#but again everyone there would be a subscriber and able to fast travel

[rohirric-hunter]

LotRO should make it so you can slow travel on the dock-masters in Evendim. I want to ride a boat across the lake.

[sineala]

How would you say fandom culture has changed over the years? What are some differences you notice between older and younger fandom folks?

I’ve been thinking for a while about how to answer this, and I’m not sure I have a really good answer, but I’m going to try.

I’ve been in fandom since approximately 1995. Maybe 1994. At that point, the world wide web was a relatively new part of the internet, and the fandoms I was in had most of their activity on privately-hosted mailing lists (predating eGroups/OneList/Yahoo Groups) and on Usenet newsgroups, with fiction beginning to be available on websites as part of either fandom-specific or pairing-specific archives as well as authors’ individual pages. Fanfiction.net did not yet exist. LiveJournal did not exist. AO3 definitely did not exist. If you wanted real-time chat, there was IRC. I was coming in basically at the tail end of zine fandom; zines were no longer the only way of distributing fanfiction, as fandom started to move online. So I have a selection of zines from 90s-era Western media fandoms but even by then zines weren’t where I was doing most of my reading.

I think in terms of generally “what it was like to be in fandom,” the big-picture stuff hasn’t changed. Fandom still produces creative fanwork and likes to, y’know, get together and talk about fandom. Also, almost every fight or complaint that fandom has about something is a thing that has been going on for actual years. People complain that, say, the kudos button is ruining comment culture because back in the LJ days the only way you could comment on a story was, well, by leaving an actual comment, or sending an email on a mailing list, and this might mean that people who would have otherwise commented have left a kudos instead. But back in the LJ and mailing list days, people were complaining that commenting was going downhill since the days of zines, when in order to comment on a story you had to write a real paper letter and mail it and because you had to do that, the quality of feedback was so much better than you got nowadays because people could just dash off a quick email or comment. You get the idea. Top/bottom wars are not new either. Pairing wars are not new. If you’ve been in fandom a while, you will pretty much have seen all the fights already. I think one thing that is new, though, is the fandom awareness of things like privilege and intersectionality and various -isms, as well as things like “providing warnings might be nice” (do you know how much unwarned deathfic I have read? a lot!) and I sure won’t say we’re perfect at any of this now, but I think fandom is trying way way more about all that stuff than it used to.

There are some fights we actually don’t have anymore, as far as I can tell. I feel like it’s been years since I’ve seen the “real person fiction is wrong” battle, but also I don’t hang out in a whole lot of RPF fandoms, so it’s possible that’s still going and I just don’t see it.

There also used to be a recurring debate about whether gay relationships that were canonical were slash or not. When slash started, obviously this wasn’t a question because there weren’t canonical gay relationships in fandoms, period. But as gay characters began to appear in media, people started to wonder “does slash mean all same-sex relationships, or does slash mean only non-canonical same-sex relationships?” Now, you may be reading this and think that sounds like an incredibly weird thing to get hung up on, but that’s because what appears to have happened is that the term “ship” (originally from X-Files Mulder/Scully fandom) has, as far as I can tell, come up and eaten most of the rest of the terminology. Now people will just say, “oh, I ship that.” For any pairing, gay or not, canonical or not. Fandom seems to have decided that for the most part it no longer actually needs a term specific to same-sex relationships as a genre.

Similarly, there are a few genres of fic that we used to have also pretty much don’t exist anymore. There are also plenty of genres that are well-entrenched now that are also extremely recent -- A/B/O comes to mind. But there are some kinds of fic we don’t write a lot of now. Like, I haven’t seen smarm in years! I also haven’t seen We’re Not Gay We Just Love Each Other in a while. There was also a particular style of slash writing where you’d basically have to explain, in detail, what made you think that these particular characters could be anything other than straight. You’d have to motivate this decision. You’d have to look at their canonical heterosexual relationships and come up with a way to explain why all those had happened in order to reconcile how this one guy could have romantic feelings for another guy. When had he figured out he wasn’t straight? Who might he have been with before? How does he interact with people in ways that make you think he’s not straight? That kind of thing. You had to, essentially, show your work. And these days a lot of fanfic is just like, “Okay, Captain America is bisexual, let’s go!” It’s... different.

Fandom also used to skew older, is my sense. A lot older. I don’t know, actually, if it really was older, but I get the sense now that there are some younger people who are surprised that adults are still in fandom. I have seen people saying these days that they think they’re too old for fanfiction because they are not in middle school anymore. And I think a lot of this has to do with the fact that the barriers to access fandom are a lot lower than they used to be. You used to basically have to be an adult with disposable income (or know an adult with disposable income who was willing to help you out; but even then if you were reading explicit fiction you also had to swear you were 18+, usually by sending in an age statement to whoever you were buying the zine from or to the mods of the list you wanted to join, so a lot of fandom was very much age-gated). Internet access was not widely available. Even if you had internet access, you maybe didn’t have your own email address, so you couldn’t sign up for mailing lists; free email providers didn’t exist. If you wanted to buy zines, you had to have money to buy them. If you wanted to go to cons, you had to be able to afford the cost of the con, travel to the con, et cetera. If you wanted to have a website you had to know HTML. Social media did not exist. You want to draw art? Guess what, you’re probably drawing it on paper! You might be able to upload a picture to your website if you have a digital camera or a scanner, but both of those things are expensive, and also a lot of people don’t have the capability or the money to download pictures from the internet (some people have data caps with overage charges, and some people have text-only connections!), so they won’t get to see it. Maybe you can sell your piece at a con! You want to make a fanvid? We called them songvids, but, anyway, you know how you’re doing that? You’re going to hook two VCRs together and smash the play and record buttons very fast! If you want anyone else to watch them, you are either making them a tape personally and mailing it to them or bringing your vids to a convention. Maybe you can digitize them and upload them, but it’s going to take people hours to download them!

(Every three hours my ISP would kick me off the internet and I’d have to dial in again. If it was a busy time of day, it might take me 20 or 30 minutes to get a connection again. And that was assuming no one else in the house needed to use the phone line. Imagine if your modem went out every three hours now.)

And now, for the cost of my internet connection, I can read pretty much whatever fanfiction I want, whenever I want it. I can see all the fanart I want! I can watch vids! Podfic exists now! Fanmixes exist! Gifsets and moodboards exist! If I want to write fic I can write it with programs that are completely free, and as soon as I post it everyone in the entire world can read it. If I want to draw or make vids that may require some additional investment, but I may also be able to do it with things I already have. Do you have any idea how good we all have it?

There are a couple of kinds of fan activity that don’t seem to exist anymore, though, and I miss them. I know that roleplaying still goes on, but I feel like these days most people who do real-time text roleplay have switched to things like Discord. I know that in the LJ days, RP communities were popular. But I really miss MU*s (MUDs, MUSHes, MOOs, MUXes..), which were servers for real-time text-based RP with a bunch of... hmm... features to aid RP. There were virtual rooms with text descriptions, and objects in virtual rooms with descriptions, and your character had a description, and they could interact with the objects as well as with other characters, and you could program things to change descriptions or emit various kinds of text or take you to different rooms, and so on. Just to, y’know, enhance the atmosphere. It was fun and it was where I learned to RP and I’m sad they’re pretty much gone now.

I also don’t think I see a lot of fanfiction awards in fandoms. Wonder where they went.

Going back to the previous point, the barriers to actually consuming the canon you are fannish about are way, way, way lower now. You can pretty much take it for granted that if right now someone tells you about a shiny new fandom, there will be a way to read that book or watch that show or movie right now. Possibly for free! Of course you can watch it! Why wouldn’t you be able to?

This was absolutely, absolutely not the case before. I’m currently in Marvel Comics fandom. If there is a comic I want to read, I can read it right now on the internet. I have subscribed to Marvel Unlimited and I can read pretty much every comic that is older than three months old; the newer ones cost extra money. But I can do it all from the comfort of my own home right now. I was also, actually, in Marvel Comics fandom in the nineties. If I wanted to read a comic, I had to go to a comic book store and hope they had it in stock; if they didn’t, I had to try another store. Not a lot of comics were available in trade paperback and they definitely weren’t readable on the internet. I used to read a lot of Gambit h/c fic set after Uncanny X-Men #350. I never found a copy of UXM #350. I still haven’t! But I did eventually read it on Unlimited.

Being in TV show fandoms also had similar challenges. Was the show you were watching still on the air? No? Then you’d better hope you could find it in reruns, or know someone who had tapes of it that they could copy for you, otherwise you weren’t watching that show. It was, I think, pretty common for people to be in fandoms for shows they hadn’t seen, because they had no way to see the show, but they loved all the fanfic. The Sentinel had a whole lot of fans like that, both because I think it took a while for it to end up in reruns and because overseas distribution was probably poor. So you’d get people who read the fic and wrote fic based on the other fic they’d read, which meant that you got massive, massive amounts of fanon appearing that people just assumed was in the show because it was a weirdly specific detail that appeared in someone’s fic once. Like “Jim and Blair’s apartment has a small water heater” (not actually canonical) or “Blair is a vegetarian” (there’s an episode where his mother visits and IIRC cooks him one of his favorite meals, which is beef tongue).

Like, I was in The Professionals fandom for years. I read all the fic. I hadn’t seen the show. As far as I know, it never aired in the US, and it certainly never had any kind of US VHS or DVD release. I’d seen a couple songvids. I eventually saw a couple episodes in maybe 2003, and that was because my dad special-ordered a commercial VHS tape from the UK and paid someone to convert it from PAL to NTSC. I didn’t get to see the whole show until several years later when I got a region-free DVD player someone in fandom sent me burned copies of the UK DVD releases and then I special-ordered the commercial release of the DVDs from the UK myself. But if I were a new fan and wanted to watch Pros right now? It is on YouTube! For free!

I think also one of the things about fandom that’s not immediately evident to new fans is the way in which it is permanent and/or impermanent. There are probably people whose first fannish experience is on Tumblr or who only read fanfic on FFN and who have no idea what they would do if either site, say, just shut down. But if you’ve been in fandom a while, you’ve been through, say, Discord, Tumblr, Twitter, Pillowfort, Imzy, DW, JournalFen, LJ, GeoCities, IRC, mailing lists. And sure, if Tumblr closed, it would be inconvenient. But fandom would pack up and move somewhere else. You would find it again. It would, eventually, be okay. Similarly, if you’ve been in a lot of fandoms, if you’ve made a lot of friends, drifting through fandoms is like that. You’ll make a friend in 1998 because you were in the same fandom, and then you might go your own ways, and ten years later you might be in another fandom with them again! It happens.

But the flip side of that is that I think a lot of older fans have learned not to trust in the permanence of any particular site. If you like a story, you save it as soon as you read it. If you like a piece of art, you save it. If you like a vid, you save it. Because you don’t know when the site it’s on will be gone for good. I have, like, twenty years of lovingly-curated fanfic. And I feel like people who have only been in fandom since AO3 existed might not understand how much AO3 is a game-changer compared to what we had before. It’s a site where you can put your fic up and you don’t have to worry that the webhost is going out of business, or that the site might delete your work because they don’t allow gay fiction or explicit fiction or fiction written in second person or fiction for fandoms where the creator doesn’t like fanfiction, or whatever. Because all of those things have absolutely happened. But, I mean, I still save pretty much everything I like, even on AO3, just in case.

So, basically, yeah, fandom is a whole lot more accessible than it used to be. I think fandom is pretty much still fandom, but it’s a lot easier to get into, and that has made it way more open to people who wouldn’t have been able to be in fandom before. There is so, so much more now than there ever was before, and I think that’s great.

[interact-if]

Taking the spotlight for Day 6... Lucirene!

Lucirene, author of An Angel’s Song

Latino Heritage Month Featured Author

In the forest of Bres an otherworldly sickness corrodes the soil and changes the creatures within. “A parting gift from the fallen angels”  say the citizens of the Hyaku Region and the mark on your hand confirms it.

Though the scent travelling in the air is sweet and enticing everyone knows better than to get closer. But the mark, it pulses, it burns, the pain spreading as fast as the corruption of the forest does.

Your masters are calling, and it seems like this time you cannot escape them.

An Angel’s Song Demo | Author’s Ko-fi | Author’s Patreon | Read more [here]

Tags: dark fantasy, romance

(INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT UNDER THE CUT!)

Q1: So, tell us a little bit about the projects you’re working on!

I have so many, but the only one public is An Angel’s Song. It’s, more than anything, a story about grief, loneliness and overcoming it all while navigating a hostile environment and discovering long lost secrets about the Divine and about the MC’s country. That one is very cathartic for me to make because of the themes, I feel like I’m working through a lot of feelings I didn’t even realize I had by writing it.

The next one is also an IF and it focuses on comedy, adventure and character interaction. It’s supposed to be more lighthearted, more fun, but knowing me… I don’t know if it’ll stay that way. Basically, it goes: A Captain’s boat falls prey to the storms and the strange creatures living under the sea, and they and their crew end up washing ashore an icy, snowy country. I already have the main cast written down and they have so much synergy, it’s amazing.

And the last one I’ll talk about (a traditional novel) actually happens in the same setting as my second IF, but many, many years before, when their local deity/guardian was born. It’s more of a romance-fantasy than anything, a love story between a Goddess and a half-dragon, however it also showcases many of the situations the people had to navigate and face before their country could become the place you’ll see in my second IF.

Q2: What excites you most about using interactive fiction? What are some of the biggest challenges?

What I like most definitely is how much freedom we have as authors. Of course, one is constrained by one’s ability to code but I think, for the most part, we can do so many things, reach an entirely new level of immersion that would not be possible with a regular novel. It’s amazing how sometimes I’m reading something and get so into it, feel so connected to the MC I feel dread when they do, panic when they have to make a choice that will clearly impact a lot of people in their world. With IF you can really feel like you’re part of the story.

Another thing I like is being able to explore other paths with my writing. Like for example, what if the MC had done this instead of that? How would that have affected their relationships, their world state? Writing branches is a lot of work, especially because they could change so many things, but it feels oddly satisfying when you do decide to include them. 

Challenges… Coding, mainly. I feel like a lot of new aspiring IF authors are a bit afraid of coding and I can understand that, especially since, had it not been for the help of the community, I would have taken way longer to actually start using Twine. Hopefully with time for resources come up and it becomes less daunting.

I don’t know if any other author feels the same way but, though I think branching is a blessing, it is also a curse. I can only write the same conversation so many times, I mean I know I’m writing it in different tones and sometimes with different results but it gets frustrating after a while because it feels like you’re stuck, like you’re not progressing at all.

Another one would definitely be finding a balance between reader interaction and just following your vision. Since it’s IF at times I feel like I have to meet a quota of branches or ways in which you can react, sometimes I also find it difficult to make the MC feel like a real person instead of a reader-insert. I’m working on that.

Q3: What has been something in your project you’ve had to do a weird amount of research for?

That’s a difficult one… I don’t know if I would consider it weird but I do tend to investigate a lot about fashion, especially when designing the main outfits of the characters. I spend hours trying to find out what colors were used back then, what they meant, who was allowed to use them. I have this little image with some palettes for kimonos depending on the season.

I also spend too much time coming up with names, especially for places. Like I look up names of places that already exist, what they mean, I try to investigate if the words that I want to use make sense, then I panic because I can’t find anything, but I think that’s usual for writers. I also spent more time than necessary researching for the name of a tree that you will see way later in the book, which no one will probably notice what the name of the tree means or what it symbolizes but it makes me happy.

Honestly, I feel like the amount of research I have had to do has not been particularly weird? If anything at times I think I should research more, even if some aspects of Japanese culture will not apply to Kyou.

Q4: Which of your characters is most like you? How?

The initial version of the MC from An Angel’s Song, which I miss dearly since they had more personality. They were autistic coded too, and I hope some traces of that still remain. Apart from that I feel like all of the characters from the main cast share something with me, even if their experiences are, of course, more dramatic than my own.

A lot of them have issues with a paternal figure or an absent mother, which also resonates with me. Some of Saori’s traits draw inspiration from ways in which I talked or acted before I became a little better at masking, before I became more self-aware. Hazuki being emotional and caring, K being a bit clingy but devoted, Masa having a temper yet loyal, Miwa being friendly but reluctant to open up beyond surface level information. I think those things describe me.

There’s also Rei but I don’t think I’m writing her book anytime soon. She’s someone that’s very family oriented, she’s a bit temperamental but she means well and she’s not afraid to speak her mind. Now that I think about it, maybe Rei is more the person I want to become.

Q5: Does your heritage influence your characters as you create them? (How? Why or why not?)

I’ve been living in Venezuela my whole life so I think so, even if most of the time I don’t even notice it. I believe that this happens especially in regards to relationships because people in Venezuela are very family oriented and also, from what I’ve experienced, they form strong bonds with their neighbors, which creates this strong sense of community —sometimes it goes well, sometimes it doesn’t, but my mom and her friends always make at least some friends in their neighborhoods and they gossip with some coffee about the happenings of the rest—. So when it comes to writing a character it is very important to me to make an emphasis on family relationships because those are a strong part of my culture, of my identity. 

In An Angel’s Song you have the main cast having issues or conflicting emotions about one or multiple members of their family, which influence their behavior and their outlook on life, but for the most part they are (or will be) able to form similar relationships with people that are not related to them, or to work towards restoring that relationship, transforming it into something healthier. 

In my other books family dynamics are also immensely important. For example, I’m going to mention Rei again because I love her. So, Rei has a sister named Rin, and they are both very close, even if they haven’t spent much time together. Their bond and trust in each other helps them overcome a lot of obstacles and they rely on each other when they need support or encouragement. Rei also has other people that she thinks of as siblings, and restoring that relationship with them is one of her main goals. There’s also this recurring guilt she feels at leaving her birth family and her home to explore, because to her, families are supposed to stay together.

Another aspect that I think influences my writing is religion, even if I wasn’t raised in a particularly religious household nor do I belong to any religion. Religion is a big deal in this country, we have so many events and holidays relating to religious figures. I remember when I was very young I loved going to one of the churches here because the Virgin of that town had a building filled with pretty clothes to dress her with. 

So, in that vein, I try to think about the character’s relationship with religion, do they believe in the Gods? Do they trust them? Do they follow local deities or prefer the main pantheon? How does this religion shape the way people interact with each other and the world? In regards to characters that are Venezuelan or Venezuelan-coded… I do have a few that are Venezuelan, but I don’t think I’m going to be releasing their stories soon, so I’ll keep it quiet for now.

Q6: What is something you love to see in interactive fiction?

People being passionate about their work! This isn’t something exclusive to IF, but it is something that I love seeing. I also like seeing the different ways people innovate within the genre. I feel like sometimes, especially with newer writers, there is this idea that an IF has to subscribe to a specific format and that’s simply not true. If you don’t want to use a stat system you don’t have to, if you want to add combat then go ahead, if you would prefer to write an MC that’s already pretty pre-established (which is something that I personally want to try) then there’s nothing stopping you and I encourage you to give it a go. IF is very versatile and it’s wrong to try and fit authors into a box, especially if they want to bring something new into our little corner of the internet.

Q7: Any advice to give?

In general, I advise people to have fun writing, to not worry so much about how good it is, about if people will like it. Writing, at the end of the day, ends up being a pretty solitary activity and having those thoughts in your head too long will make you spiral. Be kind to yourself, be open to feedback when it comes (and learn to distinguish constructive feedback from destructive feedback) and enjoy the exploration of your world and characters. 

You are not alone in all of this. If you can, join a group of writers you can talk with, exchange ideas, get feedback from or just exchange memes (the ultimate bonding experience). Don’t be afraid, you’re not alone.

[averytiredfanfictionwriter]

The Immortals- Chapter Two

Chapter Two is up! I hope you guys liked the first chapter. Comment if you want to be added to a tag list for the series, and I’ll add you. Also, reblogs and comments are very much appreciated! And as always, if you want to read this on Ao3 instead, here’s the link. And the chapters have been going out a day or so early on there, so if you want you can subscribe to me on there and be ahead of everyone else reading the chapter. But yeah, enjoy the chapter guys! Trigger Warnings/Content Warning: Nothing

Chapter One | Chapter Three

“Phil, I think we need to have a talk about Techno.” Ash says gently, watching as Phil visibly tenses at the mention of his adopted son.

“There’s nothing to talk about. Not right now at least.” He says sternly, but Ash merely waves off the statement.

“I think I should take him away from here. At least until I can teach him how to not give in to the voices. Because you and I both know he hears them. We need to teach him how to control them, before he kills Wilbur- or one of us.”

Philza finally looks away from the sink where he was washing the dishes. “And where are you going to take him where he won’t be a threat to anything that breathes?” Phil yells angrily, throwing his hands up in the air in frustration.

“Anywhere, as long as he’s with me. He needs guidance, and more than you can provide Phil. He needs to learn from someone who suffers from hearing voices just like does. Who can’t help their destructive powers but learned to control them. Phil, he needs more than he can get here. And it needs to be somewhere where Wilbur and Tommy aren’t. Please, he needs this. Let me do what’s right for him.” Ash yells, the action shocking Phil who’s never seen the older woman so much as raise her voice.

“Okay. Just, be careful.” He whispers, pulling her into a hug.

“I will, I promise.”

 Well, that was a fucking lie, Ash thinks as she and Techno dodge the arrows currently being fired by another mortal behind them.

“Come on, I think I see a tunnel over there!” She yells out, running to the right with Techno following after her.

She was correct, stumbling blindly inside for a second and then falling down completely as her partner fell down on top of her.

“Ouch,” she hisses, feeling him immediately get off of her and hoist Ash to her feet.

“Sorry. Where do we go now?” He asks, a hint of nervousness present in his voice.

“Our only choice is wherever this leads to. Let’s go. Watch your step, we don’t know what might be down here.” Ash mumbles, latching a hand onto Techno’s wrist and slowly starting to make her way down the tunnel with the younger boy in tow.

It’s been a year since she and Techno left Phil, and they’ve been in more situations like this than they can count. And honestly, they’re living for it. The fast paced action, the fighting, the sleeping under the stars- Ash finds herself reminiscing on her old traveling companion, wishing for his company once again as she runs through the dark tunnel of life, both literally and metaphorically.

Ash and Techno break through the end of the tunnel finally, finding themselves in what is pretty much the middle of nowhere.

“Uh, where are we?” Techno asks, his grip on his sword tighter than it was before.

“I don’t know. But keep an eye out. The grass is awfully tall.” Ash finds herself wishing more than ever that Dream was with her, his sharp eyesight was always extremely useful and she misses the advantage it brought in unfamiliar places.

“Okay.”

The two walk through the field, trying to stay as silent as possible in the dry grass, but failing miserably. The sun sets to their backs, illuminating the grass in a fiery orange and red glow.

“Let’s stop here for the night. I don’t think anyone’s going to find us here.” Ash says quietly.

They step into the dark cave, checking that there’s nothing in there and then starting a fire deeper inside.

“Yesterday, when we were at the town's library, you said that no one can see you. Why not?” Techno breaks the silence.

“Well, Phil told you about the three immortals that created all three dimensions, right?” Techno nods. “Well, I… am one of them. I created the End dimension, and the creatures that live there. My friend, Dream, created the overworld, and all its creatures, and then… god… what was his name,” Ash thinks for a moment, unable to remember the name of the third person that was with them,” I don’t know. But a third person created the nether dimension. Us and the mortals got along great, but then the immortal children were starting to be born, and they were full of anger and spite for us three. They waged wars against us, burnt down entire countries, killed countless mortals, all to try and get to us. Well, one day the mortals all came to an agreement, and decided we needed to be locked up or killed. Me and Dream managed to escape, and watched as the mortals tortured and killed the immortal children. We lived on the run for a long time after that. I met your father when he was a baby. He'd been left on the side of the road, and I raised him until he was 18, but we lost contact soon after. Then about 100 years ago, we found each other again and stuck together from there.” Ash finishes, staring into the fire in front of her.

“What happened to Dream?” Techno asks, his usually monotone voice now full of curiosity.

“I don’t know. We got separated one day and I haven’t been able to find him since. I’ve looked everywhere since that day, but there’s nothing- no trace of him anywhere. Well, you need to get some sleep. I’ll take watch tonight.” Ash says, letting the fire dim a little bit as she makes her way to the front of the cave.

“Hey Ash?” Techno asks from inside.

“Yeah?”

“Do you think the mortals managed to kill him?” He asks.

“No. They can’t. If they had, I would know. His powers would have been given to me and that’s not exactly a painless process. Besides, me and Dream are true immortals. We can never die.” No matter how much we might want to, she finishes in her head, sitting down on the cold stone and staring off into the clear night.

[gureishi]

prompt 2 with v tysm take care of you ^^

Thank you for this wonderful request, and apologies for taking my time writing it!

I thought a whole lot about this prompt and Jihyun and my mind said PINING and I wrote this long, sprawling thing. It’s a slightly different format from my other requests—I hope you don’t mind! Writing this made me feel all kinds of things. ♡♡

two: fall into yours arms again

JihyunxReader, G, words: 3620

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・

97 days

It’s windy today.

You wake up late and throw open the window that you can reach from your bed. The sun’s already high in the sky and beating down through the thin, gauzy curtains. You need to buy new curtains.

The window sticks; you push; it opens. The cool breeze whips through your hair, in stark contrast to the sun—nauseatingly hot and dry. The wind cools your neck, wipes away the last remnants of what you suspect was a nightmare.

Though it’s June, the air still smells of spring. The azaleas in the community garden down the street have wilted, but some of their fragrance is in the air today, and it startles you, spins your head around.

He left in March and the chaos of April and May have been locked away in your memory, behind a wall that says think about this later. Now it’s undeniably summer, the days lengthening, your tendency to sleep through the morning worsening. Time has slowed: the afternoons feel languid and the nights unbearably long. You stretch, letting your shirt—his shirt—fall off your shoulder. It’s long lost its scent by now, grown softer as you’ve slept in it, worn it while cleaning up the little loft you once lived in by yourself. You lived here what feels like forever ago, before you made the misguided decision that led to your life turning upside down and now, somehow, righting itself in ways you still don’t understand.

“I miss you,” you mouth into the wind.

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191 days

When you get home you’re shivering, underdressed and underprepared for the turn in the weather. You turn the key in the lock, shoulders hunched against the cruel chill that has abruptly permeated your quiet little neighborhood.

You slip inside and shut the door, the wind chimes jangling harshly. You toss your things haphazardly to the side—keys, bag, sunglasses, coffee cup. Everything you needed for the day except a stupid jacket.

The house is cool, too—the wood floors retain some of the warmth of summer but you haven’t turned the heat on yet out of some convoluted mixture of stubbornness and frugality. You shrug on your thickest, floppiest sweater and move through the house, closing the windows one at a time. You shouldn’t have left them open to begin with.

You survey the mess you’ve made: bag spilling out onto your multicolored shag rug, sunglasses hanging over the hand-painted lamp on the side table. You decide to leave them there.

As you so often do lately, you slip into the well-worn chair at your small desk in the corner, under the little window that faces north. You rub your hands together, gaze at the growing pile of paper, stacked precariously high. You know there’s work to be done, emails to be answered—instead, you pull a new sheet of paper toward you, begin a letter than can never be sent.

“How are you?” you write. “It’s getting cold here. I hope it’s warm where you are.” You pause, well-chewed pen cap in your mouth. Scrawl the words you know he won’t read on the paper you have no way to send to him. “I think about you,” you write. “Every single day.”

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277 days

You laugh and wave and laugh again as you see the grey cloud your warm breath makes in the air.

You call out a last goodbye toward your friends’ receding backs and then wrap your scarf more tightly around your neck, feeling the cold more strongly now that you’re alone. You make your way back through your neighborhood, stopping only to pet the head of the tabby cat that your down-the-street neighbor lets roam free. The sun is setting—the midday chill is turning to a biting evening cold.

You approach your little loft: open the gate, half-run down the path. When, you think, will this feel like a home again? How long, you wonder, till this feels more real that those two weeks that are still illuminated in your memory, brighter even than the events of yesterday or last month or last summer?

Automatically, you check your mailbox. Automatically, you riffle through the bills you can just barely pay and the magazines subscribed to by the apartment’s former occupants. At the very bottom, there’s an envelope, one side covered completely in stamps. You climb the steps, peering at it curiously. You recognize the writing.

You trip.

You should get back up and go in the house and turn on the lights—open the letter where it’s warm and bright. But instead you stay right where you are, on the bottom step, jacket twisted up under you. You tear off one mitten, your hands shaking a little, and open the envelope.

“Dearest,” he’s written. “I don’t know if I’ve sent this the right way or how long it will take to reach you.”

There are already frozen tears on your eyelashes, blurring your vision. You wipe them away frantically with your other hand, still engulfed in your warm, chunky mitten.

“There’s no regular post office where I am so I had to improvise,” he goes on. His thin, messy scrawl is the same as you remember it. You can feet your heartbeat in your fingertips. “Still, that’s no excuse. I’ve written so many letters to you and thrown so many away. I never knew where to begin. I hope you can forgive me.”

The tears are falling hard and fast now, and you give up on wiping them, squinting to read the minuscule letters he’s crammed onto one single sheet of paper.

He describes where he’s staying in detail. It’s beautiful and evocative and you can tell that he’s stalling.

He asks after you—how your work has been going, how you’ve settled back into your own home, if you’ve been eating well. He asks after the RFA too, one at a time, by name. This answers a question that’s been lingering in the back of your mind—so it’s true, you think. He’s written to no one else.

The final paragraph is neater that the rest, as if he’s written and re-written it, practiced and copied it over.

“I am trying to live in the present moment and not worry over the future,” he says. “But every night I can’t help but imagine the life we could have together, when we are both ready. Do you imagine it too?” Your eyes are blurry with tears. “I miss you,” he writes, and you mouth the words as you read them, almost able to hear them in his sweet, gentle voice.

“If you don’t feel like writing me, I’ll understand,” he says. “But I’ll be at this address for some time, so please do write, if you like.” You think of all the letters, the ever-growing pile on and under your desk. You giggle through your tears, imagining how much it would cost to send them all. 

He signs the letter “Yours.” At the bottom he’s added cramped letters, so small you have to bend over, nose almost touching the paper, to read them. “By the way,” he writes. “Please call me Jihyun.” 

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352 days

To you, March will always be him: the sudden rain showers in the midst of sunny days are his eyes and the scent of plum blossoms in the air is the indescribable warmth of his arms.

There’s a string of pictures now above your bed—you’ve hung each one that he’s sent, strung them up on a piece of bright green yarn. When you told him you’d started doing this, he began sending them with a hole already punched in the top—delicate, perfectly round, just the right size.

You sit on the floor, bare legs extended in front of you, a book propped on your lap.

“All the snow has melted except for the one, long icicle outside my window,” you write. “I think I’ve grown attached to it, and I’ll be sad when it’s gone.”

Your letters have grown longer over the months—his last was five whole pages, front and back. He sends photographs he’s taken of the beautiful landscape where he’s living and sketches he’s made, mostly of nature—and a few of you.

He includes vague references to his companion, and though he’s never mentioned him by name, it’s become clear to you who he’s with. It’s brought you immense comfort to know—if not in much detail—that he is alive and well.

“Tomorrow I’ll be seeing everyone,” you write. “I know you both still need more time, but not being able to give them any news is killing me. Not everyone is doing so well, you know.” You bite your lip, consider crossing off the last few lines. You don’t. He’s healing—and you’d give anything in the world to ensure that he has the space and time he needs. That they both do. But the time you spend with the other members has been dwindling and the evidence of their suffering—some of them more than others—is becoming abundantly clear.

“I think I want to have a party,” you write. “Not for months, maybe longer, but I want to start thinking about it. I think it might help.”

You sip from the glass of water you’ve set on the floor next to you, swirl it around a little to listen to the sound of the ice clinking.

“I miss you desperately,” you write. “And I love you, Jihyun.”

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478 days

The song that plays through your headphones is soft and pretty, not nearly loud enough to drown out the shouting of the street vendors and the overall atmosphere of chaos. It’s Sunday, and you’ve ventured into the city to shop. You don’t love the crowds or the fast pace, but you do relish the savory scents drifting from food stalls and the feeling of your thin pants swooshing against your legs.

You hoist the two large fabric grocery bags up; they’re nearly slipping out of your sweat-slick hands again. The mid-afternoon July sun beats down on you. You slow your pace.

It’s been a few weeks since you’ve gotten a letter. This isn’t shocking—he’s staying somewhere new now, and it’s even more remote than before. He has to travel into town to mail his letters, so the gaps between them have grown longer. You’re used to it, but you still can’t help feeling like a cold hand is clenching around your heart whenever you check the mailbox and find it empty.

You reach the train station, grip both bags with one hand so you can tap your card. You go through the motions: standing in the station, boarding the train. As you have so many times, you repeat the words of his last letter in your mind. You know it by heart.

“I bought plane tickets last week,” he wrote. “He hasn’t been feeling well the last few days and we decided together to cancel them.”

This isn’t a first either—the tickets bought, the tickets cancelled. And you know that it isn’t just Jihyun’s “companion” who needs more time. They are both still healing—physically, mentally, emotionally.

“Please tell me when you decide on a date for the party,” he wrote. “I’m sorry to hear the plans aren’t going smoothly. And I’m sorrier that I can’t offer the other members some solace—particularly where it concerns him. I must respect his wish for privacy.”

The train is packed; you set your bags at your feet so you can hold on. The gentle rocking motion is familiar; the air conditioning is a relief.

“I saw a flower yesterday that I couldn’t identify. It was raining here, but the flower’s petals were open. I was afraid it would wilt from the force of the rain, but it didn’t. I watched it for a long time, and saw the raindrops collect inside it. I thought of you.”

The train rumbles to a stop. More people get on. You adjust. A new song plays in your headphones—it’s slow and a little melancholy.

“Every morning I imagine the things I will do with you in our bright and beautiful future,” he wrote.

The train picks up speed again. Sweaty people read newspapers and speak quietly to one another, underscored by the gentle music in your ears. You close your eyes.

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555 days

You run to catch the bus, the leaves crunching delightfully under your feet. It’s pulling into your stop as you’re crossing the street and—why does this always happen?—you bow your head and sprint, waving frantically at the driver.

The driver sees you. Smiles. Waits.

“Thank you,” you pant, jumping the steps two at a time. 

“It’s okay. I remember you.”

Ouch.

You stumble to a seat and collapse into it. If you’re late for the bus often enough that the driver remembers you, you’ve really got to try and pull yourself together.

You comb a hand through your sweaty hair. It’s hard, as it turns out, planning an RFA party while keeping up with your old life—you’ve got one foot in the world of working and cleaning and paying bills and the other in the world of CEOs and mysterious guests and anonymous donors.

As you’re catching your breath, you pull the newest letter from your bag. It arrived just this morning—perhaps that was why you almost missed the bus again—and you’ve only read it once so far. You scan the page with eager eyes, searching as you so often do for clues and hints and promises hidden between the lopsided words.

“I made a painting today,” he tells you. “I won’t describe it to you, because I want to show it to you in person.”

But when? you want to ask. You can’t help the frustration that’s creeping under your skin. The bus rocks; you lean your head against the window.

“I’ve realized something,” he writes. “I wonder what you think about it. I feel closer to you than I’ve felt to anyone before. And yet every day I find things I still don’t know about you, because of our circumstances. What are your favorite things to eat? What smells make you reminisce about the past? What music makes you sleepy?”

You sigh, fold up the letter. It’s true, you think. You love him with a warmth that encompasses your whole being—a feeling you’d never even dared to imagine. But how does his face look in the morning when he sleeps through his alarm? Which groceries does he always forget to buy?

You don’t write these questions down. Instead you turn over the letter, scribble on the back. 

“The party will be March 24th.”

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641 days

It hardly snows this winter, but it rains. The sound of the rain fills your dreams: it pounds on the roof of your little apartment, and you wake up and run to the kitchen to check that the window is closed. It fills your waking hours, thrumming on your giant umbrella as you navigate the narrow streets of the city. When it lets up, you still hear it, humming in your eardrums, reverberating inside your chest.

You sit at your desk again. No longer is it covered in stacks of paper, records of yearning—those letters have been long sent or put away in pretty boxes with colored lids. Your laptop buzzes, hopelessly trying to cool itself down. You press send and cut the frightening number of messages in your inbox down by just one more.

You lean back in your chair. The rain goes tap tap tap on the roof and you rub your sore neck. It’s a Friday night and even in this weather, you can hear the distant sounds of people gathering at the bar on the corner. You open another email.

“I’m working hard,” you wrote in your last letter to him. “Sometimes I feel that I can barely keep up with it all. Other times I’m sure I’m burying myself in all of this work on purpose, making myself busy so I don’t have to feel lonely.”

You scan the email with expert eyes, dash off a quick reply. Both are true, you suppose—planning a proper party, not one hastily thrown together in a few weeks under extreme circumstances, is a full-time job all on its own. But you are lonely, you think, taking a break to stretch your arms over your head. There are people around you all the time, but your chest feels hollow. “I’m taking good care of myself,” you wrote to him last week. “I do feel fulfilled. But…”

But you can no longer re-create in your mind the exact way that he smells, the sweet freshness of nuzzling your face into his shoulder. You can’t always hear his voice clearly in your mind when you read the sweet, beautiful words he writes to you. “I love you like the way the ocean crashes into the rocks and then spills peacefully over the sand,” he writes. “Does that make sense?”

It does.

You shake your head to clear it, type a few brief, carefully-worded lines.

“I’m ready,” you say out loud, and the words echo in your apartment: warm and cluttered and bright and full to the brim with thoughts of him. “I’m ready when you are.”

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702 days

For the first time, you wait to read his letter.

You find it in the mailbox as you’re leaving in the morning and you whisper “patience” to yourself as you walk to the bus. You wait at the light, you cross the street. You sit at the bus stop for two whole minutes before the bus arrives and the driver raises his eyebrows at you in surprise.

“Patience,” you whisper to yourself again as you exit the bus, breathing in the fresh, early-spring air. And “patience,” you think, as you greet the venue manager and listen to her running through the event checklist for what feels like the eight hundredth time.

“Almost,” you tell yourself as you leave, taking a picture on your phone of the orange and purple sky. You board the bus again, watch the sunset fade into star-speckled navy through the smudged window.

“Now,” you say out loud as you unlock the door to your flat, hanging your light jacket and keys on the hooks you’ve recently mounted by the door. “Now.”

You tear into the letter as you make your way to the bedroom, turning on lamps as you go, bathing the room in amber light.

You pull out the paper and your hands, steady all day, start to shake. You hold it up to the light. It’s shorter than usual. He’s written your name at the top and he’s answered your questions, described a walk he took on the waterfront yesterday, offered updates on the plants growing beside the house where he’s staying.

And at the bottom, he’s sketched a picture in light blue ink. His lines are soft and wavy, but the details are clear: it’s two plane tickets. They’re dated.

You inhale sharply.

Thirty-two more days.

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734 days

It’s warm, but not too warm. The lights are dim, but not too dim. The air is lightly scented like spring flowers and rain, but it’s not overwhelming, and the chatter of the crowd is enthusiastic and warm.

In other words, you’ve done a very good job.

You step onto the balcony for a moment, patting your red cheeks with both hands. You’ve been receiving compliments all night and it’s made you feel like you’re floating several centimeters off the ground. You’re proud of yourself—you worked hard for this.

But as the night’s worn on, your anticipation has built to a fever pitch, and you have to keep reminding yourself to breathe. If he were arriving on any other day, you’d be meeting him in private— and would you feel more or less nervous, then? You can’t decide.

But of course it’s today, because the most important events of your life always seem to coalesce around each other. There’s a beautiful garden surrounding the party venue and you take comfort in the ivy wrapped around the wrought-iron trellis; it reaches almost as high as your eye level and its balance of sturdiness and delicacy gives you strength.

You slip back inside, take in the groups of expensively-dressed people clustered around tall, elegant tables. There’s a string quartet in one corner and a mouth-watering array of hors d’oeuvres arranged toward the back wall.You straighten out your clothes surreptitiously, sneak a peak at the clock, flash a bright smile at the nearest group of guests .

And then, for a reason you’ll never be able to explain, you know what’s about to happen. Your eyes fly to the door. You gravitate toward it like a moth to a lamp and you know no one else has noticed but somehow you feel that the room has quieted for you.

The door opens. Your hands fly to your mouth.

“Hi,” he says.

He’s always been spring to you but it’s as if he’s brought summer with him. He’s taller than you remember and his collared shirt is open and he’s got the warmest smile you’ve seen in your whole life. Your thrill and worry and hope are reflected in his bright eyes. 

He holds out a hand—cautiously, as if afraid you’ll float away. You take it and his fingers are soft and cool, like the petals of a flower.

“Welcome home,” you say. “Jihyun.”

★・・・・・・★・・・・・・★・・・・・・★

Let me know if you’d like to be tagged in my future mysme writings <3

@currentlyprocrastinating @thesirenwashere  @ultrasupernini​ @cro0kedme​ @otomefoxystar​ @dawn-skies06 @nad-zeta

[holycow99]

石田お寿司 18/9/21 stream summary Part 3

This is not the full translation of the stream. I only translated the parts I could understand & interpret or parts I found interesting/important. I’m still a beginner in Japanese, so the translations may not be accurate. If you want to repost, please repost at your own risk.

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(t/n: ** = translation may not be accurate, SY= Y****, TS= S******)

83. Ishida bad mouthed the assistant guy from the last stream, not realising that person was in the stream as well. He then asked whether the guy was able to wake up.

84. Someone mentioned Bleach’s author, Kubo sensei, as the one who could draw super fast. He said that being able to draw fast didn’t only include the pace you’re drawing the picture. The panels were also included. Even if you draw fast, if there’s 120 panels, it’d still gonna take time. On the other hand, if there’s only 70 panels, it’d take less time. Then there’s the art style as well. Those who use great amount of Kakeami would take a longer time. He then praised Kubo sensei’s drawing.

(t/n: Kakeami is a method of shading using only parallel lines.)

85. Takahashi Rumiko sensei, the author of Inuyasha was also mentioned as mangaka who drew fast. Ishida mentioned that she’s full of energy. He said young Takahashi Rumiko sensei was cute. She’s still cute now.

86. SY asked what kind of vehicle he wanted to ride. He said he’s scared of trucks. He also didn’t like riding buses. In conclusion, he didn’t wanna ride anything.

87. Ishida said it’s kinda hard to be motivated with digital drawing. He did want to draw on papers, but drawing digitally is infinitely better when he wants to fix or adjust things in his works. He often uses shortcuts as well.

88. He never really felt any sense of accomplishment, so he didn’t understand people who did. He did feel relief (?) when he completed something, but he didn’t understand the feeling of wanting to experience that sense of accomplishment again. He envied those who felt that way since he never felt it.

89. SY read TG manga for the first time the previous day. Ishida was surprised by it and asked him if he thought Ishida was just a streamer. People in the chat were also shocked by it, lol. There were people who only knew about JJ too. Ishida wondered how did SY come across his streams. Sy replied that he just thought Ishida was just someone who drew beautiful illustrations the first time he watched his stream. Ishida was grateful that he’s reading it. It didn’t really matter if he read it or not. When musicians told him that they read TG, he felt like they’re just trying to be considerate, but they probably did read it. It’s okay if they didn’t read it. He always thought that every time he met new people. He wasn’t being humble, it’s just that he preferred if people could just talk to him as usual.

90. Someone said that there were people who got shocked reading TG after they played JJ.  He said it’s because JJ was a combination between his sister & him. He also already through with TG, so the vibe was different. However, he once said in an interview that it was hard for him to get rid off TG vibes inside of him when doing JJ in the early stages. He was teased about that by everyone.  

91. He went to the bathroom for the 3rd time and someone guessed the correct flower.

92. He wants to invite Mr. Kunimitsu and Ms. Towada again.

93. He said 30,000 is quite a lot for a small fry youtuber like him. He’s amazed he could come this far just by his Animal Rap videos and his game streams.

94. He’s looking at the new illustration that Ms. Towada posted on her twitter. He said the illustration must’ve taken a lot of time. That kind of illustration was tough to draw. He said Ms. Towada seemed healthy when they talked recently.

95. It’s better to just have a conversation with Ms. Towada the next time she’s in the stream since he’d get distracted.

96. Takayuki Kondo, Takashina Sarafumi’s VA was streaming at the time and a fan commented that he was praising Ishida in the stream. Ishida wanted to know what he said about him so he asked the fan to record it.** Ishida was grateful about it.

97. A fan commented that Ms. Towada seemed knowledgeable about geography or local stuffs. Ishida told them it’s because she really liked to travel. She probably had gone to most prefectures in Japan. That’s why she’s very knowledgeable in local history.

98. He jokingly said that he already went to Kumamoto trip with 300 fans. He apologised to those who didn’t get invited.

99. SY commented something and Ishida asked him shouldn’t he be doing something at the moment. He hoped SY did something while listening to his stream. He wanted to think the viewers did that since he only talked about trivial stuffs.

100. A lot of people said they weren’t invited. Ishida said that the trip was only for old men. The trip was for those aged 40 years old and above.

101. He mentioned that he’s just gonna thank the viewers for 30,000 subscribers’ celebration, though he’s really grateful for it. He wanna aim for 40,000 as well.

102. Someone mentioned that Simon’s abilities were really cool to the point they wanted to try those abilities. Ishida also stated he wanted to try them.

103. A fan suggested Ishida going on a trip with 300 gals. He said it seemed tiring, but in actuality, he’d probably enjoy it.

104. A fan asked his opinion on anti-natalism. He wasn’t familiar with the term and searched for it. He wondered if the term was brought by Schopenhauer. He said Schopenhauer was just jealous of Hegel since Hegel was really famous. His books were full of criticism on Hegel.

(t/n: Anti-natalism is a principle that’s against reproduction. Anti-natalists believe that giving birth is wrong. Both Schopenhauer & Hegel were philosophers.)

105. His opinion on the subject was that it’s okay if anti-natalists exist. There are people who agree or disagree with the concept. If you don’t wanna have a baby, you don’t need to. If you want to have a baby, then you should go for it. He said recently, he finally understood why declining birth rate is a bad thing.

106. A fan suggested a stream where viewers could also participate to increase subscribers, so he asked what should they do together. People in the chat suggested games like tetris, bomberman, and Smash Bros. He didn’t wanna play Smash Bros cus he didn’t wanna get beaten again.

107. A fan said that a lot of people would be interested in having children if they had money. He said it’s better to provide support towards people who raise children.

108. Mashima Hiro sensei, Fairy Tail’s author, did an online signing session. He wondered how he did that.

109. A fan suggested playing Mario Kart with viewers, but he scared the same thing would happen to him, just like during Smash Bros.

*Ishida reading game recommendations.

101. A fan asked what kind of game should they play so he wouldn’t get his ass beaten. He said it depended on the players. It’s better to gather weak players, so he could be the strongest.

102. A fan suggested a correction session, where Ishida would look through everyone’s own manga and correct errors. But then, everyone had to draw a manga.

103. He’s still not over his Crazy Jump’s idea. He seriously wanted to publish the magazine, lol.

104. People asking him how many pages should they draw and he said just 2 panels.

105. He bought a lot of books about human history.

106. He drank a lot of proteins.

107. He said Hitman is fun if he plays it by himself. He becomes lazy when he streams it, so it feels boring.

108. He wanted to play Detroit again, but he wanted to finish Heavy Rain first. He wanted to play Heavy Rain but the game’s heavy.

109. He wanted to end the stream, but everyone asked him not to.

110. He’s probably gonna do his work or watch movies while trying to sleep after the stream ends.

111. He wanted to end the stream, but he’s really curious about Mama’s last illustration, so he continued playing Made in Wario for a bit. He fanboyed over Mama, Mona, and Penny. He wanted to get penny’s illustration, but he didn’t have enough money to buy items to increase Penny’s level.

112. He wanted to try go to a cabaret club. He wanted to try spending all his money on a cabaret girl. He wanted to go to a host club as well, but he thought he’d probably wasting the hosts’ time since they’d have to serve him.

113. In the end, he’s gonna take a look at Mama’s final illustration by himself. He fanboyed over her one last time.  

Part 1

[nowhereboundd]

Travelling on a Budget - Tips & Tricks!

Hi again!! Hope you’re all wellll. In this post I’m going to share some travel tips that I’ve learned during my adventures and how to budget/save money while travelling!

First offff, my first tip would be to travel with friends. This way you can split a lot of costs! Food, hotels, taxis/ubers, renting a car, gas - you get the idea!

If you’re planning on travelling alone, HOSTELS will be your best friend. Hostels are a fantastic way to meet new like-minded people and make some friends! A lot of hostels also have “common areas” where you can relax and chill. This is also a great place to meet people from all around the world!

Hostels are similar to hotels, except you generally pay for 1 bed in a shared room. A lot of hostels have “female” and “male” rooms, but its usually cheaper if you stay in a “mixed” room. I get that the idea is sketchy at first, but I’ve stayed in many hostels and I haven’t had any issues. Everyone is there for the same reason. Usually all backpackers on a budget. A lot of hostels also have lockers, so BRING A LOCK! (Tip #2) You really never know when a lock is going to come in handy. For our 1 month Europe trip, I travelled with Alex and Jordan, so thankfully we were able to stay in a lot of hotels and split the cost 3 ways. It ended up being cheaper than a hostel and generally just more comfortable and spacious. Because we were on a really fast paced trip we wanted somewhere quiet to sleep because we didn’t have a lot of time to do that :)

My favourite website for booking hotels/hostels is hotels.com. For every 10 nights you book, you get one free, which is nice because you’re saving already on your nightly costs AND getting rewarded from it. If you’re planning a long trip getting a couple nights free here and there can really come in handy! They also always have some sort of PROMO CODES floating around for some sort of discount. Right before paying for my booking I literally do a google search for “hotels.com promo codes.” You usually have to try a couple before you find one that works, but spending an extra 2-3 minutes could save you some money!

This leads me into my next tip. SIGN UP FOR NEWSLETTERS! I know they can be annoying, but they can be worth it! I have a separate folder in my email where all my “important” junk mail goes. I’m subscribed to a bunch of airlines, hotels.com, getyourguide.com (which I’ve mentioned in a previous post and will touch on more in this post, restaurants and so on. Whenever I’m about to book a flight, or a hotel, I also check this folder to see if they’ve emailed me any deals or promo codes. When looking for somewhere to eat, I again, check this folder to see if any chain restaurants are having any promos. Websites also sometimes give you a “new customer” discount when you subscribe, so if you are booking multiple things, subscribe with multiple emails! :)

My next tip/ money saver is to book through budget airlines. Most of these airlines are NOT boujee, but if you’re flying through Europe its likely that your flight won’t be any longer than 2 hours anyway. My favourite way (and the most effective way I’ve found after trying many different sites) to find the cheapest flights is good ol’ google. The thing that I love about finding flights through google is that there’s no extra “fees.” It takes you directly to the flight website and lets you book your flight as you normally would.

Just type into google: destination A to destination B flights. Then adjust the settings (how many people, round or one way trip) then it will show you when that flight is the cheapest and if that price is normal/ going to change before your date of travel.

In my opiniom, this next tip is one of the most important ones. ONLY BRING A CARRY ON! This one is so important to me for a couple different reasons. Firstly, MOST budget airlines allow you to bring a carry on for free (Ryanair does not.) and secondly, you don’t have to waste time waiting for your luggage to come out on that carousel thing. If you’re on a fast paced trip like I was, every second counts! Instead of spending 20 minutes waiting for your luggage you could already be checked in to your hotel or hostel!

I know it might seem a little intimidating trying to fit enough stuff for a long trip into such a small suitcase, which brings me to my next tip! FIND A LAUNDROMAT/ DO LAUNDRY! As I mentioned in my previous tip, there are so many positives to only bringing a carry on with you on your trip. If you’re going on a longer trip, laundromats will be your best friend. That being said, this usually is a pay per use service, BUT it will end up saving you a lot of money in the long run. A lot of hotels/hostels provide a laundry service, but if you’re staying at one that doesn’t, there is most likely a laundromat somewhere around you.

Another packing tip I have is to buy reusable toiletry bottles! You can find these at the dollar store and they are so handy. You can only bring liquids in bottles up to 100ml in your carry on, so buying the empty bottles and filling them up with shampoo/ body wash that you already have is going to save you a few dollars! What I did on my trip, is I bought a cheap bottle of shampoo (about halfway through the trip) when I was staying somewhere for 3+ days. I refilled my 100ml bottle and used the larger bottle until I had to get on a plane again. (If you’re travelling with friends this is a good opportunity to split on a bottle of shampoo and refill all your 100ml bottles!) Shampoo was actually the only thing I ended up running out of, but there are cheap pharmacies all over Europe where you can find pretty much anything you need!

I’ve mentioned this website in a previous post, but getyourguide.com is an amazing place to do a ton of tourist stuff for huge savings!! For example, entry tickets at Auschwitz were $30. Not including the 2 hour ride there and back. For $31 on getyourguide.com, I got an entry ticket, AND transportation there and back. I’ve used this website in Canada, the UK and Europe and I’ve never had any issues (except the one from my previous post, BUT their customer service is amazing and I ended up getting a full refund.)

My final tip for this post is all about USING PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION!!! Almost 99% of the time, public transportation will save you money! Rather than renting a car or taking a taxi, download some train/bus apps and look into buying day passes whenever possible. Google maps is also super good when it comes to travel planning with public transportation. By utilizing public transportation, you get to dive deeper into the everyday lives of the locals, so in my opinion it makes the experience that much more authentic. We visited Santorini, Greece during the “off season” so there were literally no busses running at the time. We ended up renting a car (you do need an international license to drive in Greece) for super cheap, and split the cost 3 ways. For 3 full days we paid around $50/$60. So if you do find yourslef in a situation where you have to rent a car in order to experience everything that place has to offer, I recommend researching all of your options to get the best bang for your buck! Another alternative to taking a taxi is to WALK!!! You see soooo much when you just walk around. Things you wouldn’t normally “go out of your way to see” - might end up being the coolest part of your trip!!

Alright guys, well that pretty much sums up everything! If I think of anything else, I’ll add it in another post :)

Thank you so much for reading, and I hope to see you in my next post!!

↞ to travel is to live ↠

xxoo chels

[eirian-houpe]

The Library Beneath the Clock Tower - Chapter 25

Fandom: Once Upon a Time (TV)

Rating: Explicit

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Relationships: Belle/Rumplestiltskin | Mr. Gold, Belle/Gaston (Once Upon a Time)

Characters: Belle (Once Upon a Time), Rumplestiltskin | Mr. Gold, Red Riding Hood | Ruby, Widow Lucas | Granny, Grumpy | Leroy, Maurice | Moe French, Evil Queen | Regina Mills, Merida (Once Upon a Time), Jiminy Cricket | Archie Hopper, Gaston (Once Upon a Time), Le Fou, Mad Hatter | Jefferson, Prince Charming | David Nolan, Gus | Billy, Huntsman|Sheriff Graham

Additional Tags: Bookshop On the Corner, slightly AU, Cursed Storybrooke (Once Upon a Time), Alternate Universe - In Storybrooke | Cursed (Once Upon a Time), Eventual Smut

Summary: Storybrooke has no library, and neither does Belle, not since the library where she worked in Boston discovered her past as an inpatient at a mental hospital. Taking her future into her own hands, Belle travels to Storybrooke where her intention is to open up the town library, but all does not go according to her plan. Obstacles and false starts, and diversion along very wrong pathways interrupt her journey toward fulfilling her dream, as well as taking her rightful place and becoming a part of the Storybrooke community.

Read Previous Chapters on AO3

Chapter 25 - Unexpected Ally

Once word got around that the library was open, up and running, Belle had a very busy few days almost rushed off her feet with the number of new subscribers she had registered. She had no idea there were even so many people in Storybrooke. For a sleepy little town in Maine, it certainly seemed to have a lot of residents. Not that she was complaining, not really. It helped to keep her mind off the still missing Mister Gold - being too busy to wonder very much.

It didn’t help her to avoid noticing that there were still far too many spaces on the selves, and that she didn’t have sufficient books in the library for her liking, so she spent one of her lunch breaks sitting at the computer in the library looking online and trying to source new books. She found another branch library in a rural town nearby was closing down due to lack of public funding, and though it saddened her more than she could say, it also filled her with a sense of hope and excitement, and she telephoned the head librarian there right away, securing the bulk of the books to fill the self spaces in Storybrooke’s repository of books.

And not a moment too soon, as it should happen, because while her landlord and secret benefactor - or so it seemed anyway - was still notably absent, the mayor, fast becoming her greatest nemesis, was not. Regina Mills breezed into the library with her nose in the air, practically sweeping her fingertips along surfaces like a mother-in-law checking for dust.

“Well, Miss Marchland,” the mayor said after turning to look at her. “You certainly seemed to have managed to liven the place up a little, if nothing else.”

“Yes,” Belle replied, trying to keep her voice light and polite, although Regina was like a dark cloud over a picnic. “I’ve had a lot of people come in to register.”

“And to borrow books, it would seem.”

“What do you mean?” Belle frowned, wondering what the comment was meant to be criticizing now - because she had no doubt it was.

“The selves are somewhat… sparse, dear,” she said. “We did give you a budget for the library. I distinctly remember signing off on it - against my better judgment, I might add.”

Belle had had enough and folding her arms across her chest demanded, “Then why did you?”

“Everything to do with library was voted on and approved by the town council. I told them they were wasting their time and Storybrooke’s budget, that this little… social experiment wouldn’t last, but… it appears you have some influential people in this town already on your side.”

“I wasn’t aware there was a need to take sides,” Belle grumbled under her breath.

“What was that, dear?” Even before Belle opened her mouth to answer, the mayor waved her away. “Never mind.  As soon as people see how limited their choices are, they just won’t be coming any more, and we’ll be able to close this place down.”

She turned on her heel then and headed back toward the front door, but Belle hurried from behind the circulation desk and put herself firmly in the mayor’s path. Forcing her to stop walking or run into her.

“Why do you hate me so much?” she demanded, throwing up her hands, “What have I ever done to you?”

Regina laughed, which fueled Belle’s irritation, and she could feel her color rising in the wake of her irritation.

“My dear Miss Marchland,” the mayor said as her laughter subsided a little. “Hate you?” She shook her head. “It’s as I told you at the ball, and it’s as true now as it was then. It is most fitting that you should be in peasants clothing - as a servant.” She looked around, then looked down at her immaculately painted fingernails as she added, “It’s all you’ll ever amount to, anyway. Besides…” she reached out and pushed Belle aside with two fingers as though she were touching something distasteful before she started walking again toward the door, as she said, “…why waste time hating someone who’s going to do your work for you?”

It took everything that Belle was not to run out after her; to keep her calm and not call after her with words a lady should never use. What the hell did she mean? What was it that Regina Mills thought she was going to do to further her seemingly twisted plans for the townsfolk of Storybrooke. It seemed as though the mayor just wanted everyone to be miserable.

Deliberately, she returned to the circulation desk and engaged in a few mundane tasks to try and rid her mind of the unpleasantness of the visit. It didn’t work. All she could think about was the way the mayor seemed to think that the library would fail, that the people in town were not really interested in patronizing the establishment so close to Belle’s heart. She looked at the stack of registration cards off to the left of the desk - completed registration cards - that still needed to be filed, and it made her chuckle. The sight of the tall stack was a comfort, a reassurance that whatever Mayor Mills thought was refuted by the facts, and that so long as she kept the books well stocked - and she already had that in hand without delving into the actual library budget - then the people would keep on coming.

She smiled, and glanced at her watch. It was almost time for the first of her planned community activities: Storybrooke Story Time, and she wandered over to the area she had already set up that morning with a large area rug, many colorful scatter cushions, and a place for the story-teller - which today would be her - to sit. She’d tried to make sure people knew about it, and had even asked Mary Margaret to let the parents at the school know when it would be happening. Still, after her morning visitor, she worried just a little that no one would come.

She need not have. The moment that the appointed time came around, beginning as a little trickle, at first, and then many people arriving together, parents and children came and took spots on the cushions and on the carpet.  Some parents asked if they could leave their little ones while they ran to the store, and although Belle was uncertain at first, the looks of desperation she saw in their eyes - the need for the chance to shop without having to field wheedling requests for cookies and candy, to actually buy their groceries and sundries in peace - made Belle agree, “So long as you’re back by the end,” she would add with a smile and a light touch to their arm.

While she was putting the finishing touches to the event, and setting out small cups of juice, and little containers each with a healthy snack for later, when she suspected the children, especially the younger ones, would need a break, one of the parent’s who had stayed hopped into the ‘Teller’s Chair’ and began leading the children in a song.  Belle smiled, happy that things were going well.

Of course, the thought was an invitation for something to go wrong. Even so, she was surprised when she felt a light tap on her shoulder as she was filling the last of the juice cups, and straightened up, turning to see the Sheriff standing behind her.

“Sheriff Humbert,” she greeted him with a smile, “Can I help you?”

“Good afternoon, Miss Marchland,” he began, but she could tell that he felt… awkward, uncomfortable just by the look on his face.  “Miss Marchland,” he said again, “I’m sorry to bust in on you like this, but, well, I was passing just now, and I saw some of the parents leave the building without their children.”

“Yes,” Belle said, with a frown, not quite understanding what the Sheriff was driving at. “They asked to run to the store while I was reading the story to the children.”

“See,” Graham Humbert ran a hand through his hair and sighed. “This is very awkward, but… they can’t actually do that. The town of Storybrooke - your employer you understand - doesn’t actually have a background check on file for you yet, so…”

“Oh my God!” Belle exclaimed perhaps a little too loudly, as some of the parents looked around. Belle lowered her voice and leaned closer to the sheriff, speaking confidentially despite her mounting irritation. “Oh my God,” she repeated. “Regina put you up to this, didn’t she?”

“We have to abide by the law, Miss Marchland. I’m sure you understand,” he said, and his non-answer led Belle to believe that she had been entirely right in her accusation.

“Yes, but—” Belle began, but the sheriff held up a hand.

“And the law says you can’t be left alone with children that aren’t your own without first receiving a satisfactory criminal background check,” he offered her a smile then, and with almost a cheeky twinkle in his eye added, “Just so happens that I’m due for a break now, so… if you don’t mind reading a story to a grown up boy…” he gesture toward the circulation desk, and to the new flat packed office chair that leaned against the side of it. “I could even put that together for you while I listen.”

Belle let out the breath she’d be holding, and smiled broadly, throwing a quick hug around the sheriff before she realized what she’d done.

“Thank you, Sheriff,” she said as she pulled back.

“Graham,” he told her. “I’m off the clock, remember?  Go on, go read your story. I’ll try not to make too much noise.”

Story time, once it was underway, was a huge hit. Belle didn’t think she would ever get used to the sight of all the attentive faces, eyes wide, looking her way as she told the story as expressively as she could. Time flew past, and they even managed to get through snack time without too much of a mess or too many spills. One of the parents who had stayed through the whole thing volunteered to bring the juice and snacks for the next time, and all of the parents who had run their errands returned on time to collect their children.

“Seems like that was quite the success,” Graham said as he wheeled over the now constructed office chair, echoing Belle’s thoughts.

She smiled her thanks at him, and nodding at the chair, said, “And it looks like you were successful too.”

He chuckled, shaking his head and said, “Don’t say that until you’ve tried it out. If you want to come over to the office some time this week, I can take your fingerprints and get that background check done for you.”

“Thank you,” Belle said. “I’ll do that.”

“Not that I didn’t enjoy the story, by the way,” he added quickly.

“I understand,” she said, “and thank you for sticking your neck out for me.”

He shrugged as if to tell her that he didn’t see it that way, and he didn’t mind, but Belle knew, could sense that there was more to it than he was telling.

“I’d best be on my way,” he said.

Belle walked with him to the door, deciding to prop one of them open to let in some fresh air, and she noticed the same girl she had spotted on the day the library opened.  The girl was hovering nearby, looking almost longingly at the library doors.  Belle stepped outside and waved the sheriff off as he drove away, then as she turned she offered the girl a greeting.

“Hi,” she said, “have you been out here the whole time?” The girl shrugged, but this time didn’t run away, so Belle ventured, “Would you like to come in and have a look around?”

The girl was hesitant, but when Belle began to walk back toward the library doors, she followed and stepped inside. Belle didn’t want to spook her, or crowd her, because the girl seemed a little skittish, so she set about starting to clean up the discarded cups and paper plates, and after a while the girl moved to help.

“It’s lovely in here,” the girl said as she reached out to put some plates into the trash bag that Belle held open.

“Thank you,” she said. “I’ve tried to make it welcoming.”

The girl nodded, then asked, “What story did you read today?”

Belle paused in her tidying and picked up the book she had read from where she had set it on the Teller’s Chair. She held it out to the girl, who - still hesitantly at first - took it, and turned to settled on a cushion, and begin to read the book.  Belle continued tidying, giving her time, and when the girl looked up Belle said, “You could have joined us, you know?” The girl shrugged, so Belle asked, “Do you like books?”

“I love books and stories,” the girl blurted out, then looked embarrassed as she handed back the book.

“You can borrow them, you know. That’s what the library is for after all,” Belle answered.

“But… I don’t have a card,”

“I can help you fill out a card, and then you can take it with you and get your parents to sign it.”

The girl shook her head, looking embarrassed. “Mother wouldn’t like it,” she said, and Belle frowned, but didn’t want to press the girl. It wasn’t her place to pry, after all. “Can I help you put the books away?”

“Of course,” Belle said, then after a moment’s thought she said, “I’ll tell you what, why don’t you stop by on your way home from school a few days a week, and you can help out with shelving the books and tidying up. It would be a great help for me, and if you wanted to read a little bit before you left for home…” she trailed off, letting the girl work things out for herself, then added, “My name’s Belle, by the way.”

“I’m Paige,” the girl answered. “And can you maybe help me with my homework sometimes?”

By the time Paige left, the library was practically spotless, and Belle was glad that she was able to help the girl, even though she still didn’t know very much about her. She liked her, and somehow she seemed strangely familiar, as if she’d seen her before, and not just in passing, or knew her parents even though she was certain that couldn’t be the case.

Though she was still trying to work out the library’s opening hours, Belle decided that she would close earlier than usual that day, posting a notice on the doors to the effect that library hours were under review. Then she headed upstairs, to the apartment, where she practically collided with Ruby who was coming out of the bathroom, in nothing but a robe, still toweling her hair dry.

“You’re early,” Ruby said.

“Yes,” Belle answered, “I thought we could maybe do something. We haven’t really had much time since you got here.”

Ruby’s face became a mask of regret. “I’m sorry, Belle,” she said, “I already have plans.”

“You have a date?” Belle asked, her tone one of surprise, though given what happened at the mayor’s ball it shouldn’t have been so unexpected.

“Sort of,” Ruby said, and Belle raised an eyebrow and said, “There are a bunch of us going to the Rabbit Hole. You should come. It’ll be fun.”

“No,” said Belle, rather more vehemently than she meant to, so trying again said more softly, “No thank you. It’s not really my cup of tea.”

“You sure?” Ruby looked guilty, and Belle didn’t want that. She wanted her friend to have fun.

“Yes, of course. You go, have a good time.” She told her. “It’ll give me a chance to try out that new cookie recipe that I found.”

“Belle—” Ruby started, but she cut her off.

“No, seriously, it’s fine.” Belle offered a smile, and then gave her friend a push toward the bedroom. “Get dressed, you don’t want to keep them waiting.”  Ruby leaned down and kissed her cheek, and Belle gave her a tight hug in return, murmuring, “Knock ‘em dead.”

[paradisobound]

I Want It, I Got It: Epilogue

Summary of the Epilogue: Three Years Later

Full Fic Summary: Phil Lester was a worker for the BBC in London. Working in the advertising department, he was content being alongside his friend and fellow coworker PJ during every shift. However, the BBC is temporarily being used as a film set for a new movie staring Hollywood ‘It’ star, Daniel Howell. Being stuck as an extra on the set, Phil finds it’s hard to ignore the famous star. And maybe, just maybe, Dan finds it hard to ignore Phil as well.

Word Count: 1.3k 

Warnings: Occasional swearing and sexual mentions

Rating: Mature

**MASTERLIST | READ ON AO3 | WATTPAD**

“We have time to go check out the Eiffel Tower if that’s something you want to do?” 

Phil looks up from his phone where he was busy checking to see if his video posted correctly as he sits with Dan in his pop-up trailer somewhere in the middle of Paris. Dan had been filming here for his new movie for a few weeks now and Phil has actually really enjoyed his time in Paris with Dan. 

He’d never been prior to this but yet again, majority of the places he’s had to go with Dan were places he hadn’t been prior to being with him either. But now, nearly three years later. he’s been to Shanghai, Tokyo, Melbourne, Manila, and even places in Europe he’d never ventured to. 

But he’s been traveling with Dan and that’s something he’ll forever love to do. 

They’re traveling more than they’re ever home in London, but Phil doesn’t entirely mind that. Spike is able to travel with them often but when they’re gone for a few weeks at a time, he goes to stay with Martyn and his girlfriend Cornelia and their new little newborn. Spike loves the baby more than he loves his toys and Phil feels pride swell in his heart when he sees Spike run up to the baby. 

“I’m down for going to the Eiffel Tower.” Phil says with a smile. 

Phil stands up from his chair and grabs his jacket from the back as he puts it on and feels the weight of the box in the pocket weighing heavy. He’s been wanting to do this for a long time, but it’s been difficult due to traveling. He honestly thought he would never find a good time but maybe…just maybe…now is a good time. They’d already placed their lock on the bridge and sealed it with a kiss. 

As they walk out of Dan’s trailer and head down the street towards the Eiffel Tower, Phil feels grateful that the paparazzi doesn’t bother them much anymore. He guesses it is because they became old news when people figured out they weren’t breaking up and they also weren’t going to have a shotgun wedding like the Kardashians. 

But Phil has welcomed the privacy. Sometimes they get bombarded but more often than not, the most they’ll get is a few fan notices that ask for a photo and they’ll happily give them one. 

Phil’s channel on YouTube took off not long after he quit the BBC and he’s glad for that because he carried some heavy regret for a while that he did make a mistake quitting his stable job. But seeing everyone love his videos and love him and Dan together in such a domestic setting really helped them flourish and helped his channel gain nearly 20 million subscribers. 

“It’s a bit chilly out,” Dan says, pulling the sides of his jacket over his torso in an attempt to keep a bit warm. “I hope that means not many people will be out.” 

“Listen to what you just said.” Phil says with a smirk. “We’re at the Eiffel Tower.” 

“Well, it could be dead.” Dan insists with a tongue in cheek laugh. 

Phil wraps his arm around Dan’s waist and pulls his body close to his as they continue to make their way to the famous landmark. 

Maybe it’s totally cheesy and totally cliche. Maybe proposing to Dan in front of the Eiffel Tower is peak that, but he honestly doesn’t see this moment as any other way. They take a small walkway into the park and they’re suddenly standing in front of the landmark with everyone else around, also taking photos. 

They go largely unnoticed and they find a nice bench under a tree where they sit down for a few moments and Phil puts his hand on Dan’s thigh, just laying there as Dan covers his hand with his own and takes a deep breath. 

Phil doesn’t feel like they’ve had a moment to breath in the last 3 years if he’s being honest. Dan has been so busy from awards shows to movie premieres to interviews, being on shows, and also working with various organizations and charities in the London and Los Angeles areas. Phil doesn’t feel like they’ve had a moment like this where they could just sit down with one another and take a deep breath. 

“This is beautiful here.” Dan says. “Even if the grass is a bit yellow and dead.” 

Phil lets out a snort and a nod of agreement. But that’s probably what they get for being in Paris in mid April. 

“You want to know what’s beautiful?” Phil says, reaching up and stroking his thumb on Dan’s cheek. 

Dan groans and rolls his eyes. “Don’t get cheesy on me, Lester. It’s gross.” 

“It’s not gross.” Phil counters. “I just love you and there is something about being in Paris with the love of my life that brings out my cheesy, cliche side.” 

“Mmm.” Dan hums as he leans forward and connects their lips. “Me too.” 

“And I’d like to be a little bit more cliche.” Phil says, his words catching a bit in his throat as the nerves kick in. 

Dan furrows his brows and Phil slides off the bench under the walkway and down onto one knee and suddenly people are staring at them. Dan’s eyes are wide and he’s breathing quite heavy but Phil is took focused on reaching into his pocket and not dropping the ring. 

He pulls out the box and opens it up as he begins to speak the whole spiel he’d had planned since he’d known he wanted to propose but he’s stopped by Dan standing up and just nodding. “Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes!” 

“You don’t even know what I was asking?” Phil teases. 

Dan lets out a watery laugh and Phil decides to say it. 

“Will you marry me?” 

Dan nods again and Phil stands up, wrapping Dan in the tightest hug as Dan cries into his shoulder and shakes. Phil feels himself tearing up as well as his arms roam over Dan’s back. 

Dan pulls back and looks down between them as Phil takes out the ring from its holder and places it gently on Dan’s ring finger. It’s a bit snug but Dan just laughs it off and says that they can adjust it back home. 

They share a long kiss, just the two of them in front of the Eiffel Tower. Dan’s ring glistens in the soft light of the sun and when he pulls back, Phil can’t stop staring at it on his finger. 

“Do you like it?” 

“Do I like―Phil! This ring is everything!” Dan cries. “Oh my God, it’s gorgeous! How did you find this?” 

Phil thinks back about it. He remembers it so clearly. 

They were filming a scene for Dan’s movie in Milan, Italy and Phil was wandering around the city while Dan was busy for the day. He’d come across a little jewelry store and he’d decided to walk inside just to see what he could find. Just an hour later, he had placed an order for the most perfect ring that he’d ever seen with the owners promise to have it to him in London in just six weeks. 

That was almost a year ago. 

So maybe Phil had been waiting patiently for the perfect time and really, it had taken a long time to get to this point. But he’s happy it happened now in the city of love with just the two of them. 

“I want to post this on Instagram.” Dan says with a laugh as he wipes his eyes with the backs of his fingers. “Do you mind?” 

Phil shakes his head. “No. Of course not.” 

“Can you take a picture of me with the ring?” Dan asks. “I want to show it off.” 

Dan blushes and Phil just smiles as he gets out his phone and opens up his camera. He snaps a few photos and then Dan ushers him over and they snap a few photos with each other. 

They posted a lot of photos together on Instagram but never like this. 

Dan posted the photos with the caption, “Guess what just happened” with the ring emoji and Phil just smiled brightly as he wrapped his arms around Dan and held him close. 

Life has been like a fast moving train these last few years but he cannot wait to settle down and marry the love of his life…even if it takes another three years. 

[lololollywrites]

thoughts about being 29 on the internet that i just had in the shower...

...and had to write down. they were all basically just about how f**king - NEW. and surreal. the internet, its capabilities, and its fandoms can still be to me sometimes. i feel like i forget this a lot. but when i think about it, i can easily recall my wonder at discovering that it all existed in waves of smaller finds. and because i know there are others like me, i thought i’d share some of my own experiences. because honestly, i’ve had fewer years on tumblr and sites like it than some people much younger than me. i’m catching up and enjoying it.

firstly, i know i’m old to some of you, but i’m not really old. not really. i’m still a millennial, screwed over by student loans and old white men and viewed as part of the technological generation. i’m a phd student, and because i’m always on a college campus, i’ve been mistaken as a freshman. a few times. but it’s been fascinating to witness actual freshman and other college students and consider just how different things are for them and honestly? i’m sort of jealous. 

because...

i can remember when i first discovered that fanfiction existed. i was in third period tech skills as a junior in high school - 16 years old - and got a little off-topic and searched for spoilers for a new supernatural episode. this was in 2005 and the show had just come out (yes i still watch, i can’t escape).

and what did i find? somehow? fanfiction.net. i was, no exaggeration, shocked. i sat and read a full-length chaptered fic in episodic format. my mouth was hanging open. i saw thousands more fics in hundreds of fandoms and suddenly felt less strange for envisioning full-scale episode re-imaginings in my head as i laid in bed, dissatisfied with what i had just watched. (btw, i watched new supernatural episodes the sunday after they used to originally air on the wb on thursdays, at my mom’s house where i had my own room and own tiny tv, because no one at my dad’s house wanted to watch and streaming episodes wasn’t something i could even imagine. plus i didn’t have internet at my dad’s house. i know.)

not only that, but i was impressed as hell. here was me, not even aware that you could somehow upload your own text to the internet, and people were not simply writing polished stories in private but posting them somewhere that allowed for chapters. that allowed for people all over the world to read their words. that categorized everything into a huge virtual library. and, most incredibly to me, that allowed for reviews from people around the world.

i couldn’t believe that this new world was open to me. that people would be so generous as to offer amazing stories to me to read FOR FREE. that i had a limitless supply of content to read and review. i barely had functioning internet at home, so i had been sheltered. i told the people sitting next to me in class about it and encouraged them to check it out, mostly to blank stares. i may have even told the teacher, but no one cared. i didn’t understand. who wouldn’t be interested? i told my dad and my sister about it when i got home from school. i was mind-blown.

months in and many reads and written reviews later, i wrote my first fic. it was for smallville. 6 chapters, with updates every few days, that received 14 reviews in total. i read them all multiple times. i showed my sister. i checked the story stats every half hour. i cried. i wrote on the family computer secretly in the evening when most of my family had gone upstairs, because i was about half a year away from owning my first laptop. i wrote more stories sporadically for about 6 years, gradually getting better, but also gradually becoming more stressed and aware of negativity, online arguments, and the embarrassment and shame i suddenly felt about having an online presence. i found a supernatural forum at tv.com (the forums sadly no longer exist), learned about fandom, and immersed myself in posting and being part of a community that i thought understood me more than my friends. like a secret life.

during my first year of college, in 2007, i was in a friend’s dorm when he asked everyone if we wanted to watch an episode of scrubs. i laughed. surely he was joking. “how can we just watch an episode? it’s not on now and you don’t have the dvds.” i literally didn’t consider that there may have been a way. he excitedly told us that he had found some website that had episodes just... pre-uploaded. and that you could just click. i didn’t believe him. the stress of having to be at the tv at a certain time each week for fear of missing an episode entirely and forever was just part of being a fan, right? buying the tv guide and checking listings was necessary. but he found the episode. and clicked. it only took a few full minutes to load and there it was. again, i was astounded. this memory is so shockingly clear to me. it changed how i spent much of my free time, for one. just that moment.

sometime during this first year of college, i was home for break and came across a video on youtube, this new website i had started to use. it reminded me of ebaum’s world, which my friend would show me at her house sometimes because her computer was faster than mine. it was called “cat soup”, and by two guys that called themselves smosh. it had more views than i could comprehend - probably not much more than 5 digits, but still. they were just two kids i could have gone to school with who could create a funny video and get famous. again, i was shocked. mind-blown.

i showed my sister, my mom, and all my friends. they appreciated it a bit more than the fanfiction, but no one seemed to grasp how incredible and revolutionary it was. they all liked “shoes”, with the kelly persona by liam kyle sullivan (we still quote it today), probably because its budget and effects made it a bit more familiarly professional and it appeared less homemade (though it definitely was). but i couldn’t forget smosh. i was so impressed by them. i watched more videos and eventually found communitychannel and jenna marbles and eviliguana and shane dawson. i even found fan edits for my faves, buffy (maybe i saw one of phil’s, lol) and supernatural and smallville, and tried making my own. i freaked in 2009 or so when fred reached a million subscribers. a million. i couldn’t wrap my head around that. again, i told my sister and friends, expecting them to see the enormity of something so crazy happening, and they just... didn’t.

back in 2008, after watching “stick it” again, i recalled the name of a gymnast my cousin used to always talk about when we were kids - from the 1996 olympics - and looked her up on youtube. i realized that all gymnastics competitions imaginable had been uploaded. again - not to be repetitive - but i was shocked. there’s no better word. i gave myself a thorough education on the sport, traveling through time. i am still so grateful that i was able to do that.

sometime in 2009, my friends started pestering me to create a facebook account. i was a junior in college. 20 years old already. it sounded weird - pictures of me online? why? but i gave into pressure and made one. my mom had never allowed us to make a myspace; we were a bit young, and she hated the idea (now, she’s on facebook more than i am). around the same time i got my fanciest phone yet - an LG Env3. i figured out that it could access the internet and that i could use songs to create ringtones. again, sufficiently mind-blown. considering my first cell phone had been a flip phone with no camera that i shared with my sister during emergencies when i was 13, i felt that technology was coming along fast. 

smart phones were foreign to me for a long long time, until recently actually. i thought they were unnecessary for quite a while. i don’t even remember what phones i had at the end of college and through grad school, but i’m pretty sure they consisted of a series of cheap pay-as-you-go phones from walmart. in 2013, i went to china for a year to teach. i got a cheap phone there and used it for about 7 months. one day, a friend of mine gave me his old htc smartphone because he was getting a new one. i didn’t know how to use it, but i played one app on repeat before class and snapped some low-quality photos. after that, i almost immediately went to indonesia for another 9 months to teach high school (2014-2015). the htc phone died very quickly, so i used the nokia brick phone given to me by the organization. it was fine. i had never even used my old smartphone to access the internet, aside from wechat, thanks to china’s internet blocks. it wasn’t until i got home, in the summer of 2015, that i finally got an iphone. it was a huge deal and a big learning curve. it was also around this time that i found dan and phil and tumblr. i only got my macbook two years ago and finally think i have some things figured out.

so i may be old in some ways and remember floppy disks and the card catalog and using encyclopedias to write my middle school papers and huge computers with black screens and green text that displayed math problems in elementary school. i may be able to remember the sound of ancient, huge printers that used reams of paper with perforated, tearable strips down each side. i may remember aol red, dial-up, and not being able to connect if someone was on the phone. but i can also remember watching technology evolve in front of me, discovering fandom and the huge world of content and friendship that lay ahead. and when people try to say i’m too old to like dan and phil, i remind them that dan and phil can also remember. we’re the same age. i relate to them and their stories. to phil’s buffy obsession. to dan’s love of smosh. i’ve only had about 10 fully-cognizant years here on the internet, and only a couple in the world of tumblr and iphones and mobile apps. i’m young in those ways. and i look young enough that strangers sometimes think i’m a teenager. 

that’s laughable to me in some ways, because i’ve lived so much since my teen years. so much has happened. but in others, i don’t feel much different. there’s no age where you just feel grown up. that your interests vanish. that things suddenly seem childish and dumb. yes, i cringe about some things i wrote or did back then and i think i’ve matured, but my interests are all still relatively similar and i can finally explore them in ways that i just couldn’t before.

i hope that this has made sense. and i hope that some can relate.

[nova-enjane]

Many days and many nights I have been ever so frustrated with myself, that I allowed such a wonderful and creative drive be annihilated by such a spiritual malaise. To have the passion I that filled me with a light to deafen even the largest of stars in the Cosmos, be drained. For years all I could do is mope and mull over my lost soul, the thing that drove me to live, a thing that was apart of me as much as I was apart of it. It loved me, I knew, but the heart is a fickle thing; an ounce of resistance and it's ready to cave. Or maybe I just wasn't well equipped enough to forge a heart of pure diamond, one marvelous and indestructible. Certainly, my years of stagnation can attest to this. So rather than take the reigns of my life and charge forward to carve down any challenge that entered the fray, I put up my blade and armor and shield. Eventually, this became destructive and more times than I am comfortable sharing with no more than a handful of people, I attempted suicide. None could be said to be serious attempts. I mean, yes, I was serious about wanting to kill myself, but cowardice runs both ways it seems.

     And the years moved on by with their humorous stride, laughing at me all the while, I imagined, as my youth would surely be wasted, and those beautiful Summer nights in a home I bought for my family would never come. We had even gone to Amana and Heartfield, Michigan to see if that would set alight some creative flame within me. Alas, it had not. My passion was gone, and who would be to blame for that? Everyone has a different answer for that, either sugar-coated or given with a lead fist to the heart. Thinking of who or what to blame isn't what matters anymore though because Spring has come once again. I will bloom once more! And the first thing I want to write about is a dream I had one night as I slept in my ex's bed, him the little spoon, body warm against mine, after a night of bed tumbling, no doubt. His mother asleep in the room adjacent to ours. The world was dark and everything was alright despite what demons I had been fighting at that time. Right then and there I could not have been more content with my life, I will be forever grateful for that. I drifted off to sleep with his plump body in my arms, knowing my arm would be nearly dead when I awoke. The dream I had, although short, filled me with the sort of seeking spirit I had so longed for. One strongly vivid.

     The advent of another night's sleep is always an exciting thing, like beginning a new novel or film.  For me, dreams served as a great respite from the pains of my waking world. No matter how terrifying, I was always eager to see what each night's internal play would be. For any artist, I guess, dreams would be a great source of joy and inspiration. I was always fascinated by the brain's amazing ability to translate waking experiences into vivid films where we or someone else star in. They're a part of our inner selves, our deepest emotions, thoughts, hopes, and dreams; they are a reflection of how we perceive the world around us. A microcosm of our daily lives, should I say? And besides my philosophical feelings toward them, I am just mesmerized by how wacky they can be.

     One moment you're back in school on the day your teacher made you call your mother in front of the entire class after your friend's new haircut urged you to connect your hand with the back of his head. Only this time she's naked, her breasts and sex laid bare for the entire world to see, and your principal turns out to be Godzilla in a suit. Or maybe you're a part of your favorite horror film, only this time your dog is the villain, your grandmother their accomplice. Maybe you dream of promenading through a city with your lover, everyone looks on in envy, it's perfect. When suddenly a dragon swoops in and terrorizes the city and it is up to you and them to save everyone. Then there are those dreams so utterly mystifying that they stick with you for the rest of your life. Dreams so unbelievably beautiful you never want to wake up. You think this is the world that's meant for you, you'll stay here, and your waking body can rot for all you care. And your entire life you may be trying desperately to recall that one dream, that is so perfectly envisioned in your mind, every night you fall asleep.

     Some people subscribe to the notion that our dreams lay in the astral realm, where our highest selves reside, and dreaming is just one of the ways we can enter this state. Ever the skeptic, I usually scoffed at such ideas; how could one know this, how could one prove it? But as I stood there at the end of Juniper Rd. and Falcon dr., gawking at what was an ethereal version of the woods of the park in the waking world, I had begun to doubt my own skepticisms.

   Dreams will always, no matter what, evoke awe in me with each new experience, but it wasn't only what I saw that struck me, not really. It is only natural that one encounters the insane, the irrational, the ridiculous, for that is their nature. All of it just felt so unbelievably real; the surging euphoria; the racing of my heart; the sweat beads that emerged on my forehead; the clenching of my toes; the breeze against my skin; my rapid breathing; and I swore there was a sweet pang in my privates. And tears welled at the back of my eyes; it was like nothing I had ever felt before.

   All of this gave me a sense that I was there, that I had simply left my lover's home and traipsed right on down Juniper for a casual walk through the woods. But this

was nothing like the park in the real world. Where in reality it was any old

plain wood, right before me was something far grander, far more beautiful than that.

   It was suffused with a faint golden aura, as if the color itself lived in the very air, living just above every other color, trying to overtake them. And the trees! Cosmic lord, they must have scratched the sky itself, they were so tall, their leaves were an odd shade of twinkling purple. Two massive sentinels flanked the entrance to the wood, making me think of two guards standing aside, permitting me entry into a castle of a great legend. I could see milky white spots dotting their bark.

   There was a voice, loud and powerful. Was it a sort of sighing? No, it sounded more like the musical humming of a woman -multiple women, in fact- sounding off in perfect unison.

I thought that maybe I had just died. maybe I somehow died in my sleep next to my lover, and this is my place of eternal rest, I thought as I beheld this heavenwood. Had I? I had no real basis for that assumption, but I felt this is what it must feel like after death.  

     I stepped forward, seemingly tugged forward, as if the wood itself was eager for me to enter, like a lover guiding their significant other to their sweet place. I was elated to once again be able to explore another strange realm, though underneath this I remembered a faint sense of dread inching its way into my body, like a cursed worm burrowing its way into the soil of a lively garden. Despite this, I took a step forward, and another, another, smiling as I did. The pull becoming stronger with each step. I simply had to go, I had to know what secrets may lie within.

Dreams have a penchant for teasing us, waking us up before the moment of climax, to deny us that one amazing moment. That is what I expected here, to be instantly thrust from this dream by invisible hands into the waking world. But as I passed the two sentinel trees I was surprised, yet ever grateful, to still be standing there.

     Being inside of the wood was like passing through a veil of darkness. Where the outside world was harsh and spiritually bereft, here all was immediately set to rights. There was a feeling all was right with the Universe, though something in the core of my being trembled briefly, like some other unknown emotion was trying to surface. It gripped my throat, tightened my chest, and pushed at the back of my eyes. Why should any negative emotion be felt when surrounded by such beauty?

      I looked up, from what I could see between the trees, the sky was an odd hue of gold. The trees themselves were turning pale, flecks of gold stood out on their bark like HIV blisters. There were white flowers growing under each of them, hundreds of them huddled together like lost children in a harsh winter storm. They were bent in dejection, but there was a force within them, trying to resist this, I could feel it.

       As I walked through the trees a caring breeze blew through the trees. I sucked it in at once, feeling at once alive and so at home. The air was sweet with the familiar smells of apples and oranges, of strawberries and lemon and pineapple mixed in with the aroma of the flowers. There were strange and unfamiliar smells as well, all pleasant. I inhaled this cacophony of smells and was once again surprised by how real this all felt. How absolutely right it felt.

    I gasped as I saw animals suddenly emerge from the trees on either side of me. They traveled solemnly, soundlessly, through the trees ahead. I could see that not all of them were critters of Earth, some, I was sure, was the fantastical creations of this dream world. They just had to be.

    In my dazed astonishment, I moved with them as silently as I could, for fear of disturbing something so peaceful, so serene, so amazingly wonderful. A rosy, iridescent avian creature with two sets of wings flew ahead of me, another, blue this one, flew after it. I walked among them for a while minute before some movement to my left snatched my eye, so fast I wasn't sure I had seen anything at all. I moved over in that direction between two trees, where under them pale and purple flowers were blooming. Or at least attempting to. I kneeled to take took a closer look at these, wide-eyed to see planets shining brightly in their pistils, Slowly turning on their axis. The sight was so mesmerizing, seeing miniature worlds in such pretty flora. That feeling once more arose inside of me, this time threatening to burst from my body, but I held willed it away once more. What was odd was that as this was happening, every flower pointed in my direction and stretched toward my face, as if trying to plant a kiss.

   Suddenly there was this warm pressure on my back, then I felt something lick the nape of my neck. What the everlasting hell? I thought,  trying to feel whatever had landed there. Then it was gone like a ghost. I whirled trying to see what had thought to make my back its seat and my neck its licking post. But there was nothing. The animals solemnly on their way, ever so quiet, paid me no mind, so I couldn't have been them. I waited for a moment. Again, nothing. Finally, I decided to continue my walk among the flood of animals. I only took two steps before something descended before me, moving so fast it was a blur. It darted in the air from side to side like an especially prankish fly.

      A moment later it slowed, moving up and down in the air as if it were traveling on small waves. At first glance, one could mistake it for a salamander, but a closer look told otherwise. It had to be no bigger than a human head, its body was plump, its belly translucent, eyes burning green opals. Its skin, I could see, was white, pearlescent and covered in mesmerizing patterns. The head reminded me of the glans of a penis. I tried making out more of its features before it began a series of flips and turns. It twirled in the air once again, arcing around and around twice, then curled into a perfect ring, spinning like this twice vertically, horizontally, then shot all four its feet outward, it's belly facing me. Its long tail swayed from side to side like a pendulum, glowing a faint and murky green, like a dying candle. It looked as if it had just finished a show of acrobatics and was saying "Tada!", waiting for me to give it applause. I did so with a smile of delight, chuckling; the creature was adorable, how could I not? It fell on its back -in the air, mind you- and rolled back and forth, giving off what sounded like laughter, sounding just like the winding of a music box key.

    Finally, it ceased its laughter, then twirled around my body and kissed my cheek with a faintly radiant tongue. It left a tingly feeling that was surprisingly pleasant. Then it went off a little ways ahead. Stopped. Turned to notice I wasn't following and made a series of noises that only made it sound eerily similar to a child, but rather than unnerve me, I thought the sound made it cuter.                                                    

     So I followed it through the trees, wandering beside the flood on either side of us, through trees of remarkable size and shape. Their purple, nearly black leaves swaying morosely in the wind.            

       As I went along with this alien looking salamander,  I began to notice more of its species. They crawled and swam on every tree, some seemingly asleep, some flitting about, frantically secreting some kind of fluid onto the trees from their mouths. We crossed a rusty and dingy bridge, under which was a dying version of what must be the creek. Along its edge were more of these creatures, desperately supping from what was left of its waters. The one I was following made a sound of dejection at this depressing sight, slumping in the air. And again, that feeling came to me like a hot arrow to the heart. Guilt and shame mixed in with this as well. I wish I could help them somehow. If this is a dream, my dream, then I can do something about this, I thought. I could conjure this substance for them to drink. So I crossed the bridge, walked down a dirt slope to the creek. The alien salamanders watched me, some licked their lips, others laid where they were, watching in anticipation. I held out my hand to the creek and concentrated, focusing on trying to spring life in it once again, to give them what they so desperately needed. Though no matter how hard I focused, nothing would happen. All of them made a sound of deep disappointment, all sounding eerily human, and this did give me gooseflesh. I made an apology, my friend resting on my shoulder, made that same sound. Some drank from what was left of the creek, while others simply flew away. I wished there was something I could do for them, I felt it was my responsibility to do so.

   My salamander friend flew from my shoulder, and so we continued onward to the Cosmos knows where, the musical humming never stopping, becoming stronger even, as we ventured deeper. This wood, or what I was now thinking of as a forest, was mighty sad indeed. There was a sense of great loss of something essential. One could see it in the moping lean of some of the trees, the desperation of the flowers at their base that wanted to bloom vibrantly. Even these animals that walked through them appeared despondent. We went on and on amongst the universe of trees, and as we went the singing grew louder and louder. Coming from everywhere, the sky and the trees, the flowers, the air,  the ground beneath my feet. And that pulling sensation, becoming ever stronger.

   We eventually came to a wide clearing in the forest, where the trees were sparse, destitute, their bark shone a shocking shade of white that was almost blinding. Some lay on the forest floor, curse-rotted and withering away, while others leaned, ready to fall over on their neighbors. The field was covered in billions of withering white and purple flowers. This was opposed by the fabulous golden sky above, that shone like a sunset fire opal, the clouds looking like great flying kingdoms that wanted to escape from this destitute land. Far ahead of me were three figures, girls from the look of them, floating in the air. A dark figure stood below them. Behind them was a tall glass edifice, poking possibly a hundred feet into the sky, branch pointed in every direction. There, the land rose slightly and didn’t seem to continue on. The humming lowered to an almost mournful whisper. That pulling sensation intensified here, I could feel it reaching inside of me, moving past my flesh and bone, reaching for my core, then seizing it like someone who has dropped an important item in some dark hole and has finally got a grip on it.

      There were many more of those salamander creatures here in this field, some of them looked nearly as big as a house, their bellies nearly depleted of that strange fluid. These two large alien salamanders began to fly around and around a tree, gnarled like an ancient grandfather,  leaning on a friend (who seemed to be lifting from its roots as well), who seemed to swear to carry both their burdens. They did this slowly at first, but they soon picked up to a suicidal speed, creating a sound like the high-pitch drone of hoard wasps. As they did this, the tree began to rise off its friend and re-root to its original posture. Its friend feeling ever grateful and resuming its original position as well. The others were also trying desperately to heal whatever sickness was ailing this land, exerting every last ounce of energy they had.

      Something feeling of profound gratitude welled up within me at the sight of this; there was a rock in my throat; my sinuses felt blocked by cement; my eyes began to sting. I fell to my knees and began to sob, the pain I felt was enormous, my body was shaken, I could not control it. My salamander friend glided to me and laid against my body, its arms squeezing me gently. I hugged it gently against my belly. It looked at me, appeared to smile, made that child-like sound again, then began licking the tears from my eyes. My grieving quickly turned to bewilderment, and then laughter as my tears were sucked clean from my face. It laughed its strange laugh as well, when it stopped, it bid me follow once again, into the field of pale, withering flowers, brushing my hands against the alien flora as I did. I could see that the pilgrimage of animals was heading this way as well, emerging from the milky sea of trees and from the sky above.

    What do we say when we experience something beyond our comprehension, that makes us feel like no other experience has? That there were no words to describe such a thing, that no human language has even one word to ever come close to conveying how an event made you feel. Sometimes I just think some of us lack the vocabulary for such a thing, or maybe imagination. Certainly, I am a victim of this as well, as many amazing moments, I found myself pulling from great murky depths for that one apt descriptor. Though words never need come to mind. Why should they? When your face, your voice, and how you felt is far more than enough to convey what words never will. Sometimes, that's all one needs.

   When we reached the three girls the singing stopped with an echoing sigh. And then the world took on an eerily quiet texture, like you could feel the silence. I stood in awe at this woman that stood before me, naked and odd and beyond beautiful. Her body swam with colorful nebulae and stars and galaxies. It was absolutely mesmerizing. I thought if I touched her I would simply fall through her, and be lost in the depths of space. She spoke to me. Her voice was like a cool breeze on a warm Spring day; it set my heart to rights instantly. She said she was called Cosma. “Great All’s tits, you have returned to us, after so long. All of you, those above and below, you see this? They have come again. Nnar will be ecstatic!” I turned to a great garden of creatures of all kinds, waiting in attendance. All gazing at me. Off in the distance, the alien salamanders did their work, tending.

   The three girls descended from the air, each looked about ten years old. One girl was black, one Asian, the last girl, white. This one stood between the other two, messy golden hair covered in the lovely iridescent white flowers, eyes blazing in the sun like purple fire. She wrapped her arms around the two other girls, pulling them closer to her. My salamander friend wasn't taking too kindly to her, making a low, childish growling noise. I cared nothing for that sly regard like she was privy to something no one else was. They were all wearing gorgeous dresses that must have been spun from the Universe itself.

     “Please don’t ever make us wait like that ever again,” the blonde-haired girl says. “Mother and the other gods have had enough of it. I mean, what the hell is with you? Look at this. It’s rotting!” The reproach in her voice was almost palpable, a sharp knife in the ear. It was enough to fill me with profound guilt and shame. I lowered my head. She shook her head, star earrings twinkling. “Tsh, you’ve got some good nerve. You get a good look at the shit you left? That ain’t even half of it.” Her dress twinkled with the light of multiple constellations of which I have never seen or heard of, against the backdrop of a colorful cosmos. All twenty of her nails were painted a glowing white. Her lilac eyes beamed at me, though her smile never faded.

   All I could do was apologize, to tell them that what I have done was nothing short of cowardly, that I will fight to never let it happen again.

   The black girl walked over to me, her large amber eyes showing nothing but the deepest compassion. Her dress moving and pulsed with the light of myriad galaxies. She had the cutest afro puffs and a wavy line of hair down the side of her face, on which glowing tree had been painted. She wrapped an arm around one of mine, some of her fingers covered in ornate cuffs. She looked at her sister defiantly, said: “What is done is done, Nissia, dah; now we can focus on healing,”

   “Now we can focus on healing,” Nissia mocked in an eerily good imitation of the other girl’s voice. “Fuck that!” She began to growl something in an alien tongue, looked with narrow eyes at the Asian girl, “Amaterasu?”

   Amaterasu skipped merrily over to me. She looked like a mix of Japanese and Korean. Her hair was in two large plaits that hung from her shoulders, bouncing as she came. She looked up at me, eyes jade marbles, with nothing but respect and love. She wrapped an arm around mine and said, “You did leave this place poorly tended, but we know you were in such great pain; you couldn’t have taken on that responsibility, as despondent as you were.” she said. Looking at their dresses made me feel as though I could fall right into them if I had a mind to touch them. The salamander I had been following rested on her shoulder. “But we must get to work. You have many years of it ahead, but we’ll be there, right alongside you," she said, with a reassuring smile, her lovely choker of many jewels glinted in the sunlight.

   “Mother, permission to destroy both her and Dolomiah,” said Nissia, as she held out her both her hands, the palms glowing brightly, two small bright orbs emerged from this light. They looked like small stars. “I shall make it quick, for they are my sisters.”

   Cosma put a hand on the girl’s shoulder and said: “You’ve had enough time to grieve; now it is time to weave out the Great Nexus and tend to your garden, for us and for All. You understand, me? ” Those bright eyes regarded me intensely, and I knew the seriousness of what I had done, but I had returned and now I had a job to do, one I could not afford to fail at.

   “And it all starts through there.” She moved aside, her arm outstretched toward their glass edifice up the small slope. It went up-up-up into the golden sky above, so reflective the world may have lived inside it, the sun appearing to reflect from within, the trees in that reflection were tall and beautiful, their leaves a lovely azure, the flowers were a shocking hue of red. What I saw almost made me weep once again, but I held my composure, I could not grieve again, that was over with. There was an opening at the base, inside it was nothing but blackness. This is where the pull had been coming from.

   Dolomiah and the Asian girl lead me up to the opening, the golden-haired girl following behind. That pulling sensation was no longer eager, it was demanding. I thought my skin, my bones, my utter soul would be crushed beneath that pull.

    "It'll be okay. Okay? My Brightest star, tell them," said Dolomiah. She looked at Amaterasu.

       She closed her eyes and smiled, tilting her head to the side. "You'll see some frightening things, but you won't hurt. Promise." She nodded and looked at the Dolomiah.

     “Promise,” softly, warm and comforting.

     "Tch, yeah, you two know that ain't true. Stop fucking with them and let's do this," the golden-haired girl said impatiently. I felt two hands push against my back and that was it. I was sucked in immediately It didn't hurt. Not in the way I thought, but there was emotional distress nonetheless.

Chain of Existence

   Universes and galaxies and stars and nebulae and planets all twirled upward, our faces changing color as we spiraled upward. I saw entire Universes born and then die, I saw galaxies being consumed by serpentine creatures, worlds colliding, stars collapsing, a red nebula in the shape of a dragon, it’s maw open wide, ready eat us, and then blackness. And then the visions started. I was thrown to and fro from scene to scene, each emerging around me as if they were coming up from an ocean.

   Winter was nearing its leave in Amana, Michigan, the weather felt relaxingly cool, the sky was a pellucid blue. There was a girl, her jet black hair tied in a ponytail with white baubles, blue eyes looked up at the sky, pale skin bright in the sunlight. Her face was a display of grief and agony. She was deep within a wood, in great emotional turmoil, forehead starting to swell. A small eye began to protrude from the middle of her skull. They both peered at me. She said, “Why me? Why? I am just a teenager! It hurts! Do you hear me?! It. Hurts!”,  and then they were sucked back into that black sea.

   Two red-haired girls, one younger and with glasses, are traveling with a special forces group deep in the ranges of Heartfield. They have come to a large cave. The older one is ecstatic. She kisses the younger one on the side of her lip. The younger girl looks reluctant, dejected even. She kneels to pet their dog. What have they just found? They too were sucked into the sea.

   Heartfield Michigan appears once more, and here I see a task force, led by a black man with glowing blue eyes. They are transporting a large mysterious box that hums and thrums as the drive through the woods. They have sent a small group ahead to scout for enemies. A woman stands on a hill farther away. She knows what is ahead isn’t just enemy territory. She has to warn them, something large a terrible lurks as well. The black sea took them before I could see what.

  A little girl made contact with an exquisitely made doll, it's dress an intricate display of stars and planets, its hair is long and nearly starch colored. The doll's face showed it was delighted to find a new friend, her purple eyes twinkling, her children also wanted to play with their new friend. Then the black sea pulled them in.

      A young Chinese woman works in the tallest building in Amana, it is night time and most of the workers have gone home. A black-haired girl is walking toward her office, the woman has no idea what is about to happen. Somewhere on the other side of Amana is a black man in his early twenties… He was the first I abandoned. He is walking home with his friends. A black-haired girl is following him home. And then they were gone into the eternal blackness.

   I saw a world, one as large as our star, in great and utter turmoil. The beautiful alien species had just had the largest battle they'd ever had to fight, the architecture of their buildings grander than anything I'd ever seen before was destroyed. One of their moons had been annihilated, shards of which scratched the surface of their atmosphere, creating burning red sores, as they made their descent to the surface. A man is kneeling on a battlefield, so massive I was sure he towered over everyone else when he stood, he was wrapped in muscle, swollen beyond belief. He was shaken with grief, his long hair concealing his face from me. He was holding a girl in his arms, her hair blue, her white dress in tatters, revealing her pale skin. A woman sobs furiously in front of him, caressing the girl's hair. There was another girl behind him, her hair blonde, eyes two great blue seas. She kneels beside him and tries to comfort him. She says a name. Ark, I think. There are many more floating above them, all quiet and morose. Suddenly he looks up, and over. He is looking at me, and he is livid. His beautiful features not marred but made even more beautiful somehow by his fury. He yelled at me, blaming me for what just happened, blaming me for all of it. He said he was going to kill me. And then he was gone.

   A girl sat barefoot in a chair in a garden of flowers and fruit, the smell is amazingly strong, the air hot and not at all unpleasant. Her hair was silver, she wore a cute dark red polka dot dress with a fluffy white hem.  She had her legs crossed and was writing fiercely in a large book. Her pencil was black, its eraser was as well, though it looked more like a hole. Suddenly she stopped, looked up at me and smiled. She had gorgeous crimson eyes. She lifted her pencil, the tip of which was a star, closed the book, sat back in her chair, and closed her eyes. A dog comes over and she pets it. She seemed at peace with herself and the world. I wished to achieve this state of being as well. And then she was gone as well, like all the others.

   The Blackness Dissipates

   A great egg laid hatched like a geode, nestled in a place beyond space and time, in the outer reaches of all worlds, all existence, all that ever was and will be. Deathly pale, the large slit revealed a deep dark purple, fluid gushed from this like a Cosmic waterfall, and from it, many unspeakable things were borne. We heard a wailing, we turned to it and saw something, something as large as life itself… So many eyes, you could hardly make out what exactly those eyes belonged to. This thing, larger than life, scratched against billions upon billions of Universes, bending them, pulling them in to meld with its form. I watched, terrified and fascinated. Dolomiah and Amaterasu both keened at this, overcome with grief and terror. Nissia watched as if this were an everyday occurrence.

   It saw us, it saw me. Hundreds of trillions of eyes large and small looked at me. I felt the essence of my very existence being analyzed and then stretched. I was being pulled closer and closer to its many eyes. One giant eye emerged, pushing against the others, its pupil expanded and then squeezed to a pinpoint. Lava raged in my head and I screamed, and I screamed, and I screamed. I was torn in two, my other self drifted into light that shined from its now widening pupil.

   And then I awoke.

   The light of early morning greeted me, the sunlight coming through the window a warm and caring parent, hugging my body as if it knew the terror I had just experienced. My lover still asleep beside me. I laid there for a while, contemplating what just happened. My body felt heavy, I was sweating all over, and there was this burning sensation in my forehead that quickly disappeared. And I couldn't be quite sure, but I swore I could smell the faint,  fleeting aroma of fruit.

   Years later and only now am I getting the courage to write this… I apologize, to those three girls especially. That weakness hadn’t yet left and I was mired in emotional turmoil. Now a book, intricately made book sits on my desk, a black pencil next to it. The tip where the lead should be glows with the light of Sol. Amana is quite warm this morning; it is perfect for the beginning of my journey.

[icecubelotr44]

To Every Thing a Season (8/16)

Summary:   After witnessing the tragic murder of his brother Liam, Killian Jones is more determined than ever to discover the secrets of time travel. Fast-tracking his education at Storybrooke University, Killian is assigned a lab assistant, one Emma Swan. Together, they find a way to break through the veil of time so Killian can set things right. But what will be the price for changing the past, and is it one they’re willing to pay?

Rated:  T, for violence, some dark themes, angst, and whump

Art credit/link: The totally awesome @optomisticgirl made imagesets for all the chapters and @ab-normality made a video and a gifset for this fic.  You can find the imageset for this chapter above and here on @optomisticgirl‘s blog.  The video is linked here and on @ab-normality‘s blog here and the gifset is posted here!

Beta readers: The as-always wonderful @nothingimpossibleonlyimprobable, thanks so much for all of your help and cajoling and reassuring!  And a huge thank you to the spectacular @spartanguard who stepped in to help beta read as well!

A/N:  Written as part of the 2017 Captain Swan Big Bang Challenge.  You can catch up with all the other fics that are complete by following @captainswanbigbang and/or subscribing to the Group Collection on AO3 and/or the C2 on FFN. This is complete in 16 parts and will be posted every Thursday from now until its completion. And yes, there is a happy ending after all this… just so you know.

Word count:  ~ 5,400 (80K+ Total in 16 chapters)

From the beginning: ao3 | ffn  

Current Chapter: AO3 | FFN

Chapter 8: To Embrace and to Refrain from Embracing

Killian led Emma through campus and onto the shuttle, ushering her into a seat and pulling a thermos that had seen better days from his backpack.  She settled in, leaning against his chest when he wrapped an arm around her.

"What's this?" she asked, tugging off her mittens to get a grip on the lid.

"Just some hot chocolate to keep you warm, luv.  I know how you hate the cold."  He smiled and waited patiently, the corners of his mouth ticking up a shade further when she hummed appreciatively at the taste.  It was a good look on him, she thought.

A hint of fire filled her mouth and Emma grinned.  "You didn't forget the cinnamon!"

"Of course not!” he tried to sound affronted, but he was speaking through a grin.  “What do you take me for?"

Emma laughed and tucked her head under his chin.  They rode in silence into town, the bus's other occupants clearly engrossed in their own business.  His heart pounded more fervently as they approached the stop nearest Granny's, she could hear its pace quicken with every moment.

Emma wanted to tell him to relax, but his nerves had set off her own.  She’d been careful not to tell Killian that it was her birthday, didn’t want him to go to any trouble on a day that just reminded her that she had never been good enough for anyone - not even the people who had created her.  

All this day had ever been was a disappointment.  It was better just to move on and forget the day had any significance at all.

A strange feeling settled in Emma’s chest and she was hard pressed to name it.  She shouldn’t be upset - it was just another day and she was spending it with Killian.  Whether or not he knew the significance shouldn’t make a difference.  She’d just have to take the reprieve where she could get it.

Killian stood as the shuttle came to a stop in front of Granny’s diner.  Emma followed him down the steps into the chilly autumn air and hustled past him and the outdoor tables to the front door.

“Come on, Jones.  It’s freezing out here!”

He smiled indulgently and reached over her to hold the door.  “Always depriving me of the opportunity to be a gentleman, aren’t you, luv?”

Emma huffed and allowed him to usher her inside.  She expected the hand at the small of her back to guide her towards one of the booths, but he led them, instead, towards the back stairs.

“Killian?” she asked hesitantly.

His ears turned a little pink.  “Do you trust me, Emma?”

“Yes.”  Her reply was immediate.

A boyish grin lit his face, but then he bit his lip nervously.  “Follow me, then.”

Unsure of where they were going - but never of him, not any more - Emma climbed the stairs behind Killian and was confused when he reached into his backpack for a key.

And a blindfold, she realized a moment later when Killian turned to face her.

“Just for a moment, luv, I promise,” he whispered as the fabric fell over her eyes.  She felt the knot being secured behind her head, but she wasn’t afraid.

Confused, yes.  But she’d follow where he led.

Emma heard the door in front of her open and felt Killian’s fingers tangle with hers.

“A few steps forward, Emma.  Now turn.  Just there.  Wait a moment and you can take off the kerchief.”  His voice was quiet, hesitant.

The door snicked shut behind her and a quiet ‘click’ sounded in front of her.  The noise was familiar, but Emma couldn’t place it at the moment, straining as she was to hear where Killian was.

“Jones?”  It was half question and half warning.

“Now,” he commanded quietly.

Emma pulled off the blindfold and blinked in the soft darkness.  The only light came from two candles - a blue 1 and a red 9 - sticking out from the middle of a cake.

A birthday cake.

Emma stood, speechless, for a long moment.  Her eyes were glued to the flames in front of her, her mouth working but unable to find words.

“Bloody hell.”

His whisper and his hurried steps startled her out of the shock.  

“I… I shouldn’t have listened to Ruby.  I’m sorry, luv.  We can just… go, if you want.  I should have thought-”

“Thank you,” she forced out, still caught up in the emotion of the surprise.  She’d never felt this way before.  No one had ever done anything like this for her before.  “It’s perfect.”

Killian took her hand in his own, brushing a kiss over her knuckles before he moved to swipe away the lone tear that had escaped her usually well-controlled hold on her heart.

“Are you all right?  Truly?”  He sounded frightened, unsure, lost.

Emma just nodded, finally moving to blow out the candles as she made her wish.

Please let him love me as much as I love him.

She blinked and squinted as Killian finally flipped on the lights.  The room was a bit dated, but definitely one of the inn’s rooms for rent.  There were two covered plates and silverware on the little card table he must have sweet talked Granny into setting up for them.  Emma turned to find Killian, but a flash of something shiny caught her attention.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY! was hung on one wall, the ‘H’ bent and a little bit torn.  The sign wasn’t quite straight, and the streamers that were taped up next to it were in danger of falling off the wall.

It was perfect.

Killian came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist, his chin resting on her shoulder.  “Ruby said you shouted at her last year when she suggested throwing a party, so we thought this would be better.  No surprise party, luv.  I promise.  Just us.”

Emma could feel the tremor in her smile as she turned in his embrace to face him.  “Thank you,” she whispered again.  

“It’s my pleasure, luv.  We should eat before Granny’s good cooking gets cold.”  Killian pulled out a chair for her and helped her sit before he lifted the cover in front of her with a flourish.

There was a grilled cheese and onion rings spread across the plate, a little sprig of something green garnishing the meal.

“I’ve almost forgotten…” he trailed off as he searched in his backpack.  It took him a minute to pull his treasure from the depths, but he finally emerged victorious with a battered pair of candleholders and two tapers.

The noise Emma hadn’t been able to place earlier was the lighter Killian used to light the birthday candles.  He set the pair on the table before he took his own seat and revealed a cheeseburger and fries.  They ate in companionable silence, the quiet only working to put Emma even more at ease.

The cake was clearly store-bought, but it was chocolate and it was the first birthday cake she could remember having that she hadn’t shoplifted for herself.  Emma savored each bite, ignoring the way Killian watched her eat.

“What?” she mumbled through a mouthful.

Killian ducked his head and scratched behind his ear.  “Nothing, Swan.  I’m just happy you like it.”

“You didn’t have to go to all this trouble, you know.”  She took another bite of cake.

He smiled ruefully back at her.  “I gathered that when Ruby was the one to tell me about your birthday and not you.  I wanted to.”

Emma didn’t have an answer for that.

When they were finished eating, Killian pulled out what was obviously not his laptop and set it up on the bed.  Emma curled into his side, biting back a grin when she saw the flowery desktop image.  “Mary Margaret’s computer?” she asked quietly.

She felt Killian nod against the top of her head.  “Everyone helped a little.  Those were David’s mother’s candlesticks, Ruby convinced her grandmother to let us have the room for the evening, everyone helped.”

Emma felt like she was going to cry again.  She’d never thought…

The DVD player started up and the title screen for The Princess Bride came up.

“Belle said you borrow this book from the library so often that it must be one of your favorites,” he said.  “But I have others if you’d like to watch something else.”

Emma tangled their fingers together and settled in.  “This one, please.”

The kiss he left to the top of her head was accompanied by a soft, “As you wish.”

The look in the police officer’s eyes was a mix of compassion, wariness, and something else that Killian couldn’t quite put his finger on.  It was almost like regret mixed up with anger, but it didn’t really matter.  Nothing really mattered any more.

He looked up without raising his head when the man cleared his throat.  “What do you want?” he growled.  Liam would have clapped him upside the head for the disrespectful tone, but Killian had no control over it at the moment.

The officer’s brow rose incredulously, but then his face dropped and Killian thought he looked sad.

“We got a hold of your father, son.”

Killian glared at the moniker.

The man cleared his throat again.  “He said that your br… that you already had adequate transport home and that you could travel by yourself.”

Killian’s head shot up, the familiar feeling of disappointment at his father’s indifference towards him now made worse without Liam as a buffer.

“If you want, we can arrange for a social worker to travel with you as far as the ferry stop in Dublin.”

Somehow, that made the feeling even worse.  Killian shook his head ‘no’ and tried to huddle further into Liam’s jacket.  He’d have to get used to fending for himself soon enough.  No use delaying the inevitable.

“No, sir.  That’s fine.  But I will need a ride back to where we were staying to pick up my things.  I don’t have much money, but I can get a cab from there.”

“We’ll get you to the station at least.  You keep your money.” The officer sounded apologetic when he added under his breath, “It sounds like you’ll need it.”

Killian nodded reluctantly.  “And what about…” he trailed off, the words caught in his throat.

Thankfully, the officer seemed to understand.  “We’ll need to do an autopsy before we can release him.  It will be a few days.  Should give your family time to make arrangements.”

His family?

Killian wanted to rail, to yell that his only family was lying still and cold in a freezer somewhere, alone and half-forgotten already.

But Killian wouldn’t forget him.  No, he was going to save him.

So instead of yelling and letting loose the hold on his anger like he wanted to, Killian just shut down.  He followed the officer to the car and robotically packed his things.  He sat alone in the terminal, clutching his knapsack filled with some of Liam’s shirts and items he was afraid his father would get rid of otherwise.  He crossed the channel in a daze, sitting as alone as he could manage with his arms wrapped around his knees.

His father wasn’t waiting for Killian when he got off the train after the long ferry ride, so he took a cab back to their flat and let himself in.  The darkness and stark silence that greeted him made Killian shiver.  After he hid the knapsack in his closet, he curled up in Liam’s bed, wrapping himself in the warm blankets that still smelled like his brother.

Killian wasn’t sure how long he slept for, his eyes dry and puffy from letting his guard down before he fell asleep.  He had been awoken by the light from the hallway streaming across his face, his father leaning against the doorframe.  Even from across the room, Killian could smell the alcohol.

“It should have been you,” his father slurred before staggering away.

Killian’s eyes shot open, his cheeks surprisingly damp.  Emma was leaning over him, her long hair tickling his neck where the ends brushed back and forth.

“Hey,” she whispered.  “Are you all right?”

Was he?  It wasn’t like his father’s disappointment was anything new.  And it wasn’t like he’d had any reason to even think of the man lately, not with how the evening had gone.  But clearly, his subconscious had had other ideas in mind as he nodded off with Emma tucked into his side, the slide of her skin against his tiring them both out.

“Better now, luv,” he settled on for an answer, smiling a bit tremulously when she reached up to gently brush the tear from his cheek.  Her fingers ghosted over the scar his father had left there and his eyes fluttered shut at the touch.  Killian locked the memories that had disturbed their sleep securely away and-

-Emma’s lips brushed against his, the soft touch startling him a little bit.  Before he could look at her, she kissed each eyelid, then his cheeks, then moved back to slant her lips over his again.

Killian let everything fall away from him then, the memories and the disappointment and the scars that were his upbringing, and concentrated solely on her.  He moved with her, allowing himself to just feel under her gentle ministrations.  Bloody hell, did he love her.

He thought she had drifted back to sleep after they came down together, but her quiet words drifted up to him.

“I never thought it could be like this,” she whispered, her hands wrapping tightly around his forearms when he tugged her back to his chest.  “Before, with other… it was different.  It wasn’t… like this.”

Killian’s heart clenched at the sadness in her tone.  What little he knew of her last few years in the system made him appreciate the stability he’d had in Storybrooke’s accommodations for him.  He may have had to stay in the freshman dorms for most of his tenure there - only just managing to move into the sophomore dorms this semester with Will and his friend John - but at least he didn’t have to contend with irritable foster parents or crass ‘siblings’ who would seek to take advantage of someone like Emma.  Determined to erase those memories from the moment for her the way she had for him, he pulled her closer, burying his nose in the hair just behind her ear.

“If you’ll let me, I’ll make sure it’s always like this from now on,” he whispered back.

Emma turned her head so she could capture his lips with hers.

“Happy birthday, Swan.”

He fell asleep to the sound of her even breathing.

And was awoken hours later by the sound of harsh knocking on the door.  Granny’s voice filtered through the haze.  “Jones! I need this room clean and ready to go in an hour!  Up and at ‘em, boy!”

Emma’s muffled laughter came from his side and he turned to kiss her ‘good morning’.  “Come on, luv.  I’ll buy you breakfast.”

He rushed through getting dressed and cleaning up the room, the sound of the shower running in the background as he did.  It only took him a few minutes to pull down the sign Granny had found for him and to trash the streamers he’d dug out of Mary Margaret’s ‘just in case’ box in her room.  He had just finished packing everything in his knapsack when Emma sidled up behind him and draped herself over his back.

“Thank you again, Killian,” she murmured, the warmth of her skin against his back making him question why they’d gotten out of bed in the first place.  “No one’s ever done anything like this for me before.”

He smiled and turned in her arms so that she was pressed against his chest when his arms came up to wrap around her shoulders.  “Well, I intend to do something like this for you every year from now on.”

“Why?” she asked hesitantly.

Killian smiled down at her, brushing a kiss over her forehead.  “Because I can and I want to.  After all, Swan, I'm just a boy, standing in front of a girl, asking her to love him.”  The moment the words were out of his mouth, Killian froze.  His heart beat a staccato rhythm in his chest, his breath trapped in his lungs, a chill down his spine.  Too soon, Jones.  Too bloody soon.

Emma stared at him for a moment before she broke into a grin and pushed up on her toes to kiss him.  Pulling back, she asked, “Did you just quote Notting Hill to me? Who even watched that movie?”

The breath left his lungs in a ‘whoosh’, time speeding up as she stayed where she was.  “I…” he smiled.  “I might have done some research.”

Emma laughed then, a sweet and light sound that Killian wanted to bottle up and take everywhere.  “Into what?  Cheesy chick flicks 101?”

He smiled, but he could feel how it stretched across his face.  His tone was a little more serious than he intended when he replied.

“No, Emma.  Into how to do this.  I’ve never done this before.”

She pulled him in close and whispered in his ear, “You’re doing just fine on your own.”

“I just want to do right by you.”

Emma shuddered.  “Kil-”

“Now, Jones!”  Granny’s voice echoed through the room and both he and Emma jerked apart, searching around the space frantically.

When he was assured that the formidable woman was, indeed, still outside and not breathing down his neck, Killian took Emma by the hand and pulled her into one last hug.  “Come on, luv, let’s leave the charming widow Lucas to her work.”

When she nodded, he picked up his knapsack and guided her towards the door.  Emma kissed him chastely before she bent down to pick up her own bag.

“What is it?” she asked, and it must have seemed to her like he was looking at her as if he was afraid this was all a dream.

It certainly felt like a dream.

Killian smiled, recalling another of the movies he’d watched - huddled in the corner of the library for hours at a time with earbuds jammed in his ears and praying that no one saw what he was studying so intently.  “I’m scared of walking out of this room and never feeling the rest of my life the way I feel when I’m with you.”

Emma smirked, but her smile turned soft and she squeezed his hand.

“I am, too,” she whispered before tugging open the door.

The rest of the semester flew by, classes and his application to the graduate program and Emma's constant support at his side making the days seem a little less long and a lot less lonely than his first three years had been.  The nights she wasn't wrapped in his arms were cold and the few hours of sleep he did manage were fraught with nightmares.  Killian hadn't relied on another human being as much as he did Emma since his brother had died, and it frightened him how much she meant to him now.

But it frightened him more to think of what might have happened if Archie hadn't paired them up.

The Thanksgiving break was fast approaching, and Killian was so busy trying to convince David that the engineering department would let him work on a Masters' candidate's project in his senior year that he didn't realize when the University shut down for the long weekend.  All he knew was that the lab door was locked and his research was inside.  Killian banged his forehead on the door and gripped the door handle until his knuckles went white.  He was getting more and more frustrated as the days went by - between the grants he'd been promised getting pulled and the lack of new funding being provided, Killian was starting to think that he'd been a fool to turn down Oxford for the promise of more distance from his father.

"If you stare at that door any harder, Jones, it's going to combust."  Emma's voice echoed down the hallway, but Killian didn't have the wherewithal to lift his head from the door.

He felt her hand fall between his shoulder blades, and the warmth eased some of the tension from him.

"I had a feeling you'd forget the lab would be locked this weekend," she said, her other hand coming up to jangle a jump drive in front of him.  "So I saved all your work to this last night before Dr. Hopper kicked me out."

Killian whipped his head around to stare at her incredulously.  "You... that's my..."

Emma nodded.  

“Take love, multiply it by infinity and take it to the depths of forever… and you still only have a glimpse of how I feel for you,” he quoted from Meet Joe Black, pulling an incredulous smile from her.

“How many movies did you watch?!”

Killian just shrugged, a small smile starting to pull at his mouth.

“Come on.  I have frozen chicken nuggets, instant potatoes, and the suite to ourselves for the next four days.  We're going to have Thanksgiving dinner and then you can try and concentrate on this”- she jiggled the drive again -“while I yell at whatever football team is playing horribly.”

He didn't touch the drive all weekend.

Monday morning, however, began with Emma waking him far too early with plans to spend their last hours alone lazing about in bed and working up a sweat.

Ruby had just stomped into the common room as Killian got out of the shower, Emma discreetly behind him, when he noticed the notification that he had an email from Archie on his phone still thrown haphazardly on the futon.  With his glasses still fogged up from the shower, he had to squint at the screen when he picked it up.

Mr. Jones, could you please stop in my office this afternoon at 1pm to discuss your ongoing project for the Physics department.  -Archie

“As much as I like the free show, Killian, I think Emma’s gonna get jealous if that towel slips,” Ruby snarked, startling him out rereading Archie’s words for the fifth time.

He automatically reached for where he’d cinched the towel, his cheeks burning at Ruby’s appreciative growl.  Before she could make another remark, Killian ducked into the bedroom, adopting a glare when he found Emma leaning against her desk with a look that he could only describe as saucy.

“Looking to add a little spice to-”

“Nope!” he interrupted, his whole face aflame now.

Emma swung her hips as she moved across the room to him, her hand coming up over his on the towel.  She stood on her tiptoes so she could whisper in his ear.  “Good.”

They locked the door and missed their first class.

When they finally emerged, Ruby still sprawled out on the futon and grinning maniacally at them, Killian tugged Emma into his side and whispered, “I’ve got another one, if you’ll let me…”

“Oh, go ahead, Jones,” Emma laughed.

“I've come here with no expectations,” he began.  “Only to profess, now that I am at liberty to do so, that my heart is, and always will be, yours.”

She looked impressed.  “Sense and Sensibility?  You really did do your homework.”

“Well, I am an A-student, Swan.  I like a challenge.”  He paused.  “Will you be at the lab after my meeting?”

“Of course.”

With a kiss for luck, Emma finally let him out of her suite and he rushed across campus to get to Archie’s office.  He was only a few minutes late - an inconvenient flock of Canadian geese had waylaid him by chasing him halfway back towards the dorms - but the look on his advisor’s face made it seem like he was hours behind.

“Ah, here he is, now,” Archie gestured wildly at Killian, a proud grin stretched across his face.

Killian’s brow wrinkled, wondering who Hopper was talking to.

And then, like a snake slithering out of its hidey hole, a man stood from where he was perched against the wall and limped into Killian’s line of sight.  He was slight, shorter than Killian was, and hunched with age.  There was something about the man’s eyes that made him seem cold, dark, and untrustworthy.

If Killian were more prone to dramatics, he’d have called the man evil.

Whatever the man wanted here, Killian was determined that he wouldn’t get it.  He entered the room warily, keeping one eye on the stranger as he took his seat on the opposite side of Archie’s desk.  His shoulders tensed when the man came to stand behind him, gnarled hands resting on Killian’s shoulders and keeping him in place.

“Mr. Jones,” Archie spoke as if Killian wasn’t being held against his will in the seat.  “I’d like you to meet Robert Gold of Gold-Pan Financial.”

Killian tried to rise under the guise of being gentlemanly, but the hands tightened imperceptibly and kept him seated.  

“Pleased to meet you, sir,” he forced out through gritted teeth.  “Professor, I can come back if you’re not through here.”

“Nonsense, dearie,” the man finally spoke and Killian forced himself not to shudder.  He wouldn’t give the man the pleasure of knowing how uncomfortable he was.  “I’m here for you, you see.  I’ve been looking for a worthwhile project to invest in for some time now.  My company gets in on the ground floor of endeavors like this, and I’d be happy to fund your entire project.”

Archie was grinning, but Killian frowned.  “And what do you get in return?” he asked warily.

Gold laughed, a high-pitched giggle that set all of Killian’s nerves on edge.  He needed to get out of here.  Soon.

“You’re right, of course, Dr. Hopper.  He is a very intelligent boy”- Killian snarled at being called ‘boy’ as if he were beneath this man -“I would leave all the science to you, my boy.  I know nothing of what you study.  But I would be the one to market your project down the line - for a cut of the profits.  And one more thing,” he trailed off.

Here it bloody comes, Killian thought angrily.

“I…” Gold choked up a bit.  “I lost my family years ago.  An unfortunate situation that my wife misconstrued.  It was all my fault; I see that now.  But she took my son from me and I’ve not been able to convince them to give me another chance.  My boy is half-grown by now, and I’ve lost them both.  Should your project be successful” - he squeezed Killian’s shoulder again - “all I would require from you is a chance to fix that.  To save my family from the heartbreak we’ve all experienced.”

Killian wanted to gag, but Archie was beaming like Gold had just delivered him the Nobel Prize.  How could he not see that Gold was playing them, playing him?

He was already shaking his head before Archie could speak.  “No, that’s not it.  Or at least, that’s not all of it.  There’s some kind of trick here and I’m not buying it.”

Archie’s face dropped.  “Killian, maybe you don’t understand what’s going on here.  You’ll still be in charge, Mr. Gold only wants to make a profit from your future success.  All this allows you to do is get the materials you need without having to deplete the department’s resources.”

He felt like a bobblehead doll as he continued to shake his head no.  “No deal.  Not with the likes of him,” - Killian stood abruptly and finally shook off Gold’s grip - “I don’t need his blood money.”

“Killian Jones!” Archie exploded angrily.  “I don’t know what your problem is-”

“My problem is that I’m not going to get into bed with a crocodile and expect not to get bitten!  I’ll find another way, without his help!”

“Mr. Jones,” the oily voice behind him cajoled, “this isn’t a lie or a trick.  We can be mutually beneficial to one another with the right deal.  Perhaps it’s just a matter of-”

“-of twisting your words into something that sounds like a red-letter choice.  No.  Thank you, but there won’t be a deal today.”

He stormed out of the room before Archie or Gold could register his absence.

The slamming of the door echoed down the empty hallway, but Killian’s head was too swamped with voices to even register it.  His father’s patent disapproval - I always knew you’d fail, you lunk.  Don’t come crawling back to me, now.  Archie’s confusion - This is everything you want, Mr. Jones, I don’t understand.  Emma’s tacit support - We’ll find another way, Killian, don’t worry.

His brother.

Liam’s voice was echoing above all the others, and Killian couldn’t figure out which was his response and which was Killian’s own jumbled thoughts.

I’m proud of you, little brother.  Stick to your principles and you’ll be just fine.

Why haven’t you saved me yet?

What are you doing with your life?  You have the world in your hands and it’s slipping through your fingers.

It’s okay to move on, Killian.  I’m happy for you.

Is Emma Swan really more important to you than I am?

Killian needed to find Emma and let her silence the cacophony in his head.  He needed her support now, more than ever.  She’d said she’d meet him at the lab.  That’s where he needed to go.  That’s where everything would make sense again.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Emma shouted, her voice echoing across the lab as he finished explaining what had happened.  “Archie told you already: there’s not enough money.  They’re pulling your grant entirely.  If you ever want to move this away from the theoretical science, Gold’s deal is the only option.”

Killian threw the pen he’d been fiddling with across the room.  It bounced off the wall and clattered on the tile floor.  “No.  No, there’s got to be another way that doesn’t involve getting into bed with that… that crocodile.  I won’t be beholden to him, Swan.”

Emma threw her hands up in the air.  “Why?  What possible reason could you have for not wanting to accept this man’s money?  He’s already told you he knows nothing about the science and only has an eye for potential and finished projects.  Gold has no intention of slowing you down.  He just wants to help you, Killian!”

“What? Out of the goodness of his heart?” he sneered.  “No, Swan.  No, there’s a catch.  There always is.”

“Of course there is.  He wants to go back and save his family.  Just like you do!  He wants the same thing as you.”

Killian shook his head, surprised that she couldn’t see the man for what he was.  He lowered his tone, almost to a whisper.  “No, he doesn’t.  My brother was torn from me for no reason.  He was mur-murdered.  Gold lost his family fair and square.  Whatever happened, and I have no doubt that he’s lying about it, that man wants to manipulate something.  And I won’t make a deal with him to get what I want when there has to be another way!”

Emma shook her head and her shoulders slumped.  “I don’t understand you.  He just wants the love of his family back.  He just wants another chance to make things better for them.  If I had the chance to have a family, to have grown up knowing that kind of love…” she trailed off and Killian could see the tear as it tracked down her cheek.

He felt horrible.  The last thing he wanted to do was to make her cry.  He knew what she thought family should be.  He knew the hurts that she carried deep inside her weren’t easily healed.  He knew he couldn’t understand what it was like to grow up an orphan.

But she didn’t understand either.  “Just because you have a family, Emma, it doesn’t mean that you know love.  Not every father is capable of loving his wife or his child.”

Killian left it at that, slinking out through the door and leaving behind the regret and, possibly, his entire project.

Tagging: @gusenitsaa, @katie-dub, @kiwistreetswan, @lenfazreads, @xhookswenchx, @killian-whump, @eala-captian, @kmomof4, @onceuponaprincessworld, @couldnthandleit

[litl-theinterview]

Jen Bekman

1. What is your favorite thing right now?

My roof ravens! Our house in SF is on a corner + up a small hill, which makes it a popular spot for our friendly neighborhood corvids. It’s primarily two couples—they mate for life, did you know that? I’ve been feeding them peanuts in the shell and getting to know them, and my fella has been extremely generous in indulging my obsession by setting up not one, not two, but three cameras on the roof so I can watch them. All they really do is eat those peanuts and make a bunch of noise, but seriously, I could (do!) watch them for hours. I’m actually a little embarrassed by how into it I am. 

2. If you were to be reincarnated as an animal, what animal would it be? Three-pronged answer here. If I’m being honest, it might be a sloth. But when I was kid, I had a book I loved about Ling Ling and Hsing Hsing—two pandas on loan from China to the National Zoo—so when my brother and I played make-believe I always wanted to be the first panda in space. But at my best, I’d say an elephant. They’re emotionally smart, complex, and nurturing. And also extremely cute. All aspirational qualities. 3. What is the best compliment you’ve ever received? I’m lucky to say it’s a category of compliment, specifically artists coming up to me to tell me that being featured on 20x200 (or participating in Hey, Hot Shot!, the photo competition we used to do, or showing at the Spring St gallery back in the day) was something that really launched their career. Equally gratifying: the people who’ve told me they didn’t feel like they could collect art until they walked into my gallery, or bought a 20x200 print, or even just started reading our newsletters. There are lots of folks who bought their first piece of art on 20x200 who’ve gone on to be obsessive collectors! I love that. 4. If you could travel anywhere tomorrow, where would you go? Home to New York. I’m a native New Yorker and I’m usually bi-coastal, but I’ve been quarantined in San Francisco since early March. 5. What do you consider your best feature? My big mouth. 6. What is one thing that makes you happy? Ice cream! I like it all, but mocha almond fudge is probably my favorite flavor. 7. What is the food you would take to a desert island?   Well I would say ice cream again but let’s go with something more practical. So, French fries. 8. What is something you never get tired of? Art! 9. What is something about you that people are always surprised to learn? Probably that I didn’t even consider an art-related career until I was in my early thirties. I opened Jen Bekman Gallery in 2003, without any gallery +/or arts-related experience. (I wouldn’t recommend it, but I’m still glad I did it!) 10. What is the best advice you’ve ever received? I still have a hard time wrapping my head around and believing this sometimes, but the best advice I’ve ever received is that money isn’t the only measure of success in business. 11. Who would you like to play you in the biopic of your life? Kyra Sedgwick is pretty great. And people have told me that I look like Candace Bergen before, which I just have to mention ‘cause… c’mon. ICON. 12. Please share your favorite photo of yourself and why it is your favorite. Stefan Ruiz took this photo of me in my East Village apartment several years ago. I lived there for 26 years, so it became this extension of myself. Stefan was shooting me for FOAM magazine and this was basically the one area of my home that I didn’t want people to see because it was messy. I said as much, so of course that’s exactly where he ended up positioning me for the final shot. He was right… it’s about as close to the real me in that moment in my life that you could get, and I like that it’s got a sorta badass vibe. It’s a good reminder that I can be messy and be a badass at the same time.

Jen Bekman is the founder and CEO of 20x200.com, the pioneering art ecommerce site which made its debut in 2007. She got her start in the artworld back in 2003, when she opened her eponymous gallery on Spring St in New York City, and its founding mission has been the impetus for all her artworld endeavors since: she believes that everyone can and should collect art, and that more artists should be able to make a living by making art. 

Jen has curated over 100 exhibitions during her career, many of which were reviewed and/or featured in publications like The New Yorker, ARTnews, Der Spiegel, Le Monde and more. Jen has also juried numerous photography and illustration competitions, worked on collaborations with museums, retailers, and major brands, and written extensively on the subjects of art and design. She has been named one of Forbes.com’s Top Ten Female Entrepreneurs to Watch and one of Fast Company’s Most Influential Women in Tech, and has been profiled by The New York Times and American Express’s OPEN Forum, among other publications. She's spoken at a broad range of conferences, including SXSW Interactive and the XOXO Festival, and has hosted numerous panels and discussions about art, technology and design. 

A native New Yorker, Jen has split her time between New York City and San Francisco for more than a decade. She looks forward to resuming her bicoastal lifestyle post-pandemic, but in the meanwhile she's a full-time San Franciscan, tending to her garden and roof ravens and missing NYC something awful.

Subscribe to Leave it to Leonor 

[jbkreviews]

Newbie Affiliate Playbook Review – How To Make Affiliate Commissions Like The Pros

Newbie Affiliate Playbook *Review & Bonus Page*

Hi there, Are you interested in buying Newbie Affiliate Playbook? If yes, DON’T BUY Newbie Affiliate Playbook WITHOUT MY CHECKING OUT MY HUGE BONUS OFFER on this page. Keep on reading! as I share with you why Newbie Affiliate Playbook is a must-have product in your arsenals, then to give you more value for your money, I include my massive custom bonus offer when you make an order.

Getting your start in online marketing isn’t easy. Believe me, I know. Results are slow, and it’s a constant grind without any assurance you are going to make it.

This is why most newcomers struggle – they give up and move onto something else.

However, if you follow the right system and do the right things CONSISTENTLY – the results will follow.

This is Steven’s step by step process of how he went from 0 to $12k in under 10 weeks.

He has put together a full package which also includes, videos from Paul and software from Richard as they were so impressed with what he had done.  INTRODUCING Newbie Affiliate Playbook!

Newbie Affiliate Playbook Review

Newbie Affiliate Playbook Overview

Сrеаtоr:  Paul Okeeffe Рrоԁuсt:  Newbie Affiliate Playbook Lаunсһ Dаtе:  04 Apr 20 Lаunсһ Тіmе:  11:00 EDT Оffісіаl ѕіtе:  CLICK HERE Frоnt-Еnԁ Рrісе:  $13 Воnuѕеѕ:  ҮЕЅ, НUGЕ ВОNUЅ Rеfunԁ:  ҮЕЅ, 30 Dау Nо Qеѕtіоnѕ Аѕkеԁ Money – Back Guаrаntее Nісһе:  xxxx Ѕuрроrt:  Еffесtіvе Rеѕроnѕе Rесоmmеnԁеԁ:  Ніgһlу Rесоmmеnԁеԁ

Newbie Affiliate Playbook Review – What’s Newbie Affiliate Playbook All About?

Newbie Affiliate Playbook is a step-by-step video guide to creating a 5 Figure affiliate campaign.

Inside it includes training videos and full over the shoulder case study: “Hitting A 6 Figure Leaderboard As A Newcomer”

This is a fast system for new marketers to hit affiliate contest leaderboards.

Experienced marketers can also copy & replicate this exact method to move from 3 to 5 figure promos themselves.

HERE IS WHAT IS INSIDE NEWBIE AFFILIATE PLAYBOOK

Introduction Module 1 – Intro video from Steve 2 – Intro video from Paul 3 – Intro video from Richard

Lesson 1 – How To Find Guaranteed 6 Figure Leaderboards Module 1 – Video by Steve on how he finds good affiliate offers 2 – Video by Paul on how Richard & Paul pick their offers 3 – Paul’s Rolodex of top 50 FB Jv Groups groups to join (2 x Free Downloads)

Lesson 2 – How To Get Review Access Module 1 – Video by Steve on what he did as a newbie to get accepted to promote offers 2 – Video by Paul on how we look at newbie affiliates from a Vendor’s perspective and what we are looking for, more importantly, what NOT to do.

Lesson 3 – Do You Know Your Audience? Module 1 – Video by Steve 2 – Video by Paul about running surveys and learning what your customers want 3 – A Free copy of Richard’s ‘Survey Leads’ Software (Free Download) “Survey leads” is our own WordPress plugin that we developed for our business and it lets you build surveys on your WordPress blog. Also collects the email and has different ways to send the surveys with multiple questions, audio and video included.

Lesson 4 – Adding Targeted Users To Your List Module 1 – Video by Steve on how he built his list from scratch to targeted people 2 – Video from Paul about the power of Contests & how we built up a list of 666,019 subscribers For FREE over a 5 year period by running a contest. 3 – Paul’s Rolodex of the exact 136 FREE traffic sources he used to build up the 666k subscribers (Free Download)

Lesson 5 – Positioning Module 1 – Video by Steve on Positioning

Lesson 6 – Maximising Opens and Clicks Module 1 – Video by Steve on what he did to maximize his opens & clicks 2 – 3 x Videos by Steve going through Richards Email List Studio software that they get FREE access to inside Newbie Affiliate System – 3 – Video by Steve walking them through Richards Email Domination Training course (84 More Videos in this section covering everything to do with Email Marketing)

Lesson 7 – Review Video Module 1 – Video by Steve on how he sets up & publishes his review videos

Lesson 8 Bonuses Module 1 – Video by Steve explaining how it’s better to create exclusive bonuses to increase your sales.

Lesson 9 – Webinar Module 1 – Video by Steve on how he utilized running his own webinars to the affiliate offer to make more sales. 2- Video by Paul on why everyone should be promoting webinars as an affiliate for mid-high ticket commissions. 3 – Paul’s Rolodex of guaranteed approvals for 8 auto-webinars with Affiliate Commissions ranging from $148.50-$1929 per sale.

Tools & Resources Section Links to tools & Resources we use + more free downloads.

Benefits & Features of Newbie Affiliate Playbook

⇒Online video course that teaches you everything you need to succeed

⇒Available online, meaning you can learn this course on the go wherever you are

⇒Simple instructions that any newbie will understand

⇒Information from someone who’s close to your level – not some out of touch millionaire

⇒An actual case study where the course methods were used – without a real-life demo it’s all just theory!

⇒Testimonials from more experienced marketers, who back-up what the course is saying

⇒Access to top-notch kept secrets, all the Pros marketing secrets exposed

⇒Free methods and software to help newcomers speed up their results

Top Qualities of Newbie Affiliate Playbook

♥ Newbie friendly

♥ High-quality training guide

♥ Step-by-step case study guide to bring you quick success

♥ Very easy to understand and get started

♥ Valuable information included moving from a newbie to a Pro

Newbie Affiliate Playbook Review – Demo Video & How It Works

Price of Newbie Affiliate Playbook

FrontEnd: The Newbie Affiliate Playbook – $16.95

OTO 1: 4x DFY Campaigns – $67

OTO 2: 5 Figure Campaign Framework – $47

OTO 3: Resell Rights – $97

OTO 4: 1-2-1 Coaching – $147

  Newbie Affiliate Playbook Review – MY CUSTOM BONUS OFFER

Bonus #1

Bonus #2

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My Unannounced Special Bonus Offer

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This may sound too good to be true but you really can run a business from a laptop anywhere you have an Internet connection. Affiliate marketing is a business that has the ability to be repeatable once you develop a system that has given you results. Once you have the pieces in place you will then duplicate and reuse those promotions over and over again.

By cloning your promotions you have created a system you can use to make you money anytime you want. So, why isn’t everyone doing this and becoming an affiliate marketer? The answer is simple. Most people don’t understand what it is and even if they do they think it is too hard and don’t want to put the work in to create a profitable system.

FREE BONUS #2: Affiliate Marketing Blueprint

Discover How To Get Rich Selling Other People’s Products! This guide will show you exactly how you can get started in affiliate marketing and get rich by selling other people’s products!

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But, how does one achieve a passive income? For many, it seems just a nice dream. But, this doesn’t have to be the case. If you want to achieve a passive income and start living the life that you’ve only been able to imagine before now, you may be surprised to hear that it is closer to your reach than you think. With online shopping becoming more and more popular across the globe, affiliate marketing is becoming the pathway of choice for those looking to reach the goal of a passive income. With an increasing number of companies selling their goods and services online, affiliate marketing allows regular people to start home-based businesses and achieve a passive income by simply promoting and selling other people’s things.

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FREE BONUS #3: Affiliate Marketing Secrets

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Sure, affiliate marketing is not particularly likely to make you that much money unless you’re an absolute pro, and as a general rule, it will involve a lot more work than ‘posting a few ads a day’ – particularly to begin with!

But despite all this, there is truth in the claim that you can earn an awful lot of money doing very little with affiliate marketing. In fact, affiliate marketing is really the only legitimate tool you have to accomplish this kind of lifestyle.

Affiliate marketing is simply the very easiest way to get set up with a money-generating business model that provides passive income and that doesn’t see you exchanging time for money.

Below are the chapters that you are about to read and learn from:

Chapter 1: What is Affiliate Marketing and Why You Should Take Notice

Chapter 2: The Affiliate Marketing Lifestyle – The Reality Behind the Hype

Chapter 3: A quick set-up to start earning money right now

Chapter 4: Building your empire – setting up the essentials

Chapter 5: Promoting your brand and building trust

Chapter 6: Introducing AIDA

Chapter 7: An Introduction to the Most Popular Affiliate Networks

Chapter 8: How to Choose Products that Will Bring You Massive Commissions

Chapter 9: Building and Using a Mailing List to Promote Affiliate Offers

Chapter 10: Advanced Techniques

Chapter 11: Safeguarding Your Affiliate Links Using Cloakers and Redirects

Chapter 12: Alternatives to Affiliate Marketing

Chapter 13: Your Complete Plan for Affiliate Marketing Domination

FREE BONUS #4: Affiliate PDF Brander Software

Here’s How You Can Promote All Your Products And Services On Autopilot Using The Power Of Viral PDF Reports!

If you sell digital products online likely an Ebook in PDF Form, chances are you may offer an affiliate program to make more sales lessen the marketing expenses you may spend.

So to maximize your affiliate marketing program to the next level, giving the marketing materials to your affiliate marketing partners is a huge advantage to lessen the effort of partners and immediately make more sales along the way.

One of these marketing materials is giving them a free report that they can use as a lead magnet to their email marketing campaign. And one of the features of this lead magnet – ebook has their unique affiliate links that if their subscribers make a purchase, they will also make a commission.

FREE BONUS #5: Kick-Ass Affiliate

Kick-Ass Affiliate is a video course that will enlighten you how to become a super affiliate even if you don’t have a huge email list or you don’t have a huge following on your blog or in your social media circle.

If you are thinking that you can’t beat those deadbeat affiliates that keep on toping the leader board, inside the course are you will learn how to change that mentality.

You are also about to learn the principle of offering crazy bonuses and how to set this up effectively in your affiliate marketing campaign. If you already have a mailing list, learn how to create a persuasive approach that will make your subscribers buy the product you offer.

FREE BONUS #6: Killer Ideas On How To Increase Sales Using Affiliate Newsletters

Learn the Killer Ideas On How To Increase Sales Using Affiliate Newsletters!

If you have been in the affiliate marketing industry for a quite some time now and still not achieving the sales commission that you are targeting for, you may take a look on the issue on your campaign.

The thing is that there is much information that you can read from affiliate marketing blogs on the internet and sometimes these blogs may mislead you to do something that is not aligned to your niche market or to your current skills.

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FREE BONUS #7: Simple Guide To Promoting Affiliate Products

The key to your success depends on the affiliate product. Associate yourself with an affiliate program that supplements your product or service.

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FREE BONUS #8: Super Affiliate Wizard

The following report includes important information about becoming a super affiliate that may cause you to reconsider what you thought you understood. The most important thing is to study with an open mind and be willing to revise your understanding if necessary.

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FREE BONUS #9: The Affiliate Cloak

The Affiliate Cloak is a video course that will give you the differences between a cloak, what exactly is a link, what’s a URL and what’s an affiliate link. You may seem to think that these are all the same but technically it’s not which you should fully understand.

This video will give you a better understanding what affiliate cloaking really is and how this works because if you’ve done this wrong, you will end up losing a lot of affiliate commissions due to some technical problem. You are also going to learn how to use cloaking the right way to actually improve your sales.

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The first factor that can explain why most of the people are not rich is the wrong believes about wealth and the colluding believes between negative and positive beliefs.

Basically, the human’s brain always tries to find pleasure and avoid suffering. If something is related to hardship, we’ll tend to avoid it. In the other way, if something has a strong relationship with pleasure we’ll get closer to it.

If something is associated with pleasure and hardship, our brain will be confused or neutral. Believes is just like a magnet. If positive belief is mixed up with the negative ones, there is no more “positive polar” or “negative polar.”

Our minds will be neutral or confused as regular metal. When we are sure that “being rich” is positive, while “being poor” is negative, the pole will be much clearer, thus we’ll become a “magnet.” In fact, most people never set his belief consciously from birth to death.

If you do not establish our own conscious beliefs of the need to be rich, without realizing we will be carried away by words such as ‘Money is the root of all evil deeds’. At the results, unconsciously we don’t want to be rich because we do not want to be evil.

How to claim your bonuses

1. Click on the buy now button above or any of my affiliate links/buttons on this page. 2. Go through the order process successfully. 3. After completion of your order, access your bonus offer from the product’s access page on JVZoo or WarriorPlus. Downloading the bonus offer above is automatic and instant.

For Clickbank products, please forward your ‘Purchase Receipt’ to admin@marvyreviews.com to receive your bonus.

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Newbie Affiliate Playbook Review Conclusion – Why I Highly Recommend You Buy This Product

You would like Newbie Affiliate Playbook and I highly recommend it because this is Steven’s step by step process of how he went from 0 to $12k in under 10 weeks. Copy the method this newbie used to crash a 6 figure leaderboard

Newbie Affiliate Playbook

Affiliate marketing case study teaches newbies how to easily make money online

Product SKU: Newbie Affiliate Playbook

Product Brand: Newbie Affiliate Playbook

Product Currency: USD

Product Price: 13

Price Valid Until: 2020-04-11

Product In-Stock: 1

Editor's Rating: 9.6

from JBK Reviews https://www.jbklutse.com/reviews/newbie-affiliate-playbook-review-bonus/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=newbie-affiliate-playbook-review-bonus

[dont-doubt-dopple]

someBODY Once Told Me - Smii7y

Couple Things: 1) Thank you guys for 50+ subscribers. I know that doesn’t seem like a lot, but I’ve only been on Tumblr for a month or two, so this is incredible that to feel like I’ve been welcome here. 2) I don’t watch people like RacingCatz or Subscribe to KyrozGaming, so I’m sorry if the characterization is off. 3) This is not only a high school AU, but a superpowers AU as well, so all the guys have powers. Tyler had an accelerated healing factor, like Deadpool or Wolverine. This is just to explain an action he does later in the chapter 4)It’s Smii7y. This shouldn’t be a surprise, but there will be memes. 5) I’m now shutting up and sitting back to see if you enjoy.

~•~

Kryoz From: are you coming already?

To: give me time. I’m not getting busted again.

From: hurry up then

Smitty sighed at his friend’s impatience. John knew how delicate this process was to sneak onto their roof hiding spot. It was something they calculated so they wouldn’t get caught.

Smitty could see John tapping his fingers on the side of the building through his so called sixth sense. He also say Jay waiting in one of the stalls like he was in the other bathroom. If he wanted to, he could also check on Cody, who was probably ordering fast food in another state. He couldn’t describe this power really. It wasn’t like John’s foresight since he could only see the now. The word that came closest to what Smitty had was Clairvoyance.

He flicked his vision back to Jay. His friends was just heading out of the bathroom, signing out as the bell rang. Smitty followed out about 30 seconds later, making sure anyone watching didn’t think it was planned. They would then converge at the ladder, and Smitty would keep watch on all the teachers on hallway duty so they weren’t caught.

Jay found the spot first. It was simply a ladder heading up to the roof that a teacher showed him while doing the egg drop project. He told Smitty, John, Cody and a handful of others. Since then it’s been their spot. Other people found out about it though. Mini knew because Cody one time stupidly ran to get McDonald’s without shoes. Ohm found it when Minx made him rage so hard he shadow traveled here. Tyler discovered it when he trailed John one time in order to hide from a teacher. Some of the guys even believed Nogla knew, spotting them a couple times from the tree he was always in.

Smitty quickly snapped out of his thoughts when his feet, on autopilot, stopped moving. He was at the closet, and he quickly ducked inside once he made sure no teachers were watching. Jay was already waiting for him inside, playing with his little penguin character he liked so much.

“There’s the milk boy.” Jay said when he noticed Smitty. A little milk bag appeared besides the penguin, and both men smiled. Jay had a little animation made for all of them. Smitty’s design came from when he brought over a bag of milk from Canada. He even put 3D glasses on it and a propeller hat. Jay just really like penguins, so he made a custom one.

“Sup.” He replied as he picked up the milk bag and put it on his shoulder. “The other guys up there?” Jay nodded. Smitty started heading toward the ladder, but stopped when Jay didn’t follow him. “You coming, man?”

Jay shook his head. “I’ve got physical therapy with Craig. His healing can really only do so much for us.”

“How’s that going for you two?”

“Better than when I first got hit. Not good as new yet, but we’re getting close.” Smitty smiled at his friend as he felt the milk bag fade from where it rested from his shoulder.

“I can tell.” He commented. “You weren’t able to maintain 2 animations before.” Jay beamed proudly as his penguin waddled in circles in front of him.

“Thanks, Smitty. I’ve got to go now, but thanks again the support.” He picked up the penguin in arms and walked to the door. He waved at Smitty, who waved back, before leaving. The latter than made his way up the ladder, only pushing the hatch up slightly as he got to the top so he could hear.

“Where the hell is that fuckboi?” Tyler complained as Smitty focused in.

“Tyler, calm down.” Craig assured him. He put a hand on Tyler’s shoulder, but the other one only glared.

“Relax.” John affirmed. “Besides, I can summon him.” Smitty smirked at this. He didn’t have John’s foresight, but he knew what the other one had planned.

“Wait what?” Cody asked innocently as reached the top of the building’s side ladder with a shake from Sonic in hand. “What’s happening?”

“John’s going to use his mystical power of foresight to predict when Smitty gets here.” Tyler mocked.

“No, that’s not how I do it.” John assured, and Smitty flicked out to wait for his cue. “Watch this.” There was a silence before John spoke again. “some-”

One second pause. Then go.

“-BODY Once told me the world is going to own me.” Smitty belted out as he bust through the hatch. Cody and Craig started laughing, while John’s smirk only widen and he began singing along.

“I ain’t the sharpest tool in the shed. She was looking kind of fun with her finger and her thumb In the shape of an L on her forehead.”

Craig managed to regain enough composer to also add to the makeshift off-key chorus, while Tyler only starred at them in disbelief. Cody was still watching, giggling slightly between sips of shake.

“Well the years start coming and they don’t stop coming Fed to the rules and I hit the ground running Didn’t make sense not to live for fun Your brain gets smart but your head gets dumb So much to do, so much to see So what’s wrong with taking the back streets? You’ll never know if you don’t go You’ll never shine if you don’t glow

"Hey now, you’re an all-star, get your game on, go play Hey now, you’re a rock star, get the show on, get paid And all that glitters is gold Only shooting stars break the mold.”

When it was clear that they had ended, Cody began clapping at the three. Craig took a small bow while Smitty and John high-five.

“Grade-A memes right there.” Smitty proclaimed, and John only nodded in agreement.

“I hate all of you right now.” Tyler fumed. Craig snickered, before trying to calm him down.

“Did you guys plan that?” Cody asked, ignoring the steaming Tyler.

“It’s about as planned as our CS:GO strats.” John stated.

“Meaning we have a general idea but in reality have no idea what we are doing.” Smitty clarified. Cody nodded, and went back to sipping his shake.

“They are such a couple.” Cody commented a little time later, and Smitty glanced over his shoulder. Mini was holding onto Tyler’s arms, rubbing up and down in efforts to calm him. His lips moved, but they couldn’t hear the words. Wildcat seemed calmed by them though, as anger was slowly replaced with serenity.

“One of the many ‘couples’ in this school.” John agreed.

“How many are there?” Cody questioned.

“You are very curious today, aren’t you?” Smitty wondered allowed, but it fell on deaf ears as John answered Cody’s question.

“Well, there’s them.” He started, gesturing at Mini and Tyler. “Then there’s Evan and Jonathan, Bryce and Ohm, Marcel and that coffee barista.”

“Scotty.” Smitty filled in. “Don’t forget Ze and Chilled. Plus there’s that new kid who might be in a 'relationship’ with Max.”

“Oh I saw that.” Cody commented. “They were holding hands the first time they walked into the cafeteria. I think it was the new kid’s first day.”

“Yep, definitely a 'couple’.” John confirmed. “Oh, can’t forget about Brock and Brian.”

“Nope, they’re an actual couple now.” Smitty rebutted. “Brock told us at lunch, and he said they’re slowly going to tell the others.”

“Aw.” Kyroz whined. “And I thought we were going to be the first couple out.” Cody practically choked on his shake. Smitty and John shared a glance.

“You two are dating?!” He exclaimed. Both boys nodded.

“We’ve only come out to a couple of close friends.” Smitty explained. “We’ve been trying to figure out a meme-ingful way to do it.”

“Same.” John added. “Kiss?”

“Gladly.” Smitty locked lips with John, the fire that was originally there when they first kissed in a gaming convention bathroom. It synchronized them, heartbeat and breathing, so that they felt no need to come up for air. It felt good, kissing once without fear of anyone catching them in stolen moments. It was their spot, their paradise, though it felt like the world had faded away and it was just them.

“TYLER!” John and Smitty broke away to look at Craig, who was leaning over the edge of the school. Tyler was nowhere in sight. The boys had, in fairness, forgotten they were there.

“What happened?” Cody said, voicing everyone’s opinion. “I was watching John and Smitty make out. Intensely, I might add.”

“Tyler jumped off the roof.” Mini explained. “Said he, and I quote, 'Couldn’t handle these dipshits.’”

“Damb.” Smitty replied.

“Noice.” John added.

“Now I understand why Tyler wanted to jump off the roof so bad.”