#with over three years of experience helping customers find the perfect open plots and homes. We offer

[bhanu8]

Hyderabad’s Best Real Estate Services by Excellence Properties"

[cixthotshit]

A Cup of Rose Americano

Pairing: Bae Jinyoung x Original Female Character|Reader

Genre: Smut, Fluff, Poor Girl/Rich Boy, Coffee Shop/Gangster AU (IDEK how I got here, just go with it)

Summary: There's more than meets the eye with every person, including Bae Jinyoung, the world's finest barista at Personal Barista Cafe

Word count: 4.7k

Rating/Warnings: Mature / Explicit Sexual Content: Porn With Some Plot, Kissing, Mirror Sex, Vaginal Fingering, Creampie

Author’s Note: I wanted to write a fluffy Coffee Shop AU but NGL something else has been preoccupying my mind and the world building to this fic kind of went off the rails and transformed into a completely different story. Enjoy this smut, readers! I really want to explore this world a lot more but IDK if I can commit to anything beyond this RN. So please, please enjoy this! Sorry in advance for mistakes! I don't always catch everything when I proofread.

I always appreciate some feedback on my writings!

"Really, it'll be a...new coffee experience," Hyeon assured Sandy. She handed Sandy a green card. It felt like an expensive platinum credit card, the card made of metal, feeling heavy and cold in her hand. "All you have to do is fill out a survey after you get your free coffee. Once you make it inside, hand the card over to your barista."

"Aren't you supposed to find actual volunteers?" Sandy asked, looking at the shiny card. The only thing on the card was the name of the new test cafe, PB Cafe.

“Trust me,” Hyeon said with a grin. “You’ve never had coffee like this. This is free, too. You’re going to say no to free coffee? And I swear, this is really me saying it, their coffee is really good.”

“Fine, thanks for the free coffee.”

“Enjoy!” Hyeon turned her back to Sandy, most likely scanning for potential test subjects for her new marketing event. Being her best friend, Sandy was always her first test subject. She didn’t know if Hyeon’s bosses approved of her taking advantage of all the free stuff she was receiving.

Sandy walked over to a shop that was setup at the southwest corner of a 3 story building. The walls were white and the windows were covered by white curtains. “PB Cafe” was written in black on the front door, though there were no door handles. Standing in front of the door, Sandy noticed a black square pad beside the right side of the door. She pressed the green card to the black pad and jumped slightly as the glass door slid open. A short piano tune played, sounding old but familiar, reminding her of old Hollywood movies from the mid-20th Century.

Tentatively, she stepped in. Walking past the white curtains, she found herself inside a small room. At the back end of the room was a small bar with one wooden chair in front of it. It only took her 4 steps to reach the chair, so she pulled it out and sat down. The wall behind the bar slid down to the floor and a broad shouldered man walked out from what looked like a bright white light before the wall slid back up behind him.

Too shocked to react, Sandy set the green card down onto the smooth marble countertop. Her eyes couldn’t leave the face of her barista. He was very handsome and his small grin softened his masculine exterior. Wordlessly, he took the green card and placed it in the front left pocket of his black apron.

“Welcome to Personal Barista Cafe,” he said in a soft, sultry voice. “My name is Bae Jinyoung, your Personal Barista today. How shall I address you?”

“Uh, just call me Sandy, I don’t like formalities much.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Sandy. If you don’t like formalities feel free to call me BaeJin or BaeBae.” She gave a soft chuckle and threw her hand over her mouth, feeling her cheeks warm up. Such a sultry man telling her to call him something as cute as BaeBae tickled her. “Is this your first drink with PB Cafe?”

“Yes,” she replied. “I don’t know anything about this cafe, except that you have good coffee.”

“A Personal Barista will make you a personalized drink,” he explained, pulling out a menu form. “Whatever you order, I will make it in front of you. If you want to know how I prepare your drink, please let me know and I will explain as I go. If you want small talk instead, I enjoy a small conversation as I prepare you a drink. If you want silence, for any reason, please don’t feel pressured to speak if you don’t want to.”

“Can I get an Americano?” she asked, after glancing at the long list of coffee drinks. The menu was simple and elegant, the writings were in cursive but the paper was black and the ink white. She liked the seemingly simple attention to detail. “How long have you been a barista, BaeJin?”

“Almost a year,” he replied. He poured fresh ground coffee into a metal contraption with a long neck. She pressed her lips together as her eyes were fixed on his skilled, large hands. He was using a device to compact the coffee grounds.

“Do you enjoy being a barista?”

“I do. It allows me to be creative. My regular job is stressful.”

He put the coffee grounds into the machine and pressed a few buttons. She watched him place a small white espresso mug under the spout of the machine. He grabbed a large white mug of coffee, and looked at her with a soft grin.

“This is your side hustle?” she asked. PB Cafe seemed like it paid well.

“Most people have more than one job these days,” he replied.

“That’s true,” she replied. “I have a day job and a night job.”

“What are your jobs?”

“I’m interning at a law firm, helping a paralegal out. I’m hoping to get my private investigator’s license soon.”

“You want to be a private investigator?” he asked.

“I want to be a lawyer,” she answered, “but having a private investigator’s license helps me pick up skills. Research is the true gift of being a good lawyer.”

“Research. You must be very smart and hard working.”

“You are sweet,” she said, resting an elbow onto the counter, leaning forward. “I wish my smarts and hard work were enough to give me success. I’m lacking in luck lately.” His eyes drifted away from the espresso machine and looked into her eyes. She felt her cheeks turn hot, realizing she had overshared. It’d been a sad thought, too. “I feel very lucky right now.”

“Sandy, I don’t mean to make assumptions about people but if I were to guess you are someone with expensive tastes,” he said. He pulled out two small brown glass bottles from a drawer. “But, you settle for less.”

“I..” she breathed out.

She should have been insulted, but her barista BaeJin was right. Sandy had always been envious of people who could afford designer things or had the means to go on extravagant vacations, but all of that had always been a dream. The closest she got was free shit from Hyeon. A drink from PB Cafe was likely three times that of a drink from Starbucks, and Sandy could only afford Starbucks for special occasions.

“Why are you saying this?”

“I want to make you a drink in which you will appreciate,” he replied, pulling out a single stemmed pink rose from under the counter, and handed it to her. She felt her cheeks flush with heat as she accepted it. “Refined, seemingly ostentatious, but simple and hopefully, delicious.”

He poured hot water from a glass kettle into the mug. She felt her cheeks turn hot again as he reached over and plucked a single petal from the rose she held. He tilted a single drop of liquid from one of the brown bottles onto the petal.

“Rose water,” he said to her as he locked eyes with her for a second. He placed the rose petal into the mug, letting it float in the hot water. He poured the espresso into the mug of water, and took a spoon to scoop out the wilted petal, tossing it away before handing the drink to her.

She gave it a sip, and shut her eyes, a smile on her lips. Using a flower as aromatic as a rose was difficult to pull off in cuisine. Oftentimes the rose aroma was too overpowering, reminding one’s nose of perfume instead of food. Baejin’s Rose Americano, though, was the perfect balance of a good cup of coffee elevated with some elegance, refined by the subtlest hint of a rose’s sweet scent. The warm breath she exhaled after a hot sip of Americano filled her senses with flowery comfort.

“This is the most...beautiful cup of coffee I’ve ever tasted,” she replied, setting the mug down when she was half finished. “It tastes...beautiful.”

He gave a small chuckle, his eyes crinkling as he smiled. She bit her bottom lip, trying not to smile any wider than she already was. He was incredibly cute, grinning in reaction to her compliment. How could a man exude the amount of sensuality like BaeJin yet be so cute that she wanted to squish him like a marshmallow?

“You like it?” he asked.

“I do,” she replied. “I didn’t know a cup of Americano could be improved. Thank you for this cup of coffee. You’re a gifted barista.”

“Thank you. I would love to make you another drink.”

“I’ll try to come back one day,” she said earnestly.

She sipped her drink and glanced at her phone. Thanking her talented, handsome (and cute) barista BaeJin one last time, Sandy finished her drink and sprinted out of the odd, surreal cafe. She had to get ready for work. Smelling the pink rose in her hand, Sandy smiled to herself. Who knew her barista would be the first man to give her a rose?

--

“Diamond! Malibu was accidentally double booked,” Danielle called out into the dressing room. “Can you give a lap dance in the Blue Champagne Room before going home?”

“Wait,” Sandy said, holding the gold hoop earring she’d just taken off her left earlobe, “I’m not going to chase Malibu for the flat fee. The last time I covered for her, not only did her John not tip me but I had to chase her for 4 days before she gave me the cash.”

“I have a hard time chasing her down, too,” Danielle said with a heavy sigh, handing her purple vape pen to Sandy to hold. She dug into her pink and purple Bedazzled fanny pack, and fished out a few bills. She handed a bag of clothing to Sandy. “Let me know if this John is handsy or out of line. He’s a new customer. You have five minutes, babe. Fix your makeup.”

Handing the vape pen back to her boss, Sandy put the cash into her purse before shutting and locking the drawer to her vanity. She put her earring back on and retouched her eye makeup and lipstick. Her locks of hair looked good as she combed her fingers through her hair, looking into the mirror before getting up to change.

Sandy hadn’t exactly planned on becoming a stripper, but during her freshman year in college, she took a class on feminist studies, specifically on sex work. What started out as a learning experience in respecting sex work, and educating herself on the legal struggles of sex workers’ rights, Sandy soon found herself stripping as a means of extra income. She herself was in need of money, and recognized her beauty was valued enough that she could make capital from it.

Having walked out on her dysfunctional family as soon as she turned 18, Sandy had been hustling on her own for years. She was still working towards a career in law, but in the meantime, she was balancing between her day job as an unpaid intern at a shitty law firm and her night job as a stripper at a club called Blue Paradise. Giving lap dances were only nice when she received good tips, but they didn’t happen often enough. All she wanted was a good tip.

Pulling out the outfit Danielle handed to her, she took off her clothes and put on her new outfit. She wore a neon pink G-string bikini bottom with her matching lace bra under a black pencil skirt and a white costume button up office dress shirt. She put on a loose blue tie around her neck, and put on a pair of thick black framed glasses, matching it with her black leather knee high boots. Apparently, this new customer had a librarian kink.

Walking down the hall, toward the other side of the back of the club, she entered the room with the blue door at the end of the hall. The Champagne Rooms, where customers received their private lap dances, were color coded. The Blue Room was where the clients with specific kinks went.

Opening the door, Sandy pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose, and looked up to see her John seated on the black couch. The dim lighting of the room cast a shadow over his body, making it hard for her to make out his face. She blinked, and closed her mouth, realizing that her customer was her barista from PB Cafe, BaeJin. It had been days since she had her cup of Rose Americano.

He was wearing a loosely worn grey sweater with black denim jeans. She didn’t think it was possible but he looked more handsome than she last remembered. Perhaps, with her body so close to his, knowing that he was there for devious reasons, her face flushed and her nipples hardened as heat rushed through her body from head to toe.

“BaeJin!” she said, forgetting her sexy librarian character.

“Don’t move,” he said, looking alarmed. She stood completely still, one hand on the door handle. “You’re a stripper, Sandy?”

“You...you remember me?” He nodded. “Stripping is helping me pay for my law degree.” She licked her lips and tilted her head, pushing her chest forward slightly. “I can give you what you want.”

“I can’t do this,” he replied, crossing his left leg over his right. His eyes left her, and diverted to the ground. Her ego was bruised. Not only did she need the money, but her vanity made her feel upset that he didn’t want a lap dance from her. “I should go.”

“I have to try to keep you here,” she said shyly, pressing her back against the door. “If I don’t, that means I’m not good at my job.”

“How long should we be in here for you to be considered good at your job?” he asked, his eyes returning to meet her gaze.

“You don’t want a lap dance? Am I not cute? My tits too small?”

He gave a chuckle, and looked away when his eyes moved to her chest as she talked.

“You’re very cute,” he replied, “but that’s the problem. As a barista, I don’t date customers. Since you didn’t actually pay for your drink, I thought it’d be OK to ask you out if I ever saw you again. But if I pay for this lap dance, I wouldn’t want to ask you out. It’s not fair for me to proposition you while you’re working.”

“You’ve been thinking hard about me?” Her cheeks felt hot and goosebumps formed on her arms. “Would you accept my invitation if I asked you out after this? I’m actually supposed to be off work by now, but this is my last job tonight. If I don’t give you a lap dance, we didn’t cross any lines, right?”

He nodded, and she gave a nervous chuckle.

“You said that being a barista was your side hustle,” she said, noticing the expensive watch and ring on his left hand. Sex workers had to know street codes to keep themselves safe, and watches and rings were how gang members communicated their loyalties and rankings. “What’s your main job? You said it’s stressful.”

His right hand wrapped around his platinum watch, the case of the watch encrusted with diamonds. The C9 Gang was a wealthy gang with origins in Tokyo, Japan, platinum was their calling card. BaeJin’s gold band emerald ring sat on his middle finger, indicating he was a made man of high rank. Sandy was impressed; BaeJin had acclimated to a high status in a gang at a young age.

“How long have you been working here, Sandy?” he asked in response.

“Diamond,” she answered, her grip remaining firm on the door. “My stage name is Diamond.”

“Sandy...Diamond,” he said with a grin. He stood, and she took a deep inhale of breath as he took a step forward and pressed his body against hers, his left arm wrapping around her waist as his hand gripped onto her wrist. Her hold on the door handle loosened. “You are the diamond in the rough in Blue Paradise. You still want to invite me out on a date?”

She took a gulp of breath, staring deeply into his dark brown eyes. He licked his lips and her eyes drifted to his mouth. Giving the most gentle nod of her head, she said, “Yes.”

“I drive a blue Ferrari F60 America,” he said as the tip of his nose touched hers.

“I don’t know anything about cars,” she replied, shutting her eyes. His breath was warm, making it hard for her to breathe. He chuckled and she felt his head rest onto her shoulder.

She opened her eyes when she felt a hand touch her chin.

“I drive a blue car,” he said, his eyes drifting down her face to her lips. His thumb ran across her bottom lip gently, sending heat deep into her groin. Her stomach ached at the touch. “It’ll be the most expensive looking car you’ll see when you walk outside.” He looked directly into her eyes again. “I’m a dangerous man, Sandy...Diamond. I have to ask you one more time, do you want to keep talking to me?”

She chewed on the inside of her left cheek nervously, and furrowed her eyebrows. Given how close she was to getting the paid job as a paralegal at Johnston’s &Partners, Sandy was one step closer to her dreams of becoming a lawyer. Would it be ethical to date a gangster?

“Will you take me home or will we be going to your place?” she answered. Life was too short not to take risks.

--

Upon his request, she left work wearing her costume. BaeJin’s description of having the most expensive looking car was accurate. The navy blue car shone brighter than any other car, and the curves of the body created an elegant design to the car. He’d opened the passenger door for her. She realized her skirt barely covered her ass as the cold leather from the seat hit the back of her thighs.

He drove them up a curvy hill to get to his expensive mansion, placed behind a small forest. It sat atop of a mountainous hill, overlooking the bright lights of the city far below. BaeJin was a man of very high rank by the looks of his home. It was large and designed with multiple floor to ceiling windows. Sandy took a soft gulp of air as her mouth felt dry.

“Your home is beautiful,” she said when he led her into his home, the hallway lined with expensively framed paintings. The jade vase that held 3 white lilies beside the coat hanger looked like it was worth more than everything she owned, including the small amount of cash she had in her bank account.

BaeJin’s home aesthetic was minimalist, though each room had a piece of furniture that popped out, like the jade vase in the front entrance. In his bedroom, he had a rose gold encrusted full length mirror sitting at the foot of his bed. It was shameless, but did not surprise her. Their eyes locked as BaeJin sat down at the foot of the bed. Their fingers intertwined when she reached her left hand out to his outstretched right hand.

“I spent a week trying not to think about you,” he said, pulling her easily onto his lap. His free hand wrapped around her waist. “The closest thing to you was trying to get a stripper to dress up like a sexy librarian.”

“Aren’t you lucky?” she said, squeezing his hand. “You went to Blue Paradise wanting a fantasy. Instead, you left with your fantasy.”

His hand released hers and she felt his hand between her legs, sliding up against her slit. Shutting her eyes she gave a soft moan, surprised at his swift movement.

“You deserve the best in life,” he said into her ear before grazing his teeth gently against her neck. “Don’t ever settle for less.”

He kissed her, his lips warm and firm. His tongue parted her lips and she gave a soft hum. She pushed his tongue out of her mouth, appreciating the taste of floral green tea from him. Her fingers tangled into his hair, pulling him closer to her. He tasted better than the beautiful cup of Rose Americano.

With a clouded head, she helped him pull his sweater off as he aggressively pulled her top off of her, the cheap buttons popping loudly as they flew into the air. Her skirt failed to exist when he ripped the zipper and tore the fabric apart with his bare hands.

“Are you going to rip me apart?” she asked breathlessly when his fingers found their way under her bra, fondling her erect nipple. She gave a soft moan and he grinned as he pinched her sensitive bud.

“I’ll be as hard or soft as you want,” he assured her. The pad of his thumb grazed against her nipple. Her back shivered as a sharp heat rode up her back.

“I like a bit of both,” she said, her cheeks hot. It felt like a dream to have BaeJin telling her he would do as she wanted. “You ruined my skirt.”

“The cheap costume skirt?” he asked, his hand returning to rubbing her slit. “You don’t have to settle, remember?” She shut her eyes, her hand grabbing his arm as two of his fingers pressed against her clit. “I like you best without clothes anyway.” The heat intensified as his fingers moved down lower, moistening her panties with the slick heat coming out of her pussy. Her back shook again as his fingers moved up against her slit, and then back down. “Your voice is lovely.”

She moaned as she rested her head against his chest, his fingers continually creating more heat between her legs. One finger slipped under her panties, pulling the fabric away from her wet cunt. The back of his knuckle pressed against the engorged bud of her clit, and she mewled as he rubbed up and down against her.

“BaeBae,” she could only speak with a shaky breath, “BaeBae, I’m going to come.”

Her hips thrust haphazardly against his knuckle as a small flash of heat washed over her, goosebumps forming up the back of her neck. Her orgasm disappeared as soon as it came and she breathed through her mouth. Her pussy felt wet as her slick heat dripped out of her.

“I was just playing with you,” he said with an amused smile, his eyes locked onto the mess between her legs, including his wet fingers. He spread her juices onto her folds, and moved the pads of his index and middle fingers to draw small circles onto her clit. She mewled, shutting her eyes, as her hips rutted against the motions of his fingers. “But with you this wet, I can fuck you right now.”

“BaeBae,” she breathed out, opening her eyes.

Her eyebrows were furrowed as she looked at him. Wordlessly, she stood as their hands began removing each other’s clothes off. His expensive jewelry remained on as he pulled her back to his front, making her stand between his legs. His hand went between her legs and he massaged the inside of her thigh. She hummed a soft moan, enjoying the way his hand relaxed her muscles.

Both of his hands wrapped around her waist, and his lips kissed her neck. He requested she trust him, and one hand reached down to her right knee and had her stretch her leg out to rest over his. As his other hand went to her left knee, she understood what he was doing. He wanted a full view of her pussy so she sat on his lap with her legs hooked over his.

“Ready to put this to use?” he asked, his hands kneading her hips. His reflection from the mirror was staring at her. She saw the cheeks of her flushed face turn a bright red, and she tilted her head down to look away from the mirror. The blood coursing through her chest up to her head clouded her vision. “Look at us.”

His right hand cupped her face, and she felt his wrist press up against the front of her neck. The pulse from his wrist beat rapidly against the pulse on her neck, and she struggled to breathe as her eyes locked onto his from the reflection in the mirror. Hot blood rushed to her groin and her hips jerked forward, out of her control. His left arm wrapped around her waist had her firmly in his hold, so all she could do was wiggle in his lap. Feeling the muscles of his thighs flex under her made her buttocks tighten, her body anticipating his cock.

“If you let me take you raw,” he said softly against her ear, his eyes locked with hers through the reflection of the mirror, “that’ll make you mine.”

His hold on her face was gone as his hand grabbed his cock. He rubbed his hard cock against her slit. She bit her bottom lip as his heat caused more juices to pool out of her cunt. It made her nerves shake, itching her skin in unbearable heat. He blinked, and his eyebrows furrowed as she opened her mouth to breathe loudly.

“I’m yours,” she said clearly. He groaned as he pushed the tip of his cock into her entrance. “Give me everything, BaeJin.” Pleasure blinded her vision as she saw nothing but white and gold flecks of stars. She gave a loud gulp when she felt his hand grip onto her chin again, his wrist pressing against her throat. Her grip on his arms tightened as she held onto him for leverage. His cock pushed in deeper, and the walls of her pussy trembled as heat filled her body in overwhelming waves. “I’m yours.”

His lips were on her neck and when her vision cleared all her eyes could focus was on the way his cock was fucking her pussy. He started with shallow pushes, the rhythm steady as she bounced on his lap. She came and she gave a gentle mewl, blurting out his name as her walls squeezed his cock. A gentle chuckle escaped her lips as she saw him shut his eyes tight.

“You’re so easy to please,” he said as he pushed in deep. She gave a loud groan as he pulled out roughly before pushing in fast, going in balls deep. He started a steady, deep rhythm and she cried as she was filled with undiluted pleasure.

“You fuck so good,” she moaned, her hand reaching back to grab his hair. He sucked on her neck, leaving a red mark before he kissed her shoulder. “BaeJin, fuck me. I’m gonna - I’m - I’m gonna come.”

His grip around her waist tightened as he pushed faster into her, and they bent forward together as he came into her in deep pushes. Her fingers dug into his skin as she shut her eyes, taking in the sensation of his hot seed filling up her insides.

“Come,” he panted out heavily as she felt him withdraw from her. She whimpered as she felt his middle finger push into her come-filled cunt. His thumb rubbed up against her clit, making her nerves dance in hot waves. She cried out a soft orgasm as she came again. She breathed heavily as she rested against his body.

“We barely know each other,” she said after a while. She didn’t know how long they sat together, staring at their reflection before she finally spoke.

“We have the rest of our lives to get to know each other,” he said, running a hand up and down her thigh, sending heat up and down her back. “You are mine now.”

He pulled her off his lap, and they laid in bed together. A shiver went down her back as he kissed her shoulder. They were facing each other, her left leg locked between his muscular thighs.

Giving a laugh, she watched him grab her wrist. He kissed the inside of her wrist before kissing the inside of her elbow. She shut her eyes as she felt his lips on her shoulder. Every kiss sent a vibrating heat under her skin. His mouth sucked on her neck and she grabbed onto the back of his hair as his teeth grazed against her skin. The muscles in her stomach tightened. The world ceased to exist as BaeJin’s embrace consumed her.

[hyperfixateandchill]

aaand because I can’t stop thinking about it i’ve written down my ranking of post-finale deancas scenarios including a non-exhaustive list of pros and cons for each. read on at your own discretion.

1st place: Deancas open up the new Roadhouse. My personal favorite because, again, Dean’s canon dream. I think Dean would LOVE running his own bar and playing host and serving people food and drinks is basically his love language. Cas isn’t as into the bar vibe specifically but he enjoys seeing people come and go and getting to know the locals who come by and just being with Dean. They get to stay connected to the hunting world without being actual hunters which is probably the perfect win win situation for them.

Other Pros of the Bar scenario (i’ve thought about this a lot): Claire and Kaia come by increasingly often to visit until eventually Claire basically works part-time at the Roadhouse when she’s not off hunting and Dean starts only semi-ironically calling it the “family business.” Claire puts up pride flag stickers on the front door and Dean makes a thing of it at first but then warms up to the idea. People start catching on and now local queer people will come from several towns over to visit the bar because there aren’t exactly that many queer friendly spaces in their corner of Kansas. Then it’s pride month and Claire and Kaia secretly update the bar’s online info to explicitly draw in queer customers and on the evening of the nearest pride march the bar is PACKED with all the local gays and Cas has the pop music blaring and he will NOT let Dean change it but it’s ok because Dean’s made friends with a drag queen who’s a professional comedian and now they’re comparing calendars to see when she might be able to come do a set at the Roadhouse and basically their bar is now a gay bar. “LGBT friendly”, Dean insists, because 1. he’s not gay and 2. he still caters to the local straights and the hunters. but now hunters come in and end up sitting 2 stools away from a flamboyant!gay and some are slightly weirded out but most don’t care at all and all of them end up making some kind of comment about how they’d heard about Dean Winchester and his angel... guess it’s true huh? And Dean shoots them a cocky grin and says ‘yep’ but he still holds to the rule that pop music is only allowed on tuesdays and thursdays and maybe very late at night on the weekends when everybody’s drunk and dancing. The Roadhouse is a second home to Dean and it’s the perfect mix of middle american dive, hunter’s hangout and lgbt space, and that’s literally DEAN so it’s perfect and he gets to work with his family by his side and be a part of a community (or several) and he feels useful and happy.

Cons of the Bar scenario: Doesn’t work great with having a small child or hobbies. very long hours and unusual work schedule. would encourage Dean’s drinking habit. I.e. it might be more intense than some alternatives (unless the bar is more cafe/diner during the day and Claire/Kaia/whatever other youngins can mind the place on their own if deancas aren’t in and the bar is located quite close to their house to they can come and go).

Overall works pretty well for a more active/energetic take on deancas’s lives post-finale. 8/10

2nd place: Mix of mechanic!Dean and retired!deancas. Dean’s never had a proper job before or much of a social circle who aren’t hunters, so I find it hard to imagine Dean working at an autoshop and playing mr. normie with his coworkers. Same with Cas and a regular job.

What I can imagine, however, is Dean having his own small business where he fixes up old cars (for like, vintage car enthusiasts). It starts as a hobby but then he realizes people would pay him to do it so now it’s a business. Deancas obviously have a a house on a big plot of land near the woods and a lakeside, so there’s plenty of outdoor space for him to set up a small shop and most of his customers call ahead so he doesn’t have people just coming in anyway. The work is not quite enough to pay all the bills but again, Charlie’s magic credit card, so who cares. Cas gardens and beekeeps and occasionally sells the extras at the local farmer’s market. Dean cooks and fishes and uses Cas’s ingredients whenever possible. They spend their days on their own property, doing their hobbies on their own time and making enough money from them that they don’t feel useless and still have plenty of time left to get over-involved in Jack’s pta. It’s a very calm, contented life. the millennial hipster dream, fulfilled by two 40-some year old dads.

Pros: deancas getting to spend their days doing what they love, being ridiculously domestic and married (even if they’re not officially married), both being absolute malewives in their own ways and it’s disgustingly sweet.

Cons: this scenario doesn’t have quite as much excitement and opportunity for shenanigans as the bar scenario. Less connection to a community, more living like hermits. Dean might appreciate the more social atmosphere of a bar. Cas might be equally happy either way, but he’d probably like having Claire help them out at the bar so that’s a plus for him.

Overall a good scenario for a more placid semi-retired life. 7/10

3rd place: a bait and switch. Cas is the one who ends up still having something you could call a ‘job’, Dean is the househusband. It starts with deancas still helping saileen with HOL (hunters of letters) stuff but eventually Dean is very decided that he wants out now that things are in good hands. Cas agrees with him but still consults with the hol network since he’s got all that lore knowledge. Dean very occasionally helps with research/strategy for a hunt but that’s IT no more hunting for him, and so it ends up that Cas still comes by the bunker fairly often and works from home the rest of the time on research and translations etc and Dean’s 100% amateur chef-in-training and papa bear because now nobody can look down on him for being a housewife (or nobody he gives a shit about anyway) so he’s gone all in. and whenever he comes by the bunker these days is after he’s picked up Jack from school and he comes to join their family to cook them all dinner while they finish up the work.

Pros: love me a Dean who’s gotten over his hypermasculinity and is now comfortable with doing whatever he likes even if (sometimes specially if) that thing is considered stereotypically feminine. It’s his big fuck you to his dad and it’s the life mary had wanted when she was young and dean is mary and therefore he’s honoring her memory when he spends his days on a bright airy kitchen making lunch for his 4 year old and waiting for his ex-soldier husband he adores to come home and doing not one bit of hunting. except dean never had to lie about his past and cut ties with his hunter family to get this. which is why this time for him it works, when it didn’t for mary or sam. love that energy.

Cons: Dean is not in fact just a malewife and would probably still want some more action in his life. might feel kinda useless with Cas having a ‘thing’ to do when he doesn’t. Cas would be perfectly happy regardless though.

Overall heartwarming and sweet but not as realistic: 6/10

4th: Disheveled-magic-shop-owner!Cas (+ Sam and Dean). Just thought of this. Cas knows his shit about spell ingredients and magical objects and supernatural weapons, probably more than even Sam. And Cas gardens. And Cas most likely enjoys pinterest and mom blogs and finds out about etsy... So Cas may or may not start growing/hoarding specific goods he knows are useful in the hunting world. at first it’s just to help HOL out but eventually Dean realizes like... we could profit off of this? And Cas eye-rolls because he doesn’t care but then again he knows his shit so he sets up a poorly-designed website to sell hunting stuff. and maybe Sam goes in on it with him because Sam also knows his shit and it’s kind of cute because they work together and Dean probably does the mechanic/barkeep/househusband thing though he does help with making the special bullets and dropping off parcels at the post office and so on. And maybe eventually they open up a small magic shop where they sell their shit. And maybe the shop is next door to the Roadhouse and it’s all become ‘your one-stop shop for everything a hunter might need’ (and you know the gays like their new age shit too so it all works), and the bunker isn’t even far away either and all three business are interconnected, the ‘family business’ that AU John Winchester of Hunter Corp wished he’d created.

Pros: Cas gets to do a thing he’s knowledgeable and passionate about and Deancas get to leave hunting while staying adjacent to the community. Cas as a disheveled shopkeep who’s not particularly nice to customers but who provides them with insights and mysterious comments that make people certain he must be legit.

Cons: Cas using his knowledge of the supernatural to profit off of hunters sounds too capitalist and not very Cas-like. He would be the type to gladly give people stuff for free and methinks that Dean and Sam would feel that way too. Cas helping with HOL stuff is basically established in options 1-3 already and so is him gardening for potentially useful ingredients. He doesn’t need to sell this stuff in a shop.

Overall makes sense theoretically but doesn’t vibe well for me. 5/10

5th: full on retirees, doing basically the same things as no 2 except with maybe some more travelling and less caring about making money from any of it.

Pros: the “and they lived happily ever after” they deserve after all the shit they’ve been through.

Cons: boring. uneventful. Dean and Cas are still quite young and neither’s had a chance at something even resembling a normal life for more than a couple of months at a time. They should get more of a middle aged married life experience before moving on to full retirement.

Overall valid but less interesting: 4/10

6th: Cas gets a job at a local library or shop, Dean is either a mechanic or a househusband. To preface, if Cas were to get a job out there in the world, my favorite would be like a magic shop or a bookshop with *unique* books. But I find that unlikely unless Cas is running his own shop (see 4th place for that). So here we’re talking about a regular normie shop.

Pros: Cas has a job he likes and feels useful in? And he’s not completely tied down to Dean all the time (though not sure that counts as a pro). More of the ‘normal life’ vibes.

Cons: Cas working at a random bookstore or library or shop or whatever would be passably interesting but not as fulfilling or useful or fun as any of the other options.

Overall valid but not interesting or all that heartwarming. 2/10

6th: deancas don’t know any life outside of hunting so they keep on doing it, except now with lower stakes than before and they go on less actual hunts.

pros: umm... consistency? they keep working closely with saileen and the new hunters who start coming by/moving into the bunker.

cons: everything. Dean’s wanted out and he should get it. Cas literally died several times over and he should get to experience a human life with the man he loves and not just do more dangerous shit.

Overall a terrible idea. 1/10 (because 0/10 would be the Cas never comes back and Dean dies and goes to heaven scenario)

[ohcoolnice]

Late

It’s a full story, I swear it’s just...I can’t figure out a title so we’re gonna just title each chapter. Also, each chapter’s title may seem like it connects to an insignificant detail, but it has deeper meaning. I’m known for my especially angsty works. MWAHAHAHAHA. 

SUMMARY: 

Marinette seriously just cannot afford mistakes, so, naturally, there are so, so, so many. First, four of their models call in sick, thanks to the lovely flu going around, meaning they don’t have anyone to model for most of their women’s pieces. Then, Adrien’s bright idea to have Marinette model her own pieces gets approved by Gabriel, and, obviously, it all backfires spectacularly-on him.***This is set in the future, The character’s are 19 and 20-ish. it’s all messed up tho bc i can’t figure out timelines so whatever. 

(THIS  CHAPTER IS A BIT BAcKSTORY, But also plot yay :) 

-----

Marinette could not afford to have anything go wrong today.

The new Gabriel HERO™ Collection was going to launch in two days, and with the delay she’d experienced last week with the fit models, she’d only gotten Gabriel’s approval on the final designs three days ago, stayed up all night to do the flats and came in the next day, sleep deprived and sure she’d have a heart attack with the amount of caffeine she’d consumed.

The department had been a great help. Ellie had agreed to touch up some small errors Marinette had made will working on the flats at four in the morning, enlisting Jonah, who was a wizard with Illustrator, to help her.

Samantha was great with construction, she knew every single stitch, and Marinette was sure she’d invented at least twenty of her own. She could work fast without making any errors, all the while making the rounds and helping anyone and everyone.

Marinette oversaw everything. Technically, on paper, she was an Intern. But she had been working with Gabriel for three years now, and not even out of Fashion School yet. At seventeen she’d begun interning, still surprised she’d got it, though she suspected guiltily that Adrien Agreste may have had some influence over the matter once he’d congratulated her when she’d never told him in the first place. They barely even spoke. Every so often she had nights where she felt so bad, maybe taking some other more talented girl’s spot only because she had gone to school with the designer’s son, that she would cry and sob until she passed out from exhaustion. It didn’t help she heard it often.

She learned to ignore comments and overtime the public perception of her grew more positive as people began to see her designs once Gabriel became her Mentor and put her in charge of design for several collections. She knew people knew her name as she often accompanied Gabriel to shows, taking notes on the pieces but also making notes on every work that came from Gabriel’s mouth, but she didn’t want to be too known. Even in fashion school, most of her classmates, obsessed with knowing everything about the fashion world, didn’t know who she was, just that she interned with Gabriel, perhaps. Marinette liked it that way. She wasn’t a big fan of too much attention. She preferred if she could wait until she graduated to make a name for herself.

Gabriel had admitted, in an awkward moment once two years ago, that he wasn’t overly sure as to why he decided to become a mentor to the baker’s daughter, but he remarked on the similarities he saw in his younger self and her.

She didn’t really believe him. She wasn’t sure she’d ever seen him smile, not once, even when she knew he was kind of proud of the work she was doing. Over the years she’d come to notice it wasn’t hard to read his expressions- okay, it was hard, just not impossible- once you’d spent enough time studying him. And Marinette took note of everything he did. Alya often wondered aloud how the designer wasn’t creeped out by her.

Marinette didn’t know how she could possibly be like Gabriel. He showed no emotion on most occasion, but she was the complete opposite. Another reason why the media often wondered what it was he saw in a seventeen-year-old intern. He knew her designing and construction skills from the competition she’d won three years prior, but that was really all he’d seen up until her portfolio, which she’d snuck onto one night before the leaving on what was supposed to be the last day of her internship. The eight days after that where she’d heard nothing had been the most depressing days of her life. Then she’d gotten a call from Nathalie, Gabriel’s assistant, asking her to come in, and she almost passed out. She’d cried so hard after that Alya had thought Marinette’s parents had died. Sometimes she wondered how Alya came up with the conclusions she did.

Everything afterwards hadn’t been smooth sailing, but it was all incredible. Every stressful task was worth it. She was being paid as an intern, since there weren’t technically any positions available at the time. There since had been some, but she didn’t dare ask for a raise. She liked being able to do everything without being confined to the title of “designer” or “dressmaker” or whatnot. She liked doing all of it. The customer service, the finances in accounting (she was terrible at it, but overly grateful), and obviously out of everything, the hands-on fashion was her favorite, but she was getting to experience working in every single aspect of one of the most successful Fashion Companies in the entire world, under the tutelage of Gabriel Agreste himself. She really didn’t think she deserved to be that lucky.

Of course, there were times where she’d broken down at two in the morning, struggling to finish an assignment while balancing school as well. Gabriel had the sort of connections where she was able to miss classes and take them at home thanks to a recording of the class, and while she utilized it, she didn’t really prefer it. She liked being in the class and learning hands on, in an environment electrified by the excitement of young adults itching to get out there and create art. She also knew she did tend to do the work for Gabriel before her studies, and it often resulted in stress and a rush the complete assignments and projects.

If she’d ever felt stress before, it was nothing in relation to the stress of the last two years. And even that was nothing in comparison to the stress of being late to a photo shoot that needed to be perfect because the entire goddamn collection would be public in two days and if she wasn’t ready, no amount of fondness Gabriel had come to feel for the girl would be able to save her job. This was a HUGE deal.

Her car pulled into her spot and she grabbed her things and breakfast for the crew. Next to her, Alya, who had taken the day off to help her best friend, took the trays and boxes from her hand and pushed her towards the entrance. “You’re already late girl, get out of here!”

“Thank you, thank you, thank you.” She pressed her hands together, blessing her friend for being so helpful, before rushing inside, hands full with the last pieces she’d finished last night before, thankfully, getting a good night’s sleep. She was glad the people from Vogue wouldn’t have to see her when she looked as if she’d been attacked by a bear and hit by a train. She didn’t want to wear makeup and risk the chance of feeling anything uncomfortable enough to distract her from her work.

She struggled with the door, grateful when she saw a glimpse of Adrien walking past inside from behind the garment bags covering her view. She knocked on the glass and the door opened a few seconds later.

“Thank ymph.” Her voice muffled behind the garment bags were met with a chuckle from Adrien as she felt the weight in her arms lessen a bit.

“Let me help you, Marinette, you look like you’ve got your hands full.” She gave him a blank look.

“That wasn’t even good. I don’t even know if that can be counted as a pun.” They were almost at the dressing station now, people rushed about, voices mixing as people rushed to prepare the stations and models. Chloe Bourgeois was the only superhero who had shared her identity, so, unfortunately, she would be modeling for the Queen Bee themed women’s pieces. Thankfully that was not until later.

“It can so be counted as a pun. But I’ll spare you because you’re so busy today. I’ll just have to write down my puns and attack you with them later.” She laughed softly, shaking her head as she gently let the bags rest on a table, hanging them up one by one as she took them out of the bags. Adrien’s eyes widened. “Oh wow. These are incredible Marinette. This is- wow.” He looked at her, his eyes sparking with…admiration? She wasn’t sure, but either way she didn’t understand his reaction. She was proud of her work, yes, but she hadn’t expected Adrien of all people to be so impressed by them.

“Thank you.” She replied, ducking her head to hide her blush. No, she had work to do. Focus, Marinette.

“So y-” She shushed him, placing a finger to his lips as he widened his eyes, face warming as he stared, cross-eyed at the finger on his lips.

“Nope, no talking. Let’s go, Hair and Makeup Chat Noir.” His face paled and he stammered and she raised a brow. “Adrien! Your father wants you as Chat Noir, so please don’t make me tell him you can’t do it and we have to find someone else because we really don’t have the time and I really don’t want to have that conversation with him.” He seemed to relax ever so slightly, the color returning to his face. Odd.

“Yeah, sorry, sure. I’ll go be Pat- I mean Chat!” He huffed in frustration and dragged a hand over his face tiredly, emerging with a weak smile that, despite getting over her crush ages ago, still sent her stomach into a frenzy. She pushed down the feeling and giggled. “Sorry, I’m tired.”

“We all are don’t worry. You’re just lucky it doesn’t show because this only can be done today. Now go before I kill you because I am very busy.” She scolded him and pushed him off as he tried to speak, hitting him with the papers in her hand. He laughed and stumbled out, turning to watch her walk back to her station, lost in her work, with a smile on his face.

As he turned to make his way to Hair and Makeup, he narrowly dogged Alya and she ran her way to Marinette, calling, “Hey, Blondie!” as she ran past.

“Who am I to you, Rapunzel?” He called back, eyes following her and landing back on Marinette, smiling with relief as her best friend arrived with food for the crew and Marinette’s purse. 

She’d really seemed to come into her own skin these last few years. For at least three years it was so hard for them to hang out. She was so awkward and stumbled over her words around him. Slowly it began to change and improve, and he found himself spending more time with her and his own mood began to improve as he did. He’d spent lots of time with her before, wearing the mask. He would steal her food and they would talk, laugh, play video games, board games. He loved watching her design and sketch. It was peaceful for him, hanging out with her as Chat Noir. It never was as Adrien. It bore down on him, kept him awake at night, not that he realized that until things changed, and he found himself able to hang out with her both in and out of costume. He realized how awful it was when he wasn’t sure if Marinette hated him or not. She was so different with him in his different personalities that he’d worried about it constantly, without even knowing it. It was all so confusing.

Looking at Marinette now, he felt a smile tug at his lips and a flutter in his heart.

She really was special. He couldn’t ask for a better friend.

[ciathyzareposts]

Betrayal at Krondor

During the 1960s and 1970s, a new type of game began to appear in increasing numbers on American tabletops: the experiential game. These differed from the purely abstract board and card games of yore in that they purported to simulate a virtual world of sorts which lived behind their surface systems. The paradigm shift this entailed was such that for many players these games ceased to be games at all in the zero-sum sense. When a group came together to play Squad Leader or Dungeons & Dragons, there hung over the plebeian kitchen or basement in which they played a shared vision of the beaches of Normandy or the dungeons of Greyhawk. The games became vehicles for exploring the vagaries of history or the limits of the imagination — vehicles, in other words, for living out shared stories.

In retrospect, it was perhaps inevitable that some of the stories generated in this way would make their way out of the gaming sessions which had spawned them and find a home in more traditional, linear forms of media. And, indeed, just such things were happening by the 1980s, as the first novels born from games arrived.

Needless to say, basing your book on a game you’ve played isn’t much of a path to literary respectability. But for a certain kind of plot-focused genre novel — the kind focusing strictly on what people do rather than why they do it — prototyping the whole thing as a game makes a degree of sense. It can keep you honest by forcing your story to conform to a simulated reality that transcends the mere expediency of what might be cool and exciting to write into the next scene. By pushing against authorial fiat and the deus ex machina, it can give the whole work an internal coherency — an honesty, one might even say — that’s too often missing from novels of this stripe.

The most widely publicized early example of the phenomenon was undoubtedly the one which involved a humble insurance salesman named Tom Clancy, who came out of nowhere with a techno-thriller novel called The Hunt for Red October in 1984. The perfect book for a time of resurgent patriotism and military pride in the United States, it found a fan in no less elevated a personage than President Ronald Reagan, who declared it “my kind of yarn.” As the book topped the bestseller charts and the press rushed to draft their human-interest stories on the man who had written it, they learned that Clancy had gamed out its entire scenario, involving a rogue Soviet submarine captain who wishes to defect along with his vessel to the United States, with a friend of his named Larry Bond, using Harpoon, a tabletop wargame of modern naval combat designed by the latter. Clancy’s follow-up novel, a story of open warfare between East and West called Red Storm Rising, was a product of the same gestation process. To the literary establishment, it all seemed extremely strange and vaguely unsettling; to many a wargamer, it seemed perfectly natural.

Another line of ludic adaptations from the same period didn’t attract as much attention from the New York Times Book Review, much less the president, but nevertheless became almost as successful on its own terms. In 1983, TSR, the publisher of Dungeons & Dragons, decided to make a new series of adventure modules for the game, each of which would feature a different kind of dragon — because, as some of their customers were writing in their letters, the existing Dungeons & Dragons modules “had plenty of dungeons, but not many dragons.” The marketing exercise soon grew into Dragonlance, an elaborately plotted Tolkienesque epic set in a brand new fantasy world — one which, yes, featured plenty of dragons. TSR asked employees Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman to write a trilogy of novels based on the fourteen Dragonlance adventure modules and source books they planned to publish. Thus Dragons of Autumn Twilight, the first volume of The Dragonlance Chronicles, was published in the same year as The Hunt for Red October. It promptly became a nerdy sensation, the biggest fantasy novel of the year, spawning a whole new business for TSR as a publisher of paperback novels. In time, said novels would become as big a part of their business as the games whose names the books bore on their spines.

A third, only slightly less heralded example of the games-into-books trend actually predates the two I’ve just mentioned by a couple of years. In the last 1970s, a group of students at the University of California San Diego took up the recently published Dungeons & Dragons. Growing dissatisfied with TSR’s rules, they scrapped them one by one, replacing them with their own home-grown versions. Meanwhile they evolved a world in which to play called Midkemia, complete with its own detailed history, bestiary, sociology, and geography. Forming a little company of their own, as so many Dungeons & Dragons fanatics were doing at the time, they published some of their innovations to modest sales.

Raymond E. Feist

But one of their number named Raymond E. Feist had bigger ambitions. He wrote a novel based on some of the group’s exploits in Midkemia. Calling it simply Magician, he got it published through Doubleday in 1982 as the first volume of The Riftwar Saga. It sold very well, and he’s been writing Midkemia novels ever since.

Unlike the later cases of Tom Clancy and Dragonlance, Magician wasn’t widely publicized or advertised as being the product of a game. It was seen instead as merely the latest entry in an exploding branch of genre fiction: lengthy high-fantasy series inspired by J.R.R. Tolkien, often to the point of one-to-one correspondences between characters and plot events, but written in a manner more immediately accessible to the average Middle American reader, with more action, more narrative thrust, less elevated diction, and markedly less digressive songs and poetry. Dragonlance, of course, is an example of the same breed.

I must admit that I’ve personally read only the first book of Feist’s series, and not even to completion at that. This sort of derivative high fantasy doesn’t do much for me as a rule, so I’m not the best person to judge Feist’s output under any circumstances. Anything positive I do say about it runs the risk of damning with faint praise.

To wit: my wife and I used the book as our light bedtime reading, and we made it about two-thirds of the way through before terminal ennui set in and we decided we’d had enough. If that seems like less than a ringing endorsement, know that it’s farther than I generally get with most fantasy novels, including ones with considerably more literary credibility. I thus feel comfortable in saying that at least the early Raymond E. Feist novels are well-crafted examples of their breed, if you happen to like that sort of thing. (I do understand from others that the quality of his work, and particularly of his plotting, began to decline after his first handful of Midkemia novels. Perhaps because he was no longer basing them on his gaming experiences?)

The world of Midkemia is most interesting for our purposes, however, for the computer game it spawned. Yes, a series of novels based on a game got turned back into a very different sort of game. And then, just for good measure, that game got turned into another novel. It’s a crazy old transmedia world.

The more direct origin of Betrayal at Krondor, the game in question, can be traced back to June of 1991 and a chance meeting between John Cutter and Jeff Tunnell at the Summer Consumer Electronics Show. Both names may be familiar to regular readers of these histories.

John Cutter

Cutter had spent several years with Cinemaware, helping to craft many of their most innovative creations, which blended strong narrative elements with play styles that were unorthodox in story-heavy computer games at the time. In late 1990, with Cinemaware in the process of collapsing, he and several colleagues had jumped ship to New World Computing, best known for their Might & Magic series of CRPGs. But he was trapped in a purely administrative role there, without the freedom to create which he had enjoyed at Cinemaware, and was already feeling dissatisfied by the time he met Tunnell at that Summer CES.

Jeff Tunnell

Tunnell, for his part, was the founder of the studio known as Dynamix, now a subsidiary of Sierra Online. They were best known for their 3D graphics technology and the line of vehicular simulators it enabled, but they had fingers in several other pies as well, from adventure games to a burgeoning interest in casual puzzle games.

Recognizing talent when he saw it, Tunnell asked Cutter to leave Southern California, the home of the erstwhile Cinemaware and the current New World, and come to Eugene, Oregon, the home of Dynamix. Not only would he be able to have a creative role there once again, Tunnell promised, but he would be allowed to make whatever game he wanted to. Cutter jumped at the chance.

Once in Eugene, however, he struggled to identify just the right project. His first instinct was to make a point-and-click adventure game in the Sierra mold, but Tunnell, having made three of them in the last couple of years to less than satisfying effect, was feeling burned out on the genre and its limitations, and gently steered him away from it. (Absolute creative freedom, Cutter was learning, is seldom really absolute.)

At last, Tunnell came to Cutter with an idea of his own. He’d been reading a very popular series of fantasy novels by this fellow named Raymond E. Feist, and he thought they’d make a fine CRPG. Dynamix had never dabbled in the genre before, but when had that ever stopped them from trying something new? He suggested that Cutter give the first few of the books a read. If it turned out that he liked them as well and agreed that they’d make a good game, well, perhaps he should ring Feist up and have a chat about just that possibility.

Glad to finally have a clear sense of direction, Cutter did the one thing and then did the other. Feist was very busy, but was himself a long-time computer gamer, having sat down in front of his first Apple II some twelve or thirteen years before. He liked the idea of seeing Midkemia come to life on a computer screen. Although he didn’t have much time for working personally on such a project, he told his agent to make the deal happen if at all possible. So, a contract was signed that gave Dynamix the right to make Midkemia games until January 1, 1995, with Feist given the right of final approval or rejection of each title prior to its release. By one account at least, it was the most expensive literary license yet granted to a game developer, a sign of Feist’s ongoing popularity among readers of fantasy literature.

Another, slightly less welcome sign of same followed immediately after: upon being asked whether he was interested in authoring the game himself, Feist said that his time was money, so he’d need to be paid something beyond the terms of the licensing agreement itself — and, he noted flatly, “you couldn’t afford me.” This posed a dilemma. Cutter believed himself to be a better designer of game systems than a writer, and thus certainly wasn’t going to take on the job personally. Casting about for a likely candidate, his thoughts turned to one Neal Hallford, an enthusiastic young fellow with a way with words whom he’d befriended back at New World Computing.

Neal Hallford

A fresh-out-of-university Hallford had joined New World in the role of writer some months before Cutter himself had arrived. His first assignment there had been to make sense of the poorly translated English text of Tunnels & Trolls: Crusaders of Khazan, a project New World had chosen to outsource to a Japanese developer, with underwhelming results all the way around. After that truly thankless task, he’d worked for a while on Might and Magic III before playing a pivotal role on Planet’s Edge, an ambitious science-fiction CRPG that had tried to do just a little bit too much for its own good. He was just finishing that project when his old friend John Cutter called.

Like Cutter before him, Hallford found Dynamix’s offer difficult to refuse. Eugene struck him as idyllic by contrast with the crowded, smoggy streets of Los Angeles; meanwhile Dynamix’s offices enjoyed the well-deserved reputation of being just about the most stylish and comfortable in the entire industry, vastly outdistancing even the parent company of Sierra in that respect. Certainly they compared favorably with the chaotic jumble of tightly packed cubicles that was the domain of New World. Thus on Halloween Day, 1991, Hallford shook hands with his old colleges there for the last time and hopped into his Geo Metro for the drive north.

Upon Hallford’s arrival in Eugene, Cutter pulled him into his office and kept him there for a week, while the two hashed out exactly what game they wanted to make and wrote the outline of a script. Hallford still remembers that week of frenzied creativity as “one of the best weeks of my life.” These two friends, different in talents and personality but unified in their vision for the game, would do the vast majority of the creative heavy lifting that would go into it. Broadly stated, Cutter would be the systems guy while Hallford would be the story guy, yet their visions would prove so simpatico that they’d seldom disagree on much of anything at all.

Jeff Tunnel had initially fallen in love with a Midkemia novel called Silverthorn, and the original plan he’d pitched to Cutter had been to make the game a fairly straightforward adaptation of that book’s plot. But such a thing is inherently problematic, for reasons I’ve had ample cause to discuss in earlier articles. Players who buy the game because they read and liked the novel — who are, after all, the whole reason for making a licensed game at all from a business perspective — won’t be excited about stepping through a plot they already know. At the same time, it’s all too easy from the design side to make a game where victory hinges on taking all of the same idiosyncratic, possibly irrational actions as the protagonists of the novel. And so you end up with a game that bores one group of players to tears, even as it frustrates another group who don’t happen to know what Character A needs to do in Situation B in order to replicate the novel’s story.

The biggest appeal of the Midkemia novels, Hallford believed, was indeed the world itself, with its detailed culture and geography and its cast of dozens of well-established characters. It would be better, he thought, to set a brand new story there, one that would let Feist’s many fans meet up with old friends in familiar locales, but that wouldn’t force them to step by rote through a plot they already knew. During the crash course on Midkemia which he’d given himself in the few weeks before starting at Dynamix — like Cutter, he’d come to Feist fandom cold — Hallford had identified a twenty-year “hole” in the chronology where he and Cutter could set a new story: just after A Darkness at Sethanon, the concluding volume in the original Riftwar Cycle that had started the ball rolling. Somewhat to everyone’s surprise, Feist was willing to entrust this young, unproven writer with creating something really new in his world. Betrayal at Krondor was off and running.

Hallford may have come to Midkemia late, but his dogged determination to capture the world exactly as it existed in the novels would come to a large degree to define the project. He calls himself a “born fanboy” by nature. Thus, even though he wasn’t quite of Feist’s hardcore fandom, he had enormous empathy for them. He points back to an experience from his youth: when, as a dedicated Star Trek fan, he started to read the paperback novels based on the television series which Pocket Books published in the 1980s. I read them as well, and can remember that some of them were surprisingly good as novels, at least according to my adolescent sensibilities, while also managing to capture the spirit of the series I saw on television. Others, however… not so much. Hallford points to one disillusioning book in particular, which constantly referred to phasers as “ray guns.” It inculcated in him a sense that any writer who works in a beloved universe owes it to the fans of said universe — even if he’s not really one of them — to be as true to it as is humanly possible.

So, Hallford wrote Betrayal at Krondor with Feist’s fans constantly in mind. He immersed himself in Feist’s works to the point of that he was almost able to become the novelist. The prose he crafted, vivid and effective within its domain, really is virtually indistinguishable from that of its inspiration, whose own involvement was limited to an early in-person meeting and regular phone conversations thereafter. Yet the latter became more rather than less frequent as the project wore on; Feist found his enthusiasm for the game increasing in tandem with his surprise at how earnestly Hallford tried to capture his novels and the extent to which he was managing to succeed with only the most limited coaching. The fan verdict would prove even more telling. To this day, many of them believe that it was Feist himself who scripted Betrayal at Krondor.

But Betrayal of Krondor is notable for more than Neal Hallford’s dedicated fan service. It’s filled to bursting with genuinely original ideas, many of which flew in the face of contemporary fashions in games. Not all of the ideas work — some of them rather pull against one another — but the game’s boldness makes it a bracing study in design.

Following the lead of GUI advocates working with other sorts of software, game designers in the early 1990s were increasingly embracing the gospel of the “mode-less” interface: a single master screen on which everything takes place, as opposed to different displays and interfaces for different play states. (For an excellent example of how a mode-less interface could be implemented in the context of a CRPG, see Origin Systems’s Ultima VII.) Cutter and Hallford, however, pitched this gospel straight into the trash can without a second thought. Betrayal at Krondor has a separate mode for everything.

The closest thing it has to a “home” screen must be the first-person exploration view, which uses 3D graphics technology poached from Dynamix’s flight simulators. But then, you can and probably often will move around from an overhead map view as well. When interesting encounters happen, the screen is given over to text with clickable menus, or to storybook-style illustrated dialog scenes. When you get in a fight, that’s also displayed on a screen of its own; combat is a turn-based affair played on a grid that ends up vaguely resembling the Battle Chess games by Interplay. (Thankfully, it’s also tactically interesting and satisfying.) And then when you come upon a locked chest, you’re dumped into yet another new mode, where you have to work out a word puzzle in order to open it, because why not? All of these modes are accompanied by different styles of graphics: 3D graphics on the main exploration screen, a no-frills Rogue-like display for the overhead movement view, pixel art with the story scenes, digitized real-world actors with the dialog scenes, the sprite-based isometric view that accompanies combat, etc.

The first-person exploration view.

The overhead view.

A bit of exposition. Could this be a side quest before us?

The combat view.

A puzzle chest. The answer to this one, for the record, is “die.” Later riddles get much more complicated, but the mechanics of the puzzles ingenuously prevent them from ever becoming completely insoluble. Many a male player has had a significant other who couldn’t care less about the rest of the game, but loves these puzzle chests…

This mishmash of approaches can make the game feel like a throwback to the 1980s, when genres and their established sets of best practices were not yet set in stone, and when many games that may strike us as rather odd mashups today were being produced. We can certainly see John Cutter’s roots in Cinemaware here; that company made a career out of ignoring the rules of ludic genre in favor of whatever systems best conveyed the fictional genre they were attempting to capture. By all rights, Betrayal at Krondor ought not to work, as so many of Cinemaware’s games tended not quite to work. All of these different modes and play styles — the puzzle chests in particular seem beamed in from a different game entirely — ought to add up to a hopelessly confusing muddle. Somehow, though, it does work; Betrayal at Krondor actually isn’t terribly hard to come to grips with initially, and navigating its many modes soon becomes second nature.

One reason for this is doubtless also the reason for much else that’s good about the game: its unusually extended testing period. When development was reaching what everyone thought to be its final stages, Dynamix sent the game to outside testers for what was expected to be a three-month evaluation period. Even this much usability testing would have been more than most studios were doing at this time. But the project, as so many game-development projects tend to do, ran way longer than expected, and three months turned into nine months of constant player feedback. While our universe isn’t entirely bereft of games that seem to have sprung into being fully-formed, by far the most good games attain that status only gradually, through repeated iterations of testing and feedback. Betrayal at Krondor came by its goodness in exactly this hard, honest way. Unlike a dismaying number of games from its time, this game feels like one that’s actually been played — played extensively — before it got released. The niggling problems that dog even many good games from the early 1990s (such as the infuriating inventory management and rudderless combat of Ultima VII) are almost completely absent here. Instead the game is full of thoughtful little touches to head off annoyance, the sort of touches that can only come from real player feedback.

The final verdict on its mishmash of graphical approaches, on the other hand, must be less positive. Betrayal at Krondor wasn’t a notably attractive game even by the standards of its day, and time has done it no favors; the project desperately needed a strong art director able to impose a unified aesthetic vision. The parts of it that have aged the worst by far are those employing digitized actors, who look almost unbelievably ludicrous, cutting violently against any sense of Tolkienesque grandeur Hallford’s prose might be straining to evoke. Most store-bought Halloween costumes look higher rent than this bunch of survivors of an explosion at the Loony Tunes prop department. John Cutter acknowledges the problems:

We digitized a lot of the actors, and we assumed they were going to be so pixelated that the makeup and costumes didn’t have to look that great. They just kind of had to be… close. But by the time we launched the game the technology had improved… yeah. You could see the elastic bands on the fake beards. It was pretty bad. I wasn’t crazy about a lot of the graphics in the game.

Tellingly, the use of digitized actors was the one place where Betrayal at Krondor didn’t blaze its own trail, bowing instead to contemporary trends.

For all of Betrayal at Krondor‘s welcome willingness just to try lots of stuff, its approach to story remains its most memorable and interesting quality of all. This aspect of the game was so front and center in the mind of John Cutter that, when he wrote a brief few paragraphs of “Designer Notes” for the manual, it came to occupy more than half the space:

We decided the game should be an interactive story. Characters would be multidimensional and capable of stirring the player’s emotions. The story would be carefully plotted with lots of surprises, a good mix of humor and pathos, and abundant amounts of mystery and foreshadowing to keep the player intrigued.

Balancing play against plot is the most confounding job any game designer can face on a fantasy role-playing game. In Betrayal at Krondor, we have integrated our plot so that it provides ample gaming opportunities, while also giving the player a sense of time, place, and purpose. This is achieved by making an onscreen map available to the player at all times, and by creating short-term goals — the nine chapters in the game — which give us a unique opportunity to tell a progressive story that still gives the player plenty of freedom to explore and adventure without being confined to a scripted plot.

In thus “balancing play against plot,” Cutter and Hallford were attempting to square a circle that had been bedeviling game designers for a long time. All of the things that mark a rich story — characters with agendas of their own; big reveals and shocking turns; the classic narrative structure of rising action, climax, and denouement; dramatic confrontations with expressive dialog — cut against the player’s freedom to go wherever and do whatever she wants. As a designer, says the conventional wisdom, you can’t have it all: you must rather stake out your spot on a continuum where at one end the player does little more than click her way through a railroaded plot line, and at the other she does absolutely anything she wants, but does it in a world bereft of any larger meaning or purpose. Adventure games tend to lean toward the set-piece-storytelling end of the continuum, CRPGs toward open-ended interactivity.

Even CRPGs from around the time of Betrayal at Krondor which are written expansively and well, such as Ultima VII, generally send you wandering through other people’s stories rather than your own. Each city you explore in that game is full of little story stubs revolving around the inhabitants thereof rather than yourself; your role is merely to nudge these dramas of others along to some sort of resolution before you disappear again. Your larger agenda, meanwhile, boils down to the usual real or metaphorical collecting of pieces to assemble the big whatsit at the end — a series of actions which can be done in any order precisely because they’re so simplistic in terms of plot. You’re in the world, but never really feel yourself to be of it.

Cutter and Hallford, however, refused to accept the conventional wisdom embodied by even so markedly innovative a CRPG as Ultima VII. They were determined to deliver the best of both worlds — an adventure-game-like plot and CRPG-like freedom — in the same game. Unsurprisingly, it doesn’t quite work as a whole. Nevertheless, the attempt is well worth discussing.

Betrayal at Krondor positively trumpets its intentions via the metaphors which its user interface employs. Once again ignoring all of the fashions of its time, which emphasized the definitively non-textual aesthetic of the interactive movie, this game presents itself as an interactive book with an enthusiasm worthy of the 1980s heyday of bookware. The overriding look of the game, to the extent it has one amidst all its clashing graphical styles, is of an illuminated manuscript, ink on yellowing parchment. The story is told in a literary past tense, save points become “bookmarks,” and, as Cutter himself noted in the extract above, the whole experience is divided into nine neat “chapters.”

The game is relentless about describing every single event using full sentences worthy of one of Feist’s novels. Sometimes the end result can verge on the ridiculous. For example, every single time you search the body of an opponent you’ve just killed — something you’ll be doing an awful lot of, what with this being a CRPG and all — you’re greeted with a verbose missive:

Owyn looked for supplies. Feeling like a vulture, he turned the body this way and that as he searched for anything that might be of value to them on their journey. All in all, he supposed that if he were the dead man, it wouldn’t matter to him any longer what happened to his belongings.

Every character has the exact same feeling when searching a dead body, despite very different personalities. This is one of many places where Betrayal at Krondor‘s verbosity winds up undercutting rather than strengthening its sense of mimesis.

Of course, you can and quickly will learn to click right through this message and its one or two random variations each time you search a corpse. But it remains an amusing sign of just how committed Cutter and Halford were to their “interactive storybook” concept in even the most repetitive, mechanical areas of their creation. (Imagine what Pac-Man would be like if the title character stopped to muse about his actions every time he swallowed a power pill and killed another ghost…)

All of this past-tense verbosity has an oddly distancing effect. You don’t feel like you’re having an adventure so much as reading one — or possibly writing one. You’re held at a remove even from the characters in your party, normally the primary locus of player identification in a game like this one. You don’t get to make your own characters; instead you’re assigned three of them who fulfill the needs of the plot. And, while you can guide their development by earning experience points, improving their skills, and buying them new spells and equipment, you don’t even get to hang onto the same bunch through the whole game. Characters are moved in and out of your party from chapter to chapter — again, as the needs of each chapter’s plot requires. The final effect almost smacks of a literary hypertext, as you explore the possibility space of a story rather than actually feeling yourself to be embodying a role or roles in that story. This is certainly unique, and not necessarily a bad thing. It’s just… a little strange in relation to what we tend to think of CRPGs as being. These are, after all, role-playing games.

As I’ve described it so far, Betrayal at Krondor sounds more akin to the typical Japanese than the Western CRPG. The former tend to lie much closer to the set-piece-story end of our continuum of design; they provide a set, fairly linear plot to walk through, generally complete with predefined characters, rather than the degree of world simulation and open-ended exploration that marks the Western tradition. (A Japanese CRPG is, many a critic has scoffed, just a linear story in which you have to fight a battle to see each successive scene.) Yet Betrayal at Krondor actually doesn’t fit comfortably with that bunch either. For, as Cutter also notes above, he and his design partner were determined to “give the player plenty of freedom to explore and adventure without being bound to a scripted plot.”

Their means of accomplishing that relies once again on the chapter system. Each chapter begins and ends with a big helping of set-piece plot and exposition. In between, though, you’re free to go your own way and take your time in satisfying the conditions that will lead to the end of the chapter. In the first chapter, for example, your assignment is to escort a prisoner across much of the map to the capital city of Krondor. How and when you do so is up to you. The map is filled with encounters and quests, most of which have nothing to do with your central mission. And when you eventually do finish the chapter and continue on with the next, the same map gets repopulated with new things to do. This is the origin of a claim from Dynamix’s marketing department that Betrayal at Krondor is really nine CRPGs in one. In truth, it doesn’t quite live up to that billing. Only a subsection of the map is actually available to you in most chapters, much of it being walled off by impenetrable obstacles or monsters you can’t possibly kill. Even the repopulation that happens between chapters is far from comprehensive. Still, it’s an impressively earnest attempt to combine the pleasures of set-piece plotting with those of an emergent, persistent virtual world.

And yet the combination between set-piece storytelling and emergent exploration always feels like just that: a combination rather than a seamless whole. Cutter and Hallford didn’t, in other words, truly square this particular circle. There’s one massive block of cognitive dissonance standing at the center of it all.

Consider: you’re told at the beginning of the first chapter that your mission of escorting your prisoner to the capital is urgent. Political crisis is in the air, war clouds on the horizon. The situation demands that you hurry to Krondor by the shortest, most direct path. And yet what do you do, if you want to get the most out of the game? You head off in the opposite direction at a relaxed doddle, poking your nose into every cranny you come across. There’s a tacit agreement between game and player that the “urgent” sense of crisis in the air won’t actually evolve into anything until you decide to make it do so by hitting the next plot trigger. Thus the fundamental artificiality of the story is recognized at some level by both game and player, in a way that cuts against everything Betrayal at Krondor claims to want to be. This isn’t really an interactive storybook; it’s still at bottom a collection of gameplay elements wired together with chunks of story that don’t really need to be taken all that seriously at the end of the day.

The same sense of separation shows itself in those lengthy chapter-beginning and -ending expository scenes. A lot of stuff happens in these, including fights involving the characters ostensibly under your control, that you have no control over whatsoever — that are external to the world simulation. And then the demands of plot are satisfied for a while, and the simulation engine kicks back in. This is no better or worse than the vast majority of games with stories, but it certainly isn’t the revolution some of the designers’ claims might seem to imply.

Of course, one might say that all of these observations are rather more philosophical than practical, of more interest to game designers and scholars than the average player; you can suspend your disbelief easily enough and enjoy the game just as it is. There are places in Betrayal at Krondor, however, where some of the knock-on effects of the designers’ priorities really do impact your enjoyment in more tangible ways. For this is a game which can leave you marooned halfway through, unable to move forward and unable to go back.

Dead ends where the only option is to restore are normally less associated with CRPGs than adventure games; they played a big role in all but killing that genre as a commercial proposition by the end of the 1990s. CRPGs are usually more forgiving thanks to their more simulation-oriented nature — but, sadly, Betrayal at Krondor is an exception, due to a confluence of design decisions that all seem perfectly reasonable and were all made with the best of intentions. It thus provides a lesson in unexpected, unintended consequences — a lesson which any game designer would be wise to study.

The blogger Chet Bolingbroke, better known as The CRPG Addict, made these comments recently in the context of another game:

One of the notable features of CRPGs in contrast to some other genres is that they almost always support a Plan B. When one way of playing doesn’t work out, you can almost always resort to a more boring, more banal, grindier method of getting something done. I tend to mentally preface these fallback plans with “I can always…” Having a tough time with the final battle? “I can always reload again and again until the initiative rolls go my way.” Can’t overcome the evil wizard at your current level? “I can always grind.” Running out of resources? “I can always retreat from the dungeon, head back to town and buy a ton of healing potions.”

The most frustrating moments in CRPGs are when you suddenly find yourself with no way to finish “I can always” — when there is no Plan B, when luck alone will never save you, when there isn’t even a long way around.

This is precisely the problem which the player of Betrayal at Krondor can all too easily run into. Not only does the game allow you to ignore the urgent call of its plot, but it actually forces you to do so in order to be successful. If you take the impetus of the story seriously and rush to fulfill your tasks in the early chapters, you won’t build up your characters sufficiently to survive the later ones. Even if you do take your time and explore, trying to accrue experience, focusing on the wrong skills and spells can leave you in the same boat. By the time you realize your predicament, your “Plan B” is nonexistent. You can’t get back to those encounters you skipped in the earlier, easier chapters, and thus can’t grind your characters out of their difficulties. There actually are no random encounters whatsoever in the game, only the fixed ones placed on the map at the beginning of each chapter. I’m no fan of grinding, so I’d normally be all in favor of such a choice, which Cutter and Hallford doubtless made in order to make the game less tedious and increase its sense of narrative verisimilitude. In practice, though, it means that the pool of available money and experience is finite, meaning you need not only to forget the plot and explore everywhere in the earlier chapters but make the right choices in terms of character development there if you hope to succeed in the later ones.

On the whole, then, Betrayal at Krondor acquits itself better in its earlier chapters than in its later ones. It can be a very immersive experience indeed when you first start out with a huge map to roam, full of monsters to battle and quests to discover. By the time said map has been repopulated three or four times, however, roaming across its familiar landmarks yet again, looking for whatever might be new, has begun to lose some of its appeal.

And then, as Neal Hallford would be the first to admit, Betrayal at Krondor is written above all for Raymond E. Feist fans, which can be a bit problematic if you don’t happen to be among them. This was my experience, at any rate. As an outsider to Feist’s universe, watching characters I didn’t know talk about things I’d never heard of eventually got old. When an “iconic” character like Jimmy the Hand shows up, I’m supposed to be all aflutter with excitement, but instead I’m just wondering who this latest jerk in a terrible costume is and why I should care. In my view, the game peaks in Chapter 3, which takes the form of a surprisingly complex self-contained murder mystery; this is a place where the game does succeed in integrating its set-piece and emergent sides to a greater extent than elsewhere. If you elect to stop playing after that chapter, you really won’t miss that much.

As I noted already, Betrayal at Krondor ran dramatically over time and over budget. To their credit, Dynamix’s management didn’t push it out the door in an unfinished state, as was happening with so many other games during this period of transition to larger and more complex productions. Yet everyone, especially poor Neal Hallford, felt the pressure of getting it done. Not only did he write almost every word of the considerable amount of text in the game, but he also wrote much of the manual, and somehow even wound up on the hook for the puff pieces about it in Sierra’s customer newsletter. After weeks of virtually living at the office, he collapsed there one day, clutching at his chest. His colleagues rushed him to the hospital, believing he must be having a heart attack even though he was still in his twenties. It turned out that he wasn’t, but the doctor’s orders were clear: “You’re not going back to work for a week. Get some rest and eat something proper. No pizza. No soft drinks. It’s either this or next time you leave work it’ll be in a hearse.” Such are the perils of commercial game development.

Betrayal at Krondor finally shipped on June 15, 1993, an inauspicious time in the history of CRPGs. Origin Systems was about to take the Ultima series in a radically different direction after a less than overwhelming response to Ultima VII; Sir-Tech was about to put their equally long-running Wizardry series on ice for similar reasons; SSI was facing dwindling sales of their Dungeons & Dragons games and was on the verge of losing the once-coveted license; other publishers were quietly dropping less prominent franchises and would-be franchises. The several years to come would be remembered by CRPG fans as the Dark Age of their favored genre; relatively few of games of this stripe would be released at all, and those that were would be greeted by the marketplace with little enthusiasm.

Initially, Dynamix’s first CRPG performed about as well as you might expect in this environment. Despite some strong reviews, and despite whatever commercial advantages the Feist license brought with it, sales were slow. Cutter and Hallford had gone into Betrayal at Krondor imagining it to be only the first entry in a new series, but it soon appeared unlikely that a sequel would come to pass. Sierra, Dynamix’s parent company, was having an ugly year financially and wasn’t in the mood to make another expensive game in a passé genre, while Jeff Tunnell, the man who had had the original idea for Betrayal at Krondor, had stepped down from day-to-day management at Dynamix in favor of running a smaller subsidiary studio. Cutter and Hallford begged their new bosses to give the game time before making any final decisions, noting that good reviews and positive word of mouth among fans of the novels could yet pay dividends. The leadership team responded by laying Cutter off.

But over time, Betrayal at Krondor continued to sell steadily if not spectacularly. Then a genuine surge in sales came in early 1994, when a CD-ROM-based version featuring a lovely soundtrack and enhanced if still less than lovely graphics was released, just as the influential magazine Computer Gaming World was crowning the game the best CRPG of the previous year. Dynamix now made a belated attempt to start work on a sequel, asking Neal Hallford to helm it. But he considered the budget they were proposing to be inadequate, the time frame for development far too compressed. He turned it down, and left the company shortly thereafter. Dynamix would never make a second CRPG, whether set in Midkemia or anywhere else.

Nevertheless, that wasn’t quite the end of the story. Feist had been profoundly impressed by Betrayal at Krondor, and now took the ludic possibilities of his series of novels much more seriously than he had before seeing it. As soon as the Dynamix license expired at the beginning of 1995, he began to shop the property around once again. Initially, however, he found no one willing to pay his price,what with the current state of the CRPG market. While interactive Midkemia was thus in limbo, Sierra came up with another, cheaper idea for capitalizing on the first game’s belated success. Lacking the Midkemia license, they decided to leverage the first half of the Betrayal at Krondor name instead, releasing the in-house-developed Betrayal in Antara in 1997. It copied some of the interface elements and gameplay approaches of its predecessor, but moved the action to a generic fantasy world, to less satisfying effect.

And yet the story still wasn’t over: as the CRPG market began to improve in the wake of Interplay’s Fallout, the first real hit in the genre in several years, Feist licensed the Midkemia rights back to Sierra of all publishers. Sierra turned this latest project over to an outside developer called PyroTechnix. Feist played a much more active role on Return to Krondor, the game which resulted, than he had on Betrayal at Krondor, yet the result once again pales in comparison to the first Midkemia game, perhaps because Cutter and Hallford once again played no role. Its mixed reception in 1998 marks the last implementation of Midkemia on a computer to date.

Two of Feist’s later books, 1998’s Krondor: The Betrayal and 2000’s Krondor: Tear of the Gods, were based upon the first and second Midkemia computer game respectively. Thus Midkemia completed its long, strange transmedia journey from game to book to game to book again. Feist continues to churn out books apace today, but they don’t sell in the same quantities anymore, bearing as they do the stale odor of a series long past its sell-by date.

For many of us, Betrayal at Krondor will always remain the most memorable entry in the exercise in competent derivation that is Midkemia as a whole; the game is ironically much more innovative in its medium than the novels which spawned it are in theirs. Indeed, it’s thoroughly unique, a welcome breath of bold originality in a genre usually content to rely on the tried and true, a game which doesn’t work perfectly but perhaps works better than it has any right to. As a writer, I can only applaud a game which takes it writing this seriously. If it’s not quite the revolutionary amalgamation of narrative and interactivity that its creators wanted it to be, it’s still a heck of a lot more interesting than your average dungeon crawl.

(Sources: the book Designers and Dragons by Shannon Appelcline; Sierra’s newsletter InterAction of Winter 1992 and June 1993; Compute! of December 1993; Computer Gaming World of February 1993, April 1994, June 1994, and August 1996; Electronic Games of October 1992 and June 1993; Questbusters of November 1991, August 1992, April 1993, and August 1993; Retro Gamer 84; Dragon of January 2004; the CD-ROM Today bundled CD-ROM of August/September 1994. Online sources include Matt Barton’s interviews with Neal Hallford, Jeff Tunnell, and John Cutter in Matt Chat episodes 191, 192, 201, 291, 292, and 293; Neal Hallford’s blog series Krondor Confidential; the “History of Midkemia Press” on the same publisher’s website.

Betrayal at Krondor and Betrayal in Antara are available as a package purchase at GOG.com.)

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/betrayal-at-krondor/

[enterinit]

New Xbox One Games for October 29 to November 1 2019

New Xbox One Games for October 29 to November 1 2019.

Afterparty (October 29, 2019)

In Afterparty, you are Milo and Lola, recently deceased best buds who suddenly find themselves staring down an eternity in Hell. But there’s a loophole: outdrink Satan and he’ll grant you re-entry to Earth. Control Milo and Lola with an intelligent conversation system that changes the story and your relationships based on every decision. Uncover their personality quirks and foggy history during the wild events of the night. Every step is up to you as you stumble through the underworld. Go on a hellish bender, uncover the mystery of your damnation, and drink Satan under the table. Starring: Janina Gavankar as LolaKhoi Dao as MiloAshly Burch as SamErin Yvette as WormhornDave Fennoy as Satan

Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz HD (October 29, 2019)

Hold onto your bananas, because Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz HD is rolling your way! Experience the magic of one of the most beloved titles in the series, now remastered in HD! Head back into the fantastical world of Super Monkey Ball and take back your bananas from the space alien pirate king, Captain Crabuchin. Race through over 100 colorful stages and challenge your friends and family to 10 fan-favorite Party Games! Feeling like the fastest, most maneuverable monkey around? Try out Time Attack mode or the grueling Decathlon endurance run! Will you make it onto the scoreboard? Features: 100 stages to race through10 fan favorite mini-gamesTime attack mode & online scoreboardDecathlon endurance run

Xeno Crisis (October 30, 2019)

Xeno Crisis is an arena shooter in which one or two players take control of battle-hardened marines embarking on a deadly mission to confront an alien menace and get home alive! Run and gun your way through thousands of adversaries as you explore the devastated research outpost, searching for survivors, and ultimately facing the origin of the outpost's demise. Outpost 88 is divided into seven distinct areas, each being randomly generated with each play, meaning that your strategy must evolve on the fly if you're to succeed in your mission. Collect dog-tags from vanquished enemies to upgrade your equipment between areas and look out for special weapons which will give you a momentary advantage. Features: A faithful port of the hit 16 bit game with added extras.Incredible pixel art from the legendary pixel artist, Henk Nieborg.Intense FM chiptune soundtrack by Savaged Regime, originally created for the YM2612!Two difficulty levels and three modes of play.An arsenal of 10 weapons to master.Play solo or local co-op with a friend!

Police Chase (October 29, 2019)

In Police Chase thrilling missions, powerful cars and fighting crime will be your routine! Whether it’s issuing offenders with parking and speeding tickets or thwarting terrorist plots and other crimes — only one thing counts in your job: Guarantee safety in your beat! Meet with informers, shadow suspects, chase perps and handle time-critical missions. Superfast action, a captivating story and a big, open game world call for courage, skill and fast reflexes! In Police Chase it all depends on you! Features: Begin your police career in an absorbing campaign with 15 tense missions.Be ready for the speed and heart-pumping action that awaits on 15 dangerous routes!A wide range of detailed vehicles with varying HP await.Your beat is a large, open 3D world with highways, country roads, and industrial estates.In free-play mode, protect the streets from criminal masterminds and solve 80 different side quests to move up from beat cop to the chief of police.

Close to the Sun (October 29, 2019)

It’s 1897. Deep in international waters, the Helios stands still. Dark clouds loom overhead as unforgiving waves crash against the hull. Colossal effigies of gold, decorated with magnificent finery, stretch as far as the eye can see. Born of Nikola Tesla’s vision, the Helios serves as a haven for the greatest scientific minds. An unbound utopia for research, independent from state and isolated from the gaze of society. Free to push the boundaries of matter and time. Journalist Rose Archer steps aboard the Helios in search of her sister Ada. She quickly discovers not all is as it seems. Grand halls stand empty. The stench of rotting flesh lingers in the air. Silence. A single word is painted across the entrance… QUARANTINE!

Inferno 2+ (October 29, 2019)

The sequel to Inferno+, Radiangames' critically-acclaimed twin-stick action-RPG, Inferno 2 boasts even more devious levels, more weapons, more upgrades and powers, more enemies, and more customization, along with more insane explosions and particle effects. Blast through 80+ levels full of enemies and secrets while upgrading your ship the way you want. Features: Play through 80+ levels of atmospheric awesomenessCustomize your arsenal of upgradable weapons and ship powersSingle player and 2 player local co-op for the first time!New Game+ mode adds even more replayability3 difficulty levels (change it up at any time)All-new special level types and goals. Survival and boss fights!Dozens of enemy typesTons of secrets to discover

Delta Squad (October 30, 2019)

Just when you think the world is safe and it’s okay to take a break, a new threat emerges. Having already survived an alien invasion in FullBlast, the Delta Squad must now do battle against General Rumanovsky, a maniacal overlord who will stop at nothing to achieve global domination. To overcome every threat players will need to take full advantage of upgrading their skills in a bid to deal maximum damage. Features: Gorgeous 3D graphics50 missions across 5 levelsAmbient soundtrack Local co-op support for up to four playersThe option to play any of the 5 levels you want for a quick gaming session

Citadel: Forged with Fire (November 01, 2019)

Citadel: Forged with Fire is a massive online sandbox RPG with elements of magic, spellcasting and inter-kingdom conflict. As a newly minted apprentice of the magic arts, you will set off to investigate the dangerous world of Ignus. Your goal: create a name for yourself and achieve notoriety and power among the land's ruling Houses. You have complete freedom to pursue your own destiny; hatch plots of trickery and deceit to ascend the ranks among allies and enemies, become an infamous hunter of other players, build massive and unique castles, tame mighty beasts to do your bidding, and visit uncharted territories to unravel their rich and intriguing history. The path to ultimate power and influence is yours to choose. EXPLORE A MASSIVE FANTASY WORLD Welcome to the magical world of Ignus: a 36 square kilometer landmass of sweeping plains, dense forests, craggy mountains, festering swamps and frozen tundra. Leave no stone unturned as you explore dangerous caves and ancient ruins to recover powerful artifacts and uncover a rich history spanning thousands of years. Embark on a journey across the land to find the perfect place for you and your allies to call home. STUDY THE ARCANE ARTS Master a diverse range of powerful spells. Discover your conduit of choice among a huge selection of mystic wands and staves, magically imbued axes, swords, maces and hammers, and enchanted gauntlets. CREATE ALLIANCES AND FORGE AN EMPIRE Align your efforts with fellow Warlocks to create a mighty House. Create an internal hierarchy of power, design and plant your own House flag, share your resources to build huge castles and team up to hunt legendary creatures. Wage war with opposing Houses or hatch plans of deceit and trickery to cause internal chaos and ascend the ranks within your own. FIGHT, TAME AND RIDE LEGENDARY BEASTS Use the Pacify spell to tame ferocious creatures and amass an army of minions. Tamed companions will gain experience and grow with you as you travel the world and triumph in battle. Siege an enemy fortress with a horde of savage Orcs, ride Horses and Direwolves to quickly traverse the vast landscape, or rain fiery death upon your enemies from the back of a Dragon BUILD AND FORTIFY EPIC CASTLES Construct your Dream Castle using hundreds of structural pieces found within a flexible and easy-to-use building editor, or take advantage of the dynamic destruction engine and crush someone else's. Enhance your fortress with magical structures like defensive shields, attack towers, mana pools and respawn stones. Unlock new fortification materials and building features as you level up: with so many materials and pieces to work with the only limit is your imagination. FIND A NEAR LIMITLESS VARIETY OF LOOT Are you an old, bearded and wise Warlock or are you a young, ambitious and strong-willed Mage? Create your own style with a huge variety of clothing and weapon options. Discover a near limitless variety among these items' stats with Citadel's rich and deep loot generation system; every loot pull is different and ensures that fighting monsters and exploring dungeons is a constantly rewarding and memorable experience. ACHIEVE THE POWER OF FLIGHT Why walk when you can fly? Use your Wizardly prowess to take to the skies. Enjoy the convenience of a custom-crafted broomstick, tame and mount airborne companions like dragons and giant eagles, or use alchemy to concoct potent elixirs allowing flight without the aid of beast or broom.

Race with Ryan (November 01, 2019)

Ready, Set, Race With Ryan! Take the wheel as Ryan and all your favorite Ryan’s World friends! Ryan’s World has come to life, and it’s every bit as colorful, fun and fast as you imagined. So pick a racer, head to one of six magical locations, and step on the gas to show your friends and family who the fastest racer really is. This is no ordinary championship! Ryan’s famous Mystery Eggs are scattered across each track, and they’re full of surprises that help you power through the pack – like Burger Shields, Sticky Slime, Trick Surprise Eggs and many more. A huge cast of Ryan’s World characters are here to race, including Policeman Ryan in his Patrol Car, Red Titan, Gus the Gummy Gator, Pirate Combo Panda, plus many more you’ll unlock as you race your way to the top. From the miniature toy world of Fantasy Park, to the pirate kingdom of Treasure Island and beyond, each world is full of secret pathways, slippery slides and kids’ imagination! With simple controls, optional auto-acceleration and a tutorial to guide younger players through their first video game, drivers of all ages will love to Race with Ryan. Race your way to the top in Career Mode or speed past your friends in 2 - 4 players split-screen races, the fun keeps coming. Will you be first across the finish line? Features: Race for victory across the colorful world of YouTube sensation, RyanChallenge yourself in Career mode or race with friends in split-screen playSimple racing controls, auto-acceleration, auto-steering and tutorial mean everyone can playUnlock Ryan’s World toy characters and vehicles including Moe, Gus, Alpha Lexa, Peck and Ryan himself!Speed around 6 magical locations including The Toy Shop, Wild West and Spooky Land

Jalopy (November 01, 2019)

Navigate miles and miles of tyre changing, fuel burning, carburettor busting, mud clattering terrain, through night and day, rain and shine. Adapt to whatever the procedurally generated world of Jalopy can throw at you. Upgrade, maintain and care for your Laika 601 Deluxe motor vehicle. Keep close attention to everything from the state of your tyres, the condition of your engine and even the space in your trunk. Repair each aspect of your scrappy little car and install unique upgrades to deal with the changing world. Everything from cargo weight to the condition of your carburettor will determine how your car performs on the open road. The rise of capitalism brings an economical conundrum. Scavenge for scraps to make a small return of investment, or become a baron of the open road and smuggle contraband under the eyes of border patrols to make a sizable profit. Developer Greg Pryjmachuk worked on the Formula 1 franchise from 2009 through to 2014. In late 2014, Greg began work on this new driving simulation featuring the fictional Laika 601 Deluxe car; reminiscent of the East German “Trabbie”, it will need much love and care to keep it going on this memorable road trip! Features: Embark on a grand road trip through the former Eastern BlocDrive and take care of your Jalopy, the Laika 601 Deluxe by keeping an eye on fuel, tyre wear and moreGo under the hood to replace various car parts, from the ignition coil to the air filterExplore Germany, CSFR, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and TurkeyDiscover life in the former Eastern Bloc as you undertake a grand trip with your Uncle Read the full article

[illuminated-in-darkness]

Marauders’ Magical Marvels

Another plotless piece for my weekly writing challenge.

Setting: Magic Shop, Marauders

Prompt: “Hey! I was going to eat that!”

Tags: shenanigans, found family, magic shop, AU, apparently I love making people eat together, there’s literally no plot

 ~~~

        The bell above the door tinkled merrily as Lily slipped into the shop. She was immediately surrounded by a kaleidoscope of smells and colours, the boys clearly gone crazy with the freedom to fill the shop however they wanted. Lily wouldn’t have chosen to have any living space of hers look like this, but there was a certain comfort to the shop, a way that the intensity sometimes reflected the boys’ own dynamic. At least she had been able to convince them to stick to one or two scents, instead of assaulting customers with an open bottle of each product. The days leading up to the shop’s grand opening had been hectic to say the least – there were too many last-minute changes, as could only be expected, and the boys had insisted they needed to open with a bang. It had taken Lily the better part of an afternoon to make Remus see that ‘bang’ didn’t have to mean solar flare, and it took him another two days to talk the others down too. Eventually though, even Sirius had managed to admit Lily was right.

        And so Marauders’ Magical Marvels had finally come to be (Marlene was the one who made them see that Marauder’s Magnificent Magical Marvels was just way too much), and almost three years later the shop had settled into a rhythm and a regular customer base, always experimenting and expanding, but no longer at the frantic pace of their first year. The boys had also settled better into their roles. At first everyone was trying to do everything, which only led to confusion and a few unhappy customers. Eventually, however, they each found their point of excellence.

Peter had the mind for marketing, taking on most everything from displays and the shop’s organization, to signage, adverts, and promotions. He really did have quite the eye, Lily thought as she continued through the familiar aisles. There was something pleasing to the explosion of colours and shapes, each product unique. Not only were the sections of store more intuitive than any of them initially realized, the positioning of products complemented those around them. Now Peter could leave the menial shelving to one of the employees, but he made sure to impress upon them the importance of placing things just so.

Remus, ever the scientist and the most patient of the four, handled most of the R&D – which mostly consisted of experimenting in the back room, usually with seven or eight potential new ‘recipes’ on the go. The refrigerators were covered in notes only he fully understood, with instructions on what to leave for how long and at what temperature, or when to add how much of a new ingredient. When his wand wasn’t in his hand it was stuck behind his ear, a feat which continually left everyone mystified as to how such a large object could both stay put and stay out of Remus’ way. His less visible work was that of creating new spells, some which helped with the making and perfecting of the products, and others which were used within the products themselves; enchantments which would release upon the use or activation of the product. In the beginning he spent many a night catching only a few hours’ sleep in the room above the shop, needing to just slightly tweak a recipe in order to perfect it. Now Sirius made sure to get him home before it was too late, and Remus was confident enough in his research that he could stand to leave things for the night – or set spells that would take care of things overnight.

Sirius found that numbers came surprisingly easily to him, and his memory helped with the organization of orders, shipments, and bills. His charm and wit, which got him in trouble on more than one occasion, were helpful behind the scenes with partners as well as in front of customers and press. Sirius was the one who managed to keep the shop afloat, especially in the first year and a half of investment in the shop knowing when to spend in order to make revenue. It was less often now, but he still worked the floor when he could, happy to explain the ins and outs of the newest stock and help customers find exactly the thing they didn’t know they needed. If Remus was prone to constantly tinkering with products, Sirius could get lost in numbers, spreadsheets, and forms that none of the others understood. Occasionally it would be Remus leading Sirius home at a reasonable hour, or James bringing whichever meal he was sure Sirius had forgotten to eat.

James was the artist. If Peter had the vision for what products needed, James was the one who brought it to life. Ideas and keywords that made no real sense together came to life through his imagination and craft. Bottles and containers that were not only beautiful and eye-catching, but also practical, conducive to the type of product and the method of use. Then there were the labels, the size and font and placement, the symbols and images to complete the package. Peter knew what would sell, and James found the way to take the principles and turn them into something entirely unique. Sometimes he started his work digitally, but most often he could be found hunched over his sketches, hair constantly messy from his hands running through it. Every now and then one of the boys would have to remind him to stand up and stretch his back, his neck. He also joined Sirius in press for Marauders’ Magical Marvels, his evident passion easily spreading to those he reached. If Sirius had all the information and wit to let customers know why MMM products were the best, James could make customers feel something personal about them. Together they took on most of the external communications that Remus and Peter preferred not to engage in, although the four of them always appeared together for big moments and celebrations.

Lily was so proud of the boys and what they’d achieved, how hard they worked to get to where they were. She was thrilled to write about the shop and its successes when she could – happy she was in a position at The Journal where she could actually get word out about MMM. She came by most night after work, helping out where she could before heading home with James. It wasn’t until about two years in that she realized this place had become something of a second home to her, familiar though ever-changing. It was definitely the boys’ happy place, and there had been many long nights and early weekends spent at Marauders’ Magic Marvels. 

Lily made for the back room of the shop, where she imagined all four of them were hanging out now that the shop had closed. She pushed open the door to see Remus snatching something out of James’ hand and crumbling the substance onto the tray in front of him.

“Hey! I was going to eat that!” James protested, hand still outstretched.

Remus looked up at him from under his eyebrows.

“Yeah, and it would have tasted like chocolate for about two second before it made you violently ill, genius.” His eyes flicked to the doorway. “Hi, Lily.”

“Hi Remus,” Lily smiled. “Hey boys,” she addressed the others, Sirius scribbling away with his legs dangling off the counter, Peter’s head in a book.

“Lily!” James’ face split into a grin when he saw her, and Lily didn’t try to smother the warm feeling that bloomed in her chest at the sight.

Chocolate-like non-snack forgotten, James made his way over to Lily and pressed a kiss to her lips.

“How was your day?” James asked when they pulled away.

“Long, but good,” Lily admitted. “I think I’m hungrier than I realized.’

Right on cue, Sirius’ stomach let out a loud grumble. When he continued to scribble, Remus smacked his arm to get his attention.

“Lily. Dinner,” he said when Sirius looked up, gesturing toward the door with his head.

Sirius seemed to come back to Earth and notice his surroundings.

“Lily! Dinner!” He exclaimed, jumping off the counter and stuffing the paper and pen in his back pocket. “Of course!”

Remus took the tray he was working with and slid it into the refrigerator before washing his hands and taking off his apron. Meanwhile, Lily tried to break Pete out of whatever plot he was currently engrossed in.

“Hey Pete, are you hungry?”

Peter held up a finger, eyes quickly scanning the page before setting the bookmark inside and closing the novel.

“Yep, all set.”

They headed to the pub down the road from the shop, where Dorcas, Marlene, and Benjy were waiting at their usual table.

“Hey, you made it,” Dorcas pointed out.

“We always make it,” Sirius countered. “We just prefer to be fashionably late is all.”

Further bickering on the topic was prevented by the arrival of a round of beers for the table, and they ordered their usual.

After the ‘how was work?’ pleasantries, the group settled into a familiar rhythm, Lily and Marlene discussing the latest Quidditch match, Dorcas asking James and Peter about their newest product design, and Sirius trying to convince Remus and Dorcas that they had to go check out the summer food festival over the weekend.

These weekly dinners were nothing special, just beers, burgers, and fish and chips in a pub, but Lily had lately felt just how lucky she was that this was nothing more than routine. She knew it wouldn’t last forever. Benjy was planning on taking a position in Australia at the beginning of the following year, and life and schedules would eventually have to be worked around, but they would make it work, and for now, Lily was just happy to drink and eat and take the mickey out of her friends after work. It was a good day, and the fact that it wasn’t anything special made it all the more so.

[asiantheatre]

Under the list are all the confirmed, announced shows in the 2018-2019 season featuring Asian writers, actors, designers, directors, etc in New York, London, and International. Listed are the dates for first previews, the theater it’s performed in, and a summary of the show. 

This list isn’t 100% comprehensive and will be updated as time goes on. If we missed a show, please let us know!

Make sure to tune in and give these shows your love! 

BROADWAY (source)

Straight White Men

Until September 9, Hayes Theater

“It’s Christmas Eve, and Ed has gathered his three adult sons to celebrate with matching pajamas, trash-talking, and Chinese takeout. But when a question they can’t answer interrupts their holiday cheer, they are forced to confront their own identities. Obie Award-winning playwright Young Jean Lee takes a hilariously ruthless look at the classic American father-son drama. This is one white Christmas like you’ve never seen before.”

Getting the Band Back Together

August 19, 2018; Belasco Theatre

“The musical comedy follows 40-year-old out-of-work banker Mitch who moves back in with his mother and decides to reunite his old high school band, Juggernaut.”

King Kong

October 2018

This show reimagines the famous movie King Kong into a story about fame, greed, and manipulation within the original framework of a young actress and film maker finding their way to Skull Island, the home of a 2000 pound monkey.

Tootsie

March 29, 2019; Marriott Marquis

“Based on the film, Tootsie tells the story of a talented but difficult actor who struggles to find work until an audacious, desperate stunt lands him the role of a lifetime.”

Hadestown

Walter Kerr; March 22, 2019

Info in the west end section

Be More Chill

Lyceum Theater; February 13, 2019

Info in the offbway section

Chicago

July 1–14; Ambassador Theatre

Japanese star Ryoko Yonekura will make a limited run engagement as Roxie Hart before transferring over to Japan for the national tour.

OFF BROADWAY (source / 2)

Be More Chill

August 9, 2018;  Pershing Square Signature Center

Based on Ned Vizzini’s novel, the show tells the story of an average teenager who takes a pill purported to make people more—you guessed it—chill.

Henry VI

August 21, 2018 - NAATCO 

“Shakespeare’s Henry VI is the story of a great nation’s decent into barbarism and cruelty. It is a study of how the experience of a problematic foreign war erodes civil discourse at home, and how that erosion allows political self-interests to take hold and send a country hurtling into civil war.” 

Rags Parkland Sings the Songs of the Future

September 25, 2018; Ars Nova

 “250 years from now, constructed humans are built in black market labs, Mars is a forced labor camp and underground outlaws are brewing rebellion. You might not remember how Beaux Weathers and her band of “illegal intelligences” fought for the right to exist, but Rags Parkland does. Back on Earth for the first time in 10 years, Rags plays the music that carried us to where we are today. But on this planet, the more things change, the more we stay the same.”

India Pale Ale

October 2, 2018; Manhattan Theatre Club

“In a small Wisconsin town, a tight-knit Punjabi community gathers to celebrate the wedding of a traditional family’s only son, just as their strong-willed daughter announces her plans to move away and open a bar. As they come together for feasts filled with singing and dancing, one generation’s cherished customs clash with another’s modern-day aspirations, and ghosts and pirates from the family’s past linger in everyone’s thoughts – until one sudden event changes everything.”

Wild Goose Dreams

October 30, 2018; The Public Theatre

“Minsung is a “goose father,” a South Korean man whose wife and daughter have moved to America for a better life. Deeply lonely, he escapes onto the internet and meets Nanhee, a young defector forced to leave her family behind in North Korea. Amidst the endless noise of the modern world, where likes and shares have taken the place of love and touch, Minsung and Nanhee try their best to be real for each other. But after a lifetime of division and separation, is connection possible?“

The Resistable Rise or Arturo Ui

October 30- December 22, 2018; Classic Stage Company

The political allegory shows a Depression-era Chicago mobster, who, with the help of his henchmen, manipulates and murders his way to totalitarian rule of the cauliflower trade. The play uses a vaudevillian portrayal of American mafia culture to parallel events that brought the Third Reich to power.

A Chorus Line

November 14, 2018; New York City Center

“A Chorus Line, the 2018 New York City Center Annual Gala Presentation, is a joyous celebration of dance and musical theater—two art forms that City Center has been bringing to New York audiences for 75 years. In 1975, the stories of seventeen Broadway dancers were brought to life when A Chorus Line opened Off-Broadway. The musical was born of workshop sessions with actual Broadway dancers (eight of whom appeared in the original cast) who laid bare their personal stories and the challenges they faced in pursuit of their dreams.“

The Prisoner

November 24, 2018; Theatre for a New Audience/Polonsky Shakespeare Center

“The Prisoner examines the complexities of crime, justice, and compassion in a breathtaking new international production. A man sits alone outside a prison. Who is he, and what is he doing there? Is he free, or is he the prisoner?“

Noura

November 27, 2018; Playwrights Horizons

Noura and her husband have a successful life in New York, and, eight years after having fled their home in Iraq, they’ve finally gained citizen status—which Noura, as an Iraqi Christian, is celebrating by planning the perfect Christmas dinner. But when the arrival of a visitor stirs up long-buried memories, Noura and her husband are forced to confront the cost of their choices, and retrace the past they left behind.

Flower Drum Song’s 60th Anniversary Gala

December 2, 2018 - NAAP

The gala will begin at 5:30 PM with cocktails, followed by a 6:30 PM dinner (a traditional eight-course Chinese banquet). Throughout the evening will be entertainment informed by the history of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Flower Drum Song.

Nassim

December 10, 2018; New York City Center

In his latest work, Nassim Soleimanpour explores the power of language to unite us in these uncertain times. No rehearsals. A different guest actor at every performance. A sealed envelope. Oh, and some surprises.

Blue Ridge

December 12, 2018; Atlantic Theater Company

“A progressive high-school teacher with a rage problem retaliates against her unscrupulous boss and is sentenced to six months at a church-sponsored halfway house, where she attends to everyone's recovery but her own. Set in Southern Appalachia, Blue Ridge is a pitch-dark comedy about heartbreak, hell-raising and healing.“

Merrily We Roll Along

January 12, 2019; Roundabout Theatre

Roundabout’s company in residence, Fiasco Theater, reimagines its next Stephen Sondheim creation. With Fiasco’s one-of-a-kind imagination, this audacious musical about a trio of showbiz friends who fall apart and come together over 20 years emerges as newly personal and passionate.

Superhero

January 31, 2019; Second Stage Theatre

Before we can save the world, we have to save each other. From the Tony and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer of Next to Normal and the Tony Award-winning writer of Red comes a deeply human new musical about a fractured family, the mysterious stranger in apartment 4-B, and the unexpected hero who just might save the day.

Anne of Green Gables: Part 1

The Royal Family Performing Arts Space; January 24-February 11

An adaptation of the book with the same title.

God Said This

Cherry Lane Theater; January 29-February 15

God Said This paints a portrait of five Kentuckians facing mortality in very different ways. With her mom undergoing chemotherapy, Hiro returns home, struggling to let go of the demons she inherited. Sophie, her born-again Christian sister, confronts her faith while tackling inevitable adversity. James, their recovering alcoholic father, wants to repair his fractured relationship with his daughters. And, John, an old classmate and thirty-something single dad, worries about leaving a lasting legacy for his only son.

Alice By Heart

MCC Theater; January 30-March 30

The show, by Waitress scribe Jessie Nelson and Spring Awakening duo Duncan Sheik and Steven Sater, adapts Lewis Carroll’s famed fantasy into a London-set tale against the backdrop of World War II, as Alice and her friend Alfred journey down a rabbit hole to find love, loss, and the courage to move forward despite harsh circumstances.

REGIONAL / US TOURS (source)

Man of God

January 31 - February 24, 2019; East West Players

A hidden discovery in a hotel bathroom changes the lives of four Korean Christian girls on a mission trip to Thailand. Samantha is hurt that someone she trusted could betray her. Jen is worried about how this might affect her college applications. Kyung-Hwa thinks everyone should adjust their expectations. Mimi’s out for blood. Amid the neon lights and go go bars in Bangkok, the girls plot revenge in this funny, feminist thriller.  

Mamma Mia

May 9 - June 9, 2019; East West Players 

On the eve of her wedding, a daughter’s quest to discover the identity of her father brings three men from her mother’s past back to the Greek island they last visited 20 years ago. The storytelling magic of ABBA’s timeless hits sets the scene for this infectious tale of love and frolicking fun, creating an unforgettable musical experience that will leave you dancing in the aisles!

Tours - Dates are subject to region

Aladdin

Hamilton

Miss Saigon

Hello Dolly

Falsettos

Lea Salonga’s Human Heart Tour

Rent

TV special live on Fox tells the story of the AIDS epidemic in New York City

WEST END/LONDON (source)

The King and I

Until September 29, 2018

Set in 1860s Bangkok, the musical tells the story of the unconventional and tempestuous relationship that develops between the King of Siam and Anna, a British schoolteacher whom the modernist King, in an imperialistic world, brings to Siam to teach his many wives and children.

Love’s Labor’s Lost

August 23, 2018; Shakespeare's Globe Theatre

“Self-denial is in fashion at the court of Navarre where the young king and three of his courtiers solemnly forswear all pleasures in favour of serious study. But when the Princess of France and her entourage arrive, it isn’t long before the all-male ‘academe’ have broken every one of their self-imposed rules. Shakespeare’s boisterous send-up of all those who try to turn their back on life is a dazzling parade of every weapon in the youthful playwright’s arsenal, from excruciating cross-purposes and impersonations to drunkenness and bust-ups. It’s a banquet of language, groaning with puns, rhymes and grotesque coinages“

Dance Nation

August 27, 2018; Almeida Theatre

“Somewhere in America, a revolution is coming. An army of competitive dancers is ready to take over the world, one routine at a time. With a pre-teen battle for power and perfection raging on and off stage, Dance Nation is a ferocious exploration of youth, ambition and self-discovery.“

The Humans

August 30, 2018; Hampstead Theatre

“Hampstead Theatre is proud to present the Broadway production of The Humans by Stephen Karam, the winner of four 2016 Tony Awards including Best Play. Three generations of the Blake family have assembled for Thanksgiving in Brigid and Richard’s ramshackle pre-war apartment in Lower Manhattan. Whilst the event may have a slightly improvised air, the family is determined to make the best of its time together. As they attempt to focus on the traditional festivities, fears of the past and pressures of the future seep into the reunion and the precariousness of their position becomes increasingly evident.”

The Village

September 7, 2018; Theatre Royal Stratford East

“The Village transports the Lope de Vega’s Spanish play, Fuenteovejuna to contemporary India. It’s a powerful story of community and solidarity, and the lengths a person will go to protect themselves from tyranny. In Jyoti’s village, life is simple. People work and sing while living off the land. And finding a partner is far from her mind. She’d much prefer a delicious meal. Things are happy until the Inspector and his men come back to town. But when the tyrannical Inspector has his eye on Jyoti and he commits unspeakable acts against the village, everyone is pushed to breaking point. Will Jyoti dare turn him down despite what it may mean for her village?”

White Teeth

October 26, 2018; Kiln Theatre

“Rosie Jones, the Iqbal twins, their parents, their grandparents, Mad Mary and an avalanche of other characters who make up the everyday chaos of Kilburn High Road come together in an extraordinary revelry of NW6. An epic comedy with music and dance, this theatrical rollercoaster takes us on a fast-paced journey through history, different cultures and chance encounters. Zadie Smith’s breakthrough novel is adapted for stage by acclaimed playwright Stephen Sharkey and directed by Artistic Director Indhu Rubasingham in a major world premiere.”

Hadestown

November 2, 2018; National Theater

“In the warmth of summertime, songwriter Orpheus and his muse Eurydice are living it up and falling in love. But as winter approaches, reality sets in: these young dreamers can’t survive on songs alone. Tempted by the promise of plenty, Eurydice is lured to the depths of industrial Hadestown. On a quest to save her, Orpheus journeys to the underworld where their trust is put to a final test.”

INTERNATIONAL

Philippines 

Side Show - August 31, 2018

M. Butterfly - September 13, 2018

A Doll’s House Part 2 - September 15, 2018

Waitress - November 2018

Angels in America Spring 2019

Beautiful: the Carole King Musical Spring 2019

Korea

Matilda - September 8, 2018

The Greatest Showman - August 7, 2018

Bridges of Madison County - August 11, 2018

Jungle Book - closing August 26, 2018

Singapore

Peter and the Star Catcher - September 28, 2018 

Other Local Shows

Japan

Fiddler on the Roof - December 16, 2018

Something Rotten - December 31, 2018

CHITTY CHITTY BANG BANG - May 16, 2018

Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812 - January 5, 2019

Chicago - Osaka (August 1-4 at the Orix Theater) and in Tokyo (August 7-18 at the Tokyu Theatre Orb).

Full list of shows in Japan (translated)

Other Local Shows

China

Rent - August 30, 2018

Les Mis - September 27, 2018

Hamlet - November 28, 2018

Chicago - December 20, 2018

Other Local Shows

Canada

Come From Away (until June 30, 2019)

Next to Normal Toronto (April 26-May 19)

Dear Evan Hansen 

New Zealand

If/Then - November 29-December 8, 2018

[introvertguide]

Psycho (1960); AFI #14

The next movie on the AFI list was one of the few films in the horror genre that made the list at all, Psycho (1960). This is arguably the most well known of all the films by Alfred Hitchcock and was quite successful for the modest budget. The entire movie cost about $800,000 to make in about 3 weeks of time utilizing a small TV film crew. This little slasher flick made 32 million and was nominated for 4 Academy Awards (including Best Director for Hitchcock) although it didn’t take home any trophies. So what is so special about this film? Let us first review the plot to find out...

SPOILER ALERT: This movie is almost 60 years old and I introduced it two weeks ago, but I still seem to get the occasional complaint if I don’t say something.

The story begins with what seems like a random hotel room and a woman who seems to be having an affair with a man who won’t free himself to be with her. The woman is Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) and the man is her secret lover Sam Loomis (Jon Gavin). She leaves upset to return to work and he goes back to his home in a little town outside the city. Marion is asked to take $40,000 in cash from a customer as a deposit on a house over to the bank (this would be about equal to a third of a million in today’s money). She instead drives away with it to go to her boyfriend so they can run away together. As she is driving, a sudden storm forces her to stop at a roadside motel so that she can get some sleep and get her bearings. 

She stops at the Bates Motel and finds she accidently veered from the main highway so she decides to get a room. She finds the very shy owner Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) charming at first, but she starts to realize that he is a little strange after having some dinner with him. He seems to have a very strange relationship with his mother who is mentally ill and yells at Norman. Marion goes back to her room and it is made clear that she realizes that she can’t keep the money she stole so she is going home in the morning to face the consequences and give back what she took. Sadly, as Marion takes a shower, she is attacked in what might be the most famous scene in American cinematic history. She is stabbed mercilessly by what appears to be the mother of Norman. Norman finds the body and puts Marion into her car and pushes the whole thing into a swamp near the house.

Naturally, a person with a load of stolen cash will soon be missed, so Marion’s sister Lila (Vera Miles) finds Sam Loomis and asks where Marion is. The audience knows that he was not in on the plan so he is shocked to hear about the stolen money and agrees to help find her. The owner of the stolen money has hired a private detective named Milton Arbogast (Martin Balsam) who also joins in the search for Marion and the cash. 

Arbogast goes to the Motel to ask some questions and finds Norman. The PI askes many questions and makes Norman upset so Arbogast calls in to say he is going to check out the old Bates house above the motel because he believes the mother knows something about Marion. This is a fatal mistake for the PI because he is unaware that there is a murderer about. He goes into the house and then walks up the steps looking for Mrs. Bates and he runs into her at the top of the stares when she rushes out of her room and slashes his face. Arbogast falls down the steps and Mother rushes down after him and continues to stab him. 

This is another person missing, so Lila Crane and Sam Loomis go to the motel to look for the private investigator. Sam distracts Norman while Lila goes to the house to try and talk to Mother about her missing sister. Norman figures out what is going on and knocks out Sam and runs up to the house where Lila is. Lila wanders around the house in an attempt to hide until she finds the skeleton of Mother in the fruit cellar. A crazed Norman dressed in his mother’s clothes jumps out and tries to attack, but he is subdued by Sam who came up from behind.

An ending exposition scene has a psychologist explaining that Norman’s mother died long ago and Norman had formed another personality of Mother to replace her. He had a split personality. By the time the police came and Norman was taken, he had fully changed into the Mother personality. The movie ends with a close up of Norman smiling in a cell with crazed eyes and the skeleton of mother is underlaid to show that the transformation was complete. Roll credits.

I grew up with a staircase in my house and going up to bed at night seemed strangely difficult after seeing the scene with the detective. The shower scene never was that big of a deal to me. Not sure why I thought one was worse than the other, but that was just me. From what I gather (a grueling couple of questions to a whopping half dozen people), my sample of women tended to have more issues with the shower scene. I understand the fear because everything seems so wrong about that death. It is so early in the movie and it is the apparent protagonist who has seen the error in her ways and wants to make amends. She is washing herself clean of her crimes in a place we like to think we are safe and she is unceremoniously slaughtered. At the end of the scene, a pan over to the untouched money shows that it wasn’t here crime that got her killed, but her being a tempting woman to the wrong man. She did not deserve to die, but she was killed anyway. And that is terrifying. 

The movie was originally going to be an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents (which explains the tiny budget), but two things brought in the crowds and made the movie the phenomenon it was. First was the score by Bernard Hermann. The film was actually almost scrapped because Hitchcock was a perfectionist and he didn’t like quiet driving scenes and silent murder scenes. He rewatched the movie with the attacking score of Hermann’s that had a string section played in an attacking manor (the bowing action is somewhat similar to a slicing motion). I truly believe that the soundtrack completes the film and I think that Hitchcock agreed. It is said that he tripled Hermann’s fee after watching the shower scene with the stabbing score entitled “The Murder.”

The other thing that really got the butts in the seats was a rather simple gimmick. The trailer for the movie showed Alfred Hitchcock walking around the grounds of the Bates Motel talking about all the horrible things that had happened. It was rather silly in some ways, but the end gave a warning that there was such a surprise twist early on that nobody would be allowed into the theatre once the movie began. It also showed Hitchcock opening a shower curtain to reveal a screaming Vera Miles, so audiences didn’t know that Marion Crane would be the one that was killed off so early. It was a little piece of marketing genius that really heightened the movie going experience. 

I have the Hitchcock box set, so I watched it a couple of times alone and a couple times with others in the house. Every time I watched the trailer before the film and it sets it up so perfectly. I also find myself impressed with the score no matter how many times I hear it. We even had our first jump scare that really startled the group (top of the stairs murder). This movie is so much fun and perfect for the Halloween season.

This film is surely worth recommending, but it might be a little much for the young and the sensitive. Be ready to have some nervous showers for a couple days after watching if it is your first viewing. Most certainly, watch the famous shower scene because it is maybe the most impressive three minutes of American cinema of all time. The director, the characters, the music, the setting...it is all iconic and a master class on how to make a suspenseful thriller. Watch the movie for yourself and enjoy what is undeniably one of the best films in its genre. Fully deserving of the high ranking on the AFI list.

[livingcorner]

How to plan a small garden – make the most of a tiny outdoor space@|how to plan a small garden layout@|https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/APyRhBzGSJicPA5erFdSpN-1200-80.jpg@|21

If you are wondering how to plan a small garden, these expert tips and ideas are bound to inspire you. With clever planning and thoughtful planting, even the most compact courtyard can create an incredible impact that is just as striking as a larger lawn or terrace. 

What constitutes a small garden is debatable to homeowners, yet chances are most of us have a more compact plot than we would like. However, there are countless small garden ideas and solutions to maximize limited outdoor space. And lest we forget – a small garden requires much less time and tools to maintain.

[external_link_head]

To create the small and idyllic garden of your dreams, first think about how you want to enhance the outdoor space you have to suit your style of living without making it cramped or cluttered. Bold statements, vertical planting – particularly useful in courtyard gardens – beautiful boundaries and optical illusions are all key elements to incorporate into your small garden layout to make it perfect for your needs. 

Photography/Mark Bolton

(Image credit: Future)

How to plan a small garden

1. Be inspired to find your style

To plan a small garden, in-depth research is required at the offset to construct an attractive and practical space that looks beautiful all year round.

Borrow inspiration by visiting as many open gardens and public grounds as you can, to get a feel of what you like. Yearly shows, such as the Chelsea Flower Show or the RHS Hampton Court Palace Flower Show, are full of small show gardens designed perfectly by landscape gardeners to get the most out of compact spaces, so you’ll be spoilt for choice with options.

Be it a cottage hideaway, urban balcony garden or family haven, once you’ve decided on your preferred garden style, making a mood board is a worthwhile idea to experiment with plant varieties, exterior paint colors and outdoor furniture options too. 

2. Survey and measure your plot

Whether you are starting with a blank canvas or inheriting a mature enclosure that requires a makeover, start to plan a small garden layout with a wish list and any note problems you may need to overcome. For instance, would you like secluded seating as well as a dining area? Could you fit in a pergola to break up a lawn and patio? Do you need to rectify poor drainage, or find long garden ideas to make your space look less narrow?

Then, measure and survey your garden to assess its possibilities. Look to where the sun lands during the day, and take into account how areas might adapt throughout the seasons and years to come. Envisage how your planting plan might mature or expire over time.

[external_link offset=1]

(Image credit: Future / Annaick Guitteny)

3. Pick out your small garden layout ideas

Depending on the size of your small garden, a distinctive layout will set the foundations. Most successful gardens fall into three basic designs – circular, diagonal or rectangular. These can then be customized with planting and variations of these themes to personalize your space.

Formal designs tend to have straight edges and symmetry, whereas informal gardens are looser in style with curvaceous and sweeping edges. 

4. Put your plan to paper

It’s much less expensive to make mistakes on paper first, so make a scaled sketch of the garden as it is, and then add on your ideas as separate cutouts that you can layer up and move around. Or, search for an online garden planner that will allow you to input measurements and visualize your dream space with digital precision.

5. Create beautiful boundaries

Unfortunately, small gardens are often enclosed by walls and fences and generally overlooked, so ensuring hard landscaping and boundaries are planned right can be as important as greenery. Look to ways of overcoming this conundrum, including implementing one of these small garden decking ideas to provide a seamless finish.

If the view beyond the garden is attractive, make a feature of the boundary itself. Low-level fencing will reveal the outlook and create the impression your garden carries on and on. Traditional picket style or contemporary slatted fencing, rather than close boards, will let light stream through. And why not paint the natural wood a bold color to enhance the sense of space and make foliage pop out against it? 

Arches, pergolas and trellises are useful for adding height and privacy from the outside world.

(Image credit: John Lewis)

6. Prepare a planting plan

Hard landscaping and boundaries provide a garden structure, but it’s the planting choices that offer character, shape and softness. Movement between foliage and boundaries will help your garden flow and bring the plants into the space rather than restricting them around the edges, which can enclose the space.

Research height, spread and soil preference before you buy. Stick to a single color palette for a coherent scheme. Choose one or two complementary shades and pick out petal colors with painted garden furniture or outdoor cushions and rugs.

How do you design a small garden?

With today’s busy lives, the garden is an extension of our homes no matter how tiny and so needs to be flexible. To create space for relaxing, entertaining and alfresco dining, choose outdoor furniture that is mobile and can serve more than one purpose – especially useful when planning roof garden ideas, where space is at a premium.

Ian Ellis, outdoor furniture buyer at John Lewis, explains: ‘If you are looking to make the most of your small space, buy foldable furniture for eating so you can easily put it away or cover it when not in use. 

‘The alternative is to choose something compact that can be used for casual dining and lounging – for example, small lounge chairs and a coffee table.’

Look at creating a focal point or destination place; this can be a tree, water feature or seating that will give you a different perspective of the space once you are there.

[external_link offset=2]

(Image credit: Lights4fun)

How do you make a small garden look nice? 

Optical illusions will add interest and maximize the space you have. They cleverly trick the eye to make a small garden look bigger or more densely planted. Decorative mirrors will reflect light and create an illusion of more space. Beds filled with tall plant varieties will add height, and flowering climbers on trellis fencing and exterior walls will draw the eye upwards or outwards.

Enhance the ambience of your tiny retreat when you plan a small garden by adding beautiful outdoor lighting ideas, like the string lighting draped from the wooden pergola above. Garden lighting is an attractive and practical solution for changing the outdoor atmosphere. 

Will Law, partner and home design stylist at John Lewis, advises: ‘Small gardens are a great place to layer lots of outdoor lighting, as you won’t need hundreds of metres of lights to make the space feel magical. Be inspired by outdoor string lighting ideas, such as hanging festoon lights overhead or wrapping trees in outdoor fairy lights, and have tea lights on any available surface to give a cosy glow.’

(Image credit: Future)

What are the best plants for a small garden?

Less is more when planning a small garden, so don’t be tempted to cram too much in. Instead, focus on a few larger pieces, such as a pair of space-saving trees potted in large planters, or grow a tall living wall on an obtrusive exterior wall to install height and lush colour. 

‘Just because your garden is small, doesn’t mean everything in it has to be too,’ explains Lynsey Abbott, outdoor living buyer at Dobbies Garden Centres. ‘One very large pot will add more impact than lots of small ones because it will stop the space feeling cluttered. 

‘A bigger pot will also house more plants, so you can mix and match with flowers and herbs that complement each other and your overall colour scheme.’ Pots can even accommodate a small vegetable garden with crops like tomatoes and herbs.

Thriving bedding choices when you look to plan a small garden scheme include those that are hardworking and offer striking color and shape. Award-winning designer and BBC Gardeners’ World presenter Mark Lane says: ‘Mix it up with shrubs such as vitex, hydrangea or cornus and you will have the perfect getaway. Small flowering plants such as bidens, tagetes, coreopsis, or crocosmia will add a splash of color. 

‘Narrow trees, such as taxus baccata fastigiata robusta or the ornamental cherry amanogawa, are some of the best trees for a small garden. They will also draw the eye upwards to the sky, making your garden feel bigger. ‘ [external_footer]

source https://livingcorner.com.au/how-to-plan-a-small-garden-make-the-most-of-a-tiny-outdoor-spacehow-to-plan-a-small-garden-layouthttps-cdn-mos-cms-futurecdn-net-apyrhbzgsjicpa5erfdspn-1200-80-jpg21/

[lcsbicarchive]

☽ *ﾟ  ━ second ( & final ) self para of the week for miss hazel, taking place on monday ( the 25th )  ☽ *ﾟ  ━ this was supposed to be posted on monday, but life happened, so excuse me. ☽ *ﾟ  ━ detailing & touching on what happened on monday, the status of permanent record for the week, & hazel’s plan, primarily while she tidies up her apartment & cleans her bathroom.   ☽ *ﾟ  ━ i like to think it goes without saying, but any dusty ( @dvstpan ) & roxie ( @roxxies ) details were pre-plotted & very much approved by harley; i’m not just pulling things for her characters out my arse.  ☽ *ﾟ  ━ it’s long, & definitely not my finest piece of writing ( she’s lowkey garbage but i digress ) but still stuff i wanted to establish somewhere on the dash and not just in headcanon form. ☽ *ﾟ  ━ trigger warnings: suicide, death, vomit, alcoholism & addiction, sharp objects, blood, mental illness, depression, the biggest & most explicit of which being suicide. 

     returning to her apartment, to the scene of the crime, isn't as difficult as hazel thought it might be. though eerily quiet, other than the hum of the fish tank, it isn't that bad. it just looks like her home. the laundry's still folded and perched on the back of the armchair, there's still a coffee mug in the sink waiting to be washed, and it still smells like her home, that familiar, comforting scent of home that goes unnoticed until she's been away for a night or two, yet even now can't pick apart. yet as she closes the door behind her, force of habit allowing her to gently toss her keys onto the table by the door, it can't help but become a little clearer. it's like the quietness intensifies, wandering over to the sofa with a sigh. bedding that was never actually slept in still sits on the couch, a few of dusty's possessions dotted around the room. the space between the couch and hazel's bedroom is far too small for her not to have known. he was so close, yet he couldn't have been farther away, and it causes a sigh to leave her now, forcing herself to stop uselessly staring at the bedding as if it'll do anything, and actually do something productive. if she'd returned to her flat without sleeping some of the impact of the day off a little, exhaustion not helping her emotions, it's a scene that might've caused her to burst into tears, yet roxie had been right last night. she didn't have to go home. hazel stands by her decision to ask roxie for her company; although her reaching out had been a protective measure to allow herself to stay sober, not ruining nearly nine years of work in one godawful day, it would've been the best move for her even if she hadn't thought it best to not be alone to keep herself clean. she needed it anyway. she never would've asked for it, too used to getting on with the harder days and powering through alone, as it's what she's had to do since she was a child, but perhaps that's something she needs to work on, as roxie's company had been the best thing for her. she hadn't panicked, hadn't made a big deal out of something that didn't need to be, when hazel admitted that although she doesn't want to drink, and likes her life far too much to let herself ruin it again, she was still worried about what she might do if left to her own devices, stewing at the scene of the crime and able to dwell on the events of the day, and what dusty did, and how dusty felt. there's no way in hell she'll ever let herself ruin the life she made for herself after getting sober, yet sobriety isn't just a walk in the park once achieved, and although she's fine on a day-to-day basis, there will always be struggles, even if they're just once in a blue moon; hazel accepted a long time ago that she'll always be an addict, and whatever she has to do to stop herself from slipping up again, will be done. even though she doesn't think she'd ever let herself do anything, putting the protective measure in place would never be a bad thing. roxie had been her security blanket.

    roxie had been practically perfect to her, making her dinner, sitting with her while she bathed, sharing her own experience in a similar situation though roxie nor her friend had been as lucky, giving her something of hers to sleep in, and something to wear today, letting her sleep in her bed, not going to sleep herself until hazel had nodded off to ensure she was alright, soothingly toying with her hair on the couch as they watched a movie after the numbness settled in, and being the one to remind her that she doesn't have to go to work today, and that maybe she shouldn't go to work today. initially, hazel had protested, brushing it off with saying that she has to, as that's her approach to everything; she does what has to be done and simply gets on with life. roxie was right. initially, she'd wondered if perhaps she should go to work, channel it into something productive, use her job as a way to cope as she always does, even if she doesn't need to go. but roxie was right. what she needs is a break, some time to breathe, to visit dusty, make his hospital stay as bearable as possible, and put her flat and her life back together. as she begins to strip the bedding from the duvet and pillow cases, she dwells on this now, incredibly grateful for roxie. she walked with her to permanent record, stayed nearby while hazel took care of the business side of things, and hasn't gone far now. after visiting dusty later, they'll return back to roxie's, hazel getting another night's sleep in which she feels the warmth of the other woman beside her, comforted by her presence alone let alone the affection given to her in the most innocent and soothing of ways. she's a saint. she may just be the most sinful saint hazel's ever met, but a saint nonetheless. though a feeling of emptiness settled in finally midway through her bath, the events of the day finally catching up to her full force, not coming and going in waves like it did throughout the rest of the day, she woke up not feeling quite so empty. she isn't overwhelmed with the confusing cocktail of emotions she faced yesterday, not helped by the exhaustion and the shock, but she's not entirely stoic, either. she can get on with the day, and do what she has to do.

    duvet folded, pillows sat atop it on the sofa, hazel scoops up the sheets to toss into the washing machine. it'll clean while she busies herself, and she can toss it in the tumble dryer before she leaves. god, there's so much to do. but no, she reminds herself, everything else can wait, all she needs to do is pack a few things into a bag for tonight ( toothbrush, clothes for tomorrow, something to sleep in, as although she was comforted by and very much appreciated roxie shirt's last night, she doesn't want to push her luck ) feed her fish, and see to the bathroom. that's all she needs to do. the bathroom... she doesn't know if she should save that for last, or get it out of the way now, but she brushes it aside in favour of tucking the spare pillow and the duvet dusty never slept under back in the cupboard, and gathering his belongings to tidy up a little, hoping to find his phone. she hadn't thought to grab it yesterday, among the paramedics’ questions and equipment she didn't know the use for, amidst the crying and the panic and the the blood still being on her hand. she only had hers on her because she was carrying it when she got up to  use the bathroom, a habit she'd planned to try and break, yet doesn't think she should after yesterday. upon finding dusty's phone and charger, she moves into the bedroom, planting them on her bed so she'll remember to throw them in her bag when she packs that. for now, she decides, the bathroom needs attending to.

    as she ducks under the kitchen sink to grab a variety of cleaning products and a roll of trash bags, unsure of the current state of her bathroom, her memory of yesterday becoming a blur when it comes to the finer details ( all she cared about was dusty; the aspects of the picture that are hidden in the background simply became irrelevant ) her mind shifts to her coworker's earlier words. 'you need any help or cleaning or anything ?' it'd been a question regarding permanent record, and not the apartment above it, as dusty's colleagues didn't need to know that he'd been staying with their boss ( not that she sees it that way, of course, simply seeing it as the four of them being equal ) and certainly didn't need to know that he overdosed a mere floor away from where they spend the majority of their days. still, it had been appreciated, and hazel was fairly certain that said coworker just didn't want to leave, but with permanent record cleaned saturday night, they don't need to do it again until they open once more. though the remaining three members of the PR5 team threw in their two cents regarding what they wanted to do today in terms of working, hazel had already decided to take the day off after talking with roxie, and no matter what the other two said, the decision would've fallen onto hazel. it was her call to make, whether or not they'd open the shop today, and though it's not the jolt into fully accepting and realising her manager status, it's something. she knew she had to take charge, make a final decision, and do what was best for the staff. permanent record will be closed until thursday, and hazel and the team took care of their bookings, sending out an email to every customer and client booked in for the day with apologies, slight discount offers, and a new suggested time slot, and if they can't make their new time, to call the parlour on thursday, and announcing on social media that due to an emergency, the shop would be closed. though she should be, perhaps, and she might be in any other context, any 'sorry for the inconvenience' typed up by hazel this morning, was a lie. she isn't sorry at all. though opinions differed when it came to the other artists, with one of them willing to work despite the events of yesterday, and the other wanting some time off, hazel made the final decision. telling them in the first place hadn't been easy ( they knew something was wrong the moment they walked in. perhaps hazel should've text beforehand, given them a slight heads up that today may not go as they'd assumed it might, but by the time she would've been able to, they would've already been heading out for the day. but hazel's appearance and demeanour alone would've been enough of a clue, not at all ready for work in terms of wearing roxie's clothes and not an ounce of makeup on her, and the chaotic energy swiped from her, confidence gone as she seemed to almost curl in on herself, eyes tired, yet it was rather obvious that something was awry as hazel clearly hadn't prepared the shop for opening before their arrival, as she does almost every other day of the year. their faces fell, eyes shifting, as they entered, and once they were both present, hazel watched concern wash over their faces as she told them dusty is in hospital ) but she did what had to be done. just as she'll do now, with this damn bathroom.

    the door is ajar, and hazel has to take a moment to remind herself that she doesn't have to push so hard on the door to open it. there won't be a weight behind it. prodding the door open, hazel stays where she is, not wandering forward as the door swings open. fuck. cabinet doors still flung open, half the contents is scattered across the sink below it, spilling out onto the floor, a mess of spare razor heads, cotton pads and cotton buds, moisturiser, that damn body scrub her mom sent her she meant to throw out. in an odd way, it almost looks like there was a struggle. the movement so desperate to get away from someone, or to defend against someone, that it causes a mess and it doesn't even matter at the time, reaching for anything of use or scrambling to get away. nostrils flaring, the blood and the day old vomit hits her nose before her eyes can fall to it. christ. supposing she'll start there, hazel drops to sit on her knees, cleaning products on the floor. instantly, hazel realises that this is what she expected upon walking back into her home, the aching feeling in her chest, the way her breath catches in her throat, and the weight on her shoulders and the overwhelming reminder that something happened in here. dusty could've died in here. her ceiling could've been the last thing he saw, and hazel's head tilts back to look at it now, staring at the lumps and bumps in a boring sea of white. though, he'd been slumped against the door. her eyes fall to the shower, directly opposite the bathroom door. the last thing he could've seen might've been her shower, her shampoo and conditioner on the shelf, and that mango body wash she's only using because the store had run out her go-to. it’s nothing. it’s absolutely nothing. christ.

    snapping out of it, hazel lets out a sigh, slipping on the gloves that are technically spares from downstairs as she didn't have any others, because sitting here thinking about what happened yesterday isn't getting her bathroom any cleaner. thinking about how she rammed her fingers down dusty's throat in a desperate attempt to get him to vomit up what he'd taken won't get her bathroom any cleaner. thinking of the further panic that flooded her body when his vomit was riddled with blood, pausing as she was unsure where the fuck it came from and if she should keep trying or not, her hand now covered in it too, won't get her bathroom any cleaner. thinking about dusty all alone in this damn room as the life slowly drained out of him, finally unable to keep his eyes open any longer, won't get her fucking bathroom any cleaner. the mess itself doesn't bother her, it's the reason it's here that does, and it's the reason it causes her lip to tremble and her chest to tighten, and the reason she sighs as she cleans it up. she has to get on with it. she just has to get on with it. it's only as she turns, ensuring she's gotten all of it before she commits to covering the floor in disinfectant, that she realises she'll have to throw out the bathmat. blood sits in one of the corners of it, projected forward from his mouth, and hazel sighs, arm lifting to wipe her brow as her hands are rather occupied. there is nothing to occupy her mind but the constant string of just get on with it, just get on with it and get it done, just get on with it and don't cry, don't cry, don't fucking cry running through her mind, with reminders of what happened in this very room peppered in for good measure that she tries to banish. don't think about dusty downing all his medication, don't take about him stumbling to a sit as he pushes himself against the door and slowly allows his body to go limp, don't think about what could've happened if you didn't wake up so early, don't think about how he was only a few feet away, just don't think about it. despite the state of dusty when he arrived on her doorstep on wednesday night, and the fact he, despite his usual eloquence, couldn't even text her coherently, or the way he rushed through the door on thursday, she never thought she'd be scrubbing at her bathroom floor to clean up the mess caused after he tried to take his own life, while he sits in a hospital bed the other side of town. maybe she should've known. true, she'd been worried, yet she hadn't worried about this. she didn't think it would go this far, and yet now she can't help but wonder why. he didn't seem like himself. he hardly was himself. that's a bright red fluorescent sign if ever there was one, yet hazel didn't take it for what it was.

    what if she had ? what if she'd seen what was in front of her ? what would she have done ? could she have done anything ? she wouldn't be tossing paper towels and empty cleaning product containers and her bathmat into a trash bag, peeling the gloves from her sweat-clad hands to toss in, too, once she's on her feet again. unsure if the room is genuinely stuffy, or if she's just warm and the weight on her chest is instead due to the task at hand, hazel lifts onto her tiptoes to reach up to push open the small window above the towel rack; it's the only window in the room, and hazel usually avoids opening it as getting it closed again is quite the task, but even if the room doesn't need some air, it'll help with the smell before she sprays the room with air freshener before she leaves. she supposes, though, that the hard part is over, and she moves to the sink to both wash her hands, and clean up the cabinet above it. the cotton buds that fell into the basin are thrown into the trash bag, the spare razor heads put back on the disturbed shelves, and as her eyes lift to find their home, another sigh falls from her mouth. that desperation is there, the need to find what he was looking for as his hands roamed the shelves haphazardly, as if he could hardly pay attention to what he was doing, fingers brushing over items he didn't need and lodging them out of place. the hell was he even looking for ? 'just thinking about sleep' doesn't fit as she looks at the contents of the cabinet, putting the spare razor heads away, and tidying up what got nudged out of place. he would've done anything, it seems, taken anything, done whatever he could to himself. just thinking about sleep...

     once her hands are clean and dry, hazel lifts the bin bag out the way, dropping it in the hallway to be thrown out as she leaves, before her eyes scan the floor, searching for anything that needs to be put back in the cupboard, and picking things up as she goes along, crouching. however, she pauses, a spare razor head tucked under the sink catching her attention. eyebrows gently tugged together, she lifts it into her hand. it's bent out of shape, the blades slightly askew, as if someone had been twisting and pulling and jabbing at it, almost as if... as if someone was trying to get the blades out. blinking at the razor in her hand, hazel feels that familiar lump climbing up her throat, letting a shaky sigh fall out of her mouth. dusty. the realisation churns in her stomach, and she lifts her gaze in an attempt keep the tears filling her eyes where they are, not allowing them to fall down her face, sniffing. he was so desperate. the hell would've happened if he'd set the blades free ? she'd have awoken to a pool of blood, no ? the limp hand against the tiles that told her dusty was in the bathroom being red and sticky, with a gash right underneath ? dusty's a smart man, even in a moment like this; would he have been in a logical enough head space to do what would be more effective - would he have gone horizontal or vertical ? what the hell could they do if he'd cut down and not across ? would she still have gotten there in time ? surely bleeding out would be quicker than his organs slowly shutting down and giving up on him as he slips in the abyss ? or would he still have taken his sleeping pills, too ? closing her fingers around her palm, and the razor in it, hazel pulls herself upright, though as she does so, she catches sight of round bottle by her laundry basket. she'll get to that in a second. perhaps she shouldn't feel a twinge of both confusion and hurt that dusty seemingly lied to her. he said he just wanted to sleep. all he was thinking about was sleep. bullshit. he was thinking of an escape, a way out, whatever way he could, desperate enough to rummage through her cabinet for something, anything, that could help him slip away. he'd told her he was only thinking about sleep, and it hurts that he thought he had to lie to her. that’s not the kind of friend she wants to be to him, the kind of friend he feels he has to lie to about something like this, and it hits her like a train as she remembers how important this is; dusty values honesty. yet, to her, the one person he’s told things he’s told the select few, and vice versa, he lied. allowing the razor head to drop into the trash bag, she moves back into the room, towards the laundry basket, and drops so she's crouching again. eyes blurring, she forces them shut. she just has to get on with it, and crying will only slow her down. expelling a shaky breath, hazel's eyes open, reaching for the bottle that she then flips over in her hand. her own name printed on the front of the bottle, her prescribed antidepressants sit in her hand. one a day, every day, and gratefully; it took a while, but she finally found a medication that worked for her, and she's been taking it for years. though, last night, she went without, on account of being at roxie's, and she tells herself not to assume the worst as to why they’re not in the cabinet. she found it on the floor, but dusty's hands were searching through the shelves desperately, stumbling across whatever he could find. if he knocked them to floor, it wouldn't be that wild a concept. though, if he'd reached for the razor, if he saw her medication, why wouldn't he take it, logically ? either way, hazel needs to take one to catch up for the one she missed last night, knowing that if she takes another tonight, when she's supposed to, it'll be alright. pressing the cap down as she turns it, hazel can only let out a sigh when she lifts the lid off. a considerable amount, enough for her to notice, a third or a quarter of what remained in the bottle, is gone. she doesn't keep track of how much she has left in that way, counting every pill, but she keeps an eye on it, just so she knows when she needs more. he took her fucking medication, and her eyes close for a moment, expelling another sigh as an oddly helpless feeling washes over her. there's a decent handful missing, and it could've been the tipping point. she couldn't tell the paramedics he'd taken them, too, as she had no idea, not seeing the bottle discarded under the laundry basket in that blur of a morning, and it could've killed him. christ. sighing, once more, through her nose, hazel opens her eyes and tips the bottle a tad in an attempt to get a pill out into her palm, scooping the other two that slip out back into the bottle with the rim of it, screwing the cap back on as she pulls herself upright. with the tablet tucked away in palm, she twists the lid back on the bottle, before taking the pill with a cupped handful of water from the tap, and gathering the rest of the fallen belongings to put back where they were knocked from. just get on with it. talk to dusty about it later, but for now, it doesn't matter. they flushed it out of him either way.

    now, hazel pushes the cabinet doors closed, eyes shifting away from the reflection that stares back at her once the doors are shut. even in a brief second, knows she looks tired. she looks far better than yesterday ( not that she's to know; her appearance was the last of her concerns ) but her eyes are giving her away, as they always do, with circles resting under them, and the both of them still a little red from yesterday. it doesn't matter. her fall to the sink, wondering if she should rearrange the cabinet. put the razors somewhere more out of reach, put the ibuprofen somewhere else, hide her antidepressants from the rest of the world -- when she brings them back from roxie's later, as she'll be taking the bottle with her -- before she realises that no, she shouldn't. she doesn't need to child-proof her own home, her own cupboards, as this won't happen again. it also wasn't her fault, yet this reminder doesn't come to her; it wasn't her fault that dusty knew she takes medication and knew where to find it, nor was it her fault she keeps razor blades in the house that he tried to get his hands on. it's her fault he's currently alive, her quick-thinking and sudden consciousness in the early hours of the morning saving his life, but of course, she doesn't register that either, simply dwelling on the negatives: what would've happened if she hadn't woken up so early ? why the hell did she leave him when he clearly wasn't okay ? why didn't she do something ? and why the hell is his mom so thankful for her ?

    yesterday, it had already been getting late by the time carly could arrive. she got the first flight out, desperate to be with her son, yet the travelling still took time, as did finding a flight with a seat available, and she practically flew through the corridor, eyes scanning her surroundings until they landed on hazel, who she immediately rushed up to and pulled into a hug. lifting onto her tiptoes, hazel's chin rested on the other woman's shoulder, she didn't mean to start sobbing the moment she wrapped her arms around her, the unadulterated kind of bawling that had her snivelling and caused her shoulders to jerk as guilt twisted her stomach into knots. her son could've been dead because of her. yet carly smoothed out the waves of brunette hair against the back of hazel's head, shushing her string of apologies, and holding on tight. she could've been so angry, demanding answers as to why hazel didn't do something sooner, why she left him, how she let this happen, and hazel would've understood. often, hazel will defend herself for the choices she made despite how she may actually feel inside, such as defending the choice she made eight years ago that should've could've been a two-person decision, but in this instance, hazel would've simply let the older woman yell. she would've taken any anger that carly had to throw at her, screamed questions that hazel wouldn't be able to answer. no, she hadn't known what he was going to do when she went to sleep, and no, she wouldn't have left him if she'd known how vulnerable he was, and she could defend herself in that way if anger was aimed in her direction, yet she wouldn't; this is his mother. it's her job to protect dusty. and it's her job to loathe anybody that doesn't protect him, too. if she hated hazel from this moment on, she'd understand, yet she met her with kindness. and perhaps it's the kind of kindness dusty needed yesterday, the one presence that might've been able to actually help him. hazel couldn't be more relieved to know that his mom is with him now; even hazel sees it that, sometimes, people just need their mother.

    hard part definitely out the way, hazel sprays the room with air freshener before plucking her toothbrush from the holder and moving into her bedroom, packing things into her bag to take to roxie's, as well as dusty's phone and charger. the task seems as easy as breathing after tackling the bathoom, going without a hitch, and is done in a matter of minutes. bag slung over her shoulder and breaking benjamin's album saturate in her hand, hazel moves out of the bedroom and back into her living room, popping dusty's album atop the pile of his things she'd gathered; she'll ask him what he wants her to do with them later, unsure if he wants them brought to him now, given to his roommate to take home, or left with her for the time being, but she'll pack them into his bag when she returns home tomorrow either way. her eyes shift as to tries to remember if she's done everything, ticking things off in her head, before the humming of the fish tank reminds her. she should probably feed ernie and bert. 

     "hey, little guys," she murmurs, to the gain of absolutely nobody, as she flips the lid open, the practically identical fish swimming to the top to greet her -- or, more likely, in anticipation for the flakes of food they know she's about to drop in, but she likes to think it's for her. thankfully, all seems to be well in the tank, and they don't need any further attending to until tomorrow. so naturally, she gives them a little wave before popping the lid back down. pottering around her apartment like a chicken with its ass ablaze isn't a rarity for hazel, and she doesn't realise that her laboured wandering shifts back into her usually chaotic self as she remembers to put the laundry on to dry, and to go and shut the window in the bathroom, even if she has to reach, stretch, and wish she never opened the damn thing in the first place to get there. tying a knot in the trash bag, hazel then lifts it her hand, ready to throw it out as she leaves, and her free hand instinctively reaches for the door handle to shut the bathroom door. she never wants to open her door to see that ever again, and she pauses, hand hovering over the handle for a moment before she pulls her hand back, and moves to grab her keys and leave. that door will be left open.

[thelioncourts]

what are some of the most beautiful fics of wincest or j2? in your opinion? what the some of the funniest fics? which fics made you cry the most?

this is such a loaded question. our fandom is full of so many amazing stories and so many talented authors, and it’s almost impossible for me to make a list of anything without it being three miles long. that being said, I’ll try. mind you, I am far less read in Wincest. despite my love of it, J2 fics have always called to me more, and always, so forgive me if most of what I give are J2 stories. the beautiful and the ones that make me cry often criss-cross, so I’ll do my best to organize them as much as I can.

Beautiful Fics

Forever is a Lonely Number by lightinthehall

[ Written for the prompt ] “Jensen never ages, Jared does, but they stay together forever.”

Comment: an absolutely breathtaking story. so much is said in so few words and I both ache and dream and sigh happily at this story every time.

Rating: Explicit; Word Count: 3286; Warnings: character death

In Becoming Who We Are by errant-jane

Fresh out of school with a degree from the University of Washington, Jensen meets and falls for Jeff Morgan. He may not know what he wants to do with his life, but for the first time since leaving Texas, he feels like things are coming together. Jeff seems like the perfect guy, right up until it all falls apart, and Jensen is left wondering where he went wrong. A couple failed relationships and a few years later, Jensen’s decided that one-night stands are preferable to dates. He’s got his friends and his roommate, Sophia, for everything non-sex related, after all. Until Sophia decides to move in with her boyfriend and Jensen’s stuck trying to find a new roommate. At Sophia’s insistence, Jensen meets Jared Padalecki and the two become fast friends. Only, the more they get to know each other, the more obvious it is that there’s something there. But Jensen is unwilling to risk losing Jared’s friendship for the possibility of more. Unfortunately, if he doesn’t get things figured out, he might lose Jared anyway.

Comment: this story is causes so much emotional confusion for me because it’s so perfect with just Jensen and Jeff and I couldn’t see how it would end up with Jared in the picture at all and then it just. happens. and it’s amazing to watch Jensen grow and to watch Jared worm his way, unknowingly really, into Jensen’s heart.

Rating: NC-17; Word Count: 82700; Warnings: none

A Song in the Stars by strive2bhappy

Jared Padalecki has dreamed of taking to the skies since he was five-years-old. When he becomes an adult and builds a spaceship of his own, he gets to do just that, looking for adventure – little did he know the adventure waiting for him. Jensen Ackles is born part human, part Terryn and his life as an outcast is difficult – music is his only real escape. When he’s captured by the Dominion, an organization hell-bent on taking over every galaxy in every way they can, he’s used as a lab experiment to see how his special, combined heritage can be advantageous for them. Fleeing Dominion control, he vows to himself, they will never find him again. A chance meeting between Jared and Jensen helps both of them get what they’re looking for – and the way things end up, it may have been more than just chance. From various planets throughout different galaxies, to nights under the stars in space, Jared and Jensen find in each other something worth fighting – and possibly dying – for.

Comment: I think about this story so often. sometimes I look at the stars and think of these boys.

Rating: Explicit; Word Count: 39813; Warnings: none

Meet You at the Dock by grace_fully

jensen’s a third-year ivy league student home in small town Vermont for the summer. the lake, his family, his friends – all the way he left them last year. except jared. jared’s new.

Comment: grace_fully is one of the most talented writers this fandom has had and I miss her so much. this story is so simple and gorgeous and you can feel the pining just as much as you can feel drip of sweat on your skin in a muggy summer.

Rating: PG-13; Word Count: 5800; Warnings: None

Miles to Go by @dollyluxe

As Jensen’s assistant, Jared takes care of him at work. As a man in love, he can’t help that he wants to wrap him up in a warm blanket and take care of him in every other aspect of his life, too.

Comment: I read this fic at least once a month, if not more. it’s a Christmas fic that is so much more than a Christmas fic. it makes your heart stop in your chest and it makes you want. 

Rating: Explicit; Word Count: 8176; Warnings: none

Funniest Fics

So Hurry Up and Bring Your Jukebox Money by curds_and_wheyface

It’s Mardi Gras at the beach and Chad wants to film Jared getting laid for his website. It says a lot about their friendship that this isn’t even the weirdest thing Chad’s ever asked of him.

Comment: it’s steaming hot and hysterical and Chad is a main character, which guarantees laughter. 

Rating: Explicit; Word Count: 7527; Warnings: voyeurism, alcohol 

(A Shortage of) Sense and Sensibility by lightinthehall

[ Mockumentary!AU fic ] Except Jared just can’t understand why Jensen isn’t off-the-charts, truly, madly, deeply in love with him. He’s pretty used to merely looking at people and having them swoon all over the place. Not Jensen. Not only is Jensen apparently immune to the sex-power-stare of Jared Padalecki, he’s never around to witness it. Every time the director yells That’s a wrap! Jared turns to say, ask Jensen out for something casual like coffee at his place – or sex on the coffee table at his place -  poof! Jensen’s gone before he can even get a word out.

Comment: I love the mockumentary. I love that weirdo universe’s not-Jared and not-Jensen. this fic captures that so much and I just giggle constantly.

Rating: Teen; Word Count: 3533; Warnings: none

A Man’s Fortune by morrezela 

Jared is a dragon. Jensen is a pretty if foolhardy young man trespassing on Jared’s mountain. Nobody ever warned Jensen about the possessive nature of dragons.

Comment: this is so much more than just a funny fic, but it is funny and made me laugh out loud at times. Jared is just. so sad (hysterically sad) that Jensen doesn’t want to be captured by him, and I just. the poor thing. 

Rating: Explicit; Word Count: 25791; Warnings: dubious consent 

To Hell and Back by ashtraythief

It is said that if a demon steals an angel from heaven he’ll gain immense power. Jared is a demon who doesn’t fit in and when he finds a spell to open a passage to heaven, he thinks he’s found a solution to all his problems: angel power. But Jensen, the angel he takes, is not at all what he expected a celestial being to be like and things don’t go as planned. At all. In the ensuing chaos, Jared and Jensen have to form a strained alliance to survive and embark on a dangerous journey through the deepest pits of hell to flee from Jared’s rivals and all the other demons jonesing for angel blood.

Comment: I read this last year and it was one of my favorites of the Big Bang that year. Jared is the most hysterical and adorablely wonderful demon and Jensen is the most un-angel-y guy and their adventure is amazing, whilst having a fantastic plot.

Rating: Explicit; Word Count: 28378; Warnings: violence

Decaffeinated by Molly

In which Jensen develops a drinking problem, and Jared solves it for him.

Comment: we all know that Jensen + coffee is the true OTP and, as a fellow coffee addict, I just couldn’t not love this fic

Rating: General; Word Count: 5071; Warnings: none 

#FlyTheUnfriendlySkies by dugindeep

Jensen is a customer service agent in American Airlines’ Admirals Club and Jared is the crabby celebrity who is always in his face.

Comment: literally just. this fic. lmao. 

Rating: NC-17; Word Count: 7600; Warnings: none

Fics that Made Me Cry

The Courtship of Jensen’s Co-Star by @qblackheart

Somewhere in the time between a handshake and a hug, Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki went from being reel-life brothers to real-life best friends, and complete strangers to cosmic soul mates, no rhyme or reason to it that either of them could ever see. Jared was everything Jensen was not: friendly, funny, and full of life; one in six-point-whatever billion the Earth’s population currently stood at. Life was awesome. Work was amazing. Everything was fine until Jared kissed Jensen. Everything was peachy until Jensen fell in love. With desperate times unexpectedly calling for desperate measures, Jensen called Chad Michael Murray for relationship advice – because being in love led to temporary insanity obviously – so it really didn’t surprise him that he couldn’t seem to win when it came to wooing Jared. Still, Pisces must’ve been in a really good place in the night sky or something because suddenly, right smack dab in the middle of the miserable courtship of his co-star, Jensen discovered that maybe loving Jared was all he needed to do to win his heart. And luckily for Jensen, loving Jared was also the one thing he did best.

Comment: I talk about this fic all the time, but, god, I can’t help it. it’s them. and I cry and my hands shake and I’m completely overwhelmed by them. always.

Rating: NC-17; Word Count: 112,000+; Warnings: none

Forget-Me-Not by @babybrotherdean  

In 1547, they meet as children. Sometimes, even when two people are truly meant to be together, it takes a few lifetimes across a few centuries for everything to sort itself out.

Comment: reincarnation. meant-to-be. losing each other. ache ache ache. 

Rating: Mature; Word Count: 9400; Warnings: character death

I Saw You Shine by @dollyluxe

Jared gets a glimpse into Jensen’s new life.

Comment: this was written for me so I’m probably a bit biased (I cried when I saw the notification, let alone the tears that came when I read it), but I absolutely sob reading this story. I understand them both more than I care to ever explain, and it’s the most gorgeous kind of pain that ends as happy as it can because it’s our boys and it has to. 

Rating: Teen; Word Count: 3203; Warnings: depression, suicidal thoughts

Criminal Intentions by fftf

One murdered girl and no solid suspects’ leads local sheriff Jeffrey Dean Morgan to Jared - son of respected ex-sheriff, Gerald Padalecki, and soon-to-be newlywed. With nothing but shared history and circumstantial evidence to link him to the case, Jared’s name is cleared, but there is more than one life destroyed that night and harsh truths are brought to light which threaten everything Jared thought he could count on. Four years later Jared Padalecki returns to his hometown, and his old life – including his best friend and ex-fiancé Jensen – as a successful Agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Jared has received information which endangers Jensen and everything Jared still holds dear, but his investigation provides him with more than he bargained for, including worrying insights into the crime that destroyed his life. Is Genevieve Cortese’s killer back and gunning for Jensen? Or is there more to the case than meets the eye?

Comment: this isn’t so much a crying-fic as it is just pure emotion. it’s so charged and intense and I could feel my breathing drop at times and. ugh. yes.

Rating: NC-17; Word Count: 69350; Warnings: character death

And a fic that fits all of these categories:

sadly is not online anymore. but.

The Doors of Time by felisblanco

god. this story. my forever-favorite fic ever. absolutely ever. I sob and dream and can see everything. absolutely everything that happens in this story. I wish I was more eloquent with my words so I could tell you what this story means to me, and one day I will. one day I’ll get all my thoughts about this story down. one day I’ll be able to comprehend the pain and joy this story brings me.  

[animalsoffarmsanctuary]

Jake and Peanut: Troublemakers Find Their Perfect Place

Jake and Peanut arrived at Farm Sanctuary not in a crate or a trailer, but tied down flat in the bed of an open pickup truck with bungee cords. A family with small children stated that they had found these two just wandering and brought them to us. The weeping of the children suggested a very different story, however — but seeing that they were being handled more like boxes than goats, we decided to take these boys off the family’s hands.

Just out of the pickup truck and their original home! The boys enjoy every day!

And as that first day progressed, we realized that there was likely a reason their original home was not working out. These two were clearly escape artists and also lovers of trouble. At the time of their arrival, we still had our animal hospital area in our original office/shelter building called “the white house,” with pens in the back that were more than four feet tall.  

Are they plotting their next move? Peanut telling a secret to brother Jake — and that secret seems to involve head-butting. 

And although the boys were just tiny baby pygmy crosses and very short, scaling that wall was no problem. What was a problem was their refusal to adhere to our ISO practices (we isolate all of our incoming animals from the general population until they are confirmed to be healthy, but Jake and Peanut were eager to meet new friends!). We would find them in the kitchen, in pens with chickens eating their food. Clearly, they needed a different setup!

Why do we live in this chicken barn again? 

So we moved them to an area set up for birds, with a wooden six-foot-tall fence around it. And although they did not escape, they ensured that the farm assistants had plenty to do — turning over the cans used to take out their soiled bedding, jumping on those cans in an attempt to jump over the taller fence, and butting their tools or the staffers themselves — they really kept everyone on their toes.

“Helping out” the farm assistants with their barn cleaning. Peanut is being particularly helpful in this shot.

Finally, after their quarantine period was over and they’d received a clean bill of health, the boys were ready to move to the big farm.

Day one in the big barn and not sure of things yet. But they quickly figured it out!

Here, too, they quickly established themselves as troublemakers — attempting to get out of their new barn and slip into the adjoining pastures and start head-butting matches with their neighbors, some of whom were far too old to deal with these bad boys.

Moving in with group #1 (seen with a young ZuZu). Peanut cannot wait to show ZuZu who’s boss. 

Although this behavior was frowned upon (since we were constantly trying to find them and bring them back to their barn), it changed the life of one of our more recently rescued goats at the time: Gloria.

Gloria — because she was glorious. This old gal arrived in horrible shape, and after recovering from a very serious surgery, we realized that she just didn’t like goats.

Gloria was terrified of other goats and seemed to want to only live with people. Unfortunately, knocking people to their knees was part of the territory with this relationship, so we all were really hoping for a love match with another goat for this very special girl.

Pretending to be a person — “See? I am not a goat. I need to hang out only with people.”

When she did finally move into a goat barn, she lived alone in a pen. This lasted only a few days, though, because the then-still-very-tiny Jake and Peanut made it their mission to get under the pen fence and meet this newcomer to the barn.  

Gloria was so frightened of the goats that she would cower and run if one approached her — until she met the little goat brothers. 

And they seemed to know that she was afraid, because instead of starting a butting war, they just hung out in there, and soon Gloria decided that goats were not that bad. She eventually moved in with her forever best friends Juniper and Dotty, so in this case there was a positive and very life-changing experience that came out of their otherwise troublesome behavior. 

“I ain’t ‘fraid of no goats. Da da da da da da da, da da da da da da. Da da da da da da — Goat Busters!”

Their other acts of kindness take place when they, our two top candidates, donate blood to victims of cruelty — goat victims. When the Hudson Valley goats arrived, for example, Peanut and Jake — our two healthiest and most easygoing guys — made the trip to the Nemo Farm Animal Hospital at Cornell University to donate the plasma needed to get their new neighbors back on their feet. Goats including Dana, Hope, and Archie were all able to heal because these two boys gave them life-saving blood.  

Neck shaved from giving blood, Jake and Peanut back after the first round of donations for the Hudson Valley goats. 

Besides these acts of kindness, however, Jake and Peanut — always attached at the hip — bullied their way through herd after herd until finally landing in the ideal place: with our boy Nate.  

Always close by: Even when these two are not right on top of each other, they are very close. If you see one, you will soon see the other. 

And seven years after their arrival, these very fun-loving boys have lived with almost every goat on the property. They know them all.

After living in the main barn with Gloria, they became too rough with some of our elderly goats, so they moved in with another group. But this group didn’t work either, since it included goats who really did not appreciate their high energy and love of roughhousing — so again, they moved to another barn.

Controlling feed intake: Jake ensures that those goats who need to lose weight do so. Actually part of the problem was Jake not allowing some of the weaker goats to get to the food — standing up and butting them from inside the hay feeder. Naughty boy.

Peanut in the lead with Jake bringing up the rear!

This became an annual event until a few years ago, when we thought we had finally found the perfect place for them — unfortunately, though, that situation didn’t work either. But then we realized why this particular herd had stopped being the perfect fit for Jake and Peanut: They had lost their leader, and these two boys clearly needed the structure he’d provided.

Enter Nate — the Great. Nate is one tough customer (shown here meeting his soon-to-be best goat friend forever, LeRoy). He changed the lives of the two brothers.  

So we moved them to the barn where their leader (who had also had to move because his leadership technique was a bit on the tough-love side) was currently living. We all worried that this would be too much for the two much smaller goats, but they immediately fit right in.

Jake and Nate enjoying the evening just yesterday — and Jake clearly feeling secure with such a strong leader and role model. 

And so this is where they live — with their wall-butting, fence-breaking, 290-pound leader Nate and his BGFF (best goat friend forever) LeRoy — and thankfully, this seems to be where they will stay. 

Peanut at dusk — also taken last night. He loves his life with his brother and his friends Nate and LeRoy.

Because like all the animals at our sanctuaries, these two are individuals with preferences, very individual personalities — and the ability to choose the family that they fit with best.  

Still joined at the hip and happy as two goats in a pasture — Jake and Peanut. Happy ReBirthday!!!!!

[the-royal-courier]

Courier Classifieds 4/24

Personal

Looking for Love -

Okay, I won't try to make this too long, but I can't do it in three lines. Long term relationships, I've found, take time to build. Courting is easy. I am open to either. I would like to add, though, that I've reached a point in my life where the idea of settling down into a long term, committed thing appeals to me. If I've caught your interest, just tell me upfront what you seek and we'll build the foundation differently. My history. My name is Alistandra, but I strongly prefer to be called Ali. I was engaged, years ago, to a dedicated soldier who gave her life to the Alliance. Since then, I've dipped my toe into the pool of romance, but nothing has quite stuck. I was born in Stormwind, and raised there, in a heavily military influenced environment. Both my mother and father were very successful in the Alliance military until my mother passed last year, and my father retired shortly after. As such, I chose to follow in their footsteps. I was elated when the Light chose me to be it's hand and I take my duty as a paladin and a knight very seriously. I would like to find someone that shares a similar history, but I am open to those who have chosen other paths. I have no children, but I would like them in the future. If you have them, please don't allow that to stop you from reaching out to me.  I would like to find someone who is financially stable, relatively easy on the eyes - looks aren't everything -, someone to make me laugh, can read between the lines. If you've found that you connected with anything stated above, you can often find me in Cathedral Square. I look forward to meeting you. -Ali

(contact @alistandra)

_____________________________________

For Sale

Fine Dwarven brews available from Ironforge’s Ironstout Clan Brewery.  Beer is available in casks, half-kegs, and bottles.  Be sure to stop by the Steel Pub and try Loch Modan Maple Mead!  Dwarven Honey Mead, sweetened with freshly tapped Maple sap from Loch Modan.  Only available in Spring, so act now! Please contact Bathildis Ironstout for more information.  (Bathildis in game @ironstoutbrews )

_____________________________________

Ludlow Signature Wines now open and catering to the wine lovers of the realm. For ordering or inquires, contact Elizebella Ludlow of Ludlow Vineyards (@elizebella, @ludlowvineyards )

_____________________________________

The Queen’s Garters is Stormwind’s premier lingerie boutique.  Alliance women insist on only the finest intimate apparel and The Queen’s Garters answers their call. We offer a unique buying experience for each customer. Serving women and their intimate apparel needs with beautiful lingerie, corsets, stockings and more. And because women aren’t the only ones who buy lingerie, our experienced staff can help any man buy the perfect gift for his wife, girlfriend or lady love.  Private fittings available by appointment.

The Queen’s Garters, 4 Canal Street, Stormwind City

Because it’s what’s underneath that counts.

(In-game location:  Canal Tailor & Fit Shop, To schedule a private fitting contact @queensgarters, @nariele, or in-game Nariele )

_____________________________________

The Hexy Lady, offers a plethora of hexes, enchanted items, and potions for the right price. Bartering acceptable. Contact Mistei for more information on how they can help you!

(Contact @noble-witch or find her in-game under Mistei, via ic mail or walk-up.)

_____________________________________

Simple Solutions is now offering its services throughout Stormwind City and its adjacent areas. Everything from small cabins to wide, open spaces used for lavish parties. No home or office is too big or too small for an extensive and discrete sanitation that will allow you to keep going about your business and leave the trivial, tedious work to another. Not only will everything be elegantly clean, but trash will also be removed and disposed of appropriately. You will be free to choose the scent to fill your home, office, or workshop after services have been rendered, free of charge. They include but are not limited to: vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, pine, rain, roses, peaches and oranges. All prices are negotiable and payment is to be received upon arrival at the very latest.

Contact M. Grimwald at the Stormwind City Harbor or through a messenger, mail or simply word of mouth. (OOC: You can also send me a message through Tumblr at @everythingisbetterwithpirates or whisper in-game.)

_____________________________________

Now Hiring

Monsters and cultists of the world beware, for Duskmarch has arrived. To combat with us the wicked forces of the night, we are currently seeking monster hunters of all kinds; be them fighters, casters, field medics or even those who wield the magic of the enemy. Under the mandate of the Knights Order of the Titanic Will, we take contracts pertaining to the purge of evil threats to Azeroth from every corner of the world. For glory and honor or simply coin and adrenalin, we protect the homefront!

((OOC: If you’re interested in the <Duskmarch>, check out our site at duskmarch.shivtr.com and whisper Thalvana (@valoraegn) or Leilara (@castleoftherose) with any questions! ))

_____________________________________

Are you looking for a job full of excitement? Have you the fortitude to work with all types of individuals? Are you willing to get your hands dirty? Susan Gampre is looking for individuals to assist her growing business. Currently positions are available in the bar and grill, security, and entertainment divisions of the group. Stop by or send your inquiries to Ms. Gampre.

(OOC: Sisters in Sin is easily explained by the stereotypical, quick to the point definition: Brothel house. In character the group hopes to provide a place for any to indulge themselves in women and vice- all for the right price. This guild is not for the faint of heart. There are dark themes explored. As such the guild is 18+ only. Sisters in Sin are here to have fun with their writing, they just approach at a more unethical angle. Reach out to @susan-gampre for more information on how to join the guild. )

_____________________________________

To carry the name of <House Dragonblade> means to carry the ideals of justice, honor, and charity. Seeking anyone of a kind heart and strong mind, House Dragonblade wants you if you want to make a difference.

(Contact @odessii-dragonblade or Odessii in game)

_____________________________________

Looking for ways to quell your boredom? Endlessly walking around the city? Yearn for a way to find a new adventure? Skilled in Archaeology? Combat? Research? Look no further, House Preston is recruiting! We deal in trade, combat, research, and we’re expanding into so much more! We would love your help!  Not a crafter or fighter? Not of noble birth? We will still accept you into our house. We have a multitude of things to do and if you are thinking you might want to learn how, we can help with that too!

Interested in joining our growing house? Talk to one of us today!

(OOC:  We prefer 18+ due to occasional content. A strong knowledge of lore or willingness to learn is encouraged.  Any level / race / class accepted. How would have heard about us? If you frequent the Cathedral District, noble social circles, the Broken Isles, you’ve probably seen or interacted with us! Contact Retribution or Ananorah @ananorah to discuss how you can join House Preston.)

_____________________________________

Doomwatch is an organization with Alliance ties that is devoted to defeating the Burning Legion and protecting Azeroth. We also do artifact hunting and public relations, we formed to fight the Burning Legion but developed into a close knit family who will do anything to protect this family.

(An interview is required. Contact info: Annyana or Orgrimskar, via whisper or by mail)

_____________________________________

Seeking able bodied and like minded fellows to join the honored House Ironbourne. Councils, guards, magi, healers, crafters and the like, all are welcome at Ironhearth to join the Lord and Lady of Ironwrath in making a better world for those under their care.

(House Ironborne is an RP guild that revolves around nobility and everything that comes with it. Politics, war, alliances, fighting, back stabbing, and loyalty. We seek role players who are interested in stepping into the various positions within the guild. We welcome and encourage player plot lines both individual and guild centric. We believe in quality over quantity and desire players that will maintain the respect of the guild while having fun through role play.

Led by Duchess Jossetta Ironborne, guild RP centers in part around the Ironborne estate, Ironwrath, located in the Hinterlands, Ironhearth, the village outside its gates, and the world that is Azeroth. Interested players should contact Jossetta in-game or here on tumblr @jossetta or @houseironborne We look forward to hearing from you.)

_____________________________________

Lord Dandez Northbane is seeking able bodied men and women to aid in safeguarding his homeland from demonic and domestic threats. The devastation left in the wake of the demonic invasions has created a situation where people are suffering and need strong defenders. Rebuilding and protection is a priority for House Northbane.

All specializations are accepted by House Northbane. Contact Lord Northbane or his Royal Guard Valdasowin to discuss pledging your service to the house.

Currently Open Positions

Mercenaries

Seasoned Knights

Diplomats

Crafters

Trademasters

Retainers

(OOC: All races and classes are welcome, though at this time limited demon hunters will be accepted. The minimum requirements to join the guild are TRP and MessageBoard. Discord to be launched soon. Contact Dândez, Valdasowin, or Darrus in game to join.)

_____________________________________

House Matheredor is currently recruiting able bodies for various roles to help in defending the kingdom as well as assisting in the research and hunting down of dangerous magical artifacts that could threaten the very fabric of the kingdom.

Jobs Available:

Guards

Scouts

Researchers

Healers of all types

General laborers

Those with political aspirations

Shopkeepers

And many others!

House Matheredor’s primary lands are in the mountain ranges in the Northern part of what is now the Western Plaguelands. If you wish to join the house or contact us in any way we have a Stormwind office located in the large building behind the Shady Lady in the Dwarven District.

Application Process consists of an out of character interview with Adorlan (@adorlan) or any other officer who is online followed by a small in character introduction. Contact Adorlan (Adorlan ingame or @adorlan) or Kerydwen (Kerydwen ingame).

_____________________________________

The Amberstaff Coalition, based out of Ambermill in Silverpine Forest, is an organization of mages and martials devoted to studying, teaching, and working with magic to protect and serve Azeroth. Our goal is to provide a welcoming refuge to magi while finding and ridding the world of fel casters, though within a controlled environment we have studied the practice of minor demonology. Our martials provide our first line of defense for Amberstaff, protecting the magi who may not have enough experience to protect themselves.

If you are interested in learning about magic, striving to gain control over your powers, or wish to use your skills to protect others, seek out an Amberstaff member today. We are ready to see you reach your full potential.

(OOC Note: The Amberstaff Coalition is a caster-based guild that has an additional tree for the martials. We host weekly classes in which we are training magi to become wizards of our order, able to act upon and study the majority of all schools of magick. We partner with several other guilds for RP in the Isles and elsewhere around the worlds. We are accepting all classes, contact one of us for more information -Helarsar, for those with magical aspiration or Aacer for those with more fighter type attributes.)

__________________________________

The Royal Courier is hiring! We are looking for intrepid individuals who like to write and capture moments of time. There is a lot happening in the world right now from invasions to daily crime to happier moments. The Royal Courier strives to be everywhere to cover the important events and happenings. If you have an engaging personality, are not afraid to ask the tough questions, and like to network; This might be the job for you!

Currently looking for the following positions to be filled immediately:

Investigator Advertising Office Staff

Contact Risri Elthron for more information on how you can join our expanding team (@risrielthron)

_____________________________________

Have a classified ad see our guidelines here, then send a message to @risrielthron or Risri in game. Use it to make friends, find work, hire employees, and more!

[smartworkingpackage]

How to Plan a Family Vacation Without Losing Your Mind

Think about the last time your family took a vacation together. What image comes to mind? Natural wonders? Perfect sunsets? Or the frustration of trying to deal with hotels and wrangle the kids and get something—anything—to go as planned?

The family vacation is a rite of passage for many families. It’s inspired countless movies and books (National Lampoon’s Vacation, anyone?). It’s the sort of thing that can strike fear into the hearts of parents—and total boredom into the hearts of their children. But with the right preparation, it is possible for the whole family to have fun, creating wonderful memories that will last a lifetime.

A successful family getaway doesn’t happen by accident, though. It takes a sense of humor, a willingness to be flexible—and plenty of planning. And while “the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry,” at least you can be ready when things go off the rails.

There’s no better time than today

According to new research from TSheets by QuickBooks, 65 percent of U.S. workers didn’t take all their allowed time off last year. At the same time, 43 percent of participants reported that they “often” or “always” feel stressed. We’re prepared to bet those two numbers are related.

Our advice? Take that vacation. Get away and recharge your batteries. You’ll come back to work feeling rested and ready to take on the world. And your family will appreciate seeing a happier, more relaxed you.

That doesn’t mean you need to go it alone, though. A family vacation can be one of the most enjoyable experiences of your life. But—and here’s the important part—if you’re traveling with kids, you need to have a plan. Backpacking across Asia might be an exciting adventure when it’s just you (and maybe a friend or two), but flying by the seat of your pants simply isn’t practical when you have a family.

For advice on how to get it done, we asked a few of our resident experts on vacation planning (and parenting) to share their favorite tips on how you can create an amazing trip for the entire family—right now.

1. Keep everything in one place

“The question from our kids is always ‘What are we doing tomorrow?’ I didn’t have to worry about that because I already had the research done.” Jish Mukerji

OK, you’ve decided to take that vacation. Now it’s time to get down to the nitty-gritty of planning and booking your trip. Laying the groundwork now will eliminate a host of problems down the road. So a crucial early step is to create a vacation notebook in Evernote, where you can keep track of all the details that could make or break your trip.

Product Marketing Manager Jish Mukerji took his family on a long-awaited vacation to Walt Disney World in Florida in April 2018, and planned the whole thing in Evernote. Jish says, “With theme parks, there are a lot of articles about strategies for avoiding long wait times for attractions. All that info helps you plot your day out—what to see first, what to leave until the end of the day—so I captured it all and built a schedule for us in Evernote.”

In the months before you travel, your travel notebook will be the hub for all your vacation research. As you come across websites with lists of ‘must-see’ attractions, or advice on local customs, clip them into Evernote. Looking through a physical magazine? Snap a photo or scan an article, then save it to your notebook.

Over time, your vacation notebook will continue to expand as you include confirmations of airline flights, hotel reservations, rental cars, and more. Share the notebook with your partner so they can add their own research to yours.

When you’re finally on vacation, knowing where you need to be, and when, can relieve a great deal of the stress you and your kids may feel being far from home. Jish says, “You get so exhausted at the end of these days and the question from our kids is always ‘What are we doing tomorrow?’ I didn’t have to worry about that because I already had the research done. It helped us have a little more peace of mind.”

2. Have a Plan A (and a Plan B and Plan C)

“I planned mornings and afternoons, and then depending on whether the kids were sick or jet-lagged, we mixed and matched.” Nancy Fu Magee

Let’s be honest: traveling with small children can be challenging. Even the most well-behaved kids will generally run out of patience long before their parents. Add jet lag and sleep deprivation into the mix and you have a recipe for disaster.

No matter how well-thought-out your itinerary is, it’s important to be flexible and open to change. Perhaps you’ve planned a walk through a gorgeous local park, only to wake up in the morning to pouring rain. Instead of sitting around your hotel room waiting for the weather to clear—while your kids become increasingly restless—be ready to shift gears by having alternate activities that you can enjoy instead.

Director of Product Nancy Fu Magee traveled to Europe in 2015 with her children aged one and three, and the family had such a successful trip that they decided to tackle Hawaii the following year. The key, according to Nancy, lies in being flexible and understanding how little minds work. She says, “We tried to stay in each place at least three days so the kids would get used to ‘their’ room with ‘their’ toys and didn’t feel so overwhelmed with all the new locations.”

Even when the weather behaves, circumstances beyond your control (i.e., kids) can cause you to change plans. Nancy was prepared for that too. “I planned mornings and afternoons, and then depending on whether the kids were sick or jet-lagged, we mixed and matched.”

For Jish, having a plan with flexibility built in was a game changer. “Our itinerary evolved in the middle of the trip when we saw weather conditions change. We just said ‘OK, let’s move our indoor day to this bad weather day.’”

3. Get the whole family involved

Nancy Fu Magee’s visual calendar

“If your kids are helping you cook a meal, they’ll eat it.” Jish Mukerji

There are a lot of moving parts to planning a great vacation, but that doesn’t mean your younger family members can’t be involved in their own way.

While he was preparing for their trip, Jish made sure that his 10-year-old twin daughters had a chance to review the itinerary and suggest possible destinations. “If your kids are old enough to have some participation—whether it’s editing a note or voting on an activity—then they’ll enjoy the day more,” he says. “It’s almost like they’re sharing this great thing with you that they found.”

Even if your kids are too young to take an active role, you can still make them a part of the action—instead of thinking of them as ‘luggage that eats.’ Nancy says, “Each day when it was time to decide what to do, I showed the kids these notes I made about each district, with pictures and not just words, so we could discuss what they were excited about doing that day.”

Before taking her family to Hawaii, Nancy created a visual itinerary for her then-four-year-old daughter, using a picture to represent each day. “She wanted to know what we were doing on which days but she couldn’t read yet. So we made this visual calendar together so she could get excited about the trip. This is one of my favorite memories of ‘Things I Did With My Daughter.’”

Although Jish had final approval over the specifics, he was carefully to make sure his kids had some ‘skin in the game.’ “Even if I’d already chosen the hotel, I’d show them a picture and say ‘What do you think of this place? OK, I’ll book that,’” he says. “If your kids are helping you cook a meal, they’ll eat it.”

4. Make the most of templates

“Your vacation shouldn’t just be about the kids. Find something that you’ll enjoy doing too.” SiNing Chan

Once you’ve researched your destination and decided what you want to see and do, the next step is creating a detailed itinerary. This is where you begin to put the pieces in place and see what is actually possible in the time you have available. Just like at home, aim for a mix of activities and down time when planning a vacation with the kids. Too many activities and they’ll become exhausted and cranky; too few and they’ll be bored and… well, cranky. The perfect balance is much easier to achieve, though, when you can see each day laid out clearly in front of you.

When it comes time to make your itinerary, templates in Evernote are your best friend. Instead of reinventing the wheel, templates come ready-made for you to fill with information.

We teamed up with Barbara Fuller from Simplify Days to create a few vacation-themed templates to help you on your way:

Travel Calendar Template

Travel Daily Itinerary Template

Trip Planning Template

Travel Inspiration Template

To use them, simply click “Save to Evernote,” then replace the provided information with your own. You can easily add links to local websites or other notes in your vacation notebook. Save important details like flight numbers and hotel addresses right there in your itinerary so you know exactly where to find them.

One thing to consider: If you’re still in the ‘dreaming’ stage of planning, using our Travel Inspiration Template as a guide, don’t focus solely on what the kids will enjoy. After all, this is your vacation too. As Senior Instructional Designer SiNing Chan says, “Your vacation shouldn’t just be about the kids. Find something that you’ll enjoy doing too.” Perhaps that means alternating a day at a theme park with a day at a museum. Either way, the perfect vacation plan has a mix of activities that will appeal to everyone.

5. Remember everything

SiNing says “If you’re anything like me, you think a vacation is never long enough. But I’ve learned to cope with this by developing some ways to combat the post-holiday blues.”

Her favorite piece of advice? Use Evernote to create a digital scrapbook of your trip.

Create a note in Evernote for each stop on your vacation, and fill it with pictures of the location, together with any souvenirs, like ticket stubs, brochures, etc. In each note, record audio of your kids describing what they’re seeing, and their reactions to it. Those delightful childish voices will bring a smile to your face when you listen back to them in the years to come.

SiNing also suggests arming your kids with a cheap digital camera and letting them take their own pictures. Then you can add them to your notes for another unique perspective on your vacation. Sure, you’ll probably get a lot of shots of the ground, or a finger over the lens, but you will also be amazed and surprised by what your budding shutterbugs consider photo worthy.

Finally, when you return home, set aside an evening for a fun family “slideshow.” Cook up a batch of popcorn and make use of Evernote’s Presentation Mode to look back on all the pictures from your vacation. Discuss your individual memories of the trip, and each person’s favorite moments.

Organizing a vacation for the whole family takes effort. But don’t let that scare you off the idea. With proper planning, and the right attitude, you can create an experience that you and your kids will remember fondly, and that you’ll still be talking about for years to come.

And for the final word on the subject, here’s Nancy: “I love traveling with kids!

People should be less afraid of it.”

from Evernote Blog https://ift.tt/2IHSc5g via IFTTT

[metspacesolutions]

Daily Routines of Nikola Tesla, Mozart, Hemingway, Woody Allen, Maya Angelo, van Gogh, Stephen King, and Nabokov

There is no single path to insane greatness. Picasso and Gogh are both artistic geniuses, but they pursued very different routines to stay prolific. Success is more a deliberate practice of what works than a serendipitous streak of luck or privilege. The path to greatness is paved with tiny consistent rituals. Here are the self-described daily routines of some of the world’s most prolific minds in history — past and present. These routines and habits might inspire you to create your own. After all, we all aspire to be remarkable at what we do.

Nikola Tesla

“It is paradoxical, yet true, to say, that the more we know, the more ignorant we become in the absolute sense, for it is only through enlightenment that we become conscious of our limitations. Precisely one of the most gratifying results of intellectual evolution is the continuous opening up of new and greater prospects.” Tesla was a Serbian-American inventor, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, physicist, and futurist who is best known for his contributions to the design of the modern alternating current (AC) electricity supply system. Tesla gained experience in telephony and electrical engineering before emigrating to the United States in 1884 to work for Thomas Edison in New York City.

In his autobiography, Tesla describes how he works:

My method is different. I do not rush into actual work. When I get an idea I start at once building it up in my imagination. I change the construction, make improvements and operate the device in my mind. It is absolutely immaterial to me whether I run my turbine in thought or test it in my shop. I even note if it is out of balance. There is no difference whatever, the results are the same. In this way I am able to rapidly develop and perfect a conception without touching anything.

When I have gone so far as to embody in the invention every possible improvement I can think of and see no fault anywhere, I put into concrete form this final product of my brain. Invariably my device works as I conceived that it should, and the experiment comes out exactly as I planned it. In twenty years there has not been a single exception. Why should it be otherwise? Engineering, electrical and mechanical, is positive in results. There is scarcely a subject that cannot be mathematically treated and the effects calculated or the results determined beforehand from the available theoretical and practical data. The carrying out into practice of a crude idea as is being generally done is, I hold, nothing but a waste of energy, money and time.

He further talks about his brain training exercises as a child:

“Although I must trace to my mother’s influence whatever inventiveness I possess, the training he gave me must have been helpful. It comprised all sorts of exercises — as, guessing one another’s thoughts, discovering the defects of some form or expression, repeating long sentences or performing mental calculations. These daily lessons were intended to strengthen memory and reason and especially to develop the critical sense, and were undoubtedly very beneficial.”

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

“When I am … completely myself, entirely alone… or during the night when I cannot sleep, it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly.” A prolific artist, Austrian composer Wolfgang Mozart created a string of operas, concertos, symphonies and sonatas that profoundly shaped classical music. He composed more than 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, operatic, and choral music. He is among the most enduringly popular of classical composers, and his influence is profound on subsequent Western art music.

In a letter to his sister penned in 1782, Mozart outlines a routine so intense that it left him a mere five hours of night’s sleep:

“At six o’clock in the morning I have my hair dressed, and have finished my toilet by seven o’clock. I write till nine. From nine to one I give lessons. I then dine, unless I am invited out, when dinner is usually at two o’clock, sometimes at three, as it was to-day, and will be to-morrow at Countess Zichi’s and Countess Thun’s. I cannot begin to work before five or six o’clock in the evening, and I am often prevented doing so by some concert; otherwise I write till nine o’clock. I then go to my dear Constanze, though our pleasure in meeting is frequently embittered by the unkind speeches of her mother, which I will explain to my father in my next letter.

Thence comes my wish to liberate and rescue her as soon as possible. At half-past ten or eleven I go home, but this depends on the mother’s humor, or on my patience in bearing it. Owing to the number of concerts, and also the uncertainty whether I may not be summoned to one place or another, I cannot rely on my evening writing, so it is my custom (especially when I come home early) to write for a time before going to bed. I often sit up writing till one, and rise again at six.”

Ernest Hemingway

“We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.”

Hemingway was an American novelist, short story writer, and journalist. His economical and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations.

“In a 1958 interview with The Paris Review, Hemingway explains his daily routine and work habits.

When I am working on a book or a story I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. There is no one to disturb you and it is cool or cold and you come to your work and warm as you write. You read what you have written and, as you always stop when you know what is going to happen next, you go on from there. You write until you come to a place where you still have your juice and know what will happen next and you stop and try to live through until the next day when you hit it again.

You have started at six in the morning, say, and may go on until noon or be through before that. When you stop you are as empty, and at the same time never empty but filling, as when you have made love to someone you love. Nothing can hurt you, nothing can happen, nothing means anything until the next day when you do it again. It is the wait until that next day that is hard to get through.

Woody Allen

“Seventy percent of success in life is showing up.”

Allen is an American actor, author, filmmaker, comedian, playwright, and musician, whose career spans more than six decades. Here is how Woody thinks about ideas:

“I’ve found over the years that any momentary change stimulates a fresh burst of mental energy. So if I’m in this room and then I go into the other room, it helps me. If I go outside to the street, it’s a huge help. If I go up and take a shower it’s a big help. So I sometimes take extra showers. I’ll be down here [in the living room] and at an impasse and what will help me is to go upstairs and take a shower. It breaks up everything and relaxes me.

The shower is particularly good in cold weather. This sounds so silly, but I’ll be working dressed as I am and I’ll want to get into the shower for a creative stint. So I’ll take off some of my clothes and make myself an English muffin or something and try to give myself a little chill so I want to get in the shower. I’ll stand there with steaming hot water coming down for thirty minutes, forty-five minutes, just thinking out ideas and working on plot. Then I get out and dry myself and dress and then flop down on the bed and think there.

Maya Angelo

“My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.”

Maya Angelou published seven autobiographies, three books of essays, several books of poetry, and was credited with a list of plays, movies, and television shows spanning over 50 years. She was an American poet, memoirist, and civil rights activist.

Maya described her routine in a 1983 interview:

“I usually get up at about 5:30, and I’m ready to have coffee by 6, usually with my husband. He goes off to his work around 6:30, and I go off to mine. I keep a hotel room in which I do my work — a tiny, mean room with just a bed, and sometimes, if I can find it, a face basin. I keep a dictionary, a Bible, a deck of cards and a bottle of sherry in the room. I try to get there around 7, and I work until 2 in the afternoon. If the work is going badly, I stay until 12:30. If it’s going well, I’ll stay as long as it’s going well. It’s lonely, and it’s marvelous.

I edit while I’m working. When I come home at 2, I read over what I’ve written that day, and then try to put it out of my mind. I shower, prepare dinner, so that when my husband comes home, I’m not totally absorbed in my work. We have a semblance of a normal life. We have a drink together and have dinner. Maybe after dinner I’ll read to him what I’ve written that day. He doesn’t comment. I don’t invite comments from anyone but my editor, but hearing it aloud is good. Sometimes I hear the dissonance; then I try to straighten it out in the morning.”

Vincent van Gogh

“If you hear a voice within you say ‘you cannot paint,’ then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.” Gogh is among the most famous and influential figures in the history of Western art. In just over a decade he created about 2,100 artworks, including around 860 oil paintings, most of them in the last two years of his life.

In an 1888 letter to his brother, Theo, Gogh wrote:

“Today again from seven o’clock in the morning till six in the evening I worked without stirring except to take some food a step or two away. I have no thought of fatigue, I shall do another picture this very night, and I shall bring it off. Our days pass in working, working all the time, in the evening we are dead beat and go off to the café, and after that, early to bed! Such is our life.”

Stephen King

“Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.”

Stephen’s books have sold more than 350 million copies, many of which have been adapted into feature films, miniseries, television shows, and comic books. He is an author of horror, supernatural fiction, suspense, science fiction, and fantasy.

In his memoir On Writing, King reveals his creative writing process:

“Like your bedroom, your writing room should be private, a place where you go to dream. Your schedule — in at about the same time every day, out when your thousand words are on paper or disk — exists in order to habituate yourself, to make yourself ready to dream just as you make yourself ready to sleep by going to bed at roughly the same time each night and following the same ritual as you go.

In both writing and sleeping, we learn to be physically still at the same time we are encouraging our minds to unlock from the humdrum rational thinking of our daytime lives. And as your mind and body grow accustomed to a certain amount of sleep each night — six hours, seven, maybe the recommended eight — so can you train your waking mind to sleep creatively and work out the vividly imagined waking dreams which are successful works of fiction.”

Vladimir Nabokov

“Existence is a series of footnotes to a vast, obscure, unfinished masterpiece.”

Vladimir was a Russian-American novelist and entomologist. Nabokov was an expert lepidopterist and composer of chess problems. In a 1964 interview he shared his daily schedule:

“I awake around seven in winter: my alarm clock is an Alpine chough — big, glossy, black thing with big yellow beak — which visits the balcony and emits a most melodious chuckle. For a while I lie in bed mentally revising and planning things. Around eight: shave, breakfast, enthroned meditation, and bath — in that order. Then I work till lunch in my study, taking time out for a short stroll with my wife along the lake.… We lunch around one P.M., and I am back at my desk by half-past one and work steadily till half-past six. Then a stroll to a newsstand for the English papers, and dinner at seven. No work after dinner. And bed around nine. I read till half-past eleven, and then tussle with insomnia till one A.M.”

Turns out great minds don’t think alike.

Whatever you do, it’s important to find your ideal creative time and stick to it. Do your creative and meaningful work at your peak times when your energy is high and distractions are minimal.

By Thomas Oppong. Shared from Medium.

The post Daily Routines of Nikola Tesla, Mozart, Hemingway, Woody Allen, Maya Angelo, van Gogh, Stephen King, and Nabokov appeared first on metspacesolutions.

from metspacesolutions http://ift.tt/2khYmZA