#i realise this is going to mess up like every link across my blogs so im sorry ill eventually fix everything once i get a comp

[coridallasmultipass]

URL Change!

Hey guys!! I changed my URL from @hookandcook to @coridallasmultipass so I could have some consistency across platforms!! Just wanted to let y'all know.

[angryschnauzer]

Superior Specimen - Chapter 8

Summary: One night when you are following the Archaeology tag on instagram you stumbled across a fun looking dig… and an even more interesting Paleontologist who soon follows you back. Over the following weeks you start chatting and a friendship soon grows.

Relationship: AU Henry Cavill x Female Reader (No race or body shape mentioned)

Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7

Warnings: Slow Burn, NSFW, 18+, Mutual Masturbation, Phone Sex, Drunken Piggy Back Rides, Oral Sex (Female Recieving), Drama, Theft, Amateur Heroics, Hospital Visit, Shower Sex, Oral Sex (Male Receiving), Blow Job, Fingering, Lavish lifestyle, Henry is loaded, The Shard, Expensive Gifts, Sixty nine, Unprotected Sex, Multiple Orgasms, Public Sex, Exhibitionism, Angst, Argument, Jealousy, Talk of car crashes, heroics, rough sex, use of safe words, Anal play,

I do not operate a tag list, but please follow @angryschnauzerwrites​ and put that blog onto notifications, as you will then be notified whenever i post something new.

I don’t have a masterlist, but all my works are on AO3, link here. Usually i post oneshots to Tumblr and AO3, and multichapters exclusively to AO3, but as this is my first henry story and its going to be a short series, i’ll post to both places.

Chapter 8

 On the tube an old woman had offered you a tissue and had whispered quietly;

 “He’s not worth crying over my dear”

 You swallowed and smiled weakly at her;

 “Unfortunately he was… he was just an idiot too”

 “They all are my dear, they all are”

 She got off at the next stop, giving you a pat on the arm before leaving the carriage, leaving you ride the rest of the way to Fulham Broadway on your own.

 You were on autopilot when you arrived, walking through the small shopping mall that had grown around the tube station, grabbing a pair of overpriced knock-off designer sunglasses from the concession stand to hide your puffy and red eyes, swollen from crying. As you stood in the crowd at the lights to cross the road, a stream of Ambulances and Police cars screamed past, lights and sirens blasting, but it was London, every day there was a crisis or accident and you were used to them. 

 The walk to your flat was quick, just a few roads from the tube, and you were thankful you’d brought your small clutch bag from the hotel room that had your phone, wallet, and keys in. Once inside you pulled off your clothing, everything Henry had bought for you, tossing it into a heap on the floor before you climbed into bed and curled into a ball, sobbing into the pillow.

 -

 You woke to the sound of a metal on plastic crunch from the street outside, familiar with the sound and you knew it was vehicle vs wheelie bin, an all too familiar occurrence when collection day was on a Friday and people went out that night, so the street would still be littered with bins the following day. Staring up at the ceiling you heard the doorbell ring, glaring at the ceiling but refusing to move. You didn’t care if your bin that had ended up a casualty of a car not looking where it was going, so when the bell finally timed out you closed your eyes… only to be rudely disturbed by a loud knocking on the door a minute later, a muffled voice from the other side;

 “Princess… it’s me; Henry… please, just tell me you’re ok… I’ve got to know you’re ok…”

 You could feel your emotions rising within you; a heat, an anger, and as the knocking continued you grabbed the dressing gown hanging on the back of the door and was still tying it as you pulled the door open, but surprised to see state of Henry, his clothes a mess and his face blotchy;

 “What the hell happe…”

 Your words were cut short as he pulled you into his arms, hugging you tight;

 “You’re alright… my god, you’re ok…”

 “Henry, what is going on?”

 He let you go and started pacing;

 “I was an ass, I didn’t follow you, I was stupid… I tried calling you but you never picked up…”

 “I had it on silent… I didn’t want anyone to disturb our date”

 “And then the accident, I’d gone back to the hotel, I knew it was the closest tube to where we were...”

 “Accident?”

 “There was an accident, on the road outside the London Bridge Tube, a bus and council truck collided and ran into the queue… I stayed and helped the emergency services; I was trying to find you… but you weren’t there…”

 Your hand was over your mouth, tears pooling on your lashes as you looked at him, and realised he cared so much for you that he had literally pulled people out of the wreckage of an major accident because he thought he had lost you. Wrapping your arms around his shoulders you cradled the back of his head as he slumped to the floor, sobbing into your shoulder and the softness of your dressing gown. 

 Finally he pulled his head back, a weak smile on his face as he looked into your eyes, and you saw a different Henry, one that was fragile, one that needed you as much as you needed him.

 “C’mon, let me put the kettle on”

 -

 Sipping on sweet tea as you both sat at the kitchen table, dunking Digestive biscuits in the deep brown steaming mugs, you looked him up and down;

 “You are a mess”

 He glanced down and realised his shirt and jeans were covered in dirt, grime, and in some places blood;

 “You’re right” he paused before looking back to you; “Look, I’ve got a suggestion… pack a bag. Comfy clothing, overnight things. We’ll head back to the hotel and collect our things, then head back to my place. I’ll cook dinner and we can talk… ask all those things we’ve both wanted to ask since we met, yeah?”

 He looked at you like a hopeful puppy, his deep blue eyes watery where he feared you would say no, but as you nodded he let out the breath he had been holding, and a genuine smile spread over his face.

 -

 Henry opened the door to his place and stepped aside, letting you enter and look around as he shut the door, resting all the bags from the hotel room on the shiny white tiles that covered the floor. 

 “This is your place?”

 “It’s home for the next few months” he shut the door and wrapped his arm around you; “I gave up on having a permanent place about five years ago. I would always come back to a dust filled nightmare and a fridge that was a biohazard. I keep a PO box for any mail and a storage unit for my things that I don’t need when I’m away”

 You looked at him;

 “It sounds very… lonely…”

 He paused, considering your words;

 “I’ve never thought about it that way… but, you’re right” he wrapped his arms around you, his gaze intense; “I’m sorry I over-reacted earlier… about your flatmate. I was just… I don’t know, so focused I guess on this amazing thing we have now, and what we were talking about last night… how those I fall for push me away when I have to leave… I could only think ‘this guy will be around when I’m not’...”

 You reached up and cupped his cheek with your hand, realising in that moment that for all the bravado and confidence, beneath that Henry was just like you, like anyone else, and feared losing those he cared for;

 “I would wait… I will wait…”

 You pressed a kiss to his lips, and the pair of you just held each other for the longest time, before he pulled away;

 “What kind of host am I? I haven’t even offered you a cup of tea!”

 Laughing you followed him into the kitchen, looking around at the sparse worktops, all the cupboards pristine white. Even the appliances were just plain brushed aluminium. As the kettle bubbled away you pushed yourself up onto the central island, sitting on the marble countertop as you watched Henry move around the kitchen, opening the fridge and pulling out the carton of milk, sniffing it and cringing;

 “Okay, tea may be off the menu… the milk’s off”

 Pausing he opened the cupboard, shoulders slumping when he saw the empty tea caddy;

 “No tea either…”

 Leaning back you pulled your phone from your pocket and opened google maps;

 “This is Warwick Square, right?”

 “Yes”

 You pinched the screen and zoomed out, jumping off the counter;

 “C’mon, there’s a Tesco Express just around the corner”

 -

 Walking hand in hand around Pimlico with Henry, it dawned on you that you had never visited this part of London, the sights and sounds much like most of the city, but where each little borough had its own character. Once you reached the supermarket he grabbed a basket and picked up the few things he needed, before his hand hovered over the selection of biscuits;

 “Ok, make or break time to find out if we are truly compatible” his voice had an element of mischief in it as he spoke; “Milk or Dark Chocolate Digestives?”

 You looked at the selection before you set your hand down on the bright blue packet;

 “Trick question, we both know the true answer is Milk Chocolate Hobnobs”

 He laughed as you dropped the packet into the basket, wrapping his massive arm around your shoulders and pulling you into his chest;

 “I knew there was a reason I loved you” he turned to the row of refrigerators on the other side of the isle, unaware of what he’d said, and how your eyes were a little wider as you took in his admission; “Shall I make some burnt offerings for you tonight? I have somewhat limited culinary skills, but I can rustle up something with meat or fish…”

 Nodding you were still a little stunned, finally finding your voice;

 “Yeah, I’ll eat anything”

 He cocked an eyebrow and you playfully batted at his arm;

 “Oh shut up” you laughed

-

 Dinner had been nice. An easy dish of roasted pork, Henry had thrown in some potatoes and had let them roast with alongside, and a simple salad. The one thing he did have readily stocked in his place was alcohol, and between the two of you an entire bottle of vintage Pinot Noir had been sunk over the course of dinner, and as you watched him stack the dishwasher you spread out on the massive white sofa that dominated the open plan space. You couldn’t help yourself but you popped the button of your jeans, letting out a sigh of relief. 

 Checking your phone you reopened your roommates’ email and read it again, before hitting reply. You knew deep down you wouldn’t be able to get a mortgage, but asked that you be kept in the loop and would start looking for another place come Monday. Having hit send you saw another email, this time from your Manager, requesting that you attend a review on Monday morning;

 “Huh, so much for giving me a week off” you muttered to yourself, before looking up and seeing Henry approaching you, two full glasses of red wind in hand.

 “Everything ok?”

 Taking the glass you smiled;

 “Yeah, work want me to go in for a review on Monday morning”

 “Did they say what it was about?”

 “No, but I’m guessing ‘playing heroics and injuring yourself on the job isn’t in your job description, please don’t sue us’ is probably on the agenda”

 Settling next to you he rested a hand on your thigh, giving it a squeeze;

 “I’m sure you’re right” he sipped at the wine before setting it on the small table at the side; “Hey I meant to ask, does your roommate have an Instagram account or Facebook page?”

 “Yeah, I’ll pull it up. Its where he’s trying to do more serious photography”

 He nodded and tapped at his phone for a few seconds before setting it aside, raising his glass again and clinking it against yours;

 “Cheers”

 -

 By the time the last dregs of the 2nd bottle of wine were drained from your glasses you were drunk as skunks and just an amorous. You were draped over Henry’s lap, his hand was attempting to sneak under your t-shirt as you curled one hand in his hair, wrapping a deep brown strand around your finger as you kissed him lazily. When his hand finally found your breast you moaned at his touch, his lips brushing against your neck;

 “I think we should take this to the bedroom”

 You giggled;

 “With the amount of wine we’ve had? Can you still get it up?”

 He pushed his crotch up against you;

 “Princess I’m already ‘up’, now I need to be in, and I don’t care which hole, I just want to feel you around my dick as we have some nasty drunk sex”

 You attempted to slide off his lap and land on your feet, but what really happened was you tumbled into a heap on the soft white rug, one leg still on the sofa as the other hit the coffee table and your ass in the air;

 “Help!” you cried out, giggling as Henry stood and swayed, before wrapping his arm around your waist and carrying you under his arm to the bedroom like a misbehaving poodle in Harrods.

 He dropped you onto the bed and in the light from the lounge you watched as he yanked his t-shirt over his head, and started to unfasten his jeans, letting out a sigh of relief when the massive bulge in his boxers was allowed more room to grow. With a growl be bent over you and pulled your jeans down your legs, your panties following suit, before flipping you over so you were on your front. He went to reach for your ass but had forgotten his jeans were still around his thighs, and he proceeded to trip-tumble onto the bed beside you. You couldn’t help but to giggle into the soft duvet, and it earned you a single spank on your ass that make you squeal.

 Rolling onto your back you looked at Henry as he huffed and puffed to take his jeans and boxers off, and you spread your legs as your hands strayed to your pussy;

 “Are you doing to fuck me, or shall I just get myself started?” you said with more sass than needed, but it earned you a low groan and you could have sworn you heard seams ripping as he finally rid himself of his clothes.

 “Cheeky wench!” Henry pounced on you, pulling your top over your head before fumbling with your bra, finally getting you out of it as he flung it across the room and you heard it hit something in the darkness; “I’ll show you, gonna fuck you so good you’ll have to sit on a cushion when you go into work on Monday”

 He flipped you over and pulled your ass up, and you instinctively arched your back and bared yourself to him, prone and ready, begging for attention. You felt his hands smooth over your ass before dipping between your legs;

 “Already so wet for me, you need me to fuck this cunt Princess? Fill you up with my cum? Or should I cum over your beautiful tits, so you can watch me as I spray my load on you, huh?”

 He slid two fingers into your soaked hole, stretching you as his thumb found your clit and he rubbed harshly at it, the wine making him lose his finesse but up his pressure. When he pulled his fingers out you let out a needy whine, only to feel him press his dick against you, rutting into your crease and smearing your juices over himself. 

 The friction was delicious, and you found yourself pressing back and eager for more, earning a low chuckle to rumble up from Henry’s chest;

 “You like that Princess? Like me rubbing my dick against your asshole?”

 “Oh fuck… fuck… more…”

 You felt him spit on your ass as he lowered his dick and slowly but firmly filled your pussy. As you were getting used to be filled so deep you felt his thumb press against your asshole;

 “NERD!”

 Suddenly Henry stopped;

 “Princess?”

 You turned, looking over your shoulder;

 “Look Hen, I may be up for some anal play, but lube… you gotta use lube…”

 You saw him look back and forth between your ass and his bedside drawers, as if trying to work out whether to forget the ass play and just fuck your pussy, or to give up your pussy for just a few seconds and get the lube. In the end the lube won, and he quickly slid out of you, leaning across the bed and yanking the drawer open, before pulling out a small bottle of Durex Lube. You saw it and grinned;

 “Ooh nice one. Make sure there’s enough for a tit-wank in the morning”

 Henry paused and looked at you, and you could almost see his brain short circuiting at what you’d said as it fought through the wine haze;

 “Fuck, if I didn’t want to fuck you doggy style quite so much I’d say let’s do that now…”

 He settled behind you and rammed his dick straight back into you, making you squeal as he filled you. You heard the quiet squeeze of the pump on the bottle before the cool gel fell on the crease of your ass and his fingers started to massage against your back door. He ran his finger around and around your brown rose, and you could feel yourself relaxing and trying to push back to get him to go further, making you whine;

 “Please Hen… do something…”

 He ran his thumb over your asshole and rested it on it before finally pushing in, holding the digit inside just up to the first knuckle, and that’s when he started to move in your pussy.

 “So. Fucking. Good. My dirty little Princess…”

 You whined for more, for him to go harder, deeper, and he did so with glee;

 “You want more? Fuck yes, take my dick, can feel your insides parting for me, you like my thumb in your ass? Like being double stuffed?”

 “Fuck…” your head was swimming, your chest resting against the bed as you snuck your hand between your legs and started to strum at your clit, urging your orgasm on as Henry turned into a feral beast behind you, fucking you raw and dirty, you pushing back for each thrust to feel him deeper and split you wider.

 Your orgasm happened without warning, screaming out his name as you came so hard he was sure if he hadn’t pulled his thumb out your muscles would have broken the bones in it. Your knees gave way and you slumped down onto the bed, Henry still deep inside you, fucking you as you lay spent on the bed;

 “So close… almost there…

 “Cum on my ass Hen…” you muttered as he railed into you, and you heard a groan as he pulled out of you, seconds later the splash of his hot seed landing on your naked ass, back and thighs.

 For a moment everything went quiet before you felt him wiping his cum from you, and he moved you in the bed until you were curled up in his arms, the little spoon to his big;

 “You’re fucking amazing Princess, I fucking love you so much” he slurred, before the two of you feel asleep in drunken stupors.

Chapter 9 >>>

[brelione]

Endgame(Kiara Carrera X Reader)

Request:with kie with a like super rich kook SO and bringing them to meet the rest of the pogues and they all expect to hate them but then not

Kiara had never liked you.Well, she had never reallly met you.She kind of just assumed you were a bitch.You were what Sarah Cameron thought she was, you came from a ridiculously rich family.

Your mother was a brain surgeon and your father was a famous actor so that obviously meant that you were ridiculously rich.Kie had done a lot of research on you, finding your name on your fathers wikipedia page and from there finding your blog where you posted videos of him behind the scenes and personal interviews with him on your youtube channel.

She was up for 16 hours straight watching all of your videos, memorising your intro song.You had a good one million subscribers, posting a lot of blogs and videos showing things that you had found on the beach.She would blush and giggle at your little comments.

 “Hey, beautiful people!Its your bitch and today im gonna show you guys my new surf board because my old one got broke on an accident.I mean, my wrist also broke so if you were gonna comment on it, trust me.I definitely noticed.So before I get into this video I just want to talk about mental health really quickly.”You paused to take in a quick breath, speaking a bit too fast.

Theres a new suicide game and its getting across social media really quick so please do me a favor and stay safe.It doesnt matter what the problem is now, its only temporary and suicide is a permanent solution.I linked some suicide hotlines and free therapy sources in the description so please just keep yourselves healthy and happy for me, okay?Okay, cool.”You licked your lips, calming down from the quick rant.

“Also drink some fucking water!Its hot out and I almost passed out the other day and make sure you get a snack because this video is already fifteen minutes long and im probably gonna be ranting for another hour.”You grinned at the camera.

Kiara bit into a carrot stick, her knees on her chest as she sat in the recliner of her living room. “Watching another documentary?”Her mother asked, noticing that her daughter hadnt moved in hours.Kie shrugged, focusing on you as you dropped your surfboard. “This is exactly how I broke the first one-fuck!”You laughed, picking it back up.

Eventually the boys started to spam her phone, interrupting her binge watching.She left her house with a sigh, walking out to the dock and waiting for the pogues.Thats when she heard your voice.It was quiet as you walked, wearing white jeans and a light blue button up shirt.

 “So you guys always ask me to show you the beach that I find all of my seashells at so thats what we’re-”You paused, looking over to Kiara.She quickly looked away, pretending to be busy on your phone. “Sorry guys, I just saw a really pretty girl.”You whispered to your phone, continuing your walk.

From there she finally worked up the courage to talk to you.She couldnt simply message you on instagram, you had hundreds of thousands of followers so her dm would get lost with all the others.

So she found her prettiest outfit and walked to your house, knocking on the door.You looked at her through the camera of your doorbell, knowing that you had seen her before.You set down your lap top as you were editing, going to answer the door. 

“Hi...um...hi.”She laughed, not planning on getting this far. “Hi, um...what’s up?”You cringed at your words. “Nothing much.I just live a block away and I just thought id say hi...im sorry.”She laughed again, becoming more anxious.

 “Its fine!So um...I dont know, do you wanna maybe hang out sometime?”You asked, leaning against your doorway.She licked her lips, trying her best not to blush. “Yeah, yeah ok.Um...could I get your number?”She asked, holding her phone.

You nodded, giving her your phone number and telling her to text you whenever.Once the door was closed and she had left you were a squealing mess on your couch, recording. 

“So you guys know that pretty girl I was talking about that I saw?Yeah so I just got her number and im low key freaking out-oh god lets just hope she doesnt watch my channel!”You laughed before finishing the editing process, uploading it to youtube.

Kiara got the notification while she was washing her face, watching the video and absolutely losing her mind.She buried her face in her pillow, squealing before deciding to text you.

Unknown number:hey!Its Kiara.Do you wanna hang out tomorrow?

You smiled, letting out a sigh.You screenshotted it, knowing that it would be fun to look back at in the future.

You:Sounds good!Do you want to come over and we can get coffee or lunch or something?

Kie:Okay!!12?

You:Works for me :)

Kie:Okay!

You were anxious the whole night, trying to figure out what to wear.You couldnt decide, posting a poll on your instagram.They decided that you’d be wearing a dark green romper and sandals.You went to bed early since you’d have to wake up before afternoon, heart pounding.

When you woke up it was eleven and you were already behind, hopping in the shower quickly, drying your hair and brushing it, trying to get it to a soft texture.You didnt want to look like you were trying too hard, deciding not to use all of the hair products you’d usually put in your hair before a meeting or a date.

You got into your outfit quickly, pinning your pin back with bobby pins so you could moisturize your face, grabbing your box of beads and parting your hair.You braided the two groups of hair that framed your face, intertwining the beads along the way, securing it with an elastic.

You sighed, twisting a golden flower ring onto your pinkie before going down stairs to sit in your large living room, waiting for Kiara.Your doorbell alerted you to motion outside, getting excited when you saw Kiara walking up to your front door.

She was wearing a pink tube top, light washed jeans with her hair half up and half down, bracelets hugging her wrists.You got up, answering the door the second she rung the bell. “Hi.”You smiled, phone in your pocket.

 “Hi.”She smiled back, looking up and down at you.The two of you got into your car, you driving as you started your drive to a cafe. “So how are you?”You asked, realising you knew nothing about her. “Im good, what about you?”She asked, hands in her lap. “I was up all night editing which obviously sucked but you know, it is what it is.”You replied, biting your lip.

She smiled, knowing she’d end up watching the video. “Editing what?Like an edits account on instagram?”She asked, cringing at how stupid it sounded.You shook your head, slowing down once you got to the main road, searching for a parking spot.

 “No, I have a youtube channel.I kind of just post random shit and hope for the best.”You answered, pulling up next to the cafe.She nodded, turning to look at you. “That’s cool, what kind of stuff do you post?”She asked, resting her chain against her palm.

You bit your lip, glancing over at the cafe. “I post a lot of interviews and random videos of my dad and sometimes he’ll take me to a set with him and i’ll take videos with the cast.I got to meet Scarlet Johannson so thats cool.”You replied, unbuckling your seatbelt.She grinned.

 “Thats fucking awesome-were they in a movie together?”She asked, wanting to hear you talk more. “A show thats coming to Netflix soon, its kind of like a murder mystery meets greek mythology and my dad plays Zeus.We should watch it together.”You answered.

The car was cool but you felt hot, probably because her eyes were focused on you.She nodded, liking the idea of hanging out with you more. “That’d be awesome.”The two of you went inside, the barista grinning at you.

She had always liked you and liked showing up in your vlogs when you came in to get your coffee with boba.She looked to the unknown girl beside you, a small pout on her face. “What can I get for you ladies?”She asked, already preparing your coffee. 

“What do you want, Kie?”You asked, moving aside so she could see the menu. “Uhhh….whats a green frappe?”She asked, squinting at the menu. “Oh-its like a blended matcha latte with like mint and vanilla.It's really good.”You explained.

The two of you sat with your drinks, Kiara laughing as you stabbed the boba bubbles at the bottom of your cup. “You know whats cool?These straws are made of hemp plastic so its-”She cut you off before you could finish.

 “Biodegradable?”She asked.You nodded, glad someone finally knew what you were talking about. “Yeah!And the company is awesome, they have like 10% of sales going to help the Amazon rain forests and another 10% going to help clean the ocean.”You smiled, taking a sip of coffee.

The afternoon had ended with the two of you on the beach, taking photos of eachother discretely while you finished your drinks, searching for sea glass and watching the sun set.Kiara was freaking out on the inside, knowing that she was pretty much dating a celebrity.

It didnt take long after that first day for her to start showing up in your videos.You held your camera as you two walked down the beach, her hand holding yours and twirling you every once in a while, flashing a smile to the camera. 

“So we’re currently on our way to a place that Kie will not tell me about because shes rude.”You spoke, turning the camera to face you.Kiara simply laughed, placing her chin on your shoulder. “Uh...no its because im good at planning surprises.”She answered, grinning when you gasped.

Two surfboards were on the sand along with a blanket and a basket full of fruits, veggies and sandwiches.You cut the camera, giggling and pulling her into a kiss. “Love you.”She grinned, giggling.

 “Love you too.”You replied, looking down at the boards.It didnt take long for the two of you to be in only your swimsuits, grabbing the boards and heading towards the water.You clipped the camera to your board, making sure it was secure before stating to film, catching a few good waves on camera before focusing more on Kie.

 “There she is, showing off for you guys.”You zoomed in on Kiara as she rode the wave, twisting her body to get a beautiful spin on the dark blue wave.She disappeared under the water, resurfacing with a smile and hair on her face, swimming towards you.

 “Did you see that?”She asked, a proud smirk tugging at her lips.You nodded. “How could I miss it?”You asked, earning an eye roll from your girlfriend. “Shut up.”She splashed you, letting out a loud laugh when you splashed back at her.

Turning off the camera, laying on your stomachs against your boards, holding hands so you wouldnt drift away from eachother.It was heaven. “So...ive been thinking lately.”She started, a nervous look on her face.

You raised an eyebrow, waiting for her to continue. “And I think I want you to meet my friends.”She tapped her fingernails against your surfboard, waiting anxiously for your answer.She had told the boys all about you.

About how you had a huge following on youtube, how your dad was an actor and how you lived in the biggest house on figure eight.She had tried her best to tell them that you werent like the others, that you were fantastic and humble.

But of course they didnt believer her and ‘would believe it when they saw it’.She knew that if she didnt end up introducing you to them sooner or later that she’d lost the chance to introduce you at all.

You nodded, considering it. “Yeah, okay.When?”You asked, hoping you’d at least have time to think about this. “Tomorrow.”She replied, wincing when you let out a small shout. “Tomorrow?Shit-Kie, im not ready!”You exclaimed, covering your mouth when you realised how loud you had been. 

“Babe, chill.Let me pick out your outfit and it’ll be fine.”She insisted.You gave in, the two of you paddling back to the sand, wrapping up in your towels and sitting on the blanket, eating some cutie oranges.

She spent the night at your house, holding on tight to you even though the two of you were in a king sized bed and she had more than enough space to spread out like a starfish.

The morning came too fast, Kiara raiding your closet for something appropriate for the occasion, pleased when she came across a black bathing suit and a yellow shirt along with some jeans, tossing them at you. 

“Babe, you gotta get up.”She told you, already dressed and ready to go.You groaned, finally getting up a few minutes later, slowly changing and not even bothering to pick up your pajamas.You were still sore from last night, stretching your limbs as you pulled the jeans up your body.The boys were spamming her phone, making her annoyed.

Dumb Blonde:Where are you guys

God:Are you bringing them with you

Trash Rat:Dont bring them with you 

Trash Rat:The place is a mess

Trash Rat:Kie

Trash Rat:Kiara

Trash Rat:Kiara Madelyn Klark Carrera

God:Where are you guys

Dumb Blonde:Wait are they the one with the dad that was in that one movie

She ignored their texts, turning off her notifications and sending you a quick smile, promising to get you an iced coffee on the way.You were half asleep in the passengers seat until she handed you a french vanilla iced coffee, slowly becoming awake.

By the time you had finished your coffee she had pulled into John.B’s drive way, hand on your thigh in attempts to calm you down. “You’re gonna be fine, babe.Everyone likes you, they just havent met you yet.”She grinned, getting out of the car.

You squeezed her hand, following her into the house.The boys were all sitting on the couch, looking up once the two of you had entered.JJ immediately looked you up and down, raising an eyebrow.You felt a bit insecure, trying to figure out what he thought of you.

 “This is (Y/N).(Y/N), these are the boys.Thats John.B, thats JJ and thats Pope.”She pointed to each of the boys.The tension in the room was ridiculous until Kiara pulled you into her lap, the boys looking between eachother. “So whats it like having a movie star as a dad?”JJ asked, the first one to speak up.

You bit your bottom lip, pulling at the skin on your hands. “umm...its really cool sometimes.Chris Hemsworth is a family friend so thats cool but like...I cant go anywhere with him when he’s home without getting followed around and there was this one teenage girl stalking him once and she was climbing our house and was watching me sleep.”You answered, relieved when you heard Pope chuckle. 

“Wait, actually?Thats so scary.”He replied, the two of you beginning to calm down a bit.You, John.B and JJ were all conversating about Chris Hemsworth, all of them asking a lot of questions.

 “Wait-who else have you met from the Avengers?”John.B asked. “I met Scarlet Johanson and Chris Evans.”You replied.Kiara smacked your leg. “You met Christ Evans and never told me?”She asked, outraged.

You rolled your eyes, pulling out your phone to show them the vlog that Chris had made an appearance in.Kiara was just confused as to why she had never seen it before you informed her that it was private. 

“Ew-ignore my face.Just wait a few seconds.”You told them, the phone between the circle that had ended up forming. “Oh my god!Its Chris Evans!”JJ shouted, staring at the phone.Chris had leaned over your shoulder, saying a quick ‘hello’ to the camera before Scarlet stole it from you. 

“This is Scarlet Johannson and I have decided to take over my new role as (Y/N)’s mom.Im sorry (Y/M/N) but they’re mine now.”She smiled.Her hair had been dyed a light blonde, red lipstick and light eyeshadow.

You had been freaking out the whole time. “Wait-will you ever see her again?”JJ asked.You hummed, sure that she’d be making an appearance for a Christmas Party. “Can you tell her I love her, please?”He asked, face red. “She reaches my vlogs-do you guys want to be in one?”You offered, remembering that you had your camera in your bag.

They all agreed, excited as you took out your camera, Kiara holding onto you. “So Kiara introduced me to her friends today and JJ has a special message for Scarlet.”You grinned, pointing the camera towards him. “Marry me, please.”He winked, giggling.

Pope flashed a peace sign at the camera, John.B sticking out his tongue and doing finger guns. “This is John.B and this is Pope, and then we have Kie as always.”You pointed the camera at her.She bit her lip, winking at the camera and making you laugh.

 “Oh my god- what is this vlog.”You shook your head, turning off the camera.When you had posted the vlog that night you were spammed with comments demanding JJ’s instagram and of course you had to give the people what they wanted.

JJ was more than happy to have a ton of pretty girls hyping him up in his comments, Pope getting a lot of attention as well.Scarlet had made sure to let you know that she had watched it and to tell JJ that he was too young for her but she was flattered by the offer.But then your instagram was being spammed.You were being tagged in dozens of edits of you and Kie along with one of you and JJ.But the comments on that one were so funny.

Kieand(Y/N)4life:bruh no

(Y/N)officialfanpage:no <3

(Y/N)officialfanpage:Kiara and them are meant to be bb

Kiara(Y/L/N):Kiara and them are meant to be buddy

KIEANDYNAREENDGAME:uhhh isnt it confirmed that Kiara and (Y/N) are dating?

“They’re catching on.”You told Kie, sitting down on the bed and showing her all the things you were tagged in.She grinned, telling you to post and make it official. “You sure?”You asked.She nodded, fixing her hair as you got ready to take a photo, kissing her cheek. She bit her lip, watching you type.

We are endgame.

@poguestyleskye  @jjtheangel @lovelyelinor @messuhp  @outerbongs  @copper-boom  @httpstarkey @teenwaywardasgardian @drewswannabegirl  @simonsbluee   @jiaraendgame  @khiaraaa-in-spacee  @on-socks-off  @abbiesthings @kindahavefeelingskindaheartless @i-love-scott-mccall​

[mountainmusicgroup]

Managing your Music - Part one

Defining your sound

At MMG we like to teach people how to manage themselves, but we appreciate that sometimes depending on each individual’s situation a Manager might be the answer!

Who knows? Every Artist or band is different.

We have created a series of blogs to help you with a few ‘Beginner Level’ considerations before you tread any further down your musical path. You need to have this stuff down, regardless!

WHERE WE START : Know who you are artistically

This isn’t about pigeon holing your sound…it’s about creating a way to tell someone who doesn’t know you (or your music) where you sit.

Imagine that a busy executive doesn’t have the time to delve into every tiny detail or contradiction from you about what you do. They want to know instantly where to place you and if you are worth a punt. They might not want to develop you, they might want you ready.

Hopefully a potential manager will listen to your music, and find that it clicks!

If you know what you are, and communicate this effectively, then they will understand where you are coming from, and they should know the trends and the industry well enough to be able to push you in the right direction.

The best way to start this is to create the dreaded ‘Elevator Pitch’.

If you got into an elevator (or a ‘lift’ to us Brits) with a big cheese of the music world and you had to describe your music to them before they exit in a few floors time….what would you say?!

Usually when presented with this question in real life, the answer is

“Well, it’s kind of a bit (Insert generic term) but a bit more (Insert generic term)”

I am really sorry to let you know that any vagueness doesn’t cut it.

This watery response is yawn-generating to anyone that listens to new music day in day out. They want you to know what you are and sell it to them, at the click of a finger.

Even if that means you are simply good old fashioned classic rock or avant-garde post punk theatrical ska.

When put on the spot about something so personal to you, it can be very hard to sum it up. Think it as a verbal way to get a foot in the door…will they think of you later with intrigue?

Or will they think there is a gap for you in the market at this time?

You don’t know what a manager, or a booker, or a casting director, or in fact anyone that hires musicians is looking for, so stop double guessing and aim to be unashamedly you.

Most things have been done before so the first rule is to know you haven’t invented the wheel.

But YOUR sound and what you do is UNIQUE.

It is unique to you and that is where the magic happens. Find what that spark is… and then you are on the road to creating music that is authentically you, and someone somewhere in the world will love it, relate to it, and buy it.

I have held many workshops, lectures and seminars in the power of defining your sound.

I work with the participants to define their sound on their terms, and then we listen to their music and make the necessary changes.

I have lost count of the times being told a band is Indie Rock, to find they are in fact more pop based. How we view our music might not be coming across to the outside world….and those are the customers in a business sense, so we need to always look from another perspective (which isn’t always natural!).

There are a few rules that you need to get your head around if you haven’t already.

Being commercial isn’t selling out.

How you view your music is a personal choice, and the important question of ‘why?’ raises its head. Do you want to sell your music or just make it for fun? If you want to be recognised and sell records and get booked for gigs and perform your songs then being commercial needs to come in somewhere. Don’t associate commercial with cheesy pop or novelty records.

Alternative to what?

In my seminars I ban the word ‘Alternative’ unless its backed up with more detail.

One session I had four bands in a row describe themselves as alternative.

My response : “So, you are all alternative? So there is nothing different about you, because you are all the same?”

When we listened to them perform later it turns out one was alternative folk, one was indie pop, one was alt-jazz and one was actually simply hard rock. VERY different sounds when compared with each other.

Alternative tells us nothing without the second part.

If you feel that you are alternative then tell us what you are an alternative to.

I realised that young bands want so desperately to be different. And that is a good thing.

But giving yourself a quirky elevator pitch might be misleading.

You are what you are - own it.

Indie = Independent

Does that say anything about your sound? (Another banned word if not)

It may do…I can write a whole book on the characteristics of singing Indie (it’s fascinating), and there is more to the style than maybe meets the eye. But when defining your sound this may or may not be vague, so use Indie with caution.

If you are an unpolished band and sing in your accent - then maybe you are straight up Indie, but like the word alternative, it’s helpful at these initial stages to back it up.

Remember this is not about putting yourself in a pigeon hole.

Of course you must evolve and experiment.

Nothing is set in stone, but if you only get that one chance then don’t mess it up by being vague, taking ten minutes explaining what your music is like, with the recipient walking away confused and being none the wiser, is not going to help you progress.

Now, about that elevator pitch. Keep it short and snappy.

I know many bands that have agonised over the elevator pitch. Don’t overthink it, just remember you want to keep it concise yet memorable.

There are many sub-genres that come into play.

Do you feel that you are in-between two genres? Put them together and what do you get?

Who are you influenced by musically? Do they bolt on and alter the description of your sound?

Research the genre you think you might be, and listen to some other artists because you might find that you have described yourself as Indie Rock yet you are in fact Noise pop. Or traditional RnB not necessarily Neo-soul.

And don’t be afraid to say you are just simply good old fashioned pop.

Or that you are just a really tight soul band.

Or experimental jazz.

We all need music whether it’s in it’s purest form or something off the wall.

With Spotify playlists skewing the younger generation’s genre knowledge, please don’t describe your music in the form of a playlist title. Calling yourself ‘Coffee morning’ or ‘Sunday Vibes’ means nothing. I write this as I have witnessed this in the past year.

Remember most people that are in a position to network and manage or help you, are ‘likely’ to be older. You might need to have a description for you and a description for the older folk.

IF you need help working out what the bloomin’ heck you are now, then feel free to post a link to your music here or get in touch via our website and we will help you.

Once you have found your sound, keep an eye out for the next part in this series where we will look at your artistic persona and what a manager may ask of you in an initial meeting.

Don't forget to follow us on Social Media and keep in touch about your music!

www.mountainmusicgroup.com

hello@moutainmusicgroup.com

Insta: @mountain_music_group

[backdownth3rabbithole]

Just Keep Breathing Momma..

Below is something that I stumbled across today as I was holding the baby in one arm, making breakfast for both kids (my 1 year old and 3 year old), trying to tidy up the mess they had already made within twenty minutes of waking, feed the cats, clean the dishes, and helping my husband gather his things to rush into work on his one day off this week (also my usual "day off", when I get time to catch up on a small amount of the mountain of to-do's that have piled up during the week).

It really hit home for me today.

Today, of all days, I was feeling the pressure and all of the other stinging feelings that come with being a stay-at-home-mom.

The depression, rage, and impending doom that is brought on by all of the tasks I've been meaning to get accomplished for the better part of a week now, but haven't been able to do because, well, making sure my family is fed, clothed, and taken care of comes first.

I am so overwhelmed by this multitude of tasks that are incomplete and needing help, but being too afraid to ask because I know that after managing a store full of grown men (children) all day, my husband is exhausted too. From this stems the dreary feelings of being all alone, even though I'm surrounded by my beautiful family, whom I know all love me beyond measure. I know they would do absolutely anything to help me, I need only to ask.

Being a SAHM is NOT easy by any means. There are more days than not, that when I wake up, I'd much rather just hit the reset button, crawl back into bed, and start over again tomorrow. Unfortunately, that's not an option. It's the days like today that I have to remind myself that I CAN DO THIS.

Keep pushing Mommas.

Something that was posted from another blog that I couldn't find the link to: "Stay at home mum (SAHM) depression... the elephant in the room nobody talks about. I mean, how dare you complain after being gifted this opportunity to stay at home and raise your own kids? But it's not that simple: of course we SAHM's are grateful to stay home and raise our young but that it's literally all we become. No one talks about the isolation. No one talks about the loss of identity. No one talks about the loneliness. No one talks about losing your sense of self. No one talks about how you had to give up your career because it's cheaper for you to stay home. No one talks about how you cry in the shower because your day was overwhelming. No one understands why you're tired. No one understands why you're irritable. No one understands why you need a mental break. No one understands why you're so aggravated with your kids. No one understands why after you've been home all day, the house is a wreck still. No one understands why you just need 5 minutes with no one speaking to or touching you. No one understands why you've lost your sex drive. No one understands why you're completely and utterly exhausted, after all, you just sit at home all day. No one understands the feeling you have when you are told you don't have a "real job." Most of us were working women at one point. We got to go to a job and interact with other adults outside our home. We contributed financially to our household. (Shoot, most of us want some kind of side hustle or part time job because it would sure help with financial relief.) We didn't feel like an endless maid. We got that break away (even though yes, work is a love/ hate relationship) that gives you space from the people you live with (children, spouse, etc.) because yes, every relationship needs time away in it to not go crazy being around each other 24/7. That's not healthy. Contrary to popular belief – you need a break daily. I can't tell you how many women I meet or know that say "oh, you have too much time on your hands," I sure wish I could stay home, I wouldn't complain." Good for you! I can guarantee you will change your mind 6 months in, unless you're wealthy and have money to constantly go do things. I once was you. I wished upon a star I could stay home with my kids because I wanted to spend all the time I could. I didn't realise what all came with being a SAHM. Oh but you chose to have those kids. You should've thought about that before having them. If you didn't want to go through all this you should've never had kids. And you said you want more? Seriously... Heard those all before. Next time you hear or see a SAHM venting her frustrations, listen and make her feel like she's somebody. That her struggles are not invalid. If this is you mamma , please reach out and seek help to ease your pain if even a little."

[89tczier]

the losers and their tumblr blogs

ik there’s already a billion hcs out there but none coming from my niche hellbrain soooo

richie (tttrashmouth)

his blog is one big ADHD mess, he has a new interest every few weeks and his blog changes accordingly, though there are several common ones 

he never seems to lose many followers for it though

his original posts are funny enough that people put up with it

he’s that user that you start following out of genuine interest and then realise that you’ve already rbed a lot of their popular posts and you’re like

oh shit, i know this fool

he has tags dedicated to each of his friends, they’re usually filled with shitposts or one of their Big Interests 

eddie has two tags, one he knows about, one he doesn’t, and gets mad at richie for not telling him who the tag is for 

the one he doesn’t is full of really gay shit

stan (corvid-company)

stan’s blog started out as a big vent but it was starting to get Unhealthy™ so they switched up their content 

stan knows about richie’s secret tag for eddie and constantly gives richie shit for it like they vague posts about it all the time to get under richie’s skin

‘the intricate rituals of creating a seperate LoveCore tag for the best friend ur pining for....... like the richard siken of it all.......’ ‘THIS IS BIPHOBIA STAN’

it’s 70% bird watching stuff, 20% posts for mike, 9% vaguing about richie’s gay shit, 1% abt being nb (because i fucking CAN ok)

they also have a pretty impressive following, some of it is due to being mutuals with richie, but a lot of it is due to the Wholesome Bird Content

its a surprise to them but they get so damn happy when they receive asks and stuff about their favourite bird watching spots or how to distinguish between different subspecies 

‘i dont know who this guy is, nor do i have a particular interest in birds, but what kind of fucking person would i be if i DIDN’T follow them?’

their tag for mike is pretty cute too, usually its just FarmCore but Romantic stuff they finds, other times its little thoughts they has about them

bev (marsh-makes)

initially set up to advertise her store and products 

she makes things like pins and sew on patches that are really fucking good

she gains a pretty big following from that, people like her stuff and she has a really good quality track record

richie models for her sometimes and everyone kinda loves it

she has a lot of stuff about ethical fashion and makes a lot of posts about the problems with the fashion and clothing industries (eg fast fashion and sizeism)

she also has some quality shitposts

‘i dissociated for like five hours one night and woke up with the best skirt i’ve ever pleated and a top to go with it. my power is unmatched’  ‘op are you ok????’   ‘ye i got a kickass outfit why wouldn’t i be’

eddie (kaprisun)

his blog is pretty simple: things he’s interested in, whatever his friends tag him in, and roasting the shit out of richie

‘tttrashmouth will never be content because he knows im funnier than him’   ‘ur not wrong, eds’

a lot of richie’s popular posts are shittalk between the two of them

he also gets into a lot of discourse because he’s feisty like that, usually about comics or comic book movies

‘imagine thinking marvel is better than dc based on 3 movies’

yes he’s a dc fanboy

he’s not as anti-marvel as he can come across he just really doesn’t get the hype around it 

he Also has a secret romance tag for richie and its half stuff of his own, half rbed from Richie’s Secret Eddie Posts unknowingly (and a bit of bens)

he tags them with ‘mood’ and it gives richie a heart attack each time

mike (hearth-and-heart)

farm core!!! original farm core content fresh from the oven!!

he takes photos around his farm and posts them and ohhh everyone loves them

same energy as stan’s blog (he has a lot of photos of them and the two of them together as well)

he also writes important dates down as well as books he likes

a Solid shitpost now and then but it’s mostly Pure and Wholesome content

people love his photography and unfortunately it gets stolen a lot but other aesthetic blogs but he doesn’t mind so much

he also is the only loser other than bev with an actual Impressive theme: it’s sleek and really fits the vibe

though every now and again he’ll rb one of richie or bev’s shitposts just for a little variety 

bill (deadbrgh)

he posts horror stuff (both from other people as well as his own art/writing) and little bit of vent/rant stuff

his rants are about tropes in horror he hates (eg: ableism and other general bigotry)

his vents are usually about grief or trauma, and he keeps them properly tagged and under a cut

his horror stuff too, he makes sure to keep everything tagged properly and has a link to the tag list in his description 

he sometimes makes a Spicy addition to richie’s posts, and people are like ‘wait why does this Super Serious and Talented creator follow that goblin??’ 

he also rbs a lot of ben’s stuff, people think they’re the same person for a hot minute because ben also writes and draws, but their styles and aesthetics are totally different 

‘people thinking me and eggboy are the same person is really flattering but unfortunately im nowhere near as ripped as he is’ ‘luv u bb’

then people think they’re dating, but also think the one of them is dating bev

they never clear it up

ben (eggboy)

all of his poetry and drawings 

he also makes a lot of lovecore posts that are definitely not for beverly at All

his a few of his poems get really popular so he kinda blows up a bit and he is Unsure How To Handle it

his first haiku for bev is his most popular like people go crazy for it

where his drawings are more stylized, bill’s are more realistic and gritty

people always think he’s straight tho and he’s like ‘could a straight person do this??’ *proceeds to capture the Essence of adoration and devotion*

bev rbs every one of his original posts and hypes him tf up, they collab on a few things and bev puts some of his Iconic lines on patches

the january embers line,,,,,,, people lose it

a lot of his stuff ends up in mike, richie, eddie and stan’s respective Love tags which he finds Perfect

he writes a poem about richie and eddie’s obliviousness and they’re both just like ‘god i wish that were me,,,,,, sounds familiar tho,,,,,,’ 

[adventuresofmonique]

How I learnt to form boundaries.

God says in Proverbs 4:24; “Protect your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life”. 

I’ve had my fair share of toxic relationships and some of my friends always remind me of this verse. Some relationships constantly made me  think I was the issue and this lead to some serious mental health triggers.  

After many failed relationships, I am finally happy to be single and just be free. To have a strong relationship with God and the biggest gift I think God is trying to teach me now is boundaries.

Ironically, the firmer the boundaries, the more flexible and generous we can be. 

My first every relationship I had was full of trust and the fulfilment of a void inside of me that someone actually liked me. My first boyfriend, I trusted so much but little did I know that he cheated on me repetitively. I was so innocent, so blindsided for the fact I trusted him so much, I didn’t need to look through his phone.  Until one day at university, I was getting some lunch and wondering why he never messaged me for nearly an entire day, I was cool with it though - he could just be busy.  Then the heart-dropping text of one sentence, that made me feel my heart drop to the ground and just shatter. “It’s not going to work out, we need to break up”. No reasoning, just a random break up.  It wasn’t until later I found out about the dating applications, texts etc.  I was hurt.

Fast forward to today.  Many failed relationships later and I can’t trust any guy, I also think I am not good enough for anyone, who would want to be with me? 

I once had a friend in high school who said I would never get a boyfriend, because who could possibly love me (Certainly, wasn’t a friend). But, the opinion of this one person, has followed me since I was 17. The demon of “You’re not good enough”, “you’re not pretty enough”, ‘You’re boring” etc. It took a toll and what was my way of dealing with it?  

The most UNHEALTHIEST way ever!!   I would start up relationships when I wasn’t ready and then end up breaking up over silly, small things or beat them to the chase and break up with them before they had the chance to even try to bruise my heart. I would nit pick the things I didn’t like and blow it up in my head and just leave.  But, hurt people, hurt people. I was hurting people left, right and centre and it was toxic trait of mine.  However, this lead me to relationships that were so toxic, it damaged me. I was in relationships where what I thought was normal, when it really wasn’t. I didn’t realize this until one friend said - “this isn’t normal”. I had one ex-boyfriend hide my keys and wouldn’t let me go, punch holes in the wall when he didn’t get his way. I would get told “Apologise to me for being ugly”, “You’re nothing but a whore”, “You belong on the streets” and it went on for about 5 years I dealt with this.

UNTIL, I found God again. They say he left the 99 to find the 1 and the night I was going to end it all, he showed up and saved me. I felt like the was the 1 he found in the middle of all this mess, he picked me up. (That story is for another time). But, it lead me to escaping toxic relationships and lead me to seek help, to become healed and identify a toxic relationship before even getting into one again.  

Through all of this i learnt, when you don’t establish boundaries, toxic people will continue to push. You can’t just assume that they will think and love like you do and will stop when they have pushed too far. With these types, they will never draw a line to protect/respect you -- YOU MUST draw and YOU MUST  enforce these yourself. 

Establishing boundaries isn’t just second nature and it isn’t always easy. If you are doing certain things that ‘people please’ your friends, parents, partner, colleagues or even your own boss, sorry to be so blunt but then your boundaries are weak as anything. 

I once had a friend who had literally had everything in her car. Her boot was like Mary Poppins bag, you just stick your hand in and you come out with whatever you need.  She did this because if something came up that someone needed, she had it. She even admitted to me one day that she hated carrying her Mary Poppins bag around in her boot but she felt as if she was expected to have something when someone needed it. 

Having a ‘Mary Poppins’ bag/life for the world, putting up with cheating, abuse, bullying, disrespect or going out to a lunch when you would rather not is perhaps not a huge deal at the moment, but overtime the erosion of personal boundaries has various number of effects.

When you say ‘yes’ to things that you don’t want to do, you increase your risk of growing more exhausted and resentful -- this will end up taking a toll on your mental health and then that’s when the enemy comes to steal your happiness. PROTECT YOUR HEART!

If you go into a relationship trying to fit in with society or please everyone, you’re going to loose even more. Caving into marriage or relationships because you feel behind or you’re getting old tends to be the zero-sum game. In order to assert your needs you needs, it will be expected to come across anger or even disappointment of how situations turned out or even your ex at times. No matter how amicable the situation -- that’s okay. 

They are you ex, their happiness is not your problem. 

This saying above, we have all heard so much - no doubt. But, apply this saying to your friends and family too. Some want you to reconcile and others want you to bury this dude 10 feet deep. However, this is your break up/divorce/loss of friendship not theirs. If they are helping you and making you feel better -- GREAT! If not, distance yourself a little -- get help and move forward. It doesn’t end here. Trust me, I’ve had friends that never helped, but i prayed to God for friends that are real and that’s what he gave me. REAL and Authentic friends - that tell you how it is but will never not help you. My God is so good all the time and all the time God is good. 

I like to call it ‘Pruning’, Gods going to remove some people out of your life and it’s going to hurt and be a little rough, but it’s okay to put yourself first. 

Will some people get mad? yep.  Will some people just leave you high and try? also yes. Were they real friends though? no. 

Some people will hate your boundaries. You not having boundaries have probably served some of your ‘friends’ well, they will be irritated that you no longer bought your ‘Mary Poppins’ bag for whatever they needed. Again, not your problem. And if they withdraw from your life the moment you stop allowing them from using you, do you then really care?  I found out I was way better off. 

So, I had two options. I could keep living my life for other people and on a one way street. Or I could live life on my own terms. This was a big battle, but i started to live life on my own terms and when I made this decision, God set me free.  The bars of the prison were open. I was free. 

I don’t know if you heard of Maya Angelo (Look her up, I love her). But, she said: “you teach people how to treat you, and I prefer they treat you really well”. 

I actually recently read this book called “The Art of extreme self-care” by Cheryl Richardson (link at the bottom of this blog).  She, basically goes through exercises she went through to help her break the chain of her people-pleasing habits. She decided for 30 days, she was going to disappoint one person a day and this would help her enforce her boundaries. Although, she says that this massively increased her anxiety, she goes on to tell that she learnt to stop caring about what other people think and to start caring about what she thought about herself. It’s really helpful actually, I’ve picked up a few lessons myself. I honestly, recommend this read. 

I’ve tired this a few ways myself. Examples are when asking if I would like to donate some money towards a charity at the check out you can simply say “no, thanks”, without explaining why without explaining how you normally give heaps to charity already. 

Just    let     go. 

Doing little things like this, I have started to notice my boundaries are slowly expanding. I said no to certain gatherings without having mad anxiety about it for about two days Change it up though, even with some of my good friends - when they ask if I want to go out for lunch and I know I don’t feel the best anxiety wise, I say ‘no’. 

Slowly, God starts to reveal to you that the people who actually love you, love you no matter what, They understand.  Their love is not conditional on me always saying ‘yes’. 

I am still fairly new to practicing boundaries and sometimes I find it is easy to miss the mark by being too forceful.  I relate back to Proverbs 4:24 when starting a chinwag and being friendly etc. Usually, when I do this, it is generally enough. But, when I deal with bullies, disrespect, that can trigger my past and lead to anxiety I have a shield and this shield protects my heart and this shield maybe praying to God and leaving it at the cross (Which I normally always do), asking God to bless them, open to forgiveness and then there’s also these -- warnings, blocking texts or people, walking away -- this demonstrates that I plan to enforce my boundaries - to protect my heart because what comes into my heart also comes out. 

Lately, when I make mistakes, doing uni assignments and learning a new skill (at the moment I am learning guitar lessons -- music has it’s way of helping me defuse my anxiety) I try and not fault myself for missing the mark where I wanted to be at and i learnt by establishing my boundaries, this comes to no difference, 

I make mistakes all the time, I’m human. I come to realise that it’s okay to make mistakes and i practice self-compassion. I let people who support me know that I am trying a new thing. They know I am working on my boundaries and that if I overshoot the mark, I know they tell me with love. 

What I wrote has helped me and I hope what I’ve expressed can also encourage and help you. 

Praying for you always, 

Love mo. x

BOOK: https://www.booktopia.com.au/the-art-of-extreme-self-care-cheryl-richardson/book/9781401952488.html?source=pla&gclid=CjwKCAiA4rGCBhAQEiwAelVti9rw-Kp4XvZINbu3G4lNJeqtVE_zDUxkHmZfc8d3AuQfPUHjblwDfBoCWfEQAvD_BwE

[greyygracee]

gorgeous... what does it mean? (sal fisher x reader)

Fandom - Sally Face

Summary - The reader finds out that Sal doesn’t seem to grasp what the word gorgeous means. This fan fiction was heavily inspired by the wonderful anime, Violet Evergarden.

Notes - Thank you all so much for the re-blogs and likes on heroine! It really means a lot to me and encourages me to keep on doing what I love which is writing :)).

As always, No pronouns for the reader are mentioned, if you do see they/them (referring to the reader) within this fan fiction, please replace them with your preferred pronouns. I did post this on AO3 as well, so if you want to read it there, the link is here

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Sal Fisher.

When I say that name, it reminds me of the boy to whom I hold dear to me. It would be an understatement to say that I liked the boy, because in reality, the feelings I had for him are immeasurable, hell, even saying his name out loud gives me pleasure and rolls off the tongue with ease.

Sal and I have been dating for around 2 months now and we have been friends ever since I was a 13. We pretty much grew up together and I practically lived with him at this point seen as we were both of age and we were inseparable- both as a couple and as best friends. 

We were a fairly new couple and it was hard for us to adjust to the sudden lifestyle of showing affection toward one another, so we took it slow. There was the occasional date every now and again, but we never really held hands or anything of the sort- mostly because we just simply weren't ready for that yet.

I remember one occasion where in which he invited me out on a date himself, which was a weird turn of events. He asked me out to the markets that happened every weekend during the summer months of the year, more notably during June when there's the most traffic. I closed my eyes and sighed as I sat on my bed, 'remember...'

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June 15, 1995 - 3:15pm

I shoved my hands in the pockets of my (F/C) jacket as i stood in a market with wondering children, teenagers and adults, all wearing normal attire as they walked past Sal and I. The market was near the Addison Apartments which was convenient for us both seen as we did live in the cursed apartment. Sal had asked me out on a date today, a strange change of events but I (obviously) said yes and encouraged him to ask me out on more dates. I watched the crowd with timid eyes, careful not to stare at the people who i knew would get mad at me for staring.

"Y/N" Sal said to me, his blue eyes were concentrated on me with a hand on his heart, he gripped at his shirt as he looked down at a brooch that was similarly coloured to that of my eye colour. The (E/C) brooch reflected into his eyes, which made him all the more beautiful despite his prosthetic. I walked over beside him as I looked at the brooch myself, he looked at me and I looked at him. we both made eye contact as Sal pointed at the brooch,

"Your eyes... Y/N.. It's coloured like.. Your eyes" He pointed out. My cheeks tingled with a burning sensation that I wanted to stop myself, but the effort would prove itself wasted if i had tried to stop the pink blooming across my (S/C) face. There was a brief moment of silence between us where we both just.. stared at each other. Sal soon after we fell into silence narrowed his eyes and looked elsewhere, obviously embarrassed since he thought i didn't get what he had said,

"Never mind... You probably don't get it anyway" He mumbled as he took my hand and dragged me away from where the brooch laid. After a couple seconds of debating what to do, I pulled Sal's arm so then he stumbled backward into me and stopped walking. Sal gasped as he held onto his mask and fell back into me,

"Stop walking Sal! I know what you meant with the brooch." I said, he looked up at me and sighed, he opened his mouth to speak and before he could speak, I was quick to hush him with a finger on his prosthetic where his lips would be. I smiled sheepishly as I bowed my head and thought more about the brooch that he had compared my eyes to,

"It is a gorgeous brooch, thank you" I said, flustered as his eyes shone a little brighter, I looked toward him to see that he seemed to be in deep thought,

'gorgeous...' he mumbled under his breath as I laughed a little and snapped him back to his senses,

"Yeah, gorgeous! I appreciate that." I said as I squeezed his hand that I was still holding, upon realising this, he snatched his hand from where i was holding it. I laughed a little as I tugged on Sal's sleeve,

"It's getting late, we should be getting home, Sally Face" I said to him, he rolled his eyes as he spoke with what I assumed to be a smile beneath his prosthetic,

"Yeah, yeah, ok mum. Les go." He replied, I snickered as I stuck by his side and walked back to Addison Apartments.

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Those were the early signs of it. Within our first month of dating, we got to know a lot more about one another than we did during our many years of knowing each other, it just so happens that one of those facts was that Sal didn't know adjectives that would commonly describe someone as beautiful or pretty. It made sense, seen as little to no people knew what lay under his mask, but it never failed to make me frown whenever I thought about it.

I closed the door behind me as I walked out of my dad and I's room in the apartment, we lived on the same floor as Sal so it was easier for us to see each other. I walked over to room 402 and raised my hand to knock on the door, however instead I was greeted with a masked face opening the door. I flinched backward and stared at the masked boy who was standing there, he had his blue hair down and was wearing a black long sleeved shirt with maroon coloured ripped leggings. He also wore a prosthetic mask that was coloured purple on one side and white on the other, there was a crack on it so he placed tape in between the crack.

"Sal?" I asked, unsure of who it was, I heard a snicker from the blue haired boy as he nodded,

"Y/N" he replied as he leaned against the doorframe and crossed his arms, I blushed a little as I scanned the boy up and down,

"What happened to the pigtails?" I asked as I stared at him, he shrugged

"I wanted to try out something new today, what's the matter with it?" He replied, I shook my head and chuckled,

"Nothin, just not used to seeing you like this" I said, Sal got off from the doorframe, he walked out and shut the door behind him,

"Fair enough." He replied, I snickered as I crossed my arms,

"What are you? The door or somethin'? I almost knocked on your prosthetic. i coulda knocked you out if i wasn’t careful" I said as I flicked his prosthetic mask as lightly as I could, Sal laughed and messed up my (H/L) hair,

"Shut up you, now where're we heading?" He asked as we walked down the hallway and went to the elevator, I put a keycard in that Sal gave to me a while back and I chose the basement level.

"Outside for once" I replied, Sal let out a hardy chuckle as he looked over at me,

"Sounds nice, you said you wanted to give me something?" He inquired, I nodded and held out a small, brown, wooden box in my right hand, Sal let out a gasp as he reached out to touch it, I snatched it away before Sal and I shook my head.

"Patience, my Sally Face" I said, Sal groaned and he crossed his arms at what I said and faced the elevator doors as they opened. I winked at the frustrated boy and I walked out of the elevator, Sal followed close behind. Larry and Lisa weren't at home, so I asked Larry for permission to go through his house to get to the back of the apartment and, if we needed, if it was okay to use the treehouse. I remember Larry saying 'go on dude, you do you'.

We made our way through Larry's house and outside the back of Addison apartment, I sat down on my knees when we were a good ways away from Addison hotel and I looked up at Sal.

"Sit" I instructed as I patted a spot next to me and smiled sweetly up at the boy, he sat where I told him to on, his knees as well, and looked over at me.

"So, are you gonna give it to me now?" he asked, I laughed and I nodded, I took the box from beside me and caressed it, Sal was extremely impatient, so much so that sometimes it was insufferable. He looked at me with wide eyes and what I thought would be a smile on his face. 

Earlier in our relationship, he did willingly show me his face, I still remember it like it had happened yesterday. Ever since then, when we were alone, he'd take off his mask despite how vulnerable and small it made him feel. I smiled at the boy and put a hand on his mask,

"Is it okay if you take this off? I love seeing your face, Sal, you don't have to take it off, though" I said, he let out a sigh as he nodded, he started to shake a little which I took notice of. He silently reached behind his head as he undid the buckles at the back and took off his mask. He set it to the side and gazed at me. I pressed a kiss against his cheek as I smiled at him,

"You're very pretty, Sal" I mentioned, his face turned pink as he looked at the floor,

"Im still kinda insecure about it though.. It'll take a lot of getting used to but I can trust you" He replied, he looked up at me and smiled sheepishly,

"Thank you, Y/N, I appreciate that" he said in a weak voice, I threw my arms around him and pulled him into a tight hug, he froze up a little as he wrapped his arms weakly around my torso and squeezed a little bit. The hug was warm, and it felt really nice. Moments of slight intimacy like these that Sal and I shared are the reason why we didn't do it much, just so then we could savour the moments we had together a bit longer.

I eventually pulled away and extended the box towards him, he stared at it and looked up at me and then down at the box, his face still red from the moment we had just shared.

"For you" I said as I waved the box around to gain his attention, his face turned a little red as he mumbled 'oh.. right' and took the box from my hand. I chuckled a little as I shuffled a bit closer to see his reaction as to what was in the wooden box. 

After a moment of hesitation, he lifted the lid off of the box and set it aside, his eyes laid upon what was in the box as they turned into the size of sauce pans. Tears brimmed the lids of his eyes and he took out the (E/C) brooch that was inside of the box. He looked at me and gestured towards the brooch,

"I-is this-" He asked as I cut him off,

"Yeah.. The brooch you compared to my eyes at the market a while ago. You seemed mesmerised by it and I couldn't help myself" I said, He looked at the brooch once again and held it up to his forehead with a smile on his face,

"T-thank you.. Y/N.." He said, tears fell down his cheeks as he gripped harder onto the beautiful (E/C) brooch. He put the brooch back in the box as he took a wilting rose out of his pocket, he sighed,

"I remember that day, and I remember the words you spoke... There was one that stood out to me the most, and that was gorgeous" He looked over at me and tucked some of the stray (H/C) locks that had fallen out of my (ear / hair clip) previously,

"You called the brooch gorgeous.. But, I fail to understand what that word means.." Sal said, I gasped as my eyes started to brim with tears that when I blinked, rolled down my cheeks and fell onto the grass below. The feeling of dread hit me like a truck going down a highway at 1000 miles an hour. I whipped my head around to the blue haired boy who sat beside me, my eyes were wide and my (S/C) cheeks were almost pale with shock,

'Sorry, can you.. s-say that again...? Sal?" I asked, I had to make sure that I wasn't hearing Sal wrong. Sal, without thinking, picked up the wilting red rose that I had just put down. He stared at it for a while before pressing the wilting flower against his purple and white prosthetic mask which posed as a barrier between him and I. Petals from the rose that couldn't hold on any longer fell onto the grass below us, and Sal merely watched. He moved the flower away from his face as he faced me once again,

'Please... Teach me what that word means....' Sal said, his voice light and soft, which caused my heart to pang even more than it previously had.

'Sal...' I said, dragging out the 'a'. His stare was helpless and he didn't seem to know what was wrong. I sighed and adjusted my sitting position so then I was sitting in front of him. I took one of his pale hands in both of mine and caressed it. He looked up at me and tilted his head a little, I let his hand go as I raised my arm and pointed to the sky, painted all sorts of hues as the sun was setting,

"What's this, Sal?" I asked, he looked to where I was pointing and looked back at me,

"The sky?" He replied, answering my question. I looked back at him and nodded,

"Right! How would you describe it" I said, looking at him, he looked back at the sky once again and studied it,

"I- it's uh- it's really pretty?" He replied once again, I smiled and nodded and he peered back at me, I pointed to the box that held the brooch inside of it,

"How would you describe the item in the box, Sal?" I inquired, he furrowed his eyebrows, I could tell he was getting frustrated,

"Pretty." He said, there were no signs of hesitation in his voice this time, seeing if I wanted a different answer, I simply smirked and nodded,

"Although blunt, yes, it is pretty" I said, he rolled his eyes and stared straight at me,

"What's the point of thi-" He spoke, but before he could finish his sentence, I pointed at him. Due to surprise, something got caught in his throat and he started to cough, I laughed as I patted him on the back. After the fit of coughs he had just had, I went back to pointing at him,

"How would you describe yourself, Sal" I asked, his face turned red as he stared at my pointed finger. After too long of waiting for him to say something, I smiled sweetly,

"I'd describe you as gorgeous, or what you understand, pretty" I said, he nodded, understand what I was saying. I lowered my hand and crossed my arms as I stared at the boy in front of me. His face turned a little pink as he lifted up his arm to point at me,

"So... That means you'd be gorgeous?" He asked as he leaned a little closer in, I smiled as my face turned a little pink,

"Cause.. Whenever I look at you, I don't feel alone anymore" He explained, leaning dangerously close to me,

"Whenever you look at me, my heart races and I see a future.. a future with you in it" Sal whispered against my lips, his indigo eyes staring into my (E/C) eyes. We were both extremely close to each other and Sal seemed to know this, however, he didn't flinch back. He didn't get impatient and look away, he stayed where he was. I knew what he wanted, but I was too scared to do anything but sit there.

"Y/N... I know it's taken a while for me to kiss you or hold your hand, and I'm sorry. I know there were moments where you wanted to kiss me, where you wanted to hold my hand and know I was really there. I felt it too, I really, really did." He explained, he pressed his forehead against mine with his eyes closed as he opened his eyes once again and tucked some hair behind my ear,

"I hope that I can make up for that.. Y/N, can I try something?" He asked with confidence dripping like goo from his words, I nodded

"Go ahead, Sal. I trust you" I replied, he nodded and he closed his eyes.

He hesitated for a bit, the silence was killing me as much it was him. Sal, of course, got impatient and harshly pressed his lips against mine, it was brief and quick, the movement was so fast I couldn't seem to process it. Before I knew it, the sensation of Sal's lips on mine was gone, and I had hardly felt it. He didn't seem quite satisfied, and nor did I, so he rolled his eyes and gently pressed his lips on mine again.

I wrapped my arms around his neck and pulled him closer, he wrapped his arms around my torso and pulled me closer to him, we were both on our knees so it didn't really matter. The kiss was passionate and, as cheesy as it sounds, full of whatever unspoken love we both had for each other that we hadn't acted on for what I presumed was years. We both eventually pulled away, we were practically out of breath and my knees throbbed.

Though breathless, Sal managed to say something to break the somewhat painful silence of our heavy breathing,

"I love you.. Y/N, I love you so fucking much that it hurts" He said, I pressed a quick kiss to his cheek with a wide smile,

"I love you too, Sal. You're the world to me" I replied, as he got up from where he was kneeling, I grabbed his prosthetic mask he almost left behind. Sal put his hand out for me to take, which I took, and he helped me get up. He pulled me forward so then I fell into him and he wrapped his arms around my torso as he stared into my eyes,

"You're my world too, Y/N" He replied. He pressed a kiss to my lips as he pulled away and stole his prosthetic back. I straightened myself up and he put his prosthetic back on,

"Say.. uh Y/N" He said, I looked over at him and nodded,

"Yeah?" I replied,

"Two things" He mentioned,

"One, will you take me as your boyfriend?" Sal asked, I nodded and smiled widely,

"Of course, only if you'll take me as your significant other" I replied with a smirk on my face, he chuckled and nodded,

"Why do you think Im asking if i wouldn't be?" He asked me, I shrugged my shoulders and shook my head,

"Go on?" I asked,

"Is it okay if you stay the night with me- or visa versa?" He asked with a sheepish smile on his face, I nodded as I pointed over to the treehouse,

"Larry said we can borrow the treehouse for the night.. We could use that? Y'know.. somewhere without our parents" I said suggestively, he laughed and nodded,

"I'll race ya" he challenged, I laughed as I nodded,

"Game on, loser." I replied, agreeing to his challenge. We both bolted for the treehouse with smiles on our faces from what had just previously taken place. As I raced with my new found boyfriend, everything felt as if it were going to be okay.

[thrashton]

Soaring light (elu, chapter 3)

Name: Soaring Light Fandom: Skam france Pairing: Lucas Lallemant/Eliott Demaury Tags: assassin!au, falling in love, angst, hurt/comfort Summary: Don’t get attached, do not engage in any physical contact… The list of rules were long, but Lucas had never been the one to follow orders. In fact, he might have broken all of them in just a week, all because of the piercing blue eyes staring at him from the assignment in his hands, and the charming, mysterious boy they belonged to. Chapter summary: Lucas thinks Eliott forgot all about him and watch Pirates of the Caribbean a few too many times to pass time.

prologue and chapter one&two can be found at the soaring-light tag at my blog, just click on the tag on this post. tumblr don’t wanna show my post in the search tag if I put in links… and on ao3 with the username thetimeisnow)

- Chapter 3.

When Lucas was 19, he met an older man at the bar. The man was dressed in a long, dark coat and a colorful hat and caught his attention in a second, mostly because of the odd choice of clothing.

The man waved Lucas over to his table, introduced himself and asked what he did for a living. Lucas found nothing weird or uncomfortable with the man’s behaviour, and he was also a bit tipsy.

The man told him he had been at the bar across the street, where Lucas worked at back then, a few times and had seen him him work, interact with customers and dealt different situations in a way he found fascinating. Lucas had never seen him before, but he did love compliments.

He had then asked him what he’d do for money, for a stable life. Lucas had, of course, laughed said anything because honestly, that’s how he felt at that point; had a low-pay job he hated and had to move within two months.

That night, Lucas had slipped a pill into an old man’s drink, having no idea what the pill did. A day later, he saw an article online about the strange death of the same man, and another day passed before he got his first contract sent with the post. He had put two and two together immediately.

After that, there was no way out. At first, he’d been terrified at every police car ringing in the distance, and as he receive his first reminder of his next mission, he realised the old man probably had proof he killed the guy at the bar and he had no other choice than to continue.

But as time and missions went by and he realised he wasn’t going to get caught; he grew comfortable. He was one of his boss’ best employees and well respected in their community. It was rare, for such a young age, he’d been told multiple times.

Therefore, Lucas had no idea why he went around, nervous like a man about to be hung (or something, but that reference was all he could think of after watching all the Pirates of the Caribbean movies three times to keep himself occupied) waiting for Eliott to text him.

Which he hadn’t. It had been four days.

He was scared at first, that he’d get in trouble with his boss, but he had been contacted by his right hand, a middle aged, rich woman from the more beautiful parts of Paris, and she told him that his boss understood the Eliott Demuary case was special and could take time. He had gotten an offer to change contract, but he nicely declined.

No one else could touch Eliott, except for him.

Two days after the bar, he had gotten a new follower on instagram. And nearly fell off the bed. He hesitated for around five hours before finally following Eliott back. He watched the video of his face a few (fifty) more times, considered writing him a DM, but then Yann slapped some sense into him and told him he had to pull himself together.

Lucas was sitting in his couch, phone upside down on his right. On his left side, a few pills were laying nicely on a folded paper. The easiest thing would be to find him in an exposed situation like before; at a bar, a club, a restaurant. The pills took between five hours to one day to work, depending on how many he slipped in the drink. They dissolved with first touch of water and didn’t taste anything which made them very easy to slip into whatever Eliott would be drinking.

He would rather not watch him die. Maybe he should lock himself up for a week or two after poisoning him so he didn’t have to see any newspapers when Paris learnt their favorite model was dead. Lucas swallowed thickly. It would be fine.

Then, his phone buzzed. He was lucky no one was there to watch him, because he threw himself over it in an embarrassingly fast speed.

-

From: Unknown number

Hey

-

Lucas stared at the screen.

-

To: Unknown number

Who’s this?

-

Did he answer too fast? Maybe it was someone who got his number wrong. Maybe it was not Eliott.

-

From: Unknown number

Eliott. You know, the cute one?

-

To: Eliott

I’m not sure I know you.

-

Eliott could read sarcasm, right? Lucas bit his lower lip nervously.

-

From: Eliott

Funny guy ;) sorry it took so long to write. i didn’t know what to say-

-

To: Eliott

So you settled with “hey”?

-

Was he being rude? No. He was being funny, right? What if Eliott found him incredibly boring and decided he wasn’t worth answering?

-

From: Eliott

I’m creative like that. Do you wanna grab coffee with me?

-

To: Eliott

I don’t drink coffee. wanna come over for gaming?

-

Considering how much he’d been alone at home, playing stupid multiplayer games for a long time now, he had to show off his skills to someone.

-

From: Eliott

On the first date? ;) you could’ve just said so x

-

To: Eliott

NOT what I meant!!!!! Fine. Coffee!!

-

Lucas was blushing. And extremely happy no one was there to see it, or hear the shocked gasp that passed his lips as he realised his mistake.

-

From: Eliott

sure ;) two hours?

-

Lucas glanced at the clock on the wall. It was 11am now. Okay, that could work, he just had to shower, dry his hair, get it to stick in place, decide what to wear, cry for a bit, decide how he should kill the guy and preferably spend one hour yelling. It could work.

-

To: Eliott

okay. where?

-

From: Eliott

ill pick you up, be outside ;)

-

Lucas wasn’t a fan of the winky face.

-

To: Eliott

do you know where i live?

-

From: Eliott

haha lucas, be ready in two.

-

To: Eliott

you didnt answer, do you know where i live??

-

Lucas didn’t get any other answer. Great. Fantastic. He glanced down at the pills next to him. A few images flashed in his head from the guy he’d seen fall down on his knees two months back, his last kill. A middle aged white man who had gotten away with raping his own daughter. It was his ex wife, mother of the girl, who wanted him dead.

Lucas obliged. He didn’t even feel the slightest ounce of regret over kills like that, but he couldn’t understand what Eliott could have done to get a price that high on his head. Sure, Lucas didn’t really know the guy, but he still felt in his soul that Eliott could never be capable of doing anything like that. He had seen evil in the eyes of the men he’s killed, but Eliott’s eyes had no trace of it.

Maybe a rival? Someone who wanted his followers, his money? He surely had to be rich. For a rich person, the amount of money put on his head might not be too much. That was probably the case, Lucas thought, he was just overthinking this.

He hesitated a moment, but then he put one pill in a small plastic bag and put it in his pocket. Just in case he got a good opportunity to slip it into his coffee.

Eliott was just on time. Exactly two hours later, his phone vibrated on the table. Lucas was sitting, newly showered, nervous enough he feared his stomach was going to turn upside down and then he’d puke it out. Disgusting.

He stared down at the text.

-

From: Eliott

here

-

It was just one word, but he still felt like he was going to throw up. Okay, he could do this. It wasn’t that bad, it would be fine. It would be great. If he just managed to keep his heart inside his chest until he was downstairs, it would all work out. There was no good explanation to why his legs were shaking as he walked down the stairs, nor why he was sweating more than normal.

It was just a coffee. It was nothing. It was fine.

Eliott was standing, leaning back on the hood on, what Lucas assumed, was his car. A black, newer Audi model; just what Lucas expected from him. It looked fresh, and so did Eliott, hair a beautiful mess on top of his head, a black hoodie under a brown-ish jacket. He stood gazing up in the sky, like he was posing for a shot. Lucas stopped behind the door out, just to look at him for amoment extra.

Eliott hadn’t noticed him yet, he was tapping with his foot on the ground and if Lucas didn’t know better he’d say he looked nervous. Lucas swallowed thickly, giving himself a confident nod and opened the door to step out in the warm weather. Eliott looked up; a sweet, big grin spreading across his face and Lucas almost melted into a pile of despair on the ground.

Fuck. This wasn’t good. His stomach made him feel things that he wasn’t supposed to feel. Like, extreme fucking attraction. Pure, strong and annoyingly exciting attraction.

“Hey”, Eliott said softly.

“Hi.” Lucas stood in front of him, hands in his pockets.

“You look great.”

Lucas watched him for a little too long before replying. “Thanks”, he said awkwardly, “you too.”

Eliott just kept grinning as he gestured over to the door behind him. “Hop in.”

Lucas nodded, “so where are we going?”

Eliott fucking winked. “You’ll see.”

They drove in silence. Well, it wasn’t complete silence because Eliott was blasting loud, extremely horrible music. Lucas wasn’t going to say anything, though, everyone liked what they liked, but he was pretty sure his ears were going to start bleeding at any moment.

They left town, driving down an empty road towards where only empty fields would fill his sight for kilometers. He glanced over at the confident man next to him, one hand on the wheel and knee bouncing up at down in rhythm with the music. This was how people got murdered, Lucas thought, which was funny because he was the last person who should be be nervous about getting murdered since he killed people for a living.

Technically, if he brought a knife, he could just stab Eliott right there. No one would notice. If he burnt the body, took the bones and set the car on fire, he’d be good to go.

It would be a waste, though, because Eliott looked hot. Leaning back against his seat, sunglasses on, hair in a mess and singing along to the few words his terrible music was producing; Lucas couldn’t stop staring. He couldn’t understand how he went to the same school as this guy and never even saw him, or even knew this walking piece of art breathed the same, sweaty school air.

Eliott glanced at him and Lucas looked away. The beautiful sound of Eliott’s loud laugh filled the air and made his music sound even worse. What was even happening with him, why was he like this? Who was he?

What the hell was he doing to Lucas?

Eliott parked next to what looked like an empty barn, the first building they’d seen for a good fifteen minutes, but it was recently painted in a beautiful red color. Lucas thought he could hear the clinking of glass from inside. Eliott turned off the music and stepped out of the car without a word, and gestured Lucas towards the front of the building.

“What’s this place?”

“The best café in France”, Eliott said proudly.

A few cherry trees were randomly placed on the short side of the building, and outside the barn door, a big, white dog was lying. He lifted his head lazily when he saw them arriving, but made no effort to greet them more than a slow wag of his fluffy tail. Lucas loved dogs. Just the sight of the beautiful white giant made his heart skip a beat.

“That’s Maxie”, Eliott pointed, “he’s supposed to be guarding but he’s not very good at his job.”

“He’s adorable”, Lucas grinned, “hi, buddy.” He ran his fingers through the soft fur. The dog closed his eyes and huffed out a breath. “What breed is this?”

“Slovensky cuvac”, Eliott replied, “or something like that.”

Lucas was sure his eyes were shaped like hearts as he glanced up at Eliott. “Wow. Okay, what does this place got to offer?”

Eliott opened the big wooden door. Lucas threw a last glance around the beautiful landscape, the big, empty fields and the slim dirty road leading up to the bar, before entering.

The inside was just as impressive. Another big, white dog was sleeping under a weirdly placed chair just next to them as they stepped in, and in front of them, what looked like an old stable without horses, showed the way to another door. The walls were filled with old paintings of women in dresses and men in armor and surrounded by beautiful nature, and a few paintings of animals. He recognized racoons, cats, foxes and a few unidentified species, but they were cute either way.

Eliott pointed towards one of them. “I painted them.”

Lucas raised his brows, “really?”

The proud smile on his face told Lucas he was absolutely telling the truth. “Yep!”

“They’re good”, he said, nodding encouraging.

“You think so?” Eliott asked, his voice genuinely surprised.

“Yeah, absolutely!” Lucas agreed because it was the truth. He’d definitely buy one. “Maybe you can make me one.”

Eliott stopped mid step, watching at him closely. Lucas shifted, thinking he said something bad. “What?”

“Hedgehog”, Eliott said and laughed softly, “that’s what I’d make you.”

Lucas raised his brows. “I’m a hedgehog?”

Eliott huffed, “yes. I’ll paint you something and you’ll see. Now, come on!” He grabbed Lucas arm, wrapping his fingers around his wrist and ran down the old stable. Lucas felt like a disney princess, and he was absolutely loving it.

Behind he next door, a small, cute café opened up. With only five tables, Lucas realised this was probably only for the need-to-know-guests, and not just anyone. A third, big white dog of the same breed was lying under one the table, raising his head when they entered. He barked. A deep, loud sound.

To the left the counter was placed, different buns and creations were piled up to show off the different options to eat. Footsteps were heard, and a blonde head looked out through the door leading in to what Lucas guessed was the kitchen.

“Eliott!” the lady exclaimed happily and hurried around the counter to greet them. “It’s good to see you! Didn’t hear you come in, dogs didn’t react!”

“They like me now”, Eliott laughed and hugged her. “Lucas, this is Alison. Alison, this is Lucas.”

The blonde beauty, Alison, grinned at him with white teeth. She reached up and kissed his cheek “Hi! Nice to meet you. Are you the boyfriend?”

Lucas stared at her, stuttering out an embarrassing whiny sound. “Wha- no. No, I’m not- what? No.”

She laughed loudly, holding her hands up in defense. Eliott was grinning too. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to assume. What can I get you?”

“Hot chocolate”, Lucas said dumbfoundedly.

“And two cheesecake, lemon. Please?” Eliott gestured towards the table for two closest to the big window the room. Lucas sat down without another word, which was probably for the best since he was incredibly talented in embarrassing himself.

Eliott filled a glass of water and followed him, sliding down on his chair and resting his face in his hands. God, what an actual angel sent from heaven, Lucas thought, how was he going to kill this guy? Just as the thought passed through his head, Eliott excused himself to the bathroom and left him alone. Lucas stared at the water glass in front of him.

Just slip the pills in. They’ll dissolve, no one will ever know and he’d be dead within 24 hours. Just put the pills in, get the money and forget about Eliott Demaury and his stupid, perfect smile and his soft hair he so badly wanted to run his fingers through.

Just slip the pills in the glass.

But Lucas couldn’t. He could only stare, stare for how many minutes it took for Eliott to come back in the room, give a half-hearted greeting and sit down again. Lucas continued to stare at the lost opportunity and did his best to ignore the growing lump in his throat.

“So”, Eliott smiled, bringing his attention back to reality, “tell me about yourself.”

[neuxue]

Wheel of Time liveblogging: The Gathering Storm ch 42

In which Rand gives everyone else his abandonment issues.

Chapter 42: Before the Stone of Tear

Ah, excellent, a Rand chapter. This ought to be…well, not good exactly, but. Well.

I know this book is Rand’s darkest hour—at least, darkest so far; I suppose it could get even worse but we’re so close to the ending now that I feel like his arc has to hit a turning point soon—and I know this state of mind he’s in and these things he’s doing are Not How He Is Supposed To Be, and that he can’t continue like this and have any hope of a true victory.

But at the same time, this is what I’ve been waiting for ever since Rand set himself on this path, and I am loving every moment of it, because sometimes you just want to see your characters self-destructing against their own carefully honed edges as the world looks on in horror and all they feel is cold. It’s a thing.

Anyway, we open with Rand and Lews Therin arguing with each other (themselves? Himself?) over ownership (management?) of the List.

No! the madman sputtered. Who are you? It’s mine! I made it.

Except…Rand is the one who made it, who began it. It’s yet another thing that makes me think this barrier is no longer truly between Rand’s current life and his past one but between the things he lets himself think and know and be, consciously, and the things he pushes away and holds desperately apart. 

So where once it was just Lews Therin’s memories leaking across and Rand, frightened, trying to keep them back, it became a way for Rand to shove aside emotions he couldn’t afford to feel and pain he could not endure. He has claimed much in the way of the memories, now—at least, those that are useful to him. And in exchange he has filled that gap with pieces of himself, over time, keeping the sides of the barrier balanced but not as they once were. Now it seems as if it’s just as much—or perhaps more—Rand al’Thor on that side as it ever was Lews Therin.

Which, if this is correct, makes it even more imperative that he let the barrier go; he is divided against himself, and forcing parts of himself away, and still refusing to acknowledge any of what is on that other side as his, even though ‘what is on that other side’ is at this point largely determined by him, and was ‘his’ not so long ago, and much of what was on that other side is now in his conscious perception of himself.

Overanalysing fictional characters? On this blog? Never.

What have we become? Lews Therin whispered. We’re going to do it again, aren’t we? Kill them all. Everyone we’ve loved. Again, again, again…

“Again and again,” Rand whispered. “It doesn’t matter as long as the world survives.”

Oh.

It was his greatest fear; it was the thing that he held to the strongest as a difference between himself and Lews Therin, the thing he could not accept, the thing that made him most afraid of his fate, that it could end up the same as before. He threw it in Lews Therin’s face—You killed yourself, Kinslayer, after you murdered your wife and your children and the Light alone knows how many others. I won’t kill where I don’t have to!—but now… Now even that, he accepts. Now that he has crossed all his own lines, now that he has destroyed a fortress with balefire. Now it is Lews Therin who fears it. Or rather, what parts of Rand he has pushed over to that side of his mind, holding them desperately on the other side of a barrier full of holes.

To hear Rand just…accept that, accept the thing he so reviled, the thing that in large part caused him to divide his mind this way and fight against himself, is…wow. It shows just how far he has come. (Or how far he has gone? I suppose the verb makes rather an important difference in tone there).

To hear him say ‘It doesn’t matter’. 

Which means that now, if it came to that…he would do it. In his efforts to avoid this fear, he has brought it into the realm of possibility. In pushing away everything of himself that fears that fate, he makes it all the more probable. It’s a terrible and beautiful irony.

“We’re here, ready to fight. Again and again.”

The emphasis throughout this exchange on ‘again and again’, not just killing everyone he loves but the fight itself…it sounds very like what Moridin was saying back in chapter 15. An endless cycle of war and death and no way around it. To which Rand at the time responded ‘your logic destroyed you, didn’t it?’ but now he sees no problem with that exact logic. Oh, Rand. Is this truly your own thought? 

He couldn’t let [Min], or any of them, see him slipping. They mustn’t know how close he was to collapsing.

Rand. My friend. It is way too late for that. You are (still) nowhere near as subtle as you think. Though how you think making cold claims of mercy and then balefiring a massive fortress with the most powerful sa’angreal ever created is subtle, I have no idea. After telling one of the people you think doesn’t yet see you slipping to dream on your behalf. Seriously, as cries for help go, yours are…impressive, certainly, and really not at all hidden in any way whatsoever.

So many dead by our hand.

And it was just the beginning.

Your hero, ladies and gents.

“I am well, Min” he said. “I was thinking.” “About the people?”

In a manner of speaking…

Each time he’d conquered a kingdom before, he’d left it better than when he’d arrived. […] Each land he’d destroyed had, essentially, been saved at the same time.

If only you had seen it that way at the time, we might not have come to this. But no, at the time, it was just ‘always I destroy’. Of course he would only come to understand the salvation-destruction duality when he is no longer capable of the former.

Ah, so he’s heading out. With absolutely nothing resolved in Arad Doman, and the situation easily worse than he found it. No point lingering for a lost cause, is that it?

Somehow, the people realised that, and it was very hard for Rand to look at them.

Even now, it’s hard. Even now, it tries the cold he has locked himself in, though he cannot quite admit it. There’s such a strong impulse in him to care that suppressing it takes everything he has. And a good ten or so books of working on it.

Their hungry eyes accused him: Why bring hope, then let it dry up, like a newly dug well during a drought?

That’s more or less Rand’s own logic. It’s why he’s stopped letting himself feel, or to hope for anything that isn’t death and destruction and the bleakest sort of victory. Because to hope means opening himself up to more pain, and he’s too afraid that it would break him, and then where would the world be?

So Arad Doman is being left with even less of a government than the USA had for the first month of the year. That’ll end well.

It is not my problem, Rand thought, not looking at the people.

Wellllllllllll……  *equivocates with both hands* I mean, technically I suppose it’s not, because you’re not actually the ruler of Arad Doman, but only because you’ve refused to take on that responsibility after arguably causing most of the problems here, albeit indirectly. Though Graendal can’t entirely be blamed on Rand, and she absolutely had a hand in creating this mess. But also, being the prophesied saviour of the entire world unfortunately makes said entire world your responsibility, but also that means much of what happened was arguably inevitable, but…

Jury’s out on that one, is what I’m saying.

Oh, right, Ituralde’s been sent up to the Blight. No doubt he’ll be sending a Strongly Worded Letter to Rand when he finds out what’s happened here.

“he warns that something is gathering.”

A storm, perhaps?

I’ll stop making these puns when they stop walking right up to my door and knocking until I let them in.

Rand had wanted to leave directly from Lady Chadmar’s mansion grounds, but that would have been to vanish like a thief, there one day and gone the next. He would at least let the people see that he was leaving and know that they had been left to themselves.

An odd moral hangup for someone who has, by his own reckoning, crossed the last line into irredeemability and can kill hundreds of people with balefire without qualms. And also is very much leaving them to themselves, regardless of the manner in which he does so. 

Oh but wait, it gets worse!

“The food! It has spoiled.”

“What food?” Rand asked.

“All of it.”

It’s almost funny out of context, mostly because of the ‘ALL the things’ phrasing, and also just ‘what food?’ and then wait oops it’s not funny at all because literally all of the food in the city spoiled overnight.

Which, okay, food has been spoiling for a few books now, more or less since the Dark One decided climate change wasn’t working and went for decay instead, but for so much to happen so suddenly? At…probably about the same time as Rand erased Natrin’s Barrow from existence? It feels like maybe the Dark One’s touch was…magnified, or amplified, or triggered or otherwise linked with Rand’s own ta’veren effect, which itself is…far out of the balance it once had.

In which case, yikes.

A city full of refugees, a city already strained by an influx of people brought precisely because he had sent food, now condemned to starvation.

And Rand’s not really in a bread-and-fishes sort of mood, I don’t think.

“What will we do?”

Rand closed his eyes.

“My lord?” Iralin asked.

Rand opened his eyes and kicked Tai’daishar into motion. He left the dockmaster behind, mouth open, and passed through the gateway.

He won the crown of Illian because he kept them from starving, because he ordered food sent from Tear without even really thinking about it. And now, he has refused to claim the crown of Arad Doman and is leaving them to starve.

Without even a word. That, to me, seems like the cruellest part of this. Not that he’s leaving, but that when they bring him this news and ask what to do, he just walks away without a response. Not even an empty ‘I’ll do what I can’ or instructions for gold to be given to the acquisition of food from elsewhere or, hell, even an ‘I’m sorry’. Or instructions that the Sea Folk ships be made available to assist refugees in going elsewhere where there might be food. Or anything at all.

There may not be much he can do, but to simply ignore their questions and their pleas and their need—when it was at one point so important to him that the food be brought here—takes it from awful to cruel. And frightening.

He put the coming starvation out of his mind. It was shocking how easy that was.

It has a similar feel to it as the calm, cold way he destroyed Natrin’s Barrow. Something he knew should terrify him but didn’t. Just…inevitability, and then done. 

It’s a different situation, and he’s not deliberately erasing all of Bandar Eban, but at the same time it really isn’t all that different, especially in the way he’s approaching it. Accepting the huge death toll this will take, and then turning away and putting it out of his mind. 

And it almost hurts him, you can see that in the way he closes his eyes against their pleas and even in the way he rides through the gateway without a word, perhaps because he knows he can offer nothing and cannot bring himself to face them with that. It almost hurts him, and he pushes it away too easily and leaves it behind too cruelly and it almost hurts him; there are cracks in that ice, but what will it take to open them? If enough balefire to ruin a fortress and shake the Pattern, and the imminent starvation of a nation full of refugees isn’t enough?

Bandar Eban vanished, those too-silent people vanished.

Literally out of sight, out of mind.

And now for something completely different! Tear greets him with cheers and adulation, because his turning up must be a good thing. They obviously haven’t heard the news from Arad Doman.

The adulation hit Rand like a wave of reproach. He didn’t deserve such praise. Not after what he had done in Arad Doman.

For once I’m actually in full agreement with Rand’s self-loathing thoughts, because…yeah. But again, he can still almost feel. Enough to hate himself, at least. Enough to abhor what he’s done, even as he does it. But not enough to make him open himself to the pain it causes, because it would only be worse, now, and he cannot endure that.

But at some point he’ll have to, right? So we’re back to the question of…what could possibly make him feel again, decide to feel again, when now that would mean letting all of this hit him in full? And how will he survive that?

Must keep moving, he thought, kicking Ta’daishar into motion again.

If you run fast enough, your problems can’t catch you!

Nearby, two flapping pennants got caught in the wind, and inexplicably entangled. The men holding them aloft, near the front of the crowd, lowered them and tried to pull them apart, but they were knotted tight, somehow twisted that way by the wind.

The wind emphasising the importance of alliances and unity? You try so hard, wind. 

Rand had found that outlanders—no matter what the city—paid him less heed when he visited. This was true even when those outlanders were from another country he had conquered. […] Perhaps they didn’t like being reminded that their lord and their enemy’s lord were the same man.

That’s…a really interesting—and astute—observation, and one I very much like, but I’m having trouble coming up with much more to say about it than that. But I do really, really like this. Maybe it’s just my entire Thing about enemies-and-allies or enemity-and-loyalty or really just enmity caught up with any of its various opposites. But it also seems to highlight the absurdity and futility of war, and the idea that these people shouldn’t be enemies, for they have a much greater enemy they all share, and they’re so much more closely entangled than they think, and yet humanity is humanity and so to war it will go, clinging all the way to denial if need be.

Yet here they stand, united, cheering for him. It’s promising, almost, that so many different people can stand side-by-side and look to him not in fear or hatred but in expectation and admiration. Except it comes right after he has left another city full of outlanders bereft and doomed to starvation. It’s an interesting contrast, and something of a study in the duality of salvation and destruction as sides of the same coin.

And of how much has changed, because the people here are looking to Rand and seeing him as they remember him—as he was before The Last That Could Be Done, as something of a saviour even if he is a hard one to accept at times, and with the benefit of a long absence to smooth some of those edges—while the people of Bandar Eban were reacting to the person he is now. And the two are…different, to say the least. 

It’s a well-done contrast, on several different levels. And it serves so well to highlight those differences, by taking two baseline-similar situations—Rand appearing in front of a gathered crowd of citizens and foreigners in a city he has conquered—and using them to show what was against what is…and even what is against what could be.

From this point on, Rand would be easy to locate. No more hiding in wooded manors. No more travelling alone. Not with Lan and his Malkieri riding to the Gap. There wasn’t enough time left.

It feels appropriate that Lan is, in a way, the…spark, here. The one that sets this final play in motion, the one who makes the move that forces the rest to start their final plays, the inciting incident that begins the Last Battle.  

Perhaps it is just an illusion—perhaps the Dark One was already set to move at this point, and Lan is responding to that, and perhaps everything is being pulled to this point simultaneously and this is just the way it all has to play out… But still, it seems fitting. 

This is, after all, a strike he has been holding back—or held back from—since the Dragon was reborn. An arrow that’s been drawn and then held for twenty-some years, for this exact purpose. Malkier was destroyed and the surviving uncrowned king has been bound for vengeance and then held back from it by a promise to see the Dragon Reborn to the Last Battle, and so that counterstroke against the Shadow’s last sweeping attack against a nation has been held, and held, waiting, and Rand may be the Champion of the Light but it seems fitting for Lan’s own story if he is the Light’s opening salvo, he who has focused his whole life towards this one goal and who finally has been released to follow it.

Bashere wants to know if Rand is even going to bother to tell Ituralde what he’s done and Rand figures Ituralde will eventually find out. He didn’t want to leave Bandar Eban ‘like a thief’ but he doesn’t care if Ituralde only finds out by word-of-mouth or by…just finding Rand gone? Okay.

And he also doesn’t really care if Ituralde leaves the Borderlands and fights the Seanchan. Or if the Seanchan take more territory. It doesn’t matter anymore. It mattered so much, once.

“This whole thing is a mess”

Truer words have never been spoken, Bashere.

Next up is dealing with the Borderlanders, which honestly I’m kind of with Rand on—I still just have a ‘what the entire fuck’ reaction to that whole situation because sense, it does not make. Clearly I am missing something here.

“I have little patience for men who abandon their duties.”

Have we done that? Lews Therin asked.

Does it count as self-awareness if it comes from the voice in your head you staunchly refuse to acknowledge as a part of you?

In this series, I’m going to just go ahead and say ‘yes’, because really the standards are, in fact, that low.

His ta’veren effect seemed to be growing more powerful, causing increasingly greater distortions. And more dangerous ones.

That should be a giant red blinking warning light with very loud sirens, Rand. And maybe a flashing neon sign saying ‘YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG’.

Actually all of that was quite a ways back, across that chasm of a line you crossed, so uh…here be dragons, I suppose.

During his last visit, Tear had been besieged by rebels, but the city hadn’t suffered.

Again, you seemed to see it very differently at the time. What with the starving children and trying to send gold to avert one of Min’s visions and all that. And the self-hatred, of course, but that’s just a constant at this point.

The way he selectively remembers things in this chapter is kind of fascinating. It all looks so much more positive in hindsight—almost a parallel to how the Tairen response to him is so much more positive than the Domani, because in Tear they’re still seeing who he was—now that he’s stopped letting himself care. And now that he’s done so much worse. Now that it’s too late for that shift in perspective to help him.

None of [the Stone] would be much use against an army of Seanchan with damane and raken.

Good thing Egwene is keeping them occupied elsewhere, then.

It’s a killing field, Lews Therin said.

Here, another crowd cheered Rand.

Oh, wow, that contrast. *Shivers*

Hi, Darlin. Also why are we spending so many words on Weiramon?

I like him, Lews Therin thought.

Rand started. You don’t like anyone!

He’s honest, Lews Therin replied, then laughed. More than I am, for certain! A man doesn’t choose to be an idiot, but he does choose to be loyal. We could do so much worse than have this man as a follower.

Is this directed at Weiramon or at Darlin? It seems to be Weiramon, from context, in which case…I have so many questions.

Mostly beginning with ‘what’ and ending with ‘the fuck?’

Lady Caraline was a given; the slender Cairhienin was as beautiful as Rand remembered. A white opal hung on her forehead, the golden chain woven into her dark hair. Rand had to force himself to look away. She looked too much like her cousin, Moiraine.

Was that…a feeling? Careful there, Rand; that could turn into an emotion.

Sure enough, Lews Therin started naming off the names on the list, Moiraine at the forefront.

In the ongoing discussion regarding the data structure of Rand’s list, I propose for your consideration: a hash table. He has been shown a few times to be memorising the women’s faces as well as their names, and here it’s the visual cue that starts the recitation of the list, with Moiraine’s image calling up Moiraine’s name. 

Also since when did it become just ‘sure enough’ that Lews Therin is the one reciting the list. Rand’s list. (Since he crossed his own last line, and killed a woman, thus forcing the list and all its implications and constraints across that barrier in his mind, because he can no longer hold to it).

All that aside, Caraline has good taste. White opals are gorgeous.

Rand steeled himself, listening to the dead man in the back of his mind

(‘Steel yourself, Egwene’ she thought as she read a dead woman’s list of names).

A quick roll call of the surviving Tairen lords and ladies, which I will admit is appreciated because I’m pretty good at keeping track but it’s nice when I don’t have to, and now we can get down to business.

Darlin’s not happy with the ‘hurry up and wait’ nature of Rand’s orders to him to gather an army, but honestly, Darlin, would you rather have to use that army right away? Think about it for a few minutes.

Oh.

Um.

So that army is no longer intended for Arad Doman. Because Rand is very, very thorough in his abandonment.

And because…

“And…where will we be marching?”

“To Shayol Ghul.”

But you can’t go to Shayol Ghul yet, Rand! You still have two books left, and an entire conscience to regrow!

Next (TGS ch 43) Previous (TGS ch 41)

[bi-dazai]

Hey! You! Yes, you!

Do you like fantasy stories? Of course you do. 

Do you enjoy stories of teenagers trying to deal with the typical emotional hardships of being a teenager while also handling a revolution that involves swords, magic, occasional gods chiming in to help, and the power of friendship and learning to be confident in yourself? 

And do you like the promise of not one but several endgame gay pairings? Fantasy gay pairings?! Of course you do!

Then my new online serial is for you!

Priyana is the story of three teenagers - Nik, Rada, and Kane - who find their “fate on fast forward” when the most annoying yet strangely likable character I’ve ever written cruel Prince Leander arrives in their small town. After the prince captures Amarandos (the man who raised the trio), burns their home down, and vows to destroy the escaped three kids, our trio find themselves thrust abruptly into the destiny which they thought they would be following much later on. Vowing to rescue Amarandos and reclaim the throne from Prince Leander and the evil King Olbert, they venture across the land of Priyana, learning about the true, hidden history of their country and their family, and making friends, enemies, and mending a scarred populace on the way. 

The first book, Soul, follows the trio as they attempt to recapture Amarandos and struggle with the strange new existence they have been thrown headfirst into. With nothing but each other, they must learn to work as a team and not just as three moody teenagers raised by the same man. They journey to the mountain-enshrouded city of Nahvsenn, where they encounter a passionate, well-established underground rebellion simply awaiting the moment to finally take their city back from the evil King Olbert’s reign. Could our trio be the herald of that moment?

Priyana takes strong inspiration from Avatar: The Last Airbender in terms of the exploration of themes, worldbuilding style, our main characters’ relationships with the history of the land, and character development. It is written by a bisexual non-binary with an adoration for fantasy, the written word, and using fiction to criticise the ills of the society we live in.

A recommended minimum reader age would be approximately 10-12 years old, as the work contains some death, minor violence, and minor strong language.

Priyana will be published as an online serial, with the first 4 chapters published on the 12th January, 2019, the 5th chapter published on the 19th January, and the rest of the 19 total chapters of Book One: Soul being published fortnightly (every two weeks) from the 2nd February. It will be available as a PDF with occasional sketches for the series on a Google Drive (I will post the link to the folder on my Twitter and on this blog each time it is updated) and as a text-only version in the Original Work tag on Archive Of Our Own.

Chapters range between 2000-10,000 words, so it will only take 10-20 minutes out of your day to read a chapter. Sweet! And even better - it’s totally free. That’s right. A cool fantasy story, easy to read, not to long and overbearing, for free! *Keanu Reeves voice* Whoa.

And good news! If you are just so hyped for this series that you find yourself at the edge of your seat in anticipation for mid-January, well guess what! The first chapter is currently available as a sneak-peek preview! Nice! 

Check out the first chapter here! It will only take you about 10-15 minutes to read, and even less time to reblog and share the news! Because this is the only form of advertising this thing has! 

Even more information available under the cut:

I’ve been working on this almost exclusively over the last two years. Everything is so insanely thought-out and I’m sure I must have gone over everything over a million times now. So to say this means a lot to me is an understatement.

Certain tropes in this story are criticisms and deconstructions of common fantasy tropes, particularly tropes rooted in misogyny, racism, and xenophobia. Certain character beats are familiar to character beats in other stories that I wasn’t entirely happy with - for example, in Book 2A, there’s a character beat in Rada’s arc which is remarkably similar to a character beat in Sakura’s (from Naruto) early episodes. However, I never liked how Sakura’s character change from that beat (hint: when her hair gets chopped off) was so minimal, and often she would be acting like she would when she was first introduced. Rada is probably the best example of me using different character beats and subtly implementing them in hers to, at least in my opinion, show would could be instead done with said character beats.

So yeah, this story is in essence, a lot to me. If you’ve read and shared the news, it means the world to me. Each person that reads it I am eternally thankful for. Each person that shares it and recommends it even more so. 

This isn’t my first major writing project - I’ve been writing long-form chapter books all throughout my teens, with my first chapter book having been written when I was 10 years old (sidenote - that one is a preteen mess in which I introduce vampires out of absolutely nowhere and include a wizard called Carrot-Eye). However, this is the first project I’ve written with the intent of being seen by eyes other than those in my close community of friends and family, and instead being published for those all over the world.

I struggled for a while with whether or not I would charge for this work. I’ve spent so much time and effort on it, and every day has been spent buried in Priyana, that it almost feels unfair to myself to release it for free. But as my first work, and as a poor person with few industry contacts and no industry contacts that could help me in this format, I realised it would be unwise for me to charge for it, and would make it accessible to other poor people like me. Free stories, yall!

That being said, if this project reaches a certain level of success, I’ll happily open up a Patreon, Ko-Fi and maybe a few other routes of donation. It’s my dream to be a full-time writer, and I’ve poured so much of my heart into this project already that I’m fully sure this is what I want to spend the rest of my life doing. I want to make people think with my stories, but I also want them to enjoy them and escape from real life. I want people to fall in love with my characters, to experience their emotions and to connect with my work. I hope I can do that for as many people as possible.

I’m going to now set some promises, as this series is going to be published for many years to come and my promised gay pairings are, as I mentioned, endgame, so they will be happening later on. So the following things, I promise here and now, to uphold in this series:

- there will be both a WLW and a MLM pairing with major characters

- there will be time spent exploring the dynamic and romance of said pairings

- there will be a trans girl  (hint, hint: sister girl) major character with a major character as her love interest

- there is a nonbinary character from the first chapter, who although starts as a villain, undergoes a long arc in which they eventually decide to redeem themselves on their own terms

- i promise not to demonise the gender, ethnicity, race, or customs of any minority or minority-coded characters

- at least two major characters are mixed race, with issues of race, immigration, generalisation, and xenophobia explored from the perspective of racial minorities

- issues such as the above are explored with a mindset of long, long hours and days of research into real life scholars of race, gender, sociology, etc, and especially their perspectives on fantasy and allegory

Thank you for reading this, and if you did, thank you for reading that chapter and sharing!

-Natalya

[zatxrn]

It’s unrelated to this blog but I wanted to share this drabble.

Okay so basically most things revolving around activism and anti-racism and promoting feminism (equality between men and women) makes me very emotional. People standing for what they believe in to make the future a better more safer place for the next generation is what needs to be done more often. Every little helps to achieve this future or to help someone out.

Today was the day that I walked past a homeless women and had to stop. She was a Muslim woman and she was just sitting there with a small bright yellow cup right in front of her. Usually when I see a homeless person, I am overwhelmed with guilt to the point of having to look away so I don’t burst into tears at the thought of what they may go through living on the streets. Today was the day where I decided to take a seat on a bench and think through my actions. My past actions. My present and my future actions. How could I help this woman. And how can I help future men and women from being homeless? People are entitled to asylum and sanctuary after all. Earlier on in the day, two women prayed for me. They prayed and prayed. Part of me felt better but I was still unsatisfied with who I saw myself as.

The homeless lady was still within sight and I wanted to help quite a lot. I was sick and tired of walking past and not being able to help those in need. Even if I had only a tiny bit of money left after shopping, I wanted to give it to someone who needed it more than I would. I made my way over to the woman and dropped the small amount of money I had into the cup, noticing that there was probably only £2 in there from people who had graciously donated money to this woman. The lady smiled up at me and thanked me for the money and I found myself overwhelmed. Close to tears. Her kindness. How she still retains it. That glimmer of hope. I could see it in her eyes.

I smiled and nodded, giving words of kindness and went on my way, returning to the very same bench to think once more and glance over at the area where the woman was, just keeping an eye on her to make sure she was okay. I stayed there for twenty minutes, thinking to myself as I watched many people pass that lady. Some glancing down at her and looking disgusted. Others, averting their eyes and hurrying past. A genuine random act of kindness is something you don’t come across easily in a place like this. In a world like this. Filled with death, poverty and many other horrible things. I thought to myself with burning determination.. that I want to be able to make a difference in this world. To stop all the suffering or to just make it lessen. Even if I can’t be there to do it in person. To participate in all activities, rallies, protests and other events to FIGHT FOR WHAT IS RIGHT. I still want to make a difference in this world. To correct it’s wrongs or try to. Try to make things safer.

I vowed to myself that I would make sure to donate to charities like WWF, Make a Wish Foundation, Cancer Research, Crisis (A charity that helps end homelessness) and a FriendsOfTheEarth (Charity for saving the bees and the earth.)

I’ve been thinking about it in more detail, I’m currently not working and I will have to set money aside for many things next year but by the age of 21 I will make sure to donate a large sum of money to one of these charities and every single year, I will donate as much money as I possibly can to one of these charities because I want to see a difference. It’s not so I can feel like a better person. No. It’s so that people who are less fortunate than you and I will realise that they can still have hope in a world like this. That animals that are going extinct still have a chance at life. The world has to change eventually.

I’m also planning to do more volunteering in a residents home so I can get more of a look into the Health and Social care environment.

All these issues in the world. I will try and fight for what is right. I will not let the future become more messed up than it seems. All this Brexit, Trump, South Korea nonsense. I want to make the world a better place. I want to see the world flourish and become a better place.

Thank you for reading. If you would like anymore information on the charities I plan to donate to then click on the underlined names and it’ll link you to the charity pages. Every little helps. Together we can make this world a happier, healthier place. One free of suffering.

[the-dyslexic-blogger]

Am i a joke to you 8/12/20

hey sorry tumblr i forgot about you ahah but here is another blog after mouths of waiting sorry

Okay so hello I'm back sorry it's been so long thanks to university work drowning me in computers and paper and a waterfall of assignments but I'm back now this one isn’t a walk in the park so there is a trigger warning for the following Self-harm, suicide, Depression, Anxiety, Eating disorders, abuse so do you hear that choo choo TRAUMA TRAIN TIME  enjoy (can I say enjoy?)Rant

When you can’t go out because you feel like a danger to yourself, you feel like if you are on your own you will do damage. Why is it so hard to find counselling in the year  2020? Why is depression and anxiety still you can go to hospital and get help for a broken leg but a fucked up mind with scars everywhere and a raging mind. I believe I’m lonely I believe I will never get over the sexual abuse no one cares no therapist takes me seriously.

Each night it’s like a tightrope walking across it the thoughts and suicide is the rope each night thousands of people fall I’ve lost count of the times I’ve fallen and tried to kill myself suicide is not a joke NO mental illness is a joke life sucks it really does.

My life is a mess my brain is a mess no one will help me every time I try to get help shit goes down. The thing that I think I relate to the most is this spoken poetry ‘to this day’ I’ll link it in the bottom. I never belonged in school I lost my friend at the age of 13 I was bullied and abused my whole life I was sexually abused numerous times by mums friends son I was abused in college and then again in uni my brain is a mess of suicide self harm eating disorders and everyone refuses to help the broken kid who never opened up because of trust issues and the one time I decide hey it’s time to open up I wait 4 months to be told I can’t have therapy even though the assessment was done and all said to be good.

I am told and I do say I tell others ‘it gets better’ or ‘its worth living for’ but I usually shrug it off and don’t believe it all I want is the sweet relief of death and a blade that sooths the pain I feel within.

Just because it’s mental doesn’t mean it’s not real mental health is as real as a broken leg or a cut wrist mental illness most likely turns out to have physical consequences. You know why because you get so fed up of your own brain being locked up with it and the demons screaming in your ears that there is only one way to get away from the pain and that’s to inflict it on yourself

I go out when I can drag myself out of my bed which is the hardest thing at times putting the smile on and pretending everything is fine when inside my head is like a war people win the little battles of depression and not the war the war is so much bigger than people say it is the war against your own head your own voices and just admitting you are not okay is embarrassing at times it doesn’t help I hate my whole body I’m a trans man and seeing my body makes my depression a lot worse at the moment I am not ok I was turned down from therapy after 4 months of waiting so no I’m not okay I’m far from it.

With university work trauma self harm eating disorders trust issues galore I hate every day I wake up and realise I’m alive is horrible each night I go to sleep hoping I die in my sleep I am just not happy with my life and the way the mental health system works it IS FUCKED in the age of 2020 you’d think there would be flying cars but nope we are currently in lockdown stuck inside because of a virus this year has been a shit show but take this year times it by 10,000 and then you have what having depression is that’s what it is like each waking moment of having depression. Sleeping is easy but sometimes I don’t feel safe because dreams and sleep paralysis gets me and then the moment where I’m meant to be safe isn’t I don’t feel safe in my dreams my trauma doesn’t leave me alone every moment is hell.

Feeling so anxious you can't go out feeling as though you're going to go through rape all over again I think our system needs to change. People like me who have been through hell should be a priority people who feel as though the only way out of their problems is the sweet relief of the knife slicing their arm up the sweet relief of the noose as it takes your life as the chair falls on the floor you pull that trigger on the gun BANG your dead.

Depression anxiety and other mental disorders may be invisible to others BUT not to the people who are in constant agony of life the constant burden that life puts on you the constant shots that are fired as you are called the names ‘ugly’ ‘fat’ and people wonder why we are all depressed I wonder why

Anyway sorry its been a while but I love you all

Stay strong

Love Dino xx

As per usual some helplines and also the video I referenced ..

Nhs depression-  https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/stress-anxiety-depression/mental-health-helplines/

Mind-  https://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/types-of-mental-health-problems/anxiety-and-panic-attacks/useful-contacts/

To this day = https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltun92DfnPY

i am aware its dated as the 8th but ti was uploaded on the 9th its nealy 3am and i worte it on the 8 th lol messed sleeping patten .... fun anyways hope you enjoyed 

[shirlleycoyle]

What Alternate Reality Games Teach Us About the Dangerous Appeal of QAnon

This story was originally published on mssv.net by Adrian Hon (@adrianhon)

The far-right QAnon conspiracy theory is so sprawling, it’s hard to know where people join. Last week, it was 5G cell towers, this week it’s Wayfair; who knows what next week will bring? But QAnon’s followers always seem to begin their journey with the same refrain: “I’ve done my research.”

I’d heard that line before. In early 2001, the marketing for Steven Spielberg’s latest movie, A.I., had just begun. YouTube wouldn’t launch for another four years, so you had to be eagle-eyed to spot the unusual credit next to Haley Joel Osment, Jude Law, and Frances O’Connor: Jeanine Salla, the movie’s “Sentient Machine Therapist.”

Close-up of the A.I. movie poster

Soon after, Ain’t It Cool News (AICN) posted a tip from a reader:

“Type her name in the Google.com search engine, and see what sites pop up…pretty cool stuff! Keep up the good work, Harry!! –ClaviusBase”

(Yes, in 2001 Google was so new you had to spell out its web address.)

The Google results began with Jeanine Salla’s homepage but led to a whole network of fictional sites. Some were futuristic versions of police websites or lifestyle magazines; others were inscrutable online stores and hacked blogs. A couple were in German and Japanese. In all, over twenty sites and phone numbers were listed.

By the end of the day, the websites racked up 25 million hits, all from a single AICN article suggesting readers ‘do their research’. It later emerged they were part of one of the first-ever alternate reality games (ARG), The Beast, developed by Microsoft to promote Spielberg’s movie.

The way I’ve described it here, The Beast sounds like enormous fun. Who wouldn’t be intrigued by a doorway into 2142 filled with websites and phone numbers and puzzles, with runaway robots who need your help and even live events around the world? But consider how much work it required to understand the story and it begins to sound less like “watching TV” fun and more like “painstaking research” fun. Along with tracking dozens of websites that updated in real time, you had to solve lute tablature puzzles, decode base 64 messages, reconstruct 3D models of island chains that spelt out messages, and gather clues from newspaper and TV adverts across the US.

This purposeful yet bewildering complexity is the complete opposite of what many associate with conventional popular entertainment, where every bump in your road to enjoyment has been smoothed away in the pursuit of instant engagement and maximal profit. But there’s always been another kind of entertainment that appeals to different people at different times, one that rewards active discovery, the drawing of connections between clues, the delicious sensation of a hunch that pays off after hours or days of work. Puzzle books, murder mysteries, adventure games, escape rooms, even scientific research—they all aim for the same spot.

What was new in The Beast and the ARGs that followed it was less the specific puzzles and stories they incorporated, but the sheer scale of the worlds they realised—so vast and fast-moving that no individual could hope to comprehend them. Instead, players were forced to cooperate, sharing discoveries and solutions, exchanging ideas, and creating resources for others to follow. I’d know: I wrote a novel-length walkthrough of The Beast when I was meant to be studying for my degree at Cambridge.

QAnon is not an ARG. It’s a dangerous conspiracy theory, and there are lots of ways of understanding conspiracy theories without ARGs. But QAnon pushes the same buttons that ARGs do, whether by intention or by coincidence. In both cases, “do your research” leads curious onlookers to a cornucopia of brain-tingling information.

In other words, maybe QAnon is… fun?

ARGs never made it big. They came too early and It’s hard to charge for a game that you stumble into through a Google search. But maybe their purposely-fragmented, internet-native, community-based form of storytelling and puzzle-solving was just biding its time…

This blog post expands on the ideas in my Twitter thread about QAnon and ARGs, and incorporates many of the valuable replies. Please note, however, that I’m not a QAnon expert and I’m not a scholar of conspiracy theories. I’m not even the first to compare QAnon to LARPs and ARGs.

But my experience as lead designer of Perplex City, one of the world’s most popular and longest-running ARGs, gives me a special perspective on QAnon’s game-like nature. My background as a neuroscientist and experimental psychologist also gives me insight into what motivates people.

Today, I run Six to Start, best known for Zombies, Run!, an audio-based augmented reality game with half a million active players, and I’m writing a book about the perils and promise of gamification.

It’s Like We Did It On Purpose

Perplex City “Ascendancy Point” Story Arc

When I was designing Perplex City, I loved sketching out new story arcs. I’d create intricate chains of information and clues for players to uncover, colour-coding for different websites and characters. There was a knack to having enough parallel strands of investigation going on so that players didn’t feel railroaded, but not so many that they were overwhelmed. It was a particular pleasure to have seemingly unconnected arcs intersect after weeks or months.

Merely half of the “Q-web“

No-one would mistake the clean lines of my flowcharts for the snarl of links that makes up a QAnon theory, but the principles are similar: one discovery leading to the next. Of course, these two flowcharts are very different beasts. The QAnon one is an imaginary, retrospective description of supposedly-connected data, while mine is a prescriptive network of events I would design.

Except that’s not quite true. In reality, Perplex City players didn’t always solve our puzzles as quickly as we intended them to, or they became convinced their incorrect solution was correct, or embarrassingly, our puzzles were broken and had no solution at all. In those cases we had to rewrite the story on the fly.

When this happens in most media, you just hold up your hands and say you made a mistake. In video games, you can issue an online update and hope no-one’s the wiser. But in ARGs, a public correction would shatter the uniquely-prolonged collective suspension of disbelief in the story. This was thought to be so integral to the appeal of ARGs, it was termed TINAG, or “This is Not a Game.”

So when we messed up in Perplex City, we tried mightily to avoid editing websites, a sure sign this was, in fact, a game. Instead, we’d fix it by adding new storylines and writing through the problem (it helped to have a crack team of writers and designers, including Naomi Alderman, Andrea Phillips, David Varela, Dan Hon, Jey Biddulph, Fi Silk, Eric Harshbarger, and many many others).

We had a saying when these diversions worked out especially well: “It’s like we did it on purpose.”

Every ARG designer can tell a similar war story. Here’s Josh Fialkov, writer for the Lonelygirl15 ARG/show:

“Our fans/viewers would build elaborate (and pretty neat) theories and stories around the stories we’d already put together and then we’d merge them into our narrative, which would then engage them more. The one I think about the most is we were shooting something on location and we’re run and gunning. We fucked up and our local set PA ended up in the background of a long selfie shot. We had no idea. It was 100% a screw up. The fans became convinced the character was in danger. And then later when that character revealed herself as part of the evil conspiracy — that footage was part of the audiences proof that she was working with the bad guys all along — “THATS why he was in the background!” They literally found a mistake – made it a story point. And used it as evidence of their own foresight into the ending — despite it being, again, us totally being exhausted and sloppy. And at the time hundreds of thousands of people were participating and contributing to a fictional universe and creating strands upon strands.”

Conspiracy theories and cults evince the same insouciance when confronted with inconsistencies or falsified predictions; they can always explain away errors with new stories and theories. What’s special about QAnon and ARGs is that these errors can be fixed almost instantly, before doubt or ridicule can set in. And what’s really special about QAnon is how it’s absorbed all other conspiracy theories to become a kind of ur-conspiracy theory such that seems pointless to call out inconsistencies. In any case, who would you even be calling out when so many QAnon theories come from followers rather than “Q”?

Yet the line between creator and player in ARGs has also long been blurry. That tip from “ClaviusBase” to AICN that catapulted The Beast to massive mainstream coverage? The designers more or less admitted it came from them. Indeed, there’s a grand tradition of ARG “puppetmasters” (an actual term used by devotees) sneaking out from “behind the curtain” (ditto) to create “sockpuppet accounts” in community forums to seed clues, provide solutions, and generally chivvy players along the paths they so carefully designed.

As an ARG designer, I used to take a hard line against this kind of cheating but in the years since, I’ve mellowed somewhat, mostly because it can make the game more fun, and ultimately, because everyone expects it these days. That’s not the case with QAnon.

Yes, anyone who uses 4chan and 8chan understands that anonymity is baked into the system such that posters frequently create entire threads where they argue against themselves in the guise of anonymous users who are impossible to distinguish or trace back to a single individual – but do the more casual QAnon followers know that?

Local Fame

A Beautiful Mind

Pop culture’s conspiracy theorist sits in a dark basement stringing together photos and newspaper clippings on their "crazy wall." On the few occasions this leads to useful results, it’s an unenviable pursuit. Anyone choosing such an existence tends to be shunned by society.

But this ignores one gaping fact: piecing together theories is really satisfying. Writing my walkthrough for The Beast was rewarding and meaningful, appreciated by an enthusiastic community in a way that my molecular biology essays most certainly were not. Online communities have long been dismissed as inferior in every way to “real” friendships, an attenuated version that’s better than nothing, but not something that anyone should choose. Yet ARGs and QAnon (and games and fandom and so many other things) demonstrate there’s an immediacy and scale and relevance to online communities that can be more potent and rewarding than a neighbourhood bake sale. This won’t be news to most of you, but I think it’s still news to decision-makers in traditional media and politics.

Good ARGs are deliberately designed with puzzles and challenges that require unusual talents—I designed one puzzle that required a good understanding of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs—with problems so large that they require crowdsourcing to solve, such that all players feel like welcome and valued contributors.

Needless to say, that feeling is missing from many people’s lives:

“ARGs are generally a showcase for special talent that often goes unrecognized elsewhere. I have met so many wildly talented people with weird knowledge through them.”

If you’re first to solve a puzzle or make a connection, you can attain local fame in ARG communities, as Dan Hon, COO at Mind Candy (makers of the Perplex City ARG), notes. The vast online communities for TV shows like Lost and Westworld, with their purposefully convoluted mystery box plots, also reward those who guess twists early, or produce helpful explainer videos. Yes, the reward is “just” internet points in the form of Reddit upvotes, but the feeling of being appreciated is very real. It’s no coincidence that Lost and Westworld both used ARGs to promote their shows.

Wherever you have depth in storytelling or content or mechanics, you’ll find the same kind of online communities. Games like Bloodborne, Minecraft, Stardew Valley, Dwarf Fortress, Animal Crossing, Eve Online, and Elite Dangerous, they all share the same race for discovery. These discoveries eventually become processed into explainer videos and Reddit posts that are more accessible for wider audiences.

The same has happened with modern ARGs, where explainer videos have become so compelling they rack up more views than the ARGs have players (not unlike Twitch). Michael Andersen, owner of the Alternate Reality Gaming Network news site, is a fan of this trend, but wonders about its downside—with reference to conspiracy theorists:

“[W]hen you’re reading (or watching) a summary of an ARG? All of the assumptions and logical leaps have been wrapped up and packaged for you, tied up with a nice little bow. Everything makes sense, and you can see how it all flows together. Living it, though? Sheer chaos. Wild conjectures and theories flying left and right, with circumstantial evidence and speculation ruling the day. Things exist in a fugue state of being simultaneously true-and-not-true, and it’s only the accumulation of evidence that resolves it. And acquiring a “knack” for sifting through theories to surface what’s believable is an extremely valuable skill—both for actively playing ARGs, and for life in general.And sometimes, I worry that when people consume these neatly packaged theories that show all the pieces coming together, they miss out on all those false starts and coincidences that help develop critical thinking skills. …because yes, conspiracy theories try and offer up those same neat packages that attempt to explain the seemingly unexplained. And it’s pretty damn important to learn how groups can be led astray in search of those neatly wrapped packages.”

“SPEC”

I’m a big fan of the SCP Foundation, a creative writing website set within a shared universe not unlike The X-Files. Its top-rated stories rank among the best science fiction and horror I’ve read. A few years ago, I wrote my own (very silly) story, SCP-3993, where New York’s ubiquitous LinkNYC internet kiosks are cover for a mysterious reality-altering invasion.

CITYBRIDGE/NYC

Like the rest of SCP, this was all in good fun, but I recently discovered LinkNYC is tangled up in QAnon conspiracy theories. To be fair, you can say the same thing about pretty much every modern technology, but it’s not surprising their monolith-like presence caught conspiracy theorists’ attention as it did mine.

It’s not unreasonable to be creeped out by LinkNYC. In 2016, the New York Civil Liberties Union wrote to the mayor about “the vast amount of private information retained by the LinkNYC system and the lack of robust language in the privacy policy protecting users against unwarranted government surveillance.” Two years later, kiosks along Third Avenue in Midtown mysteriously blasted out a slowed-down version of the Mister Softee theme song. So there’s at least some cause for speculation. The problem is when speculation hardens into reality.

Not long after the AICN post, The Beast’s players set up a Yahoo Group mailing list called Cloudmakers, named after a boat in the story. As the number of posts rose to dozens and then hundreds per day, it became obvious to list moderators (including me) that some form of organisation was in order. One rule we established was that posts should include a prefix in their subject so members could easily distinguish website updates from puzzle solutions.

My favourite prefix was “SPEC,” a catch-all for any kind of unfounded speculation, most of which was fun nonsense but some of which ended up being true. There were no limits on what or how much you could post, but you always had to use the prefix so people could ignore it. Other moderated communities have similar guidelines, with rationalists using their typically long-winded “epistemic status” metadata.

Absent this kind of moderation, speculation ends up overwhelming communities since it’s far easier and more fun to bullshit than do actual research. And if speculation is repeated enough times, if it’s finessed enough, it can harden into accepted fact, leading to devastating and even fatal consequences.

I’ve personally been the subject of this process thanks to my work in ARGs—not just once, but twice.

The first occasion was fairly innocent. One of our more famous Perplex City puzzles, Billion to One, was a photo of a man. That’s it. The challenge was to find him. Obviously, we were riffing on the whole “six degrees of separation” concept. Some thought it’d be easy, but I was less convinced. Sure enough, fourteen years on, the puzzle is still unsolved, but not for lack of trying. Every so often, the internet rediscovers the puzzle amid a flurry of YouTube videos and podcasts; I can tell whenever this happens because people start DMing me on Twitter and Instagram.

This literally came a few days ago

A clue in the puzzle is the man’s name, Satoshi. It is not a rare name, and it happens to be same as the presumed pseudonymous person or persons who developed bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto. So of course people think Perplex City’s Satoshi created bitcoin. Not a lot of people, to be fair, but enough that I get DMs about it every week. But it’s all pretty innocent, like I said.

More concerning is my presumed connection to Cicada 3301, a mysterious group that recruited codebreakers through very difficult online puzzles. Back in 2011, my company developed a pseudo-ARG for the BBC Two factual series, The Code, all about mathematics. This involved planting clues into the show itself, along with online educational games and a treasure hunt.

To illustrate the concept of prime numbers, The Code explored the gestation period of cicadas. We had no hand in the writing of the show; we got the script and developed our ARG around it. But this was enough to create a brand new conspiracy theory, featuring yours truly:

My bit starts around 20 minutes in:

Interviewer: Why [did you make a puzzle about] cicadas?

Me: Cicadas are known for having a gestation period which is linked to prime numbers. Prime numbers are at the heart of nature and the heart of mathematics.

Interviewer: That puzzle comes out in June 2011.

Me: Yeah.

Interviewer: Six months later, Cicada 3301 makes its international debut.

Me: It's a big coincidence.

Interviewer: There are some people who have brought up the fact that whoever's behind Cicada 3301 would have to be a very accomplished game maker.

Me: Sure.

Interviewer: You would be a candidate to be that person.

Me: That's true, I mean, Cicada 3301 has a lot in common with the games we've made. I think that one big difference (chuckles) is that normally when we make alternate reality games, we do it for money. And it's not so clear to understand where the funding for Cicada 3301 is coming from.

Clearly this was all just in fun – I knew it and the interviewer knew it. That’s why I agreed to take part. But does everyone watching this understand that? There’s no “SPEC” tag on the video. At least a few commenters are taking it seriously:

I am the “ARG guy” in question

I’m not worried, but I’d be lying if I wasn’t a touch concerned that Cicada 3301 now lies squarely in the QAnon vortex and in the “Q-web“:

Here’s a good interview with the creator of the “Q-web”

My defence that the cicada puzzle in The Code was “a big coincidence” (albeit delivered with an unfortunate shit-eating grin) didn’t hold water. In the conspiracy theorest mindset, no such thing exists:

“According to Michael Barkun, emeritus professor of political science at Syracuse University, three core principles characterize most conspiracy theories. Firstly, the belief that nothing happens by accident or coincidence. Secondly, that nothing is as it seems: The “appearance of innocence” is to be suspected. Finally, the belief that everything is connected through a hidden pattern.”

These are helpful beliefs when playing an ARG or watching a TV show designed with twists and turns. It’s fun to speculate and to join seemingly disparate ideas, especially when the creators encourage and reward this behaviour. It’s less helpful when conspiracy theorists “yes, and…” each other into shooting up a pizza parlour or burning down 5G cell towers.

Because there is no coherent QAnon community in the same sense as the Cloudmakers, there’s no convention of “SPEC” tags. In their absence, YouTube has added annotated QAnon videos with links to its Wikipedia article, and Twitter has banned 7,000 accounts and restricted 150,000 more, among other actions. Supposedly, Facebook is planning to do the same.

These are useful steps but will not stop QAnon from spreading in social media comments or private chat groups or unmoderated forums. It’s not something we can reasonably hope for, and I don’t think there’s any technological solution (e.g. browser extensions) either. The only way to stop people from mistaking speculation from fact is for them to want to stop.

Cryptic

It’s always nice to have a few mysteries for players to speculate on in an ARG, if only because it helps them pass the time while the poor puppetmasters scramble to sate their insatiable demand for more website updates and puzzles. A good mystery can keep a community guessing for, as Lost did with its numbers or Game of Thrones with Jon Snow’s parentage. But these mysteries always have to be balanced against specifics, lest the whole story dissolve into a puddle of mush; for as much we derided Lost for the underwhelming conclusion to its mysteries, no-one would’ve watched in the first place if the episode-to-episode storytelling wasn’t so strong.

The downside of being too mysterious in Perplex City is that cryptic messages often led players on wild goose chases such that they completely ignored entire story arcs in favour of pursuing their own theories. This was bad for us because we had a pretty strict timetable that we needed our story to play out on, pinned against the release of our physical puzzle cards that funded the entire enterprise. If players took too long to find the $200,000 treasure at the conclusion of the story, we might run out of money.

QAnon can favour cryptic messages because, as far as I know, they don’t have a specific timeline or goal in mind, let alone a production budget or paid staff. Not only is there no harm in followers misinterpreting messages, but it’s a strength: followers can occupy themselves with their own spin-off theories far better than “Q” can. Dan Hon notes:

“For every ARG I’ve been involved in and ones my friends have been involved in, communities always consume/complete/burn through content faster than you can make it, when you’re doing a narrative-based game. This content generation/consumption/playing asymmetry is, I think, just a fact. But QAnon “solved” it by being able to co-opt all content that already exists and … encourages and allows you to create new content that counts and is fair play in-the-game.”

But even QAnon needs some specificity, hence their frequent references to actual people, places, events, and so on.

A brief aside on designing very hard puzzles

It was useful to be cryptic when I needed to control the speed at which players solved especially consequential puzzles, like the one revealing where our $200,000 treasure was buried. For story and marketing purposes, we wanted players to be able to find it as soon as they had access to all 256 puzzle cards, which we released in three waves. We also wanted players to feel like they were making progress before they had all the cards and we didn’t want them to find the location the minute they had the last card.

My answer was to represent the location as the solution to multiple cryptic puzzles. One puzzle referred to the Jurassic strata in the UK, which I split across the background of 14 cards. Another began with a microdot revealing which order to arrange triple letters I’d hidden on a bunch of cards. By performing mod arithmetic on the letter/number values, you would arrive at 1, 2, 3 or 4, corresponding to the four DNA nucleotides. If you understood the triplets as codons for amino acids, they became letters. These letters led you to the phrase “Duke of Burgundy”, the name of a butterfly whose location, when combined with the Jurassic strata, would help you narrow down the location of the treasure.

The nice thing about this convoluted sequence is that we could provide additional online clues to help the players community when they got stuck. The point being, you can’t make an easy puzzle harder, but you can make a hard puzzle easier.

Beyond ARGs

It can feel crass to compare ARGs to a conspiracy theory that’s caused so much harm. But this reveals the crucial difference between them: in QAnon, the stakes so high, any action is justified. If you truly believe an online store or a pizza parlour is engaging in child trafficking and the authorities are complicit, extreme behaviour is justified.

Gabriel Roth, editorial director for audio at Slate, extends this idea:

“What QAnon has that ARGs didn’t have is the claim of factual truth; in that sense it reminds me of the Bullshit Anecdotal Memoir wave of the 90s and early 00s. If you have a story based on real life, but you want to make it more interesting, the correct thing to do is change the names of the people and make it as interesting as you like and call it fiction. The insight of the Bullshit Anecdotal Memoirists (I’m thinking of James Frey and Augusten Burroughs and David Sedaris) was that you could call it nonfiction and readers would like it much better because it would have the claim of actual factual truth, wowee!! And it worked! How much more engaging and addictive is an immersive, participatory ARG when it adds that unique frisson you can only get with the claim of factual truth? And bear in mind that ARG-scale stories aren’t about mere personal experiences—they operate on a world-historical scale.”

ARGs’ playfulness with the truth and their sometimes-imperceptible winking of This Is Not A Game (accusations Lonelygirl15 was a hoax) is only the most modern incarnation of epistolary storytelling. In that context, immersive and realistic stories have long elicited extreme reactions, like the panic incited by Orson Welles’ The War of the Worlds (often exaggerated, to be fair).

We don’t have to wonder what happens when an ARG community meets a matter of life and death. Not long after The Beast concluded, the 9/11 attacks happened. A small number of posters in the Cloudmakers mailing list suggested the community use its skills to “solve” the question of who was behind the attack.

The brief but intense discussion that ensued has become a cautionary tale of ARG communities getting carried away and being unable to distinguish fiction from reality. In reality, the community and the moderators quickly shut down the idea as being impractical, insensitive, and very dangerous. “Cloudmakers tried to solve 9/11” is a great story, but it’s completely false.

Unfortunately, the same isn’t true for the poster child for online sleuthing gone wrong, the r/findbostonbombers subreddit. There’s a parallel between the essentially unmoderated, anonymous theorists of r/findbostonbombers and those in QAnon: neither feel any responsibility for spreading unsupported speculation as fact. What they do feel is that anything should be solvable, as Laura Hall, immersive environment and narrative designer, describes:

“There’s a general sense of, ‘This should be solveable/findable/etc’ that you see in lots of reddit communities for unsolved mysteries and so on. The feeling that all information is available online, that reality and truth must be captured/in evidence somewhere”

There’s truth in that feeling. There is a vast amount of information online, and sometimes it is possible to solve “mysteries”, which makes it hard to criticise people for trying, especially when it comes to stopping perceived injustices. But it’s the sheer volume of information online that makes it so easy and so tempting and so fun to draw spurious connections.

That joy of solving and connecting and sharing and communication can do great things, and it can do awful things. As Josh Fialkov, writer for Lonelygirl15, says:

That brain power negatively focused on what [conspiracy theorists] perceive as life and death (but is actually crassly manipulated paranoia) scares the living shit out of me.

What ARGs Can Teach Us

Can we make “good ARGs”? Could ARGs inoculate people against conspiracy theories like QAnon?

The short answer is: No. When it comes to games that are educational and fun, you usually have to pick one, not both—and I say that as someone who thinks he’s done a decent job at making “serious games” over the years. That doesn’t mean it’s impossible, but it’s really hard, and I doubt any such ARG would get played by the right audience anyway.

The long answer: I’m writing a book about the perils and promise of gamification. Come back in a year or two.

For now, here’s a medium-sized answer. No ARG can heal the deep mistrust and fear and economic and spiritual malaise that underlies QAnon and other dangerous conspiracy theories, any more than a book or a movie can solve racism. There are hints at ARG-like things that could work, though—not in directly combatting QAnon’s appeal, but in channeling people’s energy and zeal of community-based problem-solving toward better causes.

Take The COVID Tracking Project, an attempt to compile the most complete data available about COVID-19 in the U.S. Every day, volunteers collect the latest numbers on tests, cases, hospitalizations, and patient outcomes from every state and territory. In the absence of reliable governmental figures, it’s become one of the best sources not just in the U.S., but in the world.

It’s also incredibly transparent. You can drill down into the raw data volunteers have collected on Google Sheets, view every line of code written on Github, and ask them questions on Slack. Errors and ambiguities in the data are quickly disclosed and explained rather than hidden or ignored. There’s something game-like in the daily quest to collect the best-quality data and to continually expand and improve the metrics being tracked. And like in the best ARGs, volunteers of all backgrounds and skills are welcomed. It’s one of the most impressive and well-organising reporting projects I’ve ever seen; “crowdsourcing” doesn’t even come close to describing its scale.

If you applied ARG skills to investigative journalism, you’d get something like Bellingcat, an an open-source intelligence group that discovered how Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (MH17) was shot down over Ukraine in 2014. Bellingcat’s volunteers painstakingly pieced together publicly-available information to determine MH17 was downed by a Buk missile launcher originating from the 53rd Anti-Aircraft Rocket Brigade in Kursk, Russia. The Dutch-led international joint investigation team later came to the same conclusion.

Conspiracy theories thrive in the absence of trust. Today, people don’t trust authorities because authorities have repeatedly shown themselves to be unworthy of trust – misreporting or manipulating COVID-19 testing figures, delaying the publication of government investigations, burning records of past atrocities, and deploying unmarked federal forces. Perhaps authorities were just as untrustworthy twenty or fifty or a hundred years ago, but today we rightly expect more.

Mattathias Schwartz, contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine, believes it’s that lack of trust that leads people to QAnon:

“Q’s [followers] … are starving for information. Their willingness to chase bread crumbs is a symptom of ignorance and powerlessness. There may be something to their belief that the machinery of the state is inaccessible to the people. It’s hard to blame them for resorting to fantasy and esotericism, after all, when accurate information about the government’s current activities is so easily concealed and so woefully incomplete.”

So the goal cannot be to simply restore trust in existing authorities. Rather, I think it’s to restore faith in truth and knowledge itself. The COVID Tracking Project and Bellingcat help reveal truth by crowdsourcing information. They show their work via hypertext and open data, creating a structure upon which higher-level analysis and journalism can be built. And if they can’t find the truth, they’re willing to say so.

QAnon seems just as open. Everything is online. Every discussion, every idea, every theory is all joined together in a warped edifice where speculation becomes fact and fact leads to action. It’s thrilling to discover, and as you find new terms to Google and new threads to pull upon, you can feel just like a real researcher. And you can never get bored. There’s always new information to make sense of, always a new puzzle to solve, always a new enemy to take down.

QAnon fills the void of information that states have created—not with facts, but with fantasy. If we don’t want QAnon to fill that void, someone else has to. Government institutions can’t be relied upon to do this sustainably, given how underfunded and politicised they’ve become in recent years. Traditional journalism has also struggled against its own challenges of opacity and lack of resources. So maybe that someone is… us.

ARGs teach us that the search for knowledge and truth can be immensely rewarding, not in spite of their deliberately-fractured stories and near-impossible puzzles, but because of them. They teach us that communities can self-organise and self-moderate to take on immense challenges in a responsible way. And they teach us that people are ready and willing to volunteer to work if they’re welcomed, no matter their talent.

It’s hard to create these communities. They rely on software and tools that aren’t always free or easy to use. They need volunteers who have spare time to give and moderators who can be supported, financially and emotionally, through the struggles that always come. These communities already exist. They just need more help.

Despite the growing shadow of QAnon, I’m hopeful for the future. The beauty of ARGs and ARG-like communities isn’t their power to discover truth. It’s how they make the process of discovery so deeply rewarding.

What Alternate Reality Games Teach Us About the Dangerous Appeal of QAnon syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

[your-anxious-nightmare]

Adventures In Dad-ing (17/?)

Summary: ooh boy I and so sorry for this chapter lol some shiz goes down for sure.

Word Count: 2023

Relationships: prinxiety, familial moxiety.

Previous Chapters: I cannot link on my ipad... this is going to be a problem I also apologise for the long post I can’t get the read more to work

(because I know this has problems, look up the tag ‘adventures in dating’ or ‘dad Virgil’ on my blog archive and you’ll find all of them)

Tags: @katatles-the-fish @karma-the-tax-collector @analogical-mess @rebeyerfdog @msu82

(ask to be tagged xoxoxo)

Warnings: blood, abuse, there’s also an accident and logie gets hurt.

Ao3

Happiness is a fickle thing. It ebbs and flows like the ocean and can be disrupted as easily as snapping a twig. It brings highs like Everest and lows like trenches and no matter how hard you try asking for help can feel like running a marathon in jandals made of broken glass.

At only 10 years old, Logan Foley knew that better than anyone.

“Boy! Make me a coffee, would ya?” A gravelly voice calls from down the hall, shocking the boy out of his thoughts. Logan stands quickly, shuffling out of his room and towards the kitchen. His room is no more than the cupboard under the stairs, and though Logan loves Harry Potter, it’s dark and dusty and full of spiders and just not comfortable at all.

He readies the drink quickly, pulling ingredients from the cupboards with a speed he’d perfected over years and pouring the water carefully with shaky hands. The walk to the living room is tricky, there’s trash over the floor and his step-father's shoes blocking the door but he makes it just as the man turns to call for him again.

“Took ya long enough. Clean this shit up while you're here.” George Harvey, captain of the Alexandra Police Department, continues to watch the tv screen as Logan picks up the mass of plates and cups on the table. This is a frequent event, so he stacks them up with ease, ducking around the man's view as he goes.

George takes the smallest of sips from his mug, screwing his face up and spitting towards Logan as he goes to leave.

“What the fuck is this? When I say to make me a coffee I don’t mean make a hot mug of fucking milk.” He jolts forwards, splashing the hot drink onto Logan’s arms and chest, causing him to jump and drop the plates.

“God, you’re a waste of space. Look what you’ve done now!” Logan drops to his knees immediately ignoring the searing pain on his arms and scooping up the shattered porcelain plates as his stepfather continues to scream at him. A sharp piece slices through his hand, and he winces loudly, receiving a swift kick to the back.

“Don’t you be talking back to me boy, I put a roof over your head and this is how you treat me? Get the fuck out of my sight before I make you really hurt!” Logan nods quickly, ignoring the blood and tears that fall onto his already dirty clothes and he picks up the pile and escapes towards the kitchen. Small shards stab his feet as he walks across the carpet, slicing the tender skin with every movement,

“I sad fuck off!” George roars, swinging his fist at the back of Logan’s head, hitting him just behind his right ear and sending himself flying into the wall, the plates once again falling from his arms and breaking more over his already burning skin.

Logan screams as the burns are agitated by the glass, his head aching with the force of being thrown against the wall. He scrambles to his feet, ignoring the blood and glass across the ground and sprinting out the door.

He doesn’t know what happens next. He sees a blur of colour, trees and fences and tears and pavement. He hears the screech of tires, feels his body spasm in shock and pain, and then nothing. No pain. No fear. Nothing.

***

It’s 6pm and the smell of pizza fills Roman’s car as he climbs in. He had been sent out on a reconnaissance mission to acquire pizza, ice cream and meringues for dinner and dessert and was finally heading back to his favourite boys. The pizza had taken a while, it’s Friday night and the store was staffed by only two overworked teenagers and an M.I.A manager.

Patton was heading back to his mums the next day and Virgil wanted to give him a great dinner for his last night, so the two had decided that Hawaiian pizza and goodie gumdrops ice cream would be ideal.

Roman pulls onto their street, humming along to whatever pop song was playing (he couldn’t tell you the name but he was sure it was by Taylor Swift) when a glimpse of light catches his eye. A figure bursts out of a house on his left and takes off down the street, leaving a man in the doorway with a bright red face. Roman slows down a little as he continues, watching the person snake their way across the footpath, clearly not 100% sure of where they’re going.

Roman pulls the car over beside them, ready to jump out and ask what’s wrong when they dart across the road. Time seems to slow as Roman realises two things.

One - the figure is none other than Logan, Patton’s best friend and Virgil’s all but legally adopted second son.

Two - there’s a set of headlights across the street,

And they don’t stop,

And neither does Logan.

Roman swings his door open as the car hits the boy, sending him flying up onto the bonnet before the driver slams on the brakes, the boy rolling back down to the dark tar seal road.

Roman isn’t sure if the scream he hears comes from his mouth, it within seconds he’s on his knees next to the boy with his phone to his ear and his fingers shakily feeling for a pulse.

“I need an ambulance to 85 Cresent Terrace, a young boy has been hit by a car. He has a weak pulse and shallow breathing and there’s a lot of blood and I’m not sure where it’s coming from.” He stammers out, hands shaking over the boy as he watches him struggle to breathe. The driver jumps out of their car, skin pale and clammy but a first aid kit in their hands.

Together, the two strangers cover the boy in the emergency shock blanket and place Roman’s jacket under his head, careful not to move his neck too much in fear of damaging him in some other way.

A door opens in the distance, and light spills out across the street. Roman looks up and can’t help but cry out weakly as he sees Virgil jog across his yard in only a singlet and his pyjama pants.

“I heard a yell, what’s going on?” He asks before he locks eyes with Roman, whose hands are covered in blood and cheeks shiny with tears. His eyes fall onto the stranger, who now looks paler than Virgil himself, shaking and cradling themselves as they kneel next to a third person.

“Logan?” Virgil gasps, stepping closer slowly before freezing at the edge of the road. “Oh my gosh.”

“It’s gonna be alright Virge. The ambulance is two minutes out, he’s gonna be okay.” Virgil nods slowly, looking up as a set of flashing red lights appears at the end of the street.

“I’ll get some things from inside, I’ll be one minute tops. Yell if you need me sooner.” Virgil turns and sprints back to the house, disappearing out of sight and leaving Roman alone with the unconscious boy and unresponsive stranger.

“Hey. I’m Roman, I know this kid, and it’s not your fault this happened. Go sit on the curb and calm down. Virgil, the man that just left, he’s my partner, he’ll get you a blanket and water but you need to step away and calm down first okay.” The person doesn’t speak, simply nodding and walking over to sit in front of Virgil’s house.

The ambulance parks up and two paramedics run over, taking over from Roman and assessing Logan before pushing him away as a pair of police walk over.

Roman stands next to the stranger, who’s now acquired a soft blue blanket and a plastic cup of water, both explaining what happened from either view. Virgil appears and disappears between the house and the scene, helping the paramedics with Logan’s medical history (as much as he knows of it) and keeping Patton away from the windows.

“Sir, you’re free to go, someone will be in contact in the next few days if we need anything else.” The officers dismiss Roman, helping the stranger into the back of their cruiser to take them home after parking their car safely to the side of the road.

“We need an adult in the vehicle to take him to the hospital.” A paramedic pipes up as Virgil appears again, giving the stranger one more sandwich and taking back the blanket.

“You go. I’ll get Patton and meet you there in my car.” Roman orders, already taking the blanket and walking towards the house. Virgil just nods, climbing in next to the boy and waving as the doors close.

The next two hours are a blur. Roman gets himself and Patton dressed, finds a change of clothes for Logan and Virgil, puts the pizza into the fridge and piles back into his car, all while deflecting Patton’s questions as much as possible.

He remembers sitting in the waiting room, texting Virgil and weakly explaining what happened to Patton. He remembers the doctors telling him Logan needs surgery, then almost not letting him and Virgil sign for it because they aren’t his legal caregivers, Patton crying because he can’t see his friend. It’s a mess of time that doesn’t make sense and Roman only finally gets to breathe when the three are sat in the ICU next to a broken boy with a tube down his throat and more wires in his arms than fingers on his hands.

“Logan’s gonna wake up right?” Patton cries, cradled in his dad's arms as he looks over his friend, bruises and cuts littering his dark skin.

“Of course baby, he’s strong. He’ll be alright.” Virgil isn’t sure whether he’s saying it to convince Patton or himself, but the only thing keeping him in one piece is Roman’s hand on his knee.

They sit for hours, doctors and nurses coming in and out of the room every 10 minutes, every time asking if they know the contact for his parents. Every time they ask, Virgil says no, explains that it’s best they not be called, and says he’s as close to a parent as they get. Of course, that doesn’t fly and they do eventually call his birth mother but as expected she's brash and careless and rude and doesn’t turn up at all.

The next morning, Patton is curled up on a spare cot across the room, Roman sitting next to the bed with a book in his hands and Virgil leaning against his shoulder with a blanket tucked beneath his chin. Virgil's phone begins to chime loudly and the man jolts up, answering it groggily and rubbing at his eyes tiredly.

“Oh shit. I’m so sorry, we’re at the hospital.” He pauses as the person answers. “No, he’s fine. I’m really sorry. Look can you come to get him here? We can’t leave and I have no way to get him- No I understand that that’s no- if you’d just- Meghann!” He pulls the phone away from his ear and slams it down on the table, standing up to pace the room.

“Virge?” Roman asks quietly, noting that the phone was slammed back down and thankfully isn’t cracked.

“Meghann was meant to pick Patton up ten minutes ago but we’re here and she’s there and she said she’s calling the cops. But surely she can’t do that, he’s here because his friend is in the hospital and she can’t make him leave right?”

“I’m not sure Virgil, I don't know where the law lies with this.” Roman goes to calm him down when a machine starts to beep loudly, two doctors rushing in and tending to the injured child. The family are ushered back to the waiting room, Patton waking due to the commotion and confusedly wandering off with his dad's shirt grasped tightly in his fist.

“Pa? What’s happening?” Virgil shakes his head sitting down with his head in his hands.

“I don’t know Patty-Cake, I really don’t know.”

[thrashton]

soaring light (chapter two)

here we go!!!

Name: Soaring Light

Fandom: Skam france

Pairing: Lucas Lallemant/Eliott Demaury

Tags: assassin!au, falling in love, angst, hurt/comfort

Summary: Do not get attached, do not waste time, do not engage in any physical contact… The list of rules were long, but Lucas had never been the one to follow orders. In fact, he might have broken all of them in just a week, all because of the piercing blue eyes staring at him from the assignment in his hands, and the charming, mysterious boy they belonged to.

Chapter summary: Lucas decides a drunk, fun and most of all; care-free squad night is what he needs. Life decides that no, it really isn’t.

————

prologue and chapter one can be found at the soaring-light tag at my blog, just click on the tag on this post. tumblr don’t wanna show my post in the search tag if I put in links… and on ao3 with the username thetimeisnow)

Chapter two.

The music was way too loud. Lucas was already half drunk as he, Yann and Basile finally got to the bar. It was 9:24pm. He wasn’t very good at keeping times, after all.

Arthur had cancelled last second, saying he rather be home with his new girlfriend, who he was yet to introduce to them, but that was a whole other conversation Lucas would take with him when he was in the mood to discuss someone else’s love life; Arthur was never late with the dirty details.

He had put on his dark blue shirt, nicely folded the edges over his wrists. His hair was a mess like usual, but there was no point in trying to fix it because it never stayed the way he wanted, anyways. If he was going to meet the person of his dreams that night, they would have to accept him with his faulty hair, easy as that.

Yann tugged on his shirt, pointing towards the bar. Manon and Emma were standing leaned back against the counter, Mika nowhere to be seen. Probably stealing all attention on the dance floor, Lucas guessed. He was already half drunk and was seriously considered joining Mika after downing a few beers.

“Manon!” He yelled over the music and her head snapped up, a big grin spreading across her soft face. She was really, really pretty. Especially in the dark red top and the black, short skit she was wearing. “Looking pretty as ever.” He winked.

Manon rolled her eyes before pulling her into a quick hug. “Don’t act like you’re interested.”

He laughed, letting Yann and Basile pass him to say hello to the two ladies. Yann gave Emma the most awkward hug Lucas had seen in his life, but he decided not to mention it to keep some of Yann’s pride. It has been years since they broke up and both of them had gone through multiple partners, but the weird tension between them never seemed to really fade completely.

“Didn’t expect you to show up at all”, Emma raised her brows and gestured to the watch on her wrist.

“Sorry, got caught up in beer and Eliott Demuary”, Yann excused them and Lucas threw him a quick glare, his heart starting to pumping harder just by hearing his stupid name.

Lucas had, with no shame, asked everything he could think of regarding Eliott. Yann knew a lot, it turned out, what class he was in, who his friends were, what he did for a living (full time model, that asshole). Single, as what they could find putting their stalking skills together. A beautiful laugh, but Lucas didn’t say that out loud. Nor did he have to, because Yann glanced at him knowingly as Lucas clenched his jaw when Eliott started laughing in the interview they found on an extremely sketchy website. They didn’t find anything that gave Lucas a clue to why he was worth so much money, though.

“Eliott Demaury?” Manon raised her brows, “why?”

“You know him too?” Lucas sighed.

“Yeah, of course. Went to our school. Why are you searching him up?” The way she looked at him, Lucas knew she knew exactly why. Her brows were slightly furrowed and her lips pressed together hard. She didn’t look too happy.

“Reasons”, Lucas shrugged.

Manon pouted. “That’s unfair. He’s a good person.”

Lucas shrugged. “Lot of money.”

“Yeah, he’s definitely rich”, Basile agreed with a nod, clearly wanting to join the conversation. Even though the money Eliott had wasn’t what Lucas meant, Manon played along.

“I’m sure”, she said, “but whatever. Next round on me!”

She leaned over the counter, smiling brightly up at the bartender who couldn’t ignore her invite. Lucas was thinking beer, Manon was thinking shots. So in conclusion, shots were the next thing up on the table.

It slipped down easily, like always, and Lucas pulled a face. Manon wasn’t joking around. Disgustingly strong, but just what he needed. He had left the pills he used to drip into his victims drinks or food at home, only because he planned to get drunk enough to maybe accidentally drop them.

Two warm hands embraced his shoulders and Mika’s smiling face showed up on his right. “Lucas! My favorite! How are you?”

Lucas grinned at his past roommate, holding his beer in his direction. Mika took a sip. “I’m getting drunk, what’s better? You?”

“I’m dancing, and, wait- Gabriel!” A black haired guy snapped his head up.”Lucas, this is Gabriel, my love for tonight. Gabriel, this is Lucas, my fake brother.”

Lucas held out his hand and Gabriel shook it. “Hi”, he said.

“How nice to finally meet you”, Gabriel smiled back and Mika laughed, a high pitched sound that died out in the loud music. He grabbed Gabriel’s hand and they disappeared out on the dancefloor again.

Yann frowned. “Not even a greeting, I can’t believe this.”

“Probably didn’t recognize you, you never dress up”, Lucas pointed out.

Yann shoved a finger in his face. “At least I’m not that”, he pointed over at Basile who had somehow managed to get a seat between two cute brunettes.

“At least you’re not that”, Lucas agreed, a smirk playing on his lips, “Another shot?”

“The strongest you can afford.”

“Don’t try me”, Lucas warned him, because he would waste all his money considering the amount he was getting straight to his account.

The tattooed bartender met his eye and raised his brows in a question. “Four or six?” He asked. “Eight”, Lucas grinned and rained a smile in return.

The bartender leaned towards him. “Ten?” It was a challenge.

Lucas blew his cheeks up, “you trying to get us kicked out?”

The bartender winked at him. “I’m trying to get you to dance.” He had a playful tone and Lucas meant he was joking around wtih him.

“Eight”, he decided and the bartender nodded.

“Sure, sweetheart. Jacob”, he held his hand out and Lucas took it.

“Lucas.”

Jacob nodded and turned around to get a bottle from the top shelf. Next to them, Yann was watching him suspiciously. Lucas ignored him, and ignored every other hand in the air as people tried to get Jacob’s attention.

He placed two shot glasses on the table and filled them up to the top. “On the house”, he winked and gestured towards Yann to take the the one on the left.

“Cheers”, Yann held his glass out towards Lucas, who met him half way. “Cheers, buddy.”

The night was a success, least to say. Jacob continued flirting with him and they got drink after drink for free for the whole gang. Basile had joined them again as he noticed how the alcohol started to pour in. That was, apparently, more interesting than getting laid. Lucas understood him.

It was a bit over 12am when he decided he should probably find a bathroom. His vision was slightly blurry, but he managed without causing too much damage, dance between the packed dance floor. He reached the bathroom with a proud, sloppy grin on his face.

And stumbled over an empty glass on the floor.

Two strong hands grabbed Lucas’ upper arms, warmth spreading all across his body from the sudden, unexpected touch, and kept him from faceplanting right into the door. His heart was racing like a Ferarri as his brain went over the ugly bruise he would have had in the middle of his forehead if his mysterious saviour hadn’t been there. He glanced up to thank him, and was met by the same piercing, stupid eyes he’d been cussing over for the past hours.

Fuck.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

Fuck. What the fuck? Was his life a fucking Disney movie? What was this? What was Eliott Demaury doing here? What was he doing here holding Lucas? Holding Lucas? Lucas snapped his arms back, but he knew he was staring. He couldn’t help it.

Eliott watched him too, an amused look spreading across his face and Lucas realised he had to close his mouth before he started drooling, because Eliott wasn’t only way hotter than in reality than in the pictures, he smelled like fucking heaven too. Of course he did.

“I’ll take the staring as a compliment”, Eliott said, the amusement clear in his voice. His soft voice killed every other sound in the bad and Lucas wanted to hear it forever.

He also wanted to punch him. He wasn’t sure why.

“Uh”, he stammered, “I- uh. Yeah. Thanks. For saving me, you know, from, uh, yeah.” Wow, great, really smooth.

Eliott kept grinning at him. “No worries. Right place at the right time, I guess. I recognize you, have we met before?”

“No”, Lucas answered way too quickly.

Eliott tilted his head to the side, squinting his eyes and Lucas thought he was going to melt through the floor because, holy shit. Being watched by him this intensely sent electric shivers down his spine.

“Lucas?” Eliott asked and Lucas was gaping at him again. “Lallemant, right?”

It took Lucas a moment to come back down to reality again. He nodded slowly. “We went to the same school”, he said to not seem stupid.

“We did”, Eliott agreed with a slow nod, “thought you hadn’t met me before?”

Lucas wished he could just grab the amusement and take it out of his voice so he didn’t have to stand there weirdly embarrassed with himself. Thank god the dark lightning hid the blush creeping up on his cheeks.

“I haven’t”, Lucas insisted, suddenly forgetting everything about going to the toilet. The definition of a greek (but french) god was standing in front of him and his eyes would roll back in his head and give up if he even tried to walk away. “Maybe I’ve seen you.”

“I’ve seen you too.” Eliott smiled. Fuck, that was soft, the way his lips slightly curled up on each side. “You going in?” Eliott pointed at the bathroom door behind them.

Like he was reading his mind, Lucas thought. “No.”

“Then why are you at the toilets?”

“I- uh.” He had no good answer. “I don’t know.”

Eliott nodded again, moving a bit closer to Lucas as he let someone pass by behind him. “So, wasn’t the video good enough for you?”

Lucas frowned, his mind going over any possible option to what Eliott could have meant by that when- Instagram. “Oh. Shit. You saw that?” The disaster of accidentally liking his video. Twice.

The grin was back. Lucas clenched his jaw. “Of course, kind of charming, actually. Too bad you didn’t keep the like.”

“Why?”

“Having a cute guy like the only picture of me is good for my self confidence”. Eliott fucking ​winked.

Lucas stared at him. “You’re- okay.” He was going to kill this guy.

He was actually going to kill this guy, that wasn’t even a joke. Not even an exaggeration. He was going to fall down dead because of him. Never wake up again. Break thousands of hearts. Ruin a family. Holy fuck.

“I’m only okay?” His lip curved into a mocking smile.

Lucas panicked, stuttering out a stupid excuse that came to his mind. Only okay? Had this guy seen himself? “No, no- that’s not- you’re more than okay, I mean, uh, wow. ​I just meant-”

Eliott laughed, a beautiful sound that blocked the loud music from Lucas’ ears. “I’m messing with you. I really gotta go now, but if you feel for it, hit me up.” Eliott leaned forwards, face so close to Lucas’ he could feel his warm breath against his cheek and he realised that was probably how getting a stroke felt like. “Can I get your number?” Eliott held his phone out in front of them, screen unlocked for Lucas to write his number.

Lucas stared. For a long time. Eliott even started to look a little nervous. Then, his hands got the ability to move back again and he grabbed the phone from Eliotts hands, writing his private number even though every part of his brain yelled that this was the worst idea ever and he should absolutely not give Eliott his number.

He gave the phone back, and before Lucas could blink, Eliott disappeared into the dark crowd, none who had any idea what kind of feelings ran through Lucas’ body. He felt like he’d been hit by a train. What the hell just happened?

He didn’t go to the bathroom. Instead, he paced back through the room, to where he saw Yann and Manon staring in his direction. Great. Did they see that, whatever that mess was? He stopped in front of his closest friends like a child ready to get yelled at by his parents.

Sometimes, Lucas himself found it hard to believe how many people he had cold hearted, sneakily and without mistakes, killed.

“Eliott”, Yann said. No, he stated. It wasn’t a question.

“Really?” Manon raised her brows.

Lucas shrugged. He had no excuse. “I don’t know what happened.”

Manon watched him carefully and Lucas knew exactly what she was thinking about. He wasn’t allowed any physical interaction with his targets if it wasn’t absolutely necessary Lucas didn’t feel drunk anymore, he just felt tired. Exhausted.

Absolutely fucked.