#ninety one whiskey review

[drugstoreglitter]

location :   uncle joe’s crab shack, fort lauderdale, florida.

featuring :    FRANKALLIE !!!!! but it’s an au in which they’ve never met

for :    @gallagherisms​

       it’s a red-hot florida summer, tide low, coast sandy, and the temperature’s already pushing ninety. saturday was meant to be her day of rest and relaxation in a rare week off from the yachting season, but so far all she seems to do is pick up the slack left by her brothers. she should be out in the van, tearing down the highway with dolly blaring from her tinny speaker, flowers in her hair and incense hanging from the mirror. she could even be tanning on an aft deck off the adriatic coast right now, a shammy in her hand and the sun on her back, had she booked on for another week of work rather than taking a so-called ‘holiday’. instead, she’s trapped inside uncle joe’s crab shack covering for leo while he plays hooky to nail some chick from arizona, because technically she owes him one, and when a castro makes a promise they take that shit to their grave. but fuck if she doesn’t wish she were someone else right now. take that cute curly-haired chick with the killer smile, for example — probably a holiday maker, sat with a bunch of other fresh faces, laughing at kai who runs the whiskey cove paddle board tours — looks like she’s having the time of her life, a stress-free existence, where all she probably has to worry about is what colour bikini to wear and whether or not she’s gonna let kai get the home run tonight. why do girls like that always end up with douchebags like kai. it’s fucking unfair. still, frankie’s trying to be a force of positivity, live laugh love in the moment and remind herself of everything there is to be grateful for, but it’s hard when it’s hot enough that it feels like sweat drips from the ceiling like stalactites, and her supposed ‘break’ has been pushed back so many times that she’ll likely have to go without. whatever. four’s only like, an hour away. she can manage ‘til then.

      can you check on table fifteen, it’s the big one with the out-of-townies, kelly’s asking her, loading frankie with another two plates before she can leave the kitchen, wince bitten in by her teeth. feels like being a stewardess all over again, but there’s a reason she’d made the switch to deck crew. she’s not good at saving face and sucking back how she really feels when faced with opposition. she can’t just lie back and think of england, never had a mother who stuck around long enough to teach her the secret handshake that held the code to being a girl.  “ can’t you just get bodhi to do it ?  i’m already covering, like, five tables, and those guys look super picky. ”  kai’s always asking for like, the weirdest thing on the menu, and then adding on a load of vegan, gluten-free, soy-free extras, as if he wants you to fuck up his order so he can write you a bad review on tripadvisor. the only thing worse than working when you’re supposed to be on holiday is serving people your age who are actually out having fun.  “ fine, whatever. i can get their drinks orders. but then i gotta take my fifteen minutes. let me just run these lobsters over to table twelve. ”  

      somewhere in the short commute, the instructions get lost in translation, frankie instead standing before the HBO remake of forgetting sarah marshall at table fifteen, all of them fresh from the surf and smelling of saltwater.  “ two surf ‘n’ turfs ? ”  frankie asks, ignored at first, then clears her throat, asks for the second time, cutting through the conversation a little more coarsely.   “ anybody order these surf ‘n’ turfs ? ”   these plates are fucking hot. her eyes are kinda pleading with the curly girl on the end, and it’s only when she feels a tap against her back and a child’s voice that says, uh, i think those are ours...  that frankie realises her mistake.  “ balls. ”  embarrassed, she whips around on her heel with such a voracity that there’s no time to slow her roll, and there’s a body where an empty space is meant to be, an edgar wright smash cut to something wholly unexpected, like that scene where regina gets totalled by a bus. she smacks straight into bodhi, now outfitted in the contents of his two seafood platters, her own spread of steak and lobster flying into the customer behind her’s lap, too startled to even hear the gasps of the hawaii five-o extras or the kid that’s covered in chowder. prawns hanging from her uniform, frankie turns back to the to the customer ; a lobster now sits like a cat in her lap and beef dripping clings to her shirt.  “ holy fuck... i am so sorry. like, you have no idea. ”  kelly’s gonna put her fucking head on a roasted halloumi and vegetable skewer. cautiously, frankie plucks the lobster from her lap. in her head, he grows an animated mouth, tells her cheer up, kid, it might never happen. well it fucking has happened. the most ridiculing moment of her life, thus far.  “ please don’t tell my boss, i’m not even meant to be working today, i’m just covering for my stupid... jesus, why am i saying this ? you don’t care about my idiot brother. ”  foot in mouth disease. sighing, frankie drops down, and begins plucking the fragments of plate from the floor where the sad steak sits in a pool of it’s own trimmings.  “ um, i can like... cover your meal ? ”  she says, her eyes scanning back up to the surfer chick covered in surf ‘n’ turf, the full florida experience.  “ or your drinks, if you’re just drinking. ” though it’ll probably cost her the entire day’s pay check with the shit they’ve been drinking. it’s like margaritaville on crack.  “ look... can you just... tell me how i can make this up to you ?  because if i don’t then i’m not gonna sleep tonight. i’ll just keep seeing your face and bolting upright in bed like that rigged little dummy kid in monsters university, y’know. ”

[renaerys]

Prompt 50. But Berserk & Boomer😔👉👈💕

50. “I thought you left.”

We’re calling this one Unfortunately, She Impressed Him. This is a pair of characters I love with all my heart in any flavor of relationship and can’t wait to write more of in my ongoing multi-chapter fic Trinity House over on AO3.

This fic is part of a prompt challenge that is now closed to new requests, but you can read all the completed submissions here. Reminder that the challenge is to make everything SFW, so we’re getting creative here.

xxx

Boomer was halfway across the deserted lobby of Faust Keating Rogers, LLP when he realized he’d forgotten his keys at his desk. He groaned aloud because it was 8 p.m. and no one was around to hear him because they had all gone home to their families hours ago like normal people. Boomer didn’t have two to three kids and a house in the suburbs, though, and neither did his boss. The three hour lull reserved for dinner, baths, and bedtimes before the evening work-from-home grind offered him no alternative but to power through. He fully planned to grab take out on his way home and enjoy an episode of whatever was on HBOMax before getting back to the tedious work of reviewing the draft prospectus statement his boss had sent him to proof by tomorrow morning.

Except, his keys were forty floors up and he now had to risk running into her again when he’d managed to slip away so neatly. He’d even removed his tie on the elevator ride down, and now he rubbed his exposed neck, flushed with anxiety over what might happen if she saw him and asked him to stick around to finish the work here.

“Nice going, dumbass,” he lamented as he stepped onto the elevator and hit the button for the fortieth floor.

It wasn’t that Boomer disliked his job. In fact, he didn’t mind it at all. It was better than slinging drinks or waiting tables. He had health insurance, a steady paycheck, and a resumé that could proudly display the name of one of the most elite accounting firms in the country. He could pivot his career if he wanted to, as Brick would say. Boomer wasn’t thinking about his next job right now, though. Right now, he was thinking about this one and how his boss was a hard-ass and a workaholic even if she was brilliant, and how there was a one hundred percent chance she would detect him coming back to his desk (which was annoyingly set up right in front of her office so that he could answer her calls, manage her meetings, and deal with whoever passed close enough to her event horizon to get suckered into the latest heinous audit in need of staffing).

There were his traitorous keys sitting on the desk next to the framed picture of his brothers. He glared at them, as if they were a forgotten household item that had developed a supernatural grudge like in those old Japanese folktales he liked to read online. He half expected them to jingle and alert his boss to his presence, just to spite him.

They didn’t, and he slipped them into his pocket as quietly as could be. He released the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding and took a beat. It was quiet. Most of the offices were dark, save for a few poor souls in the large conference room stuck on the ongoing year-end audit for one of the firm’s most important clients: Unicorn, Inc. His boss’s office was also lit up behind her closed door, but she hadn’t called out to him like she would during the day when he got back from his lunch break hoping for a few minutes to catch up on emails in peace before she dumped more work on him.

This, of course, was odd. The small legion of assistants who had come before Boomer were notorious for their short-term employment working this specific desk. The work was demanding and so was the boss, but there was something else that set her apart from other senior associates in the International Tax Services division, something that seemed to intimidate away any support the higher ups sent her way. Denise a couple desks down had warned Boomer not to bring too many personal effects to the office; chances were he wasn’t going to last long. Boomer had smiled thinly and thanked Denise for her advice, and brought the picture of his brothers in the next morning because he had his pride and Brick told him it was healthy to indulge that once in a while. Brick would certainly know.

So here he was, uncertain. Anxiety over having to sit here for another two hours finishing work and having tepid Doordash delivered pulled him toward the elevator and escape, while that annoying, rare pride demanded he check on his boss and make sure she knew he was here to support her, lest she get the idea that he needed to be fired.

The longer he stood there, indecisive, the greater his curiosity grew. What was she doing in there? It was quiet, even when he strained his Super hearing. He could hear Dean Matheson pouring whiskey a few offices down (that guy had a drinking problem and everyone knew they only kept him around because he had the Unicorn, Inc. account), Adebayo Hansou on a conference call with Dubai that was escalating to profanity, Shelly Kim with her head down and typing away at an Excel spreadsheet like a pro. Their assistants were long gone for the night, but here was Boomer, loitering and indecisive and what is she doing in there not yelling at me when she definitely knows I’m here?

He couldn’t take it anymore. He knocked on the closed door—rap, rap, rap—and called out softly, “Berserk?”

A beat, then: “Come in.”

Finding his boss in upward facing dog while still in her pencil skirt was not a sight Boomer was prepared for. Berserk had her eyes closed as she stretched at a near ninety degree angle and listened to music on her Airpods. Boomer had never seen her with her heels off and her mane of red hair thrown together in a messy bun; it was so casual that it was almost obscene.

“You’re staring.”

Fuck, he was staring and now she was looking right at him down her nose, even though she was the one on the floor. He stood up straighter, unable to help himself when she took that tone that reminded him so much of Brick’s when he was about to criticize, but he didn’t avert his gaze. “Sorry.”

She breathed in deeply through her nose and hoisted herself up into downward dog position. “Why are you here?”

Forgot my keys seemed like a really lame excuse that she’d probably laugh at him for, but he also was not in the habit of making shit up on the spot if he hoped to make people believe him. “I forgot my keys.” He took them from his pocket to show her, as if she might not know what keys are, as a concept.

“Smart locks.” Berserk exhaled and slowly walked her hands back on the yoga mat until she reached her feet and began to swing slowly left and right.

Huh? he almost said like an idiot, until he caught himself. “Don’t think my landlord would approve of me installing that.” Also, those things were like $200 a pop, which was not worth the occasional inconvenience and shame of forgetting his keys and then catching his boss doing yoga in her office after hours.

Berserk made some noncommittal sound like whatever, peasant and slowly uncurled upward one vertebra at a time. Boomer realized he was back to staring again, literally lingering in her door watching her and trying to equate this subdued, casual version of Berserk with the terse, no-nonsense businesswoman he was used to dealing with on a daily basis.

When she finally achieved her full height, she popped her neck. The hair that was too short for her bun fell in around her narrow face in a stylish, athleisure sort of way. The top buttons on her blouse were undone. She wore a small, golden necklace he’d never noticed before because he wasn’t in the habit of checking out his boss. “I thought you left.”

The accusatory nature of her words were totally at odds with her flat tone, only the barest hint of curiosity dangling there at the end, like she expected him to respond.

Oh, she expected him to respond.

Boomer took another step into her office because he was full of poor judgment today. “I forgot my keys.”

At which point he showed her his keys again and also had a mild stroke, because what the fuck are you doing, mate?

Berserk smiled. “Yeah, I got that part.”

Was she laughing at him? He had never heard her laugh before, unless it was at Dean Matheson, that comb-over in denial who, in addition to being a high functioning alcoholic, also had a reputation for throwing associates under the bus when a client wasn’t happy.

Boomer smiled back, because that was what he did when people smiled at him, and ‘people’ now included Berserk, apparently.

“Well, since you’re here,” she said as she padded around to her desk.

Crap, there was the work he was afraid of soliciting from her by remaining in the building. He debated an excuse to give her: picking up dry cleaning? Plausible, but transparent. Meeting up with his brothers? No, she’d probably make him stay all night for the chance to ruin Brick’s plans.

“Thai or Mexican?”

Boomer stared dumbly. He was becoming quite good at that (10,000 hours and you can become an expert at anything, they say). “Huh?”

The yoga must have put Berserk in an exceedingly gracious mood, because she actually repeated her question without getting that look on her face like she was picturing him getting trampled by stampeding monsters. “Thai or Mexican? I don’t have a preference.”

Oh.

Oh.

Boomer’s stomach picked that time to snarl at him—8 p.m. and still no dinner, the fiend.

Berserk snorted in laughter and fanned herself with her phone. “Jesus. Mexican it is.”

Which was how Boomer found himself on the small sofa tucked in the corner of Berserk’s office, shoes off and belt loosened, with enough tacos, tamales, and rice and beans to feed a small family. He even had a beer from the mini fridge Berserk kept under her desk.

She hadn’t stayed late to work. Well, she had, but only because she didn’t have a reason to go home.

“I just hate getting home to a dark apartment sometimes,” she said in between bites of food. She had her legs tucked up under her on the sofa close enough to brush Boomer’s thigh if he reached to grab the salsa.

“I thought you lived with your sister?”

“Brute got her own place a few months ago. The arrangement was only temporary while she was in between jobs.”

It was weird knowing so little about a person whose whole family had been in Boomer’s inner orbit since childhood. As far as he knew, Berserk wasn’t close to any of her cousins, not even Blossom. Boomer himself had never been more eager to leave a room than when Brat walked into it. Only Butch, Brute, and Buttercup had ever found common ground among each other once the sworn rivalries and blood feuds of their youth gave way to teenage rebellion against their respective overlord fathers and then the slog of adulthood that was inescapable even for a bunch of Supers flying high on Chemical X.

The fact that Boomer had gotten this job surprised him more than anyone. After drifting from restaurant jobs to office temp placements over the last six years, he’d never thought he would dust off his economics degree and land a temp-to-permanent position that seemed way above his qualifications. And he never thought it would be working for a woman he’d most definitely electrocuted in battle at least a dozen times before puberty.

“What?”

Boomer blinked. He’d been staring again, Jesus Christ. “Sorry, I was just thinking… I didn't know that. I’ve been working here for five months and I don’t actually know much about you at all.”

“Hm.”

Her magenta eyes were wine-dark against the murky sky beyond the window forty stories up. Boomer did avert his gaze this time to reach for the salsa, but he didn’t use it.

“I don’t even know why you invited me to stay for dinner in the office if we’re not going to do any work.”

“Why did you stay?”

“For the free food.”

Berserk grinned—the third time she had smiled at him tonight (or ever). He needed to stop counting; he’d be disappointed when it stopped happening tomorrow.

“Don’t get used to it. Much as I appreciate the company now and again, there’s no need for both of us to be stuck here while Matheson’s breathing down the associates’ necks. Can’t have him poaching you out from under me.”

“Well, I don’t work for him; I work for you.”

“It’s sweet how you don’t understand office politics.” She ate a lone slice of avocado with a fork. “He landed Unicorn back when they were early stage, and back when he was still putting in the work to earn his reputation. But since they IPO’d three years ago and make up twenty percent of our revenue now, he’s just another big name coasting by on associate work. You know he regularly schedules client calls and just doesn’t bother to show up? He forgets half the time, and the other half he’s busy playing golf or buying a yacht or whatever the fuck rich, white Boomers do.”

“Well, as a Boomer myself, I can say I’ve spent exactly zero hours buying yachts.”

She chuckled. Fourth time. “Oh, really.”

“Never even thought of yachts. As far as I’m concerned, they’re not even real.”

“Thanks for your expert opinion.”

“Any time.” Boomer turned his body to face her and draped his arm over the back of the sofa. With only the soft light from the floor lamp in the corner, he imagined himself adrift in the darkness, the sky scraper lights nearby stars. It was a lonely thought, one made romantic in the knowledge that she was here too, and he wasn’t actually alone.

“Matheson almost did poach you, you know.”

“What do you mean?” Boomer couldn’t recall exchanging more than a few words with the man.

“When we were filling support positions. Someone recognized you from the news a few years back, when the Cyclops Monster attacked the marina district and you and your brothers took it out. Matheson got it in his head that you’d be able to work at Super speed and help lower his billables.”

“Wow. Maybe you should’ve let him. What do you think the net savings would be in yacht units of measurement?”

Berserk rolled her eyes, but she was smiling again. “I claimed you before he could get the paperwork in.”

Boomer hyper-focused on that word: claimed. He also pointedly ignored it entirely, much in the same way he ignored the new count of five smiles tonight. “Showed him your bending powers, did you?”

Berserk’s Corona bottle turned frosty under her hand in a totally unnecessary, big dick energy display of said powers, and she took another sip. “No. Sharon from HR likes me. And I promised her I wouldn’t fire you after three months like your predecessors.”

Flattered was not how Boomer would describe the feeling of being claimed by Berserk and eluding Matheson’s vampiric clutches. But he was a bit tickled all the same. This was the woman Butch had once described as essentially Brick, if he were constipated all the time.

And then he realized what she was doing. “Hey, you’re sharing things about yourself.”

She clinked her bottle to his, and Boomer shivered at the frosty chill she transferred on contact. “Aw, you figured it out all by yourself.”

“Ha ha.”

She didn’t quite smile, but she did look kind of serene then, content even, as she lay back against the arm of the sofa and yawned. Her gold necklace—just a simple disk with an engraving Boomer could not make out—reflected the lamp light when she moved. It rested just beneath her collarbone, which had suddenly become the single-most interesting part of Berserk, and oh no, was he interested—

“You’re staring again.”

Son of a bitch.

“Sorry,” he said automatically. “I didn’t mean to.”

Hard no. He was not allowed to be any percent attracted to Berserk. First, she was his boss, and there was a cliché here that, while subverted on the gender role spectrum, was still very risky for both of them. Second, she was Berserk, a fellow Super, cousin to his best friend Bubbles and a shrewd, stiletto bitch in Brick’s estimation, which sounded bad. Not that she was bad, or even evil, unless you counted helping rich corporations accurately report their taxes while taking advantage of the many egregious loopholes in the Internal Revenue Code. Which, okay, point taken, but he also worked here and anyway, people should not be deemed good or evil so much as their choices ought to be—

“Are you thinking about fucking me?”

You shrewd, stiletto bitch!

She was smiling again, and Boomer pathetically logged that as the sixth time, although he wasn’t sure he should count it given the overt malice behind it.

Unfortunately, Boomer was, as had been previously established, very bad at making shit up on the fly. So he miserably said, “Yeah.”

“Hm.”

She sipped her beer slowly, and of course he watched. If it was out in the open, as fleeting a bout of insanity as it may have been, at least he could wallow in it without worrying about appearances.

It was the yoga. That fucking upward facing dog, Jesus Christ.

It was more than that too. Over the last few months, he had worked closely with her, watched her navigate the cutthroat halls full of piranhas like Matheson and other account managers, getting herself work on the best clients while managing her juniors with efficiency and professionalism. She was excellent and sharp, and she demanded excellency and sharpness in kind. After years of going it alone or temping for bosses who didn’t care enough even to learn his name, much less provide him with guidance and mentorship, it was an unspeakable relief to work under someone who knew how to rally the troops. Someone who knew how to lead, how to motivate, and how to reward loyalty with loyalty in return. It didn’t hurt that she looked amazing in her daily stilettos, either.

Unfortunately, she impressed him.

“I have some work to get done tonight.” Berserk stood up and smoothed her skirt.

Boomer scrambled to his feet. “Of course! Um.” He began closing food containers and repackaging them in the bags they’d come in, because he was panicking. “I’ll get rid of the trash. Do you want the leftovers in the fridge?”

“You take them. Otherwise my office will smell like a burrito for a week.”

“Okay.” Numbly, Boomer finished packing everything up, while Berserk made her way back to her desk and logged into her computer to check her emails.

Boomer lingered at the door. “I’ll have the prospectus back to you later tonight.”

“Thanks.”

Wow, way to go, stud.

He turned to leave, but her voice stopped him.

“Boomer?”

“Yeah?”

“Friday is good.”

He stared back at her in expert mode. “Huh?”

Berserk poked her head around the side of her large, external monitor. She was smiling again. Lucky number seven. “For fucking.”

“Okay,” Boomer said.

Okay?!

She pulled back behind her monitor. “I was going to get a cat, but you’ll do much better.”

Because she didn’t like going home to a dark, empty apartment alone. With no one to fuck.

“That was a joke.”

“Yeah, I got that,” he croaked.

Friday is for fucking, he thought, which was delightful alliteration and also completely insane and one hundred percent something he was getting more on board with by the nanosecond.

“See you tomorrow,” she said.

Boomer clutched the leftover Mexican food in his fist. “Okay. Goodnight.”

It took him the time to fly home and put the food away in his small fridge to realize that he had a sort-of date with Berserk lined up for two days from now.

He Y-posed at the window and whooped, “Hell yes!!”

Loud pounding in the floor followed by old Mrs. Cruikshank’s muffled Keep it down! couldn’t bring down his mood.

Boomer leaped onto his threadbare, living room sofa with his work laptop and took to the prospectus with alacrity. He’d send over superior work product and make Berserk’s job just that much easier tomorrow morning.

xxx

If you enjoy my writing, check out more of my fics on AO3, link in my profile. I’m currently updating Trinity House (which has a lot more Berserk and Boomer content, btw!) and The Alchemy of Us. Thanks for reading!

[chispas-and-broken-bindings]

I really wanted to get the next chapter of Nothing Sacred, All Things Wild up this week, but work was crazy and I also got caught up in another story (I can’t control my muse)...so instead I’m offering up a long snippet of the dystopian/space colonist fic I started off a prompt I got a while ago for an “Arranged Marriage + a/b/o” request I got from an anon.

A/B/O is not my cup of tea, so I twisted it into an arranged marriage by an artificial intelligence instead: 

He wakes up angry, sweat soaking through his pillow, heart racing, stomach cramped. The alarm is buzzing from somewhere beneath the bed, where he must have knocked it. 

“Turn it off,” Ygritte mutters into his shoulder, before rolling away with the rest of their thin blanket.

He complies, letting the shock of the cold floor against his feet spur him into full wakefulness. “I take the test today.” It’s raining. He watches the drops splatter against the small window near the ceiling, and he wonders if Ygritte remembered to check the bucket beneath the leak before she crawled into bed the night before. 

Their garden apartment doesn’t do well in the rain. Jon still doesn’t understand why it’s even called a garden...there’s nothing green about their cramped basement residence, besides the mold growing beneath the sink.  

“Oh yeah. Happy birthday...we’ll get drinks when you come home.” 

“If I come home.”  He could be part of the one percent, after all. That is the Institution's promise. Everyone is SOMEONE. Anyone can be part of the 1%. Are YOU?

Jon knows it’s unlikely. How could he, an orphan from Mole’s Town, have the magic combination of pheno-, geno-, and personality type to be chosen for the Colony? No...he’s just another loser of the 99% who will waste his twenty-first birthday behind the Brutalist concrete walls of the Institution’s testing center, playing lab rat for the day, until the examiners come to the inevitable conclusion that he’s just another nobody. 

They’ll spit him back out on the street, leaving him free to carve out a pathetic existence on a slowly dying planet. 

He doesn’t bother washing. It’d be a waste of precious water when he knows full well they’ll scrub him down at the testing center. Instead he spends his last moments at home drinking a pot of weak coffee, trying to remember anything he was taught in the schools he barely attended. His energy would be better spent bracing for the coming indignity of having every part of his body and mind exposed and dissected. 

“Is the area of a circle, two pi times the radius? Or is that the circumference?” 

“It doesn’t matter,” Ygritte lights a cigarette at the stove before joining him at the table. “It’s not that kind of test.”

He knows that. It’s another Institution promise. The Test doesn’t ask WHAT you know. It asks who YOU are. Are YOU the 1%

How the fuck would Jon know? It’s easier for him to remember that the area of a circle is actually pi times the radius squared, than it is for him to explain who he is. He has no idea. That’s kind of what being an orphan is all about. 

Ygritte could at least throw him a bone and tell him what the test is like. She took it two years ago, though she won’t talk. Most people won’t. There are no rules against it, but The Test is treated like dysentery. Unless you live behind the gates, you’re going to get it at least once in your life, but that doesn’t mean you’re gonna go around describing your diarrhea to the world.  

Grenn went to White Harbor for the test a month ago, and though Jon had to buy him six beers and two shots of whiskey before Grenn would shut up about his first-ever train ride, he did give Jon a few insights into the rest of the experience. 

Not that the train isn’t worth the excitement, especially when the ride is paid for (another Institution promise. No matter your means. No matter the distance. EVERYONE makes it to the Test. Are YOU the 1%?) Technically, Jon has taken it once before, from Winterfell to Mole’s Town as a baby, but he doesn’t remember.  

Now he can’t believe anything that moves so fast could feel so smooth. He’s topped out at ninety miles per hour on the best snowmobile Donal Noye patched together, but that left his teeth rattling and his ears buzzing for hours afterward. The train is moving at double the speed, but he could be in the godswood, for how quiet the near-empty economy cabin is. He shares it with a twitchy young man who never looks up from a cheap tablet, and a black raven perched in a large cage who spends the entire ride staring at Jon with one eerie black eye. 

The testing center is located just across from the train station, in an intimidating building that used to have a name. Jon has a vague memory that it was a prison before the Institution took it over. Before that it was something else. 

He doesn’t balk when a masked orderly leads him to a small room, tells him to strip, and then takes off with his clothes. He knows they’ll be returned at the end of the day. Of more pressing concern is the man and woman who enter talking too quietly to make out at the other end of the room, while a nurse rolls in with a small cart covered in collection tubes, gauze strips, and butterfly needles. 

Everyone wears surgical masks, latex gloves, long white coats, and black clogs. 

Jon remains naked beneath a small paper covering. 

He has given blood before, and the messy, life-saving transfusion Mance performed to save Tormund three years ago was far scarier than the rapid, methodical draw that's taken from him now. Still, it’s disconcerting to think of the secrets the Institution will glean from his blood. He’s uncomfortably aware that they’ll know who his parents are before the day is over, even as he’ll continue living in total ignorance. 

Another Institution promise. The Institution values EVERYONE’S right to privacy. YOU control the right to tell the world who you are. Are YOU the 1%?

Before he’s finished the recitation in his head, five tubes are full, and the nurse pats a cotton ball and a band-aid over his arm. She tosses a granola bar on his lap before rolling out of the room with her cart of samples. 

Next comes a physical exam, where the other two examiners speak only to each other as they record his height, weight, blood pressure, and note his every blemish and scar in flat affect. 

“Post-burn contractures across the palmar and dorsal aspect of the left hand, adduction and extension in the metacarpophalangeal joint of thumb fall outside normal range of movement.”

“Keloid scarring along the right gastrocnemius muscle, five point three centimeters in diameter.”

“Slightly hypertrophic scarring beginning at left brow and running medially down across the left orbital cavity to the cheek. No ptosis noted. No apparent damage to the eye.”

He should feel worse beneath the weight of each fault. Instead he relaxes. He was nervous for nothing. Failure was always inevitable. The Institution would never invest in a malnourished kid with a burned hand and a badly healed leg wound. They are famously secretive about their selection process, but some reasons for failure are common knowledge. As the crows like to say, no cripples, bastards, or broken things. 

So, he chews his granola bar slowly and even closes his eyes for a bit, letting the examiners move his limp limbs as necessary for their measurements. He imagines himself a cadaver during the early stages of an autopsy. 

As long as they don’t cut me open….

When an white-haired man enters and lays out what look to be a series of tiny torture devices, Jon wonders if he stopped caring too soon. He white-knuckles it through an excruciating dental exam that ends with his first real exchange of the day. 

“Have you ever been to a dentist, kid?” 

There is still a tube in his mouth, sucking up his spit and a hook pressing at his gums, so Jon just shakes his head. There are no dentists in Mole’s Town. Just Chett, who used to work at a slaughterhouse down south and will pull a rotten tooth for the price of a bottle of whiskey. Jon wouldn’t give the creep the lint in his pocket, and he sure as hell wouldn’t let him near his mouth. Instead he brushes his teeth so hard his toothbrush regularly snaps in half, and prays something else kills him before gum disease has a chance.

“You’ve got better teeth than I see behind the gates, boy,” he pulls the hook from Jon’s mouth to dictate into a small microphone hanging from his mobile workstation. “Review DEFB1 on ID 17630343BA. At some point the focus will need to expand beyond the holy 22 and get back to the basics. Who is going to care about neuron growth if every fourth planter is born with anodontia?” 

Jon understands little of what the man is saying, but he’s heard enough to know he’s at least got as good of teeth or better than some of the rich tossers who live within the heavily guarded gated communities where the Colonists are actually culled from. Behind their high walls, wealthy sons and daughters of the only one percent that really matters, spend their youths preparing for the Test in homes and classrooms pumped with filtered air, where the water runs clear, and no one ever goes to sleep with their bellies cramped from hunger or disease. 

The Institution promises that ANYONE can be the 1%, but EVERYONE knows that's a lie. 

---

The physical exam ends at last, after several more rounds of sterile humiliation. Jon isn’t sure which was worse; having to lie within a noisy cylinder while a disembodied voice reminded him not to move, or being asked to run naked on a treadmill, wired with electrodes. 

When it’s over, the last examiner provides him with a sweatsuit that is softer and better-made than anything he owns, and he wonders if there is any way he can smuggle it out with him at the end of the day. Another orderly comes in with a waxy crisp apple that hardly seems real even as a spray of tartly sweet juice hits the back of his tongue. He’s given a pill as well that he swallows down with a cup of water so clear and so cold, it’s an act of incredible will-power not to ask for more. 

It’s only after, when he’s led to a small room with two chairs, a table, and a pulsing white orb in it’s center that he thinks to ask what it’s for. 

“This will make the answers come more naturally during your interviews,” the man explains before leaving him alone. “We want you to answer as truthfully as possibly, but we understand that can be difficult under the stress of the Test.”

He supposes people lie all the time on the Test, trying to game the system, though Jon doesn’t have the first idea how he’d go about doing that, nor does he have any reason to try. He’s not going to the Colony. This is all just a spectacular waste of time, and it’s a race day, which means he’ll have to pull extra shifts at the Rookery to make up for what he would have made beyond the Wall. 

By the time a petite woman with a neat low bun, and cracking, grey scar across half her face and neck enters, Jon is reckless with anger. 

“I’d like to go home.”

“Hello, Jon,” she smiles as she sits across from him, and she’s the first person he’s seen since he entered the building who isn’t wearing a mask. She’s also the first person to call him by his name. “My name is Shireen.”

“Where’s your mask?”

Her smile dims slightly, but she maintains her gentle tone. “I’m here to facilitate the interview portion of your Test today. Before we begin, is there anything you need to feel more comfortable? Something to eat, drink, a bathroom break? Should the temperature be adjusted?”

He’s sour with anger so he takes everything she offers, suddenly eager to make everything as inconvenient as possible for the Institution. Shireen takes his requests with an easy smile, however, escorting him to the restroom herself. When they return to the room, there is a bowl of hearty soup with a chunk of bread that is soft and airy beneath it’s golden-brown crust. Beside it is a tall glass of water and a smaller cup of green liquid that Jon eyes suspiciously. 

“What’s this then?”

“I thought you might like some juice. It’s mostly apple, with some kale, cucumber and celery in it as well, I suspect.”

It’s the best thing Jon has ever tasted, and while part of him wants to fling the rest of it at her frustratingly serene face, it’d be a horrible waste, and he’d be the biggest loser. So, he takes his time, savoring each bite and sip, rolling the bright flavors across his delighted tongue. 

“Feeling better?” she asks after the tray is cleared. 

“Is that an official Test question?”

“No.”

“Let’s get on with it then. I can’t afford to miss the train home.”

“As you may know, it is not individuals who decide the 1%. Our artificial intelligence algorithm, The Seven, determines who is the best fit for the Colony. That is how the institution guarantees objectivity in its selection process,” she taps the pulsing orb on the table. “Though we find people are more comfortable responding to another person, so I will be facilitating our discussion as The Seven records and analyzes your responses. Are you ready to begin?”

He shrugs. 

“I’ll start with a series of statements. After each, please say a number to indicate the degree to which you agree with that statement, wherein one equals strongly disagree and five equals strongly agree. Three indicates you neither agree nor disagree. Do you understand?”

“Five.”

“Okay. Statement Number one: At social events, you rarely try to introduce yourself to new people and mostly talk to the ones you already know.”

Jon knows everyone in Mole’s Town, and he doesn’t want to socialize with most of them. 

“Two.”

This goes on for a while, each statement absurdly divorced from anything relating to Jon’s life, but the numbers spring easily from his lips as he relaxes under Shireen’s soothing voice, and kind face, and the lovely feeling of a full belly and soft, warm clothes. 

It’s when the format shifts, that he begins to feel strange. Shireen starts with questions that are easy to answer. Where were you born? How many years of education have you completed? What was your favorite class and why?  What do you do for work? Describe your strengths. When are you most satisfied in your job?  Do you live alone or with others? How many others do you live with? What is your relationship to the person you live with? 

At this point, the questions grow more invasive; more personal. A voice tells Jon that the Institution doesn’t need to know how many times he and Ygritte fuck a week...but the answer escapes all the same. 

“Four or five times a week.”

“Do you use contraception methods?”

“No.”

“Do you intend to have children with your partner?”

“No.”

“Given your age and your partner’s, without contraception, given your regular intercourse the odds of conception are--”

“She’s sterile.” 

“How do you know that?”

“Most everyone in Mole’s Town is. It’s something in the water, or the air, or our weak genes. It doesn’t really matter the cause. If it’s not the one; it’s the other. She’s been fucking since she was fifteen, and nothing’s ever caught.”

“How do you know that you aren’t the sterile one?”

He shrugs. “I probably am too, but I’m not her first partner as you say. I’m not her second or third either.”

“How does that make you feel?” 

He glares, and Shireen clarifies. 

“Your partner’s sterility?”

“How do you think it makes me feel?” he pushes back from the table, letting his chair lean back on two legs. 

Shireen only gives him a minute shake of her head, and waits for him to answer the question. 

“Angry. I feel fucking furious about it.”

“So, you would like to be a father?”

“I’d like the freedom to choose. I’d like Ygritte to have that freedom.”

“What is your least favorite thing about humanity?”

She can’t be serious with that question. It’s like asking him to name all the stars. He takes a deep breath. Shireen waits. He stands up and paces. Shireen waits. He finishes his water and asks for another. Shireen calls for a refill. He drinks that too. Shireen waits. 

“My least favorite thing? That we’ve given up. We let this machine,” he points at the orb, “decide who doesn’t have to. It’s like….it’s like the men in Mole’s Town who wander into the snows when winter grows too cold, and there’s not enough food or warmth to go around. Grown-ass men who could be fixing furnaces and braving the cold to find the resources their families so desperately need. Most of the time they don’t even have the fucking guts to tell anyone  what they’re off to do. They just wander away one day, and winter takes them. 

That’s what the fucking Institution is. We’re all those men in Mole’s Town who’ve just given up, despite the blood still pumping through our veins. We’re sitting around, waiting for winter to kill us, so that a few can live. And there’s no one left to be mad about it either, because it’s a fucking machine that decides our fate. It’s like being mad at the wind. What’s the fucking point? But just because there is no one to be angry with, that doesn’t mean the rage goes away...and winter isn’t killing us fast enough."

“So you want to live?”

“I want humanity to want to live. I want humanity to want most of humanity to live. I want us to care about more than the one percent.”

It feels radical, saying it here; behind the walls of the Institution. It feels like he’s put the last nail in his own coffin. Shireen watches him as he cracks his knuckles, one at a time, waiting for her to say the interview is over; it’s time to go home. 

Instead she asks an even crazier question. 

“Do you think there is an essential connection between the morality of an action and the morality of the intentions behind it?”

[jaketism]

leo's silly little reviews part 1: 4 all u y0ung h0ckey playerz 0ut there, pay attention

this is mostly just for me to keep track of what i read :) also i censored the title because this specific author found my tweets?? i wasn't particularly mean in them but it was very scary nonetheless. anyways.

technically i started ninety one whiskey before this but i'm never going to finish it so <3 this is the first longform (meaning 80k+) destiel fic i read. both this and 91w were recs from my friend tristan @/deankeptthecoat. i liked it! i read it pretty quickly (4 days, which by my standards is very fast, but by literate people's standards is very sad) and it gave me a false sense of confidence that i would be able to read an actual book, so i bought 2 actual books and then gave up 5 pages into them. sorry harry august. someday.

it had fun pacing! i wasn't ever bored, even if it was a little bit of a slow start. dean's inner monologue was funny, the dialogue was ok, everyone talked like themselves etc. i really do love hockey and the game scenes were well written!! they were engaging and fun! however it was REALLY weird to me that the author sent them (the supernatural boys) to the stanley cup finals and then didn't write any of those games. bro thats the most hockey game of hockey games why. why would you put it in your hockey au but only off page. dude. it wasn't even clear who they were playing, it was just "new york" which is. there are 2 new york teams, one of which is my team!! this is what prompted the. well ok the second weirdest interaction i've had on twitter where someone clearly searched key words about their long term internet projects (one time the hamilton hiv scandal exposé other and hamilton cannibal mermaid rpf writer replied to me and this in no way beat that). i tweeted about how i wanted to know if the islanders or the rangers lost the hypothetical 2015 stanley cup finals to the cavs (captained by dean winchester) and the author replied and told me it was the islanders. it was very scary i didn't think she would reply especially given i did not say the title of the fic.

the smut was. a manageable amount. i don't like sex scenes, especially when theres dialogue that makes it so i have to read it and this fic from what i remember was explicit but not overwhelmingly filled with sex scenes which meant i didn't have to switch into skimming mode all the time! woo hoo! if you like sex scenes this fic has them and if you don't like sex scenes this fic enables you to skip them while still giving you a story.

points for keeping dean's repression and daddy issues basically as is from the show by just replacing one violent hyper toxically masculine profession for another, and including charlie/jo. that's fun. i liked it and i liked all of them hanging out :) bobby/ellen is cool with me, i'd prefer if there was background cule politics with rufus and whoever's spouses get to live in the au, but that's not something i'm likely to find in anything ever so whatever.

cas was mostly in character (very unusual for human aus!). dean was also mostly in character, if a little dumber than i think he is. i don't love bi dean personally, but it didn't feel like Fanon Bisexual Man Whore Dean Winchester so i didn't mind it! (i hate that shit so much it's so. fetishizing and reductive >:P)

Hm? What? moments:

the inclusion of the supernatural books featuring main characters jensen dmitiri and jared

the choice to make cas russian

zachariah being a still active professional hockey player despite being. an old man

the repeated implication but never outright statement that gabriel and balthazar were fucking

the author committing to benny/andrea and victor/oc wife but still wanting dean to have someone to experiment with so introducing eli, the vampire ty olson played in season 2, as a bartender

the excuse for cas's name being castiel being essentially "he's russian, don't worry about it"

the check please thing must be acknowledged. i have no idea if this author has read check please but. like. there is a prominent gay hockey thing (that isn't rpf) other than this fic and its check please. i don't know. i've read both. they weren't all that similar plot wise. i like hockey, i am gay, i do not like hockey rpf. these are my options. 

on the note of rpf. the author writes cast rpf. which i didn't know until literally right now but makes sense based on her twitter profile. :/ that sucks. it puts me off reading her other destiel fics. anyways. 

like. 8/10 i really liked it! had a great time would recommend to anyone who likes destiel human aus and tolerates hockey.

[lighthouseroleplay]

SALEM HADFIELD

                          ( 22 ,  genderqueer , they/them )

♪♫ currently listening  ⧸⧸  fell in love with new york by the zolas

glimmering lights, the whir of a reel of film, dark sunglasses, the view from the top of a tall building. whiskey spilled on an old carpet, staying awake through a night and seeing the sunrise. the chirps of birds, stained silk, the rush of standing on a stage. cherry lollypops and wild grins, trees as an oasis, dancing without a care in the world. glittering eyelids, tousled hair, a wide grin. oil shining rainbow in the sun, designer shoes worth more than a car, an intensity that belies fragility.

    •  moon and emrys were already a pair when you arrived in tenebrin, two peas in a pod, a terrific twosome: and somehow, they invited you to join them almost immediately. you adored each of them in their own way, the former for the wild spirit and determination behind the rich-kid exterior, and the latter for her kindness, her empathy. they’d been friends for so long before you came along, but there was little hesitation in either of them towards bringing you into the group. you ruled the school together, and while your two new best friends have their quirks — namely, the sitcom-worthy will they-won’t they dynamic — you adore them.

    •  burke was the first person your own age that you talked to after the move, the kid boisterously trying to coax a cat out of the tree next to your bedroom window. it turned out you were neighbours, and while you never really talked at school, you would both make the walk from renfrew heights to cecil morgan every day together. your mothers got along: both single parents, both working at the olympia university, and to both of your chagrin, they began to date. it didn’t go anywhere, really, and faded back into friendship soon enough, but the two of you share a certain bond, borne more of circumstance than similarities. you know he’d be there if you needed a friend, and that means a lot.

taken by summer ⧸⧸  mikaela straus

You asked if I was feeling it, I’m psycho high

Salem was born in the city that never sleeps, the city where the stars pale against the bright lights of the sprawling steel landscape. Her mother always said her one and only child screamed so loud it was as if she had had three, but as soon as her baby was in somebody’s arms, her tears would melt away and she would smile serenely, as if she’d only been playing a game.

Her father was a lawyer at a large firm in the financial district, married to the head of the Playwriting and Screenwriting department at NYU. They created a home in a warm old brownstone recently renovated in the late nineties.  They were hard-working people, and while there was always a nanny that stood in their place when they were away at work, Salem knew she was well loved. She remembers her mother being present far more than her father, but he had always been attentive to her when he was around. On weekends he would take her to the local coffee shops with him, where she would doodle on the back of old legal pads drinking hot chocolate while he sipped espresso and typed furiously on his laptop. After that, he would always taking her shopping in the Meatpacking District, letting her raid both the boys and girls sections in the designer stores. She would walk into her private elementary school in a baby pink turtleneck with a boys blazer wrapped around her frame, but her wide grin was a staple of every outfit. Her teachers said she was a child full of life, eager to learn and play, but with everything she put her mind to there was a startling intensity that came with it.

When her father was away at the firm her mother would let Salem spend nights on the floor of the family study, learning to read off the scripts of her mother’s students. When she got old enough she began to read them aloud to her mother, and her mother always told her in return what a clever girl she was. Salem would sternly retort that she wasn’t girl, she was an actor.

She was nine when she convinced her parents to let her audition for To Kill A Mockingbird at the Shubert Theater. She practiced for the role of Scout for weeks, and when her parents got the call that she got the role a raw rush of joy flourished through her tiny body. This was a high she would be chasing her entire life.

Hardworking, passionate and driven, she convinced her parents to hire home tutors so she could pursue acting. Between rehearsals and auditions, she was taught middle school History and English. She would go from memorizing lines to learning the scientific method. Some social graces were lost after being taken out of the classroom setting, but Salem developed a confidence level few preteens had. She had the review for her first play taped on the back of her bedroom door; ‘a breakout role,’ they said, ‘destined for a life on the stage.’

Know you won’t remember in the morning when I speak my mind

She knew something was wrong when she kept catching her mother crying. She would hear the sniffling in the hallway and catch sight of reddened eyes across the breakfast table, as her mother made excuses about allergies, a cold, the dry air. A month after the secret tears began, both her parents uncharacteristically stayed home from work and took her out to breakfast. They dropped the bomb of divorce after the powdered-sugar-sprinkled pancakes had been placed in front of her. It turned out that her mother was not the only woman in her father’s heart, it was carefully explained; there had been multiple affairs eroding their marriage for years. It was an unanticipated blow to deal a twelve year old.

The divorce was quick and painless. Her mother received nearly everything she wanted in the split; a generous nest egg as well as the family’s summer house in the Hamptons, which was promptly sold. Salem had told the judge she wanted to live with her mother, a result of the betrayal of her father’s affairs having cut so deep that she could barely meet his eyes anymore. She would see her father for two weeks at the beginning and end of every summer, with alternating Thanksgivings and Christmases.  

Salem’s loyalty was rewarded with a ticket to the West Coast, marked one-way for a month after the settlement of the divorce proceedings. A cold pit formed in her stomach at the idea of leaving her city, her home, and the opportunities she knew would now be lost to her. She wanted to rage at her mother, to scream and fight, but the desperate look of hope in the woman’s eyes put a halt to Salem’s dramatics before they could even start.

Lights are on and they’ve gone home, but who am I?

Moving to a new town on a new coast just before eighth grade was simply unjust. Salem almost begged to be homeschooled, having suffered so much sudden violent turbulence in her life; to adapt to the hierarchy of a new middle school felt beyond the pale to a thirteen year old in the peak of her awkward years. Her mother gently pushed her out the door in early September, forcing Salem to stand on the sidewalk until the bus rolled around. The boy next door received a dirty look as he came to wait alongside her, her glare highlighted by cream-colored glitter smeared across her eyelids, as if he was to blame for the predicament that had become her life. Wearing a bright blue cotton t-shirt from her father’s favorite coffee shop and a leather ankle-length skirt that billowed around her calves as she stomped onto the bus, Salem entered the Tenebrin school system in a foreign splash of violent color.

Her mother wisely never left for work before Salem stepped onto the bus, knowing without a doubt that she could make a mad dash for freedom if given the opportunity. Perhaps her transition to a new school would have been easier if she’d made any effort to fit in, but she laughed loudly, dressed boldly, and took every opportunity to stand out. Not many friends were made in that first year. It was difficult to grow roots when she was determined to love the city she was born in more than her new home. It didn’t help that she was determined to not let herself be boxed in by the small town. When they would separate the ‘boys‘ and ‘girls’ into groups, she would try to join which ever side interested her more, rather than where the teacher insisted her to go. She didn’t understand why it was so confusing for everyone that she didn’t feel like one of the girls…or one of the boys.  She was simply Salem.

Things shifted when Moon and Emrys entered her life. She had only seen the pair from afar in middle school, always happy, always together. The summer before high school began when they found her early one day on the beach, reciting an overly dramatic monologue from A Midsummer Night’s Dream to the ocean. She was determined to go to the beach as often as she pleased, despite the boy next door’s constant irrational warnings, and decided to entertain herself the best way she knew how. It didn’t bother her that she had been caught, but something about the incident endeared her to the pair. A new world was unlocked when they opened their arms to her. Suddenly, she was sitting at the table everyone wanted to sit at. She gained unquestioned popularity and acceptance, a bizarre contrast from her previous year of alienation and separation. Suddenly, girls would come up to her and say her outfits looked amazing, instead of whispering snide comments as she walked past. Her sharp smiles and blunt edges now made her one of the ‘cool’ crowd. She welcomed the change gracefully, but it was hard to forgive and forget the initial alienation.

Her father got remarried to a woman in his office at the end of her sophomore year. Moon and Emrys accompanied Salem to the wedding as her plus-ones. She still remembers how her fingernails dug into the soft skin of their hands as the woman beamed at her father, walking down the aisle to a string quartet sonata. Her mother did not attend.  

She spent her high school career honing her craft as much as she could in a small town. Every production within driving distance had Salem standing front and center to audition. She helped work on sets, taught other students how to do hair and makeup, and didn’t miss a single meeting of the drama club. To her mother’s chagrin, she did not put nearly as much effort into her actual grades, skating by with mostly B’s and C’s. In the off seasons, she spent nearly all of her free time with her favorite duo, slowly becoming more and more ingrained in their trifecta, though her relationship to either one could never rival their close bond. She always knew she was the third wheel, the extra piece that didn’t quite fit; but they never made her feel that she was an outsider to them, and to her, that was all that counted.

When that day came, Salem remembers the sound of her own scream the most, the way it tore from her throat at the sight of the ocean claiming a life. They had been half a mile away, too far to do anything, but still close enough to see it all. She doesn’t know how she knew that the lithe frame looming over the edge of the cliff was Andrea, but she was without doubt when she pointed out the figure to her friends. Something in that moment made her think of the stories Burke had told her over the years— trust me, don’t go in the water— and as if the words in her head were a trigger, Andrea was suddenly falling.

Oh, how fast the evening passes, cleaning up the champagne glasses

It was as if everyone at the beach that day had made a pact to get the hell-out-of-dodge. Salem went to the funeral at Emrys’ urging, smoking a cigarette at the edge of the crowd as she watched Andrea’s coffin being lowered into the earth, apathetic behind her dark sunglasses. Everyone wept around her, but she stood apart from their grief. She didn’t see Andrea grow up from childhood, she didn’t feel the need to summon crocodile tears just for show. In truth, she hadn’t thought of the girl much at all until the incident of the senior play. As she stood on the outside the shelter Tenebrin had created, shoulder to shoulder around an empty coffin, she felt just as alienated as she had on her first day of eighth grade.

Within the week, she had arranged to fly home to spend the rest of the summer with her father and his new wife. Her acceptance letter to the NYU Drama program was carefully folded into the front pocket of her suitcase as she gave tight hugs to Emrys and Moon on her front porch, her mom packing the car in the meantime. The town she had never quite grown to love was now tainted by death and decay, and the witnesses of the horror were dissipating like smoke. She saw no reason to linger in a place she’d never grown to love, or even really like.

Salem had always pictured her eventual return to New York City as a triumph. This would mark the beginning of her stage career, the destiny she had been so desperately waiting for, and at first, it seemed like that was true. When she wasn’t in class, she was going to auditions, hauling her saddle bag full of school books, cases of makeup, and a spare set of heels across the city. She landed a fair amount of small parts during that first year back on the scene, but even standing off to the side of center stage, playing supporting roles, felt glorious. It felt like finally finding her true purpose; the applause from a New York crowd gave her ten times the adrenaline rush of any high school produced play in Tenebrin. As the years passed, the job offerings became more and more sparse. She lost some of her shine with each rejection and deflated a little more each night she spent staring at her phone, waiting for a callback. Maybe she’d overestimated her talent, or her toughness. Maybe standing behind the lead was as close as she’d ever get to the spotlight.

While she was an excellent student during her first two years at school, Salem barely graduated from the drama program, knowing full well that some teachers gave her passes because of who her mother was, not based on her own merits. The passion that had guided her so recklessly for most of her life was now beginning to fade, and the dreams that started during her last semester only made everything much, much worse.  

The dreams always ended with a scream; Salem would bolt upright in bed, sticky with the sweat glazed over her clammy skin. It was her own scream, the scream that tore its way out of her on that beach in July all those years ago, but it didn’t come from her own mouth. It came from Andy’s. She told herself it was just unresolved trauma, probably rising to the surface due to stress. She stubbornly refused to give the dreams any meaning beyond that. Tenebrin had no right to haunt her when she’d already left it so far behind.

The end of the school year came with little fanfare. She walked with all the other NYU graduates to get her degree and stood there, feeling strange and out-of-place on a stage where she wasn’t performing. For the first time in her life, despite the proud smiles both parents gave her, Salem felt lost. When she told her mother she wanted to move back to Tenebrin for the summer, she said she simply needed a break from the city, before her life became her career. She neglected to share her fears that there was actually no career to be had. She kept the dreams, and crushing anxiety she felt when she woke up from those nightmares tasting saltwater at the back in her throat, all to herself. But as soon as she told her mother she would be going back west with her, Salem felt sure in this decision. She felt sure to her core: in Tenebrin, she would no longer feel lost. She was going home.

All the glamour and the trauma and the fuckin’ Melodrama

[kraken-with-a-plan]

Thoughts on “Down to Agincourt”

(After reading less than a fifth of it)

This is not a review, just some thoughts and an opportunity for myself to reflect on what I’ve read.

-I’ve heard a lot of great things about “Down to Agincourt” by seperis, but I have to say, the first work in the series seemed more like a prologue to me than a 150k words long first “part”. It was missing the typical structure of storytelling one might expect from a complete work, and for that reason I don’t think it could be translated into a first “book” in a series, were it ever to be officially published. It also gave me the impression of being unnecessarily long in a way only fanfiction can get away with. Don’t get me wrong, “unnecessarily long” in terms of fiction is usually a good thing, as it makes for much more detailed and in-depth explorations of characters than is usually afforded by published fiction, but in this case I felt that it was unnecessary in the sense that large parts of it just weren’t very engaging. I felt like the same thing could have been said or conveyed in far fewer words. At the same time I can appreciate the stylistic side of it, and how it might contribute to a certain tone that might be necessary for the rest of the work. I do have to hand it to the writer, if there’s any place to use length as a stylistic tool, it’s in fanfiction. That’s the only avenue where it really works, in my opinion. The question is, perhaps, if it was deliberate or not.

-I’m a little ways into the second work now, though, and I’m still waiting for it to start going somewhere. There are a lot of depictions of daily command decisions and technical operations, and many of them feel like poorly concealed bits of exposition (or worldbuilding, I guess). There’s a lot of worldbuilding. 

-On a base level, I can’t help but compare DTA to the only other really long piece of Supernatural fanfiction I’ve read recently, which is “Ninety One Whiskey” by komodobits. In contrast with DTA’s million words and counting, Ninety One Whiskey is complete at 400k. The difference, I guess, is that the latter is a historical wartime AU while the former is an apocalyptic, Endverse AU, but I have to say that unlike DTA, Ninety One Whiskey was gripping and engaging more or less from beginning to end. There may have been some slow parts in the middle, but though there were many depictions of battles, they always served a purpose and were gripping to read in and of themselves. Maybe they’re just two entirely different works of literature, in that Ninety One Whiskey was a ‘can’t put it down’ work of fiction from the start while DTA relies on extensive worldbuilding and more introspective development. I couldn’t tell you, but either way there is still something that makes me want to continue reading DTA. Keep in mind I’m less than 200k words in.

-I have two thoughts on the language itself, one positive, and one not so much. There’s obviously a lot to say about the style, none of which I’m equipped to express, except that it is obviously a competently written piece of fiction, and that Dean and Cas’ voices are accurate and distinct from each other. 

--The positive thing I took note of was that I came across quite a lot of words I don’t know, and I should be keeping a list of words like that to look up later and memorize, but I haven’t been doing that nearly as diligently as I should be (as I’m looking at getting a bachelor’s degree in English at some point but I’m not a native speaker). Reading this prompted me to start actually taking down the words I don’t know, and it’s always nice to feel like you’re learning something, like you’re receiving some mental stimulation when you’re reading fanfiction instead of what you’re supposed to be reading (I mean, perspicacity? I could have sworn there were already several other words in English that mean the same thing). 

---As a sidebar, one of my favorite scenes of DTA so far was in the very beginning, when Castiel gets back to his car after witnessing Lucifer incinerate Dean’s body. The author doesn’t explicitly say that Dean’s in the car but Castiel’s immediate reflections of “Don’t look back” and that he wouldn’t make the same mistake as Orpheus, these are clear indications that yeah, Dean’s in the car (even though we might not know exactly which Dean). I feel like this scene is kind of indicative of the rest of the story. Due to the implications of Castiel casting himself as Orpheus - and by extension, Dean as Eurydice - we get an immediate feel for how deep Castiel feels that his connection with Dean is, something that is later reflected by the whole talk of Dean as Castiel’s charge (and what that means). For a large part of the story that follows, Castiel doesn’t show any of this emotion or regard towards Dean, but that scene stuck with me, and for a while it was what made me keep reading.

----The negative thing I keep running into in this fic, that just seems to be a part of how the author writes, is when a line of dialogue said by one character is immediately followed by another character’s name. This is an example taken from chapter 3 of work #2, “It’s the Stars That Lie”:

"Dean thought it was an accident." Cas smiles at him, admitting nothing. "Lecture all the way home?"

I wonder if this is a legitimate thing that happens in published works - I couldn’t tell you - but it’s definitely a pet peeve of mine either way. My brain, at least, is conditioned to read the above line and immediately assume that Cas is the one speaking, since his name appears right after the dialogue (Dean is the one speaking). It happens several times every chapter that I have to re-read a line of dialogue and the surrounding context to be sure I understand who’s speaking. Sometimes context takes care of it and then it’s not a problem, but the author does this fairly frequently, and a lot of the time it’s just confusing. If I were the one writing this, I would have written that line something like this:

"Dean thought it was an accident."  Cas smiles at him, admitting nothing. "Lecture all the way home?"

This may sometimes also be context-dependent, but for me at least, this format is a lot more intuitive. While the language itself in DTA is slightly challenging from time to time, this aspect is what’s most challenging, and not in a good way.

-I’ll keep reading, because it feels like a lot of groundwork has been laid and I’m expecting it to pick up, but if it still feels stationary by the end of work #2 I don’t know if I’ll be interested enough to continue. For what it’s worth, I had come across this author before, back when I was reading a lot of Adam Lambert RPF, and this author has written one of the more well-regarded works within that fandom, “(This Is) Not a Statement”, and while it was a long time ago since I read it, I have nothing but good things to say about it. 

I also already like Down To Agincourt, but I want to like it enough to read a million words of it, and as of now that’s still up in the air.

[puckish-saint]

Scientist reader helping Mei, Mercy, Winston and Torbjorn in science stuff because why not

Mei

Whenever you’re in Mei’s lab youfind yourself vaguely surprised that the orange juice on her deskisn’t boiling. She runs around in only a pair of loose slacks, herbra and her lab coat tied around her waist, brushing across the floorlike peacock feathers. The cold unsettles her.

You greet her by lifting up two boxesof Chinese take-out, the only real food you get when everyone who’scapable of and willing to cook is off base.

“Oh! You thought of me, that’s sonice. Thank you.” she sets her tablet aside and makes some room ather desk, guilty throwing away a handful of candy wrappers, her solesustenance when she can’t be bothered to cook a full meal. Which isalways.

It’s nice to get away from work for abit even if you’re spending the time in the boiler room for one ofthe lower circles of hell. After some brief consideration you slipout of the sleeves of your work overall and tie it around your waist,much like Mei has with her coat. It’s still stifling hot in here,but with one layer of clothes less it becomes endurable.

“So.” you say, coming after a bitof small talk to the real reason you’re here. “I checked thescanners this morning and saw one of your weather stations wentoffline.”

She groans at being reminded of it andpulls up her overview window. She has about a dozen of stationaryautomatic weather stations in her immediate vicinity. Or as immediateas she can afford them to be, what with her being one of the fewscientists still pursuing her research. One of them has a red markermerrily blinking ‘offline’ at you.

“It’s A-02, the one I set up in theAlps. It was probably damaged by falling debris. It’s going to be ahassle arranging transportation and trekking all the way up there torepair or replace it.”

You take a sip of your drink, hummingas if you’re just now deliberating her predicament.

“You know, I could fly you up there.We’d be in and out, no trouble.”“Really?” she asks, eyeslighting up at the prospect of being spared a whole lot ofinconvenience. Then, just as you think you’re getting away with it,her eyes narrow in suspicion. “Wait a second. Haven’t you beenworking on new climbing gear? You’re just looking for a guineapig.”

Guilty as charged. You shrug, smileapologetically.

“I need to see how it works with morethan one person attached. It’s safe, I promise!”

“If you knew it’s safe you wouldn’tneed to test it.”

She agrees in the end. There’s atoken argument, because only a crazy person would crawl around theAlps in experimental safety gear without it, but in the pursuit ofscience, she’ll do it.

Right up until theory turns intopractice.

“Are you sure it’s safe?” sheasks over the soft hum of the plane engine. It’s one of Overwatch’sstealth models and it barely disturbs a snowflake as it hovers overthe small plateau close to Mei’s broken weather station.

“If it were safe, there’d be noneed for testing.” you give back cheekily and receive a fond slapon the head in return. After a last check of the equipment, makingsure you’re both as safe and secure as you can be with equipmentthat’s never left controlled environments, you jump out of theplane and into the knee deep snow. The plane’s autopilot moves intostandby and you start the few but arduous steps towards the mountainwall.

“I should probably have asked thissooner.” Mei says. “But why are there no ropes?”

You stop short, patting your pockets asif the rope will miraculously turn up. The search yields no fruit andyou turn around, eyes wide in a beginning panic.

“Oh my God, I forgot the ropes.”

“What?” She squeaks, standsstockstill, untethered on the stormy alpine mountaintops. Then shesees your face and places her hands on her hips.

“That’s not funny.” she says asyou support yourself on your knees to keep from doubling over withlaughter.

“It’s a little bit funny.”

She looks utterly unimpressed, waitswith her lips pursed until you’ve calmed down enough to start theactual climbing.

The system is deceptively simple.Instead of ropes you’ll be anchored to the mountain side via smallgravity wells set on hooks that drive themselves automatically intothe surface beneath them. If you fall the gravity well will surge upand pull you in. It’s a design adapted from Zarya’s particlecannon and in theory it should be safer and more convenient thanstandard climbing gear. Although it doesn’t prevent you fromfeeling like you’re climbing utterly unsecured several thousandfeet above ground.

But even with the nervosity of notwearing any climbing gear you make faster progress than you wouldwith it and soon both you and Mei stand atop the plateau that shouldhave sheltered her weather station. It’s gone. So is most of theplateau.

“Avalanche?” you suggest while shescans the area for any remains of the device. The scanner showsnothing.

“Probably. I’d hoped I could bringit back to the base for repairs.” Mei says as she prepares to setup the replacement.

You help her, holding the base steadywhile she drives the anchor points deep into the stone below. With awhirr and a beep it comes alive, sending up a small drone to hoverabove it, taking preliminary readings.

The way to and from the site takes thelongest, setting up the weather station is a matter of minutes.Afterwards you both move to the edge of the plateau, staring down thealmost ninety degree slope.

“You know.” you say, checking ifthe gravity well is ready to travel back down its anchoring pointsthe same way as it has traveled up. “Theoretically the well shouldbe able to safely slow our decent and keep us close to the mountainside. I designed the system to allow the users to jump all the waydown in an emergency.”

Mei shakes her head before you stopspeaking.

“No.”“Please?”“Noway. I’m not jumping down a mountain on nothing but your assumptionthat some tiny gravity well will catch us both mid motion while we’rehurtling past it at terminal velocity.”

“For science?”

Mei glares at you. Then she curses andadjusts her equipment.

“Fine. For science.”

Mercy

For weeks all field agents areencouraged to bag all their used medical supplies in specialcontainers and have them sent up to the lab. And by ‘encouraged’you mean they risk facing Angela’s wrath if they forget.

Thus you shouldn’t be surprised tosee the boxes and boxes full of used bandages in her lab when youenter that morning, asked here with sweet words and the promise ofcookies. Although you get the feeling that when this is over you’llhave lost your appetite for good.

“We get hurt too much.” you say andAngela agrees, hoisting the first box on the table.

While you unpack the individual bags,vacuum sealed to keep them fresh, she explains what she’s hoping togain from this.

“Our bandages are covered in gelinfused with biotic particles. I want to enhance their efficiency,get more healing with less paste, but for that I need to see wherewe’re at currently. We need to pull the bandages apart to get atthe gel that will have trapped all bodily fluids, dirt and dead cellsinside, then count the remaining biotic particles under themicroscope.”

Simple work but tiresome, as issurprisingly much of science.

You get to work, coffee maker chugginghappily along.

As you suspected opening the firstbandage fills the air with the repugnant stench of old blood, pus anddirt. Both you and Angela scrunch your noses, then dive in, eager toget this done soon.

One possible venue for optimisationreveals itself within the first hour.

“Another seminar on basic first aidmight be due.” you say as you check the origin of the latestbandage, unsurprisingly marked J.McCree. The biotic particlesseem to have attacked dirt more than worked on the actual woundhealing. Some of them are still attached to something you have agrowing suspicion may be a part of a fingernail.

“I spent three years persuading Jesseto use our medical supplies instead of whiskey and honey. He used tosew his own wounds shut with threads he ribbed from his serape.”

You spend a happy few minutes notthinking about that hygiene nightmare.

The pattern, biotic efficiency reducedby foreign contaminants, repeats itself. With Jack they worksplendid, as he applies his own first aid with military precision.Hana doesn’t bother cleaning them at all, preferring to slap on abandaid to stem the bleeding and jump back into her MEKA.

During the course of the day you findother options to increase efficiency. Reprogramming the geneticstructure of the biotic particles may allow them to coordinate witheach other, focusing less on areas that are already being tended to.For all that it’s smelly and tiresome, it will give you a fewpercentages of extra healing in the end.

Noon rolls around and passes unheeded.You only get up to get more coffee for yourself and Angela and by thetime you’re finished it has gone dark outside.

Neither of you has much appetite.Instead of cookies Angela offers a walk to stretch your legs. Youreview the data together as you amble along the balcony surroundingthis level of the base, enjoying the warm evening breeze that carrieswith it the wonderfully clean scent of salt and seaweed.

“Professor Halldórsdóttir from theUniversity of Iceland developed a prototype particle not long ago.”Angela says, pulling up the related article on the web. It’ssimilar to your project, although it intended for the particles to bedeployed in cancer treatment. You wonder if the Professor spent a daygoing through old tumours. At least she wouldn’t have had to talkto someone about cleaning wounds by spitting on his thumb and rubbingat it.

“There seemed to be an issue withallergic reactions.”

The data is extensive, saves you bothseveral weeks of work, even though you’ll have to adapt it for yourown purposes.

All in all it was a productive day,spent in pleasant company. And now that the disgusting parts are overand done with you don’t mind extending it a little.

“What do you think, should we draw upa few genotypes before bed?” you suggest and Angela, checking ifthe caffeine supply holds steady, agrees.

Winston

He pings your comm at 3 am in themorning and, after you blearily fish it from your bedside table andhold it in the general direction of your ear, asks: “How large areyour hands?”

You open one eye to stare into the darkof your quarters as if an explanation might turn up out of thin air.None does, requiring you to request clarification.

“What.”

“Your hands. Could you measure themreal quick?”

If you were marginally more awake youwould have answered with something sassy or sarcastic, like that youforgot to keep the measuring tape for late-night measuring close by.Or that you’re sure they’re the same size they were during dinnera few hours ago, when it was still a reasonable time to chat.

As it is, you’re not even a littlebit awake and so what you do say, after some careful, sleep-addleddeliberation is:“What.”

Winston patiently explains why he needsto know the size of your hands. He has a project that resists hisfine motor control and he needs someone with smaller hands. However,seeing as it is late at night, he wouldn’t want to drag you out ofbed and into his lab just to discover that your hands are also toolarge for the task with which he needs help. That’s why he thoughtof having you measure them beforehand.His monologue takes a fewminutes, after which sleep has handed in its resignation. You mightas well get up.

Winston welcomes you with coffee and abox the length of your forearm, attached to a screen displaying anerror message.

“It’s just an issue with thewiring. But the space is too small for me to reach it and I don’twant to take the whole thing apart again.” he explains and, whenyou cast a look inside the box you see why he would have trouble. Theopening is barely big enough for your hand, nevermind the fiddlingyou’ll have to do inside. You give it a try, have Winston light thespace with a flashlight.

“How did you manage before theRecall?” you ask while you fiddle with the wires.

“Long tweezers and a lot ofpatience.” he says, with the long suffering sigh of someone whobroke a lot of the former due to a low supply of the latter.

It sounds tiring and even more so whenthe wire yields under your comparatively dainty fingers and snapsinto the right place. The error message is still there.

“Huh.” he says, pushing his glassesup his nose.

It’s coming on 4 am but being up toyour wrists in the project already, you have an interest in seeing itsucceed.

“Show me your blueprint?”

It’s a mess, the product of too manylate nights and not enough pairs of eyes that could force some senseinto it. But after following the video log and having the finished,albeit non-functioning, object in your hands, you work your waythrough it.

By the time the rest of the baseawakens the error message still blinks, but it does so for adifferent reason, which is what in scientific jargon is called a goodthing. The box has a lot of new holes through which a few combinedmetres of cables run, attached to various extra hardware anddiagnostics equipment. When finished it’s supposed to replace yourcurrent black box system for your flight computers, as well as theserver rooms downstairs.

Right now it’s serving as a coffeetable.

Winston puts his mug down on it andleans back in his tire, going over the schematics yet another time.

“We may need help.” he says andyou’re inclined to agree. As one you reach for the comm.

“Zenyatta. Yes, good morning. Just aquick question. How large are your hard drives? Could you measurethem real quick?”

Torbjörn

Sometimes science means braving hostileterrain to gather readings that may not be useful in the long run.Sometimes it means exposing yourself to dangerous and unbelievablygross biohazards and sometimes it is impeded by the limitations ofyour own body.

And sometimes it means sitting in alawn chair and throwing tennis balls over a cliff.

“We’re testing your new turretcalibration, right?” you ask, taking a sip from a colourfulcocktail with an umbrella in it.

“Yup.” Torbjörn says, equippedwith an equally colourful cocktail as well as a tablet remotelyconnected to about half a dozen turrets, all calibrated to differentsettings. You chuck another tennis ball, four turrets vaporize it inmid-air, one shoots too late and one falls over and beeps distressed.

“Good. Just so I’ll know what totell Winston when he asks where I’ve been all day.”

Two turrets help the fifth one upright.The next test involves two flying objects, for which Torbjörnreluctantly sets down his drink to take the tennis ball you’reoffering him.

“Helping me develop better defensesystems is more important than your usual duties.”

Together the balls fly over the cliffand into the net he set up below as none of the turrets can decidewhich ball to focus on.

“I wrote the software from scratch.”he says. “With the new hardware I’d just have mucked around withthe old code.”

He makes adjustments even as he speaks,pretty much the only indication you’re doing real science here.Which is what you’re doing. It would be cruel to let him do all ofthis hard work alone. Overwatch is supposed to be a team effort. Youwill sacrifice your time and energy to help out a friend in need anyday.

You toast your own integrity withanother sip of your drink.

One of the turrets mistakes a passingseagull for its target and fires wildly. Luckily the targetingalgorithm fries as it tries to reconcile its orders with the factthat the actual target isn’t small, round and yellow, leaving theseagull startled but unharmed.

Just to punish the machine for itsalmost accidental animal abuse you throw the tennis ball at its head.It targets it, fires and takes out the turret next to it.

“They’re like drunk babies. Withguns.” you say, beginning to realise where his attachment to hiscreations comes from.

He nods, pretending to wipe away atear, and tells you to throw three balls in quick succession

Turret number five seems to think threetennis balls are a threat too great for conventional ammo andlaunches its small rockets at them.

Your cocktail umbrella protects thedrink from being covered in yellow fuzz. So that’s what those arefor. Another mystery is solved. Today is a good day for science.

Jack comes by in the afternoon, rubbinghis back from scrubbing bird droppings off their satellite dishes allday. He questions your need to assist Torbjörn in this vital effort.

“We each contribute to science in ourown way.” you intone and let a tennis ball sail over Jack’s head.None of the turrets react, which was to be expected since they’reall shut down for the moment. It still serves to give him a littlescare and make him go away.

“Those turrets ... “ you saythoughtfully. “You said you could adjust projectile velocity.”

“Among many other things, yes. Why?”

“Enough to, say, match them to theattributes of your average paintball gun?”

He laughs when he catches on to yourplan. Together you set out to adjust the settings and procure somepaintball ammo.

A day later you both sit on therooftop by the main courtyard, laughing maniacally at the cursing andrunning members of your team ducking from turrets shooting paint withdeadly accuracy, while Winston swats at you with a broom.

Another great day for science.

[hellomissmabel]

Bye Bye Brooklyn Boys (6)

MASTERLIST

Pairing: Bucky x reader, Steve x reader

Warnings: This is just so sad. Language.

Word count: 1.926

Summary: You find out Tony has made some arrangements behind your back and you decide to confront him about it.

A/N: I had a clear image of this scene in my head but it feels like I lot track of it once I started writing it down. What I was trying to convey here is her desperation, she’s looking for love and the only person that has ever given her love, is Tony, who is like a second father to her. The reader is caught up in her search for love and it feels like the only person that’ll ever love her, although platonic, is Tony. This is why she feels so betrayed, why it looks like she’s being a drama queen. Nonetheless, this is just a mask. She feels empty and has no idea how to deal with it.

September, October, November , December, January

February

One week before my grand escape, my leap of faith into the great big unknown (just kidding, it’s only Norway), I received a letter from the faculty explaining that professor A. Stark had signed over my research to a certain professor B. Banner. My transfer was effective immediately.

I was pissed, so pissed. Pissed at Tony, at whoever this professor Banner might be. Pissed at those fuckers in Norway who dare lay a finger on my precious work and at the world for treating me like a piece of shit. Because that’s exactly what I felt like.

I felt like shit.

So now I’m drunk as fuck and sitting at the desk of my ex-mentor, professor Stark. I don’t know when I got this bold or where I got the fucking nerve from to barge in like this, but I did know where he kept his fancy bourbon. I pulled out the bottle stashed away at the back of his bottom drawer and poured myself a glass or two. Or maybe it was three or four, I don’t really remember. The point is that the bottle had been almost empty and I wasn’t thinking clearly by the time he found me, legs up on his mahogany desk and singing nineties pop songs like a cat being dragged into the water. And cats absolutely loathe water.

He gently lifted me out of his chair and carried me towards his couch, my arms lazily wrapped around his neck. I’m just a bunch of dead weight in his arms but he doesn’t seem to mind. After he lies me down, the black leather welcoming me in its indulgent embrace, he tucks back a couple swirls of hair behind my ear before crouching on his knees before me. He looks me straight in the eye while he tries to talk some sense into me.

“Y/N, what’s wrong? Darling, please, tell me what brought you here and I will do everything in my power to make it better. Y/N, my dear, what has gotten into you? This isn’t like you.”

You slowly open your eyes and when you do, you are met with an abundance of warmth. You had never really taken a moment to appreciate the colour of his eyes, the shade of copper coins you keep in your back pocket and the aged whiskey you treated yourself with upon arrival. His eyes are boring into you as he measures up how far gone you are but the only thing you can think about is how gorgeous, so very gorgeous his eyes are, harbouring a mischievous sparkle and crinkling at the corners when he smiles that devious smirk you’ve grown so used to. An old fox with new tricks or at least that’s what Nat thinks of him.

But those are not the eyes you long to see right now.

“Everything is so fucked up. I rejected Bucky, broke up with Steve and this morning, I found out you robbed me of my research, shipped me off like cargo to a guy named Banner without even consulting with me first! You stabbed me in the back, you kept me in the dark. I put all my hope in you, professor, and you let me down.”

“Y/N, at least let me explain.” You could hear the hurt in his voice shining through and you instantly felt like such a bitch for putting him on the spot like that. He didn’t deserve your insults, he was just doing his job.

But your mouth is quicker than your conscience.

“No! I don’t need any more lousy excuses, God knows I’ve heard enough of those already. And you know what, I don’t need those two Brooklyn boys! What I need is a real man, a Manhattan man. Mum was right after all,” you groan loudly.

“Y/N, if you would just let me finish.” You snapped out of your thoughts at the authoritative nature his voice had taken, a tone he rarely used with you. But his eyes soon softened as he took in your astounded expression, he understood where you anger was coming from.

“Y/N, I am not the right person to assist you. I barely have time to be your mentor now, how on earth are we going to be able to work together when we’re miles apart? My good friend over in Norway, Bruce, he offered to step in for me while you’re abroad. So when you return we’ll pick up right where we left off. I’m sorry I didn’t run this through you first, but time was of the essence here. We needed the board and the ethical committee to approve on this as soon as possible and we both know how long it can take for them to review a decision like this.”

You sighed, hiding your face in the pillows to avoid eye contact. “I feel like such a fool.”

“You’re wasted, love,” Tony chuckles. “And you’re very feisty when you are, I like a girl that can bite back,” he jokes quietly, the palm of his hand resting on your cheek tinted pink with mortification. You slowly look up to meet his gaze. Tony cards his fingers through your hair, his smile telling you to not worry too much about it.

“That’s not very professional of you to say, professor Stark,” you retort, laughing lightly.

“I know, but I don’t give a shit. Feeling better already, dear?”

You nod and he helps you back up, head spinning wildly from the sudden switch in position. He sits down next to you and you lay your head to rest on his shoulder. “And please, Y/N, call me Tony,” he says as he drapes his arm over your shoulder and takes your hand in his, interlacing your fingers and giving your hand a gentle squeeze.

“Thank you, Tony. I know you only did it to help me and I’m sorry I’ve been such an ass about it.”

“No need for apologies, Y/N. You’re my favourite assistant, you know that. You don’t work for me, you work with me. My team is basically your team as well, they even call you the ‘Lady Boss’.”

You scoff, turning your head to face him. “What kind of title is that? I prefer Mother of Dragons.”

He shakes his head at your folly. “I swear I’m going to miss you, kiddo.”

Tony has dark circles hugging his eyes and a light scruff decorating his cheeks, his usually immaculate haircut unkempt.  “You look tired, have you gotten any sleep lately?”

He just shrugs nonchalantly but he holds on to your hand a little tighter. “I can’t.”

“Don’t, Tony. You know how important it is that you get some rest. Please let me help you.”

“You should help yourself first by telling me what’s been going on in that pretty little head of yours, Y/N. Tell me about those Brooklyn boys you mentioned earlier.”

You cringe visibly, reluctant to stir up that particular hornet’s nest again. “Tony, are you sure? It ain’t got a happy ending.”

“I don’t mind, I’m here for you. Now, talk, get it off your chest.”

You blink away the tears threatening to spill from your tear ducts, the memory still too fresh as you reveal everything to Tony, from the very beginning till the very end. About how you and James dated on and off for a couple months before he broke things off, how you cried yourself to sleep every night, how you think that at some point Nat lost count as well which is why she dragged you out to party for an entire week straight, trying her best to cheer you up.

But you also told him the real change happened when you met Steve. “Now, I know you can’t stand the guy but please, Tony, hear me out first.”

He huffs but says nothing although his brown eyes give away more than he’d like.

“Steve,” you sigh languidly, “Steve’s a dream. He’s thoughtful and has such a kind heart, there’s a softness in his smile at all times and he loves the forties just as much as I do, even went to one of those period dances with me. Steve’s creativity knows no end and he is such an amazing artist. We even made a deal, I would model for his sketches and he would model for my photographs.”

“If everything was so perfect, where did it go sideways?”

You decide to give him a shorter version of all your past mistakes right up until what happened yesterday afternoon, the epitome of all your misery, the final drop that flooded your proverbial bucket. Class had been dismissed an hour earlier than expected and as you reached your apartment, you saw Clint’s car parked outside. Deciding you didn’t want to interrupt the two love birds, you texted Wanda and asked if you could join her at the library where she usually resides at this hour. Whilst waiting for a reply, you already made your way towards the library and just as you were about to reach out for the door handle, you felt something buzzing in your jacket pocket. Quickly fishing out your phone, you stared at the screen in confusion, one simple word lightening up on the display.

No.

Wanda didn’t want you at the library, surely you hadn’t done anything to upset her? You figured that the best approach was to ask her straightaway and as you pushed through the double doors and inside the library, your eyes immediately fell upon a familiar presence and you promptly realised why Wanda had reacted the way she did. Sitting only two seats away from Wanda, hunched over a couple textbooks with his headphones on, was James. And all of a sudden, as if God himself is mocking you, his head shot up and your eyes locked, his grey gaze falling over your body like a bucket of ice cold water. His eyes were void of any emotion and you felt yourself slowly slipping away in the bottomless pit you created for yourself.

There was no need for words anymore, because you just knew, you knew you had royally screwed up. “I am dead to him now.”

You look so tiny compared to the strong character you usually exhibited, void of your talent for light-hearted chatter making everyone feel at ease almost instantly. A loud sob escapes your lips and Tony gives you a sympathetic half-smile, shushing and comforting you until you have calmed down a bit.

“It’s a disaster,” you reply with a wry smile, the alcohol wearing off and the urge to cry again sinking in. “Tony, I lied to both of them! I didn’t want to be tied to a sallow heart like James’, so I told him no when I wanted to say yes. But I also couldn’t stay with Steve after kissing James and all those old emotions came flooding back to me. How can I be in love with both of them if it’s killing me inside? It’s killing me to love them, which I why I have to go. I have to go.”

Another heartbeat passes and Tony is clearly rendered speechless by your words. He feels bad for you, torn up by love and now clutching onto him as if he’s the only rock-solid thing that’s left in her world. Perhaps he is. “That’s a lot of weight to carry around all by yourself, kiddo.” Tony spoke softly to you, gently brushing the tears away with his thumb.

Perhaps he is.

Part 7: March

Tagging: the ever-wonderful @beccaanne814-blog along with a couple of my all-time favourites (hope you guys don’t mind me tagging you!) @hymnofthevalkyries @thedragonblood @capsbuchanan @caplanbuckybarnes @buchananbarnestrash @buckyywiththegoodhair @a-little-hell-to-raise @unpredictable-firecracker @marvelingatthewonder @emilyinwonderland3 @mrshopkirk @oopsmybagofplums @hardcorehippos @iiharu-kunii@knittingknerdy @kiwi71281 @winterwolf57 @dontbeamenacetotheforce @winterboobaer

[letohost]

indonesian brides.

Then the soon-to-be husband wonderful dad and mom would venture to the house of the woman. The wedding few would provide tea to both units of parents while kneeling straight down in front of them. This signifies paying all their respects and asking authorization of their mother and father.

Plus, you’ ll need to pay for Asian Net relationship, mainly because the website is usually not free like Tinder. com is certainly one more in the net relationship web page in Philippines that may function successfully.

Their very own silk hair, trouble-free epidermis layer basically pleasant smile could be an absolute appeal to observe. Because the appears of on the net courting choice, numerous of us everywhere in the world have truly searched all over the place for actual affection. Absent are practically the cases of being restricted to finding fondness within one’ s position. Right now, dropping in appreciate withsomeone plenty of of miles away is really as fundamental as a select on or reviewing a flyer.

However both ceremonies are well-known on the invite, the vast majority of individuals will exclusively attend the reception. Wedding invitations in Jakarta and also other city centers could be incredibly extravagant. The date around the surface of your envelope could possibly be very practical at the time you receive various themed wedding invitations. In country areas, the invitation is conducted by way of visits from the home to neighbours and good friends.

Finding Used Indonesian Brides to be At Safe-keeping Sales

The bride’s home then welcomes the baskets and normally takes them off to another room. Normally half the gifts are placed again inside the bins and go back to the family of the groom. The baskets is then arrived to the one who introduced that and all persons goes house. The bins from the groom should all be carried by males. They will comprise numerous things, such as fruits in a single baskets, clothes in another, gold jewelry for the bride within.

Introducing Indonesian Brides

Learning Indonesian must not prevent you through the love of each and every little issue, just take a total class that you reside and take a web course.

More than 47% within the girls in Indonesia will be in search of absolutely adore.

Several of her family unit members may possibly not understand English.

Even so learning Indonesian will likely be inescapable if you conclude marrying in a household group.

The head tables will normally obtain a bottle of cognac or perhaps whiskey. At the weddings of the extremely wealthy, draught beer, wine or perhaps champagne perhaps served towards the visitors. The wedding couple would in that case go to the cathedral, collectively inside the identical car, for the service. The https://99brides.com/indonesian-brides/ cathedral service just isn’t really thought of that important and solely quick household usually go to. On the morning hours of the big day, the bridegroom is symbolically dressed by simply his dad and mom.

They want fellas who can and need to conform to the connection to be a marriage could also be a long term bond. Remarrying is a last thing they need to do, once it’s because a taboo as entanglement. There are a number of things that males absolutely adore about courting women by way of Indonesian ladies courting sites. You’ll notice that they are immensely passionate as soon as communicate in assurance to you somewhat.

A actually great ninety nine% of the Indonesian ladies on Asianfeels. com will be singles searching for marriage. Upon Asianfeels. com, there’ s a assure that there’ s a minimum of one Indonesian female who’ ings visiting be truly a greatest match.

You ‘ lmost all yearn for an energetic account of the lifestyle as well as journeys, along witha appropriate quantity of enthusiasts. Just see to it to take problems slower and right now can occur too solid. The user interface of Indonesian Cupid is very user-pleasant, plus the girls are likely to reply pretty quickly to info.

It’ ings similar to Indonesian Cupid, even so could also be employed for all Eastern nations. A lot of males circumnavigate a complete lot and entirely use this web site, rather than utilizing brand-new website pages in every single nation. The site additionally costs amount of cash to use effectively. Now, Instagram isn’ testosterone levels a courting web site, therefore there’s a bit of various workout wanted than what you make make use of on Tinder or Indonesian Cupid.

Indonesian females will be commonplace and family oriented. They discover coziness inside biceps and triceps of an one who perceives marriage as a life time investment. There are a variety of ladies on this web page and lots of desire to conform withsome individuals caused by varied nations around the world. However , most men shall be far better away making use of Indonesian Cupid whereas in this land. There are actually merely extra full of energy gals onto it than in AsianDating. com.

The post What You Do not Check out Indonesian Wedding brides Could Be Charging To A Many more Than You Believe appeared first on .

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

[raystart]

Hector Ouilhet: Making Technology Human

Hector Ouilhet, Google’s head of design for Search and Assistant, is part of a rare breed in the tech sector. He appreciates the sartorial grandeur of a fine necktie and regularly wears one to the office. Today, he’s chosen a tangerine-colored Hermès cravat crawling with blue alligators and parrots that perfectly matches the pantone of the flower pinned to his left lapel. “Hermès ties are so intricate and interesting, and they usually help me strike up a conversation,” says Ouihlet. “And accents in somebody’s outfit say a lot of things about who they are.”

Ouihlet has routine and experiment days, where he’ll either play it safe or start with the accessory, like the tie, belt, or pocket square, and build the ensemble from there. With age, he’s gotten more adventurous. “Years ago, there were certain colors I’d never wear together,” he says. “Now I wear things that don’t feel fantastic yet, but I can see will eventually come.”

An eye looking toward the future is also central to Ouhlet’s work at Google, where he leads the design team making the products and interfaces that a good chunk of the population will be using in the next few years. His career trajectory was anything but a straight line. He was born and raised in Mexico City, then moved to South Korea in his teenage years to live with a relative (it was a youth rebellion phase).

Later, he studied fine arts, sculpture, and computer engineering in Mexico and then interaction design in Italy. Since 2008, he’s worked at Google in New York City and now in Mountain View, California, with a focus on the intersection of design, communication, and technology. He remains one of the most stylish people in the Bay Area. Ninety Nine U recently spoke with Ouihlet at Google’s San Francisco office about Google’s next-gen projects, including creating voice-controlled “conversational interfaces,” how his team is trying to make technology more human, and what he learns from watching his four-year-old daughter interact with his prototypes.

Hector Ouilhet photographed in San Francisco for this interview.

What’s the most exciting new idea you’re working on right now?

I’m currently working on how you design a platform that is able to give you the right answer no matter what you’re looking for. It could be something very specific, like What is the weather right now? Or more broad, like When should I change the tires on my car? Then how do we apply that way of thinking to a new set of devices? The new set of devices is particularly interesting, because people like my four-year-old daughter won’t really know what certain devices are. She recently grabbed a keyboard, and she thought it was a guitar. She was touching the keys and asking, “Why is this not making music?” She saw a keyboard as an artifact from the past. And I’m also excited to look at how you mimic this notion of human-to-human conversation in human-to-technology conversation.

Actual conversations, with back-and-forth dialogue where the machines understand us?

Oh, yeah; that is where we’re heading. Communication works with two main pieces: audio and visual. Depending on the device, we’ll be able to use both. Here’s an example: You go to a restaurant and you don’t know what to order, so you have two choices. One is, the waiter can tell you the menu in a linear way. Or the waiter can give you a menu, and then you scan it and are able to jump around, because the visual medium is nonlinear. So you go directly to the dessert. Or to the beer.

To find out more, you can either ask the waiter or – imagine if the menu gets to know you better. The next time you come in, the first thing you’ll see on your menu is the beer, then the dessert: The menu adjusts itself to what we know about you. We can then design things like, “Okay, it’s a rainy Thursday. You feel like whiskey?” “Yeah.” So the next time it’s a rainy Thursday, the whiskey shows up without you even asking.

What kind of timeline are we talking about here?

Five to ten years. I was in Berlin recently, and someone asked me if conversational interfaces would happen in a leap or a breakthrough. Well, no. It’s like human beings: A kid doesn’t suddenly become an adult. You go through these painful yet interesting learning phases. Same thing with technology: It’s going to learn from you, and you’re going to learn from it. 

You mentioned your daughter earlier. What have you observed and learned from watching how a four-year-old interacts with your voice-recognition prototypes?

Kids have a constrained vocabulary, and they use context to say what they mean. A sign like this [points to the ground] can mean, “Put me down,” or “I’ve got something in my shoe.” It could also mean many different things, depending on the location in your house. If you translate that to technology, how can you use a device’s location or place to help you in the experience? Because technology, like kids, has a constrained vocabulary and understanding. How can you use these signals to make your experience better? Maybe the first thing you would tell your device is that you’re in the kitchen, so it knows you’re in the kitchen and is only going to say certain things. You start treating the device less as a general-purpose machine, like most phones are, to something more specific, because this thing is in the bathroom, kitchen, or car. It’s fascinating to learn from little kids how much they use context to help them tell what they have in their hand.

You’ve said that Google technology must act more human. What do you mean by that?

I’m hoping that technology can get to know you, so the response you get from machines is better over time. Humans are predictable beings. Like when I ask for the temperature, the machine should know that I like Celsius because I’m from Mexico. I don’t know what Fahrenheit is. Things like that can make people appreciate that somebody’s listening. So if we’re talking and you make a reference to my daughter, I like that you’re trying to use the knowledge that we have of each other to enable a better conversation. That is how Search and Assistant should be, and are becoming, actually: more understanding of your intent. With that, we’re able to provide you with the right answer.

On a personal note, you grew up in Mexico City. Was there a big design scene there when you were growing up?

Not really. At the time I was really into fine arts; that’s what I wanted to study. I studied that for a bit because my mom is really good at it, and she encouraged me. But my dad was like, “You’re probably not going to make enough to live on in the fine arts.” He asked me to consider engineering, because I always loved tinkering with machines. My first business, which I started with some high school friends, was making digital yearbooks that we put on CDROMs instead of printing them. We took photos of everyone in the school, scanned the photos, and burned them onto CDs. We would stay up all night doing that. I liked the act of creating – bonding creativity and technology to make something powerful. I ultimately studied computer engineering at University of the Americas Puebla, which, looking back, was the right choice.

Yet you’ve continued to dabble in the fine arts and even studied sculpture at one point. What impact has that had on your design process?

I love making something tangible, and now I apply that to how we work in our team at Google. We usually start our product reviews with a piece of paper the size of a table. Because something like Search is so deep and broad, we try to visualize it by drawing it, and then we draw on top of the original drawings to answer how we would code that design element. Drawing is a natural way to tell what you have in your head – once you see it, you can see your own gaps or your own possibilities.

  This interview was originally published in 99U’s special issue for Adobe XD.

[destielfanfic]

September 2017 was the 5th anniversary of Destielfanfic and here we are with our annual (okay, in this case bi-annual 2016 & 2017) personal favorites list! Enjoy!

Fics are listed in alphabetical order and all links go to our reviews/sub recs 

Flyingcatstiel

Cinderwings by bendingsignpost 

The Complete Works of Emmanuel Allen by violue

Cuckoo and Nest by komodobits

Every Single Thing by thestoryinsideme

Hearts Here to Steal by peridium 

If At First You Don’t Succeed (Destroy All Evidence That You Ever Tried) by justkeeponwriting 

it’s a lot like life by LoveIsNotAVictoryMarch 

Just Your Heart, In Exchange For Mine by noxsoulmate 

My Heart Is Beating From Me by enochian things

Passing Ships by quiettewandering

Out To Drift by beenghosting

Should’ve Just Asked by Annie D (scaramouche)

Some Assembly Required by narrow_staircase

Someone Who’s Feeling For Me by ellispark 

Somewhere I have never traveled by museaway

Tabula Rasa by dangerousnotbroken

Womb Kindred by Annie D (scaramouche) 

Yellow by elizabeth1985 

Kyrie

The Face Behind The Mirror by shipperslist

Haven by miss_grey

Hedge Witch by EthneDragon and palominopup

Hope in Ruin by elizabeth1985

I Wanna Get Outside (Of Me) by emwebb17

Ninety One Whiskey and 4F by komodobits 

Plain and Tall by destielpasta and mtothedestiel

Plus One by ceeainthereforthat

We Are Such Stuff by inevitablethief

When the Bough Breaks by captainshakespear and deanisthesun

Yours and the Yours!Verse by MashiarasDream

The mods have done this in 2013 and 2014, 2015 too. If you need more, check out our Personal favorites tag! 

Banner courtesy of Fea and Katie

[thecloudlight-blog]

New Post has been published on Cloudlight

New Post has been published on https://cloudlight.biz/beauty-brand-tonymoly-looks-to-thailand/

Beauty brand Tonymoly looks to Thailand

SOUTH KOREAN cosmetics enterprise Tonymoly plans to open a store in Thailand to build on study call for its merchandise and function the brand for a deeper push into Asian.

The company’s distant places enterprise department and manager, Woo Sung-kook, mentioned the plans the day gone by while saying Tonymoly expected to enhance its business via 27 in line with cent this 12 months.

Woo said the organization’s merchandise had emerged as installed in the Thai market over a long period.

“Tonymoly has exported extra than 50 merchandise to Thailand and lots of greater gadgets are being taken into consideration for the market,” he stated, adding the corporation was in talks with buyers about setting up “We envisage that the store could be in a comparable format to stores inclusive of 7-Eleven, Family Mart, and Drug Store.”

Tonymoly profits last year grew 5-fold, Woo stated, with nine.Five per cent coming from TV Home Shopping, which is anticipated to develop by way of 27 per cent in 2017.

He stated Thailand is a crucial market for the business enterprise’s logo-building efforts and this need to set the degree for it to construct on the inroads the logo has made into Asian.

The organization is learning new merchandise that suits the complexions of Thais and different Southeast Asians, including pores and skin whitening and brightening merchandise.

Woo said Tonymoly offered satisfactory at affordable costs and with creative packaging.

“We have already entered markets in 8 countries within the Asian vicinity, consisting of Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines, and Malaysia,” he said. “Around 20 branches had been opened in every us of a.”

Tonymoly might be a beneficiary of efforts to sell Korean cosmetics in Thailand and the broader Asian marketplace. The second K-Beauty Expo Bangkok may be held as part of the Beyond Beauty ASEAN Bangkok 2017 exhibition on September 21-23.

    Cindy Crawford’s Meaningful Beauty Versus Reclaim! Which is Better?

There is a host of splendor merchandise available on the market that declares to redefine the effects of aging and skin care, aimed at offering a number of promise to center aged woman who in reality do not need to expose their age. Cindy Crawford’s Meaningful Beauty and Victoria Principal’s Reclaim are two of the most famous products available on the market. Both products target girls who’re looking for a worthy product effective at reducing wrinkles and fine traces, reversing sun harm in addition to preventing untimely pores and skin getting older. Meaningful Beauty reviews, in addition, to Reclaim customer reviews were overwhelmingly positive and both products encompass a complete skin care line this is to be used each day changing all different products accumulating dust in the medicine cupboard. So which one is exceptional? You would possibly need to attempt them each to decide; however, the following statistics may expose which one is your pleasant wager as some distance as a brand new, age reducing pores and skin care regime.

Cindy Crawford’s Meaningful Beauty pores and skin care line

Has been advanced and sponsored by using a dermatologist by using the name of Dr. Sebagh who is properly referred to as the pores and skin care expert to the stars. The product line is primarily based on clinical research displaying that collagen and anti-oxidants are the leading beneficial nutrients on the subject of our pores and skin and the important thing factor is an extract from an extraordinary French melon that carries an excessive stage of antioxidants. Meaningful Beauty has a very distinct scent to its pores and skin care products that are the result of the rare melon.

Consumer critiques recommend that the odor is very attractive.

The makers of Meaningful Beauty have actually patented the word “age maintenance” and declare that this product with antioxidants, collagen, lipids, coenzymes and minerals will not just lessen wrinkles and high-quality traces but prevent new ones as nicely. This Meaningful Beauty skin care line comes with a 30 day introductory offer of $29.Ninety-nine and a cash back assure and the charge jumps to $a hundred and ten for 3 months after the trial period. This makes Meaningful Beauty now not just modern, however properly priced for the common user as well.

One of the downfalls to this gadget is that the products and lotions only have an SPF of 20.

While the odor is appealing to most, there are some clients who felt that it became too robust and even overpowered perfumes. Most consumers who used the product as designed (which means all the goods from the wash, scrubs to the creams and nighttime creams) noticed a few consequences and it seems to be effective at removing redness and making pores and skin a whole lot softer. Some dermatologists, however, declare that Meaningful Beauty’s claims to undo the impacts of sun harm are fake because solar damage extensively reduces the pliability and deeper layers of the skin. All in all, the product seems to receive a rating of everywhere from 7-10 (out of 10) from consumers, which shows that the product is useful and effective as designed.

Brand As Persona

One key marketing motion is the location a brand in a market. Identifying the marketplace section or segments a product suits into.

One very famous way of doing this for patron merchandise is by using demographics, or for enterprise products by way of enterprise size and turnover.

Brand positioning is more than this. It is a meeting of minds and hearts.

Consumer Personality Factors To unleash the true strength of a brand it is also vital to don’t forget the persona traits of the individuals who are going to shop for it.

The intention of this form of target advertising is to align those personality characteristics with the benefits and capabilities of a product.

Let’s explore a number of these elements and how they might relate to a product emblem.

Values and Beliefs These are strong unconscious and conscious factors in human life. A private problem for the surroundings is a fee which aligns properly with a product which saves power or is recyclable.

Teenagers can identify with a product that conveys a robust sense of independence and originality.

Attitudes

Humans own many attitudes which may be related to products. These encompass attitudes toward social problems, cloth possessions, careers, the state of politics and lifestyles in popular.

A product which conveys a sense of social repute can appeal to buyers who use fabric possessions to make personal identity statements.

Humans have an effective want to belong, to a set or tribe. This want has a high survival value, as few human beings continue to exist for long on their own. These institution social identities are in a sense extensions of our personal one.

If a brand can faucet into a group social identity, it could gain effective traction within the market area. There are several popular manufacturers which do just this, which include, the sports clothing manufacturer Nike, the era organization Apple and the whiskey maker Jack Daniels.

Lifestyle

This is any other marketplace segmentation attitude. As we flow through our lives, we bypass thru several levels of lifestyle.

This ties in incredibly with primary demographics, however it is extra than that. In branding, it associates a product with the way people like to do matters or revel in things.

For instance, having a sure first-class of mattress linen can be vital to some humans. Owning a logo which permits humans to be visible as a sporty character or an innovative person can be a key buyer decision component.

Easy Eyeliner Looks For Any Occasion

When it involves multi-tasking a make-up object – Eyeliner is the first thing that involves mind, one liner and so many specific appears.

Lining is one of these makeup gadgets that highlights and elevates the most crucial function of your face and can offer you the proper appearance which you need on an afternoon when you are running quick of time. There is no doubt in this that eyeliner is a ought to to carry in your handbag and one cannot do lots without it.

Winged Tip

Wearing your eyeliner on this way will absolutely provide you with a beautiful look as it is very popular these days. It gives your eyes a very properly-described look at the side of giving it a glam contact. There are many tutorials via which you can without problems learn how to get the winged tip.

White Liner

White liner is a ought to to carry for a girl. This today’s eye liner can upload a lot glam on your eye make-up that you desire to procure your fingers on it earlier than. The exceptional manner to apply it’s far by applying it on the lower waterline to offer your eyes a broader appearance. This look also can be used when you have not slept properly it’s going to deliver your eyes a well-rested look.

Straight As An Arrow

Wearing your eyeliner directly as an arrow could make your eyes appearance herbal and longer. Try this appearance because it will create a visually incredible appearance in just a few easy steps. First you need to create an define and then fill inside the space. Once you’re accomplished filling in the space then take a liner pencil and draw in the direction of the internal-aspect of your eye to get this whole stunning look. You can do that look on evening clothes and pretty sarees if you are attending a marriage.

Smokey Eyes

There is something very sassy about the smokey eye make-up. The smokey appearance make your eyes look grunge and sultry. To get this look you don’t must do lots all you need is to apply a thick line of Kohl pencil and smudge it. There are many video tutorials on the net, find the only this is maximum smooth for you.

[destielfanfic]

Castiel’s POV Fics: Alternate Universe

We here at DestielFanFic love Castiel, Angel of Thursday, both in canon fic and in the diverse array of AU stories. Our angel is pretty amazing! Here are a few of our favorite incarnations of Castiel in alternate universe (AU) fics told from Cas’ point of view (POV). This list is not meant to be exhaustive. Instead we are highlighting fics that we personally enjoyed and we hope you enjoy them, too!  Be sure to check out our Castiel’s POV Fics: Canon Verse as well!  

Thanks to euclase/ @eliciadonze/ @eliciaforever , who provided us with permission to use her beautiful art!  (link to #euclase fanart tag at destielfanworks) All fic links go to our tagged reviews.

I. Some of our favorite Cas’ POV fics. We’ve added asterisk [*] to fics with little bits of Dean’s POV.  

A Brief Glimpse by cloudyjenn [T, 12,400, fluff, high school]

a certain light by flightagain [T, 24,300, fluff, Gas-N-Sip!au]

Ad Interim by emwebb17 [NC-17, 89,400, fluff, artist!cas] 

All the Way by cadignan [NC-17, 81,000, angst, college]

Angel Cookies by noxsoulmate [NC-17, 75,000, angst, writer!cas, reunion]

As You Will by kototyph [T, 1,800, fluff, historical]

Autumn Hollow by shotgunsinlace [NC-17, 98,400, angst, writer!cas]

The Boy Done Wrong Again by seasideimprovisation [M, 29,300, fluff, high school]

Castiel Novak: Tomb Raider by emwebb17 [M, 51,700, fluff, adventure]

Chances by thecouchcarrot [T, 8,000, angst, unrequited]

Checked Out by whelvenwings [T, 27,200, fluff, librarian!cas]

Crossroads State by mercy [NC-17, 54,000, fluff, teacher!cas]*

The Face Behind The Mirror by ShippersList [NC-17, 58,700, angst, amnesia, a/b/o]

The Ghosts of Blackthorn Hall by linoresearch [NC-17, 95,000, angst, historical]

If You Hurt Me, That’s Okay, Baby by blue_jack [NC-17, 31,700, fluff, bdsm, porn]

In Three Days: A Memoir by Castiel Shurley by glassclosetedcastiel [T, 32,700, fluff, kid!fic]

it’s a lot like life by LoveIsNotAVictoryMarch [NC-17, 21,300, angst, historical]

It’s Always the End of the World Somewhere by Annie D (scaramouche) [NC-17, 21,000, angst, high school, 2014!cas]

Lovingly Crafted and Tenderly Packaged by janie_tangerine [NC-17, 17,400, fluff, artist!cas]

Mr. Know-It-All by baba_writes [NC-17, 21,800, angst, writer!cas, historical]

Muscle Memory by komodobits [NC-17, 19,000, amnesia, angst, fluff] 

Never Not Fantastic by thestoryinsideme [M, 76,400, fluff, celebrity!dean]

Ninety One Whiskey by komodobits [NC-17, 401,000, angst, historical, war]

Not Part of the Plan by Annie D (scaramouche) [NC-17, 338,000, angst, fluff, arranged marriage]

the open sky (is mine tonight) by weatheredlaw [NC-17, 22,000, angst, fluff, wedding planner!cas]

Out To Drift by beenghosting [M, 20,900, angst, drifters]

The Parts of Our Sum by Annie D (scaramouche) [NC-17, 55,000, angst, fluff, scifi]

Peace and Good Luck To All Men by kismetjeska [T, 32,400, fluff, humor, college]

Prosopagnosia by misseditallagain [T, 32,800, angst, firefighter!dean]

Punch Drunk Love Trilogy by highermagic [NC-17, 16,000, high school, fluff, porn]

The Reluctant Contestant by starcatcher17 [T, 50,500, fluff, reality TV]

Rvr Ro11435 by ferritin4 [NC-17, 68,000, fluff, humor, NASA]

Say A Prayer, Light A Candle by tiptoe39 [NC-17, 57,000, angst, college]

Shootin' You Straight by rockstarpeach [NC-17, 40,400, angst, porn, celebrity!dean]

Should’ve Just Asked by Annie D (scaramouche) [NC-17, 77,900, fluff, grey ace!cas rich!dean]

Silver and Cold by superhoney [NC-17, 65,000, hunter!cas, creature!dean]

Smoke in the Mirror by letters_of_stars [NC-17, 52,000, angst, artist!dean, college]*

Sporty High School AU (An Extra Lap, Personal Best, Peak Condition) by triedunture [NC-17, 18,600, fluff, porn]

Sunset Plaza by LoveIsNotAVictoryMarch [NC-17, 28,500, sex then love]*

Tabula Rasa by dangerousnotbroken [NC-17, 78,300, writer!cas, amnesia]*

Three Funerals and a Wedding by engaldnwouldfall [M, 25,300, fluff, LARPing]

Through The Dark by endversed [NC-17, 43,200, angst, celebrity!dean, writer!cas]

Unfamiliar by riseofthefallenone [NC-17, 30,000, fluff, witch/familiar]

Unintended by emwebb17 [NC-17, 82,600, angst, fluff, porn, firefighter!dean]*

Yare by a_frayed_edge [NC-17, 43,900, angst, fluff, post divorce]

Yellow by elizabeth1985 [NC-17, 110,000, angst, fluff, mafia!cas]

Your Heart Makes by schmerzerling [M, 51,900, angst, artist!dean, Disneyland]

II. Some of our favorite Alternating POV fics (Cas and Dean POV). 

Autumn’s Thief by fairweathereden [NC-17, 38,400, angst, fluff]

Blackboard by lemonoclefox [NC-17, 76,800, fluff, college, porn]

Castles in the Sand by palominopup [NC-17, 61,800, Cas POV fic from Rough Seas 

Cinderwings by bendingsignpost [M, 182,000, fluff, wing!fic]

Going Forward by gedry [NC-17, N/A, fluff, wing!fic]

Hedge Witch by ethnedragon and palominopup [NC-17, 75,000, fluff, witch!cas]

hardcorewings.com by cloudyjenn [NC-17, 17,000, wing!fic, porn]

Just Your Heart, In Exchange For Mine by noxsoulmate [M, 46,800, fluff, witch!cas, animal transformation]

National Muggle Awareness Month by theangeloffriday [T, 36,800, fluff, Hogwarts fusion, witch!cas] 

Some Kind of Courtship by Annie D (scaramouche) [NC-17, 16,700, dark, porn] (First part in Sociopath in Love verse, second part, The Occasional Sentimentality [NC-17, 7,500, dark] is from Dean’s POV)

Someone I Forgot to Be by mathildamavis [NC-17, 36,500, angst, writer!cas]

Oh What A Beautiful City by moosefeels [M, 27,200, angst, a/b/o. eating disorder, arranged marriage]

The Spirit of Lawrence High by violue [NC-17, 70,900, angst, high school]

Womb Kindred by Annie D (scaramouche) [NC-17, 33,000, angst, reunion, historical au, kid!fic]

Check out our Tags Page for more Cas related tags and more fics on Alternating POV tag. Link to other destielfanworks rec lists.  See this post  about fic tagging on this blog and our definition of SU, AU and SU AU tags. 

If you enjoyed the fic, please drop by the archive (AO3) and let the author know with your comments and/or kudos! And if you found our recs useful, let us know by Liking and/or Reblogging our posts.

[destielfanfic]

Hey do you have any fics where one of them (preferably dean) thinks the other died/is dead, but in the end they are either resurrected or weren't even dead in first place etc? So basically angst with a happy ending. :) Thanks!

Such fics on our blog are tagged with deathish tag. We actually answered a very similar ask quite recently but since OP asked for a “mistaken death” our fic selection was somehow different. In the light of season 12 finale we are making another list with a particular attention to canon verse fics and mourning by POV character. By definition, this is a rather “spoiler-y” list. None of these fics have Major Character Death (MCD). 

All links go to our reviews unless noted otherwise and were written prior to the season 12 finale. 

I. Canon verse (SU) or AU fics where Dean or Cas saw the other to die or it was very strongly implied/expected. In brackets, we mention the one who died or was about to die.

any port in a storm [Cas]

Below Skyscrapers [Cas]

Down Like Water [Cas]

He Knows Where He Should Go [Cas] (unofficially recced here)

Holy!Dean Verse [Dean, Cas]

Kiss You When It’s Dangerous [Cas]

The Last Moonlight Serenade [Cas]

Look, Up In The Sky [Cas]

The Mensch [Cas]

My Roots Take Flight [Dean]

Named [Dean]

Ninety One Whiskey [Dean]

Of Clipped Wings and Chipped Halos [Dean]

Outrun My Gun [Dean]

The Parts of Our Sum [Dean]

Redemption Road [Cas, Dean]

Sleight of Hand [Dean, ambiguous ending]

Some Assembly Required [Cas]

Take Me Home Country Roads [Cas]

This Story Was Brought To You By Our Sponsors [Cas]

Though the Brightest Fell [Cas]

old ask about fics where Cas thinks that Dean is dead

Dean thinks that Cas is dead but is still looking for him is a common theme in season 9 fics, check out season 9 tag and 9x03 tag

II. Fics with reunion in heaven (kinda spoilerish but eh, we all need happy end)

The Dance of Inanna

The Five People You Meet in Heaven

In the Shuffling Madness

These Are Not Real Problems