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lukneetoonz · 4 years

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Ghost of You Part III

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Summary: You were the greatest thing in Katsuki’s life…. now you’re gone.

Pairing: Bakugou x Reader

Warnings: Angst, graphic descriptions, mentions of death, cursing, hospital stuff mentioned(?), also kirishima crying 🥺

Word Count: 1,881

A/N: I am not a clown, I’m the whole circus. I really thought about making a long long chapter but it just didn’t feel right? Anyways, I’m so sorry for the long wait and thank you for sticking around, it means a lot. Here’s to 200 followers!!

NO ARTWORK POSTED IS MY OWN AND IS FOUND ON PINTEREST

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The world around you was black, but you could hear everything- feel everything. Muffled sounds of sirens, people crying, the echoes of commanding bellows, all of it surrounded you… suffocated you. Even if you wanted to open your eyes, you couldn’t. It was like your whole body was a thousand pounds, and you had no strength to even lift a finger. Was this how you die? Alone and scared?

Katsuki couldn’t breathe. If he hadn’t- only if he could of- fuck. Snapping out of his thoughts, he ran to you and picked your limp body up like it was nothing, making sure you were pressed against his chest. “Please… please please please don’t give up. You deserved better, you still deserve better. Please don’t die Y/N…. please baby I love you- I would rather have you alive and hating me then dead…” The ash blonde hero’s voice was weak and shaky, tears welling in his eyes.

Why was it when you were dying, that you could hear Katsuki’s words, but you couldn’t say your own? Not even your final ones. Even after everything, you hated that you loved him so much. Hearing his voice was so soothing to you, when he picked you up it was like the pain numbed slightly… Bakugou Katsuki always did say he would come to your rescue for the rest of his life, and he was a man that kept his word. You wished you could tell him- tell him that you loved him too, but you couldn’t.

The feeling of your body growing heavier made you panic as you began thinking of how Katsuki will think you died hating him, but that’s not the truth. You just hated that you loved him- especially after what he did. You hated yourself for letting him make you feel this way. You hated a lot of things, but you didn’t hate him. Honestly, you don’t think you had it in you to ever hate him. Trying to divert your bad thoughts, you started thinking of the last time Katsuki held you- the last time he kissed you. Would that be the last time either of those things happened, and you didn’t cherish it more…

As red eyes stared at you, running towards an ambulance he started rambling, placing you on the stretcher. Looking on, He saw the paramedics run to your side, putting a mask on your face and an IV in your hand, how could he not have saved you…. Bakugou looked around to find kirishima talking to the police, a grim look on the red haired man's face as he explained in detail what had happened. Suddenly anger started rising in Katsuki, crackles heard as he looked like he could kill the next person to get into his way, unfortunately the anger was directed at his friend.

*•*

As Kirishima saw the chaos, he knew he needed to tell Bakugou what he knew, no matter the consequences. Running up, Kirishima blocked a hit from a villain and looked at Bakugou with a guilt ridden face, “Ground Zero! She works here- 5th floor… she wasn’t off today. Go!” The explosive hero felt his heart stop beating when he heard his friends' words. You were here. Not only that, but you were still inside the half destroyed building with villains.

He couldn’t even tell his feet were moving, the ground soon not under his feet as he used his quirk to fly up to the fifth floor. What Katsuki saw- he will always remember; a scream ripped through him when his eyes followed your falling body. Breaking the glass, he tackled the villain who hurt you and dealt way more damage than necessary, half her face unrecognisable. A hand came and pulled Bakugou off the villain, Kaminari had came to help and he knew he needed to stop his friend before doing something he truly regretted.

“Bakugou! Stop-! I’ll handle the clean up, just go make sure Y/N is okay.” Red eyes burned into the electric hero before huffing, and jogging towards your body. As he saw your limp body, black veins spreading under your skin, he felt as if his heart was ripped straight out of his chest. Bakugou didn’t hesitate to first make sure you still had a pulse, and then when he was reassured that you’re alive, he picked you up and started running, a determined yet worried look on his face.

This was his fault. If he hadn’t been a complete douche, you wouldn’t have even been working there in the first place. Katsuki knew he wouldn’t be able to silence his thoughts, because as soon as they started, he couldn’t hear anything else. If you died, it would be on him. Your death would have been because of him. There was nothing in this world that he regretted more than allowing cami into your bed, but now that regret had a whole new meaning.

*•*

Arriving at the hospital, you were carried out and rushed inside, yelling and orders being tossed around. Still, you were paralyzed, the venom first attacked your motor skills, but now- it was attacking your organs. You could feel your heart slowing down, lungs taking shorter breaths, and your brain tuning everything out. Oh how badly did you want to scream out and tell them what you were feeling, tell them the way the venom was affecting you, but you couldn’t.

A giant poke was delivered to your arm, a warm, but stinging sensation traveling up your arm. Slowly you started falling asleep, one voice very distinct called out right before everything went blank. “Don’t you fucking die Y/N! I need you!!” Bakugou…. he came. A small smile graced your lips, a sign of you having control of the small feature, but before you could test out your other body functions, your whole mind went numb and the world around you went mute.

Tears rolled down Bakugou's face as he watched the medical team wheel you off, he felt helpless. For the first time in his life, Mr Pro Hero didn’t know what to do or how to help. How could he not know how to help you, the love of his life? If he couldn’t help you, how was he going to help anyone else? If you left him, Bakugou Katsuki didn’t know if he’d be able to survive. Rubbing his wet face, vermillion eyes looked around, before settling on chairs he can sit in, so he did. Even if the chairs were uncomfortable, the hero planned on staying there until he got news about you.

Uraraka came running in, a panicked face as she looked around, wanting to know where her friend was. As soon as she saw bakugou’s exhausted and miserable looking figure, she couldn’t help her own tears break through and stream down her rosy cheeks. “What happened?” The shakey female voice pulled Katsuki out of his thoughts as his eyes met uraraka’s. Motioning for her to sit down, he looked away with a sniffle, “Villain attack… a-and she was attacked by one with a spider mutation quirk.”

Uraraka knew that there was always going to be civilians that got hurt during a villain attack, but never did she think you would be one of them. Sure, there were casualties during the bigger attacks, but- that’s normally because they are in the danger zone of the fight, not deliberately attacked. “H-wh- she's gonna be fine… right?” As innocent as the question was, it made Katsuki angry. It made him angry because he didn’t know the answer to that, and he always knows the answer to everything. “Bakugou…” the soft whisper accompanied by eyes filled with sadness and pity, made the ash blonde want to explode, So he did.

“I don’t fucking know!! Okay?! Stop asking me things that I don’t know the answer to! I don’t know how she’s gonna survive this, It was like looking at a corpse already. You’re her emergency contact- so why don’t you go and ask the nurses and stop asking me!” Even if he was yelling, he wasn’t angry, he was worried. The strain in his voice gave him away, and if you looked closely you could see he was tearing up.

“She’s gonna be okay Bakugou…. you know how strong she is, there's no way she would just leave us without saying goodbye.” Uraraka’s voice was shy but full of determination. Before the conversation could continue, a doctor came out, his words muted to Bakugou, vision going blurry while he heard uraraka’s cries, as she hugged the doctor.

*•*

5 days. 120 hours. Yet, Bakugou didn’t care, nor did he care how uncomfortable the hospital chair was. He stayed by your bedside, even if you were unresponsive. Your friends came by, not only to check on you but to also check on Bakugou, they were worried for both their friends. One was in a coma, and the other started to look like a living corpse. Katsuki didn’t eat, didn't sleep, and barely drank anything, it was like he’d given up.

“Bakugou… she wouldn’t like that you’re doing this to yourself.” A hand was placed on the ash blondes shoulder, Kirishima frowning behind him. “Fuck off… you don’t know what she wants. None of us do. She’s basically fucking dead!” Standing up suddenly, Bakugou panted, lips twitching into a frown. Forcing himself to look away from you, he walked towards the door. “I-I need to get some air. Stay or leave, I don’t care.”

Walking out the door, he slammed it behind him, leaving the red haired man in your room, eyes filled with sadness. Kirishima took a seat next to you, patting your arm he sighed, “He didn’t mean it…. he’s just a mess because he loves you- and because he blames himself. I thought he was bad when you broke up, but this- Y/N you would scream at him for not taking care of himself. Please wake up, if not for yourself, please do it for Bakugou. I don’t think he would live if you die.”

As the red haired hero rested his head on your bed, your heart rate spiked, making an alarm go off on your floor, nurses and doctors rushing in suddenly. Kirishima was pushed out of the room, a panicked look on his face as he tried calling Bakugou, only to be sent to voicemail. Kiri didn’t even realize he was crying until the tears fell onto his lips, making him taste the salty liquid. You were his friend, and he knew that losing you meant losing Bakugou too, and he couldn’t bare losing two friends at once.

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Taglist; @katsukiswhore @leeeah-loooser @do-not-talk-to-me-i-am-awkward @desia2 @katsukiwonu @xxlushika @lov4kbg @aj-1154 @six-piece-chicken-mcnobody @nekee-lilac02

#mha fanfiction #mha imagines #ely here #bakugou x reader #bakugouimaginedarlingely #bakugou smut #bakugou imagine #bakugou fluff #katsuki imagine #katsuki x y/n #bnha katsuki x reader #bakugou katsuki #katsuki bakugo imagine #mha bakugou

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jjkfire · 4 years

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“this makes me want to follow your footsteps but i have paranoia about losing money! how did you assess what you wanted to invest in / when was the right time to sell?” - @joonapeach

i would’ve answered you in the comments but it’s much easier to explain in a post like this!

first, you need to set aside that fear. investing is a long game. it is a fact that you will see your portfolio ‘lose’ money over the time you invest, but i will explain why it doesn’t matter. also please watch the video i linked in that ask. it’s basically what i will say here but soooo much better lol.

so, a very famous, tried and true method of investing is index fund investing. this means you don't pick a single stock but rather you are investing in the top 500 stocks in the U.S. one such index fund is called VOO and is generally what is recommended nowadays. VOO wasn't around until 2010. so, for this explanation i will be using SPY which is a similar index fund. So, say you started investing in SPY in July 2000. The stock is at $148 at this point and the previous years, it's been looking pretty good! so, you're super excited to get started. but then huh, it just doesn't seem to get better, it keeps going down... and down... even hitting $89 at 2002. it’s a slow recovery from there and then finally! in 2007, it goes to like $150! you're making money!!! and then 2008 comes. the housing bubble crash happens and wtf it's sinking to $76! doesn't matter, you think. you just keep buying bc it’s literally almost half of what it was in 2000. then 2010 it starts to recover and it hits $110. now, it starts to get interesting.

2011, it hits 130. 2012, $140. 2013, $160. hmmm look at that, you're higher than when you started in 2000 already. but we're not done yet. 2014, $200. 2015, $210. 2016, $220. 2017, $240. 2018, $280. 2019, $300. Unbeatable all time highs!!!

then 2020 comes and everyone's thinking this thing is going to the moon! It hits $330 in February and then all at once, in March, COVID hits and it sinks like a rock, all the way down to $220. this is what i personally call a SALE. if i were you, i would have bought a crazy amount. because here we are, December 2020 at $364. Yes, the market recovered a whole ass $144 dollars in 10 months from March to December (which is insane because it usually takes years for this to happen). Here’s the chart below to see how crazy the growth is.

So, you started at $148, now here you are 20 years later at $364. the main point of this was to not sell when you saw it tank and to keep investing despite the fact that you 'lost' money. i am so sure thousands of people decided to sell in march as they watched the stock market gap down further and further every day in march but if they had just held... look at where they would be today? it was $346 in Feb 2020, crashed to $220 in March then recovered to $364 in December... that's higher than what it was in February where everything was looking rosy for the year. the thing is if you don't think america is going to go bankrupt and completely implode then, just hold and sell when you're planning to retire. oh and here’s an article on how to be a millionaire in 20 years. you can just google ‘millionaire index fund’ to see stories of people becoming millionaires. anyway, you don’t need stories. the math is undeniable.

i don't recommend single stock investing unless you are prepared for it to not pan out at all. it's a bigger risk than an index fund. An index fund is you betting on the entire American stock market. It can have a bad year, two, maybe three (as you saw above) but it will recover. a company on the other hand, tomorrow you can find out they've been cooking the books and you may never recover your money ever. so, that's something to consider. if you want to invest in single stocks, you can always pick companies you think will be here in the next 20 years. that can be apple, microsoft, amazon, coca-cola, pepsi, yada yada but again that's... you never really know. GE aka General Electric which is a very big and well known company, their stock was worth $57 in 2000 and today it is worth $12. on the flip side is Amazon that was worth $120 in 2009 but it is worth $3090 today. yeah, that isn't a typo. so, that's picking a stock for ya. not all of us are amazing and can pick the best stocks all the time. you're bound to pick losers. so, index fund where it's the whole american market is the 'safest' and profitable too. remember that during index fund investing, a loss isn’t a loss until you sell. if you just hold, even if your 330 drops to 220, it doesn’t matter unless you sell. if you sell at 220, that means you lose money. if you just wait until it recovers, you’re back at 364 and you sell, that’s profit. you must remember to NEVER panic sell. also why VOO over SPY? VOO has a lower expense ratio. what does that mean? google will tell ya 😉

my main point is if you don’t want to invest yet, that’s okay. at the very least learn about it so when the time comes, you are ready. i started learning in 2018, started investing in 2019 and then the covid crash came in 2020 and it was such an amazing opportunity. imagine if i started learning just as it crashed? it wouldn’t have been great probably lol. all i’m saying is that there’s no harm in learning! market tends to crash every 10-15 years or so. yeah, so... start learning!!! do your own research as there are so many youtube videos out there. and again r/personalfinance subreddit is good once you’ve watched graham’s videos. there’s the 401k and all of that to think about too.

#invest! please!#or at least learn the basics #you can be a millionaire i swear

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thelittlesttimelord · 4 years

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The Littlest Timelord: The Death of the Doctor Chapter 3

TITLE: The Littlest Timelord: The Death of the Doctor Chapter 3 PAIRING: No Pairing RATING: T CHAPTER: 3/? SUMMARY: The Doctor’s death is looming on the horizon and Elise is growing every day. What the Doctor doesn’t know is that he has 200 years to teach Elise all he knows. Amy, Rory, and River let Elise in on their secret, because River knows she will keep it. What will Elise do when he’s gone?

[A/N - I wrote several chapters today, so we’re looking good right now. I would have posted this earlier, but my internet has been shit since this whole Coronavirus thing started happening. I’ve written up to halfway through “The Impossible Astronaut”.]

Kazran and Elise were kneeling next to the stunned shark as the Doctor lamented about his screwdriver.

“What's the big fishy done to you? Swallowed half of you, that's what. Half a screwdriver, what use is that? Bad, big fishy.”

“Doctor? I think she's dying,” Kazran said.

The Doctor soniced her with the good half of his screwdriver. “Half my screwdriver's still inside, but yeah, I think so. I doubt they can survive long outside the cloud belt. Just quick raiding trips on a foggy night.” The Doctor looked at Kazran, who had tears on his cheeks.

“Can't we get it back up there? We were just going to stun it. I didn't want to kill it.”

“She was trying to eat you.”

“She was hungry.”

Elise put her small hand on the Doctor’s arm and looked at him with her big blue eyes. He could tell that like Kazran, she was about to start crying. “Can’t you save her? Please?”

The Doctor sighed. “I'm sorry, Kazran, Elise. I can't save her. I could take her back up there, but she'd never survive the trip. We need a fully functioning life-support.”

“You mean like an icebox? Okay.”

Kazran, the Doctor, and Elise ran down into the living room, where the Doctor spotted a Christmas tree.

He ran over to it, looking at all the decorations. “Ooo, a tree! Look at the tree!”

Kazran grabbed a lamp and they continued downstairs until they came to a cryovault.

“What is this?” the Doctor asked.

“The surplus population. That's what my Dad calls it.” Kazran told him.

They tried opening the door, but nothing happened.

“Oh, it's not turning. Oh, why won't it turn? We’re running out of time,” Kazran said.

The Doctor walked over to a keypad. “Ah, what's the number?”

“I don't know.”

The Doctor started typing random numbers and then tried the door again. “This place is full of alarms. It's not just the door. I need the number! I need the number!”

“I'm not allowed to know until I'm older!”

The Doctor backed away from the door. “Stay here.” He turned and started to run back up the stairs.

“Dad!” Elise yelled.

“I’ll be right back!”

A few minutes later, the TARDIS appeared and the Doctor ran out. “Seven two five eight. Seven two five eight.”

Kazran typed in the number and the Doctor opened the door.

They entered the cryovault.

Fish swam in the fog surrounding their feet.

“Ah, there's fish down here, too,” the Doctor said.

“Yeah, but only tiny ones. The house is built on a fog lake, that's how Dad freezes the people,” Kazran told them as they walked down the corridor, “They're all full, but we could borrow one. Yeah, this one.”

The Doctor and Elise walked up to it.

“Hello again,” the Doctor said, spotting the familiar blonde.

“You know her?” Kazran asked.

“Why her? Important, is she?”

“She won't mind. She loves the fish.” Kazran hit a couple of buttons on the side and a recording started playing.

“My name is Abigail Pettigrew, and I'm very grateful for Mr. Sardick's kindness. My father…”

“She starts to talk about the fish in a minute,” Kazran said. Kazran and Elise watched the recording as the Doctor continued down the corridor.

“But I would not allow it. I could not have chosen this path were it not for the compassion and generosity of the great philanthropist and patron of the poor, Mr. Elliot Sardick. But I'm also surrounded by the fish, the beautiful, iridescent, magical fish.”

“Why are these people here?” the Doctor asked.

“…they dash beneath the light as they dart through the fog.”

“What's all this for?”

“My dad lends money. He always takes a family member as, he calls it security,” Kazran said.

“That’s horrible. To have someone taken from you like that,” Elise said.

“Hard man to love, your dad,” the Doctor told him, “But I suppose you know that.”

“…Nature. I am not alone, and I am at peace.”

The recording of Abigail stopped.

The Doctor’s screwdriver started to make the sound it used to attract the fish earlier.

“What's wrong?” Kazran asked.

“Just my half a screwdriver trying to repair itself. It's signaling the other half.”

Matching bleeping sounds started to get closer to them.

“The other half's inside the shark…” Kazran said.

“Yeah? Sounds like she's woken up. Okay, so it's homing on the screwdriver,” the Doctor said.

The shark appeared in front of them.

“Run!” Elise yelled.

The three of them took off in opposite directions.

Elise hid behind a couple of chambers until she heard singing.

“In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan. Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone. Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow. In the bleak midwinter long ago.”

Elise came out of her hiding place and followed the sound of the singing until she came across Abigail.

The shark was lying at her feet as she sang.

Elise carefully walked around the shark and joined her father and Kazran.

“It's not really the singing, of course,” the Doctor said.

“Yes, it is,” Kazran argued.

“Nah.”

“The fish love the singing. It's true.”

“Nah. The notes resonate in the ice crystals, causing a delta wave pattern in the fog.” The Doctor slapped his neck. “Ow. A fish bit me.”

“Shut up, then.”

“Heaven and earth shall flee away…”

“Of course. That's how the machine controls the cloud belt. The clouds are ice crystals. If you vibrate the crystals at exactly the right frequency, you could align them into…” The Doctor slapped his neck again. “Ow! Why do they keep biting me?”

“Look, the fish like the singing, okay? Now shut up,” Kazran told him.

“Okay!”

“In the bleak midwinter, falling down before, the ox and ass and camel which adore.”

Elise closed her eyes, listening to the song. She vaguely remembered her mother singing her to sleep, but the memory quickly morphed into being held by the Doctor after the crash of the Byzantium. Elise took the Doctor’s hand in her own and set her head on his arm.

Once Abigail had finished her song, they quickly got the shark into the cryochamber.

“Everyone into the TARDIS!” the Doctor told them.

Kazran opened the doors and he and Abigail stood there in the doorway starstruck. “It’s bigger on the inside!” Kazran said.

“Yeah, it's the color. Really knocks the walls back,” the Doctor told him, “Shark in a box, to go.”

They all piled into the TARDIS and the Doctor ran up to the console, putting them in flight.

“This is amazing,” Abigail said.

“Nah, this is transport. I keep amazing out here,” the Doctor said. He ran over to the doors and opened them.

They were hovering in the clouds. Shoals of fish swam around them.

“Come on, then. Let's get this shark out.” The Doctor typed in the code and the cryochamber opened, allowing the shark to fly out into the clouds.

Kazran took a picture of Abigail as she stared out at the fish.

The Doctor closed the cryochamber, seeing a dial on the front. “Abigail, this number. What does it mean?”

“It pertains to me, sir, not the fish.”

“Yeah, but how?”

“You are a doctor, you say? Are you one of mine?”

“Do you need a doctor?”

Something on the console dinged.

“Ah. Sorry. Time's up, kids,” the Doctor told them, running up to the platform.

“Why?” Kazran asked.

“It's nearly Christmas Day!”

They went back to the cryovault and Abigail stepped back into her cryochamber. “If you should ever wish to visit again…” she said.

“Well, you know, if we’re ever in the neighborhood,” the Doctor told her.

“They come every Christmas Eve,” Kazran said.

“What?”

“Yeah, they do. Every time. They promise.”

“No, we don't.”

Kazran shut Abigail’s cryochamber.

Elise and the Doctor ran back to the TARDIS to hop to the next Christmas Eve.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

This continued for several Christmas Eve’s until Kazran became a teenager.

“Merry Christmas!” Kazran, the Doctor, and Elise said as the cryochamber door swung open.

“Kazran...” Abigail said, looking him up and down.

They went back to the TARDIS.

“You've grown,” Abigail told him.

“Yes.”

“And now you're blushing.”

“I'm sorry.”

“That's okay.”

“So, Doctor, where this time?”

“Pick a Christmas Eve. I've got them all right here,” the Doctor told him.

“Might I make a request?” Abigail asked.

“Of course.”

“This one.”

Abigail gave the Doctor an address and they landed outside a small home. Abigail stood by the window, while the Doctor, Elise, and Kazran stood a little ways away from her.

“Who are they?” Kazran asked.

“Her family. The lady's her sister. Elise and I met her once, when she was older,” the Doctor told him.

“Abigail's crying.”

“Yes.”

“When girls are crying, are you supposed to talk to them?”

“I have absolutely no idea. Normally when Elise is crying, I sing to her.”

Kazran walked over to Abigail, while the Doctor and Elise walked up the front door.

They went inside and explained what was going on before the Doctor waked over to the closed curtains and opened them. “Come in,” he told Kazran and Abigail.

The two of them came inside.

Elise admired the Christmas decorations. Her favorite things were the tinsel and the Christmas lights. They were so bright and shiny and made her feel happy.

Abigail’s sister suddenly stood up and said, “Tomorrow's Christmas dinner is cancelled, as my sister refuses to attend.”

“Isabella…” Abigail said.

“Instead, we'll have it tonight.”

The table was loaded down with food and the Doctor placed a paper crown on Elise’s head, before they did Christmas crackers. As they were eating dinner, Elise turned to the Doctor. “Daddy?”

“Yes sweetheart.”

“Can we have Christmas like this every year? With Rory, Amy, and River?”

The Doctor gave her a soft smile and kissed her on the forehead. “Whatever you want, Ellie.”

Eventually it was time for Abigail to return to her cryovault. “Best Christmas Eve ever,” she said.

“Ah. Till the next one,” the Doctor said.

“I look forward to it. Now I'd like to say good night to Kazran.”

“Of course, yes.”

The four of them stood there awkwardly.

“Well, on you go.”

Kazran gave the Doctor a look.

“Oh. Oh. Yes. Right. Sorry. We'll, er, we'll go, then. Good night. Good luck. Night. Good night.” The Doctor backed into a cryochamber, causing Elise to roll her eyes. “Sorry.”

The Doctor and Elise started to make their way back to the TARDIS and Kazran ran after them.

“Doctor. I, er, I think she's going to kiss me,” he said.

“Yeah, I think you're right.”

“I've never kissed anyone before. What do I do?”

The Doctor put his arm around Kazran’s shoulders. “Well, try and be all nervous and rubbish and a bit shaky.”

“Why?”

“Because you're going to be like that anyway. Might as well make it part of the plan, then it'll feel on purpose. Off you go, then.” The Doctor gave Kazran a nudge toward Abigail.

“What, now? I kiss her now?”

“Kazran, trust me. It's this or go to your room and design a new kind of screwdriver. Don't make my mistakes. Now, go.”

Even though Elise one day hoped she’d find someone who loved her, she still thought kissing was gross.

#eleventh doctor #eleventh doctor imagines #eleventh doctor fanfiction #doctor who #Doctor Who fanfiction #doctor who imagine #a christmas carol #Kazran Sardick

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dippedanddripped · 5 years

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It was clear from the beginning what Shayne Oliver was trying to convey with Hood By Air, a brand he founded in 2006 with Raul Lopez that was originally named Elite Urban Brigade. At one of their first fashion shows, which took place at New York Fashion Week in 2007, Mobolaji Dawodu, The Fader’s former style editor-at-large, asked Oliver where he saw Hood By Air going. Oliver, then 18, who looks cherubic in the grainy clip, said he wanted to create a lifestyle brand for the new generation that appreciates what’s going on in the streets, but understands urban culture influences the mainstream.

In that moment, Oliver prophesized the impact his brand would have on an industry that spent years looking to Black communities for cues, but rarely exalted the culture, credited it, or brought people from it into the fold. But the 2010s changed that, and the generation Oliver spoke of 12 years ago became the designers private equity firms want to invest in, luxury brands want to partner with, and stores want to carry.

When something is happening, it’s hard to assess its influence, but as the decade comes to a close, it’s apparent that Hood By Air helped create the luxury streetwear category that’s been fueling fashion. You can’t think about the last 10 years without thinking about Hood By Air, which defined style and trends for almost half the decade. Oliver put his very Black, very queer, and very cool world on a pedestal and changed the way brands design, the way retailers merchandise their stores, they way companies approach casting, and, for many, the way they see themselves and their place in fashion.

“SHAYNE OLIVER’S EXISTENCE AND THE CULTURE THAT CREATED HOOD BY AIR, IN MY MIND, ARE VITAL TO WHAT WE HAVE TODAY AS A MIXTURE OF FASHION AND SO-CALLED STREETWEAR.” - VIRGIL ABLOH

“Shayne Oliver’s existence and the culture that created Hood By Air in my mind are vital to what we have today as a mixture of fashion and so-called streetwear,” writes Virgil Abloh, founder of Off-White and artistic director of Louis Vuitton men’s, over email. “In one word, I would say HBA and Shayne’s vision showed the fashion system at large what the word freedom meant. From garments to runway shows, everything exudes freedom.”

Musician Ian Isiah, a longtime member of the Hood By Air collective, calls 2007 HBA’s official birth year. Urban fashion brands like Sean John, Baby Phat, and Rocawear hit a peak in the late ’90s and early 2000s, but lost their cachet—most of them expanded distribution to department stores like Macy’s. Isiah says there was a void of Black-led brands, and Hood By Air was an attempt to fill it. Dominican tailors made Hood By Air’s first T-shirts and they retailed around $200, which wasn’t typical at the time. The initial T-shirts, which were sold out of aNYThing, a now-closed streetwear brand and store on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, were meant to transition from day to night, another new concept. HBA also became known for a plexiglass Hood By Air nameplate necklace that Kid Cudi wore and Kanye West purchased from Seven New York.

Isiah says although the brand was stocked in a couple of stores, their main priority was “selling it to culture and getting it on the right girls and in the right looks.” GHE20G0TH1K (pronounced “ghetto gothic”), a party series founded by Jazmin Soto, better known as Venus X, in 2009, embodied that culture. Oliver DJed on some nights for a crowd made up of streetwear kids, punks, and queer folks. They would all wear HBA. ASAP Rocky was also a part of that culture Isiah mentioned. Isiah says they met Rocky through Jabari Shelton, better known as ASAP Bari, who would bring his friends from Harlem downtown—members of the ASAP Mob appeared in one of HBA’s early lookbooks. Rocky, who would mix brands like Rick Owens and Hood By Air with Jeremy Scott’s Adidas sneakers and Supreme, adopted the line early on, which brought it greater visibility and hype. The brand went on a hiatus in 2009 and became almost a collector’s item for those in the know.

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“It was sort of like this thing that everyone was still talking about but no one knew how to get it,” says Zachary Ching, Oliver’s longtime friend. “They didn’t have a website. There wasn’t even an Instagram. It was just like this mythical thing that you would see someone wearing once.”

Because of the buzz surrounding the brand, Ching called Oliver as soon as he was tasked with turning VFILES’ space on Mercer into a store, but Oliver, who was taking a break from the line to tour with GHE20G0TH1K, didn’t have any product. VFILES produced the pieces and purchased them from Oliver—Ching remembers ordering about 500 T-shirts across six styles—and on June 12, 2012, VFILES held an opening party for the shop that seconded as an HBA relaunch event. Oliver and Venus DJ’d, ASAP Rocky performed—most of the ASAP Mob came through—and on that night both HBA and VFILES were solidified as relevant movements in fashion. Following the party, the HBA pieces sold out within two days, and VFILES had to upgrade its payment systems to accommodate demand, which Ching describes as bananas.

“It was a pivotal moment in VFILES’ history,” says Julie Anne Quay, the founder of VFILES. “To physically see both the community come together, celebrate one of their peers, and shop it was really rewarding to me. It further galvanized me in my passion to really build VFILES into this community platform that was unlike the traditional fashion world at large and embraced a community that I thought was not only overlooked, but was disrespected.”

“IT WAS SORT OF LIKE THIS THING THAT EVERYONE WAS STILL TALKING ABOUT BUT NO ONE KNEW HOW TO GET IT.” - ZACHARY CHING

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Hood By Air helped set the tone for VFILES’ assortment, which eventually included Abloh’s Pyrex, which transitioned to Off-White, Been Trill, and Fear of God—this was before luxury department stores picked them up. Been Trill and Hood By Air even released a collaborative T-shirt in early 2013, which Oliver said started out as a brunch gift for friends and family but turned into something bigger without him knowing. Because celebrities like ASAP Rocky wore HBA and it had an aesthetic and name that resonated with the hood, Danielle Greco, who managed VFILES at the time, says the early consumers who lined up for the product—she describes them as “big, burly, tough men”—probably had no idea who Oliver was or what some of his messaging and graphics meant. Oliver said many of the logo placements for HBA were inspired by documentaries on gays in prison.

“Streetwear was very much a boys’ lane, and all of the brands that were trending at the time spoke to a very straight man’s world,” says Vashtie Kola, who met Oliver and Lopez in the early 2000s and hosted a Hood By Air TV series on her blog. “I remember they made a tank top with the term ‘Realness’ on it, which comes from the ball scene. And so I remember straight boys wearing tank tops that said realness or banjee. It was really nice to see.”

Because HBA was doing so well, VFILES and MADE helped Oliver secure an official spot on the New York Fashion Week calendar at Milk Studios in September 2013. It was Oliver’s big introduction to the industry and a chance to bring showgoers, who included Abloh, fashion editors, and longtime friends of the brand like Kola, into his world. The music was loud, the lights were dark, and the models weren’t A-typical. Boychild, a trans performance artist, jerked her body in a haunting way as she walked down the runway. This was followed by an appearance by ASAP Rocky, who closed the show wearing a neoprene Hood By Air Jacket. Kevin Amato, a photographer who had never worked on fashion shows until he met Oliver, handled the casting, which became a hallmark of HBA.

“The Hood By Air narrative for me was always just the underrepresented, really,” says Amato, who was casting from the streets. “And that’s what I tried to do with the casting. It was very organic. Rocky wanted to walk the show, but we didn’t just want a celebrity to walk the show. So we cast Boychild and had this contrast of different people and cultures colliding. It wasn’t meant to be hype. But I think after HBA and the casting, the whole fucking industry changed.” You now see this gender-fluid casting from luxury houses like Gucci and Balenciaga. The Yeezy Season 3 collection/Life of Pablo listening party at Madison Square Garden in 2016 featured a mix of professional models and real people, in 2017 Nike dedicated a campaign to voguing, and Victoria’s Secret recently cast its first transgender model, Valentina Sampaio.

In 2013, style was moving beyond the heritage #menswear look. The Watch the Throne Tour with JAY-Z and Kanye West had just ended, ushering a dark, goth aesthetic into streetwear with brands like En Noir and Black Scale. Riccardo Tisci’s Givenchy T-shirts and hoodies were popular—his rottweiler graphic was a hit—and Hedi Slimane’s pieces for Saint Laurent—skinny jeans, tailored coats, and flannel shirts—were selling well at retail.

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Most consumers had known HBA for its T-shirts, but after this show, it was clear HBA wasn’t operating in the same space as its peers. Oliver was playing with gender fluidity before it became a talking point and presenting new silhouettes that played on the familiar, but elevated it. Long-sleeve leather shirts with zipper closures right below the chest could be worn open or closed, depending on the situation; puffer jackets were recreated into capes; and collared shirts were covered in HBA logos. The New York Times’ Guy Trebay questioned if Alexander Wang and Tisci took notes from Hood By Air.

“It was definitely a reinvention. It wasn't a copy-and-paste, which is commonly seen these days,” says Kola. “Shayne understood the hood, but also had aspirations of creating his own unique look and vision. He merged those two worlds so effortlessly.”

Jennifer Williams, wife of Matthew Williams, who was part of Been Trill at the time, handled sales and started showing the line to buyers in Paris, which is where Wanda Colon, Barneys New York’s former vice president of menswear, discovered HBA. Colon says at the time, the luxury/contemporary category was dormant, and the brands Barneys was selling felt “safe and a bit staid.”

“I felt there was an opportunity to offer our customer a new point of view as it related to menswear beyond the brands that were being offered,” says Colon, who purchased the collection. “HBA filled a void in the industry that wasn't being addressed. The brand came to embody the mid-2000s zeitgeist of hybrid XXL silhouettes, deconstructed streetwear, couture fabrics, immaculate tailoring, genderless silhouettes, and big logos—Shayne was there first.”

The HBA merch plan included Hood By Air Classics, which made hood basics like tall T-shirts and sweatshirts, investment pieces, and the more progressive ready-to-wear line, which reconstructed and recontextualized American sportswear. Ching says this changed the way department stores looked.

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“Because of Hood By Air, you go into Barneys and look at a designer section and it has hoodies and sweatpants,” says Ching. “Hood By Air was like a crazy statement jacket, but then you had amazing T-shirts and graphic hoodies to go along with it. And you didn’t feel like you were wearing a Stüssy hoodie.”

On a cultural level, Oliver was a designer who wasn’t typically touted in fashion—he was Black, gay, didn’t have a degree from Parsons or financial backing from his parents. He also represented a movement that was happening in the background. Robin Givhan, fashion critic at the Washington Post, remembers being struck by how he and his team had been able to grab the attention of the industry in an aggressive way with clothes that she says, initially, weren’t well made, but had a bigger story to tell.

“It felt like it was shaking up the industry out of its doldrums and pushing it on a different course,” says Givhan. “The industry needed something that speaks to a moment that was demanding diversity, questioning gender identity, questioning the path that the next generation of designers were going to take the industry on, and into that giant question mark stepped Shayne and Hood By Air.”

While Hood By Air’s star was rising, so was ASAP Rocky’s, and his influence on fashion started to take hold. But in his song “Multiply,” released in 2014, he called HBA weak, and said Been Trill “was booty like ‘Tip Drill.’” At first, Rocky told Complex in 2015 that he dissed both brands because he wasn’t getting the acknowledgement he felt he deserved from them. But he recently revealed he was upset because he asked for ownership in HBA and Oliver said no. "You don't ask Rick to put you on an official level if you wear Rick Owens. You're wearing Rick and that's it. Why is it not the same with us?" aksed Oliver in an interview with Kerwin Frost and Isiah. Years later, Rocky called up Oliver and apologized. But the fashion industry was still intrigued, and Oliver won the inaugural LVMH Prize in 2014 and the Council of Fashion Designers of America’s Swarovski Award for Menswear in 2015.

Isiah says they were skeptical of the recognition, but happy about it, since it supported the idea of giving the underrepresented a seat at the table in fashion after years of going unrecognized. The awards were helpful, but not knowing how to deal with a new brand like HBA, the CFDA would suggest traditional business structures that weren’t in line with how HBA wanted to grow.

HBA had always been a collective, but it became more fully formed before and after the 2013 fashion show at Milk Studios. Leilah Weinraub, a filmmaker who was the acting chief executive officer; Isiah, HBA’s brand ambassador; and Amato, who continued to handle casting, remained on board. Newer additions included Ching, who left VFILES to join HBA full time as commercial director. He looked over T-shirts, jeans, hoodies, and graphic T-shirts so Oliver could focus on fashion pieces. Paul Cupo came on as design director to help elevate construction, and Akeem Smith joined as a stylist. Smith says that when he came on, HBA was going through a transitional phase and Oliver gave him free range “to add some more faggotry to the mix and add more chic elements to the brand.” By this time, HBA was showing about four times a year in New York and Paris. Oliver was the father of the house. He had the vision for HBA, and everyone brought their particular expertise to the table.

“It was almost like living in a nomadic community. Wherever it took us, we went and it just worked out. We were never starving, but I think any creative knows that money's not the motive. It was more about building,” says Amato.

Making money was not a primary concern for Oliver in the beginning. The brand was approached early on about investment, but Weinraub told the New Yorker she wanted to remain independent for as long as possible. HBA worked with Edison Chen for a little in Asia, where the brand was wildly popular—Chen brought it to Yo’Hood, a streetwear festival in China. Ching remembers K-pop stars coming to VFILES and buying up all the HBA, and walking through China and seeing the craziest HBA bootleg T-shirts with Hello Kitty on them. In 2014, Oliver partnered with the New Guards Group and moved HBA’s headquarters to Milan. The New Guards Group, the parent company of Off-White, Palm Angels, and Heron Preston, which was acquired by Farfetch earlier this year, handled HBA’s production, distribution, and sales. Everyone from HBA lived in a monastery, and during the day they worked out of a compound alongside Abloh, who produced graphics for HBA’s third major collection. "I was just like, 'Wait, who is this tall African man playing beats in the other room in this Italian studio?'" says Isiah.

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Isiah says he was hesitant about signing with the New Guards Group and that he and Oliver got into arguments about it, but he opened up to the idea. “Instead of working so hard and spending so much money to get 10 samples made in New York, we were now making 100 samples in Italy. It opened up our inventory,” he says.

The shows also got more sophisticated and ideas were better executed. In January 2015, at Pitti Uomo 87, which was Hood By Air’s first show under the New Guards Group, they took over a villa in Tuscany but outfitted the space with strobe lights, smoke machines, a DJ, Venus X, and a neon HBA light logo. The show was dominated by tailored pieces with a Hood By Air spin. Showing in Europe also helped some in the industry view Hood By Air as less of an underground group of misfits and more as a viable brand that presents new fashion concepts. At other shows, celebrities like Whoopi Goldberg, Rick Ross, Jaden Smith, and Naomi Campbell sat front row. Givhan says construction improved, but the show production, which compelled her to the brand, got increasingly tamer. She called it a smart decision to focus more on the clothes, but she did notice growing pains.

“I think they struggled, but I think that’s OK. Brands take a long time for full gestation,” says Givhan. “I think the industry is a bit like a voracious monster sometimes. And it has a tendency to gobble up new ideas and to elevate them sometimes before they are fully baked.”

By then, Amato had left the company due to a death in the family, but he observed HBA’s evolution from afar. Some things he liked, and some things he didn’t. He thought the casting, which was handled by his apprentice Walter Pearce, got more weird, less authentic. And he felt like other brands were trying to get next to HBA for attention.

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“Once business is popping and everything's crazy, it kind of loses some of the main vision, but that happens with every brand,” says Amato. “Instagram was new and it was just a way to strategically align yourself with a brand, and then, boom, all of a sudden, you're in the game. Like Been Trill was a movement, but was it a movement?” From the inside, Ching also noticed changes. Sales were going well and distribution got wider. Once HBA partnered with the New Guards Group, it had 250 stockists, up from 50 in less than three years. At the end of each season, they would assess what stores they would drop and how to edit down different stores’ orders.

“It was always trying to control distribution, which I think towards the end got a little out of hand,” says Ching. “It was too easy to get it and shit was going on sale. It wasn't cute. It, like, really blew up, and then, you know, the market can only take so much.” While at the New Guards Group, Hood By Air was selling a lot of product, but not the product they thought best represented the brand. Oliver told Numéro there was miscommunication between the business side of things and the management and a lot of decisions were made in a "very panicky way." A clear business structure was never created for HBA within the group, so after a few seasons, HBA got out of the deal. In 2016, Oliver came back to New York wanting to position HBA as a conceptual fashion brand, not just a hype, of-the-moment line. Ching eventually left because he didn’t feel job security anymore, and in early 2017 HBA canceled its Paris show, which led to rumors that there were issues. In March, Helmut Lang announced Isabella Burley, Dazed magazine’s editor-in-chief, would be the brand’s editor-in-residence. She tapped Oliver to design a Helmut Lang capsule collection to show in September 2017. In April, Hood By Air released a statement that the brand would go on hiatus.

“THEY DON’T KNOW HOW TO TITLE WITHOUT OFFENDING. SO, IT’S LIKE, ‘OH, HE’S IN FASHION? HE’S MAKING T-SHIRTS? THERE’S HIP-HOP INVOLVED? HE’S A HYPE DESIGNER.’” - IAN ISIAH

“I was so excited,” says Isiah about Oliver putting things on pause. “We needed a break. It was mood board overload. The culture couldn’t even keep up. We’ve already created so many daughters in so many fields, so it was time for them to flourish and grow. It was time for Virgil to flourish and grow. It was time for Heron to flourish and grow. It was time for Alyx to be born and then flourish and grow. The empire had to go silent for everyone else to rise as their own empire.”

In the midst of HBA’s trajectory, the industry was reaping the rewards of a market they helped form. Demna Gvasalia of Vetements, which was positioned as a collective of designers who embraced streetwear sensibilities, was named the creative director of Balenciaga, a position previously held by New York designer Alexander Wang. Gvasalia also won the same LVMH award Oliver received a year prior. And eventually Louis Vuitton tapped Abloh as their artistic director of men’s. Oliver went on to design capsule collections for brands like Diesel and Helmut Lang, but people, including Kanye West, questioned why the Helmut Lang partnership wasn’t longer or why Oliver wasn’t being propped up for a bigger luxury brand.

“When I saw it coming, it read to me that you had become the creative director of Helmut Lang —and it read to other people that way, too,” West said while speaking with Oliver earlier this year for Interview Magazine. “And it felt right, and it felt deserved. The reason I’m on the phone with you right now is that, of our generation of designers, you are the strongest of all of us. Of this entire crew that came up around the same time, you are the most deserving of one of these positions.”

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In a ShowStudio panel discussing the Spring/Summer 2018 collection for Helmut Lang Seen by Shayne Oliver, you get a better sense of how the industry views Oliver and Hood By Air. Olga Kuryshchuk, a Central Saint Martins graduate, founder, and editor-in-chief of 1Granary, a student magazine and showroom, says Oliver was chosen for his hype, not for his design skills. She later offered that no one would reference the collection because it wouldn’t present any new ideas—Oliver told Numéro that because it was only a capsule, it made sense to curate rather than produce something new. Towards the end, Georgina Evans, an editor at ShowStudio, makes a distinction of asking which graduates, not just designers, could take on the role after Oliver. Another panelists suggests that Helmut Lang should look to school in Europe and maybe not one in America or Britain—her logic was although Helmut Lang is identified as an American brand, Lang was Austrian. The video underscored the industry’s tendency to look towards the same funnels or type of person for talent.

“They don’t know how to actually title without offending,” says Isiah. “So it’s like, ‘Oh, Shayne’s a hype designer. Oh, he’s in fashion? He’s making T-shirts? There’s hip hop involved? They’re voguing? He’s a hype designer.’”

Givhan says the most accepted route to lead designer jobs at larger houses is usually graduating from design school, getting a job working for a larger designer, and then being considered for the job when someone retires or passes away. She believes it’s more challenging for designers of color to get into that pipeline and be considered for those positions, but she does think the industry is making progress. She references Abloh going to Louis Vuitton.

In 2019, Oliver announced the relaunch of Hood By Air. Plans around the reboot haven’t been explained in detail, but from different interviews, Oliver seems interested in developing a solid business structure, ensuring that HBA is seen as more than a T-shirt and hoodie brand, and providing a platform for youth to create and not be taken advantage of. Amato, who had dinner with Oliver in Los Angeles a couple of months ago, says he doesn’t want to make any sacrifices this time. “He said it has to be 500 percent or nothing, which I think is the best way to go. I mean, his vision is so strong that it’s hard to even explain half the shit he’s thinking,” says Amato.

The original collective is still cool, but they’ve moved on to other things. Isiah is traveling the world singing and sitting front row at fashion shows—he sang with Dev Hynes at Abloh’s second show for Louis Vuitton. Amato is doing less casting and more artistic directing on projects like Travis Scott’s Rodeo album. Smith is the fashion editor-at-large for Dazed magazine, Cupo is freelancing for different companies, and Weinraub’s film, Shakedown, was a part of the 2017 Whitney Biennial.

And Kola, who was voguing with Oliver and Lopez in her apartment just before the decade started, is no longer just a downtown sweetheart. She travels the world DJing, has her own Jordan, and is paid by brands for her influence—the same influence Oliver talked about at his first fashion show over 10 years ago. When asked what she thought when Oliver said HBA was taking a break, she can’t recall how she felt, exactly. She starts and stops her answer, trying to find the right words to describe her feelings around the hiatus. But when asked about his impending return, she perks up, knowing exactly what to say and how to say it.

“I’m all for it,” says Kola. “I feel like a lot of other brands and designers were birthed from his movement. So I feel like mutha needs to come back and take care of these children she birthed!”

#SHAYNE OLIVER #hood by air #vashtie kola #urbanwear blog #streetwear blog

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dememarquette · 4 years

Text

Stockholm

It has been a rough year. Complete Hell, actually, but we made it. We're home. Home. 2018, where the leaves are turning red, cable can be paused, and our old record shop exhausted itself into extinction.

That's all I needed. After death, my standards dropped through the concrete. I found gratification in the mundane. I appreciated the small things. I enjoyed the understated conversations, the intimate ones, the quiet. Just- Any time absent of violence. Pain. When I didn't have to worry about the orders being screamed at us, or the anxiety living under the heel of someone much bigger and nastier. Was it a lot to ask? Generally, no. Following a thwarted attempt at societal collapse? Maybe. We made it back half a year ago. That was six months on the run. We were fugitives. 'War criminals.' We avoided trouble by bouncing back and forth from Hell, running missions, training, and staying on the move while ensuring Buné's new order- Point is, I've been exhausted. I leaned against our apartment. I lost track of what city we're in but when you're anarchists of the divine, it stopped mattering. I didn't want to think about it. I didn’t want to think at all. I let my world fall into serenity and I took peace in as cars passed. I felt the breeze on my skin, the procession of life outside the damned. There was normalcy in the city. I offered smiles to the pedestrians that walked by. I reminded them of a preacher, the charismatic one they used to watch every Thursday night. I obviously wasn't the same guy. I was a disheveled, sadder version, but some smiled back- Before a loud crash sent them running. "Son of a BITCH." Metal clanged against stone. One girl dropped her umbrella. She ran. Her rubber boots beat the pavement until she turned a corner, a block away. "Mother. Fucker. LIED." Adria kneed a recycling bin. "I should have known this would happen. It was too fucking easy." "Too easy...?" "No one gets promoted that quick! Doesn't MATTER if you do all his dirty work," The bin split. "Start an apocalypse," Glass shattered. Garbage blasted down the asphalt. "Beat the new guys in!" I had no idea what part of the last few months had been anything short of excruciating. I just knew better to argue. I picked up the discarded umbrella, shaking off the puddle. "Is it off the table, then?" I asked, spinning it. "Obviously not! I'm up here aren't I?" "Why, then?" She violently bucked her leg. A tenacious grocery bag that clung to her boot. "He wants another job! Another fucking errand before I can prove myself, get OFF! Stupid-!!" She dislodged it, but not without throwing out her calf. The cops would be here in fifteen minutes. In twenty, she would be destroying our wall instead. We weren’t getting that security deposit back. "I thought that's what Glenshollow was." I shuttered the umbrella's canopy closed. Peace was over. "Proving yourself." "Yeah well, it wasn't enough!" "'course it wasn't." It never would be. There was always more hoops, more grunt work. She punched a trash can into the street. It launched past me, aluminum warped. When her fist whipped back around, it specked the wall, corrosively leaving hissing black holes in the brick like the spray of a Tommy. "One more." She huffed. "Just- one more. He says I'm close." "When you're immortal everything is close. What if he never promotes you? What if he is a liar, like he's always been?" "Shut up." My brows furrowed. "Adria. What's the point in trusting him if-" "Shut up. This was the limit. I knew it. There was no reasoning with her. She glared, shoulders heaving with a finality saying I was a much more satisfying target than a garbage bin. I let it drop. I receded to the street in silence. Back against the wall, I stood at my post: Protecting the outside world from Adria. - - - The attack on Delgado yielded over 200 casualties. Months of preparation amounted to a twelve hour skirmish. Powers above squashed the epidemic in no time. It was an incursion controlled by dinner yet the effects rippled through the decades. History was made. It was covered up, then made again, but Buné never cared about petty tragedies and coverage above the surface. He cared about what happened after. It was a victory, not a failure. Overnight, his army doubled. They arrived onto his doorstep in droves. Marked. Branded by their wrath, the shambling husks were primed soldiers. Their consciousness’ were forever crippled into malleable potential Buné can use. Due to her stellar efforts, Adria earned respect, boons, and prestige. Just not the title. Her notoriety made her optimal for missions back in the present. He turned a blind eye to her angelic compatriot, and gave her a team. None of whom she cared for, but she thought maybe her parade of volatile dumbasses was a start to prime her for the big leagues. It wasn't. 'Lieutenant' was a bar being raised higher, and Adria's patience was burning out. Having a team didn't mean jackshit if she was still at the bottom. There was no repose to be had under someone else. While I also yearned for a delusionally quiet life- It just wasn't feasible. Details arrived the following morning. "What is this?" I wandered into the kitchen to find Adria pouring over blueprints. They were three feet by one thin drafts of paper, and full of intricate blocks with barely legible text. I'm by no means an architect or mechanic, but ‘boat’ was a safe bet. She was sitting there, nails knotted in her bangs, reviewing them like she had any idea of what they meant. "His assignment." "And this is what will supposedly get you promoted?" I said, skeptically. "It better." 'Or else what?' I wanted to ask. "And this is supposed to be harder than zombies?" "It's not supposed to be harder. It's finishing what we started." "How does that make sense?" I said, picking at another sheet. I didn't trust our 'team' to go get milk without fucking up, much less a heist? "I do what I'm told so I can get out of this shithole." While I intended to correct her on the ‘we’ situation, of that we could agree on. No matter how far this rabbit hole goes, I was sure there was something to be found at the end of it. Call me an opportunist. I hopped onto the counter. Tilting my head, I realized if you removed the claws, fangs, subterfuge, this felt familiar. I imagined a kitchen. Countertops crowded claustrophobically with congratulations and community love. A bare room that felt like bustling potential and a new lease on life rather than a pit stop. I scooched closer, crossing my legs to wedge between an imaginary dinette set and unpacked vacuum- She knew me by now. Too well. I could see it when her shoulders tense, her eyes snap to meet mine. ’Don’t-’ All that mattered was that her subconscious beat her to it. “So if you're promoted soon…” I rehearsed. “How are we going to celebrate?" Finding no room there, he crossed his legs instead. She was unpacking a mess. An obstacle course of bins, stacked impossibly high. There was no space except the marble. Adria had a hard time throwing anything vaguely sentimental out, and the collective town of Ashwater sent her off with enough supplies to stock a bunker. In lieu of helping (as he had invited himself over to do) he read over her acceptance letter to the Modena Police Academy three times over. He had the message memorized, and its creases too. The edges were folded from her happy dance, and the text smeared from her tears. How many Shakespearean ways could he recite it to her? How many ways could he decree her new title? The answer was a lot. But when that stopped being fun, he asked. "Soooo with this new promotion.” He slid closer. “How are we celebrating?" This came after a mandatory lunch. 5 box milestone. 15 minute break, then a ten. Finally dinner, and now a catch-all celebration. She looked up at him grinning, arms full of silverware. She was hopelessly behind, and would’ve had the place done at noon on her own, but what could she say? "How about we celebrate by...unpacking the kitchen?" "C'mon dep- oops." "Detective." “Detective Kyriakoulopoulos.” He waggled his brows. “It’s time to party! One does not become the most esteemed detective of the wild, formidable city of Modena every day.” "Not yet!" She swiped the letter. Before he could protest- talking with his hands, like he always did- she grabbed them, effectively silencing him. He was pulled to the floor, where his strategy switched. He hooked both arms around her waist, pulling her in. She’d weakly protest. "Come on,” She said, not fighting it. “I need to make it look like I got something done. My family is coming over tomorrow." "And they're going to be real disappointed if they don't have anything to unpack.” He grinned. “Think of Basil and Elyse, all bored. They want to help." “And you don’t?” "...Champagne?" When she came to I was off the counter. It'd been days since her last episode. Weeks. So few and far between, on days where she was kicking some guy’s teeth in, I worried they were gone for good. But she blinked. I held my breath for the fallout. Only she saw these memories, but I felt them. I lived in them every time her eyes went dark, when her lips twitched, and I knew she was following the subtitles. In those quiet moments where the pit of venom in her heart receded, Adria crawled back from her grave. Always in painfully brief snapshots, but she was there. These were the tick on her EKG, the surge in hope telling me she was still alive, under all the cruelty and malice. She didn’t receive them as well. She never did. They hit like a jackhammer. No matter how light, they weren’t her life, they were fake, and she didn’t give a shit about them. Getting as worked up as I did was a small betrayal but one I couldn’t resist. She hated me for it- But still. She was quick to tell me how useless I was when she didn’t oblige. How I would mope for weeks if she couldn’t recite this ‘stupid fantasy’ back. It was the only thing I had, despite promises I’d made to the contrary. We never said it, but we both knew. "What did you see?" I asked, breathless. She dug the heel of her palm into her eye socket, burrowing into it like she’d scrape it off her retinas. “No.” She growled, low. "Adria..." I begged. “NO, Demetrius.” She snatched the blueprints. “I don't have any time for this shit today! I have work to do." “Please.” "Mission. First. Are you going to come with me or not?" The answer was a given. - - - Under the cover of night, we hit the docks. I wasn't given the specifics. That wasn't to imply they did, because they didn't. Wrath demons maximized their shadiness. We never had any idea what we were walking into because Buné expected us to handle it- especially his aspiring lieutenants. There was no hand holding. We had a location, a number, and a time limit. Be a good soldier, and that's all there was to it. Adria corralled us to a neighboring container ship. The ship Buné marked- The Sandfly, an antiquated naval cruiser- bobbed beside us. We were to board, grab our shit, and leave. Casualties didn’t matter. Fifth didn’t care about getting dirty if you had something to show for it. Even so, sneaking past enemy lines didn’t mean a thing when there was friendly fire. She and her ‘team’ had been trading blows the whole way here. One lost a tooth, another revived an ancient blood feud, and a third tried for Adria’s head in a manner that was custom. He was promptly put down. "ENOUGH," Adria slammed him into a metal wall. Spines chipped on impact, and the wall buckled. It wasn’t the first time she cracked a bone on her own soldiers, and she never laid hands on them without leaving something to remember. His wound audibly sizzled and but it was so routine no one revelled in the example. "ALL of you are idiots, but if you want to live, get your shit together NOW. Buné does not care about you stupid peons, and I don’t even remember your names! Do you understand? You're fucking expendable." Three grumbled reluctant acceptance. The forth hissed from the ground. Her patience was thinner than mine. I stood idly by, impassive to the petty demon squabbles. They tended not to mess with me. Not seriously, anyways. They didn't care for me being here. I couldn’t escape errant comments but I never cared about hecklers. Adria abraded anyone who tried harder, and operating under her coriaceous wing meant I learned how to defend myself. Procedural power-grabs out of the way, we moved as a group to board. Those with the spare limbs to do so glided to the bridge with no problem. I needed the extra help- not without snide remarks but Adria shut them up with a heel through their feet. We convened on the other side, up to five injuries before mission start. "I go in first.” She debriefed after egos were bruised, and rebellious spirits squashed. “On my command you will join, one at a time! Any sooner I'll kick your ass back down to Hell. I want us in and out, no showboating. Understood?!" "Yes." They said. No one was ignorant of how important this mission was to her career. She told me on the way here she’d bury anyone who stood in the way. But I was the one interrupting this time. "No-" I said. "Wait." I held a hand to the wall. Nonsensically I felt comfort since boarding- and not because Adria held me by the waist to fly me over. I felt warmth. A metaphysical type. One that replaced the ever-present rotting in my chest I've come to associate with Adria (it’s an acquired taste, psychologists would claim). Whatever this ship was emitting- this cloying homesickness- couldn't be good. My disruption was met with the usual scorn. Special privileges meant I could speak out when others got a boot to the face. She took any input from me during these missions seriously. For reasons that were obvious- I didn't talk much otherwise. "What?" I moved my palm with the wave of energy. The feeling persisted down the entry hatch, and upward, as if part of the ventilation. “Let me go in first. I think it's a trap.” "Of course it's a trap. What else would it be?" The other demoness on our team spat. "Since when is your pet calling the shots?!" "He's going to get us killed." It wasn't unusual for members of her meathead party to be disgusted when I said anything. Perks of sleeping with the boss; I had seniority, even if it didn't align with their thug rules. One bland look and she threw out their objections. "Back off!” She snarled, slapping them behind her.“He's going first." "But-" "No arguing!!" I dipped inside. Their fragile hierarchy devolved into fighting. Stealth was never part of their operation but Adria had been in the game long enough to hold off all four. I padded down the corridor, unconcerned, and tracing the path. The ship was a relic of the past. The whole thing was corroded ceiling to floor, suffering a carmine splattering of rust. Stairs were welded grates, and the doors were embedded with port holes too scratched to see through. It was an asbestos goldmine but I wasn't looking for the ways it'd kill a person. Where the heat ended, the nauseating rot of corruption was back, even if I knew our team was far behind outside. Demons. "-Two of them are in." A radio transponder scratched. Sound feed bounced off the metallic halls. Luckily, I'd been quiet. "She's not." "What's she doing?" Said the room's inhabitant. "Standing guard?" I slid around the door frame. His back was to me. He flicked a lighter in his hand, reclined all the way back in a dubious office chair. On, and off went the flame, prompting me to look above. What I was feeling above was the sprinkler system- conveniently blocked in this room. As tempted as I was to trip a holy water shower, knowing she'd be safe, I knew better. "Yeah." Said the radio. "Seems like it." “She's not one to be a pussy.” "Well she is tonight!" "Maybe she needs encouragement.” He hunched over the command station. It wasn’t modern enough to be outfitted with anything more than ham radio and inscrutable dials. I approached from the behind. I wasn't armed. I never carried anything on me because I never came on these missions to do anything but protect Adria. Anything that could truly hurt her was beyond a pistol or rusty shank. “Shake down one of her lackies, make it real loud. She'll come running." "While you're in there and I'm out here?" The conspirator barked a laugh that crossed the feed like a spike in static. "Hell no. She isn’t known for her patience. Give her time." I wasn't going to. I gripped the back of his chair. Using all 150 pounds to my name, I tipped it. It's wheels spun out from under him. He crashed into the floor, the collision ringing out like gun fire. I took advantage of his momentary disorientation to stomp on his wrist. "What was that?" The disarmed radio chirped, fuzzy. "Was that them? Are they in?" It earned a good kick under the desk. Volume whirred as it spun, revolving on the tile, but safely dispatched. By the time I turned to him, he'd gotten to his feet and was bracing for me. Rigorous training meant I knew how- in theory- to respond to hand-to-hand combat. I was no natural. I didn't have the years of combat these guys did. I didn't have to fight my way out of a sewage pit to survive. I had the eye for one move at a time, not chains. I thoroughly leaned on what she taught me. Eye which foot was forward, recognize where he was putting his weight, while minding my own. So while I was able to lean away from the first hook he threw my way, that's where my advantage expired. The second his fist whirred through the air past me, his leg compensated for the dodge and lobbed the office chair into my knees. No matter the power behind it, in our cramped space with plush seating, that move was good for nothing except bruised knees. She taught me to be skeptical- so as I stumbled awkwardly back, my hands flew up to my face. He hopped the chair. Feinting for another hook, his opposite hand drove heavy punch to my gut. The small, obstacle-ridden area did not give him much of a charging period for momentum but he wasn’t exactly lanky or baby-soft. It hurt- God, it hurt- but pain meant a lot less when you could habitually heal faster than the damned. My block fell to latch onto his forearms. I grabbed him before I could go down. I was winded but he was wailing. I fired them up- I pumped wave after wave of bright energy into his forearms, clinging for dear life. Contrary to the way I set this fight up, I have nothing flashy. Months under her tutelage taught me none of her instinctual killer moves, technique, or style. Maybe for a lack of trying but this was it. My God-given and only finisher- it never failed me before. Why would I stop now? My ribs just stopped aching when he bucked. He took three solid jerks to try to rip my arms out my sockets. All failed when I kicked at knees, and hung off his arms like my next kick was going for his gut. It didn't- he'd drop me, and Adria swore that loss of balance is deadly. Instead I bowed and jumped, headbutting for his jaw. He tucked his head to protect his throat. I got his nose instead, but noted from pitch of the swear, I was doing a whole lot more damage from the arms. I seeked to remedy that. Before I could go for another, he dissolved the height difference and dropped. He twisted- twirling under my arms like a grade school dance. Just when my arms were at the apex (having never let go- his arms were gruesomely soggy in my grip) he jutted up. I arched across his back, then over his shoulder, into the air, and then on the floor. I crashed into the ground dazed, lifting my head just in time for his spined tail to pull a filing cabinet drawer into my temple. It was a miracle I stayed conscious. The collision whited out my vision. Pain lanced through my brain like an electric volt, my head humming. But I didn't need to see him when I could feel him. Those senses worked on another level. I blindly reached out. I found his leg, one hand after the other. Forgoing healing, I devoted every spare bit of Holy power into a lateral pull-up that caved his calf between my fingers. The splitting headache motivated me beyond precedent. His flesh squished, bowing with the pressure fingers exerted like memory foam that didn't bounce back. He collapsed. The muscle was rendered useless, and his cry was ear-shattering through the cellar, and the only thing that pierced the intense ringing in my skull. The lighter fell out of his opposite hand. I swatted that under the desk, too, to join the radio paging frantically for updates. They were right; she would come running when she heard us. I felt her now. "You were going to kill her." I pulled myself to a slouch, hand slipping on the rustle of papers and demon grease of my palms. “You were going to kill her.” He was emerging blearily through the spots in my vision. His hands hovered over his disabled calf, unable to tend to it after I shaped it into an apple core. "What do you care?” He half-cried. “For fuck's sakes, you're the fucking laughing stock of the whole circle. The bitch calls you her pet-" She did that in front of me. "She thinks you're wrapped around her finger!" And she does. Glow from my hands reached my elbows, reflecting in his inverted eyes like cataracts. "Remind me why you care about our relationship?” "Relationship? Is that what you call it?" His leg wobbled. While one arm reached for leverage, the other was after something in his back-pocket. "She's using you. She doesn't love you." She says that to keep up appearances. I followed him to his feet, unconcerned that my vision hadn't fully returned. This fight wouldn’t last much longer. "You were going to kill her." I repeated. "What happens when you fall, huh? What happens when this catches up to you and you aren't worth shit to her anymore? When she has no use for y-" My eyes flicked upward one second before her hand plunged through his neck. Knowing just the way to circumvent his spine, four fingers wiggled through the opposite end of his windpipe. Venom bubbled out his mouth before blood did. Poison seared canals through his lips. Chips of his eroded teeth landed in his lap. His body tipped. "What's with you and talking to them?" She snarled, irritated. She flicked excess onto his back. His final syllables gurgled into the tile, and my power guttered with it. "You were wasting time. You should have taken care of that!" "Sorry," I said, still. I got around to healing my temple, clearing up the humming. Just in case she had anything to refute about what she heard. She didn’t. "What's I say? No time for playing around. Let's go." - - - Shortly after taking care of the riffraff, we had the cargo. It was delivered back to Buné at once. Theoretically this was supposed to prove Adria was competent at not just societal overthrow, but leading too. I didn’t care enough to join that meeting back. I went straight home to cook dinner and mentally prepare for disappointment. When she returned, she slammed the door as per usual. I had dinner on the way, and was wrestling a can opener for dessert. She wasn’t immediately razing the town so it must’ve been good news, despite the firm set of her brow implying the contrary. “What’s the word?” I asked, confused. "My coronation is tomorrow." “...For lieutenant?”

Her promotions thus far have been unceremonious. ‘Now you don’t have to live in the mire,’ ‘Now we won’t beat the shit out of you,’ ‘Now you don’t have to work minimum wage to support a zombie apocalypse.’

"I didn't picture Buné to be one for fanfare." "Yup." "That's- that's great! Isn’t it?" "All that's left now is to get rid of everything holding me back." I frowned. She said it so cold. So sterile, and she hadn’t made eye-contact with me since she walked in. She just threw down her brass knuckles and kicked off her boots under the table.. "-Me?" She snorted. "No, not you." For the barest of seconds I felt relief. With the way fifth worked, that probably meant axing some a big cat, or turf-war over a street above ‘sea level.’ It concerned me as much as any of her new hobbies. But that relief turned to restlessness, and that restlessness to desperation now that we were both here, back in our quiet kitchen, absent of screaming and bloodshed. It was 2 AM and this time was traditionally ours. “What did you see?” I asked. “Earlier I mean.” She glared, snapping out of whatever she was daydreaming about. “You think you deserve that?” I didn’t respond. “You didn’t even take care of the scraps today. You acted like that guy was going to make you cry.” I looked back at her. Looking at her like this used to make her face fall. Back when she felt things like remorse or concern. This Adria held her ground, yielding only when dinner was going to burn. “Whatever. You can make it up to me tomorrow.” “For your coronation…?” “Yes.” She knew how I hated going to demon things. “It’s not going to be in Hell.” She elaborated, when it must’ve been apparent on my face. “Where then?” "Ashwater." I stopped, pot boiling behind me. "...What? How is that what’s holding you back? You want nothing to do with it." "Buné's orders. He wants to make sure. You coming or not?" "Of course.” I said, my conscious late to catch up. Funny how it deteriorates with disuse. “It’s not going to be a team thing, is it? “Nope. You and me. Just how you like it.” “Good.” - - - That night when she showered, I stole her phone. This was double suicide. She'd kill me if she found out, and she'd kill who I was talking to for good measure. If that happened she'd rot in Hell forever, and they would never have a chance. She'd never have a chance. I ducked outside, and shut the sliding glass door behind me. I cowered behind the curtains. Finding the number required an incognito tab. I punched the number through the cracked glass, and prayed for an answer. "C'mon, c'mon, c'mon-" I beat against the balcony rail. It was several painful seconds of ringing, but at the third note, I had an answer. "Hello!" She answered, drowsy. "Ashwater Cottage, Margie speaking!" "Margie!" I cradled the phone with both hands. "I need you to pass on a message. Now." "Huh-?" Her sleepy customer service persona dropped. In the background, a Gilmore Girls rerun muted. "Who is this? I don't understand-" "Get the Kyriakoulopoulos' out of town. I don't care how you do it. I don't care where they go. But get them out of Ashwater. All of them." "What-?" "They are in danger," I swore, wishing she could see my face. I couldn't intone the right amount of peril. Not with Adria listening one thin motel wall away. "But they're in danger if you tell. Trust me on that." "Who is this-?" "It doesn't matter." "Deme...?" She faltered, in disbelief. "Deme? Is that you?" I squeezed my eyes shut. "Just do it. Please. It's their only chance. I don't care if Theo has a gun. It won't help, not against this. It will only make things harder. This is your only warning, for the love of God listen. You're the only one who can help. I trust you." "But, this is- I?" I hung up and blocked the number. - - - The following day we made the drive out to Ashwater. I rode backseat, arms wrapped around her waist. If I had to pick any aspect of our new life to love most, it was this. The very concept of a motorcycle was terror before immortality was in the equation, but this was a way to be close. I learned to love it: it was a way to hang onto her that felt organic. Nothing at all like the way she touched me now. It was a two-hour journey that breaked thirty minutes outside Ashwater. She'd nearly toppled the bike when she jumped off. I held it in place, as she hit up a gas station. She pulled two cans from the saddlebags, and kicked the machine until it caved. It spilled gasoline over her fingers in exchange for a crumpled twenty. "What's this?" "Preparation." I lifted the glass of my helmet. "Preparation?" "Buné says I can't commit without burning some bridges." "Literally, huh." Not necessarily a novel concept in our lives. "Sort of like the hideout?" Her head whipped to me- indignant, before letting it go. Cyrus was never on the discussion table. Any proximity to the subject was too close, but whatever was on her mind disarmed the usual backlash. It gave me a little hope that this is what he meant. Lord knows I'd be more than happy to burn down an elementary school if it meant I was wrong. “Help.” “On it.” Together we straddled four full tanks on the bike. But instead of the compound, our first stop was her old police building. Their town never needed more than two people. It was no surprise when there were no cruisers out front. Cameras were new but our faces were shielded by a thick plate of black plexiglass of our helmets. They wouldn't know how to explain what they saw if they saw it. Demetri and Adria were gunned down at the corner of Lancaster and Franklin. They had a monument in their honor, maybe some ghost stories, but they have been dead for years. Dave, too. She doused the front. She sprayed their unfunded equipment with gasoline.. We watched it burn from the tool shop across the street. Kitschy knick-knacks aside, tourism didn't change the town integrally. Ashwater was asleep by ten. The fire alarm blared, but no one was around for miles. Assistance in arson was no small sacrifice but it’d been gutted of Adria from the inside out. I wondered if she realized the irony of this- burning away a past she supposedly didn't remember. “Why does Buné care about the police station?” I asked, as the front buckled. Electrical equipment I helped fund popped, shooting sparks into the flames. She crossed her arms, staring into the flames. Her expession, unreadable. Adria was never a mystery when it came to her face- I was reading too much into it. There was just nothing there. “It’s not why he cares. It’s why I care.” “You care?” “Not anymore. Come on,” She said, kicking back into gear. “Next stop.” When we moved out to Modena, we didn't leave anything behind. I wondered if she remembered her house on the edge of the property. In her false timeline, it was never hers. She hit the road as a delinquent. In reality it was probably repurposed since her move. Perhaps sold, or given to Celia when she graduated. I wasn't volunteering its existence, and she seemed to ride past it without incident. My gut rolled as we pulled up to her parent's place, though. I was right- even though I was hoping we'd detour. I'd love to burn Cyrus' shit a second time, spit on his memory. I would be just as ecstatic as she was- But she stopped out front, kicking the stand, and parked. No cars lingered in the driveway. There was the daunting possibility Melina's van was in the garage but I needed, needed, to believe Margie worked her magic. "Stop, no." I followed at her heels. My charade broke after she marched up to it in grim determination. "This isn't necessary." "'Isn't necessary'?" She jerked the gas can at the house. Three years ago we enjoyed pie and coffee on the stairs. We listened to Celia's poetry where the gasoline splattered the wood. She was spitefully through, going as far as to break a window for further access. "Those people never cared." "Then why does it matter?" I arced around her as a bodyguard of the front door. "Fuck them. Fuck them all, let's just go. You think he’ll double check a small town in the middle of nowhere? " Tension was heightening. Something snapped. She pitched the empty gas can at the porch, breaking the glass inches from my face. I flinched "SEE? This is what I'm talking about!" She stabbed a finger into my ribs, knocking me back. "This bullshit is why I couldn't get promoted! It's you! It's fucking you! You haven't learned since Mark!" "Me? You said it wasn't-" "Yes, you! You and your stupid, insane sentimentality! This fake life you’re holding onto!" "How is it- NO" She struck a match. I snatched the end in my palm, snuffing it. "Don't." She slapped my hand, grabbed my arm. Bending it in a way it didn’t belong, she slammed me against the door. "What's your hold up, huh?! Spill it.” She threatened. “Give it up. I don’t give a shit about any of this- why do you!" I squirmed. How do I explain? It’s the one thing that’ll bring her back. It’s the last enduring piece of her life that’ll exorcise this monster she’s become. "They cared.” I kept my hands up, placating. "I know you don't want to hear it but they did. J-just go inside. Once. I can see it from the mantle-" I'd burn my whole arm if I had to, I'd throw myself into the fire to spare it. "You'll see the pictures- you don't even go that far ! The halls are covered, Adria. Covered. They have a shrine for you. Remember the school play-? Tree number four? That's how I knew about it." "I DON’T CARE what you think you know! That isn't a thing! It's not a fucking thing, Demetrius!" God, just look to to your left. In the window, where she was smiling. She was missing teeth in a family portrait from the 90's. “LOOK-” "No." Her grip loosened. She lit another, holding it outside of my range. Her nails narrowly clipping it together. "Y-you don't even have to!" My voice cracked. In a spark of courage, I pried her claws and jumped past her. I grabbed the knob. It was locked but that barely can be considered an obstacle compared to the Hell we'd been through. I'd break a window. I'd throw my shoulder out, I'd bust the door in. I'd rob their house, dragging every knickknack onto the lawn like a fucking yard sale to get one memory out of her. Her unhappy childhood wasn't real if there was photos of her playing the recorder at six. She wasn't dead if I could prove she tripped across the stage at her high school graduation, and she wasn't a thug if Melina had clippings framed every time she made the paper thereafter, a hero in their smalltown. "I'll find them for y-" "Don't even think it," she said, icy. "You don't have to come! I'll show you. Buné doesn't have to know-" "NO," She wrenched me inches from her face. "Walking through that door means you're attached to a fucking lie. Are you?" She shook me when I didn't respond. "Are you?! Are you wasting my time?" "No!" "She's dead. You said you understood that so prove it. Prove it, Demetrius." But why are you ignoring the truth? Aren’t you even curious? Don’t you want to see? The look in her eyes said it didn’t even matter. My fingers twitched on the handle. I knew I didn't care if she lit the building with me inside if it meant I had proof. A piece of our past. Hers was a family of love, encouragement, and support that created the most perfect being I knew, but this Adria didn't understand that. Her eyes were heartless and black through the tinted glass. She didn't care if anyone was inside. She didn't check. She’d be just as quick to dismiss cold hard proof as planted evidence of my delusions. Either that, or that Adria was never something she wanted to go back to. I swallowed and let go. My arm dropped to my side. "So." I said, numb. “What's the plan?" She knocked me aside. I stumbled to the other side of the porch. "We get rid of it. Just like the police station." "Great." I said, hollow. "Not so fast." She jammed a tank in my chest. I looked down at it. The acrid scent burned my eyes, even through the helmet. "What?" "This is a test for you." "I don't understand-" "You care a lot more than I do. Clearly." She started at me, cold and hard. I was one wrong answer from failing. “...Fine.” Without taking the time to acknowledge what I was doing, I shook the gasoline over the house. Thinking about it meant I’d see my Adria smiling back. In her uniform, at attention from the living room. My heart twisted. I dropped the light. It went up in minutes. Heat buffeted my face when I lifted my helmet. I hoped physics of some sort would spare the pictures in the frames, maybe a magnet on the fridge but in truth I wasn't looking at them right now. I staggered back to where she was sitting in the dirt. Legs crossed, she watched it burn. We answered everything with fire. It wasn't a stretch to want something out of this. The optimist, opportunist in me says it can't be a waste. I needed something. Anything. Anything that reassured me I didn't sever my own past in the process. I needed to know I wasn't throwing away all physical evidence. Everything that could bring her back. Her memories took shape in the stupidest things. Like a touch at the theater or stupid joke in the car. I pleaded for her to see something . But she watched on with no emotion. No bitterness, no remorse- Nothing. Perfectly blank. Perfectly alien. Her head tilted as we smelled the rubber dripping of Damon and Elyse's bikes, leaning against the side. I breathed in the ash of her destroyed home. I buried my head in my arms. shutting my eyes tight. There was numerous moves I could make here. So many callbacks to the formative flames that made us who we were- 'Fancy meeting you here.' 'Just like that?' Just any time we won. How we reacted with humor, conquest, and of course. Fire. But this wasn't the same. We stayed. We sat there until the roof crashed into the lawn. "Did you wanna know what I saw?" she said, after I'd gone quiet for too long. The smoke in the air was turning to a different scent. Chemical. I imagined this meant the kitchen was up in flames. with it, all of the kid's art, and Melina's recipes. "Yes," I answered, muted. She had removed her helmet. Her green eyes reflected the fire monstrously, until they adopted a brownish tint. Her braid- dark, but not black, fell across her back. Messy, but in the way I remembered it. My heart skipped- the first real thing i felt in a solid hour. "It was a small one." She said. "The first time you held my hand." I picked my head up from the grass, confused. That was not the set-up I used. I brought up her promotion. Usually prying was hopeless. She didn't delve deep into these things, as they were never her life, but I had to try. "Tell me about it." I said, quiet She watched the burning building, hugging her knees. For not remembering her old life, she sure was mimicking it. She looked softer as she tried to recall. But too soft- it was forced. "It was easy.” She said. “I just remember how easy it felt. Carefree." The first time I held her hand I was on a lot of morphine. We both survived a grievous monster attack. Carefree was a funny way to put it. I stayed quiet, before I noticed she wasn’t going to go on. "At...the hospital?" "Yes," she said, too keen. "At the hospital. And what happened after. What she said to you then." My eyes slid to hers, suspicion clawing. She must've known how hard it was to look at her. How much this felt like a continuum of her sick trial. "...The first time she accepted a date, to Jo's? Once we were both patched up?" "Yes." My breath hollowed within my chest. "Yeah." I said, dead. "We always were saying how she had the best coffee in town, didn't we?" "Yup." I buried my face in my hands and laid on the ground, wishing I could sink into the dirt. It took salt in the wound to realize this isn't who I was. I wasn't a man who lived in the past. There was always something new and exciting ahead. I thrived in the moment, and I planned five paces ahead, but this is where I've been months. Disjointed. A fraction of my former self, whittled down into core needs brought out of my by Adria. I am not who I should be and this wasn't who she should be. I needed to go. I needed to cut the dead weight and leave. Today was the last straw- that sick joke was it- She's not there anymore. She was gone. My Adria, the one who always knew what to do, my loving, compassionate, spitfire Adria- would be as disgusted by this monster as I am. And the monster I've become, chasing it. This house was a pyre. A testament to the last chance l had. Adria died in Mark’s basement but I was the one who took every last trace and cremated it. But if there was nothing left for me down here, why was I here? I was doing more harm than good. I could have left her memory in peace. I could have treasured that golden smile, those fond memories, and the way she got high of danger- not sadistically drunk off it. I could have mourned, at left her be in her prime. Instead, those memories were being replaced. They were overwrit by violence. How many times could I watch this Adria cave in a head, before I forget how she'd kiss mine? How many times can I watch her lose her temper, felling the world into destruction behind her before I forgot how she'd cry at pound commercials? How many times can I watch her callously disregard the innocent, before I started to forget how she'd stop at nothing to save them all? At what point is there nothing left of Adria, and I am just as complacent in her murder? The answer should have been never but it was already starting. I aided in the apocalypse. I accepted her deal. I torched her parent's house. I didn't know if she knew what I was thinking or if it was some twisted reward for playing by her rules but she leaned into my shoulder. Her lips were parted, enough to feel the heat of the threat without the intention. I looked to her mouth. Fangs she forgot to hide pressed against the bottom, the pitch black shine reflecting the flame before she licked away the venom. I wasn't looking at my Adria's face. I was staring at a choice: what felt nice versus what was right. But what felt right and what felt right didn't co-exist outside of us. It was learned- and she taught me that yet this year of living off scraps took it back. Without Adria I regressed to where I started: selfish man driven by whims. If I held onto nothing but the way she make me felt, I could have saved her. If I remembered how her embrace was rough, but tender I'd know this Adria was an imposter. If I had held onto nothing except the way she felt against me, I'd reject this monster that gripped me obsessively like a vice. But I didn't. In these long months I forgot it all. I couldn't bring myself to do without, because even a cheap imitation was something. And eventually- everything. I collapsed on the grass, dragged by her hold. She held me against her, rolling until her wings blocked out the firelight. Until the smell of Hell replaced the Melina's singed garden. Until the possessive traction of her lips made me forget I was kissing this demon on Adria's grave I was never going to leave.

#i was going to hate myself if i didnt do anything during qurantine #bitch!adria #bad end #took long enough ):#story

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theonyxpath · 5 years

Link

My Mummy told me we’ve passed 200% funding and have over 1000 backers for the Mummy: The Curse 2nd Edition KS, so I’m coming unwrapped over the news!

Or something like that! Sometimes the metaphors flow like cold molasses. Speaking of which, last week was a very sloooow week for pledges, and we had a couple of the bigger ticket reward tiers get dropped in favor of lower ones, so getting to these milestones feels pretty great. Still, we’re looking to keep going for the last week of pledging and hit a bunch more KS stretch goals.

To be fair, one of the bright spots and effective ways we’re getting the word out has been with Actual Plays and interviews – some on our Twitch channel and on other sites as well – and we’ve seen upticks in pledging every time one of those goes live. In fact, you can find links to them below in the Onyx Path Media section of the Blurbs!, as well as on the Mummy: The Curse 2nd Edition KS page itself.

That’s what we’re doing to spread word about this new 2nd edition of Mummy: The Curse, yet we still need the help of our mummy cult horde. Please let your friends know, retweet our Mummy tweets, like our Mummy Facebook posts – you never know when one of your actions will be the torch that illuminates Mummy for a whole new section of possible fans!

I thank you, my father thanks you, and my Mummy thanks you, too.

VtR2 Spilled Blood art by Aaron Riley

Here are some other topics we discussed today in our Monday Meeting:

Sometimes we get asked where they can buy a project that shows up on social media. Just in general, if you run across this: every project we make will show up as a PDF and PoD on DTRPG. The only ones that wouldn’t have a PoD are those that can’t, like our Game Screens. PLUS, we are putting more and more projects into retail stores, so if you see a project that was Kickstarted in the last couple of years, you can be pretty sure it will be be in stores, and/or available on the Indie Press Revolution and Studio2 websites.

Speaking of Studio2, we want to point out that they will also be attending PAX Unplugged in Philadelphia in just a little more than two weeks. Since they will be bringing and selling our books and stuff, and will be right next to our Onyx Path booth, we won’t be selling anything there, but we will be gaming in the booth and out in the demo area. We’ll definitely be talking though, with new brochures, and shirts, and we’ll be announcing a couple of projects at the con. Plus, we may have an advance copy of V5 Chicago By Night to show off at our booth!

They Came From Beneath the Sea! art by Larry Blamire

Which leads to this little topic: I’ve mentioned that we have multiple secret projects we’re working on, and let me tell you, the guesses as to what they might be have been absolutely amazing! Almost none are correct, but it has been a delight to read everyone’s ideas. In general, I’m only referring to TTRPG projects that we have control over; anything else usually has too many other folks involved for me to include that kind of project on the list. And really, we have so many cool TTRPG projects coming that we don’t really need to count anything else!

December looks like it’s going to be Trinity Continuum month for our Wednesday on sale offerings! With December being the month that the Trinity Continuum and TC: Aeon core books start going on sale in stores, and the PDFs and PoDs going live on DTRPG, we’ll actually have a couple of items becoming available every week in order to leave the last week open for our monthly Exalted PDF releases.

TC: Aeon RMCs art by Aaron Riley

We’ve had a fantastic response to the Wolfenoot sale and Mighty Matt McElroy will be parsing in more detail how that went next week after the sale ends in a couple of days, I’m sure! Meanwhile, it was super to see how folks responded so far, especially considering that we’ll be helping out some deserving doggos! A bunch of posts in our forums and elsewhere shared what other people in our community did for the holiday, and those were often very inspiring.

And then, right after that sale, DTRPG jumps right into their traditional orgy of sales: their Black Friday and then their Cyber Monday sales! More info on that in the Blurbs! below, but suffice to say that a huge number of our PDFs will have ridiculous sales savings all through those days. I always see these sales as a super opportunity for folks to expand their interests in our game lines. Either by picking up supplements for a line they’re into, or by jumping in on a low-cost way to try a line they might not have been able to try before. A great way to experience our:

Many Worlds, One Path!

BLURBS!

Kickstarter!

The Mummy: The Curse 2nd Edition Kickstarter is now passed 200% funding and has over 1000 backers with over a week to go. Backers have already unlocked the Mummy 2e Screen as a Stretch Goal, additional Utterances, and a whole new project: the Mummy 2e Companion!

Please check out this blog from the last two weeks for a description of all the amazing features of this new edition!

Be there to witness the majesty and terror of this new version of Mummy: The Curse! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/339646881/mummy-the-curse-2nd-edition

Next Kickstarter: V5 Cults of the Blood Gods!

Onyx Path Media!

This Friday’s Onyx Pathcast features the Terrific Trio hitting a new milestone of an entirely off-topic episode, as they throw away their planned topic and instead brainstorm game ideas !

Remember to follow and subscribe to our Twitch channel on https://twitch.tv/theonyxpath to watch actual plays of Vampire: The Masquerade, Pugmire, Hunter: The Vigil, Aberrant, Mage: The Awakening, Scion, and Scarred Lands!

Also coming up this week on Twitch, we have a Behind the Screen special for Scion, a game of Scion being run by devilish developer Neall Raemonn Price, and an interview with the always amazing Eddy Webb on all things Pugmire and Dystopia Rising: Evolution

It really helps us to have subscribers on our Twitch channel, and you can do so for free and catch premieres as they go up if you have an Amazon Prime account. Just type Twitch Amazon Prime into Google and you’ll be shown how to subscribe for free.

We’re not restricted to Twitch, however, as on our YouTube channel we’ve been uploading all the actual plays you might have missed! Seek us out on https://youtube.com/user/theonyxpath

Also, on the Gentleman Gamer YouTube channel, Matthew Dawkins has just commenced his Gentleman’s Guide to Scion, which aims to dive into the setting and system of Scion, as Matthew takes on the in-character persona of one of the eponymous godlings! Here’s his channel: https://youtube.com/user/clackclickbang

Matthew’s been incredibly busy with interviews recently, including a three hour interview with Gehenna Gaming on the subject of many of our games (including Vampire, Mummy, They Came from Beneath the Sea!, and Werewolf) as well as games from other companies not limited to KULT: Divinity Lost and Pathfinder! For a real deep dive into Matthew’s past as a roleplayer and as a producer in this industry, check out the interview here https://twitch.tv/videos/512869972

Plus, Matthew was interviewed for Mage: The Podcast regarding using metanarrative in games such as They Came from Beneath the Sea! and Mage: The Ascension, and their interview can be found right here: https://magethepodcast.com/

Red Moon Roleplaying continue their actual plays of Vampire: The Masquerade with Klara Herbol and Matthew Dawkins, and Mummy: The Curse with Matthew, Bianca Savazzi, and John Burke, and their excellently edited shows can be found on their website right here https://redmoonroleplaying.com

And as if you haven’t had enough of Matthew, he was interviewed by the fine folks over at the Roll the Role Podcast on the subject of Mummy, Vampire, and a whole raft of other games! https://www.twitch.tv/ROLLTHEROLE

Finally, you get a break from Matthew over on the Story Told Podcast as they continue their actual play of Exalted: Dragon-Blooded right here: http://thestorytold.libsyn.com/fall-of-jiara-19-dragons-divided

And for a refreshing change of Mummy pace, here’s writer Jason Inczauskis with his excellent 307 RPG Podcast interview: https://307rpg.com/?p=67

Drop Matthew a message via the contact button on matthewdawkins.com if you have actual plays, reviews, or game overviews you want us to profile on the blog!

Please check any of these out and let us know if you find or produce any actual plays of our games!

Electronic Gaming!

As we find ways to enable our community to more easily play our games, the Onyx Dice Rolling App is live! Our dev team has been doing updates since we launched based on the excellent use-case comments by our community, and this thing is awesome! (Seriously, you need to roll 100 dice for Exalted? This app has you covered.)

On Amazon and Barnes & Noble!

You can now read our fiction from the comfort and convenience of your Kindle (from Amazon) and Nook (from Barnes & Noble).

If you enjoy these or any other of our books, please help us by writing reviews on the site of the sales venue from which you bought it. Reviews really, really help us get folks interested in our amazing fiction!

Our selection includes these latest fiction books:

Our Sales Partners!

We’re working with Studio2 to get Pugmire and Monarchies of Mau out into stores, as well as to individuals through their online store. You can pick up the traditionally printed main book, the screen, and the official Pugmire dice through our friends there! https://studio2publishing.com/search?q=pugmire

We’ve added Prince’s Gambit to our Studio2 catalog: https://studio2publishing.com/products/prince-s-gambit-card-game

Now, we’ve added Changeling: The Lost 2nd Edition products to Studio2‘s store! See them here: https://studio2publishing.com/collections/all-products/changeling-the-lost

Scarred Lands (Pathfinder) books are also on sale at Studio2, and they have the 5e version, supplements, and dice as well!: https://studio2publishing.com/collections/scarred-lands

Scion 2e books and other products are available now at Studio2: https://studio2publishing.com/blogs/new-releases/scion-second-edition-book-one-origin-now-available-at-your-local-retailer-or-online

Looking for our Deluxe or Prestige Edition books? Try this link! http://www.indiepressrevolution.com/xcart/Onyx-Path-Publishing/

And you can order Pugmire, Monarchies of Mau, Cavaliers of Mars, and Changeling: The Lost 2e at the same link! And NOW Scion Origin and Scion Hero are available to order!

As always, you can find most of Onyx Path’s titles at DriveThruRPG.com!

To celebrate the latest Internet holiday, Wolfenoot, DriveThruRPG will have a Pugmire sale from Nov 21th-28th. As part of the celebration, we’ve also given the Canis Minor community their own gift: Now Canis Minor creators can write and sell Pugmire and Mau fiction! Check out the Canis Minor program for details: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/cc/17/canis-minor

AND starting immediately after the Wolfenoot Sale concludes we are then part of DTRPG‘s massive sale for Black Friday and Cyber Monday!

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/ https://www.storytellersvault.com/ https://www.drivethrucards.com/ With hundreds of PDFs and a few PoDs discounted through the extended weekend. There will also be some big discounts on select titles for 24 hours on Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

On Sale This Week!

This Wednesday, we continue our monthly EX3 releases with Siluris, the Hidden Sting and Gleaming Gneiss, Ambitious Sorcerer on DTRPG!

Conventions!

PAX Unplugged: December 6th – 8th, in Philadelphia, PA. We’re going to have lots and lots of gaming for folks to sign up for, a lot of them featuring our game creators! 2020: Midwinter: January 9th – 12th, in Milwaukee, WI.

And now, the new project status updates!

DEVELOPMENT STATUS FROM EDDY WEBB (projects in bold have changed status since last week):

First Draft (The first phase of a project that is about the work being done by writers, not dev prep)

Exalted Essay Collection (Exalted)

N!ternational Wrestling Entertainment (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Creating in the Realms of Pugmire (Realms of Pugmire)

Contagion Chronicle Ready-Made Characters (Chronicles of Darkness)

Trinity Continuum: Adventure! core (Trinity Continuum: Adventure!)

Duke Rollo fiction (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Redlines

Kith and Kin (Changeling: The Lost 2e)

Crucible of Legends (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Dragon-Blooded Novella #2 (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Exigents (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Many-Faced Strangers – Lunars Companion (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Second Draft

Across the Eight Directions (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Contagion Chronicle: Global Outbreaks (Chronicles of Darkness)

Player’s Guide to the Contagion Chronicle (Chronicles of Darkness)

Tales of Aquatic Terror (They Came From Beneath the Sea!)

M20 Victorian Mage (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)

Contagion Chronicle Jumpstart (Chronicles of Darkness)

Development

Heirs to the Shogunate (Exalted 3rd Edition)

TC: Aberrant Reference Screen (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Titanomachy (Scion 2nd Edition)

Trinity Continuum Jumpstart (Trinity Continuum Core)

Monsters of the Deep (They Came From Beneath the Sea!)

One Foot in the Grave Jumpstart (Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2e)

Lunars Novella (Rosenberg) (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Scion: Demigod (Scion 2nd Edition)

Manuscript Approval

Scion: Dragon (Scion 2nd Edition)

Masks of the Mythos (Scion 2nd Edition)

Post-Approval Development

Scion LARP Rules (Scion)

Mummy: The Curse 2nd Edition core rulebook (Mummy: The Curse 2nd Edition)

Editing

Lunars: Fangs at the Gate (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Hunter: The Vigil 2e core (Hunter: The Vigil 2nd Edition)

Let the Streets Run Red (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

Geist 2e Fiction Anthology (Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2nd Edition)

Dragon-Blooded Novella #1 (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Scion Companion: Mysteries of the World (Scion 2nd Edition)

Cults of the Blood Gods (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

Legendlore core book (Legendlore)

WoD Ghost Hunters (World of Darkness)

Mythical Denizens (Creatures of the World Bestiary) (Scion 2nd Edition)

Pirates of Pugmire KS-Added Adventure (Realms of Pugmire)

M20 The Technocracy Reloaded (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)

Yugman’s Guide to Ghelspad (Scarred Lands)

Trinity Continuum: Aberrant core (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Terra Firma (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

Wraith20 Fiction Anthology (Wraith: The Oblivion 20th Anniversary Edition)

Deviant: The Renegades (Deviant: The Renegades)

Post-Editing Development

Chicago Folio/Dossier (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

TC: Aeon Ready-Made Characters (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

Night Horrors: Nameless and Accursed (Mage: the Awakening Second Edition)

City of the Towered Tombs (Cavaliers of Mars)

Oak, Ash, and Thorn: Changeling: The Lost 2nd Companion (Changeling: The Lost 2nd)

W20 Shattered Dreams Gift Cards (Werewolf: The Apocalypse 20th)

TC: Aeon Jumpstart (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

Vigil Watch (Scarred Lands)

Indexing

ART DIRECTION FROM MIKE CHANEY!

In Art Direction

Contagion Chronicle – Going over sketches.

Trinity Continuum: Aberrant

Hunter: The Vigil 2e

Ex3 Lunars – Just need two artists’ pieces in.

TCfBtS!: Heroic Land Dwellers

Night Horrors: Nameless and Accursed

Ex3 Monthly Stuff

Cults of the Blood God (KS) – Final art rolling in.

Chicago Folio – Got cover in this morning.

Mummy 2 (KS) – Going.

City of the Towered Tombs

Let the Streets Run Red – Going over artnotes and dividing stuff up.

CtL Oak Ash and Thorn – Awaiting artnotes.

Scion Mythical Denizens – Going over sketches.

Deviant

Yugman’s Guide to Ghelspad – Sending out art notes and contracts.

Vigil Watch – Awaiting artnotes.

In Layout

They Came from Beneath the Sea! – Wrapping it up this week(?).

Trinity Continuum Aeon: Distant Worlds

VtR Spilled Blood – Josh is working on it.

Pirates of Pugmire

Proofing

Memento Mori – Awaiting Dev comments.

Dark Eras 2 – Aileen working up the cover.

Trinity Continuum Aeon Jumpstart

M20 Book of the Fallen – Backer PDF errata is with Josh.

At Press

Trinity: In Media Res – PoD proofs coming.

V5: Chicago – Shipping to the KS fulfillment shippers. Prepping PoD files.

Aeon Aexpansion – PoD proofs coming.

Geist 2e (Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2nd Edition) – At press, waiting for proofs.

Geist 2e Screen – At press, waiting for proofs.

DR:E – At press, waiting for proofs.

DRE Screen – At press, waiting for proofs.

DR:E Threat Guide – Helnau’s Guide to Wasteland Beasties – PoD proof on the way.

Trinity RMCs

Tales of Good Dogs – Backer PDF errata being gathered.

Today’s Reason to Celebrate!

Not today, but this week, is Thanksgiving Day (on Thursday) in the US. For me, this isn’t a historical holiday with all the weight of that, nor a football holiday, it’s not even a food-gorging holiday even though we do have a big dinner with our celebration. For me, and how we celebrate it in my family, this is literally a day of thanks. Of being thankful and grateful for the previous year and all of the people in our lives who made a difference in a good way.

For all of us here at the Onyx Path, that means all of you folks! Thank YOU, for allowing us to do what we love because of your support!

#Onyx Path Publishing

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sole-cuore-amore-e-droga · 5 years

Text

Tel Aviv 2019: Straight outta Australia to Eurovision with the Statue of Liberty's opera number

youtube

It took 4 years for Australia to figure out one day, “you know what would improve our chances with the viewing audience that’s tired of bland and easily produced pop? That’s right, a GODDAMN NATIONAL FINAL!!!! anyone here agreeing, mates? ehhh???”. And so we finally had an Australia Decides - the whateverth of many of the NFs to be added to the NF family. Where only the best of the best Australian acts compete for their title to get to Eurovision. The last Australian NFs I’ve seen before then were fan-made NFs for online Eurovision fan contests. And they were fun, but now they’re not as fun anymore as a real life-sized counterpart, with shorter than 1 week voting periods, real live performances of totally new songs, all on the same arena, and actual hosts instead of the short but clear instructions of “here are the songs, here are the voting details”. Good times.

Rather exciting the show was, full of anything AND everything. And what did it birth? The first ever totally white Australian participant (nothing wrong with it, it’s just that other 4 ones were of more exciting descents than European), Kate Miller-Heidke. The surprisingly older-than-she-looks operatic blonde with a sizeable career to boot, with nice songs on her overall repertoir (and a chubby lil bun of a son :3). I admit I knew of her from one of those mentioned online fan contests, at the very time one of her songs “Sarah” was popular in a fan circle of like 150-200 people. Since then I heard two more of her songs, so when she (and Sheppard) were announced as part of the Australia Decides lineup, I was excited because of the “automatic name recognition alert!!!” triggering in my head. And I hoped her song is as exciting.

But then I did listen to “Zero Gravity”. And I got confused.

But then again, it’s Kate. I had this moment of realisation that I actually am not a huge fan of her music overall? Just a couple of songs here and there, and probably that’s all. The other ones that I listened to that aren’t those ‘couple of songs’ are nice, but something that I’d only listen to volutarily to torture my inner state of mind.

For me the problem probably arises from the fact that I don’t feel the song’s structure and a lot of things feel like unfinished (because it takes a humongously long time between songlines ksksksk). But at the same time it might as well be the point of the song?? As far as I remember this is very much so about mental issues and how is one trying to break free off them while entering the “ze-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-eeeeeee-ro gra-a-a-a-a-a-aaaaaaa-vity”, and the “stone in shoe” thing (don’t you hate it when you find tiny-ass pebbles in your shoes, guys? cuz I do!!! let alone finding bigger sized ones like Kate just did!!!). Whatever’s keeping her down this time. But for some reason I don’t quite think that Eurovision has really been graced with great mental issue songs - Malta last year was just a cheap pop song stuck in the early 2010s with its dubstep sound; Romania last year was just an average teen sitcom background rock song, and it’s a shame about it being all that forgotten by others because I just happened to like it more and I feel for all those that feel depressed about their own existence and feel like saying “goodbye cruel world, I’ll see you never again anymore”. It feels odd not wanting to break the taboo before I become an animal or going where there’s zero gravity with these songs, yanno what I mean??

BUT! I didn’t say I hate that song. It has its qualities. Like, the verses are pretty decent, it’s just that the chorus feels completely detaching from my interest, which baffles me because I wanna like it more. We have these standard 00s mild-synthpop-like choruses and Kate’s blissful singing into your ear (ffs she starts her verses with “hey you” with THAT vocal sound. You don’t feel like turning up to her to ask “yes”??) on top of them, and then the chorus buildup feels like a helium balloon ride I wanna be let go of already. Alright, well, the 1st post-chorus doesn’t sound TOO bad... but the 2nd one, I’m not really a huge fan of it when she vocally warms up and then SPITS the opera vocals at me scarily. I’m spooked out. And then the last minute of the song is spent with sounding like it’s taken from a cheap-rent theatre play (I say ‘cheap’ because nothing here aside Kate’s voice sounds like OTT theatrical musicals to me), now with some more of delightful opera voice and the backings reminding us all that ain’t nothin’ holdin’ Kate down no’ mo’, ayy! The ending of the song is just so painfully obviously theatrical though, where all the horns rise up and let out a final blast with the final high vocal note like a flat silver-painted chocolate star on top of a dazzling white cinnamon-lemon cake with white glaze and some red berries sprinkled around... I guess I felt excited, I guess I felt like I was carried through a musical journey, but I still ended up completely unsatisfied because there were long pauses in the song that didn’t reasonate with me all that much. My soul really has something against songs that only have two verses and two choruses and that sound like they have potential but are overally unappealing (like me not getting over at how silly “Meggyfa” from A Dal 2018 sounds with all those horsefly and DAW-produced cartooney violins thrown in the song... it should have sounded like a fairytale about a king’s cherry tree, not a peasant’s made-up hallucination of an old and dried-out cherry bush :V). There shall be the day I overcome that obstacle, but for now, I’ll keep it be...

All in all, a competently composed, but at the same time, estrangedly composed song, performed by a classical fairy princess dressed in white and decorated by glitter (and her complementary backings that are cheerful enough sounding for a pop and/or tune). And the entry shines bright, too. As much as Kate’s beautiful teeth and shiny red lips - a perfect combo that could potentially scare an audience for being too perfect.

Approval factor: I’m on a fence with this one, yet again, but my views are leanings toward a mild non-approval. Though objectively I do approve this because it’s finally not a safe-ass entry that is just there to keep Australia afloat on Eurovision, but subjectively... it will take me several lightyears just to get over that severely cheap-ish chorus.

Follow-up factor: Again, it follows up the trail of Australia’s in Eurovision nicely, being so far something totally and completely unexpected from the nation’s, and something so daring in Eurovision overall (we got plain opera songs in the past, now here’s a more popera-musical crossover song that is not anyhow as schlagertastic as that one entry performed by Greta Thunberg’s mom 10 years ago!). A step in the right direction, even if it means that I am personally still inner screaming about it, lol.

Qualification factor: it’s perfectly capable of floating through a couple of places in the territory of both a safe qualification comfort and a hellish danger zone. I’ll leave it up for juries and televotes to judge it for themselves, but for me personally? If that pink foggy cloud from Greece underperforms with no chances to come back into a better shape, I think it could lend a spot to the Oz’s even-foggier thundercloud of joy, and it could even climb up higher if people aren’t overly charmed by the other game changers of the semifinal (like Iceland and Portugal, especially Portugal). But as of now, I guess I’m indifferent anyway the wind blows, and literally anything can happen. It’s truly one of those “anything can happen” songs, I assure you 100%, and it shall be fine, and any result for it will be perceived as spectacular, imo.

NATIONAL FINAL BONUS

FYI, if y’all want, you can rewitness the whole show here (before SBS sues off that for copyright reasons), but let me guide you through some of my personal highlights:

• If you guys that ever read these reviews know of any other Sheppard song than “Geronimo” then it’s okay, and it’s also okay if you don’t (and if you even haven’t heard of “Geronimo”)! I’m just saying that these guys were the first ever exciting sight in the Australia Decides lineup (along with KMH of course), and now, I’m not saying I wanted something that could top over the hit song of these guys in my personal opinion (well their actual NF song, “On My Way”, might be slightly on the path of suffering from the “it’s-no-hit-song-so-it’s-automatically-disappointing”-itis, which is incredibly contagious, especially for all the one hit wonders out there (and not only), but despite people accusing it of not being “Geronimo” here and there, I sat down, listened and simply liked it), I am just saying to stop throwing shit at the artist just because their management is worse than their music. Yeah! Remember the time it was uncovered that Sheppard is funded by their parents’ business being torturous? There are Papua New Guinean asylum seekers locked away in a faraway island where all kinds of shit happens - abuse, torture, rape... and the parent Sheppard is responsible for all this (well actually he’s only 1/3 of the responsible men), and he makes profit off it. That’s disgusting to the max, I know, and by no means I support this pasttime, but I really hope that the Sheppard kids don’t support the way their parents get the money to fund their hopes and dreams, otherwise... well anti-stans you were right. I might as well begin regretting stanning Sheppard now but for a dumb bitch I am there always exist a shard from a broken hope I can hang on to just in case things would get better. Just like the time when Kesha broke free from the Ke$ha image at the time it came out to light that her former producer, Dr. Luke, is THAT kind of guy. Anyway, if there are people down here that sometimes come for the music and not for the backstory, I’ll leave a video for Sheppard’s entry, which wouldn’t have come onto Australia Decides if not for the Sheppard fans (that they still had before the mentioned incident?) that encouraged them to go ^_^ Is your love for this song on fire? (probably not but I still am asking b/c fuck it)

youtube

• I know what you’re thinking, so I’ll include Electric Fields as well. And with a good enough cause because I liked their song too, just like many people did. “2000 and Whatever” mixes electronic music with a relatable message for all the millenials out there who don’t want to “live forever”, Aboriginal sounds and cool inclusion of new and unheard-in-Eurovision-before language(s?) and all in all would have definitely made a more kickass Australian entry for this year. And what’s the best about it? They didn’t need to have a big fanbase like Sheppard’s or a relatively middle-sized abroad but big inside like Kate’s. They did THAT by being incredibly fun and unique and gained both national AND international fans with their one year Australia Decides stint, and now the fans are hopeful to see this duo come out on another Australia Decides in the future. I salute their newborn fanbase for being so passionate and hopeful already. Oh, and of course, they got a meme out of their way at the same time without even needing to win (which wouldn’t have happened if not for SBS’s care to translate different languages than their own):

casually describing the jury chatter on National Finals like

But my favourite moment of the performance that they had is when the lead singstress let go of her headscarf to show off her beautiful long dreads to the viewing audience <3333

• For those combined fans of both ESC and RuPaul’s Drag Race, Australia fished out a special surprise with Courtney Act (what, you thought all drag race queens have had to be American of origin?!) being on the lineup as well! Together with several other dancers, she presented “Fight for Love” (not to be confused with Dami Im’s “Fighting for Love”) on the Gold Coast stage - just your typical soft club banger with tight red dressing reminiscent of Lady Gaga’s eccentric costume era and Courtney’s special stare:

I HAVE SPECIAL EYES

(what’s more hilolololarious is that Logo, who aired BOTH ESC AND RDP, has not gotten a renewed contract for Eurovision this year, which means that if Courtney DID win, the Muricans would not be able to see a drag alum they might have loved at some point! As they already cannot broadcast Lady Madge, the only American performing on show, flashing her covered-up sponge pudding. A devastation <3)

• Hey, let’s not underestimate the other acts, too! There were 6 others that I didn’t mention, and among them my favourites were Ella Hooper (as during her performance I felt like I was watching that Shania Twain concert DVD again with her outfit being as outstanding as in this video) and Alfie Arcuri (one of the other names I heard before just like Kate and Sheppard - it’s a homosexual guy that feels confident enough with his sexuality by turning his struggles to songs!), and Leea Nanos (a 16 year old girlie who, like Electric Fields, don’t really have fans, but she came here to have a good time and performed confidently enough for her age! *clap* *clap*) wasn’t so bad, either.

• Australia Decides as a whole is a thing to remember. Not too annoying hosts? Check. Beautiful introductionary postcards (involving the NF guys going around to enjoy nature, talking some more about themselves and a specific soundshape for each act at the end of each postcards)? Check. (Fun) Interviews with the contestants and interval acts?? Yeah, you can check that as well. Behind-the-scenes get-togethers of every one of the participants and them getting to partake in a fun questionnaire?? Wow, they even have that!!! All in all I admired this slick production, the smooth flow and the nice details that went into this whole event. Thumbs up on that one! First organisational pancake did not burn up.

• Then again, every single one of those nice ones have to have an ugly interval act hidden somewhere, like, the German drag-like caricature that appeared on AGT not so long ago, Hans from Adelaide, who did a Eurovision medley and included “Ooh Aah (Just a Little Bit)” in it as well... needless to say, the fandom didn’t approve of that, and obviously the Måns's version from EYD was better.

• Also also, what do other NFs don’t do that Australia Decides just did this year??? A REJECTED ENTRIES COMPILATION SHOWCASE!!! Damn straight! When was the last time you’ve seen one of these? At least SOME recognition given for those songs that were close enough but the NF compilers found much better songs than those ones so those other ones just didn’t get their chance... amazing considering I believe I’ve never seen a thing like that before. There indeed were some rejected NF songs that are marginably better than some from the actual list. And thanks to Australia Decides showing them, they’ll never be any other NFs rejects ever again, unlike the Melodifestivalen/DMGP/etc. ones. Yeehaw. Maybe this serves as a ladder of hope for those rejectees to get up and try again so we’ll see them in another edition?

• Let’s not forget Kate herself. She did come down at us as the Australian version of Statue of Liberty (as the title of this write-up suggests, youhouuuuu) that looks more like someone’s unused Miss Universe national costume, but still very goddamn dazzling. And the rando flying above her presence that couldn’t be “holding [her] down”. What would have been any other way to present a mental issues awareness song than that. Majestic. I’d printscreen her dress for this one in full motion but I’d rather put down this picture with a more interesting shirt choice walking nearby the Australian Eurovision songstress while she was getting down to be ready for her winner’s reprise. I’m sure you’ll be able to see the dress in this too!

(if only I could use some extra fries in life!! =( )

All in all, I applaud the Down Under-ners for a succesful kickstart in the NF business, and I really hope SBS invests in this more than just calling up DNA Productions again to find themselves a starlet from an old Australian Idol/X Factor season that’s of different descent as always and slap a pop tune onto their discography with which they gotta go with to ESC. Would be incredigood. Thanks.

I’ll wrap this cumbersome beauty up by wishing the whimsical beauty Kate all the best in Tel Aviv! Hope your infected foot did not ruin the fun for you, dear sis.

#eurovision 2019 #tel aviv 2019 reviews #australia 2019 #kate miller-heidke #zero gravity #australia

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sailormoonartblog · 6 years

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A short guide to the different editions of the Sailor Moon manga

As promised, now that I’ve reached the milestone of 200 readers, I’m posting a brief guide whose purpose is to help newcoming fans choose which edition of Naoko Takeuchi’s masterpiece is the best one to buy. Please keep in mind that this is not going to be a full-fledged review (especially since I happen to personally own a grand total of one of these editions and can’t therefore judge the others properly), but just an overview of what differentiates one edition from the others, which is ultimately the factor that is going to be the most determing in your future choice. Unless you choose to fuck the system and just download all of this material from the net.

So, without further ado, let’s start! Like 99,99% of manga, SM was published on a regular phonebook magazine before being compiled into collected volumes, so this initial incarnation of the manga is the one that must be considered first. Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon was serialized on Kodansha’s monthly title Nakayoshi between February 1992 and April 1997 for a grand total of sixty chapters (please don’t try to do the maths - I can already tell you that two single issues during this five-year period were skipped). On, the other hand, Codename Sailor V! was host by Nakayoshi’s companion magazine RunRun, which used to come out once every three months, between April 1991 and October 1996 on a much less regular basis; this series counts a total of sixteen chapters. We must also add that eight different short stories and one much longer extra chapter were also being contempourarely published between Nakayoshi, RunRun and the bimonthly issue Nakayoshi Deluxe, with a very irregular pace; finally, a tenth extra story was later published as a stand-alone well after the end of the manga. With all of this in mind, we’ve got a grand total of 85 back issues (and an artbook, but Parallel Sailor Moon is a wholly different story) to track down if we want to possess the original version of this amazing manga series. Good luck with that! Finding them these days is very rare, and finding them at a reasonable price is simply impossible (magazines are the cheapest way to read a manga while they’re still in circulation, but bless you if you want to find some older ones), so you must be a veeery dedicated collector to start the hunt. The good news is that the amazing people at Miss Dream have upped of all this goodness for download, and while it’s not the same as actually owning the issues, it’s still something - I mean, surely it’s enough to know how the manga originally looked like. Yes, because if there’s a good reason why you’d want to give this version a look, it’s because it features art that was never seen after - Takeuchi went through a lot of effort to polish her artwork upon the series’ volume release, which is why many panels and even entire pages from the Nakayoshi version will look vastly unfamiliar to you in you’re not used to seeing her rougher style! All in all, I think this is enough of a reason to, well, at least download the files and compare the pictures with what the manga would come to be later.

Shortly after it hit the shelves in phoneback form, the manga was compiled into a series of collected volumes which came out between 1993 and 1998. The original tankobon incarnation consists of 18 volumes for Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon and 3 volumes for Codename Sailor V!; the side stories were randomly thrown around inside the main books, though it should be noted that this edition lacks Parallel Sailor Moon, since it was first published in the Materials Collection artbook, which came out in 2002. These books are the same small size of every regular tankobon (or pocket-sized comic, for that matter) and each sports the standard 180 pages for volume, more or less; and, like all standard editions, they’re completely in black and white. Admittedly, you could say it wasn’t much of a loss, since all coloured illustrations that had appeared on Nakayoshi were also being compiled into a series of artbooks, but these did not include the coloured comic pages that were not pin-up art. This means that, for a long time, the original paperback serialization was the only way to get your hands on all the coloured parts of the manga - not to mention the fact that the Sailor Moon artbooks completely glossed over Sailor V, so that series was even less lucky than its more popular younger sister, and collectors were basically forced to buy RunRun in order to have all colour art ever made. What’s interesting about this edition, then? What makes it different from the others and therefore worth being bought (apart from lacking a single short story that is present in every subsequent edition, which isn’t arguably a great factor)? You could mention the cover art, for starters: every SM!volume featured four new colour illustrations that Nakayoshi-only readers would’ve missed - one on the front, one on the back and one for each side of the flier sides - while the SV!volumes only featured new stuff for the cover and just recycled art for the other parts; it should also be mentioned that every SM!volume came bundled with a double-sided poster in full colour, but they all featured already-seen art from the chapter pin-ups that were also present inside the books, though in b/w. But, truth to be said, you can still own all these pieces of art without possessing the original tankobon edition, since they are all featured in the artbooks - and in a much bigger and cleaner format, to boot! Though sadly this applies to Sailor Moon but not to Sailor V, as usual. No, the reason why you really want to check this edition out is inside the books: first of all, the first page usually features some tankobon-exclusive b/w art (which means that it was born in b/w and not converted from a coloured source to a b/w print) which, by virtue of being b/w, was totally absent from the artbooks. You’ll also be treated with Takeuchi’s liner notes wich were then suppressed from later editions (this tankobon-exclusive feature took the space that was devoted to sports and commercials in the Nakayoshi version)! And, aside from the illustrations, the greatest difference is actually the artwork in the manga pages themselves: as I’ve mentioned, almost every page was retouched to varying degrees when transitioning to phoneback publication to book release, and sometimes full pages were even added! In the end, what makes this edition unique is that it features an incredible quantity of panels that would be later redrawn (again!) for the next release, which is why I think it’s very important to at least give a glance to the original tankobon’s scans. Oh, I should also note that the division of the story into chapters was vastly rearranged for this version: comparing this arrangement to the way chapters were actually published singularly in Nakayoshi, Sailor Moon went from 60 to 49 chapters, while Sailor V went from 16 to 15. * But well, this is more of a formal difference, since none of the content from the magazine edition was eliminated - it was either altered or added, but never cancelled. As a final note, though the tankobon edition is out of print, it’s still relatively easy to find copies at a reasonable price, so it’s not as impossible a mission as hunting for the original magazine release is.

*= The issue of splitting Sailor V into chapters is a huge problem by itself, since the series actually started as a one-shot which we are now used to calling Chapter 3. The fact is, chapters 3-4-5 were the first to be published on RunRun as a sort of experiment and, once their popularity reached a certain degree, Takeuchi went back and gave birth to chapters 1-2 to explain the origins of the heroine in a sort of prequel fashion. But after that chapters 6 to 16 were all released in subsequent order, though skipping some issues of RunRun to make space for Sailor Moon side stories. Just know that all book editions of the manga arrange its chapters following the logical (but not chronological) order in order to give the story some actual sense. I think George Lucas is proud of Naoko Takeuchi.

Now we come to the most well-known edition (and the only one I actually own): the shinsoban release was published between 2003 and 2004 and consists of 12 volumes for Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon, 2 volumes for Codename Sailor V! and 2 bonus volumes for the so-called Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Short Stories, which were grouped separatedly from the main series and included Parallel Sailor Moon for the first time. Even though the size of the books is about the same as the previous edition, they’re all quite thicker - each of them sports about 240 pages, more or less. And the first six are in full colour! Continuing on with the technical side of things, the shinsoban edition restored the original division into chapters from Nakayoshi and RunRun, but kept the tankobon rearrangment of the Sailor V reading order; in the end, the shinsoban way has become the official division and order for the manga, and the basis for every subsequent rerelases and adaptations. But what sets this edition apart from the others? First of all, the new coloured illustrations: every SM!volume (including the extra ones) features three new pieces of art - one for the cover, one for the back and one for the summary page; regarding Sailor V, this is limited to a single new illustrations per volume (the cover one) coupled with some recycled art. As an added bonus, all SM!volumes (so including the two extra ones, but excluding the two SV! ones) came with a page of stickers mostly featuring even more new coloured pieces by Takeuchi. And, this time around, there are no artbooks to have collected these artworks, so buying the books is essentially the only way you’ve got to be able to stare endlessly at all this awesome art. Speaking of the art, yet again a huge number of panels was redrawn in Takeuchi’s new style, and particulars were added to the Warriors’ uniforms which were present in their original design but had been scrapped before the manga hit serialization. This was the last time this was done, which means that a) the shinsoban has become the definitive version of how the manga looks like and b) there’s a total of three versions of the manga which differ from one another regarding the artstyle, and these are the Nakayoshi, tankobon and shinsoban versions. And the last is the best looking one, according to my very qualified judgement. It should also be noted that, in this edition, the tankobon liner notes were suppressed (their place was reassigned to some recycled b/w chibi art), but short two-pages comics about the making of the manga were added; and while the first change was kept in later editions, the omake content is exclusive to the shinsoban. The conclusion is the following: since the shinsoban edition is still being reprinted on a regular basis, it’s very easy to buy it first-hand, and to a reasonable price to boot - by virtue of being a deluxe edition, they’re slightly less expensive than your regular tankobon issue, but the difference in price is minimal and, since there are less books to buy, it even comes off as cheaper in the end; not to count that, even considering a single volume, the quality of this version is still much superior.

Then there’s the kanzenban edition, which was published between 2013 and 2014 and consisted of 10 volumes for Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon and 2 volumes for Codename Sailor V!; as stated above, the division into chapters followed the shinsoban, but the side stories were once again reinserted in between the regular series instead of being distinctly separated. Now, unlike with previous releases, the kanzenban does not feature any sort of update on the artwork, which means that the shinsoban is still the definitive version of the manga. But of course there is something to differentiate this editions from all the others! First of all, there’s the new art: every SM!volume presents a brand-new coloured illustration that, once again, is not available anywhere else due to up-to-date artbooks not existing. Unfortunately, this implies that there is nothing new aside from these ten illustrations, since the back and side cover sport no art at all and the SV!volumes, poor Mina, use recycled art even for the covers. That being said, the main selling point of the kanzenban is the fact that it’s the only edition to feature all the colour pages of the manga: this is relevant even for artbook-owners since the kanzenban is virtually the only source to include the coloured pages from the manga that are not cover pin-ups and the coloured illustrations and manga pages for Sailor V, all of which are very much absent from the artbooks. This makes the kanzenban a sort of must-own for everyone who’s obsessed with Takeuchi’s art, and you can stay assured that I’m going to spend everything I’ve got on this edition as soon as an Italian translation is published. The kanzenban volumes do not come with any bonus material, but they make up for it with their incredible size which makes them the best medium to ogle at Takeuchi’s art properly without the need to use a magnifying glass (...I’m not the only one who does it, am I?) - for comparison’s sake, the books are only slightly smaller than Nakayoshi issues, but the paper and ink quality is on a wholly different level! Every SM!volume is very thick, counting about 300 pages each, while the SV!volumes are not different from their shinsoban counterparts in that regard - they’re just bigger and more coloured. Of course this comes with a negative side: this edition, being more deluxe than a deluxe version (keep in mind that the shinsoban was deluxe indeed), is very very expensive. With this I mean that each volume costs about 2,5 times the price of your standard all b/w tankobon that you can find at the newspaper seller. This is to say that, if you’re not a super hardcore fan like me, you can very well go for the shinsoban.

The good news for anyone who can’t afford any of these editions is that a bunkoban release has been officially announced to be due to be published between 2018 and 2019. Information about this version is still very scarce, though, so we don’t know how many volumes it will comprehend - hell, we don’t even know if this edition will include Sailor V at all! With this in mind, I can only tell you what I know about bunko in general, based on the ones I own: the great thing is that each volume is about 500 pages long and very cheap, but there’s a reason to this. Bunkoban books are in complete b/w and, perhaps more importantly, are positively minuscule, to the point that reading can be even made difficult by their small size. My personal advice is to buy bunko only if you absolutely have to. Oh, I should also mention the fact that this edition is not going to feature any new art, since the covers will recycle the same illustrations used for the first kanzenban volumes, as photos from the official site have revealed. Anyway, I promise to update this mini-guide with more info as soon as the bunkoban edition is actually released!

So, to put it short, my suggestion is: hunting down the Nakayoshi edition is a task for hardcore collectors only; at this day and age, the original tankobon version is outdated, but it still holds interest to a dedicated fan; the shinsoban edition is the default one to go for new readers and probably the best way to enoy the story; the kanzenban edition is only for very, very big fans; the bunkoban edition will irreparably destroy your eyesight. In the end, I think the most difficult choice is between shinsoban and kanzenban, and that is a decision you have to make thinking of what you value more between the story and the art. If you really can’t make your mind up, keep in mind that it’s not illegal to buy both! Still, never forget that the more buyer-friendly is the shinsoban. I very much hope this piece can be helpful for new readers! :) Please tell me if you spot anything missing and don’t hesitate to ask for more information!

#sailor moon #naoko takeuchi #pretty guardian sailor moon #bishojo senshi sailor moon #pretty soldier sailor moon #kodansha #nakayoshi #runrun #nakayoshi deluxe #sailor v #codename sailor v #manga #chrono

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breakfreewithjacqui · 5 years

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My Weight Transformation. From 158kgs to 53kgs

Welcome to my transformation story.

My name is Jacqui Grant, this is little bit about me.

I am a weight loss and wellness coach and personal trainer

My book Break Free & Go For It! hit Amazon bestseller list in December 2018.It was an amazing experience to end the year on that note.

I have a passion of working WITH people to create changes in their weight their well-being and of course their fitness.

As someone that has been morbidly obese, at one point I weighed 158kgs I understand the struggles every day to release excess weight and keep it off.

I understand what it's like to feel like you have no energy at all and how fatigue kicks in quite quickly how you tell yourself every day tomorrow will be better I'll exercise in the morning I'll do that later but tomorrow and later never come and then one day you wake up and you realize that you've gained all this weight.

For me life was that much harder and i had my doctor and family telling me I need to lose weight, however it was so hard.

It seemed like nothing I did worked.

It wasn’t until I saw a baritatric surgeon and psychologist that I understood that at a weight of 130kgs plus I was not going to be able to lose that excess weight on my own.

The anger and frusturation i felt on a daily basis that i couldn’t do the things i wanted.

The days of almost starving myself in an attempt to release even 2kgs and it didnt work, chipped away at my self confidence.

In the end I began to accept that this .... being over 130kgs was my life and that i was to give up on my dreams of ever being in a relationship, being able to work out without being injured, to ever be loved for me and that I would never be comfortable in a swimsuit on the beach.

I gave up on ever advancing my career path as no matter how much knowledge I had, no matter how many qualifications I had my health got in the way of me being promoted and my body size got in the way of me physically being up for the extra work.

I gave up on me.

Turning point came.....

Then one day after having yet another health scare, this one much bigger, my heart was racing over 200 beats per minute, I had ambulance staff around me and the look of fear on my children’s face, I decided I was going to give it one more go.....

One more attempt to be the best I could, to let go of the excess weight.

That was a major turning point in my life and I have never looked back with regret since then. ( June 2016)

I choose to have bariatric surgery and I'm so glad I did that.

I spent 4 months researching bariatric surgeon, and the different surgeons and when I met my surgeon for the first time I walked in with 3 pages of questions for him.

He sat there and gave his talk on surgeon and then calmly proceed to answer all of my questions. He was upfront about the risks and one of the things he said to me and I am glad he did because it was one of the deciding factors for me to go ahead, something I already knew and accepted, however hearing it from him was perfect.....

“ This surgery is ONE tool in the weight loss journey. You still have to choose your food carefully, exercise and listen to your body!”

This I already knew, however hearing it from him especially after seeing so many people fail to release their excess weight post surgery I felt reassured that i was doing the right thing for me.

The surgeon is a tool, it is certainly not a quick fix.

I have worked damn hard everyday. I exercise everyday, I choose my foods carefully and I enjoy food more now than i ever did. I love exercising and to be able to move my body without pain, without worry of injury.

Changing Careers....

After surgery I finished my Wellness Coaching Level 3 and then became a personal trainer.

So not only did I transform my body, I transformed my career path to be able to have the career I always wanted, to work as a coach and trainer with clients, just like you to be the best version of yourself. :)

As a Weight Loss & Wellness Coach I'm here to share with you the importance of choosing what is right for you.

I work with clients that have had bariatric surgery and clients that haven't and we're getting results amazing results in both groups of people.

I would love to work with you for you to be the best version. of you.

Media Coverage....

My story of transformation was featured in The Woman's Day Magazine here in Australia and it's available online, you can read it here: 100kg Mum Transformation (simply click on the 100kg mum transformation to be taken to the story) It was published on February 4th 2019.

I share my story of transformation with you to inspire you to create the changes in your life that you have always wanted.

Change is NOT easy, however with the right support, the right people in your corner you do get results.

Moving forward.....

My business is called Break Free Consultancy.

I would love for you to visit my website and receive your FREE gift from me to you.... www.breakfreewithjacqui.com my latest eBook: Long Term Success! is just for you.

I have a variety of products/ services available for you.

* Break Free for Life! VIP Course - 16 weeks to creating and sustaining Long Term Changes ( includes online content and one to one coaching)

* Success 28 Program - 6 weeks to get you started on your journey

* Break Free Wellness Retreat - 2 days and 1 night by the beach to focus on you, time of self love, reconnecting with you and gaining clarity around how to achieve your goals in weight well-being and fitness

* FREE webinars

* 1/2 Day workshops coming to a place near you soon.

YOU are worthy!

You are worthy of the best and just like I did you can create long term success, you can have the life you dream of.

When you are ready I am right here, ready to work with you.

I would love to hear from you:)

Jacqui

P.S- remember to drop by the website to recieve your FREE gift from me

P.S.S - I would love to have you follow me on Facebook and Instagram.

Also to reach out and stay in touch so I can share with you when I am running my FREE events.

#weightloss #fitness #wellbeing #wellnesscoach #personaltrainer #breakfreewithjacqui #weightlosstransformation #health #health & fitness #energy #passion #self love #empoweringwomen #empowerment #bariatricsurgery #weightlosssurgery

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the-dubstep-strawberry · 6 years

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Asks for Margo -- 19, 29, 44

Oh my God, this has been sitting here forever. I am so sorry, @maxrev! These were good questions btw, it took me a while to think #19 over in particular…

19. What were your character’s deepest disillusions? In life? What are they now?

Margot has always had a healthy amount of scepticism when it comes to authority. While she loved and believed in the USA and thought it was a good place to be, she was never really convinced that she should trust in the infallible wisdom of the government or the idea that Science! would fix everything. Rumors of corruption, oppression, and negative news being hushed up by the authorities quietly bothered her, even though nobody around her cared to talk about it very much.

Things she definitely believed in, however, were justice and the rule of law - as a young lawyer, she witnessed her society coming apart at the seams, and while she’d never considered herself one of nature’s activists, she was sufficiently rattled by the increasing numbers of civil rights violations to start championing the cause of citizens who were being hung out to dry by those who were supposed to protect them. Had her career continued, I think she would have become a thorn in the side of local government, and experienced increasing opposition and harassment by those would have preferred to see her clients’ cases covered up.

Post-War society came as quite a shock to Margot, but meeting Preston Garvey and the Minutemen early on (and later on, Nick Valentine, the ultimate Good Cop) helped to reaffirm her faith in humanity, as well as her belief in the importance of helping others, maintaining order for the benefit of all, seeking justice for the wronged, and keeping innocent people safe from those who sought to harm them.

Other firmly-held beliefs, however, took quite a beating in the years following the Great War. She’d been raised in a church-going family and always believed that no matter how much bad seemed to be happening in the world, things would turn out all right in the end, but her husband’s senseless murder and some of the horrors she saw in the wastes made her start questioning her childhood faith.

The importance of family took an even bigger hit after she found that her kidnapped infant son had grown up to embody some of the things she hated the most - abuse of science and power, holding human rights and lives in contempt, living in luxury at the expense of others, causing unnecessary suffering, refusing to share knowledge that could improve the lives of others, and disdain for her efforts to help the remaining survivors rebuild wasteland society. Forced to take up sides against her own son in favor of the people of the wastes, she became deeply and bitterly disillusioned with the idea of the perfect Pre-War family and the home with the white picket fence. However, adopting young synth Shaun after the destruction of the Institute has helped her come to terms with her loss, and her family unit has grown to include many other important people in her life - friends, neighbors, comrades, pets, robots, and even the occasional Super Mutant.

She became somewhat disillusioned with the Brotherhood of Steel for a time, in the wake of the Blind Betrayal incident, although she still believes in their cause, and her own disregard for what she considers to be unlawful authority helped to protect Danse from the worst of the consequences. After demanding concessions from Elder Maxson (and ultimately making him an offer he couldn’t refuse), she’s working her way back to being a productive member of her faction again, this time with Danse at her side.

She does, however, very firmly believe that death is preferable to Communism. Some old habits just die hard.

29. What is your character’s weaknesses? Hubris? Pride? Controlling?

Margot’s greatest weaknesses stem mostly from her impulsive nature. She’s quick to anger and quite incredibly vengeful when wronged, although the people around her are usually enough to remind her that she needs to keep that particular impulse in check. She wants (and usually tries) to think things through, but her plans are often forgotten in the heat of the moment, and she often makes hasty decisions that she comes to regret. She is also plagued by anxiety and self-doubt - Nate was the person who helped her to overcome much of her social anxiety when they were younger, and now that he’s gone, she often feels lost, afraid and out of place, although she does her best to hide it - and overcompensate - with confidence that could sometimes be mistaken for arrogance. She is also desperately afraid of losing family or friends after the deaths of her husband and son, and frequently has nightmares about seeing loved ones injured or killed.

44. How badly do they want to obtain their life objectives? How do they pursue them?

Many of Margot’s original life objectives have already been lost, or become impossible to obtain. Her life as a Pre-War housewife and mother is gone for good, although she’s trying to make up for 200 years of lost time by being a Post-War mom instead. Her ultimate career objective was to obtain the Attorney General’s office for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts - she now has to make do with being a former attorney (and General) in the Commonwealth instead. She’s done her best to take those changes in her stride, and military life suits her - she’s making good progress in her military career with the Brotherhood of Steel, although she’s still rather uncomfortable with having obtained the rank of Paladin under (somewhat) false pretenses.

She’s slightly more comfortable with the Minutemen and enjoys building up the faction (with Preston’s help), and finds it particularly satisfying to see new communities in the Commonwealth rising from the ashes of the old ones. Her ultimate Post-War goal is to have a happy family life and to see her home state and city thriving again, and she’s well on the way to accomplishing both.

As for how badly she wants to obtain those goals? She’s very determined indeed, although she tries to avoid using phrases like “the greater good” (she knows where that path leads and wants none of it) and she will go to great lengths to avoid causing any harm to civilians or other innocent people. No matter how much she wants something, she refuses to get it at the expense of people who have done nothing to hurt anyone. Enemies, however, are fair game and she’ll use stealth, subterfuge, or even fight dirty if she has to - after all, there are no Queensbury Rules where Raiders and Gunners are concerned.

#Margot de Havilland #OC asks #answered asks #thanks for the ask!

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lindoig8 · 3 years

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The Tanami Track

Sunday, 6 June

(Wow! It is two weeks since I posted anything so I will try to catch up, albeit slowly.)

We had quite a few little jobs we wanted to do in Alice before setting sail for the Tanami and that took a couple of hours – testing and topping up our water tanks, a bit of cleaning in the car, reorganising things in the van in case of really bad roads, emptying the loo and disposing of rubbish and recycling, last minute hand washing – and of course, we had to move the van from one site to another because someone else had been allocated our site before we had booked the extra night – more packing up and unpacking, but we didn’t do more than necessary in the hope of making it easier to get on the road tomorrow.

We did a bit more supermarket shopping – just topping up a couple of things – and Heather had knitted a few more beanies so we dropped them off at a mission.

Monday, 7 June

Finally, the Tanami itself!

We said goodbye to Bill and Linda at the caravan park and hit the road at about 10.15. We called in at A-one Autos who had worked the minor miracle on our car a few days ago. I thanked them again and picked up a few business cards because I promised Linda I would get some for when people asked her for a reliable mechanic.

We also purchased 187 litres of diesel – thirsty beast that it is – and finally we were off on the trip we had planned several times before. (It reminded me a little of our attempts at the Darling Run – planned quite a few times before we finally achieved the objective.)

It was all bitumen to Tilmouth Well where we imagined we would stay overnight but it was not yet 1pm so we just topped up with fuel again (40 litres for 187 kilometres) and let some air out of the tyres in anticipation of some pretty rough road ahead. Ten years ago, we had stayed at Tilmouth Well and did a day-trip out to Birdlife Australia’s sanctuary at Newhaven. The first 40 kilometres of that was on the Tanami Road and it was the worst road I had driven at the time with inescapable corrugations 8-10 cm deep all the way. This time, it was good bitumen almost all the way to Yuendumu – they were sealing the last few kilometres as we went through.

Yuendumu was about 80 clicks further up the Tanami Track than we had been before and it seemed something of an achievement to have reached it. Alas, Yuendumu is just a very sad little aboriginal settlement about 3 or 4 clicks off the Track and we just drove in for a look but never got out of the car. There is only one shop and accompanying fuel stop that visitors are allowed to use, but we just drove past and headed back to the ‘highway’. I remember the Yuendumu Mission being talked about at Church when I was young and Mum seemed to mention it quite often, perhaps romanticising it a little – but it is an outstandingly poor, sad, dilapidated place in real life. (And I think that would be the best description of Yuendumu Heights – unfortunately, it seemed to be entirely lowlands.)

From then on, the road was all gravel, much of it heavily corrugated, with only a small percentage being easily trafficable – the driver had to pick his way back and forth across the road for most of the way, looking for the best and smoothest path. Initially, I didn’t think the road was quite as bad as it was last time we set our wheels on it, but Heather reminded me that 2011 was a long time ago and we are now much more experienced in driving goat-tracks than we were – and of course, with the caravan in tow this time, it is almost impossible to compare.

There were quite a number of patches with groups of small birds all along the sides of the road through to Halls Creek. Alas, they often flushed and flew across the road immediately in front of the car and I fear we may have contributed (just a little) to the risk of extinction of mainly Budgerigars (still millions of them around) and Zebra Finches (that almost equal the Budgies in number.)

We camped in a truck lay-by about 40-odd kilometres west of Yuendumu and spent a couple of hours cleaning dust out of everything. The van had been shaken around viciously all day and we picked up a few odd screws and brackets off the floor that we couldn’t identify – at the time. More on the damages later…..!!!

The sunset was spectacular and the stars totally awe-inspiring in a pitch-black sky. A couple of cars passed us very late at night, but otherwise, it seemed as if we had Australia totally to ourselves. If I was a Toyota driver (as I am), I would probably leap up and shout ‘Oh, what a feeling’. I didn’t, but it was a feeling to savour for years.

Tuesday, 8 June

It was very calm and quiet overnight, but a breeze kicked up soon after breakfast and kept the dust flying for two whole days. At times, everything took on a slightly blurred yellowish tint due to the dust in the air.

Not far into the day, we saw a group of about 10 or 12 raptors circling ahead and when we reached them, we saw they were circling a small dam around which were literally many thousands of Budgerigars and Zebra Finches as well as a smaller variety of woodswallows, doves and other birds. The smaller birds were wheeling around in huge clouds then swooping down to grab a quick drink and off again as another thousand took their place – again and again and again. The raptors were mainly Black Kites and Whistling Kites, but we saw a Square-tailed Kite and a Black-Breasted Buzzard – and a Peregrine Falcon swooped in a few times just before we left. We watched for half an hour or more and most of the raptors left the immediate area although we could see them perched in trees half a kilometre away. One Black Kite stayed in the tree overlooking the dam and dozens of smaller birds shared the same tree, obviously aware that the Kite was unable to catch them whilst perched. Interestingly, although the raptors made dozens of passes through thick clouds of birds, we didn’t see a single strike – there may have been a few, but we never saw them and the raptors just kept up their diving and swooping for quite some time before they tired of it.

The little birds perched so close to the Black Kite had me thinking of other situations where little birds seem to have the upper hand. Obviously, they don’t always come out on top or the raptors might starve, but we have seen scores of examples of birds a tenth the size of ravens or raptors harassing and chasing much bigger birds away from their nests. I am sure that if the raptor turned on the smaller bird, it would turn the tables quickly enough, but it never seems to happen and even very small birds will harass much larger birds again and again for quite some time until the larger bird gives up and flies away. Just another little quirk of nature!

Later in the morning we stopped for a couple of minutes to chat with a guy on a push-bike heading back to Yuendumu. He had a small low trailer behind his bike and said he was actually heading somewhere south (at least 200 kilometres to the nearest settlement as far as we could see) but there was a problem with his trailer and he had to ride back to Yuendumu to get it fixed – and he was still well over 100 kilometres out. That is really doing things the hard way! I watched him when he was riding – he was going very slowly (no wonder!) and every corrugation was a mini-ride uphill followed by a downhill one with the front, back and trailer wheels all out of synch – really hard going!!!

We also passed and re-passed two giant trucks 3 or 4 times when we detoured off the road for lunch or to look at things. They had huge pieces of equipment on them and were travelling at a comfortable walking pace – 6 or 7 kph at a guess. We think they were both driverless although one of them had a guy in it who waved at Heather when she took a photo. Probably the Union Rules require a driver to be in all driverless trucks even if he was sleeping or reading most of the time.

We called into a place called Chilla Well, another very small sad aboriginal settlement 3 clicks off the main road, with just a ramshackle house, a few tumble-down sheds and at least 24 tents of various sizes. We only saw 2 rather unwelcoming guys in a car that came up to us to see what we were doing. I think we may have been on aboriginal land without a permit, but there had been no signage anywhere that we needed one. We were trying to figure out a problem at the time. I had to do a 3-point turn to get out of the place and as I turned, there was a huge bang and a light came on in the dashboard. We were reading the manual to see what it meant and in the absence of anything useful, I used our sat-phone to ring Toyota in Melbourne to see if it was still safe to drive. It seems that something untoward had happened and we lost all our traction control features – but it was still safe to drive with some extra care – great news, given that we were still 700 kilometres from Halls Creek. I did notice a very minor change in handling the rig on the rougher patches of road from then on, but it may not have arisen from the loss of our traction control capability. A couple of days later, I noticed that one of the big brackets attaching our sway-bars to the drawbar was seriously bent and that the right-hand sway-bar was completely missing. I suspect that my 3-point turn at Chilla Well may have almost jack-knifed the rig and bent the bracket, loosening or disconnecting the sway-bar – it happened a few years ago when the Port Hedland Caravan Park put us on a small trailer site and it was virtually impossible to manoeuvre onto it.

We stopped a couple of times to photograph The Granites – strange rocky outcrops popping up almost grotesquely out of a fairly flat landscape. They were quite strange but not all that extensive, at least not close to the road. (In retrospect, I think they were a lot more extensive than I thought at the time. We saw very similar formations further west and again just north of there as we travelled to Halls Creek and back to Katherine a few days later.)

Another feature of the trip was the termite mounds. There were a few small ones around Alice, but as we went further west, they became much more prevalent and at times, I reckon we could have counted a thousand of them without moving the car. Very few were more than about a metre high, all very phallic, but after a couple of hundred clicks, they were slowly replaced by fewer (but still many) big lumpy ones, some 3-4 metres high and almost as wide. Once we got into Western Australia, there seemed to be fewer again, but a mixture of both and our research suggests that they are the building projects of at least two species of termite. Whatever…… but termites must hugely outnumber the millions of budgerigars out here – maybe even their mounds might outnumber them!

We camped in another truck lay-by 326 kilometres from last night’s camp – a surprisingly long distance given the conditions. Once again, we were drowning in dust – maybe not quite as bad as yesterday, but still a big cleaning job to make our little house comfortable for the night. And alas, we started to notice the damages to the caravan.

We were on the rough road 4 days and at the end of each one, we found a mysterious bracket on the floor. The stove is held in place with a bracket in each corner and we now know where the brackets originated! The stove-top is now held in place with our favourite silver sticky duct-tape – a bit like Gaffa-tape but more stretchy. The microvave now slides in and out of its cubbyhole, prevented from falling out on to the floor by the strap we have installed across the front of pretty much everything. Heather’s bedlamp was dead – but I fixed it by pulling it apart and reassembling it. The innards had simply come adrift and needed to be plugged back together. A section of trim had come off the freezer and that is now held in place with duct tape as is one of the fridge shelves (later all three) that had a piece broken off its anchor-point. (We have a couple of replacement shelves under the bed but we will wait until the damage becomes worse before installing them.)

Wednesday, 9 June

We woke to discover that the caravan had a flat tyre, necessitating a sizable job unpacking the car and caravan boots to access all the required jacks and tools – our newly-acquired trolley-jack (on which I had placed a lot of reliance) couldn’t find a safe jacking point under that wheel so I had to do more unpacking to get the caravan jack accessories out. By the time we had changed the wheel (first time I had used our absolutely brilliant rattle-gun too) and repacked the car and van, it was almost noon and it was 12.15 as we drove back onto the Track with the Western Australia border about 90 clicks away. We crossed the border, passing both the non-existent quarantine and border control checkpoints, and stopped for lunch half a kilometre inside Western Australia.

We wanted to visit the Wolfe Creek Meteor Crater that was about 25 kilometres off the main track so we went in and set up camp for the night in the free camping area half a click from the crater carpark.

We noted a few more minor damages. Two of the window winders are damaged and the windows were loose and flapping so they are now securely taped down too. A little cupboard over the stove had its door swinging and was taped down – but I subsequently fixed that by replacing the lost screws from one of its hinges. One of the car’s extension mirrors had lost a bolt and was hanging loose – lucky it didn’t come off completely – and I replaced the bolt with a temporary one I bought next day in Halls Creek. As always, there are costs involved in undertaking our adventures but there is no way we will sit at home and forgo the fun and challenge of our lifestyle just to avoid a little occasional discomfort and added expense. Life is simply too short!!!

It was strange being in a new time-zone, moving from the extreme east of one zone to the extreme west of the next so that dusk and dawn shifted close to two hours in the space of a day. It was well after dark before we were ready to eat dinner and light well before we were wanting to wake up next day. Makes one think about the marvels of the most basic laws of physics and astrophysics in particular.

Thursday, 10 June

I was going around the outside of the caravan before breakfast tightening up some of the screws holding the panels in place. I had noticed one screw almost out when we were taping up the window so went around much of the van ensuring that no others were loose. In the meantime, Heather was cooking all our vegetables to avoid us needing to discard them due to the absurd quarantine restrictions.

We had a walk around the camping area looking at birds and plants, then packed up and drove up to the Crater. It is truly spectacular. It is the second largest meteor crater in the world from which they have recovered part of the ‘payload’. It is about a kilometre across with very steep sides and at least three clearly defined concentric areas. It is quite dangerous to go into the crater due to its rugged steep sides but there is a central heavily vegetated area, then a broad grassed area ringed by a closely defined circle of shrubs and low trees, another grassed annulus and finally the steep crater wall. We walked a little way around the rim but it is 3.6km of steep, loose, rocky goat-track so decided to spend the predicted 2.5 hours in other ways.

For me, there was a bonus at the crater. As we climbed the outer rim, I saw and photographed a Black Falcon perched in a dead tree 50-60 metres off the track – not a bird I have seen all that many times before. It took off and flew low over us and was then joined by its mate and they soared and plummeted aerobatically in a wonderful spectacular display. I was trying (unsuccessfully) to video them from the top of the crater, when a third Black Falcon flew in to join them. As I was trying to describe the wonder of the first pair, the third flew into the frame, and as I finished the video, a fourth arrived – and then a fifth. For the next half-hour or more, there were almost always 2, 3 or 4 birds floating around, hovering on the updraughts or undertaking the most dramatic flying displays imaginable. For such big birds, they were every bit as agile as any smaller birds I have seen and it was an absolute awe-inspiring wonder to watch them. I am pretty sure there must have been at least one breeding pair with a nest out of sight almost right below us where the cliff was too steep for us to see – and either their fledged offspring or another pair all living securely in the area together. I took more than 100 photos of them but because they were so fast and so acrobatic, flying far away then hurtling back at 3-4 metres right over our heads, the results were quite disappointing. But photos or not, neither Heather nor I will ever forget the majesty and wonder of such a unique experience.

Eventually, we had to leave the crater with its fabulous avian performers and we arrived in Halls Creek early in the afternoon to enjoy the comfort of a shower and reliable power for the fridge. But I reckon we had done pretty well with everything in the car and van freezers still frozen after more than 4 days with only the car battery to provide the power.

It took us quite a while to get set up and do a bit of extra dust-eradication (still plenty, but several kilos less) and I had a walk around the area to check out several species of bird that I haven’t seen since we were in the area 4 years ago.

We really enjoyed the showers – great to remove a few layers of dust with plenty of hot and cold water (and with not too much sulphur or calcium in the water either). But we were pretty tired after such a big achievement (well, we saw it is an achievement!) so rather than cook, we bought chicken and chips for dinner. It went down fairly well, but it was by no means the best or most generous serving we have had. In fact, ……… (No recommendation on TripAdvisor!)

In review, we are both very glad we drove the Tanami, but in a few respects, it was something of a disappointment. We had cherished (and possibly romanticised) the idea for so long that the reality was a little anticlimactic. It was a big achievement for us, fulfilling a long-held ambition to traverse such a remote iconic stock-route – a truly unique Aussie symbol in our minds. But it is all being chewed up with bitumen and is fast disappearing. It was 1085 kilometres of mainly hard driving in poor conditions and there is not a lot to see along the way. It did more damage to our rig than we would have liked, but nothing too tragic. For a lot of the day, we were hot and absolutely everything was constantly dusty and gritty. At night, the sky was awesome and the solitude absolute – and the heat was replaced with near-freezing temperatures. We had some memorable experiences that will live on – but as much as we enjoyed it, we would hesitate long and hard before tackling it again. After all, life (and the next few months) offers plenty of other new challenges!

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bthenoise · 5 years

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Yes, Another Decade Recap List: These Are The 16 Most Impactful Records of the 2010′s

Look, to be honest, when it came to constructing some sort of “end of decade” list looking back on the 2010′s, we here at The Noise really had no idea what we wanted to do.

With literally hundreds and hundreds of amazing releases over the last 10 years, how in the world are we supposed to pick “the best” of the decade?

The answer: We aren’t.

See, the idea of something being labeled “the best” is subjective. It’s simply one person’s opinion vs the other. And truthfully, the idea of us thinking our opinion on something is any better or more important than yours makes us look like a bunch of assholes.

Really, who cares what we think is the best?

So, after constructing a colossal playlist featuring 1000 of our favorite songs from the 2010′s, something became very clear to us. Of all the songs we picked, there were a handful of records that contributed way more songs than the others.

Simply put, these albums made a lasting mark on this decade that go way deeper than them being any good or not. These particular albums helped influence a generation, jumpstart artists’ careers and ultimately solidify themselves as the most impactful releases of the 2010′s.

The albums we decided to shine a light on from the last ten years are records that carry more weight than just being a fan-favorite. We’re talking about releases we’ll look back on as a moment where everything changed for that artist.

To check out the 16 albums we think are the biggest movers and shakers from our scene over the last ten years, be sure to look below. Afterward, if you hate our list and really want to tell us your opinion, you can file a complaint at: [email protected].

16) Movements - Feel Something

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Starting our list off is a debut record from 2017 that helped propel a band from opening act to headliner in no time. With an impressive six-track EP released the year prior, SoCal act Movements quickly solidified their emerging star status with their flawless LP Feel Something. Following their first-ever full-length, Movements went on to sell out 27 dates of their first headlining tour and perform on the main stage of the final cross country Warped Tour. With a new album on the horizon, we’ll see just how far Movements and their unique brand of alternative pop-punk are able to take things leading into a new decade.

15) Dance Gavin Dance - Acceptance Speech

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How does a band with two former frontmen and four fantastic LPs continue to thrive eight years into their career? Enter, Tilian Pearson. Following another departure of original vocalist Jonny Craig, post-hardcore experimentalists Dance Gavin Dance turned to the former Tides Of Man singer to handle the vacant role of clean vocals. The result? The game-changing release of Acceptance Speech which helped spring-board the band to another level of musical perfection. Six years and three more genre-defining albums later, DGD and Pearson are still going strong gearing up to headline their own hometown festival and release their ninth full-length album all thanks in part to their 2013 LP.

14) Ice Nine Kills - The Silver Scream

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Coming in as the most recent record on our list, this horror-based release will be seen as the turning point in a band’s seasoned tenure. After 10-plus years of honing their craft, Boston’s Ice Nine Kills finally saw the fruits of their labor with the groundbreaking, career-defining album The Silver Scream. Taking the passion of metalheads and scary movie fanatics and combining them into a blood-soaked, breakdown-heavy package, Ice Nine Kills constructed a record that will easily withstand the test of time and help them extend their careers well into the 2020′s.

13) Code Orange - I Am King

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Dropping the “Kids” from their moniker and shifting gears into their first album as just Code Orange, the Pittsburgh bruisers constructed an unrelenting metal record that shook listeners to their core. With a punishing opening track that literally warns you about what you’re about to experience, it was pretty evident I Am King was unlike anything people have ever heard. Coupled with the mind-altering “Dreams In Inertia” and the utterly pulverizing “My World,” Code Orange quickly and deservingly so became the metal megastars they were destined to become.

12) Ghost - Meliora

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Speaking of metal megastars, after slowly creating word-of-mouth with their cult-like presence, throwback metal sounds and revolving door of Papa Emeritus frontmen, Sweedish act Ghost finally put it all together with their third studio album Meliora. Lead by the Grammy-winning single “Cirice,” Meliora fused haunting heavy metal imagery with roaring and anthemic songwriting creating the perfect package of evil-yet-accessible music. Debuting at number 8 on the Billboard 200 chart selling an estimated 29,000 copies in its first week, it was clear no matter which Papa was fronting the band, Ghost was ready to claim their spot atop the metal hierarchy.

11) Issues - Issues

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Not many bands can say that their first full-length album debuted inside the top ten of the Billboard 200. But then again, not many bands are Issues. Fusing djent, hip-hop, metal, pop-punk, R&B and more to create their sensational self-titled album, Issues proved they were more than just a band featuring former members of Woe, Is Me. Instead, Issues showcased a group of talented, trendsetting musicians destined to change the landscape of metalcore music for the better.

10) I Prevail - Lifelines

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After a famed cover of a well-known pop artist quickly put them on the map, Detroit’s I Prevail instantly had all the pressure in the world as they started to create what would be their debut album. Riding the success of their first EP Heart Vs Mind and tours with the likes of Hollywood Undead, Crown The Empire and Pop Evil, the Michigan act suddenly shot to the top of the metalcore ranks with the release of their remarkable, sonically-charged LP Lifelines. Charting at number 15 on the Billboard 200 selling over 19,000 copies in the first week, I Prevail went on to play Warped Tour for the first time -- finding a home on the main stage -- and later headlined the Rage On The Stage tour with scene veterans We Came As Romans, The Word Alive and Escape The Fate. Now Grammy-nominated and continuing to grow even larger, thanks in part to the accomplishments of Lifelines, I Prevail is without-a-doubt one of our scene’s biggest acts.

09) PVRIS - White Noise

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In the midst of metalcore’s supremacy in the Warped Tour scene -- thanks to the never-ending list of “Risecore” bands -- came an act no one saw coming. Featured on a roster with the likes of Memphis May Fire, Miss May I, Like Moths To Flames, Crown The Empire and more was a pop-savvy, synth-lead baby band mistakenly pronounced “p-ver-is.” With their infectious, critically acclaimed debut White Noise landing at number 88 on Billboard and totaling nearly 50 million YouTube views on its TEN music videos, PVRIS proved it was possible to make an impact in this community with sheer talent, hard work, and catchy-as-hell lyricism. After just one listen to the undeniably great lead single “St. Patrick,” you’ll know exactly what we’re talking about.

08) Knocked Loose - Laugh Tracks

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15 years from now, if we haven’t burnt the earth to the ground yet, we’ll look back on the Laugh Tracks era of Knocked Loose and remember where we were -- you know, because by 2034 Knocked Loose will be one of the biggest bands on the planet. Anyway, for us, the most memorable moment was watching them play “Billy No Mates” on the 2017 Vans Warped Tour at the Full Sail Stage. It was easily the largest and most insane side stage set we had ever seen in our 10 years of attending Warped Tour. From that very moment, we knew Knocked Loose and Laugh Tracks were going to be a big deal. Fast forward to 2019 and the band is now selling out 2,000-capacity venues on a semi-nightly basis. 2034 here we come!

07) Beartooth - Disgusting

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Very rarely does a member of a former band make it bigger with his second act. In those situations though, those people aren’t Caleb Shomo. Venturing out from his teenage band Attack Attack!, Shomo started Beartooth as a fun project with zero expectations of anything blowing up. Little did he know after building buzz with his chaotic 2013 EP Sick, Beartooth was about to take things to a whole nother level with the release of their massive breakout LP Disgusting. Fiery and fearsome from start to finish and full of nothing but hits like “In Between,” "The Lines” and “Beaten In Lips,” Disgusting is definitely the fuse that lit Beartooth’s outstanding career.

06) Every Time I Die - Low Teens

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How does a hardcore band 18 years into a well-respected career keep things relevant and progressing to a point where they’re anointed into “cult” status? Well, how about releasing their darkest, most emotionally charged album of their discography. After a life-altering scare to frontman Keith Buckley and his family, the longtime vocalist constructed some of his deepest and most honest lyrics for Every Time I Die’s soul-crushing LP Low Teens. Featuring guest vocals from Deadguy’s Tim Singer and Panic! At The Disco’s Brendon Urie (plus their most moving song to date “Map Change”), ETID showed off their versatility with their eighth studio album and were treated to a successful two-year touring cycle with the likes of Taking Back Sunday, Fall Out Boy, Motionless In White and Turnstile as well as a memorable run on the last-ever Vans Warped Tour. Not to mention, following the success of Low Teens, the band’s hometown of Buffalo, NY officially proclaimed December 15th, 2018 as “Every Time I Die Day” and a year later inducted them into the Buffalo Music Hall of Fame.

05) Of Mice & Men - Restoring Force

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While some may point to 2011′s The Flood as the record that “broke” scene-favorites Of Mice & Men and others might argue their debut self-titled release was what laid the foundation for one of this decade’s most successful acts, we’d like to focus on 2014. Continuing to climb the metalcore ranks following the release of two very well-received records, Austin Carlile and Co. put out their career-changing LP Restoring Force featuring new bassist and clean vocalist Aaron Pauley. Laying to rest any displeasure about their changes in sound or lineup, Of Mice & Men went on to sell over 51,000 copies in the first week peaking at number 4 on the Billboard 200. Riding the success of their third full-length album, OM&M later went on to support bands like Linkin Park and Rise Against out on tour thus solidifying their spot as one of the biggest metalcore acts of the 2010′s.

04) A Day To Remember - Common Courtesy

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Some people remember A Day To Remember’s Common Courtesy for different reasons. Maybe it was the hilarious “reality series” made to promote the record -- the “Golden Eagle” episode was our favorite! Or maybe it was the seemingly never-ending lawsuit battle between the band and the notoriously greedy Victory Records -- we’ll never forget when ADTR broke the news on stage that the album was actually coming. For us, what we remember most was the first time we saw the music video for “Right Back At It Again.” We watched that goofy, cartoony music video 500 times trying to catch all the different things they put in the video -- like did you ever notice the surfing dog or aliens abducting cows? Well, whatever it was that got you to check out Common Courtesy, there’s no denying the impact it had on A Day To Remember’s career as the Ocala natives have only gotten even bigger since that 2013 release. With a new album on the way from the not-at-all-greedy Fueled By Ramen, it’ll be exciting to see where the 2020′s take ADTR next.

03) Architects - Holy Hell

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With all the biopics being made today, there is no doubt in our mind one will be made about Brighton’s finest, Architects. With an already established career under their belts dating back to 2006, the band was continuing to see growth following their signing to Epitaph Records and the release of breathtaking LPs Lost Forever // Lost Together and All Our Gods Have Abandoned Us. Then, just like that, on August 20th, 2016 founding guitarist and primary songwriter Tom Searle lost his fight with cancer. Leaving the band in an obvious state of disarray after losing their bandmate and brethren, Architects were left with the choice of giving up or continuing Tom’s legacy. As with most biopics, this story has a positive ending as Architects decided to fight through the pain and ultimately release not just one of the best records of their career but one of the best records in metalcore, period.

02) Bring Me The Horizon - That’s The Spirit

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This can go one of two ways: You either accept That’s The Spirit is Bring Me The Horizon’s most impactful career-defining record to date or fight with us to the death that Sempiternal is deserving of this spot. Either way, there’s no denying Bring Me The Horizon’s influence on this decade. With their boundary-pushing LP That’s The Spirit, frontman Oli Sykes traded his growl for more of a pop-laced bite as BMTH ushered in their most successful era as a band seeing their fifth studio album land at number 2 on the Billboard 200. Still doubting That’s The Sprit’s impact on the scene? In 2018, only three years after its release, the gold-certified record amassed over one BILLION Spotify streams -- billion, with a B!

01) Pierce The Veil - Collide With The Sky

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Want to talk about a life-changing album? For San Diego scenesters Pierce The Veil, the famed four-piece went from a successful slow-building career to becoming a full-blown force with their third full-length record. Building off two well-received albums in A Flair For The Dramatic and Selfish Machines, Vic Fuentes and Co. (with the help of a Kellin Quinn-featured song) absolutely exploded into another stratosphere -- no pun intended -- with their now-gold-certified album Collide With The Sky. Lead by their platinum-selling single “King For A Day” and their Spanish-styled song “Bulls In The Bronx,” Pierce The Veil took the scene by storm thanks to their angsty, heart-pounding Fearless Records debut.

Honorable Mentions:

Deafheaven - Sunbather Falling In Reverse - The Drug In Me Is You Neck Deep - Life’s Not Out To Get You Nothing More - The Stories We Tell Ourselves PUP - PUP State Champs - Around The World And Back The Amity Affliction - Let The Ocean Take Me The Story So Far - What You Don’t See The Wonder Years - The Greatest Generation Wage War - Blueprints

#Best Of #Pierce The Veil #Bring Me The Horizon #Architects #A Day To Remember #Of Mice and Men #Every Time I Die #Beartooth #Knocked Loose #PVRIS #I Prevail #Ghost #Code Orange #Ice Nine Kills #Dance Gavin Dance #Movements

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winchester-with-wings · 7 years

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Troublemakers, Part 2 / (Second Chances Series)

Bruce Wayne x daughter!reader fic!

AUTHOR: @faithtrustandpixiedust95

Summary: Dick Grayson is determined to avenge his parent’s deaths. You and Roy realize he’s in over his head and may need help.

Word Count: 3600

A/N: reader is about 12ish. My sister is writing her fics all in the same universe but each one has a different title and are broken into parts. DIVERGENT FROM CANON>>>Dick is 12, not 9 like he is in canon when going to live with Bruce.

*Disclaimer* I did not write this. My sister, Sam, did and I am posting this with her permission.

Sequel to

“Shattered Beginnings” 1 / 2

“Adjusting” 1 / 2

“Growing Pains” 1 / 2

“Troublemakers” 1

Sam’s Mobile Masterlist

The first address you and Roy went to was a dead end.

The two of you had broke into the dark apartment and looked around long enough to know that this wasn’t the place you were looking for. So you headed off to the next address, which wasn’t too far away.

You and Roy knew this city better than Dick did. He had only been here for a couple weeks after all; he didn’t grow up exploring the city like you and Roy had during countless nights of training.

You took a shortcut down some side alleys and a few rooftops and you were at the next address rather quickly.

“I hope we’re not far behind him. I don’t know when he left,” you were talking quietly to Roy when he punched your arm and pointed.

“Look. Is that him?” Roy was squinting in the dark, pointing at a person dressed in a black and red hoodie who had a similar build to Dick.

“Yeah, I think so,” you confirmed your friend’s guess, “C’mon. Let’s get down to him before he goes into the building and gets himself killed.”

Roy took the lead on climbing down the side of the building. You both were scurrying down the fire escape trying to get to Dick as quickly as you could, but he went into the building before you had a chance to catch him.

You weren’t able to call out to him to get his attention without blowing your cover to anyone who was around. It was imperative you and Roy used stealth cover in this part of town. Drawing attention to yourselves was not a good idea around here.

Roy dropped to the ground from the fire escape and ran to the entrance of the building. You used one of the acrobatic flips Dick had taught you earlier to get down from the last platform of the fire escape and then ran to be with Roy.

Roy had picked the lock to the door that normally needed to be buzzed open by a resident. You both slowly entered the building and followed the sound of Dick’s light footsteps up the stairs.

Batman had followed the one thug who got singled out to run the supply errand. He stopped at a corner store and bought a few items.

When he stepped out of the store with a brown paper bag of supplies, he started walking in the opposite direction he had came from.

Batman continued to follow the man from the rooftops, keeping a good distance so the man didn’t feel his presence.

He walked for a good twenty minutes when he came up on a dingy old looking apartment building that had a few lights still on for this late at night. He walked to the entrance of the building and buzzed the apartment he wanted access to, he entered the door once it had opened.

Batman dropped to the ground and moved to the building’s entrance. Using the same technique that Roy had used on it 20 minutes earlier, he opened the door and heard a loud noise resonate from an upstairs apartment. It sounded like someone was throwing things against the walls. He headed up the stairs to the apartment where the racket had been coming from.

Dick had gotten to the apartment before you and Roy were able to stop him.

You could hear him yelling at Zucco and then you heard something break with a shatter.

You and Roy busted the door to the apartment open and saw Dick and Zucco standing across from each other. Dick had been yelling at the man, throwing whatever was closest to him.

“What the hell is this?! Ametuer hour?” Zucco yelled out. “What are you kids doing here, how did you find me, what do you want?”

Zucco had a confused look on his face, but you could tell he wasn’t threatened by the three of you. Dick looked at you and Roy angrily. He was seething with rage and you could see it, plain as day, on his face.

“Hey,” you yelled to Dick, you knew not to say his name in order to protect your identities, “what are you doing? Think this through!”

“I already have!” Dick shouted back at you with intensity. “This prick killed them! I need to do this!” He was slightly shaking out of anger and that’s when you saw the kitchen knife in his hand that he had taken from the counter top.

Two thugs had entered the main room now, curious about all the yelling that was going on. There was now one thug per kid and this was going to be an interesting fight.

Dick made the first move, lunging at Zucco who then yelled at the other two men to go after you and Roy.

You put your focus on the man that was now running for you. You dove in between the man’s legs using your small stature to evade his grasp.

Roy on the other hand took a more offensive approach. He let the other guy come right to him and try to attack him and that’s when he started throwing punches and dodging the ones meant for him.

Dick was making advance after advance at Zucco with the knife, each time just barely missing the man’s flesh. He was fighting out of pure hatred and emotion. Zucco knew this and he was able to punch Dick a few times, each time making the boy more and more mad.

You were watching Dick attack Zucco and were going towards them when these big arms wrapped around you in a tight squeeze. Your thug had taken advantage of your distraction to get ahold of you. He threw you across the room and into the coffee table near the couches, shattering the glass table as you made contact with it.

You quickly got back up in order to serve a right hook to the approaching man’s face, breaking his nose upon contact. You stayed focused on your thug managing to evade and dodge most of his attacks. Your method was always to tire someone out before you started throwing blows.

Roy was fighting tooth and nail with his thug. The man was bigger than him by almost 200 lbs and Roy was doing his best against his opponent’s strength. The man had dropped his shoulder into Roy’s body and ran him into the wall behind him, all the while throwing punches into the boy’s abdomen. His lip was split open and he was wincing in pain at each punch.

That’s when he brought his elbow up and then forced it down right onto the neck of the man causing him to recoil in pain. Roy took the moment to send several punches to the man’s jaw and pushed him back far enough to where he could deliver a brutal head-kick to the man, knocking him unconscious.

You were struggling with your thug. You had delivered several nerve-strikes to the man’s body and he was losing feeling and slowing down a bit. But he somehow managed to keep picking you up and throwing you. He had picked you up and then threw you hard onto the floor where he jumped on top of you, throwing multiple strikes to your face. You were blocking them, trying to figure out how you could get out of this position, when you bucked your hips enough to throw the man off balance. You scooted out from underneath him and then jumped onto his back, putting your arms around his neck in a choke hold.

The man stood up flailing his arms to try and get you off his back. You had your hold in a tight grip that you knew the man wouldn’t be able to break. While you were being backed into a wall by the man trying to hit you against the wall hard enough to break the hold, you yelled to Roy who had just knocked out his gangster.

“Go help him!” you motioned your head towards Dick’s direction and Roy did as told.

Dick was doing his best to attack Zucco. He was throwing punches and kicks and trying to cut the man with the knife. He had only trained with you and Roy for the first time this afternoon and he was not in the same head space now that he was in then; he didn’t know what he was up against.

Zucco was taking advantage of the sloppy attacks to throw punches and jabs at Dick when he could. Dick had gotten the knife against Zucco’s skin just enough to slice him here and there. He decided to drop the knife and try brute force instead. He got close to the large man and threw a solid punch to the man’s jaw busting open his lip.

You could see Zucco get enraged and that’s when he went all-out for Dick. He charged the boy and threw him against a wall. He was throwing hit after hit, Dick was doing his best to block the punches still barely conscious, when Roy jumped on Zucco’s back. Dick slid down the wall to the floor out of pain as Roy did his best to take on the crime-boss.

You still had your choke hold on your thug while he was still thrashing you against the wall, each thrash losing force behind it. You could feel the man getting winded and losing his power as he lost consciousness.

He was just dropping to the ground when Batman burst into the apartment to see what was going on. The thug that had made the supply run was lying on the ground in the hallway with all the bagged items strewn about him.

Batman looked to the man on the floor that Roy had knocked out and then he looked at you with the man in your choke hold dropping to the floor unconscious. His eyes then met Zucco’s, whose eyes went wide with fear at the sight of the masked vigilante.

He threw Roy off his back and delivered a brutal hit to the boy’s stomach, causing him to crumble to the floor with the wind knocked out of him. Dick was still on the ground against the wall trying to catch his breath from his beating.

Zucco kept his eyes on the Batman as he crossed the room slowly.

“So you sent little maggots to find me? I’m insulted,” the man taunted.

“These kids acted on their own. I had nothing to do with it. You must not be very good at picking safe houses if kids can find where you’re hiding out, Zucco,” Batman responded in his distorted voice, stepping closer to the man.

You were catching your breath from being thrashed against the wall so many times, you were in a lot of pain and had just stood up when Zucco pulled you by your hair and picked up the knife Dick had dropped earlier.

He had the knife against your throat and Batman stood still.

“You don’t want to do that, Tony…” Batman slowly said, the calm anger in his voice.

“Yeah? Why’s that? This little brat isn’t gonna do shit to me,” he spat back.

That’s when you took a deep breath and put your hands on the man’s arm that was draped across you. The knife slowly poked into your skin, but it didn’t go very deep. You put your back into it and flipped the man over your shoulder, using his weight against him. Once he was on the floor, you sent the hardest punch you could, square to the middle of his face, knocking him out.

When you saw he was out, you sat down on your knees and took a deep breath, putting your hand to the small puncture wound on your neck, you looked over to the boys before looking at your dad.

He walked up to you and helped you stand up, he saw how stiff and sore you were.

“Y/N are you okay?” was all he said, yet you could still hear the disapproval in his voice.

“Yeah, I think so…” you struggled to meet his gaze.

“Roy, Dick, are you guys okay?” Batman walked over to the two young men who were sitting close by each other.

Roy nodded, he too was struggling to meet Batman’s gaze. Dick seemed confused that Batman knew all three of you by name.

Dick was quiet, he was looking around the room at the mess the fight had made. A lot of the furniture was strewn about the apartment and there were several depressions of broken plaster on the walls where some of the fighting had taken place. There was a lot of broken glass from the shattered coffee table as well.

“I’m sorry, you guys…” he said very softly in an ashamed tone to you and Roy. “I was just so mad…”

“Dick, why did you go after Zucco? You could’ve gotten yourself killed,” Batman walked over to the young man and helped him to stand. “I don’t know what I would’ve done if I hadn’t gotten here in time and Zucco had hurt all three of you.”

Dick looked up at Batman with confusion on his face at the last part of Batman’s statement, “What do you mean?”

Batman slipped his cowl off to reveal his face to Dick as he helped Roy stand up next. Roy was still doubling over in pain even with Bruce now helping him to stay on his feet.

Dick just looked at Bruce in disbelief. You could see it on his face, the boy didn’t know whether to be angry or relieved at the discovery that his current foster parent was a vigilante.

Bruce put the cowl back in place and picked up Roy in his arms, seeing that the boy was going to struggle to walk with the muscles in his stomach being cramped.

“We need to get out of here. The police will be here soon to take Zucco and his thugs into custody,” Bruce was walking towards the door as you and Dick followed behind, battered and bruised.

“So...you’re not mad?” you asked in a nervous tone to your dad.

He looked over his shoulder and said, “I’m furious, but we’ll talk about it once we get back to the cave. Now let’s go.”

You rolled your shoulders forward in submission, knowing you were in for a serious lecture and punishment when you got home. For now you put your arm around Dick and helped to steady each other’s wobbly walk.

Once back at the cave, Batman placed Roy on a medical bed to rest until his muscles seized their cramping. You walked in behind your dad slowly and Dick followed.

Alfred watched as you all entered and had on a surprised facial expression, “Expanding the team, are we sir?”

“No, Alfred. We just have a few troublemakers on our hands that need to learn their place,” Bruce said as he removed his cowl once more, this time taking it off completely and setting it on his desk.

You shrunk at your dad’s words and thought about what to say, but before you could say anything, Dick spoke up.

“Bruce, this is my fault. Don’t be mad at Y/N and Roy. They were just trying to stop me from getting myself killed,” he started, “I’d probably be dead if it weren’t for them. They saved me. Be mad at me, kick me out and put me in an orphanage, but don’t be mad at them. They did nothing wrong.”

You could see he was beating himself up on the inside. He was mad at himself for putting your lives in danger. He was mad at how stupid he had been.

“Dick…” Bruce’s voice was soft, but firm in the way that only Bruce’s voice could be, “I’m not kicking you out and you’re not going to an orphanage. You’re staying here with me and Y/N and Roy...permanently. It’s up to you, but you're welcome to stay here and be a part of our family if you want…”

That caught everyone, including Alfred, off guard. You all looked at Dick and then at Bruce.

Dick looked at you and then Roy and then back to Bruce, “I'd like that very much…but why now all of a sudden?”

“I was thinking about it earlier tonight while I was following the thug to Zucco’s safe house,” he started, “You fit in here...we--I, I like having you here and I think Y/N does too.” He looked over to you as you were nodding and smiled.

“But that doesn’t excuse what you did tonight. All three of you,” he looked sternly at all you kids refocusing on the issue at hand.

You were sitting on the end of the bed that Roy was resting on, he had propped himself up on his elbow so he could be part of the conversation, and Dick was standing close to the bed with his arms gently wrapped around himself.

“Despite it being Dick’s decision to go after Zucco, it was Y/N and Roy’s decision to not bring me into the picture to handle it instead of yourselves,” he explained to the three of you.

You went to explain your thought process behind that decision, “Yeah, but Dad you were going out on patrol. I thought that Roy and I could get to Dick before anything happened. I didn’t want you to ditch your patrol to go after something I thought we could’ve handled. And we did handle it for the most part too, I think we had it under control until the last part of the fight…”

You were shrinking smaller and smaller under your dad’s gaze when Roy spoke up, “Yeah, we had it covered. It had just evened out to three against one when you had walked through the door.”

“Roy Harper, don’t you think you can talk your way out of being in trouble,” Bruce had a serious dad-voice going on at the moment, “Regardless of if you had it ‘handled’ or not, you all got hurt. I mean look at yourselves!”

The three of you looked each other over. Roy had a busted lip and a black eye along with his bruised abdomen. Dick had a black eye too and a good scrape on his forehead near his hairline that had been bleeding pretty good. And you. You had a bloody nose and a busted lip too as well as the puncture wound on your neck from the knife. All three of you had bloody knuckles from punching the thugs you had been fighting. You had a good swollen bump on the back of your head that was bleeding a little from getting slammed against the wall so many times. Dick also had some bruising on his ribs from the jabs he had sustained from Zucco.

The three of you were a regular trio of scrappers.

Roy had a small smile spreading across his face, “Yeah, but you have to admit, we look pretty badass and we kicked the shit out of those guys!”

The three of you kids laughed and Bruce just looked on disapprovingly, “Roy, Oliver is going to hear about this in the morning,” he said sternly and then he pointed to you and Dick, “And as for you two, you’re both grounded for a month. No phones and no laptops.”

Dick’s mouth dropped open and you just laughed, knowing the punishment was going to be more difficult for him.

“You guys are restricted in what you get to do and where you go, nothing more than going to school, training, and being here at the house. No movies, no shopping at the mall, no dinners out.”

That’s when your mouth dropped open, “Dad! You can’t be serious!”

“You bet I am, young lady! You need to understand how serious of an issue this is. You’re lucky it’s not worse than that,” he said with a serious face.

Alfred had been in the cave watching the whole scene unfold and he had a small smile cross his face with a barely detectable laugh underlying it.

You saw Alfred’s shoulders move in a chuckle and whined, “Alfred! It’s not funny!”

“I’m sorry Miss Y/N, I couldn’t help myself,” he said with an apologetic smile.

“Now clean yourselves up and go on up to bed, the three of you. I’ll take you to school in the morning and if anyone asks, the black eyes are from your MMA training increasing in challenge,” Bruce explained.

The three of you looked at each other and giggled, immediately wincing in pain from your sore muscles, which only made you giggle more. You cleaned up your cuts and bruises and shuffled up to the house.

The three of you then proceeded to have a sleepover on the floor of your room for the rest of the night. You stayed up for another hour or so talking about everything that had just happened. Most of all, Dick getting adopted by Bruce.

You were excited to have a brother and Dick was excited to have a family again. He felt a release of tension that he’d been holding onto, not knowing what was going to happen to him after his time at the manor ended. That was now a thought of the past that he no longer needed to lose sleep over.

He was home and home to stay.

tagging: @disappointeddinosaur @readerlucy @alohalisha @fantastic-fantasy-fanfics @sleepingalong @ahsokaslament @annabananna394 @kiri-hakumei @chrisevansisdaddy04 @emily-83113 @heyitsilverwolf @evyiione @abbytheninja

#batman #batfam #batman imagine #batfam imagine #batfam fanfic #Batman x Reader #Batman x child!reader #Dick Grayson #Dick Grayson x sister!reader #Dick Grayson imagine #DC #DC imagine #Batfam x reader #roy harper #Sam's Fanfics #young justice #Batdad #Batfamily

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