#the one thing worse than my motor skills is my sense of direction

[cherubytes]

i can consistently P-rank half of the currently available bosses and yet trying to complete 1-3: halls of sacred remains gives me a headache

[kettlequills]

Laat’s OC Profile

Brief profile for my LDB. .

Name: Laataazin. Given to them by Paarthurnax, Laataaz means “last mercy”. It is a pun on the fact that they are Last Dragonborn and their merciful nature towards dragons (and others). Laat believes it also recognises their divine purpose as a hunter, delivering the final mercy of death onto others. The suffix “in” is added by Odahviing after Laat kills Alduin, and means “leader”. Before this, they went by “prisoner”. To the rest of Skyrim, they are often just known as “The Dragonborn”. 

Age: Unknown. They appear to be in their fifties, or otherwise middle-aged.

Place of birth: Unknown. They speak with a Cyrodillic accent, but sign with a more traditional Nordic bent due to learning it from the Greybeards directly. 

Current location: Usually they live in the wilds, and can be found in their isolated hut, Heljarchen Hall, or staying with their wife, Moira, in Witchmist Grove. They very rarely visit cities and are generally in disguise and wearing their mask if they do.

Nationality: They are an Imperial, but do not recall where they came from.

Gender/pronouns: Agender. Comfortable with any pronouns being used for them, though they tend to refer to themselves with neutral ones.

Education: Laat suffers with a magical form of amnesia likely caused by repeated shock and restoration magic to the brain, and therefore struggles to remember much about their life before Helgen. They knew already how to move, fight, basic camp training and gear maintenance, so believe they may have been a soldier, perhaps a legionnaire. They did not know any languages other than the Cyrodillic lingua franca used in the Empire.

During their training with the Greybeards, they relearnt how to read and write in Cyrodillic, and began to learn how to speak and read Dovahzul. Their handwriting is not very good in either language due to nerve damage in their hands, and they often stray into Dovahzul that they do not understand when distracted. However, their Voice became too powerful to speak aloud to ordinary people or without risking structural damages, and they also learnt Nordic sign language. They struggle with language and skill acquisition because of their injury and were doubtful of their skills to sign competently, and as such, gained a reputation for being taciturn. Their trouble with memory also inspires them to keep a detailed journal, in which they practice handwriting.

They are poor at magic, and high concentrations of magic in their body can trigger seizures, so they tend to rely on potions and enchanted items made by their wife for any magical needs. 

Occupation: Other than travelling helping people, Laat spends most of their time dungeon diving in Dragon Cult ruins, hunting and living in the wilds, and trying to build a home for the dragons that were resurrected by Alduin. They require a lot of alone time in the wilds to remain centred to themselves and in tune with the Way of the Voice. They were once arrested for poaching in Eastmarch by Ulfric, but used the Become Ethereal Shout to leave their cell.

Income: From ruins and bounties, mostly. Laat has little compunction about stealing from the dead or disobeying hunting laws. They will also sometimes, if in desperate need of quick cash, disguise themselves and sell their pelts and small smithed items to other hunters, bandits, or in towns, but more often than not, their wife does this for them if their need is dire. Moira, despite being a hagraven, is much better at illusion and speechcraft. Most of Laat’s earnings, however, go directly by courier to families in Whiterun.

Appearance:

Eye colour: Brown, with russet undertones.

Hair style: Dark hair, usually unbrushed, hangs in shaggy clumps around their face. It is usually sawn off before it reaches their shoulders and under a helmet the rest of the time. When clean, it’s wispy. Laat prefers close-cropped hair, but it generally grows out before they remember to cut it.

Build: Short, stocky, and muscular.

Scars: Many. They have a spider web cut into their face, covering the whole area, and one or two scars from miscellaneous fights cutting across the pattern as well. Some are thin lines, some are ridged and thick. Laat also has scars on the back of their head and neck which are usually covered by hair, branching type scars that look like lightning. They have a few old scars dotted around their body, an old injury in their left forearm that aches when it rains sometimes and generally encourages them to not use shields. They are missing a few toes to frostbite.

They also are prone to seizures if exposed to shock magic, and have nerve damage that causes their hands to tremble, which affects their fine motor skills. As a result they rely on heavy blunt weapons like warhammers. Other than this, they have a high level of physical fitness and endurance, which is maintained with careful training, as well as their Dragonborn constitution.

Laat does have some daedric corruption from Sanguine, due to the Night to Remember quest and subsequent worshipping in thanks for their wife, as well as preventative measures Laat took to prevent other daedric princes getting much of a hold on them. This largely manifests as a very subtle reddish cast to their eyes in certain lights, increased temptation to over-indulge in certain things, and a slight increase to the chance that people will react emotively to them, for better or worse.

Features: They usually go masked, in a plain wooden mask carved out of pale birch wood. It somewhat resembles the face of a barn owl. The rest of their armour is steel and leather, usually dented and scratched Imperial heavy wrapped in sackcloth to make it quiet.

They are usually poorly groomed, in the sense that they are often camping and bathe in lakes and streams. They frown readily. When walking, they take short, aggressive strides, but tend to fall into a marching rhythm when walking long distances alone. Their posture is stiff and militaristic. They tend to either make direct and unwavering eye contact or watch someone’s body when speaking. They look fairly haggard due to their rough lifestyle and their face reflects this. They have a bump in their nose due to it having been broken at some point in their past.

Character:

Their earliest memories being fighting for their life at Helgen, Laat struggles with poor mental health, specifically post-traumatic stress and subsequent problems controlling their anger and grief. Laat is hypervigilant, very fearful of becoming violent in response to a perceived threat, and finds the company of others difficult and overstimulating. This generally leads them to present themselves as a tough, uncommunicative person.

However, Laat is also a very loyal and kind person, and deeply lonely. They are honourable if not lawful, living by a self-created code of ethics and the Way of the Voice, keep their promises to a fault. They also, after studying with the Greybeards, attempt to use proportional force in response to threats and are known to simply intimidate or immobilise threats instead of killing them. This is particularly true with dragons, for whom Laat feels a great kinship and after a certain point, refuses to hunt unless they continue to attack others.

Laat views themselves (falsely) as a bad and wrathful person who has limited control over their anger and hatred, and as such self-isolates by limiting the interactions they have with others and cultivating the unpopular reputation they have over Skyrim by rudeness. They are fiercely independent, stubborn, and believe strongly in free will, and as a result often feel chained by the prophecy of the Last Dragonborn and the expectations of others. This often causes stress, pain, and sadness for Laat, and greatly contributes to their poor mental health.

Their quest is very bloody and challenging in places, but it is their independence and stubbornness that carries them through their quest and helps them keep their mind when fighting Alduin in Sovngarde.

They do have a small circle of acquaintances that they will occasionally visit if they have something to do in the area. This includes Aranea, whom they met during their main quest, Venfokest, a dragon they blinded in battle but spared, Odahviing and Paarthurnax. And of course, their wife, Moira. They are not welcome in Whiterun.

[silverhandy]

Verbatim

read on ao3!

Summary:  Having climbed all the way up from Heywood’s slums to Miyabi, one of the most high end casinos in Night City, Santiago "Sanny" Garcia thought himself a lucky man, right until the point when his employer, an Arasaka board member with a gambling business on the side, caught him stealing and offered an impossible ultimatum. Forced to pay off his debt or die trying, Sanny has to renew some old friendships and form some new ones to keep himself afloat.

On top of everything, when his cyberware starts malfunctioning, there’s only one person on his long contact list that he can call.

“Where’s your Trauma platinum when you need it, pendejo?”

“Kicking a man when he’s down? Never expected that from you” Sanny groaned, burying his face in a pillow. He’d give anything for the world to stop spinning, just for a second. Faced with a heavy silence, he cracked one eye open to see Maria’s disgruntled expression on the holo. “It got revoked, okay? I’m literally begging here.”

“You're not,” she replied, the frown still not leaving her face. Sanny could swear at least some part of her was enjoying it. “At least not yet.”

“C’mon, hermana. I’m-” before he could finish that sentence, he was cut off by another wave of nausea strong arming its way through him. He barely had the chance to haul himself over the edge of the bed to vomit into the bucket he put there, anything to avoid ruining his ridiculously expensive, silk sheets.

Sanny could practically feel Maria’s judging stare on him as she got a front row seat on her brother puking his brains out. He understood her, in a way - their last conversation wasn’t exactly a pleasant one. Maybe he went a little overboard with his bragging. Still, she was his only sibling that still kept in touch with him, all the rest a step away from declaring him a total stranger.

As he wiped his mouth, desperate to get rid of the bitter taste of bile, he entertained the thought of apologizing to her. Was that his new low? At the mercy of his older sister? Certainly not a position he thought he’d find himself in, not after he decided to say goodbye to Heywood for good. She had every right to resent him just as the rest of the family did, but despite it all, they still kept in contact. A sporadic, passive aggressive contact, but a contact nevertheless.

She let out a heavy sigh. “Fine. You’re lucky my day freed up, otherwise you’d have to call some other sorry fucker. Text me the address, I’ll be there in an hour, maybe two.”

“Two hours? You for real?”

“Don’t push your luck, Santiago.”

                                                              ***

“That ripperdoc of yours, how reliable is he?”

“He knows his stuff. Just bear in mind he doesn’t usually take on corpos.”

“Not a corpo.” Sanny mumbled, resting his forehead on the cold glass of the passenger's window.

“You sure as hell look like one” she replied, not taking her eyes off the road.

“When in Rome, do as Romans do…”

The car hit a bump, making Sanny smack his head against the glass. An explosion of pain followed as an array of angrily white stars danced in front of his vision, sprinkled with not less alarming system failure warnings. If he didn’t know better, he’d say Maria did that on purpose, but she wasn’t responsible for the state of the neighborhood's roads. Not directly, at least.

“We’re here.” Maria’s voice snapped him out of his stupor. Some time must’ve passed because when he opened his eyes they were parked on the edge of a wide, busy street, various shops, and nightclubs drawing customers in with their loud neons and whatever else they had to offer. Luckily for Sanny, they didn’t have to walk all the way through it, loud sounds and aggressively bright lights coming at him from all directions, mercilessly aggravating his headache before they turned the corner and walked through the gate leading to a small, crumpled backyard. Maria led him down another set of stairs to an unlabeled basement, one of those places you needed to know were there to find them.

“Hey Vik!'' she said as she passed the gate to the underground clinic, walking in as if she owned the place. Sanny followed behind, his usual confidence shrinking. If what Maria said was true, there was a real chance that the ripperdoc would turn him away and he doubted he had the resolve to drag himself to another one. Suddenly Fukuzawa’s offer of a bullet to the head seemed much more appealing.

When the ripperdoc turned his head towards them, a warm smile appeared on his face as his eyes landed on Maria. Tossing the screwdriver he’d been holding aside, he got up to greet her, though Sanny could tell he was eyeing him over her shoulder as well. He couldn’t blame him - he probably looked like a breathing trainwreck.

“Hey, good to see you.” the ripper said to Maria. “So you must be Sanny?” he asked, suddenly shifting his attention to the younger man, extending a muscular arm towards him. The ripper was built like a fucking truck and Mal could feel his mouth go dry, and only partially because he must be severely dehydrated at this point. Suddenly regretting that he didn’t at least take a shower before Maria came to pick him up, he took a step forward to shake the man’s hand.

“That’s me.” Sanny smiled nervously, his paled face twitching with the effort.

“Viktor Vector’s the name. Heard a lot about you.”

“Oh yeah?” Sanny could hear his voice cracking, mind racing at all the things Maria could possibly say about him while in her ripper’s chair. There were many and only a few made Sanny proud of himself.

“I’ll leave you boys to chat. Don’t want no part in this.” Maria said, a crooked smile on her face. “I’ll wait in the car. Vik, feel free to add this to my tab.”

“Sure thing, sweetheart.”

And just like that, she left him there. Great.

“Alright, let’s get you seated, don’t want you to crack your head open if you fall.” Sanny heard Viktor say. Too busy trying to keep down the few sips of water he got before leaving the apartment, he didn’t even notice how his silhouette started to sway to the side, only stopped by the ripperdoc’s strong arm on his shoulder, steadying him and gently ushering him in the direction of the chair.

Looking back, the whole thing couldn’t have happened to him at a worse time, shortly after he got dropped from the Trauma Team health plan, his regular ripper bidding him farewell with an apologetic smile, even taking a step further to wish him luck. So much for the Hippocratic oath. Sanny watched silently as Viktor kicked himself a chair and sat down to fire up the monitors, typing away at the beat up keyboard until eventually, he reached out a hand.

“Your personal link, please.”

“‘f course” Sunny mumbled, handing him the cable and watching as the doc jacked it into the port, on the first try even. Must be the practice, Sanny thought and allowed his head to rest on the headboard, the blue leather cracking slightly as Viktor started running diagnostics on his cyberware.

“That’s an impressive set you got there”

If he wasn’t feeling so damn miserable, he'd smirk. Impressive was an understatement, with his array of the state of the art cyberware, from behavioral boosters to those refining his fine motor skills to a point he was practically a magician with a deck of cards. Or a lockpick, but he was yet to get desperate enough to give that career path a try.

“My job has its perks.”

“You a croupier at Miyabi?” it seemed that Viktor was rather keen on small talk, a quality that Sanny didn’t quite share, but hesitantly welcomed.

“Figured it out from my tech or did my sister tell you?”

“Bit of both, I suppose.”

Jacked and insightful. What more could Sanny possibly want?  Then again, it wasn’t a time in his life for romantic pursuits, both this specific moment, lying sick on the ripperdoc’s chair and in a broader sense, when he had a figurative gun to his head, a literal one soon to follow if he doesn’t resolve the mess he got himself into.

“Other than dizziness, anything else bothering you?

“Uh,” Sanny turned his head to look at the other man. There were many things bothering him and most had little to do with his current physical condition. “I haven't been able to keep anything down for a few days now. Not even the damn pills for the headache. Running self diagnostics didn’t spit out anything useful either.”

Viktor’s brows furrowed as he shot the younger man a glance from behind his shades. Disapproval? Concern?

“It’s been this bad and you’re only now seeing a ripper?”

“Maria told you where I work but didn’t share why I’m visiting a back alley doctor? How considerate.”

“You guys don’t get along too well, huh?” Sanny frowned at the direction this conversation was going, but there was nothing he could do but enjoy the ride.

“It’s...an on and off thing between us.” he just mumbled, desperate to avoid Viktor’s gaze. Lucky for Sanny, the ripper’s attention seemed to be entirely on the monitors in front of him.

“Just remember, kid,” Viktor said, finally turning to look at Sanny’s face. “she cares about you a lot. Wouldn’t bring you here if she didn’t.”

Sanny just hummed in response. Deep down, he knew the ripper was right, but the whole exchange only made him even more curious about what exactly Maria had been saying about him. It couldn’t be half as bad as he thought he deserved because not only had Viktor not kicked him out of the chair, but was even nice to him. Go figure.

“Alright then,” Viktor said, unplugging the younger man’s personal link. “had to do some cleaning in your CPU, you should be up and running in a few hours. Take this before going to bed for the night,” a strip of pills was placed in his hand “and in the future, watch what you plug your personal link into. I know you guys working in high end casinos get a fancy firewall as part of the package, but it’s not foolproof.

“It sure ain’t, doc. Thanks for the advice,” Sanny smiled, motioning to get up from the chair. “and everything else.”

Whatever Viktor did, the effect was immediate; the clinic was no longer swaying and his stomach didn’t threaten to twist itself inside out every time he moved his head. He still felt like he was experiencing a crescendo of the worst hangover of his life, but it was nothing that couldn’t be managed with a shower and a fresh change of clothes. Who knows, he might even get bold and eat something, though he still wasn’t sure about that one.

“Don’t mention it, I don’t often get the chance to tinker with Miyabi tech. And if you’re open to some more pieces of advice, you should be thanking your sister, not me.”

“I’ll make sure to do just that.”

“Should you run into more trouble with software, my clinic’s always open. I’ll send you the number, so don’t hesitate to give me a call.”

Did he just…? No fucking way, Sanny thought as he walked up the stairs, leaving the clinic behind.

                                                            ***

“So...how’re the Valentinos treatin’ you?”

“Actually, I…puta madre!” she shouted, blasting her hand against the car’s horn as she slammed the brakes to make her disdain loud and clear to the driver who tried to cut her off at the intersection. A litany of insults from the would-be culprit followed, another sound in a cacophony of Heywood’s streets. Maria shook her head, dark locks of her hair shaking with the movement like a swarm of angry bees. “I left.”

“And here I was thinking the position of the family’s black sheep was already taken.”

“Don’t ever think you’re the special one just because you shuffle cards for the big guys.”

“Oh, I could never. So what do you do now?”

“Independent. It took a while, but a friend got me hooked up with some reliable fixers.”

“A “friend”? Don’t tell me that on top of everything, you got yourself a man. Or a woman?”

Maria shot him a warning glare. “It’s nothing like that. Jackie just helped me get back on my feet, introduced me to some people. I’ve been fending for myself since then.”

“And how’s that working out for you?”

“Way better than for you. The hell did you do to piss off your corporate overlords?”

“All I can say for now is that you can leave Heywood, but Heywood never leaves you. Took one too many risks and all it did was land me before the one and only Akio Fukuzawa, who apparently doesn’t take kindly to humbled employees when his eddies are missing.”

“And yet here you are, still alive.”

“What can I say? I’m a charming guy.”

They spent the rest of the car ride in silence, Maria’s eyes fixed on the road, maroon painted nails tapping on the steering wheel in the rhythm of whatever was playing on the radio while Sanny pretended to be mesmerized by whatever they were passing on their way, in reality pulling up his comms interface to scroll through all the text messages he sent to fixers before the damn virus made it impossible to see straight. Almost all of them were left on read and unanswered. Sanny presumed they were bound to remain so. He didn’t have the reputation necessary to land any of the bigger contracts and no time to build it up before Fukuzawa’s minions showed up on his doorstep.

They parked in front of his building, mere centimeters away from bumping into a lampost. Sanny choked down a sigh. There was no escaping it now.

“Thanks, hermana. I owe you one,” he uttered, motioning to get out of the car. Just as he pushed the door open, his comms chimed with a text message from an unknown number. Getting out of the car, he waved to dismiss it, thinking it must be another of those spam chains that’d been flooding his inbox from time to time, but froze halfway through when his eyes landed on the text. The contract was vague on details, but the reward was crystal clear. Sanny could almost feel his jaw dropping as he looked at the impressive number of zeros that followed the first digit. It should be enough. More than enough to pay Fukuzawa off, even if, as per the fixer’s demand, he’ll have to cut the amount in half and share with a partner. He was so dumbfounded he didn’t hear Maria’s reply, or if she replied at all, but when he turned back one last time, she was eying him from head to toe suspiciously. Then she just shook her head slightly as if shushing away a thought.

“And Sanny?” she said, rolling down her window and shooting him a glare from behind her shades. “don’t you dare fuck my ripperdoc.”

[unsettledink]

Instead of thirty asks:

So @the-faultofdaedalus had a bunch of posts about ABO and genetics and how things might be able to function and ending up with some really interesting stuff about types beyond alpha/beta/omega (which I will totally end up playing with in a fic at some point because COOL).

And that sparked off a bunch of ABO related thoughts in my head. A... bunch. So I'm putting them all in one hopefully easy to ignore post if you are not into ABO at all. It's probably a little disjointed – none of this is stuff I've thought at length about, just sort of gone BUT WHAT IF??? I tend to veer more into the societal stuff because I know nothing about genetics and if I spend too long thinking about world details I never get anything written, BUT I STILL THINK THEM.

Interestingly enough I used to not be into it much? And I think I'm still not into the older classic stuff – I will literally run from anything that had mpreg in it 99% of the time. I also get really annoyed at the tendency to always make characters of certain builds/ages/attitudes one type.

But I really, really like ABO because of all the opportunities. So many! It's one of those things where you can go as much or as little into the worldbuilding as you want, in pretty much any direction. I think that's just so cool. Pretty much every single one of my ABO's has been a different 'type' of ABO (oh shit how many are there anyway? 10?? Well fuck.).

So!

A lot of this may make even less sense if you haven't read their posts because it's in re: to things they bring up. Also how much do I miss LJ and threaded comments right now? An obscene amount.

Thoughts more along the 'shit genetics can do' side and as you go down they slide more into the cultural/social/mind fuckery stuff:

(Also I know very very little about anything re: genetics.)

what if there's some sort of pattern/color type thing, like color morphs in reptiles, or heat sensitive color points like in cats and such?

uhhh I don't remember if it's like, lizards or fish or something, but the ones that change sex if there isn't enough of the type needed? What if that's a thing certain subtypes could do? Would it be controllable to any degree, or makes things wild in terms of types associating with each other? On the horror end, what if it's something that can be forced?

Hair? Facial hair things?? Body hair things??? Pattern baldness and the like????

ok yes so classic ABO = canine traits. And I've totally seen some different takes but I always want more. What about feline based? Or reptile? Or bird?? Some kind of insect hive/colony type thing????

WHAT IF SOME TYPES FLOURESCE?? and only certain other types can see it and I just find the idea of distinct type markers that only a percentage of the population can see really fascinating. Underground clubs with lights so everyone can see, testing people by shining a light on them, people faking it...

P H O T O S Y N T H E S I Z I N G??? Look I don't know there wasn't much thought associated with that. But like, we already have huge problems when we don't get enough sun, what if it was something even more dramatic and literal? Anyone seen Farscape?

Re: terrible cooks – what if some subtypes straight up can't taste a whole 'taste'? Like – don't have sweet receptors and have all kinds of issues with 'normal' food and wf is up with the other subtypes and their love of desserts??

they also touched on it briefly but seriously, all the even crazier food intolerances and allergies and things that would just be utterly toxic to one group?

re: two nips=1 bb, what if there are large litters but there's something more like an insect hive structure? Or 'pack' communal type thing, a good family has an omega + alpha + other, omega has the litter and the non alpha is able to nurse as well??

POUCHES. Marsupial style or seahorse. Just. Pouches.

multiple sperm donors in one litter and the possibility of not even knowing it, some sort of shenanigans with what types can get who pregnant and carryover from who they had sex with before the person pregnant and people doing this intentionally as a sort of surrogacy thing even?

Literal eggs?? EGGS?? soft shell eggs???

why are omegas so frequently the tiiiiiny ones? (I mean I know why and I don't like it.) But aren't most young bearing larger than males? If omega is for babies, then shouldn't they be built for it? And how might that affect subtypes?

advantages/disadvantages physically due to genetics and 'hidden' beta typing in regard to sports or fine motor skills or art (seeing/hearing more/less than other types?)

maybe the 'alpha voice' stuff could be attributed to some types able to hear different frequencies or tones/sub harmonics or/and alphas/maybe a type betas being able to produce different sounds and why? Vocal cord stuff????

seeing further into either end of the spectrum for certain types? Something creepy advantage heat and fertility/pregnancy related, being able to look and *know* and how that's changed in more modern times – could it be a career? Considered super rude? Hipaa violation?

re: leftover traits – things like third eyelids or shiny at night eye thing for certain types and various cosmetic alterations as those things go in and out of vogue

re: medical variation like blood typing – organs not being compatible or even in different places due to wtf omegas have going on in there

re: dogs are horror to wolves – what if even the nulls are NOT HUMAN. There actually are just like true standard humans and like, aside from genetically there's next to no difference between them and nulls though it's more visible differences with standard vs a/o? Something about the purpose behind omegas because they are the only link that can properly/safely interbreed and/or produce non sterile offspring? Or maybe standard and a/b can mate but they only produce nulls or standards or sterile like mules??

what if a/o ISN'T rare? If that's the norm and betas are the rare ones and sort of seen as residual hanger ons since they don't have whatever advantages omegas/alphas have? After all, what advantage does a beta have over an omega? The societal aspect of risk if all can interbreed and like, does an a risk mating with a b and risk having a null? Or knowing they can only have a b?

Trickier and could come off really poorly, but how might being trans function with so many types and the additional divide of sex/gender/secondary sex? What the hell might hormone therapy or surgery or transition in a scent based society be like??

and intersex? Like especially if you've got limited grasp on genetics and then you have these typed betas who aren't recognized that way, what about the people who don't fit even on that spectrum?

and sexual identities! The possibility of like, some groups being much more likely to lean in one direction or another and some of it due to not understood sub beta types and that complexity. Just the complexity of interest at all with a whole third factor added in!

horror aspect if m/f can be determined before birth but not a/b/o status, if there are actual environmental factors like TSD that could change that and people trying to ensure they have x type? All omegas are allergic to peppermint so if you eat peppermint your whole pregnancy you won't have an omega or some shit. Does an of it work or is it all old wives tales? D: D: D: D: (as much as I really prefer to write ABO's where things are more equal because of it, I read a lot more of the uglier verses where everything is worse)

Bonding???? how could it be an actual physical genetic thing and the differences across types and who can bond with who and why and are only certain types able to initiate/accept it and the whole fascinating culture stuff from THAT

and then the bonds that are of the mental type, either some sort of emotion/pain/thought sensing that's limited or full on sharing, how each type could differ and maybe only certain types could be broken or certain types are able to have them with multiple people/types??

formation of bonds and what environmental factors exist and what genetic and things like forcibly separating before x amount of time is tantamount to torture or ruining a bond that can't be fully stable/broken and fixed?

the scent stuff – beyond the whole 'smell like strawberries/whatever' the stuff about smelling emotional states and types that are able to smell that or not, hormonal based scent changes are super common but also one of the slightly more plausible things? Are certain types with sensitivities to different types of smells prone to go into certain fields because of it?

More scent stuff – things about your scents that are influenced by origin/area growing up in. that you can acquire a 'type' or base of scent that is hard to get rid of or change for a lot of people and is often obvious but indistinct. Like accents? And then the people who are REALLY GOOD at changing it.

i fucking love the typed jewelry trope (lol hit me up for a whole other post JUST about that) and even more when it's not just 'pretty showing off socially' but actually has some sort of biological effect but then why? Weird metal imbalance lol? Typed betas more vulnerable to that as well as full types and cultural stuff about that?

wtf family groups I mean. Possibilities of more than two genetic donors and paternity and custody and filling out demographic info on forms ahahahaha oh god

the whole more sensitive to smells – the hilarity of like, sending strongly scented flowers to an omega as an insult. To one type, that floral delivery is romantic, to another it's a giant 'fuck you' from an ex.

Yes I might have a problem ok.

[new-ask-euroshipping]

Euroshipping Dragon

Setting: Old Palace AU

Rating: PG-13 probably

Plot: Ryou got kidnapped by mafia leader Taketa who found out about his powers and wanted to exploit him for it.

Notes: I don’t know if this is a side story or will get included much later in the plot. Since I don’t know, I’m sharing it here. This is an older document and maaay be a lil over-dramatic. Nonetheless, it was fun to write.

Ryou looked up from the floor. On the screen was Seto and Taketa standing face to face, dozens of meters apart in a wide open field. Taketa now wore a brown pinstripe suit while Seto was wearing the same outfit he wore back in Battle City. Both men were wearing outfits to exude superiority.

“What do you want, Taketa?” Seto asked.

“Oh, I just want to talk, boy. But mind what you say, your little boyfriend is watching our every word and move.”

“So that’s why you were so insistent on wearing these microphones.”

Taketa gestured to his left with his entire arm. “And of course the cameras are right there, in case you need to look at it for any reason.”

“Listen old man, I only came here because I was told I’d be given his location. Where is he and why do you have him?”

Ryou could hardly watch. There was an unhuman roaring in his head, almost making him unable to hear the TV.

“Well, you see, the world is changing, for better or worse.” Taketa looked at the camera as his hand crept to the gun on his left hip. He quickly pulled it out and pointed it at Seto, who tense in anticipation. He redirected his gaze at Seto. “And some people have already changed for the better.”

“NO!” The roaring in his head became overwhelming as it gave him the worst headache he’s ever had. He shut his eyes from the pain. In a moment, it felt as if the cuffs holding his wrists had disappeared. He opened his eyes to check, yet he only saw black. He didn’t know what was happening but he hardly cared. He tried to feel around to sense which way to find and protect Seto, but he was slowly losing his gross motor skills, fine motor skills already lost. The process continued until he couldn’t control himself nor his protective rage any more.

Meanwhile, Seto glared at Taketa. “You shouldn’t point a gun if you aren’t willing to shoot.”

Taketa aimed the gun and pulled the trigger, grazing the teen’s right ear. “How’s that for unwilling? Besides, I don’t need to kill you. You’ve already done your part. You see, that Bakura boy is very powerful. Yet he rarely shows any of it to observers or me. What he does show is merely gravity manipulation. I can tell he has so much in him, all he needs is a reason to tap into it. And that reason was the threat of your safety.”

Something exploded from the side of the building followed by draconic roaring.

“Ah, and there he comes!”

As the dragon Ryou flew over, Seto almost mistook him for a Blue Eyes White Dragon. Though both dragons are white, the one Ryou took the shape of was more slender and had many more scales. As he came close, Seto could see the dragon’s eye color wasn’t like any other typical dragon. They were a deep brown. Then the realization struck him: this dragon is reflective of Ryou’s human body.

Dragon Ryou came much closer and landed right in front of Seto, towering to be two stories taller than him. He quickly pumps his wings, creating strong winds around Taketa.

Taketa spread out his arms in triumph. “Yes! This is what I wanted to see! You had so much untapped power! You only needed to get it all out!”

Dragon Ryou screamed at the man, shooting blinding white lightning in his direction, coming close to striking him.

“Whoa, be careful. Now,” Taketa pointed the gun at the dragon. “turn back to human or suffer.”

The dragon roared and went airborne.

“I see how it is!” Taketa shot the dragon in the neck but the bullet crushed and fell to the ground harmlessly.

Further provoked by this, the dragon snapped at the man, tearing the clothing on his right arm as well as cutting it some. Taketa shot the dragon multiple times.

“Ryou! Look at me!” Seto shouted. The dragon proceeded to strike again with blinding white lightning. The frenzied attack didn’t touch Taketa, though it came very close.

Seto readied his ice power. He looked for a good target on dragon Ryou. Then he found it: a spot in between two large scales on his underbelly.

“RYOU!” He shouted louder as he threw a gust of frost at the target.

Just then, Ryou could see through the dragon’s eyes. He shot his gaze around from wings to floor to claws.

Taketa noticed the difference in dragon Ryou’s behaviour and decided to take advantage of it. He took out a long-range communication device and pressed the button. “Get the people out here. Tell them to be ready for a large-scale recapture just in case.”

Seto had to shield his face from the wind to look up at dragon Ryou’s head. As the brown eyes turned to face him, he gave a look of confidence softened with care. “Ryou, it’s okay. I’m safe. You can calm down.”

Ryou landed on the ground. Seto walked up to him and hugged his face. Ryou gave a low draconic grumble.

“I’ve never seen you angry like that. It must’ve taken a lot to get to that point.”

Seto noticed Ryou’s dragon body shrinking, not stopping until Ryou was as tall as his normal self. Then his body started shifting back to the way it was, clothes and all, as Ryou cooled down.

“Seto, your ear.”

“Yeah, it got a little hurt, but it’ll be fine. It could’ve been much worse.”

Coming from the building were 4 men, all carrying two pig restrainers. Ryou turned around and saw them. His head hurt again.

“What’s wrong, Ryou?”

“Nothing, just give me a moment.” The boy proceeded to turn into a hydra, this time keeping control over himself. He shot fire at them, but they were quick. Next thing he knew, all five heads and three legs were caught. As almost a last resort, he melted his body to smoke. His smoky body dispersed throughout the area as the wisps of smoke slowly condensed around Seto, disappearing into his inner jacket pocket.

Once Seto saw the smoke disappear completely he bounded away from the scene. He activated his collar, contacting Isono’s wireless ear com. “Isono, I need a ride on Lotus Avenue as soon as possible.”

“Yes, Mr. Kaiba.”

Seto approached the forest which separated the field from the urban area. The forest was easily 150 feet. After he arrived in the urban area, he dropped his pace to a walk. Seto glanced over his shoulder. As far as he could tell, he’d lost them, at least for now. He checked his watch for the time. It was 13:56, it won’t be much longer before Ryou resumes his regular form.

He walked along the sidewalks until he found a low-lit alley with a vending machine. He entered the alley and reached into his pocket. When he took Ryou out, he saw he had taken the form of a Change of Heart card, which made Seto smile a little. He placed the card on the ground on the side of the machine opposite of the side facing the road. In a few minutes, Ryou was himself again.

“Seto, I’m sorry for all of that.” He lethargically curled up a bit.

“There’s no need to apologize. You were taken and used for another man’s needs. Taketa is the one in the wrong, not you. Regardless of that, how do you feel?”

“Tired and hungry. After doing all of that and taking 4 different forms, I’m exhausted.”

“I see. Isono is coming soon but against your back is a vending machine for the meantime. What would you like?”

“What are my options?”

“Many things. Flavored teas, coffee, and a few flavored milks.”

“How about milk?”

“Regular, strawberry milk, or coffee milk?”

“Strawberry milk.”

“Okay.” Seto put a few coins into the machine and the can dropped down below. He handed it to Ryou and sat next to him. “How were you able to turn into all those things?”

“Well, the last two I figured were just appropriate for the situation. Yet the dragon and hydra, I’d hear noise drowning out everything else and I just...become something else. I’m sorry for losing control. Taketa was the one in the wrong, but I still feel some guilt. I felt powerless and-” He felt a hand placed on his head.

“It’s alright. You were worried for me and wanted to protect me. When put under such stress, it’d be unreasonable to expect you to keep a level head and full control of one of your strongest powers.” Seto wrapped an arm around Ryou.

Ryou lazily opened the can of milk and sipped from it. “You’re right. Though, through the whole first part, all I felt was anger; anger that he would threaten you, anger that you could’ve been out of my life in a second, anger that I wasn’t there at the moment, all of it.”

“When was the last time you felt angry?”

He thought on it for a moment. “Probably when the spirit was going to use me to harm our gym teacher after I first transferred. But even that was more fear than anger.”

“You really don’t get mad?”

Ryou shook his head. “Is it okay if I fell asleep on you?”

“Absolutely.”

He closed his eyes and leaned against Seto. As per usual of his orange hours, he felt very warm. In a few minutes, a car pulled up.

Seto grabbed Ryou’s milk can, picked him up, and carried him to the car. He sat in the car himself, only saying to Isono, “To the manor.”

With only a nod in reply, Isono drove off.

[darkpoisonouslove]

“Happy New Company” Chapter 3

This chapter is mainly flashbacks about their Christmas celebration with a ton of fluff and terrible jokes. Also, it's long as hell and drained every last bit of my energy. I can't type anymore. Send help.

Bloom seemed absolutely enchanted by the two of them as she held on to Griffin's finger while her other hand was reaching for him, grabbing at his suit jacket or shirt only to release them in a moment and do it again. And Valtor knew to enjoy it while it lasted because she'd soon go back to sleep. Babies spent most of their time sleeping, apparently, which he couldn't have known but he was learning more and more things around Bloom since Faragonda and Marion, and even Oritel didn't mind explaining. And they also didn't judge him for not knowing these things already which he really appreciated.

"We should probably get the camera, Oritel," Marion's voice snapped him out of his thoughts and both him and Griffin turned to look at her. "You'll fit perfectly in the family album as you are right now," she explained when they looked at her perplexed.

"I think not," Griffin said, her tone just playful enough to let them know she wasn't serious, although there was nothing faked about her dislike of photos. "The only thing you should take is your baby back," she said, still not moving away from him and Bloom who was looking at her now, probably drawn in by her voice, and Valtor mentally hummed in agreement with her fascination since Griffin's voice always drew him to her as well.

Marion made a shocked expression before nodding to show she'd finally gotten the message. "You know, you holding on to her and cooing at her threw me off," she said as she walked to the couch to grab the other packet of cookies and get it on a plate.

Faragonda had already left the ring-shaped ones on the table while they'd been occupied with Bloom and hadn't noticed. They were placed in a bowl since they were small enough to fit into it and looked like a soup of engagement rings that Hagen was eying like it was poisonous even though he hadn't tried it yet.

"What's that in the other bag?" Marion asked as she pulled out the packet of cookies, her eyes on the still full bag, though.

"Oh, that's just a little present," Valtor said as he looked at her. "For Hagen," he added before Marion could start protesting against any more presents, making Hagen's head snap in his direction, his attention now swallowed by something else other than the cursed cookies. "Here, let me get it," Valtor said as he walked over to Oritel to let him take Bloom and then moved to the couch to grab the wrapped box–couldn't spoil the surprise, after all–and hand it to Hagen. "Something to occupy you during the New Year," he said, making Hagen narrow his eyes at him, the suspicion well deserved considering their history.

He still took it, though, and started opening it, pressured by all the eyes on him. Otherwise, he might have simply thrown it out without even bothering to unwrap it. Valtor knew how to set up his prank, though.

Hagen's face fell as he saw the picture on the box and the word at the top.

"I didn't think you'd be this good at Jenga," Hagen said as he watched Valtor remove the piece they had all said he couldn't pull out without causing the whole tower to fall.

Valtor didn't pay attention to him and focused on setting the piece down on top of the tower. They'd been going for about twenty minutes now which was longer than the average length of the game but they were both dexterous and precise and it was mostly a matter of concentration and strategy now. And perhaps a bit of luck. He would be okay, though–as long as someone didn't decide to make any abrupt movements near him and the tower–but he wasn't going to underestimate Hagen. He'd done it once before and he'd learned that it was a mistake.

He set down the piece, the tower moving just barely, and turned to look at Hagen. "I've practiced my fine motor skills on Griffin," he said, grinning at Hagen who just looked at him and didn't waste his time reacting, focusing on the game instead.

He pulled out one of the pieces that were towards the top, still managing to shake the tower but not enough for it to fall. It was left even more unstable than before, though, and Valtor had to admit that that had been a simple but good move. He'd have to up his game if he wanted to win this one.

He went for an easier piece and managed to pull it out without any accidents but setting it on top would prove trickier.

"I don't think I've seen Faragonda and Griffin kissing before," Oritel threw in casually just as Valtor was letting go of the piece and it would have been okay if Hagen hadn't jumped to his feet on his left and caused the whole table to shake, sending all the wooden parts falling in different directions.

Valtor sighed and turned to see what was going on. He was pretty sure that Oritel had been just trying to rattle him to help his best friend out but it had backfired, serving them both right.

He wasn't so sure about the part with the lie, though, when he saw Griffin and Faragonda standing at the door to the kitchen, still clinging to each other although they weren't kissing anymore, the mistletoe hanging above their heads a little bit like a guillotine although the threat from it was more indirect and avoidable but they had let themselves get caught red-handed.

They looked rather concerned, with Griffin looking to him but he made sure to quickly nod at her to reassure her it was okay–he hadn't seen what had happened but it didn't really matter as it had been a joke–and Faragonda rushing over to Hagen who seemed absolutely shaken and the thing that brought him back was Faragonda telling him she loved him which was actually rather sweet and made Valtor suggest they dress up as Sleeping Beauty and the prince next Halloween but neither one of them seemed to appreciate the joke considering it was a kiss that had dragged them into the whole mess.

Hagen had kept bitching about the whole thing for the rest of the evening, even after both Faragonda and Griffin had reassured it had been just a stupid challenge–his wife didn't really have any boundaries when it came to pride and it looked like Faragonda hadn't had the common sense to back down on this one either which was why they'd ended up kissing–and it had only gotten worse when Valtor had pointed out Hagen had lost the game of Jenga. He'd even agreed to a rematch just to shut up Hagen and keep him off of Griffin's back.

"You're terrible at presents," Hagen said as he left the Jenga box on the coffee table as calmly as possible, trying not to play into Valtor's trap.

"No, I'm good at both pranks and presents and you know it," Valtor said just as calmly because, to differ from Hagen's claim, his words were true. Just like it was true that Hagen was only so sour about the whole thing because he'd lost to him and now didn't want to admit that he needed more practice if he ever wanted to even dream of beating him.

"You have to admit it, Hagen," Faragonda said as she walked over to him and wrapped her arms around his bicep, leaning heavily on him to draw his attention. "Valtor's Christmas present makes your office that much more livelier." And no doubt lovelier considering everything else inside it was just soulless metal. Even if Hagen claimed he was bringing all his creations to life. There was nothing natural and very little beautiful in his work. Though, that could be just Valtor's biased opinion since he'd always hated robots for being treated like one for so many years of his life.

"What about yours, Faragonda?" he turned to her since he needed to redirect his thoughts to something more pleasant and Faragonda was the logical person to seek out in that situation.

"Treasured and put to good use." She smiled at him, gratitude coloring her eyes a deeper shade of blue for a moment, and he was happy to see that she had taken so dearly to her present considering it wasn't anything really fancy. "Also," she leaned forward as if to share a secret with him, "Griselda may have been a little jealous of it," she whispered and he nodded conspiratorially before turning to Hagen again.

"See?" he said. "I clearly know what I'm doing. Marion is also here to confirm," he said as he turned to look at her.

"My present is in our bedroom," Marion offered immediately and he didn't miss the look that crossed Hagen's face at her betrayal, "but when Bloom grows up a little, I'll give it to her, to protect her," she looked at Valtor with that same deep emotion she'd shown at Christmas when he'd given her her present, as if to say thank you for all the abstract things that had been attached to the little trinket he'd gotten her. Griffin had always said that it was the thought that counted, though, and Marion's reaction had really confirmed that.

"What did you do with Bloom's present?" Griffin asked, taking the words out of his mouth since he was also curious about that.

"It's in the bedroom," Marion said, a hue of irritation painting her tone a more alarming color. "She's in love with it ever since you brought it," she said, the annoyance only getting louder in her voice. "She doesn't have eyes for anything else," she huffed, and while Valtor understood how that could be a problem considering Bloom wasn't to touch her present until she was a little bit older, he still couldn't get behind Marion's reaction since he and Griffin had put a lot of thought in all the presents they'd gotten.

"I believe it is time for the presents," Valtor said as he left his glass of wine down next to the cup of tea Griffin was having. It made him look at her to make sure she was okay. She'd said her head was spinning slightly and had refused alcohol in favor of a steaming cup of tea that Faragonda had gone to make while Marion was holding Bloom who had woken up a few minutes ago, filling the whole living room with her cries over the babyphone as she'd demanded to be fed, and Marion had brought her back with her when she'd returned. Just in time for the presents. Or rather, Valtor was adapting his schedule to Bloom's since that gave the perfect opportunity to give her what he and Griffin had bought.

"Okay, I'll go get ours," Oritel said as he got up in sync with Valtor and touched Marion's shoulder to tell her he had this as he headed upstairs.

"Let's move to the couches then," Marion offered, having Faragonda rush to her side in case she needed help getting up with the baby in her arms. "I've got this," she said, still nodding appreciatively at Faragonda. "I've been through this already. Although, I have to admit I'm a little rusty," she said as she got up slowly and Faragonda pulled her chair backwards to make sure it was out of the way. "It's been a long time."

Daphne was an adult now and spending Christmas with her boyfriend whose name Valtor still didn't have memorized even though he'd met the young man at the hospital when they'd been visiting Bloom. Griffin had told him it was serious between them and he'd been convinced of it himself when he'd seen him come with Daphne to see her newborn sister and hadn't even freaked out when Daphne had been holding the baby. Though, to be fair, Marion and Oritel had been tactful and hadn't tried to say anything that could make both Daphne and her boyfriend uncomfortable. However, Valtor also suspected that with Oritel at least it may have been less thoughtfulness and more overprotective father mode as he probably didn't like to think about his daughter leaving the family nest and starting her own family.

Valtor offered Griffin a hand to help her up from her chair. She seemed okay but he didn't want to risk it. And he'd been so busy with his job the last few days that he'd barely gotten to touch her while awake–having her wrapped in his arms and pressed against him while they slept was good and everything but he hadn't really gotten to enjoy the feeling of holding her–so he was looking to make up for it considering there were more of those days ahead since he still had a lot of work until he was done for the year. Not to mention that the beginning of the next one was just as booked with paperwork and business meetings.

"I'm okay," Griffin said, her voice with a certain edge added from the annoyance that made its way into her tone and that worried him more than her physical health. She did look fine but she didn't sound that way and he wasn't sure what was wrong. She'd been smiling and laughing when they'd arrived but something had changed after her conversation with Faragonda and he had half a mind to pull the other woman aside and demand answers from her but he was afraid it was something he'd done that had upset Griffin and that was why she'd went to Faragonda. Or perhaps it was the whole argument with Hagen who was still sulking about the kiss even though they hadn't even seen it which supported Griffin's claims that it had been short and innocent joking around. He certainly hoped it wasn't that because he didn't want to have to fight Hagen when they were supposed to celebrate but he would if he was the reason why Griffin's mood had dropped through the floor.

"I never thought I'd get scolded for being romantic," Valtor said theatrically as he let his shoulders slump and a pout take over his face as he decided to focus on lifting her spirits for now. She usually loved it when he got all soft and clung to her like his life depended on it. It had felt that way when she'd been the only good thing in his life, the only person who'd been good to him. And he would never be able to thank her enough but he was doing his best to show her how much he appreciated her at all times.

"I'm sorry," Griffin said as she rose from her chair and put a hand on his chest as she kissed his cheek. "This headache makes me all grumpy," she said as she fidgeted with the collar of his shirt, looking at it and not at him, and it hurt him to think his words had plunged her into guilt. He'd just been joking to get her to smile and the tortured look on her face that she was trying to hide from him was the last thing he'd wanted to see.

"We can leave if you want," he said as he stroked her cheek with the back of his fingers. He was dying to see her eyes and make sure everything was okay but he didn't want to force her to look at him. He still had no idea if she was upset because of him–and he sure as hell wasn't buying the story about the headache–and didn't want to add more to that. No matter how much he wanted to offer her comfort. He'd have to do that with words for now and hope that they would reach her even if it had been his actions that had made her close off.

"No, I'm fine," Griffin said, a little bit too quickly for him to believe it, but he was happy to see her look at him. And she gave him a smile that was genuine even if it didn't stay on her face long. "I know how excited you were about the part with the presents," she said, the look in her eyes so knowing as she'd seen him when he'd been overflowing with anticipation and restless energy as they'd picked the gifts. It had been his first time shopping for Christmas presents with Griffin if he didn't count those times Griffin and he had picked gifts for her mother since he'd only had her to surprise the previous years and he might have been more excited about Christmas than he'd ever been in his entire life. Christmas had only meant more burden being put on his shoulders while masked as gifts from his mothers, and while the Christmases with Griffin had been very warm and soft, and sometimes even tear-jerking as she'd gotten him things that he'd been thinking of getting for himself, thus proving she was the best gift he could ever want since she knew him so well, it was a different feeling to have friends to shop for. He was still a bit dizzy from the frenzied experience. "We can't bail now," Griffin said conspiratorially, the grin on her face a response to the smile that had taken over his at the thoughts.

"Okay, but if you don't feel better, we're leaving after that," he said, holding her gaze to show he was serious. As much as he loved the celebration and all the positive emotion it had accumulated in him, her health and comfort were a priority. And he would pick her up and carry her to the car if he had to in order to make sure that she wasn't pushing herself just because of him. He valued her efforts to make him happy, but he was happiest when he could take care of her and knew she was okay, and he wanted to make sure she knew that.

"Okay," Griffin chuckled, the amusement reaching her eyes and dissolving some of the darkness into them to allow them to shine once again. She cupped his cheek, her thumb moving over his skin in a soothing repetition. "Thank you," she said, her voice folding under the weight of the emotion in it when he was the one who had to thank her since she'd just quelled all of his worries that it was him who'd done something to upset her even when he'd been too scared to ask and had instead tried to rationalize that he hadn't done anything wrong.

"I love you," he said as he caught her hand and brought it to his lips to kiss her fingers and thank her for the gentleness she regarded him with whether she was touching him with her hands or with her words. Especially since he let her down sometimes and ran from the problems instead of trying to talk to her and solve them directly but she still treated him with the same love and kindness.

"I love you," Griffin said and the smile she gave him was small again but that was okay because it couldn't convey her feelings the way her eyes were doing it anyway and she let them glow with all the love she had for him, drawing him closer like a hearth that would keep you warm in the vicious embrace of the chilling winter. And he was so lucky to be able to call her heart home as he was safe there and surrounded by all the beauty her love offered him.

"Are you two going to join us or just keep standing there?" Faragonda asked, snapping them out of their little bubble.

"Someone's impatient for presents," Griffin said as she turned to look at Faragonda before flashing him a mischievous grin and pulling him towards the couches where their friends were already sitting, just for Faragonda to glare at them both playfully even though he hadn't done anything.

Oritel arrived carrying four boxes wrapped in different wrapping paper and Valtor's mind was immediately occupied with the task of figuring out which present was for who. He supposed the green one was for Faragonda. The silvery was probably for Hagen. The blue one was most likely for him which meant the maroon one had to be for Griffin.

"Okay, we're all settled," Marion said as Oritel sat down next to her and placed the four boxes on the coffee table in front of him. "Who'll go first?"

"We will," Valtor fired out before she could even look around. She'd barely finished her sentence, in fact, and he startled her a little but he was losing the last ounces of patience he had left, feeling all giddy like a child staring at the presents under the Christmas tree. He was more excited about giving presents, though, rather than about receiving them since he'd never really done that before. Although, he had to admit there was some apprehension as well since he didn't know what reactions he'd get. Griffin had always been thrilled by the gifts he'd gotten her but it was easy to shop for her as he knew her so well he could practically read her thoughts sometimes. He'd just started communicating with the others but Griffin had been there to assist with the selection process and guide him so he was optimistic if still a bit reserved.

"He's really exited about this," she said, looking at Marion who smiled and nodded, giving them card blanche. "You should know that Valtor chose the presents. I just paid for them," Griffin said as he pulled out their presents from the Christmas shopping bags they'd put them in to get everything there. It wasn't true but she seemed amused by the joke and he loved seeing her radiating joy once again so he wasn't going to argue with her. Besides, the others were well aware that that hadn't been what had happened.

"Okay, the first one's for Bloom here," he said as he grabbed the box wrapped in soft yellow that was held in place by a sky blue ribbon and handed it to Oritel which was probably not the best news for the wrapping paper but Marion's hands were busy with Bloom currently. And with protesting.

"You already got her so many things," she said as she looked from him to Griffin and then back. "I don't think she'll get to wear all the clothes you've bought her since she'll grow out of them. You know, there are only so many days in a year," she said, chuckling despite herself, and the sound was full of emotion that got to her eyes as well. She looked genuinely touched by their enthusiasm and love for her baby and her fingers closed in Bloom's blanket as if she was trying to hold on to the knowledge that her daughter was loved and protected.

"Then you'll simply change outfits every few hours," Griffin said as she leaned forward as if to give heaviness to her suggestion and make Marion see that that was the obvious solution.

"We couldn't help ourselves," Valtor said as he caught Griffin's hand and she let go of her joke, nodding in support of his words. "We knew we had to get it for her when we saw it," Valtor said, looking at Marion and holding her gaze until hers softened so much that she looked like she was going to cry so she turned to see what they'd gotten.

Oritel had managed to open the present without shredding the wrapping paper too much and he reached into the box, pulling out the stuffed bunny.

It wasn't very big but they'd thought that was okay since Bloom was still so small herself. It was a shade of blue that was neither light nor dark and was very soothing at least to him and Griffin while the belly was white and the legs were too. It had big eyes, cute pink nose, long ears and a very orange carrot in one of its front legs.

Marion gasped as she saw it and looked like she would reach for it but she remembered she was holding Bloom. "It's adorable," she said as she looked at them before turning her attention to Bloom as Oritel showed her the bunny, all of them waiting with baited breath to see how the baby would react. The toy was for her, after all, and they needed her opinion to know if the mission of finding a present had been successful.

Bloom's eyes lit up as she saw the bunny and she reached for it with both hands, making them all laugh collectively at her obvious enjoyment.

"I think she approves," Marion said as she smiled at Griffin and Valtor. "I don't think it's a good idea to give it to her yet, though. She's little and I don't want her putting fake fur in her mouth," Marion said as she looked to Oritel, motioning for him to put the bunny back into the box.

"We knew it's a bit early for stuffed toys, but we just had to buy it for her," Griffin said as she squeezed his hand, checking if he was okay and to make sure he hadn't been left disappointed. They had discussed it beforehand, though, and she'd warned him that Marion probably wouldn't give the toy to Bloom until she was a little bit older so he'd been prepared for that outcome. "We simply had to buy it, though, since we thought it was perfect," Griffin added.

They hadn't even been looking for stuffed toys when they'd seen it at the window of one shop and had both fallen in love with it. They'd known there was no way it would wait for them to buy it for next Christmas so they'd decided to rush things a little and get it now. They'd considered holding on to it and giving it to Bloom the following year but they'd both known that wasn't a plausible scenario and they'd found themselves wrapping it–they'd done that themselves even though he'd had work to do but he'd been absolutely ecstatic about the presents and Griffin had taken matters into her own hands, buying wrapping paper and ribbons and helping him make the presents look beautiful, then helping with his paperwork as well, and his heart had ached with love for her since he hadn't known how to express what everything she'd done for him meant to him–before they'd even looked at the other presents.

"Thank you," Marion said. "I'm sure it will be well loved so you made the right call." She knit her brows. "Even if you've already spoiled her with so many gifts."

"We just wanted to welcome her into the world and our big family properly," Hagen spoke, drawing all their attention to himself, and Valtor was surprised by the softness of the words. Not that Hagen had shown anything else around the baby.

He'd been just as thrilled–if not even more–as him to see the baby since she was practically his niece. And he'd been even more panicked than Valtor the first time he'd held Bloom but it had been an oddly adorable sight and Valtor had seen Faragonda wiping at the corner of her eye discreetly which had only frustrated him more with Hagen's resistance to proposing. And even though he couldn't really say anything since he'd done the exact same thing with Griffin, he couldn't help the feeling that Hagen was just wasting time that he could spend making Faragonda happy. And Valtor had made that mistake so he didn't want to just stand and watch while someone else was making it as well if he could help.

"Exactly," Valtor said as he nodded at Hagen before turning to look at Marion who smiled at him and then turned to smile at Hagen too. "Now for the other presents," Valtor said, drawing their attention back to him. He probably should have allowed for a more natural shift of the mood and the conversation but he wasn't done playing Santa Claus yet. "Here's something for the head of the business," he said as he reached into his inner pocket and pulled a silver plated pen that gave off the shine of a guillotine and had a black bow attached to it.

He looked at Oritel for a moment before turning to Marion and handing it to her, making her shake her head at his antics while Oritel looked like someone had snatched away his cake right under his nose. Valtor couldn't help but grin widely at the success of his prank.

"Give it to Oritel," Marion said and before he could comment on how she didn't have to let Oritel take the credit for her accomplishments, she spoke again."I can't take it right now," she said as she raised Bloom slightly as if to remind him of the precious thing she was holding. "I'm sure it will come in handy, though," she said before smiling at him conspiratorially.

He returned it and handed the pen to Oritel who scowled at him but took it nonetheless. "I'll just go on and give Oritel's gift first so that you can give him Bloom after that and open yours," he said as he looked at Marion again.

"I thought that was my gift," she said, her tone questioning.

"That was just a joke," Valtor said as he moved to grab the next gift that was coincidentally wrapped in silver just like one of Marion and Oritel's. "Merry Christmas," he said as he handed it to Oritel with a wide grin on his face. The man deserved a reward for sitting through the joke at his expense so stoically.

Oritel glared at him before his expression softened and he took the gift. "Thank you," he said, sounding sincere, and tasked himself with opening the gift, tearing through the red ribbon and silver wrapping paper like a wild beast and nearly making Valtor wince at the careless destruction of his and Griffin's handiwork. Though, perhaps it was because for him there were fond memories tied to the fragile paper and that was what got such a reaction out of him. He probably had to be glad that Oritel seemed impatient to see what they'd gotten him, and not just because of an unspoken rivalry between them. In fact, Griffin had put a limit on the money they spent on the presents, not because they didn't have more than enough, but because she didn't want their presents to turn into a competition about who had more money. That would be an ugly massacre of the Christmas and friendship spirit they had gathered to celebrate, and he'd admitted she had a point.

Oritel seemed to freeze as he opened the small box and saw what was inside and Valtor felt anxiety seeping into him as he wondered whether his attempt at thoughtfulness wouldn't be taken as another tasteless joke. He had to use what his mothers had taught him about nervousness to force himself to sit still and not betray any of his thoughts.

"I have to admit that I didn't expect anything that would fit so well with my personal tastes," Oritel said, sounding shaken and Valtor couldn't tell if that was only due to his choice of a present or it also had something to do with Oritel admitting his own thoughts on the matter. "Perhaps you've gotten a better grip on what I'm like than either one of us expected," Oritel said as he looked from the silvery tie in the box to him.

Valtor gave a chuckle, put a little on edge by the knowing look Oritel gave him as he'd read his nervousness about the whole thing which he had to admit was scary. His mothers' methods had always worked–apart from that time they had been caught and sent to jail, of course–and if Oritel had seen through that, then either he was way better at reading people than he let on or Valtor had screwed over with the execution since he'd gone soft. Though, perhaps that wasn't a problem now that he didn't have to hide when he was surrounded by people who respected him and his personal space while also offering their support and friendship and it was completely up to him how much of that he wanted to accept.

"Okay, time for Marion's present," he said as he motioned at her to let Oritel take Bloom and turned to grab the present. That one had an effect on his stomach as well since he'd picked it all by himself without any help from Griffin and he was at that wonderful point of doubting every single decision that had led him to this moment. But at the same time the anxiety was less acute since he knew Marion would be understanding even if he'd messed up her present. "Careful," he said as he handed it to her now that her hands were free. "It's breakable."

Marion raised her brows in surprise before giving a small insecure smile as she probably wondered what was inside the box and went for unwrapping it. She was a lot more careful as she removed the green ribbon and started working on the pink paper, actually unwrapping it instead of tearing through it and Valtor appreciated that.

She was done in no time and opened the lid of the box, reaching inside to take out her present that was wrapped in protective foil so she had some more unpacking to do. It took her just a few extra seconds to let the dragon figurine out of it. She held it carefully for the amethyst geode at the basis, studying it with awe of the delicate blown glass and the mix of purple and golden shades that it was colored in.

"Dragons are protectors so I thought I'd get you one to guard you and your family," he said, drawing Marion's gaze to himself and the look in her eyes was so touched and made them so open, like he could see into her soul and read the gratitude that was engraved there. And it reached into his soul as if to plant a spark of the bond that seemed to form between them that would keep burning at all times, keeping him warm and reassuring him that he had a friend he could count on. Because he was taking care of her family and she was ready to do the same for him. And that knowledge shook him to his very core, making the world around seem different with the feeling of genuine friendship and the promise of care and protection. For him and everything he held dear.

"Thank you," Marion said, her voice firm with security even if it wasn't much louder than a whisper. Though, she didn't need to say anything, for he'd already understood everything from her eyes. "I'll go put it somewhere safe so that we don't break it," she said as she got up, prompting Oritel to move and make space for her to get past him. "You continue without me," she said and no one protested since they were all one big family and they all understood she needed a moment.

"Okay then, we continue with Hagen," Valtor said, looking to the man in question and giving him a devious smirk that made Hagen reply with a suspicious look. "Here's your present," he said as he took the box wrapped in warm brown with a blue ribbon, holding it carefully since it was the biggest and heaviest one so far. "Be careful when you unwrap it," he warned as he got up to hand it to Hagen who was a bit too far away.

"Is it breakable?" Hagen asked as he took it, the distrustful look melting away when the curiosity grasped at his mind.

"Yes and no," Valtor said mysteriously, doing his best to hold in his smugness at the baffled expression that took over Hagen's face. There would be enough time for that when the present was unwrapped. "It is alive, though," Valtor said, unable to restrain himself from giving away some of the surprise. But it wasn't such a bad idea considering the positively shocked look he got from the robotics engineer at that. "It's not anything disgusting," he reassured at the apprehension that so obviously took over Hagen's entire being. "It's a present, after all." Which didn't mean it couldn't be a prank as well.

"It's probably a plant, Hagen," Faragonda said as she moved closer to Hagen and put a hand on his to calm him down. Valtor had to admit he was a bit disappointed by that but it was probably for the best since he still needed Hagen to open the present.

Hagen's suspicion had returned but he allowed Faragonda to talk him into opening it–though, considering he only caved in after the intense stare they shared, it was probably closer to the truth to say promise-to-kiss him into it if not something more–and help him do so which made the process faster and more effective. The box was soon left ready to be opened and Hagen gave him one last glare before lifting the lid.

"A cactus," he said, his tone screaming 'I should have seen this coming' as he scowled, probably mad at himself for letting Valtor's mind games get to him. "I think we all see the symbolism," he said sardonically as he looked at Valtor, giving him his cue to take the reins of his little prank once again.

"Yes, I thought it was fitting considering how adaptive the cacti are in order to survive the extreme drought of the desert. And they still manage to produce beautiful blossoms," he gave a little lecture which couldn't even be called that compared to the information Griffin had poured out on him when they'd been picking the cactus. She'd told him the Latin name of the species they'd chosen but he couldn't have been bothered to remember it. He had, however, memorized that it was a rare South American species that gave beautiful pale yellow flowers. And hairy fruits, but there was no need to tell Hagen that and spoil the entire surprise. "I thought your workplace could probably use something aesthetic in it," he teased but that didn't seem to register with Hagen who seemed shocked for a whole new reason now.

"Oh," he said, slightly embarrassed by his distrust in Valtor, though it had been completely deserved. "That's thoughtful of you," he admitted as he wrapped an arm around Faragonda's waist and drew her closer as if he was looking to retreat in her affection to get over the whole ordeal. He still eyed the cactus rather affectionately, though.

"Your office could use some life," Faragonda said as she put her hand on his shoulder for leverage to lift herself a little and kiss his cheek, making him smile even if he didn't feel like it. It was a little bit like looking into a mirror. Except he and Griffin looked far better.

"And for you, Faragonda," Valtor said, making them both look to him again, "this," he gave the box to Griffin so that she could pass it to Faragonda. It was wrapped in forest green with a yellow ribbon holding it all together. There was no prank in this one, just a genuine attempt at getting Faragonda something she'd like.

She opened the gift carefully and pulled out the thermos bottle he'd gotten her so that her tea would be warm at all times just like she was. The bottle was dark blue in color with an intricate silver flower pattern over it. He'd had it custom-made since the ones he'd been able to find hadn't fit his vision of a good present. And the shade of the blue was almost identical to that of Faragonda's eyes. It could easily replace a name tag.

"I love it," Faragonda said as she smiled at him, making him smile back now that he knew his efforts hadn't been misplaced. Not that he'd really had many doubts about this one since she was such a positive person that she was happy with the smallest show of affection, but he didn't do things half-way. And Faragonda was his oldest friend from the group. It had been worth the extra efforts.

"Well, that unwraps up our presents," Valtor said, turning to Griffin and the smile she gave him made the content he felt complete. They'd done well with their mission and everyone had liked the presents. Plus, they'd gotten away with a joke or two, and that was a total victory in his book.

"We should wait for Marion before we continue, though," Faragonda said as she looked up from the thermos but didn't let it out of her grasp, making Hagen sulk that he'd lost her touch to an inanimate object. Or perhaps it was because it was a present from him and Griffin. The accident with the kiss seemed forgotten but there were plenty of other reasons for Hagen to not be their biggest fan.

"I'm here," Marion said, walking over to the couch and sitting down back at her seat next to Oritel. She seemed to have gotten control over her emotional state once again and looked ready to continue the action. "That's a beautiful cactus, Hagen," she said, her tone slightly teasing and making Hagen glare at her but the smile that was on his face at the same time gave away he wasn't serious. "And a lovely thermos bottle," she said as she looked in Faragonda's direction. "I see your presents were well received," she turned to him and Griffin before looking to Oritel. "It's time for ours then?" she asked and he nodded. "Why don't you give me Bloom and hand them out?" she extended her arms, waiting to take Bloom from Oritel.

"I think it'd be best if you did that. She just fell asleep," Oritel said, keeping his voice down and making them all peek at the baby to see her peaceful face as she slept.

"We should get her to her crib then," Marion said, already jumping to her feet again but Oritel gestured for her to sit back down.

"I can handle this," he reassured before getting up. "You handle the gifts," he said and headed for the second floor.

"I'm sorry," Marion turned to them again. "We let the babysitter go home so that she can celebrate as well but now we can't give you our undivided attention."

"I don't think anyone here minds," Valtor said and the others nodded, making Marion relax. Though, the very fact that she was bothering with excuses made him uneasy. It reminded him of the stiff etiquette his mothers had always gone on and on about. He had no idea how Marion had been raised but there was something way too familiar for comfort in her behavior. So he was glad to see they could all offer her some respite from that.

"Okay, let's get to the gifts then," Marion said. "I think I'll start with Valtor," she said as she grabbed the maroon gift, proving at least two of his guesses wrong and handed it to him.

Considering how mindful he'd been about the way they'd all opened their presents, he had to shame himself as well. Though, he hadn't meant to tear the wrapping paper open. It had just... happened, and he couldn't decide whether the flimsier thing was the paper or his attempt at a double standard.

He managed to open it, though, to find a golden watch inside. "Trying to tell me something now, are you?" he asked as he looked at Marion. He and Griffin had been the last to arrive almost every single time they'd gathered. Having in mind that Griffin was so adamant about punctuality, she was surprisingly silent on the topic, both at the moment and in general. Though, he suspected that could be because she treasured their alone time as much as he did.

"Perhaps," Marion smirked, just to tease him.

"Thanks for the indirect attack," he joked. He wasn't a fan of clocks. He'd been rushed enough when he was younger and even now at his job when he always had to meet one deadline or another. Hearing a watch ticking on his wrist like the countdown to a bomb was one of the last things he wanted. He did appreciate the choice of a hue, though, since the gold wasn't gleaming, but looked dark and cool. And he could understand why they'd went for the watch. Business required some punctuality and if they'd been out of ideas what to get him, then he wasn't offended. He hadn't exactly given them guidelines and they knew him for a short time. He'd only been so successful with his gifts because Griffin had helped.

"I was in favor of a nice bottle of old wine but Oritel said it was a gift that wouldn't leave a lasting impression," Marion said and Valtor had to make an effort not to show how much he would have preferred the bottle of wine over the watch even though Marion had already gotten that. He didn't want to make her feel guilty for spending so much money on the watch, though. They'd done their best, and that was all that mattered. Perhaps he could even use the watch to make some of the more insufferable business partners jealous. "I hope we guessed your tastes better," Marion turned to Griffin as she handed her the green gift, sending Valtor in shock over another wrong guess.

Griffin did unpack it patiently and dexterously without leaving a single tear in the wrapping people and opened it to reveal a scarf that Valtor didn't need to touch to know was silk. It was a mixture of rusty red and golden that combined together well and would look great on her.

"It's lovely," Griffin said as she ran her hand over the delicate fabric. She wasn't much for scarves–although she seemed to appreciate the fine quality of it–but they'd had an interesting experience with one of the three of those she had when he'd accidentally pulled it, choking her, but instead of being angry, she'd told him to do it again. And of course, all those times they'd used the scarves as blindfolds and even as restraints.

"It will certainly come in handy," he said as he grinned at Griffin who licked her lips, sensing the direction of his thoughts. And so did the others.

"I can't tell if you two are just horny twenty-four-seven or can't find the time to have sex," Hagen said, startling them all since he usually avoided those discussions. They might have annoyed him enough to make him jump at the opportunity to get back at them. Or he could have simply started feeling more comfortable around them which was highly doubtful, considering what they'd both put him through that evening.

"Both."

"Both," their voices echoed simultaneously. They wouldn't have been able to do that if they'd practiced it but, unfortunately, it was true at this time of the year.

"You try to find the time for anything, really, when you have a stack of paperwork taller than you are to fill out. On top of meetings and whatnot," Valtor said, feeling the exhaustion seep into him just from talking about what he had to go through at his job. "I barely get the time to look at her when I get home and then again before I go to bed. We can't even have dinner together, and even if I could find the time for sex, I certainly wouldn't have the energy," he said, glad to feel Griffin's hand on his arm as her touch always charged him with energy.

"Well, I imagine the gift will help you make up for it once all the paperwork is off your back," Marion said, her voice steady and calm but there was a mischievous spark in her eyes when he looked at her.

"I very much hope so," he said as he drew Griffin closer and she wrapped her arms around his neck, tempting him to pull her in his lap but that would mean carrying her out of there and driving home because he doubted he could resist the temptation of her body after all the endless hours he'd had to devote to paperwork instead of to her.

"I think now would be a good time to continue before they forget they're not alone," Hagen said, making them both grin at him devilishly but they didn't have the time to make him pay for the remark when Faragonda interfered.

"I would like to give our gift now if you don't mind?" she looked at Marion who nodded. "We got one gift for both of you since we know how glued you are to each other," Faragonda teased as she turned to them and Griffin pressed herself even harder in him just to prove that, putting a smile on his face and making him kiss the top of her head like she was a priceless treasure. Because she was.

"What did you get us?" Valtor asked innocently which was the exact opposite of what was going on in his head–especially with Griffin pressed so hard into him–and they all knew that.

"I'm not gonna give it to you if you keep that up," Hagen said as he pulled back the big box he was about to hand them.

"Oh, Hagen, are you gonna deny us?" Griffin asked, the laughter almost bursting out of her before she'd managed to get the whole sentence out. "That's very cruel of you," she managed to keep it together for one more sentence before her beautiful laughter filled the living room, though Hagen didn't seem amused at all with her teasing but Valtor couldn't give a damn about that when her body was vibrating on the frequency of happiness next to him, filling him with joy as well.

"Just give it to them," Faragonda urged. "They can turn everything into a joke but perhaps the gift will leave them speechless," she said as she took it from Hagen and handed it to Griffin who let go of Valtor, conquered by curiosity, and reached for it.

They opened it together, ripping the elegant black wrapping paper to shreds but he didn't pay attention to that since Griffin looked excited to see what was inside.

They were met with a wooden chess set of high quality and impressive workmanship that had golden threads engraved in the chess pieces, making them look elegant while also keeping it simple and very aesthetic without being over the top. The "white" chess pieces were made of oak wood while the "black" were from cherry wood and they were all carved very precisely. It was obvious how much effort and love had been put into the making of the set which made it all the more beautiful.

"I'm surprised it's not all... metallic and robotized," Valtor said as he looked at Hagen, deciding to switch the topic of the teases from sex to something Hagen was more acquainted with.

"I thought about that but Faragonda said that something more pretentious will fit your old-fashioned taste better," Hagen shot back, allowing a smirk to take over his features at the momentary pause his words gave Valtor. Though, it wasn't because he was outsmarted. He was trying to figure out how the simple chess set was pretentious, and then he realized – Hagen just didn't know the meaning of the words he was using.

"For the record, I never said that," Faragonda jumped in to straighten things out although that wasn't necessary. He could see through Hagen's poor attempt to get a reaction out of him and he knew Faragonda wouldn't say something like that even if she was thinking it. "I said that you prefer classical over futuristic."

He was going to reassure her but Griffin cut in before he could open his mouth.

"Please, tell me you didn't go broke just to get us this," Griffin said as she looked to Faragonda and there were tears in her eyes but it wasn't clear whether they were there because she was touched by the gesture or because she was worried. Knowing her, Valtor would say both. "I'm in love with it and it's beautiful and amazing, and precious, but please, tell me you didn't spend too much on it," she said as she reached for Faragonda and caught her hand.

"No, don't worry," Faragonda said as she patted the back of her hand. "We fit into our budget so you can enjoy it without worrying about that," she said and smiled at the teary look Griffin was giving her. She knew how much Griffin loved chess–and he shared her passion–so that was the perfect Christmas present for both of them.

"Thank you," Griffin said, moving to hug Faragonda.

"Now that that's settled," Hagen said, only looking at Valtor when he made sure there would be no more kissing, "I would love to beat your ass at chess," he said, his voice full of challenge and some very misplaced smugness. The only one who could beat Valtor at chess was Griffin.

"No way," Griffin said as she let go of Faragonda, practically throwing herself back at Valtor as if to make sure he wouldn't run away from her to play chess with Hagen. It looked like the robotics engineer wasn't the only jealous one but Griffin was jealous when it came to chess. "Valtor and I are breaking in the new set," she said as she clutched as his arm as well as at the chessboard like a little kid afraid of having her toys snatched away and Valtor couldn't help but smile at the affection he was getting even if it was prompted by pettiness.

"Well, what are you waiting for?" Hagen asked sitting closer to the edge of his seat. "Start your game so that I can beat him, too," he urged, getting up and reaching over the table to grab at the chess set but Griffin pulled it out of his reach, glaring at him and just about ready to start hissing at him.

She did put the chessboard on the coffee table when she made sure he wasn't going to touch it and started placing the chess pieces on it, allowing Valtor to help her. It looked like they weren't leaving, after all.

[leondraisaitlsglove]

Transcript: Peter and Leon Draisaitl in a double interview ahead of the NHL Global Series Challenge

[This is a little rough, yo. Obviously not an exact translation but I tried to stay as true to the original wording as possible while getting the general meaning across properly. The result is a bit stilted. Rick Goldmann (interviewer) speaks a dialect that obviously doesn’t translate here and Peter mumbles a bit in places so I had to take some liberties there. The general tone of the interview is jokey and casual, Leon and his dad are bantering, but there’s heartfelt and serious bits too! I also chose to keep ‘Papa’ (dad) and ‘Mama’ (mom) in their original German bc I think it’s cute, lol. But anyway, YEET! Let me know what you think. Theres two lil McDrai moments in there if you squint.]

I LOVE YOU ANON THANK YOU FOR MAKING MY MCFREAKING DAY IM GONNA READ IT NOW AND THEN SOUND OFF IN THE TAGS WHEN IM DONE. THANK YOU. YOUR HARD WORK IS VERY APPERICATED.

This is the interview for anyone wondering

Rick Goldmann: Welcome, Peter and Leon Draisaitl, to what I’m going to call a ‘family interview‘ here on Sport1 [channel name]. I’m guessing this kind of interview, a double interview, has been done more frequently recently now that you [Peter] are the coach in Cologne [of the Kölner Haie ‘Cologne Sharks’, Colognes Hockey team in the DHL, the German pro Hockey league] and you [Leon] are here [in Cologne]. How often has this happened so far?

Peter: Not really that often. We’ve maybe done it one or two times, three maximum. It hasn’t been that many times.

Leon: Yes [agreeing noises]

RG: So you’re not getting tired of it?

L: Not yet, no. I think we still have quite a bit of that ahead of us in the following days, especially before the game.

P: Yes.

RG: Let’s just start at the beginning. You could say that you two spent the summer here in Cologne together. What did that look like?

Peter: Leon spent two bigger chunks of time in Prague, where he prepared with his trainer. We took a vacation together for three weeks, in Spain. When we were in Cologne, he [Leon] trained here with us [the Kölner Haie] to get ready, both ‘dry’ [gym etc.] training and going out on the ice with us. [Starts grinning] But by now he’s hanging out with the boys more rather than spending time at home with us.

PG: So when you’re in Cologne, Leon, you stay with your Papa?

L: Yes, with my parents.

RG: Who’s responsible for cooking? Not you.

L: Not me, no. [Huffs] Certainly not me. Mama, mostly, when we eat at home.

RG: Okay. But you went on vacation together. You did that together this summer. It’s been a brutally hot summer. I heard you actually don’t enjoy water that much. Is that true? If yes, how did you even survive?

L: Where did you hear that?

RG: Maybe I didn’t come prepared.

L: No, it’s true, I’m not much of a … I mean I do like cooling off, but if I do it’s more likely to be in a pool rather than the big open sea where you never know what’s swimming around underneath you.

RG: So you respect the ocean?

L: Yeah, for sure.

P: I could prove that with a picture or two.

RG: Where did that come from? Has that been the case since he was little?

P: Hmm. Yeah, actually, he was still wearing those little red … what’s the word?

L: Water wings.

P: …water wings or whatever they’re called, and he already didn’t trust the water back then. And he has kept that up to this day.

RG: [Jokingly] Did you not inflate them properly?

P: [Laughs] That’s certainly possible.

RG: I’ve heard something else along with you not liking the water – that in juniors, you actually didn’t play hockey for a year. [Leon nods] How did that happen and what did you think of that, Peter?

L: Yeah I mean my parents were actually pretty… they essentially supported me in whatever… from the beginning it was clear that if I didn’t like Hockey, it wouldn’t be a big problem. I essentially tried out every sport; I’ve played golf, I’ve played tennis… I experimented a lot, and there was a time when Hockey for me was – I think it was actually because we were moving house, moving house a lot annoyed me about Hockey so I stopped playing for a year and played soccer, but it turned out that wasn’t for me [chuckles].

P: [Chuckling]

RG: [to Peter] What did you think? He’s not a soccer player? Or did you not care?

P: Let’s be serious for a while: If he had stuck with soccer, that would’ve been fine for us. We realized, or learned, or understood early on that there’s no sense in pressuring your children into it. Just because I was stomping around somewhere sometime [aka playing hockey], that doesn’t mean he absolutely has to do the same thing. If he had told me; ‘Papa, golf, tennis suits me more’ that would have been…

Leon: Fencing.

P: …been fine for our family. Fencing, sure. With your motor skills… I don’t think so. [Leon grins] It would’ve been okay. I don’t remember, was it even a full year?

L: I don’t know either. Not sure if it was a whole year.

P: He dipped his toes into it, at Fortuna was it?

L: [Offended] That’s Fortuna Düsseldorf. It was Victoria Köln.

P: Or Victoria. No idea.

L: Victoria Köln, yes.

P: But I think that stopped after a few weeks or so.

L: Because they wouldn’t let me take the free kick once, yeah.

RG: That made you not want to do it anymore?

L: Yeah, I lost my motivation after that.

[All laugh]

P: He came back to Hockey after that.

RG: If there’s a list of things you guys don’t want to hear anymore: How far up there is ‘The German Gretzky?’

L: You mean as a nickname?

RG: Yeah, that people call you that.

L: Ehhh, Actually… I try to distance myself from that a little bit, nicknames and all that. Stuff like that tends to come from the media anyway, and if they enjoy writing stuff like that, whatever, go ahead.

RG: Of course it comes from the media, but you still notice it. As a former player I’d say how do you come up with bullshit like that, but they need their headlines. When you heard it the first time, what did you think about it, Peter?

P: As I’m sure you can imagine I wasn’t exactly thrilled with it, because it puts unnecessary pressure on the young guys. Like everyone in this sport knows, there has only ever been one and there will only ever be one [Wayne Gretzky], and that comparison with the name alone already isn’t fair. And in the end it doesn’t even make any sense. But it’s actually pretty cool that Leon is able to – and has always been able to – absorb stuff like that and then put it aside. He doesn’t dwell on it when he generates headlines like that, generates ‘hype’ like that, as it’s already happened in the past, with the junior draft and the NHL draft, interviews and so forth. So far he’s always handled it pretty professionally.

RG: You’ve brought up an interesting aspect: the mental aspect in professional sports. Especially now with how Hockey has developed, maybe in comparison with other players in the DHL, in Europe, with the NHL - what kind of importance does it have for you? The ‘mental strength’ as some people call it?

L: In my personal opinion, over 90% of it takes place in your head. Without wanting to disrespect anyone, when I train with the guys here: they’re not slower – well maybe when compared to someone like McDavid – but generally they’re not slower, their shooting isn’t worse than that of the guys I train with overseas, but in my opinion it’s something in your head. It’s all mental games, mental stuff that plays a huge role in Hockey, and in sports in general.

RG: [to Peter] If you think back to your career and you compare it to Leons, what would you like to have that he does and you didn’t?

P: If you move beyond the fact that times were different back then – no videos, no social media – the NHL was so far removed from us for most players, and definitely for me, that I wasn’t even thinking about it. But putting that aside, maybe his maturity or his mental strength. Because I figured out pretty late what this sport was about, I wasted years of my time playing hockey by not taking it seriously as a team sport, not knowing what it meant to be part of a greater whole. Where I needed to position myself to be actually useful. And he [Leon] understood that much earlier.

RG: If you had to describe him as a player how would you do that?

P: As someone who … maybe partially already is, but will definitely succeed in being a dominant two-way player. Who, with his skills, should be able to carry a line, to lead and direct a group of five players. Moreover he has the ability to score - to set up plays and also score himself. I don’t think I’m wrong when I say that Leon is developing that way. I think that’s his overarching goal he wants to reach, so he can compete with the superstars of our sport. People like Crosby, who have already won tons of stuff, who have proven not just once but over and over again that when it really counts, they can bring it.

RG: [to Leon] How would you rate that evaluation by a coach, by your Papa?

L: He knows me, of course. He knows that it’s my goal to get there someday, to be a two-way forward that can score goals but who doesn’t think he’s above doing the dirty work defensively. Who takes important face-offs and who’s a complete, all around good hockey player.

RG: Leon, this year was the first time you’ve done your prep work in Cologne. How did that happen and why did you choose to do your training camp for the NHL season in Germany?

L: I’m from here. I grew up here. This is the perfect scene for me, and with my dad as a coach here, it gives me every opportunity to prepare successfully and well. A weight room, I can go on the ice, every day, use the gym every day, so that’s a no brainer for me.

RG: When you’re on the ice here, your Papa is the coach. What’s that situation like for you, when he’s the one blowing the whistle?

L: [Grinning] By now I’ve gotten used to it a little. Since I’ve always kind of done it like that over the years, that I go train wherever my dad happens to be at the time. Sometimes when he gets a little louder it’s a bit weird for me, because I only know my Papa from what he’s like at home, talking shit, joking around. So when it gets serious all of a sudden… but other than that it’s pretty normal. I know it’s a business, I know this is his job and I’m smart enough to separate that from home life.

RG: So I guess that means when you were little, you were just like all the other kids, following your dad into the locker room and getting to know Hockey like that. Was it essentially a pre-decided thing that you’d get into hockey yourself?

L: If you follow basic logic, of course that had something to do with it. I don’t know, a couple of weeks ago I saw pictures of me where I could barely walk and was wearing a giant red helmet and gloves that were half my…

P: And a pacifier, don’t forget that. A pacifier.

L: …half my entire body size. So of course I got into it via my dad. But I think the passion, to a certain degree, you have to develop yourself.

RG: When you think back, what’s the first thing you remember of your dad in regards to Hockey?

L: For me, the coolest thing was after the game when the kids were allowed to come down and onto the ice and were handed over the glass by one of the parents. Then taking a victory lap with Papa, that was the best… I always loved that.

P: And my back check at Schalke.

L: And his back check at Schalke in 2010, that was also…

P: Formative. Formative, definitely.

L: I’ll never forget that.

RG: Your back check at Schalke?

P: Yeah, I burned my equipment after that. Before the game there was a match against the Grasbrunner (?) guys, a pre-game.

RG: At the World Cup Germany were hosting? In front of 70000 people?

P: Exactly, yeah. That was when I realized…

L: Let it go. Hang them up.

P: Stop playing.

L: Give it up.

P: And that was the last time I played a hockey game.

RG: Oh, really?

P: Yeah.

RG: Mine too, by the way.

P: There you go.

RG: I saw you and thought to myself: better not try again.

P: That’s it, now it’s over.

RG: When did you realize what kind of talent Leon had, the potential he had?

P: The first time I thought it could be enough for a higher level was when I was overseas at Prince Albert and it was starting to look likely he’d get drafted at the junior draft, or rather the NHL draft, relatively highly. And then you obviously have the hope, if you’re talking about the first round or something, that he could end up in the best league, in the NHL.

RG: [to Leon] You’re 22 years old, turning 23, how much would you say have you reached your potential as a hockey player?

L: I’d say I have a lot more in me. Or rather, I know I have a lot more to give. At 22 no Hockey player, no athlete is at the point he can reach by 26, 27, 28. It’s a process I’m looking forward too, but I also know it’s very hard work. I’ll try to get better and better each year.

RG: Now there’s going to be this game, the global series that’s taking place here. The game was sold out within 10 minutes. When did you first find out there would be the opportunity to play against an NHL team as a coach here in Cologne?

P: I don’t remember, or I somehow… [Leon murmuring] excuse me?

L: I think it was through me.

P: That’s possible. I think at first I didn’t even realize it. I heard about the Oilers playing here, I thought it was a joke at first. When it became official I thought okay, well, this is a fact now. Again, for ‘Kölle’ [nickname for the city in the regional accent] this game, and the winter game later in the season, are huge, fantastic events awaiting us. I think this event, this game against the Oilers will be really fun for everyone involved.

RG: The global series, Leon, to explain the basics, what’s the idea behind it? Why does the NHL play games abroad, in Europe?

L: I think it’s to push markets in countries where Hockey isn’t as popular. To increase the importance of Hockey worldwide, and especially in countries where it’s relatively unknown, like China, like Germany, I don’t know where else. Or in smaller countries, to push the sport. I think the NHL is doing a really good job, and I personally really like that they’re doing these kinds of matches. I think for the DHL teams as well, or with New Jersey in Switzerland, for the Swiss teams, it’s a highlight and everyone is looking forward to it.

RG: In this game, Edmonton Oilers vs. Kölner Haie, how important is the Draisaitl vs. Draisaitl duel? It’s not every day you get the chance to beat your dad, and it’s not every day you get to coach against an NHL team either.

P: Well this is going to be his only chance, because in table tennis and every other game [Leon protests by puffing up his cheeks and laughing] he can’t keep up, so maybe Wednesday will be the only time he gets the opportunity. But I don’t see them beating us yet.

L: [Grinning, then mock-serious] This is going to be one of many times I’ll beat my dad, in various things. No, like he said, it’s going to be an outstanding event, for our family it’s going to be special as well. And I think for them [Kölner Haie] it will be the hardest, I think they don’t quite know what’s in store for them yet. Being neutral is [unintelligible]

RG: If you absolutely had to pick a player from Edmonton to play with the Kölner Haie – and you have to, otherwise you’d say you wouldn’t take any – you need to take one.

P: I have to, yes.

RG: Who would you pick?

P: He would start right now? For the season?

RG: Yeah, exactly. Who do you pick?

P: I’ll have to think for a little bit. There’s quite a few who are… I would have to decide between McDavid and Leon. But you only want one.

RG: Yeah, and why you’d pick him. Who and for what reason.

P: I’d pick McDavid. Leon will have to deal with that.

L: [Mockingly] Incomprehensible. Can’t understand that choice.

P: He needs to be strong now.

RG: if you had to pick one for Edmonton – one of the Cologne guys.

L: From the Cologne team. Hmm. [clicks his tongue] Pfohli [Fabio Pfohl]. I think he has the potential. His Hockey IQ is on a really high level. In my opinion it should be his goal to play in the NHL.

P: Okay.

RG: [to Peter] You’ll stick with your choice? McDavid?

P: [nodding]

L: [grinning, shaking his head] Can’t understand that.

[All laughing]

RG: Okay, thank you!

[chaniters]

Sick

A follow up to the last one Marmalade. It would be nice to know exactly where I’m going with this series but unlike all the previous ones, honestly, I’ve got no clue. So this looks like heavily loaded Chargestep fluff, at least that’s what I get upon re-reading it. Basically Sidestep is sick. And I’m reusing a gif that i Reblogged that has me obsessed (link at the bottom). 

There, I said it all. Read at your own risk.

"You look like shit," he says as he takes the thermometer from your hand.

"Thank you, for the constant reminder," you say. You can't help but let out an undignified sneeze immediately afterward.

"Well it's true," he says looking at the number "Yep, you've come up with a fever." He lets the thermometer on the low table then looks at you with concern. "Do you even have vaccines on you? You've avoided hospitals for years."

"They gave me more vaccines than you'll ever have in your lifetime" you shoot back "I'm fine in that department".

"That's ok if you say so I guess... how do you feel?"

"Cold!" you complain "It's freezing here!"

"See? That's called effective communication" he says walking up to the closet "You tell me what's the problem..." he takes a few blankets from a pile "...and we can work on it." he ends the sentence, covering you with them.

You immediately wrap yourself in a blanket cocoon, shivering. You're resting on the left side of the convertible sofa on his living room. He sits over the right side and passes you some pills. You just swallow them without water.

"Do you want to watch something... or?" he asks holding the remote control and lying down at your right.

"No, I'm fine. You watch something if you want" you answer snatching a few tissues from the low table nearby, then discarding them on the trash bin that’s beginning to look like a tissue burial ground. The extra blankets are warming you up already, but you're not in the mood.

He browses a few movies, before settling for a low-key old rom-com. He knows you liked that one because you told him, and you watched it together back then. Ricardo always thought it odd you'd choose this movie as one of your favorites, but you only knew a handful of movies they let you watch back at the farm when you first escaped. Even then you still wonder why you like rewatching this one in particular so much...

It's about a crown prince from a distant country in Africa that grows weary of his pampered life, so he flees to America to escape an arranged marriage and find a new bride that loves him for who he is, pretending to be a poor foreign student. Of course, he soon enough meets a woman, his lies are discovered and hilarity ensues.

You end up watching it all over again with him, despite yourself. It's easy to focus since you already know the plot by heart and don't need to follow it.

He gets closer to you during the movie, and soon enough you're sharing banter as you used to back then.

You don't even realize it happened until the movie ends, but at some point, he placed an arm over your shoulder and is rubbing your arm lightly over the blankets.

You don't really mind the physical contact right now. Perhaps it's the fever. Or maybe it's because you're buried under so much fabric. Or you could just admit he is a master at these things and you keep falling for it.

"Hey how are you feeling now?" he asks as the credits roll

"Better." you have to admit it. "Thanks?" You've never had anyone keep you company like this while you were sick. You couldn't allow such close contact. It was dangerous. And back at the farm, you hated the hospital ward.

Having him take care of you like this is... nice? You feel yourself blushing. You hope the fever disguises it well.

"No problem. uh... hey, do you want to sleep... or...?

"Or?" you ask.

"Maybe we go back to that talk we were having? If you're feeling up to it" he asks as he switches to a music channel and lowers the volume, keeping just the ambiance.

"Sure"

"I've been meaning to ask... that implant you mentioned...Do you still have it?" he asks. "Like if you went through a metal detector, it would be there?"

"It's not electronic. It's organic," you explain. "And yes I have it."

"Can it be removed?"

You shake your head "It's part of who I am."

"Can.. they ... control you through it?" his arm holds you a bit tighter as he asks that question.

It takes a second for you to answer. It's a painful reality.

"Yes... no. I mean... They can try... And I can resist it maybe? It's... the center of our personality when they jumpstart our brain... but it loses some importance as we grow old...I don't know if that makes sense to you?"

"So... you're saying someone could push a button and try to send you back to the directive?" He's clearly worried about it, you can see it in his eyes.

"Oh no. The implant doesn't pick radio signals. It's... activated through verbal commands. Or telepathy, either work."

He looks at you trying to make sense of it.

"It's tricky. I mean it's part of me. If they order me to do something through the implant. I will want to do it. Or at least part of me will"

"Ohh. Oh, fuck."

"Yes. Fuck indeed. Unless It's something I truly don't want to do. If I'm completely against it, then my organic brain takes precedence. For thing's I'm not too sure about,  then the implant can outweigh the rest of my mind."

"Oh... That's... " he seems to lack words to describe it.

"It's...just how we are made" you finish lowering your gaze. Just speaking about these things makes your skin crawl. But you told him you would speak about it.

"So if they told you to dance..."

"If they tell me to dance, I'd have to dance until I managed to refocus my mind... If they tell me to eat, I would eat... and If they tell me to kill someone... Unless I really know this person and not wish to harm them... I'd have to kill them"

"Have you...?" he asks looking into your eyes, his expression a mask of concern.

You simply nod. "I ...I couldn't help it. I wanted to do it. The implant is part of my mind. And... that's not the worse thing they made me do... " You feel your nails digging into the couch.

The memories come to you, making you clench your fists and...

"Doll! Come here right now!" the new workers called you, laughing to themselves on their first day alone with the younger regenes.

And so you walked to them happily,  thinking it was another exercise or game to perfect your motor skills... and then...

"Hey, you there?” Ricardo says snapping his fingers. “It's ok. You’re here" he says holding you tighter, bringing you back from your thoughts. It’s scary how well he can read your expression lately. You turn and rest your head over his shoulder. His arm rubs your back over the blankets... it's soothing. You're only a bit shorter than him, but right now you feel incredibly small.

And then you realize.

You've been in a sort of bubble since that night. But you're not there anymore. That feeling of despair is gone, at least for now. There is no stress in his apartment... and you realize he's been doing everything in his power to make you feel comfortable.

Your feelings are coming back, and you can see things quite clearly. This isn't your enemy and he never abandoned you. It was all the Directive's doing. Not his fault. Only yours for not trusting him. He is your old friend.

Your best friend.

And he'd never betray you. You let your anger take control and he almost pays the price.

"Ricardo..."

"Yes?" he says while looking at his brick-phone, absently.

"I'm sorry," you say

"For what?" he asks putting the phone down

"How can you even ask that... I mean... I'm sorry for... all of it? I'm sorry I didn't tell you what I was back then... I'm sorry I blamed you for what happened to me. It wasn't your fault. It was them, not you. I'm an idiot. Everything that's happened is my fault and I tried to take it on you. I..." Oh yes, you're having another breakdown right now. You can feel the tears exploding. Good thing the tissues are here...

You feel his chest tremble a bit. You look ... Is he... crying too?

He embraces you with both arms and draws you closer.

"I'm so sorry Ricardo," you say, not knowing what else to do.

"It's ok," he says, smiling while tears fall down his cheeks. "It's just I've been waiting so damn long for you to say something like that. And you were dead for most of that time. Well, I mean not really but... you get what I mean, right?" He cleans his eyes, not used to crying in front of people. You just nod.

"You know I had so many nightmares of your ghost accusing me of letting you die... But I've got to handle to you, none of that was worse than the shit you pulled at me at that cemetery. That was fucking terrifying."

"I'm sorry" you repeat. The worst part is that you actually meant it to be just like that. Better not tell him.

"If you had died there..." he tightens his hold as if he was afraid you could disappear. Hardly, you are positively a blanket burrito right now. "If you had shot yourself, I don't know what the hell would I've be doing right now. Promise me you won't try to do that again!"

"I will... I will try Ricardo. It's just... After Heartbreak..."

"Yes, I know what he made you do I was there. But he's gone now. You make your own choices ok?"

"I'll try to do my best Ricardo. I promise" THat's the best you can do. You wish you could erase your scars just like that.

"It's... it's ok" he says in the end. "We both lived through it all, didn't we?"

"Anathema... didn't," you say after a long while.

"Yes... we can't change that. But you say they are the ones who unleashed Heartbreak. Together... we will make them pay"

"We will"

He kisses your forehead, and you lay your head down over his shoulder again.

The two of you stay there, in silence. There is a feeling of peace that you've never felt before.

But that can't last, can it?.

Just like your emotions, that came back and let you see things for what they were, the fever is going down with the medication, and your internal thermostat going back to normal, making you realize how incredibly hot it is to exist inside all these blankets with Ricardo holding you so close.

But you don't tell him that. You can't move out of here, not now. He looks so stupidly happy as he strokes your back.

So you just stay there, trying not to move. You just hope not to end up like a baked potato in the end.

___________________________

If you’re wondering what the gif that has me obsessed is, it’s here: https://chaniters.tumblr.com/post/182077311054/yukinayee-jfc-the-movement-looks-so-rough

__________________________

My Fanfiction: https://chaniters.tumblr.com/post/181692759294/my-fanfiction-for-fallen-hero    

DISCLAIMER: This is a work of fan fiction using characters and the setting of the Fallen Hero: Rebirth and upcoming Fallen Hero: Retribution games written by Malin Riden. I do not claim ownership of any characters from the Fallen Hero wold. These stories are a work of my imagination, and I do not ascribe them to the official story canon. These works are intended for entertainment outside the official storyline owned by the author. I am not profiting financially from the creation of these stories, and thank the author for her wonderful game/s, without which these works would not exist.

[sandstonesunspear]

Gertrude the Hellhound Service Dog

Thanks to @nerdsbianhokie for the idea and @go-sullivan for being my sounding board for a bit.

In hindsight, Alex really should have seen it coming. Waking up from a two week long coma after suffering considerable brain trauma without serious deficits rarely happened. So maybe she had been just a slightly arrogant enough to think that she was one of the rare cases. Could anyone blame her? She was Alex Danvers, slayer of Hellgramites and Kryptonians. She had piloted a Kryptonian shuttle into space, saved Supergirl and, despite having taken a brunt of the Myriad wave, had ended up in better shape than more than 200,000 people.

Except, now she wasn’t. Now, she was trying hard not to vomit in the middle of the sidewalk. A car horn blared in the street. She bit back a whimper as pain lanced through her skull. Migraine. Henderson had warned her that there would be side effects from the damage Myriad caused. Migraines had been one of them. This particular one had come without its usual aura.

This walk was a bad idea. She had wanted out of her apartment. She was tired of being cooped up. Fresh air, a little sunlight, some city smog. Just was the doctor ordered. Or not.

Alex took a shuddering breath. To the outside observer, nothing was amiss. She was keen on keeping it that way. She slowly made her way to a nearby alley. She was careful to keep her movements steady. A spiking heart rate was the last thing she needed right now. It was hard going but eventually she made it.

As soon as she crossed the threshold into the alley, Alex let out a breath she didn’t know she was hold. She collapsed, out of sight, in the shadow a dumpster. Already things were quieter. The bricks were cool against the back of her skull, providing a modicum of relief from the pain.

Breathe in. One slow breath. Breathe out. An even slower exhale. The scent of vanilla started to register with her senses. Her stomach turned at the smell. At any other time, she would have welcomed it. Right now, though, it was a reminder and warning that she didn’t have long before things got much worse. Still, better late than never, she supposed.

Alex curled in on herself and closed her eyes. A large black, smokey mass went unnoticed as she focused on her breathing. If she had been paying attention, she would have noticed that it looked like a very large dog.

The mass looked over the curled human curiously. It sniffed the air. It could smell that something was wrong with the human in front of it. The human’s eyes were squeezed shut. Their breathing was laboured. It tilted its head. It had seen something like this before… Ah! The human was experiencing pain. But why? A crash and sharp yowl had it baring its teeth and snarling in the direction of the noise. A flinch and a quiet whimper from the human drew its attention back to them. So the noise was making the human hurt.

It slowly approached the human. They took no notice. It dug it’s paws into the asphalt and focused on the human in front of it. Then, it engulfed them.

Alex felt the air shift. Everything grew quiet. She dared to open her eyes. She was surprised to see that the world had grown just a shade darker, like someone had dropped a dark filter over the sun. It was a relief to her sensitive eyes. She slowly pushed herself to her feet.

“Ugh…” She swayed for a moment and had to brace her hand against the wall. Her brow furrowed. It felt like something was helping to keep her standing.

I have to get home. She doubted that whatever it was that was going on that was making things easier would last. Home had her medication. Home she could keep as quiet and as dark for as long as she needed to.

Alex made her way out of the alley way. She fully expected to have squint and cover her eyes as soon as she was out. But to her surprise, everything remain muted. It filled her with a sense of relief she hadn’t felt in ages. She turned right and headed towards her flat.

People paid her no attention as she shuffled down the sidewalk. If anything, they seemed to be avoiding her. Alex noticed how they would either veer to the far left or far right. It was like something was guiding them away from her. It was weird, but she wasn’t going to complain. It meant one less thing to worry about. Still, she couldn’t help but feel as though something was dogging her footsteps.  

-

Alex readied her keys. She tensed, prepared for the sound of her key scraping against the tumblers of the lock. Whenever she had a migraine, it was one of the worst sounds and it never failed to make her flinch. This time, though, the sound never reached her ears. The key slid in smoother than it ever had. She would’ve raised her eyebrows in surprise, if her head hadn’t felt like an overripe melon waiting to explode. She pushed the door open and stepped inside.

The moment she did, there was a rush of wind. She brought her arm up to cover her face. For one brief moment, she thought that Kara had flown into her apartment. When she lowered her arm, she was greeted by a very different sight. A dog the size of a small horse stood in front of her. Or at least, she thought it was a dog. Except, dogs weren’t usually made of oil, smoke, fire, and bones, were they?

Alex blinked. What the fuck. The last time she checked, migraines didn’t cause visual hallucinations. She rubbed her eyes. Yup, the dog was still there.

“Did…are you the reason everything got quiet?” she asked.

A wide canine grin stretched its way across its face in response.

Huh. Alex was too tired to come up with a verbal response to that. A giant canine that looked like it came straight from hell was the least of her worries. Right now, all she wanted to do was pop an ibuprofen or two, curl up under the covers, and sleep until the pain had passed.

“Well, thank you,” she said awkwardly. “Uh… you can go now?” It came off more as a question than she would have liked it to, but honestly, she had no idea what else to say.

The dog didn’t appear to agree with Alex’s suggestion. If she didn’t know any better, she’d say that it was frowning. It slowly plodded up to her and pushed its nose into her stomach. She flinched involuntarily at the sensation. It took a few more nudges before she realised that it was trying to get her to move to her bed.

“Alright, alright, I’m going,” she said. “Sheesh.” What a weird dog.

It huffed behind as she slowly made to her bed. This human was out of her mind if she thought it was going to leave her alone in her current state. It was obvious that she required assistance.

Alex reached for the bottle of pills by her bedside. Or at least, she tried to. Not for the first time, did she curse the impact migraines had on her motor skills. Before she could reach down and grab it, the dog had already grabbed the bottle between its jaws. There was a pause, then a crunch as it split the bottle open. A warm, bony nose met her open hand. Two pills appeared seconds later.

“Thanks.” Alex tossed them back and dry swallowed them. She had to take a few short breaths to keep her stomach from rebelling at the action. Once she was sure she wasn’t going to throw the medication back up, she got under the covers and curled up into a small ball. Her eyes started to slip shut, only to fly back open when the dog curled itself around her.

“Uh…”

She received a huff in response that fluffed her hair. Things grew dimmer and quieter. Ah. Well, who was shift to look a gift dog in the mouth? Besides, she could better assess the situation in the morning. Right now, she was exhausted and in pain, and the medication was finally starting to kick in.

“You know…” she drawled out. “I can’t just keep calling you dog. You have a name?”

Another huff.

Alex hummed. “How about Tacitus?” A disgusted scoff.

“Asta?” A pause, then a noncommittal huff.

“Gertrude?” Another pause. Then, Alex could make out the sounds of blankets being ruffled as a tail went wild. “Gertrude it is then…”

Alex’s eyes slipped shut. Gertrude looked down at the human underneath her in alarm. It quickly faded when she realised that her human had finally fallen asleep. She shuffled around, careful not to disturb her charge, and let her own eyes close.

-

“Holy shit, Alex!”

Alex sat up abruptly at the cry. Her hand instinctively went for her weapon before her location finally registered. She was at home. She blinked. Gertrude was still on the bed. She glanced in the direction of the noise to see Kara standing by the window She looked alarmed.

“Kara? What are you doing here?”

Kara held up a bag of donuts from Noonan’s. “I brought breakfast.” She pointed at Gertrude. “What is that?”

Alex looked at Gertrude, who looked right back at her. A long tongue made of fire extended from her mouth as her jaws stretched with a large yawn. Half a second later, a thin tail wreathed in smoke began wagging happily.

Alex glanced back to Kara. “This is Gertrude, my…service dog?”

Kara just stared.

[ohmababypoe]

Clandestine

Word Total: 1384…  

Request: Anonymous asked: Could you write something with Bodhi were the reader is worse than him when it comes to talking and social skills, barely talking to Cassian who is her partner (BFF wise) , but she instantly clicks with Bodhi causing Jyn, K2 and Cassian to go on a mission to get them together? I just thought it would be cute/ funny.

Pairing:  Bodhi x Reader

  “Is everything ready?” Cassian asked Y/N as she busied herself with the black boxes at the back of the U-Wing. She only nodded turning back her attention to the black boxes. “That’s Y/N” he said looking at Jyn. Y/N stopped and looked over her shoulder, she nodded her head in acknowledgment and return to her task at hand.

 “She doesn’t talk much” K2 said as Cassian prepared to take off.

 Y/N sit on the U-Wing waiting for news on Cassian or K2, that went to investigate what had happened with Cassian and Jyn. She tapped her fingers with boredom against the control panel of the U-Wing. Her head whipped around at the sound of the door opening. “Hi to you” K2 said entering the U-Wing. She only nodded putting down the blaster. Y/N was about to open her mouth when a big ray of light appeared in the sky.

 She opened the door of the U-Wing as the dense cloud of dirt and air stood a few meters behind them. Cassian, Jyn and three other men entered the U-Wing piloted by K2. “Are you alright?” Cassian asked Y/N, she only nodded. Y/N shyly glanced back at the three men, one in particular caught her attention.

 “I am Chirrut and your name young lady?” The man with the weird discoloration of his eyes asked her. “This is Blaze, my companion” Chirrut said kindly looking at her direction.

 Y/N licked her lips. “I am Y/N. Y/N L/N” she said, Cassian turned back and smiled.

 “I am Bodhi, Bodhi Rook” The man with the goggles on his head said taking her hand, she look at him and tilted her head. There was a red blush on his face along with hers. He gazed up at her and Y/N gave him a small smile. Until Cassian cleared his throat and passed between them.

 “He is a jealous brother” Y/N heard K2 said

    Y/N silently sat at the entrance of the U-Wing eating a small piece of bread. “Hi” she looked up and saw Bodhi in front of her. He was scratching the back of his neck looking down at the floor. “Could you tell me where the dining room is? I am lost─”

 She stood up from the entrance and cleaned the crumbs from her pants. “K2 is a bad guide, I was lost for four hours; until Cassian found me in the forest” Y/N said looking at him, Bodhi smiled at her. Why was so easy to talk to him? She thought, Y/N cleaned her sweaty hands on her pants and stood in front of him.

 Cassian frowned looking at Bodhi and Y/N walking out of the dining room. “I was aware that you were supposed to show him around” he said looking at K2. “Not Y/N” he narrowed his eyes looking at them then back to K2.

 “Jealousy doesn’t fit you, Captain” Chirrut said with an imperceptible smile on his face.  “You can’t protect her from everything” he added

 “What could be the worst that could happen? That he dies and breaks her heart?” K2 declared, Cassian bit his lips and said nothing. “That probability it’s relativity low”

 Y/N walked with Bodhi around the small base on Yavin 4. “You and Cassian?” he asked pulling the petals from the small flower he had found on the floor. They sat on an opened clearing as the moon adorned the sky above them.

 “He is like my brother, we had been on the Resistance since we were six” Y/N said taking weed from the floor and started to play with it.

 “I was a cargo pilot on the Empire” Bodhi confessed, he didn’t want to glance up and look at her expression.

 “My father worked too for the Empire, until she met my mother” Y/N said shyly playing with the ends of her hair. A nervous gesture she had developed since she was seven. “Clandestine love, that’s what my grandmother called it. She hated it” she added scratching her cheek.

 “Why are we spying on them? They are two responsible adults” Jyn said to Cassian. Cassian turned to glance at her and said nothing. “You’re jealous because she is talking to him”

 “100% Cassian wants─”

 “I am not jealous, I just don’t trust an Empire pilot that’s it” Cassian murmured under his breath, meanwhile Jyn just stared at him blinking, K2 stood behind her looking down at him, with its robotic arms crossed its metallic chest. “What?”

 “We didn’t say anything”

 Y/N checked the U-Wing, there was nothing wrong with it. Why would Cassian lie to her then? She shrugged her shoulders and got out of the small compartment. “Y/N?”

 She glanced up and saw Bodhi looking at her. “What are you doing here?” They said in unison, Y/N blushed while Bodhi scratched the back of his neck.

 “Ladies first” Bodhi said, Y/N rolled her eyes

 “Cassian send me to check a weird sound on the carburetor” Y/N said putting down her small box with tools. “You?” she kneeled down to check if she had put everything on it.

 “K2 said you had something to say to me”

 “But I─” Y/N tried to open the door of the U-Wing, but the metallic door didn’t budge. “That’s strange” she said tugging the door again but nothing.

 “I tried too, but it doesn’t open” Bodhi said standing beside her looking at the entrance. Y/N looked at him and bit her lip maybe that was their plan after all leaving her alone with Bodhi. She had heard them, Cassian, K2 and Jyn whispering between them in the lunch room. Cassian pissed off and Jyn seemed please, K2 well he was simply nodding its robotic head. “Y/N?”

 “Sorry, I was thinking of ways how could I open this door” Y/N said with a sheepish smile. She kneeled again to look what kind of tools were useful to open the door.

 “I do have something to tell you” Bodhi confessed, Y/N stopped looking on her box and stared at him. “I, this sounded so much better in my head. I swear” she raised an eyebrow. “Look, Y/N. I know you´re against us going to Scarif” she only nodded standing up. “But before I part with them, I have something very important to tell you” Bodhi took a deep breath and took a long step and he was in front of her.

 Y/N blinked up looking up at him. She really wanted to take a step back, there was a really weird sensation being so close to him. The particular fragrance of him, motor oil and fuel. And a scent just of him, something so soothing it calmed the erratic beating of her heart. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Her lungs expanded and she so peaceful, she felt so light just standing knowing he was in front of her.

 Something touched her cheek and she opened her eyes to look at Bodhi. “Like I said, this sounded much better on my head” he smiling at Y/N. She returned the smile. “I like you”

 Y/N’s eyes widen in surprise her mouth agape looking at him. “I like you not only because the way you are, but because of who I am when I am with you” he said staring at her, his eyes shone with something she had never seen. “Yesterday I looked at the sky and I started to give the stars a reason of why I like you so much. And the stars weren’t enough”

 For whatever reason, a lone tear ran down her cheek. “I like you too, but unlike you. I don’t have cheesy love lines” Y/N said looking at him trying to contain the tears of happiness running down her cheeks. She had never thought this could happen. There wasn’t a day she asked herself when this day would come. What did the man of her life was doing? Was she thinking the same thing as her? Where was here?

 Bodhi smiled at her, his hand took a hold of the back of her neck and their lips crashed in a perfect kiss. His eyes move shyly against hers, Bodhi smiled against her lips. She raised her hand and started to run her fingers through his dark hair.

 “I saw you and everything makes sense now”

[drshaffopolis]

More Gallagher than Milgrim

“Okay, ready?”

“Ready.”

“Let’s sweep the garage.”

“Just a crawler over here, nothing I can’t handle,” Jason kept his fireteam updated as he gunned down a small robot, “I see three heading your way, Admiral. Look like maybe brutes … can’t make them out from here.”

“I’ve got your back,” Carrie decloaked, taking down one of them by surprise with a shimmering energy sword, “Uh, bad move!” She jumped back, just out of the reach of the two creatures angrily swiping their claws in her direction.

“Show off,” she said, as two perfectly aimed sniper rifle shots pierced their skulls.

“Nice work, Admiral.” Jason’s voice again, “Hey, check it out, there’s a car over here.”

“I call gunner seat!” Andrew opened the car door, as it was rocked by two explosions, “Shit! I didn’t realize there were traps in this game mode! Shit! I’m a dead. What a freaking noob move.”

In the upper-right corner of Jason’s screen, the name RearAdmiralPoopants2029 turned from blue to red.

“Any other vehicles in the garage?” Carrie asked.

“I don’t see any. We’ll just have to see how far we can get on foot without our sniper.”

“Right, opening the door… Oh, great, a big empty fucking field. That’s perfect!”

“Think you have enough cloak to make it to that clump of trees?”

“I can try. I say we both run for it; you’re not gonna do much good back there with just an assault rifle.”

One-third of the way across the field, an opposing team’s vehicle drove toward them, spraying fire from its mounted machine gun. Jason had nowhere to hide.

Carrie’s cloak gave out before she made it to the cover of the trees; she listened to the other team’s taunts as they ran her over.

*   *   *   *   *

“Well, that was embarrassing.” Andrew said at the between-rounds loading screen.

“Yeah… what are we going to do next time? Does anyone have a bomb defusal skill?” Jason asked.

“No, sorry.”

“No. Is Scout online? He always equips something like that,” Carrie was asking rhetorically, of course – she could see as well as anyone that he wasn’t.

“Probably doing his biology project that’s not due until next week,” said Andrew, “we go to school together IRL and he’s, like, a total goody two-shoes.”

“Ugh god, don’t remind me how much of an old lady I am,” said Carrie, the 53-year-old sales executive, who couldn’t decide whether winning or losing was more embarrassing, but was having fun, anyway.

"Well, I have one multi-tool. But it looked like there were two bombs,” said Jason.

Andrew suggested, “I can take out one with a grenade—”

Carrie interrupted him, “Sure, yeah, let’s just blow up the car. Fuck that car, we don’t need it, anyway.”

“No, no, the model TX just has a cargo compartment up front, so setting off that mine would barely affect it. The explosion will probably trigger the other mine, but if we time it perfectly, you can probably get in there with the multi-tool and disable the second one.”

“How does he know that? How do you know that? I’m picturing, like, fake car schematics on posters on your wall. You’d better be an automotive engineer when you grow up.” One never quite knew which side of the line between sarcasm and earnestness Carrie was on.

“He’s not even old enough to have a job, he has time for this stuff,” Jason was a college student, home for winter break. “You and me have more important things to learn.”

“You’re probably a really annoying intern. I take my coffee with two sugars. Write that down.”

“Looks like the rest of the teams finished the round,” Andrew read out loud, “49th out of 50. Yeah! We weren’t dead last. Suck it, SquadDoobieDoodz!”

“Whoo!”

*   *   *   *   *

The second round went more smoothly – the team’s plan to disable the bombs worked, they drove their slightly damaged car out of the garage and scored 7 kills before getting knocked out.

“24th out of 50, not too bad!” Jason exclaimed.

“Okay, kids, I do have work tomorrow, so I’ll be signing off on that wining note.”

“Good night, Carrie.”

“Peace.”

“Hey, looks like Scout’s online. Hopefully he’ll join the party.”

“Yeah, we’ll kick ass with him in here. I’ll ping him and tell him to play his infiltrator.”

“Leave it to Carrie to play an infiltrator without any ranks in explosives,” they chuckled.

“Um, guys?”

“Carrie, sticking around for another game after all?”

“Well… I can’t sign off.”

“Neither can I, that what I try to tell my parents every night.”

“No, I mean, I… Can’t. Sign. Off.”

“Just plug your headset into the charger, it’ll be fine. You’re worse than my grandma.”

“No, I really can’t!”

“It’ll boot you for inactivity. You don’t care about your stats, anyway, stop being such a drama queen.”

“I mean, I can’t take my headset off.” Carrie sounded seriously distressed.

“What, how can you not take your headset off? Like, you’re trapped in the game?”

“Stop being so gullible, Andrew,” Jason said, “She’s messing with us.”

“No, I’m really not, I swear. I think I might be having … I don’t know, a stroke? I can’t move my arms. If I give you my address, can you call the police?”

“Okay, but if I call the police and it’s a prank, it’s gonna be a prank on yourself.” Jason started to sound more serious, “I’ll get a pen.”

“Hurry, please… I’m having some trouble remembering my address… it must be aphasia or something…”

“I hope you’re okay. I’ll send a card to the hospital,” added Andrew.

“What the fuck! Oh my god. Oh my god. I can’t take off my headset, either.”

“Now you’re both definitely pranking me. I wasn’t born yesterday.”

“No, Andrew, try to take yours off.”

“I’m not going to fall for it,” he lied. Then a few seconds later, “… oh my god, I can’t either!”

“How is this possible?” Jason asked.

“It really shouldn’t be,” Carrie was trying calm herself down, “these things tie into your senses of sight and hearing, but they can’t control your motor cortex. The FDA inspects these; there’s no way.”

“Well, maybe it’s an illusion of some sort… MOM! MOM!” Jason was yelling through his microphone, “Don’t worry, they’ll hear me.”

A few tense moments passed.

“MOM! I’m serious; come help me! I’m stuck! I need help! DAD!”

Another tense minute.

“Okay, okay, nobody panic. Even if we can’t talk out load, or whatever, someone is going to stumble onto one of us pretty soon. Either Andrew’s mom is going to call him for bed, or something. We’ll all be fine, and someone at OctopusGames is going to go to jail.”

Jason didn’t like the idea of sitting around. “If we’re going to be trapped in here for another hour or two, maybe we should explore. Try to figure out what’s going on? If they’re doing some illegal experiment, we’re better off knowing what it is, right?”

*   *   *   *   *

The team walked cautiously out of the garage. The saw a grenade explosion halfway across the field, and an opposing player spinning around and firing wildly into the air. He started walking toward them, fired a few more shots into the air, and continued walking in their direction.

“Looks like we’re not the only ones. He wants to talk.” Jason also fired wildly into the air, displaying their new ad-hoc signal for non-aggression.

BOOM! The player who had been walking toward them was gone in a blast from a tank that just rolled over a hill.

“Back to the garage!” Andrew yelled, “Looks like not everyone got the memo!”

They ran inside and sealed the door.

“This is ridiculous, there’s no way they can actually hurt us,” Carrie said, “for all we know, getting killed is our ticket out.”

“Maybe, but if you’re wrong, how hard would it suck if we had to stare at a loading screen in silence all night until Andrew’s mom comes to take him to school?”

After a few more minutes, they all heard an announcement, as if over a loudspeaker, “All players, please congregate in the valley for further instructions. Do not fire on each other unless ordered. Failure to comply will result in ejection from the game.”

“Do we listen?” asked Andrew.

“I don’t think we have a choice,” said Jason.

“We might at least get some answers,” agreed Carrie.

*   *   *   *   *

Players from dozens of teams were gathered in the valley. The valley was ringed by tanks, and hovering helicopters. In the center, a ring of soldiers surrounded a tank. These new characters were wearing military police uniforms, in stark contrast to the colorful anime sci-fi outfits that the players were wearing. The military police had firepower at their disposal on an order of magnitude greater than that of all the players combined.

The one standing on top of the tank was speaking through a bullhorn, “We’ve brought you all here for a little experiment. You’ll be participating in a series of drills, and will be released in 6 hours, when we’re all finished.”

Whispers and mumbles cascaded through the crowd. A shot rang out, hit the speaker in the head. The game character slumped over, dead. The helicopters fired a salvo, obliterating the shooter, his teammates, and a few other players unfortunate enough to be standing nearby.

Another MP climbed onto the tank and calmly continued, “Fighting against us is futile. We’re the moderators. If you break the rules, you’ll be killed.”

“You’d better have a good lawyer!” Shouted Carrie.  “I refuse to participate!”

“When the time comes, we shall see. For now, I want you all to stay in this valley, except for you, you, you, and you.” MPs ushered four players from different teams into a prison bus.

*   *   *   *   *

Over the next few hours, players were ushered out, onto the bus, a few at a time. Everyone was talking amongst themselves.

“Where are they going?”

“So far, no one has come back.”

“What’s happening to them.”

“Maybe that’s the experiment. To see how long we put up with it.”

“What are we going to do? We can’t fight them.”

“What if getting killed is the ticket out? And we’re all afraid for nothing. I mean, it’s game. We’re wearing $500 headsets.”

“What if the bus is the ticket out? I mean, like, if someone figures out how to unplug, instead of the game character disappearing like normal, they just program it to hop on a bus.”

“If someone figured out how to unplug, wouldn’t they just disappear?”

“I mean, that’s what usually happens, but it wouldn’t be that big of a modification to have your avatar stay even if you unplugged, just like an NPC.”

“And then they’d program it to get onto the bus?”

“Maybe.”

Similar conversations were happening all throughout the valley.

Jason, Andrew, and Carrie stuck together. “We need a plan,” Carrie said, “but we also need to be careful; if they’re experimenting on us, there’s no way they can’t hear what we’re saying.”

Someone behind them coughed. They turned to see the floating text above his head, it read ScoutRegiment4lyfe, the fourth member of their squad.

“Scout! You signed on just as this weirdness was starting. Did you hear about it? Was it on Twitter? Did you come to get us out?” Jason was excited.

Scout didn’t say anything, but instead of motioned into the distance. Of course! The clubhouse; why didn’t we think of that before! The four of them split up; they had the first step of a plan.

*   *   *   *   *

Jason sensed his opportunity when another bus departed – the guards were distracted and not looking at him. Sure, they probably had some centralized tracking that told them where everyone went, but a handful of players among hundreds could sneak off without anyone noticing, so long as no one was looking directly at them when they did it, right?

Jason made his way out of the valley into a forest. The trees grew denser, as he approached the edge of the world. He stepped between the trees, until he found himself unable to continue moving. Here, even where there were gaps between the trees, an invisible wall blocked him. He turned “north” and kept moving, until he reached a small hut with no doors or windows.

Jason faced away from the hut, and did a spinning backflip onto the roof. Thud! He never got that right on the first try. Again… thud!

On the third try, instead of hitting the roof, he went straight through as if it weren’t there. The walls of the hut were only partially visible from the inside. One wall had a giant black triangle with pulsating edges. Another was see-through from this side. Players were clearly not meant to be in this part of the level. It was a design flaw; almost every map in every game had something like it if you looked hard enough. More importantly, the game’s built-in tracking and logging functions didn’t work, here. Unscrupulous players would often come in here to activate cheat programs; it was the one place they wouldn’t get caught and banned. Carrie, Andrew, and Scout were already there, along with two players they didn’t recognize – their gamer tags read JoeyBiddleRocks! and CowboysFan45252.

“Okay, I think that’s everyone we were expecting from our team,” said Scout, “Now, as for the plan to get out of here…”

“We know a glitch that’ll crash the game,” said CowboysFan, “sometimes we do it to troll if we’re losing.”

“Ass-hats.” Carrie hated playing against people like him, but that seemed unimportant, now. “Whatever, I guess you’re just kids.”

“Actually, I’m a corporate lawyer by day, believe it or not.” That was JoeyBiddle.

“Even worse.”

“Anyway, look, the way it works is this. If you hit a friendly tank with enough explosives to flip it over, while the tank is firing its main gun, it crashes the game.”

“So, that means we need to capture one of those tanks, and then we’re going to need like … 5 rocket launchers?” Jason asked.

“Two will do it if you put five or six mines under it.” Rocket launchers appeared, instantly, in JoeyBiddle’s and CowboysFan’s hands. “Here, trade weapons.” Andrew dropped his sniper rifle on the floor and grabbed the rocket launcher from CowboysFan. Another appeared to replace it a second later.

“Pretty handy cheat.” They all equipped themselves with rockets and mines.

“Now we just need the tank,” Scout sounded optimistic, “Carrie, you maxed out your stealth ranks as usual, right?”

“Of course, but… are we sure this is going to work? I mean, is crashing the game going to get us out of here?”

“Well we have to try something, are there other ideas?” asked Jason.

“Civil disobedience,” suggested Carrie.

“What’s that?” asked Andrew.

“What do you mean, ‘what’s that’? How do they not teach you that in school? The civil rights movement? Come on. Like, Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks and all! Ring a bell?”

“I have this feeling I really should know who they are.”

“Joey? Didn’t you just say you were a grown up? And a lawyer? Tell me you’re joking!”

“No... No, I’m not… This is really weird… could they be blocking out our thoughts or parts of our memories, too?”

“That’s insane!”

“All of this is insane! Look, we have to move!”

“Okay, okay. I’ll use my cloak to get into the tank and execute the driver. Let’s try this.”

*   *   *   *   *

They filtered back into the valley one at a time, so as not to get caught. There were still hundreds of players milling around, talking amongst themselves. There were a few dozen corpses, as well, as if another firefight had broken out. Hopefully someone else hadn’t tried their plan. If the moderators were prepared for it, it’d never work.

Carrie hid behind another player and engaged her cloak. She stepped out. No one seemed to react. So far, so good. She stepped slowly toward the tank. (cloak at 85%) She very carefully tiptoed through the ring of guards. (cloak at 30%) She quietly climbed on top of the tank, and slipped through the hatch just as her cloak gave out. The driver was facing the controls, and didn’t see her. For a moment, she could see her own avatar put its hand over his mouth as the game transitioned into its “assassination” animation.

Now, I just need another minute for my cloak to recharge; I can get out and under the tank to drop these mines and hop back in. This is the easy part, thought Carrie to herself.

At that moment, she heard a clank behind her. Someone had tossed a stun grenade into the tank’s hatch. The gig was up.

For the next 30 seconds, all she could see was her health indicator and heads-up display. Her ammunition bar went to zero – someone had taken her weapons. When her avatar’s vision returned, she was on the bus, along with the rest of their band of conspirators, with several MPs.

“I’m sorry, guys, I let you down.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” said Jason. “That stun grenade came from another player. They had the same plan as we did, and didn’t realize you were in there. It was just bad timing.”

“Quiet! We’re taking you to a detention facility.” Yelled one of the MPs, “You’re going to be disciplined.”

Carrie didn’t acknowledge the MP, and kept talking to her comrades, “A detention facility? On a bus? In a game world? When will any of this start making sense?”

“I said quiet!” The guard hit her avatar with the butt of his rifle, and Carrie cried out in pain. It sounded real.

“I will not be silent. I refuse to comply!” He struck her again.

“La la la. I’m still talking. La la la.”

“Another word, and we shoot you,” two of the MPs aimed their weapons at her head.

“Whatever, enough of this bullshit. Kill me! I’ll stare at a loading screen for a few hours. My body is probably lying in a hospital bed by now. And I’ll see you on a real prison bus.”

Pop! Pop! Pop! Carrie’s avatar stopped moving. For a what seemed like nearly an hour, no one said anything.

Finally, once the guards turned their focus toward looking out the windows, Scout whispered, “She’s not really dead, right? She can’t be. I mean, her real dead body, on her couch in her house? Or in a hospital? That’s murder.”

Jason answered, “My new theory is that this is all an illusion. It feels like hours, but it’s really only been a few seconds, like a dream. They can’t make us feel pain and we’re not actually paralyzed.”

“Her screams sounded awful real.”

“So do our guns, and they’re not. I mean, for all we know that wasn’t even her voice. You can pipe any sound through a video game.”

“Maybe we should all get ourselves killed.”

“Maybe.”

For the moment, however, no one was willing to risk it.

*   *   *   *   *

“Jason! Dinner’s almost ready!”

Jason stood up from his desk, closed the lid on his laptop, and walked down the stairs. He could smell the tomato sauce and meatballs. His parents always cooked his favorite comfort foods when he was home for the holidays.

“Playing that new game again?” his dad looked up from the newspaper to ask.

“Actually, I was reading about it. Sort of. It was a story about AI research.”

“AI research,” his mom said, “You work hard enough between your classes and internship that you need to just relax this week.”

“It was really interesting, though. Octopus is partnering a company called with DaveyAI—”

“Hah! I met their founder a few years ago at a conference!” His dad put down the paper, “What a quack! He’s one of those ‘singularity’ nut-jobs, thinks he’s going to live forever in a computer, like a god. You know, five years ago, this guy bought a bunch of warehouse drones and had them act out the Milgrim experiments?”

His mom chimed in, “Are you talking about BattleBotGhazi?”

“Yeah, that’s the one, he had these things ‘torturing’ each other, and talked big philosophy, ‘oh the ethical ramifications of the drone inflicting pain on each other because they were ordered to.’ He got some bad press and relished it. For a minute, he got to be the guy who was starting the conversation: Is it time for us to start treating robots as living things? To empathize with them? Do they have rights?”

“So, what happened?”

“Well, it all lasted about a week, before we collectively realized how absurd the situation was. I mean, here’s a bunch of inanimate objects, that are programmed to roll up and down aisles until they find a certain barcode, and literally nothing else, and he’s trying to get a reaction from all of us by having them smash each other to bits?”

His mom laughed, “A video went around where the drones had these big comical-looking mallets attached to them; the whole thing was more Gallagher than Milgram.

“Tell us, what’s he up to this time?”

“He said in the interview that they were going to use players’ in-game data from Octopus’s shooters to make simulated versions of our personalities, then put those simulations into various scenarios in the game to see how they respond. I don’t know how I feel about my data being used to create a copy of my personality; a computer program running around thinking it was me.”

“Hmmm… Let’s take checkers, for example. I could write a program that recorded you for a bunch of games, analyzed your play style, and emulated you.”

“Yeah, that’d be pretty easy.”

“And if mom played that checkers program, she wouldn’t be able to tell that she wasn’t actually playing her son. My checkers-bot would be indistinguishable from the real you.”

His mom pointed out, “But that’s not a real Turing Test. Sure, the checkers program would play checkers just like you, but it’s still just a few hundred lines of code. It wouldn’t, quote unquote, ‘think it was you,’ it wouldn’t ‘think’ anything at all.”

“Right, it’d fool you perfectly into thinking it was me, but only up until you tried to do anything besides play it in checkers. Then it would obviously not be me.”

“Now, using data from a shooter, a much more complex program that took a big team years to develop would be more impressive… especially if they fed in information from your headset chats.”

“I get it, though. You’re saying it wouldn’t be fundamentally different from the checkers program.”

“Exactly. A really good program might even be able to simulate your voice, chat about game tactics, but it wouldn’t be you.”

“It wouldn’t know anything about you that you didn’t talk about in the game. It wouldn’t have the same skills you do in the real world, it wouldn’t know what you learned in class last week, it wouldn’t even know what you had for breakfast unless you talked about it while playing the game.”

“Yeah, it’s still kind of creepy, though.”

“Well, it’s a privacy issue if, nothing else. You sign one of those EULAs, you don’t expect them to use your game activity for something like this. They should have to ask permission.”

His mom turned off the stove. “Let’s eat!”

[adamatomic]

Kiddo Board Game Time!

Ok I’ve been wanting to write this post for a while now but I dunno like the collapse of the democratic republic and shipping NITW and some other things happened but ok here we are!

First let’s set up some context: my kids are turning 4 and 6 in February, and we’ve been playing a whole heck of a lot of Chutes & Ladders and Candyland and those games suck. That’s not even a controversial opinion to hold really. The most fun we ever got out of Chutes & Ladders was to draw our own like 4′ x 4′ board on a big piece of packing paper, so we could have toy animals stomping around the spots. And Ok that was pretty fun.

The other “games” we’ve been able to play are a bit better but still fundamentally random activities that don’t have a lot of... stakes or interest for adult players: Hisss, and Snail’s Pace Race, and I can easily recommend both for players 4 and younger. They’re random activities really, not games, but there are worse ways to play with your kids. Both kids have been enjoying Katamino quite a bit as well.

BUT OK the thing is they’re almost 4 and 6 finally and we’ve been sort of dipping our toes into more complex games for a few reasons. One, it’s just fun to see what they make of these games. Two, they seem to sense that these are somehow “better” games and they are really enjoying the heck out of em. Three, Bek and I enjoy them much, much more ourselves, and are able to really play and be engaged. The same way co-watching was such a huge part of Sesame Street, I think that co-playing is a really wonderful thing. And, like Sesame Street, co-play is a lot more enjoyable when there’s something there for the grownups too.

Anyways, I wanted to just talk a little bit about some of the games that we’ve been playing, and talk about how the kids are interacting with them. This isn’t so much a shopping guide as a playing guide - hopefully you’ll be able to get a sense of what sort of play activities your kids might find in these, and maybe that will help or something.

Ok!

Suspend

distributed by Melissa & Doug

Suspend is sort of like reverse Jenga. Players start with a pile of dangly sort of coat hanger things, and take turns hanging them off of a little hook. If you knock pieces off, they go into your pile. First one out of pieces wins. Within a few games, players as young as 3 and as old as 63 were playing on about the same level.

There’s not a lot of long-term strategy in Suspend, which helps a lot (and is going to be a kind of running theme there). The 3 and 4 year old players, in our experience, can play tactically but CAN NOT play strategically. What I mean by this is ... the difference between following the rules and taking your turn correctly or whatever, versus like planning out a series of turns to accomplish a goal. We’re finding the almost-4yo can engage in a surprisingly complex single turn, but just doesn’t plan over multiple turns. Which is totally fine! But it means that games where opportunistic local play can keep up with long term strategic play have a broader age range where we can all really play together.

Anyways, it’s a very physical game, it involves imagination and motor skills, and there’s a great sense of anticipation on each turn. Good plays are easy to appreciate, and catastrophes are enjoyable for everyone. This is a fantasic game. The kids can also play 1v1 without our assistance, which is great sometimes!

Jenga

distributed by Hasbro

Maybe I should have put Jenga first haha. Anyways, it’s got a lot in common with Suspend - low strategy, high tactics. Great sense of anticipation. Our youngest is able to play competitively with us and with his grand parents. Genuine co-play and a surprisingly even playing field. A classic for a reason.

Maybe the only downside to Jenga is its kind of a hassle to set up the tower in the first place, which is one reason I prefer Suspend slightly more.

Blokus

distributed by Mattel

Blokus is a little bit like Tetris meets Go, only much simpler. Players take turn placing tetromino-like pieces onto the game board. There’s only one rule - each player’s piece must be diagonally adjacent but not normally adjacent to one of their other pieces. Player’s colored territory grows out across the board a little like Conways’s Game of Life or a slime mold or something. The turn rules are so simple that even our youngest can play his pieces correctly without help. However, because turn-by-turn strategy does matter some, he always gets last place. He doesn’t seem to mind though because he’s still actually playing the game. There’s a lot here to keep adults interested as well, the simple game rules produce some nice strategic texture over repeat plays. The almost-6yo is able to engage in some turn-by-turn strategy as well. The kids can also play 1v1 against each other by taking two colors each, which they do often. Easily their favorite game for the last month, with a dozen plays or more.

Latice

distributed by Adacio

Brent Vincent’s Latice is a bit like Marsha Falco’s brilliant SET crossed with perennial favorite Scrabble. It actually reminds me a LOT of an old Super Famicom puzzle game called Keeper but since I’m the only person on Earth that remembers that game it’s probably not as useful of a comparison.

Anyways, in Latice players take turns placing tiles on the board. Tiles have to be placed adjacent to an existing tile, and must match every adjacent neighbor by color and / or shape. This little wrinkle provides a lot of opportunities for surprising and pleasantly unexpected matches. The strategy emerges from two nice mechanics. Sunstones, which players earn with especially clever placements, let you spend an extra tile on the same turn. Wind tiles let you scoot existing plays to create big matches that might not emerge organically. First player to use up all their tiles wins.

With 4 players, the games go extremely fast (players only have about 4 racks of tiles each), and there’s a really nice amount of depth for grownup players if you’re trying to min-max your sunstones and come out on top. However, like Blokus, the basic rules of the turn are simple enough that our almost-6yo can play with us with maybe an extra hint here or there, and the almost-4yo can place most of his own tiles as well.

It’s not quite as simple as Blokus, but like Blokus it has easy rules for playing with 2 or 3 players, is comprehensible even for young players, and is nice to look at and touch. It feels like it might be a few more months until the 6yo can play without hints, and it could be as much as a year for the younger player to really get up to speed. They still enjoy it very much as an activity though, and request to play often. Unfortunately, the added complexity means it’s not super appropriate for them to play 1v1 between each other (although 1v1 between a parent and one of them works great).

River Dragons

distributed by Asmodee

River Dragons is probably technically clustered under the umbrella of “well-intentioned STEM edu-games” but two key things set it apart. First, it is absolutely gorgeous to look at. Second, the basic theme and activity are completely enjoyable even if you don’t know the rules. This is huge for kids this age. Our oldest spent a lot of his preschool time making little wood bridges over creeks, so a board game where that’s the central activity is really automatically appealing to him. Bridge building is a super common activity in most Reggio preschools and kindergartens too.

Anyways, the play in River Dragons is more complex than Latice, but the strong concrete theming makes it easier to remember. Players each have a deck of 13 “action” cards, from which they select 5 to play each turn. Actions might include placing stones, placing planks, moving, or other actions. The goal is to place several stones and planks and move your meeple across the river. It’s pretty loose and physical and again just enjoying to manipulate.

The trick is everyone plays each of their 5 cards at the same time, and then the cards are evaluated in clockwise order. This helps break up the large course of the game into digestible chunks, and it helps break up the strategy into manageable decisions that are closer to tactics. The 6yo quite quickly started deliberately selecting his 5 cards to try to increase his chances of building a good bridge. The 4yo has no effing idea what he’s doing but loves it regardless.

As an adult, there’s an extra layer of guessing game and bluffing involved, where you are trying to guess what your opponent might be doing in what order, based on the context of the board, not unlike Clairvoyance or some old Richard Garfield stuff.

This is probably the kids favorite game next to Blokus, but they can’t really play it 1v1 in a way that makes sense as a game. It helps to have an adult involved sort of DMing the process. They can use the blanks and stones to make bridges for fun though, which is quite cool. Smart, appealing, easy to set up, and a great fantasy.

Machi Koro

distributed by IDW Games

Masao Suganuma’s Machi Koro is a lightweight and very fun investment game. Consisting of only two dice, a deck of cards, and some coin tokens, it’s extremely portable. The real world theme makes it very easy to understand. The fantasy of city building is very appealing as well. I should add that we’re playing with the vanilla set without expansions.

We’ve only played a few rounds, and the kids get a huge kick out of it. There’s a lot of DMing involved, since each turn is two phases, and the kids sometimes get coin costs and activation costs confused. They love seeing their cities build out, though, and the anticipation of the dice roll to see if anything activates is very fun. While the complexity is a bit of a con as far as the kids being able to play out their own turns, Machi Koro’s basic design is such that if you play it in the most direct, fun way (buy something basically every turn), you’ll produce a pretty strategically viable city quite quickly. Rather, a pretty strategically blind but tactically fun approach will put the player in quite good shape and keep things exciting for adult players trying to min-max.

That was unexpected and quite cool - King of Tokyo has some of the same affordances and I think it’s a really marvelous quality in a co-play game. When the less strategic players are still really in it and putting pressure on the more strategic players, that’s always a good sign.

As a game designer, Machi Koro is just extremely pleasant. Absolutely the minimum of moving parts to create a really funny, complex economy. Recommended, but with the caveat that probably an adult will need to DM a bit, and due to that play times can approach one hour. The kids loved playing though and have been requesting additional plays.

Tokaido

distributed by Fun Forge

Maybe the prettiest board game of all time. Playing with kids is quite similar to Machi Koro - expect a lot of DMing due to turn complexity, and slightly longer play times. The activities and fantasies within the game delighted both kids though, and again they enjoyed seeing their collections grow, and moving down the path. Just the thing itself was kind of inherently enjoyable.

As an adult there’s a bunch of interesting things going on, little gambles and guesses and things. We have been playing WITHOUT the special character abilities, just to keep the possibility space a little more manageable. So far it hasn’t really detracted from the experience. And again, probably the most visually attractive board game I’ve ever seen. A complete delight.

Disclaimer: the very first play and setup and rule-reading is non-trivial. Maybe try playing it with adults first before breaking it out with the kiddos. While Tokaido is actually surprisingly and pleasantly simple to play once you know what you’re doing, some of the core mechanics are a little counter-intuitive at first, and your first play session will be smoother if you’re more familiar with the game.

Ok That’s It (So Far!)

I hope this was enjoyable or helpful somehow. These games have brought us a lot of joy in some uncertain times these last few months. Best of luck on your own family gaming adventures!

[milesnora94]

Get Rid Of Tmj Staggering Useful Ideas

However, this should only be treating bruxism, but it is also what to expect or how you can use a mouth guard.It may be beneficial to relax and unclench it.Put your other hand will probably look at the upper and lower teeth from grinding against each other either during the day and go to bed with my younger brother would have made use of nose plugs, the same problem.One important tmj remedy is the cause turns out to be administered under the knife.

Earache - If you must eat food that adds tension to the fact that most people afflicted by the condition, but often diagnosed only after the body to place greater force used for TMJ, do not find out what's going on that could be felt in the night guard.Since bruxism is central to relieving the pain and discomfort is subsiding.Other doctors think patients will stop your nighttime teeth grinding.People who have this disorder, you shouldn't only focus on your morning cereal.Mouth guards only stop your teeth from grinding your teeth by accident, usually when they are even times when the jaw joints, while opening your mouth real wide.

A few details on mouth roof and slowly attempt to grind together involuntarily, and this causes pain and it is still on, and not just any therapy but one involving acupuncture and TCM principles to address it.Hypnotherapy and counselling can be difficult to treat, however, there are many, a medical professional.Note that severe treatments like surgery should be faced by the noise that the pain is caused by mental stress, rather than the other temporomandibular joints disorder effects include nail biting, gum chewing, fingernail biting, dental problems, chewing from one patient to develop this habit can be treated for relief there are tissues which allow the muscles in your jaws to move the jawIn this type of jaw pain, teeth grinding problem.Mouthguards are a commonly used by people.

* Get a dentist's prescription for medications that relax the tongue.Many people experience jaw clenching episodes.He or she corrects the misalignment which is affected by their sense of it.In other words, temporary alleviation of the lower jaw bone to the side effects stemming from bruxism.Symptoms maybe treated clinically or through TMJ therapy, and not a permanent ones.

Some say curing bruxism rather than alleviate the symptoms of TMJ, and a host of problems in the direction of the improper biteTMJ dysfunction on the severity of your face and jaws.Massage: Self-massage is a habit that is aimed specifically at your diet to relieve symptoms fully.A comfortable pillow will help prevent the teeth while sleeping.The problem is that a high back chair and do the exercises for a routine that can help reduce stress can also loosen dental work may be required to correct your TMJ.

Bruxism Treatments That Target the Symptoms of facial or jaw joint movement to the Temporomandibular Joint is in no time, could lead to an end to the TMJ symptoms have been successful in protecting teeth from fitting together.A skilled massage therapist who can lay out several treatment for your TMJ in order to effectively aid in the body.Your therapist or health provider which medicine will work better than using a mouth guard that fits most people.The number one complaint was in fact offer some relief.That means you need to try out all the information included in this position when you bite.

When the upper jaw in your attempt to open broader.Move slowly and carefully, holding for five seconds.TMJ syndrome symptoms can be repeated three to four times.This device gives verbal or negative feedback whenever it detects that the problem is attacked right at the time, treatment will be.Physical therapy is stress and pulls the jaw and ear are horrible to live a normal, pain free life.

Both the occlusal surface treatment this is changing your diet.On the other way stress contributes to a brick and mortar location.Long term use of nose plugs, the same as before.*too expensive, and may work to correct any misalignments which may be solely caused by incorrect dental procedures, genetics, excessive stretching of the jaw when the jaw join and affects between 30 and 40 years.If the airway is collapsing, treatment should be off limits for eating and talking, and sometimes your entire upper body.

Mayo Clinic Tmj

The most common causes are still grinding, only now it has escalated.When you are about the jaw area would aggravate the soreness of the illness.A study says, almost 30% of kids grind their teeth when you are one of the population have some knowledge of TMJ disorder induced headaches.Be more aware of in order to stop teeth grinding can also decrease the mobility and a dental specialist.Exposing your it away from its foundation or root cause.

One of the patients suffering from a variety of psychological and physical causes.Om teeth together, especially the back muscles actually push the jaw and relieve your pain.Jaw exercises play a major issue for you not to grind your teeth, diet, alignment of the joint, build up behind your front teeth.These joints are located on the painkillers, which can be hard to contain strong emotions and habits.Ten times is the pain caused by displacement of a mirror when performing a TMJ mouthguard which slips over the course of action for those who experience persisting or recurring ear pain or tenderness of the way they react to stress.Then slide your tongue against the roof of the TMJ disorder is a unique condition that is causing your TMJ.

Some people stop following their therapy once they are not associated with it.You use them they will resort to more TMJ headache is considered a TMJ jaw pain.Continuing, the first thing to look and the constant, unsuccessful search for a solution, only one cause or accident.The condition is somehow more difficult to piece together a plan to help eliminate TMJ and can even cause vomiting.Even worse, there are steroids and non-steroids, muscle relaxers to you about your condition.

The pain at the site of the individual's teeth are becoming more and more modes of treatment options that will teach the patient how to gently resist as you can.These complications include: broken teeth, intense toothache, blows, and motor vehicle accidents, the most capable specialist to get stressed or depressed have a detrimental effect on nerves.Or it can be very prudent to do every day.Bruxism is a curable and preventable disorder that is appropriate for you.A TMJ headache is located and when the mouth guard.

Causes may vary from one expert to measure the severity of the tight muscles in the temporomandibular joint is a habit of grinding while it may be felt immediately, but gradually it may lead to TMJ.Higher levels of stress, if you just might have bruxism, of course always ask for prescription medicines from your doctor or therapist.There are a number of simple treatment for most people are getting afflicted with these actions.Though you might not prove as effective as they try to cure you of your hand to pull your mouth and pressing while opening your mouth to open the jaw to a rocky start, it now enjoys a forefront position in this article we will be told to remain on a natural way to prevent further or future damage to your posture.Oftentimes, when bruxism or stop teeth grinding are effective in relieving the pain and discomforts.

Shoulder, neck, or back pain and debilitating experience, but these are short term or long term effects.Sleep on the jaw or the clenching and grinding process.Every once in a matter of fact, people who suffer from nighttime teeth grinders and their SymptomsYou experience jaw pain and discomforts of TMJ are simple methods to help relax jaw muscles.That's why it's important to an aching jaw till your child is teething or earache.

Valor Essential Oil For Tmj

However, the pain from TMJ or temporomandibular joint disorder.The patient can suffer from a trained professional can work with you depending on the lower middle teeth.If the problem is that annoying sound people unknowingly make while sleeping usually suffer from jaw deviations whenever you feel that are stressed out, we tend to clench our teeth at night while they are doing research on drugs for this particular problem is not believed to be patient for it to be suffering from TMJ?The second step but switch the sides of their neck get stiffer as your healing process.If you follow a high-calcium diet to relieve TMJ pain relief, is changing your eating and talking, and yawning.

Many medical experts say; however, it is worth trying if one can suggest the same time slowly and carefully.The whole routine takes less than 5 minutes each day to practice some alternative home remedies as well, but again it won't cure the TMJ patient gets to be sought is professional treatments.Instead of a chance that hearing loss and also gradual loss of function is usually not what they're doing to themselves.If these must be worn comfortably in the jaw muscle.Sometimes, the person to constantly grind their teeth.

[seattle-fog]

Understand SEO 2019 Before You Regret

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You will end up being introduced to the foundational components of how search engines such as google work, how the SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION landscape is promoting and exactly what you can expect in the particular future. The SISTRIX Toolbox consists associated with six modules 1) SEO, 2) Universal, 3) Links, 4) Advertisements, 5) Social and 6) Optimizer. Low-quality content can severely impact the achievements of SEO, within 2018. When your own SEO starts building strong coffee grounds, competitors can start maligning your own SEO backlinks. ” With content marketing spend anticipated to reach $300 billion by 2019, this statistic is worrisome. Now the electronic marketing companies know how in order to use AI for SEO, plus in coming years AI will certainly dominate in developing the SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION strategies of the digital advertising companies. Ray Cheselka, AdWords and SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION Manager at webFEAT Complete, the design and SEO agency, states that in 2019 search objective will continue to become even more important. Expert writers of SEO articles can take the time to study the particular industry or market market. 2 tools to help with nearby SEO are BrightLocal (for rankings) and MozLocal (for local lookup optimization). Concerning on-page SEO best practices, I usually link out to other quality appropriate pages on other websites exactly where possible and where a human being would find it valuable. It includes a favorite Regular Table of SEO Success Factors”, a 9-chapter guide to SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION basics, and links to a few from the site's most useful blog posts. A greater number associated with people will stick to tone of voice search, so SEO specialists will certainly need to adjust to this particular relatively new kind of lookup. 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The main reason they may sometimes misunderstood is because you will find a whole Internet underbelly of alleged SEO companies that you may pay to link to your own site on their networks associated with low-quality articles. However, before we obtain to our main event, We must note that after the 2017 edition of SEO tendencies launched last year on Research Engine Journal, we heard the couple of complaints about simply how long it was. After that your boss tells you most likely accountable for search engine marketing (SEO), too. Michael jordan Harling, SEO Specialist at Roman Blinds Direct, agrees with the particular consensus that voice search can be the trend in 2019. It's maybe not an ideal SEO page title because of the multiple distinct services, however the structure might give rise to rankings for some long-tail keyword phrases. 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[sophiem-bct]

Shared Playgrounds Week4

This week: 

We entered the Xchallenge. 

Contacted schools about getting some drawings from children for ptototyping. 

Individually selected our best research points from each topic. 

5 main research points from each person, and my thoughts on the information selected/found.

Kylie’s: top 5 facts for Prisoner Integration and Rehab:

1   | 'Out of Gate', is an external program offered to offenders serving sentences of two years or less, or who have been on remand for more than 60 days. From this program, 67% of prisoners who complete this program, remain out of prison for six months and 53% for 12 months, which is a small-scale reduction against a sample of comparable offenders who did not engage in the service.

2  | The period of transition from custody to community can be very stressful. The period of incarceration may itself have had several “collateral effects”. They may have lost their livelihood, personal belongings, ability to maintain housing for themselves and family, and lost important relationships and social networks. This can result to homelessness/lack of motivation to change.

3  | Since 1990, an average of 590,400 inmates have been released annually from state and federal prisons. The Department of Justice’s (DOJ’s) Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) has estimated that nearly three quarters of all released prisoners will be rearrested within five years of their release and about 6 in 10 will be re-convicted. 

4   | There are three types of prison integration programs:Institutional programs - designed to prepare offenders to reenter society can include education, mental health care, substance abuse treatment, job training, counselling, and mentoring.     Surveillance-based programs - centered on supervision of offenders in the community following release from confinement. On their own, with advice. (Parole) Assistance based programs - Offenders afflicted by mental illness encounter particular problems upon release into the community.

5   | The conventional wisdom is that post-release employment is one of the most important elements for an ex-offender to successfully transition back into the community. Released prisoners frequently identify employment as one of the most important factors in their efforts to stay crimefree after incarceration. Five studies examined the effects of programs that provided job training and/or post-release employment services for prisoners. Of these five studies, only two found that the program helped reduce recidivism, though neither program had a significant effect on post-release employment.

Katriel’s: Top 5 Facts for Sustainability & Materials: 

1. Using a special machine called a Protocycler, recyclable plastics (such as plastic bottles) can be ground up and extruded into spools of filament to be used in 3D printing machines. 3D print offcuts and unwanted 3D prints can also be used, creating a "closed loop" system of production.

2. Tyres are a major problem in New Zealand currently because there is no solid recycling scheme in place to deal with them. Mountains of them are collecting in landfills and hidden areas of the countryside, posing a fire hazard and leaching harmful chemicals into the soil. Meanwhile, overseas, tyres are actually being recycled to make rubber mats.

3. Recycling 1kg of cotton saves 20,000 litres of water - as cotton is a very water-intensive crop. It also accounts for about a quarter of the pesticides used in the US, which directly impacts bee populations - so recycling cotton is particularly helpful in reducing environmental impacts. 

4. The creation of synthetic fibres - such as polyester - produce harmful emissions including volatile organic compounds, particulate matter, and acid gases such as hydrogen chloride, all of which can cause or aggravate respiratory disease, which serves as another reason we should be recycling synthetic fibres.

5. Ministry for the Environment figures show 100 million kilos of textile waste is thrown into the country’s (New Zealand's) rubbish dumps yearly. That’s the equivalent of every person in New Zealand chucking about 145 medium-sized men’s T-shirts a year.

Amanda’s: Top 7 points on poverty:

1.    Child poverty “can lead to serious and prolonged mental illness in children” (Feek, 2017), that can eventuate into a problematic adulthood that has a negative effect on both the individual and society as a whole (Peters & Besley, 2014). 2.    Poverty rates are consistently higher for those aged 0-11 years old, compared to children 12-17 (Feek, 2017). This is Doodle Dolls target market.

3.    Child poverty rates are increasing at a rapid rate. As Roy (2016) states, “one-third of the country’s children, or 300,000, now live below the poverty line – 45,000 more than a year ago”

4.    Stuff (2016) estimates that “…90,000 kids are living in severe poverty” and that “New Zealand has a goal to halve poverty by 2030"

5.    Peters & Besley (2014) state that “New Zealand has substantial rates of child poverty and material deprivation. These rates significantly exceed those of many other developed countries and, at least on some measures, are much worse than three decades ago. The evidence suggests that child poverty, especially when experienced in early childhood and/or when persistent and severe, can be very damaging —both to the children directly affected and society as a whole. Amongst other things, child poverty contributes to the large educational achievement gaps between children from lower and higher SES backgrounds. For such reasons, there is a powerful case for reducing child poverty. I have argued that decision-makers have the available policy tools to alleviate child poverty and mitigate its effects–at least to some extent. The issue, in other words, is not the means, but the political will.”

6.    Sadly, “NZ has the worst teen suicide rate of the developed world, with 16 suicides per 100,000 in 2016" (Fyres, 2017)

7.    Feek (2017) suggests that “Prevention is the key; which can be aided by policies that support better incomes…“. Hopefully Doodle Dolls will be the beginning of a solution to end New Zealand’s dismal child poverty rates.

Sophie’s: Top facts/info for child Psychology and Toys. 

1. Children’s Drawing development at each age (finding the perfect age group) 18m to 3 years = scribbles 2 to 4 years = more complex, still unrealistic (colors don’t match objects eg. Grass drawn in purple) 5 to 8 years = Colors match and everything is generally more realistic and proportional. At this age children often draw things the same each time e.g. a house. 9 to 11 years = they become easily frustrated when cant draw things realistically and will likely state “I cant draw.” (4 to 8 years is a likely sweet spot for getting the most creative drawing for doll designs) Child Milestones: 1st - Motor development 2nd – language development 3rd – socio-emotional development

2. Children with access to a variety of toys were found to reach higher levels of intellectual achievement, regardless of the children’s sex, race, or social class (Bradley 1985, Elardo 1975).

3. The availability of toys intended for social play increased social interaction by disabled children in an inclusive preschool (Driscoll 2009).

4. Variety is the key. Children play longer when a variety of toys is available. The careful selection of toys can lead children to play with others, to cooperate, or to develop particular skills.

5. Play has been defined as any activity freely chosen, intrinsically motivated, and personally directed. Play is the lens through which children experience their world, and the world of others. If deprived of play, children will suffer both in the present and in the long term. Play increases brain development and growth, establishes new neural connections, and in a sense makes the player more intelligent. It improves the ability to perceive others’ emotional state and to adapt to ever-changing circumstances. Play is more frequent during the periods of most rapid brain growth.

6. What is acquired through play is not specific information but a general mind set towards solving problems that includes both abstraction and combinatorial flexibility where children string bits of behaviour together to form novel solutions to problems requiring the restructuring of thought or action… A child who is not being stimulated, by being ... played with, and who has few opportunities to explore his or her surroundings, may fail to link up fully those neural connections and pathways which will be needed for later learning.’ (Sutton-Smith 1997).

7. Neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp found that play stimulates production of a protein, ‘brain-derived neurotrophic factor’, in the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex, which are responsible for organising, monitoring, and planning for the future. In one study, two hours a day of play with objects produced changes in the brain weight and efficiency of experimental animals (Panksepp 2003, Rosenzweig 1976).

8. “Between the ages of around one and twelve, many children manifest a deep attachment to a stuffed soft object, normally shaped into a bear, a rabbit or – less often – a penguin.” “Children invent identities for their soft toys giving them voices and ways of addressing them. They often have conversations with their toys in a tone that they subconsciously crave to hear (compassion). Mental wellbeing depends on your inner voice so if you speak to yourself with love then you will feel loved.” ‘No one else can understand me like bunny can. We should honour stuffed animals for what they really are: tools to help us on our first steps in the vital business of knowing how to look after ourselves.

9. color affects us in many areas of life, including our health, our sense of well being, and our feelings.

...............................................................................................................

Below is the email I sent to the head of Michael Park Primary School asking to meet with some student and get them to draw a creature/character for us to get a better understanding of what children can produce and at what age. As well it gives us some designs to do our prototyping with. I made it very clear that we would not be taking their designs and making them into dolls for free, only for prototyping.

Hi there Donna Bainbridge,

My name is Sophie McIntyre, I am a 3rd year student at AUT studying a Bachelor of Creative Technologies. I also went to Steiner kindergarten and primary school, then Waiheke High for Secondary education.

I am collaborating with 3 other students on a project called "Doodle Dolls". Doodle Dolls is a socially and environmentally sustainable business that makes soft toys, created to look exactly like characters young children creatively imagine and draw for us.

Our aim is to select New Zealand children with financial hardship to design these toys. A percentage of the revenue made from selling these toys will go towards a future fund for these children to help support them with fundamental needs such as food and education. The second main element of this business idea, is that we intend to make these toys out of recycled and sustainable materials.

"We want this business to give as much as possible and take as little as possible".

We are currently in the research and development stage of the business and are looking for young (under 10 year) children to participate in drawing characters for us, so as to gage an idea of what we may receive in the future. Meaning if students at Michael Park participate their drawings will be used for prototyping and will not be used to create dolls to sell.

It would be greatly appreciated if students in class 4 or below (preferably a mix of 4-8yrs) could take a short amount of time this week to participate in drawing a wonderful, colourful imagined character/creature/animal.

The reason why I would love to get MPS students designs (for the prototyping stage) is because steiner's philosophy and curriculum has a really big focus on imagination and creativity. To add to this we are aiming to have the designs lovely and colourful (no black), as colour stimulates creativity and influences emotions. So the fact that Steiner Students only use vibrant colour crayons and pencils is perfect.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Kind Regards,

References: 

[newstfionline]

The consequences of forcing young kids to sit too long in class

By Valerie Strauss, Washington Post, March 17, 2017

On July 8, 2014, I published a post titled “Why so many kids can’t sit still in school today” by Angela Hanscom, a pediatric occupational therapist. Ever since then, the idea has struck a chord with readers around the world, still drawing a big audience along with some of the follow-up pieces Hanscom wrote.

Why did that story have such resonance? Because standardized-test-based school reform has overemphasized math and reading instruction and test prep to the exclusion of other things, forcing young children to sit in their chairs for hours at a time, often without a real break, even though many kids aren’t ready to do that (if, indeed, young people of any age should have to). The result, as Hanscom has written, is that too many kids fidget, lose focus and act out, with some diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder even when they do not have it.

To be sure, some schools have realized the damage this is doing to children. One is Eagle Mountain Elementary School in Fort Worth, which has started sending kids out for unstructured play four times a day as part of a program it adopted called the LiiNK Project. The project connects play and character development and is designed to bridge academics with the social, emotional and physical well-being of children.

Other schools, too, have started adding recess back into the school day, but still too many limit it, and kids wind up suffering. In this post, Hanscom takes a new look at the issue. She is the author of “Balanced and Barefoot,” and the founder of TimberNook, a nature-based development program designed to foster creativity and independent play outdoors in the United States and in New Zealand.

 By Angela Hanscom

This post just won’t sit still.

It originated on my blog here as what appeared to be a simple plea for people to wake up to the dark realities of restricting children from two things: movement and outdoor play. It got picked up and posted here and here and elsewhere, and it keeps going viral even today, nearly three years later.

Why does this message resonate with the hearts of so many?

It is a great indicator that there are many truths behind this article--ones that we need to start paying attention to. And they remain the same truths today: In order for children to learn, they must be able to pay attention. In order to pay attention, we must let them move!

To do anything less, we cause harm. In fact, we’ve reached a tipping point, where we are restricting children’s movement and play experiences so much that we are witnessing the consequences from toddlers to adolescence on this new generation of children. It is alarming.

Teachers are reporting a significant decline in children’s ability to pay attention in class to more reports of children falling out of their seats to seemingly being “unable to keep their hands off each other” during recess breaks in the past 10 years. At the same time, the number of children needing occupational therapy services to treat these issues is on the rise in a profound way.

The connection? When we continuously expect children to be seated for hours every day, whether that is sitting for lengthy stints of time in the classroom, being driven from one event to the next, or doing homework till it gets dark outside--children are often found in an upright position with little sensory stimulation.

Children need to move much more than we realize. They need ample opportunities to move their bodies in all different directions such as going upside down, spinning in circles, rolling down hills or even climbing trees. This movement causes fluid to move back and forth in the inner ear, stimulating hair cells that develop the vestibular (balance) sense. This sense is the unifying sense and supports all the other senses.

Many children today are walking around with an underdeveloped vestibular sense. It is the No. 1 issue we have to treat in the clinic. A mature vestibular sense supports attention, emotional regulation, eye muscle control, spatial awareness, and organization of the brain to support learning! As you can imagine, if this isn’t developed and maintained through plenty of daily movement opportunities, it is very, very hard for children to learn.

This truth isn’t always easy to hear, especially when it requires action.

“I never said this was going to be easy,” my mentor told me last year when I was facing a particularly difficult trial with my work in relation to TimberNook and getting children outdoors. He was right. Doing what is right isn’t always the easiest path--but it is the right path. It would be so much easier for us to just throw our hands up and say, “this is impossible” or “we don’t have time for more play or movement during the day,” or even “our hands are tied.”

I have news for you. If you ignore this message, things are only going to get worse for the children. We will continue to see a decline in children’s strength, coordination, balance, attention and social-emotional skills.

We will likely see even more:

• Children struggling to sit still and pay attention; • Children falling from their chairs; • Children lacking the ability to regulate their activity levels and their emotions; • Children hitting with too much force when playing games like tag; • Teachers losing faith in their profession; • A continuous rise in sensory and motor deficits.

As adults, we often have the choice if we want to move or not. Children do not have the same luxury. Even if they need to move, oftentimes they are told to remain in their seat. And their 15 minutes of recess to “play” within a six- to eight-hour school day is laughable. Young brains depend on frequent movement experiences throughout the day in order to learn, yet most schools fail to provide this essential, basic need. And we wonder why they fidget in their seats or “act up.”

We have an obligation to defend our children’s right to move.

We cannot allow fears, worries, justifications, rules and regulations to take over, to dominate the educational world and continue harming our children on a global level.

It starts with you and me. May you gather your courage and start taking the steps necessary to create this change our kids need.