'Sakutia' disease is spread through biting, yes?" And while a part of Cyborg wanted to break down fully the ways of contacting Sakutia, that it could be from biting to blood transfer to sometimes even being spat on, he just nodded his head once more to make things simple for his friend, who sometimes had trouble taking in Earthen things. Not to say that she was dumb, of course! But... he imagined it to be extremely difficult to have perfect knowledge of both Tamaran's AND Earth's cultures, traditions, languages, sayings, activities, etc. The fact that she knew so much already and picked up onto more each and every day was a sign of her great intelligence.

"Oh no... Garfield bit Robin in the leg during their fight, I wasn't-" Victor didn't wait for her to finish her statement, be it her blaming herself or voicing her condolences for Robin's safety, he wasn't about to jog while his leader had potentially contradicted one of the deadliest diseases in the world. He ran as fast as his battery could pump power into him, catching up to Raven in the process and snatching the squirming body of Robin in the process from her arms, ignoring her exasperated protest as he got the Boy Wonder to the med-bay as fast as possible.

Robin better be okay, for Garfield's sake..

Excruciating pain welcomed Garfield as his eyes shot open, reaching up to cup his head, only to meet cold metal resistance. Trying to raise his other hand, he only met the same result, which led to him glancing downward. The room he was in was rather dark, so his tired gaze could barely make out what sort of position he was in. He was laid down, neck and head propped up by a few pillows, while his wrists were strapped down onto two armrests by what seemed to be steel restraints. An idle beeping sound brought him to look at a white machine taped to his right index finger, running all the way to a heart monitor.

Wherever he was, it seemed to be some sort of medical-bay. Like a hospital. But what hospital would accept a green-skinned, murdering, diseased villain?

His wounds on his arm and his side were taped up, and while he remembered feeling far worse, his muscles were still somewhat sluggish and pain still raked at his torso. Getting stabbed will do that. "Hey!" Garfield called out, struggling a bit more against his metal straps, attempting to kick his legs up only to meet the same resistance as he did with his hands. The situation almost reminded him of a comment Professor Chang said, about strapping him down and experimenting on him. Of course, he was credited for the death of the Professor, even though it was his father who ended the elder's life. How he would've liked to be the one to be the one who put down the doctor.

Some worry crept on him as the thought crossed his mind, and the changeling once again called out, exerting as much force in his attempts to escape as he could, but it was all met with the same result of him being stuck in the hospital bed. Any transformation attempts were met with a simple prickle running through his spine and.. nothing. Wherever he was and whatever it is that his adversaries did to him, it left him without the ability to shift into any sort of animal forms, restraints or not.

Garfield's third attempt to call out was interrupted by a loud sliding sound, and glancing upward, even the darkest of rooms couldn't hide those shining emeralds for eyes that stared at him so curiously. And.. worriedly? He had a faint memory of her standing over him before he went out, but he couldn't make out her emotions there. Here? It was crystal clear that she looked at him with many emotions that led to him being even more confused than her.

"You are awake, are you alright?" Her soft voice questioned him, a finger sliding up to a switch right next to the door and a few ceiling lights turned on afterwards, annoying Garfield's dark-adjusted eyes for a few seconds before he was able to fully look at Starfire again. "Uh.. where am I?" The changeling answered her question with a question of his own, the layout of a medical room much clearer with the lights on, white tile and white-painted walls an eye-sore, along with a few other hospital beds and desks with many equipment on them.

"You are at Titans Tower. You were in very poor condition when I caught up to you after your fight." She began to explain, slowly floating over bedside to Garfield's bed, causing him to quickly gulp as those twinkling green eyes got ever so closer to him, peering at him and only him with such curiosity. And when he did gulp, he noticed how the saliva traveled much easier and quicker down his throat, but that wasn't much of a concern for him at the moment. "I.. would have felt very guilty leaving you there. You were bleeding heavily and you were unconscious before I could even think about assisting you."

So I HAVE been captured. Great. He growled in his head, only imagining how disappointed his father was going to be in him. "Speaking of which." An orange hand then reached out to his gut, causing him to flinch and suck in his stomach, trying to avoid her touch as much as he could. "Please don't worry, I am not going to hurt you. I merely wish to check on your wounds." Her voice was... actually very comforting, and a quick look upward into her eyes told him that she was telling the truth. Something so sincere and sweet like the shine in her orbs told him that she meant him no harm, and he slowly allowed exhaled.

Garfield's top, which had been cut up a bit, didn't require much tugging in order to expose his stomach, his toned abs covered up by several colorless bandages that wrapped all the way around his torso. Two long fingers pressed against his side, causing a small hiss to escape his clenched teeth, the pain aching as she poked at where he had been stabbed. "Ah, sorry. Is the pain.. um, sharp? Or blunt?" Starfire asked, once again pressing her fingers at the same spot, this time much gentler. Once again, the pain shot through his stomach, this time Garfield taking note of the pain being much more of an ache than a stabbing pain.

"Blunt? You mean.. dull?" The changeling questioned, letting out a small sigh as the fingers retreated back. "Yes, that is the word! I presume that is how the pain is like then?" She perked up, and while she was correct in her assumption, he was... confused. Why did she even care? She was nice, sure, but it was the dead of night, judging by his outlook of a nearby window. He did recall Slade pointing out her kindness could be exploited, and while it was odd.. he might as well try and use it to his advantage.

"Can I go now?" Garfield asked, putting on his best sad frown and even if it didn't work, it gave him an excuse to stare into her eyes, something he was avoiding for so long. But it seemed that while she was kind, she wasn't dumb, as she just shook her head without giving his eyes a single glance. "Unfortunately not. As much as I dislike the word, you are our prisoner." She solemnly stated, earning a grunt of disappointment from the changeling's throat.

"You have done... very bad things, Garfield. You should consider yourself lucky we are providing you shelter and medicine after all you've done." Starfire continued, floating over to a nearby table with a stack of papers on a clipboard, along with a pen placed down next to it. "Do you think your actions are justified? Using your extraordinary powers to steal, harm, even... kill?" Her words were firm and forward, though her tone hardly wavered as she picked up the pen, casually tested it for ink before beginning to scribble words down onto a paper.

Narrowing his eyes, Garfield felt.. attacked. He didn't take offense to the words she threw, in part of that having to do with her soft voice still possessing that caring nature that he had been able to recognize in the short periods of time when he heard her speak. But, it still felt like a bullet fired from a gun, only to intercepted by a bulletproof vest. She WAS attempting to guilt him, but he wasn't about to let that work, even if he was wondering about her other motives. "Why do you care?" Logan said in a monotone voice, careful to try and not let his curiosity be apparent.

The Tamaranean opened her mouth, seemingly to answer him, but nothing came out and soon she closed it after only uttering a sigh. "Get some sleep, Garfield. Robin and the others wish to speak to you in the morning, and it would be best if you were well rested for that." Her voice lost emotion as she gave him the small breakdown, not giving the changeling the chance to question what she had just told him before the lights were shut off and her tall frame disappeared behind a door.

Weirdo. He quietly huffed, figuring he might as well get some rest before he was interrogated by the Boy Wonder and the hospital bed was fairly comfortable. Still, his mind was racing with what had just transpired, with her checking on him carefully and showing interest into his motives. Those twinkling eyes never lost their shine, her voice only wavering at the end of their conversation.

God, what was wrong with him?

His slumber didn't last long however, with the feeling of metal pressing against his forehead causing him to shoot his eyes open, only to see the half-man known as Cyborg playfully poking his face. "Wake up, sleepyhead." He teased, giving the changeling's nose a 'boop' before walking away, just in time for his metallic finger to avoid an angry bite. "Let... me out!" Garfield growled, struggling against his restraints, using all the strength he could muster, but alas, it was no use.

"You're not going to break those, you know?" A calm, yet vindicating voice was the next to irritate the changeling, and Gar turned his head to look at the owner of that voice, recognizing it to belonging to the goth heroine of the team, Raven. "Those restraints are tight enough to trap Cyborg over there, and I sincerely doubt you are as strong as him. So save your energy." Her voice held quite obvious disdain for him, and it wasn't hard to tell why once his green eyes captured the bruise that was on the bridge of her nose.

A smirk crossed his face upon noticing it, knowing that it was from him, from when he wasn't restrained and she couldn't just taunt him like a coward. And it seemed she noticed his facial expression, to which he caught her frown only grow wider and her eyes darted away from him. Subtle black energy radiated from her fingers for a few brief moments before fading, and Garfield remembered that anger was considered both a strength and a weakness of hers. Get her angry enough, and she loses all restraint in her power and becomes a monster of rage. Good for strategy, but if that strategy failed, then she wouldn't hesitate to kill you.

He wasn't exactly in a position to abuse that, and he knew that he'd only get more frustrated trying to fire her up, since he was the one in restraints. So, the changeling just turned his attention back to the metal holding him in place, trying once more to break out of them.

"Really, not even a 'thank you.'? And here I thought we were doing you a huge favor here." Cyborg soon spoke, his mostly robotic face turning back to look at him, a slight chuckle escaping from his mouth when he noticed the resistance to his restraints. "First, we heal up your wounds, since while you do have enhanced healing thanks to your messed up DNA, you still wouldn't have lasted too long out there without medical attention due to all the bleeding you were doing. And really, I was fairly hesitant in closing up those wounds since well, I thought you got your dirty Sakutia disease in Robin from when you were fighting him."

Garfield raised a brow, not really wanting to listen to all to this speech, but the part about him dying did unfortunately catch his attention. As well as him potentially infecting Robin, which did make the corner of his lips raise a bit. "Oh, don't get your hopes up, green bean. Turns you can't actually spread Sakutia." Victor was quick to point out, which halted the apprentice's slow smile and brought it back down to a pout. "Yeah, that was a hassle though, cleaning up the injuries you put on my boy. But still, stitched up your stab wound, injected you with some fresh new blood and gave you oxygen. And even after doing all of that, we let you stay here instead of sending you off to prison. Bet that would've been a rude awakening for you."

"Are you trying to guilt me or something, you trash can? Your alien chick already tried that." The changeling growled, getting quite a bit annoyed of hearing a list of the things the Titans did for him, as if he personally asked for all of that. If he could've ran away from Starfire and not pass out, he would've. "Trash can, huh? Your words are like a knife to my heart, you know?" Cyborg chuckled, to which Garfield huffed: "If you even have a heart."

"Oh yeah, it's still in there. Got about 20 layers of machinery covering it, but it's there. But back to what I was saying..." But before the half robot could continue his ear-racking speech, the swishing sound of the med-bay door opening up interrupted him and a shudder went through Logan's body. Robin stared daggers at him, and with good reason, his leg wrapped up in bandages and he had a crutch pressed up against his armpit that he used to help him walk, and Starfire followed him through the door, meeting his gaze for a few brief moments before glancing away.

"Alright, let's skip to the chase, Garfield." The Boy Wonder said with a grunt, his green gloved hands pressing against the rail at the end of the bed, his domino mask bared right at him and a slight snarl on his face. "There's enough on you to put you away for life and more, and as much as you do deserve it, you and I both know that this... isn't entirely your fault." His grim voice practically growled at him, his head turning briefly over towards Cyborg and nodding, inviting him to speak.

"He's right. We know about your past, Garfield. Or at least, enough to know that this isn't what you were meant to be." The half robot then continued where his leader left off, opening up a small hatch on his arm, metallic fingers typing rapidly at the futuristic keyboard. Garfield pouted, his brows furrowing. What could they possibly know? His past..? It did take him a bit to catch on, and once he did, his eyes widened just a bit, not wanting to show much emotion to them, but his surprise was hard to contain.

"The reason you can't spread your Sakutia like animals infected with it is because you were given something that altered your DNA and made the disease apart of it. I can test your blood and detect you have Sakutia, but you can't actually spread it through typical means." Cyborg told him, bringing up a biological map of his body and blood from the computer in his metallic forearm, pointing out his blood cells flowing through his veins, each of them containing a small bit of the deadly disease.

Gar could only growl in response, not meeting Cyborg's face as he told him. However, a new face joined him next to his bed in the demon, Raven, her expression calmed, as well as her voice as she spoke. "Of course, this progression wasn't natural. You would've needed medical attention almost instantly after getting infected, and while Slade's smart, Sakutia is almost a complete unknown disease in western civilization."

"Don't talk like you know him, witch." Logan grunted, banging his wrists on his restraints, knowing where this was going and not wanting to hear it. "We don't need to know him, Garfield. Because we DO know who saved your life. Your real parents." Robin cut in, his hands gripping the bar of the hospital bed tight. "Mark and Marie Logan. Your father was a genius, he managed to save your life with a chemical that merged the Sakuta with your DNA, and even gave you your powers as a side effect."

"Shut up.." Garfield growled, the lower half of the bed rattling thanks to his attempted kicking, but alas, all it did was provide a minor annoyance. "You don't.. fucking know me." Memories of his past life were hitting him, being bit by that damn monkey, traveling from continent to continent, all to that forsaken boat trip. Oh, how he wanted to tear that blasted Boy Wonder to pieces for doing this to him. Tying him up like a damn dog, trying to act superior by talking about his life...

"We know enough to know you did not have a very good upbringing, at least, from when your K'Norfkas had passed and beyond." Starfire interjected, hovering over to the side of his bed, looking down at him with those wide eyes, sparkling with sympathy for him. Sympathy that he didn't ask for! He knew enough about their pasts too, and yet they didn't hear him serenade them about it! So what if his parents were dead? That didn't matter now, he was living the life he was given and he didn't need others to talk to him about it.

A sigh escaped Robin's mouth before he spoke once more, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "Whatever happened, be it you went to him or Slade found you... you don't owe him a damn thing, Garfield. He's a monster, and he's trying to make you the same as him." The Boy Wonder paused, glancing off to his right for a few brief moments. "Or, more likely, he's using you because of your powers for his own personal gain. I know him, he tried to make me his apprentice. And he did nothing but use me and try and manipulate me."

Logan's arms jerked once more, his mind running wild. He tried once more to transform, this time into the form of a grizzly bear, raising his body up, only for nothing to happen as his body flopped back down onto the bed. "And you can't shift right now. We replaced that collar of yours on your neck with one that restrains your powers. Even then, it's still more humane than that strap Slade had on your neck, surprised you could breath with it on." Cyborg explained, his human eye glancing over to a faraway table, where the metal collar laid.

The changeling snarled upon seeing it. Some days, he hated the damn thing. The half-machine was right, sometimes it was hard to breath with it, and it being off explained why it was easier for him to swallow, but right now? He loved the damn thing. It was something made for him by his father. For him to wear. Plus, it was easy to hate the replacement when the replacement took away his powers.

"The point is, Garfield... you don't owe Slade a thing. He isn't your father, fathers don't treat their sons like he does to you." Robin continued, his knuckles squeezing down tighter on the bar, his knuckles sure to be pale white underneath his green gloves. And that's when Gar had it. His attempts to escape got the most vicious he had, his teeth were gritting, upper lip raised in a snarl. "How dare you? Without him, I'd be dead! He saved my life, gave me a home, food, training-" "That doesn't make him your father. With his intentions, it simply makes him a supplier. He rubs your back with shelter, and you rub his by doing his dirty work."

"Fucking poetic coming from you, Grayson! Can you tell me who your dad is?" The apprentice growled, his rage joined in by slight satisfaction upon seeing Robin's eyes widen beneath his mask, even it was for a few seconds and he adjusted himself.

"Gray... what now?" Raven asked out on confusion, one of her brows perking upward and glancing questionably at Robin, who didn't meet her gaze. His other teammates joined in at looking at him, wondering much the same. He didn't even tell them. Who is he to talk down to me?! Gar thought, happy to see the embarrassed tint on the cheeks of the leader.

"That.. isn't important right now." He shakily acknowledged his teammates, before turning back to the restrained apprentice. "Batman is a far different man than Slade. Batman never had his own personal gain in mind when he took me in. He is a selfless man. Slade is nothing but selfish." The Boy Wonder replied, his brows far more furrowed, a hard pout on his face while Logan could easily match the look.

"Then why'd you leave him?"

"To become my own man."

"Your own man surrounded by teammates to do your bidding?"

The beeping of the Titans' communicators then interrupted the conversation, Cyborg being the first to check his and pouting once he saw what came up on his screen. "Uh.. Robin. It's Slade... and he wants Garfield." Victor told his leader, who let out a puff of air through his nostrils at the word, shutting his eyes firmly behind his mask before responding. "Tell him he can't have him."

"Robin... he has a hostage. He's threatening to kill them within the next 10 minutes unless we come with Garfield."

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sjf-penguin · 5 years ago

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National Punctuation Day

Today, the fourth Tuesday of September, is National Voter Registration Day. So if you are not currently registered, do the patriotic thing: register as a Republican and then vote for the most conservative candidate in each primary and a straight-ticket in each general election for the rest of your life—and if you're going to marry, seek a spouse who will do the same. Today, September 24, is also National Punctuation Day. So in celebration of this joyful holiday, which is rivaled only by Christmas and the anniversary of the U.S. premiere of Zootopia, here are a few common punctuation mistakes I have encountered in fan fiction.

Punctuation and dialogue

The dialogue in a sentence that identifies its speaker is not a separate sentence, so use a comma instead of a period at the end of the dialogue. The first word after the dialogue portion shouldn't start with a capital letter unless it is a proper noun.

Incorrect: "Let's get some coffee." The fox said. Correct: "Let's get some coffee," the fox said. Correct: "Let's get some coffee," Nick said.

If the dialogue is a question or an exclamation, use a question mark or an exclamation point at the end of the dialogue instead of a comma. But it's still not a separate sentence, so remember the rule on capital letters.

Incorrect: "I love these donuts more than Gazelle!" The cheetah said as he stuffed another in his face. Correct: "I love these donuts more than Gazelle!" the cheetah said as he stuffed another in his face. Correct: "I love these donuts more than Gazelle!" Clawhauser said as he stuffed another in his face.

Quotation marks with other punctuation marks

In American English, commas and periods always go inside quotation marks.

Incorrect: After being confronted by Judy, Nick said, "It's called a hustle, sweetheart". Correct: After being confronted by Judy, Nick said, "It's called a hustle, sweetheart."

Forming plurals of singular nouns by adding an apostrophe and an s—never do this!

For my main example, I'm going to just present my 100-word drabble "Grammar Lesson" from One Hundred DrabbleZ in full.

As Nick and Judy drove the last few miles to Judy's parents' farm, Nick pointed at an A-frame sign on the side of the road. "There's another one!" He shook his head. "Dumb bunnies." The sign was advertising "ripe tomato's" for sale at the farm they were passing. It joined "apple's," "pick your own blueberry's," and "tractor's repaired" as signs Nick pointed out as ungrammatical, forming plurals by adding unnecessary apostrophes. A few minutes later, they passed the roadside stand for the Hopps Family Farm. Hanging from the awning were signs for "potatoes," "apples," and "carrots." Nick smiled. "Smart bunnies!"

The Hoppses may grow produce, but they don't use "greengrocer's apostrophes." They are smart bunnies, and you can be one too!

Also, it is incorrect to pluralize abbreviations and things like decades by adding an apostrophe.

Incorrect: CD's, DVD's, TV's, the 80's, the 1980's Correct: CDs, DVDs, TVs, the '80s, the 1980s

Vocative commas

When addressing someone by name, use a comma to separate the name from the rest of the sentence. Failure to do so could drastically change the meaning of the sentence. It could even cost lives!

Incorrect: "I'm so hungry. I can't wait to eat Judy." Correct: "I'm so hungry. I can't wait to eat, Judy."

Thank goodness for that comma! Predators stopped eating prey thousands of years ago.

Ellipses

An ellipsis, plural ellipses, is the three dots (. . .) generally used to indicate an omission or faltered speech. Ellipses are greatly overused in fan fiction and informal communication. Use them sparingly! In one of my stories, I used 14 over the course of more than 21,000 words. If you have some 50 ellipses in a 2,000-word chapter, 47 of them probably don't need to be there.

Unless, of course, Flash is speaking. Then 50 might not be enough.

When they are used, the periods shouldn't "touch" any of the words in the sentence. A space should be used on either side. There should also be, if following The Chicago Manual of Style, a nonbreaking space between each period. My general practice is to space the periods on websites that support nonbreaking spaces (DeviantArt, Archive of Our Own) and leave them unspaced on websites that don't (FanFiction.net). I don't use the Microsoft Word ellipsis character (…) because its periods display smaller than other periods on FanFiction.net.

Incorrect: "I...love...working...at...the...DMV." Incorrect: "I... love... working... at... the... DMV." Correct (with spaced periods): "I . . . love . . . working . . . at . . . the . . . DMV." Correct (without spaced periods): "I ... love ... working ... at ... the ... DMV."

Hyphens and dashes

A hyphen (-), an en dash (–), and an em dash (—) are different things. In fan fiction, common hyphen errors include not using them when one is called for (writing "a ten dollar bill" instead of the correct "a ten-dollar bill"), using them unnecessarily, such as with adverbs ending in -ly ("a hastily-written sentence" instead of "a hastily written sentence"), and using them instead of em dashes, such as to show a sudden interruption in dialogue (example below, an excerpt from my "Pool Hustling" drabble).

Incorrect: Judy aimed her weapon. "You're going-" Nick snatched the squirt gun from her. "Down?" He laughed. "Forget I know how to disarm criminals?" Correct: Judy aimed her weapon. "You're going—" Nick snatched the squirt gun from her. "Down?" He laughed. "Forget I know how to disarm criminals?"

When a thought or an action interrupts the middle of dialogue, em dashes, not commas, should be used for the interruption. Another excerpt example below, from my "Another Dreamer" drabble.

Incorrect: "Be nice!" Nick said to the group. He looked at the weasel. "There has never been a weasel officer. However," he reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a junior ZPD badge sticker, "there's no reason why there can't be a first." Correct: "Be nice!" Nick said to the group. He looked at the weasel. "There has never been a weasel officer. However"—he reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a junior ZPD badge sticker—"there's no reason why there can't be a first."

Remember, even though "actions speak louder than words" is a nice idiom, an action cannot literally speak. For something like Nick's third sentence above to be correct with commas, it would have to be slightly rewritten.

Correct: "However," Nick said, "there's no reason why there can't be a first." Correct: "However," Nick said as he reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a junior ZPD badge sticker, "there's no reason why there can't be a first."

An en dash is used for, among other things, indicating a range where you could use the word "to" or "through." For example, a pizza shop having the hours "10:00 a.m.–11:00 p.m."

For more information about punctuation and grammar, visit Google and search away! The Internet is a great place to start learning new things. I also recommend using an English style guide as a resource, such as The Chicago Manual of Style (currently $46.83 on Amazon). You don't need to follow every rule for it to be helpful—even I don't.

Never see the "fan" part of fan fiction as a reason to not do your best. No one is perfect, but always treat your story with as much dedication, effort, and creativity—and love—as if it were your college admission essay, job application, or something similarly important.

Happy National Punctuation Day to all, and to all a good night!

Judy Supports the Serial Comma

#Zootopia #National Punctuation Day #punctuation #grammar #fan fiction #fanfiction #fanfic #Nick Wilde #Judy Hopps #Flash #SJFPenguin #posted live

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starrseternal-gvf · 6 years ago

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Finding Elysian pt. 1

AMID THE ASHES

March 8, 2019

Summary: don’t wish someone a good night.

Fandom: Marvel!

Pairing: Thor x OC

Word Count: 953

A/N: Hi! I’ve never posted anything I’ve written on tumblr before. But I decided now would be a good time to start. Especially because my muse for Thor is exploding right now. I don’t know how long this is going to be so we’re just going to take it one step of a time... right now it’s just a little musing I found in my old google docs that I figured I could turn into something. Also. There are two agents of shield Easter eggs in here. If you spot them comment them!

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“Hannah, sweetie, you really need to start taking those fish oil supplements I was telling you about.”

“Mom, like I’ve said before, I’m not going to spend an extra 5 dollars every months just for some dumb pills when I don’t even know if they really do what they claim to do!” Hannah sighed and adjusted her phone against her ear, rolling her eyes at the sound of the grunt on the other end of the phone.

“Supplements.” she corrected.

“Okay. Supplements.” Hannah retorted, “I have a good heart. I get plenty of physical activity with my upcoming production. I’ve been running for 45 minutes every day, and have been eating well. My cardiovascular system is just fine mom.”

“Hannah, look at your father! He was fit and healthy his whole life, but as soon as he turned 65 he had a heart attack!”

“Just because you exercise doesn’t mean that smoking has no effect on your lungs and heart. And since when have you talked to dad? You guys haven’t spoken since the divorce. And that was ages ago.”

There was a deep sigh on the other end. “I’m just trying to do what's best for you. I have to go, my yoga instructor is coming in. Love you sweets.”

“I love you too, mom.” Hannah was the first to hang up. She set her phone down on the counter and stared into space, not sure what to think about her parents’ condition. Living across the entire country was rough, but DC had more options than her hometown, and Hannah had to make best of her life.

She had just turned 30, and with the occasional late bill, Hannah was able to support herself in a small apartment near the center for performing arts. It wasn’t ideal, but honestly, nothing ever is. Everything was pretty average for her, she was able to score minor roles in productions held by the arts center. She also was able to make a more stable income working at a dental office. She wasn’t well known, nor did she have masses of friends. But she was happy, and that's all she wanted for herself. Someday she would like to play a major role at the PAC, but she knew that diligence and time was needed. So she kept up the work she put in.

Her stomach grumbled and she responded with the same sound from her mouth. She was ready for dinner. She raided her kitchen for something to eat, there was plenty but nothing seemed right. Nothing sounded appetizing. She slammed the fridge a little too hard and heard everything inside shutter and something fall. Huffing and letting her head fall, she decided to just go and grab something from the grocery store.

Lola came rushing in at that moment, golden body wiggling excitedly.

Hannah squatted down to the golden doodle’s height, scratching behind her ears. “Do dogs have some sort of 6th sense to know when their human is about to go to the store?” The dog whined loudly and licked Hannah’s nose, tail continuing to wag about.

“Okay, okay, you can come with me.” Hannah chuckled. She stood and grabbed Lola’s collar and leash, calling her to follow out to the car. On their way Hannah admired the setting sun on the horizon, enjoying life as it was.

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Hannah had a rough time deciding what to eat. Did she want a premade pizza? Did she want a salad? Then again, macaroni and cheese sounded good too. She looked down at her basket, one thing was for sure, Lola was going to be very excited to smell the disgusting salmon treats Hannah rarely ever bought.

After a while of trying to decide, Hannah finally chose a singular pepperoni pizza. She continued wandering the store, however, aimlessly looking around. She sighed as she passed the health aisle, pondering the fish oil supplements her mom had been encouraging her to take. She backed up and headed down the aisle, staring at the numerous bottles of the substance.

Biting the inside of her cheek, Hannah grabbed a bottle, shrugged, and tossed it into her cart. 5 dollars wouldn’t hurt. Even if they didn’t work like they were supposed to.

At the register, Hannah watched the cashier look hesitantly at the supplements in her basket, handling them with care… like they were made of glass.

“My cousin started taking these three years ago. Ever since he’s been acting… strange. He was never the brightest of the bunch… but after he took these he’s been coming up with some crazy ass mathematical equations to like explain life or something like that.”

“Maybe he started brain training.” Hannah suggested.

“I guess it’s possible.” The cashier remarked. “Paper or plastic?”

“Neither, thanks. I’ll carry them.” She smiles as the cashier went to grab her receipt.

“Have a good night.” The cashier said as she gingerly handed Hannah the supplements then handed her the other goods.

“Thanks, you too.”

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The last 4 words from the cashier seemed to be a jinx. Some curse placed upon Hannah and the rest of the world’s shoulders. She watched the news, stunned. Afraid of what was being covered.

She frantically searched for her phone, soon typing in the numbers to her mother's phone number. Lola stared at her, gently wagging her tail, begging for another treat. Hannah looked at her dog and bit her lip as her phone rang and rang.

“Mom. Please pick up. I need to know that you’re safe. I need to know that whatever happened to so many people out there didn’t happen to you… I love you.”

#thor #thor odinson #marvel #fanfic #steve rogers #avengers #my fic #infinity war #avengers endgame #thor x reader #thor imagine

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rosecorcoranwrites · 6 years ago

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Editing Advice Part 4: Copyediting

Now that you have checked your WIP for continuity, addressed every plot hole, and finished all rewrites, it's time to put on the final touches by copyediting!

Now, just to be clear, the term "copyediting" usually refers to when an editor, not the writer, reads the manuscript looking for errors, and it actually does include a lot of continuity editing and fact checking. But this series is for writers editing their own work before another soul reads it (regardless of if the work will then be self-published or sent out to agents and editors). It is my belief that, for a writer, continuity editing should come long before the final stage of the editing process. Thus, for our purposes, I'm going to use "copyediting" to refer to correcting errors in grammar, spelling, punctuation, and other such things.

Obviously, this involves going through your manuscript with a fine-toothed comb, on the lookout for misspellings and typos. However, there are a few items to especially watch for, roughly broken down into the categories of spelling; grammar, usage, and style; and punctuation, spacing, and everything else.

Spelling

Spelling of made-up or unusual words: If you write fantasy or sci-fi, odds are you're using at least a few words that don't exist in the regular lexicon. Make sure you use consistent spelling for these. This is especially true for different forms of said words. For example, I chose to spell "Lesse" in Lesse's Moor with and "e" at the end, which is easy to remember. Yet, when spelling the adjectival form of that word, I used either an "e" or "a": Lesserian and Lessarian. I had to choose one to use throughout. This goes for non-made-up words as well. "Empyreal" of the Empyreal Palace is a real word (it means celestial), but it's not like I've known how to spell it from my youth, so I still had to double check it every time I came across it to make sure it was spelled correctly.

British vs American spelling: If you spend a lot of time reading books from across the pond, you might have picked up some foreign spellings. As a child, I would always spell "gray" as "grey", because I liked it better, and to this day, that spelling sneaks into my writing from time to time. There are many such words in the English language that you should watch out for.

Hyphens: Make sure that you know which words are hyphenated, and that they are always hyphenated in your manuscript. Pay attention to height and ages: "six-foot tall", "four-year-old" and so on. Keep consistent for made-up words as well. Will you use "mechano-magical" or "mechanomagical"? Whichever you choose, you have to use that spelling every time.

Homophones and similar words: You might think that this is dumb to mention, since you, of course, know the difference between all the homophones in the world, but that's irrelevant. I know the difference too, yet I mix them up all the time in my writing. Some people picture the spellings of words even as they speak, and I am not one of them. I know the difference between "their", "they're", and "there" like the back of my hand; I still write the wrong one about a third of the time. Why? Because when I write, I'm picturing how the words sound and, moreover, how the scene looks, not how the text will appear on the page. That's what copyediting is for. You can Google lists of commonly misspelled or mixed-up words, or write down your own list if you have certain words you personally get confused.

Grammar, Usage and Style

Subject-verb agreement: By the time you're at this stage of editing, your manuscript is likely a Frankenstein's monster of sewn-together old drafts, and that tends to lead to some weird grammar. Make sure your subjects and verbs agree. That means that if the subject is plural—they, policemen, the dragons, or whatever—the verb has to be one you use on plurals—were, know, have eaten. If the subject is singular—he, a policeman, the dragon—the verbs similarly have to match—was, knows, has eaten. If you're not too keen on grammar, read it out loud and see if it sounds right; even if you don't know all the proper grammatical phraseology, you know English and you'll be able to pick up on errors that you hear.

Writing out numbers or not: Generally speaking, for narrative prose, you should write out the numbers zero through one hundred. For larger numbers, 101 to infinity, you can use numerals, but some guides suggest that numbers ending in two or more zeros should also be written out: two hundred, five million, etc. But I think you can get away with writing out larger numbers as well, like three hundred seventy-three; it looks nicer to me. Whatever you choose to do with larger numbers, stay consistent. Special numbers like years and addresses, however, should be written in numerals: 221 B. Baker Street, 1984, etc.

Capitalization of titles of people: Obviously, if the the title comes right before the persons name, and is thus part of their name, it's capitalized: Queen Delilah, Doctor Mario, Professor Moriarty, President Coolidge. But what about when the title is by itself? Well, it depends on how you're using it. If the title is used to address the person, it's capitalized: "You saved his life, Doctor!" or "Well, Professor, it looks like your theory was wrong." Obviously special title have special addresses which are obviously capitalized: Your Majesty, Mr. President, etc. If, on the other hand, you are talking about the person, or the office in general, it's not (usually) capitalized: "The professor is getting on my nerves!", "That doctor is a quack", "The president has to be an American citizen". However, for certain fancier offices, if you are talking about a particular holder of that office, you do capitalize it. Now, I found a few competing sources on this, but from what I could figure, the only titles that work this way are Pope, King, Queen. Again, you have to be referring to a very specific person to do this: "The Queen has been slain!" "The Pope blessed the travelers". Some sources also said this could be done for the president's of countries, but other said not to, so... I guess pick which way you'll do it an stay consistent.

Punctuation, Spacing, and Everything Else

Extra spaces: Get rid of 'em. This included two spaces after a period (for us old people who learned that that was the correct way to type!) as well as space at the end of paragraphs, between two words, and so on.

Missing punctuation: Don't forget commas after opening phrases like "Well, you see..." or "Of course, I'd never say that," or when separating a name when being addressed: "Are you ok, Constance?". Double check that every paragraph has a period or closing quotation marks; somehow, these seem to disappear on me and I've never figured out why.

Smart quotes, … vs ..., and m-dashes: This is almost getting into formatting territory, but I'm going to include it here anyway. Depending on what word processor you use to write your WIP, there might be some differences in how certain characters are automatically formatted. For example, some programs will turn quotation marks ( " " ) into smart quotes, i.e., one that wrap toward the text and have different opening and closing characters ( “ ” ). Something similar happens to ellipses, which may be typed as three periods (...) but turned into a single character (…). Finally, there is the m-dash, that long dash used in a way similar to a colon. When you type it by itself, it typically looks like two dashes (--), but if you type a letter, then two dashes, then another letter with no spaces between, it turns into a single character (—). I'm in favor of all of these automatic changes, as they look nicer, but depending on where you typed what part of my WIP, they don't always happen. It's a good idea to go though your manuscript and add them in, or set your word processor to change them automatically.

Personal foibles: Finally, know thyself. Are there weird mistakes that you always tend to make? I myself tend not to use question marks (they are a silly punctuation mark and ought not exist!). I have to be careful to check that all of my questions are, in fact, marked as such. Maybe you tend to spell one particular word incorrectly, or are really bad at using commas. Know your weaknesses and make an effort to fix them while writing and catch them while editing.

Tips to Make Life a Little Easier

The greatest tip I can give you is to embrace your Find and Find/Change or Find/Replace functions of your word processor. You'll find these in your edit menu.

Find should be used to check homophones and commonly misspelled words. When editing, I'll Find the word "its" and go through my entire document to check each instance of this word to make sure it should not be "it's". then, I do the reverse, searching every instance of "it's" to make sure it should not be "its". I do this for each of the words that I, personally, confuse. Know thyself; if you never confuse "it's" with "its", don't bother checking it, but if you know that you often confuse "principal" and "principle", use the Find function. You can also use this to Find quotation marks and replace them with smart quotes if your word processor doesn't have the option to replace all quotation marks with smart ones at once.

And then there is my favorite, Find/Change. This should also be found in your edit menu, sometimes with the "Find..." feature and sometimes as a separate "Replace..." option. What Find/Change allows you to do is enter in some word, like, say, "Lessarian" and replace every instance of it with a new word, like "Lesserian". I use this to do a quick fix of made-up words and British to American spellings. I also use this if I have changed character and place names, so that I can replace every instance of, say, "Robert" with "Brother Roberto". It's also useful for catching double spaces, as you can Find " " (two spaces) and Replace them with " " (one space). You can also replace two dashes with an m-dash or the three-character ellipsis with a single character ellipsis.

And with that, you'll have a sparkly new manuscript, ready for the eyes of agents, publishers, or—should you go the self-published route—your readers. Speaking of which, you self-pub peeps out there might need a bit of advice on formatting and proofreading. I just so happen to have some such advice! But it will take some doing (mostly in the form of screen shots), so that post will have to wait for a while. In the meantime, get to work polishing that manuscript! If you come across some weird editing issue and need particular advice, my email, Facebook messenger, and Tumblr asks and messenger are always open. Happy editing!

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