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dailydungeondelves · 2 years

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Hey everyone! Recently I sent out a survey asking about people's use of captions on twitch, and what their preferences were. Here's a short infographic on some of my findings. If you want to know more details - and are interested in adding captions to your stream - check out the info below.

Also - please reblog to spread the knowledge! This will contain outward links, and we all know that tumblr likes to hide those posts in the search function.

Now that I have your attention - I went on a journey with this one.

I started my survey because I wanted to find out: what was the best way of captioning streams with multiple participants? This is the case for many multiplayer game streams, ranging from things like Gartic Phone, to Phasmophobia, and of course my interest, TTRPG streams. However, a great deal of these streams are not captioned, or only caption one person. And honestly? There’s not a lot of well known tools to help streamers with this problem.

Before I get into it, I want to say that if you only need to caption a stream with one participant, the best way I have found to do this is using the OBS Captions Plugin. No extra windows open, and a real simple way to provide fast, Closed Captions for your stream. If you use SLOBS, I’m afraid this won’t work - but it’s worth checking out the other options I’m about to list for multiple streamers.

These methods use Open Captions, and only need to be added using a browser source or window capture (Aside from method number 4). They are permanently on, and a part of your overlay, so consider their size, placement and colour when adding them to your stream.

Option 1: Pixel Chat

Pixel Chat is a free to use stream overlay service, with the option to upgrade for more features. One of their free overlays is the Captions Overlay. Their website is very simple and easy to navigate: Just connect your twitch when you make an account, make a caption overlay, copy the overlay link into OBS or SLOBS, and you’re ready to have captions! You can have up to 10 people in your “room” ready to be captioned, which you can add by sending your guests an invite.

Also I recently talked to the wonderful dev, who after a request has added the “transcript” feature: meaning your captions can run in a live transcript. This is an amazing feature which lets your viewers see who is talking, and in what order, without taking up a lot of your screen space.

Pro: Has speaker recognition built in, flows in a transcript, dev is very responsive to feature requests. Some font customization available on the free tier.

Con: You need to use a subscription to upload custom fonts, however fonts provided for free are clear, sans serif fonts (with Open Dyslexia also being available on the free tier). I am unsure on what languages this method supports other than English.

Open 2: Webcaptioner (Discontinued since Oct 2023, left in for archiving and linking to the github source)

Webcaptioner is another wonderful free tool which allows you to caption your streams, with so many customization options for your font as standard, and support for multiple languages. You can add Closed Captions through OBS, or screen capture your captions using SLOBS if you stream alone.

Adding captions for multiple people here becomes slightly trickier, but still not too bad, so stay with me.

This tutorial covers the basics very well, with only a few changes for 2022:

There is no longer a box to search for the share function. However you can add it to your webcaptioner by clicking this link.

I also disagree with their placement of captions for multiple people on stream. This is obviously personal preference, but here’s my logic. You want your viewers to know easily who is saying what. The method placing captions under the speaker's webcam works okay when there are two people on a stream, but when you have to look around ALL of the screen to read many captions, it's hard to keep up! According to my survey, I am not alone in this: 38.3% of people prefer the captions together at the bottom of the screen vs 21.6% opting for captions under the camera. One participant made another interesting point as a lip reader - sometimes putting captions under the camera means putting them slightly over the camera to save room, which hinders their ability to lip read.

Another way to add speaker recognition that doesn’t force your viewers to read text across the entire screen is to change the colour of each speaker’s text. Since everyone is giving you their caption links individually using this method, this is a great alternative to placing them under the camera. You can also add the speaker’s name to the front of their captions in OBS or SLOBS - or a clear image to identify who is who.

Pro: Lots of customization for the text, can change the colour of each speaker’s text for improved speaker recognition, supports multiple languages.

Con: Kind of complex and long winded, requires each participant to have a webcaptioner account. Share feature is experimental and may break/be removed. Text does not flow in a transcript, meaning more room on your overlay to stack the captions.

Option 3: VDO.Ninja (and Caption.ninja)

This method is the most technical, but may be worth learning as it has the potential to improve your streams in all sorts of ways, not just with captions!

VDO.ninja is a free, in-browser video call service made with streaming in mind. It provides rooms for streamers to create and connect to OBS and SLOBS using browser links, and allows you to mix audio, create scenes, and do all sorts of wonderful things to make your livestreams fantastic. I highly recommend you check out their docs for more information, or watch the dev Steve’s videos.

VDO.ninja’s URL can be customized to include desired features, such as Captions. For instance, Steve shows in his video that adding “?transcribe” to your input link, and “&CC” to your browser source link, will display captions along with your video (you can also find support for different languages this way by adding the correct code to the end of your URL). If you want to do this in a room, simply create a room, enter as a director, add “&transcribe” to your invite links manually before you send them to your guests, and “&cc” to your browser source links in OBS or SLOBS (please note you can only have one instance of a “transcribe” link open at once on a single computer, or the captions will get confused about which source should be working, and won’t work.)

Still with me? Great! If you’ve done this right, you will see captions appear over your video. In a room, if you assign a name to everyone in the call in director mode, those names will appear next to their captions to provide speaker recognition - magic!

But what if you just want to have the captions in your browser link, and not the video and audio output? Or you want that, but you want to arrange your overlay in another way? Well, you can add “&novideo” and “&noaudio” to the browser link you’re pasting in OBS or SLOBS, after “&cc”, and it will just display the captions.

Want to customize the font? That’s also possible using the custom CSS panel in OBS. Steve also covers this in his Captions video linked above.

The dev has also made another site called Captions.ninja - which allows you to make captions in a similar way to webcaptioner. This is currently pretty simple compared to webcaptioner, but is also another option to look at if you want open captions for your solo streams.

Pro: Great streaming software, has speaker recognition built in, flows in a transcript, helpful dev responding to queries in their discord.

Con: Very technical, requires some knowledge with CSS or stringing URL code together.

Option 4: OBS Captions Plugin

As mentioned at the start of this post, OBS captions plugin is my choice for streaming alone. However, you can also use it to create closed captions for multiple participants.

Simply install the plugin, and set all the audio imputs you want to be captioned to one singular track in OBS. Then, select that track for your Caption Source. That's it!

The only drawback to this method is, because it is Closed Captions, there is no speaker recognition. Because of that, it's good to add a visual aid to your stream to indicate who is speaking. This could be as simple as making the camera frame glow when your guest speaks, or adding an icon which appears when audio is detected (this can be achieved with another OBS plugin, Move Transition).

Pro: Closed Captioning means that you save space on your overlay. Supports multiple languages. No extra tabs or programs, and no hassle at all for your guests.

Con: No speaker recognition. Only works in OBS.

Honorable mentions

Lastly - there’s the Stream Closed Caption Extension. This extension is great, but does not have a way that I can see where you can caption streams with multiple users. Still, for solo streamers, it’s worth checking out.

The creator has made a very helpful video on how to get this set up. You can connect this into OBS (like with Webcaptioner), if you would prefer to use this for your solo streams - or use it as an overlay or panel extension. This means that, as long as your stream mic can be connected to the web page, you could potentially use the overlay to add captions when streaming on console or without software like OBS or SLOBS. However please bear in mind that if you use the captions as an extension, they will only be available for the live stream, NOT your vods, as extensions aren’t available to watch later.

Best Practises

Okay - so we can make Open Captions now. But how should the captions look?

When leaving room for captions on your overlay, you should consider:

Their placement

Their size

Their colour

Their font

Now, it is easy to fall into the trap of considering design only - but remember why the captions are here! In order for them to be good, functioning captions, you should do your best to make them practical before stylish.

Game Maker’s Toolkit made some wonderful videos on designing video games for disabilities - and a lot of what is talked about is translatable to your livestream overlays.

Placement 84.3% of people said they preferred captions at the bottom rather than the top, and 63.7% preferred them to be centred rather than right or left aligned. While in TV or games right alignment for English text is odd, for Twitch, it is worth considering because that is right next to chat - limiting the amount of screen space a reader has to travel to look from captions, to chat.

Another mistake I see happen in stream captions is placing the captions across the entire length of the screen. This is a lot of space to read and makes following captions hard. Consider keeping your captions within 1000 pixels long when using a 1920x1080 screen resolution.

Size When choosing the size of your captions, consider mobile users. You don’t want your captions to be so big they take over all your space, but they need to be big enough to see from any device.

A good guide that you can use is the Clearcast supers test card. Clearcast are the UK advertisements compliance agency, meaning that they screen all broadcasted advertisements to make sure they are clear, and not misleading. They have a minimum size that the fine print on UK ads are allowed to be - and have made a helpful guide to make sure people are able to follow it. This guide can also help you make sure that your captions aren’t too small - a lower case “w” should fit within the red rectangle, without any red showing above or below it.

Colour If you are not adjusting the colour for every speaker, the standard would be white text on a black background. This provides good contrast for all viewers. However if you want to adjust colours for your overlay colour schemes, you should bear in mind some options.

Firstly: The text and their background should have a strong contrast. Ideally, the text being a light colour, and the background dark, or vice versa.

The colours should not be too neon. These colours can hurt viewers' eyes, which is not ideal for text.

Make sure your colours are still visible for people with colour blindness. The most obvious combination would be red and green - but there are multiple types of colour blindness that would be good to consider. You can save out an image of your overlay and test it here if you aren’t sure, to view the contrast for various types of colour blindness.

Font San serif fonts tend to be the clearest for subtitles. Examples of these fonts would be Arial, Helvetica, Veranda, Calibri, and Trebuchet. Things like Comic Sans or Open Dylexic are available as well to assist viewers who are dylexic or neurodivergent.

A free google font that has been designed specifically for people who have sight impairments or reading difficulties is Atkinson Hyperlegible. It looks very clean with recognizable characters, and is my personal favourite.

And that’s all I know! Do you know of any other apps that help caption livestreams, or disagree with anything here? Let me know, I would love to hear about it. Feel free to send me a message if anything is unclear - I’m super up for helping make more Twitch streams more accessible.

(credits: Music: Synapse by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com)

Link to survey (left open): https://forms.gle/LZS2C6yAmpXqYVg27

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sockablock · 4 years

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Chapter 11: Make Yourself at Home

“So, this is the place you were talking about, huh? I’m not going to lie, it’s much better than I expected.”

“Aw, thanks! It’s my momma’s cabin. She owns a bunch of places around here, but this is the closest one to school.”

“A bunch of places? What a lucky woman.”

“Wait ‘til you find out what else she owns.” Nott draped her coat over the nearest hook. “Lucky doesn’t even start to cover it.”

The rest of the gang filed in through the door.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Beau began with a grin, “I wouldn’t mind staying the night in a—"

“Anyway,” Fjord coughed into his hand. “Isn’t there something more important we should talk about?”

“That is right.” Caleb turned to Molly. “Namely, what it is we should do about…well, you.”

“Is that so?” Without looking back, their newest cabin-mate strode into the living room. He threw himself across Beau’s favorite chair. “Good luck with that, then. I’ll be here in the meantime.”

“In the meantime? What’s that supposed to mean?” Beau followed him in and made a mental vow to steal her seat back as soon as possible.

Molly waved his hand. “I was under the impression that your…angel would be taking care of things. That’s her new job, isn’t it? To mask me from bikers?”

“Only for now.” Yasha met his gaze with a stern frown. “I cannot look after you forever. I will not even be here for much longer.”

“Which would be our second problem,” Caleb sighed. Behind him, Jester—and for some reason, Caduceus—danced around looking for bedsheets and extra toothbrushes, the hallmarks of an excellent host.

“Right,” said Beau. “We sort of left off on a…I hate to say it, but sort of a dead end.”

“Really? Weren’t you working something out?” Nott asked. “What about all that stuff with the dictionary, Caleb? And those star charts?”

“Those are only a start,” he shrugged. “With our current level of information, it is not enough. Like I said…when was it now, yesterday?”

“It felt like years ago.” Fjord combed dirt out of his hair.

“Regardless,” Caleb continued, “we need more clues. Something. Anything. At this point I would even take subjective commentary. Like the way the sun felt. Or if there was much sun at all, Yasha.”

“You mean like if she was on the moon?” Nott asked.

“I mean like if there was a lot of shade. Like in a jungle.”

They turned to Yasha. She sighed.

“I’m not sure, I…” she squeezed her eyes shut, “…I think…yes, the sun. It…felt warm.”

When she opened her eyes, they were still staring. “Er….”

Caleb came to her rescue. “Okay, perhaps I should have been less literal. Sorry, Engel, but that was not very helpful.”

“Pajamas!” Jester spun back into the living room. Behind her, Caduceus was holding a tray of tea, topped off with a little jar of honey. “Here you are, Molly!” She leaned over the couch. “And let me say again, welcome to our house! Demon of not, I think you’re great. I’m excited to hang out with you some more!”

“Ah, you’re a darling,” he flashed her a smile. “I can already tell you’ll be my favorite. Although, perhaps, I think I’ll be better company once I’m clean. If you all are going to keep talking about…whatever important thing you’re talking about, I’d like to use this opportunity to shower.”

“Oh, yeah, here,” Fjord quickly stood up. “You can borrow my shampoo, the bathroom’s there—"

The two of them wandered off. Caduceus handed everyone else their mugs.

“Let’s keep going tomorrow,” Caleb said, trying on his most reassuring smile. “Who knows? We might find something after all. And with more time, Yasha, you might regain more memories.”

It was small, but Beau noticed Yasha skip past his gaze to stare deep into her cup.

“Maybe,” she said. “I hope so. Otherwise…”

“It’ll be okay,” Caduceus smiled. “In my experience, the best things come with time.”

— — —

Beauregard lingered by herself in the hallway outside their room. Currently, Jester and Fjord were giving a freshly-washed Molly the grand tour of the cabin while Caleb and Caduceus—with varying degrees of contribution—rearranged their room to accommodate him. And since Nott was calling her family in the living room, this would probably be Beau’s best chance to talk to Yasha alone.

She breathed in.

Nearly every conversation they’d had since the initial fall had ended in a tangled mess. Not to mention, Yasha’s situation had changed dramatically in the last few hours. On top of that, Beau was still roiling in guilt for lying to her all those days ago. It was very likely that neither of them would be in the right headspace for a heart-to-heart, and that wasn’t even taking into account how nauseous Beau felt at that very phrase—“heart-to-heart.”

Something else was poking at her too, something she’d had to shove aside earlier but now couldn’t shake away: it had been a while since she’d seen Yasha’s wings, but she knew for a fact that the first two times, they had been…well, they had been white—

And coupled with the fact that the angel only recently had started acting so anxious to leave, whereas before she’d been confused, but way more relaxed…

Beau breathed out and stared at the floor. Maybe it was time to stop wondering about what her own motivations were. Caleb, Fjord, and Jester had all made valid points, but truth be told, she was starting to get the sense that right now, how she felt wasn’t as important.

Still, the question did remain. What would she rather do?

“Yasha?” She tapped her knuckles on the doorframe. Sitting up, and dimly framed in moonlight, Yasha’s mighty silhouette turned.

Maybe she’d always known the answer.

“Beauregard. Hello. Is it time for bed?”

“No, uh…no, probably not for a while.” She rubbed the back of her neck. “I think Jes is showing off her mom’s jewelry. Fjord tagged along—it’s probably to be polite, but also to make sure Molly won’t steal anything. They’ll be at that for an hour at best.”

“It is good for Fjord to be careful,” Yasha nodded. “Though I am more worried about your souls being stolen than jewelry.”

“Yeah, uh, that thought also crossed my mind.” She made her way inside. “I mean, I’m mostly…not worried at all, but—wait, should I be worried? Do you think that’ll happen?”

Yasha thought about it. “He already knows your names, which is…not great. But as long as you do not make any promises, I think you should be fine. Do not shake his hand. No matter what he says.”

“Really? Like…metaphorically?”

“Either. Both. Deals are bad.”

Beau sat down on the wooden dresser beside Yasha’s makeshift cot. Even at this angle, Yasha was still taller.

“You’ve said stuff like that before,” she remembered. “You told me that ‘your kind’ had been corrupted that way. Right? Because they dealt with us?”

“Sort of. There is less blame on you, it is…just that mortal souls are powerful.” Yasha ran her fingers through her hair. “Basically…the short version is that there are pieces of light that exist inside you, light from the very essence of our world. It fuels us, and it keeps us alive, but too much and it can drive us mad. We lose sight of everything else in pursuit of more and more and…more of that light.”

Beau let her words sink in. “Yikes.”

“Yes. That is why we have so many rules. Why demons are dangerous. Why I am risking so much by staying here.”

Beau tilted her head. “Do you feel mad?”

Yasha didn’t answer right away. And then Beau steeled herself, she said—

“Your, uh, wings—"

Yasha went still.

It would not have been hard to miss. But Beau had spent so much time together with her in the last few days that when her breathing stopped, her shoulders stiffened, her eyes affixed to the sheets—

“Shit, I-I’m sor—"

“You know what is happening then?”

Yasha’s voice was a quaver. Beau paused.

“I…really don’t know a lot about angel stuff,” she said slowly, “but I do remember what I…saw. And I know that it isn’t the same as what I saw the night you landed. And then…I started thinking about how panicked you were about ‘interfering,’ and…well.”

She avoided Yasha’s gaze. “It’s my fault, isn’t it? It’s because I convinced you to stay with me—with us. Instead of just letting you go.”

The silence lingered on. Beau bunched up the edge of her shirt and waited, dreading, the answer—

“…I don’t know.”

Her head shot up.

“You…what?”

“I, ah.” Yasha’s shoulders drooped. “I really do not know. Nothing like this has ever happened before. On the one hand, in all my visits to Earth, this is the first time that I ever talked to mortals. But…at the same time, I—I don’t actually think I’ve done anything to…to justify a fall.”

Beau opened her mouth. She closed it again.

“So…huh. Then that’s—you really don’t know.”

“No,” Yasha sighed. “Although, you should know that I do not think you could blame yourself in any case. I would not have stayed if a part of me did not want to, Beauregard.”

Beau actively worked to shut down her facial features. Her reply, a pitched, “Oh.”

“One thing is definitely certain, though,” huffed Yasha, unaware of the battle raging in Beau’s mind. “The longer that I remain on Earth, the…the worse things could become. My wings are not…all that good, but…I still have them. That means I am still an angel. That…I am still an angel.”

Beau nodded, and managed to re-focus. “Then…then I bet it’s alright,” she said. “I mean, you aren’t out of time. And you know how stubborn we all are, there’s no way we’ll give up now. We’ll make sure you find your way home. You’re one of us now, Yash, we’d do anything for you.”

Yasha’s mouth twitched. “Thank you, Beauregard.” It was a smile. “For everything. Really. I…can never express to you how grateful I am. How lucky I was to land in front of you.”

Beau’s eyes flew wide, and Yasha backpedaled. “I just mean—no—well, no, not no—I didn’t—that was—that is—all of you. Everyone. You and your friends. Are good people. I…thank you.”

“Well, hey,” Beau’s arm shifted as if to almost reach out, and then she thought better of it. “My friends are your friends too,” she said, quite awkwardly, instead. “You’re one of us. And we’re friends. We’re…all friend, here.”

“Right, er, right,” managed Yasha; it was getting hot in their room. “Yes. Exactly. We are friends. Uh—"

In a fit of absolute panic, she stuck out her hand. Amazingly, Beau took it.

Their hands shook. Neither of them looked.

“Th-thank you,” said Yasha, when they finally broke away. “Besides, um…you know, I’m not leaving yet. I still don’t’ know where I’m going. There’s also the, uh, the—Mollymauk. I do not want to fly him across the world with me.”

“Right,” said Beau. “Yeah, that’s…we…we’re all kind of following your lead on that one.” Then she hesitated, and when Yasha blinked back in confusion, Beau suddenly inhaled so sharply it almost hurt.

“Look, uh, look, there’s something I gotta say from a while ago—it was a, well, a—Yasha, I owe you an apology.”

A beat.

Yasha stared at her. “Me?”

“It’s…really dumb,” Beau blurted out. “Not that—no, not that—you weren’t dumb, I was, I did—I lied to you. Back then.”

If anything, she looked even more perplexed.

“You…did?”

“Sort of,” her eyes fell to the mattress. “I, uh…when you told me about auras, that one time, I…freaked out and told you a lie. I, uh…I don’t know if you’ve noticed at all, but I kind of like being…mysterious. God, no, not mysterious, it’s just…look, I was feeling conflicted about some stuff. Stuff that I wasn’t…ready to share. So when you told me that you could see my aura, I panicked. I told you it was shitty of you to do that, which…that was really shitty of me.”

“Oh,” said Yasha. “Is that…then, does that mean humans are okay with me reading them?”

“I’m pretty sure humans aren’t aware of it enough to actually have an opinion. The point is,” she sighed, “I lied to you. You had way more reason than I did to be confused, and upset, and…and just unsure. But when you reached out to, like, understand me, I pushed you away. I…don’t ever want to do that.”

She risked a glance up. “I’m sorry.”

And then, to her shock, Yasha nodded.

“It’s okay.”

Beau blinked. “It…is?”

“Er…yes,” said Yasha. “I think it is. You were just being protective of yourself. That is alright. Especially if you…were not ready to share things. And you did not mean to hurt me, yes?”

“Did I hurt you?”

Yasha considered this. “To be honest, um, no. You didn’t, not really. And if you did, then I forgot about it when Caleb told me I was missing 6,000 years of my memory.”

“Oh.”

“Yes. Er…is that ‘yikes’?”

Maybe it was the relief, the sheer drop from such panic, or maybe it was the way Yasha’s eyebrows were bunching, but Beauregard could not keep herself from bursting out into laughter.

Yasha looked startled at first, but she recovered when Beau gave her a grin.

“You know what? I think it is time for bed.”

“What? Oh,” Yasha still looked puzzled, but she nodded. “Oh, er…sure. Yes. No problem.”

— — —

There was just one problem.

Jester groaned, pressing her face into her pillow. “I take it back. I take it all back. This is the worst thing in the world and we should call that circus right now.”

“Can’t,” muttered Nott. “Don’t have their numbers.”

“Maybe we can put up posters,” Beau suggested. “Let the evil bikers know where he is. They can have him.”

There was a rustle in the darkness. “Yasha,” said Nott, “are all demons like this?”

Another rustle followed. “Er…I have heard that the most fearsome demons plague their victims with visions of hellfire and ruin. But I think there are many ways to torment people.”

“Where the does not shutting up come in on that list?”

Yasha also had a pillow on her head. “The very top, I think.”

From the other side of the all-too-thin wall, a flood of music poured through. Fjord had made the crucial mistake of telling Molly to “make yourself at home,” and since Molly’s only home had been a crowded RV full of mostly-drunk carnies plunging down the highways of America at midnight, he’d said it was impossible for him to sleep without some “background noise.”

“Oh, sure,” Fjord had said. “Background noise should be fine.”

“He’s a guest,” sighed Jester. “We basically kidnapped him. I felt bad, and I didn’t think…I didn’t think he’d be like this.”

“Maybe someone will come to our rescue,” said Beau. “Maybe Caleb will finally snap and kill him.”

“Oh, if anyone would do it, it would be Caleb,” Nott agreed. “Fjord’s too weak. Or…maybe Cad, the quiet ones are always murderers.”

“It wouldn’t be murder,” Beau called sleepily. “It would be a civic duty.”

“Maybe we can plug our ears.” Yasha rolled over to look at the other girls. “Do any of you have some beeswax?”

The deep pause that followed would have been silence if not for the blaring—let’s have a party there’s a full moon in the sky, it’s the hour of the—

“I wanna die,” said Nott. “If he doesn’t, I will.”

“I can try to find some bees if I must,” Yasha pressed. “I feel guilty. I am the one who dragged him into your lives—"

She jumped when something brushed the side of her leg.

“We don’t need bees,” said Beau, who was slapping around the edge of her mattress, totally blind. “Here, I’ve got extra. Everyone, come get some. Earplugs. They’re not enough, but…helps.”

Yasha recovered quickly, reaching over to accept the little pieces of orange foam. There was some general shuffling and muted “thank yous” as Nott and Jester acquired pairs as well.

“Nice,” said Beau, rolling over on the floor. “Adds a pop to your monochrome.”

Yasha couldn’t tell whether that was addressed to her. But when it seemed clear that Beau had just passed out again, she carefully pressed the earplugs in. Then she sat there a moment longer, staring at her leg, surrounded by the muted blare of a hundred trumpets.

Off in the distance and dulled, Nott said, “I’m gonna go threaten to cut his head off.”

— — —

And then, eventually, there was quiet.

— — —

See:

Not…not a storm at all. Not even a lingering cloud.

Instead, there is just the blue and endless sky.

Somewhere, she is…lying down. The sun is warm. She is…somewhere. She is somewhere where a field of green-turning-gold-turning-russet wild grasses ripple slow.

There’s a gentle brush against her leg. She looks down. It’s a little white flower.

It’s…it’s being held in…someone’s hand.

Her head jerks up.

“Wait, who are y—"

— — —

Her eyes focused on a face.

“Huh?” said Beauregard. “Was that for me?”

Yasha sat up so quickly that Beau had to jump backwards. “Whoa, there—"

Yasha ignored this, whipped her head around, took in two unmade bunks, a mess of blankets, golden sunlight—

The curtains by the window rippled slow.

“I…but…”

“Yasha?” Beau frowned. “Hey, Yash, is everything okay?”

“But I…there was…” Her hands dug into the sides of her face as she squeezed her eyes shut. “There was…a field,” she bit out. “Grass. Under the sky, and a flower, and a p—"

She froze.

“Uh…Yasha?”

A…person. There had been a person. Someone—but who? It was someone…important…

And then the thought—no one can know.

“N-nothing,” Yasha blurted, though she didn’t quite know why. “It was…it was nothing. Er…but there might be something more I have for Caleb to work with.”

Beau’s concerned expression vanished. “Oh, what? Oh—hey, that’s awesome!” She closed the distance, even went to clap Yasha on the back. “That’s great! He’s gonna be totally thrilled! And that’s one step closer to you getting to…go. Oh.”

They both fell silent. Through the door, the clattering sounds of the rest setting a table.

Beau’s hand fell back to her side.

“Of course, we always knew you were gonna leave at some point. And…you know, you were ready to bolt, like, two days ago, so it stands to reason that you…should be happy to leave…”

Yasha looked up at Beauregard.

A person. Someone important…

“Beau, um…Beau, I think I—"

The door burst open. Nott shoved her head in, eyebrows raised.

“God, what’s taking you two so long? Cad made pancakes! C’mon, we’re waiting!”

— — —

A thick slab of blueberry-laden goodness landed in the center of Yasha’s plate. A sweet, buttery, slightly tart aroma wafted through the kitchen.

“So, I think I still have a bit more catching-up to do, don’t I?” said Molly, who was sitting in a chair with a slouch so bad it looked like his spine was broken. “For one, it seems like I’ve missed the book club meeting that made you all friends.”

“We met in college,” said Fjord, rubbing his eyes. “Not a book club.”

“Same difference,” Molly shrugged. “It’s just that I can’t help but feel a tad bit excluded from your pre-existing lovefest.”

“It would be easier to include you if you knew how to be quiet sometimes,” Nott grumbled.

He stuck his tongue out, and it was stained with blueberry.

“I think we are overdue for a proper meeting anyway,” said Caleb, spearing his pancake. “A lot has changed in the last twenty-four hours. We should review our goals and priorities.”

“Get home,” said Yasha. “Do that by finding ȣɿɕƺᶋɷ.”

“What the hell,” said Molly.

“Later,” Caleb sighed. “Right, okay, that’s item one on our list, our continuing mission to find Iothia. And once we do…?”

Yasha shuffled. It was quick, almost missed, but she glanced at Beau.

“Er…then I…leave,” she said. “I fly there, and I can return home.”

“Aw, really?” Jester pouted. “You’re really just going to leave right away?”

If anything, Yasha’s next expression was even more complicated. She fidgeted again. “I, er, sort of…sort of have to. As…quickly as possible, I think.”

“Man, that sucks.”

Yasha managed a tiny smile. “I know.”

“But you can’t go until you’ve taught me repression,” Molly said, quickly waving his fork for attention. “I need to get back to my circus, my dear. And I can’t do that safely until I learn to hide.”

“Which means you’ll be sticking around a little longer, Yasha.” Caduceus down the plate of pancakes and took a seat. “Isn’t that nice?”

“And you’ll be hanging out with me,” Molly grinned. “I expect we’ll get to know each other very well.”

A loud thump shook the table and everyone’s heads suddenly turned to Beauregard.

She blinked. Then she looked down.

“Shit, uh…sorry. I think I missed my plate.”

“Jesus christ,” said Fjord. “That’s an inch into solid wood.”

Beau gripped the handle of the knife she’d sunk into the table. On the second try, she managed to yank it free.

“Sorry, uh…sorry again,” she said. “Jes, your mom can bill my dad.”

“Are both of you rich girls?” Molly asked.

“It doesn’t matter,” she shot him a deep scowl. “You just worry about…about learning to shut up your aura, or whatever. Then Yasha can get on with stuff that’s actually important, and you can finally leave us all alone.”

“My, my, someone’s touchy, isn’t she?” Molly folded his hands over his lap. “Anger issues are bad for your health.”

“You know what else is bad for my health, asshole? Not being able to fucking sleep ‘cause someone needs a rock concert every night—"

“Okay, okay, okay,” said Fjord, holding his hands up so fast he almost knocked over the milk. “Alright, I think that’s enough, you two. Molly found headphones eventually, right? And now he knows better.”

“What am I, a child—"

“And we’ve got to be a little more understanding of a man who’s just had their whole life turned around. It’s not every day we find out we’re not even human.”

“Not a man either,” Molly added.

“Ah, sorry—"

“It’s alright, dear.” He sighed. Then, with a swoop of what could only be described as exaggerated magnanimity, he turned to Beauregard.

“Truce? Not surrender, just armistice.”

She rolled her eyes, but did concede. “Yeah, whatever.”

“Back to the matter at hand, then,” said Caleb, as that piece of breakfast theater concluded. “Yasha. Even though your sense memory from last night was…for lack of a better term, undescriptive, it gave me the idea that we could perhaps try to use images of natural places to trigger more. Jester’s mother has a number of picture atlases in the study, after all. Perhaps we could start there today.”

Yasha lowered her fork. “Actually…while I was asleep, I remembered something more.”

This was followed by a chorus of clattering and hurried exclamations, the loudest being Nott’s, “What, really?!”

“Er…yes, but it was very small,” Yasha said. “I…remembered lying down. In a field of golden grass. And, um…there was a flower. It was, um, white.”

“Is that all?” Caleb said after a while.

She hesitated.

Then, “Yes.”

“Well, that’s not too bad,” said Caduceus. “It might even be a great, actually. Most flowers only grow in specific climates anyway, and if we’re lucky, it might only be native to a certain area.”

“Ooooh, oh! What did it look like?” Jester asked. Then her eyes lit up. “Oh—Yasha, you should draw it!”

She jumped out of her chair and was running back from the living room with her sketchbook before they even processed this.

“And you’re getting so much better at art too,” she squealed, “this’ll be great practice—"

“Jester, are you sure—"

She pushed Yasha’s plate aside and handed her a pencil triumphantly. “Close your eyes! Picture it! Then draw!”

Even Caleb seemed reluctant to argue with Jester. He shrugged and said, “But also please describe it to us, please.”

Yasha put her fork down. She took the pencil.

“I’m really not good,” she said, weakly, but she did her best to envision the flower. “Okay, um, it was small…very small, and it had seven little points like this…”

A moment later, everyone leaned in to see the drawing.

“Aw, it’s so pretty!” Jester beamed. “Good job!”

“Ah—thank you.”

“Any idea what it is?” Fjord glanced at Caduceus. “Have you seen this before?”

Cad scratched his chin. “I can’t say I have, but…it shouldn’t be that hard to find. You said it’s white?”

“And small,” Yasha added. “As big as someone’s—someone’s fingernail.”

“My momma has tons of books on flowers,” Jester supplied. “Maybe those can help?”

“I’m sure they will. And Caduceus is right,” Caleb added, “this is an excellent jumping-off point. If we have this drawing too, Yasha, I can take over from here. That will give you time to help train our newest...divine associate.”

“You don’t have to lay on the flattery that thick,” Molly smiled. “Though I appreciate the compliment.”

“I meant that literally.”

“Why, thank you—"

“I can help you too.” Beau was determined to silence Mollymauk quickly. “Again, it’s not like I’m doing much anyway. At least this time there’ll be pictures, right?”

“Are you sure?” Yasha leaned backwards. “If you don’t want to—"

“No, no, really. I’ve told you, Yash, and I’ll say it again, I really don’t mind any of this. I want to do this. And you can’t stop me.”

Yasha met her gaze, then nodded. “Okay. Thank you.”

“Exactly,” said Beau, and raised her chin in a display of satisfaction. Then she hesitated, turned towards the rest. “But if the rest of you don’t feel like helping, I mean…I’m a deadbeat, but Fjord, you’re supposed to be reading for a summer class. And Nott, you’ve got stuff for your job, right? And Jes—"

“How about we clear up the living room and do what we need to do together?” Fjord asked. “Solidarity. It’ll be like…like study hall!”

“I’m game!” said Nott. “As much as it sucks, I should probably get on that.”

“Me too,” Jester clapped her hands. “It’s not as fun as fishing or introducing Yasha to fries, but studying won’t be so bad if we’re all together!”

Molly stared at her incredulously. “Are you—really?” He turned to the rest, aghast. “You’re all really going to sit down and do…do work? Willingly? Nevermind, this is much worse than a book club.”

He leaned over and nudged Yasha in the shoulder. “My goodness, aren’t we lucky to be divine? I’d rather do anything than, ugh, read.”

—

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winter-turtle · 3 years

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House Of Wolves - Chapter 2 - Winterturtle - Multifandom [Archive of Our Own]

Tony being human disaster.

Chapter 2: Endeavors And Disasters

The moving came as a surprise to Peter. Stark just showed up a few hours after dropping him off in his cell and then took him here. Instead of the dull grey, the walls here were white, not to mention without stains of suspicious origin like when Peter’s family was forced to squat somewhere and there was an actual bathroom this time. The only downside was that there was no door, but it was still a whole separate room.

Privacy.

Peter kept thinking about the interrogation session ever since it ended. It’s been hours and he couldn’t figure out what had possessed him to reveal his name, but he saw no real harm in it.

For all the world knew, the Parker family’s been dead for years. There was nothing in their name; no bank accounts, no cards, no phone numbers, so they really couldn’t link anything to them. Not even his parents’ clients didn’t know their real names as there was always different name per client. Only codenames remained the same.

And hey! For all the Avengers knew, he could have taken an advantage of a missing family’s identity-

The door opened, pulling Peter out of his musing.

“What the- why are you on the floor?”

Peter lazily blinked. “The mattress is too soft. I feel like I’m about to sink,” he replied flatly to very concerned-looking Stark.

“Uh, yeah, right,” the man rubbed the back of his neck in the same manner like Peter did when he was about to get sensory overload, “we can get a harder mattress if that’s what you prefer. Just please don’t sleep on the floor.”

Funny. Peter was used to sleeping on the floor. Though he preferred sleeping curled in the corner, sticking to the ceiling. He wasn’t sure if his spider part was responsible for that particular habit, but he felt the safest there.

Unfortunately, the option to sleep on the ceiling was taken away from him.

“What do you want?” Peter asked, not getting up from his spot. It was time for breakfast and yet he didn’t see any plate in the man’s hands. So, that’s how it was gonna be. Interrogation without-

Stark pointed to the hall behind him with his thumb. “Breakfast. Let’s go.”

Wait, what?

Peter sat up, confused. “Where?”

“The magic place where food is usually prepared and eaten, also known as,” he drummed his fingers in the air in dramatic pause, “the kitchen.”

“Why?”

The mechanic threw his head back. “Do you want to eat or not?”

Peter did, so he obliged.

Expecting the familiar force to pull his wrists behind his back, Peter put on his best defiant face. But nothing happened. Instead, Stark motioned for him to leave the room. Peter did and still nothing happened.

Were the bracelets faulty or something?

“Well, are you coming?”

“Didn’t you forget something?”

“Hmm, nope, I don’t think so,” Stark said as he walked, not waiting for the boy.

“Why isn’t he concerned about leaving me unrestrained?”Peter thought, going for light jog to catch up, confusion painting his features.

Pleasant smell wafted through the air the closer they got to the kitchen. Peter’s expression shifted into badly concealed curiosity. He sniffed the air once, twice, concluding that whatever was being made there, it smelled good enough to make his mouth water.

They entered and Peter could swear he saw several flashes of shocked expressions coming from the Avenger seated at the table before Stark had the chance to announce their presence. Rogers, standing in front of the stove, was the first one to break out from the stupor. He plastered his typical patriotic smile on his face. “Good morning, Peter.”

Peter gave him an unimpressed look in return. Stark motioned with his hand at the table, his hand barely missing Peter’s back.

His instincts briefly took over, making him stiffen in anticipation of the pain and ready to fight.

Peter, shoulders falling in relief when no touch came, took the nearest free chair, which was between Wilson and Barton. Barnes was opposite of him, looking at him in the way that kind of reminded Peter of the looks Stark sometimes gave him. “What?” he snapped.

Barnes’ expression shifted, this time into one that Peter recognized. Guilt. “Nothing. Sorry,” he mumbled, quickly averting his gaze.

Narrowing his eyes in suspicion, Peter kept staring at the man until Rogers placed a plate in front of him. “Here you go.”

All words died on his tongue, his eyes comically wide when he looked down. He hoped nobody noticed, but holy shit.In front of him laid nicely stacked perfectly round pancakes. And those were no regular pancakes.

They were chocolate chip!

His mouth began to water even more. Peter was basically an acid when it came to sweets. Chocolate was a rarity in his life. He only got it for special occasions like his birthday or if he did exceptionally well on a mission, or when he managed to find enough loose coins on the streets.

Peter dug right in. The heavenly taste of the chocolate spread across the tongue, the fluffy texture making it feel like he was chewing on a cloud. Hands down, these were the best pancakes he’s ever eaten. Honestly, they were so good it could make him start to consider switching the sides.

Kidding. He would never betray his parents. But the pancakes were still good.

“Do you like them?” Rogers asked.

Peter’s head snapped up, his stuffed cheeks dusting pink once he registered amused looks of the Avengers. “Yeah,” he forced out around the food before swallowing, “they’re alright. Thanks, Rogers.” Because he got some manners after all.

The man winced. “Just call me Steve, son.”

“Sure thing. Let me try again then. Thanks, Call-Me-Steve.”

Barton snorted, choking on the food in the process. Romanov slapped his back while, her mutter of the word ‘dumbass’almost drowned out by others’ laughter.

“Ah, you little shit,” Stark said as he wiped a tear from his eye, “I like you. Want some more pancakes?”

Peter shrugged, but mentally cheered. “Yeah, sure, whatever.” And sooner than he thought, he made it through another plate. Then he was offered another refill and then one more.

But… there was something odd to the taste. Something Peter couldn’t quite place, but it made his mouth a bit tingly. In the end, he just wrote it off as not being used to that much sugar and who knew what kind of special and expensive ingredients they could afford to buy.

He was halfway through the fourth serving when the questions started.

“Damn, do you have a bottomless pit instead of your stomach or something?” Stark asked. “I swear I’ve never seen someone keeping up with Rogers and Barnes when it comes to eating.”

Peter briefly considered pros and cons of telling the truth. Last time he gave them a piece of information about himself, he got an upgrade in accommodation. Maybe he’ll get another upgrade after this? Well… it was worth a try. “No, just fast metabolism.”

“How much food do you need?” Romanov asked.

Peter snorted. “More than a single sandwich.”

“Why didn’t you say something?” Rogers asked.

Peter straightened his back and put on his most serious expression. “Hi, I’m Captain America. Whether you’re a student, or a soldier, there’s one thing that will always give you an edge,” he paused, one corner of his mouth rising slightly, “a hot lunch. You don’t have to be injected with secret government super soldier serum to have strong bones and muscles. A well-balanced diet is one of the best ways to keep your body healthy. The food pyramid will help you find the balance,” he finished with a mock salute before shoving another piece of pancake into his mouth. “You didn’t ask.”

Rogers grimaced. “They still show those?”

“Don’t know,” Peter shrugged. “I never went to school, but they’re all on the internet. But listen to me, Call-Me-Steve, what I’m trying to say is: save your PSAs for someone else, ‘cuz they sure as hell won’t work on me.”

Barnes chuckled, nudging Roger with his elbow. “What did you get roped into?”

“Okay, but am I the only one who finds it weird that he has the whole thing memorized?” Rhodes piped in.

“No, but I have different question,” Barton said as he leaned towards Peter, looking at him intently. Peter braced himself. Here it was. The questioning.

“What did Tony do to make you talk in just one sitting?”

Peter blinked twice. That was… surprisingly petty. “He’s… annoying. Don’t take me wrong, you’re annoying too, but he’s special brand of annoying.”

“Geez, thanks kid. I take that as a compliment.”

“So, you did it to shut him up?”

“Yep.”

As it turned out, four plates were his limit. Peter released long, satisfied sigh. Wow. He didn’t remember the last time his stomach felt so full. He only got to eat that much before missions to ensure he was in top condition, which-

Peter frowned. Now come to think of it, he got no extra food before this mission.

“Kid… that’s called abuse.”

That was- no. No!

“…hurting their own children is not something normal parents do.”

There was no way they wanted to… get rid of him. No, they were just waiting for the right moment to strike.

“Same as they came for you in the past three weeks?”

Yeah, that had to be it. So, shoving away the statements that wormed their way under his skin and getting rid of that train of thoughts, Peter focused on the pleasant feeling of his full stomach.

It would be better if the strange tingling left though. It stubbornly lingered in his mouth even after two glasses of water. Oh well. He would trade the slight discomfort for full stomach anytime.

He was led back to his room when the Avengers started to clean the table. He didn’t mind, strangely.

Maybe… maybe they weren’t so bad after all.

Peter’s stomach churned. He wrote it off as being full after such a long time.

“See?” Tony held his head high, the proud feeling radiating off of him. “It worked.”

So early and he was already on a good track. The change of the room and good food – plus the new mattress, but that one had yet to arrive – were only the beginning. He just returned from the gym where he was putting everything that could be used as a weapon away. He assumed the kid would appreciate some physical activity after weeks of confinement.

“He wasn’t even his usual rude self! Well, for the most part. I think he was just cranky because he was hungry.”

“Don’t celebrate in advance,” Natasha warned, “or you’ll jinx it.”

“Me? Jinx it? Please,” Tony rolled his eyes. “I’m practically a lucky charm of this team. Seriously, what could go wrong?”

“Boss,” Friday’s voice came from the speaker, interrupting his boasting. “Peter has been throwing up for the past ten minutes.”

“You were saying?” Rhodey deadpanned after a moment of dead silence.

“Shut up.”

There was no sign of the kid or the pancakes when he opened the door to the kid’s room/cell. “Peter?” Tony called out. A dry heave coming from the bathroom prompted him to move.

The sight that greeted him made his expression fall instantly. The poor kid was hunched over the toilet, shaking like a leaf, his face pale and sweat plastering his messy curls to his forehead. “Oh, kiddo,” Tony said sadly. He kneeled next to the boy, placed his hand on Peter’s back and began to rub soothing circles on his back.

The kid tensed. “Don’t touch—” Another round of his stomach turning itself inside out cut off the threat.

Tony grimaced. Well, there were those pancakes. Reluctantly, he let go, hoping that his presence alone would be enough to provide at least some comfort. After what could have been three minutes, the heaving stopped.

“You assholes poisoned me,” the kid accused weakly.

“What? No, no, no,” Tony was quick to deny, “you were there with us, we all ate the same thing and we’re alright. There was no way someone poisoned you. Why would we ruin Cap’s famous chocolate chip and mint pancakes and made you sick?”

“Mint?! You- bleh.”

And the heaving was back. Honestly, Tony wondered how the kid managed to bring something up after he’s been praying to the porcelain goddess for so long. But… mint? “What’s up with mint?”

The sound of Clint smacking his forehead echoed in the small bathroom. “Spiders don’t like mint. Laura uses it to keep the little buggers out,” he added when the team sent him questioning looks. “And he ate four plates of those pancakes.”

“Leave,” the kid rasped out.

“Kid, I don’t think—”

“Leave!” Peter said more forcefully before he shoved his head into the toilet once more.

Tony, although reluctantly, stood up. “Okay.”

“Tones,” Rhodey let out soft protest.

“It’s no use now,” he mouthed. “Come on,” Tony said and ushered his teammates out, throwing concerned looks over his shoulder the whole time.

“I didn’t know he couldn’t eat mint,” Steve said once they were back in the hallway, his head bowed down.

“Neither did we, Steve,” Sam patted Steve’s shoulder, “neither did we.”

“I didn’t do that on purpose.”

“We know.”

Peter laid curled into a pathetic ball on the floor. The moment his stomach had nothing left to expel, he splashed his face with cold water and dragged himself as far away from the lingering smell as he could, which wasn’t exactly far. He rested his head on a pillow he’s pulled off the bed and he was here, breathing through waves of cramps.

Stupid.

He was so stupid, thinking that the group of heroes wasn’t that bad. Just look where that got him. His parents always said that he was too optimistic, too gullible and trusting. Ingesting mint used to be a punishment for him, although it’s been so long since there was a need to use it that he forgot how horrible it made him feel.

It was only when his stomach was painfully cramping that he realized that the tingly feeling in his mouth wasn’t because of the sugar, but because of the mint. It happened every time he brushed his teeth, though in much smaller extent, so he was used to it.

Peter released shaky breath, closed his eyes and buried his face further into the pillow. Sleep always helped, so that’s what he planned to do.

Unfortunately, the universe seemed to hate him because Stark walked in in that same moment, carrying a steaming bowl of something and an apologetic expression on his face.

“Hey,” he greeted softly.

“You again?”

Peter was tired. He wanted to rest. He didn’t have any energy left to argue with the billionaire.

“Kid, look. We had no idea this would happen, but I’m sorry anyway.” When Peter didn’t reply, he continued. “You said you have fast metabolism and there’s literally nothing in your stomach to give you energy. You’re also most likely dehydrated. So, here,” he said and approached the sad heap. “I got you home-made chicken broth to replenish those electrolytes and rehydrate you.”

“Electrolytes that you made me lose,” Peter gritted through his teeth. “Don’t want it.”

“Kid, please—”

Peter shot the man weak glare. “Go away.” Another wave of cramps hit his stomach, making him curl into even tighter ball, barely swallowing down a whimper.

If there was something the boy hated the most, it was showing weakness in front of an enemy.

He was aware of Stark’s eyes on him. The man sighed, then placed the ceramic bowl within Peter’s reach. “I will leave it here in case you change your mind.”

The lock clicked after that, leaving him alone at last. He dragged his eyes to the bowl and just watched the steam dance above it. It smelled great. But no, he couldn’t…

Or could he?

What if it was really just an accident? True, he never told them and he didn’t think they had any way of knowing either. So, maybe… just a sip… but he shouldn’t… was it really a good idea?

He hated these conflicting feelings.

Ah, to hell with it! If he threw up again, it’ll be his own damn fault this time.

Carefully, Peter uncurled himself, leaned his back on the wall, reached for the bowl and blew on it before taking a sip. The rich flavor combined with the warmth of the broth spreading through his body made him relax immediately and soothed his stomach.

When he deemed himself full enough, he put the bowl down, and curled back so he faced the bed. Watching the single forgotten dust bunny in the corner, he fell asleep.

Later, when Tony went to collect the almost empty bowl, he got on one knee and threw the blanket over Peter’s sleeping form. Watching the steady rise and fall of the kid’s chest, he carefully moved his hand towards the kid’s head and e began to run his fingers through the brown curls.

The action elicited a reaction, although not unpleasant.

The kid sighed in content and subconsciously leaned into the touch, making Tony smile. It was enough to givie him a confidence boost.

He could do it.

The day his stomach was turning inside out, Peter was left mostly alone. He slept through most of the day anyway, though when he woke up, he was confused about the blanket on him. He didn’t remember covering himself before falling asleep, which meant that someone, and he had a pretty good hunch who, did it for him. He found that weird.

Because why would anyone bother with making sure he was comfy? Back home, if he fell asleep without the blanket, he slept without the blanket. Simple as that.

Oddly, some part of him was… touched by the gesture. It was like something stirred in his soul. Something… something warm.

Sure, the thought of an enemy in the same room as him while he was vulnerable got him on edge, but at least he didn’t wake up cold.

The next day, he refused to leave the room. All attempts to coax him out fell flat. They were back to delivering the meals to him. Thankfully, there were no more sandwiches.

Yesterday, Stark brought him a book. Peter decided not to accept the gift/peace offering, but the boredom eventually won and he found himself reading it. He almost laughed when he spotted the knife on the book’s cover and actually barked out a laugh when he saw that the title.

Should they be giving him a book that was calledThe Knife Of Never Letting Go? Peter didn’t think so.

Though he quickly found himself rooting for Todd to get away from his hometown’s army and reach safety.

And now they were today, back at the coaxing.

“So, uh,” Stark squirmed under Peter gaze. It was strange to see otherwise confident man to act like this. “Do you want to go to the gym? To get some movement? Only if you feel up to it, that is.”

Peter, as much as he hated to admit it, didn’t think about the offer for too long. He would kill to get some actual movement. Those few squats and push-ups he could do in the privacy of the bathroom were nothing compared to his usual training regime. Plus, he didn’t want to get through the book too quickly since he wasn’t sure whether he would get another one.

“You’ll like it there,” Stark, obviously relieved, kept on babbling as he walked ahead of the boy.

Peter was baffled by the man’s decision of repeatedly exposing his back to him. It would be so easy to jump at him, even without his powers, and snap his neck and nobody would be able to do anything about it.

“I think you will be able to use the equipment our two super grandpas.”

“Yeah, whatever.”

But… Peter found himself not wanting to.

Why was Stark being so… so nice? There had to be some ulterior mo-

A sudden stabbing pain in his wrists had him stop dead in his tracks, tiny yelp escaping past his lips. Squinting, he brough his wrists up to his face to look at the bracelets.

A faint numbness began to spread from underneath them. A second later, a wave of lightheadedness washed over Peter’s whole body, making his limbs feel weak and his eyelids heavy in the process. He realized far too late what was happening.

“Oh, motherfu—”

He didn’t get to finish the sentence as his knees buckled. The world turned black just before he hit the floor.

“Come on, kiddo, open those Bambi eyes of yours,” Tony said as he frantically patted Peter’s cheek. How could he be so stupid?No, really. How? He was the one who designed the bracelets. He knew all about the functions included.

So just exactly how did he forget about the fail-safe?

The fail-safe that was specifically designed to inject quick acting sedatives into their wearer in case of an escape. Once they crossed a certain point – bam! It’s a night-night for at least an hour. More that enough time to collect the escapee.

“Man, how did you forget about the fail-safe?” Sam asked from where he was hovering over the duo on the ground, knowing he wouldn’t be much of an use in their current situation. He offered to spare with the kid in case he wanted to since Tony didn’t want neither super soldier sparring with now-average teen, though he doubted that Barnes would say yes if asked and fighting with Natasha could be interpreted wrongly after the horrific revelation.

“I don’t know, I just forgot,” Tony forced through his teeth before he resumed the patting. “Wakey-wakey, spider-baby, nap time’s over.” Lordy, he’s really done it now. Peter didn’t as much as stir.

Tony tapped Peter’s cheek a tad stronger. He hoped the action along with the kid’s fast metabolism will rouse him soon enough.

The minutes felt like the whole eternity, but finally, Peter began to stir.

“Pete? You with us?”

The kid looked painfully young as opened his bleary eyes, blinking several times to get rid of the hazy fog that was without a doubt shrouding his mind. “Wha…”

Tony’s shoulders fell with relieved exhale. “Oh, thank God. You okay?”

He didn’t know why he asked that. It was obvious that the kid was in fact not okay if his weak attempts to sit up were anything to go by. Tony put his hand on Peter’s back and gave him the boost, mindful to be as gentle as possible. One of the points to spark the change in the kid was to introduce him to a concept that not every touch had to be painful.

A concept that was no doubt alien to him.

“Don’t t—”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, don’t touch me, I know,” Tony said as he put his hands up in surrender, but remained in vicinity in case the kid toppled over.

The whole process kind of reminded him of helping an overturned turtle.

“What the hell was that?” Peter asked, some of his usual snappiness returning.

“It was an accident, I swear! This was legitimately my bad. I,” Tony inhaled, “forgot to disable the fail-safe. I’m sorry.”

“A lot of accidents seem to happen ‘round you.”

Tony shrugged, wincing in the process. “What can I say? I’m very accident prone.”

Peter weakly smiled, mischief sparking in his eyes. “For a genius, you sure are a dumbass.”

“Thanks,” Tony deadpanned, “Once again, I take that as a compliment. But look,” he lifted up his watch brought up the menu and with a few presses changed the functions, “now you can roam the building all you want.”

The kid rolled his eyes, clearly not believing him, before making an attempt to stand up. He didn’t get too far before he, as Tony predicted, toppled over; right into Tony’s waiting arms.

See? Like helping overturned turtle. Drunk overturned turtle, but turtle nonetheless.

“Take it easy,” Tony said gently.

Peter pushed him away. “I’m fine. Let’s go to the gym.”

Much to Peter’s annoyance, he was deemed unfit to do any exercise after he struggled to remain on his feet. The process of getting to the common room was tedious and slow, mostly because he refused to accept help from either of the men.

He did pretty well with the wall alone, thank you very much.

With the gym out of the question, the movie night he learned was planned for later got turned into movie marathon. The group of heroes were milling around, busy with final preparations, while Peter nestled himself into the corner of a L-shaped couch, his slouched posture and displeased look radiating clear ‘don’t approach me’ message.

“I think,” Rogers said as he was reading something from his notebook, “Star Wars. I’ve been meaning to cross it off my list for a while now.”

“Finally!” Wilson muttered.

Peter tuned out the rest of the argument about how Rogers always took forever to pick when it was his turn and Rogers defending himself until a bowl of something white but nicely smelling was placed on his lap. “What’s that?” he asked, tilting his head to the side.

“Popcorn,” Romanov said as she sat down with her own bowl.

“People usually eat that while watching movies,” Barton explained, smirking slightly.

“Wait, you,” Barnes joined in, awkwardly casual, “know what movies are, right?”

Stark sat down next to him “Ignore those idiots. They’re just teasing.”

Peter scowled, and for some reason unknown to him, switched to defense immediately. “You know, you all sure expose your backs to me a lot. I don’t think you realize how easy it would be for me to snap either of your necks.”

“Would it really?” Romanov asked, watching him sharply.

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Peter replied, matter-of-factly.

Heavy silence settled over the room, all eyes on Peter as he popped a piece of popcorn in his mouth, tiny smile pulling at his lips.

Stark exhaled, quiet and shaky. “Fri, play the movie.”

Peter’s smugness soon turned into wide-eyed wonder as the movie enthralled him. He leaned forward whenever a lightsaber appeared on the screen and held his breath when the rebels were making the trench runs on the Death Star. His disappointment when the credits rolled was short-lived though. He learned there were several other movies, and since they were doing a marathon, another one was put on.

They were halfway through the third, or sixth, movie when Peter’s head lolled forward. The impromptu nap had to mess with him more than he thought, but he couldn’t fall asleep yet! He had to see how the story ended. When his head felt too heavy, he leaned it on the headrest and through sheer willpower, he kept his eyes opened.

It was only when the final shot of celebrating rebels turned into final credits he left them fall shut.

Peter was out like a light in an instant.

“He looks so innocent when he’s like this,” Bucky whispered.

“Hmm,” Clint hummed, his eyes sad. “It’s hard to imagine that someone like him killed someone. Do you think he really did it?”

Steve shrugged. “He admitted to it, didn’t he?” He turned to Tony. “I think it’s time—”

“To get him to bed?” Tony cut him off, “Yeah, I agree.”

“Tony—”

“I’ve still got a little over a week, don’t I?” he snapped. “I didn’t take you for one to throw the towel in the ring when it came to someone. Not after Germany. Not after Siberia.”

Just as Tony expected, the reminder of the events made the man clam up. Call him a douche, but if playing dirty would get Steve off the kid’s back, then so be it!

Without another word, he bent down and carefully gathered sleeping spider-kid into his arms. Peter nuzzled himself closer and grabbed a fistful of Tony’s shirt, making tiny but involuntary smile appear on Tony’s face.

“Tones,” Rhodey grinned, “you’ve got a giant spider on you.”

Tony, grateful for the ice-breaker, rolled his eyes. “Hardy-har,” he said under his breath as he left the room.

#marvel fanfiction #tony stark #peter parker #villain peter parker #irondad #spiderson #irondad and spiderson #tw vomiting

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notsoharsh · 4 years

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The Scholarly Adventures of Brain Girl and Blood Dude || Morgan & Harsh

TIMING: Mid July LOCATION: The Scribe HQ PARTIES: @mor-beck-more-problems and @notsoharsh SUMMARY: Morgan and Harsh take a little field trip to read a lot of dusty old books.

Thanks to her super-strength, Morgan was able to pull more books for Harsh’s soul problem than she ever could have on her own. She lead him down the dusty shelves with the glee of a suburbanite at the fancy grocery store, plucking everything that seemed remotely tied to the subject at hand. “This place is pretty amazing, right? I mean just look at everything you can accomplish with some collective organization and, well, deep pockets, probably,” she said, smiling. “We’re casting a wide net, but, obviously, indexes are going to be our friend, so if you can’t find any of our keywords inside, just move it into a nope pile. I went ahead and put it on a flashcard.” She turned and passed him one. “I hope you don’t mind my getting a little excited. I get it, why you might not be, and it’s not that I don’t appreciate the gravity of the situation. I think I just really miss having a reason to come back here.” And something concrete, even tangible, to hope for.

So this was the Scribe HQ. Harsh hadn’t really thought about the place before, but somehow he had expected it to be harder to get into. Not like he was about to complain about that. He trailed after Morgan, eyes scanning the shelves. “It’s really… something.” He should probably be impressed, but with each title, he had to fight to keep his eyes from glazing over. There was so much. How were they ever going to find anything in here? He took the flashcard with a little nod. “It’s fine. Honestly, I was kinda surprised you were so up for this. And I get that. There’s… a lot in here. Did you come here a lot for witchy stuff?” He grabbed one of the books Morgan had selected, blowing the dust from the ancient cover before opening it and squinting at the writing. “This one looks like it’s just philosophy, ‘what does it mean to be ensouled’. I’m guessing there’s not really a section here with a bunch of how-to guides?”

Morgan continued to look, climbing onto stacks of books on the ground to reach higher ones. “Nope, just my curse. It went back over a hundred years deep so I had to trace back all these obnoxious second and third hand accounts to all the terrible things that happened to my ancestors trying to get down to the source. My mom had a lot of faults, but enforcing a well rounded magic education wasn’t one of them.” She balanced on the tips of her toes to get another book, On the Metaphysical Material of Human Essence, and jumped back down, grimacing only a little when she landed off and had to knock her ankle back into place. “Magic is complicated, Harsh,” she said. “In a good way! Say your magical heart’s desire is the number 20. You can get there by ten times two, or five times four, or fifteen plus five, or nineteen plus one. Lots of roads can get you to twenty. Also, witches are, historically, protective of their grimoires. And some spells are too sacred or too dangerous to really want to pass down, you know? Ooh, seriously, check the index of that philosophical one, though. There might be some reference to some, I don’t know, random Romanian death cult that was known to help vampires restore their souls. That would give us a lead to follow up on.” She moved on to the next shelf before popping her head around the corner again. “I’m kidding about the death cult, by the way. I don’t know if that’s a real thing. But it would be pretty cool if it was, right?”

“Shit. Y’know, as long as I’ve been dealing with this stuff, the whole ‘ancient curse’ thing is still kinda wild. I guess I need to expand my horizons a little more,” Harsh said, watching her scramble about. He should probably offer to help, but… she seemed pretty content. Even he could understand needing a project. That was a lot of numbers, but it sort of made sense. Kind of. “I’ve picked up on the protective thing. That coven weren’t the first ones I tried to go to. A bunch of them would’ve rather staked me than let me see any of their dusty old books. Yeah, got it.” He flicked through the book, finding the index number before scanning the pages again. “I’m not seeing Romanian death cults, but there’s some Latin stuff in here. Well, I think it’s Latin, but all I know is audio, video, disco, so we’re gonna need some translating if that’s actually gonna help much.” He chuckled as he set the book down and grabbed another. “Hey, trust me, death cults are very real. They throw some banging parties, but you never wanna stay too late. There was this one I ran into in Spain, and--well, that’s kind of a long story, but they would’ve been very into you. They were all about the brain eating stuff.” Trailing after her, he scanned the top rows of the shelves. “How about that one,” he said, pointing at an especially thick, black covered book. “Looks like it’s got little skulls on it, that’s gotta be good.”

“Well a hundred years and change isn’t ancient-ancient,” Morgan admitted, still pleased to have impressed a vampire as old as Harsh. “But brain eating death cults? That’s kinda hot. Scary, but I’m okay with side hustling as a cult maiden. But the not staying too late, is that because after midnight is when they start to get actually all murder-y?” She laughed goodnaturedly at his suggestion about the skulls on the book. “You know, I have started coming around to the idea of skull iconography being a good omen, but this could just as well be about fun curses or potions.” She tried to climb up for it, but her short arms weren’t quite up to the task. She gave Harsh a sheepish look. “Maybe you could, uh--? And then we can start unpacking what we’ve bothered before we start looking again? I think thirty books makes for a solid beginning.”

“The ones I ran into always treated their zombies pretty well. One of them even made this cool throne for them, it was pretty badass. But yeah, usually they start the murdering right after Cinderella turns into a pumpkin. You get extra drinks if you bring someone to add to the murder pile.” Harsh decided to leave out just how many extra drinks he had managed to earn. Morgan was strangely cool with the soulless thing, but adding a couple dozen murders to that might push things a little too far. He snorted. “You don’t want to spider monkey your way up there? Yeah, I’ve got it,” he said. It was a little out of reach, even for him, but getting a leg up on one of the lower shelves was enough to grab it. The book was weirdly heavy. Maybe that meant it was extra full of magic or something. Hopping down from the shelf, he brushed the dust from the cover. “Yeah, seems like a good place to start. Which ones look the most ritual-y?”

Morgan pouted as she reached for another, closer book. “I want a throne.Can it be made of bones? My girlfriend has a huge thing for bones. We’d look pretty together on a bone throne.” And for ceremonial purposes, maybe with the right amount of discretion and care with, well, offering selection, it might even be a halfway decent time. She smirked at the thought, wondering what kind of coronets death cults might make for their zombies. She laughed at Harsh’s joke and carried their haul to the nearest desk. The books tumbled from her stack and spread themselves over the surface. “Well, here’s the thing: a ritual with full instructions and ingredients is an endgame, a big ol’ golden goose. But, you know, this might start off with something a little more broad, a little more sketchy. We don’t want to turn our nose away from death cults or norwegian summoning stones or...whatever. Because some weird reference might lead us to the golden egg. And the actual golden egg might be buried in some other archive. And then, because we followed the breadcrumbs, we’ll find it in that other archive faster, and...sorry, I’m mixing way too many metaphors, huh? Anyways, I can start on the books on this end of the table, and you can start on the ones on that end? You read fast, yeah?”

“I’m pretty sure making it out of bones is required actually,” Harsh said, with a thoughtful nod. Honestly, it was a little surprising that White Crest didn’t have any death cults, at least as far as he knew. They didn’t tend to be very public. Attention moving to the books, he grabbed a few and pulled them close, scanning the titles. There were some promising ones in there at least. “Right, it would be boring if it was that easy anyway. This kinda thing seems like it needs a lot of bits and pieces before it goes together. The coven said something about ‘proving myself’ so if you see anything like that, just, I don’t know, highlight it or something. I read pretty quick, yeah.” He flicked through the pages of the first book, an older one laden with dust. The cover might have been green at one point. “Don’t think there’s any eggs in this one. It does have a spell for cooking them though. I think this one’s more basic rituals than the big one we’re after. It does have a little thing about summoning, but mostly just bats and rats and stuff. Any luck over there?”

Morgan was running her finger down the index of the volume in front of her, picking out anything that looked remotely undead or soul related and flipping to the corresponding pages. There were a few technical magic terms that stuck out that she wanted to look at as well before she wrote off the reference as a dead end for this volume. She reached for another and started the process all over again. “Not yet, although, you know, lots of fun stuff about necromancy. And vampire cults, although I guess you already know whatever you want to about that stuff.” She balanced the next one precariously on her lap and started flipping back and forth, one section after the other. “This one looks like it has lots of serious lore, though. We’re talking old myths, druidic shit, some stuff I...can’t actually read. Do you know this language?” She passed the book over to Harsh, finger hovering over the photograph of some runes.

“I guess necromancy is sort of near what we’re looking for,” Harsh said a little dubiously. Honestly, he didn’t know nearly enough about magic to be sure. It seemed to make sense though. They both had to do with souls and restoring them. Or something. “Vampire cults can be kind of cool, but most of them are pretty anti-soul, so I don’t know if they would be super helpful.” He reached for the book, brow furrowing as he scanned the runes. “Sort of. It looks like Sanskrit, just a little off. I wonder if it’s like some ancient dead version.” His fingers trailed over the letters as he muttered to himself, working to muddle through the meaning. “I think it’s talking about a ritual. It’s a lot of sorta spiritual stuff, but… I think some of it sounds pretty legit. Some of the words are kind of weird, but I think it’s saying there are three, uh, three pieces you need to retrieve a soul. And then there’s some words I don’t know, this one just means really, really old. What about the other bits, the druidic stuff?” he asked, passing the book back as he moved closer to read over Morgan’s shoulder.

“You never know. Maybe understanding more about how you get rid of them could help us understand how to get one to come back.” Morgan said. Harsh couldn’t afford to turn down any possibility, and neither could she, if she wanted to be good for more than just cheerleading. But as Harsh looked over the text and translated, Morgan started to wonder if the search would be so hard after all. “That...that might just be what we’re looking for! Look, this sigil here, means spirit, but it’s sort of a vague all encompassing sort of an idea, it could me soul, intuition, intention, but when you look at these wrapped around it, you get a soul’s last regret. And when you look at its placement in the circle, it's on a material vector, an ingredient. But it’s also in the center, where you do the conjuring for what you want to accomplish. And in that place it’s also joined by this little squiggly? It signifies a joining, of two planes or two pieces, you see it sometimes in certain kinds of alchemy circles and binding magic.” Her face cracked wide into a smile. Harsh, it’s a spell to bind a soul to a body! It’s real!” Morgan shot up from her chair, almost toppling the book to the floor. “Harsh, your cure is real! I mean, I’m going to need to do more work to figure out the other ingredients, and we need to follow up on that Sanskrit, because that might be important, and who even knows how we’re going to even get some of these things once we know what they are, but still!” She jumped on her toes to give him as strong a hug as her arms could manage. “It’s possible. And that’s what matters most right now, right?”

“That’s a good point, actually. I sort of always thought of them as being two really different things, but… I’m not really an expert on any of this. I should’ve done way more research ages ago.” Harsh had thought as much before, several times… and then done basically nothing. He’d had two hundred years to learn this and he had thrown all that time away. Oh well, he was doing it now. That had to count for something. He nodded vaguely as Morgan went on, doing his best to follow along. It was a little beyond him, but the pieces he could parse were encouraging enough to make a grin slowly spread across his face. “Holy shit--Morgan, you’re amazing!” Meeting her halfway, he locked his arms around her with enough force to lift her off the ground, spinning the both of them in a circle. “You figure out what we need and I’ll get it,” he said as he set her down, still grinning widely. “Whatever we need, just leave it to me.”

#wickedschatzy #writing #chatzy #morbeckmoreproblems #c: morgan

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hethrewmyheartinthecut · 6 years

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hey Peaky writers!

Have you ever thought:

“I wish there were more fics to read in my favorite fandoms.”

“I wish someone would write for me.”

“I wish my work could get more kudos and comments and attention.”

“I wish there was a better way for me to interact and connect with other fanfic writers.”

“I wish I could get more motivation to write.”

If so...THEN BOY DO I HAVE SOMETHING FOR YOU!

Yuletide is an annual writing exchange that helps small fandoms grow and prosper! Basically, every participant writes one fic as a gift for someone else, and receives at least one fic as a gift from someone else. (All fics are at least 1,000 words long.) This year, Peaky Blinders has been approved as one of the fandoms that you can write for the exchange.

Here are just a few of the thousands of the other fandoms that are eligible, which may be of interest to some of you:

Venom - looking at you, all Tom Hardy lovers

Six of Crows - @alfiesolcmons, @peakyposts

Dunkirk - I Know You Know This Movie, Every One Of You

The Godfather movies - @alfiesolcmons

The Thick of It - @darkandstormyslash

Animal Kingdom - @danceyreagan, @twistedrunes, & anyone who loves Finn Cole

To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before - @alfiesolcmons and anyone who has a beating heart

Baby Driver - @peakystitches

The Handmaid’s Tale - @peakystitches

Letterkenny - @thosepeakybastards

Some other cool fandoms that are eligible, just to give you a taste:

Atomic Blonde

Crazy Rich Asians

The Crown

Deadpool

The Defenders (Marvel TV)

The Good Place

Jane Eyre

Little Women

Luke Cage

New Girl

Ocean’s 8

The Sound of Music

Veep

Like I said, there are literally thousands of fandoms eligible this year, and I’d really like our fandom to put in a good showing.

To participate, you list at least 4 fandoms you would be willing to write for, and list at least 3 fandoms you would like a gift from. You will only be guaranteed to write one fic and receive one fic (but you might get a surprise treat of extra fic if someone feels like writing you a treat!)

Yuletide has been around since 2003, so it is a very good fanfic exchange to start with if you’ve never done one before. It has a lot of participants and is supremely well-designed to make sure that everyone gets a little something they can enjoy.

Most importantly...

The way that Yuletide works out, you have two months to write your gift, and then the collection makes all gifts public on December 25. This causes a swarm of activity around the holiday season--reading, kudos, comments, fic recs, the whole shebang. It’s a a big affectionate bonanza of giving and receiving fic presents, and it will hopefully give our fandom a jolt of energy and fun while we’re desperately waiting for season 5 to come out.

In order to sign up, all you need is an Archive Of Our Own account, which is very easy to get. All you gotta do is give them your email and wait for like three or four days, and then you’re good! GET ONE HERE.

(Archive Of Our Own is a fabulous site for posting and reading fanfiction, just ask @alfiesolcmons and @blinder-secrets and @whentommymetalfie etc. etc. etc. It’s not for profit and it’s been created by fans, for fans.)

If you already have an ao3 account, then SIGN UP FOR YULETIDE HERE.

If you are confused about any of this or want more information, you can pm me or SEND ME AN ASK.

Alternatively, you can JOIN THE YULETIDE DISCORD, where there are always people willing to answer questions!

And if you hate talking to people, feel free to READ THE YULETIDE FAQ.

GO TELL ALL YOUR WRITER FRIENDS: WE HAVE LOVE! AND COMMENTS!💗

#Yuletide #Yuletide 2018 #writing #Peaky Blinders fanfiction #Peaky Blinders fandom #Peaky Blinders fanfic

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avidreaderblog · 6 years

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Hello everyone! When I first started blogging, I had no idea what I was doing and it stayed that way for two years until I joined WordPress and participated in challenges and read about what to do. Now, I’m still learning, but I’ve got a better handle of the ins and outs of what to put on a blog/website and what NOT to do, but it’s taken me 6 yrs to get here.

Today, though, I figured I’d list what bloggers should and shouldn’t have on their website, all of which would help them reach more readers and get more views so that no one else has to take at least 2 yrs to figure out what they’re doing. Let’s go…

What To Include (general page ideas):

Landing page aka Home (optional)

as an alternative for readers to land first on your blog, you can have a static home page which gives a little intro to who you are and what you blog about. It can either serve as a short version of your About Me/Blog sections or it can actually be the sections.

the only thing you should watch out for is that if your end goal is for people to read your blog posts, you would be increasing the number of steps it would take for readers to get there, which decreases the likelihood they will actually press on a post and read it.

About Me

this is the page where you introduce yourself. Some things to include are:

your name (either real one or that of your online persona)

what reading means to you

how you got into blogging or why you’re blogging aka what’s the goal that you want to accomplish with the blog. It doesn’t have to be big or overly ambitious. It can just be to “help readers find good books” or something.

your social media

About The Blog (optional)

you can combine this with your About Me page if you want (I did!) and summarize what types of books, genres or topics you like reading about, what kinds of blog posts you do (reviews, discussions, blog tours etc) and how often you post. It’s best to only disclose how often you post if you are good about being consistent, otherwise, readers might get confused/lose faith in you if you say you post twice a week when you might only post twice a month.

Blog

this is basically the page where all your blog posts show up – regardless of what type of post they are. You can create extra pages that specifically show one type of post (see next section) but that is optional and, regardless, you should have all your blog posts together on one page

Blog Category Pages (optional)

Along with their general blog page, some bloggers will also create pages from various blog categories. Some of the most common pages I’ve seen are:

Discussions

Reviews (A – Z)

Reviews (by author)

Memes page(s) like Top Ten Tuesdays or Waiting on Wednesdays

Interviews

Blog Tours

again, these are all optional and, in my opinion, neither especially help or hurt your blog. TBH, you can just create a “categories” widget (which you can see on my sidebar) so that people can easily see only one type of post.

(Review) Policy

this is where you talk about what you are willing to accept from authors, publishers and companies and what you are willing to do. some examples of things to mention or keep in mind are:

what genres of books will you read? what will you definitely not read?

are you willing to read e-books (and more specifically, pdfs, e-pub, kindle)? or do you only read paperbacks/hardcovers?

will you do only book reviews or might you also be willing to collaborate on doing interviews, subscription box reviews, giveaways, blog tours etc?

what’s the best way to contact you? you can link them to your contact form and/or give them your email address

Contact Me

the best way(s) to contact you whether it’s a contact form on the website, social media, letters, email etc.

a brief summary of what people can and can’t contact you about

a link to your policies page for the specifics of what to contact you about

[Related – DISCUSSION: 15+ Author Website Tips]

What To Include (specific content):

Search bar – pleaseeeeee put a search bar somewhere on your website whether it’s up top or on the sidebar where it is immediately visible (aka don’t put your search bar in just the footer). Search bars are you and your reader’s best friends because it is a lot easier to find a post using the search bar than having to comb through post archives.

Blog follow buttons – whether you want them to follow on WordPress, via email, BlogLovin’ or an RSS feed, make sure you have a follow button on your sidebar and your footer so your readers know when you have new posts out and can keep coming back!

Social media buttons – if you have any social media relating to your blog (and you really should have at least one!), then you need to include a way for your readers to jump to said social media and follow you. I personally recommend you put them either up top or on your sidebar, as well as down in your footer.

A blog graphic in every post – images catch people’s eyes much faster than texts do (an image is worth a thousand words) so, by adding an image to your post, you can catch the attention of the reader and draw them into reading the post. Of course, the image should be appropriate to the topic and, typically, follows a consistent style. For me, when I need to create my own image (aka I’m not using a book cover or blog tour banner), I tend to do the same kind of thing. As you can see from the gallery below, I have the same background in each of my images, the font is the same, and the size of the words are typically the same (tho there are some outliers depending on the post). This consistency allows readers to become familiar with you and your blog in another way so that, if they saw one of your images on social media, they would immediately know “hey this is from X’s blog!” even if they’ve never read the post or seen the pic before.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

What NOT to do:

use weird coloured backgrounds or writing (like yellow, purple or green) PLEASE – My eyes are already bad we don’t need to make them even worse lol

show your entire blog post on the blog home page – in doing so, people are not going to press on the specific post and read it there. This means that all your blog views will show up as “home” and you won’t see any stats about the specific articles people are reading which you need to help you understand what types of posts are doing well and which aren’t. To fix this, just go to your blog settings and make sure the “Limit feed to excerpt only” option is on. For bloggers on WordPress, this can be found by going to settings –> writing –> feed settings.

not personalizing your website – if you have any free blogging account (aka free WordPress, free Blogger, free Tumblr etc) you are most definitely going to pick a theme that hundreds of others have used before. The key to making YOU and your blog stand out is in how you design it. This happens by changing around

the colour palette you use (mine is primarily white, turquoise, black)

your blog header and other blog images

the formatting

fonts

Tips:

Put the link to your website in all your social media bios

Have at least one social media that you can focus and build an audience on, as well as share your posts to. For me, my main social media is Twitter (though I am on others) and it’s where I get the majority of my blog views. Every time a new blog post is published, it gets automatically shared to Twitter and I spend time marketing posts on Twitter to drive up views on the blog.

Make sure your posts will automatically be shared on your social media(s) when they are published. On WordPress, you can do this via Publicize.

Don’t include more than 3 category-like blog pages otherwise, you’re just crowding the top of your blog for no reason

Have a master spreadsheet or list of any and all blog post ideas you think of. This will better help you when you’re in the writing mood but can’t think of any ideas.

Also, when you’re in the writing mood, write as many blog posts as you can – whether partly or fully – ahead of time so that it’s easier when you have less motivation or need to post something ASAP (seriously scheduling posts out are the absolute best!)

If you aren’t art or design-inclined, make sure you hire someone to make your blog header and other blog graphics and help you design your website. I’m a graphic designer (and former website designer) and I love helping people out with their blog headers, business cards, post graphics etc. If you want to know more about how I can help, tweet me, contact me or email me and I’ll get back to you within 24 hrs (twitter is definitely faster tho)!

Other Blogging Guides

All About ARCs (Advance Reader’s Copies)

Book Publicity Contacts Directory

Writing Tools, Resources & Tips

And that’s really all I can think of in terms of tips and tricks. What do you guys think? Do you have any cool blogging tips or tricks? Let me know in the comments below! If you have any questions, concerns, or ideas, comment them below! Lastly, don’t forget, I’m always happy to either casually or completely audit your website and see what you’re doing well & what you can improve on, as well as make any graphic designs, blog headers, business cards etc for you! Just tweet me, contact me or email me and I’ll get back to you within 24 hrs! Thanks, have a great day/night and tata for now!

Angel

Red Bubble ❙ Society 6

DISCUSSION: 15+ Blogger Website Tips & Tricks Hello everyone! When I first started blogging, I had no idea what I was doing and it stayed that way for two years until I joined Wordpress and participated in challenges and read about what to do.

#audit #blog #bloggers #book #books #do #don&039;t #feedback #help #helpful #how to #marketing #marketing plan #plan #service #services #tip #tips #trick #tricks #website #websites

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sarinotsari · 3 years

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The Disappearing of Sarina Grace

Was that a dramatic title? Yes. Was it worth it? Absolutely.

Hey guys, welcome back to yet another tumblr life update nobody asked for! Okay, so at this point we all know I’ve been M.I.A from twitter for about a month now. I left on March 23rd and deactivated on April 3rd, returning on April 11th (or maybe 10th) only to deactivate again on April 12th (or maybe 11th). Basically I had been in a really bad headspace for awhile and I just couldn’t deal with it anymore, so I left with no warning. Granted, I did make a new account for the sole purpose of dming a friend since that was the only way we could communicate, and I did have the occasional tweet of just my random thoughts (sort of like a public diary only the account was private and only one person could see it). However, I deactivated that account as well on April 16th since the aforementioned friend now has discord, which I have been using to talk to her. Now, let me back up a bit (by a bit I mean a lot). Back in early January I fell into what was, at the time, my darkest moments of depression I had ever had. This continued until about mid-February, at which point I felt myself recovering from the dark depression and was thrilled to move on and have a great year. Then came early-March, when the depression came quick - and it was even worse than before. Now, this extra-dark depression only lasted until mid-March. Which is where we get to my deactivation, which was caused by the extra-dark depression becoming super-extra-dark depression. This was an incredibly difficult time for me, and unfortunately this carried on until, strangely, April 16th - the day I deactivated the secret-public diary account. By no means am I saying that I’m fine now, because I’m definitely not, but I am back to pre-dark depression days. Light depression, if you will. Granted, it has only been two days since deactivating, but honestly I feel better now than I did in the mid-February to early-March break.

Now onto some questions that nobody has been asking and nobody wants the answers for.

Will you return to twitter?

Someday, yes. Someday soon? ... Probably not. At best you’ll see me return mid- to late-May. At worst, I’ll pop in to say Merry Christmas.

Are your other social media accounts being affected by The Great Twitter Strike of 2021?

Yes. All of my other social media are being affected, just not in such dramatic ways. Pre-strike I wasn’t that active on discord, at best I was active for a couple days and then abandoned it for weeks. Post-strike, you can find me on discord every day (granted, I’m not active 24/7 but I do frequently get on to check my messages). Pre-strike instagram I checked twice a day, once after waking up and once when going to bed (with the occasional mid-day look). Post-strike, you could probably find me once every hour, maybe every other hour... it’s become a bit of a problem. Pre-strike wattpad was starting to go a bit downhill, but I did try to write every once in awhile just to keep the ideas flowing. Post-strike, I will only open wattpad to see if I have any notifications. If I do, I view them. If I don’t, I’ll immediately close the tab. Pre-strike archive of our own (aka ao3), I read a fanfic maybe once or twice a week. Post-strike, I’m reading every day... again, a bit of a problem at this point. Pre-strike tumblr I only checked once or twice a day and never posted. Post-strike, I’m frequently on here and have been posting quite a few edits recently.

Where are you in life?

Okay, so as we all know by now, I’m newly 18 (by newly I mean that it’s been almost a month since my birthday). Since turning 18, I’ve been doing apartment window-shopping. I’m not actively seeking an apartment as of now, but I do want to see what’s available. As for jobs and moving out, I think I’m just taking some time for myself before doing anything major. For those who don’t know, I dropped out of high school in February (beauty school dropout, anyone? ... No? Just me? Okay.) and I’d like to get my GED before getting a job. But, in case you haven’t noticed, I’m not really in a let-me-add-more-stress-to-my-life type of mindset at the moment, so I’m waiting until I feel comfortable with that. And, obviously, I can’t get an apartment without a job (nor do I want an apartment until I get a car, yet another thing I need a job for). So, basically, 1. get in a better mindset, 2. get a GED, 3. get a job (F: Stop attacking me, I’m sick of it. Q: Get a job.), 4. buy a car, 5. move out, 6. uh... dye my hair pink, start smoking, and hang out with a group known as “The Skanks”? Just an option.

How are you doing mentally?

Well. I frequently rewatch two gay men in wigs on a youtube show known as UNHhhh, so that kind of gives you an idea of how I’m doing mentally. Honestly though, I’m feeling the best I have all year. I’ve been better and I’ve been worse *glares at mid-March to mid-April Sari*.

What have you been up to?

What have I been up to, you ask? Being gay and doing crime. Seriously though I have been doing nothing productive whatsoever and I love it. The aforementioned friend I talk to on discord and I have been doing a lot of watching shows together. We started with Charmed (2018) and I highly recommend it. Then we moved on to 911: Lone Star (which I’ve fully seen but she stopped early in season one), but hulu hates both of us so we dropped that pretty quickly. Up next was AHS: Coven but, shocker, a show with ‘horror’ in the title is quite graphic and I became incredibly uncomfortable so we stopped that. And now we’re on Glee, which both of us have seen several times but we’ve never watched it together. I’ve also been playing a lottttt of The Sims 4 (which, by the way, I don’t even really enjoy that much. Like... it’s just something I do when I’m bored). And, as previously mentioned, two gay men in wigs. Highly recommend watching UNHhhh if you haven’t.

Did you write this entire post because you were bored?

I am shocked and taken aback by that harmful accusation... but to answer your question, yes I did and no I do not regret it.

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readandmisunderstand · 6 years

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An ending

Hey you. Regular visitor huh. Well. I'm not really sure what happened in our last conversation. But that's okay. I rarely understand much nowadays. And its okay that you don't understand me too. But I do understand it was wrong of me to regard this /gestures around the site/ as my safe space. I apologize. I'm going to stop posting here alright? Don't worry, I'm not cutting you off or avoiding you. I told you I don't do that. It's not like I have a separate account I created somewhere just to exclude you from my life. Nah, you have about the same access to me as just about everyone whom I've shared access to me does. But this blog has been nothing but tragedy and despair and, though you might not agree, extra unnecessary pain for you. It would also be for anyone who reads it too. So I'm gonna stop. Posting here. Am I gonna shift my content somewhere else? Nah no I'm not. Nor am I reconfiguring my community to exclude you either. I'm just stopping an outflow of negativity from me. Not that you should no, no by all means go ahead. Its healthy to let it all out and sometimes, yknow sometimes, maybe someone will see and ask about how you've been. Not saying itll be me yknow but maybe itll help all the same. Its good for you, even if you have to constantly restrict my access or ability to view what you post. I mean I understand. It's difficult to post something about me when I'll see and you don't want to hurt me but you have to get it out anyways. I understand. That's kind of my definition of leaving actually haha excluding someone in particular. ... I read what I could whenever it was available. I mean I never brought it up because it felt like you needed to share it without the fear of having me see it and that's alright. Though that didn't stop me from caring enough to try everyday though. Oh well. The restrictions you put up seem to be full-proof nowadays. Or maybe I'm just unlucky. Who knows?

Much of what I posted recently have been sitting in my draft box for months actually. I'm sorry if that made you feel a little dumb. You're not I promise. You're actually rather intelligent, except for the times you form logically-flawed conclusions. You've gotten better at reading my pieces though! I mean you don't pick up a lot of things (who does?) but its much better than before when you completely missed the point. I hope itll help with Lit.

We're incompatible. I know you can't understand this right now but I hope one day you will? Idk. After all my debasing and shedding of personalities, I can sort of see it right now. It's how I hope to deal with myself in the future too.

Not all of the pieces are on you dont worry.

I have an archive similar to this one actually except I try to keep it purely love. I started it about a year back? Its a bit sad I guess but my love seems so dangerous I think its best to keep it out of reach for and from everyone.

I decided I'm not going to try and prove my pain to the world. Though you probably shouldn't copy me. It's not like I'm doing it to hurt myself. I just sort of realized I kinda wanted attention or people to recognize that hey, I'm going through some stuff too. I mean I like think my pain is much more immense and unique but I'm conceited that way. Plus, trying to prove it means I'm actualizing it further leading to a self-defeatist loop. In much of the same sense, I've decided that I'm going to stop trying to prove that I love too. Allah is sufficient for me as a witness and if not, I'm going to work towards that.

The maelstrom is worse closer to me. It basically means I kind of don't have anyone in the really friend category. 2 points that sort of make it logically unfeasible. One, the closer you are to me the more I want to be a good person to you but that also means I'll try not to drag you under the water which also means you aren't going closer to me. Hence, contradiction. Two, no one I've met can survive and I've stopped trying to prove my pain and so it is not possible for anyone to attempt a venture into the maelstrom. I'm going to clarify here. It's not that I don't have friends. I do. And they're wonderful people and so loving and caring and you are too. And I'm grateful to have all of you. It's just I've always thought someone in that category would, after I'd shared, would be able to make me feel better and still match me when I flick back into the positives. I mean, laugh together, cry together right? It would be nice I guess but I've sacrificed too many people, yourself included, to the maelstrom. I'm so very grateful to all of you. But the Maelstrom is now closed. Permanently. Don't take it personally. I have a right to choose what I want to do don't I? If you feel that I'm not a real friend to you and that I don't care enough for you to share that I guess that's your pain that you cooked up and decided to eat. I...can't seem to protect you from you.

You should know that one of my most dreaded situations is one where nobody believes that I love them and regards me in hateful/despising uncertainty. It is one of my most dreaded because I'd sometimes unconsciously work towards it. So if you mention someone that hates me or if you threaten to despise me and I don't react the way you'd think I would, it doesn't mean I don't care what you think. On the contrary, I really do. But the temptation of giving in to a scenario where all the love of the world is kept from you and stacked against you, I guess its too much.

You hurt me when you negate my love.

To the rest of you whom I've shared this blog with, hi. Not sure if you've continued reading after all this while. If you erm hate me, um its okay. Because I still care for you a lot. (I'm transitioning to care because love is a dangerous word) Yeah, you guys are still in my thoughts. Yes, even you. I know what it means to love and not be loved back perhaps the most out of all of us here, simply by quantity and at times, even quality and I choose it out of my own volition. So if you're wondering, no its not weird to talk to me after so long and yes, I do still care for you a bunch and though I largely prefer abstract conversation, if you hmu I'll try my best to pick it up from where we left off. Also, I'm sorry if I seem a bit colder than before. I just recently tried putting myself first when I need to but I'm still bad at it so don't worry too much.

Well. I guess this is it huh. A door to me closed forever. Okay haha maybe not a door maybe like a peephole. With like translucent glass. In the dark.

I'll keep all of you in my prayers InsyaAllah.

This probably won't apply to you because its you but for some of you guys it might be the last time I can actually say

Goodnight

and sweet dreams.

I have never left you.

Even if I'm never seen.

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johannaadriaansen-blog · 4 years

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How to Strategically Use Instagram Highlights

Instagram highlights. Are they dead or are they thriving? Are they serving your account or are they a waste of time? Instagram highlights are kind of like

hashtags

in my opinion, they aren’t going to make your account blow up but they are part of Instagrams key features and should be used properly!

WHAT ARE INSTAGRAM HIGHLIGHTS?

Instagram highlights are a way to save Instagram stories passed. Users were getting frustrating that the valuable content they put on stories was getting deleted after a mere 24 hours. So Instagram created highlights. Highlights are the row of circles you may see below the bio on someone’s profile. They are essentially albums of Instagram stories sorted into specific categories of your choosing. I’m here to share with you today how you can use Instagram highlights effectively to convert profile views into follows and continue to drive traffic back to the content you’ve worked so hard to create. So how can we strategically and effectively use Instagram highlights?

KEEP YOUR HIGHLIGHT CATEGORIES ON BRAND

I did a little highlight audit recently and realized that some of my highlight topics, while fun, were not on brand. I had an entire Instagram highlight called ‘Eats’ which, to be honest, had a lot of great food tips and recipes in it but it doesn’t align with the content that I regularly post. So I had to kick it to the curb. It’s crucial that your highlight categories actually match with content you consistently share and ultimately drive more people into your business in some way. Maybe that means saving stories that have swipe ups to your blog. Maybe you have a behind the scenes highlight that shows your creative process as a maker and directs people to your etsy shop. Maybe you have a highlight featuring testimonials from past clients.

Speaking of, I’d LOVE to get a

follower testimonial

from you! Feel free to put me under lifestyle *wink wink, nudge nudge*. I had another highlight called travel, and while it was nostalgic for me to tap through and reminisce over past trips it wouldn’t be accurate for someone coming to my page to see, because a Travel highlight suggests I share travel content, which I do, but it’s not the type of content that drives my business forward. At the end of the day we want to make sure our Highlight titles are serving our audience and serving our business not serving US or our personal entertainment. Make sense?

MAKE AN INTRO OR WELCOME HIGHLIGHT

I don’t know about you but when I’m looking at a new profile I want to know WHO is behind it ASAP. Who is the person behind the pictures? What are they all about? The first thing I do is click their most Instagram recent story, hoping to find a clip of them talking so I can meet their personality. If they don’t have a story live I go to the highlights and click one that peaks my interest. If I can find video content of them talking there is a way better chance I’ll follow. So what Highlight topic can we have that promotes this connection? A couple of weeks ago I had this idea that it would be cool to have an ‘intro to me’ highlight where I quickly talked about who I am, what I’m up to and how I show up on the ‘gram. But, the only way to make this highlight is by of course physically posting it to Instagram stories which might feel a little random and awkward. I went on stories and prefaced it by explaining what I was going to do and then jumped into the intro. I created a new highlight called “Welcome” and then added the appropriate clips.

MAKE HIGHLIGHT COVERS

Highlight covers are a great way to bring a branded element to your page because you can create a color scheme. If you have a website that has specific colors you definitely want to use the same colors. This is to create cohesion in the experience as someone moves from your Instagram to your website. If you don’t have brand colors but your feed has a color-vibe this is a good place to start. You can actually use Canva’s color palette picker. Canva also provides for you the actual color codes which makes

making your highlight covers

way easier! To make your own highlight covers with solid colors, simple graphics or text head to

Canva.com

, make a free account, then create a new design with the dimensions 19020 x 1080. You can simply change the background color to one of your brand colors, export the files and air drop to your phone. Or get creative by adding elements or font to the cover. HOW TO ADD HIGHLIGHT COVERS WITHOUT POSTING TO INSTAGRAM STORIES Once you have your new highlight colors as jpeg. files you can add them to a pre-existing highlight WITHOUT having to upload them to your Instagram story. Remember back in the day when we had to tap through everyone’s highlight covers? No more! Just click a pre-existing highlight, select edit, edit cover, upload from camera roll! Pro Tip: You could also make solid color highlight covers by taking a photo within Instagram stories, selecting the paintbrush tool, choosing a color and pressing and holding for three seconds. Save this new solid color image to your camera roll and upload to a highlight as I explained above. Highlight covers make your page look clean and organized, don’t skip this step!

KEEP THE NUMBER OF INSTAGRAM HIGHLIGHTS TO A MINIMUM

Users are likely not going to scroll horizontally through your highlights. Ideally you want all of your topics visible from your profile view. And since highlights are organized by which was most recently updated they are always changing in order. If you don’t update your 9th highlight for months it will be stuck in the back and likely not seen! Ideally we prioritize and aim for a maximum of 5 highlight topics. IF you have more highlights, and maybe that makes sense for you, you CAN bring a highlight to the front of the list. You’ll have to go into your Instagram stories archive, chose a recent slide and add it to your highlight. It’s okay if it’s not an actual fit because you are simply going to remove it from the highlight right after. Save the highlight and then go back in and delete the slide you just added. Doing this will move this Instagram Highlight to the front of the row without affecting the contents of the high light!

USE HIGHLIGHTS TO REPURPOSE CONTENT AND CONTINUE TO DRIVE TRAFFIC

So once we post an Instagram to our feed it pretty much gets lost into the abyss within 48 hours. That caption you worked hard to write, and that image you spent time acquiring is basically a dead zone now. Not ideal! Just the same blog posts and podcasts can be promoted and SHOULD be promoted more than once! So we can use Highlights to bring a little extra life to these things. You could have a blog post Instagram highlight where you save stories in which you featured a blog, even better if you are over 10K and have the swipe up link. You could also save stories in which feature a podcast episode if podcasting is your thing, and of course you can create a highlight out of your Instagram posts if you post them to your story. So what we often see is users posting their new post to their story, with a huge sticker covering the images and a call to action that says tap here or new post. I would recommend taking it one step further and adding a bit of text that describes what they will get or read if they go to that post. Once you have this in place you can save this story to a highlight and then as someone is tapping through your highlight they can kind of navigate to the type of content they want to see. For example, I have different Instagram posts that I have posted on my story saved under highlights called ‘IG Tips’, ‘For Influencers’ or ‘Freelance’. So if someone looks at my feed they are going to choose a photo that catches their eye. BUT if they look at my highlights they can find content based on what they are interested in. And that is the entire goal!

THE BEST WAYS TO USE INSTAGRAM HIGHLIGHTS

To recap when it comes to strategically using Instagram highlights you are going to make sure that the highlight topic, title or theme is actually on brand for you and in alignment with your content. Your also going to make some pretty highlight covers through Canva.com or within Instagram stories itself and also make sure those are on brand and cohesive with your blog or website if you have one. Third you want to get a little uncomfortable, get on camera and make a Intro to you highlight! Please tag me if you do this because I’d love to see what you’re up to. You can even blame me in your disclaimer story and say “hey Johanna is making me do an Intro story so that I can save it as a highlight, here goes!”. And then you can do your intro and it will be amazing! Other things to keep in mind are that you want to keep the number of highlights you have to a minimum and lastly create highlights with the intention of repurposing content such as IG posts, blog post or podcast episodes. And while I’m thinking of it, if you have in your bio you could actually write a little call to action that directs people to your highlights maybe something like ‘check out my highlight for how to work with me’ or ‘check out my cooking highlight for easy breakfast recipes”. Whatever makes sense for you! Alright friend that’s all. for me. today.

#instagram #instagramhacks

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ask-starbucks-dva · 7 years

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Final OOC Post, Probably

So, apparently this month is the year anniversary of Retailwatch, and I’m on this extra account to move the last of my blogs over for archiving purposes, but I thought I’d make a post reflecting on the past...almost a year for me.

I’ll put this all under a readmore so it doesn’t stretch out your dash.

I’ve been a pretty dedicated follower of Retailwatch blogs for awhile. I remember interacting with the first Walmart Hanzo posts and thinking it was such a funny thing. I had no plans to join the community because of anxiety. Finally, in November, I gave in and made an account.

Admittedly after a bit my blog began to...stray from being a Retailwatch blog and started to morph into a really angsty mess of magic anons got wrong. This trickled over even more on my second blog, which was basically nonstop angsty magic anons. I actually seriously upset some people with my desire for angst.

A few months passed with me being in Retailwatch, and some drama happened. Won’t go into detail but it was silly and pointless and not something that should have happened. I spent some time away from the group and came back a few weeks later, ready to focus less on angst and magic anons and more on doing silly retail jokes and the like. Of course I strayed from time to time, but in general I did much better than before.

...Then came the McHilton.

Look, I’m not gonna beat the dead horse anymore. But I know very well that there are still people holding things against others-things that were done months ago in a very stressful situation. Not wanting to forgive, not wanting to apologize, not wanting to move on from a situation that had such a simple solution. People are continuing to point fingers and place blame and not realizing that HEY! We all fucked up! We all treated each other like shit! But let’s all move on and try again because guess what? We’re all human fucking beings. Human beings that were put in a tense situation. A situation that honestly? Most of us were just to young and/or immature to handle. And I’ll admit it!! And I’ll admit to still being bitter about things I shouldn’t be bitter about anymore!! I’ll admit I haven’t moved on nearly as much as I should have!!

Retailwatch started off as such a fun thing for me. It was the first time since I was in high school that I felt like a part of a group. I felt welcomed and happy and enjoyed it immensely. But we’ve all strayed away from the purpose of things and it turned into a mess.

I don’t know how I feel about this group anymore. It’s done a huge toll on my mental health and I lost a lot of recovery progress because of the drama that happened. I wouldn’t say I hate it, but I know I don’t feel the love I once did anymore. I still treasure the friendships I made with the few people that still support me, hell if it weren’t for this group I probably wouldn’t have met my boyfriend. But...it’s changed so much. Too much for me to enjoy it anymore

If you’ve actually sat through this long as speech, thank you. I’m not gonna respond to anything sent to this blog because I’m signing back out after publishing this post. My main blog if you wanna contact me is @imasmutual , and my indie rp blog is @notthatold76. You can send me an ask or a message on either of those blogs if you wanna talk further about all this or anything.

Good luck to those who are still riding this train. I hope you all find happiness I can’t find here anymore.

-Miles

#retailwatch #ooc

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50funny · 4 years

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Mage- Chapter 63- Special Assignment

Written By 50Funny

Part 1- VIPs

Liz, Bip, and Alex stood in the neat and clean hallway in front of a small door being guarded by two soldiers. Liz looked up at one of the soldiers with a confused and somewhat frustrated expression.

“Huh, what the hell do you mean?” Liz said aggressively.

“Just like we said, he can come in but without one of those red cards I can't let you enter.” One of the soldiers replied, maintaining his composure.

Liz took in a deep breath preparing for another tirade. Alex stepped in front of her.

“Listen I’m not going anywhere without my friends. If they don’t come in then I don’t simple as that,” Alex threatened.

“You have been summoned by the president himself for an important meeting. If you refuse then you will be in active rebellion against the state. Is that really worth it just to prove some kind of a point?” said the other soldier.

The man who had accompanied the president during the meeting with all the mages walked down the hallway towards Liz, Alex, and Bip. He looked down at the piece of paper clipped to his clipboard, scanning the page and writing on it. He stopped in his tracks and looked up as he heard the commotion happening at the door in front of him. Liz pushed Alex out of the way to once again face off against the soldiers.

“Listen I have to have a word with the president so I'm getting in there one way or another,”

Liz held up her hand next to her. It began to glow a light blue tinge as the room's temperature slowly began to drop. The solider raised their weapons up and shifted into position ready to fight. The two stared each other off waiting for the other to make the first move. Liz clenched her fist tightly before taking a step forward towards the men.

“Settle down settle down, no need for anyone to get hurt,” the man said as he steed towards the group.

Liz stopped in her tracks and turned to look at the man. The solider also looked before quickly dropping their arms and saluted the man.

“Umm… who are you?” asked Bip.

“Don’t be rude… that's the vice president.” One of the solider said.

“Haha, it’s fine, no need to berate him for it. Now what seems to be the problem here?” the vice president said.

Liz looked at the man with a mix of frustration and anger.

“I need to see the president and these two don’t seem to get that.”

“The boy has been authorized to see the president but the girl and the flying rat don't have authorization.”

“Who are you calling a rat”

The vice president turned to look at the two men.

“Well I appreciate your hard work and effort but there’s no need to cause a fight over this. The meeting isn’t anything confidential so there shouldn’t be any problems if she comes with us.”

“Huh… really?” said Bip.

Liz, Bip, and Alex all looked on in surprise at the vice presidents' carefree nature towards security. The two soldiers stood aside leaving the doorway unblocked. The men saluted as the vice stepped forward and open the door. He walked through into the corridor behind before beckoning for the group to follow behind him. Alex and Bip stepped through the into the corridor followed by Liz making faces at the soldiers as she did. The group followed behind the vice as he walked down the long corridor still writing on his paper.

“I’m sorry about that, their good solider but sometimes people around here can be a little bit uptight, Mis?”

“Liz… thanks for the help back there.” Liz answered.

“Umm.. and what can we call you… sir?” asked Bip.

“The official title is Vice President Stone, But you can call me Joe, no need to be too formal.”

“You seem pretty casual for the vice president,” Alex said in confusion. “Oh, by the way, I’m Al…”

“Alex, I already know all about you.”

“Huh how do you know me already?”

Joe signed the bottom of the piece of paper before lowering his clipboard to his side and focusing on where he was walking.

“The green and blue cards were handed out at random with seventy percent being green and thirty being blue. The red card that you received was special,” Joe explained. “I was tasked with going through a list of all mages called to the meeting and listing those best suited for a special assignment and the one highest on that list who actually showed up would be selected.”

Alex listened on intently to the vice president's word.

“So… what your saying is…” Alex said, his mind starting to race. “I’m basically the best mage ever, I’m the best man for the job,” Alex began to rant, no small hint of pride coating his voice.”

Bip and Liz rolled their eyes as they listened to Alex continue to ramble on.

“Haha… well, to be honest, you were actually our second choice.”

Alex stopped in his tracks as he felt a pain in his chest and his pride shattering leaving him to soak in his embarrassment. Liz and Bip began to snicker at Alex further drenching him in his embarrassment.

“Haha guess you’re not quite as good as you thought you where… hey, number two?”

“Oh please, teach me your greatness mighty number two.”

“Shut up I’m still better than either of you!” Alex yelled. He had a moment of realization, quickly calming down and looking to the vice president. “Huh hang on a second. Did you say a special assignment? What am I going to be doing?”

Joe let out a slight smile before stopping as he reached the door at the end of the hall.

“I'll let the man himself explain that to you.”

Joe reached out his hand and pulled the door open and walked through. Liz Bip and Alex turned to look at each other, nodding in solidarity before walking through the door.

Part 2- The Commander And Chief

The group entered the room and looked around in amazement. The walls were covered in stunning and expensive pieces of art. In the center of the room was a large circular rug with a leather couch on either side. Along the back wall of the room was a large window looking out over a beautiful garden with the silk curtains being held out of the way with golden rope. Sitting in front of the window was a large, heavy-looking wooden desk with the president sitting behind it smiling at the group as they looked around. On either side of him stood a bodyguard keeping a close eye on the group and following there every move.

“Ahh Alex… it’s good to finally see you, I've heard so much about you,” The President said as he stood up and held his hand out towards Alex.

Alex gaze shifted across to look at the president. He stared at his hand with confusion for a moment before reaching out to shake it.

“Ahh yeah it’s good to meet you to… Sir…” Alex stammered awkwardly. “So you already know who I am?”

“Please no need for the formality, call me Chris, and of course I know you, Joe has told me all about you. Not even a Mage for a year and you’ve already had quite a promising career, haven’t you? You managed to infiltrate and take down the infamous Channel 4014 and put an end to the horrors being committed there, a feat that the government was unable to perform for years. You also took part in the operation in Niske meaning you already have experience working with the military, and on a personal note, the events in Niske lead to my administration gaining power… so thank you for that. From what we can tell you also have quite the history before becoming a Mage, traveling the country, and getting into all sorts of mischief. All of this seems to make you the perfect candidate to work as my bodyguard.” The President explained.

“Your bodyguard?” Questioned Alex.

“Yes… My team of body guard’s will be with me at the signing in Lemia with me and while I trust in there ability I would feel more comfortable with a skilled mage by my side, so what do you say?”

Alex turned away and thought for a moment. The bodyguard to the Presidents right let out a slight growl.

“Sir… please reconsider,” the guard said.

Chris turned to look to his guard with a surprised expression.

“As the chief of your guard, I can assure you my team is more then capable of keeping you safe. There is no need to hire some child.”

“Please Adam… I’ve told you not to call me sir. I know as the chief of guard you must feel some sort of dishonor at me hiring extra help but trust me I have plenty of faith in you and your team. Having a mage around is simply an extra precaution.”

“There’s no need to reprimand him,” Alex said drawing the president's attention back to him. “Thanks for the offer and all, I'm flattered really… but the answer is no. You’re not wrong about any of my accomplishments so I can definitely see why you would want me on your team, but there is one thing that you didn’t account for. I have my own reasons for doing the things that I do, my own goal that I’m willing to risk my life for. The only reason I even stuck around to hear what this job was was to satisfy my own curiosity. So the answer is no, I'm not gonna risk my own life for something that doesn’t benefit me at all.”

The chief guard looked at Alex and let out a low pitch growl.

“See sir, Mages are all just selfish creatures.”

Chris raised his hand up in front of his subordinate instantly silencing him.

“So you say that you have your own personal reason for what you do, by any chance, you wouldn’t be talking about your father would you.”

A wave of shock hit Alex as the president's word sunk in. He took a step back as confusion spread across his face.

“What the… ho… how the hell do you know about that.”

“We’re the government… Your father was a Mage and the founder of the Guild Of The Silver Sun. He retired to look after you and your sister but was pulled back into the line of action for a special government job. He later disappeared and was reported as deceased. You know I was actually poking around some old archived documents from the old administration and managed to find some classified documents about your father… Tell you what, you join me in my mission to bring peace, and ill give you all the documents regarding your dad. What do you say?”

Alex averted his gaze from the president and raised his hand to his chin. His mind began to race as he considered the proposal.

“Peace huh… don’t make me laugh!” Liz yelled as she stepped forward towards the president.

Alex snapped out of his thought and turned to look at his friend. The bodyguards reached into there concealed holsters and pulled out their guns. They aimed their weapons directly at Liz as she continued to look threateningly towards The President.

“You talk about peace like you actually think it's possible. You have to realize that Lemia won't give up until every last magic user is dead.”

“Umm… who is she?” Chris said as he turned to face Joe.

“Shes appears to be a companion of Alex, I let her in,” the Vice President explained.

The President let out a brief sigh before raising his hand up to his guards. The guards lowered their weapons to there side.

“You seem to have some very strong opinion on the Lemians, might I ask why?” Asked the President.

“Because I am one!” Liz yelled at the top of her voice, Alex and Bip looked over to Liz in shock from her sudden confession. “I was raised in a Lamian household by loyal Lemian parents. I learned first hand what the Lemians think of magic users. They think magic is evil and won't be satisfied until every last one of us is dead… and you wanna talk about peace with them? the only peace Lemia wants is socked with blood, so if we want to survive the only option is to strike first.”

There was an uncomfortable silence that came over the room as Liz started to breathe heavily. The president looked down at his desk before closing his eyes.

“I’m sorry that you had to go through all of that.”

Liz let out a slight grunt of confusion as the president looked back up from his desk.

“I understand your pain and anger at Lemia, but I also understand the pain that this constant war with them has caused.” The president stood up and walked over to the window behind him. He looked out over the soldiers going about their business below. “ I have been lucky enough to get to lead this country through a time of relative peace, however, I have heard of the horrors brought by a full-scale war with Lemia. If we continue on the path we are now, war is an inevitability with them and I don’t think I could bear to see my people suffer through that let alone lead them through it.” The president turned around to once again look at Liz as he walked back over to his seat. “ I know there is a good chance this whole thing falls apart, hence the extra precaution, however, I cant turn up the chance to bring on the first true peace between our countries there has ever been. I hope you can understand that.”

Liz looked away in thought for a moment. She clenched her fist together tightly as she struggled to hold her tung. She turning back to face the president.

“Ok, I can understand that I’m sorry for my outburst. But despite that I still think that this mission is a fool's errand, I couldn’t live with myself if this all goes wrong and I didn’t do anything to stop it so… let me be a bodyguard so I can be there to fight when the time comes.”

“I’m sorry but no, I have no use for any more guard’s, you will work the position you were assigned,”

Joe shuffled over to the president before leaning over to whisper into his ear.

“Umm excuse me, if I might make a suggestion, if she has grown up surrounded by Lemian culture then her insight might be useful. We should at least place her on the forward strike force to put her knowledge to better use.”

Chris once again looked down in thought before looking up to Joe and nodding.

“Ok then, you can come with the main attack force. Now I have some work to do so if you wold please make your way to the barracks for further instruction."

The group nodded before turning around and walking towards the exit, preparing themselves for their new life as soldiers.

________________________________________________________________ Thank you for reading chapter 63 of mage. forgot to upload this yesterday but spose it doesnt really matter since no one reads these. If you like what you see consider checking out my AO3 at this link https://archiveofourown.org/users/50Funny to see all new chapters 3 days early. If you feel so inclined please consider following my tumblr for all updates and other tid bits. Until next time , have a good one.

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