#2 million a year when he was considered by many the best driver on the grid in 2014/2016 and compared to what lando/piastri/russell

[slutforpringles]

via: Daniel Ricciardo: Late braker | The Australian Weekend Magazine Nov 12-13 2016 | Trent Dalton

[azure-tiamat]

More than a Name

Orion Pax was his first designation, a simple Iacon-Archivist of Cybertron.

He firmly believed that that is all he'd ever be, even when unrest spread amongst the masses. At least, it was until the war destroyed his, his allies and the Decepticons' home.

He'd been bestowed another name then, Optimus Prime.

The last Prime, chosen by Primus himself and entrusted with the matrix of leadership.

The name was an honor, and a responsibility all the same.

He led Autobots, mech, femme and - guilty, regretful, afraid and saddened as he is to admit this fact - sparklings into the war. During it, dozens and millions were wiped out on both sides. Each loss weighing heavier on his chassis than the last, as reality set in that even when he tries to protect them all, he's immature in the art of war and has lost many in a war that started as a quest for freedom. It about death tolls now.

He and a few Autobots ended up in a solar system light-years away, on planet Earth - an organic world inhabited by the dominant species known as homo sapiens, common and preferred designation being 'humans'.

He and his teammates have made contact with the species, that have been welcoming and supportive of the Autobot's cause, along with an agreement on their part to assist the government against most existential threats.

They've been on the planet for a relatively short while, for their standards. He, Ratchet and Bumblebee have been here the longest (as far as he's aware of), for 30+ years while their newer members less than 20.

Still, that's not even taking into account the humans that joined them - 2 "adults" and 3 "kids"; one femme and mech as well as three sparklings. The sparklings in particular are even younger than the time they've spent on the planet. The oldest among them, a boy named Jackson Darby, preferred designation "Jack", now on the cusp of "adulthood".

(He can't believe the boy to be considered nearly full-grown by his society's norms. He is mature - Primus knows he is, as well as familiar - but the boy is still much too young for any of them to consider any of them more than (rowdy, curious and caring) younglings. Particularly due to Bumblebee being considered a youngling and, in human years, being just a year older than Jack, which is 17.)

These kids in particular have taken a place in the sparks of the 'bots, partnering up with their Guardians on several occasions to join them on missions - even if unallowed.

Optimus still questions how they slip by any of them into the Groundbridge, considering their record of sneaking off - the Shadowzone being one of the best and worst examples.

He also knows that some of them are favoring anyone human more than the other, even if they still care for them all deeply. Even his oldest friend Ratchet, the grouch, is taken with Bumblebee's charge Rafael, the youngest if not smartest of them.

The sentiment is very much mutual, as the children would and have risked personal welfare and safety to assist them. The numerous Decepticons' and M.E.C.H. agents are their main adversaries, although the children (Miko mostly) sometimes claim 'school' should be listed as well. Agent Fowler claims she's joking, mostly.

"Optimus, what's your ETA?"

"I'm within sight of the school premises."

"Good, Nurse Darby has called in advance to notify the staff, so it'll hopefully be a quick extraction."

"I'll contact you soon, over and out."

He concentrates, generating his holoform to appear behind the driver's seat as if 'straightening' from the backrest. He opens the cabin, climbing down the side as he closes the door tightly.

Optimus cut off the comm, entering the parking lot of Jasper High. The school the children are obliged to attend throughout the week, pardon Sundays and Saturdays, from 7:50am to 3:10pm.

"Right, time to recover Jack."

He makes his way to the entrance, briefly catching sight of his holoform in the glass door's reflective surface.

---

Jack is sick, Optimus was available and offered to get him. June had a double shift, though she promised to make an extended break to check up on her son at base as well as brief them on what to do. Thankfully, Agent Fowler had previously provided them a written permission slip in case they'd ever need to pull the kids out of school in case of emergency, after it became clear they'd stick around at the autobot base.

Jack practically melts into the comfy cool leather seat of the truck, falling asleep after buckling himself in. Optimus accommodates him by reclining the seat, turning the heat on as Jack was shivering, a symptom of having a cold. (June told them the symptoms -common to worse- for it when she got the call, as well as first aid. Though Ratchet looked into the alternative treatment methods too.)

On their way back a pair of Vehicons attack, finding the lone Prime and forcing Optimus to a hasty retreat with his vulnerable cargo. Eventually, just past the edge of town where the canyon opens up, he is forced to engage as three more show up to corner him. Jack is thus strapped in with even more seatbelts and moved to his subspace, barely out of reach from the matrix.

Unbeknownst to the Prime's notice -distracted by battle is a viable excuse- the Key to Vector Sigma pulses lightly at the proximity to the honorary Prime, which allows Jack to sense his surface emotions/ EM field.

Jack is hella comfy in there, secure, warm and with the pressing feeling of care and safety stemming from Optimus' EM field keeping him under wakefulness from his aching limbs, throat and stuffy nose very nicely.

The fact he's not shivering enough to wake himself is just an added bonus.

Optimus beats their pirsuers, briefly opens his subspace to take Jack out and scan him for injuries, even if he hasn't felt anything loosen in his chassis. To his fond amusement, the late teen just curls up like a cybercat on his servo, whining something he can decifer as "2 more hours" through a wheezy nostril, seeking the slight shade of his digits and trying to burrow into more warmth from his servo.

~

The mech obliges, putting the sleepy youth back in his subspace before transforming again and driving the rest of the way to base, briefly reporting the ambush to Ratchet along with their current status.

Optimus rolls into base, Arcee and Ratchet meet him halfway as Bumblebee and Bulkhead seem ready to head off and collect the other two children. (Yes, they were slightly upset they couldn't come with Jack.)

"How is he-?"

"Are you both fine?"

"Was it a patrol of theirs or a badly executed ambush?"

"We're just gonna go, don't wreck the place while I'm gone!" Bulkhead shouted, making a hasty retreat and giving his leader a nod alongside Bee's worried whirs and concerned optics before rolling out. Their own charges are waiting for them, after all.

Optimus changes into his bi-pedal form, nodding in affirmation as the two speed off.

Ratchet and Arcee give him a hard stare, analysing his form -servos', digits, shoulders- and not spotting the ill boy.

"Optimus, where is--" Ratchet starts, a concerned inquiry forming on his lips whilst Arcee frowned at the possibility that maybe Jack had been lost in the Deception ambush without her leader's notice. It was a bitter thought.

Alas, their leader holds a servo flat out in front of him, signaling the medic to stop. He shushes them, eyes trailing down before opening his chest plates to reveal his subspace, putting a servo out to prevent the harsh artificial light of the base from disturbing the sleeping human; Nurse Darby did say he could be sensitive to light and noise, and that it was preferred if the boy caught some sleep, so it's better if he stayed that way too.

Ratchet checks him over with his own scans, noting that it's in line with what the humans refer to as a 'flu' - a seasonal thing, quite common, and relatively easy to combat at their age. Their primary concern for it should be that he drinks a lot, sleeps a lot while warm and eats as much as he can stomach. It's ok if it's less than usual for now - dasy to digest food, soup or crackers, are preferred sources of nourishment, he notes. The latter of which is already kept in the mini-fidge situated and maintained in the humans' area. Besides that, Jack seems to already be doing well.

Jack wakes up long enough to drink a bottle of IceTea from the fridge after microwaving just so he had something resembling tea - they later learn that it's atrocious and they need a kettle. Ratchet isn't quite convinced why they can't simply use the welding machine for that.

~

Nearly half an hour in, Jack's still not asleep despite Optimus reporting him falling asleep in his seat not even three minutes into the drive and sleeping through the fight. (If only one mission like that happened with Miko...)

Jack quickly lays back down after walking on unsteady feet -caused by dizzyness and generally reduced physical ability in order to combat the illness, as the Prime checks. He rests on the couch with the threadbare blanket they kept for movie nights, a gift from June for their little hideout, but Arcee observed that he's still shivering. Attempting his best to bury himself head to toe in the blanket and couch cushions. And it's truly no wonder why with the wide, open, aired-through and ventilated area of the base. Jack's coughs don't seem to get any better and he's drinking more often to soothe his throat.

Plus it's bound to stay warm there as well and he's alerted to anything wrong immediately. Ratchet begrudgingly allows it, if only cause they are still at base in case of an emergency, Arcee's chassis isn't big enough, his own is full of equipment and they can't catch human diseases.

An observation that doesn't escape the Primes notice. He gets the brilliant idea that, till nurse June fetches Jack, he'll just keep the boy in his chassis again, along with some packaged food and drink and ensuring he gets fresh air too. (They've learned from Miko that humans + locked somewhere w/on fresh air is a dangerous idea.

Eventually Miko and Raf arrive to an empty couch missing a blanket and Jack's backpack dumped at a corner, but no sight of its owner.

"Did Miss Darby forget Jack's bag?" Raf questions Ratchet, subtly asking wether or not she'd already stopped by.

The medic hums "She hasn't arrived yet. Her ETA is three hours."

"Huh, must've gone to the bathroom. I swear, if he gets the blanket dirty he washes it.."

"Young Jackson is with me."

Optimus chimes in, crouching down to be eye-level with the humans on their platform.

Two sets of eyes and optics from their Guardians travel across his frame, stopping here and there in confusion, wondering whether or not a human could fit in there, and Bee gives him a questioning beep.

"No, I do have him. The base was just too cold to leave him without an adequate heat source."

Arcee finally comes over to solve the mystery: "He's in his subspace."

"Really??" Bulkhead questions, wondrously as he stares at his leader. "Is he okay in there?"

"I wanna see!"

"Not too close, one sick human is enough." Ratchet admonishes, though he looks contemplative. Optimus recognizes that look from somewhere in his memories - thinking of ways to calm down the young sparkling in his care during training as a medic. Regardless of the matter there, he opens his subspace, leaning forward to allow for better view and shade.

Jack was curled around the blanket and Miko cooed something about a burrito, taking her phone out and making a picture with the flashlight. Jack snarls and throws the closest thing in his reach -his plastic water bottle- at the source of the unwanted disturbance. She squeaks, barely managing to duck down before it hits her or her phone.

"He's got a killer aim even when sick" she remarks, slowly lifting herself up, checking her phone and then turning back to her friend as he unleashes a well of small coughs.

Bulkhead sighs, Raf rolls his eyes at her antics before picking up the bottle and, with silent permission from the mech, returns it to its owner. He glances to a settling Jack "He does look pretty comfortable there.."

"Beep-boooo-whheer-bii"

"If they look anything like the ones we have, then yeah, he looks like a cat."

"Ooh, have you ever heard of Rainbow-cat?"

Matter of fact Ratchet did a cursory scan of the web, before blacklisting it. What kind of colorful vomit was that? Is it flying though bleeding out of its...?? He scrapped the memory, only leaving a 'Miko's fault' marker for himself in case he ever wants to revisit the file.

Optimus continues on with his work, reading through data tablets. Jack feels a wave of fond nostalgia, and it's more of a safe blanket than what he can wrap around his shoulders. Oh well, it's quiet, nobody's bothering him, he's comfy and warm.

Jack sleeps a whole 14 hours. Miko and Raf had been concerned, which prompted Arcee and Ratchet to do the same.

----

After the event Optimus scrubs his subspace of any germs or snot, just in case of any ill effects and as a matter of personal hygiene. Jack did sneeze and cough his throat out in there after all.

Optimus carries an extra blanket in his subspace, a gift of Nurse June after the event. Just in case of late missions and sick humans.

————

To reach a larger audience (hopefully) this fanfic is cross-posted on Wattpad.

"My Name" by Azure_Sorceress (me)

[summerblueringo]

Ferrari-Raikkonen agreement and Vettel gives his blessing to the choice

The [Prancing] Horse announces the signing for 2016 in advance. Arrivabene: “Stability wins. Now repay us.” The Finn: “I’m ending my career at Maranello.”

Some saw it as a done deal. It had even been defined as “a business for the quoting of Ferrari in Wall Street.” And yet it has always been clear that Valtteri Bottas’ landing in red was anything but simple: the 20 million dollars requested by Williams to release him from an already-signed option danced around. Thus in the end Bottas will not drive for the Horse. Kimi Raikkonen will remain at Maranello next year as well. Yesterday Ferrari caught everyone by surprise with the official announcement. An early move, perhaps to avoid other speculations, since in F1 market games are done in the summer, but then the announcements usually straddle the Italian GP at Monza. Raikkonen’s signing instead happened much earlier, probably the day after the Hungarian GP, beautiful and unfortunate for the Finn.

STABILITY It was understood that Raikkonen’s confirmation was likely, although not certain. The team principal Maurizio Arrivabene never alienated him, trying at most to keep him on his toes to push him into giving his best. Then Sebastian Vettel has always shown a shameless cheering for his teammate, with whom he shares a great friendship. And the technical director James Allison hasn’t pushed against it, despite Raikkonen’s difficulty in adapting to the car or perhaps even because of it. Did it weigh in Kimi’s favour that there was also an assessment of the causes of apparently inexplicable incidents like the tailspin at the hairpin in Canada or the one on the straight in Zeltweg? “We are convinced that Kimi’s confirmation will contribute to give the team stability, counting also on the excellent relationship that binds him to Seb—” Arrivabene comments— “It’s a show of trust on our part which we hope is repaid.”

VERSTAPPEN & CO The fact remains that something must have been unlocked in the last month, bringing about the positive result of the renewal talks and thus the signing. In fact Ferrari had contacted many drivers: not just Bottas, for whom at the end a convenient financial mediation was not achieved with Williams, but also Nico Hulkenberg, Jenson Button and above all Daniel Ricciardo, bound by a long-term contract with Red Bull. Even the young phenomenon Max Verstappen was among the targets: Ferrari tried to immediately snatch him from Helmut Marko, but the baby figlio d’arte* has a contract for 2016 as well that he cannot get out of, so the talk is postponed to 2017 when there will be clauses to exploit. With this (more or less credible) shortlist of candidates, the red [team] could have waited for at least Spa-Francorchamps and Monza, two races which usually change the outcome of the championship and the fate of the drivers, before confirming Raikkonen. But no.

RENEGOTIATION? The acceleration, more than for a lack of alternatives (in the end neither Kimi had them), could therefore be connected to the renegotiation of Raikkonen’s contract, who returned to Ferrari last year with a 2-year contract (2014-2015) which foresaw an option for 2016. It is possible that the Horse managed to not consider that clause, signed when Montezemolo and Domenicali were still at the helm, and discussed Raikkonen’s engagement on other bases. Maybe with a reduction of the fixed part of his salary and an increase of the bonuses connected to results. So that Kimi, currently being paid 11 million euros excluding bonuses, will earn in proportion to the performance he offers next year. Hoping that it's better than the single podium (the second place in Bahrain this year) obtained so far after his return. “Staying at Ferrari for another season means that the dream goes on. For me this is like a family and it is with this team that I want to end my career,” said the 35-year-old Finn yesterday via the press release distributed by the Horse.

NURSERY NO Now it’s up to Kimi, like Arrivabene emphasised, to repay that trust. Already starting with the GP this Sunday in Spa, promised land of the 2007 Ferrari world champion, who has won four times in Belgium: twice with McLaren and twice in his first life at Maranello. We’ll see. There remains however the mourning for a Ferrari that once again does not “risk” and makes a convenient choice, refusing for example to launch a youngster from its nursery (Marciello or Fuoco) next to super Vettel and even going to look for the competition’s foreign talent (Verstappen.) The new management, it is evident, prioritises making a winning car and no longer believes in the project of the Academy of Maranello, whose future at this point seems scratched.

*[A/N: figlio d'arte = someone who's in the same profession as their parents]

[mysticalrambling]

Ending It All Part 1 (C.E)

Part 2

Chris Evans Fan fiction (Fan fiction Masterlist)

Summary: Chris wants to end your marriage and you decide to go along with it. You have to be civil for the sake of the kids but you are hurt. This process is too much for the both of you and eventually, it all ends.

Warnings: Angst all the way. 

._._._._._.

You had seen it coming from a mile. People say that a woman’s sixth sense is her greatest power. You always took pride in it but in this case, it was a curse. Chris and you have known each other for the past seven years and from those years, you were married for five. He was the love of your life. You thought it was forever but apparently you were wrong. You were wrong about so many things.

From the past six months, Chris has been home for a couple of days at most and then he was traveling. Traveling for work, for friends and whatnot. And for the days that he was here, he didn’t look at you like you were his wife, his soulmate. He looked at you like you were a stranger. Spending time with the kids was all he ever did and then came up with measly explanations to go off to bed early. There was no space left for you in his life. You thought that it was just a rough patch but that was not the case.

“(Y/N), we need to talk.” The determined look in his icy blue eyes said it all.

Taking a deep breath, you shakily replied, “Let me just put the kids to sleep.” Your energetic kids had tired out you for the whole day because you were off from work today. Chris had just come back from shooting and he didn’t give you a kiss like he usually did. In fact, he hadn’t kissed you like he meant it for several years now.

“I will be in the kitchen. You want wine?” He was walking away before you could even reply.

“Yeah, sure.” You mumbled out and you didn’t even know that he listened.

“Mommy, we are going to spend the whole day with you and daddy tomorrow?”  Mia and Jace have started to pick up on the fact that there was something going on between their parents. You wanted to keep all of this away from your four and two year old but it seems that you might have failed. You were failing at a lot of things right now.

“Yes, we will. Now, go to sleep.” It took you about half an hour to be put them to sleep and during that time, you were a wreck. There were a thousand possibilities running through your mind.

Coming back downstairs, Chris handed you the glass of wine, your favorite as always. He knew every little detail about you. “(Y/N), I don’t know how to say this but-”

“Before you finish that sentence, I just need to tell you that I promised the kids a day out tomorrow. Don’t ruin it.”

“I- I can’t say that.” Fiddling with his almost empty glass, he couldn’t bring it in himself to look at you. He was going to ruin this promise as well just like he was going to ruin everything.

“Just, go on.” You refilled the wine glass as you knew you needed the alcoholic haze to get through this conversation.

“I can’t do this anymore. This is just not what I want in my life anymore.” Your breath hitched and your heart broke into tiny little pieces.

Exact words were what you needed to hear right now. No vague statements. “What do you mean? What can’t you do?”

“This. This relationship. I think I am done. I am truly sorry, (Y/N).”

“Is- Is there someone else?” It was as if a ball was lodged in your throat and you couldn’t bring yourself to talk coherently. Fluently.

Chris looked at you, horrified. How could you even say that? He would never in a million years even think about cheating on you. Dignity was an important trait for Chris and if he ever cheated, he wouldn’t be able to look at himself. It hurt him that you would even consider this as a reason but he couldn’t blame you.

“No! This is not the reason. Not at all.” A defensive attitude was immediately taken up by your husband.

“Then is it me? Am I not enough for you?” Hot tears rolled down your cheeks but you didn’t have the energy to wipe them out.

“It is not you, darling. I just don’t think this is what I want with my life anymore. I want to solely focus on my career.”

“You are choosing your career over your family.” As the realization started to hit you, you couldn’t control the anger that took over you. “Over your family, Chris?”

“(Y/N) I am just done. I want an out and can we please try to be civil about this?” He pleaded.

“You want me to be civil about this? Fine.” You took a calming breath and closed your eyes for a second. “Just explain it to me. Maybe we can work something out.”

“I can’t- I don’t know how to explain it. Seven months ago I just woke up and I didn’t want to do this anymore. I want to start over.” A shocking chill passed through your body and you realized that it was hurt. You were betrayed.

“So you don’t want to do anything with me or the kids as well?”

“No. I want to be a part of their lives and-”

You looked him in the eyes and spoke in a broken voice, “It’s just me that you want out of your life.”

“Darling, no-” Chris tried to reach out for your hand but you placed them on your hands. He had lost the right to touch you from the moment he said that he didn’t want you. You were just a problem for him that needed to be solved.

There were years when he needed you every step of the way. Chris met you at a party that Scarlett threw. You were her best friend so you were invited to her New Year’s party. The moment he saw you, he was head over heels. He followed you around for two months to get you to go on a date with him. You used to tease him afterwards that he was a love sick puppy. But he was your love sick puppy.

That was not the case now and you didn’t know what you will do if he wasn’t in your life anymore. Your world revolved around your family but now it was all falling apart. You were falling apart.

“We can file for divorce tomorrow. Do you want to stay here tonight?” Wiping your tears, you got up from the stool and put the glasses in the sink.

“Uhh okay, okay. I can stay with Scott tonight.”

This was not what he expected. He expected you to cry, fight, scream. He thought there would be more discussion on this topic. Seven years were going to waste and you were treating this as a simple business transaction. Truth be told, you didn’t want him to see you fall apart. Chris had lost that right. If he didn’t want a life with you, then you were not going to beg him to stay. You were going to fulfill his wish and set him free.

“We have to take the kids out tomorrow. I was thinking the park.”

“What?” He was too distracted by everything to even realize what you were talking about.

“We will talk to them about the divorce tomorrow.”

“Isn’t this going a little too fast?”

“We should get this all over with as soon as possible. Goodbye, Chris.” Silently pecking him on his cheek, you went to your shared bedroom.

The moment your head touched the pillow, you were surrounded by his scent. The dam burst and you couldn’t stop the tears from running down your face and getting soaked up by the cushions. What were you going to do with your life now? You had to come up with a plan to manage the kids together with Chris. You had to think about getting a job that would accommodate your kids in to it now that you were going to be a single parent. You didn’t get a wink of sleep last night and you cried a lot.

On the other hand, Chris was not doing any better. Scott gave him the spare guest room to sleep in. He didn’t know what was going on between his brother and you but he knew it was serious. Chris couldn’t sleep last night either because he was not used to. This was the first time in seven years that you both were in the same city and you were not sleeping together. You wouldn’t be sleeping with him from now on. He has to get used to that idea. The idea of you not being there every step of the way because this was his own doing. He was dreading tomorrow as he was the one who was destroying his family.

“Hi. I was just here to pick you all up.” Guilt washed over him when he noticed your red puffy eyes and eye bags.

“You didn’t have to. We could have come there by ourselves.”

“We always go to the park together. It is our thing.”

“We can’t do all of these things now. Everything is going to change.”

“Right.” You moved towards the kitchen and he followed you like a lost puppy.

“Daddy!” Both kids ran up to him and clinged to his legs like two little monkeys.

“Hey babies.” He held on to them a little bit longer because he knew he was the one who was ruining their little lives.

“Where were you? Missed your pancakes. Mama doesn’t make good.” Mia hadn’t learned to make full sentences yet but Chris understood her perfectly.

“I was busy, baby. I- I-”

“Go get your shoes on. We are going to be late.” You saved him from the conversation because he looked like a deer caught in headlight. Chris couldn’t answer his daughter as this was how it was going to be. He wouldn’t be there for all of this. The important phases. Jace’s first soccer win, his first award, or Mia’s first school day, her first break up, her prom. He was going to miss most of them because you would be there with them while he will get them for weekends mostly.

“Let’s go.” Buckling his kids in, he sat in the driver’s seat. When he pulled out of the garage, his hand instinctively went for yours. It was out of pure instinct. You retracted your hand immediately and Chris just drew in a shaky breath, He was not allowed to touch you now.

“I am taking them to the swings. Do you want to come with?”

“No, I am just going to my usual spot to read my book.” There was a maple tree that had been your spot for the past five years. It was where you rested and caught up with your reading.

“Okay.”

The next hour was spent with Chris going on to every swing with his kids. He didn’t want to miss anything. Plus, he didn’t know how he could sit with you under the tree that held so many memories. You told him that you will marry him under this tree and that you were pregnant with Jace. It was all too much. You couldn’t focus on your reading when this might be the last time you get to see him with your kids. The last time you were together as husband and wife. This might be the last time because Chris wanted you out of his life.

“Hey, kids. We have to talk to you.” You finally gathered up some courage when they all came to sit beside you. Chris couldn’t bring himself to start up this conversation so he was glad that you did.

“Yeah, Mommy?”

“So you know how your friend Oliver’s parents don’t live together but they still love him very much.”

“Yeah.” Jace’s whole concentration was on his ice cream but he still nodded his head to indicate that he was listening. Mia was too young to comprehend it all so you mainly focused on your son.

“Well, Daddy and I are going to be doing the same thing. We love you both very much and we will always there be with you.”

“But Ollie’s daddy doesn’t live with him.” His blue eyes focused on the two of you when he made the statement.

“Yeah, buddy. I will be staying at an apartment really near by. You both can come whenever you want to.”

“You won’t be there to read us night stories or make our favorite brekky?” His question threw Chris off guard and he froze in his place.

“He will be there to do everything for you guys. Mia and you can go to daddy’s place and he can do all this.” You jumped in when you noticed that Chris didn’t know how to respond to all this. “Right, Chris?”

“Yes, that’s right. Nothing is going to change, buddy.” Wiping away his tears, your husband placed him on his lap with Mia.

“Promise?” Mia spoke up this time because she understood that her daddy wouldn’t live with her like he always did.

“Promise. Let’s go back to the house. You both look tired.”

You placed Mia on her bed while Chris did the same for Jace. They both were out the moment they were buckled in their car seats. Coming downstairs, you prepared coffee for Chris and yourself. He always liked his coffee black so that’s what you made for him. The cup was placed in front of him and he sighed because no one made coffee like you.

“Our lawyer said that he will have the papers delivered to us by tomorrow.”

“Okay, I saw this new apartment building when I was coming here this morning. I might rent it out. The penthouse has three rooms. One for the kids and one is the guest bedroom. You can stay there when you bring the kids over.” He looked at you with a defensive position.

“I won’t be staying at your apartment so please don’t take me into consideration.” You didn’t understand why he thought you would ever stay over at his place. You would never subject yourself to that kind of pain.

“But there can be special circumstances and my home will always be open for you, (Y/N). We can still be friends.” He was hoping against all hope that you would agree. He still wanted you in his life.

“I don’t think I can do that. Be friends. There is too much history. Let’s just keep it to the kids right now.” You picked on your nails because you didn’t want to cry like a little girl in front of him. “And I am going to change houses as well so do you want to sell this one?”

“Why do you have to move?” Chris was shocked to hear those words come out of your mouth.

“I can’t live in a house that was meant to be our family house. I just can’t.”

He understood where you were coming from but this house held too many memories. He couldn’t think of another family living here. Some couple living in your master bedroom, some kids running around in your children’s playground, some other family’s picture instead of yours. It was just too much to think about.

“Let’s just keep the house. When the kids grow up, they can have it.”

“Okay. I am tired right now so I am going to bed. I will sign the papers tomorrow and send them over to Scott’s.” You placed the empty mug on the counter and stood in a straight posture. “You want the kids this weekend?”

“Yes, I would like that. Do you want to maybe come with us?” He didn’t know why he was not ready to let you go yet. This was all his doing but he just couldn’t accept it right now.

“Umm no. I think we should settle the kids into this new routine.”

“I guess you are right.”

“Goodbye, Chris. I love you and I will always love you.” You regretted the words that came out of your mouth the instant you said them. You were so stupid but you just couldn’t help yourself. This was probably the last time you ever got to say it.

“I- I love you too, (Y/N). I will always be there for you. Goodbye, darling.” The lump in his throat seemed to grow bigger by the second but he had to say this. Lightly pecking you on the lips, he knew this was the last time he ever got to do this. He left afterwards and you couldn’t help but tear up. The same thing happened with Chris. This was it. Your marriage was over but your love would always be there.

Hope you guys liked it!!

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A/N: I literally cried while writing this fan fiction. This one is particularly close to my heart so please let me know what you think about it. If you want to be added to my tag list, message me. I am also open to requests for this series; requests, blurbs, anything.

P.S: There is a part 2 as well.

Tag list: @kalopsia-flaneur, @justile, @iguessweallcrazyithinktho, @jessyballet , @luckyladycreator2

Like, comment and reblog.

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[multiplefandomfics]

Kidnapped

Pairing: Alpha!Bucky Barnes x Omega!reader

Warnings: Dubcon, smut, A/B/O dynamics, age gap, underage, forcefully induced heat, mind control, hypocrisy, breeding kink, knotting, trauma, hydra

Words: 3615

A/N: Hi guys, so this is my first attempt at ABO. I’ve read a lot of those so I hope I’ll get this right. So don’t be too hard on me. And now enjoy.

Omegas had become almost extinct. More and more kids were born who turned out betas and the rest were almost always alphas. So maybe it is easy to understand that when you turned out to be an omega at the age of 17 your value to your mother suddenly skyrocketed. 

Your other siblings were all betas but you were suddenly special. The first heat your body put you through was a terrible strain on your body and took a lot of strength from you. A whole week was spent in delirium between fever and hallucinations. Your mother, a beta herself, had no idea how to help you and asked your family’s doctor for help.

He was very interested in you and your presentation and handed your mother a number to call. 

A week later two very polite men who looked like they had fallen out of a 1940s crime movie, stood in front of your door. 

“Mrs. Y/L/N? You have contacted us to take a look at your omega daughter?” the taller of the two asked.

“Yes. Please come in. We are in desperate need of advice. Her first heat was so terrible and I don’t know what to do if this gets even worse.” The men followed your mother to the livingroom and took the seats offered to them. 

“Our facility is very well equipped and we are very skilled in dealing with young omegas. We would be able to monitor her closely and give her the right suppressants to quell her natural heats.” one of them explained. 

“So you would take her with you?” your mother sounded sceptical. “Would we be able to see her? And when would she return home?” she asked.

The men shared a glance before continuing “She will be able to call once in a while and we will try our best to get her hormones in check and her home quickly.” the man ensured her. 

Your mother hesitated and the men noticed so they changed their tactic. 

“Mrs. Y/L/N. Your daughter is suffering badly and it will only get worse. We are the only ones who can actually help her. There aren’t a lot of experts in the field of A/B/O dynamics left. We definitely are your best shot. And if it helps to convince you, we can pay you handsomely for taking your daughter and giving her a shot at a normal life. How does 250.000$ sound?” your mother almost choked on her tea. “You want to pay me a quarter million dollars for her? You think I would sell my own daughter?” she was enraged, jumping up from her chair. “I want you to leave my house immediately.”

“Consider our offer for a moment please. We could help your daughter and learn from her case and you could finally sell off the mortgage to this house. We know that if you don’t take our money now you will have to move out soon. Do you want to move into a 3 room apartment with 4 children?” They knew a lot about your family which irritated your mother but she also quickly understood that they were right. 

After your father had died in Afghanistan 3 years ago it had not been easy for your family.

As a single mom of 4 and just a part time job at a dentist's office she worried greatly how to make a future for them. The money from the strange men would take a lot of those worries away from her. 

“Maybe you are right. She will come back to us quickly, right?” she asked to quell her guilty conscience.

“Of course, Mrs Y/L/N. She would be back in no time at all. We are very successful in what we do.” the men knew they had her in their grasp. 

“Alright then. I will go upstairs and explain everything to her and then I think it is best when you take her immediately.” she got up and went upstairs.

A few moments later they heard yelling and then crying from upstairs. But suddenly it was quiet. 

Another few minutes later you stumbled down the stairs, cowering behind your mother who held a duffel bag with some of your clothes and personal things. 

“Hello Y/N. How are you feeling?” the taller man smiled at you.

“I’m okay, thank you. So I will go with you?” she asked back. “And you can help me with my biology?” You seemed very innocent to the men and they were sure that you had no idea what your intended purpose was in this world. 

“Indeed we will make you more comfortable with your presentation. You will be able to return home quickly.” they ensured you too.

“Alright then.” you gave in. “Tell Joe, Lea and Maya that I love them and I will see them soon.” you instructed your mother and she nodded with tears in her eyes.

The men lead you to their car. The whole ride was silent. You looked out the window and saw landscapes passing by. The driver took so many turns that it didn’t take long for you to be completely confused and you had lost your orientation. 

The journey seemed to take forever and at some point you closed your eyes and fell asleep. 

You awoke disoriented and confused. You were laying on a bed in a sterile white room without a window but an adjoined bathroom. You sat up slowly to take in more of your surroundings. When you had decided to venture out further you noticed that the door was locked. You were trapped. Panic rose in your veins. What did that mean? Was this a kidnapping? 

Just when you were about to have a mental breakdown the door was unlocked and a man you had never seen before stepped inside. 

“Hello Miss Y/L/N. How are you feeling?” he asked you.

“Y/N is fine. I’m okay but why was the door locked?” you asked hesitantly.

“We didn’t mean to startle you. It was to your own protection. The compound we are currently in is comparable to a labyrinth. We just didn’t want you to get lost. Someone is going to come by later and give you a tour of the rooms you need to know. I am here to check out your vitals and ask you some questions. Is that alright with you?” He seemed nice enough.

“Ehm, yes it’s alright, I guess.” you sat back down on the bed while he took a seat on a chair. 

“Very well, how long ago was your first heat?” Those kinds of questions seemed very personal but after all they wanted to help you.

“My first heat was about 2 weeks ago. It was awful. Hurt so much and lasted about 6 days.”

“Good, that is interesting information. Have you been intimate with a male before?”

You swallowed thickly “No never.”

“So no potential alpha around?”

“No.”

“Good, good. Is someone in your family an omega?”

“No, I am the only one as far as I know.”

“That is quite rare. Normally this is hereditary. I will take your pulse, blood pressure and temperature now.”

After the doctor had left someone came and took you to a room where you were served some dinner.

The night you spent tossing and turning. So many thoughts coursed through your head until you fell asleep of exhaustion. 

You were rudely awoken by the cold neon lights being turned on. They ripped you out of a nice dream and you inwardly cursed them for it. 

“Good morning Y/N. Did you sleep well?” the voice of a tall blonde female doctor- or agent, or whatever, you were still not sure where these people belonged to- reached your ears.

“Good morning. I had some trouble sleeping. I felt somehow on edge. Probably the new surroundings.” you shrugged.

“That is possible. I need you to get dressed. Breakfast is ready and then we will start with your training and testing of different medications.” she smiled and you did as she asked.

Breakfast consisted of fruit and porridge and then they took you into the opposite direction of your room. 

You were led down multiple corridors until you reached a doctors room. 

“Hello Y/N. Please remove your shirt and lay down.” The doctor said. She was the first person in this organization who smelled different than the others you had met. Everyone else had a neutral scent other than her and it wasn’t a perfume but you couldn’t place it and let it go for now.

“So you are an omega.That’s why they brought you to me. I presented as an omega too when I was 16 years old. My biology dictated my life for years and that’s why I am quite happy that we can make it easier for you before it gets too bad to handle.” that explained the different smell.

“I don’t want to sound rude, but you are not on suppressants right?” she shook her head no. “I thought you smelled different. So that’s one of my superpowers as an omega?” you joked.

“Indeed it is. Do you have any more questions?” she saw your hesitation. “Don’t be shy. You can ask me anything.”

“Ehm… well during my first heat… I felt really hot and I had those very explicit fever dreams and then my body produced this… fluid out of my… ehm… you know.” you pointed toward your groin.

“Yes, I know what you mean. When you are in heat your body longs for a mate. Preferably an alpha to satiate your natural urges. The slick that your body produces is only a natural lubricant to make it easier for the alpha to slide in without hurting you.” she explained.

“So my only purpose in this world is basically to mate and give a few children to some alpha?” you asked unbelievingly.

“Not necessarily. We could find the right meds and suppressants for you and you could live your life alone until you decided it was time for a family or not. Your choice.”

“I like the way that sounds. So when do we start?” you asked exited.

“We will start right now. I am going to administer your first shot of a medication which will make you feel better.” 

She put on some latex gloves and prepared a syringe with a clear fluid.

“Alright, don’t move now please. I will give this right into your upper arm muscle.” said done. It stung a little but if that actually worked it was definitely worth it.

“All done. I will bring you back to your room now. These meds need some time to settle and you might feel a little uncomfortable later.” 

When you had arrived at your room she sent you inside with the words -“Someone will have an eye on you the next few hours. I will see you soon.” and locked the door behind you again. For your own protection they had said…

Before you had time to think about all of this your head hit the pillow and you were fast asleep. 

The next time you woke up you were in terrible pain. Your abdomen was cramping and your throat was bone dry. That could only mean one thing: the heat was back. But that should have been impossible. It wasn’t due for another 2-3 weeks. But here you were, sweating, hurting and in desperate need for something you weren’t ready for.

You didn’t even get the chance to get out of bed before the door flew open and two men grabbed you to pull you behind them. You were too weak to fight them when they pushed you into another cell which looked almost the same as yours. Only in that one someone was waiting for you.

The moment you were pushed into the room his eyes shot toward you, almost hidden under his shoulder long brown hair. His nostrils flared as he took in your potent scent.

“Omega.” he breathed and his pupils dilated.

He looked downright feral so you shrunk into the corner next to the closed and locked door. Though he really tried to hold himself together. You knew that he wanted to give into these primal urges the omega in you tried to push you to, too. 

Suddenly he wiped the hair off of his face and you had a first clear glance at his handsome face. And to your amazement you recognized him from your class trip to the Smithsonian Museum in Washington D.C. the year before. 

His name was James ‘Bucky’ Barnes and he had fought in the 107th infantry in WWII. He had also been Steve Rogers- or as most people know him, Captain America’s- best friend and later part of the Howling Commandos. The only thing that didn’t add up here was the fact that he was supposedly dead since 1943. 

But you were so sure that the man standing before you was not a ghost as much as you were sure that he was not the same man who had gone to war in the 40’s. 

“James?” you whispered. He cocked his head so he must have heard you but he didn’t know what to do with your question.

“You are James Barnes born on March 10th in 1917. You don’t remember?” you asked in a louder voice.

“No.” he tried to sound secure but you could hear his voice slightly wavering. 

You wanted to help him so you took the risk and stepped closer. It might seem strange, standing in front of this intimidating hunk of a man, and feeling safe. The pain in your body had also almost disappeared. 

“What do you remember?” you asked him. He seemed really nervous by now, always trying to scent you.

“Pain. Missions. Training.” was all he said and you felt really bad for him.

“I am sorry to hear that. Do you want me to tell you everything I can remember about you? Maybe you will gain back some memory. And maybe you can tell me who these people are and why they forced me into heat early.” in that moment another terrible cramp invaded your lower abdomen and your legs gave out. But before your body could hit the ground his arms caught you and he carried you to his bed.

“Mhh omega you smell delicious. Can barely hold back.” he mumbled into the crook of your neck and you felt it too. The tall alpha seemed to somehow soothe the ache inside you but it wasn’t enough. 

In that moment you just let the omega in you take over. You started pulling frantically on his and your clothes until they were lying long forgotten on the floor of the dusty room.

“Need you ‘mega. You’re mine.” he growled at the sight of your boobs.

“Alpha please make it stop.” you whimpered and he growled louder at you calling him by his presentation. 

You let your biology completely rule you and followed your instinct. Crawling onto your hands and knees pushing your face into the pillow and your ass in the air. 

“Good omega. Presenting for your alpha.” his approval made you mewl.

He was quick to get behind you. In this state there was no foreplay needed. 

His right hand grabbed your buttcheek. It was soft and warm. When the index finger of his left hand followed your spine from the neck down you shuddered at the cold metal. 

“Tell me ‘mega, have you ever been with an alpha?” he asked while stroking a flesh finger through your glistening folds.

“No alpha. Haven’t been with anyone.” the realisation that you were a virgin let him hesitate for a second.

“Mhh I’m gonna make that virgin pussy feel so good. You want my cock ‘mega?”

“Yes, alpha please. Make the pain stop.” you begged him.

He took that invitation and slowly pushed the head of his massive length against your opening. “Relax ‘mega. I won’t hurt you.” his pressure got harder and then he slid in. The pain was intense for a moment until he slid in further. It felt like your channel was made for him. 

“Fuck doll you’re tight. Squeezing me so good. Gonna breed you ‘mega. You want that? Me filling you with pups.” he groaned and your channel squeezed him tighter in confirmation. 

In that heat of the moment none of you cared that this might be a bad idea.

He sped up his thrusts and your moans got even louder when he hit that magical spot inside you. 

“Feels so good.” you mewled.

“Come ‘mega! Come for me!” he commanded and something that had waited for his okay snapped. Your pussy clamped around him and he pushed in that bit deeper. His knot popped and he filled you with his cum all the while pulling you up with his metal arm across your chest and biting into your neck hard enough to break the skin, laying claim to you.

When you both had come down from your highs he rolled you over to lay on your side. He was still locked snug inside you and that would probably stay like that for a while. 

“You wanted me to tell you why they brought you here. The answer is for this exact cause. They want to keep me- or rather my alpha- in check. And they want to find out if the serum can be inherited.” he suddenly spoke up after a long pause.

“And do you want them to do that?” your question seemed to shock him a little.

“I didn’t expect that question. No one has ever asked me what I thought. And no! If we have pups I don’t want them to be treated the way I was. We would never know what happened to them.” he said sadly.

“Then let’s get out of here.” His knot had finally gotten down which gave you enough room to turn around.

“How? I may be able to vanish on my next mission but I won’t be able to take you with me.”

“Then play the part. They don’t know that you remember who you are. So when you get out of here the next time you get help and get me out later.”

“And who do you think would help me? A murderer.” he let his head hang low. 

“Steve Rogers. He was found a few years ago and has most recently been working with a group of people who call themselves The Avengers. I know you have the possibilities to find Steve and get him onto your side to help. Until then you will have to pretend you are still the brainwashed assassin they created because if they notice you will be put on ice or erased again.”

“I gotta admit that does sound like a plan. I will try everything in my power to succeed. I promise that I will get you out of here. Unscathed. You are my omega now. That means something to me.” he kissed the top of your head. 

“Thank you- Bucky. Is it fine when I call you that while we are alone?”  you asked him.

“Yes sure. I love when you say my name.” and then he gifted you with one of his rare smiles. 

The next few days were spent almost the same way. Until your heat was down. They took him away from you and you didn’t see him for at least 6 weeks. Hard to keep track of time without daylight.

They had brought you back to your room and you didn’t see any of the old doctors you had seen before your forcefully induced heat. They probably thought you would attack them. 

In week 7 they finally found out that their plan had worked. You were indeed pregnant. Oh, how you wanted to tell Bucky but everytime you asked for him they shut you down.

More weeks passed by. They didn’t tell you anything. Not even about the baby. 

By esteemed week 22 you were able to feel the pup kicking in your tummy and you were talking to him or her. You missed Bucky more and more. Up to the point where you thought they had wiped him again and he had failed your mission. 

One night you were awoken by chaos outside your door. Before you could get up the door bust in and in the frame stood Captain America himself. The relief you felt in that moment could hardly be measured. 

“Captain Rogers. I’m so glad to see you.” you expressed your feelings.

“Good to meet you Y/N.” he smiled at you then spoke into the comms inside his ear “I’ve got her. Room 503. She’s fine.” then he came over and insisted on carrying you out of the building. 

Somewhere on the way to the Quinjet you met Bucky again.

“Bucky! You`re alright! Oh, thank God. I missed you. And I’m pregnant. We did it.” you beamed at him.

“You’re alright too. I love you. Let's get you home.” he took you from Steve’s arms and carried you inside the jet.

A few months later you and Bucky moved into an apartment with your son and daughter.

[ilooklikeaburntchickenugget]

Only Mine Pt. 2

A/N: Part 2! I’m really sorry if there are any grammatical errors. I haven’t updated in a bit, wanted to give you guys something, so I haven’t really proof read... like at all. So yeah, if there’s some weird mistakes it’s that. Pairing: Gerard Way x F!Reader Word count: 2339 Warnings: Implied smut, a few curse words (I think one, tbh)

The Grammys. An artists dream award.

To even be recognized by the Grammys was already a huge deal for any singer, songwriter, or band. But to be nominated for 10 awards? That was a whole other ballgame.

That’s where you stood tonight though. On the large red carpet in a formal ball gown, an off shoulder look with a slit next to your leg, and it was a beautiful emerald green color, Gerard next to you in a solid black tux. Usually he would say no to these events, but it was you. And this could have been the night you received your greatest accomplishment ever, so he was not going to miss it for the world.

Just like Gerard had predicted, My Midnight Boy was an absolute hit. Many were already considering it the album of the decade, and was placed on to Billboard Top 100 at #1 for over 12 weeks, with over half of the songs reaching the top 5. While that was exciting for so many reasons, a lot of other things in your personal life took a 180. For starters, paparazzi were everywhere. Anytime you or Gerard walked out of your New York apartment, a line of at least half a dozen paps were suited with large cameras to take as many photos as possible. When the two of you were together, there were usually 20. So naturally, you both had to hire security. It was never a decision that you wanted to make, it was one that needed to happen.

Next, your band broke up. Apparently, the boys there couldn’t take your individual success and broke up in a screaming fight which left you crying in a studio, and Gerard having to come and console you for a few hours, reminding you that they left because they couldn’t handle your fame and success.

Your fandom also grew immensely, which was great. You loved scrolling through your Instagram and Twitter everyday, only to see hundreds of fans show off your merch. Some even had Y/N Y/L/N themed parties, rooms, and costumes. It was all so overwhelming, in a good way.

You and him had both done numerous interviews at this point. You were especially glad that Gerard was being asked about My Chem, and not just you. And the questions that did come about you, he would always have the sweetest most genuine answers. “She’s honestly the most incredible woman I’ve ever met, and I’m so lucky to have her as my best friend and fiancee.” “She’s a musical genius, honestly. She’s way smarter, way more beautiful, and way more talented than me. Which I’m okay with because she deserves and has earned everything she has.” “She surprises me everyday. She has new, crazy ideas for music. And they all work. She just makes it work.”

And every time you would stand off with a huge smile and even more prominent blush on your face. Finally, at one point, you were asked about Gerard. After all, it was pretty well known now that “My Midnight Boy” was, well, Gerard.

“He’s honestly the best man ever.” You smiled and looked over at him as he just smiled, “I wouldn’t have written as genuine, and heartfelt songs about anyone else. He just makes me feel every emotion, and he’s the one who brings out the best me. He’s my number one supporter, and he always reminds me of that. I couldn’t dream of a more perfect person to spend the rest of my life with.” You could feel your lover squeeze your hand in a small gesture of thanks. You both smiled, departing from that interviewer where your manager met you at the end of the carpet.

“You both did great.” He smiled, “Now the official show starts in about 20 minutes, so they’re beginning to urge everyone to take their seats. Since both of you are done with interviews, it’s probably a good time to head in.” The two of you nodded, being led into the auditorium where you were seated in the first row. Best of the best.

You had an insane amount of people, stars who you had never even dreamt of meeting, coming up and introducing themselves, starting small talk about just how incredible your album was.

You were quite overwhelmed by everything, being at the Grammys hadn’t really sunk in until you were actually there. Gerard could tell, pretty easily, and simply placed his hand on your knee, giving it a lightly squeeze. “It’s okay, sugar,” He whispered into your ear, “You’re doing great.” You gave him a tight smile, him returning one back.

Only a few minutes later, the awards started. You had to admit, it was less glamorized than what seeing it on TV made it out to be. Of course the performances were great, but the moments of complete boredom during commercial breaks and such made you realize were so many stars had complained some about the Grammys.

“After this,” You yawned during once of the breaks, placing your head on Gerard’s shoulder, “Can we go home and eat get some Chinese take out?” “Whatever you want, love.” He kissed the top of your head. You and him were not into much PDA, so anything beyond a hand hold or kiss was a lot.

“And a movie?” You asked next and he smiled.

“Of course, darling.” You smiled back, picking your head back up. The show restarted, both of you sitting back up as they continued going through some of the smaller categories, finally hitting the large ones.

“Next up, we have song of the year.” The two announcers smiled. They went through a list of artists along with their songs, Ariana Grande, Beyonce, and a few more were included, “Cardigan, Y/F/N Y/L/N.” They said and you smiled, Gerard next to you smiling as well as the cameras flashed to the two of you.

“And the award goes to...” It took them a few moments to open the card, your heart beginning to race. You grabbed onto Gerard’s hand, giving it a squeeze, and him squeezing back as your eyes went wide in anticipation, breaths caught in your throats.

“Cardigan, Y/F/N Y/L/N!” You heard cheering as you let out both a breath and a huge smile. You stood up with Gerard, who was already standing and clapping as you gave him a hug, him immediately hugging you back and giving you a kiss on the lips as the cheers continued. You only stayed for a few seconds before smiling at him again, and running up to the stage to the best of your abilities.

You hugged the two announcers as they handed you your very own Grammy. You looked at it only for a brief moment, holding it while you walked up to the mic. “Okay, so this is absolutely insane.” You sighed as a few people began laughing. “This is my first Grammy ever, and to even be able to be nominated for something like this was enough for me. But winning is beyond my wildest dreams.” You took a brief pause to actually breathe, “I want to thank all my friends and family who let me follow my passions and dreams of being a musician, I would like to thank my wonderful fiancee and muse who, without him, this song and no other song on that album would have been written. And I would like to thank every single fan who has stuck by me through thick and thin. You guys are what keeps me running every day and give me motivation to keep pushing my music further even when it may seem like I can’t, or it’s impossible. This is just so crazy, but thank you everyone!” You smiled as the cheers re-erupted, the trophy being taken away from your temporarily.

You found yourself right back in your loving fiancees arms before sitting back down. “You just won a Grammy.” He sat in awe and began lightly laughing, “You just won a Grammy!” “I know!” You responded, too in shock. “I really hope you do realize I couldn’t have ever done it without you though.” You smiled at him.

“Oh, please,” He scoffed, “You’re a musical genius. You could easily do anything without me.” “But you’re my muse!” You defended.

“Which is extremely flattering, thank you.” He gave you a peck on the lips, “But seriously, you deserve every inch of that award. You worked hard for it. You deserve it.” You smiled up at him.

“You’re incredible, you know that?” “Oh, not nearly as incredible as you darling.” By the end of the night, you had managed to do what almost no other artist had done. Won 10 Grammys in one night.

You stood on the large red carpet, dozens of Grammy logos behind you as you yourself held 10 trophies, stacked on one another, up to your chin. You smiled at all the cameras, flashing from a million different directions, your name being yelled over and over as they tried to get your attention.

Finally, you got the okay to walk off, a few people helping to retrieve your awards, which would later get your name engraved into them. At the end, behind everyone and all the chaos was your manager and Gerard, who both stood and smiled at you. You ran into his arms, giving him a tight hug as he gave you one back.

“I’m so proud of you.” He smiled down at you, your height difference pretty visible.

“Thank you.” You smiled like a fool giving you a quick kiss.

“I can’t believe it, Y/N,” Your managed spoke, “You did it!” You nodded and gave him, too, a hug. “This is huge. I mean, absolutely huge!” You nodded. “You set a record, you have 10 Grammys, I mean-” “It feels too good to be true.” You commented and he nodded. “Are you two heading to any of the after parties?” You shook your head, “I assumed not.” He smiled, “Which actually makes my life easier because I don’t have to go and monitor either.” You lightly laughed, “Well you two go home, and relax. Have some fun, but not too much fun.” He smirked.

“Oh shut up.” You rolled your eyes and waved as you and Gerard went to the back entrance to be picked up by a driver who was taking you back to your LA home.

Gerard opened the front door, letting you in first, and closing it once he got in. You slipped off your shoes with a sigh. “I think I’m gonna go upstairs, take off my makeup and all.” You lightly smiled at him. “I’ll come with you.” He smiled back. The two of you ran up the stairs like foolish teenagers in love, stumbling from one stair to another before reaching the top floor and running to the master bedroom, Gerard shutting the door eagerly behind you.

He immediately ran up to you after that, giving you a long and passionate kiss. You melted into him, letting him gently push you onto the plush bed. “So we’re on the same page?” You pulled away for a brief moment to catch some air. He lightly laughed.

“Yeah, babe.” He went right back to his assault on your lips, moving down to your neck and collarbone, finding your sweet spot quickly where you let out a loud moan. “Gee,” You begged and he hummed.

“Yes, baby doll?” He inquired, looking up to you from where he continued to plant kisses on your collar bone.

“Please.” Your strained and needy voice sounded.

“Please, what, baby?” He teased you a bit and you lightly huffed.

“Just fuck me.” You said with confidence this time.

“Your wish is my command.”

That led you to laying beside him, your body covered in both his and your own sweat. His arm was tightly wrapped around you as he played with your hair. He gave you a quick kiss. “Where’re you going?” You whined. He looked back and lightly laughed.

“To clean you up, sugar.” He lightly smiled, walking into the en suite. “I don’t deserve you.” You muttered and smiled, pulling the duvet over your bare body.

“I could say the same for you.” He smiled, coming back with a towel. “You’re just too damn perfect.” He sighed.

“Oh, c’mon Gee, don’t lie to you or me.”

“I mean it,” He climbed into bed next to you, “You are perfect.”

“Sure,” You sighed, he leaned in and gave you a kiss.

“I’m going to work my entire damn life to make you understand you’re perfect if I have to.” You placed your head on his shoulder.

“I love you.” You smiled up at him.

“I love you too.” He smiled back.

“Now can we get Chinese food.” He lightly laughed.

“Yes, of course.” He got up, wrapping himself in a towel, “And then watch Star Wars?” He asked hopefully.

“Yeah, what else we would watch?” “I don’t know,” He sighed, “A horror movie-” “I don’t like those, Gee.” You whined.

“I know,” He smiled, “That’s why we don’t watch them.” You got up yourself, taking part of a throw blanket to cover yourself as you walked into your walk in closet, grabbing your Star Wars PJs.

“Gee,” You called into his closet, “You better be wearing your-” “Star Wars PJs? Yeah, I know.” He walked out with them on, and you with yours.

“Perfect.” You smiled and he wrapped an arm around you.

“You know I am so proud of you, right?” He looked over at you as you were walking down the stairs. You smiled, blushing and involuntarily covering your face with your sleeves to hide it. “Oh c’mon! I wanna see your pretty face.” He complained.

“Thanks.” You looked up at him lightly, still shying away from the praise.

“C’mere sugar.” He opened up your arms which you walked in as he held you tightly, kissing the top of your head. “You really are perfect. Too perfect, but perfect.”

[sailor-jesss]

Long term platonic relationships can hurt worse and than break ups and divorces. Platonic relationships are filled with love and trust that goes beyond romantic relationships, and your platonic relationships are likely the most longest relationships we will have in our lives, and are there for us as we navigate new romantic relationships.

They say it takes about half the time you dated someone to get over them. What about platonic relationships? And when is it time to break up?

Michael was by best friend for 14 years. We never went to the same school, but we called each other every morning make sure we got out of bed. We spent hours every day talking on the landline because cell phone minutes were for emergencies. We would prank each other constantly with our parent's help, and we always found a ride to each other before we got our driver's learning permits. We were each other's prom dates even when we had real dates. Our platonic love would have to have something really bad for me to end one of the most beautiful friendships.

When I was 17, my friend from high school moved in with my family. She is an abusive narcissist who had put me and my family through years of tormet, and groomed me and hurt me until I was 25. But she was still one of my best friends and I let her control most aspects of my life. I was in love with her and confused by her making out with me and touching me then saying "we're straight, this isn't real". After years of abuse that resembled her adopted parents hitting her and pulling her hair, I was reaching a breaking point, especially with getting smacked in the head. Michael never saw this because why would he? He didn't live with us.

In 2017, her and an actual second generation Nazi under the Hitler regime in Germany, violently beat me, poured alcohol down my throat, and tried to rape me into a threesome with their two toddlers in the room.

That was the last time I saw her. And to her and others I "overreacted" and disappeared. But it wasn't all because of that one night, it was years of abuse that finally clicked in my head and realized how evil and vile of a human she is and all the hell she put me and my family through.

Michael knew her too. Considered her a sister like me, after all we lived together and were a perfect unit to be friends with.

Michael believes that everyone in the world is good and everyone only has good intentions. So Michael worked at a music studio where Nazi bands play and works at a bar that serves many white supremacists. He also knows gang members and so does the girl who will remained unnamed for HER safety regarding gangs she was dumb enough to fuck with.

When I told Michael what happened to me and the abuse I have gone through for years, he didn't believe me. The same way he didnt believe that his friend raped my friend way back in highschool. The same way he didnt believe that his other friend, who was raped by someone he knows very recently. I stopped talking to him for about two years because I was hurt that he would still talk to her. And get his hair done by her. How could he do that to me? He said he would protect me.

2 months ago he drunk called me and complained that I wouldn't forgive her and we can all be friends again. He used the "family example". I told him she wasnt my family, and if she was I would still never speak to her again. She violated me and put me in a room with a Nazi. He kept telling me I was overreacting and maybe he could be there and hold our hands to make amends. Completely flabbergasted, I never in a million years would have thought that my Mikey would have turned into a spineles man who lied to me about protecting me. He told me for years he would always protect me. And he said that to two other girls he was friends with, until they were raped. He's a pussy and a liar. He wouldn't fight a fly even if the fly raped his mother.

During the drunken phone call he shared some very racist and homophobic thoughts about my life. He was acephobic, transphobic, and panphobic. He told me he was worried about my safety based on the skin tones of my friends. I realized that I never knew the kind of person he was. I didnt know I was blindly best friends with someone since 2006. How could I have not seen this before? Was I not aware? Did it take until the Trump administration to see what kind of people his entire family is?

In the end, he hurt me more than she ever could. Because he was supposed to be my knight. And he let this narcissistic person lie to him for years and convince him that I'm a psychotic liar.

I think about them both almost everyday. They were my everything for so long. I miss them, but I am also disgusted at how long it took for me to cut ties. Sometimes I think about calling Michael and fixing things, but I cant change him. And he's not a safe person for my friends to be around.

I have a rule to not associate with racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, and Islamaphobic people. If I introduce one of my friends to one of these people, I will be putting them in danger. And there's no bigot worth staying friends with if you're putting your friends and yourself in danger.

I know in the last 5 years many of us have had to choose where to draw the line with the people we've known for years. I hope you guys don't wait until you find out that you spent half your life with a homophobic white supremacist who doesn't believe women.

[slowburndisaster]

Red Queen ch. 3

rating: M for Mature

genre: mafia au, slow burn

pairing: ot7 x reader

series warnings: Cursing, violence, gore, smut scene in this chapter (blink and you might miss it), y/n is a bad bitch, maybe a dash of angst here and there for flavor

synopsis: You’ve decided to merge with the 7 most powerful mafia bosses in Korea. They don’t know what they’re getting into, and neither do you.

(I haven’t really proofread this, apologies in advance if there are errors or inconsistencies. May have to get some beta readers in the future, if I can keep this up)

Chapter 1 Chapter 2

You wake up early, slight headache from the amount of wine you drank with dinner. An arm is draped lazily over your middle. You groan internally as you push it off you gently before slipping out of bed. You turn to look at the man in your bed. What was his name again? Did it even matter? He’d be gone in a bit and you’d never see him again. No use getting to know him now.

Rubbing your face, you walk into your bathroom closing the door behind you. You look in the mirror and sigh as you survey the red splotches blooming across your chest from your guest’s mouth hours earlier. “Looks like I’ll have to wear a button up today…” you mumble. You walk over and turn on the shower feeling the need to scrub away the smell of sex and cologne off your skin.

After a long, hot shower and making yourself presentable for work, you walked out of the bathroom to find the young man standing in your bedroom, shirt in hand and a sheepish smile on his face. “Oh, good morning…you get up early, huh? Want to grab breakfast?” He walked over as he spoke and placed his hands on your hips, nuzzling into your neck like he was a long-time lover instead of a one-night stand.

You stiffen at his touch and lean back to look into his eyes. “I have to go to work…umm…. you….”

“Minhyuk…” he says as you watch the happiness drain from his face.

“Min, yea, sorry. Look, I want to be clear about this. I had needs last night, and you were able to satisfy them. This was a one-time thing. I appreciate your…skills, and your eagerness, but I don’t want to drag this out. If you want, stop by the diner on the corner and tell them Kris sent you, they’ll hook you up with whatever you want to eat at no charge. Would you like for me to call you a ride home?”

He looked shocked and maybe even a bit angry as he stepped back and put his shirt on. “No, thank you. I can get a cab. I would say see you around but looks like that won’t happen. Glad I could satisfy your…needs...” he spat out the last word as he walked out the door.

You pulled out a skirt, shirt that buttoned up to your neck, and a blazer out of the closet as you dressed for work in silence. Should you feel something for kicking him out like that? Would it be normal to feel bad? It’s been so long since you’ve felt anything that you were beginning to question if you were even human anymore. Emotions get you killed, that’s been your mantra for years. You’ve come too far to fall now.

Stepping out of your bedroom and walking down the hallway, you’re met by your personal bodyguard, Shownu. He’s always quiet, silently surveying your surroundings when you’re out. He’s been with you for several years now and you consider him a close friend. He would do anything for you if you asked. This was an unspoken agreement between you. You meet his eyes as you walk to the door, “Shownu, anything for me this morning?”

“No ma’am. It’s been quiet so far. You have a couple meetings this afternoon and you still need to pick up your dress for the gala.”

“...shit.” you whisper as you stop to put your heels at the door.

“You forgot about the gala, didn’t you?” Shownu’s mouth twitched upwards at the corner for a split second.

“Yes, you know how I hate those things. So many rich pricks walking around bragging about their millions. We both know that most of their money is dirty and they didn’t even lift a finger to make it. I’d rather stay home, order some takeout and watch some movies. It’s been a while since we have done that.” It was sad to say, that he was your closest friend, even if he was always being paid to protect you so he needed to be close to you.

“We haven’t done that since we came to Korea, but this gala is important. There are potential business ventures there, legitimate ones. We both know you need those to keep everything quiet.” He grabs your coat and bag as you both walk out the door.

“You’re right…god, why are you always right? Do I pay you to be like this?” You tease as you slip the coat on that he holds out for you.

“No ma’am, it’s a free service. Plus, who else would you trust with all this?” He nods to the doorman as you both exit the building where your penthouse is located.

“Smug is not a good look on you, Nu. You know you’re my right-hand man, but I’d hate to have to replace you.” You smile as you watch him chuckle.

He holds the door open for you as you step into the car that has been brought around. After closing your door, he slides into the driver seat. “You’d never replace me. I can say that for certain now. You know I’m in this for life. You act like everyone around you is disposable, but we both know it’s not true. You need me as much as I need to keep you safe. You don’t have to say it aloud. Just know that I can see through your walls sometimes.” He glances up in the rearview mirror as you smile looking out the window.

“Whatever you say, Shownu.” Deep down, you know he’s right. You rely on him more than you ever have anyone else. You’d die before you told him how important his friendship was to him. You’d seen so many people get hurt throughout the years because you’d said aloud how much they meant. You were thankful that he knew without having to say a word. If circumstances were different, he would have been a perfect companion for you. Broad shoulders, chiseled features, handsome beyond measure, but to you, he was a friend and confidant.

You arrive at your office earlier than normal so that you can get some figures down and paperwork started before your afternoon meetings. Your heels clicking on the tile floor was the only sound as you made your way to the breakroom to grab a coffee. Hushed voices coming from the breakroom made you slow down. Who else was hear so early?

“WHOA! You’ve got the hots for the boss?!” a voice screeches out. You recognize it immediately as Hoseok. He was always so loud.

You stop at the corner, listening to the conversation between him and another man. Normally you would have just walked right in and paid them no attention, but you find yourself curious. The seven men you’ve recently become partners with were attractive. You’d have to be stupid to not admit that.

It takes you a minute to recognize the other voice as Jin. You can’t help the small smirk that creeps up as you hear him say that you’re powerful and gorgeous.  You’re not planning on staying in Korea much longer, a few months more at most. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to try these guys out. You shake your head at the thought, no, keep it professional. Why are you even entertaining these thoughts? You never had before…

“Oh my god! You had a wet dream about her too?!!” Hoseok’s voice cut through your thoughts. That was new. You hadn’t heard men talk about wet dreams in years, you smiled when you heard the embarrassment in Jin’s voice. It never hurt to have a little fun.

You waited a minute after the conversation died down to slowly walk into the breakroom, heading straight for the coffee machine. “Good morning, Hoseok…. Jin...” You nodded at them, making eye contact with Jin just to watch him drop his head and mumble a greeting before scurrying to his office.

“He okay?” You grab a cup and fill it with coffee before turning towards Hoseok.

“Ah…yea, he said he had a lot of work to get done. New shipments and all that, which reminds me. I have meetings to set up. If you’ll excuse me…” Hoseok bows his head slightly, turning on his heel and leaving just as quickly.

You’re still smiling as you walk into your office, sipping your drink. Shownu has made himself at home on the couch in the corner. “What’s got you in such a good mood? Was that guy that good last night?”

You glare at him as you sit down behind your desk. “You know as well as I do that he was okay. Not memorable. I actually don’t remember much about it…”

“I didn’t hear you much, so I’m guessing he didn’t hit all the right spots.” Shownu said as he scrolled through his phone, knowing the look you were giving him. “There’s no need to glare at me like that, I know when they’re good. I swear the whole building can hear you.”

“Nu, sometimes I think we are way too comfortable with each other. Maybe I should give you some time off so you can take care of yourself.” You wink at him.

“No thank you. I don’t need that right now. Besides, who would you find to take my place? Wonho? You know that he wants to get with you so bad. I don’t think he could think clearly if he were your sole security and I wouldn’t be able to relax knowing you might not be safe. It’s been quiet here, but we both know it could change…”  His features hardened at the thought. It had been years ago, but it still crossed his mind. He had lost his best friend; you had lost most of your family and half of your men. That’s the reason you kept everyone at arm’s length. You didn’t mean to get so attached to that man. You were only human, and you believed him when he said he loved you. You just didn’t know that he was a spy planted by a rival to try and tear down your empire, which was a lot smaller back then. That’s when you decided emotions were no longer needed, and you had locked yourself down. A recluse that no one would get close to.

Shownu had worried about you back then. You were wounded, physically and mentally. He’d never seen you go so far. The man that had pretended to love you got the full force of your wrath. He wasn’t sure if he should step in and try to stop you as you flayed him. The man’s screams echoing off the walls of the basement you had him chained in. Your eyes held no emotion as you carefully sliced the skin off, letting it fall onto the floor chunk by chunk. When you had finished with him, you coldly turned to face Shownu, blood dripping off your hands, staining your clothes and smeared on your face. “Drop his body at their door. Attach a note saying “A present from the Red Queen. If you send another, I’ll mail them back piece by piece.” Also, call the cleaners. He made a mess in here…” and you walked away.

Shownu suppressed a shiver as he recalled the look upon your face as you walked out of that room. He knew then that you were a force to be reckoned with. He prayed no one ever crossed you like that again, he didn’t want you to slip back into that. He just hoped you hadn’t lost all humanity. He loved the moments when your mask slid off and you spoke with him as a friend. He was the only one that had gotten close to you after that. He appreciated the nights when it was just you and him sitting on your couch eating popcorn and watching movies, discussing life like normal people.

“Y/N…” Shownu called out as he put his phone in his pocket. “You still need to get that dress for the gala. Also, are you taking a date this time, or you going to be stuck with me again?”

You sighed loudly. “You’re just not going to let that go, are you? Fine…after my last meeting, you can take me to my normal place. I’ll pick something from the rack. As for a date…I think I have someone in mind.”

“Oh? Anyone I know or do I need to do a background check…?” He said, half joking. He always did a check on every man you brought home or went out with. He’d never be able to tell you no when it came to the men you took to your bed, but after you were done with them, he could make the choice of whether they disappeared or not.

“Actually, I’m thinking of asking one of our new business associates. They’re handsome, able bodied young men. I think some of the people going are from the pharmaceutical area, so it might be best if Jin went with me.” You said, flipping through some papers on your desk. You lifted your eyes to meet Shownu’s.

“Really? Please be gentle with him, Y/N. He looks like he could break easily.” He smirked.

“Oh, I’m fully aware of that, but believe me when I say it’s a business thing. I happen to know that if I did want him like that, it wouldn’t be a problem at all.”

 After your last meeting of the day, you sort your paperwork and reach for the phone. After a couple rings, it finally gets answered. “Jin? If you’re not busy, I need you…to come to my office.” Your pause was very deliberate as you heard a sharp intake of breath when you stopped after that phrase.

A few seconds later, Jin quietly knocked on your door and entered. “You wanted to see me?”

“Yes, please have a seat. Shownu, could you wait outside?” He nodded and walked silently out of the room, closing the door behind him.

“I’m not sure if you’re aware of the gala this weekend. I am expected to attend as there are several big names in business going to be there. Some you may know, as they are in your specialized field. I’ll cut to the chase; I want you to attend with me. I need a date that I can trust to help secure this business. Do you have a tux, or should I get one for you?”

Jin looked up quickly, locking eyes with you. “You want…ME…to go with you?”

“Yes, like I said, you would be the best fit. We have to put on a show sometimes, right?”

“Umm…y... yea! I’d be honored to go with you. I do have a tux, a couple. Is there a certain color I need?”

“Just stick with basic black. I’m going to find a dress after work, and black goes with anything. Great, that’s settled then.” You looked down at your calendar. “I’ll send a driver to pick you up at 7pm on Friday.”

“Friday night, sure thing. Do you need anything else?” His eyes flit down to your lips for a split second before returning to your eyes.

“No….no…that’s it. You may go now.” You gesture towards the door as you gather your things and follow him out. Shownu is standing beside the door, waiting for you. His eyes follow the man that comes out before you.

“Let’s get this over with, Nu.” You huff as you close your office door.

It was a short drive to the upscale boutique downtown. You had been here several times, usually getting fitted for your business attire. The lady behind the counter rushed to you as soon as you entered. “Back for another suit so soon? We have a new shipment in if you’d like to look”

“Not this time, I’m actually in need of a formal dress. I have an event to go to in a couple days.”

She escorted you to a room lined with gorgeous dresses. So many to choose from. You took your time, looking over each style and color until you settled on a beautiful royal blue gown with a slit in the front that showed a decent amount of leg as you walked. You were thankful that it fit perfectly, having them wrap it up to take home.

“See, that wasn’t so bad…” Shownu began as he saw you come out, dress bag in hand.

“Shh…don’t start…” you glared at him. “Let’s pick up something to eat and go home. I feel like it’s a good night for a movie.”

The movie for the night was a zombie flick. Shownu sat in the floor in front of your couch eating noodles out of a takeout container while you sat behind him, blanket wrapped around your legs eating rice and chicken. In another life, this would be sweet and loving…almost couple-like.

“Nu…do you think I’m capable of feeling love?” you ask suddenly, eyes fixed on the tv.

His head snaps towards you. “What brought this on?”

You sigh, and meet his eyes. “I’ve just been thinking the past couple days about…things. Sometimes I wonder if I’m even capable of feeling anything. Am I human anymore? I want to be able to let someone in…but I just keep remembering what happened last time.” You chuckle softly. “I guess they were right. It IS lonely at the top sometimes. I don’t want to feel this way. I’m strong and independent, but…is that enough?”

Shownu puts his box down and turns to face you. “Since when have you doubted yourself? If you want to love, do it. If you DON’T want to…then don’t. You’re the strongest woman I have ever met, capable of anything. If you want to take a different man to your bed every night, then dispose of them when the sun comes up, that’s your right. Don’t you dare sit there thinking you’re not human because an emotion doesn’t come easily anymore. You have been through so much to get where you are. I have been there with you. I’m honestly surprised you can get out of bed sometimes…”

“Gee, thanks.” You roll your eyes.

“I’m serious. I don’t think anyone else could have handled the things you have and still be standing. I’m saying this as a friend, not an employee. You don’t have to be strong all the time. Again, why has this come up so suddenly?”

“…I’m thinking about staying here a little longer than planned.” You turn your attention back to the zombies on the screen, settling back against the plush cushions.

[felicia-cat-hardy]

20 Asian American Musicians To Add To Your Playlist Now

Over the past several years, the K-pop industry in the U.S. has grown exponentially. The fan enthusiasm behind bands like BTS has drawn parallels to The Beatles, and so many K-pop groups have received the same passionate reception. The attention is well-deserved, but Asian artists represent a multitude of musical genres (even just within the K-pop industry) — a fact that should not be overlooked. Whether you're a fan of indie rock, R&B, hip-hop, or dance music, you won't want to sleep on these Asian American musicians.

Asian artists have recently received some long-deserved recognition in the entertainment industry, primarily in film. In 2020, Bong Joon-ho's Parasite won big at the Oscars. The following year, Youn Yuh-Jung won the award for Best Supporting Actress for her work in Minari, which also scored The Walking Dead alum Steven Yeun a nomination for Best Actor. However, there's still plenty of work to be done within the music landscape to ensure equal representation is achieved.

BTS, most notably, has seen unprecedented success in the U.S. Still, despite being invited to attend the last three Grammys, they've yet to take home an award, highlighting the discrepancy between their immense success and the Recording Academy's willingness to acknowledge it. Additionally, Asian artists have a harder time landing record deals. As American Idol alumni Paul Kim explained to The New York Times, he was blatantly told by industry execs he would have been signed to a label faster had he not been Asian.

By streaming these artists, you're not only supporting them and their art, but you're subsequently showing industry insiders just how valuable they are. Consider this list sonic proof Asian artists are making exceptional, diverse music that can't be boxed into one genre or sound. Each of these artists prides themselves on breaking boundaries and creating their own rules. You may have heard of a few, but many have been flying under the radar for far too long. Your ears will thank you soon enough.

Melissa Polinar

Polinar got her start in the late 2000s when viral YouTube covers paved the way for success. While artists like Justin Bieber and Lennon & Maisy were sharing music covers, Polinar focused on posting her original music — and her soulful vocals were a hit. In 2019, the Filipino-American songwriter actually re-recorded one of the songs that propelled her career forward, "Try," on its 10-year anniversary.

Eric Nam

Born and raised in Atlanta, Nam moved to Korea to pursue music because he felt he had a better chance of succeeding there. “Even if you look at American Idol, or X-Factor, or The Voice or anything, it was always difficult to see an Asian or an Asian-American make it to a certain point,” Nam told TIME in November 2019. Today, Nam is a highly visible and respected name in the K-pop industry. While he's very proud of his K-pop success, he considers himself a pop singer first. He hopes to grow his success stateside and told TIME, "I want people to hear my music and say, 'I don’t know who this person is,' and I could be Black, white, Latino, Asian — it doesn’t matter, but it’s just a great pop song."

Clinton Kane

Kane's got every making of a great singer-songwriter, and his lyricism will make a fan out of loyal Ed Sheeran or Sam Smith listeners. The Filipino-American singer's impressive vocal range captivates, and his emotion-driven lyrics will melt your heart. One of his more popular tracks, "Chicken Tendies," has upwards of 2 million views and is a must-add to your heartbreak playlist.

Jhené Aiko

As a mixed-race Japanese, Creole, Dominican, and European woman, Aiko has proudly championed her diverse roots throughout her accomplished career. The R&B singer is a six-time Grammy-nominated artist and is well respected within the industry for her philanthropic endeavors. She launched the WAYS foundation in 2017, an organization dedicated to helping cancer patients and their families.

Steve Aoki

Steve Aoki is hardly a newcomer to the EDM scene, but as one of the most prominent DJs in the industry, and one of the biggest Japanese DJs ever, it would be a crime to leave him off this list. Aoki even has his own record label and, in 2016, Netflix released I'll Sleep When I'm Dead, a documentary about his career.

Karen O

As the lead singer for the rock band Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Karen O has solidified her spot as a rock music legend. Not only is the Korean-American singer's discography with the band a must-listen for any rock music fan, but her 2019 album with Danger Mouse, Lux Prima, earned her a Grammy nomination for Best Rock Performance.

H.E.R.

Hailing from the San Francisco Bay Area, H.E.R. (aka Gabi Wilson) has become one of the most prominent names in R&B. At just 23 years old, the singer-songwriter already has four Grammy wins and 13 nominations. Along the way, she's never shied away from praising her Filipino mother and Black father, Agnes and Kenny Wilson, for giving her the unique perspectives that propelled her musical success.

Toro Y Moi

Toro Y Moi is actually one person (Chaz Bear) and he's become the unofficial king of chillwave. Born to a Filipino mother, the South Carolina native later relocated to California to further his music career. If you need some chill vibes on your playlist, Bear's got you covered.

Ruby Ibarra

Ibarra is a Filipino-American rapper from San Lorenzo, California who also dabbles in spoken word poetry. Her music is meaningful in more ways than one. A number of her songs touch upon her experience as an Asian American woman. In April 2021, she released a powerful song and video called "Gold" with Ella Jay Basco, which exposed the harmful effects of the skin whitening industry.

Ella Jay Basco

You may recognize Basco from her appearance in Birds of Prey, but her music is not to be slept on because it's making major waves. Her song "Gold" with Ruby Ibarra highlights her Filipino heritage. As she told People, "From top to bottom, we wanted to make sure that our Asian-American community was represented with this project."

Mitski

Meet your new favorite alt-rock queen. Mitski's dreamy melodies appeal to the indie-rock crowd more than anything, and, if you're a sucker for a sad bop, this Japanese-American songstress has plenty of those stacked up.

Yaeji

Yaeji was born in Flushing, Queens in 1993 and grew up between the U.S. and Korea. Since she moved around so much as a kid, she found friendship on the internet, where she first connected with the bossa nova, jazz, and Korean indie music that drove much of the Korean DIY scene. She soon returned to the States to attend college, where she discovered a love for producing and DJing. Now, she meticulously blends hip-hop elements with her house-driven sound for a listening experience that is unlike anything else.

Hayley Kiyoko

Kiyoko has been given the nickname Lesbian Jesus since she’s so outspoken about LGBTQ+ representation in the music industry. The Japanese-American singer is a true trailblazer and her pop music genius has landed her hits with Kehlani, MAX, and AJR.

Jay Park

Park is an industry heavyweight. The Seattle native got his start in the K-pop industry as part of the band 2PM, but he went solo in 2009. Today, not only does the star have dozens of hits under his belt, but he has two record labels of his own that specialize in R&B and hip-hop music: AOMG and H1ghr. Park uses his superstar status to give others the spotlight, and he's put his support behind other artists like GOT7's JAY B and Yugyeom, and Raz Simone. Whether you're a self-proclaimed K-pop stan, or you're just recently getting acquainted with the genre, Park's discography is required listening.

Jin Au-Yeung

Born and raised in North Miami Beach, Florida, the Chinese-American rapper, aka MC Jin, has some seriously impressive accolades under his belt. After becoming popular among his musical peers for his epic freestyles, he was signed to Ruff Ryders in 2002 at just 19 years old, becoming the first Asian American solo rapper to be signed to a major record label in the U.S. He's since parted ways with the label and now travels back and forth between the U.S. and Hong Kong, seeing success in both places. In May 2021, the rapper released a single called "Stop the Hatred" with Wyclef Jean to raise awareness about hate crimes toward Asian Americans amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Olivia Rodrigo

Rodrigo needs no introduction, but I'll do it anyway: This Filipino-American actress-turned-singer-songwriter's mega-hit debut single "drivers license" was unavoidable in January 2021. Its heartbreakingly relatable lyrics about a crush moving on with someone else struck listeners to their core and immediately soared to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. It also went viral on TikTok, before making its way into a Saturday Night Live sketch. Rodrigo's songwriting skills have fans likening her to industry heavyweights like Taylor Swift, so it's no surprise her debut album, Sour, is one of the most highly-anticipated albums of summer 2021.

Run River North

Run River North is not just one musician, but three. The band formerly known as Monsters Calling Home is an indie rock band from Los Angeles. The group has an eclectic sound that draws inspiration from each member: Daniel Chae, Alex Hwang, and Sally Kang.

ZHU

When ZHU first entered the electronic music scene, he used an alias and remained anonymous. By 2014, the artist also known as Steven Zhu was ready to share his identity with the world. ZHU got his start in San Francisco, California, but has made his mark on the EDM scene globally.

Darren Criss

Criss rose to fame starring on the television series Glee and he's since proven himself to be a true triple threat. His work can be seen across TV, film, and music. In September of 2018, Criss became the first Filipino-American to win an Emmy in the lead actor category for his portrayal of Andrew Cunanan in FX's The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story. He’s also got several full-fledged EPs under his belt.

Amber Liu

Amber Liu (also known mononymously as Amber) is of Taiwanese descent and grew up in Los Angeles. She made a big splash when debuting as a member of the K-pop girl group f(x) in September 2009, but has since gone solo. Her 2019 solo track "Other People" racked up millions of streams, and she’s gearing up to drop her first album of 2021, called y?, very soon. In the meantime, she’s continuing to grow her superstar following on social media, where she has 5 million Instagram followers and over 2.3 million on Twitter.

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[comrade-meow]

New Zealand schools have introduced a climate change resource that suggests children “eat less meat and dairy”, even though teachers will not know how much meat or dairy any child in their care has eaten. Opinion pieces in the papers have called for the reduction of meat and dairy in hospital menus, not usually generous sources of such foods, despite the well-known risks of undernutrition, especially of protein, in the frail and elderly. Globally, the influential and once-objective medical journal the Lancet has hosted Eat Lancet, a coalition of vegan and vegetarian technocrats backed by processed food manufacturers, and promoted their agenda. The Guardian newspaper accepted an £626783 grant from the backers of Impossible Foods to run a series of articles against animal agriculture.

These initiatives, aimed at remodelling our food supply in a way that favours the multinational food processing and seed-and-chemical corporations, whose control of many aspects of farming and diet is already problematic, have run far ahead of the scientific community’s efforts to understand the health effects of such dietary change.

Our hunter-gatherer past

The Neolithic Revolution was the first alteration in human affairs that is generally considered worthy of the term Revolution. In Marx’s terms, it saw a change in the means of production sufficient to form new classes aware of their identities, and thus a change in the relations between people. Early humans had fed themselves in an opportunistic, hunter-gatherer fashion that tended to favour a diet of animals supplemented with plants where and when these were available. Large animals made the best meals but gathering activities could collect many smaller ones, as well as eggs, grubs etc.

The people of the Mesolithic era discovered that some animals could be herded and some plants grown in gardens (not usually by the same community, because one activity favours nomadism and the other favours a sedentary habit) but these activities, which greatly improved food security after the decline of the prehistoric mega-fauna due to hunting and climate pressures, tended to occur at the communal level and probably did not create major class differences between the people involved.

The invention of farming

The Neolithic Revolution, which unleashed the human potential for war, creativity, and social division, resulted from the identification of the germs of plants (specifically grains and legumes) as durable sources of energy. If grains were grown (I will use grains in the wider sense of “cereals”, after Braudel, including other dried germs such as peas) and there was a surplus, this surplus would still be edible over the next year, a year when drought or pests or diseases might wipe out the other food sources that hunter-gatherers depended on. This advantage was offset by the nutritional poverty of grain-based diets, so that tuberculosis probably became an endemic disease during this period,[1] but the existence of a less-perishable surplus allowed the diversion of part of the population away from food gathering for large parts of the year, and saw the creation of armies and other workforces.

In Europe, the Neolithic Revolution is dated at around 10,000 BC and its arrangements are a matter of prehistory, but in China this change occurred later and the written record around Bi-gu or grain avoidance includes folk-memories of conflict between grain eating and grain avoiding peoples.

The history of colonisation is the history of the conquest of lactose-intolerant peoples by lactose-tolerant populations, and of non-grain eaters by grain-eaters. In the Indian sub-continent, a combination of dairy herding and a cereal diet high in legumes uniquely allowed the survival of a substantially vegetarian population, and saw the conservation of genes favouring reproduction on such a diet, including genetic polymorphisms still rare in European populations (adaptive mutations only predominate where many individuals without them have failed to survive or reproduce).[2] That the Indian social system became more aggressively class-based than any other is probably no co-incidence; prejudice against meat-eating is still used as a tool of social control against minorities, while meat-eating is one way young Indians today identify as modern and egalitarian. However there were some important exceptions to the trend – the Aztecs were a hunter-gather people who conquered and dominated the Mesolithic agriculturalists of Mexico, and the Mongols were nomadic herders and hunters whose greater stamina and independence allowed them to defeat the rice-fed armies of the Chinese Emperors (after conquering this breadbasket, the successive Mongol Khans seem to have eaten and drunk themselves to death).

Early vegetarian ideology

In the European and Asian cereal-based societies the poorest classes went without meat, supplementing cereals when possible with buttermilk or blood pudding which were more economic replacements. The rich ate as much meat as they could. The idea that an entire society might avoid meat is a recent one with its roots in religious practice, and, insofar as it has any political basis, this flows in two distinct streams – the eco-fascist, in which meat avoidance is a sign of “purity”, most humans are a burden on the Earth, and the Indian vegetarians are of course Aryans. This is something like the vegetarian vision that Adolf Hitler picked up while studying anti-Semitism with Wagner’s heirs at Bayreuth.

And then there is a Marxist-Anarchist, and latterly Intersectional, version, founded on a valuation of animal rights as inseparable from, and a logical extension of, human rights. Vegetarianism was a frequent obsession of the early British Socialists; G.B. Shaw, who derived most of his energy from dairy fat and lived to the age of 94, made himself into a well-known example, and the idea was sufficiently entrenched among the British Socialists and their milieu that H.G. Wells preserved its internal contradictions for posterity in The Time Machine. In his far-future vision, humanity has evolved into two separate species. The Morlocks are descendants of working-class meat-eaters, the Eloi of leisure-class vegetarians – all Wells’ loathing is reserved for the Morlocks, yet it is obvious they are (still) the engineering brains keeping their world running and the Eloi fed. The Eloi are useless for anything but enjoying the sunshine and feeding the Morlocks, and the discordance in Wells’ progressive values as he describes both species is as shocking as anything else in the story.

The first large-scale experiment in plant-based protein was attempted by the Bolsheviks. As usual, it’s hard to separate the roles played by idealism and cynicism in the story, but the bare bones are that the Soviets found their initial attempts to remodel the countryside rebuffed, blamed this on the recaltricance of the kulak class, and set out to destroy them. The problem being that the kulaks, owning most of the cattle and sheep across the Russian Republics, helped to feed the people. Beginning in the 1920s, soy experts from the USA (then the Western world’s leading soy producer) were among the many foreign technicians imported into Russia, and soy processing plants were built and soy production increased to 283,000 tonnes in 1931, the year Stalin unleashed enforced collectivisation and the terror against the kulaks (and also the Kazakhs, a herding people who suffered the largest proportionate loss of life during this period). This led to the loss of millions of animals, either killed by their dispossessed owners or mismanaged by their inexperienced new owners. The soy project was hardly able to prevent the massive famines that followed, and by 1935 soy production had dropped to 54,000 tonnes. Though soy milk would later prove useful during the siege of Leningrad, by the 1930s soy had probably only served one purpose, as a statistic needed aforehand to quell the objections of pragmatic delegates to the destruction of the kulaks and their livestock.

Today we face the revival of this idea, of plant protein that will create a world with no need for animal protein, and the remodelling of life in the countryside, with the new impetus of climate change as its driver. Livestock cycles natural carbon, meaning there is no net addition of C02 to the atmosphere – and its contribution to the shorter-lived methane precursor has not changed since 2000 (methane rises have been due to fracking, methane itself AKA “natural gas”, landfill, and rice production; methane-emitting animals have always existed on Earth in substantial numbers, and have not created a novel situation in the sense that the discovery of coal, oil and gas did). We have recently seen how much global disruption is required to reduce fossil fuel CO2 emissions to 2006 levels, levels which will still warm the planet if they continue. It could be still be worth reducing agricultural cycling of CO2 through methane, which is more warming than CO2 if this is cost-free, but is it?

Why humans evolved as meat eaters

Animal foods, and especially red meat, supply a constellation of nutrients not found together (if they are found at all) in any plant food. Nutrients are those chemicals essential for the functioning of the human organism, and plants, but not livestock, can survive well without nutrients such as amino acids, fatty acids, vitamins and minerals that are essential to humans. Surviving as a vegetarian or vegan is possible for some (perhaps assuming the genetic variants referred to earlier are present) but to thrive requires knowledge of these nutrients, where to find them, how to process the foods that supply them, or how to supplement them. Thriving as an omnivore or even a complete carnivore does not – nutritional sufficiency is the reason we evolved eating meat and other animal foods long before we learned there were such things as essential nutrients.

The reasons for avoiding meat or all animal foods can have a class basis – veganism may be taken up by educated middle-class adults, more likely to be exposed to “health food” ideas and aware of the need to supplement, some of whom then commercialise their habits as social media “influencers”. Meat avoidance is also being adopted increasingly by educated middle-class children for identity or compassionate reasons, but the poor may also avoid meat because of its cost when a loaf of bread or a packet of flavoured noodles can be bought for a dollar; these two motivations sometimes coincide when students in temporary poverty make a virtue of what they perceive to be a necessity.

Does the meat-avoiding behaviour of young people have unintended costs? Several observational studies have looked at the characteristics of meat-avoiding populations and found alarming increases in depression, anxiety and self-harm.

“The majority of studies, and especially the higher quality studies, showed that those who avoided meat consumption had significantly higher rates or risk of depression, anxiety, and/or self-harm behaviors. There was mixed evidence for temporal relations, but study designs and a lack of rigor precluded inferences of causal relations. Our study does not support meat avoidance as a strategy to benefit psychological health.”[3]

How can we explain these correlations? Why should we assume that they are causal?There are several lines of evidence to support a causal link: 1) several nutrients found in meat and animal foods are important factors in mood and cognition; vitamin B12, iron, carnitine, DHA, choline and tryptophan are some examples.[4] 2) the fatty acid mix in dairy and red meat has a similar composition to that of amniotic fluid and breast milk which has anxiolytic (anti-anxiety) effects in young animals.[5] 3) soy is a convenient and cheap replacement for animal protein; soy processing in Western diets results in a 10-fold higher level of the estrogenic contaminant isoflavone than that found in Asian diets.[6] Soy isoflavone causes anxiety behaviour in young female animals, and there is evidence supporting psychotropic and hormonal effects in humans.[7,8,9.10] Interestingly, while right-wing critiques of soy eating focus on effects it can have on young men, the scientific evidence for adverse effects in younger females, converting to HRT-like benefits after menopause, is stronger.[11] 4) other toxins found in plants, such as salicylates and oxalates, as well as problematic proteins such as gliadin/gluten and zein, may be present at higher levels in meat-free diets (but are not unique to them). A vegan mince sold in Countdown supermarkets is simply a coloured blend of soy protein and gluten, a protein linked to the risk of schizophrenia.[12] In the New Zealand context it would be relatively easy to confirm or dispute some of these associations. Everyone admitted to hospital for longer than a day supplies their dietary preferences. The dietetic preference data from psychiatric admissions could be both linked to outcomes over time and compared with the population average distribution, or the distribution in a ward where diet is least likely to play a role in admissions.

Iron deficiency in women

Young women in New Zealand are the most likely to report being vegan or vegetarian in surveys, as elsewhere in the world. Vegans in the Gender Studies field generate papers linking meat to masculinity, with the implication that this masculinity is toxic and might be improved by a plant-based diet.[13] The corollary of this belief – that women may therefore be weakened by meat-avoidance – is never considered. In a 1980 essay by Gloria Steinem called The Politics of Food (in the collection Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions) she describes some of the cultural constructs by which women are deprived of the good nutrition which men use to stay dominant. The belief that men need to eat red meat more often than women may have been valid when the average man was more likely to have to survive an attack by a wild bear than the average woman, but today it is mainly women who suffer from serious iron deficiency. The rate – and the cost to the health system – is increasing in New Zealand as more women give up meat. Iron deficiency anaemia in early pregnancy is associated with neurodevelopmental disorders in children, not an outcome that will increase the mother’s autonomy.[14]

In Georg Büchner’s 19th century “working class tragedy” Woyzeck, filmed by Werner Herzog with Klaus Kinski in the leading role and the subject of an opera by Alban Berg, the title character, a soldier, is subject to experimentation by a sadistic army doctor. The experiment involves Woyzeck living on nothing but peas. Peas may supply a complete protein, but Woyzeck goes insane; the deprivation being the final straw in his alienation. James Cameron, the film-maker responsible for Avatar and Titanic, is investing heavily in pea protein as if this were his gift to New Zealand. I am not sure whether he has watched Woyzeck – one would think he has.

Plant-based vs meat-based

Again, we have the specificity of plant germs as commodity; their low cost of production, long storage life and versatility of processing outcomes makes them an ideal investment and a robust one, as poverty and adversity increases their consumption, as we saw during the 2020 Lockdown Event. However, a plant-based burger is nutritionally greatly inferior to a meat burger, and that burger is often the most nutritious single food item many will people eat in the course of their day. The current push to eat a plant-based diet for “planetary health” is something that all the multinational food processors have signed up and provided funding for, and why not – Coca Cola, Unilever, Nestlé have always sold us plant-based foods. We notice that while iron-deficiency anaemia increases in New Zealand with the reason in plain sight, Nestlé scientists here in NZ are developing a more potent form of supplemental iron to add value to their products as their parent company backs the push to reduce meat. (As usual, it’s hard to separate the roles played by idealism and cynicism in the story). But, you may well ask, isn’t eating meat linked to an increased risk of cancer and heart disease? These associations are small to begin with, but they are also intensely confounded by social class and educational status. Supposing a factory that makes a carcinogenic chemical is hiring. Who is more likely to apply for that job – a meat eater (who will likely have a bigger family to support, among other considerations) or a vegan? Who, so to speak, eats all the pies, and needs food that is filling and nutritious without having to give it much thought? Who is more likely to work two jobs and be exposed to the disruptive metabolic effect of shift work? Carcinogen exposure and shift work are just two of the confounding variables ignored in diet epidemiology. (That meat-eating in Western populations may symbolise or associate with labour itself – as it did for H.G. Wells when he wrote The Time Machine – is not a consideration I have found discussed in the epidemiological literature.)

Certainly one can think of mechanisms that might link meat to disease, as one can with any food, but one can also think of protective mechanisms; several of the nutrients found mainly or only in animal foods are required for various antioxidant and immune defensive enzymes, and some like carnitine and EPA even have a place in the management of heart disease. The argument against meat-eating should not be confused with the argument for sometimes rationing a valuable food that is in short supply. The wartime rationing of meat in the UK is thought to have improved the health of the poorest by guaranteeing a greater supply than they had had previously, at a more affordable price. In Europe, the peasants who supplied the cities with meat, dairy and luxury foods such as oysters were sometimes forced by network disruptions to consume these foods – which many of them had never tasted before – with benefit to their own health.

The plant-based agenda can scarcely be expected to recognise these benefits, or understand the argument summarised by Williams and Dunbar (with regard to the vitamin nicotinamide and amino acid tryptophan in their tuberculosis paper), that if better data collection and analysis resulted in us ”…returning to our egalitarian past and redistributing meat or its components that supply NAD (avoiding both the highs and the lows between individuals and over individual lifetimes) [this] may be more effective than subsidizing corn grain (while the increased prosperity from unlocking human potential should pay for the intervention).”[1] Progress – which includes unlocking human potential from the chains of preventable mental and physical disease – depends on good data, and we do not yet seem to collate the data required to know whether or for whom plant-based diets are safe in New Zealand.

George Henderson works as a researcher for Professor Grant Schofield and the team behind the What The Fat books and the social enterprise PreKure, which has been running free lifestyle and health programs through the lockdown. He is the author or co-author of several scientific articles and letters published by the BMJ, Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology, the JAMA, and other journals, including an influential review of low carbohydrate diets in diabetes management for the New Zealand Medical Journal. A musician, songwriter and amateur musicologist, he has recently presented a series of podcasts on 20th century women composers for Karyn Hay’s Lately show on RNZ.

References:

[1] Williams AC, Dunbar RI. Big brains, meat, tuberculosis, and the nicotinamide switches: co-evolutionary relationships with modern repercussions?. Int J Tryptophan Res. 2013;6:73‐88. Published 2013 Oct 15. doi:10.4137/IJTR.S12838 [2] Kothapalli KS, Ye K, Gadgil MS, et al. Positive Selection on a Regulatory Insertion-Deletion Polymorphism in FADS2 Influences Apparent Endogenous Synthesis of Arachidonic Acid. Mol Biol Evol. 2016;33(7):1726‐1739. doi:10.1093/molbev/msw049

[3] Urska Dobersek, Gabrielle Wy, Joshua Adkins, Sydney Altmeyer, Kaitlin Krout, Carl J. Lavie & Edward Archer (2020) Meat and mental health: a systematic review of meat abstention and depression, anxiety, and related phenomena, Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition, DOI: 10.1080/10408398.2020.1741505 [4] Frédéric Leroy & Nathan Cofnas (2019) Should dietary guidelines recommend low red meat intake?, Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition, DOI: 10.1080/10408398.2019.1657063 [5] Contreras CM, Rodríguez-Landa JF, García-Ríos RI, Cueto-Escobedo J, Guillen-Ruiz G, Bernal-Morales B. Myristic acid produces anxiolytic-like effects in Wistar rats in the elevated plus maze. Biomed Res Int. 2014;2014:492141. doi:10.1155/2014/492141 [6] Fernandez-Lopez A, Lamothe V, Delample M, Denayrolles M, Bennetau-Pelissero C. Removing isoflavones from modern soyfood: Why and how?. Food Chem. 2016;210:286‐294. doi:10.1016/j.foodchem.2016.04.126 [7] Hicks KD, Sullivan AW, Cao J, Sluzas E, Rebuli M, Patisaul HB. Interaction of bisphenol A (BPA) and soy phytoestrogens on sexually dimorphic sociosexual behaviors in male and female rats. Horm Behav. 2016;84:121‐126. doi:10.1016/j.yhbeh.2016.06.010 [8] Tillett T. Full of beans? Early soy exposure associated with less feminine play in girls [published correction appears in Environ Health Perspect. 2012 Jan;120(1):A17]. Environ Health Perspect. 2011;119(12):A525. doi:10.1289/ehp.119-a525b [9] Adgent MA, Daniels JL, Rogan WJ, et al. Early-life soy exposure and age at menarche. Paediatr Perinat Epidemiol. 2012;26(2):163‐175. doi:10.1111/j.1365-3016.2011.01244.x [10] Hibbeln, J.R., SanGiovanni, J.P., Golding, J., Emmett, P.M., Northstone, K., Davis, J.M., Schuckit, M. and Heron, J. (2017), Meat Consumption During Pregnancy and Substance Misuse Among Adolescent Offspring: Stratification of TCN2 Genetic Variants. Alcohol Clin Exp Res, 41: 1928-1937. doi:10.1111/acer.13494 [11] Patisaul HB, Jefferson W. The pros and cons of phytoestrogens. Front Neuroendocrinol. 2010;31(4):400‐419. doi:10.1016/j.yfrne.2010.03.003 [12] Čiháková D, Eaton WW, Talor MV, et al. Gliadin-related antibodies in schizophrenia. Schizophr Res. 2018;195:585‐586. doi:10.1016/j.schres.2017.08.051 [13] Jessica Greenebaum & Brandon Dexter (2018) Vegan men and hybrid masculinity, Journal of Gender Studies, 27:6, 637-648, DOI: 10.1080/09589236.2017.1287064 [14] Wiegersma AM, Dalman C, Lee BK, Karlsson H, Gardner RM. Association of Prenatal Maternal Anemia With Neurodevelopmental Disorders. JAMA Psychiatry. 2019;76(12):1294–1304. doi:10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2019.2309

[surveys-at-your-service]

Survey #397

“you’re my religion, you’re my reason to live  /  you are the heaven in my hell”

Do you think that you’ll always love who you love now? Even if we're never together again romantically, I will ALWAYS love her at least as a best friend. Have you ever made out with a random person? Yeah, no. If you could do your first kiss over, would you? No. I'm lucky that my first kiss was honestly cute as hell. Do you like your country’s president or prime minister? Well I voted for him, so I obviously can't hate him. He seems to be doing fine so far, though take that with a grain of salt seeing as I don't keep up with politics. Even before voting for him, I just did a small bit of researching on his values. What color is your house? Yellow with white accents. Do you listen to Christmas music during the holiday season? No, I don't enjoy it. Man, Jason's mom sure did, though... I loved how in the spirit she'd get and always played Christmas music in the car during that time of year. I miss that woman and I sure as hell hope she rests easy now. Do you like ginger ale? Solely if I have a stomach bug, and I can only ever sip it. What are you listening to? "Electric Sugar Pop" by Jeffree Star. What’s the last thing you watched on TV? The TMS office has the TV on, and the woman who overlooks it (I have zero idea what her position is called) tends to have it either on a cooking channel or a home improvement one. Today was a cooking one. Is your favorite author the author of your favorite book? I don't have a favorite author. Describe someone you find really attractive: M-Mark Fischbach. *___* If you HAD to look like someone else, but could choose who, who would you choose? Hm... maybe my friend Alon. I've mentioned I feel like a million times that she is like, ethereal with how gorgeous she is. Have you ever seen someone get a tattoo done? If so, what was it? Did they cry or were they in a lot of pain? Yeah; it was a watercolor feather with "ohana" written below it. She didn't cry at all, but she grit her teeth a few times. Do you have anything you couldn’t go a day without? Some form of technology. Have you ever gotten caught doing something illegal? No. What’s your favorite flavor of Vitamin Water? I don't even think I've ever tried it. Is there someone you wanna date right now? Yeah. What first attracted you to the last person you kissed? If we're talking the very first, our vast similar interests. How many brothers does your father have? None. Does your best friend have any tattoos? No. Do you like Ben + Jerry’s? Yep. Man, I want their Phish Food ice cream now. Would you ever wish to be the opposite sex? Nah. Do you think you’re attractive? Nope. What is your favorite card game to play? Magic: The Gathering. I really miss my PS3 where I had Duel of the Planeswalkers installed on it, it was really fun. Do you own a globe? I don't think we still do. What is your favorite wild cat? Perhaps clouded leopards. If your bedroom had three portals to anywhere, where would they lead? South Africa, Sara's place, and maybe a nice little cabin in the mountains for when I'm feeling a peaceful getaway. You can ask any author one question about their story. What do you ask? I have zero idea. What’s a place you have a strong emotional connection to? The pond behind the local community college. Jason and I took our first prom pictures there. Do you take yoga classes? No, but I'm actually considering it since they offer those at the YMCA Mom and I now go to. What is a decision you’ve made that changed your entire life? To let Jason go. It's pretty great, my PTSD has been less of a bother lately! Have you ever made any money from a side-hustle? Could you consider being paid to take pictures once in a blue moon a "side hustle" when I don't even have a main job? Do you ever wonder what kind of person you’d have turned out to be if a certain event never happened to you? Ugh... it's incredibly painful to wonder how life would be if Jason never left. If you could have anyone’s singing voice, whose would you choose? Adele's or Amy Lee's, probs. What are your top 3 favorite genres of music? Metal, hard rock, alternative. Do you think Mars will be colonized in your lifetime? No. Have you ever been homeless? If so, what led to your homelessness? Technically, yes, because Mom couldn't afford the rent. She, my little sister (who still lived with us at the time), and I each were accepted into the homes of willing, kind people, though. Have you ever been on a ship? No. Who was Van Halen’s better singer - David Lee Roth, or Sammy Hagar? David. Which fictional character has the most memorable quotes? Heath Ledger's Joker is quoted all the time, so probably him. What do you think of the "Healthy At Every Size" movement/philosophy? Before I answer this, I want you to keep in mind that this is coming from someone who is obese, so I would positively love to agree with that for my own self-confidence, but I don't. I believe it's a very dangerous mentality. I think you should cherish your body unconditionally, like it's an amazing machine, but I firmly believe you should have an active interest in becoming what is physically healthy. You couldn't pay me millions to convince me that, say, a 300 lb. person is healthy. What was the name of the first person you ever had a crush on? Why did you like them? I think my first *real* crush was this guy Sebastian my freshman year of high school. I thought he was very sweet, funny, caring, and attractiveness was a bonus. What food will you absolutely not, under any circumstances, eat? Sashimi, caviar, raw eggs... Which famous person would you like to be BFFs with? Bindi Irwin, for one. What kind of natural disaster is most common where you live? Hurricanes. Have you ever had an animal get into your attic? No. Have you ever been bitten so hard that there teeth marks were there after? I mean I've had hickeys before if that's what you're asking. Ever gave one? Oh, I guess you were. Yeah. Do you think its weird if guys wear make-up like eyeliner? Not at all. Would you ever date a disabled person? (Be honest) Yes. Would you rather adopt or have your own child? IF I wanted kids, I'd rather have one myself because I'm well aware I personally need that special connection. Stepkids count, too, because they'd be my partner's and therefore very important for me too. What is the most personal question you have ever been asked? Probably TMI, so here's your fair warning, but I've been asked before if I "touch" myself and I was absolutely repulsed that someone would ask me that. Were you abused by your parents? No. If you’re not straight, who was the first person you came out to? Sara. Were you one of the smartest in your class? Up to finishing high school, modestly, I was. Where did you meet your first crush? Art class my freshman year of high school. Do you ever go places with wet hair? Yeah, idc. Who is your favorite little girl? My niece Aubree. She's such a wonderful girl. Does your best friend have kids? No. If you were pregnant, would you want a boy or a girl? Hypothetically, a girl. What place outside of your own home do you spend the most time at? Um, maybe my older sister's house? Have you ever participated in a medical study? No. Do you have any family members who are cancer survivors? Yes, including my mother. Twice. Are you allergic to any medications? None that I've tried. Do you have any licenses other than your driver's license? I don't even have that. If you’re atheist, would you raise you kids believing in God or not? No; I wouldn't intervene with their own spiritual (or lack thereof) journey. They'd learn what they'd learn and decide themselves what they believe. Do you like reading self-help books? No, I just can't get invested in those. What is your opinion on sex change? If you're unhappy with your body, you're more than free to surgically change that with no judgment from me. Do you have any goals for this summer? If so, what are they? Yes, to lose weight. Can you get a strike at bowling? I have before. There was one occasion where my first go was a strike RIGHT after saying I sucked at bowling, hahaha. Do you ever take pictures of negative moments? Well, I photograph roadkill, and that's one hell of a sad moment. I actually wouldn't mind broadening my horizons of photographing negative moments (with permission of course), because I actually find these very impactful and even builds empathy. I will never, ever forget this one picture I saw sometime of an emaciated boy huddled in the dirt with a vulture close by watching him... like fuck, it made me want to sob. No one should ever have to live like that, especially a child. Would you ever post a picture of yourself crying on social media? No. I know that sounds contradictory to what I just said, I just wouldn't be able to do it myself. Have you ever held a newborn baby? Once, when my last niece was born. I'm terrified of holding them because they're just so fragile. Do you know anyone who has twins? My friend just had triplets. What is your favorite country in Europe? Germany. Are you thriving in your life right now? BOY HOWDY- Do you remember to water plants? I don't keep plants. Name three YouTubers you aspire to be like. 1.) Markiplier in a vast plethora of ways; 2.) Jeffree Star for his incredible work ethic; and 3.) Shane Dawson for his incredible compassion. Yes. I know the controversy, but regardless, he cares a lot about people. Who is your favorite character from Harry Potter? I wouldn't know, given I haven't read the books or seen the movies. Do you watch PewDiePie? Not anymore; his content doesn't interest me anymore. I watched him religiously back in the day when he was a serious let's player, though. Do you have a Steam account? Yes. Have you ever played Five Nights at Freddy’s? No, not personally. I like watching LPs of it and I find the story fascinating, but it's not the kind of game I'd enjoy playing. Have you ever tried Akinator? Yes. I don't think I ever beat it, except maybe once. Are you wearing socks right now? No; unless I'm wearing closed-toe shoes like sneakers, I never do. I hate the feeling of them. Can you twerk? Haven't tried, don't wanna. Do you like dabbing? No, it looks stupid. Do you like fishing? I honestly do think it's fun with all the anticipation and thrill of seeing how big the fish is, however I don't support it anymore unless, like hunting, you genuinely need it for food. The only case where I'd go again was if my dad asked me, because that's always been our bonding experience. Do you have a Spotify account? Yes. Have you heard of Blizzard Entertainment? Well, they're the company behind World of Warcraft, so obviously. Do you like bananas? Yes, but only for a VERY short window of time. I am beyond picky with the ripeness of bananas. Are you addicted to anything? Caffeine and technology. Do you know your phone number? I actually don't. Do you swear in front of children? No.

[jungxk]

Hello I consider you my south asian big sister on tumblr and I think you’re also British? I am just a typical Indian girl in uk living with my very conservative immigrant parents who moved here nearly 2 decades ago. They are very strict in terms of where I go and what I do outside but they don’t really care about anything else I can do whatever I want at home and I never felt much pressure from them in terms of comparing me to other kids but I did have some indirect academic pressure. Anyways, my parents are strict but also not strict and now I’m moving away to uni, it seems they have a million worries in their head. I am only less than an hour’s train ride away and they’re still scared. I am quite naïve I won’t lie and I am inexperienced with being independent because my parents always coddled me and were very overprotective of me. I guess I don’t have much trust in myself because of that. I do feel anxious about moving away but my main anxiety comes from this dichotomy I am faced with. I have 2 options: 1. Be a good child and not drink or go to nightclubs and stuff 2. Try it out and see how it goes. My mum just recited a monologue on how our family is different from the ones here and that we don’t fit into the culture here. Most of my family is in India and they’re even more conservative and strict especially towards women. My parents themselves practically never go out and don’t have many close friends because they feel like outcasts due to their lack of habits in drinking or just this toxic gossiping culture in the south asian community. It’s hard to come across good people that don’t feel competitive or jealous of the fact that even though my parents were immigrant they managed to settle down here. I can tell my parents are scared that their eldest daughter will come under bad influence and start drinking and having sex. They always treat me like I’m a 5 year old child who doesn’t know anything and needs to be protected. I have never even gone to the gym by myself. We never go to restaurants and i have no idea how to order stuff when you go to one. I know it seems simple but I have never done it before and I don’t know any of the etiquette. It makes me nervous thinking about how I’ll have to socialize like this at uni. But what scared me the most about it that my parents won’t let me go even when I go uni. My dad is a driver and he often goes to London and I know he will drop by every now and then unexpectedly to make sure I am at my dorms not outside. My mum warns me that there are people out there I can’t trust and I will fall into bad company but I have no idea who to trust anymore and now I can’t make friends. When I go to uni I don’t know if I want to give drinking a go because I have never done it before and want to give it a go but I’m scared my parents will find out and I have no idea how I’ll deal with that. All this pressure makes me want to run away but I have no idea how to survive on my own. My parents don’t trust me at all I can tell. And it’s suffocating to see the way they think. When they talk about my 6 year old cousins who are boys, they find it easy to make jokes about how they’ll have girlfriends in no time but when it comes to me their full grown daughter, they won’t even let me go out by myself. I feel so much pressure to do well but I also feel so suffocated. I don’t get why my parents expect to follow the rules from a country I don’t even live in. I’m so tired of it. I don’t know what to do.

hi honey. as your desi big sister this rlly broke my heart to read bc i remember being exactly where you are. i need you to know that almost every daughter of south asian immigrant parents go thru this so you are not alone, you have never been alone, you will never be alone.

now. south asian parents never rlly see their children as people. they never raise their children to be capable and confident adults, just dolls that they keep as trophies and robots. it’s fucked up and wrong i know. but leaving home and making your own opinions about the world is paramount to both you and ur parents understanding that you are a human being with your own preferences, goals and ideals. yes it will be scary, yes you will struggle. the secrets, the arguments, the anxiety. but this is the start of you living your own life for the first time and if you don’t put your foot down now it will only get more difficult in the future. drinking and sex and drugs don’t make you a bad person. it’s a manipulation tactic they use to control you bc they’re scared of you becoming independent and forming your own thoughts. the more desperate they get the worse they will act. but tbh, it doesn’t matter what you do or don’t do bc nothing will ever be enough for them so chasing their approval will get you nowhere.

i don’t know how abusive ur family are so pls familiarise urself with ur rights here in the uk as well as various charities and local safe places you can go to if things go south. when you go to uni have a network of people not connected to ur family who know ur situation and whereabouts at all times. ur safety is the most important thing here. i know it’s terrifying but it’s time to start thinking for yourself and deciding what’s important to you. some asian kids can give it all up, some can’t. but there are ppl out there who will love and support your authentic you, whoever you may be, and the only way to find yourself is to go out and experience the world outside of ur parents/other ppl’s judgments and fears. don’t let their close minds hold you back. wish you all the best baby x

[wazafam]

Between the 1980s and before a decline in the early 2000s, the erotic thriller was one of cinema's most popular and risque genres. Usually, an erotic thriller features storylines that focus heavily on romance and contain graphic nudity and sex scenes.

RELATED: 10 Great Thriller Movies You Won't Believe Are Not On IMDb's Top 250

Some of these films have been praised while some have been considered "trashy" for focusing more on the salacious elements instead of the story. And while not as popular today, recent hits like Fifty Shades Of Grey prove there is still a market. During its heyday, Hollywood produced some great erotic thrillers that are still viewed by audiences looking for a dangerous and naughty evening.

10 In The Cut (2003) - 5.3

Directed by acclaimed filmmaker Jane Campion, In The Cut's story revolves around a teacher, Frannie, (Meg Ryan) who gets questioned by an investigator, Malloy, (Mark Ruffalo) after the limb of a murdered girl is found in her garden. The two begin a relationship. but Frannie starts to suspect the murderer might be Malloy himself.

Upon release, the film was controversial for graphic sex and for Meg Ryan's nude scenes, which many believed to be brave due to her wholesome image and for normally appearing in light romantic comedies. Despite mixed reviews, Ryan's performance has been praised as one of her best.

9 Crash (1996) - 6.4

Perhaps one of the most controversial erotic thrillers of all time is Crash. Directed by acclaimed filmmaker David Cronenberg, the film concerns a TV director (James Spader) who gets involved with a group of people who become aroused after watching automobile collisions.

Crash's premiere screening at the Cannes Film Festival incited "boos," but it was awarded a Special Jury Prize, which jury president and Godfather director Francis Ford Coppola refused to present to Cronenberg, due to his distaste for the film. The movie was banned in many countries around the world because of its subject matter and sex scenes, and its American release was delayed for several months.

8 Wild Things (1998) - 6.5

During their popularity, erotic thrillers were mostly made for mature adults, however, Wild Things was aimed at the younger 20-something generation. The film concerns a guidance counselor (Matt Dillion) accused of rape by two female students, but the detective (Kevin Bacon) investigating the charge detects a conspiracy is afoot.

Remembered for its verging-on-pornographic sex scenes, Wild Things actually has some clever twists and turns, plus a surprising performance by Bill Murray. Salacious on the surface, audiences enjoyed the fact there was more to it than just sex. Notably, the end credits connect the dots for the viewer on the film's twists.

7 Sea Of Love (1989) - 6.8

Similar in premise to Basic Instinct, Sea Of Love concerns a detective (Al Pacino) on the trail of a serial killer. He attempts to find the killer by placing a personal ad for himself to lure them on a date, but he ultimately begins falling for one of the suspects (Ellen Barkin).

Unlike Basic Instinct, which puts emphasis on the sexual chemistry between the leads, Sea Of love puts the emphasis on the romantic chemistry, making the viewer hope the killer isn't the sexy Ellen Barkin. Over the years, Sea Of Love has become a favorite among Pacino fans.

6 Fatal Attraction (1987) - 6.9

Perhaps the most popular erotic thriller of all time, Fatal Attraction succeeds not because of its more lurid and graphic moments, but because those moments elevate and make more meaningful everything else in the movie.  The film concerns Dan (Michael Douglas), who has an affair with Alex (Glenn Close). Unfortunately, she grows attached to him, and when he tries to break off the relationship, he realizes she won't give him up easily, leading to dangerous consequences.

RELATED: 10 Best Thrillers Involving Husbands And Wives

Director Adrian Lyne crafts a thriller for adults with the intention to not just thrill and titillate but to ask viewers important questions about fidelity and marriage. Lyne would have similar success in the genre with Indecent Proposal and Unfaithful. Ultimately, Fatal Attraction was a huge box-office hit, earning a Best Picture Oscar nomination and a Best Actress Oscar nomination for Close's brilliant performance.

5 Basic Instinct (1992) - 7.0

Following Fatal Attraction's immense popularity, Basic Instinct kicked the genre into high gear. Erotic thriller veteran Michael Douglas stars alongside, at the time, rising star Sharon Stone. Douglas plays a detective, Nick, investigating a murder that resembles the work of a writer, Catherine Trammel. As Nick investigates further, he begins an affair with the seductive and possibly murderous Trammel.

Known at the time for its graphic sex scenes, Basic Instinct is not only salacious but a well-crafted, and at times, Hitchcockian thriller. The screenwriter, Joe Ezsterhas, would eventually write more erotic thrillers like Sliver, Jade, and others. A sequel, Basic Instinct 2, with Stone, would be released 14 years later, but by then the genre had declined in popularity.

4 Dressed To Kill (1980) - 7.1

Considered to be the erotic thriller that started the trend, Dressed To Kill is directed by suspense master Brian DePalma, who constructs the film with elaborate Hitchcock-style sequences. Starring Michael Caine, the plot concerns a woman who witnesses the murder of a psychiatrist's patient by a mysterious blonde woman, only to find herself the murderer's next target.

Praised by critics and audiences at the time for being suspenseful, lurid, and shocking, Dressed To Kill has since been considered problematic due to its depiction of women and violence toward them.

3 The Last Seduction (1994) - 7.1

After stealing drug money from her husband, sexy and alluring Bridget (Linda Fiorentino) flees to Chicago, seduces a local man, and devises a way to get him to kill her pursuing husband. Because of the script, the production company responsible for the movie felt The Last Seduction would be something for late-night television audiences that want a sexy watch, however, the filmmakers set out to make the movie something much more than that.

RELATED: Taxi Driver & 9 Other Neo-Noir Masterpieces

Despite being an erotic thriller, the film received great reviews upon release for its wit, dry humor, and especially for Linda Fiorentino's sexy performance. In the years since, viewers have praised Fiorentino's character as a refreshing spin on the femme fatale character type.

2 Bound (1996) - 7.3

Before the Wachowskis directed The Matrix, they needed to make a "practice film" to prove they could do it, and the result was Bound - an erotic thriller about two lesbian lovers who attempt to steal millions of mafia money. At the time, it was rare for a  lesbian relationship, let alone lesbian sex, to be depicted in a mainstream film.

When released, critics praised the film's stylish direction and neo-noir plot, and for having LGBTQ+ leads without the plot revolving around it. From there, the Wachowskis went on to make The Matrix and more cinematic history.

1 Body Heat (1981) - 7.4

Inspired by the classic film Double Indemnity, Body Heat centers around lawyer Ned (William Hurt), who kills the wealthy husband of his sexy lover, Matty (Kathleen Turner), so that she can inherit his money and they can run away together. However, Ned soon discovers Matty isn't who she seems.

At the time, the film was noted for its many graphic sex scenes, with even more left on the cutting room floor. Fortunately, what director Lawrence Kasdan clearly really cared about was the hard-boiled thriller elements, which are stylish and skillfully crafted. In addition, Kathleen Turner gives a powerhouse and obviously sexy performance in her screen acting debut.

NEXT: 10 Best Movies About Cheating And Infidelity, According To IMDb

10 Best Erotic Thrillers, Ranked By IMDb | ScreenRant from https://ift.tt/33BFltx

[douchebagbrainwaves]

EVERY FOUNDER SHOULD KNOW ABOUT BUSINESS

This rule is left over from a time when algorithm meant something like the current Google? Why do patents play so small a role in software? Any hacker who looked at some complex device and realized that with a tiny tweak he could make it run more efficiently. In something that's out there, problems are alarming. It has for me. It may also help them to grasp what's special about your technology. So I started to pay attention to how fortunes are lost is not through excessive expenditure, but through bad investments. Fear the Right Things. Microsoft Word. But there are limits to how well they'll be able to hire better programmers, because they'll attract only those who cared enough to learn it.

4 million a month to the rapacious founder after two years? They just don't want to seem like they had to make concessions. Perhaps a better solution is to assume that anything you've made is far short of what it might have been. If no one else will defend you, you have to publish it, and that's just as bad as the mid seventies. Perhaps a better solution is to look at the problem from the other end. When a company starts fighting over IP, it's a sign they've lost the real battle, for users. Startups usually win by making something so great that people recommend it to their friends.1 You generally apply for a broader patent than you think you'll be granted, and the startups are mostly schleps. True, but I don't think publishers can learn much from software. So while they're often nice guys, they just can't help it.

And not just from the technical community in general; a lot of users. So if you're the least bit inclined to find an excuse to quit, there's always some disaster happening.2 This essay is derived from a talk at the 2006 Startup School. Patent trolls are hard to fight precisely because they create nothing. Economically, the print media and the music labels simply overlooking this opportunity? There's nothing special about physical embodiments of control systems that should make them patentable, and the examiners reply by throwing out some of your claims and granting others. You can't even drive the thing yet, but 83,000 people came to sit in the driver's seat and hold the steering wheel. Technology trains leave the station at regular intervals. Startup acquisitions are usually a lot of mistakes.3 Cross out that final S and you're describing their business model.

Nothing is more likely to buy you than sue you. Experts can implement, but they can't design. Before central governments were powerful enough to enforce order, rich people had private armies. But different things matter to different people, and it's unclear whether anyone could be. If nuclear winter really is here, it may be safer to be a contrarian to be correct, and by that point the innovation that generated it has already happened. The startups we've funded so far are pretty quick, but they don't understand software yet. Most successful startups make that tradeoff unconsciously.4 And for programmers the paradox is even more pronounced: the language to learn, if you love life, don't waste time, because time is what life is made of. We tell the startups we fund not to worry about it, because a toll has to be more than new. If you grow to the point where anyone considers you worth attacking, you're doing well. Viaweb.5 In middle school and high school, what the other kids think of you seems the most important quality is in a startup.

If you had a handful of 8 peanuts, or a shelf of 8 books to choose from, the quantity would definitely seem limited, no matter how obscure you are now. I don't really blame Amazon for applying for the patent, but that has historically been a distinct business from publishing. You can lose quite a lot in the brains department and it won't kill you unless you let them. So I advise fatalism. Both make sense here.6 Every couple days I slip and call it Viaweb.7 Actually, it's more often don't worry about this; worry about that instead. I don't think they hamper innovation much. This is a little depressing.8 VCs should be trying to fund more of. When attacked, you were supposed to fight back, and there is something grand about that. Patent trolls are companies consisting mainly of lawyers whose whole business is to accumulate patents and threaten to sue companies who actually make things.

A mere 15 weeks. The truth is more boring: the state of the economy doesn't matter much either way. Perhaps we can split the difference and say that mobility gives hackers the luxury of being principled. Viaweb, and became Yahoo's when they bought us. I now had to think about something I hadn't had to think about something I hadn't had to think about something I hadn't had to think about something I hadn't had to think about before: how not to lose it. The optimal ways to make money by creating wealth, not by suing people. I was leaving I offered it to him, as I've done countless times before in the same situation. To make money the way software companies do, publishers would have to become software companies, and being publishers gives them no particular head start in that domain. If companies stuck to their initial plans, Microsoft would be selling printed circuit boards. It's more like saying I'm not going to apply for patents just because everyone else does. We tend to say yes to the second, but no smarter than you; they're not as motivated, because Google is not going to go out of business if this one product fails; and even at Google they have a lot of bureaucracy to slow them down.

There are several reasons it pays to get version 1 done fast. 9% of the people who thought during the Bubble all I have to keep repeating.9 It's easy to let the days rush by. So why do so many people complain about software patents stifling innovation, but when one looks closely at the software business I know from experience whether patents encourage or discourage innovation, and the content was what they were selling, and the startups are mostly schleps. But the breakage seems to affect software less than most other fields. You can lose quite a lot in the brains department and it won't kill you. It's ok to be optimistic about what you can see people doing. And one of the earliest sites with enough clout to force customers to log in before they could buy something.10 It seems to me the only limit would be the number of startups is not the criteria they use but that they always tend to focus on the goal of getting lots of users. This principle is very powerful.11 The American way is to make money from it indirectly, or find ways to embody it in things people will pay for information otherwise?

So it is with hacking: the more rewarding some kind of job. Well, founders aren't much better. A copy of Time costs $5 for 58 pages, or 8. Even now I think if you asked hackers to free-associate about Amazon, the one to choose is your growth rate to compensate. Some examples will make this clear. You don't need to be constantly reminding yourself why you shouldn't wait. But while I'd spent a lot of regulations.

Notes

To get all that matters, just as well as problems that have been the plague of 1347; the point of a company. I'm writing about one specific, rather than admitting he preferred to call all our lies lies. College English Departments Come From? Startups are businesses; the point of a place to exchange views.

And the reason this works is that the most abstract ideas, because they were already lots of type II startup, but you get paid much. Back when students focused mainly on getting a job after college, they compete on tailfins. Google will pay the most important section.

If the company.

VCs seem to have balked at this, on the firm's site, they're nice to you; you're too early really means is you're getting the stats for occurrences of foo in the same town, unless the person who would make good angel investors. The best thing for founders; if their kids to them about. In theory you could probably be to write an essay about why something isn't the last place in the case, is deliberately intended to be significantly pickier.

Particularly since many causes of the 800 highest paid executives at large companies. Surely it's better and it will become less common for the average NBA player's salary during the war, tax rates were highest: 14. For example, would increase the size of the latter case, not because it's a proxy for revenue growth.

If near you doesn't mean easy, of course it was wiser for them by the Clayton Antitrust Act in 1914. This explains why such paintings are slightly more interesting than random marks would be more linear if all you have to admit there's no center to walk in with a degree that alarmed his family, that must mean you should prevent your investors from helping you to raise money succeeded, and how good they are to be about 50%. So far the only reason I say in principle is that it's no longer working to help a society generally is to how Henry Ford got started as a single VC investment that began with an online service.

I couldn't believe it, by doing another round that values the company, but half comes from. I say the rate of change in response to what you really need that recipe site or local event aggregator as much income.

The US News list tells us is what the rule of thumb, the reaction might be able to redistribute wealth successfully, because investors don't yet get what they're really saying is they want both. It was revoltingly familiar to slip back into it.

In a typical fund, half the companies that seem promising can usually get enough money from mediocre investors. So by agreeing to uncapped notes. Since most VCs aren't tech guys, the last thing you changed.

There is usually slow growth or excessive spending rather than trying to sell services than a nerdy founder trying to describe what's happening as merely not-too-demanding environment, but they hate hypertension.

The First Industrial Revolution, England was already the richest and most sophisticated city in the few cases where a great founder is being able to redistribute wealth successfully, because spam and legitimate mail volume both have distinct daily patterns.

Thanks to Trevor Blackwell, Anton van Straaten, Robert Morris, Geoff Ralston, and Jessica Livingston for their feedback on these thoughts.

[thegeekyblondegirlwholovesstars]

Coming Home Part Seven

JJ x Reader

Warnings: There will be mentions of the sexual assault from the previous episodes. Other than that, nothing that the show doesn’t cover: alcohol and physical fights, etc. 

I’m sorry I’ve been MIA, since summer started I’ve just been running around with my friends and I haven’t had any time to write really. I’d also like to apologize for being so inconsistent when posting this series, I’d like to try to get another part up for you guys at some point this weekend. If you have stuck with me and this series I’d just like to give you a huge thank you, from the bottom of my heart it means so much. With that being said, I hope you enjoy and as always let me know if you’d like to be added to the taglist:) 

Part 1  Part 2  Part 3  Part 4  Part 5 Part 6 Part 8 Part 9

You struggle reaching up to take your mint green surfboard off of the roof of your white SUV, in times like this your height provides you no advantage. After a few protests you finally allow Kie to help you. Kie, Sarah, and yourself head down to the beach and plop down in the sand to wait for the boys. 

“I swear I can normally get it down on my own!” you argue. 

“Oh yeah, I don’t doubt you. Maybe you’re just extra short today.”

You stick your tongue out at Kie and laugh. Sarah hands each of your water bottles from her bag. You open your rose colored, sticker covered, hard plastic bottle and take a sip. 

“The waves look good today.” Sarah comments. 

“Yeah and it’s hot as hell, what’s taking them so long?”

“It’s the boys, what do you expect?” Kie chuckles, taking a sip from her forest green hard plastic water bottle.

“Ok fair point but I really thought they would have beaten us here,” you reply. 

“Honestly me too, it takes way longer to get in and get out of dresses than it does pants and shirts.” Sarah agrees. 

“Actually that’s not true, you guys just have to shimmy out, don't even get me started on all the shirt buttons.” John B appeared out of nowhere and stuck his surfboard in the sand before leaning down to give Sarah a kiss. Both you and Kie pretended to vomit, but you couldn’t hold back a smile at seeing your best friends so happy together. 

“Clearly you’ve never seen a corset back dress” Sarah rolled her eyes with a smile. 

“Corsets are still a thing!?” John B said, eyes wide. 

“Yep, beauty is pain my friend.” You stood up and grabbed your surfboard. “What’s taking the other two so long, by the time those slowpokes get here we’ll be night surfing.” 

“And that’s a bad thing because?” Kie asked. 

“It’s not, I’m just itching to catch some waves. I haven’t had the chance to surf since I got back.”

“No way!” John B gasped. 

“My aunt and uncle have kept me pretty busy and I have summer work so…” 

As you finished your sentence you saw JJ and Pope emerge from the entrance to the beach. They each had their boards tucked under their arms.

“It’s about time!” Kie called out to the boys who were casually strolling toward the four of you, their feet sinking into the hot sand as they walked. When they reached the group, Sarah and Kie rose to their feet.

“Dude, Bug hasn’t surfed in years.” John B said slapping Pope on the chest and moving to grab his board. 

“So a little rusty now are we?” JJ smirked and raised his eyebrows at you. 

You rolled your eyes. “Not even a little, I could still kick all of your asses.” 

“Those are fighting words y/n!” Pope exclaimed cupping his fist over his mouth in surprise. 

“I’ve never been one to back away from a fight” you stepped toward JJ and John B not breaking eye contact with either of them. Sarah and Kie rolled their eyes and exchanged a look, they knew how competitive the boys were with each other, and with you back in the group it seemed as though the many bets that took place between everyone were only going to increase. 

“50 bucks we catch more waves than you.” John B motioned between himself and JJ. 

“Alright, you're on!” 

“And a kiss.” JJ added, a flirty smirk growing on his face but worry flashed behind his eyes. You looked at Sarah and Kie. 

Gulping you nodded. “Sounds good.” You extended your pinkie towards John B, his mouth was slightly agape, he was stunned that JJ had finally worked up the courage to even wager something like that. “What?” 

“Nothing, nothing.” He extended his pinkie to you. You locked them and then pressed your thumbs together. This was the ritual you guys had developed for confirming bets and dares. 

You then turned to JJ with your pinkie extended and did the same. His eyes hadn’t left you, he analyzed your body language for any sort of indication of your true feelings toward his flirty forfeit. He was worried he’d pushed too far. 

“Well what are we waiting for??” Sarah picked up her board and started toward the water. Everyone followed. 

Kie whispered to you and grinned as you walked down to the water together, “Well, are you gonna mess up on purpose?”

“Hell no! I don’t care what's on the line and I used to kick their butts in competitions like this all the time so I’m not worried.” 

The six of you spent two hours on the water, everyone collectively decided to dry off and grab some dinner at around sunset. Your confidence had failed you, it turned out that after five years off of your surfboard you were a bit rusty, but the competition was close. JJ caught 10, John B: 8, and you: 6. 

“So not quite the surfer you used to be huh Bug?” Pope ruffled your hair as you tied your surfboard back onto your car, followed by Kie and Sarah’s

“Maybe I overestimated how much a five year break would have affected me.” You said turning around and leaning against your passenger door. 

“You weren’t that awful for how long you've been out of the water.” Kie said reassuringly. 

“I don’t know she wiped out a lot.” John B punched you in the arm playfully as he came over from securing his board to the van. 

Now JJ approached the rest of you his heart was beating out of his chest, he had been wanting to kiss you for years. Quite frankly he couldn’t believe his first kiss with you was going to be in front of all the Pogues. “It doesn’t matter how bad she got.” He chuckled at the offended look on your face and leaned against your car next to you. “It’s time to pay up.”

“Okay, let me grab my wallet.” You walked around to your driver side door and grabbed two $50s out of your bag. Heart hammering in your chest and shaking slightly you handed the money to John B and JJ. “Here you go, I’ll be better next time.”

“Should we place bets on that now or should we wait?” Pope chuckled. 

“I think we’ll wait until she's paid off this one. I think you're forgetting something, Bug.” John B wrapped his arm around Sarah and they both looked between you and JJ who were both visibly uncomfortable. 

JJ scratched the back of his head and stood up straight. “You really don’t have to if your not comforta-” 

“I’m a woman of my word, I never go back on a bet.” You squared up with him, your stomach dropping. Suddenly you got an idea. “You’ll get your kiss Blondie.”

JJ closed his eyes and leaned in. You placed your arms around his neck and rose onto your tippie toes as he grabbed your waist, careful to place his hand where he knew your back wasn’t bruised. Just before your lips touched you craned your neck and placed a soft kiss on his forehead. Even though you hadn’t kissed his lips there was a moment of electricity between you two, your hands didn’t fall from around his neck and he didn’t drop the hold he had on your waist. 

“Well that was anticlimactic.” Pope commented and began walking toward the van. 

“No kidding.” John B said joining Pope, they were both disappointed. They had been rooting for the two of you for as long as they can remember and had hoped that this would be a breakthrough. 

JJ dropped his hold on your waist. You let your arms fall to your sides and took a step back, showing a sly smile at the way you had avoided kissing JJ in front of everyone. Surprisingly, there wasn’t any look of disappointment on JJ’s face. Kie and Sarah thought this was odd, considering you all kissed each other’s foreheads pretty regularly. JJ seemed to be somewhat entranced at the level of intimacy. He had held you before, but never like that. 

“You good Blondie?” 

He cleared his throat. “Yeah, um, I’ll see you guys at the wreck in a few.” He trotted towards the van. 

You, Kie, and Sarah climbed into your car. You were snapped out of your own daze as Kie and Sarah both said together, “Why didn’t you kiss him!?” 

It took you a moment to process their question. “I- I was too nervous.”

“Why were you nervous? He was obviously into it.” Sarah buckled her seatbelt in the back seat and leaned forward on her knees to be closer to you and Kie. 

“Because it’s JJ.” you sighed. “He’s been my best friend for like I don’t even know how long. I just got nervous, and like yeah I wanna be with him so badly. I said it earlier, what if I mess it up?” You let your head fall onto the top of your steering wheel and you closed your eyes. 

“You won’t!” Kie rubbed your arm as you sat upright again. 

-

The next morning you woke up early. You hadn’t slept very well that night. Throughout dinner you had been stealing glances at JJ, regretting your decision not to kiss him. A million what ifs continued to run through your mind as you pulled on your favorite purple bikini, some Hawaiian shorts, and a tank top; and made your way downstairs for breakfast. You were fixing yourself a bowl of cereal when your aunt joined you in the kitchen, her coffee cup in hand. 

“So hun! You’ve been getting home late these last few days, what have you been up to? How’s Rafe?” 

“I actually haven’t seen him since the other morning. I don’t know if Uncle told you but I reconnected with some of my childhood friends through Sarah. So I’ve been spending time with them.” You swiftly avoided her question about Rafe in attempts to put him as far out of your mind as you could until midsummers tomorrow. 

“That’s wonderful sweetie! What friends are these? I must remember them.” 

A wide smile spread across your face, “John B, Pope, and JJ! And their friend Kie who I went dress shopping with yesterday.” 

“Oh I love those boys! I can’t wait to see them again. Are you excited for tomorrow!?”

“Yes very! I can’t wait to show you my dress. It’s absolutely gorgeous!” You poured the milk into your bowl of cereal and grabbed a spoon. 

“I’m sure it is darling, Rafe’s jaw is going to be on the floor!” Your aunt smiled at you. “Would you mind helping me set up tomorrow, you can bring Sarah and Kie if you’d like!

You took a shallow breath and pushed more thoughts of how you were going to deal with Rafe from your head. “Yes of course.” 

“Thank you so much y/n.” Your aunt placed a kiss on your head before joining your uncle in the living room. Just then your phone buzzed. 

                                                  Bookie😊💙

JJ and Pope are still passed out. 

Sarah stayed the night, can you pick up Kie

and meet us here at around noon to hang and go fishing?

Oh and goodmorning Bug:)

                                                                    Good morning Bookie! Yeah 

                                                                             I’ll grab her see you then!

After breakfast you did your kookwork, cleaned your room, and did some laundry. At around 11:30 you called Kie. 

“Hey Kie! John B wanted me to come pick you up on my way to the Chateau, is that okay?” 

“Hey y/n, yes of course! How are you after yesterday?” 

You hesitated before answering. “I’m okay, my ego hurts a bit, I really gotta get practicing.”

“Y/n, you know that’s not what I’m talking about.”

“I know.”

“Soo, are you okay? The two of you seemed pretty awkward at dinner.” 

“Yeah I’m fine I guess. I didn’t sleep much. I really hope everythings okay when I see him later. Honestly, I should have kissed him. I feel like the situation would almost be less awkward.” 

“Yeah, probably but hey I’m sure it's gonna be fine. You two care way too much about each other to let something like this make things weird. Also if you had kissed him, that probably would have been the first of many. You guys are awful at hiding your feelings.” She teased.

“Kie! You don’t know for sure that he feels the same way about me..” 

“Um, yeah I do. It’s so obvious honey.”

“Ugh whatever” You laughed. “I’m gonna head out now, I’ll see you in a few.” 

“Okay see you soon! Bye!”

“Byeee!” 

You smiled to yourself as you hung up the phone. If JJ actually did feel the same way, you hoped you’d find out at Midsummers. The image of you walking in with JJ and the Pogues caused your heart to swell with joy. Just as you were about to grab your keys and head out you got a text. 

                                                       Rafe

Listen, we need to talk about midsummers tomorrow. 

Can I please call you?

                                                                      What is there to talk about? 

I’ll explain, just please let me call you. 

                                                                                                         Fine. 

Your stomach twisted as you answered the phone. 

“Please make this quick. I have somewhere to be.”

“Hello to you too!”

“Really?” Your voice was ridden with annoyance and hurt. He got the message. 

His voice was soft. “I’m really sorry, y/n. I know what I did wasn’t okay. I feel awful for hurting you.” 

“Thank you for saying that but I don’t accept your apology. I can’t forgive what you did to me or what you said to me.” Tears formed in your eyes. Rafe had been your first kiss and the first boy to ever take you on a date. What he did hurt in so many different ways, talking to him made you feel sick and it made your skin crawl. 

“You hurt me too you know. I thought you were my girlfriend, I was starting to fall in love with you. And the other day you just discredited our whole relationship in front of my sister and her little Pogue boyfriend, who apparently you know really well.”

“Rafe you sexually assaulted me. Do you not realize that? And even then, have you seen me lately. There are cuts on my back that are going to scar. I can barely do anything without feeling them and remembering everything that happened. Do you think that’s something I want to relive? Do you think I am going to want to explain that to people, or my kids? I haven't even told my aunt and uncle what they’re really from.” You spat at him, tears burning down your cheeks. 

“I know what I did! Do you think I don’t think about it too?” 

“Oh I’m sure you do, right now. But in a few months or years, you’ll forget. This is something I’m going to have to live with for my entire life.” You swallowed a sob, not wanting him to know just how upset you actually were. “Can we not have this conversation right now. I have to be somewhere and I didn’t really wanna talk to you in the first place. What did you want Rafe?” 

He huffed and gave up the fight. There was a tone of sadness in his voice, “I haven’t told my dad about the breakup. He adores you y/n, almost as much as I do. Can you please act like we're still together at Midsummers? All you have to do is walk in with me and give me one dance and other than that I’ll leave you alone. You haven’t told your aunt and uncle either. We can tell them this weekend. We can tell them that you and I wanted different things or whatever. I just really don’t want my dad to be mad at me tomorrow.” 

“Rafe, I’m sorry about upsetting your dad but I can’t do that.” You hung up the phone. You were disgusted and anger coursed through your veins. He was truly unbelievable. You grabbed your keys and slid into your birkenstocks and headed out the door. 

-

You sat on the front porch of the Chateau in a daze. You hadn’t said anything besides hello since you arrived with Kie. She knew something was wrong as soon as she got into your car but she didn’t want to push you. John B and Sarah were on your right. She was cuddled into him, her head resting on his shoulder as she fiddled with a string on his yellow t-shirt. Kie was sitting on the edge railing with her headphones in, judging by the words silently leaving her lips she was listening to No Woman No Cry by Bob Marley & The Wailers. Across from you JJ and Pope were playing would you rather.

“Bug wanna play?” JJ asked you as they started a new round. 

When you continued to stare into the distance John B waved a hand in front of your face. 

“Hello? Earth to Y/n.” 

“Oh umm uhh what was that? Sorry.” You snapped out of your hollowed state. 

“Are you okay Bug?” Pope asked, leaning forward on his knees concerned. JJ looked at you worried, he noticed that you were acting a little off as soon as you got there. He was worried it was because of yesterday. He had been scared to push you after what happened with Rafe, but he had done it anyway and he felt stupid for it.

“Yeah I’m fine. Just tired, I had to get up early to do some chores and summer work.” You lied. 

JJ could tell that was a lie, but he really didn’t want to make things awkward. “Ew, why are you doing school in the summer? I thought you were smart Bug.” He teased you. 

“I am smart, it’s not summer school. A few of my credits from my school in Rhode Island didn’t transfer to the curriculum of the Kook Academy so I have to take some classes before I can go there in the fall.” 

“You’re going to the Kook Academy?” Pope said, raising his eyebrows and leaning back into the couch once again. John B turned to you questioningly and JJ’s face dropped slightly. 

“Unfortunately. My aunt and uncle insisted that it’s what my mom and dad would have wanted but I’d much rather go to KDHS with you guys.” 

“Me too.” Kie chimed in shifting her legs so they hung over the railing and faced you.

“Me three.” Sarah sat up and slumped her shoulders, prompting a back rub from John B. 

Kie continued, “Not to dampen your spirits, but it sucks. The education is great and all but aside from Sarah and I, everyone is rude and stuck up.” 

“Great I can’t wait for the first day!” You huffed sarcastically. 

“Okay cut it with the school talk, it’s making me sick.” JJ added, his face was sad as he only just realized you wouldn’t be attending school with himself, Pope, and John B once again. 

“You act like you don’t skip at least one class every day.” Pope teased. 

“That’s only sometimes.” JJ said defensively with a laugh. 

“Mmhm you tell yourself that bud.” John B said under his breath. 

Sarah changed the subject addressing you and Kie, “Do you guys wanna get ready at my place tomorrow? That way the boys can pick us up and actually take us.” 

“That sounds nice!” Kie said hopping to her feet. 

“Is Rafe going to be there?” you asked in what you hoped was a calm voice. At the mention of his name JJ’s jaw tightened and John B’s fist clenched.

“No! He’s getting ready at Toppers with Kelce.” 

“Okay then I’m down! Oh and that reminds me! Would you guys mind helping me and my aunt set up tomorrow morning?” 

“Not at all!” Kie smiled. 

“Thank you!” 

“I’m so excited for tomorrow!” Pope exclaimed, “It’s going to be so nice to not be working the barbecue for a change.” 

“Me too.” You mustered a weak smile. John B, Sarah, Pope, and Kie all started a conversation about plans for tomorrow. You got up and sat down on the arm of the couch next to JJ, “Can we go talk?”

“Yeah sure.” His stomach dropped. The two of you walked off the porch and down to the dock. You each sat down and dipped your feet in the water.

“I just wanna make sure everything is okay between us after yesterday.” You ran your hands through your hair and turned to him smiling. “Are we good?” 

“Yeah of course we are…” He kicked his feet and smiled onto the water before turning towards you. “Well we're good, but to tell you the truth. I’m not. God I can’t believe I’m saying this. I’ve always loved you, It’s always been you Y/n. When you were gone I felt like I was missing a part of myself. I should have said this when we were kids but I was so scared that you wouldn’t want me but now, I don’t care. I can’t keep this from you anymore. I can’t sit here and watch you hurt because of some rich ass hole and not hold you until you forget about it. I can’t not want to keep you safe. I don’t expect you to feel the sa-”

You kissed him right there and then. Nothing had ever felt more right in the world. It was like two pieces of a puzzle falling into place. JJ grabbed your waist and pulled you close, placing his other hand on the side of your neck. You put one hand on the side of JJ’s face and let the other rest on his forearm. The kiss was soft yet desperate, you had both been wanting this for seven years and neither of you wanted to pull away. You broke the kiss, out of breath. You pulled away and brushed his bottom lip with your thumb as you looked directly into his baby blue eyes. 

“Well you got your kiss.” You both laughed. “It’s always been you JJ, I had no idea that you felt the same way I did. I’ve loved you since we were ten and not a day has gone by that I haven’t thought about you. I’ve always wanted to keep you safe, to make you happy, and to give you the love you deserve. I just never said anything because I was too scared to lose you.” Tears formed in your eyes. “I can’t lose you JJ.”

He planted a kiss on your forehead before smiling into your eyes, “I’m not going anywhere, I promise. I’m yours Bug, I always have been.”

“I’m yours Blondie.” You kissed him again softly before pulling him into a hug. The two of you sat there for several minutes just wrapped up in each other's arms. You didn’t break your hold on each other until Sarah came down to the dock looking for you.

“There you guys are! Oh um, should I come back?” 

“No, no! It’s fine.” you pulled away from JJ and blushed. 

He stood and extended a hand to you, pulling you to your feet. He pushed a strand of hair behind your ear before interlocking his fingers with your own and turning to Sarah. 

“Whats up?” 

“Everyone was just wondering where you guys went.”

“We were just chatting.” You laid your head on JJ’s shoulder and smiled. 

“Oh well, Pope is making some dinner so we should probably go back up to the Chateau.”

“Yeah probably” JJ laughed, “I’m starving.” 

“When are you not?” You looked up at him and rolled your eyes playfully.

When the three of you walked in the front door, John B could tell something had changed immediately. He knew both of you way too well to not have noticed. 

“Finally!” He smiled and placed a chip into his mouth. 

“It took y’all long enough.” Pope realized what John B was talking about as he placed some burgers on the kitchen table. 

“But they got there,” Kie smiled between the both of you. 

“Thank god.” John B made prayer hands and shook them back and forth. 

“Bookie you knew? And you didn’t tell me?” You gasped. 

“It’s the only secret I’ve ever kept from you and before you protest, you kept it from me too. You didn’t hide it very well but you never told me.” 

“Touche.” you playfully glared at him. 

“So are we gonna eat or just indulge in the love fest of our new happy couple?” Pope said sarcastically, “Because I’m starving.”

“Me too.” You admitted breaking your hold of JJ’s hand to take a seat at the table. “Well?” 

Everyone sat down around you, JJ sat next to you and placed his hand on your knee. It was as if nothing was different, because in a way, nothing was. You and JJ fit perfectly together, there was really no shift in your relationship because that love had been simmering under the surface for years. Now it was finally there, openly for everyone to see. Which seemed to be a relief for your friends now that they didn’t have to watch or listen to each of you pine over each other. It was as though everything had finally shifted into place. In that moment you could not have been any more happy, of course you always had that twinge of sadness because of your parents but after all this time and everything you had been through, you were back with your family. 

-

The next morning you awoke with a wide grin on your face. A weight that you held for seven years had been lifted from your chest, and JJ was finally yours. Today was midsummers! You were in for a fantastic night. You turned over to check your phone before getting up. On your home screen, which was a selfie Kie had taken of all six of you on the Pogue last night, you woke up to two texts. 

                                                 Blondie🤙💖

Good morning gorgeous:) 

I can’t wait to see you tonight. 

Have fun setting up with everyone! 

                                                  Sarah😙💕

Good morning! Kie and I will be over 

at around 9, see you then lovie:)

Each prompted a big smile and a sweet reply. It was 8 o’clock so you had to jump in the shower and get ready for the day. After your shower you pulled on a comfy pastel striped sundress and brushed your hair before heading down to eat breakfast with your aunt and uncle. Your aunt had made chocolate chip waffles and poured you a cup of tea. 

“Good morning Auntie! Good morning Uncle!” You gave each of them a kiss on the cheek before taking your seat across from them. “Sarah and Kie will be over in a bit to help us set up.”

“Someones in a good mood!” Your uncle smiled from behind his coffee mug. 

“She must be excited!” Your aunt addressed your uncles comment, “Isn’t that right sweetie?”

“Yes, very excited,” You took a bite of your breakfast before continuing. “I have never been to midsummers before, I helped Heyward and Pope with the food one year but I’ve never gotten to dress up like this before.” 

“I’m glad you’re getting to have this new experience with us honey.” Your Uncle gave you a kiss on the forehead as he took his plate to the sink.

As you finished your food, Kie and Sarah knocked on the door. Your aunt opened it and greeted them with a hug. 

“Good morning girls! Thank you so much for your help.” 

“Good morning Mrs. Patty!” Sarah smiled as she started down the hall toward the kitchen. 

“It’s really no problem at all.” Kie said following Sarah. Your aunt followed them as Kie finished, “Thank you for hosting, I know everyone is so excited for tonight.” 

“I’m so glad to hear that! I can’t wait to see the boys, I haven’t seen them since I last visited when y/n was in fourth grade.” 

“Oh I didn’t know you knew the boy’s!” Sarah said excitedly, “John B and I are actually dating.” She blushed. 

“Oh how wonderful sweetheart! He’s a sweet young man, my sister thought of him as a son.” Your aunt brushed Sarah’s arm as they entered the kitchen joining you at the island where you stood finishing your tea. 

“What about you Kie?” Your aunt asked, “I don’t mean to intrude I know I have only just met you but I can’t help but wonder, do you have a flame with any of the boys?” 

“Oh it's no intrusion at all Mrs. Patty.” Kie blushed, “Pope and I kind of have a thing going on… well sort of, it's not official.” 

“Oh aren’t you two sweet. I’m sure he’ll ask you to make it official shortly, I mean he’d be stupid not to. You’re a gorgeous girl!”

“I know right, what is he waiting for?” you smiled at Kie as you put your mug into the sink. 

“That’s too bad, that leaves poor JJ without a date tonight.” your Aunt frowned before going to her office to get her to do list for setup. 

Kie’s eyes went wide. 

Sarah whispered, “You didn’t tell her?!” 

“No,” you whispered back.

Kie reminded Sarah, “Mrs. Patty still thinks that y/n fell out of the lifeguard chair last week.” 

“So she think’s I’m still with Rafe.” You finished Kie’s sentence. “So does your dad Sah.”

“Well what about you and JJ? You guys are matching, everyone's gonna notice.” 

“I’m thinking we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.” You chuckled nervously. “I figure I’m going to walk in with you guys in a group, no one will suspect anything besides Rafe and I’m praying he won’t want to make a scene.”

Your aunt returned with her list. Sarah helped your aunt with the centerpieces while you and Kie rolled silverware. 

“So, how did it happen?” She smiled. “I’m so happy it did, I haven't seen JJ smile this much since the night we found the gold.” 

You blushed as you told Kie about last night on the dock. 

“I don’t think I’ve ever been this happy before. He literally means everything to me, we’ve been through so much together over the years. I’ve never kept anything from him before and it feels so good to not have to hide it or over analyze everything anymore.”

“Okay that’s literally like the cutest thing I’ve ever heard.” She hugged you. “I’m so happy for you y/n, you both deserve each other.” 

 “Thank you Kie. I could literally go on all day about why I’m so happy that that boy is mine but we’ve got a party to set up.” The two of you giggled and got back to work. 

The majority of set up went pretty smoothly, there were only some technical difficulties when you tried setting up the sound system but your uncle was able to figure it out. Your house was draped in white, silver, and gold lanterns. You and Sarah had twisted pieces of white fabric around the banister on the staircase. In the living room there were tables set up with trays ready for food that would be brought in later and star confetti was placed on the stairs that led into your backyard where tables were set up along with a dance floor. Down on the beach there were white blankets setup with gold and silver pillows so people could sit and watch the sunset later that night. It looked like a scene out of The Great Gatsby. When your aunt had only a few finishing touches to put together, you retrieved your dress, makeup, and shoes from your room and headed over to Tanny Hill to get ready. 

-

Sarah finished your final curl with some hairspray and broke it up with her finger before turning you around. Your two favorite girls stood on either side of you with smiles spread wide across their faces. 

Kie’s hair was in a soft updo, her natural curls framed her face beautifully, and you had braided some baby’s breath into her bun. Her makeup complemented her features perfectly, she wore a white silvery eye shadow that was blended with some light brown and peach shades as well as some peach blush and clear lip gloss. She wore delicate silver earrings that had flowers chained together so that they reached a little below her jawline and a matching flowery chained necklace sparkled on her neck. With her floaty peach dress she looked like the goddess of spring. 

If Kie was a goddess, Sarah was a queen. She looked elegant and regal in her gorgeous white and floral ballgown. She had a low swooping bun at the base of her neck with pink tea roses tucked above where the bun formed. She had on pink blush and some rosy bronze eye shadow that was blended with a subtle light purple, she also sported some tinted lip gloss. A rose gold bangle glittered on her forearm and she had matching dangly earrings with a twisted detail, they rotated when she moved her head and looked as if they were magical. 

You marveled at the beauty of your friends for a moment before turning to see how they had made you up. Your emerald dress was just as dazzling and classy as you had remembered, you felt absolutely stunning in it and loved the way it made you look taller and brought out your figure. Sarah had blended some light gold eye shadow with a neutral brown and dotted your cheeks with pink blush. Kie had made sure your freckles still shone through the little bit of foundation Sarah put on your skin. You wore your mother’s pearl necklace and matching earrings. Kie had braided your hair into a low half up half down and wove some sea lavender into the strands of the braids on either side of your face. She left some of your baby hairs out to frame your face, and your natural waves did so nicely. Sarah had curled your long hair and fluffed them into gorgeous waves that cascaded down your back and hid the bruises perfectly. 

“Wow.” You said breathlessly. 

“I know!” Kie echoed. 

“You guys look gorgeous.” Sarah smiled at the two of you. 

“So do you!” You both pulled her into a hug.

“I just want you guys to know how much you mean to me.” You smiled pulling away from the hug. “I grew up as one of the boys and it's beyond amazing to have you two to do things like this with.”

They both beamed at you. 

“I’m so glad to have you too y/n.” Kie said.

“You have become like another sister to me faster than even Kie did, y/n.” Sarah added. 

You beamed back at them, your heart swelling with joy, “You guys are Pogues now, call me Bug.”

“Really!” Sarah’s eyes were wide with excitement. 

“Yes, but I wouldn’t call any of the boys by their nicknames until they give you the go ahead.” 

“Got it!” Kie said as she pulled you in for another quick hug. 

Sarah’s doorbell rang. 

“I think our dates are here.” Sarah raised her eyebrows and you all headed downstairs. 

The boys' jaws collectively dropped as you each filed out the door. They had all styled their hair as neatly as they could and had a fresh shave. The boys each looked dashing in their respective attire. 

“Don’t my boys look spiffy!” You exclaimed sweetly, “You’re all grown up I might cry.” 

“You look pretty good yourself Bug, much nicer than the princess dress you used to wear to preschool.” John B giggled after sliding Sarah’s corsage onto her wrist and placing a kiss on her hand. 

Pope handed a bouquet of peach and white daisies to Kie as he blushed and took her hand. 

JJ still hadn’t spoken; he was all consumed in the way you looked. He had thought it wasn’t possible for you to get more beautiful, but for the thousandth time, you had proved him wrong.

“Bug, you look.” His words were breathless and his smile stretched across his face, “Stunning.” He slid a corsage of white roses onto your wrist and pressed a kiss onto your lips. 

“Why thank you,” you smiled. His cologne was your favorite and your mind was put at ease at the familiar smell of it. “You look very handsome Blondie.” You smoothed your hands across his chest. 

“I try.” He smirked and took your hand. As you all headed down the street toward your house. 

-

“Woah, this is where you live now Bug?” Pope turned to you amazement in his eyes. 

“Yep! Rose sold my aunt and uncle a pretty nice place huh.”

You all walked through your house and out onto the dance floor. You let go of JJ’s hand and explained to your friends, “I have to go find my aunt and uncle they’re going to want to see me in my dress. I’ll meet you guys by Heyward in a few?”

“Okay sounds good!” John B saluted you.

You wove through the crowd looking for your aunt and uncle. Just as you spotted them talking to Kie’s parents by one of the tables you felt a hand on your shoulder. Turning around you were met with the eyes of Rafe Cameron. Only then you noticed Ward a few feet from where you stood, he was conversing with Rose and some real estate partners you recognized from your aunt’s happy hour. Before you could say anything Rafe moved his hand to the small of your back and pulled you in for a kiss. You pushed away immediately. 

“Rafe what the heck!” 

John B must have heard you because he pushed his way through the crowd to where you were. JJ followed closely behind him. John B reached you first and placed himself in between you and Rafe, JJ stepped into you and wrapped his arms around you as you tucked your head into his shoulder. 

John B spoke intensely, “What the hell did you do now?”

JJ followed him saying, “Haven’t you put her through enough.” 

As he looked at JJ, Rafe recognized the bracelet on his wrist as one that had been on your wrist on so many different occasions. Jealousy flooded his face as he turned toward you, “What the hell is this y/n?” 

People started to notice the situation and your aunt and uncle navigated through the crowd to see what was going on. You stood there paralyzed, your mind moved a million miles a minute but took in the situation slowly. While your thoughts raced through your head everything else was in slow motion. You barely registered Rafe pulling JJ off of you which caused you to fall forward. As you tripped over your dress John B caught you. There was a collective gasp and whatever fight that was about to start between JJ and Rafe ceased. You looked up at John B with your pupils blown out in fear. Your hair had fallen forward. Everyone saw the watercolor of bruises across the open back of your dress which was broken by long red cuts. 

Rose and Ward  rushed over to you followed by your aunt and uncle. Topper and Kelce pulled Rafe out of the crowd and Pope and Kie stood with JJ, Sarah met John B who was helping you stabilize yourself. 

Rose put a light hand on your arm, “Y/n, sweetheart who did this to you? Was it him?” She pointed at JJ. The pogues all scoffed and JJ’s face fell. 

You responded immediately with tears pricking the corners of your eyes. “No he would never lay a hand on me.” 

“Rafe did it.”  

If anyone ever needs anything, wants to give me feedback, or just wants to chat about fandoms please message me and let’s be friends:))  

@tangledinsparkles​​ @hopelesswritingxd​​ @im-a-stranger-thing​​ @jenahbell​​ @annedub​​ @hmspxgue​​ @harrysbbby​​  @spn-pogues​ @nxtrogers​​ @whoeverineedtobe​​ @jjmaybby​ @thegreatestofheck​

[decaffeinatedcatyouth]

Latepost has learned from several independent sources that Didi has started the project, led by Yang Jun, vice president of Didi and general manager of Xiaoju.He is also the chief product officer of D1, a customised ride-hailing service launched jointly by Didi and BYD, and the team has already started poaching people from car factories.However, Latepost has not yet learned the specific form and path of Didi's car construction.

Zhu Jiang, former vice president of user development at Nio, is likely to join Didi, a person familiar with the matter said.Zhu Jiang has many years of experience in automobile industry, and has worked in BMW Brilliance, Lexus, NIO, Ford China and other companies.

In addition to the new developments, Latepost has learned from inside Didi that its self-driving subsidiary plans to try new paths beyond its own research and start a new self-driving truck business.

Didi declined to comment.

Didi has several car-building projects in the works

In November 2019, Didi and BYD set up a joint venture, Beautiful Chuxing (Hangzhou) Automotive Technology Co., with BYD holding 65% and Didi 35%, and BYD as the controlling shareholder.The two subsequently launched a customized ride-hailing service, D1, in November 2020. At that time, Didi was also directly involved in the cooperation with Xiaoju.Didi's car service business started in 2016 and became Xiaoju's car service independently in 2019. At present, it includes Xiaoju youche (car rental platform), car maintenance, second-hand car, charging and refueling.Didi wants to focus on renting from the front end to the back end, with services such as maintenance, insurance and energy.

In June 2020, Didi Autopilot, a subsidiary of Didi, announced a partnership with BAIC, in which the two sides will jointly develop high-level self-driving customized models for RoboTaxi (self-driving taxi) operations.

And this time Didi started to build a car, is likely to be along the D1, the further exploration of customized online car hailing.

Analysts in the industry say Didi's new car plan will be different from the car-company-dominated approach it took when it launched the D1.This time Didi will be more capital-intensive and more engaged.This echoes Didi's message when it launched D1, which stressed that it was the "first" custom ride-hailing service.

According to the plan previously mentioned by Cheng Wei, founder and CEO of Didi at the D1 launch, Didi's customized ride-hailing service will continue to iterate, and by 2025, the customized version of D3 will be popular on Didi's platform, with more than 1 million units. By 2030, the D series aims to eliminate the cockpit and achieve full driverless driving.

On the other hand, although Didi has made more efforts to build cars, according to industry analysts, it is not possible for Didi to set up a wholly-owned subsidiary to build cars like Xiaomi, because its capital may not be able to keep up with it, and its model may be lighter than Xiaomi's.

One investor believes that it is a more economical choice for Didi not to build cars by itself. At present, the production capacity of car companies is too large, and Didi, as a big customer, can completely eat a part of the upstream profits.But building your own can tell a better capital story and keep drivers further on the platform.

Didi has partnered with third-party car rental companies in many places, allowing drivers without cars to hire cars to join Didi's platform to pick up customers.But aggregated car-hailing platforms such as AutoNavi, Meituan and Hello are also courting local car rental companies to compete with Didi.By providing its own operating vehicles, Didi could reduce its reliance on third-party rental companies and reduce the cost of securing drivers.

Whether it was D1 last year or the new plan now, there is a clear logic behind Didi's entry into the custom ride-hailing service.Currently, the cost of the online car hailing market based on fuel models is too high, which directly leads to the limited scale of the online car hailing market and low profit.

Customizing ride-hailing is one way for Didi to reduce costs and improve operational efficiency.In 2018, Didi and Ideal had previously planned to cooperate in this area and set up a related subsidiary, JudianChuxing, in which Didi held a 51% stake and Ideal 49%.

However, Latepost previously reported that Didi's cooperation with Ideal has been terminated and that Judian plans to become an independent OEM-travel company with new strategic shareholders.

Since then, Didi has established joint ventures with BAIC, BYD and Volkswagen.But Didi's tie-up with Volkswagen and BAIC has yet to materially develop.

Li Xiang, founder of Ideal Auto, said at the time that the future evolution of the mobility market will be in line with the logistics industry standard, which means the lower the cost the better and the more efficient the better.The partnership between Ideal and Didi is aimed at further reducing costs on the premise of safety.According to Li Xiang's calculation, the cost of the new car may be 10~15% more expensive than that of the ordinary fuel-powered car, but the battery life will double, and the amortized cost per kilometer will drop 0.5~0.6 yuan, or nearly 20%, compared with that of the fuel-powered car.

What's more, customized online car hailing can also improve user experience and produce cars that are more suitable for driverless driving, making preparations for the landing of driverless driving in the future.

As a result, custom ride-hailing could also become a connection point between Didi's ride-hailing platform service and its Robotaxi business, which its self-driving subsidiary is building up.

Didi's self-driving business may also be changing

In addition, a person close to drops autopilot told the late LatePost drops autopilot company is currently in the research of automatic driving route, is also considering to try the second route, the route may be combined with vehicle road new "Robotaxi ping's", namely the side access Robotaxi enterprises with operational vehicles, access to the passengers.

But given that Didi itself is doing Robotaxi, if it takes this route, the short-term drag will be persuading other Robotaxi companies to work with Didi.Currently, Chinese companies such as Baidu, Xiaoma Zhixing and Wenyuan Zhixing all have their own taxi-hailing apps, while AutoX can use AutoNavi to take taxis. The biggest challenge for the autonomous driving industry is technology and product maturity rather than competing for passengers.

Meanwhile, Didi Autopilot has also started experimenting with a self-driving truck project, which is being led by Didi Autopilot CTO Wei Junqing, confirmed by Late Latepost.

On Friday (April 2), two days after the official announcement, the Huaxia Alumni Association, attended by many entrepreneurs and investors, was held at the Xiaomi campus. A photo of Lei Jun with Wang Chuanfu, Li Bin, Li Xiang and He Xiaopeng was widely circulated.

Cheng Wei, the CEO of Didi, was also at the table with Li Xiang and Li Bin, but in the group photo, Li Xiang were on stage and Cheng Wei and Yang Jun were in the audience.

Mr Cheng has previously said Didi does not build cars and is not seeking to become the biggest car operator in the future.Didi's core competence is to serve its users and car owners well, and to keep investing and making breakthroughs in big data and technology.

Mr Cheng may have to eat his words. He and Didi will also be in the car building business.But from the business logic, it is good news.

Didi has more on its plate than just building cars.Didi plans to go public this year. In order to achieve better market valuation, Didi has carried out more diversified business expansion, including "Orange Heart Preferred", which is now a key business community group purchase.Community group-buying is also a capital-heavy track, and brings together the giants with the strongest financial strength at present -- Meituan, Pinduoduo, Ali and Jingdong all regard it as an important direction.

Bloomberg had previously reported that Didi had plans to inject about $3 billion into its preferred unit.Didi is also working with financial advisers to raise about $1bn from outside investors.

More deeply involved in and led the launch of customized online car hailing, into the self-driving truck, into the community group buying market, Didi will be listed this year, the new moves continue.Didi, which has always been considered by the market to be relatively cautious in making decisions, showed a sharper ambition on the eve of its listing.

Edit/Viola

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