#but they’re the slowest slow burn in history for a reason

[tm-trx]

Step By Step, ep 1-6

I have caught up on the aired episodes and have compiled some thoughts below the cut. Couples first, then some general show notes.

Sp*ilers ahoy!

Jaab/Jen

Jen kissing Jaab, when he seemingly has a boyfriend: Is this him giving in to pure physical attraction? Mistaking close friendship (influenced by the flattery of that friend pursuing him) for more? Is something wrong in Jen’s relationship with Mon and that’s why he kissed Jaab? (This is my preferred explanation, because I love angst and there is a lot of excellent drama potential there. However, considering they are a side couple, I think they won’t be going the evil!Mon route.)

I do think there is more to Jen’s story. I’ll be very surprised if they’re doing a straightforward cheating storyline with Jaab and Jen.

Apart from that: dang do those two have intimate chemistry. The kiss was intense. And the symbolism of ‘crossing the line’ between the two beds in order to kiss was perfect. (It also explains why the beds were so close to begin with. I’ve never once seen hotel beds placed so closely together, which I found amusing until Jaab made his move.)

Put/Pat

Up until episode 6, I half thought that maybe Put had history with Jeng too. Jeng’s interactions with Put seemed very comfortable and familiar, so it seemed like an actual triangle might be building. But it seems like that’s not the case. Too bad, because it would have been a lot better than a pining/jealous Put. In that vein, I need some ex-lovers to show up for Jeng, because he’s losing to Pat 2:0 so far. (That’s assuming Kong is an ex. Pat’s reaction to his IG posts made me think he was, and if he is it makes what Kong did even worse and might also explain why he went so far.)

I like what they’ve done with Put and Pat’s relationship so far. I like how the reveal of their history developed, and that Put isn’t actually a stalker. He’s just pining and regretful. At this point in the show, I definitely see them dating for awhile until they both realize they are trying to go back to what they had. (And also, Pat is half in love with Jeng.) It would also give Jeng the push to pursue Pat. In fact, I really hope that is the direction the rest of the season takes because I can see how it all shakes out over the next couple episodes and it would be great.

Jeng/Pat

The slowest of slow burns. I think we’ll get one kiss (and maybe an overnight) before one of them decides they can’t date while Jeng is Pat’s boss. The office-related plot (with its emphasis on appropriate workplace behavior) has been too prevalent so far for me to believe that either of them would be okay with a boss/subordinate romantic relationship. Pining/in love, yes. Actually going through with it and still working together as they are, no.

Also, I don’t mind age gaps, but Jeng looks old enough to be the CEO rather than the CEO’s son (even in scenes with his father). It throws me off a bit. He needs to smile more because when he does, he looks much younger. Perhaps that will be part of his continued character growth; learning to loosen up in general.

I am impressed with what they’ve done with Jeng so far. I don’t think I’ve seen an office drama with a character like him working on improving himself in this way. It’s nice to see and I like him more and more every episode.

Chot/Krit

10/10, no notes. Just kidding. I LOVE THEM. Bruce is the reason I started watching this show while it’s still airing and I was not disappointed. Chot is an absolute delight. And I know what Krit said about the words being enough, but I do think Chot would love a little beach ceremony, just saying.

Ae/Kunan, Beam

They are great side characters, but I did not expect a pining best friend. Not thrilled about that. Two love triangles in one show is two too many.

Selections From the TV Journal

Some of the ost music+scene pairings are jarring and odd. Music should either ‘disappear’ into the background or emphasize a significant moment. The viewer shouldn’t be distracted by song choice. Also, some of it sounded like tv commercial music.

I almost quit after episode 2. Too close to home. Also, who doesn’t use templates in PowerPoint? That’s like the first easy shortcut you learn.

Loved the product placement meta joke in episode 3.

I am past being over all of the office gossip happening out in the open where anyone could overhear. I do not like Ying.

Did those two kids really put up a fake out of order sign on the showers so it’d be free for them to fool around?! Hilarious.

I really like Nan. She’s such a good work friend/mentor for Pat.

The BL industry call out was so pointed and well done, even as frustrating as it was to watch in-show. I felt for Pat and Chot in that scene.

I want to know more about Chot and Krit. Why aren’t they the main side couple? I cannot help being suspicious about the little side pairing montage in episode 5. I’m hoping it was just a straightforward ‘catch up’ deal rather than foreshadowing.

Big sighting, yay. Someone give him a lead role.

The IKEA ‘date’ was cute.

I’m glad that I stuck with the show. I’m enjoying it a lot and am looking forward to seeing what happens next.

[kazhewbrekker]

all things said, if kaz and inej do anything other than hold hands im busting down to the writer’s room and drop kicking whoever disregarded their trauma and relationship development

[greensaplinggrace]

What Is There To Celebrate About the Darkling? (Part 4)

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He’s calculating but impulsive. Gentle yet firm. Stubborn and adaptive. Just a real mess of contradictions that makes him all the more interesting.

He loves nature. He loves the forest.

Fond of luxuries and nice things. After growing up as he did, I think he deserves them.

Very socially awkward. Introvert just trying his best. Anything that isn’t manipulation and therefore something he’s planned in his head is just a social train wreck waiting to happen.

The way he pushes up Alina’s sleeve when they first meet. This man had zero compunctions about acting completely unprofessionally in front of his soldiers and I think that’s very sexy of him.

He’s constantly tired and exasperated with the people around him.

The way he says “quiet” with the softest voice imaginable and a room full of laughter instantly goes silent.

He had no interest in Elizaveta even though she was utterly obsessed with him and I think that’s hilarious.

Elizaveta: I have a plan to resurrect the Darkling Everybody Else: Oh the Darkling is so evil for trying to come back! The Darkling, who just wants a nap and is sick of this mortal bullshit: Why am I even here? This is such a pain in the ass. I should have killed Elizaveta when I had the chance.

How he asks if Alina “will have” his name like a man proposing.

Has his bedroom attached to the war room.

Constantly checking up on Alina just to know how she’s doing. Never pushing her beyond her limits as she’s training.

Very creative with his shadows and the extent of their abilities. So many of the ways he uses his powers are genius.

His ending in RoW is a tragedy and an injustice. He deserves better.

This old man pouting at Alina in episode seven as he says “please, I just want to talk to you 🥺”

There is a black kefta made for Alina after like two days in the Little Palace. He really was already planning their entire immortal futures together as Mr. and Mrs. Starkov wasn’t he?

His bed is covered in maps and notes when he’s plotting how to find Alina. Also before that, the way he’s poring over the notes at his desk and giving orders is 👌🥵

Him acting like a real General at all is simply amazing.

The fact that he trusts Luda with his life. That they have a whole intimidation routine set up around him purposefully getting himself fatally injured knowing she’ll heal him.

He looks like a vampire in the show and a fae in the books.

His favorite ABBA song is probably “Lay All Your Love On Me.”

Looks composed but that’s only a façade. Is actually an unhinged feral terror of pain and misery.

That scene where he tells the king she will remain in the Little Palace to train undisturbed and he puts his foot down. ON THE RED CARPET. the king’s carpet. and uses a commanding voice that’s just on the edge of an order…I’m surprised he didn’t get flogged for that. IMO nothing conveys the fine line he walks with those in power while wielding his own like this scene. Literally he should just be celebrated for this alone.

“‘Why won’t you leave me alone?’ I whispered one night as he hovered behind me while I tried to work at my desk. Long minutes passed. I didn’t think he would answer. I even had time to hope he might have gone, until I felt his hand on my shoulder. “Then I’d be alone, too,” he said, and he stayed the whole night through, till the lamps burned down to nothing.

Trapped a bunch of Saints in the Shadow Fold like a true amoral disaster villain. What an icon.

His barely concealed amusement and half hidden smile when Alina comes to put his kefta on. The way he finds Alina utterly hilarious and tries so hard to act like he doesn’t.

That small amused smile when Alina jokes about finding Volcra hilarious. Please he’s so adorable 😭

“‘I know what you feel when you’re with the tracker,’ he said. ‘I doubt that’ He gave a dismissive wave.” - My Malarklina obsessed self, vibrating at the edge of my seat: but what does it mean?!?

Mal and the Darkling’s entire fight in the Fold: dumbass on dumbass violence.

The way he stands with his back turned to Alina when she enters his tent the first time they meet and then does the slowest Godfather turn in history. 1999/10 - points removed for a criminal lack of cat petting.

“I may lead the second army, but the king is still the king.” - the delivery of that line. the implications, the history behind it and also the foreshadowing for his plans.

That slow turn face reveal in episode one though. Like okay we get it you’re pretty alkjsdflkj

Confused Old Man Face™ whenever Mal or Alina do anything remotely defiant in his presence.

How he tells Alina to come closer and she only takes the tiniest step and he doesn’t even react.

His little head cock whenever someone says or does something that just doesn’t vibe with him.

Darklina tumblr has now convinced me that the Darkling is a cat in human form.

“You’re an amplifier,” she said. He glanced at where Sylvi was pouncing on another helpless tree, oblivious, and gave a single, frightened nod. How could he have been so stupid? He would have to tell his mother now, and she would insist that they leave right away. If word got out, they’d both be in danger. Amplifiers were rare, hard to find, harder to hunt. Their lives would be forfeit. Even if they got away, word would spread. He could already hear his mother’s voice: Foolish, careless, callous. If you don’t value your own life, show some concern for mine. Annika touched his sleeve. “It’s okay,” she said. “I won’t tell.” Panic crowded in. He shook his head. She slid her hand into his. It was hard not to pull away. He should. He was breaking his mother’s fundamental rule for keeping them both alive. Never let them touch you, she’d warned him. - 😥 I just want to give him a hug all the time.

His strangled shout when Mal tackles him off of the skiff.

His smile when he’s summoning the sun. The expression on his face when he does so. Like I know I’ve mentioned this before but damn. If you ever needed a reason to celebrate him, this would be it.

“Shame, I’ll have to give that speech again now.”

The way he flips Mal over his shoulder in the Fold after Mal attempts to strangle him.

His little lecture on the Small Science to Alina when they’re going to meet the King. Info dump.

“You make it sound so easy.” “A bird makes flight look easy. But it was born to do so.”

When Alina looks at him for guidance on whether or not to remove her veil and he gives her a small nod.

The handhold in the throne room after Alina’s demonstration is absolutely precious, but it’s in a room full of people he should be keeping up a façade for and it’s so unwarranted and yet he does it anyway, I’m-

The way he says “welcome home, Ms. Starkov,” in the most tender voice I’ve ever heard and then goes “ok that’s enough emotions for one day” and then just straight up leaves without even a goodbye.

He has his symbol?? Sewn into Alina’s kefta??? bRo???!?!

Disaster Simp never gets tired of introducing Alina to other people or talking about how she’s the best thing that ever walked this earth.

The Darkling lying: honestly

“I have devoted my life to undoing the great sin of my forebearer, but I am never seen as the solution. Only as a reminder of the problem.” Sasha you were literally the problem. What a manipulative little shit. We love to see it.

The way he closes his eyes and kisses the coin before he makes a wish at the wishing well.

“I think the Grand Palace is the ugliest building I’ve ever seen.” - I love him your honor.

This man has the most intense lines for Alina. Like straight up I would have booked it when he said “you and I are going to change the world”. But then the head grab?! “I’ve been waiting a long time for you.” He’s so intense like sir can you tone it down a bit please I am begging you.

“I shall be right by your side.” / “We can do anything. Together.” / “For us.” / “You cannot do this on your own. And neither can I” / “I want you to know my name. The name I was given, not the title I took for myself. Will you have it, Alina?” - WEDDING VOWS

That scene in the war room when Alina comes to find him and he instantly drops his guard and lowers his arms and welcomes her with a soft voice.

“Am I bothering you?” “Not at all.” - girl you could be stabbing him in the chest and you still wouldn’t be bothering him.

This whipped disaster sounds like the proudest man on the planet when he talks about how much more his enemies fear Alina over him.

His shadows react to his emotions.

“YoUr’E nOt IvAn.” asjlkdfjs god he’s so embarrassing.

Local Dark Lord Sasha offering Alina the throne after she literally tries to kill him.

He gets so jealous of Mal.

Has a great relationship with his soldiers and his men. His men trust him implicitly and believe him to be an amazing general.

When he turns around after Alina puts the kefta on him and looks flustered/has to take a breath because she’s a lot closer than he expected. The way he’s breathless and literally can’t string a sentence together because he’s so distracted by her closeness.

His jokes are absolutely terrible.

GF: *jokes about throwing herself down the stairs to get out of an event* Sasha “no thoughts head empty only Alina” Morozova: haha I’d just have my healers heal you right back up again.

How genuinely touched he is by Alina admitting to wanting to help Grisha and Ravkans.

That scene in Demon in the Woods when he notices the intricate details of the politics in the Grisha camp after one meeting with the Elders. He has the Ulle pegged almost instantly.

Born to be a leader. Born to take care of others. Born to protect. Even in Demon in the Woods he’s protecting people. Even in Demon in the Woods he’s leading them and caring for them.

The way he cups his hands around Alina’s face when they’re kissing.

This man gets so starstruck by Alina walking into the Fete that he doesn’t even excuse himself from the King’s side to go to her.

Long haired Aleksander rights!

Ok I know the wig was kind of ugly but he looks pretty with long hair and I think it would look very good on him naturally.

The way he slams his hands together in the Winter Fete scene and instantly turns the room pitch black.

Literally any times he summons shadows is a blessing and we should all celebrate him for it. They are so beautiful. On god if I ever saw his shadows in real life I would be awestruck.

He asks Mal if he’s okay when they first meet.

The pure, barely contained fury directed at the Conductor for daring to harm Alina and kidnap his Grisha.

He always has to make a grand entrance.

This man is like a bloodhound when it comes to Nina. He is very invested in finding her and I feel like that’s never really talked about.

“I know exactly how she felt. The King’s soldiers treated me the same way. Because they knew- they knew that I was more important than any of them.” - the way he says it, like it’s something he has to remind himself of in his head constantly. a justification for the way he’s been treated, the fear he evokes in others. a way to protect himself from the hurt of being ostracized and reviled. arrogance and conceit as a defense against emotional harm.

Also the way his face instantly changes after that, like he’s said too much. vulnerability. lowering his eyes. shifting his eyes. literally just everything about this scene makes me love him all the more.

Dark carriage rides up to the Crows’ hiding place. Grisha circle the area as Aleksander steps from the carriage slowly, dressed all in black, floofy cloak high on his shoulders. Villain Entrance™

Him slowly pulling a knife out of his chest like it shouldn’t have killed him is hot as fuck and also totally badass. Big dick energy.

“I’ve had enough of your lies.” “And what lies are those?” - Alina, pulling out a fifty mile long scroll of grievances: Well, for starters-

This man is literally just an Alina Starkov compliments machine.

He cares so much about the Grisha and their protection. He loves Ravka and his people so much.

He had an entire cult dedicated to him.

“They would approach him. They always did. But he felt more anxious than usual. He’d stopped trying to make friends in the places he and his mother visited—there was no point when they moved on so quickly. Now he wasn’t quite sure how to go about it.”

Save a Villain. Murder the King.

Openly admits to staging a coup like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

He speaks so slowly. He moves so slowly. Everything he does has to have Purpose and Gravitas.

Theater Nerd™

He knew Nikolai for years and yet couldn’t recognize him as Sturmhond. We do stan an oblivious icon 💕

The Darkling after he gets his ass whooped in Siege and Storm: Mom can you please come pick me up? I’m scared!

He’s here to manipulate sun summoners and murder cities. And unfortunately he’s all out of sun summoners.

Would absolutely get drunk on real alcohol. This man thinks kvas is strong liquor.

Has his wrists exposed exactly one time in the most skin he’s shown all season and it’s when Alina visits him at night in the war room. WHORE!

Was too emotionally slutty and fell for Alina. RIP.

He’s passionate and cold and beautiful and hurt and twisted up in ways nobody could ever hope to understand and he’s stunning.

I would literally kill for this man 🖤✨

[decennia]

Ok I just gave up catching up on my dash full stop because Clementine and George and Wildest Dreams got my brain like this:

I feel I desperately need to make an OC for George but he is YOUR precious lol

So instead while I'm here, give me and I mean GIVE all your George and Clementine headcanon

SORRY THIS TOOK SO LONG I WAS FINISHING UP SOME GIFS ✨

First things first, that image lives in my mind rent free.

Second things second, please create an OC for George holy shit please yes?! George has already been romantically (or at least sexually, because Sable is a hoe) linked to Ellis Grant from @chlobenet (nothing ever came of it, George developed an infatuation and was perpetually rebuffed by our Lord and Saviour Miss Grant), @perfectlystiles' Laurel Chase, and @randomestfandoms-ocs' Reese Masrani. It is my goal to accumulate enough George Cassidy romantic interests that I can make a Wives of Henry the Eighth edit, so literally go nuts. Everyone, Create An OC To Thirst Over George Cassidy Challenge!

The best thing about George and the other Corpsemen is that the only thing that makes them Jurassic World OCs is that they happen to be hired there. It is by no means their entire story, and although they've been around for literally three days (?!) I keep thinking of more and more things about them and I keep building their backstories to the point where dinosaurs are literally the least craziest thing they've experienced.

If I were to sum up Clem and George's relationship in a gif, though:

(This got hella out of hand so keep reading under the cut if you want to know more about George and Clementine.)

A brief history on George "Sable" Cassidy and Clementine "Calico" Roscoe:

He is known as "George" to his friends, and "Cassidy" to his enemies. "Sable" when he's on the job, and "hers" when they're alone.

But it wasn't always like that. I'm not going to bore you with the details about George's fatherless upbringing, or his reasons for joining the British military, or how he'd always been a bit of a troubled kid. Where his story really begins is when he directly disobeys orders and murders the military hostages who were responsible for the attack on his unit. He is dishonourably discharged, and is sent back to the U.K. to await trial for murder and treason.

He manages an escape and goes dark; during which time, Clementine Roscoe, an agent at Interpol, is assigned his case. Unfortunately, after a year of searching (one close call where he was literally within breathing distance of Roscoe ) and a thousand too many mistaken sightings after that, the case goes cold, and she is assigned another case, one which results in the death of her entire family.

Clementine resigns from her position after she is denied leave to pursue the murderers, and spends the next few years methodically hunting down and executing the list of people she knew to be responsible. It was enough to impress Malcolm Drake, who located and recruited her into the Corpse Corporals (aka Gucci Suicide Squad).

All this time, Cassidy had been residing in Southern Africa, making a hefty living as a poacher under ever-changing pseudonyms (I had to make y'all understand that Sable is a bad man but y'all be forgiving Tom for murder and incest so here we are but honestly did it even work because here I am, being fooled, alongside you 😭). He runs a pretty decent operation, also dabbling in the smuggling of weaponry, and he lives a comfortable life. That is, until he is betrayed by his business partners (a brother-sister duo, FCs Megan Fox and Aidan Turner? Idk, still debating) and pushed out of the business under threat of death.

He is rescued by Malcolm, who has managed to track him down, and in exchange for his life spared, he agrees to work for Malcolm. His reunion with Clem is incredibly tense, with both of them pulling their guns on each other and refusing to work together. Malcolm snaps some sense into them (that, and the sum of the payload which had so many 0's added to the end, you couldn't be sure what the number really was other than "a lot") and they swallow their pride and work together.

They would continue to work together as Calico and Sable for the years to come, and when I say it is a slow burn, I do mean THE SLOWEST OF THE SLOW. But there is definitely a fuck ton of sexual tension thrown in there for angst, and a couple of near brushes with death (hazard of the job, really).

George is a prolific man whore, and he's bisexual and proud. So Clem has gotten used to an endless slew of people of all genders cumming coming and going from his hotel room, especially during the long cons where the Corpsemen go deep undercover for months at a time (Hector doesn't come on those jobs, he's got a family to worry about. He taps out at a month, max, if he doesn't get to leave to see his family).

George Cassidy is not a man who is used to not getting what he wants, but Clementine Roscoe is the only exception to that rule. He has come to view her as "unobtainable," this irreverent forbidden thing that he must not ruin. By the time the heat of their mutual hate had dissipated, it had turned into a friendship, and although there was an undeniable electric tension between them, they have never done anything about it. But it has that "will definitely be the best sex of your life" kinda energy.

They fight quite a lot, and disagree on almost everything. Have they tried to kill each other? Oh, absolutely. But they're also professionals, and although Clementine and George may be going at it, it never bothers Malcolm, because he knows that Calico and Sable will put those differences aside and do the damn job.

Clem only involves herself in George's sex life when it comes to people who she considers friends. She has the warnings already mentally scripted, because the thing about George Cassidy is that he cares about no one but himself, and nothing but his holy trinity: blood, money, and sex. He's an emotionally devoid sociopath at the best of times, and at the worst, he's a well oiled and dangerous killing machine.

He is not a good man, Clementine knows, but sometimes, you don't want a good man.

I have a gifset in store involving the two of them, and I'm busy compiling a list of headcanons as we speak. If you want, I can tag you in it :)

But this is everything about their past and a bit of their present, so if you want to create an OC please do and tag me so I can write up a crossover and make some gifs 💕

(And before anyone comes for me, yes, I am aware of the fact that George "Sable" Cassidy is a very toxic and fucking despicable man, I created him, and I made him that way. I am not condoning his actions, nor would I want to be in a relationship with him in real life, but this is fiction. It is not meant to be taken seriously, if you don't like my hot mercenary boyfriend, then please unfollow me, because he is my current obsession, and I cannot promise that I will not be thirsting for him on my TL at any and all hours).

[five-wow]

i watched 10.17 a few days ago and this has been lingering in my drafts since then because i forgot to post it! as always, rambles about the episode behind the cut.

i’m for once really glad for the “previously on” recap, because it showed us the yakuza big bird telling adam that adam is going to be his eyes and ears in five-0 and the bit where steve welcomes adam back home, which i had both forgotten about, and which make the last two episodes make slightly more sense adam-wise

oh BOY. tani and junior are incredibly cute and then suddenly, bam, car sex. i’m really happy for them!!! but i’m also really scared that with how quickly this is happening suddenly, it’s a prelude to something bad happening that they don’t know about yet, ahhhh. they don’t deserve that! they deserve their happy post-coital snuggling, even if it’s in a car.

fjdkfd steve and danny at a literary festival, bickering (obviously), is not something i knew i wanted. also. tom clancy. dear lord, steve, if you want to sound like a guy who likes reading, you might want to dig a little deeper than the number one most obvious choice. :p

oh gOD harry is here!! maybe i should have known that but i DID NOT.

harry: “it seems, uh. it seems i’ve written a best-selling book.” as a person who pretends to know things about writing and has never published anything but definitely done a lot of research on the subject, i am both intrigued and made very wary by the implication that harry accidentally wrote a best-seller. go on.

fjdkfdjkfdjfkd it’s EXACTLY the story i was expecting him to tell, which is that he randomly sat down one day, had a manuscript within a few weeks, sent it to a friend and was immediately offered a seven figure book deal. i both hate and love this, because this is in no way how anything at all works, but it’s also very... harry langford, by which i mean basically james bond, by which i mean definitely a male mary sure, which to be clear in this case i don’t mind, but does amuse me greatly.

oh my gosh, the dramatics with harry suddenly talking nonsense at no one and then it turns out he has an earpiece in to talk to his “literary alter ego”, i just. oh my god. this is all so stupid and i love it.

fjdkfjdkfjdk steve’s little cyrano namedrop with a meaningfully faux-whispered “de bergerac” in danny’s direction is killing me dead, haha. well done, steve! you know at least one (1) literary reference that is not tom clancy. i’m sure danny will be deeply impressed.

right, so deirdre naysmith was a fictional crime writer and maureen townsend was the real life writer behind her. the agatha christie vibes are strong with this one.

we’re switching kind of abruptly from steve on the phone with lou about the case, to steve at hq in his office with adam, talking about tanaka and how they haven’t caught him yet, and then he tells adam that he knows adam did what he did for good reasons and adam’s FACE. he does not look entirely convinced of his own good reasons, pff.

adam: [turns to leave] steve: “hey. i trust you, okay?” oh dear lord, this hurts.

danny: “it’s like a vintage murder art project, or something.” what a lovely description!

junior and tani walk in!!! and there are huge smiles all around and it’s super cute and then the FIRST THING danny says to junior is “i have a confession to make. i’ve been uh, sleeping in your bed” and LOOK, no offense, dear h50 writers, because you were very close there, but you made danny say that to the wrong seal. totally understandable mistake, just make sure to keep an eye on it next time.

they have to go back to the literary fair for their case so steve throws up a hand and goes “just came from there” and danny says “well you love books, so we’ll go back” and that’s some good throwback banter on its own, but what really makes it for me is that in the brief reaction shot of steve we get to also see junior crack a huge grin. sometimes a family is two bickering dads involved in the slowest friends to lovers slow burn in human history and their navy seal son (and a whole bunch of other people) and that’s not only okay, it’s pretty damn great.

harry’s double gets abducted, because of course he does, but he didn’t deserve that! he’s just an idiot who stumbled into a really nice, really dangerous job.

harry tells junior (who is at the wheel as they’re chasing down harry’s double) to “drive it like you stole it, my friend”, which i get, but also makes me think junior should slow down and stick to traffic laws, because if he had actually stolen the car he wouldn’t want to attract the attention of the police by speeding and causing near-collosions.

harry is guiding his double through transferring harry’s money, like the kidnappers asked, and we’re casually told he has a total balance of ten million hidden cleverly behind the password “LAN9F0RD” and all of it is objectively hilarious, fjdkf.

adam is now climbing a tree in the middle of the forest to do something with a camera, and i really wish this means his subplot gets switched to “adam has developed an interest in birdwatching since the divorce and is hoping he caught this rare species of [insert type of bird] on tape!” instead of more crime stuff.

harry transfers the money for the kidnappers and there’s probably some ruse or trick involved (either that, or it turns out he actually owns like, another ninety million), but also... would any reputable bank just let you remotely transfer ten million while only requesting a username and a password? i feel like my bank asks for better identification if i just want to view my own balance.

fdjkfd harry employed an ex in the caymans to get the money back from the kidnappers’ guy there, and she tells him she’s keeping it now because he never called her back. beautiful, A+, i love this. i hope she lives her best life with this new fortune.

so. harry’s double has been rescued and is in harry’s expensive hotel suite going “thanks for letting me use the bathroom” (shower, it’s implied he used the shower) while there is some piano music in the background that could be taken as vaguely romantic and they kind of swagger each others’ way and harry says something about the finer things in life while sort of toasting his double’s face with his drink and i’m not saying harry definitely slept with this guy, but, you know. i’m not not saying it.

there are fireworks! and i’m not sure why (what american holiday am i missing? are fireworks a set part of every literary festival?) but steve and danny and harry and tani and junior are on a balcony and looking at it and it’s very pretty, and tani and junior hold PINKIES, which is almost painfully cute, dammit.

ah, adam’s mystery tape shows two executions instead of pretty birds, which is a bummer. hate when that happens.

this was such a good episode though!! again!!! seeing harry again was a lot of fun, the main plot was ridiculous but also super fun, and tani and junior got to actually be happy for a little bit without immediately being thrown into turmoil for whatever reason, and that’s also wonderful. and oh my god, i enjoyed all of the side characters so much - harry, harry’s stand-in, the woman who was obsessed with a mystery writer from the past and ended up being the murderer. they were all such characters and just really delightful to watch, honestly, which is awesome because it means it wasn’t just the main cast that i’m here for. (adam, though. oh, adam. what are the writers doing to you? i minded his subplot less this episode, but mostly because it got less screentime.)

[elenajohansenreads]

Books I Read in 2019

#158 - Wrong to Need You, by Alisha Rai

Virtual Mount TBR (47/48)

Rating: 5/5 stars

First, though, I rarely listen to audiobooks out of personal preference, but that's how I could get my hands on this through my library, so I did. I did not particularly enjoy the way Sadia's POV narrator did male voices, so that meant a good deal of Jackson's dialogue sounded forced and flat. But that's not the fault of the story itself, so I learned to live with it. Oddly, I found Jackson's narrator handled female voices a lot better overall, when I usually hate men imitating women. Chalk it up to professional ability, I guess. If I liked how Rai handled Livvy's depression in the first book, I love how she handled Sadia's anxiety here. Anxiety didn't prevent Sadia from being good at her job, or a good mother, or a good sister--except when it did. For a person who's never suffered panic attacks, that contradiction might be hard to parse, but not only did Rai write about the panic Sadia suffered as a result of overwhelming circumstances, she also included the worry and stress a panic attack causes when it happens--the sense of failure to live up to expectations and meet obligations, the shame of someone else seeing you in such a state, the worry that others will view you differently once they know. I cried through some scenes, to be perfectly honest. They were that real to me. As for the romance? The tone is wildly different from the first book, being just about the slowest of slow burns, whereas sex in the first book happened early and often. But I like slow burns just fine, and Jackson was worth waiting for, so to speak. When the heat was on, things got really hot, and in some unexpected ways I definitely appreciated. The emotional side was just as well developed. Jackson might have been distant and closed off at the start, but he was never cold or "robotic" (as he actually describes Nicholas to be) or as much of an asshole, either. He's not good with words but his actions are generally pretty clear--he lives to support, and eventually love, Sadia. With that motivation wound into the mystery of why what happened to him re: the arson charges and his complicated family history, I wasn't nearly as annoyed by the drama-rama this time around, because I was getting resolution to the extensive setup laid out in the first book. Here, it didn't detract from the story, it enhanced it. Yes, I realize that wouldn't have been possible without laying the groundwork earlier, but it doesn't really change my opinion about the first book, because there was just so much of it and it was so tedious keeping it all straight! And finally, I haven't read a lot of brother/brother's widow romances, though I'm aware it and similar situations like it are a subgenre. I'm not weirded out by it personally, though I'm glad it's acknowledged in a balanced way here. Jackson doesn't really think it's wrong for that reason, it's more about his own relationship with his dead brother than Sadia's status as a widow. Sadia is weirded out by it, because she's handling it along the weirdness of the entire situation they've gotten themselves into, and I think that's a perfectly understandable reaction for someone in her position. And Sadia's sisters, in the big climax of personal acceptance that happens near the end, are all basically "So what?" which is the enlightened, consenting-adults attitude to take. Everyone else generally seems accepting as well, which is a better stance, I think, for the book to take than harping on the "forbidden" aspect and fetishizing it. Which this never did. Especially as Sadia's son develops a strong relationship with his "uncle" long before it's clear that Jackson might end up being his step-dad, too. Because making the kid's relationship with Jackson creepy or complicated would have ruined this in a hurry, but they're sweet and wholesome and so incredibly adorable. What can I say, I have a thing for introverted men who don't do crowds or attention and aren't alpha-male jerks. I see a fair bit of myself in some parts of Sadia, and given the chance I probably would have fallen for Jackson if he were real and in my life. So what do I have to complain about here? Basically nothing.

[katajainen]

Grounds for Divorce (122217 words) by Tepre Chapters: 10/10 Fandom: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling Rating: Explicit Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter, Also briefly:, Harry Potter/Original Female Character(s), Harry Potter/Original Male Character(s), Draco Malfoy/Original Male Character(s), But not to worry they will eventually get their shit together Characters: Harry Potter, Draco Malfoy, Just your regular Hogwarts gang Additional Tags: Slow Burn, Pining, UST, Anal Sex, brief but all the same enthusiastic rimming, One (1) lemon tree, Accidental Bonding, And I mean like U! S! T!, Jealousy, Deals with Trauma, They both top at some point, ron is a good friend, Draco is a Good Cook, Dubious Consent due to the Accidental Bonding, The actual SLOWEST burn, Hurt/Comfort, Have I mentioned UST? Cannot overstate this it's like A LOT, First there's frottage, And then there's more sex, Anal Fingering, Blow Jobs, Hand Jobs, and just a lot of sex, sex on a bed, sex in the shower, sex on the floor, Sex on a settee, In other news they go to Egypt, Teddy is a Small Bean, There is one (1) cat, and one (1) happy ending

Summary:

Malfoy finds a coin. Harry finds a letter.

A story about histories, a story about families. A story about a lemon tree somewhere in Upper Egypt.

This fic beautifully illustrates the reason why I like reading the 'slow burn' trope: namely,the way you know they're going to end up together at the end, but you're desperate to know what sort of twists and turns (and how many) it will take them to get there this time.

And here's a good roller coaster ride's worth of them here!

To begin with: the set-up. I confess that accidental bonds, forced proximity scenarios and the like are totally my jam. This iteration of the trope (read: the curse) is innovatively conceived, solidly developed, and engenders some quite wonderful character interaction -- complete with witty dialogue -- and extra-delicious angst.

And then there's a plot happening. With lovingly detailed settings and lots of opportunities for the reader to cringe and go “Harry NO” or alternatively “Draco NO”... but the painful is well balanced by the tender (and the *cough* UST).

It sounds like a complete mess, and at times, it is, but a riveting, insomnia-inducing sort of mess that allows you to see characters grow and eventually resolve their personal Gordian knot (though not with a sword, mind!) in a very rewarding way.

Also, did I mention the bees? Or the cat? Or the lemon tree? (Shoo, read the thing already!)

[naruto-oc-reviews]

Can you do a pairing guide for Sasuke? I doing a fanfiction that is set in part 2 canon that builds up the foundation for a relationship for my oc and Sasuke and then make a sequel fic in the blank period where they actually fall in love because for me it's unrealistic for Sasuke to be with anyone in the canon story because he's so obsessed with revenge

Hi anon! So so sorry for the super long wait! We’ve got quite a long response, from multiple mods, to hopefully accommodate for the delay. Since the response got so lengthy, It’ll be under the cut:

Mod Hisui:

I think you seem to be aware of the biggest issues with pairing with Sasuke: he’s so obsessed with his revenge that romance is damn near impossible within the canon storyline. You’ve also already decided to have the romance happen during the blank period, which I think is a wise decision. You didn’t give a lot of details, so I’m wondering:

When did they meet? Where is your OC from? That would play a big part in their relationship, because of the context of the whole Uchiha clan massacre. How much do they know about him prior to actually meeting?

Once they’ve met, what exactly is their relationship? Do they only meet in passing every now and then coincidentally, or does your OC join up with him and Team Taka?

How romantic do you want them to end up being? Honestly I have a very difficult time seeing him in any romantic relationship at all, so if you want them to be very romantic, there should be a VERY gradual buildup.

A few things I would caution you against:

I don’t think it would be wise to go the route of your OC being one of Orochimaru’s experiments, unless they’re part of Team Taka. Even so, Sasuke gathered that team because he believed them to be useful to him in reaching his goal, and while he values them more than he would value an acquaintance, I don’t think he would see them in much of a romantic light due to how he’s assigned them somewhat of a professional role rather than one of friendship.

Don’t make your OC ignore his looks just for the sake of being “different from his crazy fangirls.” In context, he seems to be so handsome that it’s not really easy to ignore. Unless your OC is the type to not pay attention to physical attraction, of course, but it has to fit with their character. But still, I don’t think Sasuke would value your OC more for ignoring his looks. 

Sasuke would probably like someone who lets him be when he needs time alone. Clingy is NOT the way to go here. Conversely, someone who argues with or contradicts him would likely put him off too. The way I see it, the two would need to be able to peacefully coexist, and while precise communication is usually a vital part of a relationship, I think Sasuke would respond best to someone who understands him without him needing to explain himself. Trust him to do what he needs, but also have enough concern for him to not let him go COMPLETELY off the deep end.

Pairing with Sasuke WELL is extremely difficult. Your character will probably need to be very complex, and it’s definitely a good idea for them to have a motive of their own, rather than just aimlessly following him and what he wants. Don’t let your OC just be a follower, make sure that they’re equals, but your OC will have to earn his respect, which isn’t an easy feat.

Mod Nagi

I completely agree with you, pairing with Sasuke during the canon is extremely difficult since he’s so fixated on revenge. 

The period I recommend pairing with Sasuke is after post 4th Ninja War. I imagine that during Sasuke’s travels he could potentially meet your OC? Or if they’ve already encountered each other temporarily in part 2, then they can meet again several years later. It’s up to you as to how you want this relationship but I imagine Sasuke to be much different after the war. Regarding relationships, I still don’t see him craving a romantic relationship immediately but rather he would meet someone and develop a slow-burn trustworthy bond with him would be great and more realistic. You also have to keep in mind that he does want to keep the Uchiha legacy ongoing so he could potentially bring up the topic of children, but only if he’s able to see your OC as a life-long partner.

Mod Shin

In my honest opinion, Sasuke is the hardest character to pair with in the Naruto series. He is arguably one of the most complex, fleshed-out characters to have ever come from Kishimoto as much of Sasuke’s character is gathered through context. There is more to him than initially lead on to be, surprisingly. I know it can be hard to analyze Sasuke’s character as a whole since even Kishimoto/the anime at times will portray him as nothing more than an “emo asshole” whose desire for revenge clouds his better judgement, but this doesn’t explain who he is as a whole. While it is important to who he is as a person, I don’t believe this is the only defining feature of Sasuke. To effectively pair with Sasuke, and to honestly just understand his character in general, you have to look past him as a person and understand the entirety of his life. 

You need to have a clear understanding of the Uchiha clan, their history, their relationship with Konohagakure, and the events that lead up to the massacre. I know this is a lot, and I would very gladly go into detail about this for you, but this post is already incredibly long and we would honestly be here all day if I did that. So, I highly suggest looking at other analyses and think pieces that go into detail about all of the above in order to not only gain a better understanding of Sasuke but to also form your own opinion on how to effectively pair with him.

Since you didn’t give much detail about your character, and the other mods already gave very good feedback, I am going to try to keep this as broad as possible while also slightly touching on some of what they mentioned. Before I do that, though, I just want to say you’re already on the right track with pairing as I genuinely believe that the Blank Period is the only time in Sasuke’s life that it would be plausible to be shipped with. Now, onto some of my own cautions and advice when it comes to pairing with him:

Since you intend on writing fanfiction, I highly suggest making these pieces the slowest slow-burn fic the fandom has ever seen. I think it’s excellent that you chose to hold off on their romance until the Blank Period, but in all honesty, I think you should continue to hold off on it so you can keep building up their relationship. This is your story, so of course you can write it any way you want, but with the Blank Period essentially being the first time in his life he isn’t driven by revenge, it opens up many opportunities for your character react with him in ways not possible in Shippuden. I would say this is one of the best ways to help characterize Sasuke, as if you leap into their relationship too fast he’ll become incredibly out-of-character.

There are very few people that Sasuke has a genuine relationship with in his life, and even less so with those he can trust. Your character will have to not only prove themselves as worthy and reliable to him in Shippuden, but also as someone who Sasuke is able to trust. It will take time, and you will have to have legitimate reasonings for everything said above.

That being said, the few positive relationship that Sasuke does have are incredibly important to him. While your character doesn’t have to be on the same level as his relationship with Team Taka or Naruto, they will have to greatly impact his life in a way that makes him want to actually have a relationship with your character. Taking a look at his interactions and feelings towards Naruto, Team Taka, Itachi, Orochimaru, and whoever else is present in his life is a good way to judge how he’s going to treat your character based on their personality.

Sasuke, without a doubt, is a very traumatized individual, and it’s very clear that he has some form of PTSD. While I don’t suggest going into full detail on these things if you don’t have a clear, defined understanding of what they are, it should be prominent that Sasuke is heavily affected by everything that’s happened in his life. If you intend for him to fully open up to your character, they need to be someone who’s able to handle these negative emotions as well as someone who understands boundaries of when to comfort him or when to leave him be. You should only write about this when you feel that their relationship has reached a point where Sasuke can safely and assuredly express these negative feelings.

I know this last one is rather obvious, but i’ve seen a countless number of people characterize Sasuke as either of these two things, so I have to blatantly point out that Sasuke is neither emotionless nor emotional. It is going to take time for Sasuke to open up to your character, even after he trusts them, but that does not make him emotionless; likewise, when Sasuke does begin to open up to them, he is not going to let them know everything at once and will more than likely not have a mental breakdown about it, so he will not suddenly become over emotional. It can be difficult to write a character that isn’t one to show emotion often, so my best advice to you, especially as a writer, is to heavily rely on body language to portray Sasuke’s thoughts and feelings. While this is vital when writing every kind of character, I believe it’s the most important when writing about a character like Sasuke. This makes it so that Sasuke doesn’t seem emotionless, and it allows you to write how he’s feeling without him actually expressing them himself.

[nikkistrations]

Dragon Hunter

I entered this one in a writing contest once, I didn’t win, but I was very proud of it.  My friends told me not to enter it, but I liked it so much I did anyways.

                                             DRAGON HUNTER

Write a story about a character who happens to hunt dragons for a living.  The catch?  This character takes the quests that no other member of the mercenary guild would ever take.  Double catch?  By the way, this character also happens to be a dragon.

There she was, at the mouth of the cave.  So dark that she could not see within a foot from the opening in broad daylight.  Not that this stopped her, of course.  Orwyne Q’pala was not afraid of the dark, nor was she afraid of what lurked within the depths.  The heroine, The Dragon Slayer, Orwyne Q’pala was known for her fearlessness in such circumstances, thus the reason she got her title.  The only way one could be called a Dragon Slayer was by facing their quests head on without fear, and always coming back successful.

Orwyne had many souvenirs from her quests, ranging from battle scars, to weapons, to teeth and claws, to the armor she wore daily.  She had battled every type of dragon: fire-breathing, ice-spitting, lightning-throwing, earth-burrowing, etc.  You name it, she’d fought it.  The most skilled in her guild, she quickly earned her title.

Now, she faced one of the biggest challenges in her dragon slaying carrier:  She must battle the oldest dragon in recorded history and force it out of its mountain home.  The people of the village felt threatened by his constantly spewing fire out of the mountain, melting the rock, and sending it flowing down the mountain side in a thick river which threatened to burn the village down every month.  True it was a slow flow, the slowest substance known to this world, but, nonetheless, they felt threatened.  So, they did the only thing humans have ever been known to do when they feel threatened:  they called in someone to get rid of it.

That someone was Orwyne.  All the others of her guild were too scared to take up the quest – despite the hefty pay it would bring – and so she took the job.

“Bloodbane, the Elder Dragon of the Northern Red Mountains…” She muttered to herself, shifting in her dragon scale armor – one of her many armor souvenirs of battle.

She walked into the mouth of the cave, her eyes easily adjusted to the pitch blackness.  The further she went, the lighter it got.  Lighter, because of the short spurts of flame which came in a rhythmic pattern much further ahead from the dragon’s nose as it slept.  Orwyne was not afraid.  She approached the mighty beast with a powerful stride, her hand went to the hilt of her sword, a sword told to have taken the lives of many dragons before this one.

The dragon was mighty indeed.  Its body took up most of the cavern within which it slept, and his scales glowed red with every breath he took.  His eyes opened as Orwyne got closer, and he raised his mighty head.  His yellow eyes glowered down at her, seeming to scan her over.

“A dragon slayer…” he hissed softly.  “No, The Dragon Slayer, if I am correct.”  He corrected himself.

“Did the townsfolk speak of me?” She asked, her hand remained upon her sword.

“No.  I would recognize a titled dragon slayer anywhere.  Especially one of my own kind.” He replied, his voice deep and raspy from not speaking for quite some time.  Orwyne flinched at the comment.  “You have come to slay me, Orwyne Q’pala?”

“Yes, that is what they sent me to do.” She replied, her gaze never faltered as she looked up at the beast before her.  The all-knowing Bloodbane would know about her and her predicament.  Trying to fit into a world which hates dragons while being one is a rather difficult feat, but some chose to adapt to the environment they were put into.  Very few chose this, however.  “But, I do not plan to kill you, Bloodbane.”  The Elder Dragon raised his brows in question. “I have come to you, like I have many others, to tell you to leave this place.  There is a place in this world where we dragons can live peacefully-”

“For how long?”  Bloodbane interrupted, something no dragon – or human – has ever had the courage to do to Orwyne before.  “For how long can we live in a confined space peacefully?”

“For as long as we need.  They won’t accept us for what we are, they feel threatened by us.  So, they’re just going to keep killing us off until we’re all gone, extinct, until they feel they need not fear us any longer.  I am trying to keep our numbers from dying out.” She explained.  It’s true that she never actually killed many dragons, but few know that. “You’re making the humans feel threatened, which sure doesn’t help the situation any.  Because of your monthly stunt, they feel that you’re the biggest threat of us all.  And now, they want you dead, and they’re not going to stop until you are.”

For a moment, Orwyne thought she had really won.  She thought she had broken through the stubborn skull of the last Elder Dragon.  “Then so be it.” Bloodbane said as he rose to his feet.  Orwyne looked on in terror, afraid of what she would have to do. “If they want me dead, then they shall have me dead.”

And, with that, the battle began.  Clad in Red Dragon scale armor, Orwyne was resistant to the dragon’s fire, though the heat was practically unbearable.  Her sword almost overheated and melted once or twice, but she cooled it quickly.  Being a dragon of the water gave her a hefty advantage that most historians failed to record in their writings, and most storytellers failed to remember.  She did not want to use it.  She did not want to revert to her true form simply to defeat the last Elder Dragon.  Her goal was never to kill him in the first place, but it was inevitable.

More roaring flames came her way, and she met them with a large spurt of water, quickly dowsing them.  The battle was a long one, and the villagers waited at the base of the large mountain for her return.

And she did return.  Her armor was scorched, her sword gleaming red with fire.  She dragged behind her attached to a chain she had found in the cavern, the dragons large head (she dragged it downhill, so there was little struggle).  Her expression was somber.

The village celebrated her victory.  She sat alone at a long table, sipping her ale and picking at her food.  That marked the third dragon she had ever killed, and then, just like all the other times, she did not enjoy it.  Another Elder Dragon, the last of the Elder Dragons, was dead because of humans.  She was angry, sad, so many emotions floated around within her and she couldn’t hold them in.  She wept.  Nobody saw.

I don’t know the original writer of the prompt, if you know please message me and I will give credit where credit is due.

[drunkdragondoes]

Summoner AU Bonus #2: Blake Belladonna

The science world knew the Belladonna name quite well. Her mother and father, having been doctors in the field of aura studies who met by chance, were both well-published. For many the name didn’t matter. But for some it was everything.

Blake found herself not fully understanding at first. She was too young to see it at the time. But as she grew older and learned about her heritage, she felt an anger bubbling within. Had the Faunus race as a whole not done enough? There were tales of heroes and kings and queens and all of the good things they had accomplished in the name of a united humanity.

But it was the crying of her parents that broke her. Sometimes, when they thought she was already asleep, tired from hunter training, one of them would cry. Sometimes it was her mother, other times it was her father, but usually it was both for their works were linked together. One’s sorrow often drew out the other’s.

They were few and far in between. She didn’t put two and two together until a little later, when she realized that the crying tended to occur after a scientific summit or meeting. Her parents were well-respected. Scientific circles often praised what they did and based their own experiments and theories from it. But even science was burdened with its old traditions, and sometimes they got in the way.

One night, after her mother had gone to bed early, Blake moved through their house and found her father staring into an empty fireplace and she asked the question. “Father, why do you cry?” He played it off at first, but eventually she broke down the barrier and he talked. The summit he had spoken at had laid out the thesis and experiment to be carried out, and yet they rejected the findings.

“I’m not young anymore. Stop hiding from me,” she angrily said. “You’ve done nothing wrong, and there’s no reason for you to be crying like that.”

He closed his eyes and breathed long and slow. Her ears stood straight upon her head, waiting for his answer. “I cry because it acknowledges who I am.”

“But you spent a whole year on that project! It’s rude! You followed every little-”

“Blake.” He said her name with a heavy sigh, as if he still thought she was too young to understand. But she bit back her retort and quieted down, straining her ears to hear him. “I don’t cry because I question my worth as a person. I’ve never done that before. I followed the steps, I put in the time and energy, and I made sure that nothing was out of order. I cry because it is they who do not see me as such.”

Blake wanted to scream, to yell at him for his answer at the time. But despite what it seemed to carry, his back only straightened. It pushed him to his full impressive height, even if he was seated, and that was the end. She had asked why he cried, he had given it. It was her problem that she was dissatisfied by his answer.

She wanted him to say it was unfair, that he was struggling to break out of that lower status like the Faunus heroes in history and in her books. But instead he had said he was already equal on a technical level - it was the others who were trying to lower him. She hated his response.

The hunter academy also knew her last name. It was inevitable - she needed to give it if she wanted to have any chance at becoming a huntress. This meant that the world she was a part, if the average hunter ever put any time into reading books, knew where she came from. It didn’t take long for her Faunus status to come out in the social spheres she was in.

And just like how it was for her parents, for most it didn’t matter and for some it was everything.

Blake tried to ignore those some. But whenever she set foot out into the town, a black bow rested over her ears hiding who she really was. And while it kept the stares off her head and the uncommon sneer away from her, it made her teeth clench.

One day she wore it to class. She promised herself it was just this once. Then just one more time. Then she swore herself off of it, but no matter how hard she tried to step away she wanted it because otherwise she remembered that she wasn’t worthy yet.

Her partner, Yang, gave her hell and back for it all the time.

“They already know who you are, and guess what - you wipe the floor with them in class!” the blond nearly spat. “You’ve proven you’re bigger and badder! They should conform to you, not the other way around! They’re not going to care about your achievements, and frankly I don’t think you should care about what they think.”

Until one day Blake finally said something about it.

“It’s not about who’s the better hunter. Who is better doesn’t matter when I’m not the same as them. They’ll always view me differently. And besides, I don’t even have a summon yet.”

“... And what would a summon mean to you?”

“It means that I’m one of them, and they can’t deny it anymore.”

Yang was rearing to continue the fight, but she relented in the end. Since then she hadn’t said a word about her ribbon and she wore it day in and day out. It was a victory she didn’t want, not even worthy of the term pyrrhic. But it was a comfort, and at the time that was what mattered.

But all it ever did was make her angrier. If she thought about it, Yang was right. There was a time where those who mocked her didn’t have a summon, when they were trainees as well. And when she finally got a summon, that didn’t change anything because they already had one. She would just be going through the phases expected of a hunter.

So when it was time, her heart pounding in her throat and all four of her ears, with light gathering at her front in the summoning hall, eyes closed and listening, she felt her rage boil to her top again. This was the moment she was waiting for. Here was where she would become a huntress. Here was where her mockers would face the light.

Blake hoped the summon would be big, gigantic even. She hoped it’s worth a damn to prove all of the other people wrong, that she could match the prowess of a human. But as the light swirled more and more, she realized that it had stopped growing in size. The summoning had paused, and shortly afterward the light began to unravel itself. It was not a common occurrence, but neither was it unusual. In fact, it was something witnessed in perhaps forty percent of the summoning rituals with an equal occurrence across all intersectionalities.

Yet for it to happen to her now was horrifying. This was her proving moment. Yang was watching from the sides. She couldn’t lose now, not when she put so much weight into this. She tried to breath, to slow herself down. But then came the voices. They were little snickers playing in the back of her head. Words calling out to her to say lines and sentences she would never dare to repeat.

Blake began to panic.

“Faunus filth.”

“You’ll never be one of us.”

An image of bruised and defeated student wiping blood from his lips, of her putting away her sword.

“Hide behind your bow then. I know what you are.”

All this time, Blake wanted to be accepted as a human. She wanted to be able to walk down the streets and be free of the errant gaze or stare. But her two damned ears atop her head meant she could never truly be one.

Her body and breath trembled. Lips quivered before gritting her teeth in anger. Heat stung at her eyes before streaking down her cheeks.

But despite the realization, despite the pain it brought her, only one word echoed in the silence that was now her mind.

No.

It would not end here, and her eyes fell shut. Slowly, her arms pulled out Gambol Shroud from her back, holding it in front of her and pulling out the blade. In her best, slowest, calmest breaths possible, Blake’s body began to bend and turn, going through slow forms and stances and disciplines. Hardly useful for combat, but it was taught in the academy to calm and discipline the mind. Gradually she went through more advanced twists and turns, the movements drilled into her body.

Once the last step came to an end, she felt her body snap and flicker. Moving faster and faster through her own personal variations this time, she let go of the blade and used only the ribbon to control its swings and arcs. Despite her eyes being closed, she knew where it was at all times, knew just how to pull it so that no bullets fired. And she moved until her limbs burned, her rage fueling her movements until each pull and tug was followed by a roar from her lips.

This was hers, something that she had earned because she was always physically capable of doing so and drove herself to achieve it. Anyone could learn to do the basics, and with enough training anyone could do what she had done. Anyone.

She was already a hunter.

With one final tug of her ribbon, the blade arced upward and flew neatly into its sheath and she slung it across her back. Now breathing heavily, tears lost amongst sweat, she realized what her father was trying to tell her, what Yang was trying to tell her. With a steady hand, she reached for her bow and pulled, the cloth becoming undone and falling to her feet.

She didn’t feel the need to be a human anymore.

Whoosh

Her heart picked up once again. Turning her head to her side and looking past the dying light, a hulking black bull faced her, red eyes staring back. But in its mouth was the handle of a sheathed sword, elegant and beautiful.

Her rage would always be there, just like the coiled muscles of the beast before her, ready to lash out. Yet her presence of mind was refined like blade in its jaws. There would always be someone who thought less of her. There would always be those who oppressed Faunus rights. But she no longer needed their approval. She didn’t need to try and reach and be them, for she already stood tall in her own light.

Before she was was a hunter, she was a Faunus. But before she was a Faunus she was Blake Belladonna, and no one could take that away from her. Not even herself.

[the-cookie-unicorn]

READ THIS AND YOUR LIFE WILL CHANGE.

If you read this your life will never be the same again. Key to success and failure!!!

Some years ago, the late Nobel prize-winning Dr. Albert Schweitzer was asked by a reporter, “Doctor, what’s wrong with men today?” The great doctor was silent a moment, and then he said, “Men simply don’t think!”

It’s about this that I want to talk with you. We live today in a golden age. This is an era that humanity has looked forward to, dreamed of, and worked toward for thousands of years. We live in the richest era that ever existed on the face of the earth … a land of abundant opportunity for everyone.

However, if you take 100 individuals who start even at the age of 25, do you have any idea what will happen to those men and women by the time they’re 65? These 100 people believe they’re going to be successful. They are eager toward life, there is a certain sparkle in their eye, an erectness to their carriage, and life seems like a pretty interesting adventure to them.

But by the time they’re 65, only one will be rich, four will be financially independent, five will still be working, and 54 will be broke and depending on others for life’s necessities.

Only five out of 100 make the grade! Why do so many fail? What has happened to the sparkle that was there when they were 25? What has become of the dreams, the hopes, the plans … and why is there such a large disparity between what these people intended to do and what they actually accomplished?

THE DEFINITION OF SUCCESS

First, we have to define success and here is the best definition I’ve ever been able to find: “Success is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal.”

A success is the school teacher who is teaching because that’s what he or she wants to do. A success is the entrepreneur who start his own company because that was his dream and that’s what he wanted to do. A success is the salesperson who wants to become the best salesperson in his or her company and sets forth on the pursuit of that goal.

A success is anyone who is realizing a worthy predetermined ideal, because that’s what he or she decided to do … deliberately. But only one out of 20 does that! The rest are “failures.”

Rollo May, the distinguished psychiatrist, wrote a wonderful book called Man’s Search for Himself, and in this book he says: “The opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice … it is conformity.” And there you have the reason for so many failures. Conformity and people acting like everyone else, without knowing why or where they are going.

We learn to read by the time we’re seven. We learn to make a living by the time we’re 30. Often by that time we’re not only making a living, we’re supporting a family. And yet by the time we’re 65, we haven’t learned how to become financially independent in the richest land that has ever been known. Why? We conform! Most of us are acting like the wrong percentage group and the 95 who don’t succeed.

GOALS

Have you ever wondered why so many people work so hard and honestly without ever achieving anything in particular, and why others don’t seem to work hard, yet seem to get everything? They seem to have the “magic touch.” You’ve heard people say, “Everything he touches turns to gold.” Have you ever noticed that a person who becomes successful tends to continue to become more successful? And, on the other hand, have you noticed how someone who’s a failure tends to continue to fail?

The difference is goals. People with goals succeed because they know where they’re going. It’s that simple. Failures, on the other hand, believe that their lives are shaped by circumstances … by things that happen to them … by exterior forces.

Think of a ship with the complete voyage mapped out and planned. The captain and crew know exactly where the ship is going and how long it will take and it has a definite goal. And 9,999 times out of 10,000, it will get there.

Now let’s take another ship and just like the first and only let’s not put a crew on it, or a captain at the helm. Let’s give it no aiming point, no goal, and no destination. We just start the engines and let it go. I think you’ll agree that if it gets out of the harbor at all, it will either sink or wind up on some deserted beach and a derelict. It can’t go anyplace because it has no destination and no guidance.

It’s the same with a human being. However, the human race is fixed, not to prevent the strong from winning, but to prevent the weak from losing. Society today can be likened to a convoy in time of war. The entire society is slowed down to protect its weakest link, just as the naval convoy has to go at the speed that will permit its slowest vessel to remain in formation.

That’s why it’s so easy to make a living today. It takes no particular brains or talent to make a living and support a family today. We have a plateau of so-called “security.” So, to succeed, all we must do is decide how high above this plateau we want to aim.

Throughout history, the great wise men and teachers, philosophers, and prophets have disagreed with one another on many different things. It is only on this one point that they are in complete and unanimous agreement and the key to success and the key to failure is this:

WE BECOME WHATWE THINK ABOUT

This is The Strangest Secret! Now, why do I say it’s strange, and why do I call it a secret? Actually, it isn’t a secret at all. It was first promulgated by some of the earliest wise men, and it appears again and again throughout the Bible. But very few people have learned it or understand it. That’s why it’s strange, and why for some equally strange reason it virtually remains a secret.

Marcus Aurelius, the great Roman Emperor, said: “A man’s life is what his thoughts make of it.”

Disraeli said this: “Everything comes if a man will only wait … a human being with a settled purpose must accomplish it, and nothing can resist a will that will stake even existence for its fulfillment.”

William James said: “We need only in cold blood act as if the thing in question were real, and it will become infallibly real by growing into such a connection with our life that it will become real. It will become so knit with habit and emotion that our interests in it will be those which characterize belief.” He continues, ” … only you must, then, really wish these things, and wish them exclusively, and not wish at the same time a hundred other incompatible things just as strongly.”

My old friend Dr. Norman Vincent Peale put it this way: “If you think in negative terms, you will get negative results. If you think in positive terms, you will achieve positive results.” George Bernard Shaw said: “People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don’t believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can’t find them, make them.”

Well, it’s pretty apparent, isn’t it? We become what we think about. A person who is thinking about a concrete and worthwhile goal is going to reach it, because that’s what he’s thinking about. Conversely, the person who has no goal, who doesn’t know where he’s going, and whose thoughts must therefore be thoughts of confusion, anxiety, fear, and worry will thereby create a life of frustration, fear, anxiety and worry. And if he thinks about nothing … he becomes nothing.

AS YE SOW and SO SHALLYE REAP

The human mind is much like a farmer’s land. The land gives the farmer a choice. He may plant in that land whatever he chooses. The land doesn’t care what is planted. It’s up to the farmer to make the decision. The mind, like the land, will return what you plant, but it doesn’t care what you plant. If the farmer plants too seeds and one a seed of corn, the other nightshade, a deadly poison, waters and takes care of the land, what will happen?

Remember, the land doesn’t care. It will return poison in just as wonderful abundance as it will corn. So up come the two plants and one corn, one poison as it’s written in the Bible, “As ye sow, so shall ye reap.”

The human mind is far more fertile, far more incredible and mysterious than the land, but it works the same way. It doesn’t care what we plant … success … or failure. A concrete, worthwhile goal … or confusion, misunderstanding, fear, anxiety, and so on. But what we plant it must return to us.

The problem is that our mind comes as standard equipment at birth. It’s free. And things that are given to us for nothing, we place little value on. Things that we pay money for, we value.

The paradox is that exactly the reverse is true. Everything that’s really worthwhile in life came to us free and our minds, our souls, our bodies, our hopes, our dreams, our ambitions, our intelligence, our love of family and children and friends and country. All these priceless possessions are free.

But the things that cost us money are actually very cheap and can be replaced at any time. A good man can be completely wiped out and make another fortune. He can do that several times. Even if our home burns down, we can rebuild it. But the things we got for nothing, we can never replace.

Our mind can do any kind of job we assign to it, but generally speaking, we use it for little jobs instead of big ones. So decide now. What is it you want? Plant your goal in your mind. It’s the most important decision you’ll ever make in your entire life.

Do you want to excel at your particular job? Do you want to go places in your company … in your community? Do you want to get rich? All you have got to do is plant that seed in your mind, care for it, work steadily toward your goal, and it will become a reality.

It not only will, there’s no way that it cannot. You see, that’s a law and like the laws of Sir Isaac Newton, the laws of gravity. If you get on top of a building and jump off, you’ll always go down and you’ll never go up.

And it’s the same with all the other laws of nature. They always work. They’re inflexible. Think about your goal in a relaxed, positive way. Picture yourself in your mind’s eye as having already achieved this goal. See yourself doing the things you will be doing when you have reached your goal.

Every one of us is the sum total of our own thoughts. We are where we are because that’s exactly where we really want or feel we deserve to be and whether we’ll admit that or not. Each of us must live off the fruit of our thoughts in the future, because what you think today and tomorrow and next month and next year and will mold your life and determine your future. You’re guided by your mind.

I remember one time I was driving through e a s t e r n Arizona and I saw one of those giant earthmoving machines roaring along the road with what looked like 30 tons of dirt in it and a tremendous, incredible machine and and there was a little man perched way up on top with the wheel in his hands, guiding it. As I drove along I was struck by the similarity of that machine to the human mind. Just suppose you’re sitting at the controls of such a vast source of energy. Are you going to sit back and fold your arms and let it run itself into a ditch? Or are you going to keep both hands firmly on the wheel and control and direct this power to a specific, worthwhile purpose? It’s up to you. You’re in the driver’s seat. You see, the very law that gives us success is a doubleedged sword. We must control our thinking. The same rule that can lead people to lives of success, wealth, happiness, and all the things they ever dreamed of and that very same law can lead them into the gutter. It’s all in how they use it … for good or for bad. That is The Strangest Secret!

Do what the experts since the dawn of recorded history have told us to do: pay the price, by becoming the person you want to become. It’s not nearly as difficult as living unsuccessfully.

The moment you decide on a goal to work toward, you’re immediately a successful person and you are then in that rare group of people who know where they’re going. Out of every hundred people, you belong to the top five. Don’t concern yourself too much with how you are going to achieve your goal and leave that completely to a power greater than yourself. All you have to do is know where you’re going. The answers will come to you of their own accord, and at the right time.

Start today. You have nothing to lose and but you have your whole life to win.

30-DAYACTION IDEAS FOR PUTTING THE STRANGEST SECRET TO WORK FOR YOU

For the next 30-days follow each of these steps every day until you have achieved your goal.

1. Write on a card what it is you want more that anything else. It may be more money. Perhaps you’d like to double your income or make a specific amount of money. It may be a beautiful home. It may be success at your job. It may be a particular position in life. It could be a more harmonious family.

Write down on your card specifically what it is you want. Make sure it’s a single goal and clearly defined. You needn’t show it to anyone, but carry it with you so that you can look at it several times a day. Think about it in a cheerful, relaxed, positive way each morning when you get up, and immediately you have something to work for and something to get out of bed for, something to live for.

Look at it every chance you get during the day and just before going to bed at night. As you look at it, remember that you must become what you think about, and since you’re thinking about your goal, you realize that soon it will be yours. In fact, it’s really yours the moment you write it down and begin to think about it.

2. Stop thinking about what it is you fear. Each time a fearful or negative thought comes into your mind, replace it with a mental picture of your positive and worthwhile goal. And there will come a time when you’ll feel like giving up. It’s easier for a human being to think negatively than positively. That’s why only five percent are successful! You must begin now to place yourself in that group.

“Act as though it were impossible to fail,” as Dorothea Brande said. No matter what your goal and if you’ve kept your goal before you every day and you’ll wonder and marvel at this new life you’ve found.

3. Your success will always be measured by the quality and quantity of service you render. Most people will tell you that they want to make money, without understanding this law. The only people who make money work in a mint. The rest of us must earn money. This is what causes those who keep looking for something for nothing, or a free ride, to fail in life. Success is not the result of making money; earning money is the result of success and and success is in direct proportion to our service.

Most people have this law backwards. It’s like the man who stands in front of the stove and says to it: “Give me heat and then I’ll add the wood.” How many men and women do you know, or do you suppose there are today, who take the same attitude toward life? There are millions.

We’ve got to put the fuel in before we can expect heat. Likewise, we’ve got to be of service first before we can expect money. Don’t concern yourself with the money. Be of service … build … work … dream … create! Do this and you’ll find there is no limit to the prosperity and abundance that will come to you.

Don’t start your test until you’ve made up your mind to stick with it. If you should fail during your first 30 days and by that I mean suddenly find yourself overwhelmed by negative thoughts and simply start over again from that point and go 30 more days. Gradually, your new habit will form, until you find yourself one of that wonderful minority to whom virtually nothing is impossible.

Above all … don’t worry! Worry brings fear, and fear is crippling. The only thing that can cause you to worry during your test is trying to do it all yourself. Know that all you have to do is hold your goal before you; everything else will take care of itself.

Take this 30-day test, then repeat it … then repeat it again. Each time it will become more a part of you until you’ll wonder how you could have ever have lived any other way. Live this new way and the floodgates of abundance will open and pour over you more riches than you may have dreamed existed. Money? Yes, lots of it. But what’s more important, you’ll have peace … you’ll be in that wonderful minority who lead calm, cheerful, successful lives. Visit www.bargainbrute.com, change your life. #motivation, #douglasvandergraph, #goals, #amazon, #business, #news

Source: https://bargainbrutedotcom.tumblr.com/post/182250633569

[thyroids101]

READ THIS AND YOUR LIFE WILL CHANGE.

If you read this your life will never be the same again. Key to success and failure!!!

Some years ago, the late Nobel prize-winning Dr. Albert Schweitzer was asked by a reporter, “Doctor, what’s wrong with men today?” The great doctor was silent a moment, and then he said, “Men simply don’t think!”

It’s about this that I want to talk with you. We live today in a golden age. This is an era that humanity has looked forward to, dreamed of, and worked toward for thousands of years. We live in the richest era that ever existed on the face of the earth … a land of abundant opportunity for everyone.

However, if you take 100 individuals who start even at the age of 25, do you have any idea what will happen to those men and women by the time they’re 65? These 100 people believe they’re going to be successful. They are eager toward life, there is a certain sparkle in their eye, an erectness to their carriage, and life seems like a pretty interesting adventure to them.

But by the time they’re 65, only one will be rich, four will be financially independent, five will still be working, and 54 will be broke and depending on others for life’s necessities.

Only five out of 100 make the grade! Why do so many fail? What has happened to the sparkle that was there when they were 25? What has become of the dreams, the hopes, the plans … and why is there such a large disparity between what these people intended to do and what they actually accomplished?

THE DEFINITION OF SUCCESS

First, we have to define success and here is the best definition I’ve ever been able to find: “Success is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal.”

A success is the school teacher who is teaching because that’s what he or she wants to do. A success is the entrepreneur who start his own company because that was his dream and that’s what he wanted to do. A success is the salesperson who wants to become the best salesperson in his or her company and sets forth on the pursuit of that goal.

A success is anyone who is realizing a worthy predetermined ideal, because that’s what he or she decided to do … deliberately. But only one out of 20 does that! The rest are “failures.”

Rollo May, the distinguished psychiatrist, wrote a wonderful book called Man’s Search for Himself, and in this book he says: “The opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice … it is conformity.” And there you have the reason for so many failures. Conformity and people acting like everyone else, without knowing why or where they are going.

We learn to read by the time we’re seven. We learn to make a living by the time we’re 30. Often by that time we’re not only making a living, we’re supporting a family. And yet by the time we’re 65, we haven’t learned how to become financially independent in the richest land that has ever been known. Why? We conform! Most of us are acting like the wrong percentage group and the 95 who don’t succeed.

GOALS

Have you ever wondered why so many people work so hard and honestly without ever achieving anything in particular, and why others don’t seem to work hard, yet seem to get everything? They seem to have the “magic touch.” You’ve heard people say, “Everything he touches turns to gold.” Have you ever noticed that a person who becomes successful tends to continue to become more successful? And, on the other hand, have you noticed how someone who’s a failure tends to continue to fail?

The difference is goals. People with goals succeed because they know where they’re going. It’s that simple. Failures, on the other hand, believe that their lives are shaped by circumstances … by things that happen to them … by exterior forces.

Think of a ship with the complete voyage mapped out and planned. The captain and crew know exactly where the ship is going and how long it will take and it has a definite goal. And 9,999 times out of 10,000, it will get there.

Now let’s take another ship and just like the first and only let’s not put a crew on it, or a captain at the helm. Let’s give it no aiming point, no goal, and no destination. We just start the engines and let it go. I think you’ll agree that if it gets out of the harbor at all, it will either sink or wind up on some deserted beach and a derelict. It can’t go anyplace because it has no destination and no guidance.

It’s the same with a human being. However, the human race is fixed, not to prevent the strong from winning, but to prevent the weak from losing. Society today can be likened to a convoy in time of war. The entire society is slowed down to protect its weakest link, just as the naval convoy has to go at the speed that will permit its slowest vessel to remain in formation.

That’s why it’s so easy to make a living today. It takes no particular brains or talent to make a living and support a family today. We have a plateau of so-called “security.” So, to succeed, all we must do is decide how high above this plateau we want to aim.

Throughout history, the great wise men and teachers, philosophers, and prophets have disagreed with one another on many different things. It is only on this one point that they are in complete and unanimous agreement and the key to success and the key to failure is this:

WE BECOME WHATWE THINK ABOUT

This is The Strangest Secret! Now, why do I say it’s strange, and why do I call it a secret? Actually, it isn’t a secret at all. It was first promulgated by some of the earliest wise men, and it appears again and again throughout the Bible. But very few people have learned it or understand it. That’s why it’s strange, and why for some equally strange reason it virtually remains a secret.

Marcus Aurelius, the great Roman Emperor, said: “A man’s life is what his thoughts make of it.”

Disraeli said this: “Everything comes if a man will only wait … a human being with a settled purpose must accomplish it, and nothing can resist a will that will stake even existence for its fulfillment.”

William James said: “We need only in cold blood act as if the thing in question were real, and it will become infallibly real by growing into such a connection with our life that it will become real. It will become so knit with habit and emotion that our interests in it will be those which characterize belief.” He continues, ” … only you must, then, really wish these things, and wish them exclusively, and not wish at the same time a hundred other incompatible things just as strongly.”

My old friend Dr. Norman Vincent Peale put it this way: “If you think in negative terms, you will get negative results. If you think in positive terms, you will achieve positive results.” George Bernard Shaw said: “People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don’t believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can’t find them, make them.”

Well, it’s pretty apparent, isn’t it? We become what we think about. A person who is thinking about a concrete and worthwhile goal is going to reach it, because that’s what he’s thinking about. Conversely, the person who has no goal, who doesn’t know where he’s going, and whose thoughts must therefore be thoughts of confusion, anxiety, fear, and worry will thereby create a life of frustration, fear, anxiety and worry. And if he thinks about nothing … he becomes nothing.

AS YE SOW and SO SHALLYE REAP

The human mind is much like a farmer’s land. The land gives the farmer a choice. He may plant in that land whatever he chooses. The land doesn’t care what is planted. It’s up to the farmer to make the decision. The mind, like the land, will return what you plant, but it doesn’t care what you plant. If the farmer plants too seeds and one a seed of corn, the other nightshade, a deadly poison, waters and takes care of the land, what will happen?

Remember, the land doesn’t care. It will return poison in just as wonderful abundance as it will corn. So up come the two plants and one corn, one poison as it’s written in the Bible, “As ye sow, so shall ye reap.”

The human mind is far more fertile, far more incredible and mysterious than the land, but it works the same way. It doesn’t care what we plant … success … or failure. A concrete, worthwhile goal … or confusion, misunderstanding, fear, anxiety, and so on. But what we plant it must return to us.

The problem is that our mind comes as standard equipment at birth. It’s free. And things that are given to us for nothing, we place little value on. Things that we pay money for, we value.

The paradox is that exactly the reverse is true. Everything that’s really worthwhile in life came to us free and our minds, our souls, our bodies, our hopes, our dreams, our ambitions, our intelligence, our love of family and children and friends and country. All these priceless possessions are free.

But the things that cost us money are actually very cheap and can be replaced at any time. A good man can be completely wiped out and make another fortune. He can do that several times. Even if our home burns down, we can rebuild it. But the things we got for nothing, we can never replace.

Our mind can do any kind of job we assign to it, but generally speaking, we use it for little jobs instead of big ones. So decide now. What is it you want? Plant your goal in your mind. It’s the most important decision you’ll ever make in your entire life.

Do you want to excel at your particular job? Do you want to go places in your company … in your community? Do you want to get rich? All you have got to do is plant that seed in your mind, care for it, work steadily toward your goal, and it will become a reality.

It not only will, there’s no way that it cannot. You see, that’s a law and like the laws of Sir Isaac Newton, the laws of gravity. If you get on top of a building and jump off, you’ll always go down and you’ll never go up.

And it’s the same with all the other laws of nature. They always work. They’re inflexible. Think about your goal in a relaxed, positive way. Picture yourself in your mind’s eye as having already achieved this goal. See yourself doing the things you will be doing when you have reached your goal.

Every one of us is the sum total of our own thoughts. We are where we are because that’s exactly where we really want or feel we deserve to be and whether we’ll admit that or not. Each of us must live off the fruit of our thoughts in the future, because what you think today and tomorrow and next month and next year and will mold your life and determine your future. You’re guided by your mind.

I remember one time I was driving through e a s t e r n Arizona and I saw one of those giant earthmoving machines roaring along the road with what looked like 30 tons of dirt in it and a tremendous, incredible machine and and there was a little man perched way up on top with the wheel in his hands, guiding it. As I drove along I was struck by the similarity of that machine to the human mind. Just suppose you’re sitting at the controls of such a vast source of energy. Are you going to sit back and fold your arms and let it run itself into a ditch? Or are you going to keep both hands firmly on the wheel and control and direct this power to a specific, worthwhile purpose? It’s up to you. You’re in the driver’s seat. You see, the very law that gives us success is a doubleedged sword. We must control our thinking. The same rule that can lead people to lives of success, wealth, happiness, and all the things they ever dreamed of and that very same law can lead them into the gutter. It’s all in how they use it … for good or for bad. That is The Strangest Secret!

Do what the experts since the dawn of recorded history have told us to do: pay the price, by becoming the person you want to become. It’s not nearly as difficult as living unsuccessfully.

The moment you decide on a goal to work toward, you’re immediately a successful person and you are then in that rare group of people who know where they’re going. Out of every hundred people, you belong to the top five. Don’t concern yourself too much with how you are going to achieve your goal and leave that completely to a power greater than yourself. All you have to do is know where you’re going. The answers will come to you of their own accord, and at the right time.

Start today. You have nothing to lose and but you have your whole life to win.

30-DAYACTION IDEAS FOR PUTTING THE STRANGEST SECRET TO WORK FOR YOU

For the next 30-days follow each of these steps every day until you have achieved your goal.

1. Write on a card what it is you want more that anything else. It may be more money. Perhaps you’d like to double your income or make a specific amount of money. It may be a beautiful home. It may be success at your job. It may be a particular position in life. It could be a more harmonious family.

Write down on your card specifically what it is you want. Make sure it’s a single goal and clearly defined. You needn’t show it to anyone, but carry it with you so that you can look at it several times a day. Think about it in a cheerful, relaxed, positive way each morning when you get up, and immediately you have something to work for and something to get out of bed for, something to live for.

Look at it every chance you get during the day and just before going to bed at night. As you look at it, remember that you must become what you think about, and since you’re thinking about your goal, you realize that soon it will be yours. In fact, it’s really yours the moment you write it down and begin to think about it.

2. Stop thinking about what it is you fear. Each time a fearful or negative thought comes into your mind, replace it with a mental picture of your positive and worthwhile goal. And there will come a time when you’ll feel like giving up. It’s easier for a human being to think negatively than positively. That’s why only five percent are successful! You must begin now to place yourself in that group.

“Act as though it were impossible to fail,” as Dorothea Brande said. No matter what your goal and if you’ve kept your goal before you every day and you’ll wonder and marvel at this new life you’ve found.

3. Your success will always be measured by the quality and quantity of service you render. Most people will tell you that they want to make money, without understanding this law. The only people who make money work in a mint. The rest of us must earn money. This is what causes those who keep looking for something for nothing, or a free ride, to fail in life. Success is not the result of making money; earning money is the result of success and and success is in direct proportion to our service.

Most people have this law backwards. It’s like the man who stands in front of the stove and says to it: “Give me heat and then I’ll add the wood.” How many men and women do you know, or do you suppose there are today, who take the same attitude toward life? There are millions.

We’ve got to put the fuel in before we can expect heat. Likewise, we’ve got to be of service first before we can expect money. Don’t concern yourself with the money. Be of service … build … work … dream … create! Do this and you’ll find there is no limit to the prosperity and abundance that will come to you.

Don’t start your test until you’ve made up your mind to stick with it. If you should fail during your first 30 days and by that I mean suddenly find yourself overwhelmed by negative thoughts and simply start over again from that point and go 30 more days. Gradually, your new habit will form, until you find yourself one of that wonderful minority to whom virtually nothing is impossible.

Above all … don’t worry! Worry brings fear, and fear is crippling. The only thing that can cause you to worry during your test is trying to do it all yourself. Know that all you have to do is hold your goal before you; everything else will take care of itself.

Take this 30-day test, then repeat it … then repeat it again. Each time it will become more a part of you until you’ll wonder how you could have ever have lived any other way. Live this new way and the floodgates of abundance will open and pour over you more riches than you may have dreamed existed. Money? Yes, lots of it. But what’s more important, you’ll have peace … you’ll be in that wonderful minority who lead calm, cheerful, successful lives. Visit www.bargainbrute.com, change your life. #motivation, #douglasvandergraph, #goals, #amazon, #business, #news

Source: https://bargainbrutedotcom.tumblr.com/post/182250633569

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READ THIS AND YOUR LIFE WILL CHANGE.

If you read this your life will never be the same again. Key to success and failure!!!

Some years ago, the late Nobel prize-winning Dr. Albert Schweitzer was asked by a reporter, “Doctor, what’s wrong with men today?” The great doctor was silent a moment, and then he said, “Men simply don’t think!”

It’s about this that I want to talk with you. We live today in a golden age. This is an era that humanity has looked forward to, dreamed of, and worked toward for thousands of years. We live in the richest era that ever existed on the face of the earth … a land of abundant opportunity for everyone.

However, if you take 100 individuals who start even at the age of 25, do you have any idea what will happen to those men and women by the time they’re 65? These 100 people believe they’re going to be successful. They are eager toward life, there is a certain sparkle in their eye, an erectness to their carriage, and life seems like a pretty interesting adventure to them.

But by the time they’re 65, only one will be rich, four will be financially independent, five will still be working, and 54 will be broke and depending on others for life’s necessities.

Only five out of 100 make the grade! Why do so many fail? What has happened to the sparkle that was there when they were 25? What has become of the dreams, the hopes, the plans … and why is there such a large disparity between what these people intended to do and what they actually accomplished?

THE DEFINITION OF SUCCESS

First, we have to define success and here is the best definition I’ve ever been able to find: “Success is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal.”

A success is the school teacher who is teaching because that’s what he or she wants to do. A success is the entrepreneur who start his own company because that was his dream and that’s what he wanted to do. A success is the salesperson who wants to become the best salesperson in his or her company and sets forth on the pursuit of that goal.

A success is anyone who is realizing a worthy predetermined ideal, because that’s what he or she decided to do … deliberately. But only one out of 20 does that! The rest are “failures.”

Rollo May, the distinguished psychiatrist, wrote a wonderful book called Man’s Search for Himself, and in this book he says: “The opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice … it is conformity.” And there you have the reason for so many failures. Conformity and people acting like everyone else, without knowing why or where they are going.

We learn to read by the time we’re seven. We learn to make a living by the time we’re 30. Often by that time we’re not only making a living, we’re supporting a family. And yet by the time we’re 65, we haven’t learned how to become financially independent in the richest land that has ever been known. Why? We conform! Most of us are acting like the wrong percentage group and the 95 who don’t succeed.

GOALS

Have you ever wondered why so many people work so hard and honestly without ever achieving anything in particular, and why others don’t seem to work hard, yet seem to get everything? They seem to have the “magic touch.” You’ve heard people say, “Everything he touches turns to gold.” Have you ever noticed that a person who becomes successful tends to continue to become more successful? And, on the other hand, have you noticed how someone who’s a failure tends to continue to fail?

The difference is goals. People with goals succeed because they know where they’re going. It’s that simple. Failures, on the other hand, believe that their lives are shaped by circumstances … by things that happen to them … by exterior forces.

Think of a ship with the complete voyage mapped out and planned. The captain and crew know exactly where the ship is going and how long it will take and it has a definite goal. And 9,999 times out of 10,000, it will get there.

Now let’s take another ship and just like the first and only let’s not put a crew on it, or a captain at the helm. Let’s give it no aiming point, no goal, and no destination. We just start the engines and let it go. I think you’ll agree that if it gets out of the harbor at all, it will either sink or wind up on some deserted beach and a derelict. It can’t go anyplace because it has no destination and no guidance.

It’s the same with a human being. However, the human race is fixed, not to prevent the strong from winning, but to prevent the weak from losing. Society today can be likened to a convoy in time of war. The entire society is slowed down to protect its weakest link, just as the naval convoy has to go at the speed that will permit its slowest vessel to remain in formation.

That’s why it’s so easy to make a living today. It takes no particular brains or talent to make a living and support a family today. We have a plateau of so-called “security.” So, to succeed, all we must do is decide how high above this plateau we want to aim.

Throughout history, the great wise men and teachers, philosophers, and prophets have disagreed with one another on many different things. It is only on this one point that they are in complete and unanimous agreement and the key to success and the key to failure is this:

WE BECOME WHATWE THINK ABOUT

This is The Strangest Secret! Now, why do I say it’s strange, and why do I call it a secret? Actually, it isn’t a secret at all. It was first promulgated by some of the earliest wise men, and it appears again and again throughout the Bible. But very few people have learned it or understand it. That’s why it’s strange, and why for some equally strange reason it virtually remains a secret.

Marcus Aurelius, the great Roman Emperor, said: “A man’s life is what his thoughts make of it.”

Disraeli said this: “Everything comes if a man will only wait … a human being with a settled purpose must accomplish it, and nothing can resist a will that will stake even existence for its fulfillment.”

William James said: “We need only in cold blood act as if the thing in question were real, and it will become infallibly real by growing into such a connection with our life that it will become real. It will become so knit with habit and emotion that our interests in it will be those which characterize belief.” He continues, ” … only you must, then, really wish these things, and wish them exclusively, and not wish at the same time a hundred other incompatible things just as strongly.”

My old friend Dr. Norman Vincent Peale put it this way: “If you think in negative terms, you will get negative results. If you think in positive terms, you will achieve positive results.” George Bernard Shaw said: “People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don’t believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can’t find them, make them.”

Well, it’s pretty apparent, isn’t it? We become what we think about. A person who is thinking about a concrete and worthwhile goal is going to reach it, because that’s what he’s thinking about. Conversely, the person who has no goal, who doesn’t know where he’s going, and whose thoughts must therefore be thoughts of confusion, anxiety, fear, and worry will thereby create a life of frustration, fear, anxiety and worry. And if he thinks about nothing … he becomes nothing.

AS YE SOW and SO SHALLYE REAP

The human mind is much like a farmer’s land. The land gives the farmer a choice. He may plant in that land whatever he chooses. The land doesn’t care what is planted. It’s up to the farmer to make the decision. The mind, like the land, will return what you plant, but it doesn’t care what you plant. If the farmer plants too seeds and one a seed of corn, the other nightshade, a deadly poison, waters and takes care of the land, what will happen?

Remember, the land doesn’t care. It will return poison in just as wonderful abundance as it will corn. So up come the two plants and one corn, one poison as it’s written in the Bible, “As ye sow, so shall ye reap.”

The human mind is far more fertile, far more incredible and mysterious than the land, but it works the same way. It doesn’t care what we plant … success … or failure. A concrete, worthwhile goal … or confusion, misunderstanding, fear, anxiety, and so on. But what we plant it must return to us.

The problem is that our mind comes as standard equipment at birth. It’s free. And things that are given to us for nothing, we place little value on. Things that we pay money for, we value.

The paradox is that exactly the reverse is true. Everything that’s really worthwhile in life came to us free and our minds, our souls, our bodies, our hopes, our dreams, our ambitions, our intelligence, our love of family and children and friends and country. All these priceless possessions are free.

But the things that cost us money are actually very cheap and can be replaced at any time. A good man can be completely wiped out and make another fortune. He can do that several times. Even if our home burns down, we can rebuild it. But the things we got for nothing, we can never replace.

Our mind can do any kind of job we assign to it, but generally speaking, we use it for little jobs instead of big ones. So decide now. What is it you want? Plant your goal in your mind. It’s the most important decision you’ll ever make in your entire life.

Do you want to excel at your particular job? Do you want to go places in your company … in your community? Do you want to get rich? All you have got to do is plant that seed in your mind, care for it, work steadily toward your goal, and it will become a reality.

It not only will, there’s no way that it cannot. You see, that’s a law and like the laws of Sir Isaac Newton, the laws of gravity. If you get on top of a building and jump off, you’ll always go down and you’ll never go up.

And it’s the same with all the other laws of nature. They always work. They’re inflexible. Think about your goal in a relaxed, positive way. Picture yourself in your mind’s eye as having already achieved this goal. See yourself doing the things you will be doing when you have reached your goal.

Every one of us is the sum total of our own thoughts. We are where we are because that’s exactly where we really want or feel we deserve to be and whether we’ll admit that or not. Each of us must live off the fruit of our thoughts in the future, because what you think today and tomorrow and next month and next year and will mold your life and determine your future. You’re guided by your mind.

I remember one time I was driving through e a s t e r n Arizona and I saw one of those giant earthmoving machines roaring along the road with what looked like 30 tons of dirt in it and a tremendous, incredible machine and and there was a little man perched way up on top with the wheel in his hands, guiding it. As I drove along I was struck by the similarity of that machine to the human mind. Just suppose you’re sitting at the controls of such a vast source of energy. Are you going to sit back and fold your arms and let it run itself into a ditch? Or are you going to keep both hands firmly on the wheel and control and direct this power to a specific, worthwhile purpose? It’s up to you. You’re in the driver’s seat. You see, the very law that gives us success is a doubleedged sword. We must control our thinking. The same rule that can lead people to lives of success, wealth, happiness, and all the things they ever dreamed of and that very same law can lead them into the gutter. It’s all in how they use it … for good or for bad. That is The Strangest Secret!

Do what the experts since the dawn of recorded history have told us to do: pay the price, by becoming the person you want to become. It’s not nearly as difficult as living unsuccessfully.

The moment you decide on a goal to work toward, you’re immediately a successful person and you are then in that rare group of people who know where they’re going. Out of every hundred people, you belong to the top five. Don’t concern yourself too much with how you are going to achieve your goal and leave that completely to a power greater than yourself. All you have to do is know where you’re going. The answers will come to you of their own accord, and at the right time.

Start today. You have nothing to lose and but you have your whole life to win.

30-DAYACTION IDEAS FOR PUTTING THE STRANGEST SECRET TO WORK FOR YOU

For the next 30-days follow each of these steps every day until you have achieved your goal.

1. Write on a card what it is you want more that anything else. It may be more money. Perhaps you’d like to double your income or make a specific amount of money. It may be a beautiful home. It may be success at your job. It may be a particular position in life. It could be a more harmonious family.

Write down on your card specifically what it is you want. Make sure it’s a single goal and clearly defined. You needn’t show it to anyone, but carry it with you so that you can look at it several times a day. Think about it in a cheerful, relaxed, positive way each morning when you get up, and immediately you have something to work for and something to get out of bed for, something to live for.

Look at it every chance you get during the day and just before going to bed at night. As you look at it, remember that you must become what you think about, and since you’re thinking about your goal, you realize that soon it will be yours. In fact, it’s really yours the moment you write it down and begin to think about it.

2. Stop thinking about what it is you fear. Each time a fearful or negative thought comes into your mind, replace it with a mental picture of your positive and worthwhile goal. And there will come a time when you’ll feel like giving up. It’s easier for a human being to think negatively than positively. That’s why only five percent are successful! You must begin now to place yourself in that group.

“Act as though it were impossible to fail,” as Dorothea Brande said. No matter what your goal and if you’ve kept your goal before you every day and you’ll wonder and marvel at this new life you’ve found.

3. Your success will always be measured by the quality and quantity of service you render. Most people will tell you that they want to make money, without understanding this law. The only people who make money work in a mint. The rest of us must earn money. This is what causes those who keep looking for something for nothing, or a free ride, to fail in life. Success is not the result of making money; earning money is the result of success and and success is in direct proportion to our service.

Most people have this law backwards. It’s like the man who stands in front of the stove and says to it: “Give me heat and then I’ll add the wood.” How many men and women do you know, or do you suppose there are today, who take the same attitude toward life? There are millions.

We’ve got to put the fuel in before we can expect heat. Likewise, we’ve got to be of service first before we can expect money. Don’t concern yourself with the money. Be of service … build … work … dream … create! Do this and you’ll find there is no limit to the prosperity and abundance that will come to you.

Don’t start your test until you’ve made up your mind to stick with it. If you should fail during your first 30 days and by that I mean suddenly find yourself overwhelmed by negative thoughts and simply start over again from that point and go 30 more days. Gradually, your new habit will form, until you find yourself one of that wonderful minority to whom virtually nothing is impossible.

Above all … don’t worry! Worry brings fear, and fear is crippling. The only thing that can cause you to worry during your test is trying to do it all yourself. Know that all you have to do is hold your goal before you; everything else will take care of itself.

Take this 30-day test, then repeat it … then repeat it again. Each time it will become more a part of you until you’ll wonder how you could have ever have lived any other way. Live this new way and the floodgates of abundance will open and pour over you more riches than you may have dreamed existed. Money? Yes, lots of it. But what’s more important, you’ll have peace … you’ll be in that wonderful minority who lead calm, cheerful, successful lives. Visit www.bargainbrute.com, change your life. #motivation, #douglasvandergraph, #goals, #amazon, #business, #news