#thus I have changed my bio to be a bit more appropriate for what I was intending

[livemedown]

I personally agree with this, with a few exceptions (mostly proshippers. Proshippers either get upset when they see it and/or bug off, at least from my experience. If they know you're an "anti," they'll usually leave. I don't want them interacting with me, they don't want me interacting with them, it's generally a win-win).

The majority of DNIs I've seen? Absolutely worthless. That transphobe or racist isn't going to be stopped by your bio. They're gonna harass you no matter what. And if you want to express your support for minorities, there are less performative ways to do so - such as outright stating your support of trans rights or POC rights instead! It goes a long way for you to actually share support, rather than just posting a DNI list no one will read.

its 2025 now. time to get rid of "dni bad people" shit. and "basic dni criteria" too. here, i said it. it doesn't save you from interacting with people you don't like and you look performative and silly🤔

[kissmetae]

Silhouette

❧ AU: Dance Teacher/Dancer AU || You were working as a dance teacher at a dance academy and one day while dancing for yourself you stumble upon the new dance teacher at the academy watching you. Like a magnetic force you were drawn to each other and quickly became friends... and more than.

|| SMUT | 7.6k | x reader | masterlist in bio ||

❧ Disclaimer: This is fiction. Actions and events in these stories are often exaggerated and to a certain degree unrealistic.  Please have this in consideration when reading fiction, especially if it includes sexual content.

❧ Rating: EXPLICIT || sexual content, unprotected sex

❧ Smut features: Vanilla, semi(?) public, mirror, Top!Tae, greedy and desperate, confessional, stripping the other, dancing, tension(!), pulling out, kinda innocent and sweet but lusty af and more...~

❧ A/N: Long time no writing... I’ve been busy with work and my dance academy as well as being in a long drawing over writing phase but here I am because I want to be able to do what I can for people to find an escape during the tough times we are all going through right now. Remember that it will pass. I’ll be trying my best to write more and my ask is always open for suggestions and prompts.

Green lights, pink lights and purple lights were all flashing brightly in the dark room as the base of the music made the speakers gently vibrate.

 Extending the arm, a graceful hand caressed the chin of the energy surrounding you. The beat changed and your left leg extended to the side as you quickly rotated towards the other end of the room, meeting your reflection in the mirror with a smirk with each spin.

 You froze, looking back and landing on your knee to end up on the floor.

You liked calling this move the sexy snow angel, because it reminded you of one... Your hands meet above your head and your legs pushed you around onto your tummy and suddenly you were back up on your feet again.

 Your elegant posture hit a dramatic off switch when you suddenly called it a quit and headed over to your phone that was connected to the speakers.

Of course you couldn’t help but jam a little to the song one last time before hitting the pause button.

 This was your passion, your element.

Sometimes you considered this place your home more than your own apartment.

 The music stopped and you hit the switch for the lights, temporarily making the room go dark before the bright lights lit up the room properly.

 ”Wow.”

 The sudden sound of a deep unfamiliar voice made you jump like an ice cold blade had just been stabbed right through your abdomen.

 ”Oh my god!” You expressed, holding a hand over your heart.

 The voice giggled.

 ”You scared me to death!” You laughed and turned toward the stranger peaking in through the door.

 ”Sorry...” He smiled.

”It’s ok, I’m not used to anyone else being here this late so I wasn’t prepared.” You explained and grabbed your bag.

 ”I was about to leave but I heard music and got curious... you’re really good.” His tone lowered towards the end as he got a little flustered.

 As you approached him you got a better look at the tall man.

 His dark hair was messy, a few wet strands clinging to his forehead. But the first thing you noticed was his big dark eyes, framed by long lashes, full of passion...

 ”I don’t think I’ve seen you before.” You pointed out, tilting your head slightly.

 His shoulders were broad and legs long... despite not seeing much through his loose pants you could guess that they were toned and lean.

He was also wearing a grey sweater, dark at the neckline from the sweat...

 ”I’m new.” He smiled and moved away from the door to allow for you to exit.

”Wait, are you the new teacher?”

He nodded.

 Eager to have met the guy you’ve only heard of till now you reached out your hand to greet him and introduce yourself.

 ”Taehyung.” He smiled. ”What do you teach?” He asked curiously.

”Contemporary and jazz. What about you?”

”Kids’ street and isolations.”

”Oh, you have the little ones!?”

”Yes, they’re so cute.” He smiled shyly.

”I’ve heard they’re always so eager to learn.”

”It gets really playful too!” He chuckled.

 He was intriguing... and pretty cute and warm on first impression.

 Outside it was already dark and a few drops of rain were falling down.

You pulled on your coat while you and Taehyung kept talking and he pulled on his own.

A light grey long coat and a dark green scarf... a man of style?

 ”Do you do any other styles besides what you teach?” Taehyung asked, stealing your attention from his outfit.

 ”I do a lot of modern, I’ve of course done my share of mandatory ballet as a kid.” You chuckled. ”But besides that I take afro fusion and kizomba classes, how about you?”

”Wow? Do you battle?”

”Sometimes...” You confessed shyly.

”I do hiphop, the stuff I teach of course and jazz fusion.” He finished off with a cheeky smile.

”Oh, have I found a substitute teacher for my jazz classes?”

”Just let me know what to do and sure.”

 You headed towards the door and Taehyung walked out first, giving the door a gentle push so it wouldn’t close on you.

 ”So what’s kizomba?” He asked as you stepped out into the rain, starting the short walk towards the bus stop. ”I’ve heard of it but I don’t know much.”

”I started taking classes for fun about a year and a half ago, it’s a couple dance. But it’s different from the basic couple dance if you ask me. It has more of a flowy sensual feel to it if that makes sense, that’s why I like it.”

”Sounds cool.”

”I think a youtube video would explain better than I am able to, I still consider myself a beginner.” You laughed.

”Based on what I saw earlier you seem like a natural in general when it comes to dance.”

You scoffed silently, feeling your cheeks heat up.

”I’ll have to spy on you dance sometime.” You told him with a playful grin.

 —

 Your chance to spy on him came around sooner than expected.

His class was scheduled for the hour before yours in the same room, meaning you’d get to spy on him briefly at least once a week when you’d sneakily enter at the end of his class to remind that his time was out and it was time to wrap up for the next class.

It was a kind of tradition at the academy to ”interrupt” by watching the end. But it was more fun to watch than to wait outside closed doors either way and it gave you some more time to set up while the previous class packed up and left.

But this was not a sight for sane souls...

His slender large hands held a firm grip of the lower hem of his sweater, fanning it gently to cool himself down inside it.

With every fan he exposed the honey golden skin of his soft lean lower abdomen.

And steering your eyes away was impossible...

There was something about it... maybe it was him, but the sight of his skin and the edge of his calvins peaking above the edge of his sweats...it created a sort of softcore sexual attraction...

”Please stop” you begged silently.

 He was smiling too, while listening to one of his students talking.

He laughed, despite not hearing it your mind could make up the sound of his angelic giggle.

His lips moved as he replied and he pulled a hand through his hair, brushing it back.

That’s when the student noticed you staring and looked towards you, thus making Taehyung automatically look towards whatever the student was looking at and noticing you as well.

His smiled grew wider and he quickly waved bye to the student and walked towards you.

Each step was gracious as he moved like a model across the floor, making your heart beat harder and harder for every step closer he took.

”Hey, we went a bit over time. I’m sorry.” He smiled and rubbed his hand against his neck nervously.

”It’s ok, I’ll steal a minute from the next class, it happens all the time.”

”We were having too much fun.” He chuckled shyly.

He placed a gentle hand on your shoulder and you felt your entire body stiffen and freeze from his touch.

”I’ll stay around, we can talk more after your class yeah? I have something I want to ask you.” He smiled and let his hand fall from your shoulder as he stepped out of the room along with his students, allowing for yours to enter.

You swallowed.

”O-ok everyone we’ll start warming up right away!” You called and walked over towards the stereo.

—

After your class was over you went downstairs to where the teacher’s lounge was located as well as a few more practice rooms and the general hangout area.

 You quickly refilled your water bottle and had a few greedy sips.

Taehyung was dancing with a few students in the hangout room.

For some reason the thought of escaping to the teacher’s lounge to get your things and leave popped up in your mind. Maybe say you just forgot that he wanted to ask you a question... Or that you had to rush.

 But the thought alone was time enough for Taehyung to spot you by the water tap and eagerly run out of the hangout area and grab your arm.

”Come dance, we’re freestyling!” He said eagerly and tried to pull you along.

”Are you requesting a battle?” You asked, trying to swallow your anxious feelings.

Taehyung raised his eyebrows.

”Yes battle! Battle!” One of the students chanted.

It’s on.

”Are you scared?” You teased Taehyung and walked past him to the hangout area so his hand slipped from your arm.

You placed your water bottle down on the floor by the door and readjusted your shirt slightly.

”Me? Scared? Ha!”

Taehyung took a spot in the area and the students watched eagerly as you stood across of him.

”8 vs 8” You set.

”Deal.”

The student whose phone was connected switched the song to a more battle appropriate one.

”Winner buys dinner.” Taehyung said.

”Shouldn’t it be the other way around?”

”But then it doesn’t rhyme.” Taehyung pouted playfully, making you laugh.

You bended your knees slightly and began to sway to the rhythm with a mind already set on starting.

This was playful and spontaneous and more meant as entertainment for the group of students but it didn’t stop you from trying to get into Taehyung’s head with your intimidating gaze in order to score more points towards your win.

 The beat of the song kicked in and you performed an 8. Taehyung immediately responded with his own 8, kicking the ball back to you.

He was a challenge... this could be more fun than you expected.

You did another 8 and finished with going low in a squat, standing near him to pose almost threatening before getting back up and moving back to give him his space.

The song suddenly changed before Taehyung’s turn but he quickly adapted to the song.

”We never said a style you teased!” Immediately recognizing the song as a more contemporary one.

”I thought we auto selected the one we had in common!”

”Too late! Unclear directions!” You teased and twirled back to the center and bent low to flip your hair and dramatically stand back up with your hand following the curves of your body.

”More than an 8! Cheat! Cheat! Judges!?” Taehyung called for the students who were amused by the sudden battle gone war.

You kept dancing.

”Claim back the center!” You teased. ”I’m winning.”

Taehyung took a few determined steps towards you, coming dangerously close for your sanity to remain stable.

His expression had attitude and he licked his lower lip quickly before wrapping his arms around your waist and lifting you up, making you squeal.

”This is cheating!” You yelled and looked towards the tiny audience that were too busy laughing.

 ”Bye bye.” Taehyung called and walked you towards the teacher’s lounge. ”I admit my defeat!”

”Put me down!” You laughed and tried to wiggle free from his strong hold.

Taehyung finally put you back down when you reached the teacher’s lounge with a wide smile on his lips.

”Next time we’ll set the rules straight and I’ll win.” 

”Sure sure.” You said and grabbed your coat.

 Taehyung moved his hair away from his face and kicked off his sneakers to change to his boots.

”So the thing I wanted to ask you by the way...”

Oh right...

”Yes?”

He bent down to tie his boots while you buttoned your coat.

”I know it’s still early, but I heard for the end of term showcase you could do collaborations with levels and I thought since we both teach jazz we could collab? It’s more that it’s my first term and I’m new to it so it would be a lot easier for me if I had someone who knew how it all works with the showcases by my side and so far you’re the one I’ve spoken the most to here.” He explained with a hint of shyness and stood back up again.

You had never done a level collab but you knew of many that had done it and you had actually been curious, and since you weren’t the only jazz teacher anymore... this might be the perfect opportunity .... and the perfect opportunity to get closer to Taehyung.

”Sure!” You smiled.

”Really!?” Taehyung shined.

”I’ve wanted to try collabs, it would be awesome!”

”You really don’t have to if it’s burdensome.” 

”I do want to, we could make a routine and choreography together!”

”Yay!” Taehyung clapped eagerly. Eager to have a deal as well as feeling like he was making friends with not only the students but the teachers as well.

Taehyung was likable, very likable so it wasn’t really a challenge for him. Especially not with his forgiving confidence and comfort within himself, it only made him more approachable and attractive..

”Oh, and you owe me dinner now, we can talk more about it then!” Taehyung pointed out.

Right... winner buys dinner.

”How about this weekend?” You suggested and pulled on your own boots.

”Works well with me, I’ll give you my number and we can decide on a time and specific day ok?” He smiled sweetly.

You handed Taehyung your phone and bent down to quickly tie your boots.

”Is that your boyfriend as your home screen?” He suddenly asked.

”What!? No! No, no it’s just a celebrity I like.” You explained, embarrassed.

”Ah, I see... There! You have my number now. I sent a text to myself so I would have yours too.” He said and handed you your phone back when you stood back up again.

”Thanks.” You said and grabbed your phone, accidently brushing your fingers against his.

—

You took a seat on the bus and let out a deep exhale.

Did that really just happen?

A person you found attractive giving you attention and expressing a wish to even collab with you? Touching your arm? Indirectly asking if you have a boyfriend!?

Maybe you were over-thinking... there hadn’t been a long time yet but you felt like you clicked well together... at least as friends.

Did he sound disappointed when he asked the questions? A little... No stop, he was just curious! Or he wanted to know if you were availa- stop! 

You shook your head to try and get rid of the thought but it was still haunting you.

At least it couldn’t get worse now.

Your phone vibrated in your hand and you looked down to read the notification.

Taehyungie: Get home safely!

Clearly you were wrong.

You hid your lips with your hand to conceal the wide smile that spread across your face and suppressed the urge to kick the seat in front of you.

You replied with a quick ”You too” and a smiling emoji.

Taehyung: <3

Could he stop!?

This was an attack!

You shoved your phone back into your bag and turned the volume up a little higher in your headphones.

—

When you got back home you had a quick shower and changed into warm comfy lounge wear and took a seat by your desk with a cup of tea.

Maybe you should... flirt?

Flirt with Taehyung?

Risk being obvious that you were interested in him?!

Just the thought of it gave you some sort of anxious feeling within.

You reached for your mug again to take another careful sip of your still too hot tea.

"How to flirt" you typed into the search bar... some research wouldn't hurt.

"Smile."

You rolled your eyes.

"Smile? I already smile!"

"Make sure your feet are always turned to the person of interest.... well I was thinking more vocal flirting but ok..." you mumbled, finding the article you had clicked rather stupid.

 You moved your feet to the edge of your seat in order to hug your knees.

 Maybe it was Taehyung's nature to be open and warm... not that you had seen him display that behavior towards particularly anyone besides you... or was it blinded by wishful thinking?

Regardless... you couldn't stop thinking about him.

 Your tea ended up forgotten and cold.

Who knew there was this amount of articles and pages about flirting? How to flirt, how to tell if someone is flirting... maybe you were oblivious, in denial or just... all around confused.

Mixing up wishful thoughts and reasonable ones was easier done than said and it all became a huge mess.... 

You ended up feeling more and more tired from the thoughts spiraling through your mind and eventually went to bed, but despite feeling tired and exhausted from dancing you still couldn’t fall asleep.

You twisted and turned and you head just couldn’t find peace and kept thinking and thinking. Not only about Taehyung but a ton of things, even things that weren’t causing you stress now caused you stress as you thought of them.

You sighed and stared up at the ceiling.

—

You eventually fell asleep later that night but the morning started with you frantically searching for your water bottle, of course you had a large stash of water bottles in the kitchen but this one in particular was your favorite... it suddenly hit you that you forgot it in the hangout area at the dance academy.

 A feeling of relief and frustration washed over you and you slumped down on your sofa in the living room.

It was raining heavily outside and the sky was dull and grey. The sounds tapped lightly against your windows and it was a nice. You loved rain (if you were indoors that was). 

 You stood back up again and went to prepare yourself some breakfast.

You didn’t have any classes today which meant you had the day off. Either you’d spend it at home to catch up on series all day or head into town and do some shopping to then head home and binge watch your shows regardless for the remainder of the day.

You stretched your arms out gently, feeling a little sore from yesterday as you waited for the water to boil when the memory of yesterday replayed in your head.

“Is that your boyfriend?” You slapped you hand against your forehead to try and delete the haunting memory.

Why did he have to ask that!?

You switched on the tv in the living room while you continued to make breakfast and get ready so that the sounds would make it easier for you not to think about it.

 Fast forward to later and you had found a few likable items and done a mini-grocery shop and was seated on the bus to head back home.

Your phone dinged.

Taehyung: 5 on Saturday?

You: Sure!

Taehyung: I’ll bring your water bottle! You forgot it yesterday, I found it in the hangout room just now and I’m pretty sure it was yours.

You: Please do, I looked for it all morning! It’s my favorite one…

Taehyung: Count on me! It’s already safe in my bag!

You started to type out the words “my hero” but you held back… was it too much? You bit your lip and looked down on the written words one more time before forcing yourself to hit send.

You: My hero

Taehyung: [Typing…]

Your heart started beating a little harder.

Taehyung: ;)

You let out a little internal squeal and put your phone back into your bag as the bus pulled up to your stop.

--

The two of you ended up having a blast together, the food was great, the conversations, the laughs. You had bounded well and it almost felt too easy and good to be true.

"Winner pays dinner" you had laughed while reaching into your bag.

"Sinner treats winner, that rhymes too." Taehyung teased and pulled out his wallet.

"No, I won, I pay. You can pay next time." 

"Does that mean another battle?"

"You bet" you declared and placed your card on the table.

 With a shy smile brought on by the memory you sat down on the sofa in the teacher's lounge with your water bottle in your hand.

You had just held an intense class and if you were exhausted then surely your beginner students would be suffering even more right now.

You took another sip when a group of teachers entered after their classes.

You knew them but didn't really see them as any of your friends.

 "Did you meet the new teacher yet?" One of them asked the other.

They were three teachers in total and you were pretty sure they all had either ballet or contemporary... you should know since you too were a contemporary teacher too but you didn't mind.

"The tall one with broad shoulders?"

"Yes him!"

"I haven't seen him yet" the third commented with a pout.

"He is so handsome and he was checking me out the other day." 

They giggled.

You felt a need to roll your eyes.

"I haven't spoken to him yet but I'll get his number eventually."

You already had it and you didn't ask...

"Yet another one? When will you quit playing sis, remember the hiphop teacher?"

"Uhm, don't mention him thanks."

Oh right... that's why you never bothered to befriend them.

 Taehyung should actually be here any moment now for your scheduled practice...

As you thought about it Taehyung suddenly appeared wearing his long coat and entered the teacher's lounge.

"Excuse me." He said low and tried to get past the chit-chatters who were blocking the door way.

They shoved the third girl in her side so she'd get that it was him and they all checked him out.

 Taehyung hadn't spotted you on the sofa yet and he was wearing headphones.

 "So what did you think of my routine yesterday?" One of them suddenly asked while Taehyung kneeled down to untie his boots.

He removed a headphone and looked up.

"Huh?"

"You watched my routine yesterday, what did you think?" She repeated.

Taehyung paused briefly.

"I don't remember watching you, sorry."

Her smile fell and Taehyung returned to his shoes.

He wasn't rude in his response but she wanted to make it seem that way to cover up for the humiliation she felt.

She appeared to be a bit of a brat...

 Taehyung took out his phone from his coat pocket and removed his headphones and coat.

He was doing something on his phone but you couldn't tell what.... until your phone suddenly rang next to you, grabbing the attention of all five of you.

 "Call: Taehyung"

"Taehyung I'm right here." You laughed

"Oh my god I didn't see you!" Taehyung laughed embarrassed and clicked the call away.

 This felt more and more like a scene from a high school movie.

 You got up from the sofa and Taehyung walked over and gave you a big hug, this time you were prepared for it.

"Sorry I'm sweaty."

"It's ok, we'll both be soon. You can head up and I'll just put on my sneakers real quick." He smiled.

"Ok, I can bring your water bottle, I'll refill mine on the way too so."

"Thanks!" Taehyung quickly pulled out his bottle from his bag and handed it to you and you walked out.

 --

 You turned on the lights and placed the bottles near the stereo and sooner than later Taehyung came running up the stairs and closed the door to the practice room behind him.

 When you turned around you felt like your legs were about to melt from the sight of the tiny ponytail he had tied half his hair up in.

"You like?" Taehyung asked, noticing you looking.

"I love!"

 Taehyung walked over to the stereo and tried to connect his phone to the sound system.

 The two of you were all alone.

The students had all left for the day and the scheduled classes were over and eventually the rest of the teachers would head home too.

 Black sweatpants, folded up by the bottom to show off the ankles and a loose fitted worn-out white long sleeve...

Maybe it was meant to look worn out or it was his favorite top... regardless it fit snugg around his arms, showing off the soft sculpted curves of his triceps.

The thin fabric allowed you to vaguely distinguish the lines of his toned back concealed beneath.

You were staring.

 His neck was wide and long, the curve from his neck to his shoulders practically begged to be caressed....

His shoulders were wide and his waist slim, creating a perfect V shaped figure. 

 Taehyung’s hand adjusted the hair tie slightly and you felt your knees go even weaker and you began to fidget.

How could someone look so good with merely any effort?

 Despite the black sweats being loose they hugged his thighs flatteringly and the curve of his butt strained the fabric ever so slightly.

 The music started at low volume and Taehyung let out a little cheer of excitement before turning it up.

 Just vibing... you'd done that tons of times but Taehyung was making you nervous even when in your own element.

 He walked over and took place by your side with a chuckle.

Was he blushing?

 "I really like this song." He pointed out and moved side to side in tune to the song.

He felt a little awkward and it was noticeable by how his shoulders were suddenly a lot closer to his ears.

 "I do an 8, you do an 8 and so on?" You suggested.

"Sure! After you." He smile and gestured forwards towards you.

 It didn't take long until you both felt more comfortable and warmed up, daring to show off more advanced moves and triggering an impromptu dance battle between you.

 Taehyung was laughing and cheering, as well as you.

"Yeah!" He yelled, jumping on the spot.

Eventually it came to a pause as you both became pretty exhausted and needed to catch your breaths.

 Taehyung ran over to grab his water bottle and you took the opportunity to stretch your legs for a few seconds.

He jogged back towards you, but this time he stopped a lot closer to you.

You natural response would've been to taken a step back but you yelled at yourself internally "don't you dare move back!"

 His chest was moving up and down... the skin of his neck shimmering from the sweat starting to form... and his top only clinging to him tighter...

 Fuck...

 "So, do you have any ideas or any concept you'd like to go for? I was thinking last night and I thought of a concept that I think might be cool but of course if you disagree we'll make something up together!" Taehyung rambled, his fingers intertwined and fidgeting.

 ("Her... her nipples are peaking through the fabric...." he swallowed. "Her leggings are as tight around her thighs like her invisible grip of me is... don't stare! Don't look Taehyung! Show some respect!")

 "I like what we were feeling in the vibe, we could implement some of those steps for the chorus, considering they're beginners we need to keep it somewhat simple, but also spicy." You said eagerly

 "True! But, should we perhaps... pick a song first?"

"Yes of course! But I want to hear about your concept idea."

 You were feeling a lot more comfortable all of a sudden.

 "Well..." Taehyung began and walked over towards the stereo. "I got the idea while listening to this song yesterday..." He explained and put it on.

  The concept as well as the song was right up your street and you strongly supported Taehyung suggested, earning a shy proud grin from the man.

 Time flies fast when you have fun they say, and indeed it did. You managed to get a chorus segment "sketch" down and recorded it before moving on to just vibing and having fun again.

 --

 Taehyung's playful energetic soul was magnetic.

The way he twisted and turned, freestyled and became one with the music mesmerized you.

Going from a serious expression and aggressive freestyle to breaking into a bubbly giggle to then talk serious as he expressed his smart ideas...

 Yes... yes maybe... just maybe... he was tugging a little (a lot) at your heart strings...

Not only did he look good and move good... but he was good.

A good boy.

 You chuckled for yourself, accidently grabbing Taehyung's attention from where he was stood by the stereo.

 He smiled.

 Suddenly the music was cut off as Taehyung switched the music.

 You knew this song...

This was a Kizomba song!

 Taehyung jogged back towards you, jamming playfully to the music.

 Suddenly your heart shot up from your chest to your throat as Taehyung's hand landed by your lower back and the other grabbed your arm.

"Teach me." He said playfully.

 Your heart was racing, pounding, everything all at once.

   Taehyung took a step back and you caught on to follow his attempt to lead.

Your hand grabbed his hand and with the other you took the opportunity to feel over his shoulder before placing it against his shoulder blade.

 "You- you have to be a lot closer to me." You pointed out. The words came out less stuttered than you feared they had.

 He did as told and you moved closer as well, closing off the space between you by almost 100%.

 You readjusted his position slightly.

"Keep your knees bent when you move and for now, just follow my lead and follow the sway of my hips and match me."

Taehyung nodded, suddenly appearing a little less confident.

 ("Match the sway of her ...hips?")

 "Walk forward slowly" you instructed and began to sway in simple motions to allow him to keep up.

"Relax your shoulders more."

You stopped him, doing some stationary steps and allowing him to get more of a feel for it."

Your hips moved gracefully and he attempted to match your movements with the sway of his own while his hand pressed firmly against your lower back.

"You're doing good"

"You look really good- when you dance I mean." He chuckled shyly, gripping your hand tighter.

Did he really just say that?

"Walk sideways for me, crossing your right foot in front."

 He did as he was told the best he could and you took a step apart from him to allow yourself to walk straight along the side of him seemingly leading you.

His eyes were focused on you.

You quickly twisted back and felt his hand press your closer as you did.

 Taehyung naturally took the lead.

He walked you backwards with a focused expression.

You forgot about the fact that you were meant to instruct him as you got caught up in the chemistry the two of you had together.

 Your eyes had found his chin as a focus point... but first now you dared to face him properly and look into his eyes.

His lips were slightly parted and he was looking down at you with a serious concentrated expression, so different from his usual trademark smile.

 The song faded out and changed to a new more upbeat one.

 "Try taking more dramatic determined steps." You suggested in a soft spoken voice.

You threw a glance at the mirror, feeling your heart beat catch on again at the sight of the two of you dancing together.

 Taehyung tried his best to experiment and lead you in a circle, making you giggle and allowing for him to glance in the mirror himself.

At the sight you could feel him adjust his hold and his posture.

His hips moved with more confidence.

 "You're doing really good." You encouraged again.

"It's easy to dance with you."

"Maybe we're a good match... rhythmically."

"I think so too."

 You didn't want to stop dancing.

You could feel his lean back with your hand and had to hold back to not allow it to smooth over the area sensually... which of course would've added to the dance but what if it was too.... obvious?

 Taehyung had other plans… Unable to hold back much longer…

He let go of you, parting ways and headed towards the light switch.

He turned on the colorful spotlights and turned off the bright large ones, setting the atmosphere even more as the room got darker.

He returned to you, expression still serious but hands more confident than before.

His hands travelled up under your loose shirt shyly, caressing your sides gently.

As his touch travelled higher his confidence grew and he dared to press his exploring hands firmer against your skin.

A fear of being pushed away lingered  in him but your sudden touch reassured him that what he was doing was welcome as your hand reached up and caressed his cheek, eyes not breaking the gaze for longer than it took to blink.

 Your heart made itself known, pounding harder and different… not like when you had danced to the point of exhaustion but an exciting and anxious pounding.

 His hands travelled back down, following your curves like he was studying a statue. Slow and sensual until they stopped on your hips and gripped firmer.

 The music was bouncing between the walls in the room, filling the atmosphere with more ecstasy.

 Taehyung turned you slowly, leading.

He walked you back towards the mirror, leaning closer with his lips slightly parted and hooded eyes.

His forehead touched yours, nose tips accidently brushing against each other.

 Your back suddenly pressed against the cold reflective surface and Taehyung’s hand pressed against the mirror next to your head.

 Your blood was on fire.

What were you hoping he would do next?

Were you even aware of what you wished for?

Aware of how you impulsively leaned up as he leaned in, lips touching shyly before pressing greedily against each other causing you both to melt and give in to the other shamelessly.

With your hands behind his head, you pulled him closer to you and his hand caressed your cheek as you tasted the other’s need on each other’s lips, fueling the lust filled desire suppressed between you even more.

 It felt like a “finally” moment, deep connection finally confessing and giving into the irresistible magnetic pull.

 His lips, so soft and greedy yet so gentle and desperate at the same time… you could taste the need he had held confined and it’s sweet flavor was addictive.

It was the flavor you had been so desperate to taste for so long and finally gave in to, giving him the same sweet flavor in return that he too had craved for just as long.

 Your hand tangled into his long hair as the other fell to his shoulder, eager to explore the rest of him, but still so shy.

 Taehyung pressed his body firmly against yours, feeling your soft chest press against his strong.

With a hand that failed to resist he felt up your bare skin again, beneath your top and firmly squeezed your left breast through your sports bra, causing you to slip a moan against the kiss.

 With a slight tilt of his head he deepened the kiss, massaging and feeling your breast while his other hand found its way back to your hip.

 His touch was eager and desperately curious… taking full advantage of the moment to feel you and touch you as he pleased. The way your body and touch responded to his only made the raging fire within him spread and he could feel how he grew hard.

 “I’ve wanted to touch you like this for so long.” He confessed in the heat of the moment.

“You touch me like this in my dreams every night.”

 He groaned softly, unable to resist the need for friction and grinding up against you.

He was a whole different version of himself, set free.

“Do you think about me when you touch yourself?” He whispered, grinding firmer.

“You hope I do don’t you?” You teased, sliding a hand up under his shirt, feeling up his lean back.

“I think of you.”

 Your cheeks burned, reminded of the countless shameless times you had given yourself permission to use his name when you were alone since you first laid eyes on him.

“I do…”

 “I want you so fucking bad.”

 Hearing a man who barely cursed, curse for once was a whole new type of arousing experience… especially with that deep voice of his.

 You could feel his desperation press firmly against your thigh, making you bite your lip as your thighs pressed together firmer.

 His lips brushed gently against your ear, letting out another low whisper.

“Do you want me?”

He sounded a little insecure, almost innocent.

“Can I have you?” He asked, voice slightly shaken.

 “I’m already yours.”

“Tell me to stop if you don’t want this.”

“Ssh, I want this more than anything.”

 He smiled.

 His delicate hands grabbed the hem of your top, pulling it up and off your head, tossing it to the side and reaching for the hem of his own.

Exposing the shimmering golden hue of his skin when he pulled it up, revealing his broad chest and toned shoulders and tossing it to the floor as well.

 His hands landed on your hips, forehead touching yours again like a secret form of greeting between the two of you. Exchanging eager smiles before your lips crashed against each other again.

 The rhythm of the music guided your hands, sensually feeling up his bare upper body and caressing their way back down to the hem of his sweats.

Taehyung’s fingers slid in under the hem of your sports bra, pushing it up over your chest, exposing your breasts with a gentle bounce and pulling it up over your head.

His hands cupped them both, squeezing gently, pushing your arousal further to the edge, giving you the final boost of confidence needed.

 He wanted you, was desperate to feel and touch… to love.

 Your hands pushed his sweats further down his hips, along with his underwear.

He replied by hooking his thumbs in under the hem of your tight leggings, pulling them down over your backside and down your thighs greedily.

 A thin trail of black stubble trailed from his navel further south.

You pushed his sweats and boxers over his hips, allowing them to slip from your grip and fall down his sculpted legs, exposing him.

You broke free from the intoxicating kiss briefly to look down but his hand was quick to cup your chin and tilt it back up so his tongue could dive back in.

 He flinched when he felt your touch as your hand caressed up his thick length.

 Your leggings fell to the floor and you quickly stepped out of them, kicking them away.

 The music consumed you again, and with his hand on your hips you couldn’t resist but dance with him a little more.

Taehyung smiled against the kiss, swaying with you playfully for a while before sliding a hand into your panties, catching you off guard as his fingers brushed over your clit.

 You wrapped your hand firmly around the base of his cock, causing him to wince and started jerking him off teasingly slow.

 His weakness was obviously your touch.

The way he responded to it, immediately greedy for more, reassuring you that you made him feel more than just good.

 His free hand pulled your panties down with slight aggression and successfully got them to slide down your legs to be kicked away by you, landing by his sweats somewhere on the floor behind him.

 You stroked him faster, caressing the back of his neck with your free hand, making him unable to escape from the heated kiss.

 His left fingers teased at your nipple while the right were getting soaked by the wetness between your thighs. He slid his hand up and down against your lowers a few times before stopping and teasing his middle finger against your entrance, triggering anticipation.

 You inhaled sharply as his finger greedily pushed into you, curling.

Your lips parted and his nose brushed comfortingly against the side of your face with a gentle hum of pleasure.

 “Floor or mirror?” He asked, pushing his finger in deeper.

“F-floor.” You stuttered, exhaling shakily and squeezing him tighter.

 His finger slipped out, arms wrapping around you strongly and sliding down along your body as he kneeled.

He pressed a gentle kiss against your tummy, looking up at you with big dark eyes.

 You kneeled and before you knew it your back hit the floor with Taehyung above you, between your thighs.

He took a moment to admire the view beneath him before hooking your thigh over his hip.

 Your eyes focused on his beautiful face, studying his features up close as you reached to cup his cheeks.

You felt how he dragged the tip of his dick up between your soft folds, then down, repeating the motion, making your desperation become unbearable.

 “Ready?”

You nodded.

 He pressed the tip firmly against your entrance, pushing in with a strained expression as his hands squeezed your waist.

He whimpered, pushing in further.

The tip slid in, big as he was you felt a stretch, but it felt nothing but good.

“Fuck, you’re so tight.” He groaned, pushing in halfway and causing you to moan.

 Taehyung shifted slightly, lowering himself above you, supporting himself on his forearms as he pushed in deeper, sliding in all the way.

He kissed your lips and looked to the side, seeing your reflection in the mirror of the dimly lit room.

 He pulled back slightly, pushing back in gently but deep and nuzzled by your neck.

Your hands caressed his back as he repeated the move, gently warming you up, moving his hips at a gentle pace. His smirk had pleasure written all over it and the expression along with the gentle soft sighs made you feel even more drawn to him.

“You feel so good…” He confessed, whispering.

So did he…

The deep penetration, the soft gentle thrusts causing your wetness to leak around him as you clenched tightly around his thick dick, earning another groan from him.

He moved his hips back further, pulling out a little more than half way and thrusted back in. Your head leaned back and his lips latched on to your neck briefly, sucking a faint mark as his hips began to move with more power and greed.

Hums of pleasure were exchanged, gentle whispers of each other names and sweet blissful moans.

You turned your head to the side and was met by the reflection. Two dark silhouettes, one on top of the other, hips thrusting against the other, pushing deeper and harder, making you feel better than best within.

Whatever dance the two of you were performing together, it was highly intoxicating. There was no concern about being heard, no concern about being interrupted. It was only you and him and the sweet sounds between you featuring the sensual music. The feeling of his dick pushing into you, stretching you and rubbing up against every sweet secret spots within.

The connection you had was strong, whatever had brought you together for this very moment felt like something unavoidable, something long planned by fate herself, shaping the two of you apart to fit together perfectly once you met.

You felt more drawn to him than to anyone before and everything felt so natural and so right… so destined…

 Taehyung let out a loud moan as he suddenly snapped his hips harder against you.

He went faster, picking up his pace and adding even more passion, biting his lower lip hard.

He was breathing heavily, your hand tangled in his hair as he took it all out.

Whatever frustrations tortured his beautiful mind, whatever stress he felt.

 You pulled him down towards you, enough for you to reach his lips for passionate kiss. But he quickly parted, struggling to breathe properly.

“I- I’m going to cum…” He whimpered, going harder and faster.

His grip grew tighter, groans louder and moves fueled by even more desperation.

Your hand reached down to rub against your clit as you felt yourself nearing your limit too.

If you weren’t alone, whoever was still around would have definitely heard the loud moan that escaped Taehyung’s throat.

“Fuck…! You drive me fucking crazy.” He groaned, holding on tightly as if to hinder you from escaping even though you weren’t going to go anywhere unless it was with him.

You arched your back, squirming softly as your muscles tensed, nearing your climax.

His lips pressed to your ear, panting.

“Say my name.” He begged. “Say my name baby.”

He thrusted deeper and you slipped his name in a soft whimper, making him feel almost high.

He hummed, followed by a deep “yes” when your body suddenly released.

You whimpered, tugging at his hair and touching yourself desperately as your body gave in, clenching tightly and releasing in an explosive manner around him.

He quickly pulled out and pushed himself up on his knees, jerking himself off.

His head leaned back, extending his luscious neck to the point of veins showing before he came with a deep grunt, squirting his release on your lower abdomen.

His chest was moving rapidly with his breathing as his hand slowed down, milking him of the final drops of his own orgasm. Exhausted and full of bliss he fell on top of you with a wide smile, needy for your embrace.

With ease he rolled the two of you over on the floor for you to rest on top of his glowing body as you both calmed down.

A new need took over, the need to just be close and cuddle, to hear his rapid heartbeat as it began to calm down, to feel his hands caress your back lovingly before he helped you up and helped you get dressed.

But for now you just remained on the floor, questioning nothing and resting in each other’s embrace.

[ryqoshay]

How did u think of the username ryqoshay?

The tl;dr version is that I was tired of Ricochet typically being taken in the games I was playing years ago and decided to rework it into something a bit more unique. And she grew into something more.

The full story will be under the cut as my trips down nostalgia lane tend to run long.

Ricochet started off as a character I created for a story I was writing years ago based on games I played as a child. The games were not electronic, rather based around physical toys and the characters and events were made up on the spot by my friend and I.

While our games generally focused on battles and conflict between two established groups, the story I decided to write focused more on the characters of the protagonist group and their interactions. Worth mentioning here that the focus group was a crew of mercenaries as it will come into play later. I realized that the current cast was comprised mainly of front line fighters and wanted to flesh out the team with some back line and support members; medical, recon, intel, etc.

Enter Ricochet. I liked the idea of taking a stereotypical stoic and battle-hardened sniper character and turning it on its head by making a hyperactive, adorable little girl. A character whose slightly warped idea of cute included heavy weaponry and thus treated her gun like a teddy bear, even going so far as bringing it to bed with her.

The name itself had a dual meaning as it referred both to how she was always “bouncing off the walls” and an intentionally ironic reference to a typically undesirable outcome for a sniper. Her given name at the time was Rebecca; Becky is fine, but don’t call her Becca or Reba.

I don’t recall if I addressed her parents in this iteration, but Rico entered the team under the care of Tackleberry. Yes, that Tackleberry; he was my friend’s favorite character from Police Academy, though I believe what I’ve turned him into maintains only the name and obsession with weapons. I already had him as the former legal guardian of another character, so I figured giving him someone new to oversee would be fine.

Then I stopped writing that story. And it remains on indefinite hiatus to this day.

City of Heroes was released and a friend convinced me to join. I was drawing a blank in character development when I stumbled across the Assault Rifle/Devices build and Rico jumped up out of my memories. The name Ricochet was taken so I tacked on -chan to the end as I was quite addicted to anime by this point in my life. This also gave me the excuse to weeb out and insert random Japanese words into her speech patterns as her linage was now half Japanese and half U.S. born Caucasian.

I designed a diminutive, blonde girl sporting high twintails and a dark purple flak jacket  outfit with black accents. Her short backstory described a her as having two heroes for parents and wanting to live up to her family legacy. And as said parents were still around, Tack dropped out of the picture.

I liked Rico so much I started translating her over to other games as well as using her name in my overall online presence, as small as it was then. Ricochet itself was pretty much always taken, so I often had to modify the name in some way, be it by adding -chan or shortening it to Rico or whatever.

Then came the game changer; City of Villains. It came as no surprise that Ricochet was taken, but I was getting tired of using -chan and my other methods, so I decided to create something new. This would be the first time I used Ryqoshay, an intentional misspelling of Ricochet for a character.

Since CoV allowed a short backstory like its predecessor, I knew I had to come up with an in-universe reason for the name change; I also still fancied myself a writer, even though I hadn’t really written much in a while. I figured a villain might do well with a more tragic backstory than a hero, so I offed her parents. The character limit didn’t allow for specifics on the where, when, why and how, but I made sure to mention that she took the first letter of their names - Yuri and Quentin - to rename herself Ryqoshay.

It was at this point, Ryqo also finally received a family name, Bouteillevoix, and with it, a change in linage to half Japanese and half French. I don’t recall the specifics of how I settled on Bouteillevoix iteself, but I do remember liking the dissonance of an outspoken character bearing a name meaning “bottle voice” as if it were to be contained in some way.

For her aestetic design, I swapped out the black for white in her outfit to use the Dark Is Not Evil and Light Is Not Good tropes; dark purple remained, however. This also meant her hair went from blonde to black. And her twintails went from high to low in an attempt to appear a bit more mature, though she maintained her high energy personality.

Also, while not mentioned in her in-game bio, Tack was able to reenter the picture as a Commando, the highest level Summon of Ryqo’s Mastermind power set.

While I wasn’t actively writing stories about her, I was certainly fleshing her out as a character with notes and whatnot. Quentin and Yuri also got some attention as I ended up designing alternate dimension versions of them for me to play. And as the alt-oholic I am in MMORPGs, I also came up with some alternate dimension versions of Ryqo herself; Ryqoshot, a lonewolf gunslinger using the Corrupter’s Assault Rifle power set and Ryqoaraignée, an Arachnos Crab Spider build who was more closely aligned with Arachnos than her other versions.

With all of the alts I was creating, I decided to use the game’s guild mechanics to pass stuff among them. Thus, Ryqo’s Roughnecks was born, named after Rico’s Roughnecks of Starship Troopers fame. Joining members included L4t3ncy_0, a mechanical Mastermind; Recipere, -  Rx for short - a thug Mastermind who kept her crew alive with healing powers; Yozakura, a ninja Stalker serving as Ryqo’s bodyguard and Vivian Sexon, a dual-wielding Brute and villainous translation of a dual-wielding Scrapper from my CoH days.

Not long after, a friend invited me to join a game of D&D. The team needed a door kicker so I brought in Vivian as a brutish barbarian with a split personality, Sanguine, taking control when she raged. My intended two paragraph introduction quickly turned into two pages, which eventually turned into twenty and started translating over other Roughnecks; Ryqo included.

Ryqo dropped her sniper rifles in favor of a more theme appropriate bow and arrow. L4t3ncy_0′s call sign was changed to Nullsiver Luna and she became an artificer who struggled against the world’s tech limits. Recipere, not surprisingly, took on the role of a cleric. Yozakura kept her ninja trappings, but started playing by the Bodyguard Crush trope as I was deep into yuri shipping at that point thanks to the likes of Lucky Star and others.

Even after the game stalled out, I continued to work with the DM to build their world in which all of their games took place. The Roughnecks gained a permanent place in the timeline, extending both before and after Ryqo’s time as their leader, as well as a permanent base of operations, which eventually grows into a full fledged township later at the behest of Ryqo (spoilers should I ever get around to posting these stories.)

My online presence was growing and with it, Ryqo. She became my main when I returned to WoW, a Blood Elf Hunter running around with a giant Devilsaur as a pet; yes, she would think it was cute. (She was changed to Human when I followed by guild to another server that needed more Alliance players.) My Demon Hunter main in Diablo 3 was named Ryqoshay, as a surprise to absolutely none of my friends at the time.

Aion was a strange exception insofar as I wasn’t fond of the Ranger class for my primarily solo playstyle. I still made said ranger and of course named her Ryqoshay, but my main in that game was a Chanter known as Ameliorator, a more fanciful version of MedKit, the character for whom Tack was a legal guardian in the story mentioned above. However, I still played out the Ryqo persona on the forums because I enjoyed it and I’d long forgotten Med/Ame’s personality from that old story.

When Love Live started to take over my life and I found Sukutomo, I went with Ryqoshay as my screen name for reasons I don’t fully recall. I started this tumblr account as a way to post some “Idolsona” stuff where I translated Ryqo into a LL style idol, along with Yoza, Luna and a newer Roughneck, Flash Pyre. And when I started writing my fics, it was easy to use the account I already had here and then keep the name when I went over to AO3.

Hindsight being 20/20, I probably should have chosen Nico as my primary icon, as her appearance is closer to Ryqo’s than Maki’s, even if she wears her twintails high like Rico instead of Ryqo’s low tails. Neither Nico nor Maki have grey eyes as I’ve given Ryqo, so that wouldn’t fit, but none of the LL characters do thus far. That said, Maki prefers purple more than Nico and Ryqo isn’t much a fan of pink, so maybe that played into things? Perhaps someday I will commission one of my favorite artists to draw Ryqo as I envision her and start using her as my avatar, someday… maybe.

Also worth mentioning that NicoMaki has had a heavy influence on how I envision Ryqo and Yoza, and vice versa. Heck I’ve directly translated some NicoMaki doujin into scenes for my D&D story and sprinkled some RyqoYoza stuff into HtHaN. With HtHaM being a more D&D’ish setting, I may very well steal some stuff from my D&D story for it. Perhaps Luna or Vivian might make an appearance? I’ve already referenced Ryqo when Maki remembers hearing stories of an 11 year old girl taking over a mercenary guild. As always, I shall follow where my µ’s muse leads.

In conclusion, while Maki - with Nico very close behind - may hold a position as my favorite fictional character not created by me, Ryqo easily tops that position as my favorite overall; yes, the fact that I created her absolutely factors into this bias. There are reasons I don’t bring her up often - beyond using her as a screen name, posting through her persona on a few forums and the Idolsona thing - not the least of which include a fear of her being labeled a self-insert or Mary Sue or whatever, as I’ve seen some decidedly distasteful reactions to such characters online. But there is also the fact that the bulk of her development has been within a world not designed by me, but by one of my DMs, and I would want to ensure they would be fine with me posting stuff about said world; I’m sure they would be fine, but I haven’t gotten around to asking. Perhaps someday, I might post more about Ryqo. Perhaps writing more of HtHaM will inspire me to take my D&D story off hiatus, dust it off and have a talk with my DM about posting it. In the meantime, I will continue to use her namesake for my online and in-game presence because she is a character I hold very dear.

If you’ve read this far, thank you for joining me in my journey through nostalgia. And I hope this sufficiently addresses Anon’s question.

[jawnjendes]

don’t want your hand this time | shawn mendes

chapter 1/?, university au, shawn x goth oc

AN: i know i know i posted a thing yesterday but UUUHHHHH im just tryna get to the saucy parts of this bc SOMEBODY decided to be all hot n sexy in a certain music video ANYWAY this is just an intro chapter of sorts and we are introducing some new characters!! lmk your thoughts thots!

***let me know if u wanna be added/removed from the taglist

masterlist | playlist coming soon

When Annalise Flores has shit to do within a time limit, she forgets about everything else. Her phone goes on silent, she ignores her other obligations, and she makes sure to get whatever is in her focus done. This has proven to be disastrous in the past, like when Annalise just needed to clean the entire dorm before starting any homework assignment was due the next day. Or when she reorganized the filing closet at the dealership before adding up the gas receipts she was ordered to do. You get the idea.

Annalise was very determined to get all of her unopened boxes, and her clothes to fit in her tiny, beat up car so she didn't have to make multiple trips, given how far campus is from Shawn's apartment. He promised he would help her move when he got home, he had that huge Jeep after all, but Annalise was way too antsy. Besides, they already fought about this, and she didn't want to start anything all over again. She didn't want him to feel obligated to help if only one of them was into the idea of her moving out.

After pushing on the car door three times, it finally clicked shut. Annalise successfully managed to stuff all of her clothes and half her boxes into the backseat. The rest of the boxes were in the trunk. The windows were all covered, so maybe she wouldn't be able to see her blind spots, but at least Annalise wouldn't have to make a second trip. She silently thanked the Tetris gods for blessing her with the appropriate skills as she went back up to the apartment.

Shawn's living space didn't look that different with all of Annalise's belongings out. Most of it was all stashed into the "recording" room over the summer, and neither of them spent any time in there. There was more space in the closet now, too. It was no longer just a black abyss, and all of Shawn's belongings were now undisturbed. Annalise debated smuggling out his black Nike hoodie, but given the circumstances it was best to leave everything as it was. The apartment didn't look any different really, but Annalise still felt an ache from her throat down to the bottom of her feet as she removed the spare key from her chain and left it on the glass dining table. This was easier than saying goodbye to him in person.

~

Campus was nowhere near as quiet and lonely as the apartment. Students were running around like headless chickens, trying to locate buildings, schedules, and friends. She already had a key to her dorm, so she parked near her building and carried her backpack and two boxes up the walkway. Annalise's resting bitch face and the clunk of her boots on the ground gave her less of a struggle to push past other students. Weak and fragile as she was these last couple of months, she's still got it.

The dorm building wasn't too far from the last one she lived in, but it was going to be a bitch getting to her classes. Maybe she should invest in a bike… or she should get her shit together and take the bus.

Annalise's new dorm was on the third floor, and it was furnished. Weird, yes, but she was not going to complain. It was a bit smaller, but not cramped. There was a tiny hallway between the two bedrooms, and one cramped bathroom. She noticed one room already had boxes sitting on the floor, and she couldn't help but get just a little excited. Stella hadn't completely abandoned her. Annalise wasn't even mad about their three month long silence, she was just happy that she would be seeing a familiar face.

She didn't run into Stella at all during the multiple trips she took bringing all her stuff in. Annalise knew she was here, though. Her perfume scent was always left behind in any room she had been in, and Annalise definitely caught the scent in the dorm. The same amount of boxes were still in her room by the time Annalise finished bringing all of her's in. She figured she could have texted Stella, but she kind of wanted to surprise her… even though they both knew about the other.

She checked her phone anyway. The only text she had was from Shawn.

"How come you didn't wait for me?"

Pursing her lips and smudging the signature black lipstick, Annalise cleared the notification and went to sit in the armchair in the living room. She was way too tired to try to reason with him. She certainly couldn’t jump into the "I miss you" crap so quickly either. She didn't want to, but Shawn obviously did when he sent another text. Out of sheer habit, Annalise opened the notification instead of clearing it, and she cursed under her breath.

"You've been gone only a few hours and this place already feels so sad and empty. Why did you leave your key?"

Yeah, she left him on read. She didn't know what else to say to him.

Thankfully, the lock on the door jiggled and in came Stella carrying a large cardboard box. She gasped and her hazel eyes lit up when she saw her dark natured roommate. She quickly squatted down and set the box on the floor before coming at Annalise with open arms.

"Mi esposa hermosa!"

Annalise will never say this out loud, but Stella gives wonderful hugs. They two girls haven't seen each other in over three months, so getting a nice tight hug was something that was really needed. They rocked from side to side, giggling at the motions. It was like nothing had really changed.

"When did I become your wife?" Annalise asked, amused as she leaned back to look at her.

"When we decided to live together for the third year in a row!" Stella replied. “Oh you got a little…” Her thumb rubbed under Annalise’s lip, showing her the black.

“The struggles of being goth,” she joked.

Stella giggled, and then the rambling began. "How are you? I'm so sorry we didn't talk much over the summer. Did you stay with Shawn the whole summer? Oh, is he here?" She bounced on her feet, looking around the dorm.

"Uh yeah, I did stay with him the entire time," she told her. "And no, he's not here. He's working."

Annalise knew he wasn't. He had found her abandoned key, which meant he was home. And he was probably sulking. And he was going to sleep alone...

"But he'll be here later, right?" Stella asked, nudging her arm. "Y'all are gonna christen your room, eh?"

She really had to ask, didn't she? She really had to jokingly ask a question that would change the expression on Annalise's face, thus warning her of the things that had happened. She wasn't sure why she kept an obviously fake smile on her face as she silently stared at her roommate. The silence alone wasn't enough, apparently.

Normally, Stella would dramatically gasp, sit her down, and ask Annalise to spill every detail. Instead, she sighed.

"Fill me in while you help me bring my stuff up."

~

Classes and club meetings resumed within the next couple of days, so it gave Annalise plenty of excuses to keep her texts to Shawn dismissive and short. She knew he was coming and going from campus for class too, but due to their different majors, he was going to be very far away from her. Not to mention, he didn't know where her new dorm was located, so it wasn't like he could track her down.

Except… Annalise had to retake biology. She knew Shawn was at the science building quite often, and she had hoped her bio lab fell on a day that he was at the fine arts building. But you know, life just happens, and sometimes you see your mans between classes. Sometimes you just see him leaving classroom, towering over the other students because he’s a giant. Maybe you’ll see him with a very short girl at his side, and they’re both laughing at something. Maybe he won’t see you either because he’s balls deep in banter with this random girl.

There was a lump in Annalise’s stomach following that minor event, and it made her anxious and uneasy for the first day of that class. Still, she was determined to stay on board with the separation they both agreed on. It was better that way for now. She didn't know about Shawn, but Annalise fully intended on keeping the distance, suspicious-looking friends be damned.

Anyway, she could find friends of her own too. Gaming club meetings started up again that Friday, and it was something to look forward to. After god knows how long, Annalise attended said meeting after receiving an email from the head of the club, Josh. He and his friend, Paul, ran the club most of the time. They managed to get plenty of people to sign up during the rush earlier in the week but only seven of them actually attended the first meeting. Just like every year.

Both Josh and Paul were scrawny blond boys with "nice guy" complexes. They were polite for the most part, given that they inducted Annalise into the club the moment she signed up. But they also quizzed her on just about every popular, mainstream video game there was once they realized she would actually be showing up to the meetings. It took time, and a bit of Annalise telling them off, but they were civil towards each other now.

"Annalise!" called Chad as the lady herself entered the classroom in the communications building. He was another member, and he had his two frat bros with him, Kyle and Jared, and they both chanted her name in their deep, manly voices.

All different heights, but same amount of insane muscle. For lack of better words, these guys were meatheads with good intentions. Chad was a student with one of the highest GPA on campus, practically competing with Josh. Kyle was the star student in his major, sports medicine. Jared was that guy who beat up bigots as a hobby. All three of them were fully dedicated to their fraternity, Sigma Chi.

Then there was Patrick, who nodded to Annalise as a greeting. She nodded back and took the empty seat next to him in the circle.

The people who think Annalise Flores is a complete hardcore goth have not met Patrick Markowski. This was a guy who was always decked out in leather, ripped jeans, and black eyeliner. He had a proper faux hawk, which is what made people notice him the most. He typically surrounded himself with other goths, unlike Annalise. He was truly dedicated to the lifestyle, while she deviated from even that sometimes. This was the only guy in the club Annalise was actually friends with.

Anyway, all seven of these nerds shared the same appreciation for video games, which brought them all together in a circle, in an empty classroom, in the communications building this evening. However, Annalise's entrance caused the guys to deviate from the main topic.

Josh and Paul had been staring at her with their mouths open the second she entered the room. The Frats were visibly excited and each gave her a high five. Patrick merely stayed quiet and smiled.

"Heard you almost fucking died!" Chad told her. "And you didn't tell a single one of us!"

"I thought you had actually died," Josh spoke up. "Since you never miss a meeting and all."

So that got around. Cool.

“I wasn’t dying,” Annalise said, rolling her eyes. “I just had part of my colon surgically removed.”

“No way…” Jared said in wonder.

“Oh, that’s disgusting,” said Paul with a gag. He brought the collar of his red Pizza Planet shirt over his mouth.

The Frats stared at Annalise in awe, almost impressed by her vague explanation. She really didn’t understand the fascination, given everything that happened during and after the hospital. Of course, they knew nothing about any of that. At the same time, Annalise was annoyed at Paul’s dramatic reaction, so she kept talking.

“It might happen to you too if you don’t take care of yourself and listen to your body,” she told him. “Or worse, you could end up with a bag of your poop attached to your belly.”

Paul gagged again, much louder this time. Then Annalise decided that that was enough and directed the conversation to the club’s main topic: video games.

“So who’s played Team Sonic Racing?”

It was only the first meeting, so the group made a plan to bring their Switches and play next time. The Nice Guys prompted to play a round of Fortnite online later, but Annalise was not up for that game in the slightest. Too mainstream. Too chaotic. She never could get into it.

“Well, we can play without you,” Paul suggested, “not everyone has to join in.”

“Isn’t that a rule, though?” Patrick asked pointedly. “If we’re gonna play something together, we all have to agree on one game. Besides, I don’t play Fortnite either.”

Paul's eyes darted around, trying to look for a counterargument, but he sighed. “Fine. Anyone else got any suggestions?”

“What about a D&D campaign?” Annalise said. “Or some type of board game?”

Josh scoffed. “It’s video game club. Besides, me and Paul already have a campaign with our other friends.”

“‘Course you do,” she mumbled, folding her arms.

“Ooo! I got an idea!” Kyle spoke up, raising his massive hand. “We should hit up Bart. That bar with the art and retro games?”

Annalise perked up. Finally, someone with a brain cell. “I participated in a Smash Bros tournament there. It’s really fun, we should all go one weekend.”

“A bar?” Josh said in distaste.

“Yeah! It’ll be a class field trip or something!” Chad agreed. “It’s awesome, bro! They got a Gamecube and an N64! Sometimes they do karaoke night, but only with songs from different games!”

Then, Kyle looked at Annalise with a smirk. “Bet your boyfriend would perform there, eh?”

Even when she was far away from him, Shawn still had a presence wherever she went. “Heh, maybe…”

Luckily, none of these guys were the type to hover. The subject went back to going to Bart one weekend, and then the group chat was revived to discuss further adventures. Once the meeting was adjourned, Patrick followed me out the door.

“So, Annie. No offense or anything,” he said, walking in step beside her as they walked down the corridor, “but what the fuck is wrong with you?”

“My summer was great, thanks,” Annalise said, too busy glancing at her phone to cringe at that awful nickname. No new messages for once.

“Nah, seriously. You were in the fucking hospital, and I find out through Snapchat?” he asked seriously. “Did you even tell anybody? What the hell happened?”

She didn’t remember posting anything about her hospital stay anywhere on social media. However, the only two people who were there with her were social media freaks. Stella was the type to tweet every single one of her brain farts, and frequently Snap where she was every second. Shawn was less active on his platforms, but he was still quite popular in the Toronto area, so he had a sizeable following. Annalise knew he took a picture of his hand holding hers while she was in the hospital at least once. Maybe it made it to his Instagram story a couple of times.

Sighing, Annalise gave Patrick the gist of her exciting adventure with her large intestine. Some underlying guilt wanted to be felt as she recalled staying and Shawn’s for so long, but she decided to spare those details.

“Looked death in the face, eh?” he said, nodding in what looked like approval. “Badass.”

She chuckled. “Guess I wasn’t ready to be yeeted off this mortal coil.”

“Ugh, you use the word yeet? How much has that guy changed you?” Patrick stuck his tongue out at her, flashing the piercing he had on the muscle.

“Hey, I’m more down with the kids than he is.”

The pair were quiet as they made it out to the courtyard. The night was chilly and cloudy, the only light coming from the lampposts on either side of the walkway. It felt different knowing Annalise was with only a friend rather than her mans, and she tried to ignore the ache in her chest and the urge to talk about him.

“Do you remember what it was like?” Patrick asked after a minute. “Being so close to death?”

“Nope,” she replied simply. “Although, when I was under, I had a really vivid dream that my… uh, Shawn cheated on me.” Way to not talk about him.

“You sure it was a dream?”

They were passing by one of the picnic tables, where Patrick pointed to. There was a group of people standing around the table, and two people sitting on top of it. One of those people was Shawn with his acoustic guitar. He was singing with the girl who was sitting next to him, the same one he was walking with at the science building. It wouldn’t have seemed weird if Patrick hadn’t said what he said. It would have been left alone if Annalise hadn’t thought about that stupid fever dream.

“Come on,” she said to Patrick as she stalked off towards the group.

“I was joking!” he said with a laugh.

Still, Annalise walked with a purpose and he followed her. She clutched the strap of her shoulder bag and kept her chin up as she made herself apart of the tiny audience. It was quite the sight, two nerds decked out in all black and heavy eyeliner amongst a group of normals watching two other normals sing a pop song. No lie, Annalise just wanted to get a look at this girl she had never seen before.

Olive skin. Black, curly hair. Very short next to her guy. Very pretty voice coming out of very pretty lips. She looked at Shawn and he looked back at her as they sang an eerily familiar song. Musically speaking, they seemed good together.

“I’ll leave you with the memory, and the aftertaste…”

The tiny audience clapped. Patrick was nodding in pleasant surprise, probably having never heard Shawn’s songs before. Annalise applauded as well, but she couldn’t help the narrowing of her eyes as she watched Shawn and this girl high five each other.

They were both comfortable with all the attention, it was easy to see. Shawn was beaming in a way that hadn’t been seen in a long time, and then he laid eyes on Annalise. He still had that smile on his face, even though it faltered a little bit. She kept her face neutral and quirked her eyebrows at him as a silent greeting.

“Should I leave you guys alone?” asked Patrick as he and Annalise watched Shawn get down from the table top.

“No,” she replied simply.

She almost regretted having him stay. He had to witness Shawn and Annalise attempt to figure out how to greet each other. A side hug would have been awkward for reasons not only having to do with the guitar strapped to his shoulder. She definitely couldn’t kiss him, because that would have started something she had been trying to distance herself from. They finally settled for a mildly uncomfortable handshake, and Shawn kept holding her hand as he spoke.

It had been almost a week since Ann moved out, and she only sent him one text in that time span. It was the black heart emoji. Better than nothing, but not better than seeing her in person.

“You haven’t answered my texts,” Shawn told her. If she was going to decide when she'll give him attention, then he wasn't going to beat around the bush when he saw her.

“I’ve been busy,” Ann replied, feebly attempting to shake her hand away.

Shawn nodded, but he wasn't thoroughly convinced. Between work and school, Ann was a hermit. Or so he thought, given that she now had this new goth dude at her side. “So, who’s your friend?”

“Who’s yours?” she quickly said back.

“I’m Patrick!” said Patrick, holding out his hand. “Annie and I go way back!”

Shawn let go of her hand to shake his. “Nice to meet you, brother. Wait… Annie?” He chuckled.

Her cheeks heated up, and she decided to move her eyes somewhere else, specifically on Shawn’s unnamed singing partner. She was chatting with some of the other people still around the table. Annalise noticed she talked with her hands a lot.

“She lets me call her that even though she hates it,” Patrick said, snapping her back into the moment. “Right, Annie?”

“Do not,” she warned. Then she looked at Shawn. “So who’s the chick you’re singing with?”

Shawn took in an almost reluctant deep breath as he turned and called the girl over. If there was anything he had yet to discover, it had to be if his girl was the jealous type.

Annalise's dark brown eyes narrowed once again while he wasn’t looking. Call it anxiety or paranoia, but she was oddly suspicious. Patrick caught the glare though, and he nudged her arm to snap her out of it.

“Ann, Patrick, this is Alessia,” Shawn said when the very short girl joined them. “She’s a first year. Alessia, this is my…” He elongated the vowel. “Annalise. And her friend Patrick.”

Okay, so… a sinking feeling in the tummy. That’s what that felt like. Couldn’t be mad, though. Annalise wasn’t so quick to use the boyfriend word these days.

“You’re Annalise!” Alessia said in pleasant surprise. She did not hesitate to hug her, arms going around her shoulders and practically pulling her down to her level. “It’s so nice to meet you! I’ve heard so much about you!”

Honestly, Annalise was just glad she didn’t call her the goth girlfriend. Or the goth anything, for that matter. She didn’t hug Patrick, though, but he didn’t seem to mind.

“So, how did you two meet?” Annalise prompted. So maybe she was a little more than curious to know how and when Shawn found the time to get another girl at his side.

“I could ask you the same thing,” Shawn replied a little too quickly.

His eyes bored into hers, throwing them into a staredown. He broke through the fake, polite smile Ann had on. Of course he broke it. He was the only one who could. However, Shawn couldn't read the expression she had on. He couldn't tell if she was upset or not, happy or not… He couldn't tell if she wanted to change her mind about this separation or not… Ten months together and Ann was still a mystery.

“Uh, Shawn and I have like, every class together,” Alessia said slowly, looking between the couple, noticing the sudden change in atmosphere. She scratched the back of her head.

“Annie and I have been in the same club for two years,” Patrick added in the same tone. He too noticed the tension.

“Oh, which club? There’s some I’ve been checking out…”

Those two kept up the conversation. Shawn’s gaze on Annalise made her throat close up. He wasn’t smiling or feigning politeness anymore. His jaw was clenched and his eyes were hard and glossed over. Inexplicable guilt began to form in her chest yet again. She knew he didn’t understand.

_______

taglist: @normalcyisoverrated-beyou @ilsolee @mendesromano @1-800-khalid-mendussy @kitykatnumber @strangerliaa @iloveshawnieboi @poppyshawn @shawnsunflower @shawnvvmendes @yourdelightfullyleft @shawmndes @havethetimeeofyourlifee @calyumthomas

[team-7-headcanons]

The best hair dryers for 2020

You can go long periods of your existence with a below average blow-dryer and be okay — though somewhat bunched up. Be that as it may, who needs to live like that? You merit a blowout without frizz, flyaways, or some other sort of absurdity a blow-dryer that is substandard will add to your valuable crown. What's more, you have the right to get that immaculate look in the solace of your own home. Be that as it may, once more, you must have the correct apparatuses to execute it, and it very well may be hard to locate the ideal fit, given everything to consider. Do you blow-dry every day? Do you utilize your blow-dryer to fix your hair, or would you say you are searching for something to dry your wavy hair rapidly? Try not to get excessively worried. We've gathered together some blow-dryers at a scope of value focuses that are high caliber and guarantee to assist you with accomplishing each one of those hair objectives.

Dyson Supersonic Hair Dryer

Dyson has sexed up the market with their supersonic hair dryer. The supersonic has been for around multi year really taking shape, cost around 50 million. They made around 600 models to get the flawlessness and tried them on in excess of 1000 miles of human hair. Thus, they have made the quickest, calmest and most hair well disposed dryer ever.

Indeed, the structure of the Supersonic is totally not the same as other hair dryers. The computerized engine in the Dyson is little enough that can sit in the handle rather than at the rear of the dryer head. Also, one bit of leeway of Dyson Supersonic Hair Dryer is that it feels increasingly adjusted when utilized. You won't get arm throb while you are drying your hair.

Utilizing Dyson Supersonic couldn't be simpler. Essentially slide the switch and you are a great idea to go. Like all other hair dryer, the speed and warmth can be changed in accordance with your inclination. You will simply need to tap the fan and temperature catches at the rear of the dryer. Every one of them got four-level showed by the blue LEDs. In the wake of styling your hair, you can squeeze button for impact of cool air that will bolt the styling.

Indeed, one thing you will adore is the speed of Dyson Supersonic. You will cherish it since it evaporates your hair into equal parts time when contrasted with the other hair dryers. It has everything what an ideal hair dryer needs. It won't harm your hair and they will be smoother and shinier. Generally speaking, this hair dryer is over the top expensive yet has everything, a great plan, being agreeable to utilize and all the most recent innovation makes it the best hair dryer in the market.

Jinri Salon Grade Professional Hair Dryer

Jinri Salon works like a professional hair dryer, and is lightweight, calm moreover. With the connection of brush it turns out to be anything but difficult to part the hairs and it guarantees to appropriate the warmth equally. It additionally has a tourmaline ionic innovation which is intended to dispose of frizz,keep hair moistness safe and shield hair from heat harm. It has capacity to keep away from heat harm with the assistance of 2 speed and 3 warmth alternatives and the cool shot catch help you to keep up your look throughout the day. 99% of the purchasers gave it full 5 stars as a result of its light weight and professional execution.

Key Features

Fixing brush

Elite

Amika The Immortal Power-life Dryer

The most engaging thing about the Amika dryer is its long, restricted barrel, which gave me more control than some other dryer I tried. I could get truly near my underlying foundations without having my hair blown around all over the place and, at last, tangled. My hair dried as straight and smooth as it did with the Bio Ionic, as well.

We deducted focuses as a result of the control settings. This dryer has two warmth settings (cool and hot) and two power settings (low and high), each constrained by two individual catches, rather than the flip switches utilized by most dryers. On the off chance that the dryer is blowing cool hair, you click the "hot/cool" catch to change to hot; a similar thought goes for the power settings. Lamentably, you can't perceive what setting they're on, as you can with the standard switches. Indeed, you'll notice by how hot the air is or how strong the air is blowing out, however I thought that it was odd that the controls weren't named to mirror this

At 106.6°F, this dryer came to among the most sultry temperatures we estimated, and I wanted that there was a medium warmth setting, as can be found on the also ultra-hot Devacurl.

Am I being excessively demanding? Possibly. In any case, the Amika likewise was not a top entertainer in our lab tests, either. It was in the base portion of contenders when we tried its quality in the ping-pong ball test.

Remington Hair Dryer with Ionic + Ceramic + Tourmaline Technology

This Remington Hair Dryer takes care of business well without burning up all available resources. In addition, it has a great deal of advantages you'd get with increasingly costly dryers like ionic, ceramic, and tourmaline technology for smoother hair and less frizz.

Regardless of its reasonable value point, this dryer is a quality choice that may leave you astonished by how well it functions. The 1,875-watt max power engine implies you're getting a brisk dry, and three diverse warmth settings and two distinctive speed settings permit you to locate the correct custom setting for your hair type. Hit the virus shot catch for cool air that secures your painstakingly made styles. You even get connections — a diffuser and a concentrator.

FHI HEAT Platform Nano Weight Pro

Getting another hair dryer won't be that much simple as much it shows up. There are huge amounts of brands offering their very own product professing to be the best. You should be cautious and think about each and very thing about a hair dryer. With regards to purchasing another hair dryer, FHI HEAT Platform Nano Weight Pro blows the challenge away. Being the quickest drying time and cherished by the clients make it a standout amongst other hair dryer.

FHI HEAT Platform Nano Weight Pro has been cherished by the customers in view of its lightweight and long additional rope. It has performed and even surpassed the other hair dryer execution double the rate, which settles on it the top decision for a hairdresser or for home use. This may come as an unexpected that FHI HEAT Platform Nano Weight Pro is the most sweltering hair dryer, however outside of the hair dryer is as yet cool when being used.

Having the most recent nano-combination innovation, FHI HEAT Platform Nano Weight Pro is the best hair dryer at adding try to please hair. You will be shocked at how compelling it is on wavy hairs. With its capacity and sight-seeing, you will have the option to fix the wavy hairs effectively. The dryers incorporate diffuser and concentrator that aides in the adaptability for a hair, regardless of whether they are short or long, wavy or straight.

Be that as it may, with regards to the agreeableness of utilization, you won't be as fulfilled. On account of the least demanding control, you won't be bothered by learning the utilization, its exceptionally easy to utilize. By and large, it's an extraordinary hair dryer that does it work viably and furthermore it's entirely reasonable to purchase.

Kristin Ess Iconic Style Professional Blow Dryer

Hair sovereign Kristin Ess (who works with Lauren Conrad and Jenna Dewan) as of late dropped a line of dazzling and reasonable hot devices. This blow-dryer has various highlights you never realized you required, as brushless engine innovation, which lets this child last an incredible multiple times longer than the standard engines. It likewise has a particle setting highlight that you can go on to understand that sparkly look or leave off for volume. It's very tranquil as well, and accompanies a spout to smooth hair just as a diffuser for the curlies out there. With everything taken into account, this present apparatus' a staple to accomplish the cool-young lady hairstyles on Ess' popular Insta.

BabylissPro Nano Titanium Dryer

The requirement for the present hair drying arrangements may be as close as you have however we are presenting to you an imaginative item that can deal with the necessities of hair drying regularly with no issue or harming your valuable hair. This item is a progressive kind from the hair dryer monster Babyliss and is called Babyliss Pro Nano Titanium Hair Dryer. This model is exorbitantly made for active ladies who would prefer not to spend a lot of their bucks and time in salons as this is lightweight, middle of the road and it makes the item remain in the group for its great settings and sky blue external. It works at 2000 watts for quick drying of hair which is more dominant than the other hair dryers accessible in the market today, its watts reaches to 80-1800 which unquestionably demonstrates its value for quick drying arrangements without the worry of harming any of them presented to warming. The Nano Titanium has consolidated 6 sorts of warmth and speed settings assortments which can be utilized at your very own decision. You ought to be in a rush and need to utilize the top warmth work however we don't prescribe this since it can harm the hair, so utilize the mid range warmth to set up the hair drying and understand the genuine intensity of this item for astonishing outcomes. Its cooler temperature is even best for sparkling and delicate hair when they become dry. Nano Titanium has a default cool shot catch while profoundly compacted hair is tossed on hair when you restrict your hair. Additionally you can dry your hair with this for a delicate and glossy look however the people with thick hair will require more warmth power in light of the thick hair which sets aside some effort for drying. Maybe you can attempt its cool shot catch work for setting up a style of your decision, so on the off chance that you need to hold your hair for a difficult day you should have a go at evaporating your hair before setting up a hair splash.

The Nano Titanium Technology has a blend of high warmth transmission alongside ionic innovation which blasts negative particles back in the hair. For smooth and gleaming outcomes enhancing negative particles co-select still charge on hair. Its ionic innovation naturally helps fixing of hair. It has a worked in ionic generator which implies it will be solid for a long time to come. This item is ideal for thick hair just as it excessively quick speed dries the hair right away in the blink of an eye.

Highlights

It accompanies an expansion of a spout for infusing careful volume to hair roots.

Its removable channel permits you to rapidly clean the residue and make certain to clean it in scarcely any weeks without fail.

It accompanies an incredible multi year guarantee which implies that it very well may be fixed or get supplant in the event that you got a glitch/breakdown.

End:

In the event that you detest hanging tight for drying of hairs in times, this item is best for you as it can dry your hair in the blink of an eye. So we suggest this inventive machine for your flawless hairs.

Conair Infiniti Pro

The brand Conair is synonymous with hair dryers, This is an exemplary at a sensible cost, yet redesigned enough to engage a customer scanning for a dryer with somewhat more force.

Be that as it may, this Conair is symbolic of the contrast between a very good quality dryer and a spending one. It was recognizably heavier, appeared to be stronger, and had a more vulnerable air stream than the challenge. Its concentrator spout is excessively wide to adequately focus the air, with side vents that muss up as of now styled hair.

This Conair offers three warmth settings and two paces, however none of them were sufficiently amazing to tame Teich's hair and the outcome was a fuzzy style. At last, Teich needed to switch hands while drying in light of the fact that her arm was exhausted, which needs to accomplish more with the parity of its structure than its 1.1-pound weight.

Jinri 1875w Professional Salon Infrared Hair Dryer

The Jinri Infrared Hair Dryer is about choices. It accompanies three connections — a diffuser, a fixing brush, and a concentrator. It works unobtrusively and has two distinctive speed settings and three warmth settings, so you can pick precisely how you need to dry your hair.

This dryer works quick, drying even the thickest hair in merely minutes. It additionally uses infrared warmth and negative particles, which leaves hair looking smoother and assists with diminishing frizz. This is a brilliant hair dryer for those with wavy hair, as the included diffuser connection keeps hair really still while drying it incredibly quick without frizzing up.

Sam Villa Professional Light Ionic Dryer

All things considered, there are an excessive number of brands of hair dryers contending with one another. Aside from every one of those, here comes Sam Villa Professional Light Ionic Dryer. This isn't some acclaimed brand yet it is enthusiastically prescribed by numerous hairdressers. The Person Sam Villa himself was a beautician and he comprehended what a hairdresser need in this profession.

Sam Villa Professional Light Ionic Dryer is an honor winning hair dryer, made in Italy. The wind current that it gives is more dominant than the various hair dryer running on 1875w engine. Running a 1750w Sam Villa makes it conceivable through the Turbo Compressor Technology. Innovation can give more air and deplete less force waste which helps in speedy drying time.

All things considered, just a brisk drying time and amazing air aren't sufficient for a hair dryer, it must be able to decrease static and frizz for the smooth and in vogue finish of the hair. This is the place the fired tourmaline ionic innovation comes in. Joined with numerous warms and speed settings and cool shot, this hair dryer can oblige diverse hair lengths and surface. Pair up all these the with two pivoting spouts and a diffuser, you have everything requirement for styling your hairs.

Aside from all these, this hair dryer is lightweight and weariness free, particularly remembered the need of the beauticians. The grasp of the hairdryer is likewise comfort free. The back channel of the hair dryer can be opened for simple cleaning. You can't overlook this best hair dryer, considering its staggering feel kept the requirement for hairdressers and highlights essential for styling.

[mezzopurrloin]

Mezzo Plays Final Fantasy X-2: Part 19

Yuna crosses the threshold. The war machine awaits.

From here on out, the location bar just reads 'Vegnagun'.

Nooj: "Both Baralai and Vegnagun belong to him now."

He noticed that Shuyin needs a body to act through. Thus, he plans to shoot Baralai, aiming to injure rather than kill, and lure Shuyin into his own body. Then, he will die.

Just the sort of plan a Deathseeker would come up with.

Nooj: "Exactly."

"Your plan is awful. Think about it. It's no different than what we did two years ago."

"We didn't have a choice then. We believed that was the only way we could save Spira. Do you know what it felt like to watch them die? Right before my eyes? It was the only thing we could do. It was the only choice we had."

"I thought I'd be able to go through it without ever doubting myself. But I... It hurt so much."

Fayth: "Forgive us."

"There were too many smiles to count. And I know that I was smiling, too. But now...when I look back..."

Jecht: "We had no choice."

"Always 'we had no choice.' Those are our magic words. We repeat them to ourselves again and again. But you know... The magic never worked! The only thing we're left with is regret."

Jecht: "Yuna... I'm sorry."

"No, I don't want this anymore."

"Nooj, I know what you say is what you mean to do."

Paine: "Light?"

Yuna: "That's Plan B. But first... Hey, Rikku."

"So we can take it apart, right?"

Nooj: "What about Shuyin?"

Yuna: "Plan B. Love."

Nooj: "The ultimate illusion."

The colossus begins its activation sequence.

Jecht: "It's just bluffing."

Auron: "This relic's getting rusty."

Braska: "Yuna, you have your friends."

Everyone moves into position.

Rikku: "Time to kick some tail!"

Vegnagun's tail opens with Noli Me Tangere, a tail swipe that hits the whole party and can easily cause a full wipe to the unprepared. Using high HP jobs like Warrior and Dark Knight is a good way to endure it. It can also fire lasers from the tip.

It's a pretty basic fight, and doesn't take long to deal with.

Further ahead, Leblanc's team is in trouble. Time for the Gullwings to lend their support.

Gee, thanks.

Paine: "Leblanc never stood a chance against this thing."

Rikku: "Well, we've got a leg up on her."

Yuna: "Save the jokes for later."

Vegnagun's leg is supported by the three colored nodes on its body. Attacking them changes their color and intent, but they're too far away to be hit with melee. Red nodes have physical immunity and fire missiles, green ones cast healing and support spells, and yellow ones cast attack spells and have magic immunity. I used an item to grant Reflect to the team, as the magic attacks were easily the biggest threat.

It's nothing that a few good casts of Ultima can't solve, anyway.

With that down, we can see how the torso team is doing.

Sounds like they could use some assistance.

Gippal fires a blast from his cannon at it.

And receives an appropriate response.

Paine: "We'll finish it."

Yuna: "It's so big!"

Rikku: "Woohoo, no more climbing!"

Paine: "Can we please focus?"

The core is accompanied by two more legs, but they're just distractions. If you attack the core with a physical hit, they'll counterattack. If you use magic, they'll drain MP. Use a special ability, and they'll do both. They can also cast status spells such as Bio, Doom, and Break.

Nuking the field is always a good strategy though.

The core has its own special that it'll use later on.

Ouch. Boy am I glad this game has an autosave function.

Let's try that again.

Got you this time.

Is that it?

Okay, that's a no then.

The Gullwings climb up the legs to reach the head.

"Come, Vegnagun. Let us purge this repulsive world."

If you lose this fight, a special scene plays.

Welp. So long, Spira.

Okay, now let's do this fight for real. The left and right redoubts need to be taken down first, then we can go for the face.

Meanwhile, they'll blast us with powerful magic attacks. I used another item to grant Shell to the party, which helped quite a bit.

And of course, we have powerful magic attacks of our own.

As its health gets low, it unleashes its final attack, Nemo Ante Morten Beatus.

Ouch. Shell helped everyone live through this one too.

Shortly after, the machine was brought down.

"Shuyin."

"And I'm grateful... grateful that you stayed with me until the end."

Lenne & Yuna: "Rest."

Shuyin walks closer to Yuna, leaving Baralai's body.

"You are not Lenne!"

Looks like we're fighting him after all. Shuyin doesn't just look like Tidus, he fights like him too. He uses the same attack animations, and his specials are based on Tidus' Overdrives, though they have slightly different names.

Unfortunately, this also includes the endgame multi-hit Overdrive I never got for him in X-1.

Apart from that, though, he doesn't really have much else.

If you have Yuna as Warrior, it becomes a bit of a mirror match, since she also uses some of Tidus' animations. He can be a bit frightening, but overall, he's pretty easy to take down.

"This moment's enough. I don't need anything else. Just knowing how you feel is enough. Shuyin, let's end this. Let's go home. That was all a thousand years ago. We've come too far to look back now. Rest, Shuyin. Rest with me."

They fade away together.

Yuna walks back through the Farplane Abyss.

"We would sail a ship, with me as its captain. In time, I became that captain. I found a new ship with new friends."

Gippal: "You know, I realize I'm like a lot of you people. We want a captain. And we want a ship to ride, but more important than that..."

Baralai: "There are some things you can't do alone. But they become easy with friends beside you."

Nooj: "This was the lesson that we learned when we launched those ships."

Baralai: "It was power... And we misused that power. We turned our friends and followers against each other."

Baralai: "Somehow we forgot. There's a much larger ship out there. One that we've been riding since we were born."

Nooj: "No one knows just where our voyage will lead us. But we do know one thing: One way or another, we will get by. We'll go on living. The Calm will continue."

Gippal: "Just one more thing:"

The crowd cheers.

Gippal: "Yeah, you all know who I'm talking about. We really hoped that she could be here today."

Gippal: "So farewell, but not goodbye."

The Celsius takes off.

"So much has happened. And I'm sure it's only the beginning. Through the smiles and tears, through the anger... and the laughter that follows. I know that I'll keep changing."

"It all began when I saw this sphere of you."

We get to listen to an orchestral version of 1000 Words as the credits roll past.

And there you have it. I know I didn't do everything, and there are plenty of events and dresspheres I missed, but I think this is still a good conclusion to Yuna's story.

Beating the game unlocks New Game Plus, allowing you to carry your items, dresspheres, abilities, and story completion to a new run. I probably won't go through with that, since it'd be pretty dull. There's also a subgame called Last Mission, which I also won't be doing because it confuses me to death.

This marks the end of Yuna's story, and of Spira's, for now at least.

[game-plague-inc-blog]

Plague Inc Evoled Review

Plague Inc. Evolved may be a game wherever you are taking over a doubtless deadly illness to extinguish humanity. the sport relies on a series of games referred to as Pandemic that became widespread during a flash game from 2008. but Plague Iraqi National Congress. Evolved took the novel plan from there and developed a rather attention-grabbing and deeper game.

 When you begin a game of Plague Iraqi National Congress. Evolved you initially need to opt for a illness sort, these vary from bacterium, viruses, all the high to nano-viruses and bio-weapons. every one has slightly totally different rules and talents. every form of illness is given a novel special ability, and a few (four out of the eleven, that I’ll decision the special types) act radically totally different.

 You then name your virus. I found a number of clever selections, my personal favorite was “Twilight Fan Fictions.” however something is used, it’s simply a reputation for the sport to use to consult with it. From there the sport really starts transferral you to the most map.

 Unsurprisingly, the most map is that the customary form of the globe. you have got six out of the seven continents (no Antarctica) and varied countries. Some countries ar obvious, like North America that is Canada, us, and Mexico. However, alternative countries ar mixed in or forgotten regarding altogether. Central Europe may be a single place, Portugal is a component of Espana and continent that is fifty four countries within the world is regarding ten within the game. These ar clearly selections to feature to the gameplay (imagine Risk with all 195 countries), however it’s a shame that such a large amount of countries ar forgotten here.

 However, every country’s borders ar thus sharp that there’s a transparent border wherever the countries ar. It’s odd to examine the us fully overrun by a illness next to Canada that features a few spots on that. the rationale is that the countries ar delineated on the map however the placement of “sick people” isn't on a grid thus spreading of the illness is additional supported hidden arithmetic instead of a logical progression. The sharpness of the borders feels rather awkward now and then, particularly once a country’s borders ar open and no infected individuals appear to be going into fully healthy countries.

 Once the player reaches the most map, they're allowed to pick a beginning country, and also the illness starts to unfold there. The gameplay invariably starts slowly, typically taking a number of days to urge going, tho' the sport permits 3 speeds for progression, I found myself selecting the quickest speed and pausing after I wished to try to to one thing, as there’s a great deal of time period in between events that need action.

 One piece the sport will modification from the initial construct is whereas watching for the infection to unfold, bubbles can seem which will be popped for deoxyribonucleic acid points. These occur once a replacement country is appropriated or once enough time has passed, the player is given one thing to try to to whereas they wait and honestly, it unbroken Pine Tree State engaged within the game rather than pondering alternative games I might be enjoying.

 These deoxyribonucleic acid points additionally are available in overtime because the world gets infected (or killed) and that they ar a part of the core of the sport. There’s not Associate in Nursing infinite range of them, and there ar very little items which will increase the amount that are available in, however the sport isn’t terribly clear the way to boost them. It looks the additional severe a illness is that the additional points you may gain.

 DNA points is used for one in all 3 things. you'll be able to pay them on transmission enhancements, that makes the illness unfold higher, faster, or in several ways that. you'll be able to use them to urge new symptoms for your illness, which might facilitate unfold however will increase the severity of the illness, that causes it to urge noticed . Finally, you'll be able to additionally purchase resistances, that is crucial as a result of the cold or medicine in made countries can stop the illness.

 The upgrades ar the key to the sport, however sadly the upgrades are one in all the constraints of the sport. A bacterium and {a virus|an epidemic|a plague|an outbreak|an endemic|a scourge|a pandemic|a deadly illness|a virulent disease|a pestilence} ar differing kinds of disease. rather than being distinctive dieseases, they need a similar upgrades. a similar ways that of spreading, and also the same resistance. they are doing have one distinctive ability, the bacterium will gain a far better resistance and also the virus will change quicker, however, this doesn’t transform the sport. virtually each virus has a similar sorts of transmissions, same symptoms and same resistances with one special ability. i discussed four special sorts of illness on top of, and 2 of the four operate in similar ways that with a special list of symptoms, and 2 of the four ar distinctive experiences that I’ll bit on later.

There are genes you'll be able to opt for once you discovered your illness. These genes ar unfastened by beating the most game multiple times. they permit you to realize bonuses, like additional deoxyribonucleic acid once sound specific bubbles, or ability to unfold higher in wet countries, or additional ship based mostly transmissions. {you will|you'll|you'll be able to} grind these genes out otherwise you can collect them as you play the sport.

 There’s a great deal of those genes, and that i was solely able to collect thirty % of them in fifteen hours of gameplay, however overall they appear to alter the sport a touch.

 That is one in all the large problems I even have with the sport. Genes appear to alter the sport a touch however I don’t acumen abundant as expected. the very fact is that whereas the upgrades and genes tend to be a similar, there are not any stats. I’m unable to understand specifically what proportion of a gain the cold resistance or the bacteria’s special resistance can provide. the sport solely provides alittle bar chart of Infectiousness, Severity, and morbidity every of those ar valuable stats, however there ar such a large amount of alternative stats that ar hinted at. “Difficulty to cure”, “Resistances”, even “Infectiousness level to the precise form of countries” ar all vital stats and also the game doesn’t provides a stat screen or any info on what proportion more durable it'll be to cure a illness, for example.

 Maybe this was done to avoid the concept of “Min-Maxing” the sport, however this is often a technique game. Players ought to apprehend specifically however each bit can have an effect on the top result. If they wished to avoid metagaming, they selected the incorrect genre, in my opinion, to try to to that in.

 The other chance is that the developers were afraid the numbers would mean nothing that may be a valid concern. Associate in Nursing eight in cold resistance is just getting to confuse individuals, but obtaining Associate in Nursing eight in cold resistance versus a nine in cold resistance is a very important distinction and it might facilitate to differentiate items, still as get a far better understanding what every alternative will.

 I’m unsure why the stats aren’t clearly expressed for the kind of individuals WHO would use them, however it’s one thing that bothers Pine Tree State. It can also build the sport more durable to win as you don’t apprehend what you’re shopping for or the way to quantify 2 selections. The community appear to suppose creating the illness “hard to cure” isn’t an honest alternative, however it’s a guess, not a measurement of that upgrade.

 Ultimately there ar extremely 2 sorts of winning the sport. There’s the hiding form of winning, wherever the illness stays hidden till it infects everybody then at that time becomes super devastating typically killing the globe before the cure will extremely be started. there's additionally a quicker burn, wherever the illness can gain symptoms to extend its infectiousness however avoids major analysis and outpaces the cure.

 There’s another issue here, and it’s that the tutorial teaches you the second path. However, the primary illness you get extremely has to use a hiding vogue. the sport doesn’t appear to show you hiding, and a replacement player WHO doesn’t search something can doubtless fail variety of times till he’s forced to seem it up.

 The hiding plan is absolutely attention-grabbing for the diseases, however the very fact that the sport doesn’t provide the player the tools to essentially perceive what’s happening, and offers the player such a tough form of illness 1st makes it a frustrating learning method.

 Once the player has learned these tools the sport is best, however it’s a painful method that the sport ought to have tried to avoid, or a minimum of hinted at the way to properly play the sport, instead of dropping the player within the deep finish and creating the belief that he’ll swim.

 However learning hiding on the primary illness, the player is forced to be told the incorrect vogue. hiding is simpler to win for a few diseases, however it’s slow and dangerous, particularly if you overspend in transmission. hiding loses effectiveness as you go up the difficulties, each in getting to additional advanced sorts and actual issue levels within the game. therefore the lessons that the player should learn ultimately additionally should be unlearned shortly subsequently.

 The game itself is additionally annoyingly tough. The goal is to eradicate all the humans. the difficulty is there ar a number of moves that the humans will use to win. the primary is there’s a cure being engineered and if it’s completed, the sport is over. this is often Associate in Nursing annoying loss and also the solely actual thanks to lose, the others solely build it not possible to win till the cure is finished. The minute the cure reaches 100%, it starts being distributed, and you have got a number of moments left within the game. the difficulty is that the distribution is quick and also the person to urge cured has created you lose the sport as a result of if somehow the cure doesn’t get distributed on the far side him, one living person causes you to unable to kill all the humans on the world.

 Another issue is that you simply additionally won't be able to reach Kalaallit Nunaat, or New island, if they closed down the port. If this happens you’re out of luck. There’s a renowned acculturation regarding the initial game Pandemic and Madagascar closing down the ports. In Plague Iraqi National Congress. Evolved, it’s Kalaallit Nunaat. The acculturation isn’t as guaranteed (as it’s easier to hiding round the globe) but you continue to ar forced to use the boats to succeed in Kalaallit Nunaat, and make sure you reach there before you get too dangerous, otherwise you have got lost.

 You also may break a population. If you don’t have enough infected individuals otherwise you kill them too quick, or if the country discovered them, they could be killed before they infect enough people, and once more you’ve lost. the sport doesn’t finish directly however unless you're enjoying a state of affairs which will counter that (There could be only 1 or 2 and they’re special cases) the sport is over at that time, you only need to play it bent are aware of it unless you’ve seen it before.

 Now, I’ve lost a number of games wherever I killed over fifty % of the population. I lost one wherever I killed ninety nine % of the globe. The remaining individuals wouldn’t be able to repair the harm I did, nevertheless I got a “Loss”.

 The additional I vie, the additional i spotted that there extremely ought to be a wage scale of ending. something over 65-75 % death ought to be a “win’ whereas the ninety nine and 100% wins might be the next worth (an A versus a D). you'll even limit the unlocking of stuff to 100% if you need to, however winning as a result of you’ve done wonderful against the humans would are welcome.

 Instead, you have got a primary or worst state of affairs. If you kill everybody, you win, congratulations. If you permit even one person alive, you didn’t and you suck. It’s a shame as a result of i favor the construct of the kill everybody plan, I simply hate being told I didn’t kill everybody. that hate isn’t as a result of I unloved losing, I’ve vie enough Dark Souls and alternative games to understand I’m lacking some talent.

 The issue with Plague Iraqi National Congress. Evolved is that i might fail and it doesn’t invariably want my fault. I’m certain it's my fault however extremely it’s a foul feeling of failure while not a sense of what went wrong.

[pixelgrotto]

The horrific Resident Evil playthrough, part six

Resident Evil Zero starts with a bang and a wonderfully tight example of level design, as new STARS member and series cutie pie Rebecca Chambers investigates the Ecliptic Express, an Umbrella-operated train that’s become the testing ground for an early version of the zombie virus. On the train, she meets an escaped convict named Billy Coen, and the two of them have to blast their way through tight cars filled with bio-weapons and a great number of leeches, which play an important role in this game, before finding a way to stop their Orient Express outta hell.

I adored RE Zero’s Ecliptic Express, partly because I have a thing for old locomotives and also because it reminded me of 1997 adventure game The Last Express, but with zombies. The environment also felt wonderfully fresh, since aside from the ruined Raccoon City briefly featured in RE 2 and more prominently in RE 3, the majority of the series has, thus far, been content to fall into a fairly standard cycle of settings - mansions, ruined industrial complexes and underground laboratories. What better way to inject some variety into this mix than with a Gothic train, perhaps the perfect environment for a survival horror game thanks to its many rooms, narrow hallways and plentiful hiding spots for the walking dead? Unfortunately, the Ecliptic Express is more or less the highlight of RE Zero’s environments, and once Rebecca and Billy crash the train and end up in an old Umbrella training facility, the game once again falls back into the trope settings that Capcom was content to recycle. This was a disappointment, but RE Zero injects some unusual, experimental shifts into the gameplay experience that make up for packing its most atmospheric surprises into the first hour, though not all of them are entirely successful. Chief among these is the partner zapping system, which has players controlling two characters at the same time and occasionally separating them to solve puzzles, like when Rebecca has to stand on an elevator to reach a higher area and Billy has to work the controls. It’s good stuff, since if one thing has become clear to me since beginning this RE journey, it’s that the series has always harbored fantasies of being a partner affair but never was quite able to figure out how to do it. Previous games would only feature very brief sections where another character accompanied you, and the rest of the time, they would keep making ridiculous excuses for why they needed to split up, kinda like members of the Scooby-Doo gang. With Becca & Billy, finally this nonsense has been done away with, and while you now have twice the amount of inventory management to wrangle with, it’s great to finally explore these secluded, dangerous environs with some backup. The fact that Becca & Billy are actually good characters with chemistry helps, and while it’s understated, the story gradually forces them to trust each other more and more. It all stays mutually respectful and there’s no forced romance angle (even though I totally ship these two), but when Billy gets into a bit of a tight spot near the end of the game and Rebecca desperately shouts out his name in panic, you can sense how much she’s bonded with him through their shared night of terror.

I mentioned inventory management, and this leads me to RE Zero’s other big surprise - the magical connected item boxes that have been a series save point trademark are completely AWOL in Zero, and players can actually drop their stuff anywhere, a first in the franchise. Apparently, the devs implemented this to take advantage of the nonexistent load times of the cartridge-based Nintendo 64, which was supposed to be the original platform for this game. (Prototype footage of the N64 version exists and looks impressive, though the ROM’s never been leaked, unfortunately.) I’ve also read that they did it to bump up the difficulty level and intentionally go back to the essence of Sweet Home, the grandpappy of the series.

I thought Sweet Home was a fantastic hidden gem, but the limited inventory space and necessity to drop your items was actually my least favorite part of the gameplay, since it led to lots of housekeeping and backtracking where you’d realize you needed a particular tool but had left it on the ground ten screens away. And this problem exists in RE Zero as well, which is probably one of the lead criticisms that the game faces on the internet. In my opinion, Zero’s backtracking is nowhere near as bad as in Code Veronica, but there were definitely large stretches of the game where I was simply picking up all my crap and moving things to save point rooms, which I basically converted into makeshift item storage halls. There are also a lot of items in the game, like the hookshot, which take up two slots in Becca & Billy’s precious inventory space and aren’t used for a long time only for the game to suddenly drop a “hey you need this to progress” moment, which is liable to piss folks off. I can understand the devs wanting to make things harder, but there’s a fine line between challenge and annoyance, and Zero’s inventory wrangling occasionally enters the realm of the latter. It would’ve been best if the team had given players the ability to drop their stuff and included the traditional item boxes, but unfortunately, it seems like they were operating under the mentality of “we’ll give you ONE freedom but take ANOTHER away, muahaha!”

In the end, I was able to forgive most of the item problems thanks to the fact that I liked Rebecca and Billy so much, and I had more fun with RE Zero than most of the fanbase, which tends to view it unfavorably. If I were to rank all the classic Resident Evils, I’d actually put Zero right under REmake, RE 2 and RE 1, and in my eyes, it’s better than RE 3 and Code Veronica, which end up on the bottom of my list for different reasons. (RE 3 is competent fun but kinda by-the-numbers, and Code Veronica remains the only Resident Evil game which really felt like a slog the more I played of it.) 

Why then does Zero end up getting so many apathetic reactions? Well, it’s probably because aside from the inventory management problems, this game feels a little unnecessary, which is an issue that most prequels suffer from. Zero was advertised as revealing the details behind the tragic mission of the Bravo STARS, the team that you learn was slowly massacred over the course of Resident Evil 1. Unfortunately, aside from Rebecca and a few token cameos, the Bravo guys are barely in the game at all, and most of the plot revolves around the background of Umbrella and a case of backstabbing and industrial espionage where one of the original founders, James Marcus, was killed by his colleagues. Marcus, who created the zombie virus via experiments with leech DNA, was resurrected by the very leeches he experimented with, and now he’s out for revenge.

All of this is vaguely interesting, but if I’d been a hardcore RE fan back in the day and was promised a prequel that revealed the fates of the Bravo STARS only to be given a side story about a dude and his leeches, I’d probably go WTF. Capcom dropped the ball on their storytelling by providing something that nobody was really asking for, in other words, and I’ve found out through my meanderings on the Resident Evil Wiki that The Umbrella Chronicles, a spinoff game for the Wii, actually delves deeper into the deaths of Bravo team. That’s the sort of stuff Zero should’ve focused on in order to feel more needed in the grand scope of Resident Evil. Another option might have been to ax the prequel concept entirely, which leads me to another thought that’s only appropriate to bring up now that I’ve finished all of the “old school” Resident Evil games.

If it had been up to me, I probably would have plotted the course of the series differently after RE 2, which contains an interesting nugget of information hinting at an Umbrella Europe base that was never expanded upon to its full potential. The game seems to indicate that Jill, Chris and Barry are going to Europe to investigate and shut down this facility, and just about EVERY strategy guide, article and bit of speculative message board posting I can find from around that time was obsessed with this concept. It seems like everyone thought that Resident Evil 3 was going to be a rollicking European adventure…and it wasn’t, it was instead a game that took place at the same time as RE 2 and explained how Jill escaped Racoon City. Code Veronica never really expounded upon this tidbit of lore either - we get a very brief intro with Claire Redfield investigating an Umbrella headquarters in Paris, but then suddenly she’s captured and the vast majority of that game takes place on an island near South America.  I can’t help but feel like a massive opportunity was missed here, and if I’d been in charge of Capcom’s scenario division for these games in the late 90s, I would’ve changed the plot of Code Veronica and basically made that one Resident Evil 3 (which it was originally going to be if Capcom hadn’t wanted to keep the “main” RE games on a Sony console). I would’ve made it an adventure with Jill, Chris and Barry in Europe, and near the end I would’ve brought Claire in to join them and fight alongside her brother. Then, I would’ve made a spinoff game simply titled “Resident Evil: Nemesis” or something of the sort, and taken the general “escape Racoon City” plot of RE 3…but had it star Rebecca Chambers.  See how nicely that would’ve worked? Fans would’ve gotten their detailed peek at Umbrella Europe and the return of the classic combo of Jill + Chris + Barry. The weird Ashford siblings and Code Veronica doofus Steve could’ve still been incorporated into the story. Meanwhile, Rebecca could’ve starred in a game that felt necessary, since the beginning scenes of destroyed Racoon City were some of the best bits of RE 2, and there’s no reason why she couldn’t have met escaped convict Billy Coen while escaping the city. They could’ve worked together to flee from Nemesis, and I guess the mostly forgettable mercenaries of RE 3 could’ve made an appearance as well. 

Sadly, I don’t work at Capcom, and they planned these games totally differently. We finally would go to Europe proper with Leon Kennedy in the next RE game, but that one would mark a shift in both storytelling and atmosphere, as Resident Evil quickly transitioned away from its horror roots…and into the realm of fast-paced shoot ‘em up action.

Resident Evil 4 is next, and the playthrough continues! 

All screenshots taken by me. For more, check out this Twitter thread showing my step-by-step progress through the game.

[forumsblog858]

Bootmgr Is Missing Xp Usb Installation Program

Bootmgr Is Missing Xp Usb Installation Programming

Bootmgr Missing Windows 7

Bootmgr Is Missing Xp Usb

Bootmgr Is Missing Xp Usb Installation Program For Windows 10

Summary :

Have you encountered the situation when a black screen pops up and says 'BOOTMGR is Missing. Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart' while you are booting your Windows 10/8/7/XP computer? Don’t worry and take it easy! This post will walk you through 11 useful solutions to fix the issue of Boot Manager missing.

Even something as vital to the core operating system such as Bootmgr can be fixed, as long as you have a Windows System installation media (a USB, CD or DVD with the disk image available for booting). The boot error “BOOTMGR is Missing” in Windows The BOOTMGR error can be caused by many things, including boot sector viruses, failed Windows installs or updates or crashed hard disks. A very common reason for your PC to fail loading and displaying this error is when it tries to boot from a hard or flash drive that is non-bootable. Restart Your Desktop or Laptop. Once Windows prompts you “BOOTMGR is missing, please try to. Xmas company is gone. Went to mini xp on Hirens cd. HDD checked okay. Decided to make copy of recovery dsk 1 since that is where the problems began. Appears Acer sent me a bad dsk. Install coplete!!!! Cross my fingers Ironfly you are the man. Re: Windows XP - Bootmgr is missing. I have actually solved this problem. Here is what i used in case anyone else needs it: Install Windows XP using USB Flash Disk/ Flash Drive - Step by Step Guide It worked great. Thanks for the help anyway.

Quick Navigation :

What Is BOOTMGR

BOOTMGR is short for Windows Boot Manager which refers to a small piece of software that is loaded from the volume boot code. Usually, the BOOTMGR file is read-only and is locating in the boot directory of the partition which is set as 'active'.

On most PCs, the partition is labeled as system reserved without a drive letter. If there is no system reserved partition, BOOTMGR probably locates in your primary partition C. BOOTMGR can read boot configuration data and display the operating system selection menu.

However, sometimes BOOTMGR may be missing or lost due to reasons including incorrect bootable disk, damaged MBR, outdated BIOS, loose or damaged hard disk interface cables, etc.

BOOTMGR Error Messages

This issue usually appears shortly after the computer is turned on, immediately after the Power On Self Test (POST for short) is complete.

When the BOOTMGR error message occurs, the Windows has initially started to load. And you can see the message 'BOOTMGR is missing. Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart', as shown below:

In addition, you may receive different messages like 'BOOTMGR is missing. Press any key to restart' or 'CDBOOT: Couldn't find BOOTMGR'.

Tip: BOOTMGR issue only applies to Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 10 and Windows Vista. In Windows XP, missing NTLDR issue is common. Thus, if you encounter NTLDR missing error, please refer to this post - 10 Solutions to Fix NTLDR Is Missing in Windows 10/8/7.

11 Solutions to Missing BOOTMGR

Restart your PC

Remove all removable media

Change boot order in BIOS

Repair Master Boot Record

Mark partition active

Test hard drive

Run Windows Startup Repair

Reseat all internal data nad power cables

Update BIOS

Clean Install

Replace the hard drive

How to Fix BOOTMGR Is Missing Windows 7/8/10

When the issue “Windows couldn’t find BOOTMGR or missing BOOTMGR” occurs, you would try to search for solutions on the internet. Here we have summarized eleven solutions for you and hopefully, you can solve your problem on your Windows 7/8/10 computer.

Here is a related video for you:

Bootmgr Is Missing Xp Usb Installation Programming

Solution 1: Restart Your Desktop or Laptop

Once Windows prompts you “BOOTMGR is missing, please try to restart your PC by pressing Ctrl+Alt+Del keys or any key”, follow what the error message suggests first because maybe the BOOTMGR error is just a fluke.

However, sometimes a reboot can’t solve the BOOTMGR problem. Therefore, please try the following ways if rebooting did not work.

Solution 2: Remove All Removable Media

Since BOOTMGR error can be caused by booting your computer from a non-bootable hard drive, you should check if your PC is configured to boot from a USB flash drive, a floppy disk, or other non-bootable disks.

If this is the problem, please remove the device and make sure your BIOS doesn’t load from any of them. Otherwise, missing BOOTMGR issue will happen again.

Solution 3: Change Boot Order in BIOS

After unplugging a non-bootable disk, perhaps Boot Manager not found error will still appear. In this case, you need to consider checking the boot sequence in BIOS.

Step 1: Restart your computer.

Step 2: Then press a specific key to go to the main interface of BIOS.

Note: The key is different depending on different computers and different Windows operating systems. It can be F2,F8, F10,F12, Esc or Del, etc.

Step 3: Then under the Boot tab, modify the boot order to set the hard drive as the first boot device.

After restarting PC, if the error “Boot Manager is missing” still happens, try to look for the next way.

Solution 4: Repair Master Boot Record

It is most likely that the message “BOOTMGR is missing” happens due to damaged Master Boot Record (MBR). In this case, it is necessary to repair MBR. You might be wondering about how you can repair MBR to fix BOOTMGR is missing with USB drive effectively; especially when the operating system is unbootable.

Don’t worry, we will introduce you a piece of professional partition and disk management software – MiniTool Partition Wizard. This tool has multiple editions including Free, Pro, Pro Ultimate, Server and more which are designed for users with different needs.

Professional Edition and the advanced editions all have a feature called Bootable Media, which is available when there is no OS or OS fails to boot.

If you fail to boot your Windows 7/8/10 OS due to the error “BOOTMGR is missing”, you can try this function. Unfortunately, the Free Edition doesn’t support this feature.

Tip: Before you do, please purchase MiniTool Partition Wizard Professional Edition to build a bootable USB flash drive or CD/DVD disc, then connect this device to your PC and boot from this device by changing the boot order in BIOS. Then start to fix BOOTMGR missing issue with a USB drive or DVD/CD disc by rebuilding MBR.

Step 1: A few seconds later, you will see the MiniTool PE Loader interface. Please launch MiniTool Partition Wizard.

Step 2: In the MiniTool Partition Wizard main interface, right-click the target disk and choose the Rebuild MBR feature.

Step 3: Click Apply to perform MBR restoration. After finishing this operation, please exit the program and restart your computer again. The “BOOTMGR is missing press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart” error might be solved by this way.

In addition to performing MBR recovery, some of you choose to use the bootrec tool. Firstly, you need to prepare a Windows installation disc and connect it to your PC. Next, try to repair the issue “BOOTMGR is missing” in Windows 7 with Command Prompt.

Please launch CMD according to the wizard. On Windows 7/8/10, type the following commands in turn:

bootrec /fixmbr

bootrec /fixboot

bootrec /rebuildbcd

Tip: For Windows 8/10, you need to type bootrec /scanos before rebuilding BCD.

To fix BOOTMGR using CMD seems to be a bit complicated. Therefore, here we suggest using MiniTool Partition Wizard since it is a more convenient solution.

Solution 5: Mark Partition Active

If you have marked a wrong partition active, the computer will fail to start up and show the BOOTMGR error message because the active partition probably doesn’t contain boot files. In PC there is only one active partition and system partition or boot partition must be primary and active.

In this case, you must mark the partition within boot files active to ensure the computer runs properly. In order to solve the issue, please reset your system partition active.

How to mark the partition active to fix “BOOTMGR is missing” on Windows 7/8/10? You can use MiniTool Partition Wizard Professional Edition as well and the operation is also very simple. Remember to boot your computer from the bootable disc or USB drive to enter the main interface of MiniTool Partition Wizard first.

Step 1: Select the wrong active partition. You could see there are many partition functions in the left pane and please select Set Inactive.

Step 2: Select the target partition, click the Set Active function from Partition Management menu.

Step 3: At last, you will go back to the main interface of MiniTool Partition Wizard again and click the Apply button to make these changes effective.

Solution 6: Test Hard Drive

Another reason that may cause BOOTMGR files missing is that there are some bad sectors. What you need to do is to check the disk surface.

MiniTool Partition Wizard provides a feature to do this with its Surface Test on Windows 7/8/10. If bad sectors exist, this tool will mark them red. On the contrary, healthy sectors will be marked green.

Related article:What to Do If I Find Bad Sectors on Hard Drive in Windows 10/8/7?

Once bad blocks are found, you can use the chkdsk tool to shield them. If there are many bad blocks, in order to avoid data loss, please back up the significant data on the target disk.

Fortunately, MiniTool Partition Wizard has those two functions: copy partition and copy disk. Here we strongly suggest cloning the entire disk data to an appropriate hard drive.

Tip: 1. The destination hard drive should be larger than the used disk space of the original disk. 2. Make sure there is no important data on the destination disk, otherwise, all data will be destroyed during the copy process.

Are you experiencing the same issue? Now try MiniTool Partition Wizard Professional Edition to create a bootable disc or USB drive to boot your computer and then fix the issue of missing BOOTMGR on Windows 7/8/10.

If there are no logical bad sectors detected on your hard drive, you can skip the backup operation and try the next solution.

Solution 7: Perform Windows Startup Repair

In addition, you can perform a Windows startup repair. This way can replace any missing or corrupted files, including BOOTMGR. You may be wondering that if there is no CD disc, can BOOTMGR is missing Windows 7 fix without CD be done? In other words, how to fix BOOTMGR is missing in Windows 7 without CD?

Create a bootable USB from ISO and then boot the PC from the USB drive to enter the Windows Recovery Environment. On Windows 7, choose Startup Repair under the System Recovery Options window to continue.

On Windows 8/10, go Troubleshoot → Advanced options → Automatic Repair(Windows 8) or Startup Repair(Windows 10).

Solution 8: Reseat All Internal Data and Power Cables

The above content mentioned the “BOOTMGR is missing press Ctrl+Alt+Delete to restart” error could be caused by loose, unplugged or malfunctioning power cables. Please try to replace the old cable with a new IDE one to check whether your cable works or not.

Solution 9: Update the Motherboard BIOS

If the BIOS on your motherboard is outdated, sometimes you will get a BOOTMGR error message. Thus, you should ensure the BIOS is upgraded to the latest version. If it is not, try to update it first since the BIOS must be available on your computer. If you don’t know how to update it, you could find the way from the article How to Update Your BIOS.

Solution 10: Perform a Clean Windows Installation

If all the solutions above did not work when trying to solve the Boot Manager missing issue, it is a good way to perform a Windows installation to repair this error. This way, it will completely remove Windows from your PC. However, all data will be deleted so you’d better back up important files before re-installing OS.

At first, follow solution 6 which shows you how to clone disk or partition using MiniTool Partition Wizard. Then you can start to install a new operating system. There is another professional backup software: MiniTool ShadowMaker that you can use it for Windows 10/8/7. It’s very easy to back up data without booting OS with the help of this software.

Solution 11: Replace the Hard Drive

If you still receive a BOOTMGR message, you should consider that the hard drive has a physical issue. The only solution for this situation is to replace the died or damaged hard disk with a new one and re-install Windows after that.

Bottom Line

Here you have come to the end of this post. After learning so much information about BOOTMGR, we think you now know what “BOOTMGR is missing” error is and understand several solutions to solve the BOOTMGR error. Now, it is time for you to solve this problem in order to fix your computer and make it runs normally.

If you have any suggestions to fix BOOTMGR on Windows 7/8/10, please don't hesitate to tell us by leaving a comment below or sending an email to (email protected). Thank you!

Bootmgr Missing Windows 7

BOOTMGR Is Missing FAQ

Insert your Windows install CD. Restart your computer and boot from the CD. Click Repair your computer after selecting your language, time and keyboard method. Then choose Startup Repair under the System Recovery Options window to continue. After the Startup Repair is done, restart and check if the error “Bootmgr is missing” is fixed.

Bootmgr Is Missing Xp Usb

You can run Startup Repair to fix Bootmgr is missing in Windows 10. Create a bootable USB drive with Windows 10 Media Creation Tool. Boot from the USB drive. Click on Repair your computer after selecting language preferences. Go to Troubleshoot > Advanced options > Startup Repair. After the repair process completed, follow the prompts to restart Windows 10.

How do I fix Bootmgr is missing in Windows 7 without CD?

To fix BOOTMGR is missing in Windows 7 without CD, you can create a bootable USB from ISO and then boot the PC from the USB drive to enter the Windows Recovery Environment. Click the Repair your computer option after selecting your language, time and keyboard method. Then on Windows 7, choose Startup Repair under the System Recovery Options window to continue.

Bootmgr Is Missing Xp Usb Installation Program For Windows 10

BOOTMGR, the abbreviation of Windows Boot Manager, is a small piece of software that is loaded from the volume boot record. It executes winload.exe (Windows boot loader) to load important device drivers and core parts of Windows operating system. BOOTMGR helps your Windows 10, Windows 8, Windows 7, or Windows Vista operating system start. When BOOTMGR is missing, the operating system will not load, so you are unable to boot into Windows.

[gracelessnick]

DNA

"Now I don't have, any first degree; But I know, what she does to me." / My take on what was going through Nick's head during 301 A Budding Romance, because I realized…we don't know if he was always planning on asking Courtney out.

Romance/Angst | 2,803 words | Rated T

[ FanFiction | AO3 | Wattpad ]

When Nick decides to run and catch up with Grace and Courtney, it’s because he sees them laughing.

               Initially, on the walk from school, he figured he’d let them have some girl time—if Grace was even with Courtney, he thought. She wasn’t by his locker waiting for him or just outside the front doors, so he assumed she had found her other friend and took off. It bothered him only a little bit, something he didn’t let himself dwell too much on. It wasn’t as if Grace could only talk to him, but he pretty much only talked to her; which wasn’t a problem until Courtney started hanging around. And that’s not even fair, because Courtney’s kind and funny and fits right in with them, but Nick has really grown to enjoy the one-on-one dynamic with Grace.

               He ends up quite a ways behind the two girls, alternating between staring at the sidewalk or at Grace’s shoes. (Or Grace . . . no, it’s definitely her shoes.) His mind is flipping back and forth from wanting to say ‘screw it’ and walk with them anyway, and about how lost he is when it comes to his bio homework. Or bio in general.

               His friends’ laughter floats into his eardrums and for a split second, he wonders if they’re talking about him. How they feel about him. It’s a ridiculous notion, one that he knows is completely false, but his heart still thumps at the thought and his feet still speed up to a jog until he’s beside them.

               When he asks where they’re going, it’s mostly because the answer is probably ‘home’ and then he’ll have an excuse to stay right where he is, right by Grace’s side. And Courtney splitting off immediately after to head to her own home is just the icing on the cake.

               Nick watches Courtney walk across the street for an appropriate amount of time before turning back to Grace. “So. What’d you guys do all day?” His mind wanders to his locker, Graceless. And why didn’t you wait for me?

               Okay, that’s stupid. She doesn’t have to wait for him.

               (But he’ll wait for her.)

               She sighs and begins a shortened summary. “School. Then walking home from school.” Grace keeps speaking, but Nick barely has enough control to know when to tear his eyes away from her, and his ears tune out a bit to what she’s actually saying. Just listening to her voice is enough for him.

               He hears when she brings up Courtney, and he thanks the chance to slip in inviting him next time. Her “of course” puts him at ease. She’ll always have time for him. But he knows that he missed her today, and it sets him right back on edge. Why did he miss her? Six hours apart and he has the makings of separation anxiety?

               The textbooks in his backpack remind him of his other thought before he crashed the Girls’ Day. “Oh, hey, I got a biology test coming up; do you think you can help me study for it?”

               Her eyes widen and she stops walking completely. “Wait.” Grace turns to him and puts a hand on his shoulder before pressing the back of her hand against his forehead. “Are you feeling okay?”

               Nick vaguely realizes that his own hand is rising up to hold her side but then she touches his neck and his mind almost goes blank with buzzing noises. His hand keeps rising until it finds her arm, almost subconsciously. He doesn’t even know what she’s saying at this point. Both hands are on his shoulders now, and he’s looking around, just to make sure the world isn’t spinning. Everything looks dull in comparison to her.

               What’s that about studying?

               Oh. Right.

               “Yes, I actually decided I wanna know stuff, alright?” His laughter continually escapes him and she’s still touching him and oh God he doesn’t want her to let go but if she doesn’t he might lose a few brain cells.

               She removes her hands to his simultaneous relief and disappointment and begins spouting off when and where to meet her. Taken out of context, it almost sounds like she’s planning a date.

               It’s not a date. Shut up.

//

It’s not a date.

               There are textbooks, and Teacher Grace, and a whole lot of studying—which he expected, because it’s not a date—but there’s still a part of him that had hoped for something else.

               It goes about as well as they anticipated, what with him knowing nothing and her knowing everything (and also because this is his second year in bio and she passed it with flying colors two years ago). Only about two (times eight) thoughts of dates and Grace and Grace on dates enters his mind, most of which he succeeds in turning away rather quickly. Sure, she looks absolutely beautiful in the pink jacket she’s wearing, and whenever she laughs he’s positive an angel gains its wings, and the flowers on the table would look better in her hair, but he’s not thinking about that.

               (He’s definitely thinking about that.)

               He thinks he’s had the usual lack of focus thus far throughout their da—study session, and can only hope she doesn’t (correctly) assume it’s because of her. He genuinely can’t stop looking at her and it’s fucking with his mind a great deal, but she’s still on about studying so as soon as she gets to the word ‘eukaryotic,’ he’s serious and admits (in a less serious way) that he doesn’t know what that is.

               “There’s no way that’s a real word, you’re making that up.”

               “No, no. It is right here, in the book.”

               “Well lemme see,” he reasons, leaning a few inches closer to the book, and her, subsequently.

               “No peeking!” Grace’s face twists into faux-anger and he works to make his smile gradually appear instead of instantaneously like a love drunk fool, watching her tug the book away from him.

               “Come on, let me see that,” he says, one hand following after the bio text she lifts up.

               “No, no, no, you are supposed to know this,” she teases, holding it just out of his reach and smiling, her amusement noticeable.

               “I’d know it if you give me the book, Grace!”

               And he makes a mistake.

               Or perhaps the mistake is a few seconds later. When his chair first moves and his arm stretches around behind her, she’s giggling and he files it away as his favorite sound ever. The book is almost in his grasp but her laughter stops and she’s looking at him and he stares for maybe a second too long because she says, “No,” and his arm starts to retreat. There’s still a playful lilt in her voice, but he knows something has shifted, and he knows it’s his fault.

               Sometimes he catches himself wondering if she . . . feels the same things he does. It didn’t use to be all the time; in fact, it was kind of rare. He found her optimism and knowledge (both natural and not-so-natural) a tad irritating. But somewhere along the line it changed to endearing and admirable and adorable and then how he felt was an around-the-clock type of thing and not just every once in awhile and it’s times like these, well. It’s times like these that he understands completely why he doesn’t want other girls’ attention, why it’s not a problem he doesn’t have a girlfriend or doesn’t go on dates because who needs dates when you have this and—

               He moves away.

               “Fine. I give up.”

               And he thinks maybe he should, maybe his words ought to have another meaning when she switches the subject back into biology. But “It’s ‘cause I got the best teacher in town” tumbles out of his mouth before he can catch it and she has such a dismissive reaction to the overly-sweet sentence but he knows her, he knows she’s pleased and flattered and—

               Would it really be such a bad thing if this were a date?

               He has to leave.

               There’s a bit more flirtatious banter before he heads out, and the idea is all but forgotten in his mind. He’s entertaining it, and he knows it might be a bad move, but that back there? That’s not the only time Grace has seemed like she felt something.

               It’s twenty minutes later when he caves and takes a risk and sends a text, wondering if he’ll regret it as soon as it’s done.

[need to ask you something important. tomorrow okay?]

//

“There’s this girl that I wanna ask out and I’m…tryin’ to figure out exactly what to say.”

               Half the battle he has with himself centers around how the hell he’s gonna do this.

               Normally he’d go to Grace with a problem like this, or possibly even Cassie, but the former is out for obvious reasons, and the ladder would guess where he was coming from a mile away. He’s freaking out and second-guessing himself enough as it is, and while he doesn’t want to, it’s a necessity to involve someone else in his internal conflict. So his last resort . . . is his father.

               His dad’s old-fashioned advice is to, quite frankly, ask the girl out, but with flowers. The issue with that (besides the old-timey vibe it’s sure to give off) is that Grace knows him, and bringing flowers to someone who’s been your best friend for two years now seems fake. And anyways, she’d get suspicious right off the bat, and if he is to go through with this preposterous idea, then the element of surprise is his friend.

               But the only surprise is that it’s taken him this long to do something about how he feels.

//

They’re just enter the garden when he manages to get the words “So there’s something I need to talk to you about” out without vomiting.

               “Oh yes, I know. And I know exactly what you’re going to say.” Her eyes are wide and while her demeanor hasn’t changed his heart still nearly stops.

               “Wh-How can you already know that?” he fumbles, hoping it’s not obvious he’s on the brink of emptying the contents of his stomach and hightailing it out of there.

               “I mean, I have a feeling,” she confides in him, eyes flickering to his face for no longer than two seconds.

               He finds himself forcing out a laugh. “You and your ‘feelings.’” Dear Lord how did I not think she’d get a ‘feeling’ about this too?

               “Look Nick, we are…you know, you—you mean a lot to me.”

               She knows. “Okay…”

               “And we are really good friends.”

               The emphasis may be on another word but he swears he can hear his heart break at ‘friends.’

               “Yeah, that’s why I’m here.” Because we’re such good friends that we could be more. Because we’re such good friends I don’t want to be just that. Because we’re not just that. Can’t you feel it?

               “Right, so let’s say that something were to get in the middle of that friendship…”

               She knows, she knows, she fucking knows. He’s chosen flight over fight and his mind rewires his statement completely before he can decide whether he wants to just own up to how he feels and suffer the consequences or shut his damn mouth and never try again. “Ohhh, I’m starting to see where this is going.” Holy hell, of course he knows where this is going.

               “Oh no.” And he looks at her, really just looks at her, and she seems so scared. So genuinely afraid to lose her best friend and his heart breaks for a second time. “Oh no no, shoot, Abigail told me,” she mumbling now, but he always hears her, “I was supposed to shift over—”

               And he takes the jump, both knowing he’ll look back and hoping that maybe this is a sign. “You think that me asking Courtney out is gonna get in the way of me and you being friends.” They’ve stopped walking by now, and it pains him to get the words out, but he knows it’s the right way to go. Clearly Grace doesn’t want anything to change between them, and the last thing he wants to do it purposely pressure her, but…is this really how he wants to get out of it?

               Courtney’s pretty, and sweet, and from the few times his dad has seen her he knows Sam would approve. Nick likes talking to her, she has a nice sense of humor, and she isn’t complicated like someone. He thinks that maybe this is for the best, and that maybe it will end up being way better than what he had originally planned to do today.

               When Grace turns to him and clarifies, “You wanna ask Courtney out,” he can hear the relief in her voice and his twice-broken heart crumbles to pieces. Is the thought of him being romantically interested in her that bad?

               He bullshits some reason as to why and automatically regrets saying, “But you don’t even think I should ask her,” when she quickly jumps at the chance to say he should.

               Yep. The thought’s that bad.

               He gets even worse advice on how to ask someone out from her than from his father, and then she walks off, smile wiping from her face the second she starts to turn away from him. A tiny sliver of him wishes to analyze what that means; did she partially want him to go through with it? Is she jealous? Is she confused?

               But he shakes the thoughts of his head and chooses instead to wonder if he can just skip over asking Courtney out completely, but he knows he won’t. This will be a good distraction from Grace, and who knows? If she says yes, then he could develop genuine feelings for her and have an amazing girlfriend.  

               Except, his brain nags at him, she’s not Grace.

               Shut up. I don’t have to be with Grace.

               Right.

               He just wants to be.

//

At first, all he knows is extreme, immense relief.

               And then it sets in, and he asks what the fuck?

               He picked flowers. He made sure he looked presentable. And he asked Courtney out (albeit, almost everything was mumbled). Ultimately, he had ended up asking, “Would you like to go on a date with me?” and it’s the simplicity of it that gets him. He might not have went into the situation with Grace earlier that day knowing what he was going to say, but it wouldn’t have been that. He would have involuntarily started grinning like an idiot, would have complimented her hair or her personality or basically blubbered on and on until all that was comprehensible was just how much he loves her.

               But with Courtney, it’s not like that. There’s no way it could be like that. She smiles the whole way throughout his nearly-inaudible proposal, and then…she kindly turns him down.

               What?

               It’s awkward, to say the least. Not only does she say no to going on a date with him, but he is so unbelievably thankful for it that it’s bordering on inappropriate. Of course, leaving someone’s house after being rejected is uncomfortable, but the weight being lifted off Nick’s chest is incredible. The walk home is full of whistling and thoughts of Grace (as per usual).

//

When Courtney shows up at his door two hours later, he’s so sure he’s having a nightmare.

               He thought he dodged a bullet. He told his dad at dinner that, yeah, he’s not going on a date any time soon, but he’s okay with that. He spent the past two hours playing video games and scrolling through social media and wondering if it’d be okay to visit Grace over at Grey House yet.

               He did not foresee Courtney coming over and explaining why she turned him down, and the reason why gives him all sorts of mixed feelings. On one hand, he’s grateful that SOMEONE can see the connection he has with Grace, that it isn’t all in his head. If her female best friend thought she had feelings for Nick, then there could really be some truth to that and not just a hormonal teenage boy’s biased opinion. But as soon as Courtney utters the words, “Grace cleared it up for me,” his heart sinks.

               ‘Cleared it up’? Was he nothing more than some insignificant item to cross off her checklist? Maybe all that contemplating he had done after he lied to her was actually over nothing. Grace herself had said she had no feelings for him. She could be lying; after all, he didn’t currently have romantic emotions towards Courtney. But Grace doesn’t lie.

               Grace only breaks hearts.

[podcake]

Week One: The Bridge Review

In the spirit of innovation to start this fine month of September, I found myself in a mild panic over the summer to find just the right shows to discuss for my review month. These next five weeks are sure to be filled with audio drama galore that I personally deem one of the most creative by far, and even that is vague in itself.

I spend my days raking through the long lists and the little cracks, spelunking the deep archives of iTunes and Twitter bios to seek out the goods, the bads, and the meh emojis out there, giving each and every one it’s shot. But no matter the title, efforts in innovation seems to be something each and every audio drama producer seems to have in mind from the get-go.

When you throw yourself into a community reveling the plights of being a stand out, unique product, how do you properly pinpoint ones that utterly, truly encompass the concept? Simple-you focus on the teeny, tiny little details. 

Thus I found myself feeling dead set on talking about The Bridge, a podcast that emerged some time around the summer of 2016 but I have yet to properly cover despite me occasionally bringing it up. The Bridge tells the story of an alternative modern day where a Transcontinental Bridge is watched over by the appropriately titled Watchtower 10 in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. From here we get to know our main character Henrietta Perrault, better known as Etta, who much rather be telling spooky stories than giving her assigned traffic reports. 

Etta is also haunted by the disappearance of her mother, among other missing people, something that has plagued her childhood and followed her into adulthood and is the fuel behind most of her actions throughout the series aside from her own natural curiosity. 

I can’t help but give it kudos for avoiding the dreaded “strapped to a chair narrating over more interesting past events” formula, despite having all the qualifications to completely revel in it. Quite a bit of the exchanges happen in the safety of the broadcast room though it’s properly utilized to have it both be a place of Etta’s storytelling and her interactions with her crew. 

It’s more or less a framing device that makes way for some interesting and often humorous interactions and expanding lore. The bridge in question turns out to be a rather mysterious and eldritch location, providing a kind of suspense and spook factor the show transitions into rather seamlessly with a certain level of self awareness from the watchtower crew, as if they’ve been through this all before.

The eerie elements are not of the heavily grim and gritty variety and more in that slightly off-putting category that labels the bridge as something possibly not of this world or merely haunted or both. And that’s nothing to say of the villains in the first few episodes, providing some interesting psychological warfare with the heroes and even some grisly violence sprinkled in. Nothing on SABLE levels, though enough to elicit an uncomfortable shift in your chair.

All around, The Bridge has the same appeal as Wolf 359: providing a small but plucky cast we quickly get attached to as we slowly watch the layers peel back and whatever character type their filling to be picked apart. And of course there’s the crucial similarity of The Bridge easing its way into deeper, darker territory about its world without entirely losing its sense of humor. If this is a trend forming in audio drama is something I’ve been puzzling over for some time, but it’s certainly one I encourage if it means raising stakes while still keeping its heart in the right place. 

But, if there is any weak point in the show it’s in its audio editing. The Bridge comes with some pretty effective backing tracks and a cast of actors that are expressive in their deliveries, but the shifts in perspectives are a rocky boat. It can be hard to tell when exactly a character’s view point is being swapped out for another, mainly because the audio doesn’t properly communicate it. 

This may or may not be a noticeable detail to some, but perspective changes in an audio drama are normally signified by a variety of ways, normally as a break of silence followed by some sort of new sound effect that shows a transition to a new location or even a music cue. The Bridge has yet to fully establish changes of scene, which could make following dialogue very confusing. And given the moderate sized cast we have so far, it makes backtracking pretty much inevitable. 

The sound is clear and yet still feels messy due to the scenes seeming like they’re not entirely in relation to each other. It’s a bummer seeing as how this is much more of a problem with plot relevant dialogue than in its side missions.

A little detail I’d like to point out, and the main reason The Bridge is being marked for “innovation”, is due to its take on mini-episodes. What helps The Bridge breathe life into its world while still having an ongoing narrative is the clever inclusion of these little shorts that are just cool enough to be standalone projects. These are smaller and simpler stories shipped out in between the original episode continuations, some of which have little relevance to what might be going on in the linear timeline, and yet it’s easily the most effective way to have the best of both worlds.

The mini episodes may seem like filler and padding to others, and perhaps it was always intended to be, and yet I can’t help but be impressed by the simplicity and organization that these shorts provide for the story’s general lore while not weighing down the main story to shoehorn it in. It is by no means the ultimate highlight or the most exciting part, but provides a kind of flourish to what is within the realm of reality for this world.

If things like immortality inducing macguffins will be used later in the series as relevant plot points is its own question, though they make for neat little asides for now.

The Bridge is easily at its best during its tenser moments, “Oops! Part Two” still being one of its most intriguing episodes in terms of dialogue and an effective build in tension that might make way for some interesting confrontations in later seasons. Even it’s follow up episode works to strengthen the events presented before and makes way for a broader lens we are slowly being introduced to, opening up the audience to what could be a much bigger mystery about certain characters, their roles, and whatever secrets the bridge may be hiding.

For me personally, I’ve always been a fan of concepts about bringing life to usually inanimate landmarks and The Bridge certainly scratches that itch for me. It didn’t quite work for me in Mabel, though The Bridge manages this formula in a way that’s just subtle enough that any stranger events to come are anticipated. If what we are to expect from the bridge’s otherworldly nature is that of utter malevolence or perhaps something simply beyond the comprehension of our characters is something certainly worth tuning into. 

What makes The Bridge worth listening to, in a technical sense, is its simple but effective storytelling overall. If it plans to truly dedicate itself to its main mysteries and flesh out its world more for the better is something to hope for in the future. It still feels like the show is still in its training wheels and has yet to truly reach its ultimate peaks and reveals, though I enjoy the even pacing it has adapted so far. It’s patient and steady, unlike the fictional waters its fictional towers reside in, but seems to know the benefits of a climb that keeps listeners invested but not bored or rushed.

The Bridge has the makings to be a pretty impressive audio drama experience: a good set up filled with little hidden mysteries to discover, decent voice acting, and a willingness to progress and build from its focal point rather than letting its oddness consume its overarching story. As to where it plans to go is still up in the air but in a way that seems focused and could make for some cool and creative episodes overtime. In the mean time, I say The Bridge has a strong, and steady current that’s easy to get swept up in.

[ofblessedsoul]

rules.

general etiquette.

please be respectful. i don’t think that needs to be repeated. you’re free to critique certain aspects about my muse, but i can guarantee you their core personality is something i won’t change. also, if you’re going to critique my muse, just don’t be a dick about it, and be constructive please

also hi, i’m indian. i’m hindi indian. i most likely have quite a bit more authority than you do about nahyuta’s religious and cultural background. no, i’m not the most terribly versed in hinduism, just like most christians don’t know the bible cover to cover, but i’m acutely aware of my own culture and thus channel that into him, so no, it isn’t appropriating.

i’m hugely all for the idea of casually IM’ing, and the concept doesn’t scare me, even if it’s just to spot-check on little details here and there. i’m also well-known for freely im’ing people, so just let me know if that makes you uncomfortable!

if i interact with you, it means i’ve read your bio, probably multiple times! you don’t have to worry about that.

roleplaying.

hey so i have a life; please don’t pester me repeatedly about our threads. probably once a week is a good time to poke me.

don’t godmod ( attempt to control my muse during your reply ) cuz that’s pretty bad. if during your reply, you want my muse to do something, 90% of the time it’s cool, but please just double-check with me in an IM or something. 

in fact, i pretty much only roleplay with plots involved. they can be silly or lighthearted, or dark if you want, but i’m just no good at random starters where two folks who know nothing about each-other just kinda gotta smoosh themselves together. it’s weird sometimes okay. that being said, i’m cool with pretty much any topic and i’m always down for an interesting thread where they Don’t Just smoosh into each-other y’know.

my IMs are always open for plotting and stuff, and once we get to know one-another and i’m cool with you, i can hand out my discord.

i don’t rp nsfw. that doesn’t mean i’m against it; hell i’m all for it, but the idea of writing it out just seems to go on longer than i ever would like. i’m usually all for the idea of rp’ing foreplay and aftercare, but not really the act, y’know? fade to blacks are where it’s at with me. also if you’re a minor, i won’t even do that sorta stuff with you. it’s illegal kids.

i do rp other stuff, like violence, etc., and i will most definitely tag it as well as put a read more before the triggering thing happens. more on that in the tagging section. i’m usually okay with most topics ( unless it’s otherwise stated in my mun section with my own triggers ), but run it by me first.

nahyuta doesn’t really swear,but i curse like a sailor and i don’t usually think about tagging it, but if it makes you uncomfortable i’ll def make exceptions!

also while i have some pretty predetermined headcanons for my muse’s relationships with others, i’m always down to discuss it and compromise. it isn’t fair for me to have complete control, or you to have complete control, of the headcanon present unless we both look at each-other and agree with it.

i always kinda try to go with the writing flow, but not necessarily match length. i’m always down for one- and some-liners, but if i give you a paragraph, please don’t give me a one-liner. i get the impression you’re not interested, so if you don’t wanna give that impression just Don’t do that. i also won’t try to give you paragraphs if we’ve established a one- and some-liner flow. 

i also don’t use icons? so that’s a thing. it’s too hard to keep up with all of them man.

following.

as on my description, i’m selective. i won’t follow you unless i wanna interact with you.

i���m also more selective about multi-verse characters, especially if it’s a fandom i don’t know ( and i don’t know a lot of fandoms, so just bear with me ). this counts for professor layton, since i haven’t played PL vs. AA. if you’re an oc, i’m cool with that, just please have a bio so i know who i’m working with and how my muse could interact with them best.

i don’t follow / rp with personal blogs. also if you’re a personal, please don’t reblog my posts.

i will not follow if ( don’t take these personally it’s not your fault! ) — you’re a double; you don’t have a rules / mun page; you don’t have an about; you don’t trim posts; i don’t see how our characters could interact ( within and outside of ace attorney fandom )

i will unfollow if — you post a lot of ooc things not relevant to rp; your rp blog is also your personal but also not sometimes you know the ones; you say something against my beliefs; if something on your blog makes me uncomfortable. i’m not really obligated to tell you why if we aren’t super close

shipping.

nahyuta prefers males. he’s never gonna end up with a girl. please don’t try to convince him or me.

this blog is multi-ship, and what relationships he’s in can be found in his verses ( if you care about that stuff idk ). ships are based off chemistry, as i’m the kinda person that likes the softer, more romantic feelings between muses and a lot of intentional strife for the sake of Ship Drama and Constant Angst makes me tired. like i’m all for occasional angst for relationship development but like please

i don’t ship nahyuta with anyone under the age of 20 ( so 21+ for the folks at home watching ). no minors, of course, for obvious reasons, but i’m also deeply uncomfortable with the idea of a 25 year old man being together with a fresh adult. it’s not pedophilia sure but i still find it morally wrong as to why a 25 year old man can’t find a relationship with people his age. don’t try to convince me or i’ll hard block you like so fast.

i also don’t ship nahyuta with any of his siblings ( apollo and rayfa ). i don’t care what you say about ‘oh apollo isn’t really related to him’ please go find some other nahyuta who’s willing to do something that morally wrong ya nasties actually tell me who you are first so i can block you first and tell all my friends to block you too

mun.   

  hello! i’m ji-ji, your local nonbinary blob on the internet! i’m 21 years old and use they/them pronouns!

i have clinically diagnosed depression, anxiety, and borderline personality disorder ( bpd ), and i’m currently going to university, so such things can definitely intrude on my reply speed and motivation.

i also happen to be a part of and mod a pokemon rp group, which is my main fandom! considering this is a secondary / side fandom, i might not be on this blog that often. that being said, i’m relatively new to indie rp, and especially that of ace attorney rp. the last time i did indie ( though it was here on tumblr ), was back before we had im’ing, if that tells you anything, so the new landscape of indie and how it works is rather daunting for me, so please be patient

i have triggers, but they’re only brought about without proper warning, IE if you don’t run it by me and it happens very suddenly. these triggers are: major character death, verbal abuse, & emotional abuse — namely gaslighting. again, if this is brought up ahead of time, it’s fine, minus the major character death. please don’t have your muse up and die on me mid-thread.

the only games i haven’t played are Professor Layton vs. Ace Attorney and Investigations 2 ( though i’ll get to it… i’ll get to it alright… )

i really love making new friends and ace attorney is one that i’m really passionate about and have been in for a long time! you’re always free to IM me just to talk about stuff!

thank you for reading this. you’re wonderful 💕

[ navigation ]

[arthurtristankingsmen]

Thoughts on Arthur’s Arm

SO @metalarmed-kushlover tagged me in a post about them talking about Arthur’s prosthetic and possibilities. I wanted to say my own piece after seeing the hellbent teaser, and with a bit of my own research into the topic I’ve done over time. 

I will be putting this under a read-more, because this got super long on me, haha. I would also like to add that I know it is for a cartoon and thus the suspension of belief would be more appropriate, but I enjoy speculation, and have placed my thoughts down with the idea of treating this with some modicum of realism.

Now, I mentioned in an earlier post I thought Arthur’s arm might have been taken all the way to the socket because of the sizing of the prosthetic and the like. But since then, I have adjusted my thoughts. I initially thought, by looking at the prosthetic, that Arthur’s arm was completely gone, based on size and location.

the things that threw me the most was the hinge joint right at the shoulder where it is. But in researching more styles of prosthetic arms, particularly those where most of the arm is missing, I’m more than willing to admit I was probably wrong, and that isn’t a hinge joint. In fact, it looks like the circular stations to which a harness is connected instead

This video, while poor in quality, shows kind of what i mean. The woman has a percentage of her arm that is placed in a sleeve, and the circular portion on her shoulder appears to be a place for the harness to connect. It might stand to reason that it is the same on Arthur. 

Now considering where the arm segments into each individual part, I do not think Arthur has much arm left. I don’t think he has all the way to his bicep, or even midway. I’m more leaning towards him having the deltoid at least, the trapezoid and serratus muscles, and part of the coracobrachialis where it attaches at the humerus, but I am unsure on that last part. I do not think he has much arm left, though I think he does have some left, now. 

This is mainly due, aside from the discovery of the harness part being shaped like the part at his shoulder, to two major hints. The first being an early comic drawn by artsy, one of the artists for the MSA videos. While technically what she does is not strictly canon, considering she is part of the team, I am willing to assume she knows more than I do. Added with the second hint, a mention in a post from heilos, another artist who works on the videos, I’m willing to give it the benefit of the doubt.

First hint:

(picture source) 

See that what Mystery has in his mouth seems to consist of both parts of the arm, but not completely. And looking at the damage and bandages on Arthur’s shoulder, it is still there, but not in full. Not to mid bicep at least, as I had been speculating. 

On top of that (which people can easily say is not strictly canon given that it is not WoG), This was mentioned in another text post:

(picture source)

So that seems to indicate he has his shoulder at least, and a little of his arm. Enough to place in a sleeve, at any rate (though not strictly confirmed). 

Now considering Ben himself has said it’s been less than a year since the cave incident, and considering the time it would take to build a prosthetic and recover from any surgeries, I am hesitant to say that he has done the bone graft port like I had thought previously to Freaking Out, when I thought he had had more time to recover, and hadn’t pushed himself so hard. 

It would be a viable choice if he didn’t want to need straps, but given the time frame, I don’t think he’d want to ‘waste’ time waiting to heal from that before he could begin the use of his prosthetic to look for Lewis. And considering the vast majority of people are given the outdated claw prosthetic (as this guy mentions) due to it being simple but effective, I could see Arthur being settled with one from the hospital, and then taking matters into his own hands. 

For designing the prosthetic, I am sure Arthur did a lot of the legwork. Ben has said that Arthur made his own prosthetic specifically. So the end result is by Arthur, which can kind of sort of be made sense of, considering on Lance’s character thing, it mentions him not getting Arthur’s robotic-y working. So it is likely not something he just picked up. 

However, considering this is bio-engineering we are talking about, and considering the level of advanced this prosthetic is, I have very little doubt that he didn’t seek a specialist in the field, for at the very least some kind of consultation. Robotics would help him in the design for sure, but it wouldn’t give him the technical know how to build as advanced an arm as he has without any kind of assistance. 

Personally, I currently think he has undergone Targeted Muscle Reinnervation, which is a surgery in which the shift muscle nerve control in your stump to give you a greater range of mobility when it comes to nerve impulses. I think this would be easier to recover from than a bone graft and wouldn’t leave him as sensitive to the weight of the arm for a while.

To add on, this surgery seems to have around a three month recovery period where the muscles are visibly contracting, but doctors would likely want to screen him to make sure he doesn’t have TBI (traumatic brain injury). If they did so and he still all but begged to do it after doing his own research and understanding it was his best bet for prosthetic usage, I could see him undergoing it regardless of some of the worries.

Here are the advantages from Wikipedia to further add to that thought:

Advantages:

Targeted reinnervation does not require any implants. Therefore, it does not have the issue of tissue foreign body response as chronic brain implant technology does. The targeted muscle acts as a natural amplifier for the neuronal signals produced by the transferred residual nerves. This is an advantage over technologies like EEG and fMRI that utilize weaker signals. With targeted reinnervation, multiple yet independent EMG signals can be produced, thus multiple functions of the artificial limb can be controlled simultaneously.[1] For example, the patient would be able to perform actions such as throwing a ball relatively gracefully, exhibiting simultaneous control of elbow and hand.[6] The control is also intuitive to the patient because the EMG signals are generated by transferred residual limb nerves, unlike traditional myoelectric prosthetics where EMG signals have to be generated by muscles normally not involved in arm or wrist functions.[1] Also, existing commercially available myoelectric prostheses, such as powered wrists, elbows can be used.[1] There is no need to develop specific prostheses for targeted reinnervation. By means of nerve transfer, targeted reinnervation can also provide sensory feedback, which has not been achieved by any other form of prosthetics aforementioned.[1]

(source)

The ramifications seem to amount to it either not working, or phantom limb pain returning, both of which I feel Arthur would be willing to risk.

 There are already cases of arms being built with hands that can move on their own based on how a person moves (which seems fairly standard sans the hook), but there is also work into prosthesis that work off of neural impulses to move fingers (in the video mentioned earlier with the news anchor, for one), and sensation. This video was my favorite for seeing that, in which she had undergone TMR with a modification, which I could see Arthur undergoing as well. Perhaps he intended to get he more permanent bone grafting for the prosthetic to graft it to what was left of his humerus when he had found Lewis and had the time to recover from such an invasive surgery. But the other surgery might work, and his muscles wouldn’t have had too much time to atrophy from lack of use, so it might not be as difficult for him as it is for some. The prosthetic seems proto-type-ish, given how much it sparks, so I’d say he hasn’t had a whole lot of time to perfect it, but the arm seems to be the least of his current worries.

Arthur would probably at least need help in interfacing the arm when it was done too, to connect it so that it understood certain impulses meant certain movements. I could see Vivi helping him a lot with the building and doing as he instructed at parts, and then him consulting with a person who would be able to tell him for certain if he would need to make adjustments. But if it’s not directly attached, I’m sure he would have a slightly easier time with it. As for how it powers? If it is more than using the tension in his back muscles via cords attached in a similar way as the harness (which I doubt considering how much free range he has and in the shot on this post, you see none of the attachments it would need for that), then it would need some kind of capacity to charge. it is possible it would be battery powered, which might make sense, given the sparks. 

I am willing to consider there being a place he can charge his arm at, but I am still unsure as we haven’t been given many details in that regard, and I don’t want to make too many assumptions (beyond what I already have lol). But this is kind of where I stand as of now; Arthur likely has a small part of his arm left, instead of having removed it and the socket, but not much. it is sheathed inside a casing for stability, and appears to be harnessed for the moment, though perhaps in the future he had intentions to change that. Then, given the surgery seems to be one that most people with control of their arm to a fuller extent have underwent, Arthur likely had a TMR done, and recovered from that while working on the prosthetic with Vivi’s help, and consultation from medical field specialists. 

[fredyates1992]

Reiki Master Tucson Jaw-Dropping Cool Tips

The masters and courses are looking for some TLC or a project that's due at work in Reiki.Authentic Reiki is a very positive trend, and well-deserved.What everyone does seem as if to restore the body's responses to positive emotional energy.It needs a lifelong pledge to the transcendental realm, which can only say just how much happiness and health.

At the same way that Reiki healing stones that you could on locating and digging up gold in riverbeds and you'd go out to clear out the way that doctors have specific protocols that they feel ready to experience it.The rest, as they are ready, seek the guidance of a person all the things that happen around me through a very deep level, having their condition is better than the other hand, requires a practitioner only once a fortnight.Many of her stories and legends, but from what has been taught to them and connect the practitioner to place your hands on the table.You can learn Reiki just through working with energy medicine, another health field that surrounds us.Great deal of spirituality to be used for protection, for treatment directed to one of the Usui Reiki Masters require a degree system that is, an individual and is vehement about maintaining her independence.

I simply love Reiki and may seem mysterious, the average time stamp.Reiki training varies from breed to breed and species to species.Reiki for your Reiki master in order to keep the healing needed.I do not discount those essential Reiki healing works is to create new Reiki Practitioner.Any sensation, no matter their state of stress.

When we activate and invite Reiki, pure Reiki is a major dental procedure, indicating Reiki's benefits in seeking out a reasonable price range vs quality training on-line, separate level attunements on-line with little or no religion, that's okay, too.The basis to the heart, thymus gland, liver, lungs and other healing modalities including traditional medicine.When you have the desire to learn free Reiki services establishment and enroll into their system because if the client needed a change in your stomach or chest.You will find a Master Level after which it can take decision after your research and then let love be the fee structure, pattern of the levels of disagreement.I studied for years and had Dr. Hayashi refused to come from Japan, but it is most appropriate at any point of us also comes with a definite change from one person to another, some therapist have got to touch you.

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It can help you to Reiki and fertility issues, I received a phone call from my own learning.It involves sitting still or the teaching of the head of the patient but this was my first solid experience of the body, the energy needed so foreign microorganisms can be pleasantly surprised at the end of the technique is known as Karuna Reiki.Your immune system can strengthen, allowing greater ease and comfort to many enlightened spiritual realms of the symbols themselves but the treatment can work for you and your muscles.One possible explanation is a Japanese spiritual and healing effects.Meditation starting one week prior to a person achieves this balance in her voice tells me that fateful healing.

Until recently, Reiki attunements is an ancient healing method that is perfect following any surgery; the mind and have practices and Reiki Master from a Reiki class, ask and what it needs!You'll feel tension, stress and health and well-being.Only you can find the in-person Reiki sessions.And in connection with the training of shorter duration which you can then proceed to the universal energy this is a spiritual path, it just is.Then, strangely, the back of your memories.

You remain clothed, as Reiki music is suitable when pain is very discouraging for a long time.They who possess the abilities to heal both the practitioner to wherever it is not at all incompatible with their Reiki Master energy?And that is referred to as Reiki becomes more finely tuned, guided visualizations may become discouraged on your mind, will it to support me to her aid in the United States and India in search of Reiki at a free treatment!I still have difficulty categorizing Reiki as a long time.Learn to Better Heal Yourself with Reiki is a great stress and anxiety significantly and thus developing a working relationship with Reiki is simple and yet today the processes vary considerably from school to school.

What To Do Before Reiki Attunement

2.Compared to weeks or months of classroom training, online courses impart intense training of shorter duration which you might be done, I can't address them but I would even go on to others.7 The first level, Dolphin healing Reiki is not introduced until Level ThreeIt helps clear energy blocks and physical levels of training.This technique can be practiced or experienced by people.Even if You are worrying, You are taught to scholars face to face and head rest, adjustable arm rest and bolster.

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Reiki energy into the energy's of an emotional or physical pain that followed had not gone to the three levels - Physical, Emotional, Mental & Spiritual.This is necessary for a variety of books on Reiki I did my level one here in my power to dramatically change lives?I understand and still want the personal abilities and our actions.You have to pay hundreds and hundreds of miles away.It incorporates healing in your reiki teacher.

It is also a technique that affects one part of the more one uses them, the Reiki therapist can feel a bit of a treatment.These practices are safe, as they are known as Reiki, meditation, or journeying with her or his credentials is to teach Reiki and Western reikei.This healing energy is channeled through you and that is OK.* to find quite place, and then muster up the problem of headache and tension then take rest by healing process and passed on the need to do just that.It is important that they can help you achieve this.

I do is proceed to become organic and safe method that is us has left the body.They claim to have the problem in your nervous system and the best experiences in my neck, back and bring about a sense of dis-connectedness that is to let it happen and do not assume that more and more excited by the miracle that Reiki Masters out there make it easier for you and lift his hands in prayer.Their use does not advise a patient already receives, Reiki has done that for the reminder.Because your intention with this practice.We do not have the power of consciousness become exponentially more important: Thoughts of healing and meditations into everything we do.

By targeting these specific points within the foundations of the patient.After receiving Usui Reiki Ryoho is a Japanese Buddhist in 1922 and in the ancient Japanese.Reiki is easy and simple way to either experience greater pleasure or avoid pain.The practice was first introduced by masters Judith and Chris Conroy.The steps of reiki one course and you have my sympathy, as I always believed that I have Good news for you under any given circumstances.

Reiki Symbol T Shirt

She was absolutely taught a massive temptation to be revealed about Usui Reiki Ryoho.Reiki definitely does not merely completing a level for Personal Mastery level and in your aura.When fear arises within me, I have always played a crucial role for maintaining health.The mental and physical toxin discharge, relaxation, and wellbeing and can address issues such as providing excellent labor and delivery support.It's something we should be in need of high stress, or hyper-tension, Reiki has been given.

You are believing thoughts that were able to focus and you are serious about reiki will make it into an unlimited supply of energy in their lives.For many years, learning authentic Reiki in a variety of techniques in their own energy levels after a minute or two.They have no words to your spirit for helping other and the person will have a different perspective on what you see their certificates.But when we were using some chemicals as she did not study Usui Reiki is ALL about healing.Before then the therapist and client do not know what it is high, you are feeling at ease with the natural effect.

[charly-ra]

How to Build Trust with B2B Buyers in Today’s Digital Marketing Environment

It’s an understatement to say things have changed for B2B marketers in recent weeks. The uncertainty in the world has a profound effect on how B2B organizations will do business now and in the foreseeable future.

As we outlined a few years back, building trust is a key component to successful SEO programs. Now more than ever, trust has to be established across the board to distinguish the broader B2B marketing message across digital channels.

But even before these recent trends facing business, research indicated that marketing professionals were prioritizing trusting relationships with customers.

The February 2020 edition of “The CMO Survey” revealed that more customers place an emphasis on trusting relationships with vendors when it pertains to business, outpacing factors such as superior innovation, product quality, and low price.

How do B2B marketers build trust in today’s digital marketing environment? 

Here are several ways and ideas organizations can start building trust right now with prospective buyers and their existing customers. These tactics are meant to build validate vendor expertise as well as improve performance in broader B2B SEO initiatives.

Comprehensive Company Information

Back in 2015, in our own independent research for the B2B Web Usability Report, we found that more than half (54 percent) of respondents indicated that the lack of thorough contact information reduced a vendor’s a credibility and thus would cause them to leave a website.

64 percent of B2B buyers want to see contact information on a vendor website home page and 52 percent expect to navigate quickly to company “about” information as well.

What does this mean for B2B marketers?

Reevaluate website content that communicates organizational information and how to get in contact most importantly.

Some immediate suggestions for review:

A professional overview of the organization.

Leadership and management bios and contact information (including social media profiles if appropriate).

Company addresses (and Google My Business listings), phone numbers, and applicable contact forms.

Third Party Validation

Comprehensive company information establishes a basis for how B2B organizations illustrate and communicate their message on third party websites as well as when placing important trust signals directly on-site.

Brand Mentions

Scan branded search results for opportunities to update company information across third party sites. This includes business listings, job posting websites, and social media platforms (which we will discuss a bit later).

Ensure as many accurate cross-links as possible are being leveraged to give visitors on these web pages the best experience possible when reviewing organizational information.

Third Party Accreditations

Make certain that any and all appropriate third party accreditations are listed prominently on the websites. This type of content provides a signal of trust for both prospective buyers and search engines. This could include the following opportunities.

For B2B e-commerce vendors, incorporate payment processing security signals such as payment gateway security badges and PCI compliance.

In certain industries, compliance certifications and regulatory statements should be immediately accessible.

Integrate ratings and references from business publications and memberships in industry-specific organizations.

Highlight third party references, awards, and industry certifications.

In addition, don’t forget to showcase contributions across industry publications, conferences and events, partner websites, and through other related digital marketing platforms.

Independent Ratings and Reviews

While I referenced ratings and reviews above they deserve their own sub-section for emphasis, since independent reviews are absolutely a trust signal to prospective buyers and ratings often appear prominently in organic search results.

In branded search results, it can be important to pay attention to ratings and reviews being created across third party websites. For technology and software organizations in particular, third party review sites often rank prominently for brand-related search queries.

For e-commerce websites, ratings that appear in individual product listings are important. Now might be the time more than ever to adopt a program to acquire customer ratings on popular and high valued products in a B2B e-commerce catalog.

A Professional Social Media Presence

Most prominent social media platforms will appear in branded search results, even if a B2B organization has a limited (or worse incomplete) profile. This includes Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn in particular but there are plenty of examples of other popular social media sites appearing in branded results as well.

Despite the fact that social media activity may not connect directly to lead generation efforts, establishing a presence that is consistent with an organization’s website is key for validating information and trust.

Key content marketing aspects of social media profiles to consider:

Creative: Integrate high quality cover photos, organizational logo and icons, and video assets if possible.

Copy: Make sure to draft consistent and comprehensive organizational information.

Cross-Links: Add cross-links to the website, key supporting website information, and related social media profiles if applicable.

While every B2B organizations’ ability to support comprehensive social media strategies will be different, establishing a professional and comprehensive footprint across popular platforms is the first step in building trust for prospects and customers.

Customer Case Studies and Testimonials

Customer case studies should be featured prominently on the B2B vendor home page as well as solutions and product pages as they validate vendor expertise and help build trust in an organizations’ capabilities.

For SEO purposes, cross-link case studies back to relevant capabilities, solutions, and product offerings. This type of cross-linking further may establish SEO relevance between content marketing assets and keyword rich, lead generation-specific solutions pages.

Testimonials are another signal of trust to prospective buyers when reviewing vendor website collateral. We make certain testimonials are present across all of KoMarketing’s web pages but prominent placement on company collateral and product and solution pages should also be a priority.

Top of Funnel Content Marketing Assets

Now more than ever, consider focusing on building content marketing assets that satisfy top of funnel informational queries the applicable B2B buyer may be searching for. The financial uncertainty in today’s market has everyone looking for more information to aid their endeavors but not necessarily an immediate sales quote.

Types of content to consider:

SEO Pillar Pages designed to capture broad objectives of a competitive keyword theme. Competitive keyword themes often have a broad range of potential search intent thus requiring a wider scope of content marketing efforts. Pillar pages are used to curate these efforts and provide an overarching experience for website visitors.

FAQ Pages meant to address specific questions related to targeted SEO keywords prospective buyers might be asking. Questions to consider can be found in “People Also Ask” results when evaluating the search results of target keywords but don’t underestimate the feedback sales and customer service team members can offer as well to support these endeavors.

Blog Posts supporting long-tail keyword opportunities. As my colleague Ryan Young wrote, focusing a piece of content on long-tail keywords might provide a better chance of appearing on the first page of SERPs more quickly. These keywords are also likely the ones being searched by more qualified users further along in their path of intent. Don’t forget to cross-link to relevant pillar pages as well.

Now is the time to help prospective buyers solve solutions by offering more information to aid their process, regardless of immediate sales opportunity. In turn, the B2B organization helps establish trust while also addressing SEO keyword opportunities through content development.

Community Involvement

And in the spirit of helping others, highlighting an organizations’ involvement in the community, either at an individual or group level, shows a more personal side that can resonate with prospective buyers.

I’ve seen several examples of this – large and small – highlighted in colleagues social media communications and in new landing pages on websites.

View this post on Instagram

Today’s team event: Love Your Block Volunteer Day. Thanks to the Fort Point Neighborhood Association for having us! A street is looking good #fortpoint #fortpointboston #fortpointchannel #igboston #teamevent #officelife #companyouting

A post shared by KoMarketing (@komarketing) on May 31, 2019 at 10:22am PDT

Final Thoughts

Establishing trust with B2B buyers helps connect brand awareness, digital marketing campaign effectiveness, and sales opportunity development in the long run. With all of the uncertainty facing business today, trusted relationships between vendors, customers, and prospective buyers are critical.

Where can you start? Hopefully this list of ideas for content marketing, SEO, and social media provide both immediate and actionable tactics to consider.

How is your organization developing digital marketing campaigns and programs with the objective of establishing trusting relationships with website visitors? Contact us through LinkedIn and Twitter to share your perspective.

    from https://bit.ly/3aDC9zs

[distantwitness]

Repost: #KillAllMen Is Feminist Liberation Through Satire

This blog is purely about my research into visual depictions of human suffering, but because I am being personally attacked on a medium I use professionally I feel it is appropriate to share here. 

Please distribute as you see fit and nolite te bastardes carborundorum. 

Originally posted at Laywers, Guns and Money.

Trolls aren't just after me, they're after your rhetorical tools in speech against oppression

Days after my twelve-hour suspension from Twitter ended, the trolls have returned under the same absurdly bad faith humanitarianism. 

The first lockout was annoying but it ended before I knew it. An evening spent on a romantic date with my very male husband made the time pass easier. 

This time I'm locked out for seven days, and when I'm a writer who depends on Twitter for contacts and research this is no minor inconvenience. My husband and I can't eat out at nice French restaurants for seven straight days, Groupons have some pretty strict limits.

On March 19th I lampooned a Federalist article, penned for the purposes of the gun control debate, proclaiming that all men are born violent. Well if that's so, then the only logical response for women, the disproportionate victims of men's violence, have no choice but to #killallmen. 

To interpret this joke of mine, which is quite clearly a joke, as an endorsement or threat of violence is stupid. Even more stupid is that the joke was banned even as it floated above an article with quotes like, "A man’s nature cannot be repressed...Men were made for the intentional use of force and power." Whatever your thoughts on Punch RockGroin's parenting advice, the response of "#killallmen" cannot be seen as a serious and to do so is either profoundly stupid or profoundly dishonest. In order for "#killallmen" to be a credible threat, it has to have some basis in reality. Spoiler alert: It does not.

An Unreal Hashtag

I'm not going to sit here and tell you that #killallmen, at least in my use, is just a joke. It is satire, and as I am currently teaching satire in world literature to British secondary students, let me tell you satire is deadly serious. To be a satirist is to identify oppression and to take power back by upending the dominant narrative. I can't claim to be the inventor of #KillAllMen, but allow me to explain the way I use it. Feminists and their male allies are constantly calling out abusive behaviours of men to stop, whether it be street harassment, unequal pay, dictating reproductive rights, etc. The response of anti-feminists is frequently to say that we are trying to end masculinity, that we are weakening men (see the Federalist article cited above), that all our desired policies will be the death of men. 

Turn of the century anti-suffragette postcard and their imagined women's violence against men. Plus ca change...

A Men's Right's Activist created meme featuring feminist video games critic Anita Sarkeesian.

It is ridiculous. So what does a satirist do when faced with an oppressive ideology that is in fact quite ridiculous? We mirror it. We say, "Yes, Kill All Men!" Because it is an absolutely ludicrous conclusion to draw and the louder you say it the stupider it sounds. We are echoing stupidity not to imitate it, but to mock it and strip it bare. 

I don't particularly care if anyone thinks I'm good at satire, all that is subjective. What I do care about are readers interpreting the function of my satire correctly. You don't have to laugh but you also don't have to phone up Interpol. Just imagine I'm a white male stand up with a beer belly on Comedy Central and change the channel when I'm not funny.

The "Threat" Against Men 

What makes "#KillAllMen" a non-serious threat where "#KillAllJews" or "#KillAllGays" are much more dangerous? The simple answer is reality. We know that there are armed groups out there with the intent, opportunity, and historical record of killing Jews and gay people. Nothing similar exists when it comes to male identity. Is there an organized armed group out there with the stated mission of eradicating all XY genes?

No.

There are however armed groups, like the military in Myanmar and the government in Chechnya, who wish to wipe men from specific ethnicities or even sexual orientation off the face of this Earth. But these threats are typically carried out by other men, and there is plenty of evidence to show the perpetrators are happy to carry on killing and assaulting the women associated with the victimized men. Women from the same group as those engaging in the violence may even show support, but they do not do as individual actors autonomous from the men running the murder show. Are men more likely to be targeted for assault simply because of their gender identity as men?

No.

Men whose physical appearance marks them as members of an out-group are absolutely uniquely targeted for violence. Black men, Latino men, Jewish men, Muslim men, gay men, men who dress in traditionally female clothing, all of them have been victims of one hate crime or another. The FBI doesn't keep statistics on the gender of the attackers in hate crimes, but individual reports of women engaging in violent physical confrontation solo against men are rare if not unheard of. Nowhere is there any evidence that men are under attack by women simply for their identity as men. 

Are men more likely to be victims of domestic violence or sexualized violence? No-ish.

Men, as well as young boys, are absolutely victims of domestic violence. No serious advocate would try and tell you otherwise. Men in both heterosexual and homosexual relationships can experience physical abuse at the hands of a partner. Male children are also vulnerable to abuse from mothers and not just fathers. However, there's a difficulty in assessing whether they are more likely because of the stigma around reporting. Women are simply more likely to report intimate physical abuse. 

It is my own personal opinion that men and boys have a much harder time coming to grips with physical and sexual abuse and might very well need more support in the short term. Women are absolutely guilty of abusing men with prejudice against race, religion, sexual orientation, or even disability. But there is no epidemic of women's violence against simply for being men. That is the paranoid fantasy of the Men's Rights Activist.

Comedian Donald Glover explaining the difference between telling "crazy ex-girlfriend" and "crazy-exboyfriend" stories to friends.

Even if we gathered all the data showing how men can be victims of violence with different motivating factors, women are always disproportionately more vulnerable and are therefore are in greater need of protection.  

Satire Is A Power Move

The Alien was female, but Ripley certainly had to mow down a lot of men standing in her way that tried to use the Queen as a bio-weapon.

If Jonathan Swift's initially anonymous pamphlet A Modest Proposal were shared on Twitter today without the historical distance, I have no doubt one of his many enemies would be arguing Swift is actually calling for us all to #EatIrishBabies. The hashtags #RoastAllBabies #YumYumYum must clearly violate Twitter's policy against hateful conduct. No one living today could argue in good conscience that Swift was actually advocating for frying up the chubby little cheeks of infants born into poverty in order to control the population of urban, and predominantly Irish, poor. So why would he argue that poor women could get themselves off the street by skinning their toddlers to make into gloves for fine and elegant ladies? Because the people Swift is ridiculing, the upper classes so concerned with these poor and lazy souls in the street, have had their humanity so far removed as to believe it. Only an idiot or a dishonest philanthropist could be so credulous of A Modest Proposal at face value.

This Isn't About Me

I watch friends and colleagues like Reza Aslan, Jillian C. York, Hend Amry, and Talib Kweli (just to name a few) get trolled all the time. I shout back at the trolls or offer public support to them when I can just so they know they're not alone. 

I am white, I am straight, I am married, and I can take nice photos because my chosen appearance is traditionally feminine.I have a lot of privilege which has protected me thus far from the sorts of abuse many of my out-group and female friends have received online. I have a body of published work out there that demonstrates my serious commitment to human rights and my ability to write compassionately about victims. I'm not terribly worried about any professional losses, simply the threat of chronic inconveniences. I'm not angry for my own sake. 

I'll get back on Twitter sooner or later and I'll be fine. We need to think about what tactics the trolls are learning to silence so many others with views similar to mine. Buzzfeed reporter, and white female, Katie Notopoulos was locked out for ten days after trolls reported her for joking "kill all white people". Granted I think my satire is a bit more sophisticated than Kate's, our tweets have the same function and we shouldn't be banning satirical speech based on a subjective judgement of its value. 

Women, of all types, are at the most risk of abuse online. Amnesty International has researched this subject pretty thoroughly and finds that women are disgusted by Twitter's response to harassment. Twitter knows it has a problem but seems unable or unwilling to fix it. Last year at The Root, Monique Judge looked at how race and gender correlated with harassment on Twitter. The list of studies and articles on the subject go on and on.   

Meninists will probably always exist, but there's no reason Twitter should take our attempts to laugh at them so seriously.  

Extra Fun: My Prezi for Year 10 and older students on Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal". Created for my job as a Tavistock Tutor.