#That's like. Me expecting my cat to not get adopted by anybody else except my niece in case I die before her

[b-rainlet]

People claiming Aemond 'stole' Vhagar from Rhaena....you know Dragons aren't inherited do you....

[ancientwastedlores]

Undone by “Darling”

REQUEST (from @november-solarstorms​): Celebrating another year of this earth being braced by Tom Hiddleston's presence! Lol. Might I make a prompt request? I feel as though it would be interesting to read from Loki's POV to explore the dynamics between him and a human female who is just as intelligent as he. She has a sharp wit and even sharper tongue. Her sarcastic and clever nature enable her to out-banter Tony Stark, the king of snark himself (may he rest in peace). But she is also just as flirtatious and salacious. She never blushes, never falters, and is incredibly clever. You can decide the nature of their encounter. Really im just in it for a good game of cat and mouse.

A/N: Okay, I had SO MUCH FUN writing this!! And yeah, this will run a bit longer than my usual fics lol. Also, there IS a Loki POV, just keep reading thaaanks <3

WARNINGS: none. 

WORD COUNT: 1,932

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Undone by “Darling” 

17 hours and 6 white chocolate mochas later, it was finally ready - an upgraded version of Corvus Glaive’s glaive, this one spec-ed out to your fancies and requirements. It was a beast, and definitely not something Nick Fury would ever let you play around with, even if you made it. 

Satisfied with your work, you remove your safety goggles and grin at Stark, who is working on his own weapon he scavenged from the Black Order. 

‘I’m done!’ you say triumphantly, causing him to look up and groan.  ‘How did you finish before me!?’ he lowers his glasses and looks at your weapon.  ‘I’m smarter’ you say.   ‘I went to MIT’  ‘And I didn’t, yet here we are, both in the same lab’. 

He shakes his head, not unlike a petulant child, causing you to laugh. 

‘How far along are you?’ you ask.  ‘Still running diagnostics’.  ‘Still!?’  ‘Have you seen the size of his hammer?’ he gestures to Cull Obsidian’s chain hammer on his work table, but the innuendo doesn’t escape you and you grin at him. He facepalms. ‘Y/n, for god’s sake...’  ‘You’re just tired, or you’d appreciate the joke too’. 

You stretch your weary body and let out a deep breath. You’d test the weapon out tomorrow, but for now, you need a nap. 

‘Take a load off, Stark. Hammer’ll be there tomorrow’.  ‘Oh, you’d like that wouldn’t you...’ he puts his goggles back on and get to work. 

xx

Loki’s POV: 

Humans are surprising, but I always knew that. I never thought them boring, even if my brother says I do. Humans are of so little power but such incredible resilience that it’s frankly astonishing. I am inclined to believe that sometimes resilience is just stupidity... in most cases, I am right. But that’s not to say I haven’t come across some truly brave people. 

Take the Avengers Tower, for example. 

Just in here, you have Y/n, a brave soldier with the mind of an intergalactic scavenger, and I do mean that as a compliment. She’s awfully clever, she can build better than Stark, and has a track record of finishing every mission to perfection and before time. And then you have the Super Soldier Steve Rogers, a big muscled, big hearted idiot who often mistakes challenging our enemies for bravery and morality. 

The two couldn’t be more different, but they get along like siblings. Not siblings like Thor and I... better adjusted, perhaps. 

They sit in front of me, talking about some mission while they play Chess. Her moves are quick but calculated, his take more time because he’s more interested in telling his story than playing the game. 

‘...so there I am, no weapons, no shield, bang in the middle of the Serpent Citadel...’ 

He’s a good storyteller, I’ll give him that. But not as good as Y/n. She paints quite a picture, full of delicious gory details and horribly dark jokes. 

‘Steve, you have to pay attention, you’re losing’ she says.  ‘Yeah, I don’t actually know how to play chess, I just wanted you to listen to my story’. 

She looks up at him, almost offended. ‘STEVE...’  ‘Cool, I’m gonna go wrap Stark into a game of Battleships and tell him about my fight with Copperhead’. 

She laughs as he leaves the room, and she puts the chess pieces away. 

‘We could play?’ I ask her.  ‘Is the God in a mood to lose?’  ‘Over confidence isn’t attractive in anybody’. ‘Oh darling, neither is telling someone what is and isn’t attractive’. 

She’s never called me that before, and in the context it should seem cutting, but it isn’t. ‘Darling?’  ‘Problem?’  ‘It’s quite a term of endearment to set someone straight’. 

She says nothing. 

‘Cat got your tongue?’ I tease her. She only smiles and continues putting the pieces away neatly. Stark’s chess set is gold and black, all individually carved pieces. The pawns are all Iron Man suits, but that’s to be expected. She handles them with the care Stark would. 

‘I mean...’ I continue, ‘honestly, if someone heard, they’d never let you live it down’. 

And she carries on, unbothered. 

‘Y/n!’  ‘Oh dear, look at you come completely undone with just one term of endearment’ she comments, shutting the chess set. ‘Whatever would happen if I held your hand?’ 

The very thought of it seemed to drain my brain of blood. I unwillingly glanced at her hands, working the lock mechanism of the box, her blue veins prominent. 

‘Cat got your tongue?’ she asked. 

I stood up, the human emotion of embarrassment becoming too familiar for me. ‘I’ll have to see you at lunch’.  ‘Sure, darling’. 

Oh, I hate how she’s enjoying this. 

----------

The next day, Y/n booked a training room to test out the Glaive, and Stark had a rusty but working chain hammer. Steve insists on trying it out anyway, and now our breakfast is being spent on discouraging him from doing that. 

‘Guys... if nothing else, I’ll still have my shield. Let me test it out!’  ‘Y/n’s glaive cuts through Vibranium, you know that, right?’ Stark says.  ‘Y/n wouldn’t do that’. ‘Oh yes she would’ Y/n says nonchalantly as she sinks her teeth into a bacon and egg sandwich. 

As she does, the yolk runs down her fingers. She makes a sound at the inconvenience and sets the sandwich down, then grabs a napkin. I’m hardly ever crude, but the energy it took not to take her hand and lick off the yolk myself could burn every star in the galaxy. 

Captain America scrunches his nose at her remark, severely offended. 

‘In any case, that shield barely covers your giant body. It will force Stark to make you a new one’.  ‘What do you care about his giant body’ Stark says.  ‘It’s America’s ass, Tony’ she takes a sip of her iced coffee. Steve blushes, and Tony rolls his eyes. 

----------

The training facility is magic, of course, somewhere between a mirror dimension and Wanda’s reality powers creating a safe cocoon inside the building so no one can be harmed. Y/n hardly trusted anybody to fight with her except Thor, but given the nature of Corvus’ Glaive, she knew magic would be required. 

And so she called me. 

After getting into my battle armour, I stepped into the facility, equipped with my sceptre and the teachings of the witches of Asgard. 

She whistles as I walk in. ‘Trying to distract me from killing you?’  ‘Are you?’ I ask. She’s dressed in a black bodysuit, details of purple in her belt and weapon harnesses.  ‘Why yes, I am. Glad you noticed’. 

The glaive is on the floor, and she stomps her foot on one part of it so it swivels up and neatly places itself in her hand. She smiles. 

‘Try to keep up. I’m not just looking for eye candy in a training partner, darling’ she says, getting into battle stance. 

With nothing left to say for the second time this week, I aim the sceptre at her and the stone at the end glows. 

She charges and I shoot at her, but she spins the glaive and creates a shield which absorbs the energy. 

She continues to charge at me. I shoot again, and again the glaive takes the hit. Not a scratch on her. 

Once she comes closer, she simply places the flat end of the weapon against my chest, sending me hurtling back into a wall. 

She spins the glaive and laughs. 

‘Compliments of Wakanda. It absorbs any hits and charges up with kinetic energy’. 

I get up on my feet. This is far from over. I create multiple illusions to surround her, all of them brandishing knives, Chitauri tech, and sceptres. 

‘Damn, suddenly my whole evening has opened up’ she says, looking around.

Even my clones look around at each other puzzled. 

‘Come on then, who’s up?’ she spins the glaive around. ‘One at a time or all at once, baby’. 

They charge at her, and I expected her to fight them off at once... instead she plants the staff on the ground and ducks, and a semi-circle shell grows from the top of the staff, down to the floor... like a mini fortress, completely impenetrable. It could, no doubt, continue to take hits and build up kinetic energy, so I call off the clones. 

She gets up and retracts the shell. ‘Nanotech’ she grins at me. ‘The whole shell sits in a disk. It can withstand bombs and even a moon’.  ‘Is there any tech you haven’t adopted?’  ‘I’m an intergalactic scavenger, aren’t I?’ 

I stare at her, horrified. Can she read minds? 

‘Maybe I can. Or maybe I heard you tell Stark when he was complaining about me finishing my weapon first’. 

Silence. 

‘Also, darling, you’re awfully predictable in your fighting’. 

She picks up every trick and tech she sees, so beating her is less about weapons and more about cunning. 

No problem. Cunning is my specialty. 

‘Ready now?’ she asks.  ‘Mhm’. 

She takes a deep breath to ready herself, her eyes shutting slightly. Once they open back up, she stares in shock. 

In my Jotun form, I give her my most menacing smile.

She cocks her head to the side, studying my icy blue skin. 

The illusion I cast of myself approaches behind her, dagger in hand. Once it’s close enough and I can almost taste my victory, she raises the glaive and in one swift motion, sticks it into its abdomen. 

The illusion disappears into green light. 

‘Cute’ she remarks. She points the glaive at me. ‘What else you got for me?’  I shift back to my Asgardian form and sigh. ‘You win’. 

Y/n laughs and lowers her weapon. ‘Oh darling, I won the second you walked in wearing all that leather’. She winks at me, then walks out of the facility. I feel a blush creep to my face, much against my will. 

-------------

‘Maybe you should stick to your guns, Tony’ Y/n says, ‘Fancy suits is it for you, chain hammers may be overshooting it’.  ‘Is that what they taught you in the back alley you learnt ironmongery from?’  ‘Yes! Do you want their number, I’m sure they’ll have a spot on the waiting list for you’. 

Ah. Y/n’s relationship with Stark seemed more like mine with Thor. While they banter, Steve and Natasha tear up from laughing. I wouldn’t go so far as to call this domestic, but it certainly is comfortable. 

‘Come on, the glaive can’t be that good, right Loki?’ Stark asks. 

The company looks at me expectantly. ‘To say her weapon isn’t good enough means to insult your own tech, Stark. Everything about it is founded on your theories’. 

‘So technically, it’s my brain that made the glaive so cool’ he tells Y/n.  ‘Yeah, you could say that. The glaive comes from the same mind that manufactured Captain America’s dinner plate’. 

Steve doesn’t find that one funny, but Natasha does, sending her into peals of laughter. 

‘Oh whatever’ Tony huffs. ‘I’m going back to the lab’. 

He stands up and Y/n grabs his arm. ‘Aww Tony, I’m just kidding!’ she pats his hand, ‘Look, you’re a brilliant inventor, we all have our slow days’. 

He sighs and nods, and holds her hand. ‘Thanks... I guess I’m just not in my element, you know?’  ‘Yeah...’ she keeps patting his hand. 

And the feeling of domesticity creeps in. We really are all a family. Y/n smiles encouragingly at Tony, and Tony seems more relaxed. 

‘So, you want me to get you the number of that ironmongery, or...?’  ‘OH FOR...’ he snatches his arm away and storms out of the room, with Steve and Nat losing it all over again. 

___________________________________________________________

Ah this was so fun!!!!!!!! I hope you guys liked it <3 

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[gayoperatorgunclub]

ULTIMATE SHIP MEME: MontaDoc Edition? Pretty please? Or any MontaDoc content. I crave it. Much 💕

of course!!!!!!! sorry this has taken so long, but i sincerely hope you enjoy it!!! 💝💝💝

General:

Rate the Ship -   Awful | Ew | No pics pls | I’m not comfortable | Alright | I like it! | Got Pics? | Let’s do it! | Why is this not getting more attention?! | The OTP to rule all other OTPs

How long will they last? - for fucking EVER!!!!!! 

How quickly did/will they fall in love? - two words: mutual. pining. this period, often referred to as the “Beginning of Operation: T.E.A.M. D.A.D.S. (Temporary Employment As Masters of Dad And Dad Sweethearts)” however, unbeknownst to anybody else in rainbow, by the time Operation: T.E.A.M. D.A.D.S. had begun, gustave and gilles had already been together for a couple of years. how did they actually get together? about six months after the GIGN joined rainbow, gustave was in the middle of a mountain of paperwork when he heard someone clear their throat. he spun around to scold whoever it was for coming to medbay when they were sick (despite the fact that he was coming down with a nasty cold), only to be greeted with gilles leaning nonchalantly against the doorframe. “gustave. you look as though you’re about to meet death for dinner. how can you expect to take care of others when you’re not taking care of yourself?” gustave just sighed and shook his head, muttering something about leaving him be for another couple hours so he could finish his paperwork, but gilles has other ideas. in mere moments, gustave goes from standing over his desk, organizing some files, to being held in gilles’ big strong arms. “wh- gilles! i-” he was cut off by his own yawn, and gilles smiled at him fondly. gustave felt himself blush, and he squirmed a little, but let gilles carry him to the GIGN quarters. as soon as it seemed like gilles was going to leave, gustave pulled him down for a kiss, then pushed their foreheads together and whispered “you’re going to carry me all this way and not even stay to make sure i don’t go back to my office?” gilles just grinned at him, climbing into bed beside him and wrapping his arms around him. 

How was their first kiss? - ROMANTIQUE! and smelling of sickness but what can you do

Wedding:

Who proposed? - monty!! he decided to cook a romantic candlelit dinner at their apartment, and when he sees gustave come home from work, all ragged and exhausted, yet still with a glimmer of determination and subtle joy, he says the first thing that comes to mind: “will you marry me?” gustave froze, his cheeks still rosy and his hair sprinkled with snowflakes. “will i what?” gilles realized his mistake and flushed, stammering a response before gustave was standing in front of him, staring at him scrutinizingly. “gilles.” he started, reaching to intertwine their hands, bring them between their chests, “what did you say?” gilles gulped, then steeled himself and got down on one knee. “gustave kateb. love of my life, light of my days. the man i want to wake up next to every day for the rest of my life. the man who i adore with every fiber of my being. would you do me the honor of being my husband?” 

Who is the best man/men? - for monty: bandit! for doc: lion (everyone but them thought it was a joke until the day of the wedding). dominic and olivier’s dual best man speech is the stuff of legends. there were tears, there was laughter, and there was an almost excessive amount of thinly-veiled sexual innuendos at various people in attendance (including both grooms; the best men were both drunk of their asses) 

Who is the bride’s maid(s)? - they actually fight over who gets to pick twitch! meanwhile rook is in the background like D: (don’t worry, it’s decided that he and twitch will be ring bearer and flower girl respectively) for monty: dokkaebi. for doc: finka 

Who did the most planning? - they both did! though gustave focused on food and flowers, and gilles focused on the guest list and the venue (but they ran things by each other before any final decisions were made)

Who stressed the most? - gilles! he was so worried about their families not getting along that he actually prepared a “leave my husband and his family alone or so help me i will never speak to you again” speech

How fancy was the ceremony? - Back of a pickup truck | 2 | 3 | 4 | Normal Church Wedding | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | Kate and William wish they were this big.

Who was specifically not invited to the wedding? - gilles’ racist, homophobic, french nationalist uncle (no one in the family likes him, so it wasn’t a big loss) (this uncle also made a surprise appearance at the family dinner where gilles introduced gustave to the rest of his family, and started yelling about “godamn immigrants” and other such bigotted statements, before gilles’ sister physically dragged him out of the house and threw him out the door. afterwards, up in the guest bedroom, gilles quietly tells gustave that it’s okay if he wants to leave, or break up, or anything, and gustave just laughs and tells him that if he wasn’t prepared for family members to express their distaste, he wouldn’t be dating a white man. he pressed a kiss to gilles’ temple, before whispering “although, he was right about my being an immigrant; it’s just that i was born in Paris and immigrated with my family to algeria, not the other way around. A for effort, though”)

Sex:

Who is on top? - gilles!!!! although gustave will occassionally ride him 👀👀👀

Who is the one to instigate things? - gustave is lowkey horny 24/7, but if gilles walks in on him bending over to get something from a cabinet, or tilting his head all the way back while drinking from his water bottle, thereby showcasing the way his throat moves as he swallows, he will lose his shit 

How healthy is their sex life? - Barely touch themselves let alone each other | 2 | 3 | 4 | Once a couple weeks, nothing overboard | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | They are humping each other on the couch right now

How kinky are they? - Straight missionary with the lights off | 2 | 3 | 4 | Might try some butt stuff and toys | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | Don’t go into the sex dungeon without a horse’s head

How long do they normally last? - okay i’m gonna change this one to an explanation of some things from below. i personally think doc lowkey a freak, and gilles is happy to oblige him if that’s what his lapin wants (although he’s not entirely sure how he feels about this “overstimulation” and “post-orgasm torture” and “cock & ball torture” stuff. specifically, he’s not sure he likes hurting gustave, but, while he probably won’t admit it out loud, he secretly adores making gustave cry. when he’s so helpless and powerless and mindless, and he’s begging for something, but for what he doesn’t really know. maybe it’s the knowledge that gilles is in complete control, that gustave trusts him to do this, to make him hurt and cry and just melt, the knowlege that gustave is completely reliant on him for his pleasure, his pain, and everything in between. it’s a heady thing, and gilles isn’t sure how he feels about it, but he’s pretty sure the warmth in his chest and the warmth in his gut are good signs 

Do they make sure each person gets an equal amount of orgasms? - unless they’re doing some of the things mentioned above, or mayhaps some denial 👀👀👀 then yeah, everyone gets the same. they’re very considerate when they’re just doing vanilla 

How rough are they in bed? - Softer than a butterfly on the back of a bunny | 2 | 3 | 4 | The bed’s shaking and squeaking every time | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | Their dirty talk is so vulgar it’d make Dwayne Johnson blush. Also, the wall’s so weak it could collapse the next time they do it.

How much cuddling/snuggling do they do? - No touching after sex | 2 | 3 | 4 | A little spooning at night, or on the couch, but not in public | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | They snuggle and kiss more often than a teen couple on their fifth date to a pillow factory.

Children: btw, the rest of this is kinda set in a post-retirement au (idrk i just want them to have a farm and be peaceful). give it whatever context u want tho, i was just havin fun

How many children will they have? - they will have four cats and a dog, as well as 2 horses, a donkey, 5 cows, an alpaca, a rabbit, some ducks, a flock of sheep and goats, and the occasional visit from a herd of deer from the forest surrounding their little farm

How many children will they adopt? - since humans CANNOT, i repeat, CANNOT, give birth to the animals listed above, they’re all adopted

Who gets stuck with the most diapers? - no one. the animals potty train themselves

Who is the stricter parent? - gilles sneaks them treats while gustave lectures them about dietary habits, so take your pick 

Who stops the kid(s) from doing dangerous stunts after school? - whenever gilles leaves to run errands, one of the goats goes into a depression so deep and miserable that they’re utterly inconsolable until he comes back. once they hear the sound of the car in the driveway, this lil goat, lovingly named “Bastard” by gustave, will climb onto the roof of the house and scream his joy over gilles’ return to the heavens 

Who remembers to pack the lunch(es)? - they tag team on things like feeding the animals and cleaning out the barn, but gustave is much more organized about it

Who is the more loved parent? - the cats, dog, one of the horses, donkey, alpaca, rabbit, goats (except for Bastard), and deer all prefer gustave, though gilles is adequate in the event that gustave is busy with something else (although the alpaca and donkey hate his guts, and will escape their pastures to break into the house and be near gustave. gilles maintains that they’re both devil-spawn, but gustave says he’s just being dramatic and that Thamin (alpaca) and Albalatin (donkey) are complete angels who could do no wrong)

Who is more likely to attend the PTA meetings? - animals have NOT unionized. yet. 

Who cried the most at graduation? - idk if this counts, but when Bastard finally figured out how to get himself down from the roof after getting himself onto it, gilles cried for an hour

Who is more likely to bail the child(ren) out of trouble with the law? - gilles lowkey does whenever thamin and albalatin escape to go out into the world and commit crimes, but only to make sure his husband doesn’t get upset when he finds out his precious creatures are hell beasts. certainly not out of anything resembling tolerance or *shudder* like 

Cooking:

Who does the most cooking? - gustave, but gilles can make a mean bowl of cereal

Who is the most picky in their food choice? - gustave. gilles will eat something straight from the garden and gustave is like “DID YOU CHECK IF IT WAS RIPE?????? YOU COULD DIE FROM THAT YOU KNOW, THEN WHERE WOULD I BE???” 

Who does the grocery shopping? - gustave. gilles is something of a hermit in their town, and people often remark about the “sweet, kind doctor and his utter brick wall of a husband” 

How often do they bake desserts? - whenever Bastard goes a day without doing something Bastardous 

Are they more of a meat lover or a salad eater? - both lowkey prefer salad, since they care for many animals that would often get used for their meat, and they can’t bear to think about hurting any of their babies

Who is more likely to surprise the other(s) with an anniversary dinner? - gilles. the people in town helped him when he burst into the little grocery store all panicked like “I NEED TO MAKE MY HUSBAND A SURPRISE DINNER BUT I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO MAKE” 

Who is more likely to suggest going out? - gustave. gilles like being at home, but city-boy over here thinks that restaurants are a weekly luxury

Who is more likely to burn the house down accidently while cooking? - neither. it was thamin and albalatin, attempting to frame gilles for yet another felony

Chores:

Who cleans the room? - gustave. everything is color coded. sex toys included 

Who is really against chores? - gilles. gustave films him whenever he actually does clean and yells things like “go white boy go!!” and sends them to twitch for her T.E.A.M. D.A.D.S. scrapbook 

Who cleans up after the pets? - they both do, but gilles gets stuck with shit duty more often than not

Who is more likely to sweep everything under the rug? - gilles, once. gustave walked in, sniffed the air, then glared at him until he actually swept whatever it was up and threw it away 

Who stresses the most when guests are coming over? - gustave “we can’t have guests over, the house is a mess” kateb

Who found a dollar between the couch cushions while cleaning? - Bastard. he then proceeded to eat it

Misc:

Who takes the longer showers/baths? - gustave and his hour-long skincare routine 

Who takes the dog out for a walk? - gustave, bc sadiqi the dog (not to be confused with sadiqi the kitten), or Big Sadiqi (kitten sadiqi is Little Sadiqi) is his, gilles, and he will not allow his precious boy to be influenced by such creatures as Bastard 

How often do they decorate the room/house for the holidays? - they get little sweaters for the animals. that is all

What are their goals for the relationship? - joke: gustave always says “the White Man’s money” despite the fact that his family is richer than gilles’. woke: mutual happiness, comfort, and healing 

Who is most likely to sleep till noon? - gustave. after 11 am, thamin and albalatin decide they’ve had enough and break in to lay down on the bed next to him. gilles banishes himself to the couch for a week

Who plays the most pranks? - Bastard, thamin, and albalatin. although gustave did dye the sheep’s wool (while it was still attached to them) different colors and patterns and, for the ones who were perfectly content to sit still and be held, replicas of famous paintings (his favorite artist is monet, in case you forgot that he’s french)

[maximoffzinha]

Candyman (50′s AU)

The war is over. Poe goes out to drink and can't help but to feel lost. What he's gonna do? His life was only war, and now it ended, and all he has left is a Corgi... And the memory of a voice as sweet as candy.

A/N: So, this is the first time I tried to write something like this... Never done reader inserts before but Poe really puts me in the mood. PS: Please have in mind that english is NOT my first language, I'm sorry for any mistakes

°°° It was a warm night; people were dancing around the bar finally being able to enjoy parties again. The War was over, for good this time, and Poe wasn’t going to waste any time. Being a Pilot for the royal fleet wasn’t easy, he lost many colleagues and many friends, but tonight was about happiness, a celebration! His best friend Finn invited him and two of the nurses of their squadron, Rey and Rose, for this party, they had become good friends besides the environment where they met, and while he was walking around he saw Snap and his wife Karé together laughing and enjoying each other presence in the midst of the drunk mess and the dancing couples.“I’m telling you man, I think I have a shot at the academy.”- Finn told him excitedly, he was looking for work after the army dismissed him at the end of the war.“That’s awesome Finn! I got a job at a local hospital, if you need a place to crash, we have a spare bedroom since Rose and I share the suit.”- Rey says with a smile, the two women have been living together after the hell they’ve been through on the field.“And you Poe? Any plans?” Poe stared at his friends, had he any plans really? Those five years fighting had been the only thing occupying his mind, he never thought he would get a chance to do something else, hell he never thought the war was going to end. Except it did, what did he have left? Sure, he was a General now… But he didn’t see himself in the military front forever… He wanted a domestic life, a house to get back to, someone to get back too… He even knew who he wanted, but the was too much of a coward to look for her… What could he give her?  Scars, psychological trauma and a corgi. At least BB wasn’t expecting much more of him than belly rubs and food. All of his friends had some sort of last resource, someone to get back to (well he had his father, and his sort-of-maybe-adoptive-Mother Leia, but it wasn’t the same). He mumbled some idiotic answer to his friends that seemed pleased enough, and was shaken out of his sadness by the sound of applauses and a familiar up beat tune.“Holy shit, they brought her!”“I thought she had retired!”Soon enough a velvet like voice began to sing, and Poe didn’t need to look up to the stage to know it was really you. Two Years Ago… Poe and his squadron were back to the base after a month long operation that took them all the way to Eastern Europe, they were tired, beat down, and grieving with the loss of many colleagues, so imagine their surprise when they saw a show stage in the middle of the field. Colonel Solo gave them the day off to enjoy the show paid by the US allies as a reward for their backup.Poe and the guys did their best to freshen up and went on their way to the show, some girl choir was there and the guys were excited to maybe get laid. It was nice to see them hoping for something else besides survival. A upbeat sound started and some well dressed women were up, their outfits reminded him of some military secretaries back home, their hair in perfect Victorian Rolls with a hat on top that resembled the formal uniform he had stored away. They began to sing and dance some sort of mock up march, and then there she was… Y/N Y/L/N. The men around Poe started howling and whistle when they saw the American beauty. Poe was frozen, as she sang the song (so full of innuendos that got him in a mood), somehow their eyes locked and the words coming out of her mouth held a lot more of meaning.“There's nothing more dangerous than a boy with charm... He’s a one stop shop, makes the panties drop...” -She licked her deep red tinted lips and Poe found himself doing the same. “He’s a sweet talkin’, sugar coated Candyman”- The other girls supplied backing up her strong voice.The lead lady then took of her blazer living her in a tight blue tank top like dress that had the soldiers screaming louder. “Well, by now I'm getting all bothered and hot…When he kissed my mouth, he really hit the spot… He had lips like sugar cane, oh” “Good things come for boys who wait!”- She winked giving a side smirk then turned around to dance with the backing vocal ladies.She then opened space for two girls come to the front, a red headed, and a blonde.“He's a one stop, gotcha hot, makin' all the panties drop…”- The blonde one sang and danced her way next to the red head. “He's a one stop, got me hot, makin' my (uh) pop…”- they both dance to stand next to the main singer who smiles before singing. “He's a one stop, get it while it's hot, baby, don't stop”- She sang and they got on to the next part. “He got those lips like sugar can…- They belted a high note in harmony and Poe saw some of his mates literally drooling. - “Good things come for boys who wait” “He's a one stop shop with a real big (uh)… - The main lady sang without breaking eye contact with Poe who swallowed dry. – “He's a sweet talkin' sugar coated candy man…”  After the show Poe didn’t try to invade the stage like his desperate friends, he went straight to the backstage, nervously passing his hands on his dark curls, he avoided the other girls going straight to her, every second he got less confident but he found himself knocking on the support bar of your makeshift tent.“Yes? Come in please.”- Poe stepped inside the tent and saw her wearing a lighter blouse, in trousers and a pair of black boots, still with her make up on, he thought she was even more beautiful that way. “Hello? Anybody there?”- She was snapping her fingers on his face, and he felt the warmth spread across his face. “Sorry, ma’am. I’m Commander Poe Dameron, from the black squadron.”- He said still embarrassed. “Commander? Very interesting… I’m Y/N. So Fly Boy, are you here to show me you have ‘The lips like sugar cane?’ like every other officer on this camp might try later?” Poe was taken back, what was exactly his plan? He really didn’t think this through, and was feeling kind of stupid, I mean, did he really thought he was the only man that tried to win her? “… That must be tough.”- He found himself saying. “It’s more tiering than anything else really… Most of the times the guys understand the meaning of NO, but other times… Sorry, you don’t have anything to do with this.” “No, I don’t mind… I can’t imagine that is easy to be out here having to entertain a bunch of needy man.”- He said with a smile, she sat down on a bed and motioned to him to sit with her. “I shouldn’t complain, you are doing an essential job, taking the real risk, and I’m a showgirl. I wish I could do more, maybe being a nurse… Or even fight like those Russian girls.” – She sighed. “Try to fight? That’s not something you see everyday… You any good with a pistol?”- He said with a smile and an idea popping into his mind. “I know some stuff, my dad taught me even though I was a girl… It came with the singing classes.”- She smiled a little as she got a small pistol from her boot.Poe let a small laugh out as he got up and gave out his hand to the woman, she hesitated a little but accepted his silent invite and followed him out of her tent.It was already night and the sky was clear and the star shined bright.“Where are you taking me Fly Boy?”- she said smiling. Poe could see the stars reflected in her eyes, as she could see it in his. “You’re gonna have to trust in my Showgirl…” – He smiled back at her.This man was weird, but by far the gentlest and educated one she found on this tour through the camps. It also helped that he was devilish handsome, his smile was broad and true, his hair was beautiful even though she knew the supplies were few, but his eyes… His eyes dragged her in and she found herself lost in them already. She was no fool, she knew love at first sight didn’t exist, but damn if this wasn’t a close to the feeling.That night he took her to the forest, and he showed her the beauty behind all the pain they were living. Present times. He had kissed her, he had loved her in the short while they were together, after he took her back to the camp she gave him her full name, told him to look for her after the war, she said she would be waiting… And he didn’t do that. Not because he had forgotten her, God knew there was no way for him to forget her, but because he knew better. She was a star, a fucking singer, with a brilliant career ahead of her, and he was what? Another soldier. Just another pilot without a plan.When she started to sing, that same lewd song that got him and so many other soldiers crazy, he only smiled, making way to the front of the stage being pulled by Finn and the girls who were dancing happily.She saw him. How could she not? Right there, with the formal uniform that made him look so damn good, she was singing that same damned song that she sang the night they met. And fuck if it didn’t make her remember him, it was like the lyrics were about him. Fucking gorgeous bastard… She thought without stopping the show, and while he looked at her singing, she formed a plan to never let him go again. “He’s a sweet talkin’, sugar coated Candyman… A sweet talkin’, sugar coated Candyman.” As the crowded bar applauded Y/N got down from the stage and staying in front of Poe she got him by the neck of his shirt and brought him down for a heated kiss, it didn’t take long for him to respond to it letting even a small moan as he held her by the waist and felt her fingers tugging in his hair. “Wow… Showgirl… What’s this for?” “I missed my Fly Boy and his candy cane lips…” – She whispered against his mouth, they separated when finally noted the whistles and cat calls around them. “You didn’t look for me, so I came after you, Commander Dameron…” “It’s General now actually…”- He smiled at her surprised face. “It seems like we have a lot of catching up to do.”- She said playing with the medals on his blazer. “We do… What do you say we come back here… Thursday, 7 p.m. sharp.”- He said smiling. “Is this an order, General?” “It’s a hopeful request from a stupid man that almost let you go.” “Then it’s settled. 7 p.m. sharp. Dress nicely, you look good in tuxedos, Candyman…” She went away with a sway of her hips and left Poe smiling like a fool not even noticing the sheer disbelief on his friends faces… He didn’t know what the future would be like… But at least he had a date.

[feynavaley]

Hetalia Miraculous Ladybug AU

(Or, I spent about 2 hours with an 11-year-old explaining me everything about this show so now you’re getting this.)

The characters aren’t completely like the ones from the show (which I haven’t even watched), I just thought about somebody who might cover a similar role, but their personalities are their own and presumably different from the ones of the canon characters. (Besides, keep in mind that all my knowledge comes from a brief look through the Wikia pages and the explanation of an 11-year-old. A very exhaustive explanation, but still.)

- Marinette/Ladybug: Michelle Bonnefoy (Seychelles). Daughter of a Parisian baker, Francis Bonnefoy (France) and a Seychellois woman (Angélique, an OC). She spent her early childhood in Seychelles and went back to Paris with her father after her mother’s death. Michelle has a great passion for fashion (inherited from her father, even if he eventually chose a different profession) and dreams of becoming a fashion designer. She’s optimistic, friendly, and lively, with a positive view of people and the world in general. She never turns back from somebody in need and is always eager to be helpful in any way she can. She can be a bit shy when she first meets somebody, but once she opens up, she’s an extrovert. She would like to do loads of things at once but sometimes she doubts her abilities, she needs some encouragements. She can also be quite clumsy, at times. As Ladybug, she displays more confidence (which lets her intelligence and quick thinking shine, since she doesn’t let her insecurities sway her) and is extremely dedicated to her job.

- Alya: Amelia Jones (Nyo!America). A new classmate of Michelle’s, has been in France for just a few years and still misses America. Energic, headstrong, and with a strong sense of justice, she wants to one day become an investigative reporter because she thinks it would be a good way to bring to light important stories and make her contribution to the world (and she thinks it would be exciting, too). She stands up for Michelle against bullies and they become best friends from there, she’s very supportive and protective. In fact, she’s very friendly and open in general, a total extrovert. She can also be a bit too obstinate and overconfident at times, though. And the fact she always says what she thinks can be both a blessing and a curse. On a different note, she’s also extremely athletic – she has done lots of sports, with her last interest being kickboxing. Once Ladybug appears, Amelia starts investigating on her not only to cover the story but also because she wants to help and become a superhero herself (she eventually does earn a miraculous too).

- Adrien/Chat Noir: Matthew Kirkland (Canada – his surname has been changed for plot reasons.) Only son of the owners of a famous fashion brand and also one of their main models (even if not by his own choice). He grew up sheltered and isolated, not being allowed to have contact with his peers except for a few selected ones. He has been brought up to excel – advanced curriculum, several foreign languages, playing piano, fencing, and above all, impeccable manners. His father’s expectations and detached demeanour, united with his mother’s subtly oppressive and controlling one, made him develop an awfully low self-esteem. He’s polite, quiet, and kind-hearted, but quite clumsy and always doubting himself in social interactions as he isn’t used to it and tends to miss some clues/convince himself he’s missing clues even though he actually isn’t. Due to his strict upbringing, he also has trouble standing up for himself and letting the dorkier parts of his personality show as they were deemed ‘undesirable’ and ‘undignified’ by his mother (she said it in a much sweeter and apparently supportive way, but that was the meaning). As Chat Noir, he lets his dorky side shine because he thinks that’s how a superhero’s supposed to act (and that it’s cool – he doesn’t realize it makes him look like he isn’t taking things seriously). Extremely dedicated to Ladybug. He’s actually a good tactician but he’s so focused in his role of protecting Ladybug (and not confident enough in his intellect, on top) that he ends up acting mainly on instinct just to do that instead of coming up with plans.

- Gabriel Agreste/Hawkmoth: Arthur Kirkland (England). Owner and executive manager of an extremely famous fashion brand. He’s not the designer himself, though – that was his wife Marianne (Nyo!France) before her ‘mysterious’ disappearance. Growing up with distant parents and insecure, Arthur doesn’t know how to connect with Matthew and had always left the job to his wife, whom he felt was a much better person than himself. After Marianne got sick and later slipped into a coma due to the damaged Peacock miraculous, he donned the Butterfly miraculous in order to retrieve the Cat and Ladybug ones and get Marianne back at the cost of his own life (erroneously convinced he can decide the price of the wish on his own). The fact he’s planning to sacrifice himself is also part of the reason he’s so cold and stern with Matthew – he doesn’t want Matthew to get too attached to him. Yet, his love for Matthew (and feeling on inadequacy as a paternal figure) translate in him being extremely protective and controlling in order to keep Matthew safe. In addition, he tries to micro-manage every aspect of Matthew’s life as he’s convinced it’s the best to make his life as good as possible in the long run.

- Nathalie: Sakura Honda (Nyo!Japan). Arthur’s assistant. Always detached, formal, and extremely efficient, but she’s actually very fond of her boss (she admires his dedication) and ended up falling in love with him. She would go to great lengths to ensure his well-being and success, she doesn’t even hold back from using the Peacock miraculous (and damaging her own health) in order to help Arthur. Sakura also ended up becoming equally fond of Matthew; even if she isn’t able to express it outwardly (or even fully admit it to herself), she cares for him as if he were her own son, at this point.

- Nino: Carlos Machado (Cuba). Another classmate of Michelle’s – actually, he was one of the first people who welcomed her when she moved to Paris and they’re still good friends. He can’t stand any perceived injustice and is quick to anger in that sense, but unless he gets provoked, he’s very laid-back and welcoming. He sees the nervous wreck Matthew is and befriends him immediately because the poor dude deserves somebody being kind to him. Later, he basically adopts Matthew and gently tries to coax him into understanding that being his real self – even if it isn’t the perfect and flawless picture he tries to project in order to make his father proud – isn’t a bad thing. (Carlos has a very low opinion of Matthew’s father.) From day one, he’s also very supportive of the new superheroes and helps from the sidelines (which is the reason he eventually earns a miraculous himself).

- Chloé: Lavinia Vargas (Nyo!Romano). This one is probably very different from the show. Lavinia’s the spoiled eldest daughter of the major who uses her influence to bully other people – in particular, those she’s jealous of. Because Lavinia’s mother is one of Arthur’s senior designers but also self-centred to the point of narcissism – she doesn’t care for anybody but herself or those who could serve her. And Lavinia, who doesn’t have any artistic talent, doesn’t. The one who, instead, is artistically talented is Lavinia’s younger twin sister, Felicia (Nyo!Italy), who is, instead, very sweet and good-natured but doesn’t dare to go against Lavinia as she’s looking for her approval. (Lavinia has never made a mystery of her jealousy – masked as disdain – towards her twin.) Moreover, their mother has dragged Felicia around the world a lot to display her talent so she hasn’t had enough time to create strong bonds with other people – and instead ended up cementing Lavinia’s resentment towards Felicia and everybody else. The only person Lavinia’s kind to is Matthew, whom she has known since childhood and bonded with due to both of them being lonely and isolated.

- Kagami: Natalya Nikolaevna Arlovskaya (Belarus). Niece of one of Arthur’s major investors, Ivan Igorovich Braginsky (Russia). Since her father died before she was even born, she was raised by her mother Iryna (Ukraine) along with her uncle (Iryna’s younger brother), who instead isn’t married and has always been very close to his sister. Iryna is very sweet and maternal, but Natalya prefers following her uncle’s footsteps. She’s cold and competitive, always pushing herself to reach the top. Along with being academically gifted, she plays the violin, does ballet, and fencing (along with Matthew). Low-key convinced that friendship and social interactions are a waste of time unless she can get something out of them, she tries to pursue Matthew romantically because of the favourable connection that match would make (Matthew’s the heir to a fashion empire, after all). Yet, she ends up becoming genuinely fond of him once she realizes the determination and strength of character hidden behind his kindness.

I want to go more in-depth into some aspects but this post is already horribly long, so I’ll do it under a read more.

- Michelle initially doesn’t feel up to being Ladybug and tries to refuse it, but after some time, she starts growing into the role and gaining a bigger confidence that also bleeds into her daily life. Ladybug also helps her become more mindful of the consequences of her actions – one of Michelle’s flaws is that she tends not to be very far-sighted.

- The interaction between Michelle and Matthew could be similar to those of Marinette and Adrien – Michelle gets a crush on Matthew (due to his kind-hearted nature) but is convinced it’s not reciprocated so she doesn’t want to confess to him. Instead, she works on becoming his friend first and they eventually get quite close.

- On his part, Matthew is completely oblivious as his self-esteem is so low he doesn’t think anybody could truly like him as a person – those who claim they like him are actually only attracted to his popularity as a model (or money).

- About this, Matthew’s actually very insecure about his appearance. Because he looks like a model – so, while he’s athletic, he’s more on the skinny and delicate side. Only a ‘pretty boy’, while he would like to be a ‘real man’.

- Apparently, Chat Noir’s a flirt but I really cannot see Matthew doing that. He certainly lets go of some of his inhibitions while he’s behind the mask so he ends up being a dork (and the fact he’s a manga nerd, which shapes his perceptions of what’s cool, doesn’t help at all). He is smitten with Ladybug, this much is true, but he ends up acting starry-eyed and clumsy instead (when he isn’t focused on the job and they’re interacting more casually).

- Matthew isn’t so confident in being a superhero, either, but since he’s unable to say no, he immediately sets to do his best instead of complaining. As time goes on, he starts liking more and more being Chat Noir for the freedom it offers him and, in a way, the lack of expectations. (Yes, he has to save Paris, but nobody knows who he is behind the mask so it feels less personal than the criticism he receives when he’s himself. Moreover, the public eye tends to be more focused on Ladybug.)

- In her effort to be Michelle’s wingwoman, Amelia gets very close to Matthew as well. Maybe she manages to spend a lot of time with him using an excuse (research for an article or something) in order to try to steer him towards Michelle, but as she starts knowing him better, she becomes very fond of him herself. In particular, Amelia recognizes his kind-hearted nature and his inability to stand up for himself and basically appoints herself as his protector and older sister. (And they find common ground in their love for video-games and manga, too.)

- Amelia and Carlos actually don’t get along, but they’re in some sort of truce for the sake of Matthew and Michelle. They still keep bickering and teasing each other, but with time, they start growing fond of each other. (They don’t end up dating, though – more like a best frenemies.)

- Carlos is one of the first people who get to akumatized as he’s easy to anger. After that experience, he starts working on his quick temper and learns to channel his anger in a more positive way. He puts a lot of effort into it and improves a lot.

- Matthew is a lot closer to Lavinia than to Felicia because Felicia was always around the world following her mother. Felicia finally gets into school the same year as Matthew – and she finds herself isolated from her peers because of her connection to Lavinia. She loathes how Lavinia behaves but isn’t strong enough to stands up against her, which makes other people think she approves of Lavinia’s actions. (Moreover, they were already ill-disposed towards her as they thought Lavinia’s twin sister couldn’t be any better.)

- Lavinia eventually starts working through her trauma and insecurities as Matthew and Felicia start criticizing her behaviour. She does get the Bee miraculous – but she also goes through a positive growth. She never completely sheds her caustic and sarcastic exterior, but she does end up behaving a lot better.

- Natalya also starts loosening up after being touched not only by Matthew but also by Michelle’s, Amelia’s, and Carlos’s kindness/welcoming demeanour. She despises them at first, but after a bit, she starts becoming fond of them and appreciating them. In the end, she loses a bit of her pessimistic view on relationships and becomes their friend as well.

- Over the course of the school year, Matthew starts hanging around Michelle’s house and Francis basically adopts him because he can see the kid’s in desperate need of some human warmth and affection. Also, Francis builds a very negative picture of Arthur in his head based on Matthew’s defeated demeanour. And he doesn’t hold his tongue in the few cases he meets Arthur in person, managing to get under Arthur’s skin better than mostly everybody else (Matthew’s upbringing is a very delicate topic for Arthur – partly because it almost feels like somebody’s criticizing Marianne’s actions, and partly because he has no idea of how to do it. And he doesn’t like it at all). They loathe each other for some time.

- On the other hand, once Michelle becomes more comfortable around Matthew, she’s invited to some photoshoots (since she’s interested in fashion) and then she gets noticed by Arthur, who, in spite of not being a designer himself, has been around enough of them to recognize her talent. Besides, he doesn’t disapprove of her personality so he lets her hang around their house and Matthew and even personally interacts with her a few times. Michelle ends up forming the opinion (not completely wrong) that Arthur isn’t actually a bad father – he cares a lot for Matthew, but he’s out of his depths and doesn’t know how to express it.

- The ‘Final Boss’ – the one behind everything – is actually Marianne, not Arthur. Marianne was a talented fashion designer who dreamed of fame and power, and once she met Arthur – who came from a rich family and had the financial ability to realize her dream, but was very frail and in dire need of some affection – she manipulated him into falling in love with her and used his financial assets to establish her company. She was genuinely fond of Arthur, in part – but it was secondary to her goals. And even once she got rich and famous, she wasn’t satisfied. She came across some legends about the Miraculous and decided to investigate into the matter. She eventually came into possession of the Peacock and Butterfly ones and tried using them for her own gains. Her greed was so strong that she didn’t stop even after she realized the damaged Peacock was draining her health, but kept pushing herself until she fell into a coma. And Arthur, who had just lost his anchor and emotional stability (Marianne was very careful that Arthur, instead of developing healthy relationships and healing from his childhood, would remain completely dependent on her) decided to do everything to bring her back. And that’s how Hawkmoth was born.

- Arthur doesn’t enjoy fighting two children (Ladybug and Chat Noir) nor hurting people (that’s also why he never uses real traumas to create akumas but only mundane annoyances), but he thinks he doesn’t have any other option if he wants to bring back Marianne. Moreover, he’s fully aware that Ladybug’s powers always fix everything, which helps convince him that, given his goal, his actions are justified.

- Marianne was actually a very poor mother for Matthew, too. He has good memories of her, but only because that’s all he knows. She isolated him and was possessive, overbearing, and constantly resorted to emotional manipulation – she was happy and affectionated as long as Matthew behaved exactly the way she wanted,  but the moment he would stray even of an inch, she would act overdramatic and disappointed, making him feel awful. Essentially, she destroyed Matthew’s self-esteem. (And Arthur didn’t notice because he, instead, had grown up with distant and more openly abusive parents. So, he thought that as long as Marianne was affectionate, she was a good mother. Moreover, he didn’t witness how capricious she was or how she would guilt-trip Matthew because she would only behave like that when Arthur wasn’t around.) Marianne did care deeply for Matthew, in her own way, but she was just a horrible person. She treated him as an extension of herself and her property instead of his own person.

- Eventually, Arthur does get the Cat and Ladybug miraculouses – even if Matthew and Michelle escape and he doesn’t see their identities (nor do Matthew and Michelle discover who they are – because they had sworn they wouldn’t. So, they walk side-to-side as they try to plan what to do and don’t look.) Arthur wishes Marianne back, fully intentioned to return the Cat and Ladybug miraculouses to their rightful owners afterwards.

...But Marianne comes back and not only Arthur doesn’t die – there’s something wrong with Marianne. She wants to keep the Cat and Ladybug miraculouses (which Arthur and Sakura wrestle away from her and manage to give back, but barely), she’s undeniably hungry for power. Arthur starts thinking that something went wrong with the wish, but he loves Marianne too much to go against her. He – along with Sakura – instead pretends to be on her side while at the same time trying to help Ladybug and Chat Noir fight against her and trying to find a cure to fix her. (It’s a long time before Arthur realizes that that was Marianne all along – she doesn’t need fixing because she has always been like that, she only became more unhinged and less subtle after recovering.)

- One of the turning points in Arthur’s realization is seeing how Marianne treats Matthew. Arthur had granted him many liberties, and while he was sceptical at first, (also thanks to Sakura’s insight) he eventually had to admit that Matthew thrived in the company of his peers. Maybe the dangers are higher (Arthur’s overprotective, and what happened to Marianne doesn’t help) but they’re outweighed by how much happier Matthew is. But Marianne wants to take everything back, and she doesn’t hold back any punches. (When Matthew wants to spend time with his friends, she complains that he doesn’t love her anymore, acts all heartbroken because he isn’t truly happy she’s back – if he were, he would spend all his time with her, wouldn’t he? – says he doesn’t respect her opinion anymore when he wants to go back to school, etc.) Matthew is a wreck, he’s torn and he doesn’t know what to do or what to think anymore. (He is happy that is mother’s back, yet, he can’t help but realize that he was happier before, when he could spend time with his friends and go to school, which leaves him feeling horribly guilty and selfish.) He stops smiling, can’t sleep, stops eating when not prompted... he becomes a ghost of himself. He looks even worse than Arthur did when he was still living with his parents. And that’s when Arthur comes to the realization it’s just wrong. He still doesn’t want to blame everything on Marianne (he tries to convince himself her instability is due to her prolonged coma and she’ll get better) but he starts pulling his weight and argue with her to defend Matthew’s freedom. He even gets to swallowing his pride and revealing the situation to Francis in order to make sure Matthew has a safe place he can stay at when his mother goes overboard (and that’s how a tentative friendship starts forming between Arthur and Francis).

- This isn’t all there is about Matthew, though. Arthur thinks the wish comes without a price, in the end (or maybe, that the price is Marianne’s sanity, for how much he doesn’t like to admit it). But Arthur doesn’t see Matthew collapse in a faint just after the wish is granted. Matthew wakes up not long later and resumes fighting as if nothing’s wrong – and even if he’s very exhausted afterwards, he thinks nothing of it. But over the following weeks, he starts feeling worse and worse. It’s small, at first – just lingering exhaustion and weakness. But it never gets better, developing instead in more and more frequent dizzy spells. It’s particularly bad after he transforms – he starts passing out once it’s over. He now gets sick very easily, too. If he has to hold the transformation for a bit longer than usual, he gets flu-like symptoms afterwards – it eventually gets to the point he’s too sick and weak to leave the bed for days. His miraculous isn’t damaged, but the price of the wish is paid with Matthew developing the same illness that affected his mother.

- Once Arthur realizes this, all the pretences are dropped. He realizes the person Marianne is and lets her go, focusing instead on trying to find a cure for Matthew and defeat Marianne alongside Ladybug and Chat Noir (whom he doesn’t know is Matthew, yet, but he does realize it after Chat Noir displays symptoms too similar to Matthew’s. It really doesn’t help with how guilty Arthur’s feeling). (Sakura keeps staying by Arthur’s side, too, and Arthur eventually admits he reciprocates her feelings.)

...

And that’s it. This was long. 😅 I don’t know how much of it makes sense but... I just couldn’t help thinking about this as I walking home tonight.

[jackalopesao3]

Can I get a match please?🥺

Hello!💎

I hope you don't mind if I submit instead of sending several asks😅

So in general idk if this helps but I'm 21, bisexual, cis-female. My sun sign is Taurus, but I don't agree with it lots of times. Except when it says that I'm stubborn and hard-working. If I get myself to do something, I'm going to do it. I'm hard-working especially when it comes to education, I'm doing a Master's degree right now. (in English and History, and it is a teacher's degree but my plans don't include teaching after getting it. I might, but I would rather do something else with it) I really enjoy being with people. I wouldn't say I'm shy, like I can and will go up to someone to talk, but I prefer if the other person talks to me first. If we are friends you can always count on me, I usually go the extra mile to help if you need that. My friends say I'm wise, much stronger than I think, and I'm usually the mom friend with braincells. 

My interests and hobbies include languages, English is my second language. Hungarian is my native language, but I also know a bit of German, Latin, and Polish. I would like to learn more in the future. I love to spend my free time with traveling. I wish I could do that more.. I also play with games, but not as often as I used to. Now I would rather just watch videos (Canadian Masterchef is fun, but videos of animals also). I love both cats and dogs, spending time with them is always fun. I also like to cook and bake, but to be honest I need more practice. I also do make-up sometimes but it's more like a hobby, not an everyday thing. 

I have been through a couple of heartbreaks and other hard times in my life, I would not like to explain this in detail but my family life is complicated and it took me some time to heal. (But I love how I don't look like what I have been through. 💪)  I love my younger sisters the most, I'm always prepared to help them.

However when it comes to love, I will not trust for a long time no matter who you are and how good you look on paper. My expectations of my partner are rather high. He has to have his education, money, and past relationships right. In a relationship I want consistency, loyality, honesty, and quality time. I'm not going to wait for anybody who can't make up their mind about it. (Been there done that its a waste of time, never again.) Gifts are also nice, you really can't go wrong with chocolate or flowers. 😁 

In a relationship I'm very loyal and honest. I will always communicate if something is up so we can fix it and move on. (None if this silent-treatment, playing games bs) I will not be giving up any time soon once I love you. I give gifts, compliments, and so much of my time and energy. My partner will be my priority. I really give my all. 

I think that's it? I hope thats enough! Thank you so much for your time 💕💞

🦡🦡🦡🦡🦡🦡🦡🦡🦡🦡🦡🦡🦡🦡🦡🦡

Hello! @peshkatz

I would match you with...

Satan!

Satan appreciates hard work and would be very interested in your English and History studies. You'd never run out of things to talk about between human literature/history and Devildom literature/history. He's also very curious about the world and would enjoy traveling with you. He would make the perfect travel buddy.

He would also be the one to approach you first as he would find you quite interesting. This boy definitely needs a mom-friend/girlfriend in his life. Sometimes he gets so wrapped up in his books he forgets to take care of himself. He needs someone to remind him that he isn't a monster, because he feels like he is being born from Lucifer's anger. You would definitely help him be more comfortable with his origins.

He would also appreciate your wisdom and ability to speak in two different languages while also knowing a little of several other languages. The more languages you know, the more books to read!

Satan also likes to be around people as evidenced by his outings with his brother. He would definitely be up for hanging out with you and your friends/family too. To him, anyone you like he would like. He would also love watching animal videos with you. Satan is a softie for cats and for dogs. In the future, maybe you two could adopt one together.

Satan is also a man that tries his best to have his life in order. He does not have financial problems like a certain older brother of his. He is well educated from his studies. Honestly, I'm not sure of his past relationships but he strikes me as the type to be committed and loyal. His partner would be his world. He would make sure you both get quality time together. Satan is also the type to be understanding of his partner. Loyalty and honesty are important to him and he would always be loyal and honest to you.

Seriously, you'd be his world. Satan would compliment you as much as you want and spoil you with gifts. He'd also want to spend every moment with you as much as possible.

Please excuse any errors as I'm currently typing from my iPhone and I have fat fingers. 😅

Thank you for the ask! I had fun writing this.

[violetsystems]

#personal

There’s always levels to depression in anything.  I was reading an article this morning on the “limits of positive thinking.”  America has always had this sing song hum to it when it comes to adversity.  I’m not talking about we shall overcome.  It’s more like “This too shall pass.”  My dad is famous for saying this.  He’s also famous for thinking every major fashion house is a subsidiary of Polo by Ralph Lauren.  When I told my Dad about the job I applied for he said he knew a guy.  I did the google search.  That guy did indeed work for Ralph Lauren and not the company I applied for.  My mom was a little more receptive.  I had forwarded her the resume acceptance email.  She acknowledged it for about fifteen seconds then turned the conversation towards her car problems for the next four minutes.  I call my parents because I am indeed lonely.  I reached out on LinkedIn for the first time into my professional past.  I connected to about fifteen or so people who could be called upon as references.  It feels more like a trial.  That’s where the limits to happiness come into play under constant duress.  I think psychologically applying for my first real job is more significant than the outcome.  The article talks about how people need to be realistic about our goals and expectations.  Everything having a silver lining sounds nice and gets you through week after week.  But when nobody has any real insight about your struggle, you tend to turn inward.  And that is when the depression sets in with varying degrees of intensity.  It’s all a foggy notion at best.  Where do you go in your career after this?  A paycheck, a job, a mission?  I paid my rent yesterday.  The psychological precipice of how am I going to pay for things isn’t as threatening as it would be for other people.  I did have a severance.  I am waiting on more.  I’ve spent most of my time trying to stay at zero so that I can take a financial breather.  Analyze my spending.  Figure out exactly how much I need to survive.  The encouraging thing about having a resume is that applying for things should be a no brainer.  And yet all I see are jobs in the health care industry or some cultish startup black data mining incubators.  Work for a law firm.  Work for Insurance.  Coming from the number two art school in America all these sound horrifying culturally.  Staffing agencies and recruiters are a whole other nightmare.  In a time this dark, you have the tendency to wish for the light.  That your paladin like behavior will some day be rewarded effortlessly.  They’ll just know.  And how will they if they’ve never done a background check or run your name through a government registry?  I’ve already spent two months proving my identity to enough two factor authentication services to know.  The only thing positive I’m about is I know somebody knows my birth name and what I’ve been doing with my life the last twenty or so years.

What I don’t know or feel is that anybody really cares.  And while I did maybe think somebody out there could empathize, I didn’t want to sit here useless.  And so sometimes, trying is about as best as you can do.  And after a coffee fueled morning I had already written my resume for a contract position that ghosted without an interview.  I made the decision to put a head shot on it.  When the algorithm pinged my watch, I saw the logo for the company I was about to apply for.  I felt a rush of hope and maybe something else.  And I cautioned myself as one should do in these situations.  Because I’ve had my heart crushed so many times to know.  If nothing ever comes of it, you can’t say I didn’t try.  You cannot say I didn’t go to all ends of the earth to connect.  And you can’t say the opportunities weren’t there for me to do so.  If one door is open, there is most assuredly another way.  The reality of the job I applied for is that I will probably be disqualified over the fact I don’t live in Shanghai.  Of course, there could be exceptions.  Am I prepared to drop everything and go.  I have to be.  The only difficulty would be the cat I adopted.  And I’m sure my mom could watch her while I figure out a way to transport her too.  But this is all fairy tales I tell myself when the nightmare I’ve been living is all too real.  I connected with elements of my past on LinkedIn more out of ransom.  For two months I have had no contact or outreach from my previous life.  I’ve tiptoed through the neighborhood around people’s suspicions and emotions.  I’ve moved all my plants from the patio so as to not damage the air conditioner.  I’ve vigilantly watched the thermostat I pay the utilities for so the troll below me doesn’t whine.  I go out to shop and people follow me around in t-shirts advertising lawyers or that I should go get a physical with my COBRA benefits.  This is America mind you.  It sounds like what you would expect Russia or China to feel like.  I’ve been to China a couple of times by myself.  I’ve read so many articles from conservative political officials in America who bemoan the risks to privacy the Chinese pose.  I literally installed TikTok to remind myself how much of this is a joke to me.  An Amazon IT staff member recently had made this sweeping security decision to remove it from all phones in the organization.  It was an overreaction at best.  What people worry about the communist party spying on is kind of ridiculous when everyone in America is just as nosy if not more.  The worst is that they do absolutely nothing with the information.  Even if you overshare it.  My only hope these days happens to be the algorithms that surround it all.  I almost connect to people for the dataset and not the company these days.  That’s what networking is all about I guess.  The cognitive dissonance of maintaining completely one-sided professional and personal relationships is truly American.  So is the double speak.  We are free only after we give up all our information and share all our power.  And then we’re lucky to be forgotten about.  

Putting all those emotions behind me is easy.  I have a suitcase.  I have a lot of things still to get rid of.  I don’t know that this is the most mutually beneficial or holistic answer in these times.  Chicago happens to still have one of the only Chinese consulates in the states.  It’s fairly easy and cheap to fly to Shanghai if it’s business.  I don’t leave my house other than to travel.  I have the world’s sickest connection to the internet when it decides to go over 300 megabit.  I built a whole home office to support COVID-19 and it generally is now wasted on video games and streaming.  My side hobby of investment has definitely seen some improvement.  My name is at least on the books at enough companies to know in passing.  Some of those in Shanghai.  Not enough shares to register a full nod or even blink of an eye.  But through this process I came to understand a new way out.  People keep following me around like I’m an asset but it never amounts to much other than being bothersome and annoying.  I don’t literally have any clue what people think about me.  I’m completely alone and shell-shocked one hundred percent of the time.  The only things keeping me sane are of my own volition and cost money to survive.  Come September when the financial result of all of this is actually more real I could conceivably sit out like I planned until my birthday.  This is to say if the right job didn’t come along.  What is the right job for somebody like me?  Why do I feel picked over like a vulture?  You have to go out there and try regardless.  And when things aren’t working out your way, you have to find a way to survive.  This does not mean you have to find a way to stay positive when the evidence is very real.  It’s not just that nobody cares about me here.  Nobody respects me at all really other than a major women’s fashion brand.  I guess I could work for them too.  It definitely feels more realistic than sitting with a bunch of bro-coders who make dick jokes in the workplace and expect you to validate it with a chuckle.  If anything I can say clearly is that the email verification was a simple way of saying that I had officially started my job search.  I don’t actually feel like the position is far off at all.  It was actually one of the only clear and concise job postings I’ve read in the tech industry thus far.  Whatever happens I at least know somebody scanned my name and my headshot before it was filed under G.  I really hope G stands for good boy and not goddamn this guy really went that far to make a connection.  If it is the later of the two scenarios I at least know somebody out there appreciates how far I go to say hello.  I’m not expecting the world out of that.  Barely anybody talks to me at all.  So I’m humble in that fact that I can back up my ridiculous love letters with a professional resume.  In that you know I won’t stop trying.  Just don’t expect me to be positive about it all the time. <3 Tim

[barbex]

Top Five/Bottom Five

Rules: tag the person who tagged you, always post the rules, answer the questions, and add the date!  

I was tagged by the awesome @hollyand-writes, thank you! (I’m pretty sure you tagged me for something else too and it’s probably sitting in my drafts. If I don’t do this right away, it never happens.

What are your five most popular works?

I have all of my fics on AO3, except for [Trifecta], which is a tumblr only WIP. Kudos is probably the best metric as anybody can cause a Hit on a fic but a Kudos (hopefully) means a bit more.

I had hope to have at least one Dragon Age fic in this but it’s all Mass Effect:

[Solid Fluidity] Hits: 11709, Kudos: 325, Comment Threads: 117.  No surprise this one, it’s the oldest and longest and it’s sexy shakarian with lots of romantic sparkles. A killer recipe ;-).

[Cultured Memories] Hits: 5120, Kudos: 254, Comment Threads: 7.   This one keeps surprising me, it’s a shavik (Shepard/Javik), hardly anybody comments on it but it keeps getting Kudos.

[The Rippling Effect] Hits: 6185, Kudos: 144, Comment Threads: 5. A very porny shrex. It looks like other people love Shepard with Wrex too and this one is just one big sex scene.

[Under The Sand Of Tuchanka] Hits: 4232, Kudos: 114, Comment Threads: 8.   I’m glad this fic is up here, it’s one of my favorite things I have written. It’s also shrex and I tried some new things with it. 

[When the Hunter is Hunted] Hits: 3146, Kudos: 109, Comment Threads: 2.   A shrios (Shepard/Thane) and some light BDSM. 

What are your five least popular works?

I don’t know if this is quite right because I uploaded original works to AO3 and they are, as expected, the least popular works:

[The Shine] (Original Work) Hits: 141, Kudos: 6, Comment Threads: 1. A story about living with a perception altering AI in your head. The AI changes how you see the world and makes it prettier. But what happens when you see how the world really looks?  

[Varric And The Aliens] (Dragon Age II, Star Trek: Voyager) Hits: 71, Kudos: 6, Comment Threads: 4. Written for the @daficswap, crossover where Varric and FemHawke stumble upon Captain Janeway and Chakotay in the Deep Roads.

[Octopus over Paris] (Original Work) Hits: 105, Kudos: 4 Comment Threads: 0. Written for an image prompt of an octopus in a room.   

[(podfic) Local Man Returns From Trip, Discovers Boyfriend Adopted 25 Cats] (Dragon Age II) Hits: 88, Kudos: 3, Comment Threads: 3.   Oh, this was fun. It’s a podfic of @hollyand-writes‘s handers fic.

[Empty Eyes] (Original Work) Hits: 29, Kudos: 1, Comment Threads: 1. The least popular, a little fantasy story about addictive magic. I wanted to write a story that showed that only a little child would be cruel enough to do what’s necessary to save the world but I just couldn’t get the end right.

Are you surprised? Why?

I am not surprised about the bottom five, original work hardly ever gets read and AO3 is not the right platform for it anyway. I’m a bit sad that the podfic doesn’t get much love, I guess people don’t like listening to me. 

For most popular, the Mass Effect spam was kind of expected and I’m glad that Under The Sand Of Tuchanka is up there. I’m a bit sad that Lyrium Skin didn’t make it up there.

Optional: If you want to calculate this, what are your works’ average number of notes?

You want me to do math?????.

Total hits-to-kudos ratio of all fics on AO3 = 26.91 (I currently fail at making that a percentage thing, it’s been a long day)

Today’s date, so you can see how your results might change if you do this again in a year.

27/7/2017

Tag six people to do this next!

I’m tagging (no pressure though) @thelilybird, @wilwarindi, @theravenofwynter, @rederiswrites, @thesecondsealwrites, @threewhiskeylunch ... I feel like I’ve forgotten someone obvious...

[nevillelongsbottom]

Could you write fredlee with the Yule ball please?

I enjoyed this one a lot - it’s probably not the most eloquent thing I’ve ever written, because I wrote it in between revising the UK government, but I really liked writing it!

-

George beats Fred to the punch, and asks Angelina out to theYule Ball.

This annoys Fred a little, because he was going to ask her, but it’s not as if he’s lacking in peopleto ask. He could ask anyone. He’s popular, and of course he is extremelyattractive, and anyone would beflattered to be asked out by him.

And yet he finds himself not asking anyone; the weeks pass quietlyon the romance front. Other people sweep up dates and, before he knows what’shappened, everyone from Beauxbatons is spoken for (he curses himself; there wasa very cute blond-haired Portuguese boy among their number who he’d had half amind to ask out, and probably should’ve). He has no interest in any of thelumps from Durmstrang, and when he considers his options from Hogwarts, nothingreally appeals to him.

Maybe he shouldn’t go – but he’s Fred Weasley! He can’t passup a chance to embarrass Ron and Ginny and show them his incredible dancingskills.

He’d tell George, but George is likely to just make fun ofhim, so instead he tells Lee, while the two of them are up in the Quidditchstands, watching some of the students play in lieu of the official Cup; it’snice, he thinks, that they can play without the radical competition of theusual matches, students from all over just playing for the fun of it, and he’splayed a few matches himself. It’s been much better without Oliver breathingdown his neck every two minutes.

“So,” Fred asks, popping an Every Flavour Bean into hismouth (cat food; he grimaces). “Who are you going with? Someone fromBeauxbatons, I bet? Or are you out there for those Durmstrang lads? They’ve gotlovely buff arms, them, even the girls…” He watches as whoever’s playingChaser makes a beautiful goal right over the Keeper’s head before gettingbeaten in the head by a Bludger that isn’t under control. He winces; he’d havebeaten that away, for sure.

“Nah, I haven’t got anyone either,” Lee replies, stealingone of Fred’s sweets. “Maybe we should go together. I mean, look at us. We’d begreat. Your amazing dancing skills, my attractiveness…”

“My attractiveness,you mean,” Fred butts in.

“What? I’m the hotter of the two of us!” Lee argues,crossing his arms and pouting.

“Yeah, yeah, my butt.”

-

Fred’s lounging in the common room, like he does, ignoringthe textbook in front of him in favour of picking the dirt out from under hisnails when Ginny comes storming up to him like a tiny terror. He raises aneyebrow; she’s never intimidated him before, and she’s not going to start now. “Andwhat, dear sister, do you want?”

“You can’t go to the Yule Ball looking like that,” she says,pointing to his hair. Okay, it’s true: it’s in dire need of some kind of cut,but he had successfully managed to go the entire summer without frustrating hismother with the length of his hair and therefore hadn’t had it cut at all. “Especiallynot with Lee. He looks great.”

“There is nothing wrong with the way I look,” Fred says.

“Except your face,” Ginny retorts, pulling Fred’s hair outof his face and tying it up, trying not to tug on it too much despite the factthat it clearly hasn’t been brushed in what must be several millennia. “There.Now you can be cool, like Bill.”

“I am cool.”

“Nobody who says they’re cool is cool.”

Fred makes a partial attempt to try and read the textbook,but the words are just so boring andmeaningless that, when Lee comes to sit down next to him, he almost flings itaway, careful not to because Pince is already at the end of her tether withhim. Really, most of the teachers are at the end of their tether with him;Pince just makes it clear.

“Nice hair,” says Lee.

“Shut up,” Fred grumbles.

“I mean it,” Lee replies, picking up the textbook andflicking through it. It’s about Charms. He has a funny feeling that Fredprobably knows everything about practical charms that the textbook could teachhim anyway; anything about the history of charms, Fred will know fuck allabout. “You look nice. But really, you should just cut it. I could try using aSevering Charm…”

“Not with your success rate, mate,” Fred scoffs. “You’d havemy head off.”

“Yeah, true. I didbutcher a Tentacula the other day in Herbology.”

“Save your talents, Jordan.”

“I will. I’ll save them for all those beauty spells I’llhave to cast on you at the Ball.”

Fred grins. “Piss off.”

“Never,” Lee replies heartily.

-

Fred and George are two of the first people outside theHall, surprisingly distinguishable thanks to Ginny’s putting Fred’s hair upagain (“you look like a hobo,” she insists). They have better dress robes thanRon’s, too, theirs hand-me-downs from Bill and Charlie, who have significantlygood taste. Fred’s are bright velvet cobalt, and George’s are emerald green,and they look like a strange not-quite-matching pair, like they wouldn’t quitework on a game of Exploding Snap.

“So,” says George. “How are you feeling that you’re going tobe one-upped by me on this wonderful evening?”

“Excuse me,” Fred replies, “I think you’ve got it the wrongway round.” He catches a glimpse of some very familiar robes and elbows George.“Smiles on, Georgie, it’s McGonagall…” He beams like he’s the best student inthe world as she passes by; she gives them a warning glare, suspecting thatthey’re up to something, though for once, they’re not. They’re just waiting fortheir dates and being perfectly normal.

Angelina arrives first, looking (to Fred’s joke) angelic. Hekisses her on both cheeks, as respectfully as possible, and she and George headinto the Hall first as he waits for Lee. The Beauxbatons boy walks past, too,giving Fred a sympathetic smile – not that Fred needs his sympathy. He’s got adate, after all, and he can put aside the fact that the boy is a lot cuter thanLee for the fact that Lee is probably much more fun to spend time with, and isn’tgoing to leave after the tournament is done.

Lee is one of the last to arrive, like a storm of chaos,half his dreads pulled up into a bun and the other cascading down his shoulderslike a static waterfall. “Hey!” he grins, walking over to Fred. “You look good.”

“You too,” Fred says, honestly, admiring Lee’s patchworkdress robes – they’re definitely not like anything anyone else is wearing, butLee’s mother has been a hippie since birth and she wasn’t going to let him skipout on the style. “Well, are you ready to go and destroy everyone else on thedancefloor?”

“Absolutely,” Lee grins, taking Fred’s hand as they walk in,filing into the crowds like there’s nothing noticeable about them, though ofcourse, everybody’s eyes follow them. Everyone had wanted to know who FredWeasley was taking to the Yule Ball, and now they do. Ron’s jaw drops from thecrowd, and Ginny elbows him – she, of course, is entirely unsurprised, havingmanaged to notice, unlike Ron, that Fred had just as much an eye for boys as hedid for girls. Harry seems too busy panicking to notice, and if Hermione isruffled, she doesn’t let it show, though Ginny has to turn to the other side ofher and elbow Neville, whose eyes are wide, before directing a glare at Draco,who has doubtless just made a derogatory comment.

Unsurprisingly, though, they make a popular couple,receiving compliments here and there from anyone and everyone. Even McGonagallstops to tell them they’re a “perfectly matched” couple, though the tone of hervoice suggests to Lee that she might not be particularly pleased with that. Whenthey meet with George and Angelina during a period of relative quiet, wheremost people are in need of some of the punch and a good sit down, Georgeadmonishes them entirely for making a more popular couple.

Fred pokes his tongue out. “Told you so.”

George sighs. “I admit defeat. You two are very lovely andwill grow up to have many children who will all drive Mum and McGonagalldemented. Or, because I wouldn’t put it past either of you, you’ll probably adoptsome of Charlie’s dragons and dress them up and pose them as your children.”

“I like this idea,” Lee says, nudging Fred. “How far away isRomania again?”

They’re a little too wiped out by the force of their owndancing and don’t take part in the first slow dance, sitting at some of thetables, Fred nursing a cup of punch like it’s wine (there were too manyteachers standing by the bowl for him to even bother trying to spike it, andthey’d had it monitored since it was made, giving him no opportunitywhatsoever; not that he minds much, since he can laugh soberly at everythingand remember it all for the next day). “Well, Lee,” he says, “you’ve given me alovely Yule Ball.”

“Oh, mate, you too. Who knew we’d end up in a dance-off withthe Slytherins?”

“They were abysmal.”

“Tell me about it.” Lee shakes his head, grinning, takingthe glass of punch from Fred’s hands and taking a sip of it himself. “Youbetter kiss me goodnight, by the way.”

“I’ll kiss you before goodnight,” Fred says, leaning forwardand letting his lips brush against Lee’s; Lee had always expected Fred to be a littlebit more of a violent kisser, but he’s never seen Fred kiss anyone, and he’ssurprisingly gentle (but maybe that’s because he’s kissing Lee goodnight, in away).

“Next time there’s a party,” says Lee, “you better inviteme.”

Fred laughs. “Wouldn’t invite anybody else.”

-

When George gets back to the common room with Angelina, Fredis sprawled out on the couch, snoring, Lee leaned up against it, fast asleep ina less obnoxious way. George holds in his laughter.

“Merlin,” says Angelina, “and you’re telling me this is thefirst time those two have realised that they like each other? Idiots.”

-

I’m also now extremely tempted to write something with Fred and that random Beauxbatons boy I made up?? It seems cute too? ? but ofc lee is the og 

[yakumtsaki]

Komei finally has a high enough creativity skill to get started on the death portraits! Exciting stuff. Look how happy he is painting the portrait of his beloved wife, aww.

-Just the thought of Victoria dying and this hanging over her urn gave me a semi.

Still better than the wolf tbh.

Jojo’s lifetime want appears and all I can say is NOICE. I love this want because it’s so flexible and you can do all kinds of crap to achieve it. Thank god so far the kids aren’t taking after their dumbass parents (at least in that area. let’s not talk about literally everything else) both of whom have the worst lifetime wants ever created.

In case you forgot, since I mentioned it once and then never again, Vic’s ridiculous lifetime want is to own 5 top level businesses which.. fucking lmao. I am kinda tempted to try it once she retires though, because add her charming personality to my OFB ineptitude and you have what is sure to be the greatest tragedy of the computer age. 

Polar opposite convention in the front yard! The best and worst this household has to offer in one convenient location.

-I hope you’re ready, my child, for the greatest story ever written.. One filled with hardships, mortal danger, doomed loves, tragic loss and the eventual triumph of human spirit..

-Dad, please, I’m so sick of listening to your cat training diary every day.

-Well mom doesn’t let us touch her TV when she’s not home, so this is the best you’re gonna get.

-UGH I hate you both!! I wish Kennedy Cox would adopt me!!

Well that is starting to look like a real possibility since he calls for you 200 times a day after you threatened to throw a bag of cat shit at his face. Game recognizes game I guess. Let’s hope we don’t get any proposals for a black market adoption, because the way our money situation is going it would be hard to resist.

Victor grows up! My feelings towards him remain ambivalent at best, as in I hate him 99% of the time but sometimes his unrepentant assholery is kinda endearing. In fact, I just remembered that I tried to give him away at some point, probably after the one millionth time he attacked Alegra, but then this happened..

LOOK AT FUCKING KOMEI. Victoria has no relationship with any of the cats except Victor, since he was the only living soul available in the early days when she was living in an open field, but I wasn’t expecting SOBBING. JFC. Daniel is also in the background freaking the fuck out. Suffice it to say I quit without saving after those dramatic ass reactions and Victor stayed on as our resident cat dicktator.

-HAPPY BIRTHDAY BITCH

Guess who’s fighting again for the first time in months! Obviously desperate to prove to himself that he’s still got it, fucking Victor attacks Ronroneo in a predictable middle-age-crisis move. But the playing field is level now that they’re both elders, so this is anybody’s game! Place your bets while you still can!

Unbothered by this fuckery is Helen of Troy, Alegra, who’s really living the aging-movie-star lifestyle ever since she topped her career and got tfo. Every time I look she’s either sleeping or high on catnip. You do you baby, you’ve earned it  ❤

LMAOOOO. In a magnificent turn of cosmic justice, the geezer knifefight doesn’t end well for Victor, who suffers a humiliating and well-deserved defeat by Ronroneo’s claws of fury. Obviously Ronroneo’s birthday present to him was the reminder not to mess with the streets. And his own beaten ass.

-Where’s the Persian Empire now, pussyboi?

-Save me, Artaxerxes!

Someone (I don’t remember who, but lets be real, it was Komei) rolled a want for this stupid ballet bar and I obliged like a moron, forgetting that it’s a highly cursed object that causes sims (and especially kids for some reason) to devote their entire lives to it. Seasons literally change around Gunther as he remains there, practicing the two same sad moves..

And here we are. It’s winter now, Daniel has a keyboard (need I remind you he wants to become a rock god LMAO) and Jojo is finally getting confronted by Stephen Tinker aka the object of his spying obsession and probably his secret affection as well, since there is no other justification for the time he spends creepily looking at him through the telescope. 

-What the hell is wrong with you, kid, I thought you were trying to get abducted and impregnated by aliens like a normal sim but this is crossing the line!

-How dare you speak to me in that tone like we’re strangers, Stephen? 

-The fuck, we just met two seconds ago-

-Tell me, what must I do to make you love me? Kill your family? That’s already on the list but I can bump it up a few spots!

Dear god, ok. Time to enter the Tinkers into witness protection and for Jojo to meet someone a) not married b) age appropriate c) who is not gonna be missed by their family or cause the police to ask too many questions.

NO. JOJO NO. ISTG I’M GONNA DISOWN YOU. AS IF KOMEI HASN’T ALREADY FUCKED US FOR LIFE, ALL WE’RE MISSING IS THE OTTOMAS GENES IN THIS FAMILY. FML 

[bleep0bleep]

hi carrie, i just found out one of the cats we've had for a good decade is having to be put down and i was wondering if you had any feel good sterek/zimbits fic recs to make me less sad? maybe where they have pets and and super happy bc in fanfiction the cruel reality of outliving your pets doesn't exist? hope you're having a better day than me :)

i’m so sorry to hear about your cats, bb. i know that you are sad that you outlived them, but i hope you can think of it as you giving them the best lives that they had while they were here, and i bet your cat appreciated and loved you a lot.

here are some fluffy sterek fics featuring pets and i hope you feel better soon. ❤❤❤

Light Up My World Like Nobody Else by lissadiane (T, 6k) In which Stiles Stilinski has a little too much to drink, and steals a baby goat.

Care and Feeding by otter (T, 3k) Derek desperately needs to fire the newest volunteer at the kitten nursery. Mostly because the guy keeps saying things.

BunBun the Bunny by DomesticatedChaos (G, 6k) Derek gets a pet. It’s not what anyone expects. 

Barking Bad by lazarusthefirst (E, 28k) ‘I wish you wouldn’t call the dogs “customers”, Derek,’ Cora complained, rubbing an acetone-soaked rag over her jeans to get the paint splashes off. ‘It’s not like they pay or anything.’‘I cut off their nails and Kira pins bows to their collars,’ Derek said, flatly. ‘They pay, alright.’

I Know Who I Want To Take Me Home by WhoNatural (T, 5k) "I was digging in my garden and I found your time capsule with a bunch of weird stuff in it, sorry I went through it" AU (That’s not exactly what happens, but kind of.)

derek has too many cats by pantstomatch (T, 2k) “I thought it would be funny,” Scott says. His smile wavers. “It’s not?” Stiles looks at the lock screen of his phone again—Derek is scowling at the camera, Henley unbuttoned. He looks sleep-mussed and unamused and there are two fuzzy balls of floof cradled in his arms. One is pawing at Derek’s mouth, the other is asleep in the curve of his elbow. Both are stripy orange and fluffy-furred with pink noses and pink beans, they are so super cute it makes Stiles’s eyes water a little. “No, Scott,” Stiles says slowly, “it is not.” What it is is devastating, never mind the fact that Stiles immediately set the picture as his wallpaper as soon as Scott sent it to him.

Dog’s Best Friend by otter (G, 9k) Other people might have found the name of the place off-putting. Stiles didn’t. He was actually relieved, when Scott handed him a business card that said “HALEHOUNDS” across the top, because clearly, if anybody could recognize and understand the evil that lurked within his dog’s fluffy precious body, it was these people.

Puppy Love by Jerakeen (T, 7k) "You stole half the dogs in town,“ his dad says, hands on his hips. “I should arrest you.” “They’re in protective custody,” Stiles corrects him. He’s trying to sound serious, but it’s almost impossible when you have a Pomeranian eating your hair.

why do birds suddenly appear by trilliastra (G, 1k) “I’m going to kill you.” Derek says. “I’m going to kill you then bring you back just so I can kill you again.” He glares which would be more scary if there wasn’t a bunny trying to make its way under Derek’s shirt and two birds building a nest on the top of his head. In which a spell goes wrong and suddenly Derek is being followed by all kinds of cute animals.

best in show by thegirlgrey (T, 9k) Derek adopts a cat. Or the cat adopts Derek. It all depends on who’s telling the story really.(Stop telling people the cat is psychic, Stiles.)

five times Derek and Stiles weren’t actually boyfriends (and one time they were) by halfffizzbin (T, 3k) In which Derek and Stiles are essentially a married couple. Except they’re not actually dating.

Of Dogs and Dads by nighunpossible (G, 1k) Beleaguered dad Derek has a dog who wanders into Stiles’ house for daily naps.

Introducing Miss Ladybug Lydia Stilinski by 1001cranes (T, 2k) When Stiles adopts a vampire kitten, no one really believes him.“It’s like the vampire abyss stared into the werewolf abyss and decided they need to be bros,” Stiles whispers, horrified.

Interspecies Friendships Are The Best by hazelnglasz (T, 1k)  i thought your large dog was going kill my cat but they seem to really like each other, and maybe i kinda like you too au.

Full On Rainstorm by BarlowGirl (E, 11k) He catches Derek by the arm and Derek lets himself be turned, surprised when Stiles shoves a small box into his hands. “I don’t know if you still celebrate it or what but… I wanted you to know someone was thinking about you. Happy birthday.” Then he squeezes Derek’s arm and bolts, gone before Derek can think to stop him. He opens the box standing there, only to find one singular, misshapen, sloppily-frosted, cupcake, with a candle in the box next to it. It’s kind of squished despite the paper towel all around it to keep it from banging around in the box.Derek has to take a moment to sit down because yeah, he can’t deny it anymore.He’s gone on Stiles.

Another Brilliant Idea, Steinberg! by calrissian18 (T, 3k) ‘Get a dog, or get a therapist.’ A dog had to be less annoying.

and home before dark by verity (G, 3k) The mystery of the absent Hale brother was hardly a mystery at all until he appeared at last, set on taking up residence out in the woods.(In which Derek is a hedgewitch. With a cat.)

The Obvious Solution to Obliviousness is Kittens, Obviously by crossroadswrite (G, 2k) (708): This is worse than naked and afraid. This is drunk and confused. (409): Fuck baseball, getting drunk and playing with kittens is the REAL national pastime. When Doctor Deaton calls Scott to come pick Stiles up, he’s not really sure what to expect.Stiles was supposed to be over at Derek’s watching the ball game and pretending not to be in love with him, not here doing whatever the hell it is he’s doing.He slowly pushes the back door open and sees Stiles on the floor with about seven cats on top of him, petting them and cooing into their soft fur.“Stiles,” he says carefully, “what are you doing?”

Garden Variety by lissadiane (G, 11k) In which Stiles Stilinski attempts to finish his first draft of his new novel while being utterly distracted by the shenanigans happening next door - which generally involve his hot new neighbour engaging in physical labour. Whether it's a hoe, a trowel, a hammer or a nail gun, watching Derek get dirty and sweaty is a thousand times more interesting than meeting a deadline.Stiles has a crush and a dog, Derek has baggage and a little girl, and together, they just might make it work.

[lewisgabriel84z31]

Shitcoin of the Week: Top Secret!

Shitcoin of the Week: Top Secret!

Coinstaker is very pleased to announce that this week, we’re covering the smelliest shitcoin of all. If Skycoin had an ugly paint job, and Tronix has a  used-car vibe, this one’s the roaring dumpster fire of the cryptocurrency world: a toxic, fuming wreckage of bad code and worse management with no benefits other than to make the rest of us feel better about our tanking portfolios.

Unfortunately, due to complicated restrictions involving  a Top Secret clearance and a pinky swear with my very real Canadian girlfriend,  we can’t disclose this week’s stinker just yet.  Before we reveal the Shitcoin of the week, we need to raise at least 3 million dollars in to make this project work.

Please donate to the address below so we can reveal this exciting crypto-turd.

ETH Address.

Did you donate yet? We can’t reveal anything until we meet our fundraising goal.

Please Donate here.

Okay, good. Surprise! The shitcoin of the week is: Verge.

Verge-in Birth

Verge(XVG) is the youngest sibling in the family of “privacy coins,” the projects designed to safeguard the secrecy and anonymity of their users. Whereas Bitcoin and Ethereum have public ledgers, allowing sufficiently-motivated busybodies to theoretically deduce who owns what, these coins help you hide your wealth from the IRS, the police, and your wife.

There are couple of different ways to do that. Monero, the preferred medium for darknet drug dealers, uses enhanced encryption to disguise addresses and transaction volumes. Dash  PrivateSend allows coins from multiple transactions to be mixed for greater anonymity. Verge uses Tor,  the IP masking system used by Dark Net Markets, Chinese activists and other cyber-miscreants.

As described in the XVG Black Paper(an admittedly clever bit of branding) Verge hides a users’ identity by island-hopping their transactions through a chain of nodes. There’s also the Wraith protocol,  which gives users the choice of recording transactions on a public or private ledger. 

Incidentally, Verge is also French for “penis,” a word we expect to appear on the XVG website in the coming weeks.

Brown Flag No. 1: The Dog Keeps Eating Their Code

Most of us learned about Verge after its first bull run last fall.  To novice investors, XVG  was crypto-catnip: it was cheap, had just mooned spectacularly, and had a heavy shilling from John McAfee, the L. Ron Hubbard of cryptocurrency. And it had just announced the Wraith Protocol, about which we knew nothing except that it had a really cool name.  

I immediately decided to throw some money at it, but a gut feeling held me back. Maybe it was the cultish shilling and endless Lambo-talk, but for some reason I decided to wait and see what the Nazgul money had to offer.

Then the Wraith protocol took a sickday. Then it was delayed by bugs.  By the time  it finally did come out, Verge looked like the digital equivalent of a guy selling speakers from the back of a van.

Brown Flag No. 2: Don’t Give your Money to Someone Who Won’t Tell You their Real Name

“Officer, that’s the man who ran off with my money. The cartoon character with the glasses. His name is SpookyKid.”

Verge is brought to you by “Sunerok,” which sounds like the Bizarro-world equivalent of Justin Sun.Apparently it’s a pseudonym for Justin Vendetta–I say “apparently,” because Vendetta sounds as much like a real name as Sunerok.

“Sunerok’s” other  colleagues include such distinguished crypto-luminaries as “SpookyKid” and “CryptoRekt,” as well as a team of identical grey silhouettes with names like “Yakuza112” and “XVGMonk.”

We’ve harped on this before, and not just because fake names make you look dumb. Having real names is an important sign of a projects’ security: it’s much harder to pull off a scam on people who know where you live.

Brown Flag No. 3: Don’t Trust a Locksmith Who Keeps His Key Under The Doormat

There are two things almost everyone should learn before they’re allowed near a computer. The first lesson, which I learned the hard way, is that you should always use Incognito Mode so that you don’t spend your teenage years with a therapist who specializes in cat porn.

Only slightly less important is to protect your passwords. That’s why you need twelve different alphabets just to get into your email. Usually when  you hear about someone famous getting hacked, it’s because all of their passwords are “Guest.” 

So it was a pretty bad sign when Verge—”The future of privacy”—got its Twitter account hijacked like a teenagers’ Instagram.

Sunerok would later shift the blame to Yahoo,  saying the hackers exploited a leaked database. The fact that a leading cryptocurrency developer is using Yahoo in the first place should be a pretty big warning sign by itself.

At least he wasn’t the only idiot in the room.

Urgent: My account was hacked. Twitter has been notified. The coin of the day tweet was not me. As you all know… I am not doing a coin of the day anymore!!!!

— John McAfee (@officialmcafee) December 27, 2017

Brown Flag No. 3: Please Contribute To Our Moon Fund

Most of the cryptocurrency world was ready to give XVG the benefit of the doubt. Sure, they had some green programmers, but they’d put too much work into it to exit scam. And then:

….A global organization with a vast network of high traffic sites is looking to enter the cryptocurrency market and form a strategic business alliance with Verge as the preferred form of secure payment method, offering a quick and private means of transaction to hundreds of millions of potential consumers daily. This partnership represents an enormous potential market with a global reach that will compete with multiple fiat currencies. We are eager to see this partnership materialize and invite everyone in the Verge community to support this groundbreaking initiative. Help us accelerate this crowdfunding effort and reach our target by donating coins today.

That’s the future of money, rattling a tin cup and promising to make you rich. In other words, your Verge could be the new Bitcoin—but only if you give us more money.

Justin Sunerok’s fundraising strategy. I mean, Justin Vendetta. How is that a real name?

This is textbook Nigerian prince-ing,  almost as sketchy as the time Elon Musk promised to send me ten Ethereum. He still hasn’t paid me back, but hopefully the Binance guy will pull through. 

“……..and the worst part is, I signed an NDA so I can’t tell anybody yet who we have this massive potential partnership yet with is….”

The secret “partnership” attracted wide speculation within the Verge community, and wider ridicule outside of it. Could it be Amazon? Microsoft? Or some fake shell corporation in the Bahamas? After much well-deserved roasting Bizarro-Justin produced the following, totally credible explanation, courtesy of his rectum:

We were talking about doing a crowdfund to get Verge supported on Ledger Nano, and uhhh, then I got an email from somebody at a big company, and uhh,  they said, “hey, we’ve been checking out cryptocurrencies for the last few months and we really like Verge. Can you come talk to us?” And I said, sure. And I met up with them, everything kind of worked out, and they said, “alright, if you guys can raise the funds to cover the integration and some marketing and stuff, we can make this all happen.”….and the worst part is, we signed an NDA so I can’t tell anybody yet who we have this massive potential partnership yet with is.

And later:

” I think that this is the largest adoption of a non-top three coin  to ever happen. It could be the largest adoption of a virtual cryptocurrency ever…..”

The secret to a good lie is making it believable, but Justin can’t even get that part right. Can anyone imagine a conversation like this happening in a real business run by grownups?

CEO: “We’ve decided to make our foray into cryptocurrency. As you know, this is a high-stakes business deal and we can only partner with the most sophisticated, professional development teams. We certainly can’t endanger our brand with a second rate partnership. How’s the research going?

Minion: “Well boss, there’s Bitcoin, but the fees are kind of high and its market dominance is slipping. Plus we have no idea if the Lightning Network’s going to work. We could try partnering with Ethereum, it’s not had quite as much time to prove itself but the market cap has grown by quite a lot. There’s one called Dash too..”

Boss: “Dash is out, they’re wasting their money on some sci fi show. Any other promising contenders in the top ten?”

Minion: “Well, there’s one called Bitcoin Cash, which forked from Bitcoin last year.

BOSS: “Bcash. LOL. What else? Anything in the top twenty?”

M:“No, but according to John McAfee there’s a one-year old privacy coin developed by volunteers. It’s unproven, doesn’t actually offer any real privacy, and keeps missing deadlines. It’s called Verge.

BOSS:“That’s just the kind of project we’re looking for! Let’s just hope they don’t get hacked in the next few days.”

Brown Clouds on the Horizon

Any doubts or reservations about XVG’s toilet quality should have been flushed away last week:

We had a small hash attack that lasted about 3 hours earlier this morning, it's been cleared up now. We will be implementing even more redundancy checks for things of this nature in the future! $XVG #vergefam

— vergecurrency (@vergecurrency) April 4, 2018

The “small” attack, which actually lasted for thirteen hours, exploited a loophole in Verge’s rules which allowed the hacker to successfully mine empty blocks in less than a second. Sunerok did not address the hack until it was discussed on Bitcointalk.

Instead of forking back to a pre-attack state, Sunerok panicked and pushed an update to the node software. The update caused an unexpected hard fork, which paralyzed the network, froze many users’ wallets and allowed the hackers to walk away with a million dollars in tokens.

Paradoxically, XVG tokens continued to soar on most exchanges, for the simple reason that the tokens were still impossible to move.

As usual, Verge downplayed the enormity of their fuckup while continuing to upsell their “groundbreaking” partnership. Meanwhile, somewhere in Silicon Valley, we can only guess what when down with Verge’s totally-real partnership when the protocol’s Swiss-cheese security was revealed. 

Diagnosis: Get your Umbrella

Until recently, even the deepest skeptics  didn’t really question the honesty of the Verge team. Although it had all the signs of a naive project by get-rich-quick amateurs, there was no reason to think it was an intentional scam.

That perception changed as the Verge team alternated between bungling their software and deceiving their investors. Their inability to demonstrate any technical skill–besides digging their hole deeper–make us wonder if they hired Firano the Bomber to help with the coding.

The mystery hack also set off alarm bells, and not just because of the shitty coding. The timing of the attack–and the strange decision to let the “hacker” walk with the coins–seem to echo the bad omens that foreshadowed the collapses of Mt Gox, BitGrail, BitConnect, Davorcoin and many bigger projects. 

 The only way to improve this project would be to exit scam, which at least would prove that Bizarro-Justin can get one thing right. On a scale of one to BitConnect, Verge gets a score of Nine Carlos.

Seriously. Get out while you can.

https://ift.tt/2ITHZ1n

[lewisgabriel84z31]

Shitcoin of the Week: Top Secret!

Shitcoin of the Week: Top Secret!

Coinstaker is very pleased to announce that this week, we’re covering the smelliest shitcoin of all. If Skycoin had an ugly paint job, and Tronix has a  used-car vibe, this one’s the roaring dumpster fire of the cryptocurrency world: a toxic, fuming wreckage of bad code and worse management with no benefits other than to make the rest of us feel better about our tanking portfolios.

Unfortunately, due to complicated restrictions involving  a Top Secret clearance and a pinky swear with my very real Canadian girlfriend,  we can’t disclose this week’s stinker just yet.  Before we reveal the Shitcoin of the week, we need to raise at least 3 million dollars in to make this project work.

Please donate to the address below so we can reveal this exciting crypto-turd.

ETH Address.

Did you donate yet? We can’t reveal anything until we meet our fundraising goal.

Please Donate here.

Okay, good. Surprise! The shitcoin of the week is: Verge.

Verge-in Birth

Verge(XVG) is the youngest sibling in the family of “privacy coins,” the projects designed to safeguard the secrecy and anonymity of their users. Whereas Bitcoin and Ethereum have public ledgers, allowing sufficiently-motivated busybodies to theoretically deduce who owns what, these coins help you hide your wealth from the IRS, the police, and your wife.

There are couple of different ways to do that. Monero, the preferred medium for darknet drug dealers, uses enhanced encryption to disguise addresses and transaction volumes. Dash  PrivateSend allows coins from multiple transactions to be mixed for greater anonymity. Verge uses Tor,  the IP masking system used by Dark Net Markets, Chinese activists and other cyber-miscreants.

As described in the XVG Black Paper(an admittedly clever bit of branding) Verge hides a users’ identity by island-hopping their transactions through a chain of nodes. There’s also the Wraith protocol,  which gives users the choice of recording transactions on a public or private ledger. 

Incidentally, Verge is also French for “penis,” a word we expect to appear on the XVG website in the coming weeks.

Brown Flag No. 1: The Dog Keeps Eating Their Code

Most of us learned about Verge after its first bull run last fall.  To novice investors, XVG  was crypto-catnip: it was cheap, had just mooned spectacularly, and had a heavy shilling from John McAfee, the L. Ron Hubbard of cryptocurrency. And it had just announced the Wraith Protocol, about which we knew nothing except that it had a really cool name.  

I immediately decided to throw some money at it, but a gut feeling held me back. Maybe it was the cultish shilling and endless Lambo-talk, but for some reason I decided to wait and see what the Nazgul money had to offer.

Then the Wraith protocol took a sickday. Then it was delayed by bugs.  By the time  it finally did come out, Verge looked like the digital equivalent of a guy selling speakers from the back of a van.

Brown Flag No. 2: Don’t Give your Money to Someone Who Won’t Tell You their Real Name

“Officer, that’s the man who ran off with my money. The cartoon character with the glasses. His name is SpookyKid.”

Verge is brought to you by “Sunerok,” which sounds like the Bizarro-world equivalent of Justin Sun.Apparently it’s a pseudonym for Justin Vendetta–I say “apparently,” because Vendetta sounds as much like a real name as Sunerok.

“Sunerok’s” other  colleagues include such distinguished crypto-luminaries as “SpookyKid” and “CryptoRekt,” as well as a team of identical grey silhouettes with names like “Yakuza112” and “XVGMonk.”

We’ve harped on this before, and not just because fake names make you look dumb. Having real names is an important sign of a projects’ security: it’s much harder to pull off a scam on people who know where you live.

Brown Flag No. 3: Don’t Trust a Locksmith Who Keeps His Key Under The Doormat

There are two things almost everyone should learn before they’re allowed near a computer. The first lesson, which I learned the hard way, is that you should always use Incognito Mode so that you don’t spend your teenage years with a therapist who specializes in cat porn.

Only slightly less important is to protect your passwords. That’s why you need twelve different alphabets just to get into your email. Usually when  you hear about someone famous getting hacked, it’s because all of their passwords are “Guest.” 

So it was a pretty bad sign when Verge—”The future of privacy”—got its Twitter account hijacked like a teenagers’ Instagram.

Sunerok would later shift the blame to Yahoo,  saying the hackers exploited a leaked database. The fact that a leading cryptocurrency developer is using Yahoo in the first place should be a pretty big warning sign by itself.

At least he wasn’t the only idiot in the room.

Urgent: My account was hacked. Twitter has been notified. The coin of the day tweet was not me. As you all know… I am not doing a coin of the day anymore!!!!

— John McAfee (@officialmcafee) December 27, 2017

Brown Flag No. 3: Please Contribute To Our Moon Fund

Most of the cryptocurrency world was ready to give XVG the benefit of the doubt. Sure, they had some green programmers, but they’d put too much work into it to exit scam. And then:

….A global organization with a vast network of high traffic sites is looking to enter the cryptocurrency market and form a strategic business alliance with Verge as the preferred form of secure payment method, offering a quick and private means of transaction to hundreds of millions of potential consumers daily. This partnership represents an enormous potential market with a global reach that will compete with multiple fiat currencies. We are eager to see this partnership materialize and invite everyone in the Verge community to support this groundbreaking initiative. Help us accelerate this crowdfunding effort and reach our target by donating coins today.

That’s the future of money, rattling a tin cup and promising to make you rich. In other words, your Verge could be the new Bitcoin—but only if you give us more money.

Justin Sunerok’s fundraising strategy. I mean, Justin Vendetta. How is that a real name?

This is textbook Nigerian prince-ing,  almost as sketchy as the time Elon Musk promised to send me ten Ethereum. He still hasn’t paid me back, but hopefully the Binance guy will pull through. 

“……..and the worst part is, I signed an NDA so I can’t tell anybody yet who we have this massive potential partnership yet with is….”

The secret “partnership” attracted wide speculation within the Verge community, and wider ridicule outside of it. Could it be Amazon? Microsoft? Or some fake shell corporation in the Bahamas? After much well-deserved roasting Bizarro-Justin produced the following, totally credible explanation, courtesy of his rectum:

We were talking about doing a crowdfund to get Verge supported on Ledger Nano, and uhhh, then I got an email from somebody at a big company, and uhh,  they said, “hey, we’ve been checking out cryptocurrencies for the last few months and we really like Verge. Can you come talk to us?” And I said, sure. And I met up with them, everything kind of worked out, and they said, “alright, if you guys can raise the funds to cover the integration and some marketing and stuff, we can make this all happen.”….and the worst part is, we signed an NDA so I can’t tell anybody yet who we have this massive potential partnership yet with is.

And later:

” I think that this is the largest adoption of a non-top three coin  to ever happen. It could be the largest adoption of a virtual cryptocurrency ever…..”

The secret to a good lie is making it believable, but Justin can’t even get that part right. Can anyone imagine a conversation like this happening in a real business run by grownups?

CEO: “We’ve decided to make our foray into cryptocurrency. As you know, this is a high-stakes business deal and we can only partner with the most sophisticated, professional development teams. We certainly can’t endanger our brand with a second rate partnership. How’s the research going?

Minion: “Well boss, there’s Bitcoin, but the fees are kind of high and its market dominance is slipping. Plus we have no idea if the Lightning Network’s going to work. We could try partnering with Ethereum, it’s not had quite as much time to prove itself but the market cap has grown by quite a lot. There’s one called Dash too..”

Boss: “Dash is out, they’re wasting their money on some sci fi show. Any other promising contenders in the top ten?”

Minion: “Well, there’s one called Bitcoin Cash, which forked from Bitcoin last year.

BOSS: “Bcash. LOL. What else? Anything in the top twenty?”

M:“No, but according to John McAfee there’s a one-year old privacy coin developed by volunteers. It’s unproven, doesn’t actually offer any real privacy, and keeps missing deadlines. It’s called Verge.

BOSS:“That’s just the kind of project we’re looking for! Let’s just hope they don’t get hacked in the next few days.”

Brown Clouds on the Horizon

Any doubts or reservations about XVG’s toilet quality should have been flushed away last week:

We had a small hash attack that lasted about 3 hours earlier this morning, it's been cleared up now. We will be implementing even more redundancy checks for things of this nature in the future! $XVG #vergefam

— vergecurrency (@vergecurrency) April 4, 2018

The “small” attack, which actually lasted for thirteen hours, exploited a loophole in Verge’s rules which allowed the hacker to successfully mine empty blocks in less than a second. Sunerok did not address the hack until it was discussed on Bitcointalk.

Instead of forking back to a pre-attack state, Sunerok panicked and pushed an update to the node software. The update caused an unexpected hard fork, which paralyzed the network, froze many users’ wallets and allowed the hackers to walk away with a million dollars in tokens.

Paradoxically, XVG tokens continued to soar on most exchanges, for the simple reason that the tokens were still impossible to move.

As usual, Verge downplayed the enormity of their fuckup while continuing to upsell their “groundbreaking” partnership. Meanwhile, somewhere in Silicon Valley, we can only guess what when down with Verge’s totally-real partnership when the protocol’s Swiss-cheese security was revealed. 

Diagnosis: Get your Umbrella

Until recently, even the deepest skeptics  didn’t really question the honesty of the Verge team. Although it had all the signs of a naive project by get-rich-quick amateurs, there was no reason to think it was an intentional scam.

That perception changed as the Verge team alternated between bungling their software and deceiving their investors. Their inability to demonstrate any technical skill–besides digging their hole deeper–make us wonder if they hired Firano the Bomber to help with the coding.

The mystery hack also set off alarm bells, and not just because of the shitty coding. The timing of the attack–and the strange decision to let the “hacker” walk with the coins–seem to echo the bad omens that foreshadowed the collapses of Mt Gox, BitGrail, BitConnect, Davorcoin and many bigger projects. 

 The only way to improve this project would be to exit scam, which at least would prove that Bizarro-Justin can get one thing right. On a scale of one to BitConnect, Verge gets a score of Nine Carlos.

Seriously. Get out while you can.

https://ift.tt/2v5U6WS