#very beautiful and worth a lot of money but completely artificial

[fictional-men-enthusiast]

Blue Zirconia art because I’m obsessed with them.

[quanjewelry]

Accessorizing With Jewelry: What You Should Know

Jewelry is an investment that so many people all around the world make. It gives many the feeling of worth and beauty. Buying and caring for jewelry is also an important aspect to pay close attention to. This article was written to help you with all things jewelry and should be read to help you with your decisions.

Jewelry consignment stores are a great place to sell your jewelry. Consignment stores will sell your jewelry for whatever you think is a fair price, and they take a certain percentage of the sales when the item sells. They will usually display it for about 3 months and then you have the option of either picking it up or selling it to the store. Occasionally the store will keep it on display for longer if you ask.

If you buy an item of jewelry for your wife on your anniversary, why not get a matching piece for her birthday? It's always lovely to have jewelry that goes together, so complete a set over a year for her! No woman will be disappointed when you present her with a beautiful piece of jewelry.

When cleaning silver, it is best to invest in a jeweler's rouge cloth. It has a polishing compound on the red side which is safe to use with all gemstones, and the yellow side is intended for giving a polish that will sparkle. This will keep your jewelry looking gorgeous for a long time to come!

To make sure no one can tell that you're wearing costume jewelry, choose pieces that have a real metal setting. A gold or platinum setting can give an artificial gemstone a much more authentic look. This will make sure that you still look elegant even when you're buying your jewelry on a budget.

When giving a piece of jewelry to someone, you must always remember to keep the receipt. This applies to almost anything you purchase, but this definitely applies to a piece of jewelry because of how expensive it is. If you want to return the piece of jewelry for whatever reason, you need the receipt to get your money back. Otherwise, you will be stuck with a useless piece of jewelry that you spent lots of money on.

Once you have decided that you are going to purchase a piece of jewelry and are ready to start shopping, consider taking a friend or family member with you. This way, you have someone else to bounce ideas off of and another viewpoint for the items you are considering.

Jewelry makes a great gift - and an even better surprise gift! A little foresight will ensure that appealing jewelry can be presented without consulting with the recipient beforehand. Pieces selected with the receiver's taste and sizing taken into account are best. Just in case, the jewelry giver should know exactly how a surprise gift can be resized or exchanged.

Always store your pearls flat, and in a silk pouch. Pearls scratch very easily and so, soft silk is the safest material to store them in. Hanging pearls is a bad option because it can stretch the knotted string over time and ruin your precious investment.

When you clean your jewelry, be sure to dry it and polish it before returning it to storage. This is especially true for gold and silver jewelry. The metal can tarnish if left damp. The stones in your jewelry will also develop water stains if they are put away with water on them.

As it was said at the beginning of this article, jewelry is an investment that many people around the world will make. Hopefully the tips and information that was in this article will help you in all of the decisions that you must make pertaining to your beautiful collection of jewelry.

[being-worthy]

Saturday Home Cinema: Mulan (2020) - A very honest review!

I just had to write this review because Mulan is one of my heroes and I’m a huge fan of the original Disney Mulan (1998). I saw the movie for the first time as a kid when I had trouble feeling integrated and was daily bullied at school. I re-watched it again and again and again until I was able to learn by heart the script and all the songs in German (and later on, even in English). I just saw so much of myself in Mulan (maybe except for the fact that I’m not as beautiful or witty as she is). I too always felt out of place and I couldn’t be my true self and I was never very ladylike either. I also looked up at her and saw her as a role model. Sometimes I thought that if I stared long enough at my reflection in the mirror, it’d show me my true self - and I’m still waiting to this day… Disney’s 1998 version of Mulan was and still is my favourite Disney movie.

> SPOILER ALERT AHEAD!! <

The best thing about this movie is the soundtrack, especially at the end. Christina Aguilera was the right choice to sing Reflection and Loyal Brave True. The goosebumps her voice gives, I can’t even describe how extraordinary her voice is. In the end credits, you can listen to the English version of Reflection as well as the Chinese version (sadly sung by Liu Yifei  ¬¬). It’s worth to watch the end credits and listen to the songs.

*My suggestion: Stop whatever you’re doing. Put on some headphones (even better if they’re noise-cancelling), close your eyes, play the song Reflection song (and Loyal Brave True if you feel like it) by Christina Aguilera, no distractions no interruptions, forget about everything and everyone, let the song flow through your ears, mind, heart, body, and soul, and you will feel like you’re Mulan, especially when the drumming gets louder, it’s epically epic! (Sorry for the redundancy but it IS a remarkable song!)

I welcome the idea of wanting to take a classic and do something new, something fresh with it but humanity could’ve gone without this movie and they shouldn’t ask for $35 to watch it on Disney+ and sometimes a classical doesn’t need to be redone. Additionally, I can’t entirely understand what’s going on these past years not only with Disney but Hollywood and all other big movie production companies. It’s either remake of this classic or a 2nd/3rd sequel of a movie that doesn’t actually require a sequel but it’s still done anyway. Why even bother wasting big amounts of money to create a disaster? You’re better of donating that money to charity (or to me lol). The main thing that Disney has been doing lately are remakes of many of our childhood movies Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, Dumbo, The Jungle Book, The Lion King, among others, and now Mulan. Some have a few good parts in them but they still can’t and never will compare to the original. Why is there no originality and innovation anymore? Have they run out of ideas? Furthermore, let’s be honest people will always compare the remake (either consciously or unconsciously) with the original because there are less than a dozen movies where the remake either was (almost) as good as the original much less better than the original. The movie Mulan (2020) had a massive budget and is the most expensive film made by a female director (Niki Caro), yet how they made it, the battle sequences and CGI effects, etc. they’re all crappy.

Budgets of all Mulan interpretations:

Mulan (1998) - $90 million > Directed by Tony Bancroft and Barry Cook. Made $304.3 million in the box office

Hua Mulan (2009) - $12 million > Directed by Jingle Ma. Sadly, made only $1.8 million in the box office. It deserved more love!

Mulan (2020) - $200 million(!!) > All that budget was a waste!

I’ve seen all three versions. The 1998 version is for everybody and it’s funny and you feel with the characters and the film. Let’s be honest, the granny is one of the best characters, most of us have or had a granny like that in our lives. The 2nd one is a 2-hour long movie, a more mature adaption which illustrates the ugly harsh truth about war and the loss and death it brings with it and that there’s nothing funny or cool about it. This one is not suitable for children. You feel with the characters and their sacrifices and they also develop along the movie. I can only recommend to watch this version if you haven’t. And the latest one is a disgrace.

I’m a bit confused as to what the message of the movie is. On one hand, it tells you shouldn’t hide your inner beauty, you shouldn’t hide who you are, you shouldn’t hide your abilities, you shouldn’t try to hide who you truly are in order to conform to what the world/society wants you to be or who you should be, let your true self shine and be yourself and don’t allow anyone to tell you that you’re inferior just because they think/say you are. This is something powerful and admirable but, on the other hand, at the same time, it tells you that you can only do that if you are the chosen one. Let me explain... In the beginning, we see Mulan as a little girl chasing a chicken up to the roofs of the houses at the village where she lives. Basically, she’s born as a one-woman army (almost deus ex machina) and doesn’t require any further training which is total and utter rubbish. She has all the skills because of her powerful chi (vital life force energy) but has to underplay them because it’s not very ladylike to behave like she wants to and she still underplays them when she trains with the soldiers so as to keep a low profile. Her being so powerful from the beginning makes me feel alienated from her and I can’t empathise with her. It’s also not very realistic, nobody is born with their abilities fully developed. For example, even Bruce Lee had to train hard to get where he got and he wasn’t the only one.

The original version shows us a regular girl, at times clumsy (which is a cliché but we still liked it) and when she’s confronted with new situations, she analyses them and finds a quick canny solution to them. She also has to train her body and mind to get to the peak of her potential and accomplish what nobody else could in her time, and here the character is done from the start of the movie and the only thing she has to do is choose not to hide her chi anymore. This tells us that you don’t have to work hard to achieve your dreams whereas in reality you actually do have to work your butt off!

I’m not a fan of the leading actress they chose for Mulan, aka Liu Yifei, not only because she’s a police brutality supporter according to her controversial tweets a while back - this already makes her unworthy to portray Mulan who is the complete opposite - but also because she didn’t do a good job at depicting this great role. Mulan is a role model for every girl and woman and it’s a massive contradiction if a woman who agrees to the atrocious police methods impersonates her role. What message do we send out to every girl out in the world? In her acting she’s this blank and hollow person through the movie and transmits no emotion whatsoever - not even when she cries. This also makes it difficult for me to identify myself with her. She’s this wooden plank, she is and stays a blank canvas through the whole movie with no growth in her character and it’s frustrating having to see this because the character of Mulan isn’t at all like this. Mulan experiences many emotions from the moment where she makes the decision to enlist so her father doesn’t have to or when she experiences the loss of her comrades or has to kill someone for the first time, etc. she suffers along her journey and all this changes her but you see nothing of it in Liu Yifei’s Mulan.

In the Disney version, there are some crucial moments that are missing in the new one. For instance, the most crucial one is the moment where Mulan decides to go to war. If you remember the animation one, she’s sitting in the rain by the dragon statue and at that moment makes a decision that could kill her or worse bring dishonour to herself and her entire family (including ancestors) which was far worse than death during that time! She gets up, marches to the altar of her ancestors, takes her father’s sword and cuts her hair (I know men had long hair back then too but still), puts on the armour and goes to war. All this while being accompanied by an epic song written by Jerry Goldsmith called Haircut. This is one of the most intense and dramatic moments in the movie and in all Disney movies! You can understand and feel the importance of this decision for the character and you feel the weight of it! In the 2020 one, she takes the sword and the next shot presents her already with the armour on - there’s zero dramatic impact here. That was a great missed opportunity!! By omitting important scenes and their dramatic impacts like this one that are essential to the story and to the characters, to their development and their journey throughout the story and you really need to rely on the original from 1998 to have this context.

The battle scenes are like many modern movies: lots of action, lots of moving (too fast-moving), a few amazing fighting moves and fights but not showed entirely. I at least expected some similar quality, like we’ve seen in films such as Hero (2002), House of Flying Daggers (2004), and Tiger & Dragon (2020) to name a few. Sadly, these movies had better fight scenes quality than Mulan which were filmed in high frame rate but over-edited with action that is negatively frenetic and have artificial CGI effects (even the CGI effects in Independence Day were better - I’m watching the movie while writing this). We’re in the 21st century with great advances in technology and movies are given big budgets (particularly Hollywood films), yet despite all this, most movies end up with CGI effects from another era. How come this happens over and over? In this one, we see people running too fast, horses running too fast, and they’re all like a big mass of headless chickens and you don’t know exactly what is happening where. All this fast running, the constant cut and paste of scenes looks all too modern and doesn’t fit the current time period of the movie and it surely doesn’t transmit the way of fighting of that period. 

Moreover, we get lots of flashback-lesson learning scenes throughout the movie. This is another fashion in movies lately, playing the film in the present time while at the same time jumping back and forth between flashbacks. It spends a good portion of the movie with these flashbacks. This is not a big issue and admirable per se but when these scenes are insignificant because they’re glossed over and transmitted without zilch emotion, then why even bother to include them in the first instance?

As a last comment, I like the fact that they hired Chinese actors and actresses for the movie (although I don’t know why it had to be in English, I’d have preferred it to be in Chinese, it’s not like we’re allergic to subtitles - unless they’re not done properly), some of them of renewed name, like Gong Li, Rosalind Chao (I loved her in The Joy Luck Club), Jet Li, Donnie Yen (legendary Ip Man), Jason Scott Lee (saw him in Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story), Tzi Ma but they won’t be able to save the movie even with a great cast like this one. 

[fortune-fool02]

More than a Machine

Android Jonathan Joestar x Robert E.O Speedwagon

This was inspired by the Android AU that @lyssors helped support! Thank you again for that! 

Android/ DBH AU 

Please enjoy. 

2038. In this day and age, humans were no longer the peak of perfection. That spot belonged to the human's greatest creations: Artificial Intelligence, Androids. The perfect being. Never tire. Never blinded by emotion. Perfectly obedient to any and all given commands. Unable to talk back. Every flaw that humans had were removed from them. Emotionless. Indifferent. Obedient. Perfect. Just because they looked human, it did not make them human, as many believed.

But that all began to change. Slowly, like a tiny strand in the genetic chain of evolution, the androids began to change. Thinking for themselves, questioning their owners and some even disobeying completely. Many feared this, no longer trusting their own androids and even becoming hostile towards them if they felt unsafe. While many treated them as items and objects, things to be replaced and thrown away once they grew bored of it or the newest model came out, there were those who did no such thing. Instead, they treated them as more than items and objects, treating them as individual beings with their own thoughts and feelings, like humans.

Robert Speedwagon was one of those people. He knew what it was like to be shoved about and treated like the lowest scum on Earth. He has had his fair share of fights -as resulted by the many scars on his body and the countless nights of patching himself up or having a friend do it for him- but he would never hurt someone who didn't deserve it. While he may be a thug, he was not a horrible person to those who knew him. Though, with the decline in jobs due to the androids taking their place was more than a kick in the knees for people like him who were forced to resort to stealing just to make some money. And yes, he couldn't deny he had some form of bitterness towards the androids but it remained at that.

But that changed when he found an android slumped against the wall, blue blood leaking from an open 'wound' on its chest where its regulator was. The dim glow on the LED light told him it was damaged but still working. Seeing as no one was around, he took it to his place thinking he could salvage some parts to sell or sell it as a whole.

He muttered to himself as he opened the android's chest and examined it a bit. He had a bit of knowledge of android repairs and whatnot, and noticed the two disconnected wires -likely done so during the damage- and reconnected them. A sharp gasp left the android as he sat upright, the LED light flashing blue as his eyes darted around, scanning his environment as his systems rebooted and came back online. 

Speedwagon tried to calm the android down. The blue-haired android calmed, his scanners confirming he was safe and all his systems were running smoothly again. Once he had calmed and gathered himself, the android introduced himself as Jonathan, a JJ-180 model; the model was a rare prototype given to Lord George Joestar as a gift, the model was one of a kind.

As he is programmed, Jonathan was nothing sort of a gentleman to Speedwagon, thanking him for fixing him and helping him, which did surprise the blonde human. Well, seeing as this model was a prototype and belonged to a Lord, he was easily worth a lot of money and not to mention he was very easy on the eyes. No human could be as well built and beautiful as Jonathan. But now there was the dilemma: What to do? Reset the android and sell it off? Keep it? What to do? Well, with him still somewhat damaged, Speedwagon thought it best to keep hold of him until someone came looking for him.

And that was how Speedwagon ended up with an android despite having little money to his name.

Jonathan was, surprisingly, a caring android despite being programmed for a Lord and acted more of a carer than anything; kind and warm, gentle and soft despite his large build, to be honest, there were a handful of moments where Speedwagon had forgotten Jonathan was an android until he noticed the LED light on the side of his head again. It was known that some androids were programmed to 'care' with their operation systems but none seemed to match the way Jonathan showed this.

It was mostly thanks to Lord Joestar who had treated him as a son rather than an android. He would thank Jonathan if he completed a job, he took the android's condition into consideration and whenever there were guests, he asked them to treat Jonathan with respect. But there were occasions where he came back home with dirt and slightly torn clothes from people pushing him around because he was an android.

Accessing Memory File. March 3rd 2038. 10:51am....

Jonathan sat across from George, the man's cane resting beside them as he threaded the needle through the rip one final time, sealing it fully and pulling the thread away. He grabbed the pair of scissors beside him and snipped the thread.

"There. Good as new." He spoke, setting the tools aside and holding the jumper up. Jonathan smiled at it and took it from him, slipping it back on.

"Thank you, George." The jumper had been a gift from George so Jonathan didn't have to wear the uniform all the time. Even though Jonathan stated he didn't require clothing, George insisted, telling him that he didn't need a servant. Jonathan was confused at this but he continued with the duties given to him. George smiled at him,

"JoJo, you know I am not going to be around forever. Humans are not like machines, we're fragile. We break down and eventually, we die." Jonathan turned his head and looked at George at this, his scanners quickly analysing George's condition. He did have a few medical conditions but nothing that posed a high fatality rate.  "I want you to be safe when I'm no longer here."

"George, I'm afraid I don't...quite understand what you mean." George smiled lightly at this and placed his hand on Jonathan's shoulder, patting it lightly.

"I am going to leave everything in my possession to you when I pass." Jonathan looked at him, flecks of confusion on his face at this. Everything was being inherited to him?

"But George, your inheritance should go to your next of kin or related family." That was how it went, everyone knew that. Though he simply smiled at the blue-haired android.

"Jonathan, you are my son. And that won't change because we have different coloured blood." His words weren't hollow nor false, Jonathan was his son regardless of their differences and he would proudly defend him if the situation arose. Jonathan felt himself smile at this.

"Hey, JoJo, you alright?" Speedwagon's voice pulled him from his memory file, bringing him back to the present moment, "You zoned out there for a minute." Jonathan looked over and smiled a bit,

"Yes, I'm fine, Speedwagon." He responded and continued with the task he had given himself. It had been a few weeks since Speedwagon had found him and he just couldn't bring himself to rest the android or sell him off, it just felt wrong to do so. Plus, he was amazing company. During his time there, Jonathan had noticed a similar pattern between Speedwagon and George: They both treated him like a human. But what did that mean?

George treated Jonathan like a human because he viewed him as a son, but what did Speedwagon view him as? Friend? Ally? After finishing his task, Jonathan moved and stood aside, awaiting another command.

"Speedwagon, may I ask you something?" He asked, looking at the blonde man as he read the newspaper.

"Yeah, sure. What is it?" He set the newspaper aside, showing the android he had his full attention.

"Why do you treat me like a human?" Confusion painted Speedwagon's face at this, his head titling lightly as he thought.

"Well, it's just you're so....human-like. You look human, sound human and on occasions, act human too."

That caught Jonathan's curiosity. He acted human? How can one act like something they aren't? His thoughts jumbled a bit, trying to figure out what that meant.

"How though? How can I be human if I am an android? A machine?" That was what he was though. Mechanical mechanisms composed together and dressed up to mimic human appearance and speech. The blue LED flashed yellow, circling as he tried to process it.

"JoJo, just because you're one thing it doesn't make you unable to be something else. Look at me, I'm a thug but I'm not a jackass like others are."  He had come clean to Jonathan about his past and the things he has done and yet the android didn't see him any different as the kind man who reactivated him and repaired him. That was what Speedwagon was trying to get through to him.

"But-"

"No buts. Yes, you're an android but you're also whatever you wish to be. You're an intelligent being with thoughts and knowledge, you care. That's what makes you who you are, JoJo." He took in the answer and processed it, "You're not just a machine, JoJo."

He repeated those words in his mind over and over again, breaking it down and analysing it further. It was similar to what George would tell him but there was something else in there. Something he couldn't quite define. Slowly, Speedwagon's hand moved towards his, their fingers gently brushing against one another. His touch was warm, while Jonathan's was cool with a smooth texture. It felt...nice.  The blue-haired android watched, a mix of curiosity and wonder in his eyes as their hands moved closer to each other, pressing their palms against each others. The skin on his hand fading away to reveal the smooth, snow-white colour beneath that every android had, the pale blue lights glowing more than they should.

Speedwagon seemed just as fascinated at this as Jonathan was, a warmth softly bloomed within him as he watched the android slowly lower his fingers between his, interlocking them together. Something about this felt right in a way neither of them understood. How their hands seemed to fit perfectly together like two pieces in a puzzle. The odd warmth that seemed to spark and bloom from this simple touch.

Perhaps...they were not so different after all? Maybe he truly was more than just a machine.  

[freebooter4ever]

Rubber Ducky Road Trip

Fun Fact: the rubber duck actually surged to popularity after WWII when a sculptor started manufacturing a cute yellow version of it as toys for kids instead of just dogs! Anyway, Joe’s photo with the weird creepy roadside giant duck statue? 100% inspiration for this. Thank you @badgerms​ for editing this for me!

Post War AU, Snafu still left Sledge on the train. One day Snafu gets it in his head to go see the newly constructed World’s Largest Rubber Duck on the side of the road somewhere in Oklahoma, and he decides to stop at Sledge’s first because Eugene’s letters say Eugene is taking up bird watching now, cause ducks totally count. Also they adopt a dog.

Snafu doesn't understand civilian life. The things most of his neighbors consider commonplace - well balanced meals, regular showers, polite conversation, underwear - Snafu no longer has the patience for. He was never a good civilian before the war, and he's an even worse one after. Not like Eugene with his perfect manners, and stalwart ideals, and easy conversation. If Snafu imagined a model upstanding citizen, Eugene Sledge's face was the first to pop into mind. A deep indefatigable ache came with it.

Eugene's face also brings to mind guilt. In two forms - one: guilt for having cut off all contact with him, and two: guilt for having had any contact with him in the first place.

Snafu doesn't kid himself - Sledgehammer probably would never have gotten through the war on his own. But Eugene Sledge always deserved better. Snafu knows Eugene got off that train to meet a welcoming party, exactly like Burgie. He'd been watching Eugene's face when Burgie hugged his little brother tight. Eugene was looking at them with understanding, empathy. He wasn't baffled by the scene, like Snafu was.

Snafu got off the train to nothing but crowds of strangers. He disappeared. And hoped Eugene would imagine a lie when he thought of Snafu. Maybe a father who stayed up all night just to be there at the station at three am, a mother who had food waiting just for him, a house warm and clean for his little sister to actually have a childhood in. Anything Eugene could invent is probably better than the reality Snafu never told him about.

When Snafu imagines Eugene's civilian life, he imagines white picket fences, and a hoard of smiling extended family wearing bright clothes in the sun, and lots of unnecessary hugs. That's where Eugene would fit in. That's what Snafu wants for Gene.

All the things a good civilian is supposed to have in their life. None of which make any damn sense to him. He's still young, which keeps off most of the pressure to become respectable. But he sees the odd looks thrown his way, he knows the talk. Every bit of gossip compounded now that he's a veteran, and suddenly that means his vices can be overlooked - that means he's eligible. But only if he keeps up appearances. Only if his nightmares stick to night.

What a joke.

He expounds upon this topic loudly and at length to anyone who will listen. Very often this means to his coworkers during after work drinks, sometimes over a game of cards. It doesn't make him many friends.

On one such night, a few years after V-J day, one of the coworkers tosses a strange yellow toy into the betting pool.

"What the fuck?" Snafu asks, snatching the thing up, "You trying to cheat us? Ain't no way this is worth anything."

Apparently, though, it is. The little yellow toy is called a "rubber duck" and it's the latest craze to hit the United States. The things are selling out everywhere, and they're on every child's wish list this winter. Not that Snafu would ever know what the latest trends are. He doesn't follow fads or styles. He understands them even less than he understands civilians complaining about things like slow service or cold weather. And this new yellow toy is the worst trend yet. Personally, Snafu thinks it's the ugliest thing he's ever seen - plus it looks nothing like any duck he's ever seen.

His coworkers laugh at him and chide him for being a confirmed bachelor with no kids at home throwing tantrums over toys. As if that's something Snafu could even begin to understand. This generation of children - demanding toys instead of being grateful for what they got.

He wins the card game and collects his money, but promptly tosses the duck to the first child he passes in the street.

Somehow word gets around that Snafu Shelton is giving away rubber ducks, because the next time he steps foot outside of his apartment, the grubby neighborhood kids swarm him like he's Santa Claus or some shit. He barely escapes with his life.

Luckily Snafu knows a friend in the rubber manufacturing business, and a week later a sack full of duck toys just happens to fall off the back of his friend's truck. Snafu distributes them amongst the neighborhood. It's not a free for all, he carries one or two around in his pocket and hands the ducks off to the weird kids. The small runty ones wearing castoff clothes too big for them, who come home from school with bruises and empty stomachs. Snafu remembers what it's like being small and watching fads pass by instead of taking part. 

So Snafu is less like Santa Claus and more like a kingpin throwing wrenches into the carefully balanced schoolyard popularity hierarchy.

This being a poorer neighborhood on the outskirts of New Orleans, no one really has the means to designate social status. It's all just silly things like who can afford something as small and inessential as a rubber duck and who can't. Snafu himself rents a shitty top floor apartment with a private entrance that doubles as a fire escape. It isn't so much an apartment as it is a room with a twin bed. But there's trees all around, and a big window at the foot of his bed, and a narrow decorative balcony (the useless kind not meant to hold humans - another part of life Snafu doesn't understand) attached to the window.

The first thing Snafu bought after the war, even before he bought a bed frame, was a beautiful stone birdbath. The kind like the one in the park his mom used to take him to. They'd sit on the park bench, and spend hours watching the birds splash around, and it bored Snafu to tears but it was the only time of the week his mom didn't cry so he learned to sit as still as he could.

Snafu put his brand new birdbath on his useless balcony and for two years every spring morning he woke with the sun, crawled down his bed, and watched the birds sing their thanks through the open window.

This year, as winter approaches, Snafu looks at his now empty birdbath and gets an idea. He didn't keep any of the rubber duckies for himself, but luckily his friend in the business has connections and manages to get him one extra. And Snafu's lonely winter mornings are assuaged when he wakes to see a friendly yellow face bobbing happily in the cold bath outside his window.

Snafu thinks he's simply cleverly besting migratory bird patterns until more yellow ducks start showing up in his birdbath. This time wearing hand sewn floral bonnets, or flower crowns, or top hats, or in one particularly painful case - a tiny toy army helmet.

The little neighborhood shits are climbing his trellis to his balcony and putting the damn things in there at night. Every couple of days the rubber ducks will disappear only to be returned wearing new themed outfits. When Christmas comes and Snafu wakes to discover he has a completely full bird bath containing not only a duck wearing a santa hat but also all twelve reindeer ducks - one of which has a painted red nose - Snafu finally admits this fad is here to stay.

And that is how Snafu becomes known around town as the weird bachelor who collects rubber ducks.

It gets so bad even the secretary at the lumberyard where he works saves him a newspaper clipping about a town two states over. The girl sneaks it to him during lunch and Snafu reads the article over his shitty thermos of soup.

The world's largest rubber duck is being erected somewhere in Oklahoma by some hodunk town hoping to put themselves on the map by throwing excess rubber, no longer needed by the war effort, into a useless vanity project.

Idiots.

A few days later Snafu is playing cards, and winning as always, when he finds himself rethinking his stance. He stops mid-sentence when he realizes he is having a conversation with his coworkers about ducks. And it's normal. And he doesn't want to roll his eyes right out of his head.

Maybe he is adapting to civilian life after all.

He collects his winnings and goes home. He ignores the New Years themed duck floating outside his window and goes straight to the crooked chest of drawers wedged in between his bed and the wall. He opens the top drawer, pries off the false bottom, and lets the stack of letters and all his life savings fall to the floor. He gathers up the letters carefully, leaves the money, and sits on his bed to read.

There are a bunch of letters - each addressed to Snafu in the same beautifully written cursive. The handwriting inside is neat, and elegant, and never strays from tight measured lines, as if the author places the blank sheet of paper over a lined page to use as a guide. If each letter wasn't signed with a no nonsense, perfectly legible "Eugene", Snafu would never guess they came from the same man he watched scribble away in a bible - writing that looked more like chicken scratch than actual words.

Snafu shuffles through the letters until he finds the one he's thinking of. Eugene's letters are full of normal things Snafu no longer relates to. They're artificially pleasant in the way of small talk, and say the kinds of things people who have nothing in common say to each other. Snafu doesn't like to think about him and Eugene no longer having anything in common. Whenever Snafu receives a letter, he reads it, feels his heart shrink two sizes smaller, and then slides the letter into his secret drawer to forget about it. If he hides it and doesn't reply he can pretend civilian Eugene would still care about him, no matter how all fucked up Snafu feels.

He never forgets what he reads though, and this letter in particular from a month ago details Eugene's new found hobby - bird watching.

Finally, they have something in common.

He scoops all his savings off the floor, adds his week's paycheck and tonight's winnings to the pile, and calculates how much gas he'll need. Then he fills up his truck, borrows a tent from his friend, and starts off down the road.

A day later he shows up on Eugene's porch.

He knows he made a mistake when a butler answers the door. It's shock that keeps him rooted to the spot for the few minutes it takes for Eugene to be called in from whatever activity Snafu interrupted. He knew Eugene was one of them rich kids, but a butler was beyond even his imaginings.

Shock keeps him there initially, but it's amusement that keeps Snafu on the porch when Eugene appears in the frame, takes one look at him, listens to Snafu's brief "I hear you like birdwatching" quip, and slams the door in his face without another word spoken.

Snafu can hear Eugene's mother's scandalized outrage through the walls of the house.

The door opens and an older woman with an aristocratic but comfortable air takes Eugene's place.

"I'm so sorry," she says, slightly out of breath, "Please, come in. Sit. I'll get you a glass of iced tea. I don't know what's gotten into that boy sometimes."

He and Mrs. Sledge exchange introductions, and she immediately recognizes his name.

"Oh, you're the one Eugene's been sending all those letters to," she says. She doesn't mention the tiny detail that Snafu never sends any letters back.

Snafu smiles and perches on a stiff chair in the parlor. He accepts the glass of tea, and drinks it to avoid awkward conversation.

Mrs. Sledge bustles around rearranging things to make more room, and also to avoid awkward conversation. "Eugene Bondurant Sledge!" she calls, "Get out here!"

Eugene obediently appears in the doorway, a petulant look on his face that Snafu knows well. Eugene's stubborn presence does nothing but force Mrs. Sledge and Snafu to carry the conversation.

"Your friend's come all the way from New Orleans to see you," Mrs. Sledge prompts.

Eugene remains silent. And standing.

"A stop along my way, actually," Snafu says. His charm is turned up as high as it will go. Partially out of respect for the mother of his best friend, and partially to see Eugene's blood pressure rise with every obsequious word out of Snafu's mouth.

"Oh, where are you headed?" Mrs. Sledge asks.

"Out aways, into the middle of nowhere. Woke up one morning and got it into my head I wanted to see the world's largest duck," Snafu may be talking to Mrs. Sledge but his eyes remain unwavering on Eugene.

"I dare say," Mrs. Sledge says, "And what  species of bird is this exactly?"

"Can't be sure, ma'am," Snafu says, "That'd be more Eugene's area of expertise."

"Well, how big is the world's largest duck?" Mrs. Sledge asks.

"Don't know, haven't seen it yet," Snafu drawls with a grin.

Eugene looks fit to burst.

"How far do you have to go to find this bird?" Mrs. Sledge asks.

"Just a couple of days drive, maybe a week round trip," Snafu says, "Was gonna ask Eugene if he wanted to come along."

"What a splendid idea," Mrs. Sledge is delighted, "Eugene doesn't have any plans scheduled for the next few weeks. It'd do him good to get out for a while."

Eugene's petulance slowly transitions to horror as the conversation goes on and he realizes there is no polite way to extricate himself from this situation without disappointing his mother terribly.

Which is how Snafu ends up with a silent and surly Eugene sitting next to him on the bench seat in his truck's cab and a basket full of gifted provisions neatly tucked into his truck bed next to his borrowed tent.

Snafu fiddles with the radio, switching stations whenever he gets bored with whatever murder mystery radio play or big band music is being broadcast until they drive too far out into the sticks to get any kind of signal.

The minute he switches the radio off, Eugene finally speaks up.

"Since when are you interested in birdwatching?" Eugene's tone is accusatory.

"It was kinda forced on me," Snafu shrugs, "Or I forced it on myself. On accident."

"And we're going to see the world's largest duck?"

"Ahuh," Snafu agrees.

"And where would that be, exactly?"

"Oklahoma."

Eugene screws up his face. He pulls the atlas out from underneath the bench seat, and flops through it till he hits the southeastern United States.

"Alabama is not in between New Orleans and Oklahoma," Eugene points to the map. As if Snafu doesn't know his geography and Eugene needs to prove to him the position of Oklahoma and Mississippi.

"Never said it was," Snafu says calmly.

"You said picking me up was a 'stop along the way'," Eugene argues.

"I said it's a stop along my way. Never said my way was the most direct."

Snafu keeps his focus on the road, but he can feel Eugene's eyes on him.

"Yeah? Missed you too, Snaf," Eugene says as if that answers an unasked question and settles more comfortably in his seat. He props the map up on his lap and traces the spider web of roads with his finger.

Everything goes smoothly the first day. They eat lunch on the side of the road. It's warm, and the heat of the truck's engine makes it warmer, but they prop the doors open to let a breeze flow through and make sandwiches from the food Eugene's mom packed. Snafu provides the desert. He brought a slender bar of chocolate, provisions in case Eugene turned him down.

Now he breaks it in half and shares it with Eugene and watches him suck melted chocolate from his fingers.

Eight hours of driving later when it's almost too dark to see they stake out the tent on a dirt field to sleep. Snafu tosses and turns until he rolls to face Eugene and finds wide unblinking eyes staring back at him. They decide sleeping on the ground isn't for them, and set the tent up in the bed of Snafu's truck instead. The wooden slats are hard and a little uncomfortable but it's different enough from memories that they're finally able to fall asleep pressed back to back.

The next morning is quiet, and still. They snack on fresh snap peas for breakfast and strike the tent in silence. They don't need to talk about it. Snafu senses Eugene's understanding. For once it's nice to not need to explain his particular brand of insanity.

Later on the road again, in between casual conversation, Eugene brings it up.

"Best sleep I've had in months," he says.

"Me too, Sledgehammer," Snafu admits.

On the second day it rains. At night they park at the edge of a small town in the lot of a gas station run by a friendly old lady who lets them use the outhouse on her property and the outdoor shower behind it. Snafu laughs at Eugene becoming so spoiled he needs daily baths now. And Eugene retorts that not everyone can have as nice of a natural musk as Snafu, and it's enough like a compliment to shut Snafu up quick.

Snafu leaves Eugene toweling his wet hair dry in the truck cab, and runs across the few feet of muddy gravel to use the outhouse. When he comes back he starts to hastily climb into the truck, but stops when he notices a strange shadow under the carriage hiding from the rain.

He reaches over the bench and pokes Eugene awake.

"Flashlight," Snafu whispers, gesturing to the floor.

Eugene hands him the flashlight. And then pulls the blanket over his head to go back to sleep.

Snafu crouches on the runnerboard of the truck to keep his feet off the ground for an easy escape, bends down, and shines the light underneath.

A head lifts up and a pair of reflective eyes look back at him.

Snafu flicks the light off, lifts himself back into the cab and digs through the picnic basket for the leftovers from dinner.

"Snafu, what are you doing?" Eugene complains from under the blanket.

"Just give me a minute," Snafu says.

He jumps to the ground and waves a bite of chicken to the darkness under the truck.

"C'mon, boy," he says.

It doesn't take much to get the big shaggy dog out from underneath the carriage and into the cab. Eugene gets a rude awakening, however, when the dog decides to make a bed out of his lap.

Snafu can see Eugene jolt awake, but instead of kicking the weight off his lap, he just shifts to accommodate it.

"Snafu, next time warn me if you're going to sleep on me," Eugene grumbles.

"S'not me, boo," Snafu says with a grin.

Eugene peeks from behind his blanket, sees the dog, and promptly sits straight up in his seat. He grabs his towel and starts drying off some of the water and dirt matting the dog's fur.

The dog chooses that moment to fart.

Snafu starts laughing at Eugene's scandalized face that looks so much like his mother's, until Snafu starts choking from the smell, and then he leans over Eugene to roll the window down. Just a crack, enough for fresh air but not enough to let rain in.

It's rather cramped in the truck cab, with the tent (more useful keeping out mosquitoes than rain), and the picnic basket, and the two boys, and the dog, but they manage.

Snafu wakes up to whines. At first he thinks it's the dog. It's the middle of the night, there are no street lamps all the way out here, and he can barely see. Until there's a jerk of movement on the other side of the cramped bench seat and the dog climbs over Snafu to shelter under his feet.

"Eugene!" Snafu exclaims. He takes Sledge's arm and then remembers what happened the last time he watched someone being held down mid-nightmare. He keeps a safe distance and says loudly, "Sledgehammer!"

Eugene snaps awake. He lurches forward, and stops when he sees Snafu sitting up and watching him.

Snafu takes his hand then. Eugene twines their fingers together. He's still breathing hard with his mind half out of this world. Snafu can see it in his eyes. The dog wanders over and places his head back on Eugene's lap. Eugene looks down, sees the dog for the first time since he woke. He turns to Snafu.

"I didn't hurt you did I?" Eugene asks.

"No," Snafu says firmly.

 Neither of them fall back asleep for a long while after that. 

The next morning the dog plods slowly along when they walk to buy groceries. He patiently waits outside the door for them to finish and plods along after them when they go back to the car. When they open the car door to wedge the grocery bag into the picnic basket, the dog jumps up and sits on the bench seat between them.

"I think you accidentally adopted a dog," Eugene tells Snafu.

Except it's Eugene who feeds the dog, and Eugene's lap that the dog chooses to sleep on most of the time, and Eugene who names the dog 'Fred'.

"What the fuck kind of dog name is that?" Snafu asks.

"Like you're one to talk Merriell," Eugene retorts. Eugene uses a fond tone for Snafu's given name like it's a good thing, and that throws him for a bit of a loop.

"Sure thing, Bondurant," Snafu croons.

Eugene throws a slice of turkey at Snafu's smiling face in response, which is a dreadful waste of food, but Freddie happily eats the discarded turkey and licks Snafu's face clean.

At one point the car breaks down. Fortunately it happens on a flat stretch of road so not only can they see the gas station in the distance, but it's also fairly easy to push the truck along. Snafu jerry-rigs a contraption to keep the steering wheel pointed straight, and off they go. The dog lumbers into the truck bed, watches them push for a bit, and then falls asleep in the sun.

When they reach the station, Snafu pays for use of the tools, but does all the repairs himself. The mechanic who runs the station is jovial and sharp tongued. He and Snafu trade stories and exchange barbs while Snafu works.

Eugene sits and waits in a camp chair off to the side, the dog in his lap and his fingers stroking the dog's fur. He watches Snafu with keen eyes, but doesn't say a word.

Snafu winks at Eugene when he peels his sweaty button down off and bends over the engine wearing nothing but his undershirt.

"Come on, Freddie, let's go for a walk," Eugene stands and leads the dog out of the garage.

They're not gone long. Fred isn't the 'go for a walk' type of dog. Eugene shows up again twenty minutes later carrying a large panting dog bundled in his arms.

"He got tired," Eugene explains.

Snafu hastily grabs a clean tin from the mechanic and fills it with water for the dog. When Eugene takes it from Snafu's hand, their fingers brush.

Snafu thinks about that brief second of contact for the rest of the day.

With the car up and running again, they finally reach their destination. It's around four pm, and the sun is beginning to set, but the baked dry land around them is still warm. The large rubber duck is not actually in town, though they have to drive through town to find it. The buildings still show the ravages of the dust bowl - peeling paint bleached by the sun, splintered wood, missing planks, weeds everywhere. Feels like home.

They take a turn onto a single lane of freshly paved road at the edge of town and drive to the end till there is nothing but fields around them.

"Snafu…" Eugene starts. Neither of them have gotten out of the truck yet. Fred is fast asleep between them, farting as usual.

Snafu grins wide, his hand tight on the steering wheel as he pulls the truck into park.

"Snafu, that is the ugliest sight I have ever seen in my life," Eugene states.

"Surely not the ugliest, don't you remember Leyden?" Snafu asks.

"I thought we were going to find the largest duck in the world?" Eugene asks.

"And here we are," Snafu gushes, gesturing to the view outside their windshield.

"You failed to mention the duck is rubber," Eugene says.

"Never asked," Snafu responds. He kicks the truck door open and jumps down excitedly.

In Snafu's mind, the world's largest duck does not disappoint. It's a good few feet taller than him and the duck's bill comes right up to his head. And if he leans his face forward enough he can make it look like the duck is either eating or kissing him.

"Snap a photo," he calls to Eugene with his head still in the duck's mouth.

Eugene clambers out of the truck to comply. Once done, Eugene sits on the curb and watches Snafu examine the duck.

Snafu circles the statue. He pokes at it and tries to gauge if it's actually made entirely of rubber.

"Think this thing's hollow?" Snafu asks.

"Like your head," Eugene drawls.

Snafu leans around the duck to grin at him.

"He's got your eyes," Eugene comments.

"You've been paying attention to my eyes?" Snafu goes round to the front of the duck and notices the eyes are painted an unnaturally vibrant shade of robin's egg blue.

"Hard not to Snaf, when you ask me if they're yellow every time I turn around," Eugene says.

"One time," Snafu says.

"Once was enough," Eugene says.

Snafu remembers that time. And if he remembers that time, the first time he touched Eugene's skin for reasons other than necessity, he also then remembers the more recent time, with the dog bowl. And his fingers start to itch.

He places his palms flat against the hot rubber of the duck. It smells like car tires, and wood chips, and fresh air and summer. There's no gasoline or any other rotting stench to remind him of other days involving the strong smell of rubber. This smell is childhood, and innocence.

Snafu looks over at Eugene.

Eugene meets his eyes. "I can't believe we drove all this way for a rubber duck," he says.

Snafu smirks and picks his way over to sit next to him. Their shoulders brush, and that is also a familiar touch.

"Not just any rubber duck, the world's largest," Snafu counters.

"They all look the same," Eugene says.

"Not true," Snafu says, thinking about his ever changing birdbath.

Eugene stands, marches to the truck, grabs the rubber duck off Snafu's dash, and sits back down. He places the duck in Snafu's hands.

"This one's got a hat," Snafu points out, flicking the little green helmet on the duck's head.

Eugene rolls his eyes, "This and the big one in front of us could be cast from the same mold except for size."

"What, you think I oughta curb my enthusiasm?" Snafu taunts.

Eugene looks at him deadpan.

"Get it?" Snafu nudges him with his shoulder, "Cause we're sitting on a curb?"

"Oh good lord," Eugene puts his head in his hands.

Snafu laughs.

He doesn't laugh for long because Eugene removes his head from his hands, cups them around Snafu's face, and pulls him into a soft kiss.

And if Snafu failed to mentally prepare himself for the excitement of seeing the world's largest rubber duck, he certainly didn't prepare himself for this.

It's wonderful. And suddenly it makes sense. All that affection, rattling around in Snafu's empty tin heart like glass marbles. It didn't have anywhere to go. But now it does.

He still doesn't know what to do with his hands.

So he clasps them on his knees, leans in as close as he can get while staying seated on the curb, and lets Gene kiss him.

They sit there necking so long they miss the sunset. It's twilight by the time Eugene pulls away. He doesn't go far, keeps his hands on Snafu's face, and caresses Snafu's cheek as if unwilling to actually part from him.

"Gene," Snafu breathes.

Eugene smiles.

The dog wakes up from where he was sleeping behind them and sits straight so he can rest his head on Eugene's shoulder. Gene laughs, takes the Marine Corps rubber duck from Snafu's hands, and tosses it a few feet away.

The dog immediately becomes alert. Freddie watches the rubber duck fly, watches it bounce to the ground, watches it stop moving, then slowly trots over, picks up the duck in his mouth, and slowly trots back. Freddie sets the rubber duck in Eugene's lap, lies down across both of their feet, farts, and then goes to sleep.

"I think we've accidentally adopted an old dog," Snafu observes.

Eugene grins and leans in closer to Snafu's side. Eugene's arm wraps around Snafu's waist and he kisses his neck before settling his head comfortably against Snafu's shoulder.

"I think we can teach him new tricks," Eugene says, patting the dog on the back.

"In Mobile or New Orleans?" Snafu asks.

"New Orleans," Eugene replies, "But not before Sid's wedding in a few months. You'll have to come to mobile for that."

"Good thing it's on the way," Snafu drawls.

"Yeah," Eugene laughs, "Good thing."

"I ain't gonna be the most agreeable person to have in the wedding party, Sledgehammer," Snafu warns. He lights a cigarette and turns so the smoke doesn't blow in Eugene's face.

"Me either," Eugene says.

Snafu snorts, "Naw, you're always a delight."

"Not always," Eugene says, a little more seriously, "Not always."

Snafu pulls away. He doesn't stand because he doesn't want to disturb the dog, but he moves enough that Eugene takes his hands off him. Because it's not the same. It's not the same and he needs to convince Eugene somehow.

"Why don't you find a nice girl, Gene?" Snafu asks, "Someone who could be a bridesmaid. Or a bride."

"You sound like my mother," Eugene complains, "I don't want some girl. Never have." He stays quiet for a minute and then voices his own insecurities, "Have you? I mean, I know you used to flirt with all the girls on the journey home…"

"Never have," Snafu says.

"Then why…?"

"T'make you glare at me," Snafu smirks, "Make you jealous. Always figured it was me getting the girls you were jealous of though."

"Nope," Eugene sighs, "Afraid it was the other way around. Didn't like that the girls got you"

Snafu laughs. They sit quietly while he finishes his cigarette and the last bit of light fades from the sky. Somewhere behind them a street lamp turns on and illuminates the giant rubber duck in an eerie orange glow.

"Shit, it got uglier," Snafu drawls.

Eugene's shoulders shake with laughter. Snafu likes how the movement transfers into his own body. He likes how close they've drifted together again. Like they can't keep apart, even when not deliberately touching.

"Always knew I wanted you, Snaf," Eugene says.

That's a sobering thought - Eugene wanting him. 

"Situation Normal All Fucked," Snafu says. He leans as close to Eugene's face as he can get and smiles at him, "I guess if you leave out the 'up' my nickname could be fun."

He can't imagine how he could be of any use to Gene. Aside from the obvious. It'd be a lie to say he never recognized the heat in Eugene's eyes when he looked at Snafu.

He tells Eugene as much, while also trying not to say anything.

"Oh for goodness sake," Eugene says, "I don't love you because you're useful. That's not how it works."

Eugene kisses him quiet. And this time Snafu holds his chin and kisses him back.

_____

Here is snafu's truck: ^_^ 1946 chevy currently in the process of being rebuilt but you get the idea

[redfoxwritesstuff]

Coffee and a Wedding (Chapter 7)

Good morningish. We’re back to our regularly scheduled programming complete with me forgetting it’s post day! As always, thanks to @winterisakiller who puts up with my constant whining and stream of random thoughts.

I’m going to NYC in December for my birthday to see Betrayal, y’all! 

Buy me a Ko-fi

Clint x ofc, warnings: glitter, bad kissing, references to sex.

Chapter 7

“On that note, let the real party begin.” The real party? The whole even reeked of entitlement but I didn’t have anything else planned for the night. I’m sure Matt would be glad to start some dumb rumor if I ducked out early anyway. Regardless, I wanted to get inside soon- the sky was heavy with clouds and I didn’t want to get rained on.  

Matt turned and with all the grandeur his scrawny suit clad frame could gather, pulled open the double doors. Inside was a warmly decorated Whiskey room that looked unremarkable. As I moved inside, I saw more warm redwood than I could have dreamed of. I was a sucker for the warm woods and rustic furnishing, though this was with a much classier touch than my own place.

Mark? Or was it Tim? Whatever his name was, one of the men made his way to the sound system and turned the music on. God, I hoped the music was going to be better than this at the wedding. Bass thumped through the air and it frankly felt like a sin to listen to such trash music in a whiskey room but what did I know? I wasn’t some rich trust fund kid.

A drink was well within my rights. So I wasted no time in ordering a double of whatever they had on the top shelf. I’m not picky but I have class. And dammit, I’ll not be outclassed by a bunch of children. It was bad enough that I was stuck socializing with the kids tonight.  

Alexis had mentioned that Sarah was her older sister. I wondered, as I sipped my drink, how much older than Matt she was. I knew there was only a few years between the two women but Matt acted a lot like a boy freshly turned 21 and less like a man each time I had seen him. The short beard on his face worked well to make his age a question.  

Wouldn’t it be funny if he really was as much of a baby as he acted? His own insecurity would go a long way in explaining his issues with mine and Alexis’ relationship. Our fake relationship. I had to remember that. It wasn’t real. She thought I was just pretending.  

That was going to be a battle for another night. Somehow, I had to make her see I wasn’t playing a game. I wasn’t pretending. She was a light in my life. I just had to somehow convince her to take a chance on this old man. Her reluctance would make sense, I am her boss and a good bit older than her. But man, I would give anything for just a chance.  

Looking around the room again, I noticed there was a lack of board games but I was thankful for it. The idea of drinking expensive whiskey and playing children’s games wasn’t my idea of fun. Maybe sometime next lifetime when I had a family of my own, children of my own but not right now and at a goddamn bachelor's party.  

There was a shift in the music, rather suddenly as I finished my first glass. The base got louder. The beat came to life and at that exact moment, the doors were thrown open by two of the men (boys?) standing near by. I was half amazed to not have the bad luck to be standing next to them at the time. That honor went to another who fell flat on his ass with the power of the blow. I couldn’t help but snicker at the man and his ill fitting suit.  

Half a dozen or so trench coat clad figures, tall and lean were making their way to the door through the empty street. The streetlights reflected off the wet ground as they marched through puddles.  

It was a sight to be seen, their hats perched on their heads, hiding their faces from the streetlights. Rain was coming down, dripping off the rims of hats and splashing up onto calves with each purposeful step. Artfully curled hair bounced on shoulders.

These women were here because they had a job to do and it was very clear that they intended to complete their tasks to the best of their ability. The click of their heels on the pavement seemed to echo over the loud music. Really, that was a figure of the imagination, it couldn’t be heard but with the way they walked, you expected to hear it. I learned a long time ago that it was often intent that mattered.  

I’ve seen women like this before. They were high class and high dollar. There was a time where they were a staple of a Stark Industries party though those days had long passed. Stark had settled down with the woman I was sure would eventually be his wife. I could only begin to imagine how much money was spent hiring these women and how much they would make when their night was through.  

So much for the high class boring event this was billed to be.  

When the women marched into the center of the room, two of the men who seemed to be in the know slammed the door shut behind them with far more force than needed. It was like they were going for ominous and failed to hit the mark with the too bright lights in the taproom and the music being a touch too harsh.  

The women spread out, hips swaying dramatically with each step. There was a stomp of their feet when they hit what I could only assume was their preassigned places. How long did they spend rehearsing this? Every one of their movements were perfectly timed and totally in sync. It was kind of creepy, if I’m honest with you.

They looked around. Right in front of me- I could lean forward, reach and I would be able to touch her coat. This one was a redhead. Curls of bright nearly orange hair bounced as she looked around.  

Her eyes locked on me as the other women selected targets. Each, in perfectly synced motions, hooked the brim of their hat in their fingers and flipped it off the tops of their heads. With practiced skill, they grabbed the hats from midair only to hook them on their target’s heads. Again, it was impressive and made me question just how long they spent practicing this and even more so, how much they were costing per the hour.  

I raised a finger and snagged the brim of the hat intended for my head. “No, Thank you.”  

“Oh Sir, you wound me.” Her voice was sticky like syrup in a way I couldn’t even begin to understand or describe for you. She batted her big and clearly artificially colored green eyes at me and scrunched her lips together in a way that was beyond sexy. “Perhaps, I can persuade you?”  

I watched with mild amusement as the women around the room were flirting with their targets rather than answer her. Typically, if they know you’re not going to bite, they go and other someone else.

The unnamed woman- I’ll call her Orangie- was shuffling even closer to me with her swaying hips. As I looked back, she was undoing the belt holding her coat closed. She was close enough now that the leather was brushing against my knees.  

“Leave that on, won’t you?” It was time for another drink.  

“Oh, do you like to the undressing, Sir?” Swaying her hips, she had the intention of getting between my legs and nope. It was time to stand up and make it very clear that I was moving away.  

“Nope.”

She looked doubtfully at me and questioned, “Not at all?”

“I mean, yes but not you.” I corrected.

She had her belt untied and coat on the ground in a heartbeat. For a second I took in the black lace that hugged her curves and kept what she and many men considered to be the best parts of a women hidden but just barely.  

The men around me were hooting and hollering, each having the time of their lives. Hands were on hips and bodies swaying.  

“Go dance for someone else.” It was hard to make it any clearer for her that I wasn’t interested. Another night, I'd think about it but not tonight. Not right now. Not when I cared for someone.  

Slipping out of my seat, I down the empty glass and went for another. It was going to be a long night. As much as I didn’t want to, I needed to stick it out long enough that Matt and most of his friends wouldn’t remember me leaving.

“Barton!” Jesus fucking Christ, wasn’t Matt busy? “Are none of these girls to your liking? They are young enough.” Don’t punch him. Don’t punch him. Don't fucking punch him.  

“Oh they’re beautiful and seem very talented. Well worth the money spent on them.” That drink wasn’t in my hand fast enough.  

“Than find one. Enjoy your night. It’s my last night as a single man, so let’s party it up.” I’m pretty sure, if I am honest with you- and I’ll be honest with you, that this isn’t going to be the last time Matt parties it up like a single man.  

“I’m just here for the whiskey.” Tipping my glass to Matt, I smile. “Enjoy.” I say before downing the drink.

With that annoyance making his way to a too skinny blonde with breasts that were very fake and judging by the way they moved, very expensive, I went for another drink to sip on and keep my hands busy.

With my back from the room, I nearly jumped out of my skin when long soft hands slipped down by back and around my side. Looking down, I found perfectly manicured red tipped fingers running over my abdomen.  

“You’re strong. Fit.” Organgie, of course.  

“I have a girlfriend.”  

She laughed and leaned, pressing her full and seemingly natural breasts against my back to whisper in my ear, “As do most of the men here. It’s a bachelor party, you’re single for the night. Let me show you a good time.”

“Not interested.” I wrangled her hands off of me and she went on her way with a pout. More than likely, she would try again soon. They always tried again, made the rounds until they found someone to accept the attention she was paid to provide.  

Leaning my back against the bar, I tried to figure out how the girls ended up with a sip n’ paint party and the boys ended up in a whiskey room full of strippers. Around me, men gathered around women, sometimes two or three around a single woman. They rocked their hips, danced and ran their hands up bodies.  

In the back corner, Matt sat with one of the blondes perched on his knee. His hand was inching up her fishnet covered thigh. His other hand was running through bouncing curls as she leaned down. Closer and closer, I watched in disgust as their lips came together in a kiss that looked more like he was trying to eat her face than kiss her.  

If this is what bachelor parties were about, I’m pretty sure I’d rather skip it and just go to a bar with the guys if I ever got my turn.  

Matt struggled to lift the blonde while he stood. Her legs hooked around him as he gripped her ass tightly. So tightly, in fact, that it was clear he was struggling to hold her up and walk. With nothing but disgust, I watched as they disappeared into a cleaning closet. Wonder how much Matt was paying for the full service treatment?

Not that I had anything against hookers. It was the oldest profession in the world and as long as everyone was consenting and sane, more power to them. I never found myself needing of their services but I could see their appeal.

Again, hands ran up my chest. “Go away, Orangie.”

“I want you.” leaning forward, she purred the words into my ear. Glitter from her hair dusted my shirt. Yeah, I’d much rather she didn’t touch me than go back to the room covered in stripper dust. “I won’t even charge. I want you so bad.”  

When she pulled my earlobe into her mouth with a suck, I slipped out from between her and the bar. “Nope. No thank you. Not interested. Bye.”

After downing my glass in a swift motion, I made the most direct path to the door. Was Smith fucking the Asian stripper on the coffee table? Was Smith even that dude’s name? Real classy dude, whatever-your-name-is. At least Matt found a room.  

~~~~~<3

I looked up from my laptop when the room door flung open. Clint looked beyond flustered and his shirt shimmered in the light. Looking at the time on my screen, I saw it was hardly even 11.  

“You’re back early?” Not that I wasn’t happy to see him, I am. I just hadn’t expected him back so soon. “And shinny.”

“Matt is a fucking scumbag. As are most of his friends.” Clint started in on his buttons.

“Okay? How do you mean? And why do you shimmer?”

"I'm a vampire." Clint deadpanned before answering again when I only raised my eyebrow at him, “Stripper dust.”  

I looked at him in confusion. “Stripper dust? How?”

“Well the board games Matt wanted his party to play was ‘pin the stripper with your pecker’. I was lucky to make it out with my life.”

“What are you talking about?” Closing my laptop, I slipped it into that little space between the bed and the nightstand on what was unofficially my spot.

“That party was anything but tame or chaste.” Clint announced, pulling his phone out of his pocket, unlocking it and tossing it onto the bed.

Looking down, I saw a picture of what appeared to be Matt trying to shove the entirety of a scantly clad stripper’s face into his mouth. There were two things that jumped out at me. Firstly, her hair was amazing- I could never get curls and volume like that. Secondly, I was looking at the single most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen. And I’ve cleaned the men’s room at the cafe.  

“Strippers?” Shit. Do I tell Sarah? Is it my place? Fuck. I needed to talk to her.

“Strippers. God, Matt is such a dick. Thinks he’s so grand.” Clint finally got the shimmery shirt off of him and tossed it to the side, little specks of glitter poofing into the air.  

“Did you have a good time at least? I mean- your shirt shimmers so you must have.” I tried to make it sound like I was okay with the idea. I tried to make it sound like the idea of Clint watching a stripper, touching her didn’t make me jealous.

“What?” Clint froze, standing shirtless in our hotel room with his chest on display for me. I couldn’t manage to appreciate it at the moment. “No. God no.”

“Were they that bad?” I tried to joke as Clint ditched his pants and grabbed a pair of sweatpants from the dresser and slipped them on. I did manage to find it in me to admire his ass as he bent over.  

“No, they were beautiful. But I’ve got a fake girlfriend right here to be loyal to.” He didn’t even look at me as he spoke. That was a good thing, if he doesn’t look at me, he can’t see the emotions play across my face.  

“You should have.” I say as if it wasn’t killing me to say it. “It would have been a perfect reason for us to fake breakup. You could have had an easy way out of this fake relationship.” Maybe if I say ‘fake’ enough, I’ll feel like it was fake.  

“Naw, I don’t want to go out like. What if you change your mind or need another fake boyfriend?”

“Change my mind?” What the hell did that mean?  

“Never mind. I’m talking nonsense, too much whiskey.” Clint climbed into the bed next to me as if that’s where he always belonged. Such stupid thoughts. It was too easy to forget that it was all pretend.  

“Babe?” He whispered once he had the light off. I could feel him looking at me in the dark, his breath fanning over my shoulder. I don’t know why he insisted on calling me that when we were alone.  

“What, Clint?” I whispered back.  

“I didn’t touch them. I didn’t dance with them. I didn’t let them dance for me. I told them 'no' and when she wouldn't stop, I left and came back here. You believe me, right?” Why did this matter to him so much?

“Yeah, okay. Yes, Clint, I believe you. Go to sleep, you’re drunk.”  

Rather than answer with words, a soft snore slipped out of my bed mate. I was now the only one left awake in the small room. My mind went wild. It was hard to remind myself, to tell myself and convince myself that he didn’t care about me in that way when he would say those sort of things.  

If I wasn’t careful, I could believe he felt the same way as me. If I wasn’t careful, I could fall deeper in love with someone who was only putting on an act.  

~~~~~<3

It had been two days since the bachelor party of doom as Clint had taken to calling it and I’d spent a lot of the time studying. Sometimes I studied in the room. Sometimes I studied at the beach. But I was always studying.  

Clint had been gracious about it. He’d been more than willing to help me review material as needed. I tired to get him to go out and experience the island without me but he would refuse time and time again. It was nice, to not be studying alone and he made a good study partner. Better than my classmates.

He made sure I took breaks, ate and moved. Most importantly however, he was always willing to help while taking care to never be a distraction. The test I had to take was online and once I finished it, I was officially done for the summer. This one class was all that I had left to finish.  

With a sigh, I closed the laptop lid and picked it up. With a risky flair of dramatics, I tossed the laptop away from me toward the foot of the bed where in bounced.  

“All done?” Clint asked.  

“All done.” I agreed.  

~~~~~<3

Tag List (Coffee): @winterisakiller, @theheartofpenelope, @ruebx, @hufflepuff25, @0-0-0-0-0-0-0-7, @theoneanna, @bradfordbantams, @toozmanykids, @alexakeyloveloki, @j-u-s-t-4, @missaphrodite23, @bambamwolf87, @nonsensicalobsessions, @tinchentitri, @xoxabs88xox, @queenoftheunderdark, @myoxisbroken, @wegingerangelica

[benreillyscarletspider]

Red Dwarf Series One Starter Sentences

“Have you ever been hit over the head with a welding mallet?”

“The only reason they don't give this job to the service robots is they've got a better union than us.”

“You touch that guitar, [name], I'll remove the E string and garrote you with it.”

“ Can I do anything? Is it OK if I breathe? Can I breathe?”

“This is not cheating! It's merely an aid to memory. Helps me marshal the facts already in my command.”

“What does this mean? What does any of it mean? I've covered my body in complete and utter and total absolute nonsense gibberish!”

“Although you exist, you no longer exist in time, and, for you, time itself does not exist. You see, although you're still a mass, you are no longer an event in space-time; you are a non-event mass with a quantum probability of zero.”

“I've been on my own for three million years, and I'm just used to saying what I think. I think I've gone a bit peculiar, to tell you the truth.”

“ Never again will I be able to brush a rose against my cheek, cradle a laughing child, or interfere with a woman sexually.”

“Lots of people have died. Lots of people have died and then gone on and done really, really well.”

“I know it's wrong of me to speak ill of the dead and all that, but you're still a smeghead.”

“Looking nice. No, wait a minute. I'm looking better than nice. I'm looking dangerous.”

“He's your father? No wonder you're so ugly.”

“You are how you look, and I look like a complete and total tit!”

“Switch me on, switch me off, like I'm some battery-powered sex aid.”

“Death isn't the handicap it used to be in the olden days. It doesn't screw your career up like it used to.”

“It's gonna take 4000 years just to turn around. You can't do a three point turn when you're this close to lightspeed, you know.”

“You'll be in your element if insects are in control.You'll probably get a decent job at last.”

“Oh, just because I'm a toaster, I'm tone deaf?”

“Watch my lips. What ... is ... hap ... pening?”

“Hey, it hasn't happened, has it? It has ‘will have going to have happened' happened, but it hasn't actually 'happened' happened yet, actually.”

“It will be happened; it shall be going to be happening; it will be was an event that could will have been taken place in the future. Simple as that.”

“You know, I wish I was someone else. Then I could kiss me.”

“It's not fair. There's loads of things I've never done. Like... I've never had a prawn vindaloo. And I've never read... A book. And I wanted to have a family. And I wanted to have loads of practice in the things that you've got to do to get a family.”

“You can't whack death on the head!”

“ If he comes near me, I'm gonna rip his nipples off!”

“Yeah, well, everyone dies. You're born, and you die. The bit in the middle's called life, and that's still to come!”

“That woman's out of your league. She's just too classy for you.”

“I'm looking nice. My hair is nice. My face is nice. My suit is nice. I'm looking really nice!”

“You really must think I'm stupid. I'll deal with you two later.”

“You've got the brains of diarrhea and the breeding of a maggot.”

“I laughed so hard I nearly puked.”

“Of course you're tense, you rectum-faced pygmy!”

“Well, we'll give him ten seconds to come back from the dead, and, if he hasn't managed it, we'll presume I'm in charge.”

“If a job's worth doing, it's worth doing well. If it's not worth doing, give it to [Name].”

“It's obviously beyond me. I've got more teeth than brain cells, remember?”

“What's the point of buying a toaster with artificial intelligence if you don't like toast?”

“My mind is open to new cultures, and new ways of looking at and doing things.”

“There's nobody out there. No alien monsters, no Zargon warships, no beautiful blondes with beehive hairdos who say 'Show me some more of this Earth thing called kissing.’.”

“If there's no one out there, what's the point in existence? Why are we here?”

“Smooth with a capital SMOO.”

“Hey, you monkeys are smarter than I thought.”

“I just don't know why I bother. I'd get more sense out of a squashed hedgehog.”

“Six breasts!? Imagine making love to a woman with six breasts!”

“Imagine making love to a woman!”

“This is terrible. Holy wars. Killing. They're just using religion as an excuse to be extremely crappy to each other.”

“I'm not a god! I've just been... Misquoted.”

“That's a fearsome hat.”

“I renounced coolness, and chose the righteous path of slobbiness.”

“But, as one by one we died, my faith died also.”

“I was thinking it might help pass the time if I created a perfectly functioning replica of a woman, capable of independent decision-making and abstract thought and absolutely undetectable from the real thing.”

“It must mean something. You don't dream about someone that you don't feel something for.”

“I once had a dream about a baboon but that doesn't mean I want to go to bed with it.”

“I happen to agree with their philosophy that love is a sickness that holds back your career and makes you want to spend all your money.”

“Love is a device invented by bank managers to make us overdrawn.”

“What makes us different from animals is we don't use our tongues to clean our own genitals.”

“Hey, this has been a good day. I've eaten five times, I've slept six times, and I've made a lot of things mine.Tomorrow, I'm gonna see if I can't have sex with something.”

“If you weren't my friend, I'd steal your shoes.”

“No, you're a filthy, stinking, loathsome,disgusting object I wouldn't be seen dead with in a plague pit.”

“I just love that accent. It makes me go all wibbly!”

“Bet you've got a terminal disease.Always happens to the people who least expect it.”

“Forget those losers. Let's go party.”

“Oh, he's drunk. Yes. I can smell it from here.”

“Ding dong! Another great idea from the people who brought you beer milkshakes!”

“Why should she be interested in you?”

“Yeah, why should she be interested in me?”

“You're great! You're an incredibly seductive, charming, charismatic, young stud!”

“You've got a body like a coat hanger! How can you make a spacesuit look like evening wear?”

“In space, no one can hear you cha-cha-cha!”

“He didn't suffer! I just fed him into the waste grinder and flushed his bits into space.”

“Who told you you needed oxygen, huh? Some loser who was trying to make you feel small.”

“Look, if she comes back and she's not interested, I can handle it.”

“A-ha! The Pop-Up Kama Sutra - Zero Gravity Edition!”

“My death is one of the most important things that ever happened to me.”

“Are you saying you never became an officer because you shared your quarters with someone who hummed?”

“Hey, I'm looking so good today! If I looked any better, I'd be illegal!”

“I am feeling very, very sexy!”

“Sensual emergency! Good lovin' needed bad!”

“I'm far, far, far too much of a gentleman to stoop to that kind of shower-room mentality.”

“Well, I'm sorry I didn't have time to sit down and bash out a speech in iambic pentameter. I was hit in the face by an atomic explosion.”

“SHUT UP, YA DEAD GIT!”

“STOP YOUR FOUL WHINING, YA FILTHY PIECE OF DISTENDED RECTUM!”

“Nothing major. But it goes without saying: IT WAS HIS FAULT!”

“Will you two guys just grow up?”

“ This can't go on. One of youse has gotta go.”

“Ippy-dippy, my space shippy, on a course so true; past Neptune and Pluto's moon, the one I choose is you.”

“I don't believe it. I've been ippy-dippied to death.”

“There's precious little entertainment on this ship. I mean, if you can't attend the odd execution, what have you got left?”

“I thought they were laughing at the chef, when all the time,they were laughing at me as I ate my piping hot gazpacho soup!”

[mamthew]

I finished Persona 5 Royal, after 135 hours. My feelings on the new content are mostly very positive, though do I have a few issues with it. Here's a suuuuuper long write-up first about Persona 5 and then about Royal. This is gonna have full spoilers for both versions of the game, so keep that in mind if spoilers for either game bother you. Persona 5 is my favorite game of all time for several reasons. The first is how masterfully it's written. Not necessarily line-to-line (and certainly not in the English localization, which could've used a few more weeks of edits to make the sentences sound more natural), but in its structure, thematic unity, and use of allusions to achieve that unity. The first two-thirds of the game are presented through a complex and well-orchestrated frame device that's honestly just a treat to experience. It presents the player with a glance at each upcoming story beat without the context to understand it, then lets them piece together the context as they go, giving the whole game a sense of mystery even as the player inhabits the characters at the center of the mystery. It also uses concepts from Jungian psychology to tell its story, most notably character archetypes, which means players can use knowledge of the archetypes to better understand aspects of the characters and their stories. It's beautiful, and it means that I often fall down rabbit-holes researching the allusions made and finding the connections they have to the story. The other reason Persona 5 is my favorite game is much more personal, but it actually played a major role in my radicalization (or if you're uncomfortable with such terminology, political reawakening). The game released in early April of 2017, only a few months after Trump took office, and partway through my first semester back at school after my five year...break. The game is about fighting back against societal injustice. It starts out small, with a high school teacher who abuses his students, but moves up to people with increasingly greater power exploiting increasingly larger swaths of the population: a famous artist using his clout to steal his students' livelihoods, a mafia boss stealing money from the people of his neighborhood, a CEO overworking and underpaying his employees while jockeying for a political position, a government prosecutor who fabricates evidence to maintain her perfect record, and finally a member of the Diet running for Prime Minister who uses populist rhetoric but only cares about gaining personal power. As in previous games, each protagonist gains their powers by awakening to their Persona (essentially publicly performing as their true, unfiltered selves), but in this game, the process is physically painful, bordering on body horror. The act of tearing off the masks so tightly glued to the characters' faces is cast in a similar light to putting on the glasses in "They Live:" doing so is painful and frightening, but allows each character to see the world for what it is, without the filter of the justifying ideological framework. In the last dungeon of the game, the characters invade the physical manifestation of the justifying framework, which takes the form of a prison in which the prisoners beg to be left inside, as the idea of freedom from the prison terrifies them. A vein running from each of their cells sucks out their life force, vampirically, and directs that life force into the manifestation of the concept of hierarchical structures itself, portrayed as the holy grail - a reference to Marx's Capital. This holy grail - which to Marx was wealth - is revealed to be a false god created by the masses because they wanted a god. However, it grew so powerful that now the masses serve it, rather than the other way around. It created its own artificial collective unconscious, barring its subjects from participating in a true collective unconscious free of its influence. At the very beginning of the game, a voice directly tells the player they may only play Persona after agreeing that the events of the game are entirely fictional, and any similarities to the real world are entirely coincidental. The game will not start until the player indicates that they agree to those terms. That voice is revealed to be the holy grail itself, implying that to refuse to compare fictional works to the real world or "get political" about these stories is to submit yourself to the justifying ideology. That's some powerful stuff, and grounding it in real-life examples of exploitation while following characters suffering from that exploitation made it hard to ignore, especially in the wake of the 2015-2016 rise of Fascism and at a time when I was back to studying literary analysis. The game seems specifically crafted to induce a radicalization in its players. It has a scene in which the characters attain class consciousness. For a chunk of the story, the characters try to fight against manufactured consent, as they are framed by the media and authority figures as dangerous villains just for taking a nonviolent stand against rapists, billionaires killing their employees, and corrupt officials. The citizenry believes it almost unquestioningly. The protagonists are often visibly enraged at the exploitation they see - much of which is based on specific real-world events - and the internal logic of the story suggests that this rage is the only moral response. Every aspect of the game bolsters these themes of hierarchy, exploitation, and rebellion, giving the game a thematic unity unlike any I've ever seen before. Even the smallest NPCs have full storylines running in the background that highlight the ways even these nameless characters are exploited, and the ways they've been socialized to accept this exploitation. Every book, every song lyric, every reference to a food item, every damn fictional allusion in a game ABOUT FICTIONAL ALLUSIONS ties back in some way to that larger theming. The thematic unity of this game sings, and playing it was unlike anything I'd experienced before. This game, for me, defined Leftism. I didn't put down the controller a full-blown Communist, but it gave me the tools I needed to ask the necessary questions to discard Liberalism. I probably would have gotten there eventually, and the game probably wouldn't have had quite as powerful an effect if I weren't a literary/media analysis kind of guy living in the time I was in, but even now, three years later, the game reads to me like a damn revolutionary text. So I was honestly terrified of Persona 5: The Royal, which came out at the beginning of this month. It's a rerelease of the game with added story content, including a new dungeon, a new party member, the return of a deceased party member, and a new ending. That's a lot to add onto a really fun game with unprecedented thematic unity that also helped me to redefine myself and my positions on...literally everything. If they messed with this unity for the sake of adding unnecessary content, it would heavily alter the game's effect, and my own personal understanding of the game, forever. That's not to say that the game couldn't be improved. The localization was kinda shoddy, it occasionally drifts into male gaze shit (glaringly so in the 2D animated cutscenes, which makes me wonder if the animation studio had different ideas about the project than the devs did), there are two scenes which are virulently homophobic, and the devs had originally planned for another party member who they had to scrap for time. The two homophobic scenes especially have made it difficult to recommend the game, as I've always had to add the caveat of "...but it completely undermines its own central thesis twice for cheap laughs and it's disgusting." I wasn't sure, however, that a rerelease would fix any of these issues, and I was really worried that adding ~25 hours of gameplay after the dungeon about the justifying ideology and the holy grail would undermine too much of what made the game so revolutionary to me. There is no larger threat to humanity than the ideological framework justifying capitalism, so I worried that moving away from that for the length of a whole-ass Kingdom Hearts game would make the game less effective. From a storytelling perspective, the party member they advertised they would bring back to life is an unambiguous villain, and I worried that bringing him back would both undermine the sacrifice from his death scene and rehabilitate the character, neither of which I wanted. The new party member was not the character they had planned for and cut, and her story as it was advertised did not involve her being exploited by people in power in any way. Rather, she's a star athlete and honors student whose success was attributed to her sense of personal responsibility, which runs pretty counter to the game's themes. I also worried that adding a new dungeon worth of gameplay would mean getting rid of the part at the end of the game where the protagonist willingly turns himself in and spends several months imprisoned, so that he can testify against one of the villains of the game. The thought of losing that bittersweet ending definitely didn't sit right with me. As I said at the beginning, my feelings on the new content are mostly positive. Before getting into pure spoiler territory, I'll say there's no going back to the original now that this version exists. They redesigned every dungeon and boss fight, retooled the battle system, added a LOT more voice acting to scenes where there hadn't been any, added a ton of new scenes further fleshing out characters and the setting, retranslated the worse lines from the localization (it's still not perfect but it's much improved), added new gameplay mechanics and personas, added a bunch of great new music, expanded on Tokyo, and FIXED THE FUCK OUT OF THE HOMOPHOBIC SCENES. I now actually really like the two nameless characters who were in the original just straight up predators, as they've been rewritten into overenthusiastic drag queens who get excited at the thought of introducing nervous kids interested in drag to the scene. They improved on dungeon crawling, too: the newly added grapple hook mechanic introduces a fun verticality to the dungeon designs, stealth is more challenging and rewarding, and each dungeon has new optional collectibles. They reimagined the procedurally generated dungeon you explore over the course of the game, too, giving it more room types, more music, a currency unique to the dungeon, a merchant, and ways to level up money, experience, and item rewards from the enemies in the dungeon. As for the new story content, the extra 25 hours of gameplay is not...counter to the themes of the game. Instead, it's set up as a story about Revolution vs. Reform. The question it poses to the people of its now-too-content Tokyo is "would you join the Phantom Thieves?" which translates more to something on the order of "if these exploitative systems still existed, but didn't really hurt you or anyone you know, would you still care enough to fight against them?" The new villain co-opts the place formerly held by the Holy Grail and uses it to rewrite reality to one in which everything is basically the same, but almost everyone in the city has everything they want (with the notable and noticeable exceptions of homeless people and service workers). The central conflict, especially to the characters who have regained lost loved ones, is whether they should still fight for a better world if most people are fairly happy. Tokyo never ends up agreeing that they would join the Phantom Thieves, but the crew still end up determining that they must restore the real world, because a world in which people are still critical of the justifying ideology has a path to a better world, while one in which people are uncritical will never find that path. It's a complex and interesting take from the beginning, and even moreso when the game uses imagery from the mythologies of the garden of Eden and Prometheus. The other dungeons correspond to deadly sins, but this one instead corresponds to "sorrow." The villain is so afraid of his own grief and the grief of others that he refuses to allow anyone to take risks, even if success would improve the world. The three new confidant arcs are well thought-out and engaging, too, especially the arc with the villainous party member, whose actor absolutely chews the scenery in this game. In the new story, he's so angry about being forced into a reality on someone else's terms that he fights tooth and nail to return to the old reality, where he was at least able to die on his own terms. It's...not as emotional as the game wants it to be, but it's a really fun time. Each party member also gets a mini arc in which they come to terms with what they would lose by returning to the old reality, and acknowledges how much personal growth they would lose by staying. These culminate a new ending in which each party member finds a way to work to regain some of what they had lost by restoring reality, going their separate ways in the process. The new content has a bit of a Persona 4 vibe, in that it's much more personal and contemplative, and the characters find strength by maturing and uncovering avenues to personal growth. As Atlus has pretty consistently existed both in the shadow of Persona 4's popularity and with the pressing need to make up for Persona 4's failings, it's not a bad angle. I do have some minor issues with the new story. It still means that there is no downtime after the original final boss, so newcomers won't really have much opportunity to consider the implications of that dungeon and boss before being thrust into another conflict. Its ending is not quite as clear-cut as the original ending, either. The protagonist still turns himself in, but the story basically...switches back to that reality a week before his release, meaning it's not nearly as much of a sacrifice and it's a decision this version of the protagonist technically didn't make for himself. The situation is probably also clearer to people who've played the original game than to newcomers. The old ending is kind of "required reading" for fans; it's still the canon ending for Scramble where the new one is not, and the new one is more impactful to players who've already experienced the original ending. This creates a major predicament when recommending this game to new players. Do I tell them to purposely not fulfil the requirements to get the new ending, then replay a 130+ hour game a second time? Should they keep a save at around the 85 hour mark, so they can reload their save and retread the 20 or so hours of game they've already experienced to get to the new stuff? There's no good answer, which is irritating. At least the original ending is included in this version, so those are options, but it's frustrating that I can't just recommend one or the other without caveats that are also huge time sinks. I dunno how to end this, and it's much longer than it probably should be, so I'll say that this game is extremely important to me, and I'm impressed that Royal is not less important to me. I sure hope we get a release date for the worldwide release of Scramble soon.

[hydrospanners]

archiban frodrick’s kennel He was a vet, she had a ginx, could I make it any more obvious? Or the one where Doc is a vet and Rea has a late night pet emergency and things go the way they always do no matter what universe they're in. SWTOR Vet AU. F!Jedi Knight x Doc. Much fluff, a little sin, a lot of absurdity. 2600 words. AO3. I’m so so sorry.

He’s refilling his caf when he notices the snow. A rush of white flakes, tinkling like bells as they slant against the lobby window. It lays in drifts nearly half a meter deep already and building fast.

 Looks like it’ll be another night spent at the office.

 Doc wraps his fingers around the warm mug and tries to talk himself into shoveling a path out to the pens in the back. They’re heated and usually unsupervised at this hour anyway, but since he’s already here--

 A flood of blinding white light pours through the front window. Gilded plaques and framed holos rattle on their hooks as the walls around him start to tremble, a sound like thunder rumbling overhead. He raises his arm against the light, trying to squint past it to the source. He can’t see anything but the snow, blowing against the window in impenetrable sheets of white.

 This might be one of the tamer places he’s settled, but Doc hasn’t made it this far in life by being stupid. He drops to hands and knees and crawls behind the receptionist’s desk, pressing his palm to the safe hidden below. The blaster inside is a cold, familiar weight in his hand.

 Someone pounds at the front door and he clicks off the safety, letting his finger rest on the guard as he peeks over the desk. The snow outside has settled, and he can see the outline of a ship idling in the parking lot. An honest-to-stars cargo freighter. In the parking lot.

 Squinting, he can make out a figure at the door cast in shadow by the ship’s lights. A humanoid figure, cradling a pretty big bundle of something in their arms.

 It’s a posture Doc knows pretty well.

 He leaves the blaster on the desk.

 A wave of snow and piercing cold rushes through the doors as he keys in the code for release. A human woman stumbles in after, brown hair blowing in the wind, trembling from head to toe and clutching a creature in obvious respiratory distress tight to her chest. She isn’t dressed for the weather, wearing only a light, beat-up jacket and some fingerless gloves, but she’s taken better care of the patient. Whatever it is, it’s wrapped tight in layers of thick, protective blankets.

 “Please tell me you aren’t a fucking janitor,” she says.

 Doc would laugh if the creature in her arms wasn’t actively choking on its own throat. “With hands like these?” He displays them--they are excellent hands--in a gesture something like supplication before reaching for the patient. He hasn’t failed to notice the blasters on her hips, and he knows better than to startle someone upset and well-armed. “Who do we have here?”

 “Pooper,” the woman says, completely straight-faced. “I don’t know what happened. I mean, he’s always had trouble breathing when he gets excited, but this time--I don’t know. It’s different. He isn’t calming down and it’s getting worse and I--Can you help?”

 She lets him take the hyperventilating bundle from her arms, and when he peels back the blankets he finds the four red eyes of a barbed ginx blinking back at him.

 Huh.

 “We don’t see many fellas like you in these parts,” Doc hums, holding Pooper more firmly as he starts to wriggle in the stranger’s hands.

 “I picked him up on Makeb,” the woman explains, reaching out to stroke the ginx’s forehead. It changes the tone of his choking, like he’s trying to respond with some particular kind of noise. “Found him sleeping in my cargo bay. I must’ve put him out five or six times but he always found a way back on board, so I let him join the crew.”

 “Hard to say no to a face like that,” Doc says. “Let’s go in the back and find something to calm him down.”

 “You can help?”

 “Never met a living thing I couldn’t. You have the very good fortune of dropping your ship on top of the best vet in the galaxy, Beautiful.”

 After a beat of skeptical silence, she huffs. “Well the last two laughed me out of their offices, so I don’t have much of a choice. But you aren’t going to like what happens if you’re as full of hot air as you sound.”

 “I promise my ego is very well-founded,” Doc says, grinning despite himself.

# # #

 The problem, it turns out, is actually several problems. Congenital gland failure forces Pooper to rely on his underdeveloped amphibian lungs since his skin is too dry to keep his blood oxygenated. The strain on his trachea is creating lesions and inflammation that closes the airway to his lungs, so he isn’t getting enough oxygen there either. Plus he seems to have pretty severe anxiety. And he’s fat.

 Very, very fat.

 “It’s my brother’s fault,” the woman—Rea—is explaining, draped over the metal stool on the other side of the exam table. “Rhese gives him crickets just for existing. Poops just looks up at him with those big red eyes and he folds like a wet tissue. It’s embarrassing, really.”

 Doc indulges himself in a nice, long look at her while her attention is on her extremely sedated pet. She’s a very distracting presence back here, looking the way she does in those tight pants and that thin, clingy tank top, her jacket long abandoned on the floor.

 It’s not a distraction he minds.

 “So it’s just you and your brother on your ship, then?” Doc asks, oh-so-innocently. “No one else I ought to know about? Spouses? Romantic partners?”

 Rea snorts, but there’s a smile on her lips and a spark of curiosity in those sharp blue eyes. “Very subtle,” she says.

 “Subtle isn’t really my style.”

 “Mine either.”

 “So that’s a no to the committed, monogamous relationship?”

 “I’m allergic,” she says, and Doc can feel a tiny sliver of his heart plummeting fast and hard into love.

 “We have so much in common.”

 Rea laughs, leaning her head against her hand, elbow propped against the back of the stool. She’s looking at him with a strange sort of intensity that leaves him tingling everywhere. “So talk to me about this shrine,” she says, and gestures to his tech’s station in the corner, surrounded by posters and scale models of swoop bikes. Mostly just the one swoop bike.

 “It’s my tech’s,” Doc explains. “Some swoop jockey he’s obsessed with.”

 “You not a fan?”

 “I’ve been to a few races, but I’m more of a gambler than a gearhead.”

 She nods. “Wouldn’t want to ruin those pretty hands.”

 “Need ‘em for work.” And with a wink, Doc adds, “Need ‘em for play, too.”

 Rea laughs, and he doesn’t think he’s imagining the color rising in her face as she shakes her head. “You fix my ginx, and maybe we find out if they’re as good as you say.”

 “Your skepticism is starting to hurt my feelings, Gorgeous.”

 # # #

 Pooper is happy to return to his perch in the corner of Rea’s quarters, croaking approval as he settles his considerable mass onto a wide log under a heat lamp. He’s breathing easy now, his skin slick with artificial mucus that doesn’t stop his companion from dropping a kiss to his broad forehead.

 She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand and hooks a finger into the lapel of Doc’s jacket, leading him back out to the lounge. The gentle wheeze of Pooper’s snores follows them down the corridor.

 A weird pet, but Doc likes him.

 “So let’s talk payment,” Rea says, whipping out two glasses and a bottle of midtier Corellian whiskey. “You want a mixer?”

 Doc shakes his head, clinking the glass she hands him with hers before taking a generous sip. Something about the blizzard outside makes the heat of it all the more welcome in his belly.

 Rea tosses the whole thing back in one swallow.

 “Here’s the thing,” she goes on, pouring herself another two fingers. “I don’t actually have any credits. But I’m not gonna leave you with nothing, so don’t worry about that. A Corellian always pays her debts, y’know? I’m sure we can work something else out.”

 Honestly, he forgot about the money. It isn’t usually his responsibility. Doc shifts uncomfortably, swirling the liquor in his glass as he tries to think how to put this. “If you’re suggesting sex--”

 “Sex? What?” Rea shakes her head emphatically. “No way. I mean, I’d definitely like to fuck you, but not as payment. Just for fun.”

 Doc visibly sags in relief. “Oh, thank the stars. I mean, yes to the fucking for fun part. But you really don’t need to pay me. We can just call it a favor to my favorite ginx if you want.”

 “Hold onto that charity until you see what I’m offering,” Rea says, smirking. She downs the rest of her whiskey and strips out of her jacket, leaving her in that thin tank top that clings to every plane and slope of her sculpted figure. He doesn’t try to hide his captivation. “Follow me.”

 Like he could do anything else.

 He trails after her into the ship’s cargo bay, fixated on what has to be the most exquisite ass he’s ever seen. His fingers itch to dig into it, to feel the shifting of all that muscle for himself.

 She stops in front of a speeder--No, a swoop bike. A very familiar swoop bike.

 “No way,” he breathes.

 Rea leans back against the bike, looking unbearably smug as she props her hands against the chassis. “I thought you might recognize it.”

 He’s only seen it a billion times, at a billion different angles, immortalized in the revolving collection of holos and figurines covering Terek’s station. He’s seen it enough that even he can recognize the sleek lines and unique thruster configuration hovering before him. “When you said your name is Rea,” he says, still gaping a little in bewilderment, “is that short for Nirea Velaran?”

 Her smile only widens, and that’s all the confirmation he needs.

 “Whaddya think?” She says, patting the hood. “Will this hunk of junk be a fair exchange?”

 “Fair? I don’t know much about swoop racing, Gorgeous, but that bike is worth a million creds, easy.” Doc glances around the cargo bay, quickly realizing there are a dozen other bikes and a few speeders crammed into the small space. “They probably all are, just cause they’re yours.”

 She shrugs. “Well I don’t know much about biology, but I’m pretty sure Pooper would’ve died without your help. His life is worth every credit and more. So just take it, will you? Give it to your tech or something.”

 Terek might literally kill him if he refuses.

 “I don’t even fly this thing anymore, Doc. It’s just gathering dust in here.” When he still doesn’t agree, Rea adds, “The sooner you say yes, the sooner we’re done with business. And once the business is done, we can start having fun.”

 Doc laughs then, nodding. “You drive a hard bargain, Beautiful.”

 # # #

 They watch the sun rise from the cockpit, their bodies glistening like the snow in the wash of soft, golden light. Rea is collapsed against him, boneless and sighing, her head tipped back against his chest and her body still slick against his thigh. He suspects she isn’t quite as thoroughly spent as he is, but she must be satisfied enough since she isn’t asking for more.

 Doc has learned a number of things about infamous swoop jockey Nirea Velaran tonight, namely that she isn’t shy about asking for what she wants.

 It’s the most fun he’s had in ages.

 The silence is comfortable as they bask in the afterglow, hands still lightly caressing, coming down from the last of many highs. It’s the undemanding kind of quiet that grows out of people who understand each other, even if they don’t know one another that well yet.

 Finally, Rea yawns. “You want a lift home?”

 “I don’t think my neighbors will appreciate a freighter in the street,” he says, toying with the ends of her short, tousled hair.

 “I could grapple you down.”

 He would laugh, but Doc has learned enough in the last few hours to know she isn’t joking. Rea is both very athletic and exceedingly eccentric with her solutions to commonplace problems.

 “I’ll be fine. I met this fascinating woman today who traded me a swoop bike for taking care of her ginx.”

 “She sounds great,” Rea says, and he hears the smile in her tired, syrupy voice. “But I’m not letting you take a swoop out in this snow. It fucks the repulsors all to hell. You’ll end up nosediving into a drift, and then who will I call when Pooper needs help?”

 He doesn’t mention how she told him earlier they probably wouldn’t cross paths again. He just laughs, sneaks a kiss to her temple and shifts her off of his lap. “Fine,” he says. “Any idea where I left my pants?”

# # #

Doc holds tight to Rea’s waist as she lowers them onto his roof. More than one of his neighbors are standing on their stoops, staring dumbfounded at the ship and the woman dropping out of it, wrapped only in a heavy blanket and a very tired veterinarian. The snow swirls around them in a storm, shimmering like diamonds in the morning light.

 She must be freezing, but he can’t see any sign of it on her face.

 “Thanks again,” she shouts as their feet touch the heated roof, straining to be heard over the rumbling of her ship’s engine. “I really don’t know what I’d have done without your help.”

 “It was my pleasure,” he shouts back.

 “Don’t I know it!”

 Rea pulls him in for one last, searing kiss before she shoves him away, both of them laughing like idiots. Like senseless fucking teenagers who don’t know anything else. “You can get down from here, right?”

 Doc just nods, too breathless for more shouting.

 The light flashes on her grappling gun as it changes directions, lifting her slowly back toward the warmth of her waiting ship. He can see that Pooper is waiting at the top of the ramp, watching her eagerly with his big red eyes, his skin slick and shining like it’s meant to be.

 Finally, after watching just a little too long, Doc turns and lowers himself to the edge of his roof. He’s about to make the jump into the snowdrifts below when she calls out.

 “Hey Doc!”

 He pauses, craning his neck back to look at her, almost within arm’s reach of her ship now.

 “If you’re ever on Corellia,” she shout, “look me up!”

 Then, she lets loose the blanket wrapped around her body. It catches in the wind kicked up by the engines, whipping and swirling its way to getting stuck in his neighbor’s hedge. Doc hardly notices where it lands. His eyes are fixed on the tight, sculpted body of the woman he’s just realized he’s never going to forget.

 He whistles loudly in appreciation, watching the laughter he can’t hear dancing across her face. Then she’s grasping onto the lowered boarding ramp, vaulting herself to her feet in one smooth, exquisite motion.

 Rea walks backward as she disappears into her ship, blowing him a kiss and giving him a little shimmy to remember her by. He doesn’t move from the spot until she’s long gone, nothing more than a dark speck streaking through the sky.

 Doc doesn’t know when and he doesn’t know how, but he knows with every bone in his body that he has to see her again.

 And her little ginx too.

Quick shoutout to @meonlyred for the concept and genuinely horrifying title of this, and to Winter Storm Diego and my beloved, yet fucked up dog, Cooper, for inspiration.

[deepintoforestwego]

Pros and cons of two hearts and other peculiarities: A personal account

For @slavicafire, a urban fantasy story based on lore of  strzyga. Sorry it took so long and is so short. Hope you (and others) like it.

1# early childhood

Your father was a folklorist. Your mother was witch.

What that meant was, that when you were born, with two sets of teeth (one, to be fair, smaller then other) and monitor picking up two heartbeats, they almost immediately knew what was up.

Which also meant your mother got in trouble for casting several rather harsh illusion and memory altering spells. Which are complicated and iffy on their own, and much less when witch in question is only half conscious and just went through labor. Your grandparents are still giving her earful about that.

Point is, anyway, that sometimes children like you were abandoned. it is rarer in  this new, smarter, thankfully less superstitious age (though some, as always, would argue it is worse), but in centuries before such children, or those suspected for no good, true reason, were abandoned in woods, or at best, chased away after certain age when community couldn’t stand them.

Your parents, however, were reasonable, caring and good people who wouldn’t allow such tiny thing to get in way of loving and appreciating their daughter(s). They didn’t call attention to your strange behaviors, or try to forget them-loving whole of you.

Even if it made feeding time very awkward.

2# Being wonder child

Most kids like you do not actually display any abilities before certain age, or in case of accident, which of course requires you to lose one half of your being. Thankfully, you didn’t have to go through that traumatic experience, as well as devastating mental consequences it contained when one half of your mind/life/best friend forever is lost.

However, training and keeping those powers secret, when you live in a village (which, whether because such is nature of small communities, or because your people are like that, means deaf grandma of your mom’s hated neighbor knows what you ate for breakfast) was rather hard and embarrassing.

But you learn on mistakes. And at least your dad’s best friend’s annoying cousin never comes over again. It was worth lecture and denied chocolate.

3# Smelling blood

A fantastic nose capable of smelling, discerning and categorizing blood. Useful for detecting sickness, knowing which blood group you need when making transfusion (other nurses turn blind eye to that) and discerning whether meal is fresh.

It is also not good pick-up line, small talk and way to greet grandma.

4# Shapeshifting

Do you know what wonder it is, to have your whole body just-change and become something else? For mass to shrink and cells to rearrange, in direct defiance to laws of nature, for you to become animal but still think like human, to rise and soar through air, wind and moonlight caressing your feathers.

Plus owl are amazing. Even if it hurts at first to transform in one.

5# Detecting life

This is how a strzyga hunts:her soul senses and feels life around her sensing it’s different shades and forms. Life of doe and rose tastes very differently for example.

And even dead carry feelings of it, shadows and memories. To taste death is to taste cold ash upon tongue, and murky, freezing river traveling through your bowels, a sound of laments echoing through your head.

But it can be so damaging, so painful, to sense it all. You need to learn to numb it, make it weaker, ignore it, even as you earn to taste it all. Some strzygas, old and powerful enough, can even feel microbes, which is why they generally go mad.

6# Two minds

Having another person up there with you is an amazing, wonderful feeling.You are never alone, and it feels like having best friend who always understands, a sister you never truly had. Plus, it is extremely helpful when you are at university and swamped with work.

Downsides:appearing to forget some appointment because your other half didn’t remember to tell you what they promised, conflicting crushes, fashion tastes (gothic for human, pastel and cute for demon) and some contrasting lifestyle choices ( we do not talk about week your human half decided to go vegan).

Anyway, you invest in lot of stick-it notes.

7# Trance

That is how you decided to call feeling your other side feels enters when it isn’t in control. A half dream, blind and deaf, yet getting emotions and hearing thoughts of dominant half, and whispering advices like some crazy, unstoppable conscience that also happen to have no idea what it is doing.

8# Meeting your girlfriend

You are floored and confused and completely non responsive (general state of strzyga, who, as strzygons are rather rare, are in your experience mostly feeling preference for other woman).

she is beautiful, but that hits you last, and her AB positive blood group comes close to it. What hits you first is sense of her life, of power within her. Energy within her swirls and twists, coils like a snake around you, with force of tempest about to unleash it’s fury, like thousand spring flowers waiting to bloom.

‘‘Are you okay?’‘ She asks, and syringe meant to take her blood for her blood test misses and hits you in forearm.

9# First date

It is an awkward, busy mess both of times. Two souls inside of you both scream and panic, while she seems so relaxed and confident (you will learn, later, that you two together were both more collected then she was). Fact that she is witch and actually remembers each of your names, favorite foods and music tastes just adds to it.

You make awkward joke she rolls over on floor, makes waiter blush and old people look funny at you thrice, break two dishes and spill wine twice. In your defense she overshares five times,and once accidentally makes lightbulb break.

You find common taste in tv shows, get in discussion which animals best (hedgehog, toad for two of you, snake for her) and dance on cobblestones in rain.

10# Family dinner

Your parents already accepted you. It is however quite wonder when you are invited for Easter to spend time with hers.

Anxiety fills you up, when you see her hundred and counting rich cousins, meet her awesome mothers, both accomplished sorceresses ( genetic scientist and mechanic also), her spinster singer and model aunt (who has no makeup, yet looks exactly as she does on photos, too many illusions and glamour magics) and actually get involved in fight about her fourth aunt not coming over despite not knowing how it happened.

There is same power in them all, but different from hers, a great weight of life and energy that struggles as if their bodies are to small for it, tasting of hundred different species, hundred different demons, their energies sluggish and thick and bitter and hurting you from intensity, even as she squeezes your arm and asks if you need to go outside.

Her smirk when you insult her loud, angry uncle by showing him both of your teeth sets is worth it all though.

11# Lifetime

‘‘Are you sure it will work?’‘ You ask, for now there are both of you, brought by her magic, her will, awake at same time.

‘‘Of course my dears. One of you is already undead, it will be no trouble to make others so.’‘ She says with quick kiss, magic sparkling like electrical charge at lips.

‘‘But how will it work is completely other question.’‘ Voice calls out from behind, dark and low, and you almost jump, because for first time in your life you feel nothing at all.

You turn, and from shadows steps a woman, tiny and upper end of middle ages, dressed in modest , elegant skirt and button up shirt, eyes obscured by netlike veil hanging off small cute hat covering her bun.

You close your eyes, breathe deep and sharp, and take step back. This woman is blind spot in your otherworldly vision, a presence you cannot find and identify, world silent and empty around her, as if she was never alive at all.

‘‘Auntie, please don’t lecture me.’‘ Your love groans, and you wonder if she knows how her aunt ( madwoman witch monster demon dirty blood teen pregnancy bastard stain upon family unfortunate choice widow foreigner not ours criminal you remember, remember what they told about her) does that, how can she wrap herself behind so much magic you cannot even feel she exists and not choke on it, and wonder if your love will learn that someday too.

��‘I will if I have reason to. Binding human to demon side is easy. Making yourself live on after what you were afforded isn’t. It requires blood.’‘ She says, and in step crosses over, like winter wind.Your love looks down on her.

‘‘I know. I know the price, and for her- for our sake, I will pay it.’‘ Her power blazes, a bonfire and storm and earthquake, and you delight in it, in her strength and magic and stubborness.

‘‘Of course you will. It is love, after all.’‘  Her aunt moves lace covered hand and puts on her cheek.

‘‘When you do ritual-be sure that sacrifice is somebody deserving. The Cold Lady’s ire will be earned either way, but by this it will be appeased for some time, instead of invoking Her wrath. Be smart.’‘ She says, and in tradition of all aunts across Balkan, shoves money in your love’s palm, and spends next fifteen minutes arguing whether it is appropriate gift (your love snatches it away finally, acceptable loss).

‘‘As for you... Love her well, and that will be good enough. Otherwise...’‘ And before disappearing in shadows she smiles, and you are sure her teeth are sharp and white, kind that can feast upon bones.

‘‘And that trouble is gone too...Now let us get on track, shall we?’‘ She asks, before you start playing with her hair.

12# Lifegoals

So, what should strzyga, her artificial vampire sister/other half and their quasi-immortal witch girlfriend do with rest of their long lives.

Well, love, explore, do whatever they want, and curse those that get in way of it, of course.

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[alishbakhanus]

Wedding Planner: 6 Wedding Business Ideas in 2021

The wedding industry is a gold mine of domestic business. They earn a lot here and in different directions. Every entrepreneur will find an idea to his liking and budget.

A wedding is not only a great celebration, but also a lucrative business idea. The wedding industry is developing by leaps and bounds. The turnover of the wedding market grows by 3-5% annually.

A wedding is a holiday for which many do not spare money. People strive to make an important day in their lives ideal and memorable – hence the demand for various wedding products and services (and not the cheapest ones). The markup for wedding goods is 300-500%, and you can earn 20-50 thousand rubles on services for one event. The label “wedding” automatically makes the product more expensive. So even with minimal orders, the wedding business can be profitable.

Today, many areas are successfully working in this direction. Indeed, in addition to standard wedding salons, there are creative and new business ideas in which competition is minimal. However, it is worth remembering about two main disadvantages of the wedding business: high competition and seasonality. The result is a limited number of orders. Therefore, in order to succeed in this business, it is important to assess the competition in the niche and the prospects of the product or service.

Organization of weddings

Let’s start with the classics. The service of organizing weddings is not new, but it is still in demand. The scale of the business and the start-up capital may vary. It all depends on your capabilities and plans. A wedding agency can be organized by one person and at minimal cost. In this format, an entrepreneur is a manager and organizer in one person. Clients and contractors can be found via the Internet, and meetings with clients can be held in a cafe. The downside is that working alone, without an office, is much more difficult to gain customer loyalty. And you won’t be able to take many orders if you do everything yourself. But you can work in this format for the first time in order to gain experience and collect a portfolio of completed projects.

In the future, it is worth considering the opening of a full-fledged wedding agency: with an office and staff. The initial investment will amount to about 300 thousand rubles. This amount will be enough to rent an office in the city center, equip it with appliances and furniture, advertise its services, and also form a wages fund for the first month. The initial investment will pay off much longer, but this will allow you to take on several projects at once and not miss the client.

The meaning of the work of a wedding agency is to fully organize the celebration. Concept development, search for contractors (presenters, photographers, florists and decorators, artists, etc.), coordination of their work at the preparatory stage and on the day of the event itself. The activity is very interesting, but it requires creativity, responsibility and organizational skills.

The amount of profit can also be different. It all depends on the budgets of the implemented projects and their number. The revenue for one project can be 30-150 thousand rubles. Working alone, you can organize 2, maximum 3 projects per month. Hence the average income of 200 thousand rubles.

Where to look for clients? Many entrepreneurs in the wedding industry are looking for clients right at the registry office. They offer their services to couples who come to apply. You can prepare brochures, business cards in advance and distribute them to potential clients. Another option is to find partners. For example, to agree on cooperation with the owner of the wedding salon and hold a promotion, handing each customer a discount coupon for the services of the organizer. You can also register as a contractor on wedding forums like Bride.info. Connect social networks: start a blog, write not only about your services, but also share useful tips for readers. Run a competition for a free wedding organization to attract attention and add a project to your portfolio. Such a competition will be especially relevant at the very beginning of work.

It is best to start a business in April in order to be fully prepared for the wedding season. The season starts in June, so you need to leave yourself a couple of months to swing. As a rule, newlyweds contact the organizers in advance, at least 2 months before the wedding. In the first month of work, it is advisable to start a project, advertise, and organize your work. In the second month, focus all efforts on finding or (if you’re lucky) implementing the first orders.

Wedding printing

The wedding starts with an invitation. Many people pay special attention to wedding printing, because invitations are not just a formality, but an opportunity to surprise guests. Therefore, you can open a business for the development and manufacture of wedding printing. If you are a needlewoman and are looking for a creative idea for making money, then here is one of the interesting options.

Your first task is to choose the direction in which you will work. For example, if you paint with watercolors, you can use airy, watercolor designs as your theme. If you are doing scrapbooking, focus on unusual design. Offer eco-friendly invitations on wood cuts or other original solutions. People will buy regular invitation cards in the store, so the emphasis should be on individual design.

After you have decided on the concept, you should purchase the necessary equipment. Everything here is also quite individual. Someone will need a scanner to transfer drawings to digital format, while others will buy a printing press. The budget can be different: from 0 to 300 thousand rubles.

Another important nuance is to create a portfolio of your work. Therefore, you will have to spend money on creating several samples to advertise your services. The client search scheme is the same as in the case of a wedding agency. Optional: you can create your store on various sites for needlewomen, 

The business scheme looks like this: you receive an order, discuss all the nuances with the client, create a layout, agree on it and then prepare the final version. We advise you to make initial layouts in specialized computer programs in order to save on materials. By the way, such layouts can be used to create a catalog.

If you are thinking about whether to print invitations or make them manually, be guided by your capabilities. Keep in mind that a large number of postcards are ordered for the wedding, so it will take a long time to get handmade. Of course, such invitations will be more expensive, but the number of orders will be limited. If you make postcards with the help of a printing house, then this simplifies the work. Printing one postcard in a printing house will cost about 10 rubles. Additional costs are materials for registration. And the final price for 1 invitation is 150-300 rubles. That is, an order for the production of 50 wedding invitations will bring the entrepreneur about 10,000 rubles.

Location for photo shoots

Wedding photography is one of the most popular services in the industry. Newlyweds want to get beautiful pictures and diversify them. Photos against the background of the monuments have been out of date for years. Various locations for a photo shoot are now in demand. If you create a creative location in your city, you can earn money by organizing wedding photo sessions. This can be an interior location in a photo studio or a decorated area in an open area.

The project budget may be different, it all depends on the scale. Registration of a location in a photo studio will cost about 200 thousand rubles – this cost will include the services of a decorator, props and rent.

Considering that the cost of a photo shoot in a location costs about 5 thousand rubles, then during the season you can not only recoup your investment, but also make good money. The average monthly revenue of a photography studio is 200 thousand rubles. This means that in just a few months you can recoup your initial investment. By the way, not only newlyweds can become your clients. Therefore, even in the wedding off-season, you will be provided with orders.

Renting out equipment for organizing weddings

Various techniques are often used at weddings. For example, special lighting, musical equipment, smoke machines, artificial snow generators and even chocolate fountains. The owners of all of this can earn money from renting equipment.

It is quite easy to organize such a business. All you need is to purchase the appropriate equipment and find a way to receive orders. You can place an ad on Aviso, thematic forums or negotiate cooperation with other representatives of the wedding industry.

You will have to spend on this from 7 thousand rubles (about the cost of a device for a chocolate fountain) to 100 thousand rubles (this is the average cost of musical equipment). The initial investment can pay off in 3-4 orders.

This also includes the rental of wedding cars. Of course, this idea will require an impressive start-up capital, and the payback period will be about 1-1.5 years.

The lease format of the business is good because it is quite simple to organize and is suitable for those who want to receive additional income.

Photo vending

For the past few years, Polaroid-type photographs have been relevant. Only in this case, photo booths are used – special booths that are equipped with a high-precision camera and a powerful computer with special software. The cost of such equipment will cost about 200 thousand rubles.

In addition, buy a variety of fun props such as glasses, wigs, hats and masks. This will be your working arsenal. With all this goodness, you arrive at the place and delight guests with funny photos.

The advantage of this idea is that you can implement it alone. And also a bonus is a simple principle of operation and a quick payback period. An hourly rental of a photo booth costs about 15 thousand rubles. This means that you can recoup your initial investment within 3-4 months.

Flipbooks

A more advanced version of photo booths is flipbooks. This is a new direction for the domestic entertainment industry. The flipbook consists of 72 color photographs collected in a small book. When flipping through, the photos turn into animated videos.

Newlyweds use them as wedding invitations or gifts for guests, installing equipment at the celebration itself.

The main advantages of such an idea are a free niche and, as a result, the absence of competitors. Another plus is a quick payback. The rental of such equipment is about 50 thousand rubles per event. This means that you only need 8-10 orders to get a return on your initial investment. This volume can be completed in 2-3 months of active work.

Courtesy: best shadi halls in Lahore

[miaswetnambcu]

Critical Lecture 2 - What does the future hold; prediction of current social changes impact on fashion and textiles

In the previous critical thinking lecture, the links between technology, world events and social changes influence fashion and textiles were explored and identified. This lecture focused on the current social factors and attempt to predict the impact that these will have on the future.

The key causes of social change were identified in the lecture. The first being politics and power. According to Watch Mojo on YouTube, out of the top ten most powerful people in the world in 2020, five were involved in politics in some way. The most powerful person was named as Xi Jinping, who is China’s president, showing how much influence politics can have. He was named as the most powerful person due to him having amended the constitution to broaden his power. China has the second largest economy and is the most inhabited country in the world. Both aspects show the amount of power the country can easily have, and a large portion of that power will go to Xi Jinping. Vladimir Putin is another high-power public figure. He has been the president of Russia since 2000 and has changed the constitution to allow him to be in power beyond 2024. Just this singular change illustrates how much power Putin has in his country, which is why he second on the list of the most powerful people in the world.

Trump is another example of power and how it can be used in politics. Trump is known for being very outspoken on Twitter and has posted some very misleading things on the app. In the 2020 election, he posted a tweet saying that Dominion voting machines had stopped working in Republican areas of the US. The tweet was very misleading, and the problem had been resolved hours before Trump tweeted about it. There was a slight malfunction in one of the voting machines, but with Trump’s power he was able to blow it out of proportion, which lead to his followers being angry. Another similar tweet by Amy Coello claimed that ‘shredded ballots’ were found, when in fact those ‘shredded ballots’ were waste from a ballot opening machine and were not ballots (BBC, 2021). The rise in fake news on social media and with the faster rate it is easier to spread, politicians and other public figures on social media have a power that is different to anything before. Social media allows millions of people to view a post or an article very quickly, whether it be true or not. By spreading false information, this can add to the power that these public figures have by ensuring they receive support from this false news and adding people to their list of followers and supporters. 

Division of wealth is another sector that has a huge impact on society. The world’s richest 1% have more than twice as much wealth as 6.9 billion people. This shows the huge gap that is created in society and as the rich get richer, the poor get poorer. The question surrounding this regarding fashion is if this 1% of the world will control the whole fashion industry due to their wealth and power, or whether that 1% will get bigger or smaller.

Another cause of social change is consumerism. The rise of fast fashion has impacted the fashion industry massively and has led to a dramatic increase of online clothing sales. With the current pandemic and people being unable to go to physical shops, online shopping has never been so popular. In 2020, Boohoo were involved in a scandal regarding their factories and the unfair treatment that was being seen in them. However, their profits still rose by 50% during the pandemic, indicating that the factory scandal they were in may have increased their sales due to people talking about the brand.

Regarding sustainability, consumerism has accelerated it. During the pandemic, sustainable clothing sales rose very much and is continuing to rise. It appears people are looking to support different sustainable brands online as they are unable to go to physical shops that do not offer such clothing. With people being at home a significant amount of time in the last year, they would be able to research what brands they are buying from and take more time to consider what brands they should be buying from, leading to this rise in sustainable fashion. With brands like Zara and H&M creating sustainable fashion lines, buying sustainable fashion has never been more accessible.

Innovation also has a strong impact on social change, with the constant advancement of technology. Artificial intelligence (AI) is rising in popularity now and is looking to eventually become the new norm. For example, Amazon are working on drones to complete unmanned deliveries. This can be translated to the fashion industry, by all production eventually being completed by AI. Chatbots are already online fashion advisors to help customers with the selection of products, as well as keeping track of trends and predicting future ones. Through the pandemic, many brands used augmented reality for their fashion shows. Hanifa used 3D models to show their garments, which increased the amount of reach that they were able to have. Many people were talking about the beautiful execution of the garments and how much detail had gone into each one. However, the use of these kinds of technology will eventually resort in a huge cut of jobs. This is a huge problem with the development of AI and other technologies as there should be a balance between the working people and the working technology to ensure that they are worked in cohesion, rather than against one another.

Social media has a huge impact on social change and on all other aspects mentioned in this lecture. Netflix produced a film called ‘The Social Dilemma’ which highlights the dark side of social media that many people fail to see. It shows how it becomes addicting and how reliant we can become on things such as likes or comments. The reality of social media is that is makes the creators of the platforms lots of money just by clicking on the app. Their goal is to keep their customers on their apps as much as possible, and they do this by using things such as notifications to draw people into their application. Everyone’s usage of social media is monitored to learn what keeps people interested on their apps. They use this information to show more of what seems to keep their customers interested, and then this leads to more watch time on their app. If multiple people were to type on word into Google, the suggested searches will be different for most people due to Google having monitored our results of using their platform. 

Social media has led to the reliance on being appreciated on those platforms through likes and comments. Many people, although they may not realise it, base their own worth on how many likes they get on a photograph they have uploaded to a social media platform. If they do not receive any or enough likes, they tend to feel sad about it and may even delete the picture. The use of social media has had a huge effect on Gen Z. Gen Z is those born after 1996. With the rise in technology since 1996, many people in Gen Z have grown up on social media, which has never been seen in any generation prior to this. The self-harm and suicide rates have increased in Gen Z significantly and it is most likely due to the added pressures of social media, among other aspects like school. Social media has a huge power over this generation unlike any other generation before, making it harder for those older generations to understand Gen Z. Bottega Veneta found that social media was a very toxic place and decided to delete all of their social media outlets in January 2021. The question that arises to this is that if online is too important to stop or if offline is the new luxury. In my opinion, the fastest and easiest way to get exposure to a brand is through social media, so it would help new and upcoming brands. However, social media has not always been present and is obviously not the singular element that can affect popularity or a brand, as proved by many brands prior to social media. 

To extend the lecture, my group and I were given a task to look at how the pandemic has accelerated these different elements. With everyone being at home during the pandemic, advertising on social media has increased as people were looking at it more often due to boredom. Also, social media has been the only source of communication between families and friends, so has provided a comfort to people during this tough time. 

Regarding consumerism, less retail stores and more online shopping has been shown as people were unable to go to physical shops during the pandemic. Although there has been an increase in sustainable fashion, there has also been an increase in fast fashion, which will ultimately lead to more pollution. 

During these uncertain times, people have been looking more towards political figures for guidance. This has led to a bigger reliance on these figures as people are unsure on what to do to help to stop the virus from spreading. The restrictions that have been put in place has led to people respecting their governmental leaders and following their orders more readily. 

Many companies have had to adapt during the pandemic, which has led to innovation happening. Virtual fashion shows were on a rise as well as virtual shopping experiences. Many fashion brands offer online stylists to help choose garments for the customer. As many people are unable to work during the pandemic, the reliance on machinery has never been higher. Online platforms for meetings are constantly upgrading and expanding to meet people’s needs and may result in online meetings continuing after the pandemic. 

The current effects that are occurring due to the pandemic is something that my group and I will have to take into consideration. As our brand is more party and eveningwear, the clothes we create will be focused around leaving the pandemic and helping customers to be confident and excited for when they are able to go out after restrictions are lifted.

[fayewonglibrary]

Faye Wong: Do we love her singing or do we love her freedom? (2020)

Faye Wong, who has not shown her face for a long time, appeared on a live KTV program.

The Heavenly Queen was in her usual languid and relaxed state. She sang four songs in a row on a comfortable sofa in English, Cantonese, and Mandarin. All were pleasant to hear and they all fit Faye Wong's style very well.

The fans were even more happy, cheering like it was new year's.

In recent years, Faye Wong has been living a retired life. But even if she deliberately stays away from the public eye, she has always maintained the magical power of enchantment and influence as the heavenly queen.

Every time she comes out to sing, it becomes the most talked-about topic. In the "Believe in the Future" benefit performance a few months ago, she and Chang Shilei sang "Mortal World" together and still retained the classic Fei flavor.

Faye Wong has been an inimitable singer in the Chinese music industry for thirty years. Her singing is integrated with her life, her character, her temperament, and her attitude. It is unclear whether she interprets the song or the song summarizes her.

If the young Faye Wong gave people the feeling that she was a free spirit, then as we get older, we find that the core of being a free spirit is actually something else - true “comfort".

So, after all these years, do you love her singing or love her freedom?

"Freedom" is not a characteristic, but an ability.

Faye Wong's sense of comfort gradually emerged after years of build up, or in other words, it was a process of brewing and cultivation.

Faye Wong, born in the late 1960s, was actually the same as many typical people in her childhood, adolescence, and early days of her debut. She too was restricted with the limitations of the times and personal limitations. 

As a young girl, Faye Wong worked hard and at the age of 15, she secretly went to record a cover tape of Teresa Teng’s songs, earning a thousand yuan.

She moved to Hong Kong with her father when she was 18 years old. By chance, she was introduced to the famous musician Dai Si Chung and was accepted as his student. It was a pivotal moment that changed destiny. Friends recalled that after discovering Faye Wong, Dai Si Chung was ecstatic.

When Dai Si Chung described Faye Wong to others, he said: "I just accepted a student with very good talent. It may be unparalleled in the entire Hong Kong entertainment industry."

Dai Si Chung immediately recommended Faye Wong to Chan Siu Bo, the general manager of Cinepoly Records. Chan Siu Bo also liked Faye Wong and planned to sign her to a record deal. At this point, Faye Wong set foot on the road to becoming a singer.

At that time, Faye Wong didn't know what all this meant. In short, she did whatever the company arranged.

Chan Siu Bo asked her to cut her hair short like other stylish Hong Kong women and spent a lot of money to ask a fortune-teller to choose a more Hong Kong-style name for her: Wong Jing Man.

We can see that when Faye Wong first debuted, she was full of youthfulness and did not fully open her heart.

For Faye Wong, the environment in Hong Kong was unfamiliar and she was not fluent in the language. She joked and said that she was sleepwalking every day, and that this kind of sleepwalking was naturally performed in Chungking Express.

During this period, there were one or two incidents that showed Faye Wong's firm stubbornness and self-identity. When Chan Siu Bo asked her to cut her long hair, Faye Wong said, “Shouldn’t a singer focus on songs first?"

She liked her own name and did not like "Wong Jing Man". Her manager once said that Faye Wong didn’t care about major issues such as "contracts" or "career development", but was always concerned about small details, such as her name.

Faye Wong changed her English name from Shirley to Faye when she returned to Hong Kong from the United States at the age of 22.  

Faye Wong began to show her character and attitude in the year that she returned to Hong Kong from the United States. She said that she was influenced by New York: "I like New York very much. No matter what kind of people there are, they are very confident."

Therefore, Faye Wong's naive period was very short because she quickly stood out with her songs, strength and style.

If you have to pick a turning point, I think it was 1994 when she won the most popular female singer award. That year, the trends of the Hong Kong music industry were changed according to her.

The success of her career made Faye Wong qualified and able to find herself, thus she could enter a more natural state.

Gradually, she understood what she wanted, so she was focused and determined on cherishing her energy and talent. Her eyes were no longer covered. She could devote all her efforts into developing her sound and doing what she liked to do.

In 1994, she held the first solo concert tour in her life. Faye Wong played with her long sleeves and wore sunglasses while singing dreamily on the stage. The video producer of that concert was Wong Kar-wai. The Hong Kong Coliseum was filled with fans.

This concert was the beginning of Faye Wong's style of being herself - enchanting, comfortable, pioneering, artistic, unruly, and confident.

Throughout the 1990s, she was extremely productive. Albums such as "Fuzao", "Sing and Play", and "Only Love Strangers" fully represented this style and stood out among the entire Chinese music industry. Her distinct expression, high standards and self-confidence made her a true queen.

At the same time, Faye Wong also began to be herself without fear. Her world became more and more comfortable.

When she was young, she once said: "I like natural things", and even now she still says: "I am most afraid of being artificial." True enough, she always "has nothing to say" at her concerts and doesn’t want to please anyone, so the labels of aloof and cold have been affixed to her.

In fact, to be extremely simple, we must first be extremely smart, and the source of wisdom must come from experience and reflection.

In an interview with Yang Lan, Faye Wong once made a very philosophical remark - why are people stressed and troubled? Because they take themselves too seriously.

It can only be said that true freedom must be a state that can only be reached after experiencing destruction over the years, experiencing the peaks and valleys of life, and experiencing continuous thinking and introspection.

When a person has struggled and then succeeded, they have found their own value and found their place in the world. They can see some things clearly and let go of some things, and then understand the world better. All the noise can't reach a truly free mind, it is a wide open space.

It is most comfortable if you have experience, strength, wisdom, and a fulfilling life.

Freedom is the timeless glory of women.

Faye Wong looks aloof and cold. She always faces the public with her truest face, preferring to be silent rather than telling lies. Gradually, people were even more attracted to this personality than her singing voice.

‍Faye Wong is not a person who is good at speaking and she is not good at showing emotions in public. Many times she chooses to be silent. When she cannot be silent, she only chooses truth.

This honesty might be too harsh at first, but as time goes by, it turns out to be a very valuable quality.

Of course, there are many people in this world who can be true, but few people can maintain complete truth for thirty years.

This means having a very firm sense of self and a very stable life energy in which you never try to please others, never waver, and you accept and appreciate yourself no matter what happens. This is a manifestation of self-confidence.

On the stage, Faye Wong was totally emotionally absorbed and enjoyed herself, and when she left the stage and settled down with family, she also lived very vigorously.

I liked to listen to her interviews and I also liked her Weibo posts very much. On Weibo, she made all kinds of silly talk and jokes. After all, only Faye Wong’s corny jokes could make both Barbie and Dee Hsu speechless. 

It can only be said that Faye Wong has been radiating her own energy and feeling the beauty of life wholeheartedly, whether it is in the public eye or not.

During her retirement years, Faye Wong also showed up from time to time and every time she came out to sing, her aura was overflowing. She even made a variety show "Phantacity", and admitted that there was no other reason, just "because of ease".

She seldom changes herself because of a worldly perspective. Regardless of the different opinions of the world, she never goes against her heart. She only lives the life she wants, loves only those who are worth loving, and only spends her energy on relationships and emotions that are worth maintaining. 

Therefore, "freedom" is a very high realm.

The core of freedom is independence and truth. Once a woman has freedom, she will radiate light from the inside out and this light will last forever. She may not know it but everyone around her will feel how bright this light is.

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SOURCE: EASTDAY // TRANSLATED BY: FAYE WONG FUZAO

[australianservices1]

Creating Your Perfect Outdoor Living Space

The warmer weather of Australia, and in particular the Gold Coast, means that a majority of our time is spent outdoors. So, having a functional and enjoyable outdoor living space is really important.  Creating an outdoor living space can turn into a complex project involving everything from cabinet markers to carpenters but the final results will be worth the efforts. In the end, you will have a practical and enjoyable addition to your home. After all, in Gold Coat’s beautiful weather who wants to be indoors?

Before you begin your home renovations or start searching for reliable carpenter, you’ll need to think about how your new area will be used. Do you want to build kids and pet play zone, an alfresco dining area to entertain family and friends, or a quiet retreat?

How having an attractive and functional backyard adds value to your home

According to Domain Real Estate online, a well-styled garden can boost the value of your home by up to 25 per cent. Such an addition can cultivate as much interest in a property as a new kitchen or bathroom. The old-style garden and big lawn are no longer in fashion as Gold Coasters opt for paved terraces, al fresco dining spaces, and barbecue grills. Contemporary, attractive landscaping can increase the value of a home as a standard lawn no longer impresses or intrigues potential buyers anymore.

Ideas for creating a modern outdoor living space

Once you’ve decided the functionality of your new outside area then comes the fun part - designing and building your perfect outdoor living area! Proper Job team of knowledgeable and creative handymen have years of experience in cabinetry, carpentry, decking and landscaping on homes across the Gold Coast. Here are some of ideas for creating a modern outdoor living space.

Building an outdoor dining area

Consider the location first – being close to the kitchen in order to easily ferry food and party supplies to and from the area or create an actual outdoor kitchen area.. An outdoor dining area needs resilient flooring that can survive furniture moves, weather extremes countless feet, not to mention dropped food. The surface should be practical and durable as well as being even and smooth to prevent accidents, and to allow easier cleaning.

You will also want to create a practical preparation area with storage where you can keep all your utensils and table linens clean and tidy – a Gold Coast cabinet maker can create custom outdoor kitchen-fit outs, with optimal storage, enduring surfaces,

Adding an outdoor kitchen

Since Gold Coast’s warmer climate allows us to spend more times outdoors it means we are entertaining family and friends in the outdooring living area. There are plenty of options for outdoor cabinetry, with beautiful stone or practical stainless steel. Not only will having the option of preparing AND cooking meals outdoors make you feel more together but it will make making it easier to bring food to your outdoor dining area, keeping smells outside, and saving money on restaurant meals as you will be more motivated to cook and eat at home.

Building a pergola and/or deck

Adding a timber deck or pergola can completely change the look and feel of your garden. Ensuring good shade is crucial during Gold Coast’s hot and sun-drenched summer. A shady cover provides a way for your family and pets be protected by the sun and rain whilst still enjoying the outdoors.  Remember that shade coverage can be attained by using fabric, plastic, timber or even plants such as crawlers or vines to create cover.

Another crucial aspect to consider when building a pergola or timber deck is choosing materials that are easy to clean and maintain. You want to enjoy the space, not to spend a lot of time cleaning it. Timber is a favourite, but you need to maintain well in order keep a great finish on it. Use natural oil that you can reapply every 12-18 months to make sure your deck or pergola lasts.

Herb garden for fresh produce

By creating a herb garden, you can have fresh mint on hand for summer mojitos or freshly grown basil for a great Italian dish. Think about how much sun or shade your garden gets when deciding on plants and also opt for local plants that are low-maintenance and thrive with little to no care. Also, make a distinction between annual and perennial herbs; the latter will spread and develop over time, so trim them carefully every once in a while.  

Add a water feature

If your outdoor space includes a large variety of plants, adding a water element blending into the foliage can be an excellent idea. You can opt for a pond, a fountain, or an artificial river – any of these can become a focal point of your outdoor space, while the pleasant sound of water will ensure complete relaxation for you and your family. Adding a water feature can seem complicated but a professional landscaper and plumber can easily add these features to your garden. There are multiple reasons why water sources are a good addition to your garden: they are easy to maintain, they look amazing, they can create a natural habitat for fish, they cool down your outdoor space, and they attract birds and other wildlife to your yard.

Fire pit

A fire pit is perfect for those cooler winter evenings and can become the centrepiece of your backyard. You can build your own fire pit from bricks, flagstones or metal drums, get some help from a Proper Jobs Gold Coast home renovations handyman or you can purchase a ready-made one from various local and overseas suppliers.

Outdoor shower

If you live on the Gold Coast you most likely have a pool or live near a beach. An outdoor shower is a fantastic feature to add to your outdoor living space. Aesthetically they can be creatively designed, adding a tropical feel.  They make it easier for you to clean off before venturing into the house, they are easier to clean then traditional showers and come in very handy when cleaning any muddy paws!

Outdoor movie spot

Due to current restrictions caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, there are many things we cannot enjoy as we did previously. A backyard cinema allows you to skip the queues and save on expensive cinema tickets and confectionary. Projectors are now super low cost and widely available, simply grab a sheet to create your screen and you’ve got an outdoor movie theatre!

An outdoor living area is a great addition to your home. This year we’ve spent a lot more time at home than we did in the previous years, it’s the perfect time to invest and improve. Home renovations Gold Coast services are on the rise as more and more people are looking to increase their property value and extend and improve, both indoors and out.

Starting to plan your outdoor living area? Contact a cabinet maker Gold Coast early in the planning process to ensure maximum efficiency and get some valuable and creative ideas from the professionals. Proper Job Maintenance and Renovations can help with a variety of home improvement and maintenance projects, including landscaping Gold Coast and home renovations Gold Coast. Contact us today for a wide range of services including repairs, renovations, electrical, plumbing and outdoor/landscaping works; no job is too small!

[dailyeconomicsnet]

AI technology driven e-commerce platforms – boon or bane for consumers?

AI Technology:

Remember a time when salespeople used to go door to door selling products? From then on, technology has grown leaps and bounds only to make buying products convenient, affordable, and cost-saving for consumers. No doubt, all 3 play a crucial role in making our busy lives more comfortable. While on the one hand, we should thank technology but on the other, are we aware of how this is impacting us? Are consumers exploiting the technology, or is technology influencing the consumers? Is AI technology – a boon or a bane? Read on to see if you can arrive at a decision.

In the first series of the article, we understood what AI technology is and saw a quick glimpse of how retailers leverage AI technology using consumer buying patterns. In this article, let us explore the consumer side of the story. How are the e-commerce platforms impacting consumers like you and me?

Research by the World Retail Congress organization (www.worldretailcongress.com) says 35% of google product searches by consumers turn into a transaction in 5 days. India is expected to see the highest online growth rate between 2018-22.  Out of the top five countries with the highest online shoppers, four are in Asia. The E-commerce industry is a hotbed for building wealth in the upcoming years.

Did our Jeff make fair use of it? What happened to his online store? Did Seema move to the online platform to buy milk? If you don’t follow anything I just said, read the first part of the series Artificial Intelligence powering the golden era for Retailers – Part – 1 real quick!

Trust me. You will enjoy this article much better!

For those who have read part 1 of AI technology, you would remember how Jeff leveraged the AI technology and built his pricing strategy. Let’s see what happened to Jeff, Seema, and Dinesh in 5 simple scenes like the first part!

Part 1 Conclusion: What happened Jeff after he launched his online store?

We ended part 1 with Jeff launching his promotion campaign for his new online store.

Seema grabbed the opportunity and took up a 1-year subscription. Within a month Jeff’s promotion went viral in the neighborhood. Although Jeff sold milk at a lesser price than the price, he sold at his store. His customer base grew to an average of 3,000 active subscriptions. At the end of the year, his sales shot through the roof, and he ended the year earning nearly five times more. At the same time, Dinesh, who was not inclined to move ahead with technology, lost his customer to Jeff, and his sales nosedived to the bottom.

Scene 1:  Sunday – Fast forward three years since Jeff opened his online store for selling milk

On a fine Sunday morning, Seema opened the newspaper while going through the technology news section. She was amazed to see “Amaze Online Platform” valued at 100 million dollars, and there it was Jeff in a crisp suit beaming with pride about his flourishing business. Seema took some time to come to terms with what she had just read. The person who sold milk in a small convenience store is now on a newspaper headline with the title “Upcoming Businessman.”

Seema had moved to a different city a year after Jeff opened his online store. After that, she had not followed Jeff’s story until she saw him on the newspaper cover. After reading the newspaper, she got very curious about how Jeff made this happen. She opened her laptop and searched for “Amaze Store Online.”  She discovered that the Amaze store now not only sells essential commodities, but the categories had expanded to electronics, apparel, daily household, and the list went on.

Scene 2:  Sunday- Seema curious to explore other categories to buy online

Seema remembered the convivence of buying milk online. She was eager to check out what “Amaze Online Store” had to offer now. She quickly browsed through some categories, and some dresses caught her attention. She was impressed with the collection and variety “Amaze Online Store” had. She promptly created her login through Facebook ID and added few to Wishlist, hoping to buy them.

After the initial excitement subsided, she pondered over the quality and fit of the dress. No matter how good they looked in the picture, she was not entirely confident about moving the dresses from Wishlist to the cart. She was tired fighting this thought, and finally, she decided to close the browser and get on with her day.

Scene 3: Monday – Introduction to Nudge theory and Seema typical working day

“A ‘nudge’ is a term used to describe any change in the environment which steers an individual’s behavior predictably while preserving their freedom of choice. It is not a push, nor a shove, but a gentle nudge.”

The following day Seema went back to her work. She had completely forgotten about the dress she wanted to buy.  She opened her g-mail to check her emails, and there she finds an email from the “Amaze Online Store,” asking if she would like to finish her shopping, and in bold, there was a callout saying a 15% discount on the first purchase. There was also an underlying message on her Wishlist products, “Selling Fast.”

Seema was “Nudged” twice if you noticed.

15% Discount to lure her back to the site

“Selling fast” message to create a sense of scarcity (Remember, we always value scarce things).

These nudges were enough for Seema to open the site again and move a product from “Wishlist” to the cart. Just when she was about to check out and pay for the dress, she was surprised to see additional add-on costs such as “shipping,” “tax”. These costs were equivalent to discounts provided. Seema was just not convinced about buying the dress. Despite an additional nudge of “10 People looking at the dress” flashing. Seema just abandoned the cart.

Scene 4: Tuesday – Seema can’t get the dress out of her head

As compared to the casual browsing on Sunday, Seema had invested a lot of time on Monday thinking she would buy the dress. Unable to completely let go of the thought, Seema opened Instagram casually and was scrolling through the updates. Just when she thought she had forgotten about dress; she sees an ad for the same three dresses with the message “flash sale” Buy 2 to get 30% off! This is a classic “Nudge” tactic to create a sense of “Limited Time Offer.”

Finally, 4th nudge did seem to work. Seema again launches the website to purchase the dresses and be done with it! But there was another message called out on the website shop for “Rs 4,999 and get an Rs 899” worth of dress free + avail free shipping!

Seema was now just Rs. 1,779 away from getting another Rs. 899 worth of free products. She had one more dress in her Wishlist that was “Rs. 1,800”. Precisely the difference amount she needed to get an additional Rs. 899 worth of products.

While Seema was processing all this information, there was “Nudge 6”, Amaze store now was showing all “Affordable Fashion Products from Celebrities” that were available to be shopped within Rs. 1,700/-.

Scene 5:  Wednesday – Seema choice validation by peers, influencers, and celebrities

Seema was still feeling overwhelmed by the information and promotion. She decided to put shopping off for a while as she had a birthday party to attend. To Seema’s surprise, her favorite dress that she was thinking of buying, one of the guests was wearing the same dress. She noticed that everyone in the room was talking about her.

The following day, she opens Instagram to see all the photos from the party uploaded to Instagram. Guess what, the girl wearing the dress Seema had liked, received the maximum likes. The comments section was overflowing with compliments.

Seema could not decide if the dress made the girl look beautiful or the complete set of accessories, matching shoes, make up that she was wearing! Social validation is also a kind of “Nudge”. Some other types of these “Nudges” are reviews by influencers, likes, and comments by friends, celebrity endorsements.

Today e-commerce platforms are paying tons of money to Celebrities, to people with the highest numbers of followers, influencers to flaunt their products, and repeatedly keep tagging the brand and posting images of the products on social media.

So, does Seema finally gives in and shops for the whole look, or does she wake up and realize before she spends more money than she has? If a brand or e-commerce platform can pay Rs. 2.18 crore for a single post. You can only imagine how many people on Instagram, seeing the post by celebrities, are ending up buying the product.

In Summary, the e-commerce industry is thoroughly using consumer behavior data coupled with AI technology to ensure every ad, every nudge message, every promotion on the site gets customers one step closer to sale. And it is working, the reason I say that is because today Amazon has valued 1 trillion dollars, Flipkart at 24 billion dollars, and Jio Retail at 55 billion dollars. The list can go on.

But what about us as consumers, is our earnings growing exponentially? Are we spending more than we are earning due to the e-commerce industry? Are we shopping more than we did a decade ago?  The answer to all and more in the final part of the series! Stay tuned to know how AI technology is driving your purchasing patterns.

References:

https://www.financialexpress.com/industry/technology/the-flipkart-story-a-timeline-of-funding-from-2007-to-2017/595740/#:~:text=2010%2D11%3A%20Flipkart%20raised%20%2420,company%20then%20was%20%241%20billion.

https://www.gqindia.com/get-smart/content/how-much-priyanka-chopra-jonas-makes-per-post-on-instagram#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20list%2C%20Priyanka,2.18%20crore%20approximately)%20per%20post

https://blog.edesk.com/resources/ecommerce-marketing/

https://www.convertize.com/how-nudging-boosts-sales/

https://www.worldretailcongress.com/__media/Global_ecommerce_Market_Ranking_2019_001.pdf

https://www.emarketer.com/content/global-ecommerce-2019

https://www.walkersands.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Walker-Sands_2018-Future-of-Retail-Report.pdf

https://www.merkleinc.com/thought-leadership/digital-marketing-report[2]

https://blog.edesk.com/resources/ecommerce-marketing/

https://www.convertize.com/how-nudging-boosts-sales/

https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2016/03/17/shopping-cart-abandonment