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terramythos · 3 years

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TerraMythos 2021 Reading Challenge - Book 21 of 26

Title: The Galaxy, and the Ground Within (Wayfarers #4) (2021)

Author: Becky Chambers

Genre/Tags: Science Fiction, Third-Person, Female Protagonists

Rating: 9/10

Date Began: 8/15/2021

Date Finished: 8/22/2021

Gora is an unremarkable planet. It has no natural life and few resources to speak of. In fact, its only use is its proximity to more interesting places. Over the years, it’s become a waystation, notable only as a temporary stop for travelers as they wait for their spot in the wormhole queue.

The Five-Hop One-Stop is a small, family-owned rest stop on Gora. Three travelers— a marginalized nomad, a military contractor, and an exiled artist-- lay over at the Five-Hop awaiting the next stage of their journeys. But everything goes horribly wrong when repair work on an orbital satellite causes a cascade event, destroying the planet’s communications. Now stranded on Gora with debris raining down from the sky, the travelers and hosts must live with each other while cut off from the rest of the galaxy. As they learn more about one another, each is forced to confront their personal struggles… and challenge their perspective on life.

Speaker had a word for how she felt right then: errekere. A moment of vulnerable understanding between strangers. It did not translate into Klip, but it was a feeling she knew well from gatherings among her people. There was no need being expressed here, no barter or haggling or problems that required the assistance of a Speaker, but errekere was what she felt all the same. She’d never felt it with an alien before. She embraced the new experience.

Content warnings and spoilers below the cut.

Content warnings for the book: Non-graphic sexual content, child endangerment, ableism (if you squint; it’s not malicious), references to warfare, discussions of intergenerational trauma re: colonization (not the scifi kind), prejudice and xenophobia, recreational drug use.

I’ve had a mixed experience with Wayfarers, which is unusual for me. I can’t remember the last series I read that fluctuated so much in terms of personal enjoyment and (in my opinion) quality. People as a whole seem to enjoy this series more than me, hence the multitude of awards and glowing reviews. I liked book two, A Closed and Common Orbit, because of the focused narrative and dedicated development of two lead characters. But the first and third books suffered from an overly large cast and reliance on generic archetypes. When a series is built on character development and plot is a secondary concern at best, those characters have to be outstanding. And to me, they usually weren’t.

But in this fourth and final book, I felt that Chambers finally hit her stride. On a surface level, The Galaxy, and the Ground Within has striking similarity to book three, Record of a Spaceborn Few. Both are virtually plotless novels which do deep dives into a cast of characters. What sets The Galaxy apart is its execution. All three leads have unique and compelling personal conflicts. An underutilized strength of the series is its creative aliens; something Chambers takes advantage of here with a fully alien cast. Finally, this book hinges upon interaction between the three leads, something sorely missing from the previous book.

In these reviews I often seem critical of ensemble casts. But when done well, I actually prefer them to singular narratives. The main hurdle is having consistently interesting characters across the board. When there’s one or two characters I prefer over the others, I usually struggle with the novel. There’s an inherent sense of disappointment when leaving a favored character’s POV. For me this affects my overall enjoyment of the story. But when I like all of the characters or they all have something interesting going on, ensemble casts are great. The Galaxy, and the Ground Within is successful in this regard because I thoroughly enjoyed all three perspective characters. In no particular order…

Speaker is an Akarak, a birdlike scavenger species introduced as sympathetic antagonists in the first book. Going in, we know their home planet was colonized by the Harmagians, which has caused irreparable harm to their culture. Robbed of their homeworld and forced into the margins of GC society, the Akarak are nomadic, and many of them rely on banditry in order to survive. We have seen very little of them besides that. The Galaxy expands their lore a lot; their short lifespans, their incompatible biology with other sapients, and the resulting generational trauma from centuries of colonial exploitation. Speaker’s arc in particular is about dealing with the prejudice she encounters daily, adjusting to acceptance after being othered for so long, seeing things from a new perspective, and persistent worry for her twin sister Tracker, who she’s been separated from due to the events on Gora.

The Aeluon Pei is actually a recurring character; she’s Ashby’s love interest from the first book. Here we get a more intimate view of her as a person. In particular, she struggles with living a double life. She works a prestigious yet dangerous job among her people, running cargo into critical warzones. But her affair with Ashby (a Human) is a huge cultural taboo among the Aeluons. If her colleagues discovered her romantic relationship, her life as a cargo runner would be over. The double life is wearing on her, because she loves both aspects of her life, but knows that it can’t go on like this forever. To make matters worse, she goes into “shimmer”, a once-in-a-lifetime fertility period, during the events on Gora. This adds a layer to her struggle; does she do her duty to her species and produce a child, or does she pursue what she really wants?

Finally, there’s Roveg, a Quelin. Like the Akarak, Quelin haven’t received a whole lot of development in the series. In the first book, they’re portrayed as a xenophobic insectoid race, and their role is unambiguously antagonistic. Roveg is the polar opposite of that. He’s something of a renaissance man; an appreciator of fine art and dining, who designs artistic sims by profession. He delights in meeting aliens, befriending them, and learning everything there is to know about them. His arc centers around his exile from Quelin society and all the hidden pains associated with that. Chief among these is a mysterious meeting he has to make— which the Gora disaster obviously complicates.

Complementing the three leads are the Five-Hop’s hosts; a Laru mother and child named Ouloo and Tupo. Similar to the Akarak and Quelin, we haven’t seen many of the Laru (who I always picture as fuzzy dog-giraffe hybrids). Ouloo struggles to be a kind and accommodating host in the wake of disaster. She’s also forced to confront her own prejudices, especially regarding Speaker, the first Akarak she’s ever met. The two initially have a lot of tension, but grow to be great friends over the course of the novel. Her child Tupo is a nonbinary character using xe/xyr pronouns throughout the novel. Xe’s basically a Laru teenager, and super endearing. I love xyr natural curiosity and naiveté. Definitely the “heart” of the group.

Interaction between these characters is the bread and butter of this novel. There’s very little action; instead it focuses on their differing perspectives and life experiences. It’s a gradual build as the characters grow more familiar with one another. The epilogue is brilliant, because we see the long-term effect of these characters meeting. Despite interpersonal conflict in the story, Speaker inspires Pei to make a specific decision. From this decision, Pei realizes she can help Roveg with his meeting. As a result of this, Roveg is inspired to help Speaker based on one of their earlier conversations. His help fundamentally alters Speaker’s perspective on life— and there’s an implication it will reach beyond that, to the Akarak as a whole. It’s a cascade effect, but rather than the disastrous version that happened on Gora, it’s a positive social change for the leads. That’s the kind of literary parallel that really fires me up.

I do have a few criticisms of this novel, minor and otherwise. The first is, I wish the tension between Speaker and Pei was more strongly built throughout. While I’m glad the novel isn’t all sunshine and rainbows when it comes to the character interactions, their conflict goes from an idea in the back of one’s mind to an explosive event. This is something of a nitpick because it’s otherwise well executed. I especially like that despite their interpersonal problems, they work together in the climactic events of the novel without sacrificing their respective principles.

My other criticism is a series-wide observation. Wayfarers is optimistic to a fault. As such, it’s pretty rare that we see true evil or even bad behavior in this series. On one hand, it’s nice to read something where the characters are people who want the best for everyone. But there’s a lot of dissonance here, because there are MASSIVE social problems with the GC at large. For example, we see the effects of xenophobia, war, slavery, and colonialism, but the ones who perpetuate these issues are faceless. If Chambers wants to portray good characters, that’s fine, but it strikes me as odd to build complex social issues into your society, yet exclusively portray groups of morally good people. Why would a society full of such nice, helpful groups also marginalize the Akarak, or create an entire caste of slave clones to sort through their junk? This approach comes off as a desire for nuance without committing to it.

This trend continues through the final book. The Galaxy, and the Ground Within is clearly a COVID-19 response novel (“we’re all in this together”!)— but everyone is blameless, and the government response is reasonable and timely. That’s just not how it worked in real life. So many people were (and still are!) selfish in response to COVID, often outright endangering others. Practically every government botched their response for the sake of money, leading to mass death worldwide. If Wayfarers has similar social issues to the real world, why would the response to a disaster be any different? It’s an ongoing contradiction; the Wayfarers society is simultaneously utopian and flawed, and it’s hard for me to suspend my disbelief.

As an individual novel, though, I really enjoyed The Galaxy, and the Ground Within. Like all the other books in the Wayfarers series, it’s a standalone and can be read on its own. My experience with this series has been up and down; I recommend the second and fourth books, but I’d skip one and three if I ever do a reread. There are things to like about Wayfarers in terms of worldbuilding and the creative ideas behind all the different aliens. Characterization is hit or miss, but the hits are great, and this book in particular knocked it out of the park. Chambers’ prose improves a lot over the series, and it’s nice to see how she develops as a writer. As I’ve mentioned, Wayfarers has gotten lots of positive feedback, so it’s possible you will enjoy it more than I did. But I’m looking forward to reading something new.

#taylor reads #2021 reading challenge #9/10

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how-to-portuguese · 4 years

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Review of Practice Portuguese Paid Content

The Practice Portuguese team produce a lot of amazing free content on YouTube, their podcast, and their website. But is their paid platform good value for money?

I finally decided to pay for a one-month subscription to access the Practice Portuguese paid content. I give my initial thoughts on the pros and cons below.

(Disclaimer: this post was originally written in Jan 2021, but was added to my queue to post at a later date. The current prices and content may differ.)

What the platform offers

Pros

The scope of the content

The platform has very solid A1-B1 content and is expanding their B2+ content. It currently gives at least an introduction to every verb conjugation, which will get you through B1 and started with B2. Their introductory and elementary material is definitely more developed than their intermediate and advanced material, but they are also expanding their content as their community grows. They seem receptive to suggestions and the needs of their users, so it might be a good time to get involved in their online community to help shape the way that the platform evolves.

Quality of the content

The website has very clear and extremely detailed explanations. The learning notes are WAY more detailed than grammar explanations on DuoLingo. In particular, I think they have very good lessons on clitic and tonic pronouns, including rules of when to include the clitic pronoun before, after, and in the middle of the verb. They also have great lessons and learning notes on pronunciation, including a whole lesson dedicated to open vs closed vowels with examples of minimal pairs and homophones (with audio recordings).

Plenty of audio content

Every word or phrase in Portuguese has an audio recording. Simply hover above the word or phrase, and you will see a speaker icon to play the recording and a turtle icon to slow down the recording. They use a variety of native speakers in their lessons, so you will hear multiple accents of Portugal. They also have a mix of clear recordings and recordings with background noise (e.g., in a café or train station). There is always an additional clear recording is always available when they have audio content with background noise. This is all in addition to their free audio content on YouTube, their podcast, and their social media accounts. With the combination of paid and free content, it is definitely possible to develop solid listening skills.

Verb conjugation practice

There is a section of the website where you can practice verb conjugations. You can practice each tense individually, a combination of indicative (past, present, future), a combination of conjunctive and imperative, or a combination of all verb tenses. It provides all the benefits of flashcard apps without having to make the content yourself.

Multiple ways of reviewing material

You can revisit each lesson as many times as you need, the platform automatically creates flashcards as you start more lessons, and you can review in quiz mode if you prefer this to flashcards. They have a smart review feature that adapts to how well you have mastered a word or phrase. You can also manually manage the words and phrase that you review by moving them between "short term memory", "long term memory", "mastered" the lists and you can remove them from all lists. The app is focused on mastery and not gamification, so you won’t get constant notifications or lose progress on basic content just because the app wants to keep your level of engagement high.

Full access to all the content

Once you purchase access to the platform, you can click through all content and do lessons out of order. You don't have to unlock levels or master a concept before moving on to the next. This allows you to focus material you need to know and learn at your own pace. This is a nice experience for those who already have some knowledge of portuguese and don't want to go through another set of introductory lessons just to get to the elementary and intermediate content.

Tailored for expats, not tourists

A lot of online introductory material is tailored for tourists, who only need very superficial knowledge of Portugal. This platform includes grammar and vocabulary lessons tailored for immigrants (e.g., immigration office, getting residency, renting an apartment, buying a house, etc.) AND lots of lessons around culture, which is good for those who are interested in studying or living in Portugal. The platform includes so many idiomatic expressions and interjections!

Building a community, not just a platform

There is a pretty active forum for paid members. Members can ask questions and comment on individual lessons. Overall, this is similar to the DuoLingo forum. However, when I tried to ask questions or comment on EP vs BP differences on the DuoLingo forum, it was not well received. Some people were quite hostile, with at least one person saying that all the best American universities teach Brazilian Portuguese so there’s no point trying to learn European Portuguese. This was really disheartening, so I quickly stopped posting and it set me back at an early stage of my studies. I think it would have been really valuable to have a supportive community specifically dedicated to EP, so new language learners would really benefit from this.

No ads, no gamification

In my experience, gamification doesn’t make something more fun. It just feels like a poor attempt to generate more advertising revenue or incentivise you to buy add-ons or purchase a paid version. I like having a sense of completing something to mastery, so gamification that results in constantly losing lives, losing progress on lower levels, having to redo an entire tree five times, and being sent constant notifications to practice actually makes me want to use the app less.

The Practice Portuguese platform doesn’t have any of this. No gamification. No ads. Just mastery of topics you want to study, at your own pace, with no added pressure. It is much more affordable than a lot of other paid language-learning software. I am working full-time now, so I am in a position where I am able to pay for this. And I definitely appreciate the ad-free environment that focuses on learning and not getting users to spend more money.

Good value for money

Can get you from A0-B1 (with some intro to B2 content) for €15 a month or €153 if you buy an annual subscription (15% discount). This is far cheaper than any classes or private lessons I have paid for myself or seen elsewhere, and it is much cheaper than most other paid language-learning software. For basically the price of a monthly streaming service, you get unlimited access to the platform with no limit on the number of devices you can use.

Cons

Note: Not all of these are inherently cons or things that I think Practice Portuguese should change. This post is more of a discussion of what is and is not available on the platform. The platform does have cons if you are looking for specific tools or features that are not offered.

Content is paid with no free trial

The paid content does not come with a free trial. Practice Portuguese is a small company with a small team AND they produce a ton of free content, so I get it. They need some source of revenue to support content production and web hosting.

But, some people may be hesistant to commit to a subscription without knowing what they will be getting first. Honestly, one of the main reasons I didn't sign up sooner is that I wasn't sure if they would have lessons dedicated to learners at the B2 (or higher) level. I was also somewhat concerned about the quality of the content, given the poor quality of so many of the other European Portuguese apps. After seeing the Practice Portuguese team consistently produce high-quality free content, I decided to give the paid platform a try.

They offer a €15 one-month subscription that automatically renews each month. This is what I went for just to get an overview of the content. The website says that they will refund you within the first 30 days if you want to cancel, but I can't say anything about how smooth this process is yet. They also allow you to cancel the monthly subscription at any time.

If I decide to keep using this tool (which is highly likely at this point), then I plan to cancel the one-month subscription and will then purchase the annual subscription to take advantage of the 15% discount. Hopefully, they will have a more elegant and cost effective way to transition from a trial to a full membership in the future.

Elementary lessons may contain some advanced content

At times, more advanced content is sometimes included in elementary lessons. For example, all of the rules on clitic pronouns are included in one lesson, which is placed just after the lesson on the past continuous tense. This is fine for simple clitics, but you need to know future indicative and conditional verbs for some of the clitic pronoun uses in the lesson. Users don't learn about these verb tenses until after the lesson on clitic pronouns.

I think this is something that the Practice Portuguese team could change that would improve the learning experience. Learning about clitic pronouns in general can be quite overwhelming, and this lesson could be very overwhelming for those who are learning entirely through the Practice Portuguese platform.

You can always go through the easier parts of the lesson and then come back at a later stage, but I know that I like the feeling of completing a lesson in its entirely and feel frustrated or disappointed when I am not able to do so. Users might benefit from two separate lessons on clitics placed at different learning stages.

Limited speaking practice

Like DuoLingo, each lesson has a section that ask you read a phrase out loud. You can compare your recording to a recodring by a native speaker. The system also evaluates your pronunciation and gives you a score from 0-100%. I always wonder how good these are systems are at actually detecting the accuracy of the pronunciation. Are they merely the aural equivalent to Just Dance and Sing Party? OR do they actually work?

These types of lessons also don't work as well for those with speech impediments. I have a bit of a lisp, and I always do poorly on exercises when there are a lot of S and Z sounds. I know my S and Z sounds aren’t correct. I’m more concerned with whether my open and closed vowels, lh's, etc. need to be improved. The 0-100% scale simply isn't going to convey this information in the same way an interaction with a native speaker would.

These kinds of exercises are also not going to prepare for you an actual conversation. Being able to compare your recording to the official recording very useful when you are getting started with a language. But, it is possible to have excellent pronunciation but terrible conversational skills. If you mostly just want to improve your conversation skills, this particular platform isn't right for you.

No option for a private tutor

The Practice Portuguese platform does not offer private tutors or private lessons. I don't think this options would fit well with the current aim of their platform, so I also wouldn't expect the Practice Portuguese team to change this. But, if you are looking for private lessons or having access to a private tutor, then this isn't this tool for you.

The Practice Portuguese team do engage the users in their YouTube videos and podcasts, and they occasionally post to the forum. But, don't expect them to be heavily involved in your day-to-day study. The platform is designed to develop a strong community base. Users can post questions and comments on each lesson (similar to DuoLingo's desktop site) and there is a discussion forum, so you will probably get your questions answered by community members at some point.

No CEFR levels, No test prep

The Practice Portuguese platform is not designed to be test prep for any of the exams certifying proficiency in Standard European Portuguese as a second language. If this is what you're looking for, then the Practice Portuguese platform may not be what you need. It is probably a good tool to supplement your test prep, but the platform is not designed around the language exams.

Unless you are very familiar with the content of the exams themselves, you will probably not know the CEFR level you are at. The content is designed to be continuous, and the site doesn't have any numeric measure of progress or proficiency (no crowns, no arbitrary scores, no CEFR levels, etc.). However, I can see why some people prefer having a levels system or may want to know the exact CEFR level they are working towards.

It seems like most apps use these measures of progress as ways to gamify the app in order to increase the monetisation. For me, it is a relief to be able to learn casually without feeling the pressure of leveling up or facing the threat of moving down a level or losing progress if I don't use the app enough. So, while not having levels or test prep may be a con, there is also the trade-off of not having excessive monetisation / gamification.

Limited B2+ content

The content for advanced learners (CEFR B2 and higher) is pretty limited at the moment. The team is continually expanding the content, so this is likely to change in the future. For example, they added lessons on the o modo conjuntivo in July 2020. These are pretty basic lessons, and they could add more content on various uses of the conjunctive form so their users can build more solid B2 skills (e.g. conjunctions + conjunctive). There are also no lessons on pretérito mais-que-perfeito, which is necessary for C1 and C2 learners.

I am trying to reach a more solid B2 level, and so I think the platform will be a good way to solidify my grammar skills while also providing a refresher for grammar skills that might have forgotten. I am also happy to see the section with verb conjugation practice. I have exposure to all of the conjugations, but I definitely need more practice to be able to use them more fluently in practice.

But, I don't think I could use the Practice Portuguese platform alone to pass a B2 (or higher) language exam. There would definitely need to be more advanced content.

#european portuguese #portuguese language #portuguese langblr #long post #practice Portuguese #european portuguese resources #portuguese resources #review

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thathopelessromantic · 4 years

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Crossing Lines

Fandom: Voltron: Legendary Defender Rating: Mature (implied sexual content + mild language) Pairing: Lance/Keith Note: The comeback no one expected with a series I thought was finished in 2018 and a fic I started in 2019 finally finished lol

There’s a nagging worry in the back of his head that this is not normal friends-with-benefits behavior, but it is easily drowned out by Lance’s sleepy smile when he shifts again to face Keith. He hides another wide yawn in his shoulder.

“Those kids wore you out, clearly.” Keith observes, trying to fight back his own yawn.

Lance smiles fondly. “It was fun to see them, to go back and be with everyone for a while. But I’m really glad you were here when I got home.”

AO3: (X) Part 1 of the series: (X)

Keith looks away from his computer as his phone buzzes against his leg. Pidge sits across the room at her desk, muttering to herself as she readjusts the device’s calibration – again. Their project was supposed to be at least 80 percent theoretical, but Keith knew the moment he was paired with Pidge that option was thrown out the window.

He flips his phone over just as it vibrates again. There’s a text from Shiro, asking him for the third time about a shirt Shiro insists Keith stole and Keith insists Shiro just lost, and a snapchat from Lance. Dismissing the text notification, he opens snapchat.

Most of the picture is just of a bright blue sky above him, but Lance’s face peeks out from the bottom, at an extremely unflattering angle. The selfie is taken at chest level while Lance looks down at the camera. His hair is pushed under a backwards baseball cap with frayed stitching along the edge and there is, what appears to be, a sparkly butterfly sticker on his cheek. Above his head it reads:

don’t blow up my apartment while im gone, mullet. i live there.

Shaking his head, he taps away the message. Pidge still appears absorbed in her tinkering and doesn’t notice as he takes a blurry picture of her.

we’re not that irresponsible

It only takes a few seconds for Lance to reply, no longer bothering with pictures and just texting back.

HA! but seriously, hunk’s been sending me worried messages all weekend

…Hunk had seemed particularly anxious the last time Keith emerged from Pidge’s room for a drink.

hm…like an hour ago pidge thought she had gotten the laser to work for real and did seem a little maniacal…

Lance replies with a supremely unimpressed expression, made, of course, all the more effective by the butterfly sticker. Keith snorts, but also half-heartedly wonders how easily he could get away with saving a screenshot of the selfie. He just saved one last night, of Lance cuddling with his parent’s dog ruined only slightly by the caption insinuating the dog had better breath than Keith, but he brushed it off with a lie about trying to lock his phone and taking the screenshot accidentally. He’s not sure if Lance believed him then, but he definitely wouldn’t believe it two times in a row.

Pidge loudly clears her throat across the room. Startled, Keith dismisses the message, and nearly drops his phone in the process. When he looks up, Pidge is looking at him over the rim of her glasses, with one brow raised.

“…Yes?”

“How’s that report coming, Keith?”

He glances back at his computer, at the three and a half pages he had finished of their ten-page report. “Fine.”

“Hm.” Pidge looks away, jotting down some other measurements on a pad besides her. “And how’s your boyfriend?”

“He’s not my-” Keith starts before he gives up with a heavy sigh. It’s a waste of breath with her. “Lance thinks we’re going to blow up the apartment. Well I guess actually Hunk does, and he turned to Lance for help.”

Pidge rolls her eyes, muttering something under her breath about worry-warts and ridiculous roommates. Keith smiles at the, somehow, simultaneously exasperated but fond tone she uses and turns back to his computer, tucking his phone under his leg again. But it takes a while to focus on anything other than blue eyes and familiar, silly banter.

It’s nearly three and a half hours later, though it hardly feels like it, when Hunk knocks at the door, tempting them out of the room and their work-stupors with the promise of pizza, the heady aroma already spilling out from the kitchen. They settle in the living room, Pidge and Hunk on the couch with Keith on the floor in front of them, legs stretched out under the coffee table. Pidge is still complaining around mouthfuls of burning cheese that they were almost done, if Hunk had just waited a little while longer, but Hunk turns on the sci-fi series they’ve been watching together and within ten minutes into the episode her complaints have turned into an analysis of how the character’s spacesuits work.

Keith relaxes against the couch as their familiar chatter falls around him. He’s a little lost in what is happening in the show, they’re further than he’s been able to get on his own, but it’s nice to share it with them anyways, especially with the way Hunk laughs triumphantly when he guesses the ridiculous plot twist twenty minutes early and Pidge keeps comparing the characters to people they know with frightening accuracy.

It only takes them an episode and a half to completely demolish the pizza, but when the third one starts up in the queue, no one bothers to reach for the remote. Full of good food and only half-paying attention to the show, Keith can feel himself being lulled to sleep right there on the living room floor. He fights against the urge as much as he can, but the last thing he remembers is the upbeat opening starting for the next episode, and then suddenly the episode is ending as he jerks awake, knocking his knee on the underside of the table, hard.

After his unfortunate waking, he extracts himself from under the table, gathering up dirty plates, despite Hunk’s protest, and taking them into the kitchen – the moving helps wake him up, even if his knee still hurts like a bitch. The stove clock reads 7:03. He slips through the living room as another episode is starting and goes to their bathroom.

As he’s washing his hands, his phone buzzes with another text. He opens the text as he exits the room. It’s a picture from Adam, Shiro’s fiancé, of Shiro sitting on the floor of what Keith is pretty sure is their laundry room, head buried in his hands. There’s a very dusty pile of something next to him.

The text says: we found his shirt.

Keith leaves the text conversation, trying not to laugh. Considering all the trouble Shiro gave him, Keith feels like he should be at least mildly annoyed by this instead of amused.

He turns the doorknob to the room in front of him and swings it open before he even realizes what he’s doing. He freezes, looking in at Lance’s dark, empty room. Distracted, he had apparently been moving through the apartment on autopilot – straight to Lance’s room. Feeling like he’s breaking some kind of unspoken rule, he takes a few steps in. Lance’s bed is still a mess of blankets and pillows, and there’s piles of books and discarded shoes covering his floor. He’s only been gone a few days, but his absence feels so prominent, especially like this, Keith can’t help but feel like something is wrong.

He’s texting Lance before he can think better of it.

when are you coming back again?

Lance’s response is almost instantaneous.

why? missing me that much already, mullet?

Yes, Keith’s head or heart, or maybe both, shout.

no just wondering how much longer we get to enjoy this peace and quiet he says instead.

whatever, asshole …….tomorrow night

Keith silently but firmly tells himself to stop being so damn happy about this news as he slips his phone back into his pocket. He takes one last look at Lance’s room before stepping back out into the hall and pulling the door closed behind him.

He just barely manages to fight the telling smile off his face before he gets back to the living room.

Keith crashes at their apartment for the night, on the couch. Hunk and Pidge both try to convince him that he could take Lance’s bed and Lance wouldn’t care, but Keith is fairly certain he wouldn’t get much sleep if he was in Lance’s room – even if he would be alone – and insists the couch is fine. He wakes up once around 5 or 6 in the morning as Hunk is getting ready for his opening shift at a local diner but otherwise sleeps well until about 10:30. He wanders into the kitchen to start a pot of coffee before going to roust Pidge. He doesn’t mind mornings much, but he learned very soon into their friendship that Pidge is very firmly a “night owl,” and has no interest in trying to deny her nature. She’s lying upside down on her bed when he gets to her room, and somehow managed to kick all of her blankets off of the bed, except one, which looks dangerously close to suffocating her.

He stands in the doorway for a moment, just staring at her. “How do you even manage this?”

“Mmphf.” Sleeping Pidge replies, very firmly.

“Right.” Keith pauses. “I’ll come back when the coffee’s done, actually.”

With a little extra time, Keith hops in the shower. As soon as he opens the bottle of shampoo, he recognizes the familiar, fresh scent as Lance’s soap. He’s a little surprised Lance left his favorite soap behind, even if he was just going to his family home for a few days. He also isn’t sure what to do, looking around the shower space for other soap. There’s plenty, and surely none of them would care either way if he used a little soap but…

Is he totally over thinking this? Absolutely.

Does that realization help him make a decision about which soap to use? Absolutely not.

What feels like ages, but is hopefully only a few minutes, passes before he finally convinces himself to stop being ridiculous and just use the damn shampoo. He just grabbed Lance’s first, it was a coincidence and if Pidge noticed later…well, she would just have to accept that.

…Right.

He washes up quickly after wasting who knows how long second-guessing his soap choices and leaves the bathroom to the smell of coffee slowly starting to fill the apartment.

He has to break the nonexistent, unspoken rule his brain has built up in his mind a second time, and trespasses across Lance’s room to find some spare clothes he’s left behind for overnight stays. He pulls on some clean boxers and his jeans from yesterday, but after he’s pulled the worn Altea University shirt over his head, he realizes its Lance shirt, not his. There’s a small hole starting in the bottom hem and the white letters are fading and cracked from excessive wear. It was folded in his drawers, so Keith is like…ninety percent certain it’s clean, but it still smells like Lance’s cologne. Or maybe it’s his lotion or laundry soap or bodywash, but between whatever lingering scent Lance has left on his clothes and the smell of his shampoo still obvious in Keith’s damp hair, he suddenly feels overwhelmed.

He hates how much he hates that Lance is gone.

It’s just a couple of days. Why is he such a disaster? They’re friends. When was the last time he missed Hunk or Pidge this much when they were gone? Even with their friends with benefits arrangement, what made Lance that special to him?

Actually, that was a can of worms he wasn’t really prepared to open just yet.

Keith makes a hasty retreat – a calm, completely normal walk out of one room to another if anyone asks – back to the kitchen for coffee. He pours a generous amount for both Pidge and himself, before he returns to Pidge’s room to finally wake her. He’s not exactly eager to spend another full day working on this project, but he wants to get it done, and he officially really needs the distraction.

It takes another hour, even with the promise of coffee, to pull Pidge out of bed, and she insists on showering “to feel like a real person” before they can get back to work on their project.

Keith has gotten as far as turning his laptop back on and opening their report, rereading the last few paragraphs to remember where he left off, when Pidge returns to her room in some leggings and a baggy t-shirt Keith is pretty sure belongs to either Lance or Matt.

“How about food first?” she suggests.

It’s not exactly the distraction he was looking for, but he shuts his laptop anyways, pushing it off his lap before she even finishes her sentence.

Sal’s is a small 24-hour diner just outside of Altea's central campus that makes it a popular place for both students and professors. Sunday morning, it is practically bursting at the seams, but it’s got good food for reasonable prices and Hunk, Lance, and Pidge had become regulars even before Hunk got a job in the kitchen. Within a few months of becoming friends, Keith had been invited along enough times that the waitstaff began to recognize him too.

Their wait for a table is reasonable, all things considered, and then Keith and Pidge have only been at the table for maybe three minutes before their waitress, Flora, drops drinks off at the table with a promise to be back for their orders in just a minute. Her long, red pony tail swings wildly behind her as she flits around the small space.

They hadn’t ordered anything, but Flora had been there for a long time and was used to their group stopping in, especially on weekend mornings when Hunk was working. But sitting on the table in front of them is two coffee mugs, and a tall glass of apple juice.

Keith and Pidge both stare at it for a moment, before looking to each other. Keith has a feeling the juice is making him feel a whole lot more…things than it is Pidge.

“I guess she just assumed?” Pidge finally says after a moment and goes back to the menu, as if she hadn’t memorized it within the first three months of their visits.

Keith pulls out his phone and takes a picture of the juice, sending it to Lance with a text:

from flora

Lance’s response comes in a few minutes later, interspersed with at least a dozen crying emojis.

i cant believe u traitors went to sal’s w/o me. tell flora i love her and one of u better drink that. we don’t let apple juice go to waste in this house

i am not telling her that. but i will drink the juice for u

Flora comes back to the table before Lance’s next reply comes in. “Just your usual’s today?”

Pidge hums and haws over the decision a few times, like she does every time they come, before agreeing to her usual order. Though she asks for fresh fruit as well today, just to mix it up.

He can feel his phone buzz against his leg almost the entire time Pidge is ordering. And again a few more times as he confirms that he would like his usual order as well. “But, Lance isn’t with us today so…nothing for him.” Keith adds awkwardly at the end.

Flora blinks at him a few times, surprised, before she snaps her fingers as if suddenly remembering something. “Right. I remember Hunk mentioning one of his roommates was out of town for a few days. Sorry guys, I’m just so used to your trio, or just you and him,” she says to Keith, thankfully not seeing the way Pidge wiggles her eyebrows and makes kissy-faces at him for the aside. “I’ll take that juice back for you.”

“Oh no, that’s fine.” Keith says, moving the glass closer to him. “It’s already poured, we’ll drink it.”

Flora arches a brow, but doesn’t argue with him. She promises their food will be out shortly and leaves the table.

“I can’t believe Lance didn’t request you deliver any messages to her for him, or insist we eat his chocolate chip pancakes in his honor too.” Pidge says once she’s gone.

Keith pulls out his phone, flipping it around to show Pidge the twelve messages he got while they were ordering. “Oh, I’m sure he did somewhere in there.”

It’s hard to get back to work on a full stomach, but they power through it. Their shared determination to not have to worry about the project after today deters the usual urge to distract each other. Still, progress is slow, and they’re still working when Hunk comes home from work and peeks in to check on them. They pass on lunch when Hunk asks after his shower, and give non-committal answers to his questions about dinner plans.

Keith is entirely unaware of time and date and hell maybe even location by the time he drags himself through the conclusion but he is bordering on ecstatic when he finally saves the document for the last time and looks up from the computer only for Pidge to look up from her own work and meet his eye a few seconds later.

“Done?”

He nods, and she gives an excited “whoop!” stumbling off her desk chair to throw herself on the bed besides him. “So I just need to add in my input and double-check the details match up, right?”

He nods again, and she immediately scrolls to the top of the document to start reading. “Oh!” she jumps up again, grabbing her laptop from the desk and the notebook she was working in besides it. “Do you want to double check the equations and make sure the experiment outline matches the order you have everything in the paper?”

He is relatively confident in Pidge’s work, but he agrees, nonetheless, and the two settle against each other in the twin bed to finish their work.

Keith isn’t sure when he dozes off, he doesn’t even really remember falling asleep, but when he wakes up, it’s dark in Pidge’s room. Both of their computers are on her desk and he’s alone in her bed. He sits up, half-heartedly feeling around the blankets for his phone to check the time.

“C’mon Mullet, you really had to move right then?”

Keith about jumps out of his skin at the unexpected voice, though he’d vehemently deny it if asked. Lance is sitting backwards in Pidge’s desk chair, pushed close to the door. He lowers his phone, smirking at Keith’s startled expression.

“I guess the deer-in-the-headlights look is fun too, but I was really going to enjoy lording the drooling-all-over-Pidge’s-sheets picture over you.” Lance teases.

Keith’s heart brain is doing some kind of stupid, fluttery thing over the boy across the room that he is pointedly ignoring.

“Shut up.” Keith mutters, even as he hastily wipes at his mouth. There’s nothing there. Asshole. He pushes himself off the bed. “What the hell are you doing here?”

Lance presses a hand to his chest in fake offense. “Really? You sleep through my grand return and when you finally bother to wake up, that’s how you greet me?”

Keith crosses the room, folding his arms over his chest and summoning the most unimpressed expression he can muster. “You know what I meant.”

Lance doesn’t seem deterred by the new height difference between them, or Keith’s attitude, crossing his arms over the back of the chair and batting his eyelashes up at him cheekily. He’s wearing the same baseball hat from the picture he sent Keith yesterday, but he’s got it on in the right direction this time, making him look minorly less like a douchebag. The baggy zip-up, which may very well be Hunk’s, over a t-shirt with the sleeves cut off, and sweatpants isn’t really helping though.

“When did you get back?” Keith askes instead of commenting on his poor outfit choices.

Lance shrugs. “A little after five. Pidge said you started to doze off around four.” He adds before Keith can ask. “Hunk made stir fry for dinner.”

Taking that to mean Lance was actually sent here to wake him up for dinner, rather than simply coming to terrorize him because he was bored, Keith steps around him to leave. A moment later Lance stumbles off the chair after him, complaining all the way.

“Hey,” Lance calls after him.

Keith is already rolling his eyes as he turns around, assuming Lance has a few more jabs he wants to get out before they get to the kitchen, so he is wholly unprepared for Lance to hook a finger in the collar of his shirt and pull him close.

“Is this my shirt?”

It takes all of his self-control not to fly away from Lance’s hold, though the heat rising rapidly to his cheeks is probably giving away his embarrassment all the same. “Maybe? I just grabbed something from your drawers after my shower this morning.”

Lance has a look in his eyes that Keith recognizes as usually meaning something dangerous is in store for him. He leans in closer, stopping just before the bill of his hat brushes the top of Keith’s head. “Did you use my shampoo too?”

“I think you’re a little too obsessed with your things for someone wearing someone else’s hoodie.”

“Well I think you missed me while I was gone.”

Keith isn’t entirely sure who moves first, but one second they’re staring each other down daring the other to give in and the next he’s shoved Lance’s baseball cap off his head, burying his fingers in Lance’s messy hair while Lance’s hands have dropped to his waist, pulling him close with a bruising grip. Their kiss is uncoordinated and messy. Keith is ninety percent certain he was not the only one missing someone a stupid amount this weekend. His back hits the wall, and he faintly registers Pidge yelling something about her room from the other side of the apartment.

Lance rucks up his shirt, warm hands brushing over his sides, and Keith is dangerously close to wrapping his legs around his hips and saying fuck dinner.

They finally break apart for air and Lance laughs against his throat, the sensation sending shivers down his back. “I knew you missed me.”

“And what?” Keith asks breathlessly. “You were ambivalent about it all? I don’t think so. Not kissing like that.”

Lance pulls back to look at him with a surprisingly soft look. “I just wanted to hear you admit it,” he teases.

Normally, Keith would have a comeback for that, probably, but now he’s distracted as he runs his fingers through Lance’s bangs. “You have blue hair.”

Just the tips of his hair that are dyed, actually, not his whole head, he’s still surprised by the change. It seems a little silly, but it still looks good on him.

Lance, not one to be deterred by much, winks at him, striking a pose. “Hot, right? Rachel did it.”

“Yeah, it looks good.”

That does give Lance pause and he blinks at Keith and his easy admission a few times. “Er, well…we should probably go eat now. If just to reassure Pidge we aren’t defiling her room.”

Dinner is great, as usual when Hunk cooks, and they sit in the living room with another show on in the background, but they fill most of the time talking about Lance’s trip and gossip in their department that Keith is somehow always unaware of.

It is well after eleven before conversation begins to fade and they start to disperse around the apartment. Keith is, maybe a little, embarrassed about it, but he doesn’t bother to hide his intentions to stay with Lance rather than going back to his own apartment now that the project is done. For once, Pidge and Hunk leave them be with minimal suggestive looks.

Considering the brief tryst in the hallway earlier, Keith isn’t entirely sure what to expect when they finally retire to Lance’s room, but Lance doesn’t seem to be in a particular rush to do anything. Keith shimmies out of his jeans and drops into bed while Lance puts on some kind of moisturizer. He strips down to his boxers after and Keith can see new, blue markings up and down his arms before Lance turns the light off. Predictably, a moment later there’s a crash and Lance swears. Keith leans over to turn on the lamp next to the bed. Lance is leaning against the footboard, rubbing his shin.

“What did you knock over this time?”

Lance sticks out his tongue. “Don’t worry about it. Move over.” He says. He doesn’t wait before he climbs over the end of the bed and flops down, half on top of Keith.

“I would have moved if you let me,” Keith says into his shoulder.

Lance hums in consideration before he shifts on the mattress. Keith lets him maneuver him around the bed, mostly curious as to what he’s doing, until they end up on their sides, legs tangled together and arms around each other. Lance’s head is pressed against his chest, and his hands are, conveniently, on his ass.

“Lance-”

“Shh,” Lance interrupts immediately. “I had to go a whole weekend without even being able to see this ass, give me a moment to enjoy it.”

Keith laughs despite himself, rolling his eyes. “You are ridiculous.”

Lance wiggles against him, sighing contently. “You like it.”

“Whatever.”

Absentmindedly, Keith runs a hand against Lance’s back, trailing nonsense patterns against his warm skin. Eventually, he looks down, just to make sure Lance hasn’t actually fallen asleep like that, and sees the blue drawings on his arm again.

“What is all over you?”

Lance lets go of him to roll onto his back and show off his arms. “After Rachel dyed my hair, Nadia and Sylvio wanted to match, but Lisa, their mom, wasn’t really thrilled with the idea, so we found these tattoo markers at the dollar store and they were washable, so we went kind of crazy.” Lance shifts so his side is up where the black outline of a shark tattooed into his waist is now black and blue. “They also colored in my tattoo.”

“Did you draw these?”

“Haha,” Lance elbows him in the side half-heartedly. “I drew the rocket ship on my wrist, and the constellations on my shoulder, if they’re still there, are from Veronica, but everything else is from Nadia and Sylvio. Oh, and Luis,” Lance points to a…something near his elbow.

“A flower?” Keith guesses.

Lance snorts. “A lion, according to him.”

“Not the most artistically inclined I’m assuming?”

Lance shakes his head. “Not at all. Nadia’s pretty good though,” he turns over his arm to show off a dog on his forearm. “That’s pretty damn good for a seven-year-old drawing on a moving canvas with dollar-store markers.”

They just spent the last few hours talking about this weekend with Hunk and Pidge in the living room, but Keith can’t help but ask more questions about his family and what they did over the weekend. He brushes Lance’s hair out of his face, and Lance settles deeper into his arms, waving his hands in the air as he talks about the piñata he had to fill for the party by himself, that was bigger than the birthday boy, and the balloon mishaps that had his mother ready to call the whole thing off more than once.

There’s a nagging worry in the back of his head that this is not normal friends-with-benefits behavior, but it is easily drowned out by Lance’s sleepy smile when he shifts again to face Keith.

“Did you guys have fun this weekend?”

Keith shrugs one shoulder. “As much fun as you can have the weekend before a Kolivan deadline.”

Lance grimaces sympathetically. “You finished everything though, right?”

“I think so. We were just checking each other’s work before I fell asleep. If there was more to do, I doubt Pidge would have let me sleep for long.”

Lance hides a wide yawn in his shoulder. “That’s good,” he tries to say, only to break off half-way through into another yawn.

“Those kids wore you out, clearly.” Keith observes, trying to fight back his own yawn.

Lance smiles fondly. “It was fun to see them, to go back and be with everyone for a while. But I’m really glad you were here when I got home.”

The admittance is so quiet in the still room, and almost immediately drowned out by the way Keith’s pulse races, blood roaring in his ears.

Lance had closed his eyes, but he opens them again and looks up at him curiously. Keith knows he has to be able to hear the erratic beating of his heart. He wonders if Lance is even remotely aware of how many lines they’ve crossed in the period of their relationship, if he thinks at all about how little like fuck-buddies they behave when they spend nights wrapped in each other’s arms saying soft things and doing nothing else and if it affects him at all or if this is just how he is casually intimate with everyone. And he wonders why he hates that idea so much.

“Can I kiss you?” Keith asks. It’s usually Lance’s question, but for once, Keith can’t help but ask, ignoring, for now, how overwhelmed he is.

Surprisingly, Lance is quiet, and just nods his agreement, watching Keith with wide eyes.

The kiss now is nothing like the ones they shared before dinner, slow and gentle where the others were rushed and near-frantic. Keith wraps both arms around Lance’s waist, and Lance cradles his face with one hand, threading his other hand through Keith’s hair.

“Good night,” Keith whispers against his lips as they break apart feeling like he’s doing something unbelievably stupid even as the words come.

Lance presses one more quick, closed-mouth kiss against his lips. “Good night.”

Keith flips off the bedside table lamp, dousing them in darkness.

He isn’t sure how long they lay in the dark before Lance finally relaxes and falls asleep, but it feels like at least another hour before Keith admits to himself, he can’t sleep yet and carefully extracts himself from the bed. Lance makes a quiet noise of displeasure in his sleep, but easily stretches out, taking up the empty space and doesn’t wake up.

Keith goes out into the hallway, thinking he’ll just go to the living room and calm down but a light shines through the crack of Pidge’s closed door and he finds himself drawn there instead. He knocks once and Pidge opens the door immediately, looking around the hall almost alarmed.

“Keith? What’s wrong? It’s almost four in the morn-”

“Pidge, I think I love him.” Keith interrupts. “I think I’m in love.”

#vld #voltron #klance #fic #au #fwb #vld lance #vld keith #rita writes #fic: get some #lance mcclain #keith kogane #6.13.20

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cyberloops · 5 years

Audio

Cyberpunk/noir writing prompt:

It was nice to have a quiet day. No gunfire nearby. No sirens. Even when you’re down so low that you can’t see the sun, sometimes you get reminded that not every day is crap. Sometimes it’s just another day.

Originally posted on my personal blog

Almost done remastering these original writing prompts. There were 30, and this is the 27th one.

It’s kind of amazing to me to see how far I’ve come. The first writing prompt I ever did was a long, meandering mess that I originally made just to try and experiment with making a cybergrunge style set of digital instruments. Eventually I started to learn what to DO with the instrument set with some more experimental tracks. Which eventually led to some of tracks like this at the end of my Digital Inspirations. At first I was oscillating between depending on synths and effects to get the feel I wanted, and using actual musical growth and change to get the feel I wanted. Towards the end, I was finding how to use both to augment each other.

This track never really jumped out at me as a favorite from my Digital Inspirations, but I think it’s a great example of my growth as a composer. Where there’s repetition, it’s used to build and grow. Where there’s innovation, it’s used to create something better and not just break up the monotony. Where there are interesting instruments and effects, they’re there simply to enhance and augment. Nothing in this piece feels like a crutch that I used to cover up a lack of ability.The pulsing synth with a flange on it builds atmosphere and adds a rhythmic pulse to it, but it wasn’t there to cover up a lack of actual rhythm and percussion. It just makes it deeper. The changing lines between instruments allows for natural shifting and growth all the way through.

I’m listening to it now as I’m writing all this. Maybe it is one of my favorites.

And of course, these last few Digital Inspirations tracks inspired me to start doing my various cyberloops tracks. And got me to spend some time looking through some other unpublished or just older tracks.

Which led to me resurrecting my Neon Streets idea... which now has 14 tracks with a 15th on the way that I started working on instead of working on actually releasing it as an album.

If you couldn’t tell by the fact that 95% of my posts all come at the same time of day, I don’t usually post live. In fact, I usually only log on every few days to update and put a bunch of whatever I’ve been working on or nifty posts I’ve found in my queue. I don’t have a queue right now. I’m posting this just to make sure I have some music out there while I’m at work tomorrow. I’m writing this at about 2 in the morning, and I really should get to bed. I have to be awake for work in just a few hours.

But I’m listening to some of my more recent stuff now. Not even the high-fidelity lossless audio versions that I have on my harddrive and that I’ve been putting up on Bandcamp. Just the 192k and 128k mp3 files I’ve uploaded here.

When I first started my Digital Inspirations, I only really enjoyed listening to a few of my own tracks. Now with the Neon streets stuff, I’ve been going back and listening to it. Not just to critique it, or get ideas for what needs remastering. Just... listening to it. Going backwards through my own blog.

The smooth saxy sounds of Sly. The focused finality of Homeward. The beat driving everything down the Digital Highway. Beat Streets. Oh, boy. I tried to start that one a dozen times. And it never worked. But lucky number 13... well, if I hadn’t kept trying, that one wouldn’t be in the upcoming track list for Neon Streets. Lost Moments found itself when I overlaid the Cybergrunge and Analog variants together. Slow Motion was something I churned out in one session, something to give thanks for hitting 5k followers. That was two months ago... and now I’ve doubled that number of followers. (Although to be fair, if you account for porn bots, I’ve probably only just hit 8 or 9k...) I made Holding Pattern because right then it was what I was feeling. I was out of work. I was being creative, but I didn’t quite feel like I was... contributing. Is that the right word? I don’t know. At this point it’s getting closer to 2:30 in the morning. And I spent the last few hours of my work shift today writing out a mind-numbingly long manual for how to do my job. Because after my supervisor retired at the end of last year, I’m LITERALLY the only one who knows how to do it. So I’m rambling. Words are just kind of pouring out.

The end of the year last year was when I wrote Sync. My job was coming to an end. I had to quit my other part-time job because an old knee injury kept flaring up, and I just couldn’t be on my feet for hours at a time. I didn’t know what I was going to do over the summer. I was out of sync with myself. I had a long stretch of nothing ahead of me... and even at my most lazy, my most depressed, my most uninspired the idea of doing nothing is anathematic to me.

Towards the end of the year before that I was stressed out. I was worried about the upcoming summer. About not having a job for a few months. About not having money for a few months. About dealing with a work situation where I wasn’t given the tools I needed to do my job. I didn’t know what was going to be up in a few months. I didn’t know what was going to be down in a few months. I felt like nothing was quite making sense.

Not that everything had been Smooth before that, of course.

That was right around the time I started listening to my own music at work sometimes. I don’t know if it calmed me, focused me, or just made me feel better. Summer was coming. Nothing was coming. But I was making something. Something that I actually liked.

And, of course, there was Prowl. This was what really did it. Prowl was the piece that made me realize that I could put together a Neon Streets album. Something that mixed my Cybergrunge style with a more Analog 80s/early 90s vibe. The rough draft of it is one of my most popular posts. Over 300 notes right now. And it was posted when I only had maybe 2k followers.

I stopped by my office last Friday to start setting it up. Just for a few hours. And I had a genuinely stressful experience. I found out that there were some changes going on that could literally prevent me from doing my job. My job may not be grandiose. In fact, it’s pretty damn dull. But it’s mine, and I’ll be damned if I’m not going to do it right.

Thankfully my new supervisor, who at that point I was meeting for only the second time actually listened to me. Realized that I knew what the hell I was talking about. And he got the right people on the line and told them in no uncertain terms that some things had to be fixed. By the time I came into work on Monday, not only was the upcoming problem fixed... but another huge problem that I’d just been living with for the last year and a half was also fixed. My job is still going to be boring. I’m still going to spend a lot of time just sitting at a desk, not doing a whole lot. But at least I have a job. At least I can put earbuds in and listen to music. Even if I’m doing nothing but checking people in and out, while writing long-winded descriptions of what I do on a daily basis.

Towards the end of the day today while I was writing out a description for how to do the job I’ve been doing pretty much on my own, alone in a room away from all of my coworkers for the last two years, I pulled out my earbuds. But the only thing I felt like listening to... was Neon Streets.

#cyberloops #digital inspirations #cyberpunk digital inspirations #cyberpunk #cyberpunk aesthetic #cyber punk #aesthetics #writing prompt #cyberpunk writing prompt #neon streets #cybergrunge #synthwave #retrowave

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brownskinsugarplum76 · 5 years

Text

Deceiving Looks, Pt. 1

I have several kiss prompts in my queue still from a few months back, and I’ve finally polished up the first bit of the next one. This comes from @callmethehunter's request and is for a forbidden kiss. I guess you could say this isn’t forbidden as much as it would be less likely... There are a few reasons why this couple would turn heads in the early 70s.

I intend to write more of this, including smut (this first installment is PG-13-ish). This is a fun pairing! ❤️❤️❤️

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Robert makes his way to a bench and sits down before he stumbles again. He watches Bonzo stagger around the pool and through the front door of the hotel. He is too out of it himself at the moment to be of any use to his friend.

He sweeps his curtain of curls to the side and produces a joint that was resting inconspicuously behind his ear, and he pulls a slim pack of matches from his back pocket. He lights up. He figures any hotel staff unlucky enough to be walking the grounds at 5 a.m. will only care if he doesn't offer a puff or two.

He stretches his long legs but can't get any relief. His jeans are clinging to his body tighter than usual in the humid, cloud-covered Honolulu morning air, and he can't wait to peel them off for the last time before going to sleep.

He exhales, closes his eyes, and lets himself go from the frenetic dash to the show, the volley of energy thrown at the band from thousands of fans, and the good, bad and ugly of the groupies available for the choosing for hours after the final note had been played. He closes his eyes and smiles. It's good to be Robert Plant, he thinks. It has become a mantra for him when he gets homesick, or when the last journalists without a clue insist on writing negative reviews.

"You've got something there that I need, I think. May I?"

The voice is feminine, throaty, and assured. Almost seductive. His smile grows to epic proportions.

He prepares to feast his eyes on a lass who seems to have followed him back to the hotel, but his sexy comeback gets caught in his throat. Rather than a twenty-something in a t-shirt, jeans, and shorts, he sees pink heels, brown legs, and a rose-colored Chanel skirt, with its matching suit jacket draped over an arm ending with gold bangles and colorful rings. Above her white sweater shell, he finds the smiling face of a woman who, he's sure, always gets what she wants. Her poise is perfect as she stands, and a rolling suitcase rests next to her. She has the regal sensuality of Diana Ross, and the flawless makeup and hair to match. He smooths his hair a bit, but he knows it's a losing battle, after the night he’s had.

His smile falters. "Ma'am?" he stutters out. He realizes with horror that his accent must make it sound more like "mom" to her ears, and he can't fight the Mrs. Robinson fantasies that flood his still-sluggish brain. "Miss?"

“Your cigarette,” she says. She realizes that he’s a little out of it and smiles sweetly, waiting for him to come around.

“Well, ah, it’s not a typical cigarette, I’m afraid… It’s, uh--”

“--I know. Trust me, it’s exactly what I need right now… I hate flying." She sits down next to him and places her hotel key in her purse. She holds out a hand of slender, tapered fingers that have never seen a day of manual labor. Her smile is still open and encouraging.

“Oh… Ah, I see now... Here you go.” He passes his joint to the woman. “You’ll have to excuse me. I’m a little out of sorts… It’s been a long night and a long morning.”

“I see you’re a little worse for wear right now. But,” she says, brushing a strand of hair from his eyes, “I can also see that you’ll clean up really nicely. What a handsome face...” She takes another hit of the joint and passes it back to Robert.

“Now, what have you been up to all night long?” She crosses her legs slowly, and the look on her face is stern.

Robert stares blankly. He opens his mouth to speak, and then closes it. “Uh…”

“Relax! I’m teasing you. Besides, I think I can imagine...”

Robert puffs a couple of times before passing back to her. He curses himself inside for being so tongue-tied. He’s not sure why he’s at such a loss for words, but he’s hoping the edge will wear away soon, so he can give the mystery woman the full effect of his charm. He knows that she is enjoying making him nervous, but he senses that she would prefer a little more flirtatious back and forth, even if it feels like he’s the last person who should have her on his arm.

She smokes some more. “But I must ask: Where did you get the money for this? It’s top quality.” Her expression relaxes noticeably as the high slowly makes itself known.

“Ah… A fan of Acapulco Gold, then? It just has a way of showing up for us at the concerts, you know? I mean, certainly we have our favorite friends with the best of herbs, but it’s everywhere, wherever we are. Nothing but the best.” He takes the joint back and smokes some more.

“Concert? We? Are you in a band? Must not be an American band, by your charming accent.”

“That’s right, it’s a British band. Led Zeppelin’s the name. We have 4 albums out now, came together in 1968. Maybe you’ve heard ‘Stairway to Heaven’ on the radio?”

“Well, I just listen to Motown, but Led Zeppelin… I think that name sounds familiar... I do know there are a lot of young rock bands, a lot of them from England, making a lot of noise… Free, sexy noise... A bunch of wild boys, stirring up all kinds of feelings with their guitars… What’s your name, dear?”

“Robert. Robert Plant. I’m the singer for Led Zeppelin. And I know my fair share of Motown.” He grins.

“Do you, really? Sing something for me?” She crosses her legs the other way and gazes up appreciatively when Robert stands. She could tell his legs were long when she first saw him, but she’s not prepared for him to be so tall. She realizes that he’s wearing boots with heels, but still.

“I might be a little rough right now… The concert was about three hours long, and I haven’t had a second of rest since then…”

“Three hours? That’s a lot of stamina, young man...” The joint dangles in her mouth while she takes this information in.

Robert can feel his manhood slowly waking up. “Bloody hell, you’ve got as much cheek as me… Uh, excuse my French, by way of West Bromwich…”

“I’m used to hearing all kinds of language, so it doesn’t bother me. And don’t let the Chanel fool you; I’m originally from Harlem. So, which song are you going to sing for me?” She inhales more of the weed.

“Hmm… City upbringing checks out, I think, because that’s very New York minute of you, the way you cut to the heart of the matter… OK, miss…?”

“Call me Josephine, Robert.” She looks him in his eyes, but the bulge in his pants that stands defiantly at the edge of her periphery keeps tempting her to shift her gaze.

“Right. Here goes…” He smiles and takes a deep breath.

“If I have to sleep on your doorstep all night and day

Just to keep you from walking away,

Let your friends laugh, even this I can stand,

'cause I wanna keep you any way I can.

Ain't too proud to beg and you know it,

Please don't leave me girl,

Don't you go,

Ain't too proud to plead, baby, baby,

Please don't leave me, Jo,

Don't you go.”

“You clever devil… Slipping my name in! Wow… Bravo, Robert. Where’d you get so much soul and passion from? Your voice is so rough one minute, and then so loving the next. I… I can’t tell you how much I love the way it sounds…”

“How about you show me, if you can’t tell me?” Robert sits back down, grabs the joint and then stubs it out and places it in his pocket. He gazes in Josephine’s eyes, and his wry smile means that he’s back on his game.

He’s not sure where this brazenness is coming from or, more accurately, he has mixed feelings about propositioning an older woman. He doesn’t think he’s misread her flirting, but being with her doesn’t seem as easy as it is with someone more his age. But he doesn’t have long to ponder it, because her face draws near and her lips connect with his.

She grabs his hair. He realizes that passion is the same, no matter the age or color of the person at the other end of the kiss. He cups her face and invites her tongue to dance with his in a sultry tango.

“Somebody’s hit his stride, and I like it! Would you like to continue with me in my room, Robert?”

“Yes. Yes, Mis-- erm, Josephine. I think we have a lot we could learn from each other.”

“I think so, too…" She stands up. "Say, give me 20 minutes or so and meet me at my room? It’s room 548.”

“548… I’ll be there.” His eyes sweep her body, and by the time his eyes search for hers, he realizes she’s also appraising his youthful, athletic frame.

“See you soon, Robert,” she says over her shoulder as she wheels her suitcase toward the hotel.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The rest of my stories are here, or search for the hashtag #brownskinsugarplumlibrary.

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thedisneydoc · 5 years

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Best Coast: Adventureland

I recently became a fan of the Lost Bros Co’s Oh Boy! The Podcast. I’ve been learning a lot of great things about Walt Disney World (WDW) that I have never heard before, and I am loving the recommendations, tips, and bits of knowledge and nostalgia that they share. Since Disneyland (DL) is my “home park,” it’s always fascinating to learn more about how the other park lives. The Lost Bros also play some pretty entertaining “games” on their show that incorporate their opinions and creative ideas. In one of their first episodes, they play something like West Coast vs. East Coast, aka DL vs. WDW, where they compared the same attractions and rides from each park. To them, DL took the cake on the majority of rides, even though the Lost Bros themselves are WDW locals. After my 2 trips to WDW in 2018, I’ve been comparing the parks myself as well. So as a DL native, “let’s get down to business” and find out what the West Coast thinks as well.

I’m going to go land by land and space each post out, because if this were just one whole post, you’d be reading a full book at that point.

Adventureland (TL;DR Disneyland wins!)

Adventureland is my favorite (follow up post on “Lands That I Love” to follow). When you first walk into the park and go up Main Street USA, you first hit “the Hub” (with or without grass to sit on, depending on your park) where the road spikes off into different directions and your journey begins depending on which land you run to first. Well, I always veer to the left and begin my day at Adventureland, so I’m going to start here first.

WDW: The biggest advantage WDW has is space. There’s TONS of it in Florida, unlike in tiny Anaheim, CA. So it’s great that they have more to work with over there. One of the things I do love about WDW’s version is that they have a whole Pirates of the Caribbean dedicated section (Caribbean Plaza) with this AMAZING scavenger hunt quest game that I will cover in a later post. And they have a whole restaurant devoted to the Jungle Cruise and its dad joke puns, which is one of my favorite things ever. That being said, I still think DL is the winner here.

DL: While smaller, it has much more of a jungle adventure vibe with towering, lush tropical plants and trees than WDW, which is much more open and goes with the desert Bazaar feeling instead. I definitely get the feeling that I’m isolated in a mysterious jungle somewhere, and I’m just a sucker for that old-timey, vintage adventurer and tiki aesthetic. That feeling is just missing for me somehow at WDW. Plus we now have one of the best snack spots ever, The Tropical Hideaway! It’s no Jungle Navigation Co. Skipper Canteen, but I can’t complain. Dole Whip is my favorite Disney snack and I’ll admit that I stan that exclusive chile-mango whip real hard. We also have the major advantage of being home to The Indiana Jones Adventure, which I won’t compare with WDW since it doesn’t really have an equivalent ride. But in my opinion, just having Indy alone puts the DL Adventureland wayyyyy in the lead. Now in terms of comparing similar rides and attractions...

The Enchanted Tiki Room: While I have to agree with the Lost Bros Co and say that the inside show is pretty much the same, I have to say that the DL version still surpasses the WDW version because of its pre-show and its new Dole Whip snack service at Tropical Hideaway. At DL the preshow allows you to eat a Dole Whip and sit down while you watch each of the enchanted Polynesian god totems come to life. The totems each share their name and a little backstory about their part in the Polynesian mythology while giving a specific animatronic performance. The fun part, especially for kids, is the scavenger hunt feeling you get when you follow the totems around the preshow area and try to find out which totem is speaking and from where. Plus the detail inside Tropical Hideaway, from magic lamps and carpets to the infamous missing Rosita telling corny Jungle Cruise-worthy jokes, is top notch. In contrast, the WDW world version has you standing in a little amphitheater setting to watch two animatronic birds share their personal story of the Jungle Cruise with you, which is a little more meh for me. And there’s hardly any space for you to sit and enjoy your Dole Whip.

The Jungle Cruise: This one is a little tough. This is one of my favorite rides ever, not only because it serves me tons of that vintage exploration aesthetic vibe I love, but also because I an unashamedly obsessed with the dad joke script. I’ve ridden this thing so many times, I can recite any version of the script and be your Skipper myself. In fact, if I worked at Disney, one of my dream roles is to be a Jungle Cruise Skipper. I love love love the DL version and its classic scenes, like the ambush from the natives and the piranhas. Plus I’m used to seeing our version of Trader Sam and was shocked to see a completely different guy at the WDW one. According to the Imagineering backstory, they actually ARE 2 different Sam’s! They happen to be cousins who each opened up their own trading business on opposite coasts. There’s also almost never a wait at the DL one, averaging at about 10-15 min whenever I walk by (30-40 min is maybe the most I’ve ever seen). The queue is a little cramped and small, but I love waiting in the 2-story building and looking at all the Jungle Cruise memorabilia on the walls and the cute rooms/scenes set up inside it (reminiscent of Swiss Family Robinson Tree House back when it used to be at DL). It also has a bomb Jungle Cruise logo sign on the front. In contrast, the WDW queue is a more open and airy, allowing those huge, life-saving fans on the ceiling to do their work. There is some interactive element in the line, but less so than many of the other, more entertaining queues at Magic Kingdom (MK). I remember something about a hissing tarantula in a cage near the end of the line, but it was broken when I visited. I also loved the witty menu and accident signs on the dock right before you board your boat. But the wait time always seems outrageously longer than it should be for this ride, and somehow FastPasses distribute quicker than I would have expected. On the ride, I also really liked the temple tunnel at WDW that we don’t have at DL. For those who have never been on it, there’s a decent stretch of river that goes inside the ruins of a temple through an enclosed tunnel. It allowed for some cool effects and scenes in the dark, but cuts off the flow of the Skipper’s script. The Skipper literally has to stop talking because the microphone would echo too much. In addition to the ride, they have claim to a very fun and punny restaurant overflowing with Imagineering secrets and Jungle Cruise memorabilia. Not only is the atmosphere and theming on point, but the menu is DELICIOUS at the Skipper Canteen. Finally, they regularly get a Christmas overhaul for the Jingle Cruise, which is fantastic. I’ve never been to the WDW Jingle Cruise, but they did it only once (maybe twice) at DL that I can remember, and I loved the Christmas decorations both inside and outside the ride. The Christmas puns were also a nice change. But overall, in terms of the ride, I have to give it to DL’s Jungle Cruise for the overall immersive experience and aesthetic, but I might just be biased because that’s the one I grew up with. I also think there’s a richer opportunity for jokes at the DL one.

Treehouse: Ok, when I was a kid, DL is the one who used to have the Swiss Family Robinson Treehouse and it was one of my favorite things to explore. I was obsessed with playing house and going adventures as a kid, so I loved seeing how someone could build a home in a tropical tree. Then it became the Tarzan treehouse walkthrough. The theming is very cool and the storytelling is great, but as a child afraid of loud noises and jump scares, that stupid jaguar, Sabor, and his snarl scared the shit out of me and has traumatized me good. I still don’t like him and have to scoot quickly around him with my fingers stuffed in my ears. But otherwise, the treehouse is a good little cardio climb. So, again, I am a little biased because of a nostalgia factor, and WDW wins since they now have the Swiss Family Robinson Treehouse. But objectively, I can see how that’s really boring to many people without a history like mine, so I will give DL the point for taking advantage of the already existing treehouse structure and turning it into a self-paced story walkthrough based on one of their popular films (kind of like Sleeping Beauty’s Castle).

While Pirates of the Caribbean lives at Adventureland in WDW, I’m going to leave off comparing that one for when I discuss “America Lands” next time.

So that’s part 1 of many many comparisons to come. Again, take my opinions with a grain of salt since I grew up at DL, but you’ll see that there’s a lot at WDW that I love more than DL too. See ya, pal!

PC: the.disney.doc

#adventureland #disneyland #walt disney world #waltdisneyworld #disney parks #disney resort #disney california adventure #disneycaliforniaadventure #magic kingdom #disney life #disney blog #the lost bros #the lost bros co #oh boy the podcast

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avpdpunpun · 5 years

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i disappeared for 3/4ths a year here’s an update?

its been 4 months since my queue ran out and way longer since i wrote an actual post. 8 months about? i think i last posted when i impulse quit a job that was bad for my mental health and just kept getting worse.

sometimes i wonder when ppl who blog about mental illness disappear if they’ve died. there was a big user i used to follow who did, and i still occasionally think about it sometimes, so i figure its nice to post updates sometimes. and being able to look back on posts ive written and reflect on them/what state of mind i was in can be helpful even if it can be embarrassing/dangerous because its so easy to fall back into those thinking habits

after quitting my job i did basically nothing for 6 months haha. at some point i managed to clean out my room which i had done the bare minimum on for years because of depression, took out more built up trash than i thought was possible to fit into my small space. its disgusting but the only thing i struggle to keep up with now at least is vacuuming and putting clothes away so my space is a lot cleaner and it makes me happier. your living space can really have an effect on your mood bless you marie kondo

after my post about having an anxiety attack taking my test i got my drivers license in march. i saw the same lady again after going somewhere else and i think she just let me pass because she felt bad haha. i never finished drivers ed and i still get anxiety about driving unfamiliar routes but my skills and confidence have improved a lot. i managed to drive 2 hours to a big city to visit a friend! i literally didnt have a choice in getting my license, but its still something i can be proud of. like, when i have to explain it to people, it feels extremely shitty that i didnt get it until i was 20, and only about 5 months ago too but... for someone who struggles as much as me, i have to be proud of it my small accomplishments or i’ll have nothing.

at some point something in my brain just snapped and i literally havent been able to cry? for a long time in those 6 months i felt like i was right on the edge of breaking down mentally but never actually crossing that line and it was honestly one of the weirdest things ive experienced. i almost wanted to have a breakdown again just to get rid of the feeling and reach a catharsis like... i used to be a fucking crybaby almost but i. cant. anymore. but i think ive mostly moved away from this point... still feel kinda weird tho.

i didnt end up signing up to a local school fo gen eds. its still on my mind for the vague future because there’s topics i want to learn about (psychology, natural resources, languages...) and maybe try to pursue for a career but really i just wanted a way to get out of my toxic house, even if it meant going into debt to live in a shitty dorm.

in the last 30 days though life has been moving extremely quickly for me. i dont think i couldve lived with myself much longer being a useless adult basically living in my basement bedroom of my parents house, especially with my younger siblings getting nearer to adult milestones, plus my savings were starting to run out.

so literally next weekend, i’m moving out! and i make enough money right now that with the rough budget i have established, if its accurate, i’ll have a decent amount of wiggle room and hopefully wont be ruining my mental health just trying to make ends meet.

it took a long time of searching but i managed to find a job that hasnt made me suicidal and has slightly more than the MIT living wage for my area lol. im a janitor now! we’ll see how long it lasts but a lot of the factors from my last two jobs that contributed to my failing mental health are gone. i rarely have to interact with other people, and if i do its my coworkers, of who i tend to only see for minutes per day, or the other people working in the building i clean who at most i have to say hi and have a nice night to lol. i get to listen to music and podcasts for 8 hours and its very routine heavy. i have to clock out after the 8 hours is up so i literally cant be forced into overtime. a lot of people dont respect cleaning jobs like this but honestly who gives a fuck, its something i can handle mentally and support myself with. its still hard adjusting to 40 hours. i know its the standard, but the standard is rly tough for me, but i think i can do it long term.

all of this has been achieved through sheer self hatred and impulse alone, and im very nervous about moving in with 3 other people even if 1 of them ive known for 8 years, and i dont think its even properly hit me yet. literally cant register that i have to fend 100% for myself but also ill be away from my toxic family! i can bring my cat with me, who before this i got to see at MOST once a week!

a dude ive known online for two or more years is moving to my area too for college and he’s so sweet and kind, i feel better talking to him than i have 99% of people in my life and im so lucky to know him. ive been forced to talk about personal things i was kind of dreading (not his fault, just a result of our relationship going to go from online -> irl and things id have to address beforehand) and honestly i didnt even mind it that much when i just got it over with and talked about it to him! vulnerability is literally the thing i struggle with the most in interpersonal relationships and is a huge block for me in every way and in even the most mundane life situations but like... he’s honestly the best and im getting emotional writing this and its weird af because i straight up dont GET emotional about other people. ive absolutely developed a stupid fucking crush on him recently and i THINK hes been receptive to flirting and i cant tell if he flirts back because we already say i love you and are wholesome af but honestly no clue if he’s into (trans) dudes but honestly? even if it doesnt work out im so happy to be friends with him and im so excited to finally meet him!! i really think knowing him has helped me improve myself

i’ve always thought that if i could literally just achieve the bare minimum in life that things would naturally get better. like i’m still mentally ill and get paranoid about peoples intentions and i think if my boss yelled at me id have an anxiety attack on the spot. im still depressed and hate that i have low energy and that it’s still rly hard doing basic chores.

but like a huge part of my problem was that i felt like i literally couldn’t TRY to connect with people if i couldn’t face having to tell them bare info about myself, like “oh i cant drive” or “i dont have a job” or that i was living with my parents but not even making PROGRESS on getting out. like how could i make friends or go on dates if i literally couldnt contribute shit or admit these things i was so ashamed of? a lot of my self image was shaped by this because my entire life i havent been mentally well enough to do as well as i should have.

but like. i feel like im finally doing these basic things!! i dont have to hate myself so much anymore! i dont look badly on other mentally ill ppl who are less lucky than i/havent been able to do those things yet/might not ever and are still in the same situation i was 2 months ago but the self hatred is strong pls understand.

i dont know yet if i could afford twice yearly drs visits for meds or anything and probably not therapy. i dont even know what my insurance is yet haha. but i’ll see

i need to figure out at what point in my life im going to be able to never contact a single person in my family ever again, considering i’ll be a 20 min drive away and they will know the precise location of where i live, and if i’ll ever feel safe enough in society to start hrt but :^) you know :^) i can at least present more masculinely in the meantime!

i dont rly know how to conclude this... i’m not trying to brag either im just very nervous and excited about where my life might be going for the first time ever? maybe? in my entire life? i have no clue what to pursue after moving out, but i can figure it out. and just... that there’s hope even if youre as fucked up and mentally ill as i am lmao!

#text #update #mostly tagging this for myself to read later if i ever start blogging frequently again

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dramallamadingdang · 6 years

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Annnnd some replies.

For @penig, @scribblingsim, @taylors-simblr. @freezerbunny-sims, @tamtam-go92, @dunne-ias, @holleyberry, and @scibirg...

penig replied to your post “Every time I think I’m going to get back on track with keeping up with...”

Bonk the guilt on the head. Following someone is not the same as promising to view all the content. Anybody you're particularly interested in, you can go to the individual blog sometime when you're in the mood. You never get to do all the things you want to do and that's life. Don't turn your leisure into work.

Intellectually I know that. Thing is, there are some things I really do want to catch up on, but then when I sit down at the computer, I end up doing something else. Like, going off and looking at Photoshop tutorials or something because an idea strikes me and I want to check out some ways to make it happen. In short, I need more hours in the day and being able to stay awake for them. But don’t we all, I guess? :)

scribblingsim replied to your link “ModTheSims - Orchard Fruits Gussy Up”

Oh, of *course* I'd find out about this after I finally get my game loaded. LOL ah well. A good download for later.

Ain’t that always the way! *laugh* My game was already loaded, too, when I looked at the downloads on MTS, so adding in the mod will have to wait until the next time I exit and reload it. But it’s in the Downloads folder, waiting for that to happen, at least. :)

taylors-simblr replied to your post “Every time I think I’m going to get back on track with keeping up with...”

Same here, I think ooh I’ll catch up and comment on recent story posts, but then I also want to read a book or play a game or maybe I have ironing to catch up on and then I forget and feel guilty and then the dash moves so fast anyway. It is one of the ways that livejournal/dream width is slightly better. The posts don’t get lost forever in the sheer amount of posts even on one persons tumblr

I actually like the journal system better, overall, for lots of different reasons. (Properly threaded conversations is the main one.) But its downside -- at least the last time I used my LJ -- was that it’s a pain to post pics. Gotta do the upload the pics somewhere and then link to the post thing, which is tedious if it’s a lot of pics, rather than just dragging/dropping like you do with Tumblr. Since Sims-posting tends to be pic-heavy, that’s a real bummer. Buuuuuut yeah, it’s nice that it doesn’t move at breakneck speed like Tumblr does. Tumblr’s definitely meant more for the short-attention-span crowd, I think.

And then people post saying their “dash is dead,” and I’m like, “What? HOW??!!” :)

freezerbunny-sims replied to your post “Question!”

Never tried that but it's a great idea. Wasn't there an option for sims with high enthusiasm in a hobby to instruct other sims? Or does that just increase hobby enthusiasm, not skills? On a side note, maybe some skilling objects could be modded to have an option to instruct other sims, like some of the career rewards already have. I don't know how hard it would be though.

Yeah, the instruct thing does only affect enthusiasm. Which is good, too, for my purposes. Because ultimately skills don’t really matter in this neighborhood. No one has a job and most of the skills, except maybe cooking, are most useful for job promotions and whatnot. They don’t actually have too much of an effect on a Sim’s daily life. What would be good is if instructing would increase badge levels. But I think maybe SimWardrobe’s vocational training podium can do that, now that I think about it. I’ll have to track that down...

tamtam-go92 replied to your post “Oh, I didn't know that "send grave to the community lot" thing didn't...”

I didn't know the sent to graveyard doesn't work probably too! And I always sent ma ghosts there ��

Using “Move This Grave” works in the sense that it does move the grave and doesn’t break anything in ways that would cause neighborhood corruption, but if keeping the ghosts’ colors/behaviors is important to you, that’s not the way you want to do it. So far as I know, the interaction hasn’t been fixed so that it preserves the colors/behaviors.

holleyberry replied to your post “Hi iCad. I have a morbid question. How do you deal with graves in your...”

I didn't know that about letting the ghost spawn.

Yeah, the issue is that when a Sim dies, a certain amount of time has to pass before the ghost will spawn. I think the time is randomly determined when the Sim dies, but it seems like it can be anywhere between the night of their death (if they died during the day) up to three or four nights after the Sim’s death. If you move the grave to a community lot before the ghost spawns for the first time...Well, time doesn’t actually pass on unowned community lots because they don’t save, so an “unspawned” grave on a community lot will never reach its designated “spawn time.”

So, if you want ghosts on community lots, you have to let the ghost spawn for the first time on a residential lot, where time DOES pass. If you don’t want it to be their home lot (so you don’t have to deal with haunting, for instance), then you could use a gravekeeper, go to THEIR residential lot, and have them plunk the grave down there. Then make motives static and put the game on ultraspeed until the ghost spawns. THEN put the “pre-spawned” grave on the community lot. Then the ghost will appear there.

tamtam-go92 replied to your post “Question!”

It's not quite in topic but in my normal gameplay I pretend that teens that don't attend University do an apprenticeship. They have to get a Job and when they go to school I tell it trade school. But since neither exist in your neighborhood I think your Suggestion seems a good Option! As someone who did an apprenticeship I wish there Was something like that in game.

I tend to not like the schooling in the game at all. Probably because I’m not a fan of the “standard” public school system in the US, which is what the game’s school is based on. :) For instance, I violently disagree with the entire concept of “homework” IRL, so I homeschooled my real kids, and in my game, I come up with alternative ways to educate kids/teens that are actual practical (As in, they gain actual skills or badges or whatever) as opposed to just something that sends them off the lot for X hours and all they get is meaningless “grades.” I’ve not done apprenticeship before, but that sort of system makes logical sense for this neighborhood, since it is mostly trades-based, so I’m going to work out some kind of system.

dunne-ias replied to your post “Question!”

I played it once similar to your plan. The teen would move in with the mentor (unless the mentor was their parent) but I would have them stay there, not move them back to their parents's house as I think that made more sense. They were often invited home though for big events and sometimes just dinner. I also made the parents pay the mentor. I think a certain amount of days of apprenticeship would be reasonable, or a certain amount of work done so that skilled workers-

2/2 - would be able to finish their apprenticeship faster. Once they were done they were moved back in with the parents until they had enough money to move out, so the cost of moving out wasn't subtracted from the mentor, but the parent (I had the no20Khandouts.)

With the Sim Transporter, I can move individual Sims into and out of different households at will, without the moving-around affecting anyone's money. (Although there is no money in this neighborhood, so it doesn't really matter. :) ) I use it to run daycares and schools in my game. For this neighborhood...Teens will all leave their birth household on the morning after their teen bday, mostly because space will be at a premium and they’ll need to get out to make room for their younger siblings. :) They'll move to the communal lot, going into the queue to earn their own house. So I was thinking that when playing the communal lot, any apprentices would just get transported out somewhere for a block of days -- to simulate being "at training" -- and then transported back. Then when I play the mentoring household, I can use the transporter to move their “assigned” apprentice(s) in for their days of actual training and then transport them back when they're done. I think it'll work....

The detail I'm not really clear on is how to run the training. I suppose they can just do all the mentor's work, give them a break. *laugh* But I'd like there to be some interaction between mentor and apprentice as wel. It'd be nice if there was some sort of social interaction to “pass on” skills or badges, sort of like how you can pass along earned business benefits... Maybe I can rig something up with Sophie-David's "opportunity" items (There's a thought...) or maybe SimWardrobe’s vocational trainer or both. Maybe have them do hands-on work one day and then “classroom”-learn from the mentor the next and switch off that way. That might work...

I've got time to think about it, though; it'll be a while before there are any born-in-game teens in this neighborhood! *laugh*

tamtam-go92 replied to your post “This looks crazy. I wonder, how do you take the second baby out of the...”

It's still possible that the fences of the cribs can be put down to put the babies in ��

Now that I think about it, I don’t actually recall if the crib “doors” are animated on those cribs. Of course, that’s how such a thing would work in real life, but I’ve not paid attention to whether or not those cribs are animated in-game....

scibirg replied to your post “This looks crazy. I wonder, how do you take the second baby out of the...”

I once played a medieval game and the Picaso's were living in a tiny hovel and just kept having kids (ACR of course). With the shelf beds from simlogical I was able to cram an amazing number of sims into their one bedroom house!

Oh, yeah. Shelf beds will definitely be used! (That’s why the second bedroom in the houses is three tiles deep. :) ) I’m figuring I can stack three of them per side of the room and then maybe put a floor mattress underneath the “stack,” thus cramming in eight kids. If there’s more than that at a time, tents will be broken out! :)

tamtam-go92 replied to your photo “Attempting to befriend another wolf. This one’s a female because I...”

Won't they bite the sim and turn her into a werewolf?

(This is an old reply. Sorry about that, dear; I missed it when I did the last batch of replies.)

Anyway, no, only the “Leader of the Pack” -- the wolf with the glowing yellow eyes -- can turn a Sim into a werewolf. The others are just really aggressive big dogs that are rather hard to build relationships with because many interactions are rejected at first and the wolf tends to leave before you can get very far, so you have to wait for the same one to show up again to continue to work on the relationship. I do want someone to befriend/adopt the Leader, though. Mostly because I’ve never had anyone become a werewolf by the “real” in-game method. *laugh*

#penig #scribblingsim #taylors-simblr #freezerbunny-sims #tamtam-go92 #dunne-ias #holleyberry #scibirg

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thehoneygloss · 7 years

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you’ll always be my best memory

sometimes the act of falling doesn't hurt as much as letting go

word count: 5.5k

pairing: yoongi x jimin

genre: angst, fluff

author’s note: pianist yoongi au is what i live for. so this is that. along with a fanboy jimin au (not really an au, cause he's probably yoongi's biggest fan). also, it's kinda fluffy but also very angsty, i suggest to read this all in one go for that 'effect'. anyways, enjoy.

December, 2015

Lang Leav once wrote a poem about loving someone who’s miles and miles away, it is short of metaphors and words in general. It was rather simple, actually, and was not composed of long paragraphs and overused similes. But in it, Jimin happens to find reassurance. ‘Physicality is an expression of intimacy — not the indication of it.’ Jimin has spent his whole teenage years thinking that physicality indicates the sincerity of love that someone has for another. The million dollar question (if Jimin has even half the amount of money lying around, he actually might offer that much, but he’s a university student — one who’s part time job consists of organizing books in the university library): so which is correct? Doesn’t the presence of a loved one supposed to affect you more than of a stranger’s? Honestly speaking, that is indeed true. Their presence should affect you more than anyone else’s, looking at them right in the eye’s supposed to make those butterflies in your stomach a swirl, it’s supposed to make your eyes light up, brighter than usual. However, their absence shouldn’t affect the love you have for that person. Jimin thinks he’s got it, for the first time, he doesn’t argue with this uneasy feeling he’s been feeling lately. Just like how he doesn’t argue with Taehyung everytime Taehyung brings someone home after his usual round of drinks and freshman get-togethers (he’s not even supposed to be there, Taehyung’s a junior for heaven’s sake) but Jimin has never been one to argue. It’s just things that has to do with unnecessary feelings that he likes to argue again and again, as if it were for a thesis. Hell, you could give him a yellow sweater for Christmas and he wouldn’t even complain (he hates yellow). ‘Why are you even here at this hour?’ is the first thing Jimin says as soon as he sees Taehyung walking into their shared flat. Taehyung’s eyes are red and he hasn’t changed his clothes since the last time Jimin saw him. ‘I had to finish this damned assignment in the library all night,’ Taehyung replies as he kicks his shoes off and plops on the bed across from Jimin’s. ‘Alone?’ ‘Jungkook was there.’ It takes Taehyung ten seconds to muster up the courage to say it, he hasn’t said that name in months, even the mere sound of Jungkook’s name rolling down his lips feels foreign. ‘Oh,’ Jimin looks at Taehyung, for the first time in weeks (they’ve been busy with their own things, their own problems) and instead of looking like he’s been in war for ten years straight, Taehyung looks rather fine. Besides his blood shot eyes and messy hair, Taehyung doesn’t look like he might cry at the mention of Jungkooks’ name.

Although Jimin is completely aware that sometimes, hurting goes beyond what the eyes can see, for the first time in months, Taehyung seems fine.

‘How was it? Did you guys sort things over or?’ Jimin continues, though very cautiously. He learned that the last time he asked Taehyung about his relationship, only to be replied with an overly intoxicated Taehyung shouting at Jimin at the top of his lungs. Never again, Jimin thinks, except maybe, well, now.

‘Not exactly. But he said ‘hi’ first and asked me if I wanted to help him with the pictures for the recital program book,’ Taehyung’s looking at every corner of the room except at Jimin. It’s strange, Taehyung thinks, how easily feelings change.

‘Did you say yes?’ Jimin knows he did, after all, he’s known Taehyung for almost ten years, he’s practically his brother. And Taehyung will agree to this, at times, Jimin knows him more than he even knows himself. That goes a long way.

Taehyung raises his eyebrows, as if telling Jimin that yes, he did say yes. After all, as seasons change, so do feelings.

The rest of the afternoon is quiet; after the jarring conversation, Taehyung immediately dozes off to dreamland, leaving Jimin alone by the computer on the chair his ass has been spending most of the days on, working on that damn thesis . As if it’s a cue for Jimin, a sign from the heavens, a notification pops up on his phone, a text from Hoseok, his senior in his cognitive psychology class, in full caps lock.

MIN YOONGI’S GOING TO BECOME A GUEST PERFORMER IN THE MUSIC DEPARTMENT’S END-OF-YEAR RECITAL

Jimin doesn’t believe him, the idea seems too far-fetched, even for Hoseok. Could it really be him? The Min Yoongi that Jimin swears for his life has been a fan of ever since he debuted alongside a ballad singer. For the first time in months, Jimin wakes Taehyung up from his deep slumber.

‘Dude, you’re not going to believe it,’ he shakes Taehyung’s shoulders, trying to transfer all of his excitement on to Taehyung’s indifferent expression.

‘Shut up, I’m trying to sleep,’ is all Taehyung says as he moves his body further away to the opposite edge of his bed while at the same time shoving Jimin’s chair away.

‘Min Yoongi’s performing in your boyfriend’s end-of-year recital,’ Jimin throws Taehyung off the best way he can while at the same time proving to him that, yes, there is a chance for Jimin to finally meet the man he’s been dying to see live. To finally see him play. And the best part? For free. He just has to convince Taehyung to convince Jungkook to convince Junho, the head committee of this year’s music recital to give him a ticket. Simple.

‘He’s not my boyfriend anymore,’ Taehyung says softly, looking straight ahead at Jimin, ‘but I’ll try to ask, happy? Now let me sleep.’

Jimin doesn’t feel like taking a nap, not anymore, because for the first time in his life, he finally has a chance to see his idol live, someone he’s been looking up to for years, the person who taught him that even though he doesn’t have the passion to play, just listening to the sound of Yoongi’s music on the ivory keys makes his heart happier than usual.

Jimin doesn’t realize it’s almost 8 pm until he hears Taehyung across the room from him practicing his lines for his photography presentation tomorrow morning. He decides to not bother Taehyung, he really needs more practice and Jimin really needs food.

The walk to the campus cafe is quiet, deadlines are coming up, people are too busy to simply eat — but Jimin’s been there and he knows all too well that not eating will only be the death of him.

As soon as he reaches the cafe, he is greeted with the smell of cinnamon and nutmeg and a long queue of people waiting to get some food in their system. That’s Taehyung’s hoodie, Jimin realizes, it’s Jungkook in front of him with his music folder in his right hand and a guitar on his left.

‘Jungkook?’ Jimin taps his back, this is my only chance, he thinks.

‘Ah, hyung!’ Jungkook replies as he turns his back facing Jimin. Jungkook looks different, his hair isn’t as long anymore - now nicely cut. He looks much more taken care of since the last time Jimin met him and that was two months ago.

‘You good?’ contrary to popular beliefs, Jimin and Jungkook has never had anything going on between them. They were close, yes, but in a way that was more suitable to be called siblings rather than lovers.

Jungkook stops for a second, then says, ‘Never been better.’ It’s as if he’s trying to tell Jimin that him and Taehyung are working things out, don’t worry.

For the first time, Jimin believes it.

‘Good. That’s good. By the way,’ Jimin continues, contemplating if he even has the right to say, but he says it anyway, ‘I heard Min Yoongi’s the guest star of the music department’s end of year recital.’

‘Yeah,’ Jungkook knows how passionate Jimin is when it comes to a certain pianist.

‘So, um, this might sound weird but,’

‘You want an extra ticket? Taehyungie-hyung texted me,’ Jimin’s eyes lights up, half-glad that he doesn’t have to continue his already seemingly frivolous sentence and half-astonished that Taehyung cares to even inform Jungkook of the situation.

‘Look, if you don’t want to, it’s fine. I can go ask someone else to ask Junho.’ Jimin is lying. He has no one else to ask, he’s never had the chance to befriend a music student, always too preoccupied with analyzing people in general.

‘I’m the assistant of the head committee for the recital, I can get you one easily, it’s fine,’ Jungkook says, giving Jimin a reassuring smile.

‘You are? That’s amazing, thank you, a thousand times, thank you,’ Jimin hugs Jungkook tightly, Taehyung got himself a really good one this time around, he thinks.

‘Anytime, hyung,’ Jungkook replies as he rushes to the counter to order his food.

As soon as Jimin walks into his shared flat, he sees Taehyung and gives him a genuine smile, thanking him for the simple act he’s done today. Taehyung doesn’t know this, but in that moment (and his whole life) Jimin’s very thankful to have a bestfriend like him.

The day of the recital comes sooner than Jimin thought. Two weeks isn’t long enough to prepare for this occasion, but he doesn’t want to wait either. He bought a new outfit a week ago, a crisp white shirt and black pants, stating the obvious: he wants to look good in front of the great pianist. But Jimin won’t admit that, using the ‘it’s a recital, I gotta look nice’ excuse, which in Jimin’s defense, isn’t wrong either.

The hall is more crowded than usual, the last time Jimin was here, he was in the committee of the freshman’s honor programme. He sees Taehyung and walks over to him trying to get the best seat possible. Second row, right in the middle, perfect, Jimin thinks.

‘Before we begin, I’d like to remind you that students placed at the end of the recital program have worked just as hard to prepare their performances as have students placed at the start. I would ask that you remain until the end of the program to ensure that all of these wonderful students experience the supportive and full audience that they deserve. And now we’re ready to begin!’ Junho, who looks ravishing and significantly different from how he usually dresses, announces as the light starts to dim. Tonight will surely be something.

‘Apparently, Min Yoongi’s performing two songs,’ Jimin hears Taehyung whisper to him, giving a slight nod of reassurance.

Jimin nods as a reply.

Min Yoongi is performing last, much like the final bow, the grand gesture. Jimin fiddles with the program book in his hand, trying to contain every bit of excitement in him.

‘Thank you students, parents, and other guests. As our closing, we will have Min Yoongi, one of South Korea’s greatest pianist to perform two of his songs from his newly released album, Things That Withers and Things That Blossoms. Give a warm welcome to the star of tonight’s show, Min Yoongi!’

As the light dims down, walks in Min Yoongi in all his glory, dressed simply in a black suit with his black hair slightly messy, he’s breathtaking, in an almost clean-cut and slightly intimidating kind of way. Although, with those almond shaped eyes and a cute button nose, he looks slightly less brooding. Yet his aura and charisma says otherwise, in short, Jimin is taken aback. Both with his beauty and the way he presents himself on stage.

‘Hello, I’m Min Yoongi. Now, before I start playing, let me give you a very brief introduction to my newest album. I’m very aware that a lot of people in this crowd don’t really care for it, but I’m sure some of you might want to know since I’ve received a few requests on my social media page last night regarding a short commentary before I start playing, so here it is.’ He pauses for a moment, as if trying to find someone in the crowd and fails in doing so, Jimin notices this and looks around the room. But nobody is looking at Yoongi with the kind of familiarity someone should.

‘So, my new album, Things That Withers and Things That Blossoms is loosely based on life experiences of people that I know and of course from my own,’ he stops midway and looks at the crowd, this time, he’s not looking for anyone, then continues, ‘when I was in university, as a music student, I never got time to really take care of myself, I’m sure a lot of people in the room might relate to this,’ the crowd gives a faint chuckle, ‘and that led to me never really getting into relationships. And that went on to senior year until I met someone, who at first glance, might not look like someone who’d date a measly music student. But we dated, and for a long time. But things led to other things, and he went away, I can’t really call it ‘our separate ways’ because I never really went ... away.’

Jimin exhales deeply, taken off guard by how vulnerable he is on stage, how easy it is for him to strip himself naked emotionally and show the crowd his personal stories, ‘For a long time, I was very much overwhelmed. I didn’t know what to do and what to say, because quite frankly, that person pretty much took care of me. But I had to grow up and graduation was around the corner at that time and I couldn’t slack off. So I went along and pretty much numbed myself of the unfamiliar feeling I had. So I guess I never really took time to heal. And that is for me, very important. You have to let yourself heal. Anyways, a few years after, we met again. This time, that person was married, we met at the grocery store and he was with two of his children and his wife. I mean, I couldn’t really say anything so I just greeted them, went to my apartment and immediately wrote this song. It’s called ‘When I Knew I Still Loved You’.’

Jimin’s eyes are teary as he looks at Taehyung who’s too busy whispering to Jungkook, talking about god knows what. Then Yoongi starts playing, the song is soft and almost, in a way, sounds nostalgic. The kind of sound you’d hear in your head if you saw an old love walking past you in the street, the kind of sound you’d hear if you came to your ex's wedding with the scars still fresh, it was melancholic.

‘A few months after, believe it or not, I met that person again. This time, it was at a party. You’d think at this point that we’re just an over-complexified version of soulmates but … he looked really happy? And I couldn’t dare to ruin that for him, for his wife, and for his children. So I just sat there, two tables away, and I thought to myself, ‘just because it ended, doesn’t mean it wasn’t beautiful.’ I think love can be manifested into different kinds of love’. So I wrote this song, and it’s called, ‘When You Don’t Make Me Smile Anymore.’

As Min Yoongi starts playing, Jimin notices the different tones of this song. It’s much livelier, soothing and almost reassuring; the kind of music you’d hear if you’re trying to heal. The kind of music you’d want to listen to if you’re trying to put all your bones back together. And again, it is beautiful, Jimin thinks.

As he presses the last ivory key on the piano, the crowd cheers, the light turns on and he bows. Jimin fixes himself on his seat, mouth slightly ajar with Taehyung chuckling next to him.

‘Hyung,’ Jungkook goes near Jimin and whispers to him over Taehyung.

‘Yeah?’

‘You want to go backstage?’

Jimin pauses, not knowing what to say. ‘You sure? wait, why?’

‘Because you’re a fan? We asked him if he was willing for a personal meet up and he said yes, so, um, just go meet Junho and he’ll lead you to the waiting room he’s at,’ is all Jungkook says as he focuses his attention back to Taehyung who at this point is too busy taking pictures of the recital guests.

Jimin walks to the waiting room with Junho by his side telling him to liven up, after all, he’s been waiting for this moment since his senior year in high school. As he reaches the waiting room door with Min Yoongi’s name plastered on, Jimin halts. He doesn’t like the way he’s feeling - the uncertainty of how Yoongi will act without cameras around scares the shit out of him.

Then Junho knocks.

‘Come in,’ is the only sound that comes out from the other side of the door.

Min Yoongi is sitting alone, on the farthest end of the black couch across from the door. His suit jacket is off as he stands up and greets the already overly-excited Jimin. None of them are saying anything as Junho leaves, the faint sound of the crowd outside is slowly disappearing. Jimin won’t admit it, but seeing Yoongi up close for the first time in his life isn’t making his already unstable breath any more stabler. It’s not making the butterflies in his stomach to stop fluttering either; Jimin feels like he’s eighteen again, watching Min Yoongi’s performance for the first time in TV, trying to keep every bit of emotion inside of him yet only failing in doing so.

‘I’m Park Jimin. It’s so great to meet you. Thank you for the, um, this?’ Is all Jimin can muster up while looking at everything in the room except at Yoongi.

‘No problem. Junho told me that you’re a big fan, so I thought why not?’ His voice without the mic is lower, much, much lower. And Jimin’s catapulting inside.

‘Do you mind if we take a picture?’ Jimin’s smile is so bright that Yoongi doesn’t realize he’s holding his breath until Jimin moves further away from him after the picture.

It’s close to midnight and for some unknown reason, with Yoongi’s sudden flash of kindness and maybe, just maybe, a bit of bravery, he suddenly says to the awkwardly standing Jimin, ‘Want to grab some beer?’

All Jimin can do is nod. It’s not everyday a guy like Min Yoongi invites him for a drink.

The walk to the nearest bar is quiet. Jimin, dressed warmly in his padded jacket is walking next to the humming Min Yoongi. He doesn’t really know why this all is happening and how. But Jimin doesn’t question good things that happen to him and this might just be the best thing that has happened to him in a long time, well, besides getting accepted in university but that’s a different story.

‘When did you find out about me?’ Yoongi looks at Jimin. And he realizes just how beautiful he is. Jimin’s hair is quite frizzy from the cold, his cheeks are almost like blush wine but only can be seen faintly through the lamp post of the walkway, and he hasn’t stopped smiling ever since they left the waiting room.

‘Um,’ Jimin stops and faces Yoongi, trying to think of the correct thing to say, ‘when you performed with Seo In Na in MMA.’ Jimin was eighteen at the time, still very much playing piano but still hadn’t found any passion for it, but all his mother wanted was for him to play and the only thing that could give Jimin even a hint of excitement was the sound of Min Yoongi playing the piano. Maybe, that was it.

‘I just debuted like a month, at the time,’ Yoongi purses his lips and nods, Jimin finds it endearing. Like that’s all he wants to see his whole life.

The bar is packed with university students and Yoongi feels out of place. Jimin leads them both to the only two seating table that’s available, with people greeting him at times and him only replying with a big smile and a nod. Yoongi finds this immeasurably familiar, the kind of familiar you’d see if you met an ex lover in your next life.

‘Is this table okay?’

‘Perfect,’ Yoongi replies with a nod and Jimin thinks he will never get used to it.

Late January, 2016

Jimin sits patiently outside of the unfamiliar studio he is at. He was planning to wait outside, being somewhere he’s not familiar with just doesn’t sit right with him, but it’s freezing and the only thing covering him is the brown coat he received for Christmas last year. His hands are in his pocket and his face is almost fully covered with the wool scarf Taehyung gave him two days ago with the note, ‘your late Christmas gift. You’re welcome.’

‘Hey,’ the familiar sound Jimin never gets tired of suddenly appears in front of him. His hair messy from the evident stress being in the studio has given him, but his smirk is still very much there, sending shivers down Jimin’s spine.

‘You’re done?’ Jimin looks up from his phone.

‘Yes. Let me go grab my jacket. Do you want a padded one too? I don’t think that coat will do,’ Yoongi goes back in his studio, continued with the sound of ruffles and an occasional ‘fuck’. He comes back out with a padded jacket on and another on his hand, shoving it to Jimin.

They are sitting on the farthest end of the sushi bar, Yoongi’s eating without any sound coming out and Jimin is looking at him. He’s used to this, he really is. But what Taehyung said a few nights ago is ringing in his head, ‘don’t sell yourself short of love.’

Jimin doesn’t love Yoongi. At least not yet. It’s only been a month and a half since he’s known Yoongi, they’re not even dating, but the mere thought of Yoongi and someone else just doesn’t seem right to Jimin. But he shakes that thought away, after all, he’s merely an (almost) graduating Psychology student - he’s not supposed to fuss over things that doesn’t matter. But the more he shakes that thought away, the more it comes back.

May, 2016

‘Babe,’ Yoongi says over the phone. He’s laying on his hotel bedroom, a wine glass filled with Chardonnay is sitting nicely on the table next to him.

‘Yeah?’ Jimin replies from the other end of the line.

‘Fuck, wrong number,’ Yoongi curses over and over again inside. He blames his stupid mistake on the two glasses of wine he’s had. Yoongi hears more chatters, it’s busy where Jimin is at, which confuses Yoongi for a few seconds; he hasn’t gotten the hang of time zones.

‘I’m busy,’ Jimin doesn’t want to interfere, he won’t budge. If Yoongi won’t tell him, then it probably isn’t his right to know anyway, no matter how hard it is to keep himself from being brutally honest. Jimin doesn’t like to argue. Especially with Yoongi.

‘Sorry, I’m just ... I thought you were someone else.’

‘Is everything alright?’

No, Yoongi says to himself. Nothing has been feeling alright for weeks.

‘Yes. Perfect. Stream my performance tomorrow, okay?’

Jimin exhales deeply, he didn’t study psychology for four years to not spot Yoongi’s lie for the almost countless of times. But if there’s anything Jimin wants to say, he doesn’t say it, because the phone has just cut off. Wouldn’t miss it for the world, Jimin thinks.

June, 2016

Jimin is at Yoongi’s studio, he’s familiar with every corner of it by now. He didn’t think it was a good idea to come considering Yoongi came over to his flat the night before, intoxicated beyond measures. But he comes anyway, in hopes that even though Yoongi remembers some bits of that night, he won’t bring it up.

But he does.

‘Sorry about last night.’

‘You always come by my flat anyway, chill,’ Jimin doesn’t look at him, instead, he’s focusing on Yoongi’s keyboard, plopped on his wooden table.

‘I’m not sorry about that, though,’ Yoongi says almost too softly.

‘So what are you sorry about?’ He’s just dragging this on, scared to know what comes next. I don’t want you to be sorry, there’s nothing to be sorry about.

‘I’m sorry that I kissed you,’ but Yoongi’s sorry. And Yoongi doesn’t lie.

‘But I’m not,’ it’s fine, really, Jimin thinks. But all he wants to do right now is kiss the living shit out Yoongi with neither of them being sorry for it.

But even the thought of it seems too far-fetched.

August, 2016

Jimin calls Yoongi at 3:45 in the morning, he’s deeply intoxicated but Yoongi’s in Prague for a concert. And even though it is 7:45 in Prague and Yoongi’s about to start his concert, he picks the phone up anyway.

‘You okay there, buddy?’

‘Me? I’m great, thanks for asking. Can you pick me up?’ Jimin’s voice is slurred, barely audible from the loud background music of whatever club he’s at.

‘Jimin, I’m in Prague. Did you forget?’ Yoongi chuckles and even though Jimin can barely walk, the sound of Yoongi’s deep laugh sends shivers down his spine.

‘Ah. Sorry about that,’ Yoongi’s never there.

‘Make Taehyung pick you up.’

‘Taehyung. Right. Someone who actually cares,’ but before Yoongi can say anything, Jimin ends the call.

October, 2016

‘How did you two become close anyway?’ Jungkook asks over the phone. Jimin called his apartment thinking that he’d find Taehyung, but he’s out for work and Jungkook seems to be the only one available for one of Jimin’s vents.

‘The night of the recital, we went to grab a drink. Maybe we wanted to see each other more but not enough?’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Some teeny bopper love story of a one-sided love, Jungkook,’ Jimin thinks it’s funny, but Jungkook doesn’t think so. Love isn’t meant to be described that way, love isn’t as simple as a movie. But Jungkook is better at leaving things unsaid, especially with Jimin.

‘You sure you’re okay?’

‘Never been better,’ but looking at the 2 bottles of soju next to him, it doesn’t look like he’s even near being fine. Not at all.

December, 2016

Jimin hasn’t talked to Yoongi for a month and a half. None of them has even tried to fix whatever mess they had created, in hopes that over time, things will go back to how it’s always been.

Are u busy?

The notification scares Jimin for a (few) seconds.

No. Why?

It takes twenty minutes for Yoongi to reply. But those twenty minutes feels like a long, long stretch of time.

Down for coffee?

Yes.

No.

Jimin tries to act as nonchalant, it’s time for him to move on. Falling in love with a musician who actually knows you exist has quite the same effect as falling in love with a musician who doesn’t… at least for Jimin.

Alright.

Jimin leaves Yoongi on read.

July, 2017

‘There’s someone on the phone for you,’ Jimin changed his number two months ago, something along the lines of a new beginning and a new iPhone he purchased only recently.

‘Who?’

‘He didn’t tell,’ Soojung, Jimin’s newly-hired receptionist whispers, covering the speaker end of the phone.

‘Alright. Thanks,’ Jimin gives her a smile and takes the call.

He doesn’t expect anything at first. Thinking that it’s one of his university buddies trying to get in touch. But the deep cough and the then familiar, ‘hello?’ throws Jimin off.

‘H-hello?’ Jimin can barely say anything. But his eyes are wet and he doesn’t know why.

‘Jimin?’

‘Yeah?’ Jimin can barely breathe.

‘Can we talk?’

No.

‘Yes.’

So Jimin picks up his things and goes to the coffee shop near Yoongi’s studio. Maybe now things will get better.

But things don’t get better.

Because instead of putting things back together, Yoongi’s whole intent of the meet up is to announce the inevitable proposal of marriage, of course not to Jimin. Of course. Jimin should have known.

‘You what?’

‘I’m going to propose,’ his nonchalant tone isn’t helping Jimin to cope with this situation. Who would’ve thought that a couple of months would change things this much?

‘Propose? To who?’

‘Junho,’ the name comes out of Yoongi’s mouth so easily, as if he’s been saying his name all his life. And Jimin doesn’t like, he doesn’t like it one bit. But when it comes to Yoongi, there’s no bone in Jimin’s body that’d argue with him.

‘Junho? Kim Junho?’ But this isn’t how it’s supposed to go.

‘Yeah, sorry I never told you. I was going to tell you last December but you—‘

‘Since when?’ Jimin’s voice is soft now, too soft for Yoongi to find any hint of disappointment.

‘Last November.’

Jimin takes another sip of his bitter Americano. When he finally musters up the courage to speak up, Yoongi hands him a cd. It’s plain white and on it, written with a black sharpie: For Junho.

‘I wrote him a song,’ and I’ve loved you for two years, so what?

‘I’m sure he’ll love it,’ Yoongi relaxes in his chair, his hair is shorter now, Jimin realizes, still as messy, but there’s a hint of change on his face. Jimin can’t seem to point out what it is.

‘I’ll send it to you once he hears it.’

‘No. Please don’t do that. Keep it between the two of you.’

‘But you’re my biggest fan,’ Jimin doesn’t want to admit it, but Yoongi owes him so much more than that. So, so much more.

December 2nd, 2017

Jimin doesn’t remember the last time he’s even seen Yoongi’s face. His wedding invitation came in the mail yesterday, sent in a pearl white envelope, with Yoongi and Junho’s name engraved on it. He still hasn’t opened it, thinking of an excuse to not come to Yoongi’s wedding.

Is yoongi really getting married?

This time Taehyung texts him.

Yep. Inv came in the mail yesterday.

What Taehyung says next throws Yoongi all the way back to his university days.

You never told him?

Told him what?

Jimin knows what’s coming next. In all honesty, his love for Yoongi all these years was just a deconstructed form of skinny love. Of things that’s left unsaid.

That you loved him. Love.

Taehyung doesn’t know anything, Jimin thinks. Though deep down Jimin knows he probably knows him more than anyone else.

Jimin leaves Taehyung on read.

December 20th, 2017

Jimin cares about Yoongi, he really does. And he doubts that it will change. But Jimin also likes to think that things have changed so much between them that this love he has for Yoongi isn’t the same love he’s felt for Yoongi months and months ago.

The only two people Jimin knows in the wedding party are Jungkook and Taehyung; sitting nicely in a round table near the entrance door, they wave at Jimin. Jimin comes over.

‘Hang in there,’ Taehyung whispers and pats Jimin’s back.

‘I’ll be okay, bud.’ Jimin thinks he might cry. Taehyung notices and pats his back once more. Jungkook squeezes Jimin’s hand, reassuring him that things will be okay. The first time Jimin meets a married Yoongi is in the bathroom. Yoongi looks overwhelmed but so, so happy. Jimin is happy that things are going together for Yoongi. Even if those things might have taken a bit of heartbreak and disappointment on Jimin’s part. ‘Congratulations, hyung,’ this time, Jimin means it with all his heart. ‘Thank you,’ he says with his usual gummy smile. Along with things that wither, you are growing now, hyung.

June, 2018

Lang Leav once written a poem about change. Again, it is short, isn’t comprised of fancy words that Jimin finds hard to understand. But in it, as many other forms of poetry, Jimin finds reassurance.

And the weather was so damn sick of being predictable; I heard it began snowing in the Sahara and I wanted to tell you that I’ve changed.

‘It’s perfect,’ Jimin says holding the sky blue album cover. When We Grow, is written in black with a sharpie font in Yoongi’s hand writing.

‘You’re one of the dedication,’ and Jimin will admit this: for the first time, he wishes he isn’t.

‘Thank you, for everything.’’ Jimin smiles back at him.

‘You too, Jimin. Thanks for being there,’ Yoongi pats Jimin’s hand, giving him a nod.

Maybe in another world, Jimin has moved on. Although he hasn’t, Jimin likes to think that it’s okay. Living proof that yes, he’s fallen in love and although things aren’t okay now, it sure will be.

Track 4: The Way We Grow

To Jimin, you are undeniably my biggest fan. Hang in there, bud.

#yoonmin fanfiction #yoonmin angst #yoonmin #taekook #taeguk #BTS jimin #BTS suga #bts fanfiction #bts angst #bts v #bts jungkook #bts hoseok #taehyung #jungkook #min yoongi #yoongi angst #yoongi pianist #pianist au #bts

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suzanneshannon · 4 years

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Scott Hanselman's 2021 Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List for Windows

Can you believe it's been 6 years since my last Tools list? Tools have changed, a lot are online, but honestly, it's just a LOT OF WORK to do the tools list. But here's one for 2020-2021. These are the tools in my Utils folder. I made a d:\dropbox\utils folder and I added it to my PATH. That way it's on all my computers and in my path on all my computers and I can get to any of them instantly.

This is the Updated for 2020-21 Version of my 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, and 2014 List, and currently subsumes all my other lists. I’ve been doing this for over 17 years. Wow. I need to do better, I guess.

Everyone collects utilities, and most folks have a list of a few that they feel are indispensable. Here's mine. Each has a distinct purpose, and I probably touch each at least a few times a week. For me, "util" means utilitarian and it means don't clutter my tray. If it saves me time, and seamlessly integrates with my life, it's the bomb. Many/most are free some aren't. Those that aren't free are very likely worth your 30-day trial, and very likely worth your money.

These are all well loved and oft-used utilities. I wouldn't recommend them if I didn't use them constantly. Things on this list are here because I dig them. No one paid money to be on this list and no money is accepted to be on this list.

Personal Plug: If this list is the first time you and I have met, you should subscribe to my blog, and check out my podcasts, and sign up for my newsletter of Wonderful Things.

Please Link to http://hanselman.com/tools when referencing the latest Hanselman Ultimate Tools List. Feel free to get involved here in the comments, post corrections, or suggestions for future submissions. I very likely made mistakes, and probably forgot a few utilities that I use often.

THE LIFE AND WORK-CHANGING UTILITIES

"If everything was perfect, you would never learn and you would never grow." - Beyoncé

Windows Subsystem for Linux - It really can't be overstated how WSL/WSL2 has put the cherry on top of Windows 10. It runs on any build 20262 or higher as it was recently backported and it's integration with Windows is fantastic. It's also WAY faster than running a VM. Go learn more on my YouTube

Windows Terminal - Finally Windows has a modern terminal. You can run shells like Command Prompt, PowerShell, and Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). Its main features include multiple tabs, panes, Unicode and UTF-8 character support, a GPU accelerated text rendering engine, and the ability to create your own themes and customize text, colors, backgrounds, and shortcuts. It also includes a pseudo-console so 3rd party Terminals like hyper, conemu, terminus and more work better!

Windows PowerToys - They are back and they should be built into Windows. Install them here and get a color picker, fancy zones, file explorer addons, image resizers, keyboard manager and remapper, an Apple Spotlight-like running in the form of PowerToyrs Run, the Shortcut Guide and more!

Also check out Ueli as a great launcher/spotlight for Windows!

VS Code - Visual Studio Code is hella fast and is my goto text and code editor. I still use notepad sometimes and I'm in full Visual Studio a lot, but VS Code is like the Tesla of code editors. Check out my Favorite VS Code Extensions below.

PowerShell/OhMyPosh/PoshGit/Cascadia Code - I've had a blast this year taking my console prompt to the next level. Try these out but also look at Starship. Whatever you do, play! Don't accept the defaults!

ZoomIt - A true classic but also the answer to the #1 question I'm asked. How do you draw on the screen when you're sharing your screen? ZoomIt has been THAT TOOL in my toolbox. Really take some time and learn how to do boxes, arrows, colors and more and you'll be a more effective screen-sharer. In fact, just go get the whole SysInternals suite and put it all in your PATH.

Winget - It's apt-get for Windows. Similar to choco which I've used in the past, WinGet is going to be included in Windows 10 and has a ton of nice features. I use it to setup a machine in an hour from the command line, versus a day before doing it manually. Just add your MSA (Microsoft login) to the Package Manager Insiders Program and get it from the Store. It's bundled with the Windows App Installer. Then just "winget search <tool>" and winget install whatever!

QuickLook - Free in the Windows Store, just highlight a file in Explorer and press Space to get a preview!

Amazing .NET and Developer utilities

"Power means happiness; power means hard work and sacrifice." - Beyoncé

CodeTrack - CodeTrack is a free .NET Performance Profiler and Execution Analyzer. It works on basically every version of .NET and will give you massive insight into how your code is running! The flamegraph view is fantastic. It's free but you should donate as it's a one-person amazing app!

LINQPad - Interactively query your databases with LINQ with this tool from Joseph Albahari. A fantastic learning tool for those who are just getting into LINQ or for those who want a code snippet IDE to execute any C# or VB expression. Free and wonderful.

WinMerge - WinMerge just gets better and better. It's free, it's open source and it'll compare files and folders and help you merge your conflicted source code files like a champ. Also see Perforce Visual Merge which free and also can diff images, which is pretty amazing.

WinDbg - Low-level and classic but also new and fresh! WinDbg (Wind-bag?) is now in the Windows Store with ALL NEW VISUALS and more!

Insomnia and Nightingale are great alternatives to Postman for doing REST APIs!

NuGet Package Explorer - This app allows browsing NuGet packages from an online feed and viewing contents of the packages

WireShark - What's happening on the wire! WireShark knows!

GitHub Desktop - Gits, ahem, out of the way! Watch my Git 101 on YouTube!

Useful Windows Utilities that should be built in

"I love my job, but it’s more than that: I need it" - Beyoncé

Ear Trumpet - Fantastic advanced volume control for Windows! If you have ever wished that volume on Windows could turn their UI up to 11, Ear Trumpet is that app.

Teracopy - While I use the excellent built in copy features of Windows 10 the most, when I want to move a LOT of files as FAST as possible, nothing beats TeraCopy, an app that does just that - move stuff fast. The queue control is excellent.

AutoHotKey - This little gem is bananas. It's a tiny, amazingly fast free open-source utility for Windows. It lets you automate everything from keystrokes to mice. Programming for non-programmers. It's a complete automation system for Windows without the frustration of VBScript. This is the Windows equivalent of AppleScript for Windows. (That's a very good thing.

7-Zip - It's over and 7zip won. Time to get on board. The 7z format is fast becoming the compression format that choosey hardcore users choose. You'll typically get between 2% and 10% better compression than ZIP. This app integrates into Windows Explorer nicely and opens basically EVERYTHING you could ever want to open from TARs to ISOs, from RARs to CABs.

Paint.NET - The Paint Program that Microsoft forgot, written in .NET. It's 80% of Photoshop and it's free. Pay to support the author by getting the Windows Store version AND it will auto-update! It's only $7, which is an unreal value.

NimbleText - Regular Expressions are hard and I'm not very smart. NimbleText lets me do crazy stuff with large amounts of text without it hurting so much.

Markdown Monster - While I love VSCode, Markdown Monster does one thing incredibly well. Markdown.

Fiddler - The easy, clean, and powerful debugging proxy for checking out HTTP between here and there. It even supports sniffing SSL traffic.

NirSoft Utilities Collection - Nearly everything NirSoft does is worth looking at. My favorites are MyUninstaller, a replacement for Remove Programs, and WhoIsThisDomain.

Ditto Clipboard Manager - WindowsKey+V is amazing and close but Ditto keeps pushing clipboard management forward on Windows.

TaskbarX - It literally centers your Taskbar buttons. I love it. Open Source but also $1 in the Windows Store.

If you really want to mess with your Taskbar, try Taskbar Tweaker.

ShellEx View - Your Explorer's right click menu is cluttered, this can help you unclutter it!

OneCommander and Midnight Commander and Altap Salamander - As a long time Norton Commander user (google that!) there's a lot of great "reimaginings" of the Windows File Explorer. OneCommander and Altap Salamander does that, and Midnight Commander does it for the command line/CLI.

WinDirStat - A classic but still essential. What's taking up all that space? Spoiler - It's Call of Duty.

Also try SpaceSniffer!

FileSeek and Everything - Search it all, instantly!

I like Win+Share+S for Screenshots but also check out ShareX, Greenshot, and Lightshot

For animated Gifs, try screen2gif or LICEcap!

Alt-Tab Terminator - Takes your Alt-Tab to the next level with massive previews and search

PureText - PureText pastes plain text, purely, plainly. Free and glorious. Thanks Steve Miller

I still FTP and SCP and SFTP and I use WinSCP to do it! It's free or just $10 to get it from the Windows Store and support the author!

VLC Player - The best and still the best. Plays everything, everywhere.

PSReadline - Makes PowerShell more Bashy in the best way.

Yori and all Malcolm Smith's Utilities - Yori is a reimagning of cmd.exe!

Visual Studio Code Extensions

"I use the negativity to fuel the transformation into a better me." – Beyoncé

There's a million great Visual Studio Extensions. The ones I like won't be the that ones you like. But, go explore.

GitLens - Glorious. Just makes Git and VS a joy and adds a thousand tiny lovely features that will make you smile. You'll wonder why this isn't built in.

Version Lens - Do you have the latest package versions? Now you know

CodeSnap - Screenshots specifically tailored to make your code look nice.

.NET Core Test Explorer - Makes unit testing with .NET on VS Code so much nicer

Arduino for VS Code - The Arduino extension makes it easy to develop, build, deploy and debug your Arduino sketches in Visual Studio Code! So nice.

Coverage Gutters - This amazing extension highlights what code is covered with Unit Test and what's not. Ryan is looking for help, so go see if this is a great OSS project YOU can get started with!

Docker for VS Code - Container explorer and manager and deployer, directly from VS

GitHistory - Another nice add-on for Git that shows your Git Log

HexDump - I need this more than I would like to admit

LiveShare - Stop screen-sharing and start code and context sharing!

PowerShell for VS - A great replacement for the PowerShell ISE

Remote Containers - This is an AMAZING EXTENSION you have to try if you have Docker but it has a horrible non-descriptive name. But must be seen to be believed. Perhaps it's "Visual Studio Development Containers," I'm not sure. Open a folder and attach to a development container. No installs, just you debugging Rust, Go, C#, whatever whilst installing NOTHING. Amazing.

Remote SSH - Another in the VS Remote Family of Extensions, this one lets you use any remote SSH Server as your development environment.

Remote WSL - Edit and debug and build code from Windows...using Linux!

And finally, Yoncé, my current VS Code theme. Beyoncé inspired.

Things I enjoy

“We all have our purpose, we all have our strengths.” – Beyoncé

RescueTime - Are you productive? Are you spending time on what you need to be spending time on? RescueTime keeps track of what you are doing and tells you just that with fantastic reports. Very good stuff if you're trying to GTD and TCB. ;

Carnac - This wonderful little open source utility shows the hotkey's you're pressing as you press them, showing up as little overlays in the corner. I use it during coding presentations.

DOSBox - When you're off floating in 64-bit super-Windows-10-Pro land, sometimes you forget that there ARE some old programs you can't run anymore now that DOS isn't really there. Enter DOSBox, an x86 DOS Emulator! Whew, now I can play Bard's Tale from 1988 on Windows 10 in 2021! Check out Gog.com for lots of DOSBox powered classics

Oh yes, and finally Windows Sandbox - You already have this and didn't even know it! You can fire up in SECONDS a copy of your Windows 10 machine in a safe sandbox and when you close it, it's gone. Poof. Great for testing weird tools and utilities that some rando on a blog asks you to download.

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Scott Hanselman's 2021 Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List for Windows published first on https://deskbysnafu.tumblr.com/

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philipholt · 4 years