#before i just took screenshots of three asks per and counted the screenshots on my phone gallery

[sentientstump]

perhaps,, falsesymmetry?

22. symmetry expressions

from this post

[amerrierworld]

Nightmarish

No I haven’t seen nightmare alley. Yes I’m a massive simp for Cate B sultry noir psycho psychiatrist femme fatale. Here, have some manipulative sexy times inspired ENTIRELY by screenshots and trailer stills that may get me writing again ahahahahaha.

Summary: You have an appointment with your psychiatrist. 

Characters: Dr. Lilith Ritter x fem!reader

Word Count: 1.6k

Warnings: omg smut 

It was a dangerous game walking into her office, every single time. Your heels clicked and echoed in the halls until you reached her door. There was an electric tension running through your whole form as you looked at the gold letters that stood out to you.

Dr. Lilith Ritter

You went inside without thinking, expecting her to be seated and waiting for you, but instead the office was empty. It always felt so grand and cold without her in it. 

So, you stayed just by the door, watching the clock with a twinge of nerves jittering along your frame. 

“Who said you could come in here, darling?” a low, smooth voice said from behind you. You somehow had missed  her approach and jumped in surprise. Lilith had the skill to sneak by without detection like a cat, much to your chagrin. 

When turning to face her, her face and red lips were set in a cold expression, but her eyes were glittering. This is where the games began.

“You’re late,” you said firmly. “You’re never late.”

Her steely eyes glanced at the clock. Three minutes late. Practically tardy for her usual behaviour.

“I have more things to do than just wait on my nosy patients who come into my  office without warning,” she replied, brushing past you and entering the room. Suddenly it was filled up again, like she was the last missing piece to make the whole space stand out. It caught you off guard every time. 

“Have a seat,” she gestured to the large cushioned armchair, the leather looking menacingly sleek. You wondered if the marks of your fingernails digging into the material could still be detected now. It had been just a couple days, after all. 

You did as she asked, and crossed your ankles with your spine straight and upright. Lilith glanced you with a hint of approval. It made your stomach flutter.

“What brings you back to my office then, hm?” She didn’t sit down in her chair behind her desk. Instead, she leaned against the edge of the desk, just a few inches from you. She was dressed in dark black and grey, every crease and fold of fabric falling into place like it had been meticulously placed that way.

“The medication you gave me hasn’t been working, Doctor,” you said. “Nothing has happened.”

“Well, it’s hardly been a week. You can’t expect every miracle to happen overnight, dear,” she said, leaning to grab a glass with a sliver of scotch left on the bottom. She drank it in one smooth motion before gesturing for you to get up. You did so silently.

“We may have to up the dosage,” she took a step towards you. “Your body may be resisting the medication until then.”

“Yes, Doctor,” you agreed. Lilith smirked, before a cool hand slipped under your blouse and pressed against the small of your back, pulling you into her. You breathed in sharply through your nose. Her hand was icy against your heated skin, and the thick perfume from the pulse point on her neck began to overwhelm you.

You could feel her against you, barely moving. You, on the other hand, were shivering and quaking with need and arousal. Your heart was racing a million miles per hour. 

This was the game, and every time, you lost. 

The recording of this session would be your favourite yet. Not that Lilith ever shared those with you, but the thought that she would listen back to your conversations when analyzing her sessions made you hot under the collar. 

You had to be quiet. Every time in here, you had to be silent as a mouse when she touched you. Nothing suspicious was allowed to come up on those recordings. But Lilith liked to push you until you were close to breaking by having to hide your pleasure. You wondered if there were any tapes she had to destroy already because of your weak sounds and gasps.

“You seem a bit feverish, are you quite well?” Lilith continued, her voice booming by your ear. 

“I’m a little warm, but nothing else, Doctor,” you replied with all the ease you could muster. 

“Do you mind if I check? If your medication is causing fever or sickness, that could be a bit of a concern for your wellbeing.”

“Not at all.”

A second hand came up to press against your forehead as if checking your temperature. You were sure it was scorching, but not for any sickness-related reasons.

Then it reached down to your neck, the coolness startling your sensitive skin. You let out a small, breathy gasp at the feeling, and her eyes shot up to yours immediately.

“Why don’t you lie down,” she suggested, letting go of your body. “I don’t want you fainting in my office.”

You did as she asked, lying down like you had so many times. She would pull up a chair during your sessions and ask drawled-out questions related to your health, while she pressed against your cunt or made you play with yourself until you couldn’t bear it. 

This time, she stayed standing, blonde curls falling loose into her eyes as she looked down at you. 

“Take a few deep breaths for me,” she said, but that was impossible because her manicured nails were trailing up your legs. 

“Good,” she pretended as if you had done as she asked, and now her fingers were deep under your skirts, pulling at your stockings and clasps to make room for her. They moved quickly and clumsily under the thick fabrics, and you could tell she was losing just as much patience as you. 

Then a single finger tapped your clit and your body tensed as rapidly as a pencil snapping in half. Your mouth opened, but no sound came out.

“Why don’t you walk me through what your day has been like so far?”

Then three fingers slid in mercilessly and began curling and pressing against your frontal walls. Your jaw went slack and your eyes glossed over at Lilith’s grinning lips. 

“Come now, are you really that forgetful?”

“Sorry, Doctor,” you managed to get out, because now her other hand was gripping your jaw and forcing you to stare at her. Her fingers inside of you were working at a faster pace with every passing second, with no intention of stopping. The way they were angled meant there was no unsavoury sounds from her pulling her hand out, which she barely did anyways. There was nothing to give you a break from her unforgiving presence. 

You managed to tell her what you had for breakfast and how you went down to the shops in the morning, but a pathetic whimper from her rough hand holding your jaw made you cease. 

“Don’t cry, my dear,” Lilith said, “I’m only here to help.”

“Yes, Doctor,” but it only sounded like another weak mewl.

Then her thumb pressed just by your clit, sending fire through your body and her fingers dug so deep that you didn’t think she would ever get her hand back. Your whole body went rigid. She fucked you through the orgasm, rubbing that sensitive spot inside you that made you quiver with overstimulation.

It was overwhelming every time. You were scrabbling for purchase on the bench below you, and then grabbed her skirt without looking. Your nails dug into her thigh, feeling smooth velvet under your hands as well as muscle and flesh that you wished you could see for yourself. 

Lilith was smiling at your face as you tried so hard to keep it together. One day she’d get you to cry and scream on her tapes so she’d have something a little more substantial to listen to on her own time. 

“Now wasn’t that helpful to let it out?” she released your jaw and you breathed heavily, not letting go of her. 

“Yes, Doctor,” you could only say. Her fingers were still inside, moving slower and slower. Your legs were so tensed you didn't think you’d be able to get up again.

Then suddenly her presence disappeared, leaving you empty. She stepped away so you could get up and swing your legs over the side to stand up. 

“Good girl,” she complimented, but not with a sultry tone. It was like she was praising a sweet pet for following a command. You didn't think it differed much.

You got up on your feet and brushed your hair into place. Your cheeks felt rosy and you rubbed them with your fingers to make it seem like you had just overdone it on the rouge. 

There was a shaking of a bottle and Lilith held out a small dosage of tiny pills for you to take. You took them and stuffed them in your pocket, knowing you’d only bring them back to her later.

“Thank you again, Doctor,” you said, still feeling wetness between your legs. But that was the beauty of layered skirts, no one would be able to tell. Not on the bus, not on the sidewalk, not in the shops.

“Of course, dear. Take care. I’ll see you next week, the same time.”

And before you could leave the room her arm had wrapped around you and her mouth had hungrily kissed yours. You tasted the remnants of scotch and let her devour you. The waxiness of her lipstick would still be there later despite how much you would wash it off. 

Her nails dug into your sides and your body arched back into hers again. Eventually, she wrangled herself away from you and gestured for you to leave through the door. You could barely hold yourself together and gave her one last glance to see her smiling at you with sated eyes.

On the way out, you passed a handsome, tall man with a hat and long brown coat that you had never seen before. You glanced down at the floor as you walked by and hurried away.

You watched from around the corner as he went into Lilith’s office, wondering who he was and hoping he hadn't noticed you were now both wearing the same lipstick.

A/N: yeah i’m gay

[shadowed-dancer]

My Thoughts on the New MHA Opening and Ending

I have thoughts, and I will share them because oh boy if I don’t get this out I’m gonna explode

Vague Spoilers for the manga (up to chapter 258 and vigilantes) because I discuss the upcoming arcs, but I don’t discuss any major plot points in detail. Still, proceed with caution if you’re anime only

Keep in mind, this OP and ED will cover the Endeavour Agency Arc and the MVA Arc, so I will be judging them accordingly.

First, the OP

This is a good OP... in theory (that’s going to become my catchphrase for this post). It’s nice to look at and flows pretty well, but my biggest problem is that it doesn’t do it’s job. An OP is supposed to be a sort of... summary (?) of the Cour it plays for. That means any cool plot points, emotional beats, and important characters should be featured in some way, shape, or form. We’ll talk about that more later, but first let’s discuss the music.

The song is really good. I have a feeling it will continue to grow on me as I listen to it more often, but yeah my first impression is that the song sounds great. My only complaint about the music itself is that it ends kind of abruptly (I noticed this is the JT opening too). The previous openings used to have a bit of instrumental to “play us out” and lead us to the end card, but this one feels like it ends very suddenly and unnaturally.

As for the visuals...

Yeah alright I’ll admit, the visuals are stunning... in theory. I appreciate the variety in backgrounds and colours, it makes the OP really interesting to look at. This was actually one of my biggest problems with the JT Opening, it all took place on the training grounds, so there was no variety (everything was metal tubes with a blue sky, with only 3 shots set somewhere different). I appreciate the style of this OP.

But like I said, that’s only in theory, as in, through screenshots these are all pleasing to look at. The pacing of this OP is wild, and I truly don’t know who to blame for this.

That sunset shot above? It lasts approximately 12 seconds, zooming in every few to make it seem like something is happening (when in reality it’s still the same poses, angles, etc). While there’s nothing wrong with a nice, drawn out shot, it becomes irritating when compared to the pacing of the rest of this op.

At the 41 second mark, we are given the shot above. It has flowed directly from the previous sunset scene. We still have not moved away from the image of the trio (aside from the opening shot and the title card) yet we’re approaching the halfway mark of the OP.

The next shot is the MLA, which lasts about 5 seconds. Ok, perfect. Not too long, but also not short enough to be confusing. It cuts away a little fast once the dude on the far left appears, but does anyone actually know who that is? No, seriously, I’m asking. I don’t remember his name and he’s not on the wiki, so I can only assume he’s not important. Therefore, it’s not all that bad if the shot cuts away shortly after he comes into frame. The audience is able to take in the scene without having to pause...

... And then the problems start

While this shot is fine in theory, it pans up fast and  cuts away quickly. You know how hard it was for me to get this screenshot? Really hard. You want to know why I struggled so much? Because, due to the timing of the cut and the way it pans upwards, it’s almost impossible to pause on Dabi’s face. I literally had to go frame by frame to get it, because he’s in shot for so little time that naturally pausing is guaranteed to miss him.

When watching this in real time (without pausing) the cut away makes you feel as if you missed something because “something was there, I just couldn’t register what because now it’s gone”. Unlike Compress, who wears a very colourful coat you can recognize the entire time, Dabi’s pants are more blended into the background.

It also doesn’t help that this shot is literally composed to draw your attention away from Dabi until the last possible second. Due to framing, your eye is naturally drawn to the brightly coloured Toga in the foreground, making it super easy to miss Dabi in the back (until, of course, his bright face appears and contrasts against the background, drawing your eye just in time for the scene to change, leaving you to wonder who or what you missed).

I know this sounds like nitpicking, but this shot is the only group shot we get of the League, and is also the start of a seriously weird trend for the villains in this OP getting the short end of the stick.

Anyways, then we get what I’ll call “The Carousel Shot” in which every Class 1A kid shows up and poses dramatically, as if they were on a carousel. It’s a lovely sequence and I really enjoy watching it but... why is it in this OP?

Seriously, this is a genuine question. Class 1A barely shows up in the Endeavour Agency Arc, and NONE of the students are in MVA. This sequence (not counting the three boys at the end) lasts 8 seconds. Why is this much time dedicated to characters who are barely in the arc? (Unless Studio Bones extends their work studies into fuller plot lines which oh my gosh please don’t do that, or if they do, do it quick).

We then get what I call the “Oh God I Blinked And Missed Everything” sequence, which lasts 3 seconds (not including the longer, moving shot of Shigaraki at the end) and features NINE INDIVIDUAL IMAGES, none of which are related to each other. Not only is this 3 images per second, but the fact that they are all unrelated means you can’t even use previous information to fill in the blanks.

What do I mean by that? Well, imagine if I show you 9 images of various pro heroes posing. If I play that in 3 seconds you’ll absolutely miss some of them, but as long as you catch some you’ll still get an idea of what I’m trying to show to you. Your brain is able to fill in the gaps that “I recognized 4 pro heroes, therefore the rest must have also been pros” even if you didn’t register every single frame.

That doesn’t work if every frame features a completely different subject. The shots in this sequence vary so widely that it’s impossible to find a through line. Some feature multiple characters, some feature one, some are closeups, some are super far away, some are character’s we know, others are characters we don’t. It’s impossible to get a solid read on what you’re being shown.

Now, again, there’s nothing wrong with these super quick shots... in theory. The problem comes from the fact that these shots are the only indicators for some of the major themes that will be explored during this Cour (like Twice’s growth and young Shigaraki).

That being said, let’s move away from criticism and talk about speculation, because hidden amongst this sequence are two... interesting images.

This All Might one is very reminiscent of the shot in Chapter 257, where Aizawa and All Might have a conversation while staring up at the stars. However, this is technically the start of the “War Arc” (or the “prologue”, if that’s what you want to call it), so this might indicate that we’re going to get farther into the series than a lot of us guessed.

(Many people suspected we’d get to that cliffhanger at the start of the season (if you read the manga you know the one), but after seeing the pacing for JT a lot of us assumed we’d be lucky to even finish Endeavour Agency. It seems we’re back to the cliffhanger now though lol). 

This is another really interesting shot because it’s indicative of Shirakumo, meaning we might get to see Aizawa and Mic confront him some time this Cour (this also makes sense, since this confrontation technically happens before that All Might scene I mentioned in the previous paragraph).

But the cat specifically is a really strange addition. That cat is named Sushi and, correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think Sushi is ever mentioned in the main series. I think he’s only in Vigilantes.

This might just be a little Easter Egg for Vigilante readers, but I’m personally hoping that they’ll add at least a few Vigilante shots in there to really tug at the heart strings. I’d say I want a whole Vigilante episode but I don’t think they have the time (unless they really cram MVA, which I do NOT want).

I don’t have much to say about the last bit of the OP. The action shot between the 3 boys was nice, and it follows the sort of narrative through line they established from the early shot of them sitting at the sunset. I also like the shot of Endeavour fading in to replace All Might, even if it’s very simple.

But I want to talk about an overarching problem I touched upon earlier in that villain shot: the way the villains are handled in this OP.

This is a good OP... in theory. The problem is, it doesn’t represent half the arcs in the cour! Every shot of the League is so rushed that you can barely register that they were on screen before they’re gone.

I have no idea how many Episodes Endeavour Agency will take, but I’d assume 3 (4 if you count the Christmas episode). 12 episodes for this Cour minus 3 for Endeavour Agency = 9 episodes left. If we truly do get the prologue for the War Arc (and if we assume it’s only 1 episode) that leaves us with 8 villains episodes.

8/12 episodes (aka two thirds of the Cour) will likely be about the villains. And yet they’re pushed to the background so hard in this OP.

I want to dream, and I want to believe that this OP is going to magically change when MVA starts. The song fits super well, and I can imagine like an inversion of the OP but from the Villain side! Wouldn’t that be neat? Imagine right after the “it’s alright” part Shigaraki just freaking decays the title card... oh man that would be so cool. But, alas, I highly doubt they’d do that.

Side rant, but you know what was so fun about MVA in the manga? It’s that, for 21 chapters, we leave the kids behind and the villains become our protagonists. Suddenly Shigaraki is the one we’re rooting for, suddenly we’re learning backstories for everyone, and suddenly we find ourselves just as attached to the villains as we are to the kids. It’s an inversion that’s SO RARE to find, and I think many people (myself included) were hoping it would be reflected in the OP.

A big part of being the protagonist means featuring heavily in the OP, and a lot of us just wanted the villains to get that honour, even if only once. As is, the OP still treats them as the antagonists when... really they aren’t. Not right now, at least.

So yeah, final thoughts on the OP are that it’s good, it’s just not very representative of the arcs it’s supposed to cover. If this was just for Endeavour Agency, I’d say it’s actually really cool, but if we assume that this is what will play for the Villain Arc, then it simply doesn’t do it’s job. And it makes me sad to say that because, again, this OP is really well done.

If I had to rate it? Hmmm

If Studio Bones actually grants my wish and creates a different visual for the Villain Arc (while using the same song) and then this version only plays for the Endeavour Agency Arc and the War Prologue? I’d give it an 8/10. It’s really good, but it could use a few more elements that are clearly derived from the Agency Arc (ahem, Todoroki siblings).

But if this is the OP that will play for the entire Cour? a 6.5/10. It’s nice, but it’s not representative of one of the arcs it’s going to cover. And, unlike other arcs like Pro Hero or Summer Exams, the villain Arc is so important and takes up so much time that it honestly feels like a bit of a disservice.

Now for the Ending

I want to say that I appreciate how soft this ending starts. This cour will likely feature a lot of episodes that end on... heavier themes, and I think the sight of peaceful, falling raindrops is the perfect way to let the audience process their emotions before starting the ending in earnest.

The song itself is very nice, and I like that it’s a bit slower than the more recent endings.

(Side note, but the FUNNIEST moment in the entire series is when Sir Nighteye dies because it’s so emotional and everyone is standing around his bed in his heartwrentching silence, only for the ending to come BLARING IN out of no where. If you forgot how jarringly hilarious it was, go listen to the Eri ending and tell me that’s not the funniest thing this series ever did. Anyways yeah I’m glad that’s not gonna happen this Cour).

This ending is a bit all over the place in terms of it’s visuals, but honestly I think it works. Most endings usually have a theme tying them together (all the Class 1A girls, a fantasy AU, old photographs, planning a party, etc) but this ending’s theme is a bit harder to identify.

That being said, I think it’s just supposed to show everyone going about their day. It’s calm, it’s peaceful, and it’s just very sweet to think about

I like this shot. Actually, scratch that, I like this whole sequence. I enjoy anything that allows Class 1A to chill and have fun.

Hawks is featured quite heavily in this ending which, fair. He’s pretty important in this arc.

I really love the shot where Endeavour immediately switches to Hawks, I thought that was a lot of fun, and very good symbolism on how Hawks wants to be like Endeavour. I also love all the shots of Baby Hawks, because it’s adorable.

Something about this shot is just so cute. It’s the little domestic things like waiting for a bus that make this ending feel... idk the word, real? It shows a side of the characters that we’ll never see in the episodes, but we know have to exist.

Like yes, of course the kids have to wait for the bus. We never see it, but of course there are those moments of quiet. Agh, I love it.

The villains also make an appearance and I’m very happy about that (I’d love to see more of the villains just chilling around, I think they deserve it). I kind of wish they weren’t sitting in a dark room for the sake of being edgy, since I think it would be nice to see the villains just... sort of existing, but honestly it’s still a nice shot. I also like how this shot sort of mirrors the first one with Class 1A (someone coming in while everyone else is sitting and waiting for them).

That being said, as much as I love looking at Dabi and his stupid face (affectionate)... why is Dabi the one getting the closeup?

Mind you, endings don’t need to be connected to their Cours (they can be, like the Eri one, but they don’t have to be). But this ending does seem to be connected to the arcs it intends to cover, given all the Hawks appearances, the boys wearing their work study scarves, etc.

So, I ask again, why Dabi? Out of the six League members, we learn the backstory for four of them in this arc (Shigaraki, Toga, Twice, and we very briefly learn about Spinner). The only two left out are Dabi and Compress.

I can only assume they chose Dabi because he’s constantly in contact with Hawks, and therefore that makes him important? If the OP told us anything, it’s that Bones values the Endeavour Agency Arc over the Villain Arc lol...

... Oh my gosh please tell me that’s not actually the reason Dabi is focused on here BONES WAI-

Anyways, the ending comes to a close with Hawks watching over the kids and Endeavour. The relaxing time is done, it’s time for work studies.

Overall impression? It’s great. It’s hard to screw up an ending, so as long as you have something pretty on screen, it’s wonderful.

I’ll give this a 9/10

[tiramisiyu]

【未定事件簿】 Tears of Themis: Main Story 7-30 Translation

Translation Masterlist | Video

Chapter 7 – Rains of Monte Cristo: 7-1 / 7-3 / 7-5 / 7-7 / 7-9 / 7-11 / 7-13 / 7-15 / 7-17 / 7-19  ♦️ ♦️  7-20 / 7-22 / 7-24 / 7-26 / 7-28 / 7-30 / 7-32 / 7-34 / 7-35

Content Warning: This section contains topics that may be uncomfortable to some readers (mentions of abuse). Please proceed with discretion.

✼ ┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈ ✼

NXX Base

After deciding on what to do, Marius and I rushed to the base.

Marius: Just import the surveillance footage and Hang Jiahe’s photos into the system.

MC: Okay.

I followed Marius’ instructions, entering the necessary information into the computer and started the program. On the common screen, large amounts of data started to move again. Fluorescent blue lights flashed past, casting a mottled light. Ten minutes later, the data search and comparison stopped, and the final comparative results displayed itself.

MC: Based on the results, the “Qi Yu” who started to appear at 9pm was indeed Hang Jiahe. Plus, she appeared in the surveillance 6 times in total.

Marius: Three of those times were to enter the apartment – 12pm, 8pm, and 9:45pm individually.

Marius: The other three times were to exit the apartment – 7pm, 9pm, and 10:15pm individually.

I carefully looked over the brown silhouette that appeared in the screenshots and confirmed her identity.

MC: That’s got to be Hang Jiahe.

MC: The figure that appeared at 8pm and 10:15pm is wearing the same brown trench coat as the one I saw at Hang Jiahe’s house.

MC: She even rolled up that stack of dry-cleaned clothes she’d brought back, like she didn’t want us to see.

Marius: So we can figure out what Hang Jiahe’s trail of actions were on January 28th.

Marius grabbed a random sheet of paper and started to write as he spoke.

Marius: First, Hang Jiahe returned to the apartment at 12pm. After confirming that Hang Fei and Qi Yu were home…

Marius: She entered Room 1001 using the safety route near its door and murdered the two victims.

MC: At 7pm, Hang Jiahe left the apartment and headed to the suburban villa. After, she disguised herself…

MC: And secretly re-entered Room 1001 at 8pm.

Marius: At 9pm, she disguised herself as Qi Yu, and asked the security guard downstairs to help her move the two suitcases with the bodies in them.

Marius: At 9:45pm, she carried the empty suitcases back to the apartment. The bodies probably were placed elsewhere by then.

Marius: So she had completed the illusion that “Qi Yu was still alive at 10pm”, and her alibi with it.

MC: As for her leaving at 10:15 in disguise, she probably went to dispose of the corpses and then returned to the suburban villa.

Marius: Probably.

Marius: After disposing of them, Hang Jiahe also buried the swapped hammer that she’d long prepared with them.

MC: Then Hang Fei and Qi Yu last appeared at…

I looked at the surveillance footage.

MC: 12:30pm on the 28th. Hang Jiahe had not left the apartment yet.

At this point, we had completely figured out the process of Hang Fei and Qi Yu’s murder case.

Marius: But is the evidence we have now insufficient?

MC: Yes, though the logic’s sound…

MC: We lack objective core evidence to accuse Hang Jiahe with, especially her motive and murder weapon.

MC: The opposition will easily refute a few photos and some inferences.

Marius: …It won’t be easy to solve the murder weapon issue. Hang Jiahe always wears gloves, so she wouldn’t have left fingerprints.

Marius: But for the motive… let’s wait for Captain Morgan’s analysis results on that hard drive.

Marius: If it’s as the bar boss said…

Marius had just spoken when his phone rang.

Marius: Speak of the devil – see, Captain Morgan’s calling.

Marius: Captain Morgan, is anything the matter?

Darius Morgan: We’re finished analyzing the photos and hard drive you gave us.

Marius: What are the results?

Darius Morgan: They match with what the bar boss said.

Darius Morgan: There are many videos of Hang Fei’s child abuse, as well as domestic violence against Qi Yu, in the hard drive.

Darius Morgan: But based on the people featured in the photos, we are missing the videos that feature the child that appeared the most.

MC: (Hang Jiahe must have bought the videos of her abuse…)

Marius: Have the identities of the other children in the photos been confirmed?

Darius Morgan: Aside from Hang Jiahe, the children in the photos are not from Stellis.

Darius Morgan: Hang Fei and Qi Yu traveled overseas, so these children just might be from those countries.

MC: (It’s a transnational case now?)

Darius Morgan: How are things on your end?

MC: We’ve figured out how Hang Jiahe got the fingerprints on the murder weapon and how she created her alibi, but…

Marius: We lack direct evidence.

Darius Morgan: What about the video she took away? That evidence should be convincing enough.

Marius: But the question is, where is that video right now?

MC: The boss said before that he advised Hang Jiahe to not destroy those videos for now…

MC: Undestroyed… but can’t be found by the police…

MC: Can’t be found… so they should be hidden… hidden…

I had a flash of inspiration.

MC: “Liqing Bank”!

I thought of that useless-looking membership card in Hang Jiahe’s house.

Both Darius and us headed out at the same time towards the Liqing Bank in the suburbs, but due to distance, we arrived before Yan Wei. Marius used his own connections to find the manager to ask about Hang Jiahe. The manager admitted that Hang Jiahe had opened an account here and kept things here, but he refused to tell us which was her vault.

Vault Room

Manager: My apologies, but our rules state that unless if our client asks or the police issue a search warrant…

Manager: We cannot allow any others to open the safes.

MC: This…

Marius: We were just in contact with the police in front of you, and he said that he would be bringing a search warrant over immediately.

Marius: Even with that, you can’t let us see Hang Jiahe’s vault?

Manager: My apologies, but we must see the documents first, per our rules.

Marius: …

The male manager looked calmly at Marius.

MC: Then we…

I was about to speak when Marius tugged at me.

Marius: If so, we won’t trouble you anymore. When the police arrive, we’ll come again.

Marius then tugged me to leave, walking out without looking back once. However, we’d just turned past aa row of shelves when he suddenly tightened his grasp on my wrist and took me into the shadows of another row of cabinets.

MC: Marius, what are you doing?!

Marius: Shh, quieter. Don’t let the manager know that we haven’t left.

I took a deep breath and lowered my voice.

MC: What are you trying to do?

Marius: Of course, I’m trying to find Hang Jiahe’s vault.

Marius: Since he won’t show us openly, we can only wait for it in secret.

MC: Are you aiming to open the vault secretly?

Marius: Of course not. Opening vaults in banks like this is usually a complicated procedure.

Marius: Some need two keys, some need biological info… all in all, without the owner, they’re very hard to open.

MC: Then you want to…

Marius: I want to follow the vault.

MC: ???

Marius: Based on how this bank’s operating guidelines, that manager is sure to contact Hang Jiahe that people came for her box.

Marius: And with how cautious Hang Jiahe is, she’s sure to come get what’s in the vault herself.

Marius: I’ve calculated the timing – Hang Jiahe’s place is closer to here than the police station is. Even if she receives the alert and heads out only now…

Marius: She might get here earlier than Captain Morgan.

Marius: To prevent the evidence from getting taken, I decided…

Marius took out his phone and opened up the screen for Darius’ shared location.

Marius: Before Captain Morgan comes, we’ll follow the manager secretly and prevent him from taking Hang Jiahe’s box away.

MC: Can we really?

Marius: Of course, why not? Nothing will happen.

Marius: Jiejie, just trust me this once. If anything happens, I’ll just apologize to them.

MC: Then… alright. If anything does happen, I’ll go with you.

MC: What do you plan to do?

Marius: Look around first.

I looked around, per his instructions. Liqing Bank’s vault room was very large, and there were many vaults in it. Above the room, at set intervals, there was a full-scene camera rotating nonstop to monitor the whole room. Aside from that, there were also bodyguards on patrol in the vault room to prevent suspicious persons from moving about.

MC: There are a lot of bodyguards and surveillance cameras. How are we supposed to follow him?

Marius: Don’t worry, just listen to me.

Marius: I just observed that the patrolling bodyguards will pass by the same place around every 5 minutes.

Marius: As for the full-scene cameras above, I can’t tell if there are any blind spots for now.

Marius: But we’re luckily wearing dark clothes today, and it’s dark here.

Marius: We’ll just stick to the walls where the light doesn’t reach – maybe we’ll get by.

MC: Why do I feel like we’re acting in a spy movie…

MC: Then how should we move? We’re pretty far from the manager right now…

Marius: See that old table in front?

Marius pointed at a table that was around several tens of metres away from us and stacked with random items.

Marius: That table’s in a pretty subtle spot. People outside can’t see in, but we should be able to see out from inside.

Marius: When the nearby guards move away, we’ll head under that table.

Marius: On my count – when I say 1, we’ll move.

MC: Okay.

I took a deep breath, focusing my attention on the table.

Marius: The guard’s almost about to leave.

Marius: 3 – 2 – 1, go!

I held my breath and rushed to the corner.

MC: Huff – huff –

I supported myself against the table, suppressing my sounds as I gasped.

Marius: A-are you alright?

Marius’ breath was also somewhat short, probably thanks to our nervous moods.

MC: I’m alright. You?

I turned around to look at Marius, but the scene before me stole my breath away in the next second.

Marius was awkwardly crouching under the table, and the height that he was usually so proud of had become a sort of sweet “burden”. Maybe because the air circulation was bad, or maybe because the crouching pose was tiring him, but his face was somewhat red. Under his opened collar, there were small drops of sweat rolling down his fair neck. He breathed lightly, and each of his movements and breathing sounds became unusually heavy in this tiny space.

MC: …

Marius: Hm? What are you looking at me for? Is there something on my face?

MC: T-there isn’t…

Marius: Then… did you get fazed from staring at me?

Marius: Though I do like it when you stare at me, since we’re this close…

Marius: Even I’d get embarrassed.

MC: This close…

MC: !!!

My rationality returned, and I belatedly realized just close we were.  

MC: S-sorry, it wasn’t on purpose, I was just…

I apologized as I attempted to pull away from him, but I hadn’t moved much when Marius suddenly pulled me back.

Marius: Don’t move. If you keep pushing, you’ll bump into the table.

Marius: This space is tiny – best not to move at random.

MC: …

I could only stiffen my body and not move in the slightest. The tiny space sunk into silence again, and I could clearly feel Marius’ gaze on me, never shifting away. And my heartbeat became more and more intense, along with this gaze.

MC: W-why do you keep staring at me…

Marius: I’m just thinking that right now…

Marius: Your heartbeat and your breaths only belong to me.

Marius: It’s great…

MC: …

Marius: But this is too little. It’s not enough compared to what I want…

MC: !!!

MC: M-Marius, you…

Marius: Oh well, now isn’t the time.

Marius sighed quietly and shifted his gaze away.

I tried my best to calm my heartbeat and refocus my attention. Simultaneously, the manager, who’d been lingering in some shelf row for a while, finally moved.

Manager: Hello, Liqing Bank. Is this Miss Hang?

Marius and I exchanged a glance.

Manager: Two people just came to see the contents of your vault.

Manager: Yes, a man and a woman, and the woman was a lawyer.

Manager: Don’t worry, I did not allow them to open your vault.

Manager: You want me to take a video for your confirmation?

The male manager spoke as he strode to a shelf in the corner, then used his phone to take a photo.

Manager: Look, it’s been well taken care of – no one has opened it.

Manager: Alright, I will send it to the back door for you.

The manager hung up and pressed a button on the side of the safe. After a small electronic startup sound, Hang Jiahe’s vault suddenly disappeared. The manager walked to an elevator on the side.

MC: Where’s the vault?

When the manager had completely left on the elevator, Marius and I carefully got near the vault shelf.

Marius: Don’t worry, it’s been sent elsewhere – should be the back door.

Marius: Let’s follow.

MC: Sure.

Following behind the manager, we boarded the other elevator beside the vault shelf.

✼ ┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈ ✼

MC: How did we end up in another warehouse?

Marius: …

Marius: Follow the manager first. If anything else unexpected happens, we withdraw immediately.

MC: Okay.

✼ ┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈ ✼

Marius: Where’s the manager?

MC: In front!

MC: We’ve already been following him for over half an hour…

Marius: Is the back door of Liqing Bank that far? We’ve got to get through a warehouse and then a basement…

MC: Marius, could he be leading us in circles?

Marius: …

Marius: … But Captain Morgan’s almost here, and Hang Jiahe’s been held back by him too.

Marius: We can’t just give up here.

MC: Then let’s keep following. If things don’t change, we’ll give up.  

Marius: Okay.

✼ ┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈ ✼

The manager finally stopped at the back door of the bank warehouse.

MC: Why isn’t he walking anymore?

Marius: …

Marius: This is bad, let’s go back…

Manager: The two of you, stop hiding. Come out.

MC: …

Marius: …

We could only walk up to the manager.

Manager: CEO von Hagen, what are you trying to do here?

Marius: Didn’t I tell you my request before?

Manager: Then I’ll have to reject you once more. No…

Marius: Wait.

Marius looked behind the manager and suddenly laughed.

Marius: This time, you can’t refuse.

Manager: Wh…

Darius Morgan: City Criminal Investigation Police Brigade, Captain Darius Morgan. Please cooperate with our investigation.

Darius Morgan: This is the search warrant.

[dearingbooks]

The Difference one Woman can make.

Late Friday night in June, we had stopped for a burger on the way to the cinema, we used to do family movie nights at the cinema when a new film came out that the majority of us wanted to watch, this time I was the one who was reluctant to go, sadly we do this significantly less now.  So, stubborn 2015 me, rolling her eyes and dragging her feet up the cinema steps to find our seats to watch the new Jurassic World movie. Pathetic! I thought, why pay money to watch a movie about a dinosaur theme park! My parents had completely lost it! Huffing and puffing I took my seat on the aisle and sipped my blue raspberry slushie and looked up at the big screen. Ugh! I wanted it to be over, quickly. I sat down and shut my mouth, despite not wanting to watch it, I wasn’t going to spoil it for the others; but I didn’t get why they would want to watch it, I watched the trailer before going, was not impressed, it looked dumb!

However, as much as my pre-Jurassic self would not like, I found who I was during that movie, I discovered a whole new admiration for actors and movies. I found that I related to the main female protagonist, Claire Dearing. She did not need a man, or children, she was so focused on her career and let no one boss her around. She was top dog, and I completely fell for this fictional character. I evolved through that movie with her character, I felt content with being a strong female who put career over family. I wanted to embody this fictional woman; I wanted to be her.

On the journey home I typed ‘Claire Dearing actress’ into google and saw this stunning redhead- Bryce Dallas Howard. I immediately recognised her from movies I had watched prior, and I was completely astounded at her range of characters she can portray and portray them well. After scrolling through her Wiki page and reading news articles about her, I learned that she is the daughter of Ron Howard, one of my parents’ favourite people in film.

“Dad, that woman in the movie is Ron Howard's daughter”, I needed to inform my family that my now favourite woman in film is the daughter of my parents’ favourite people in film. My parents were shocked that I enjoyed the movie despite my loud vocalisation of not wanting to watch it.

Googling ‘Bryce Dallas Howard’ became my new after school routine, learning that she applied to acting school as Bryce Dallas to avoid people knowing she is the daughter of an already famous actor and director, and she had met her true love at nineteen and is still happily married to him. Yet what most stuck out to the self-conscious, body hating 2015 me, was that Bryce wasn’t a skinny twig of a woman that you see in most movies, she had classy curves and promoted body positivity despite some backlash the media gave her. I made a connection with this woman I had never met because I too received negative comments about my figure, yet Bryce took that on the shoulder and learned to love herself. I wanted to feel that self-love about myself that she acquired.

After watching Jurassic World, I explored many more fandoms, and from there I became obsessed with movie franchises and TV shows, actors and directors. I could not give you a full list of all of the fandoms I am in, there are too many to count, and they have all played a role in helping me evolve to who I am today. All because I latched onto one character from one movie I did not even want to watch, one film got me hooked on this life: it’s like a drug. I cannot stop. I also went back and forth with my hairstyle due to this woman; in the movie Bryce has a stunning ginger graduated bob with a fringe, however I never had the guts to go ginger until now; shame the hairdressers are all shut.

Now, almost six years later Bryce Dallas Howard has had great success in directing two episodes of The Mandalorian. Over the Christmas break I watched the show with my dad, sat on the sofa, fire lit, the chocolate Labrador curled up between us, peach vodka and diet lemonade in my hand, hot cup of tea in my dad’s. We binge watched both seasons in a week (it’s amazing) and he was shocked to see ‘Directed by Bryce Dallas Howard’ at the end of one, let alone two episodes. “Shit, she’s come far in the past few years” he said putting another episode on.

Bryce allowed me to find my best friend, Iz, through Instagram; Bryce has brought so many people together it is so surreal. And when I found out that Iz was going to Southampton University in 2019, a 20-minute drive from my house, I was finally able to meet her, because of one woman we both adore. I was friends with Iz for three years before I was able to meet her, I asked my school friend to come along with me so she could film the moment Iz, and I met! We got pancakes and watched the second Maleficent movie at the cinema, it was one of the best days of my life. I was so thankful that I met a truly hilarious and loving girl through this one actress! Because of Bryce Dallas Howard, I have made so many other friends from all over the globe as they too idolise Bryce and together we have created the ‘BDH online family’. A small group of us do regular zoom calls to catch up and chat about the recent photos and updates that Bryce has posted on Instagram, talk about Covid-19 and the types of restrictions and lockdown rules each of our countries has. During one of our calls, we had the craziest idea- Invite Bryce to one of our zoom calls. Bryce said yes! And after a few months of organisation, we had the date. The date was-

My.

Birthday.

The day came around and I was so nervous, it was 11pm exactly. The Wi-Fi had cut out fifteen minutes before the call. I was in tears. Mascara down my face, puffy eyes, I joined the call with a few minutes to spare before Bryce joined it. My mum hung around off camera for the first 5 minutes to double check the Wi-Fi was stable, luckily it stabilised. The other girls had never been so glad to see me, everyone was panicked for me; I could not miss it for the world (despite telling my parents, in floods of tears, that I cannot join and that it’s the end of that).

“Kat! You’re here!” “Happy birthday!” “Are you okay? The Wi-Fi sorted?”

They all chimed, happy to see my little face in the bottom right corner of their computer screens. Luckily Iz was there, otherwise it would have been extremely awkward with only one of us since we are known as a duo in the online family, we have to do everything together, we come in a pair and there can’t just be one of us.

“Shit girls, that was stressful”

I hadn’t realised I was holding my breath until I exhaled the large breath when my    Wi-Fi settled, and I was on the call, I fixed my makeup and was ready to meet Bryce.

The few minutes we had before Bryce joined were intense, two of the girls left to get a drink and we weren’t sure if they would be back in time, luckily they did return.

“No way!” One of them, Anna who was hosting the call, gasped “Bryce is in the waiting room!”

We all freak for no more than 10 seconds, we compose ourselves then our faces are reshuffled, and we see this stunning glowing face that we all admire smiling at us. Omg, it's her.

“Hi girls!”

I have never smiled for so long in my entire life, my cheeks hurt afterwards. Don’t get me wrong, I am not complaining at all, it just hurt as I thought I would only be smiling for half an hour, since that is how long we were told Bryce had. However, we were speaking to Bryce for nearly an hour and a half, she just kept talking and asked us questions! She was so lovely to talk to, so relaxed; it was if I was talking to a friend that I had known for years!

“Before we go I want to all sing Kat a happy birthday!”

My idol wanted to sing me a happy birthday! The other girls were really ecstatic for me, I still can’t believe to this day that The Bryce Dallas Howard wanted to sing to me!

It was both the best and the worst happy birthday song that has be sung to me. It was the best because, well my idol was singing to me! And proposed the singing! It was the worst in terms of the actual song as they were all out of sync and lagging, it was bloody hilarious!

At 10:27pm the next evening, watching a rerun of Game of Thrones on Sky, I got a notification ‘Brycedhoward just posted’, I clicked the notification then see our smiling faces on her page, she posted a screenshot of our call on her social media! The call was supposed to be a secret so other fans weren’t upset. There’s a few snotty comments on the post, but they’re just jealous and to be frank, I don’t care! My smiley face is on her page forever! All ten of us have printed the screenshot of Bryce’s post off and put it in a frame, one day all ten of us hope to congregate somewhere, most likely in America, and sign the backs of all of our photos. I’m still in utter awe and shock-  How many celebrities have you seen that would do a free zoom call with some fans? Not a lot, and that amount is even slimmer when they talk for an extra hour than scheduled. Bryce truly is one of a kind and the best idol anyone could ever hope to have.

Compared to a zoom call with Bryce herself, the few times she has liked my comments on her posts feel like nothing in comparison! I remember being so excited, running downstairs to my parents.

“Mum! Dad! Bryce liked my comment! She knows I exist!”

“Was it actually her? Remember when you got a Facebook request from Robert Downey Jr and it turned out it was a fake account?”

I rolled my eyes at her, it was Bryce, it was her verified account. The comment was a book recommendation I had for her, she posted on her hashtag BDHbookshelf and I thought I’d take a chance and comment a book recommendation I had for her, and the chance paid off.

I cannot wait to see what the future holds with Bryce, she has been such an inspiration to me for the past few years, and she promotes such wonderful causes and body positivity! I hope to one day meet her and thank her in person for changing my life for the better, and I think I’ve come up with the perfect opportunity to meet her- Iz and I have decided to travel up to London for the Jurassic World Dominion premiere in 2022 (if Covid lets us!), we’d get a hotel and actually meet Bryce in person, as well as meeting other members of the online family!

Words cannot fully contain the admiration that I possess for Bryce, her soul is utterly and truly exquisite, she has been such a visionary while I’ve been transitioning from a girl who had no idea who she was with no dreams or aspirations, to a woman who has now found so many new friends and now knows who she wants to be.  

[tabithacarlisle]

*OFF THE RECORD : Part 9

.......

by jo ( @tabithacarlisle ;)

*Catch up on OFF THE RECORD’s previous chapters Parts 1-8 at the OTR MASTERLIST

Word count: 5757

OTR Part 9 Notes & Disclaimers: Pixelberry Studios owns these characters, not me! I just have fun playing with them :)

Pairings: Liam x MC (Tabitha)  (mentions: Maxwell x MC | Liam x Drake | discussions of Liam x Drake x MC x Maxwell)

*Author’s Note: any time you see text underlined, it’s a link to screenshots from Pixelberry’s Choices TRR scenes, or other chapters referenced from *OTR- click them!! :)

Warnings: 18+ NS*W, !, erotica, polyamory, marital angst, discussions of group sex, brief mention of recreational drug use, sex-play bondage If you click ‘Keep Reading’ you are acknowledging that you are 18+

…..

OTR Part 9

:::Security sweep, check.::::

::::North end, all clear, check.:::

::::Perimeter, secure. Check::::

...

The King & Queen of Cordonia sat waiting in their motorcade vehicle that had picked them up only a half an hour or so earlier from the jet tarmac on Sardinia. Tabitha rolled her window down to get a better look of the private costal beach view that they’d be enjoying for the next few days on their scheduled mini-break. The sun was setting, creating the most gorgeous purple and orange sky, and the only sounds they could hear apart from the shorebirds, and the waves crashing against the rocks were the faint sounds from inside the villa of Bastien & Mara’s security team communicating on their radios.

Tabitha sighed, enchanted at the sight. “It’s so beautiful.”

“Isn’t it?”

She looked back at Liam, who was looking straight at her, rather than at the sunset at the horizon. Groaning she rolled her eyes at him and slapped his shoulder, then laughed, “will you ever stop doing that?”

“What? Stop thinking you’re the most beautiful sight I’ve ever laid eyes upon? Doubtful.” He winked and laced his fingers through hers, bringing her hand up to his lips to kiss the back of it. She blushed, turning to rub his shoulder as she returned her gaze back out the window, both touched and embarrassed by his flattery.

Bastien opened the door the villa and Mara followed with the rest of the team, signaling for the Royal couple to make their way out of the vehicle.

“All clear. Enjoy yourselves tonight, your Majesties.” Bastien winked at Liam and the security team bowed towards the newlyweds before leaving to man their posts outside the building.

Liam moved to lock the door behind Bastien and Mara as they left. He spun Tabitha around an pinned her wrists together above her head against the door, almost too eagerly.

“Liam?!”

He groaned “I’ve been aching for you, my love. I can’t wait any longer.”

Liam pressed into her, his body urging her legs apart. She could feel his erection insistent against her, separated only by their thin layers of clothing.

“Liam...”

He dipped down his head to suck at the side of her neck, his free hand roving over her every curve. Liam pulled down her neckline to free her left breast, tweaking the nipple until it peaked before he took it in his mouth. Her breath caught in her throat and she bit her lip to suppress the pain.

*gRrrrrrrrrdddddNnnnn...*

“What was that?” Startled at the sound pulled away from each other, both panting with ragged breaths.

“Was that... you?”

“Omigod, so embarrassing. I guess I’m hungrier than I thought?”

Liam chuckled softly. Effortlessly switching modes, he helped Tabitha straighten her dress. With the doting care of a man who truly adored his wife, he smoothed down her hair and kissed her forehead, “well then we must feed you. Both of you.” His eyes twinkled and he let his hand rest on her stomach. For a second, it seemed as if a cloud passed over his gaze making his expression momentarily unreadable, but his face softened again quickly afterwards “Our dinner reservations aren’t until 7:30, but... I could pull some strings to make it earlier—“ He reached for the cellphone in his back pocket and started to dial.

“No, darling. I’m not really in the mood for dinner, but I could go for some gelato.”

“I know the perfect place. I’ll have them deliver to our room.”

“Liam, it’s ok. We can walk there. Like normal people.”

“But we aren’t normal people, Tabitha. I hate to be the one to remind you. We won’t be able to get the security clearances out there this late. Please, trust me on this one, my love. I do have ideas for how we can spend that time while we wait here to make it worth your while.” His hands moved down from her shoulders, slowly over her arms, and grazing over her hands before reaching behind to cup her ass.

“Oh? Like?”

“A foot rub? You asked for one awhile back and I do feel per my duties as your husband that one is long overdue.“ His eyebrows cocked suggestively as he pulled her flush against him again, toying further with the back hem of her skirt.

“That sounds heavenly” she purred, closing her eyes and inhaling the scent of his cologne and enjoying the pressure of his body against hers. “But what about you? Suppose we book some professionals for a couple’s massage in the room? Like we did for our honeymoon?”

“Perhaps, another time. Sometimes...”

He bent down to growl low at her ear, his hand cradled her throat

“Sometimes, I want to be the only one who gets to touch you.”

His lips kissed and softly sucked at the cartilage rimming her ear down to the lobe.

“Okay...mmm... you are very convincing.”

“I’ve learned from the best.” he murmured with his lips against her skin. “Go, sit down on the couch. I’ll be right there.” He hung up his blazer and unbuttoned his shirtsleeves, rolling up the cuffs before he dialed a number on his cell, where he could be heard speaking to the person at the other end of the line in fluent Italian.

“Now, where were we?”

Liam joined Tabitha on the couch and patted his lap.

“Up, feet, now.”

“Yes, your Majesty.” Tabitha obliged, giggling. He carefully removed her sling back pumps and placed them on the floor. Then lifting her heel, he began to knead the soles of her foot.

Tabitha closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the upholstered cushions.

“Ohhh... How do you know just what I need before I even know it?”

Liam tutted at her, a sideways smirk creeping across smile, “I’ve told you, it’s something I pride myself on; knowing you, what you need.”

His expert hands worked their way stroking up her toes.

“Omigod... that feels phenomenal...”

Her hips ground slowly from side to side as Liam increased the pressure. Tabitha moaned and arched her back off the couch

“mmmm...  Liam How are you so good at this? Your hands are magic!”

He pressed in a tantalizing circular motion at the pressure point under her left arch, causing a jolt of electricity to pulse a current that shot straight up to her core. She inhaled sharply and bucked at the sensation, causing the hem of her dress to fall backwards revealing her thin lace underwear. He could see the physical results of his efforts by the small damp spot forming at the crotch. It made him ache for her.

“Tabitha...”

Liam let her foot down to dip his torso towards her and leaned down to kiss her lips. He groaned into the kiss as she deepened it, cupping his jaw as his lips moved feverishly against hers. His hand reached down, pushing her dress up more, skimming her bare, pregnant belly and traveling lower still to toy below the waistband of her panties.

“Oh, Liam—“

A sharp knock at the door interrupted their moment.

Liam sighed, smiling sheepishly, pulling her dress back down. “...That, would be the gelato.”

“Fuuuck.” Tabitha bit the back of her knuckles in an attempt to sober up for company, wincing. “Damn my stupid cravings.”

“Indeed.” He kissed her cheek softly and rubbed her shoulder, “we’ll pick this up later.” before gently patting her rear end and getting up to answer the door.

The handsome Italian Gelateria owner who came to their door had closed his shop and wheeled a refrigerated cart on foot to their vacation villa. They had a multitude of flavors to choose from. Tabitha’s mouth watered, overwhelmed at the prospect of having to make a decision out of so many options.

Liam, ever practical, knew exactly what he wanted.

“Vorrei un gelato stracciatella, per favore.”

Tabitha wrinkled her nose “Just chocolate chip? You’re only going to get one flavor? When there’s so many to choose from? That’s no fun.”

“Why not?” He shrugged. “I know what I want. It’s chocolate, it’s Vanilla, I get the best of both worlds in one flavor.”

“Liam, live a little! Let’s try something... *ahem* Vorrei un gelato con tre gusti, per favore.”

The Gelateria owner smiled at her, “Quali gusti vorrebbe?”

“cioccolato all ‘Azteca, stracciatella, y Nocciola, per favore.”

Liam smirked at her boldness, “That’s an awful lot of gelato.”

“Hush, you. Just trust me on this one.”

He chuckled, shaking his head

“Ok, you’re the boss.”

Liam thanked and generously tipped the gelato store owner, and dimmed the lights before rejoining Tabitha at the table.

“Now how, on earth, do you suppose we‘re going to eat all of this?”

“Patience, grasshopper. Watch & learn.”

“I’m listening.”

Tabitha spoke as she poked at the scoops of gelato in the bowl with the sharp end of her spoon.

“Liam, Stracciatella is a perfectly good flavor, by itself. But add some Noccicola, some Cioccolato all ‘Azteca, dip your spoon in all three, let their flavors meld and mix on your tongue, and it makes for a bite that becomes an experience, something you’ll never forget. Something you’ll find yourself craving to recreate that sensational combination, when one flavor just won’t do.”

He halfheartedly clapped, voice dripping with sarcasm “My Queen, I think you’ve missed your calling as a marketing executive. That was positively Don-Draperesque.”

“High praise, and a Mad Men reference on top of everything? I’m impressed!” she smiled. “But it means nothing if I can’t convince you that I’m right. So go on then, try it.”

Tabitha dipped her spoon again into each of the three flavors. She held it up to him, her eager anticipation awaiting his response making her eyes go wide and bright. Liam bent down tentatively, keeping his eyes locked on hers as he let her feed him. His eyelids closed once he took the full spoon in his mouth, and his hands drew up against his lips to hold it in as she pulled out, trying to keep it all in.

“Well...?”

“It’s....”

“‘It’s...’ what?”

Liam put his hand up to shield his mouthful of gelato as he spoke

“It’s bloody amazing.”

“Right? That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you! Three is better than one.”

He dabbed a napkin at his mouth and finished swallowing his bite. “You’re not still talking about gelato... are you?”

“Please, Liam. I know you’re not that dense.”

Liam gathered his breath and drew a large sigh, taking another spoonful

“I signed off... on the plans.”

“What?”

“Drake’s plans. And yours, I gathered? Since you two seem to be tag teaming me to cave to your will.. For the cottage on your open estate lands in Valtoria.”

“Does that mean... you’re on board?”

Liam sighed.

“I, want to make you happy, Tabitha. More than anything. But I still can’t help but feel apprehensive about this idea. I know you and Drake are both bullish about it but, I...”

Liam looked down, trying to gather his thoughts. Tabitha could see the agony on his face, though he was trying to hide it.

Tabitha gave him a conspiratorial smirk

“That’s what the pot is for, darling. You boys are going to have so much fun, I’m actually quite jealous”

“Jealousy… interesting word choice. That’s another concern of mine...”

“Wait, you mean jealous of each other while we’re… Liam, if you’re worried about jealousy, you won’t find any from me. Max isn’t a jealous person at all, he’s done this before, and—"

Liam sighed

“Wait a minute. This isn’t just about the foursome is it? You’re still trying to work through the-“

She lowered her voice in a hushed tone,

“You, and Maxwell... the baby?”

Liam didn’t say anything, but looked down, his face couldn’t conceal his troubled feelings any longer with her.

Tabitha broke the silence again

“Are you still upset with me?”

“No. I was at first. Though, you didn’t deserve any of my ire. That was when I let my primal brain take over. Drake calmed me down, a lot. And I don’t blame you Tabitha, or Maxwell. I’ve made my peace with it. I am going to love this child and raise them as my own, regardless of whom the biological father turns out to be. But I can’t help but feel I should blame myself, for putting us all in this situation in the first place. I... wish I had been able to give you a simpler life.”

“Liam, what do you mean?”

“Part of me bears this unshakeable guilt...”

“Guilt? About what? Us?”

“No. Yes. No, it’s— it’s guilt that this, us, that we couldn’t just be simple. That we couldn’t just be enough for each other. I’ve told you before, Tabitha. You were the only one of my suitors who didn’t want to run away, or didn’t demand that I remove Drake from my life, when you found out about my complicated relationship with him. Drake even sensed that about you before you made it clear to me that you would accept me with all of the strings attached. It’s why he tried to suppress his own feelings for you, because we both knew what a gem you were, Tabitha...” Liam reached across the table and held her hands in his, with tears in his eyes, “you’re my ‘once in a lifetime.’ When I found you, I finally found the one I was searching for. I realized in you that I could fulfill my duties as King, to marry such a beautiful, marvelous woman. To have the heirs demanded of me, to have your love and also be able to keep the love of my best friend, it’s more than I ever dreamed possible. It’s why I’ve wanted to give you everything you could ever want, including that night with Maxwell....”

He swallowed back tears.

“When, you told me that the baby might be his, my biggest fear wasn’t that I might not be the father. I mostly feared that if he was, that you would leave me for Maxwell, and that I could never find another woman as remarkable or incredible as you, who’d let me be myself. I don’t want to lose you, Tabitha. I literally don’t know what I would do without you. I just worry that this experiment of yours will cause tensions that will end up with people I love getting hurt, and cause you think that you don’t need or want me, and-"

“Liam, stop. That would never happen. I married you. And you’re stuck with me now. For better, or for worse. And the parts with you, have all been ‘for better.’ I love you.”

“I still wish I could give you all of me.”

“You wouldn’t be the man you are today without Drake in your life. I see how he calms and grounds you. I know how much you need each other”

“But why do we have to all be together? Like... that? I honestly don’t understand the appeal. Sex has always been such an intimate act for me. I have never understood exhibitionism because for most of my life I always had to hide my feelings, until I met you...” he smiled with love in his eyes as he squeezed her hand across the table, “I don’t know if I’ll be able to— perform, with others around, and I don’t know how we’ll handle the fallout if it doesn’t go well. To be honest, I’ve always gotten a thrill out of being intimate away from prying eyes, the spontaneity of it—“

“Liam, is that why you get off so much on having sex outdoors, or anywhere else that’s not on a bed?”

“Well I’ve never analyzed my motivations so thoroughly before, Dr. Freud, but perhaps you might be on to something there.”

They both laughed, breaking the tension some, before Tabitha spoke again,

“Look Liam, I like a naughty fuck behind locked doors with a lover as much as the next person, it’s hot, sexy, dangerous, I get that. But sometimes, damnit, sometimes I just want to shout from the rooftops how much I love my three favorite men. And I want to be able to show you all that, physically! I get tired of all of this behind closed doors, off-the-record business all the time. I love you, I love Max, and I love Drake, I love what you and Drake share, and I don’t think any of us should be ashamed to admit it to ourselves! We should embrace it, celebrate it even. Don’t you think so too? You keep thinking of all of the possible ways this could go wrong, but what if, what if it goes right? What if making love to your wife and your best friend and her lover at the same time is the most amazing, earth shattering, mind blowing experience you’ve ever had, Liam? Just think of how good the sex could be if we put it all out on the line and can finally be fully honest with each other. Give it a shot. Give us a shot.”

“You make it all sound so goddamn reasonable. How on earth do you do that, Tabitha?”

“Because it is reasonable, and deep down, you know it too. Because we aren’t like other married couples. We never will be. Our many layers, our lovers, they’re what makes our love so extraordinary.”

Liam relaxed his shoulders with a stoic acceptance. “All right. You’ve convinced me. I’ll try it, for you.”

“You will? Oh Liam!”

She threw her arms around his neck as he tucked a finger underneath her chin to bring her lips to his and kiss her deeply. The passion in the kiss burst from Tabitha’s mouth hot like fire. Liam let a low moan escape from his throat, echoing at the back of hers. She pulled back from his lips just enough to rest her forehead against his, as his strong arms easily braced her frame pulled flush against him.

“God, I’d do anything to make you smile like that at me, my love.”

“I am so, so happy right now! Aren’t you?”

“It’s difficult to not catch that sentiment from you, my queen. Your energy is infectious. But honestly, I’m still-”

He let out a low exhale.

“- a bit, nervous. I’ve never...”

“Had group sex before?”

“No! Of course not. Have you?”

“No, I almost had a threesome once. There was this one time, in college...”

Liam chuckled. “I should have known. You and Drake had all of these ‘forbidden experiences’ that I missed out on 'in college.' What is it about Americans throwing caution to the wind when they attend University?”

“Yeah well, I kinda had a crush on my best friend Mark, and I think he felt the same about me, but we were always dating other people. Anyway, one time his girlfriend Amy, whom I couldn’t stand, said they wanted to have a threesome with me.”

“I gather, you turned them down then?”

“I couldn’t go through with it. I had feelings for Mark but I hated her so much. She could be a real monster. I knew it wouldn’t work out.”

“And... this tale of yours is supposed to make me feel better about our plans?”

“No! I mean, yes? That was different. I had no respect for Amy. But you, and me, and Max and Drake, we all know each other and genuinely care for one another. It’s a totally different situation.”

Liam scratched at the stubble on his chin deep in thought. “I see... so what ever happened to this ‘Mark’ - What was his last name again?”

Tabitha could see Liam’s brows furrowed with a tinge of mock jealousy as he started typing on his cellphone.

“LIAM! oh my god - Don’t!” Tabitha laughed as she swatted the phone away from him.

“No, I insist! I need to know about all of the many men in my wife’s past.”

“It’s a funny story, you know after we graduated, I hadn’t heard from him in years, until I got a FaceSpace Message from him, just a few months before I met you. He told me he found a job listing he thought would be perfect for me out in San Francisco, writing a dating advice column for a web publication.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, and he even found a place for me to live, some of his friends in the city who were looking for a new roommate.”

“I’m, guessing you turned it down?”

“I did. I told him I wasn’t quite ready to make that big of a move yet, Daniel and I were still locked into a couple more months on our apartment lease, there would have been huge fines if we broke it. And little did I know then how just a few months later that my life would change when a literal handsome prince and his two best friends would all come into my dive bar and sweep me off my feet, and turn my world upside down, in the best way possible.”

“Well, I feel like I should write this ‘Mark’ chap a thank you letter then, for not sweeping you off your feet.”

“You’re crazy, Liam.”

He winked at her. “I only kid. Did you ever hear back from him?”

“Not much after I turned him down, no. I did check out his FaceSpace profile several months ago, just out of curiosity. He’s in Seattle now. He made millions selling an app he developed to a big software company there. Crazy, right?”

“Do you ever think about, how much simpler your life might have been if you had taken him up on the offer?”

“What? For the threesome? Gross, not with him and Amy, never.”

“No, I mean moving to San Francisco. Rekindling an uncomplicated romance with an uncomplicated man with no obligations to ruling a sovereign nation, no strings attached...”

“No, Liam, no. Never. I thank my lucky stars every day that I turned him down. I don’t even want to think about what my life would be like if I hadn’t met you, and Maxwell, and Drake. Coming to Cordonia was the best thing that ever happened to me. And for all of the good and the bad, I wouldn’t change it for the world.”

He clasped her hands together and kissed her soundly.

“I’m so glad you feel that way. I love you, Tabitha. I feel like the luckiest man on earth that you chose to let us into your life. To love me, all of me. You are such a gift, and I could never properly put into words just how much you mean to me.”

“I love all of you Liam, every part.”

He pulled her into an embrace with his arms wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her in tight until their bodies melded together

She leaned back, beaming up at him, as he tucked a strand of hair behind her ear..

“Liam, I really appreciate you agreeing to get out of your comfort zone and agreeing to give this a go. I know how hard it is for you.”

“It’s hard for, selfish reasons, really... but it’s definitely not hard to agree to fulfill the desires of the two people I love most in the world.”

“And I feel so lucky to make it onto that exclusive list of yours.”

Tabitha took his hand and led him over towards the bedroom.

“I want to show you my appreciation. Tell me what your biggest sexual fantasy is that you’ve never done before.”

“You are my fantasy, my love. I don’t need anything else.”

“Ok, that’s romantic as hell, but. I call bullshit”

“What?! You would doubt me?”

“I know you, Liam. I know there’s some wild erotic fantasy knocking around inside that insanely beautiful brain of yours that you’ve been too timid to tell anyone about before. Tell me. I want to make it happen for you.”

“Well...”

“Yes! I knew it. Tell me.”

“Are you sure?”

“Absofuckin’lutely.”

Liam chuckled, “You sound just like Drake.”

“He does rub off on you, but... I probably don’t need to tell you that.” She wiggled her eyebrows at him suggestively.

He blushed keenly with a knowing glint in his eye. “There you go again,”

They laughed until Liam’s shoulders eased and taking a long breath and a solid sip of wine, he dared himself to open up to her.

“Bondage. That I could do, to you. Light bondage anyway. Nothing that would hurt you, I could never forgive myself if anything happened to you, but the idea has, intrigued me...”

Tabitha’s mouth fell open with shock, her lips drawing up into a smile as she reacted to his suggestion.

“Wow, Liam, that’s so hot! I’m into it.”

Liam was taken aback by her eagerness,

“You’re... serious? Because if you’re not, don’t tease me, just forget I said anything and I’ll—“

As if to prove her point, Tabitha began undressing immediately.

“Totally serious. I’ve never been with someone before who’d be into it who I’ve trusted as much as I do you.”

Her hands went for his belt buckle and she smirked up at him,

“Let’s do it.”

“As you wish.”

Liam wrapped her in his arms, crushing his lips against hers with newfound ferocity. Their clothes were quickly discarded on the floor, leaving Tabitha naked, and Liam in nothing but his black briefs. He threw her down on the bed, and made moves to bring closer a small duffle bag with his belongings.

“Do you trust me?”

“Yes, with my whole life.”

“Put this on,”

She secured the familiar blue silk eye mask over her head, pulling out her hair from the ties in the back to make a tighter fit.

“Can you see?”

“Nope! Not a thing.”

“Good. Now, if you’ll humor me, lie down here on the bed, my love, and listen while I give you a short civics lesson in Cordonian crime and punishment.”

She giggled “Your Historian Nerd-foreplay is absolutely adorable, Liam. I—”

:::Rip::: :::Rip::: :::Rip:::

“Liam? Are you ripping the sheets?”

“The Cordonian Royal coffers paid good money for this villa. I intend to get our money’s worth. Will you allow me to continue?”

“...yes”

“Good.”

The sound of ripping fabric continued in the background of Liam’s monologue. Tabitha peeked beneath the blue silk blindfold, focusing intently at his biceps and pectoral muscles flexing and contracting beneath his taut skin as he methodically stripped the flat sheet into inch wide strips and continued to speak.

“Did you know that under Cordonia’s high treason laws, our Lord Chancellor barrister could legally try and execute upon conviction and my orders, anyone who binds the Queen?”

“Really?”

“Yes, it’s an ancient law that never became modernized, so it’s technically still in effect. One of those things we’ve been meaning to update, but it hardly ever comes up, so it gets pushed aside.”

He held her wrists together, kissing the inside of them before he began to wrap her arms further with the white strips of bedding.

“But because it’s still law, that means if either Maxwell, or Drake, or anyone else, Noble or not, decided to have a ‘romp’ with you and some rope or handcuffs in the bedroom, I could... legally, have them executed.

“...my god.”

“There’s only one person who is immune to this law.”

“...Who?”

Liam cocked an eyebrow at her, smirking at her as he tightened the binds at her wrists,

“The King.”

Tabitha moaned in her gasp of breath.

“Liam...”

“Now, just so you know, upon my honor, I would never do such a thing. That’s why Anton and his bastard cronies are going to spend the rest of their lives rotting away in prison cells, rather than lose their heads. Still, it would please me, greatly, in this... complicated arrangement of ours with our lovers, to have something, intimate, that only you and I could share, as husband & wife. Don’t you agree?”

“Liam...”

“Is that a yes?

“...Yes. That’s so hot.”

“And for now, since you’re carrying our child, I’ll remain extra delicate with my methods.”

“What about after the baby’s born?”

“... then all of my restraints, in regards to gentleness with you, are lifted.”

“I... anxiously await that day.”

Liam finished tightening the remainder of her restraints. He looked at her so vulnerable and at his mercy, feeling both aroused and overwrought with pangs of guilt at what he was planning to do to her

“Is this ok?”

“You don’t need to keep asking me if something’s ‘OK.’ I trust you completely Liam, and I just want you to have your way with me.”

“...Noted.”

“When I submit to you, it means everything is ok. If it makes you feel more comfortable letting loose, we can have a safe word in case anything ever goes too far.”

“A safe word? What should it be?”

“Your safe Gelato flavor would be the ideal word. ‘Stracciatella.’”

“I’ll remember that one.”

.......

He felt the excitement of a man about to experience something he had long craved but was just now about to taste.

Liam secured her wrists to her ankles with the strips of bedding. His mouth watered at the sight of her skin covered in goose pimples from the anticipation.

Tabitha’s hands strained against her restraints, her body’s automatic response and reflex to wanting to remove the blue silk blindfold.

“Are you sure you trust me, my love?” The deep cadence of his voice relaxed her struggling.

“Yes, my King” she purred. Of course she trusted him.

Liam’s cock twitched in his tight briefs at her words. He bit his lip and continued, hardly believing this was all happening.

She could hear him step away from the bed and the sound of a long metal zipper being pulled open. Sounds of rummaging around in a bag followed, before she heard and felt the sounds of his steps returning to her. Her pussy was spread open and aching to be filled

“Liam I need you.”

“Not... just... yet.” He playfully slapped her asscheek and she gasped, smiling. “You must be patient.”

She heard the sound of a switch flipping and a deep electronic vibrating pulse that seemed to be causing ripples in the air around them.

Tabitha bit back a laugh and shook her head He brought my ‘Magic Wand’ on holiday?? So presumptuous...

Just then she felt the pressure of it on her mound, pressing her lips open and vibrating against her clit. She tried to angle herself so the stimulation wasn’t so direct, but her restraints prevented her from achieving that goal. Tabitha’s insides seem to convulse in both protest and excitement. It felt so good it hurt. She mewled, reveling in her arousal, but in the back of her mind she worried if this much stimulation would be harmful for the baby. No matter, she was having too much fun to stop Liam now.

Liam watched her expressions fascinated, trying to interpret what was going through her mind. He kept the vibrator at her groin and leaned forward to suck and knead her breasts.

“Liam please!”

His hand roved downward, tracing her landing strip before he inserted a finger in her. She was soaking wet, so ready, but he wasn’t quite finished with tormenting her yet.

“You’re doing beautifully, my love. Stay focused.”

Though legs quaked with longing she nodded her head, committed to submission.

Liam liked being in control. He was born and bred for a life of public service to his kingdom, a Constitutional Monarchy but a monarchy no less, but there was something primeval and deeply engrained into the fiber of his muscles, this rush and natural high of being the one fully in control over her capacity to feel sensations of both pleasure and pain, that awoke his passions anew in him much like nothing else had in quite some time. The charge he got from discovering that she was as into it as he was both a surprising and thrilling discovery for him.

“Tell me when you’re about to come.”

Tabitha whimpered. She wanted him to ravage her right then. Biting her lip, she stayed focused on the smells of his cologne that wafted from him as he hovered over her, the sound of the vibrator pulsing electronic waves against her sex, the slight metallic taste of blood on her lips for biting back her screams. It suddenly became too much to hold in.

“Liam, I...”

The Magic Wand shut off. She cried out

“No Liam, please!”

"Are you ready for me to fuck you now?" He said untying her.

Once her hands were freed, she hungrily pushed up her blindfold, overly anxious to see him again.

The site that greeted her was his face in the candlelight, glistening with sweat and flushed with arousal. He was completely naked now, hovering above her, staring deep into her eyes.

“God, Liam, you are so gorgeous, take me now.”

“Tonight, I’m all yours.”

He moved over her gripping her wrists tighter, locking her into place, and crushed his mouth to hers. “God, Tabitha, I love the way you taste,” he moaned into her mouth whilst his knee nudged her thighs apart and his swollen cock hovered at her entrance. Ripping his mouth from hers, he gazed down at her flushed face. Her swollen, just bitten lips still beckoned, and the precum glistening at his tip gave away his eagerness to penetrate her and give in to that ultimate release, yet he resolved to stretched her patience just one more time. “Tell me, my love, tell me again.” With conviction and deep sincerity, she looked deep into the sapphire blue of his irises ringing the deep black pupils dilated with lust and she moaned. “Take me, please.”

He plunged his cock deep within her and their bodies moved together, finally, as one. Tabitha’s hands now freed, raked her nails up and down his back. He shivered and groaned as she lifted her head to softly bite at his neck. All the build up from the evening’s events came crashing down like lightning and Liam came long and hard inside her. Her walls pulsed around his shaft as she screamed his name.

They lay tangled up in each other for what seemed like an eternity, the night air cooling their sweat, their bodies strewn over the leftover scraps of fabric. They were both was almost asleep when Tabitha felt something, like a small hammer from inside her womb.

“Liam!”

“What’s wrong?”

She took his hand and placed it deliberately on her belly, holding it there, before she felt the flutter again

“That’s the baby?”

“I think so?”

“Our baby.”

“Yes! These are the first movements I’ve felt”

“Wow, that’s so incredible, it’s… you don’t think I hurt—”

“I think if we had, there’d be no kicking at all.”

Liam kissed her temples and held her, cradling her abdomen as the baby’s flutters continued. He fell asleep like that before she did, and she laid in his arms, feeling happy, though her heart ached suddenly when she found herself missing Maxwell.

---

Thanks so much for continuing to read and for all of the feedback, likes reblogs and support!! :)

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[the-rainbow-mafia-blog]

Y don't u care abt UsUm?

// Short answer; because I feel Nintendo doesn’t either.

And now a long answer because I’ve been sitting on this rant for ages and I bothered the Discord server enough with it. I want to put foward first that the opinions expressed here are my own. I am a big fan of Nintendo and this is something that bothers me. This is no way shape or form an attack to people who love these games to bits. This is also not meant to hate on a franchise or a company. The purpose of this rant is to put some arguments behind my statements.

Sources are linked in the text. I used Nintendo but I always meant everyone involved in the making of these games.

The reason I feel comfortable sharing it now is because people have their, rightful, concerns about the upcoming games; Pokemon Sword and Pokemon Shield, releasing in a few short weeks for the Nintendo Switch. Nintendo’s newest and most succesful baby. 

Why doesn’t Nintendo care about Pokemon, according to you?

First we need to ask ourselves;

How much does Nintendo make on Pokemon?

While I do think they care in a sense the numbers won’t lie. Pokemon has made around $95 billion US dollars since the franchise came to life in 1996. To put it in a way bigger number; they make about 4130434782.61 US dollars PER YEAR on Pokemon. (This is my own math, I do not know the exact numbers per year. I divded their total by the amount of years Pokemon has been alive.) That’s a lot of money and it’s with right the most financially succesful franchise to date. 

Only a part is made by the video games $17.138 billion. It’s merchandise makes more; $64.1 billion.

I could not find a reliable source on how much it takes to make a Pokemon game in monetary value.  What I could find however is that Pokemon is making less and less per game they release. Without counting Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon, Sun and Moon made LESS than X and Y.  

The only main series game that made less than Sun and Moon (again not counting UsUm) was Black/White.

Nintendo knows people will buy their games anyway;

Dropping sales or no, Pokemon still manages to fatten the piggy bank over at Nintendo because people will buy it anyway. The Pokemon craze of the 90′s should tell you that. People would buy it if it had Pokemon on it. Those people are now in an age group that has money to spend, hell some even have kids. So Nintendo is smart and releases commercials like this one or this one.  This marketing is beautiful (and no, not only Nintendo knows how to do this) because they play on your feelings. Who didn’ make a friend because you both liked Pokemon? And if you grew up with Pokemon like the person in the second commercial the whole feeling and setting is famillair to you, hell they could’ve casted you and it would’ve make sense.  They compare the whole bleakness of adult life, having to work to pay the bills, having less time for video games, to that warm familliar feeling of coming home and playing Pokemon. They feed on your nostalgia; your desire to relive those moments or if you have kids, to share the feeling those games gave you with your off spring. Or your younger siblings or other family memmbers.  I catch myself doing it! When a young one comes up to me, or I see a kid play the game on the bus I get that familiar feeling of ‘Hey I used to do that!’ It’s smart and it’s a thing Disney is good at too. It zooms in on what was precious to you and now resells that feeling to you. 

“Hey buy our game to feel something again. The world sucks anyway but Bulbasaur is still cute!” This isn’t a bad thing! Nintendo is a company and at the end of the day they need to make money. That is fair and I am in no way bagging on them over that. But it’s my belief that Nintendo keeps making money on the Pokemon games this way. Which leads me to my next point;

The Pokemon games come across as lazy.

Again, opinion but it feels like that. Which is also why I don’t care for UsUm; it’s lazy.

I truly believe Pokemon has some decent writers who don’t get their chance to shine. The beginnings of great stories and characters are there but it feels unfinished. Like someone bought the ingredients to a delicious dish but forgot to make them. Over the years Pokemon has a colorful bunch of characters, and the ones that stand out the most are the baddies. They usually get the coolest designs, the sickest themes, one way or another they are present in the climax but again. It’s lazy. How many of them pretend to be good or have a high moral standing and then turn out to be absolute dickbags? Almost all of them. Then they have characters (Ghetsis, Lusamine and Faba come to mind first) do something horrible (abuse of minors and playing God) and they get away with it what is basically a slap on the wrist. 

And after you beat them… for me the story stops. Yes you can go and beat some very powerful trainers and claim your title as whatever the thing in this game is and yes often that unlocks some post credit content but it’s bare. The big threat is gone.

“But,” I hear you say “It’s a DS/3DS game. There is only so much you can do.” Disagree. Phoenix Wright, Ghost Trick, Professor Layton and The Legend of Zelda OoT 3DS and Majora’s Mask all released on the same consoles and have a much richer story and even more characters. All games keep their pacing and the story really feels like it ends when the credits role. 

Then there is the overal quality. The main characters in Sun/Moon looks like someone forgot to progamme their soul in: /Screenshot take from THIS video/

I, again, easily could compare this other games who have much more expressions but let’s take one of Nintendo’s own;

There is so much more emotion in the Legend of Zelda one.  It released a few years earlier than Pokemon Sun/Moon too.

Second the frame rate drops like a hat. While some framerate drop is expected this much is a little too glaring to ignore.  To compare it to BoTW or Red Dead Redemption on the PS4, who both also have some frame rate issues at times it only happens in certain locations, usually a spot with lots of effects of NPCs. In my opinion, Pokemon does not have the luxery of that excuse. It would random drop in almost every location i was in.

The story

Every Pokemon has a story and I get that it’s basic. It’s a game for all ages after all. I get it won’t have a deep story like other games have. The basic gist of the game is to still enjoy catching all these mon’s with occasional story woven into it. But here is the thing that irks me; The little sneak peaks of story that we do get.. it’s good. It’s just so unfinished. It’s like there is a constant battle in the developers room betweeing writing a deep and interesting story (I’m not counting Pokemon Lore, just the story given in a game) and focussing on just the gameplay. There are many examples of rich story games with little gameplay (Grim Fandango, The Walking Dead, Almost every Visual Novel ever, Detroit; Become Human, just to name a few.) There are games with lots of gameplay and little story (Mobile games for example) and there are games that mix story and gameplay perfectly (Red Dead Redemption, Left 4 Dead 2, Persona 5 to name just a FEW examples) 

I feel Pokeon TRIES to be all three of these styles of games but ends up failing at everything.

Storywise they lured peopel in with Team Rainbow Rocket, like mentioned before this is for most people the reason they get drawn in; seeing their old baddies return and getting to interact with them again. It’s the same reason for me. But it feels unpolished, same with The Ultra Recon Squad. They seem like GREAT characters but again, so little is done with them that I feel there could be so much more.

Don’t change a winning team. 

Pokemon has been selling the same game to us for years. Again, I don’t blame them. Why bother. People like it, why change it? They try new gimmicks now and again and I respect them for trying. I personally like the Let’s Go Eevee/Pikachu versions. While they were FAR from perfect I can at least applaud them for doing something new and interesting. While at the same time trying to lure people who only played the mobile app into the main series by remake the first game all over again. Again, I understand. I would too if I were them.

But with Sword and Shield they are taking something away; Pokemon. And with that the whole thing comes undone. This is supposed to be THE Pokemon game, the big one, the game that will release on The Switch; home of BoTw and Mario Odyessy but also the upcoming Witcher 3, Skyrim. Games that are all much bigger than Pokemon and yet they took a vital part out of it.

The video is deleted now and I won’t link to the Chinese Bootleg game as it does steal user data, but the whole issue was the animations.  The animations in the bootleg were GOOD. And if we remember the amount of Pokemon makes per year they can afford themselves a team of good animators. This isn’t some indie studio who employs 20 people and have to live of Kickstarter donations, this is GAME FREAK, this is NINTENDO. And it’s not like they can’t, please remember Pokemon Stadium.  Look at the animation on that. Now remember that Legend of Zelda, Ocarina of Time, ALSO came out for the Nintendo 64 and got a beautiful update on the 3DS. If they can do that, surely they can port the animations.

And yes, I’m hearing you. You say that there are a lot of Pokemon.. but they’re taking a lot of them out of Sword and Shield. So there is no excuse for the battles to look like this. And remember this is the same console that has BoTW, one of the most applauded games in recent gaming history. A game with tons of content, tons of NPCs, tons of Items and has almost none of the issues Pokemon has.

I don’t care about USUM because it’s a lazy cash grab that adds nothing new to the table except some side story that doesn’t do anything to the main story. Play UsuM, Play SuMo, you’re basically getting the same game. Nintendo is smart and tries to sell you the same game twice due to a Pokemon being unique to a game. Meaning that if you want them all, you’re going to have to fork over 120 US dollars and guess what? That version is almost sold out where I live. So it’s working. And I don’t blame them. I am impressed.

Because I get the feeling that, with absolutely minimum effort they are forking in insane amounts of money.  Nintendo is a company. They need money. I don’t blame them for doing the things they do. I am however, entitled to my opinion and despite everything said above I will see myself getting a copy of Sword or Shield in the future. Because that is how it always is. Because I too, want to relive the moments of my youth when the biggest concern I had was chosing my starter.

[my-mystic-messenger]

So I jumped between requests all day but couldn’t focus on a single one - just too many ideas, you know that feeling? - so I went through my pics and found this beautiful screenshot. I mean MM is known for it’s grammar mistakes, translation issues and similar, but this one is my favourite so far. Due to a small mix-up this makes it seem like Saeran is the one marrying MC in the after endings, not Saeyoung. And I know it’s just a mistake and I know it was all a dream anyway but I love Saeran and he deserved redemption, love and therapy. Therefor I write a fic where he gets all three, hopefully. MC mentioned Masterlist Hope you enjoy ❤⃛ヾ(๑❛ ▿ ◠๑ )

Fandom: Mystic Messenger Rating: General Warnings: Depression and hinted at self harm but like blink and you miss it kind. Still I want to be safe rather than sorry so... Categories: F/M Relationships: MC x Saeran Word count: 1435

When Saeran had first gotten out of Mint Eye he'd been in a horrible state. He'd been underweight, malnourished, completely drugged up with things even doctors couldn't fully identify to the point his already weak immune system was on the brink of completely collapsing on top of suffering from multiple mental disorders; the most prominent being depression. He was either busy attempting to kill his twin brother or himself and not a day went by that he didn't feel an unhealthy mixture of miserable and resentful. It certainly didn't help that his brother had gotten him out of the hospital far too early for his mental state to be stabilized. Not to mention that his go to solution to everything had been locking Saeran up in a windowless hole until he got better eventually. Without meds, obviously, because who on earth would ever need those, right?. Frankly, he'd given up hope altogether, gradually drowning in his own guilt and sadness, wilting away.

That was until Min-Jee Chu had begun to play a recurring role in his life. Whatever he threw her way, verbal or physical, she always remained calm. Once he'd actually attempted to punch her to which she'd merely caught his fist in her hand, twisted his arm and gotten him on the floor. She'd straddled his back like a little pony, peacefully continuing to lick at the lolipop she'd been enjoying before his attack. She'd sat on him for however long it took for him to finally calm down. Only then had she patted his head and gotten up, leaving him completely baffled. It had been that moment that Saeran had realized that maybe, just maybe, he'd met his match and not just physically. She never chewed his ear off, never pushed for anything and yet gave so much in return. Whenever she came along, despite Saeyoung telling her not to on multiple occasions, she always had a proper meal she handed to Saeran. For a while he refused to eat, but eventually she resorted to doing the here comes the plane game and Saeran only lasted so long being subjected to such idiocy before he gave in. 

Not only that, but she also stuck around when things got ugly. Whenever Saeran hurt himself, intentional or not, she was always there, pulling out a bandaid from her pocket and gently putting it on the wound after carefully disinfecting it. Throughout the entire process Saeran didn't move, instead watching with awe as she took care of him so sweetly. The sick, twisted part of him wanted to break her, ruin her to be more like him. A bigger part, however, had the need to protect and cherish her. Frankly that part scared Saeran more than the darkness he held within. It only got worse as the weeks passed by. They barely talked and yet he felt close to her. She didn't need to talk for him to understand her. The fact that she constantly kept breaking into Saeyoungs place – learning Arabic just so she could answer the goddamn door quick enough and get in – or the fact that she was willing to fight his twin in order for him to give Saeran certain freedoms or at least therapy was proof enough that she cared. It took a while until Saeyoung finally gave in. Min-Jee must have been miserable, spending all those afternoons and evenings in that pit that Saeyoung called his home. Saeran certainly did! Still, she came every day after school, without fail. She would sit down next to Saeran and sometimes they would just look at one another, neither saying nor doing anything. He'd glare while she'd eat her candy. Secretly though, he was happy that she was there. Especially on those days when she brought along a book and read it aloud. He didn't have to ask her to do so, she just did. Even when he'd complained she'd just continued, somehow knowing that he actually loved the sound of her voice and those beautiful stories she told him. It was extremely soothing. Still, obviously there were bad days where he resorted to his violent and mean tendencies. Whenever he threw a hissy fit her comeback would be stuffing some bonbon or loli into his mouth, effectively silencing him.

When the day finally came that Saeran was allowed to leave the house for the first time, Min-Jee took him to the park. They sat near the lake, in the shadows of a tree so Saeran wouldn't get a sunburn. He complained a lot that evening. Not because he was actually unhappy, but because he was so happy it scared him and his instinct told him to push her away before he got too attached. Nothing worked though, as per usual with her. He was too hot? She had an electronic pocket fan with her. The sun burned his eyes? She put her shades on his nose. He was hungry and thirsty? She got him a burger and something to drink. She'd even trusted him enough to leave him out of her sight and Saeran actually stayed put! He'd realized in that moment that there was no chance he'd get away from that girl. There was no escaping her, so he might as well give in, give the last piece of his broken heart to the one person who hadn't yet battered and abused it. 

From that moment on things started to finally look up a little. He felt a little less miserable and like maybe there was some purpose to his life. The dark thoughts were still there, but there was a ray of sunshine silencing them from time to time and Saeran took what he could get. Min-Jee talked both Choi brothers into getting Saeran therapy and he actually went. He also took it serious this time, trying his best to open up about his feelings and thoughts, accepting possible treatments and eventually medication. Sure, he was still weary of it, since drugs had been the start of all his problem to begin with, but Min-Jee encouraged him and thankfully she turned out to be right once more. Not only did therapy help untangle the mess Rika had created in his mind, it also taught him the strength to forgive his brother and understand that he'd really tried his best. The meds also numbed that aching pain of loneliness and darkness he'd suffered from and the little rest that was left Min-Jee took care of for him.

The day Min-Jee turned eighteen was the day Saeran proposed to her. Throughout this entire time she'd done nothing but give and give and then some more. Never had she asked for anything in return and that was precisely what made Saeran want to give her the world. He knew, despite only having known her for a little over a month, that she was the one person he wanted to spend the rest of his life with. Sure, they hadn't dated per se and yes they were both extremely young, but the second he got out the small ring he'd gotten for her on his first trip around town by himself both of them just knew that they wanted to be together. Saeran had learned to live life to the fullest. Suffering through the things he did, frankly he hadn't even expected to make it this far and part of that mentality was still embedded inside of him. If he died tomorrow, he wanted to die a happy man, knowing that he'd done all the things he wanted and could do. That included putting a ring on the finger of the woman he loved.

When Saeran and Min-Jee announced their engagement in the chatroom everyone reacted very intensely. Zen was completely shocked and to some extend enraged, Yoosung had difficulties figuring out when on earth that connection between Saeran and Min-Jee had formed, Jaehee was weary of such a rushed proceeding, Jumin was merely glad that you were getting married instead of jumping into other much more improper activities and Saeyoung cried buckets. They discussed the engagement long after the couple had left the chatroom, cuddled up on the couch together peacefully without a soul to disturb their little moment of bliss. When the big day finally came it wasn't big at all. All the people they cared for were there; the RFA members. Despite their initial reservations anyone with a set of eyes could see that Saeran and Min-Jee were meant to be. They filled those empty slots in each others hearts and everything else time would take care of.

[i-heart-heart-health-blog]

Let’s get started ...

When I got back to school, one of my biggest goals for the semester was to significantly lower my stress levels. I wanted to work on decreasing my stress by getting my school work and extra-curricular activities done in a timely manner, without the use of procrastination in the process. In the past, I have had a lot of issues with pushing back deadlines until the night before, causing me immense emotional strain due to my poor use of time management.

When this assignment was presented to me in class, I knew immediately that I wanted to focus on something that would help me track my stress levels and encourage a positive mindset. Since thoughts and emotions are not tangible, I decided I would measure heart rate since it can be easily recorded and also, directly correlates to the concept of stress.

On a day-to-day basis, I wear an Apple watch in order to track these types of sensors. The Apple watch has the capability to measure heart rate upon the click of the screen, however it does not give an overview of the data being tracked. I wanted to find a mobile application that would display how my heart rate fluctuates throughout the day.

After searching through the App Store, I came across Cardiogram for Apple Watch. The motto of the application is “What’s your heart rate telling you?”

What it actually does …

The cardiogram application provides a summary of your heart rate information for each day using data tracked on the apple watch. It tell you your resting bpm (beats per minute), peak bpm, step count, and sleep duration. Cardiogram provides a list of habits that you may want to change that will improve heart health. You can track how often you complete the habit within the application. It also has a social feature that allows you compare information with friends and motivate each other to complete the habits together.

How you set it up …

After downloading the app, there is a series of steps taken in order for the application to get to know you better. Here’s what you are going to do:

1. Create an account and link it to the Apple Health Application (this will allow the app to pull data that is monitored with the Apple Watch).

2. Enter in personal medical information. This will include characteristics such as date of birth, sex, height, weight, and questions regarding the health of your heart.

3. Provide your insurance information. 

4. Provide your contact information. 

5. Select the habits that you’re are going to track. 

The time it took me to set up my account was surprisingly short. During my time using the application, my insurance information was never brought up again. They did not provide a reason for asking for it, but I assume it was for safety. The contact information was asked for because the application does research studies and if they want a user to participate, they will be contacted. Even though neither of these information pieces were used, I do not deem them as unnecessary.

My Expectations and Personal Goals …

I did not really have any huge expectations going into this assignment. I did not expect my average heart rate to change over the course of the three weeks. My goal was to become more aware of the types of activities and environments that cause my peak bpm to occur.

One of the features that I did not expect to be on this application is the habits tab. There were a couple of habits to choose from that catered towards stress relief. I choose the meditation habit tracker. The application on keeps a tally of how many times you check off that you complete a habit. I found it surprising that it does not have a feature to set goals. To make up for this lacking feature, I decided on my own that my goal was to complete the meditation habit three times per week.

Below is a screenshot of the application’s habit feature. The habits are placed into categories based on the method the user wants to use to improve his or her health

Reflecting on my experience …

The graphs that showed the peak heart rates were very interesting to observe. Even though the data was presented in a pleasing manner, they were not informative. The heights of the bpm were color coded based on intensity, but it was nearly impossible to remember what you did at certain points in the day. In the graph below, it has two high peaks towards the beginning of the day. It does not provide an exact time for the peak so I do not know why it occurred. In order to improve this, the user-computer interaction design needs to improve. If you click on a peak, it should give you the exact time of day it occurred which may jog a user’s memory. Even though there was a lack of usability, I still enjoyed being able to look at the date in the form of a bar graph. The graphs provided an educational overview of my daily heart rate patterns.

As I mentioned previously, I had very little expectations going into how this experience was going to unfold. I did not expect to acquire a new habit when I first downloaded the application. Cardiogram provides a very simple way of tracking habits. I only focused on meditation for this assignment, but many other grabbed my attention. One of the habits I found that I want to work on is not drinking caffeine past 2:00 PM. This is something I frequently do and I did not realize the impact it can have on your heart health and sleep patterns. One of my favorite parts about this feature of the application is the information on why you should acquire this habit. Below is the screenshot of the reasons why you should not drink coffee past 2:00 PM.

My past experiences tracking personal health behaviors ...

For the past couple of years, I have always been tracking some sort of health behavior. I love to track what I eat, how often I work out, the number of steps I reach per day, etc. Setting small daily goals and getting a little sense of reward when I achieve them gives me motivation to set larger goals and strive harder to achieve those. Accomplishing little things will always add up to a larger amount of success.

I feel like I have always had success with tracking the health behavior data, but the biggest challenge I face is continuing to track information when it doesn’t seem to change. For example, it is important to me to reach my steps per day goal. But when I am getting the same number of steps every day, it seems unnecessary to continue tracking.

That being said, it is important to be aware of consistency. I believe you should know that your number of steps isn’t dropping, that you aren’t all the sudden consuming too many calories, or (even more importantly) that your resting heart rate has all the sudden increased.

What I believe sets Cardiogram apart from the issues I have faced in the past is the simplicity of the design of the habits feature. There are so many different habits that you can focus on at once or in intervals that it would be hard to get tired of them all.

If I were to continue moving forward using this application, I would choose to focus on a different habit each week. For a week, I will not drink coffee past 2:00 PM and I will record how I feel at the end. It takes the pressure of completely changing a habit in your daily routine. If the habit is something that is hard for you to acquire or let go of, you can see the light at the end of the tunnel because it is only a week’s worth of time.

Some advice before using the Cardiogram Application from me to you …

1. Try not to get overwhelmed! There are a lot of features this application provides. Stick with one or two of them and get used to how it works!

2. Don’t expect things to change overnight; take your time learning about you own heart rate and how it fluctuates.

3. Stay Optimistic! In class, we talked about the important of self-efficacy - an individual’s belief that they can achieve a goal. Go into using this application knowing that YOU can change your behavior!

4. Use the social feature for motivation! Encourage your friends to download the application so you have people checking up on your progress.

5. Take your time with it. The application is trying to teach you how to create habits but even just getting into the habit of wearing an Apple Watch every day is hard for me! The process of monitoring health behaviors is something that will take time to learn.

Thank you for reading all about my experience!!

Amelia Dahm

[topicprinter]

Why I startedI love building new things and sharing them. When I do, my excitement often turns to despair as my betas rarely catch on.Though I’m ok with this (and I usually learn a ton along the way) I often lament over how much time I had put into building a web app just to test the value prop. Sometimes the prospect of it all going to waste can even be a huge demotivating force during the build.Regardless, I had always considered it a necessary evil to test my idea. Without really thinking about it, I hadn’t considered that anything less would be a fair test of an idea. Perhaps it was the engineer in me that thought about the technical considerations before what it really took to test a business.What I builtMy latest beau is Catsnatcher — a tool that gives profitability and competitive metrics on 40,000+ highly-specific Amazon categories so that sellers can find the perfect niche.Having spent months developing the necessary scripts to gather and analyse the info, I finally completed the data stage three weeks ago. I then started to break ground on the web app that would present this data to users.“If you’re not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.” — Reid Hoffman As a lone wolf, I quickly found myself frustrated when dealing with the mundanity of non-value add pieces (pretty much everything on the frontend). I had the data ready, wasn’t that enough for people? The medium wasn’t going to affect people‘s success on Amazon. ‘People don’t pay for buttons’, I told myself after three hours of trying to fix the damn buttons.Thinking about myself and all the time I had wasted on the presentation of previous betas — I put myself in the shoes of the customer and realised that if I was them, I wouldn’t care how this was given to me. My purchase would depend on the data available and if it serviced my need to be the best Amazon seller. In fact, part of me would probably trust data from a file more than a typical web app.Following research on the specs and planning what adjustments I’d have to make (more on these below), Google Sheets quickly became the favourite. After all, it includes:Data presentation — the well-known tabular format first made famous by excel is easy to navigate and isn’t much worse looking than a custom frame that would have taken days to tweakSorting — viewing metrics from highest-to-lowest and vice-versa is very important for analysing Amazon data Filtering — as with the above, people will be searching criteria based on parameters (e.g. rating < 4.2)Copy protection — data is my product, so if I didn’t use Google Sheets I would have had to install CloudFlare to prevent illicit scraping of my dataSharing/auth of users — its so easy to add new emails and adjust permissions of existing ones, I can even add people who provide a non-Google email!All of this could have taken me weeks or even months to build myself, not to mention maintenance. As I closed my IDE (for what was hopefully the last time), I asked around to make sure I hadn’t lost my mind:Running MVP on Google SheetsWhat I learnedThe new stack would be a Google Sheet that I added people to once they had paid me through my simple static HTML landing page. As I could export directly from PostgreSQL to CSV getting the data in would be as simple as drag and drop; however the remainder of the setup wasn’t all plain sailing.Although Google Sheets was handling huge chunks of my app stack (data frames, authentication, frontend protection from copy/paste) there were several limitations that simply wouldn’t have been an issue if I had taken those extra weeks to code an app instead:The maximum allowed cells possible in Sheets is 2M. I needed two sheets — one for the Categories and another for their constituent Item listings. Considering I started out with 40,000 Categories and over 500,000 Items and about 10–15 columns of metrics for each; keeping this many rows would have meant a lot fewer metrics on each to be compliant (no fewer than four for Items, in fact). Instead, I filtered some protected categories and ones I thought were useless to bring it down to 28,000 and instead of showing the top 20 Items for each Category for beta I decided to show just the top five (for a total row count of just over 100,000). This meant I could show off most of the important analyses (columns) I had made for both. I think my final tally of cells was about 1.8M.User permissions were probably my biggest challenge. I wanted people to be able to explore the data but not make edits, copy or download the data, which meant a regular Edit user option was off limits. View-only ended up being a decent option only because of filter views, which allow viewer users to use Sheets’ sort and filter options without affecting anyone else’s view. I did mess up whilst adding one of my first users and left him as an Edit user for three hours. Thankfully he’s a nice dude and opted not to steal my data or blow shit up. Unfortunately these view-only users do see each other’s Google icons if they use at the same time which is a bit weird, but for now this isn’t a big issue.Ease of use was definitely not as polished as it would have been in a regular app. The most memorable example I have is that I wasn’t able to link from a niche that a user had shortlisted to jump to the next tab and filter the constituent items that were within that — this would have been possible with a Google Script but there aren’t accessible to view-only users. Instead, I added a tutorial in the welcome email on how to do this manually. I gave users more detail into what each datapoint meant using the notes feature, where if you hover over a cell you can get more insight.As expected, performance is touchy when you’re at 90% capacity presenting hundreds of megabytes of data to your users. From testing myself, I noticed most of the lag was when initially opening the sheets, particularly the 500,000 row list of Items. I made a note in my email tutorial to give it some time to load initially before using. Although I expected the lag to get worse and worse as I added more users, filter-only views actually helped here, my understanding of how they work suggest that they defer a lot of the work to the user’s computer rather than Google’s compute/memory allocated to a sheet, thus not affecting others’ experience. I’d assume more overhead in scaling Edit users as the changes are seen and saved on everyone’s version of the sheet.Pricing wasn’t a limitation per se but it was clear that it needed to be more attractive to beta users due to all of the above. I’ll also be gathering feedback from them as I tweak the final draft of v1 in the coming weeks — so its only fair that its a bit cheaper. As it stands I’m charging $60 for two months access to the list ($30/month) and for the full app the fee will be closer to $40-$50/month for access — billed quarterly. I know this won’t suit everyone but I’m looking to build up a cache of serious Amazon Sellers, regardless of their stage in the journey.Usage and event analytics are super important for a new product —not only for informing the features in the full build but also for ensuring people use it and keep using it long enough to give meaningful feedback. Unfortunately there really is no way to track this in Sheets. I’ve overcome this by reaching out a little bit more to my users than is necessary to check that everything is going ok or if they have any issues.My product has no free trial, so people have to make their judgement to sign up based on what I say and show on my landing page. I figured this might be troublesome as I’d just be showing them a screenshot of a Google Sheet alongside a promise that it could help them be more successful. Part of me expected laughter when people saw a $60 price tag on a Google Sheet. Thankfully they saw past the wallpaper (see below). On balance, I feel it was still worth it — anything major outlined above was either overcome or just wasn’t as important to the end users or getting access to the data.LaunchThough nervous about the my light stack I decided that data was worth it so I’d charge $60 for two month’s beta access. Last week I launched on Product Hunt and I got several paying users within hours, and many more newsletter signups! I followed this up with a BetaList launch and have more targeted stuff scheduled for the coming week. The plan is to continue adding users to the Sheet and get their feedback as I build out the full app on the side.Despite being only part of the way through, I can say with confidence that its by far the best launch I’ve ever had (in far less time)!I am almost certain this is a result of outsourcing the app to Google Sheets and thus having more time to focus on messaging, sharing and nurturing new customers. This is important. Use your newly-freed time wisely. In my previous launches, I had put all my energy into the app, pasted the link and hoped for the best. As much as it pains the engineer in me to say it, this stuff is the life and soul of a business.Feel free to reach out on Twitter if you’re thinking of running a product beta on Sheets. Also (shameless plug), if you are an Amazon seller or considering becoming one, check out the Catsnatcher beta file to find your perfect high-profit, low competition niche!