#took me an hour to 1. get the right packages loaded

[unnonexistence]

using Trespasser's page on the pacific rim wiki as the first thing i practice web scraping on seems really appropriate. like... yeah there's this weird thing that just arrived from another dimension and no one knows how to deal with it now that it's here. we're just throwing things at it at this point.

[d0youc0py]

I am ✨obsessed✨ with your page rn and would absolutely devour literally anything you give us.

I’d love to see your take on a kidnap/break in fic though!

Something like they’re coming home from deployment and their girlfriend/wife calls them (or laswell) freaking out about a weird car outside, or someone following them home.

Just damsel in distress x protective husband vibes all the way 💕

“If we’re gonna go after them we’ve got to do it tonight. They’re expecting us to wait till they get further south.”

“What about all the civilians in the city?”

“No explosives. Everyone keep your silencers on. They won’t know till mornin’.”

“Ghost has a point. If we wait till next week our chances of hittin’ ‘em are slim. They aren’t expecting it now.”

“Yeah, they aren’t expecting it because it’s too damn risky. We do it tonight they have home advantage. We wait- all of us are on an even playing field.”

“They outnumber us 10-1. We’ll never be even.”

A knock at the door halted the conversation. A errand boy stuck his head in.

“Sorry to interrupt but this came for Lieutenant Ghost. Labeled urgent.” He held out a yellow package for Ghost.

“Thanks.” Price nodded his head, politely dismissing him.

“Johnny I’ve dealt with groups like this before.” Ghost spoke tearing open the flap of the package. “We need to get ‘em while their sitting pretty.” He blindly reached his hand into the package, his brow furrowing when he touched something soft. He pulled out a clump of hair.

His right leg gave out and he grabbed the table to steady himself.

“Ghost?” Price questioned. He gripped Ghost arms to steady him- and also urge him to give him an answer.

“No.” Ghost mumbled. He ripped open the rest of the package frantically searching for any sign that this was a prank. It couldn’t be real. Couldn’t be. “No.” He growled out. He pushed his way out the door his whole body shaking from anger and distress. The rest of the 141 followed quickly behind him. “Laswell.” She jumped as the door slammed open. “What the fuck is this?” The sight of him was enough to send a spike of fear through her heart. He threw the package with your hair on the table in front of her.

“Oh no.” Her eyes were wide and she wracked her brain for any answer she could give him.

“You said it would be alright.” He was seething at the point. Tears welled up in his eyes and he couldn’t be bothered to hide them. The air felt like it was being choked out of the room. Everyone’s skin was crawling. “You said they couldn’t trace her.”

Laswell looked over at Price for some relief, but he had not the slightest clue as to what was going on- or how to fix it. Just that Ghost was more worked up than he’d ever seen. Even Soap was shifting nervously from foot to foot.

“What going on?” Price asked. Ghost growled not answering the question, his eyes still trained on Laswell.

“I didn’t think they could.” She said calmly. “I didn’t enter it into the computer- it’s in your file, but not electronically.”

“Someone clarify what’s going on.” Price snapped.

“Ghost, let’s not jump to conclusions. Are we even sure this is Y/N’s hair?” Laswell tried to soothe.

“You think I don’t know my wife’s hair?” Ghost gritted. Wide eyes and jaws hung open around the room.

“Wife?” Soap whispered.

“Yes, my wife.” Ghost affirmed. “After I had that accident a few months ago I thought it would be a good idea to finally make her my emergency contact. So if I died she wouldn’t be locked up in the house waitin’ for me.” He explained. “You told me it was safe.”

“It is. They had to have gotten her info somewhere else.” Laswell insisted. “I’ll start tracking her down. You need to calm down.”

“Fuck off.” Ghost sneered. Price gave him a warning shoulder shove.

“We’ll go see if we can find anything on our end.” Price sighed.

•••••••••••

It only took an hour to find you. Gaz was able to PinPoint your location- conveniently the sight they were debating on hitting tonight. They could barely keep up as Ghost began to load up. The odds weren’t great for them. They knew they were coming, they were outnumbered and they had a hostage- who they knew at least one of the team members would die for in a heartbeat.

“Ghost you need to keep your cool. Stick to the plan. You can’t help her if you’re dead.” Price was trying to talk him through it. Ghost had completely shut down. He’s had nightmares just like this before. You being tortured- just the way he had been. He swallowed back bile just thinking about it. He paced back and forth on the plane, growling and grumbling like a caged bear.

They were ready for the 141. All waiting patiently in their places ready to take down the infamous task force. Smirks spread across their faces and they could practically taste the celebratory dinner that awaited them. What they weren’t ready for was the absolute hell that was about to be unleashed on them.

They all had just stepped off the plane before Ghost was blowing through people like they were paper. Soap would bet his life on the fact that he saw Ghost go through a wall at one point. He wasn’t sticking to the plan. He was moving at inhuman speed. It was impossible to keep up with him.

“Found her. Back building, fourth floor second door on the left.” Soap’s voice rang through the comms.

“Hey, I’m a friend of Ghost’s.” Johnny spoke softly. You seemed to be relatively unharmed. When Johnny pried open the door he caught a glimpse of you diving under a small cot- your hair peaking out from under it.

“I’ve told you I don’t know who that is.” You murmured. He could hear the fear in your voice. Johnny sat down a few feet away from the bed.

“Oh right.” He whispered. “A friend of Simon’s.” Soap corrected. Your head peaked out from the bed. You had a bruise on your cheek- a slap mark?

“Simon?” You repeated slowly. Soap nodded his head. “Johnny?” You asked. Soap smiled.

“So he does talk about me.” His humor was wasted on you, but it did calm you a bit. Suddenly Ghost practically tumbled through the door. You shrieked not realizing who it was and dove back under the bed.

“Sweetheart.” Ghost quickly ripped off his mask, (not wanting to scare you more) laying on his stomach to get a look at you. You shot out from under the bed wrapping every limb you could around him. His hand gripped the back of your head pressing your forehead against his lips. “I’m sorry.” He pressed a few quick kisses against your head, before pulling away, worried eyes scanning all over you.

“I’m fine.” You assured. You had been lucky- well as lucky as one could be in this situation. Your worst wound was a slap to the cheek and a shitty haircut. The worst part was the fear. Fear of what they would do to you. Now that Simon was here you were at ease. His fingers skimmed over your cheek. “Got that because I bit a chunk out of someone’s hand.” You smirked.

“Good Girl.” He growled, pressing another kiss to your forehead. “We’ve got to get out of here, yeah? I’m goin’ put my mask back on and you’re going to stay between me and Johnny, understand?” You nodded your head, while Johnny was still reeling from all the affection Ghost had displayed.

Safe to say the mission was a success.

*ring*

“Sweetheart?”

You thank the stars above that John always picked up on the first ring.

“Not to worry you”-

“You need me to come get you?”

“No, can you meet me somewhere? There’s a red car that’s been following me and I don’t want to lead it to our house.” You explained, checking in your rearview mirror. Sure enough, a bright, red sports car was bearing down on you.

“Go to the coffee shop. Don’t park until you see my car in the parking lot. Don’t hang up either.”

“Affirm.” You snickered. John was in absolutely no mood to joke with you. You could hear the sound of his car starting.

“Hope I don’t have to get in a fight tonight. Only wearing my boxers and a shirt.” He wasn’t trying to be funny, but it still made you laugh.

“Could’ve thrown a pair of pants on.” You commented.

“If the difference between you being worm food and you being alright was me wrestling with a pair of jeans I’d never forgive myself.” He grumbled.

“I’ll be fine John. Captain’s coming to save me.” Normally he would melt at that but he was too focused dodging in and out of cars. You could hear a horn from over the phone. “Please be safe.” You sighed. “I’m here.” He said suddenly. Your eyes glanced to your phone. You had only been on the phone for seven minutes and it took at least fifteen to get to the coffee shop from your house.

“Don’t worry about it.” He said as if he could read your mind.

“It’s still following me John.” You whispered. Your fingers dug nervously into the steering wheel.

“Don’t get scared on me now, Sweetheart. How far away are you?”

“Ten minutes?” You weren’t entirely sure. “I can take a shortcut through the neighborhood.”

“No.” He interjected. “Stay on main roads with traffic. Doesn’t matter how long it takes for you to get here, just make sure you stay with people.” You nodded your head. “You hear me?”

“Yes sorry. I nodded my head but you couldn’t see that.”

“I’m standing outside the car. Pull up next to me, don’t get out, I’ll get your door for you.” He had his Captains voice on. You wondered if this was how team briefings went.

“You always get my door for me.” You smiled.

“Damn right I do.” He scoffed. “But it’s important this time. I don’t just want to leave your car in the lot because who knows what type of things they’ll put on it.”

“Like a tracker?”

He hummed in agreement.

“You’re scaring me John.” You gulped.

“Don’t need to be scared. I won’t let anything happen to you, you know that. Just want you to be aware of what’s gonna happen when you park. Just stay in your car, yes?” His voice was calm. Like he had done this a million times before. You nodded your head again. “Did you nod your head again?” You swore you could hear a chuckle.

“Yes, sorry. I understand.” Time seems to slow as you finally pulled into the cafe parking lot. It hadn’t closed yet people still wandering in and out even as the sun has set. You were surprised no one noticed the large man in a pair of light blue boxers and white t-shirt. A t-shirt so thin you could see his chest hair. You did as he told and pulled up right next to him. The red car pulled in right next to you. Your eyes quickly fled to your left to look at John. He had a look on his face you weren’t familiar with.

The sound of the red car door opening caught your attention. A medium sized man stepped out. He just looked greasy. He shut his door and began walking over to your side of the car, seemingly not noticing John.

John met him in the middle, using one hand to grab him by his shirt and slam him against the hood of his own car. You covered your mouth, your eyes going wide. John’s face hovered over his. You couldn’t hear anything that was said, but when John finally let him go the man scrambled to get back into his severely dented car. John stood at the front of the car as he started it up and ripped out of the parking lot.

John tapped at your window signaling for you to unlock your door.

“You alright?” He checked, crouching down to your level. You eyes were still wide and you slowly nodded.

“What did you say?” You mumbled. John took your shaky hands with his, pressing a kiss against your palms.

“That’s a secret.” He smirked. “Didn’t scare you too bad did I?” He asked softly. His brows furrowed and he ran a hand up and down your arm.

“Honestly?”

His face paled. He hadn’t thought about scaring you. He didn’t think he acted too rash. In fact he was holding back.

“Honestly.” He affirmed.

“That was really hot.” You admitted, a hot blush across your face. His face went blank for a moment before a wide smirk crossed his face.

“Then we better get home.” He murmured, pressing a kiss against your shoulder. “Safe to drive?”

“Yes!” You said a little too enthusiastic.

You’re so sweet! I absolutely loved this request and probably went a little overboard. I was only able to fit Ghost and Price in this but would gladly do this with the rest of the 141 and other cod characters! Hope you liked it and thank you for making my day!

[writingroom21]

Bloody Love Pt.2

Summary: It's been two years since Rafe found out about your obsession with him. But with his new coworker always trying to get with him, it's hard to keep calm. It's about time someone put her in her place

Warnings: 18+, murder, stalking, strangulation, reader is unhinged once again , Rafe finally snaps

Wc: 3.4K

part 1

Rafe was out yet once again with her. In the past two years things have been going good. Ever since he caught you and helped you out things have changed. From that moment on you were his but more important he was yours. He was done hiding the fact that he was into you, that even with your differences he wants you.

You two started dating immediately, taking everyone for a surprise. The kook prince with a pogue was not something people would have thought of. In a way it took you by surprise as well. You were used to Rafe belittling you, talking down on you every chance he got. Having him care for you, say the sweetest things, or do something for you was like jumping into a freezing lake. Sending your body into shock.

It was a welcoming change. He would spoil you with gifts, take you on trips, and spend hours between your legs. Overall he was great. Rafe would brush off the girls that flirted with him, never wanting you to feel like he doesn’t love you. He even beats up the guys that try to flirt with you. After your murder spree he couldn’t risk murdering anyone so they got lucky.

A year into dating Rafe’s dad gave him a position at the family business. He was ecstatic to have the trust of his father. He took you to celebrate that night, a fancy dinner with wine. Then when you got home it was champagne and sex all night. Like you said everything was great. Then six months ago little miss perfect joined the company.

Her name was Melanie but she liked to go by Mel. From the moment she stepped foot into the office she set her eyes on Rafe. He was tall, handsome, had a great body, plus he was loaded. Rafe was the ideal package to her, the only notch in her plan was you. At first she tried to play dumb that he had a girlfriend.

Wearing tight button ups with a few of them undone to work. Walking into his office to ignore the photo of you on his desk. She would walk around to his side and sit on his desk to talk to him, trying to show off her legs to him. Even trying to slyly flash her panties at him by crossing and uncrossing her legs. 

She wasn’t shy with her advances. Once at a company dinner she even tried to pass herself off as you. One of his clients was talking to him and she had walked up to him. The client had confused her with you. “This must be your beautiful girlfriend you’re always telling me about.” Mel smiled at the older man, putting her arm around his. “He talks about me?” She gushes. Rafe took his arm out of her and corrected the older gentleman. “Actually my girlfriend is over there talking to my sister.” He pointed at you as Mel laughs saying it was only a joke.

The little instances continue over the months. She was invited to your anniversary dinner like all the coworkers and ruined the cake. She so happened to have tripped and pulled the table down with her, the cake smashing to the ground. “I’m so sorry. I feel so terrible right now.” slipped past her lips as she tried to explain herself. 

Mel even started to cry when you yelled at her, telling her she needs to leave. “Rafe, I told you she’s always rude to me. She hates me. I made a mistake and she’s yelling at me.” She whined out trying to cling to Rafe’s arm. The rest of the night was ruined, some people felt bad for her thinking it was a mistake and others saw through the ploy. She won that night, because when you got home for the first time in a while you and Rafe had a fight.

He wanted to believe that she didn’t do it on purpose and you wouldn’t budge to believe it. The fight lasted a few days before Rafe came crawling back. He didn’t think that you would take this so seriously to the point of ignoring him. But what really made him come to his senses was when he overheard her talking on the phone at work. She was bragging on the phone to what he could assume was a friend.

“Her face was priceless. She was so pissed off that I had destroyed the cake and yelled at me. Rafe was so on my side, he was comforting me as I cried. It’s just a matter of time.” He was disgusted with what he heard. He made sure to make it up to you for being so blind. “See I told you that I need to protect you.” You whispered in his ear that night.

You tried to say calm, not let your anger get the best of you but she was testing your limits. It was broken when they were paired together for a project two months ago. Mel made it impossible to even have time alone with him. During lunch he had to work with her so he can’t meet with you anymore. Dinner? Not anymore, he has to stay late to work through paperwork. Why does he have to do that? Oh because Mel thinks it’s best to keep working this until it;s finished. She would even say that they should go to dinner to recharge in the middle of doing work.

Exactly like tonight. You had called Rafe earlier that night to see if he could sneak away and come home. It’s been a while since the two of you could relax and you are super horny. “Hi baby.” His voice sounds over the phone, Mel’s voice can be heard faintly in the background “Is she really calling you again we need to work.” Rafe sighs and goes back to talking to you. 

“What’s wrong?” You look at the meal you had prepared and try not to cry. “Sorry I just wanted to see if you would be home for dinner but I can clearly see you’re busy.” The sounds of papers moving and footsteps can be heard from the other line. “Come one don’t be like that. I’m just working here.” You clear your throat and answer. “I know. I have to go.” You hung up the phone. 

The food on the table stares back at you mocking you for failing to keep him. He may have come to his senses before but he still lets her dictate things. You walk over and grab the dishes, throwing everything in the tash. You grab your keys and get in your car driving to the office building. Over the last two months you started to stalk Mel, fighting the urge to smash her head in with a brick. You watched her every move, leaving little letters for her to find.

I’ll make you regret this

Be careful or you’ll end up dead

Can’t hide from me. I always know where you are

The notes increase in severity of threats. You thought by now that she would get the hint but she seems content with ignoring the warnings. You park your car a few rows down from theirs, of course they would park together. Sitting here waiting to see them walk out the door is torture, every minute feels like hours. Maybe because it actually was hours.

Almost three hours since you got there they finally walk out the doors. They are laughing bumping into each other as they walk to their cars. When Rafe reaches his, he goes to open the door but Mel stops him to give him a hug. You continue to sit there upset at the sight in front of you. How dare he touch someone else, even if it’s just a hug. He knows how she feels about him and your feelings towards the situation yet he still touched her. 

The parking lot is empty except for your lone car. Realistically you know he wouldn’t cheat on you, he loved you too much. He has always said he would kill for you if he had too. Someone who didn’t love you wouldn’t say that. Mel was just some whore who thinks she has a shot at what’s yours.

You drive back home, thinking about what you are going to do. After that night you killed the last girl it was agreed upon that there would be no more. It’s not that the cops were close to catching you but they were on the hunt for whoever was doing it. They had a curfew placed and patrol cars on almost every street. A couple months after they finally let up and things got back to normal. You shouldn’t do anything crazy and you know that.

“Where have you been?” You just walked into the door and you don’t want to deal with this. “Out.” You throw the keys in the bowl that’s on the table next to the door. “What the hell happened with all that food?” Rafe’s following you through the halls as you make your way to the bedroom. “You had to stay late with Mel. It was going to go to waste anyway.”

“Don’t do that, I was working and you know it.” He stands at the doorway as you change into your sleep wear. After months of fighting with him about her, you can’t anymore. All of that energy was sucked out of you a long time ago and you are done. “I know.” He stands there as you get under the covers facing away from him.

“Babe nothing is going on.” The sheets cover your head, muffling your voice. “I know.”

The next day was a saturday, you had woken up early finding a sleeping Rafe next to you and his phone laying on the nightstand. He’s supposed to be having dinner tonight with Topper and Kelce at the country club. That means he won’t be home for most of the night and you would have the place to yourself. You lean over and grab it. His passcode has been the same since you’ve gotten together so it wasn’t hard to get in. Looking at the text chain between him and Mel you can see just how much they actually text.

Most of her messages are left unanswered due to her flirting but he never shut it down either. You send her a quick text, glancing to the side to make sure he doesn’t catch you. She’s going to be gone tonight. Why don’t you come over? The message was barely sent for two minutes before she already sent a text back. Took you long enough. I’ll be there. You told her to just come into the door and send the address. Deleting the messages you put the phone back in place and get up.

You got ready and left the house before he was even awake. Over the weeks you’ve been stalking her social media. You’ve seen every instagram story she’s posted on the weekends, following her schedule. Every Saturday she goes to a pilates in the morning, to this smoothie shop right after, grocery shopping, then home. She thinks of herself as an influencer and never realized how much of an easy target she makes herself.

You follow her to every location, watching her every move. She’s the same type of girl that used to manipulate him. She looks down on everyone and is stuck up. The fact that she was willing to hit on a man who was in a relationship should have been a sign to him. Yet again he never realized how wrong those other girls were. You just needed to jog his memory.

After watching her get back home, you make your way back to yours. It's three hours until you told her to be there and two hours before Rafe had to leave. You had enough time to plan everything, Rafe should be getting back from golfing and then taking a shower so he’ll be oblivious for a while. You both got home around the same time, you were getting out of the car when his truck parked next to yours. 

“Hey where have you been?” He shouts when he gets out of the truck. “Out running errands.” You walk into the house, the same one you two bought last year. At least then everything was perfect. “Like?” Since last night he’s been in his own head. He keeps thinking about how defeated you sounded. He knows that you’ve had issues with Mel, you voiced it plenty of times. He’s tried to do the best he could to not let it affect the two of you but he failed.

“Just went around looking for things that I’ve been wanting. Didn’t really see anything though.” Rafe knows you’re lying. If you wanted something you would have gotten it as soon as you saw it. Were you with some other guy? You didn't even put up a fight last night which normally you would. Was he so blind that he didn’t realize he drove you away to someone else? The thought alone makes him sick, you with someone else.

“Why don’t I stay home tonight and we can order in. We can even watch some chick flick if you want.” There’s a slight pause in your movements, a slight glitch that’s barely noticeable. He wants to comment on it, ask you what's wrong but he bites his tongue. “It’s okay. You haven’t seen the guys in a while. We can do something another time.” You keep floating around the house trying to waste time as Rafe gets ready. All of the windows and doors are locked. The camera’s around the property have all mysteriously stopped working.

Rafe’s been freaking out the whole time wondering what you are up to. He keeps asking if everything is alright and you give back the same answer each time. “Everything’s okay.” It is, once Mel is out of the way everything will be okay again. But the answer is making his skin crawl. Something just seems off and he can’t put his finger on it. 

“Baby I’m about to leave.” Rafe shouts from the front door. You're upstairs but you heard him. You walk to the railing that looks down to the front door. “Bye, have fun.” He looks at you for a minute before saying he loves you and walking out the house. Backing away from the railing you get to work on the last minute plans. You had bought a door knob for the front door that locks on your phone a while ago. The two of you were always too busy to actually set up the app but tonight you’re not.

Next you make sure anything sharp or heavy is moved. You don’t want her to be able to fight you back in any way. This is her punishment for not staying away. Finally you fish out the old mask and knife that you had hidden away in a closet. Everything was set. Mel would be here in a few minutes and you had everything you needed. Putting on the mask you hide in the hallway that weaves off the front door hallway.

Right on queue the front door opens. “Rafe?” Her heels echo in the entrance hall as she walks in. “Rafe, where are you?” She gets closer to you, one more step and she’ll see you from the side. When she goes to take the step you just out in front of her, slashing the knife to her arm, twisting her around to block her from escaping. 

She tries to get around you, stepping to run past you but backing away when you fake lunge at her. Taking out your phone you open the lock app, waving it in her face and press the screen. A clicking sound alerts her of the fact that the front door is now locked. Not knowing what to do she turns around and runs up the stairs. 

She grabs the railing and makes it halfway before you catch her. Her head hits the steps as you pull her leg, stabbing her in the side. She screams in pain. It’s a good thing you have some land so no one can hear. She kicks you, causing you to fall backwards. Mel makes it up the stairs hiding in a room, making sure to close the door quietly. 

You run up the steps, looking at both sides of the hall. You walk to the far end, towards your bedroom. Opening the door you see it’s empty, you walk in further inspecting every inch of the room. A creak in the floor board from the hallway catches your attention. You run to the open door to see Mel at the top of the stairs. You run full speed at her, racing down the stairs just fast enough to get to her. 

You grab her hair and go to stab her again but she elbows you in the stomach. A groan escapes you, the pain radiating on your side. “What did you do to Rafe? Why are you doing this?” She cries out, you slice at her thigh, only leaving a gash on it. Mel tries to limp backwards as you stand straight again, taking the mask off of you. Her face drops, eyes getting wider.

“You?” You smirk at her. “Surprise.” You use her confused state to lunge at her, missing as she stumbles backwards. Before she could get far you stab her in the shoulder. She screams in pain, clutching her shoulder to stop the bleeding. She stumbled away, going through a door and running into something. She looks up to see Rafe. His hands automatically shoot out to catch her in his arms. “Are you okay?” 

He doesn’t see you and worry sets in. He says your name. “Is she okay?” She gets offended, ready to tell him it was you that’s doing this but you walk in. You pause when you see Rafe with his arms wrapped around her. You point the knife at the two of them. “I fucking knew it. You are sleeping with her.” You scoff at the audacity he has. You’ve been nothing but perfect. How could he do this to you again? Doesn’t he realize that everyone else doesn’t care about him like you do. No one will ever love him how he needs. “Is that what this is all about? You think I’m sleeping with Mel?” He wants to laugh but this is serious. 

“I never slept with her okay. We can talk about this later but she needs help.” You’re relieved he’s not sleeping with her, but you still don’t want her around. “What are you doing here?” You question. Mel interrupts you “We need to call the cops.” Rafe looks at Mel as they walk to the door. “No, we'll say you were mugged and don’t want it looked into.” Mel huffs at that. “Are you fucking serious? You’re girlfriends a fucking psycho who tried to kill me.” Now Rafe was trying to be nice to her because he didn’t want the hassle of looking for a new hire. 

He was so willing to let her go and then she had to ruin it. Rafe unwraps his arms watching as her face drops. He’s quick to wrap his hands around her neck, constricting her air flow. She struggles to push Rafe off her, kicking and clawing at him. “Rafe please.” The words are broken, each syllable struggling to escape. “You were so close to making it out. Then you ruin it by being a stupid bitch.” He starts to slam her against the wall, squeezing tighter until her movements slowed. Soon her body gave out, taking its final breath before entering eternal darkness. Rafe drops her body, storming down the hall to get to you. The knife in your hands falls, dropping in a little pool of her blood that fell from it. 

He pulls away looking you in the eyes. “Does this mean you aren’t cheating on me?” You slap his arm. “Are you serious?” He laughs. “It’s stupid I thought you got fed up with the Mel thing and decided you wanted to get back at me. Kinda glad this was the outcome, she was a bitch.”

“Next time I won’t wait as long, you’re lucky I played nice. Now show me how you’re going to make it up to me.”

[baticeer-sims]

A couple of experiments with TS2 loading time

I wanted to test out some things I've commonly heard around the Sims 2 community as ways to affect your load times. Disclaimer: I have a powerful gaming computer so my game loads fast anyways, so there might be small differences that I won't notice that are more obvious on other machines. I don't know how much of this generalizes to everyone's computer! I run the UC with Sims2RPC as my launcher on Windows 11.

My method: I loaded the game and timed how long it took the game to load from the end of the intro movie, to the neighborhood selection screen. I did it 5 times in a row for each different thing I tested and averaged out the times, just to reduce variance as much as I could.

Test #1 - Control

First I just loaded my game with my downloads folder the way it is right now (8.2 GB of pretty disorganized CC) to get a baseline value. Result: 55 seconds average

Test #2 - Do special characters affect loading times?

I used a bulk file renaming program to replace the letter "S" in every filename in my entire downloads folder, with š - if you can't see that character it's an S with an accent mark on it. (I picked S because it's one of the most common letters in English and it's also in some words common in cc filenames like "sims" and "mesh" so I thought it'd be one where I'm hitting almost every file even if I only replace one character.)

Result: 55 seconds average Conclusion: This one surprised me because it's such a piece of repeated common knowledge around the TS2 community, but I think it's unlikely that special characters affect loading times? If nothing changed from turning the vast majority of my CC from files that don't have special characters into files that do.

Test #3 - Do non-CC files in your downloads folder affect loading times?

I remember hearing you shouldn't keep preview pics in your downloads folder, because it'll slow down the game, and I was confused because I always thought it won't even try to read non-.package files at all. So to test this one, I temporarily moved 17.5 GB of photos, videos, and audio files from elsewhere on my hard drive, into my sims downloads folder.

Result: 55 seconds average Conclusion: If tripling the size of my download folder didn't change load time at all when the new files were all non-sims files, I think it's almost certainly fine to keep preview pictures (or zipped-up backups of something you don't want to use all the time, or whatever) in with your CC if it helps you keep track of your downloads.

Test #4 - Merging your CC

I knew this one was going to actually make a difference because I've directly experienced it before (on an older, worse computer where my load times were longer) but I thought I'd give it a go anyways just to see how much difference it made for me. So I merged some of my CC subfolders I knew would be the biggest (clothes, buy mode objects, & hairs) with CC Merger. According to the logs, it went from 4,308 individual files to 148 merged files.

Result: 46.5 seconds average Conclusion: This definitely makes a difference but it will make a lot more of one for people who already have long load times. For someone like me it might not be worth the amount of time it would take to be bundling every little thing I download lol.

A few other things I've heard that I couldn't think of an easy way to test

1- "Default replacements don't affect your load times as much as if you had a custom version of the same thing" - It feels to me like this doesn't make sense because surely the game still just has to read the files but I have no clue how to test this, I'm not about to spend hours gathering up the custom versions of all my defaults just to try it.

2- "The game will load faster if you have shorter file paths / fewer subfolders within the download folder" - I heard of and started doing this long enough ago that all my downloads are already only one or two subfolders deep already. I couldn't think of a quick way to make my folder structure a lot more complicated lol, and I think even if I found out this wasn't true I wouldn't change how I organize my downloads, so I didn't spend time on it.

Everyone draw whatever conclusions you want from this post, I'm not telling you to change how you organize your CC or anything, just wanted to share what I found is true for me specifically, I would be interested to hear other people who have longer load times repeating my tests and see if you get the same results, or to hear people who know more about the programming side of this weigh in, maybe something like the special characters is dependent on your computer or operating system!

[pbandjesse]

I am bone deep tired. I hate it because I just want to be able to accomplish stuff. I haven't made anything this week. And that upsets me. Like I get it. I have a ton going on right now. I am just so busy all of the time and while work is great I am also just a little sick of being so tired.

I had trouble falling asleep again last night but it wasn't as bad as it has been. It was just to warm. Waking up was terrible. When my alarm went off I told James I just couldn't do it. And reset my alarm for 740.

I woke up right before it went off. I was still not feeling great but I got myself together. I got dressed. I grabbed a few snacks. I couldn't handle figuring out an actual breakfast or lunch. I grabbed my cup. And I left.

It was raining a little. And that's when I remembered I left my sweater in the council ring yesterday! It's gonna be all wet. Terrible.

So once I got to work I drove right up to the amphitheater but my sweater wasn't there. I was so sad. I figured it got taken by the feild trip ground yesterday by mistake. Disappointing.

I went back to the office to unlock the doors. And then drove up to Yukon.

I was looking forward to the organization of the basement. And it would be good but it was a little overwhelming at first. I put on a podcast and worked through almost 10 just moving things. Pulling out any material I thought we could repurpose or use up in arts and crafts. Or for any of the other specialty programs. But I was frustrated. One by the sheer amount of stuff. And two by the casual appropriative nature of so much of what's stored down there. I am jokingly (not jokingly) referring to it as the racism corner. War bonnets and questionable masks and costumes.

A little before 10 Sarah joined me. She asked if she could help or would she be in my way. And I asked if she could work on refolding and organizing all the bedding we have down there. And she did such a good job! It's also a shocking amount of stuff. We had to throw some of it away because it was just damp or to dirty to salvage. But she did an amazing job.

And while she worked on that I tackled the tipi kitchen stuff. I found about 8 boxes of stuff that I think they keep creating every year. So I emptied them. I sorted everything with like things. We have an embarrassing amount of silverware. Specifically forks and knives. Very few spoons. But at least it's all together now and hopefully more easily accessible for next summer.

Once that was done I moved all the empty boxes into the corner and sorted that to make it nicer. And then we moved the bedding boxes. The space is so much nicer now. You can actually walk around. I can't wait til everyone sees how good it looks.

Sarah loaded up her car with the materials I pulled. And we drove up to the art building. We stopped and talked to Joe and he said thank you for organizing Yukon and that made me feel good. He asked if we could add cleaning the tipi mattresses to the list so I will get that done soon.

After we unloaded everything we went and got the gator and started our next adventure. We had a package of frozen coffee concentrate to deliver to the dining hall. Then trash to be tossed. And mattresses to be counted.

We went to every building and counted all the mattresses and made notes about the covers and what would need to be replaced. We had to throw out some. But it was fun looking in every building. And we also got to see all the finished work from our projects. And saw some more we wanted to add.

We would head back to the office and took a half hour break. I ate some of my snacks. And read the graphic novel I brought. Which was really sad. But I'm glad I read it.

It was around 1 and we still had upper camp to count. We would also grab the trash from up there. We counted everything pretty quickly. And we were able to toss the trash and the. Go to the art building and start putting away materials and resetting my fibers boxes. I also told Sarah some stories about drama and it was fun. I like her company. She's a quiet spirit and I like that about her.

It was just about 2 when we were supposed to go to the office to wait for the wedding party to come and check in. But then they did not until like 3. It's fine. I worked on some stuff on my laptop. We chatted. And eventually Rachel and Dachelle joined us.

Dachelle coaches a lacrosse team and her students are going to a college game and were tasked with making posters. But they didn't get to finish. So Dachelle brought them to finish and we all helped.

We did get some pretty great laughs about some misspelling (hornts instead of hornets) and weird spacing and layouts. It was very silly. I was pretty proud of how I fixed the one I was given. Rachel always makes a big fuss when I make art but she does it like she's mad at me. So when I came out to show them she put her head in her hands and went "Jesus Jesse, you should look into being an art teacher." And then everyone was like you are going to make a children fight over your poster. High praise. I am glad they think the kids will like it. I did only give 4 legs to the one hornet so it's fine.

I said goodbye after that. And drove to taco bell. I thought it would be nice to get a taco or a crunch wrap. I got two potato tacos and nacho fries. Which were fine but I probably won't get again. I really liked the cinnamon bites the best though. Not shocked.

I went home and was surprised that I beat James. I would get a shower and try to not feel so tired. It was hitting me hard.

I thought I would take a nap and get some thing done. But then James got home and they seemed so sad that I got a spike of adrenaline and couldnt rest in any way that mattered. Instead I just laid in bed and watched videos. James would get cleaned up and joined me.

And that's how we spent our evening. Resting together. Painting our nails. I am really tired and struggling to get this all written so I can stop thinking. I really hope I can fall asleep quicker tonight.

Tomorrow is going to be very busy. I am back at the market for the first time in forever!! And then we have to rush to a wedding!! I love a wedding so I hope getting there goes smoothly. It's all the way in PA so we need to get on the road ASAP. James is taking a half day but it will still be a close one getting there on time.

So wish us luck. I love you all. Sleep good and be safe! Until next time

[theselfshippingwitch]

Ray x Violet - A Christmas Romance - Thursday, December 7th

Violet and the gang go to get a Christmas tree.

-

Violet came into the firehouse during a lull in activity. "Hey guys! I brought sugar cookies!"

Ray jumped up immediately. "Hey, Violet! Can I take your coat?" He hopped all over the firehouse, placing the package of cookies on the table, Taking her coat and hanging it, pulling up a chair for her. The other guys shot each other looks. One word from Violet and Ray is going absolutely crazy, as always. "You made us cookies? You're amazing! They look delicious!"

"Ray! I only bought them from the bakery across the street!"

"Well, they still look very festive."

"I'm glad you think so! I'm way behind on my Christmas festivities. I only got my tree up this past weekend."

"This past weekend? That's early!" Peter said.

"When do you guys usually put your tree up?" Violet asked.

"Christmas Eve." Winston shrugged.

"...You guys don't put up your tree until Christmas Eve?"

"Yes. Why?" Egon asked.

Violet stared blankly. Janine looked up from her magazine. "Hey, don't look at me. I put up my Christmas tree at the same time I put up my Menorah."

Violet shook her head and stood up. "Nope! No! We're going to get this firehouse a Christmas tree right now!"

"What? Why? We don't need a tree, especially not so early! It's only the beginning of December!" Peter argued.

"Well, I love the idea!" Ray said.

"Yeah, me too! Let's do it!" Winston said.

"It certainly makes more logical sense than putting in all the effort only to keep it up for one night." Egon noted.

"Great! We all agree! Janine you wanna come?" Violet asked.

"No, thanks. I'm in the middle of this magazine."

"Fine, go get your tree. But, I'm not going." Peter crossed his arms.

"Yes, you are!" Violet said.

"How come I have to go but Janine doesn't?"

"Janine celebrates Hannukah."

"But she celebrates Christmas, too! And Egon only celebrates Hannukah but he's still going!"

"Exactly! And if he's going and he doesn't even celebrate Christmas, it's only fair that you go, too!"

Peter opened his mouth to say something, but could only shake his head.

They all jumped into the Ecto-1 (Ray and Winston practically dragging Peter) and drove down to the nearest Christmas tree farm.

"This one!"

Violet had found the biggest tree still left in the place.

"You gotta be kidding me. Does it really need to be that big?"

"Well, the ceiling in the garage of the firehouse is quite high. It makes logical sense to fill up the entire space." Egon said.

"Have at it, Peter!" Violet shoved the axe into his hands.

"Whoa, whoa, why does it have to be me?"

"Well, if you don't think you can handle it..."

Peter huffed. "Show you what I can and can't handle..." He started chopping down the tree while Violet ran off to the side with Ray, giggling with him as they watched Peter. After about an half an hour, the tree fell, and Peter right after. "Uuuugh..."

The loaded the tree up to a sled and dragged it back to the Ecto. It took all five of them to get it onto the roof of the car. They tied it down and drove off, the top of the tree extending way past the roof of the car to the tip of the hood.

[glygriffe]

And a Bottle of Rhum

Fandom - Firefly

Characters - Malcolm Raynolds, Jayne Cobb (no pairing)

Summary - Mal's crew encounters a snag on a salvage mission (but what else is new?)

Word Count - 1.2k

A note - For the @sicktember Challenge of 2024, Day 1: I’m not hungover, I’m just sick (or vice versa)

The derelict was huge and Mal knew his team had to cover a lot of ground fairly quickly to find anything of value, load it on Serenity, and get out of there before an Alliance cruiser had the notion to come see what was happening in the area. That is why he had split the team. Jayne was going towards what was presumed to be the captain's quarters - where some of the more precious items were stored when a leader didn’t trust his crew -, while he and Zoe poked around the cargo bay. So far, the mission was a bust.

“Is there anything interesting in there, Jayne?” Mal asked over the comm system while looking at Zoe who closed the last crate, shaking her head. “Well it seems the captain was a pricy booze collector or a complete drunk with fancy taste; his bunk has wall-to-wall bottles of whisky and rhum in fancy packaging and the room ain’t small.” “Good to know this job won’t be a complete bust. How many crates do you reckon we’ll need to get that booty out of there?” “Five or six large ones might do the trick.” Zoe lifted an eyebrow. “That is a lot of bottles.” “That’s what I’m saying.” “Ok. Do a thorough check of the cabin for any other valuables and start to pile the goods in the hallway. We’ll come to you to load it up.”

After finding a dolly and some straps in a corner of the cargo area, the captain and his second in command made their way into the crew section of the ship proper. It was a complex design with inner and outer corridors, and multiple doors leading seemingly nowhere. After the third time they'd found themselves in the same place or at least in incredibly similar passageways, Mal admitted they were lost. “Jayne, where is the captain's cabin again?”

The comm stayed silent for longer than usual. When finally Jayne answered, it was with a very useful “… What?” “Could you. tell us. how. to get to. the captain’s. room.” repeated Mal, separating the words and biting into the consonants exaggeratedly. “I don’t know”, was the slightly slurred answer. Then Jayne added as a way of explanation “I’m already here.”

With a barely restrained sigh, Malcolm changed the channel on the comm system and hailed Serenity.

“Kaylee, could you find a blueprint of this Tian Di Wu Yowng ship and tell me how to get to the captain’s cabin from my position?” “Aye-aye, Captain. Coming right up.”

It took some time for Kaylee to give them the directions they needed and even longer to get their gear through the smaller and smaller doorways of the abandoned ship. When Zoe and he finally reached a corridor where several bottles of spirits were lying by an open door, Malcolm had lost what little patience he had.

He barged into the cabin to find Jayne sprawled on the floor, hugging a crushed package containing what looked like prime-aged rhum from a volcanic region, from where he stood. The mercenary was partly buried amongst the remains of a shelf that must have been displaying quite a large number of liquor bottles.

“Jayne, you know we are in a time crunch. Was it really the best moment to sample the goods?”

Jayne smacked his lips with a slack jaw. When his slightly glassy eyes focused on Mal and Zoe near the door he slurred: "Hey! You’re here. I’m here too. So… you found me.” “How can you already be hungover? How many drinks did you toss back? Zoe, how can he be hungover an hour after finding the goods? I thought Jayne had a sturdier constitution than that. Does well-aged whisky, scotch, or rhum pack a more powerful punch than fresh moonshine?” “I could not say, sir.” “I ain’t hung’ver. Wouldn’t drink the payload, y’know dat, Mal. I’m just sick is all.”

The exasperation drained out of Mal in an instant. The sassy banter too. This could be serious. A muscle bulged on his jaw as he scanned the cabin. Despite the mess of the turnover shelving unit, not a single bottle appeared broken or even open. So, Jayne wasn’t sick from drinking anything or coming into contact with any poison in liquid form. Mal crouched down beside the fighter whose pupils were abnormally dilated.

“Is it air-born? Or did you touch something aside from the booze, something that could have broken the skin?” “What? Oh… I think the necklace bit me”, said Jayne vaguely pointing at the open top drawer of an old-fashion dresser.

Mal looked at Zoe who was already putting her gloves out of her pocket and approaching the dresser. No jewelry in sight. She began to scan the room for the item that might be responsible for Jayne's condition.

“Where is the necklace, Jayne?” Getting no answer, Mal grabbed Jayne’s wrists to better look at his hands. A couple of red pinpricks were visible on the fatty part of his right hand.

“Found it.” Mal looked up to see his first mate's gloved hands taking a pendant with a lot of protruding parts in a tarnished metal out of Jayne’s heavy canvas bag.

“Good. It might help Simon figure out what happened.” Clicking the comm system on, he added for the crew still on Serenity “Get the Doctor here on the double. Tell him to bring the stretcher.”

Simon and Shepherd Book found the captain’s quarters in record time, guided by Kaylee. Jayne was adamant that the goods should be the priority, so Zoe and Mal did a quick job of loading three crates full of liquor on the dolly and followed the stretcher where Jayne was slurring the words of a pirate song.

It would have been funny if the mercenary was simply drunk. But Jayne's movements when he tried to help get on the stretcher were uncoordinated in a way that even heavy drinking never caused.

Back on Serenity, everyone was quiet while Simon did his thing. Even Wash, who usually made jokes at Jayne’s expenses as often as he could, deemed his condition not fit to be a laughing stock. But Simon did a quick analysis of shavings taken from the metal of the necklace, and soon enough, his frown turned into the usual concentration wrinkle on his forehead when he was doing his work.

A couple of injections and 24 hours in the infirmary later, the symptoms were fading out. Jayne could walk in a straight line, talk without slurring and his hand-eye coordination was back to normal. The doctor was satisfied that his heart rate had returned to the non-life-threatening range and he said something about a neural infection caused by oxidate metal in the bloodstream, but Mal didn’t care about the medical jargon.

He rubbed the back of his neck and discreetly rolled his shoulders to dissipate the tension that had crept in there since they had left the captain’s cabin on the derelict. He didn’t particularly like Jayne, but he was part of his crew. He looked at the mercenary sitting on the examination table. He seemed fine, but was, he really?

Jayne caught Mal’s eyes on him and smirked. “Now can I have a fifth of that whiskey?”

Yep. Jayne was back.

[worldwright]

Good evening !

I, hum, didn't take apart my computer. Tomorrow :) Yeah, I'll do it tomorrow :)

I took 1 hour to get a nose right for the commission, gave me a headache but I finally got it right

I think I'm finally done with taking things out of my walls, minus a painting (i MUST have it with me, I can't sleep peacefully without it, it's been 3 move out, and at least 11 years I have it with me)

I'm so fucking tired omg, I just need a nap, just one ;-; but at least i'm full of rice and eggs

Have a wonderful morning my friend !

good <3

i need to go to my new vet today and get them to refill my idiot son's prescription... hell on earth

BUT my friends are coming over to my place for pot roast night after that!! and maybe we could like. watch venom or something. it's been a bit since i've seen it

i also have like six packages arriving today LOL. they just all decided to get delivered Now for whatever reason

did laundry yesterday!!!!!! finally. lmfao. the machines hold like twice as much as the ones in the old place, and Actually Work (😱) so paying $2 per load isn't too bad. i'll have to find a way to get lots of quarters after i run out of the stash i've been collecting since i was like 8 (no idea why, but obviously they're coming in handy now LOL)

hope your painting keeps you safe from the horrors of an empty bedroom!! it'll be so fun to put all your stuff up in the new place :3333

have a wonderful evening, friend!!

[d-trashbandicoot]

The last 4 years : A retrospection (part 3)

Now the house was empty, yes, but I had friends here to hang out with. I think I had also brought my PS4 with me. I was there for two weeks and yet I cannot recall much. As a matter of fact I cannot recall anything from memory. Not with certainty. I think; I went surfing at one point, I would’ve met my closest and oldests friends, maybe a night out, many hours at the old coffeeshop which doubled up as a queer second hand bookshop. But I cannot say for definite. My memory is hazy, as is often the case on these down swings. Somehow, once again, I ended up moving to Glasgow. The only reason that remains for that choice was convenience. Was it a mistake? 

Yes. Definitely. I could’ve resolved that situation much better. I could’ve been back in Bristol and getting on track after Jersey. But no, we got hooked on Mitsiki’s Brand New City. 

“Guess I should move to a brand new city, and teach myself how to die” 

Those words resonated. Now Glasgow wasn’t exactly a brand new city, for me, but then again I hadn’t really lived much in it the last time I was there. I guess maybe it was also the pro trans stance that Scotland offered that enticed me. Not that it mattered after I went down the DIY route. This time I told my parents my plans the first week I was at home. When they returned, I spent another few nights there  and made my way to Glasgow. And yes I left with yet more of my crap from my home, because I had decided that Glasgow would be there for good. I had found some courses to get into a Paramedic degree and thought it was enough. I thought I’ll find work and figure out the financials later. 

In reality I was still caught in the rip currents of the mood swings, and the change of self medication regimen didn’t help matters. 

My first month in Glasgow was tinted by the excitement of a new place. However once again even though it is the most recent time I seem to remember a lot less than of my time in Bristol. 

At some point I had picked up my first job doing deliveries for Amazon. The commute was between 1-2 hours with all the waiting times. The job was fine at first, I got to drive around, see new places. I started on Nursery routes, that’s what they call the routes with less stops to give to the new starters. Even on these I found myself always having someone pick up packages from me. Pretty soon as my loads increased, I was unable to complete them. I was doing 14 hour days,10 of which for driving. I was allowed 1 break, but never had the time to take it. In hindsight it wouldn’t have mattered, but I had hoped that it was just a case of getting to know the route. And once that happened I would get my working hours done much quicker. It was pretty clear very soon that it would not be the case. The worst of it was not having access to a toilet. And with the places I was delivering to, there wasn’t anywhere to go discreetly. Except for the back of the van, in a plastic bottle. It was only a matter of time before the mixed episode started. 

And then right on cue, I reversed the van into a bollard. Hard enough to bend the bumper into the back door and prevent it from opening. The worst of it was that it was a hire van, not a company one. The entire day fearing the consequence under a mixed episode only to drop it off and not hear anything from it. It wasn’t long till I snapped. One day I was going in, and only saw the message that my shift had been cancelled once I was on site. Not that it mattered, I took a bus to work that day, which only stopped at the business park at the top of the industrial complex before going on to Edinburgh. Now I was complaining too much, I was dreading the work. I walked down to the train station and went home. I had started dating someone at the time I started working too. That kind of kept it going. But alas I was growing too attached to this person, and I don’t think they wanted that. Then after the break-up, the next thing I know, I'm sending a message to my boss to say I’ve relapsed and can’t come in. He said he’ll be in touch but I would never hear from him again. 

And so here we were again. Jobless, single and in a pit of despair. 

[beaisdifferent]

Recovering from the Holidays

You’ve survived.  I’ve survived.  As I clutch to your arm and pull you to your feet from the muck, the sun rises over the holiday battlefield, and we are alive.

I’ll be frank, 90% of the time, I hate the holidays. Especially Christmas.  It’s everything I’m not good at slammed into one poorly wrapped package.  Socialize with distant family at the parties, mingle in a crowd of 40 smushed into Nanny’s house, rearrange your living space with décor and flashing lights, swallow back financial anxieties and buy the all gifts, organize the gifts for a dozen people, plan well in advance what you’re getting those dozen people, make sure you have the ingredients for those special holiday meals and then somehow find the time in all of this packed on top of your already busy day to day to cook those meals.  I hate it.  Expectation, obligation, the dread of inevitable failure to get it as right as everyone else seems to get it, the seemingly physical sickness that comes when spending too much time around so many endlessly noisy people.

But I’m at the end of Christmas day, tucked away home and safe.  I can unclench my mask of a smile, I can relax my muscles, and know that tomorrow holds no holiday responsibilities.  It’s like my heart just took off her bra.  Freedom.

But it’s not as easy as just wiping the glitter off on your hands and dropping into bed.  There is routine, structure, ritual to shaking off the pressure of December lays into your clenched teeth.  Here is how I recommend it’s done.

Light a candle.  If your home has been neglected or ignored for a few days, bringing in some soft light and good scents are a great place to start.  Smells are significant to me, and I breathe easier when the smells are baked goods or pine forests.

Wash the dishes.  The heart of my apartment is my kitchen, so starting here is a necessity.  The dishes that have built up over the past few days as the chaos built to a crescendo are the first thing on my list.  Empty whatever is clean from the dishwasher and fill it again, cleaning dishes with hot, soapy water and loading them into the dishwasher.  I handwash what needs more intimate attention and stack it neatly to dry.  I scrub down the sink and the smell of soured milk creeping up from beneath the pile.  I take a deep breath and admire my empty, organized sink.  Then wipe down the counters and I’m done.

Drink a cup of tea.  Brew up a cup of tea, white or green, and hydrate yourself with some soothing herbal heat, I recommend green, ginger, peppermint, or chamomile.  Drink it from your favorite, freshly cleaned cup.

Handle the laundry. My laundry has built into an intimidating mountain as well.  I switch over what I’ve forgotten about in the washing machine, and carry yet another bundle to the bedroom for folding.  Then I fold.  Tonight I talked to my husband as he sorted some of the gifts we’ve been blessed with this season, and sipped on my lemon ginger tea.  In less than a half and hour, I had neatly stacked piles of clothes and a stomach pacified after Holiday indulgences, and I’m done.

Get Rid of the crash.  I take all the expired food from the fridge, clean the litter box, and compile all the cardboard boxes for the recycling.  Taking out the trash right now means driving across the apartment complex for the one (1) dumpster we all share, so it’s a pain, but husband cleared it all away while I tackled the dishes, and it’s done.

Wash the Me.  I strip down and climb into a hot shower.  I shampoo my hair, wash my face, rinse and smother my locks in a heavy conditioner, and scrub every inch of my with my favorite smelling soap.  A good exfoliating is sometimes needed to really cleanse myself of the flimflam celebratory chaos, small talk, and hugs and shoulder touches from all the people I don’t know how to tell not to touch me.  Tonight a special bottle of aromatherapy bodywash I’ve been using sparingly for years was the calling.  Then I dry in my favorite purple towel, and moisturize, rubbing a heavy dollop of lotion to the problem areas of my hands and arms where the dragon scales of eczema like to lay claim.  Then I wrap up my hair to plop it.  It keeps heavy wet hair from sitting on my neck, face, and shoulders, helps to bring out the curls, and the compression feels good around my head. I’m done.

Finally, I crawl into fresh pajamas, and sit down on the couch with a stilling hobby of my choice.  I’ll read one of the new books I’ve been gifted, or knit the a gift I’ve decided too late I want to give to someone for Christmas and ready it to give to them late.  I sink into the cushion, clean, and I exhale the stress.  I’ve done it.

Cleaning my house and catching up on at least some of the things I’ve been too tired, distracted, or busy to handle puts me back in control.  It’s a catharsis with great reward, letting me see and feel that life can resume routine now and that I can be left at peace within that routine once more.  I deep clean myself, scrubbing away the festivities and all their anxiety and disruption in water almost hot enough to be painful, just hot enough to be satisfying.

The holidays are done, the gifts are given, the parties are over.  New year’s eve will be smaller for me at least, but if needed, I can come back to this ritual, and find the air to unclench again.  Always, again.

[looye29]

Product Name: (3) Discover the 10-Second Solution [ad_1] Click here to get (3) Discover the 10-Second Solution at discounted price while it's still available... All orders are protected by SSL encryption – the highest industry standard for online security from trusted vendors. (3) Discover the 10-Second Solution is backed with a 60 Day No Questions Asked Money Back Guarantee. If within the first 60 days of receipt you are not satisfied with Wake Up Lean™, you can request a refund by sending an email to the address given inside the product and we will immediately refund your entire purchase price, with no questions asked. Description: ... With the effortless 10-second solution that over 117,232 people of all ages and genders have seen incredible success melting fat with!or prefer to read? Get the text only version here...(Make sure your sound is on. This video may take 10 seconds to load) ReNew is not endorsed by, sponsored by, or affiliated with any of these organizations. Your order today is protected by my 100% Money Back Guarantee. If you are not 100% satisfied, if you do not see results right away... Dramatically and each day and don't find a sexier, more confident and slim version of yourself... then at any time in the next 60 days, simply send me back the bottles and I'll refund EVERY SINGLE CENT of your investment within 24 hours. No questions asked. I just wanted to thank you so much James for changing my life forever! I went ahead and got 6 bottles of ReNew and have noticed an insane increase in my energy and libido.I feel thinner already,I’m absolutely blown away!!!I have been telling all of my friends, my friend Shania recently took my recommendation and also saw her pant size shrink from a 12 to a 9 within just 3 weeks!James, you are a Godsend!I honestly don’t know what I would do without you. ReNew is a daily part of my life and I can’t imagine being without it.Since I’ve been using your product, I have felt my life change in just 1 month! You have given me my confidence back and I feel a new sense of pride I’m so grateful!I saw such good results that I stocked up on 6 more bottlesI can’t wait to tell my friends!I just wanted to thank you! My wife and I have been taking ReNew for 2 months now and we have felt so much healthier with a renewed sense of vigor and zest. We have a new lease on life. Our doctor is blown away!I was a little skeptical at first, but the 6-bottle deal was too good to pass up, and with your 60-day money back guarantee I had to give it a try at least. 4 weeks in I already feel much thinner! I just bought 6 more bottles today out of excitement. I never want to be without what I’m calling ‘the deal of a lifetime in a bottle.’ I’m a true believer now and swear by ReNew!! Thank you for not disappointing me!”James, I can’t believe how amazing the price is now so I immediately grabbed 6 more bottles. Now that I know first-hand ReNew really works I wanted to share them with my husband who has had a serious weight problem as well. I really care about his health and wanted to surprise him and with a deal as good as this one I just couldn’t pass up the opportunity to make his life much better.I just wanted to take a minute to let you know that I was extremely overweight and my doctor classified me as a health risk. I bought the 6-bottle package for the extreme discount which I highly recommend everyone do. It arrived at my doorstep in just a few days. I was like a kid on Christmas.I tore the package open and did my 3 second hack, just 2 pills with a glass of water every day since.It’s the first 2 months alone and I’m completely shocked!! Is this normal?I can’t wait for my next doctor’s visit!I have been telling EVERYONE I know about ReNew. Thank you so much James!”I just want to go ahead and start by thanking you so much James for helping me lose weight like never could before! 4 days in I felt like I was seeing results almost too fast.

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please contact us here For order support please contact Clickbank hereFree shipping is only available for addresses within the United States. For international shipments fees do apply. Please see our shipping terms here The content of this site is for informational purposes only, and is not intended to replace professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or other qualified health care professional about a medical condition, a suspected medical condition, and before starting a diet, exercise, or supplementation program or take or stop a medication. Testimonials, case studies, and examples found on this website are results that have been forwarded to us by users of ReNew and related products, and may not reflect the typical purchaser’s experience, may not apply to the average person and are not intended to represent or guarantee that anyone will achieve the same or similar results. ClickBank is the retailer of products on this site. CLICKBANK® is a registered trademark of Click Sales Inc., a Delaware corporation located at 1444 S. Entertainment Ave., Suite 410 Boise, ID 83709, USA and used by permission. ClickBank’s role as retailer does not constitute an endorsement, approval or review of these products or any claim, statement or opinion used in promotion of these products. [ad_2] Click here to get (3) Discover the 10-Second Solution at discounted price while it's still available... All orders are protected by SSL encryption – the highest industry standard for online security from trusted vendors. (3) Discover the 10-Second Solution is backed with a 60 Day No Questions Asked Money Back Guarantee. If within the first 60 days of receipt you are not satisfied with Wake Up Lean™, you can request a refund by sending an email to the address given inside the product and we will immediately refund your entire purchase price, with no questions asked.

[grahamstoney]

How To Make Your Toshiba Laptop Run Like A TRS-80 Model I

New Post has been published on https://grahamstoney.com/technology/how-to-make-your-toshiba-satellite-laptop-run-like-a-trs-80-model-i

How To Make Your Toshiba Laptop Run Like A TRS-80 Model I

I’ve been going completely crazy lately at the glacial speed of my Toshiba Satellite P50t laptop running Windows 10. My virus scanner kept reporting that the 10+ minutes that it took just to boot up was slower than 100% of computers like it, and hitting the “tune up” button wasn’t helping.

They don’t make ’em like this any more

For goodness sake, my TRS-80 Model I running NEWDOS/80 back in 1984 could boot faster. Not to mention all the waiting and spinning icons actually using the damn thing. It’s 2017 for your-chosen-deity’s sake, and a machine with a 2.8GHz processor should be just a bit speedier than that.

So after ruminating for ages on the decline of modern technology and how things “should” be, rather than how they actually are, I decided to suck it up and upgrade the hard drive in the laptop to a Solid State Drive (SSD) to save my remaining mental health.

This also took ages, since the first few USB-to-SATA adaptor cables I bought on eBay to clone the bastard either didn’t work, or weren’t compatible with the first few hard drive cloning software packages I tried. So I thought I’d write this article to help anyone else in similar situation reduce their mental distress.

My SSD of choice is a SanDisk Ultra II 960 Gb, which I found on eBay for about A$400. I chose it because it’s a reputable brand, reasonably cost-effective, is almost as big as the hard drive I was replacing, and has quite high data transfer rates. Certainly a lot higher than a conventional hard drive with all the head seeking required to load the billions of crappy software components that fucking Microsoft Windows 10 needs just to launch the goddam desktop screen. Not to mention the software apps I want to run on it.

The first trick is to get a USB-to-SATA adaptor with an external power supply, because the low-cost cables you find on eBay won’t be able to supply the 5volts at 2amps from a USB port that the Ultra II requires in order to function externally while you clone your internal hard drive to it. After trying 2 other dodgy cables from eBay, I found the Unitek USB Converter3.0 to SATA Adapter from Kogan.com worked for me. Kogan is great because they only sell shit that works. It might still be made in China, but they don’t stock all the cheap electronic crap that eBay has which doesn’t actually work, but is too expensive to mail back once you’ve ripped it open in Australia.

The next trick is to find cloning software that works. This took me a few goes, including trying the Acronis True Image WD Edition software that SanDisk recommend; which wouldn’t detect the drive initially and always failed with a spontaneous reboot mid-cloning.

Eventually I found the free trial version of EaseUS Todo Backup (I don’t know if it’s pronounced too-doo or toe-doe) worked for me, provided I plugged the USB adapter into the front-most USB port on the right hand side of the machine. Download the trial version, fire it up, hit the Clone button on the main screen, select the “Optimise for SSD” checkbox, select Drive 1 as the target, and give it a couple of hours to work the magic. You don’t need all 30 days really, provided you don’t take a month off between installing it and getting a working USB/SATA adapter, like I did when I attempted to use Macrium Reflect.

Then all you have to do is pull the laptop apart and swap the SSD for the internal hard drive. Here’s a video a really helpful mute with poor taste in music created to show you exactly how to do it:

Here’s to speed and sanity!

[wincestisasincest]

The Barrel - Ch. 1 (LOTR x Reader)

Okay, so time for a fun and sexy take on Modern Girl in Middle Earth that no one asked for - what if the Modern Girl had a gun? I wanted to try and write something where the Modern Girl in question was not completely defenseless, and had a fair amount of experience that the others lacked.

This will be very slow burn, I think.

Chapter: 1

Words: 1452

Warnings: Blood, guns (obviously)

Pairings: None (yet)

The butt of the rifle cracked against your cheek. You bit your tongue, but kept your arms rigid and eyes open. The taste of copper slithered between your teeth.

The orc staggered, his head reeling back with the force of the bullet that had just been lodged into it. His spine arched, and his arms flailed. Before he could catch his balance, his heart finished beating and he collapsed to the ground. Pungent, dark blood oozed into the dirt.

The wizard hardly flinched. His weary, sloped brow and buggish eyes were fixed on you thoughtfully. He tugged a strand of his curly brown beard - the one that had been blanched with bird crap.

You dropped your arms and let the rifle relax into the natural dent of your hands. They were clammy, but the crisp chilliness of the forest kept them from being sweaty. Everything about you, from the fresh redness pooling in your cheeks due to the recoil of the gun to the congested nose you had that made you sniff every couple of minutes, put you on the edge of sickness. And yet, here you were, shambling and corpse-like, but still upright and alive.

You stepped towards the wizard, your eyes occasionally darting back to the orc. You hadn’t registered yet that you were the one who killed it. You’d give it some time.

“Are you Radagast the Brown?”

You kept your voice monotone and deep to not risk exposing the rasp extending up the back of your throat.

“Who’s asking? Friend or foe?”

“Friend. I’m (y/n).”

“No family?”

“None that are around here. I’m, uh, not from here. If it wasn’t already obvious.”

You swayed nervously on your legs. Your combat boots were worn beyond repair, though their gaudy artificial stitching that was loosely holding them together still stuck out like a sore thumb. The black tank top clung to your body, and though you mostly kept it hidden with an oversized jacket, you couldn’t help the occasional peak of bare flesh and tight fabric. Oh, and, of course, your jeans were bright-ass blue and had a leather tag on the back with an impeccably printed logo.

“Indeed,” the wizard nodded, “I’ve never seen a bow quite like that before.”

You neither. This whole shooting business was about as new as Middle Earth. When you had woken up in a small pile of freshly fallen leaves, the gun, along with a few packages of ammo, were about 10 feet from your stiff body. You hadn’t dared to practice anything besides loading and unloading the gun, lest you run out of ammo in the middle of your hour of need. You had abstained from counting, knowing that it would just make you more nervous.

“Yeah...” you trailed, “but anyway, I know you don't know me, but you know Gandalf, right? He needs help.”

“Help? Now, there’d have to be something mighty strong that could get that old goat in trouble,” he raised an eyebrow hawkishly.

“Saruman.”

“Saruman? Well now, that can’t be.”

“He’s working with Sauron. Looking for the ring, and-”

“Hush!” he finally broke eye contact with you and warily scanned the tops of the trees. Nothing but a wall of silence.

“The forest... it’s quiet. Someone is listening. Come, come. Matters like these ought to be discussed inside,” he turned around and waved for you to follow, hustling in between long, imposing trunks that looked like they were ready to fall on you and crush the life out of you at any second.

******

You had killed the moth. Not on purpose, of course. You seemed to have fallen on it after you crashed through the sky of Middle Earth.

You could remember hearing its screams. You rolled over, looking for the source, grinding the roots further into your ribcage. When you finally saw the tiny thing flitting on the ground, trying to get your attention, you dumbly watched its crushed wings and snapped legs twitch with jolts of desperation.

“I have a message! A message for Radagast the Brown! Friend of the Eagles! You must take it in my stead - it is urgent. The fate of Gandalf the Gray depends on it.”

You said nothing, barely able to keep yourself conscious as you rapidly inhaled and expelled stilted breaths.

“Gandalf the Gray was betrayed by former friend Saruman the White. He is on top of the tower Orthanc, in Isengard, dying with each passing moment. He dispatched me to tell Radagast to seek out the aid of the Eagles - he fears that they may be his only chance at rescue from the tower.”

“Are... are you real?” you finally sputtered.

“I am alive, but not for much longer. My strength fails me. But you must go. Follow along the edge of Mirkwood until you find the brown wizard. The fate of Gandalf, and perhaps the realm, may depend on you. Please, time is of the essence. You must leave.”

The creature’s mouth never moved. You never heard the sound of its voice. But you felt the words in your head, bouncing around there after being injected by some foreign source. The moth pointed its head straight at you.

“Please. It does not matter who you are - your future depends on the knowledge that only Gandalf holds.”

A throbbing pain blossomed in the back of your head, just under your neck. The moth flitted its wings once more, and then the telepathic force that had been drilling into your skull blinked out.

You took a long sip of murky liquid in a cracked glass teacup. Warmth stirred in your void of a stomach, which you had been trying to ignore.

“My word. Then it is true. Saruman has turned to the darkness,” Radagast said to no one in particular. He looked out the window, as if waiting for the silhouette of his friend to appear over the horizon, completely fine.

“I’m sorry,” was all that you could say.

He turned to you, eyes still flickering with life but in danger of going out.

“So am I,” he said grimly, “but, no matter. Gandalf was right. The Eagles are his only chance of salvation from a place as wicked as Isengard. I’ll get the message to them at once.”

He looked at his feet. You couldn’t actually recall much about Radagast from the books - you knew more about how low of an opinion Saruman had of him. But the look of despair that was settling deep within his chest was a grave reminder that he was just as capable of complex thought as anyone else.

You realized that you had just seen a man accept that there would be war on their hands, and that there was nothing he could do to avoid it.

“It will be alright in the end,” you found yourself saying.

Finally, he looked up at you sadly.

“I know. The world will always be okay in the end. And I, who have lived many years and will live many more, will be around to see it. But what will happen to everyone in between?”

“I dunno,” you shrugged, “but in the meantime we’ll just... do our best to protect them. That’s all we can do, right?”

You tilted the edge of your lips up, not quite forming a grin but far from the hopeless neutrality that you had carried with you into the house. He analyzed you, squinting his eyes and pursing his lips, not caring if you noticed.

“Who are you?”

“I’m (y/n).”

“A person is more than their name, especially one such as you.”

“I’m nobody important to this world. I don’t belong here.”

“And yet here you are. You’ve become somebody important,” he scratched his chin, “this appears to be beyond me, but I suggest that you consult with Gandalf. You’re already heading in his direction anyway.”

“What?”

“I’m sending you with the Eagles. The fellow will be in a mighty poor condition when you find him, it’d be irresponsible for me to send him back all by himself. And besides, you seem like a useful person to know.”

He smiled coyly. Your mind buzzed.

“There must be someone else that you can send?”

“Nope. Well, no one humann, anyway. One of the quirks of dedicating your being to the plants and the animals. Now, on you get! I can hear them circling overhead.”

You had no idea how he had summoned the Eagles, and at this point, you were almost too afraid to ask. You gritted your teeth and let your stomach do a cartwheel as you realized that you were about to come to terms with your fear of heights in the worst way possible.

So be it.

[ilovejevsjeans]

How Olympian race engineer Tom Stallard helped coach Daniel Ricciardo to Monza victory

Daniel Ricciardo and the ever-improving McLaren team were seen as a match made in Heaven ahead of the start of the 2021 season. But while it all came good at the Italian Grand Prix, Ricciardo’s win at Monza was a product of hours and hours of unseen work, and some confidence-shaking moments along the way. F1 Staff Writer Greg Stuart sat down with Tom Stallard, the man who’s race engineered Ricciardo throughout 2021, to trace the arc of that breakthrough Monza win.

You could make a strong case that Lap 52 of the Monaco Grand Prix marked the nadir in Daniel Ricciardo’s first season with McLaren. As the Australian exited Sainte Devote and accelerated up the hill, he dutifully jinked left to allow team mate Lando Norris to lap him, Norris acknowledging the gesture with a wave from his cockpit. Norris would go on to finish third. Ricciardo, who’d brilliantly won in Monaco just three years earlier for Red Bull, finished out of the points in 12th.

That was May – and yet just four months later, Ricciardo had taken McLaren back to the winner’s circle for the first time since 2012, capping off a superb Italian Grand Prix weekend with an emotional victory at Monza, and leading Norris home in a McLaren one-two.

How did that happen? Ricciardo’s race engineer Tom Stallard has been the man F1 fans have heard soothing and chivvying Ricciardo over team radio this year, a year in which success has been harder to come by than many had anticipated – and he was naturally delighted when Ricciardo combined all his learnings to take the assured win in Monza, his first victory since that 2018 Monaco triumph.

“I was super proud,” Stallard tells me as we chat in the paddock in Sochi, “because we've worked really hard this year to be honest, and it was nice to see him executing everything that we'd talked about and worked on.

“Obviously he did a fantastic job, but he actually did the job that we'd been talking about and working on together. He's a top driver, obviously, joined our team as a top driver, but we’ve actually had to work at it quite hard and in Monza, he really executed that.”

Why didn’t Ricciardo and McLaren gel immediately? Ricciardo’s stellar second half of 2020 with Renault – during which he took two podiums and finished every race in the points – combined with McLaren’s sharp upward trajectory and the arrival of Mercedes power units at the team for 2021, meant that many earmarked the Ricciardo/McLaren combination as a potential surprise package this season.

But despite claiming points in his first four races for the team – including convincingly leading Norris home in Barcelona – right from the off, Stallard says, there were issues.

“I think the Bahrain race [where Ricciardo finished P7 to Norris’ P4 on his McLaren debut] he did quite well, but that was with a lot of time in the car in the [Bahrain] test – I mean, not a lot of time but a bit of time at the test, and a circuit that suits him well,” says Stallard.

“And then at Imola [where Ricciardo finished P6 as Norris claimed a podium in P3] we kind of exposed the problems, if you like, that he was having with the car, and we understood the struggle that we would have.”

As you might expect from an engineer of Stallard’s experience (he joined McLaren back in 2008) his first reaction to the situation wasn’t to panic, but to put in place processes to help bring Ricciardo on.

“We put in place a plan of what we needed to do differently and how we needed to react. And since then actually, we've been on an upward trajectory from that point, but you don't always necessarily see that from the outside.

“There have been a number of races where after the race, he's been frustrated and I've been reassuring him that actually we are seeing progress, and we don't have the good results yet but they're coming.”

So what was it about the MCL35M that wasn’t suiting Ricciardo and his driving style?

“Ultimately,” says Stallard, “all the drivers would choose the same thing, which is very good rear stability, and front end that increases as you add steer. That is totally universal, but the truth is that having a car that does that is the Holy Grail of Formula 1 design; every team up and down this paddock is trying to do that, and succeeding to a greater or lesser extent.

“We have a car that understeers and that's been something that he's had to adapt to and modify his natural approach to get the best out of.”

One thing Stallard is at pains to point out is that, for all of Ricciardo’s famously insouciant manner, beneath the gigawatt smile there lurks one of the world’s top racing drivers, with a work ethic to match.

“Obviously Daniel seems like the most laidback guy in the world,” says Stallard, “but behind the scenes, under the water, the duck feet are going quite quickly.

“Because we were in lockdown and he was in Los Angeles [over the winter break], we did most of his initial integration virtually, and during that phase, he learnt all the switches, what all the toys do, how to use the steering wheel.

"We spent a lot of time talking through the strategy with Daren [Stanley], our strategist. And actually all the communication side, all of the switches, all the controls, he had completely down by the time he went to winter testing.

“He's been in the factory loads, doing the simulator, partly working on his driving with that, but also giving feedback to the team about what he wants from the car,” adds Stallard.

“And at no point during the phase where he was getting up to speed with our package did he question that there was any kind of, the team backing the other driver, or the engineers didn't know what they were doing, or the car was set-up wrong. He just knuckled down, got on with the work, and I think that the whole team has a lot of respect for him for that.”

Ricciardo endured an up-and-down run of form leading up to the summer break, the lows including a tough Styrian Grand Prix where he finished 13th to Norris’ fifth and a Hungarian Grand Prix where first lap contact with Charles Leclerc hobbled his McLaren, leaving him 11th at the flag.

But Ricciardo appeared rejuvenated after the summer break, nailing his best qualifying of the year at that point with P4 on the grid in Belgium – while after a race to forget for the whole McLaren team in Zandvoort, Ricciardo then put together what would ultimately be his winning weekend in Monza, qualifying P5 on Friday, racing to P3 in Saturday’s F1 Sprint before claiming that sensational victory in the race.

Indeed, it was Ricciardo’s anger at qualifying P5 on Friday at Monza (and just 0.006s off his team mate) that seemed to indicate that a change had come in the Australian’s expectations of the level he should be performing at – with Stallard noting the key difference in Ricciardo since the summer…

“I think the ‘frustration at being P5’ thing was there all along,” says Stallard. “For me, the difference with the break is that it helped him not overthink it, so he's adapted better to the way you have to drive our car without it being completely conscious every corner, what you need to do.

Daniel's easy to work with, because if you give him a problem to solve, he goes away and works at it, so the work ethic's always been good, which makes life easy,” adds Stallard. “He doesn't defer responsibility away from himself; he takes a lot on the chin, which means some of what I've had to do is keeping him, let's say, up, because he's taken a lot of responsibility for things himself.

“But from my side, that means he's great to work with, and that collaboration is very strong. And when we got to Monza, we both had a lot of confidence in each other, so that made the result in Monza feel very natural.”

Going forward

Ricciardo leading McLaren to their first victory since Jenson Button’s 2012 Brazilian Grand Prix triumph, and their first one-two since the 2010 Canadian Grand Prix, was a fantastic moment for all at McLaren, and one that was warmly welcomed by most in the F1 paddock.

But Stallard was under no illusions during our chat in Sochi that Ricciardo is still on a journey to being fully comfortable in McLaren’s MCL35M car this season – a point Ricciardo would then back up himself a few days later when, despite finishing P4 in the Russian Grand Prix, he admitted that “there is still some stuff missing”.

“In Monza, the circuit and our technical package aligned well,” says Stallard, “and actually last year we came second there, so it's a circuit that suits our car and obviously Daniel did a very good job putting it all together, and the strategy was correct.

“He now understands how to drive the car; I think he's felt that himself rather than it just being explained to him, which means we have made another step. But it's a much more linear process than it appears from the outside.”

What Ricciardo does have in his corner, meanwhile – apart from the work ethic and talent that have made him an eight-time Grand Prix winner – is a race engineer in Stallard who has been an elite athlete himself, forming part of Great Britain’s silver medal-winning men’s eight rowing crew at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

And Stallard believes that his own experience as an athlete can help get the best out of Ricciardo, who signed to McLaren on a three-year deal that will take him into Formula 1’s bold new era of regulations with the team.

“In this sport, 20 years ago, the race engineers were very much engineers,” says Stallard. “But now we are coaches, and so we're using the data to guide the drivers in how to get the best out of the car.

“So I see myself now as a coach and I have a lot of experience of being coached, whereas a lot of the other race engineers… don't necessarily have the same experience of being coached. And I think that does give me an insight in terms of the struggles that people have when being coached, especially in a sport where on the way up, drivers often aren't coached that much and it gives me a good ability to manage the pressure and stay calm in what would be a pressured situation as well.

“And I also think that on any journey, although I describe it as a linear process, there's still ups and downs, and there'll be events in the future that are more difficult and that we'll have to respond to and react to. It would be naive to think it's plain sailing from here – but I think that it's a good next step.”(X)

[drakenology]

“he call me throatzillaaa” w/ bakugo, sero and kirishima inspired by “throatzilla” by slayyyter

warnings: cum (like lots of it), d*ck sucking, degrading, cussing, face fucking- just straight nasty head, 69-ing, filthy words, mentions of weed and high sex.

I recommend you listen to the song just to get a feel of the lyrics I used.

minors dni 18+

author’s note: this song came on shuffle and the idea came to mind to write about sucking dick. (one of my many favorite hobbies) Enjoy, besties!

“i know you wanna cover my face in whaaaat?.....”

- b. katsuki

bakugo’s in a testy mood and that could only mean two things

1. He’s horny

2. He’s genuinely pissed about something

more times than most it’s the first reason

so you being the caring s/o you are, you help him out *wink* *wink*

Katsuki sat on the couch scowling at nothing. He had ranted to his pretty baby that everything and everyone was just pissing him off; a telltale sign he needed a release. All that pent up aggression must have been a heavy load to carry so why not let him spill it all over your face? So being the sweet and considerate significant other that you are you happily get on your knees for him, palming at his growing dick through his jeans. Your eyes sink into his as you unzip them, Katsuki stopping midsentence at your boldness. His dick breaks free from the confines of his boxers, springing and slapping against his stomach. Hm. His proud boner stood tall, its bright red head leaking precum serving as further proof the man was just irritatingly horny.

You practically salivate at the sight, taking him into your mouth immediately. Words just took too much time to say. Your need to suck every aggression out of your bratty boyfriend nullified any other thought in mind as you slide your mouth down his length, your tongue stroking the bottom of his cock. Bakugo relaxed in his seat, watching as your pretty mouth take in his whole length. He moans when he feels himself slide into your throat, yanking your hair to bob your head up and down. You start gagging and drooling all over his dick as you pull away. Strings of your spit connect your mouth to his throbbing cock from the separation, your tongue returning and following the trail of his vein up to the head with focused and teary eyes darting into Bakugo.

“So big...” You gasp, taking him into your mouth again, your hands stroking what you can’t fit. Katsuki’s so astounded by the warmth of your mouth and all the slurping that came from it he’s a moaning mess, his head hanging back as he cussed. Your hands twist and pump his blushing cock, your spit making it feel as if he’s inside your tight walls as you work his most sensitive spots with your tongue.

“That’s it baby. Suck my fucking dick. Such a whore.” Katsuki slurred, hissing as you urge him to fuck your mouth again.

You moan around his dick, the vibrations sending shockwaves into Bakugo as he pulled your mouth off of his throbbing cock. He takes his cock into his hand and pumped a few times before erupting all over your face, your mouth open and tongue hanging out as you try and taste him. Hot, sticky globs of his cum drip all over your face much to Bakugo’s delight. You lick your lips and look up at him, eyes teary as you blink them away. Bakugo just stares down at your coated face, kissing your lips to taste himself like the filthy man he is, pulling away with lovesick eyes.

“Shit..... Go upstairs.”

“dirty talk so good it was poetry.”

- s. hanta

hanta sero is a resident “tree” smoker. 💨

so high sex is a must. he gets real horny when he’s stoned with his baby.

there’s no better feeling than smoking a blunt, kicked back watching you struggle to swallow him whole.

sometimes he’ll look at you with those pretty brown eyes all low and hazy and ask oh so nicely for you to suck his dick.

and what kinda s/o would you be to deny your sexy boyfriend the privilege of being sucked off by you?

filthy praise >>>>>>

like his dirty talk game is strong 💪🏽

like his words alone could make you wet mmhm yessir

sero just finished his blunt. you could tell because he reeked of weed and ash, his eyes low and red riddled with lust when he saw you just minding your business in your bedroom. you were reading something, laying on your stomach and swinging your legs all innocent like.

“You smoked without me didn’t you?” You question, looking up from your book to see Sero taking off his shirt. He smirks, noticing your face flush and turn back to your book. Sero walks up to you, crotch standing in your peripheral vision showing off a hefty boner.

“Whatcha gonna do about it, huh?” Sero slurred, swatting your ass to catch your full attention. Whenever Sero got high, he was insatiable in bed. You fondly remember a time you were bonded by his tape, ass up and face buried into the mattress as he fiendishly pounded at your cervix. Throwing your book somewhere, you pull Sero towards you in a heated kiss. Something in you just needed him, needed to feel him in some way or another. Clothes molt away and thrown all over the bed, making out with each other with fervor.

You’re now straddling his face, leaning down and sucking his dick to return the favor simultaneously. Sero’s tongue plays with your clit, slipping into your folds as his hands knead and grab at your plush ass. Your soft moans tingle on his cock, your head bobbing up and down to try and keep up with him.

“Having trouble, baby?” Sero teased, replacing his tongue with two slender fingers so he can talk you through the high he was about to give you.

“Your pussy’s so wet for me. Sucking my cock’s fun, isn’t it babe?” His filthy words cause arousal to resurface, your pussy dripping onto his fingers as he thrusts them inside with a deliberate pace. You’re shaking, unable to focus on sucking his dick from the seering pleasure he was giving you.

He slides his fingers out, wet sounds following as he slid them back in, lips kissing your thighs while he worked you. “Go on baby. Keep sucking my cock... if you can that is.” Sero laughed, bucking his hips up to keep you focused on your task. You gag around him, slurping as he started fucking your mouth and devouring your pussy at the same time. Tears stream down your face as Sero filled you with his tongue and dick, playful hums vibrating against you as he groaned and talked shit once again.

“Mmm.. listen to that pussy. So fucking sloppy. She likes it doesn’t she? Yeah I know she fucking does. This pussy’s mine, ya hear?” Sero moans, his fingers yet again fucking your soft walls so you hear him clearly.

“Face so pretty and my head go dumb like...”

- e. kirishima

eijiro loves you. like that’s not surprise.

and he thinks you’re the prettiest and sweetest thing he’s ever met.

so imagine his shock when he finds out you’re an absolute savant at sucking dick.

the thought of coating your pretty face in his cum just- like he short circuits.

damn like you’re the whole package.. gorgeous and you can suck dick like a pro?? scuse him while he goes and buys the biggest ring in the jewlery store.

“Fuuck, you look so sexy right now.” Eijiro gasps, feeling your warm mouth take him in. Your pretty eyes look up at him as your mouth works his length, slurping and choking on him as you drool all over it. Eijiro takes your head and holds it still to pull himself out of your mouth, holding his cock in one hand and tapping it on your tongue. You happily stick it out further, panting a little from trying to catch your breath.

“You’re gonna be the death of me, y/n.” Kirishima lulled, groaning at the sight of your pretty face becoming so lewd. He loved seeing you like this, spit dripping down your chin, skin flushed and eyes teary, your mascara running all over your face.

Eijiro sticks himself inside your mouth again, missing the warm wetness as he fucked your throat. You slack your jaw, sticking out your tongue to take him in. He’s moaning into the air, spewing out his desire to cum all over your face and then bend you over to fuck you for hours with a fistfull of your hair. You moan around his dick, slipping a hand down to play with your pussy shamelessly while keeping that hypnotizing eye contact.

“God you’re so fucking sexy. I bet you’re wet as fuck right now. Mm keep going like this and I’m gonna cum all over that pretty mouth.”

[pbandjesse]

I had a good day. I am very cozy right now and I feel happy. I feel excited for the wedding. And I feel excited for the week.

This does not mean I wasn't stressed at points. But that was thankfully not the entire day.

I slept alright. I don't remember my dreams from last night. Not like the night before when I had such vivid and intense dreams. Getting up was tough though. But I got up and my hand hurt but I was in a good mood. I loved my outfit. I don't think the picture James got of me was a great one but it was still really cozy and this sweater is so soft.

We packed up the car and went to get breakfast. Because I was running the market today I had to be there early but that was fine. James helped me get everything over and then it was just. Very busy.

I had a lot to do. Setting up. Both my tables and my printing stuff. And people would take me up on that which was cool.

But there was a ton happening today. The kids fair, the bat box guy, there was a boat race, and music, and even Batman was there?? So it was a lot. But it was fun!

There were a few small issues. The wind was pretty bad and people kept wanting the sides down which I'm fine with but then the boat race asked for a path so to leave some open. And then I had to move two venders around and one was very much not happy with me. But I was able to fix it and everyone seemed pretty happy in the end.

It was cold though. I am glad James told me to bring a jacket. And I had fun regardless. My face just got a little wind burnt. I worked a lot on my circle loom and it was great. I also did get to print with a few people. When the bat box guy came, his name is Chris, I told him people could come and print words on their boxes with me and that ended up being so super cute. People were awesome today.

I didn't sell much. I decided my small knit bears should be half price because they are a little funny. And I sold 3. Plus I got $10 in tips for the printing. So honestly it wasn't a bad day. Especially since I got paid to be there today I wasn't to upset.

At 1 everyone packed up. There had been some confusion when someone parked where the venders load in and out and we didn't know who they were and I was like. Okay I am in charge so I will go check in. And it ended up being a venders mom who was here to get her so no problem at all. All good.

I got lots of hugs and congratulations and good luck about the wedding. I struggled to pack the car a little because something went in on the wrong order so the trunk wouldn't close and I had to take everything out and start over. And the parking lot was a little wild so having all my shit on the ground was not ideal.

But I packed it up and locked the car and headed inside to teach James the cannery.

James had to put a few fires out with an event but I ended up running around helping Angie and answering some questions for a few minutes. And then we headed to the cannery.

It was really fun showing them everything. I decided to both give instructions for our small adult cannery, as well as for a regular kids one. So James can help out during the school year. And it went great. It took a little less then an hour to do the entire run through. Srt up, program, breakdown, issues you could have, how to fix them, and the choosing of who our dads will be so they don't have to go up stairs much.

I also showed them how to make a chase and we set it up for our group. I felt great about it and I'm really excited to get to do this with James and our family.

I was really tired after this. I gave James a smooch and headed home. I was a little bit driving in a fog. But I got home safely and everything was good.

When I got home I struggled with the stuff I brought in from the car plus two packages and I ended up breaking my nail and when I say I was devastated, I am not exaggerating. I just want to have nice nails for the wedding!! So instead of ripping the rest off I super glued it?? It seemed to have worked but I did it over my nail polish so I don't know if it will hold but my nail seems like. Really stiff and strong so I guess we'll see what happens.

I had lunch and chatted with Jess and realized I needed to lay down.

I got cozy in bed and waited for James to come home. And when they got back they laid with me until I fell asleep.

I woke up at 6 and was a little distressed. My allergies had kicked up and my nose was so dry I barely got any oxygen for my whole nap and it was nice fun to be awake. But slowly I got it together. And me and James got to work.

We cut all our stickers out and while James made us dinner I stuck 100 stickers to 100 matchbooks. And I am thrilled with how they came out. This was such a good idea. We did print to many stickers but I figure we can just have them in the table too like confetti.

After we finished that me and James both worked on editing our vows. This is a funny thing because I had written then forever ago and was like. Okay! Knocked that off the list!

But now that it's almost here I'm like. Nervous!! Like self conscious. I have read them so many times at this point and I am afraid that they seemed to generic. Not personal enough. Which is fair because I have read so many others that I have taken good phrases.

So last night at midnight I started editing and taking stuff out and adding jokes and trying to make them more. Authentic feeling.

But there were still two paragraphs I wasn't thrilled with. Something was off.

So me and James both worked on our vows. James ended it scrapping half of there and I sent mine to Callie to get feedback after some changes. And honestly it think it's much better. Could it be even better? Probably but also it is already 550 words and I didn't want it to be longer then a page. I will probably look over it again this week but I'm happy.

Callie said it was good. And we discussed how I wrote it with declarative thesis statements and 3 supporting sentences. That I approached it like a paper. She thought that was very funny.

I got a shower and tried not to pick at my face. I have a new little psoriasis on my upper lip and I am trying hard to leave it alone but my hands keep finding it. Hopefully it settles quickly.

Now me and James are in bed. It is chilly but in a nice way. Tomorrow there are chores to do. And then I am working an event tomorrow. Which is a wedding apparently! James just told me. I didn't think I was doing another wedding before my own but I am. It will be nice to have one more.

I hope I get good sleep tonight and wake up with so much energy tomorrow. Wish me luck. Goodnight everyone!!