#thinking of divers and swimmers who happened to be under at the time. swimming up and hitting Something

[the-faultofdaedalus]

once again thinking of the alt-history/sci-fi/dystopic universe in my head where the whole concept is “the surface of the sea just stops existing”

[bonny-kookoo]

Jungkook

𝐈𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐭𝐢𝐝𝐚𝐥 [Teaser]

In which Jungkook really only went to earth to take home his new pet- but ends up leaving with a lot more than that.

Tags/Warnings: Alien!Jungkook, Human!Reader, Ocean theme, very wet planet, bioluminescence, sci-fi, Romance, strangers to lovers, God this ended up WAY softer and fluffier than I thought it would, Fluff, Kook is tall and buff but sometimes fails to realize that, a pet shark named Custard, another pet shark named Noodle, more TBA

Length: unknown yet, teaser is ~700 words

-> Masterlist

A/N: a silly idea I had because of fellow fish enthusiast @euphoricfilter

━━━━━━━━━━.~°🩵°~.━━━━━━━━━━━

“I’m pretty sure they’ll get along great.” Jungkook smiles. “Of course I’ll have to slowly familiarize the two- but Custard is very sweet, she’s just sometimes a bit moody.” He explains to you, who watches the other shark in the tank with him as he’s being fed by a caretaker.

“I heard they’re a.. popular pet.” You mention, and Jungkook nods.

“Yeah! I initially wanted a lemon shark first, but then things changed, and I got custard first.” He shrugs. “Which I think might have been a good thing, considering that lemon sharks are said to get jealous easily if not properly socialized. It’s easier to introduce them to an already established shark than have them first and get them comfortable with a new one.” The alien explains, watching his new pet swim around.

“You know a lot about them.” You say, and he chuckles a bit bashful.

“I uh- not really. I just.. wanted to know what I’d be getting myself into. A pet is a big responsibility. “ He explains to you, and you nod.

“I swam with lemon sharks before.” You mention. “they’re pretty cute, but.. a bit chaotic sometimes.” You giggle, remembering the time, and how overwhelmed you’d gotten as the sharks had began playfully fighting over attention of you and the other divers.

“So you’re a good swimmer?” He asks curiously, standing next to you in front of the gigantic tank that holds his chosen pet inside, the young shark swimming around for now, while he’s being prepared for the newer conditions soon to become his permanent home.

“..decent.” You laugh a bit uneasy. “I.. nowhere near, you know, your skills.” You say, and he laughs.

“Oh that’s- like comparing clams with mussels. It’s not the same- just looks similar. Like us!” He shrugs off. “I think you’re under-selling yourself. And even if you’re not a good swimmer- I could teach you!” He offers, making you look up from where you stand near the glass.

"I'm just.. still a bit scared." You admit. "You know, after all that happened. I don't think I could just.. forget that and just.." you sigh, and he gently bumps your shoulder.

"Hey.. no one's asking you to." He tells you. "It just might be a good chance to face your fears? And I'll always be right at your side. I have an underwater license after all!" He proudly reminds you, and you can't help but laugh.

“You really seem like you really want me to visit your planet.” You tease, though he clearly doesn’t take it as a joke- nodding with almost cute enthusiasm.

“Of course! You said you always wanted to- so why not do it while visiting a friend?” He proposes. “it’s safer than just going alone. You could get lost, or even hurt.” He tells you. “and you’d miss out on.. you know, the spots only locals know.” Jungkook says, before he looks as Noodle swims closer again to inspect something floating around.

“I mean, you’re right..” you mumble, watching the shark move around. “…but I don’t know. I don’t think I could.. really.. I’m still just human.” You tell him, and he nods.

“I’m aware.” He responds. “and my planet has already made many adjustments to accommodate humans in many areas. You seem to forget that my kind has been.. mixing with humans for a long time by now. “ He chuckles. “means we had to evolve too, and change some of our architecture and stuff to adapt to those changes.” He says.

He’s right. And, in a way, he’s a living example of that change- with his honestly surprisingly human appearance, minus the height difference, and the hardly visible stripes of his skin.

“so, if you’d like, I’d happily house you for your vacation on my planet.” He grins. “and we can see just how well you swim.” He teases, leaning down a bit towards you before you both leave the large hall containing the tank for his new pet-

And you feel like this won’t just be a vacation at all, considering that he’s made it clear that he’s found interest in you past just simply being friends.

And in a way, you don’t mind that one bit.

[appleciders]

Rachel + Leah + Water, the Director’s Cut!

Okay, so I made this gifset exploring Rachel and Leah and the ocean, but because there’s a ten gif limit and a major point of gifsets is for them to look nice, I had to sacrifice a lot of the behind the scenes thoughts and initial versions that came along the way. I still wanted to talk about them though, because I found a lot of them really cool, so I figured I’d stick all that in this post. It’s gonna get long, so you can find the rest under the cut!

So first up, we have Leah as we first see her in the water. (I’m using shitty screenshots because tumblr has a 2mb limit for gifs on text posts and I don’t feel like compressing these down lmao.) Here, she’s face-down, unconscious, floating on a fragment of the plane. This is the first time we see any of the girls in the water.

As Leah gives her dramatic speech talks to the detectives, we see flashbacks to the girl’s lives pre-island. There we see that one of them already has a very strong relationship with the water already, in her before-life: Rachel.

Rachel, as we know, is a diver. We see her take a magnificent tumble into the pool, but when she surfaces, her coach is sternly head-shaking. She corrects Rachel’s form, and after she walks away, Rachel echoes the correction, clearly frustrated with herself. 

Back to Leah. We next see Leah waking up on her lil chunk of flotsam. When she realizes what the hell’s going on, she does what we all would do and starts screaming in terror.

Her panic gets interrupted by Jeannette’s classic Raise Your Glass ringtone. (This was my alarm for two years in high school, and when I watched this for the first time I did have an out-of-body experience). She swims her way over to the Hello Kitty suitcase and—irrationally—unzips it, but we’ll cut her some slack because she’s in some serious shock. As she tries to get the phone, it slips through her fingers and starts spiraling down to the bottom of the ocean. She dives after it.

Unfortunately, she quickly runs out of air and has to give up. She then spots Jeannette floating nearby, checks her out, judges her to be “just a little roughed up,” and then sees land and has a big oh-thank-fuck moment. Because we saw Gretchen’s team placing all of the girls, we know that Linh and Leah were the only two that were put out in the open water. The other girls were put in the beach, or, in Martha’s case, near the shore. This was probably done to quell some of Leah’s suspicions about the crash, but it does give me a couple questions about how they got the other girls wet—did they hose them all down? Pour a couple buckets over their heads? Bob each of them up and down a couple times in a big net like fries in a fryer?? 

Anyway, not important. 

Next that we see, Leah has pulled Jeannette/Linh in from the water. (My Australian parents, who can never pass up an opportunity to give ocean safety tips, chimed in at this point in our first watch to say “See how she’s doing it! You always want to hold someone from behind and pull them in that way. Good job, well done.” So there’s some approval for you, Leah.) As Leah nears the shore, Dot and Toni come tearing in and they help pull the two of them out. 

The rest of the episode after that really only concerns fresh water—Toni and Shelby set out in search of it, to no avail, and Nora helpfully plugs Diet Coke reminds us multiple times that sugar’s heavier than water, so “sugar sinks.” We do set up a goal for the next couple episodes, though: Rachel says, “I'm gonna swim out to the plane tomorrow. See if I can find anything,” and Leah volunteers to come with. Rachel gives her a nod of respect.

Moving on to episode two, we have Rachel and Leah’s (iconic) first real conversation. Rachel says she’s still going out to the wreckage. Leah looks out and looks back at her, incredulous, and says, “Rachel, the water’s insane.” Here’s a big recurring association—the water and “insanity.” (I use insanity here because that’s the language they use, along with psycho/crazy. In no way does that reflect my actual beliefs about their behavior nor am I condoning the way they use those words.) Leah points out the rip current (“well done,” said my mum), and explains her very brief stint as a norcal surfer. Rachel still looks set on going, but then Leah says:

Turns out, Leah can be as ripe with foreshadowing as Fatin. This marks the appearance of their second main association with the ocean—death. After she says this, Leah turns Rachel’s attention inland, and the two agree to climb a big hill to scope out their situation.

Episode two is also obviously Rachel’s episode, so we see a lot of her relationship with diving. 

We see her plunge over and over and over again, drilling technique and form, but despite all her hard work, we learn her coach advised her to quit the team. Instead, Rachel throws herself in twice as hard, and ends up with an eating disorder. By the time the nationals come around, she’s too physically weak to dive safely, and she ends up hitting her head as she goes down. She surfaces in the pool with blood flowing around her.

She refuses to see that as the end of her diving career. She says she’s gonna “get back out there” and “be fucking great again” and she tells Nora at the end of the episode that she needs her to let her believe that.

In episode three, we finally see Leah and Rachel’s trip out to the plane! Nora comes along with them, her relationship with Rachel smoothed over after the events of ep two. “Nora’s a good swimmer,” Rachel explains as she invites her, “We were both water babies.” Water’s clearly been central to Nora and Rachel’s identities since they were really young. 

The three of them make their escape from the rest of the girls as the topic of building a shelter comes up. “Not interested in putting down roots!” Rachel calls. In keeping with the elements theme, Rachel isn’t looking to be grounded. She climbs super high into the air and she dives deep into the water, but earth isn’t her thing. (See: the quicksand scene. Whoops.)

Anyway, the three of them paddle out into the water. Rachel dives down, scopes out the plane, tells Nora she doesn’t expect her to “fucking free dive in open water,” and then looks to Leah and asks if she’s ready. Leah reluctantly agrees. 

We get our first shot Rachel swimming down into the ocean and our second shot of Leah (first the phone, second the plane). In the wreckage of the plane, they discover the black box, affixed to the wall. They keep trying to wrench it free, but it’s stuck, and Leah—who’s primary activity is, like, reading—keeps having to surface for air. Rachel gets frustrated and grabs her leg, holding her down. 

Leah screams and fights, but Rachel doesn’t let go. We cut away, and when we see them again, they’ve emerged victorious (Rachel) and drowned as dogs after a bath (Leah and Nora) with the black box in hand. Later, Leah mutters the above line to Fatin, calling Rachel a “psychopath.” For those keeping score at home, here’s where we refer back to the association between water and “insanity.”

In episode four, the ocean benevolently bestows a bag of takis upon Nora, and we have our whole shelter-building shebang. It’s all very land-based until Leah and Fatin go head to head, which ends with Fatin smearing her blood all over Leah’s face. Leah, with her usual flair, strips off her clothes as she walks into the ocean. She stays down there, passively letting the water wash the blood from her face.

This shot parallels a couple things. First, the drifting blood visually parallels Rachel in the pool after her diving injury. Second, we have Rachel staring out at the water where Leah’s disappeared and going, “Man, that is some real Virginia Woolf-type shit.” Dot has no fucking clue what she means, so Fatin interprets: “It means that bitch is crazy. She said you were the psychopath of the group.” Now it’s Leah who’s done something in the water that’s been deemed insane. The water and “insanity;” the water and accusations of insanity within their relationship. 

Those accusations pop up in episode five, but the episode is pretty focused on the inland search for Fatin, and revolves around fresh water, not salt water. (That could be a whole nother post lol.) It’s in episode six where we again see these two return to the ocean. 

Rachel is diving in the ocean! For fun! She’s picking up pretty shells (which granted isn’t the safest thing to do in the pacific, cone snails are not our friends), and she’s grinning, and she’s generally enjoying herself. With the, uh, finale situation, we’re probably not gonna get to see her smile for a bit, which is sad, because she should get to do this more often! This shot visually echoes her diving for the plane and Leah diving for the phone, except she can be in a better mood because there is no end goal. 

So she goes diving, ends up finding a bunch of mussels, gathers ‘em up, and brings ‘em back to camp. They all chow down, but wind up with serious food poisoning. Martha and Toni ring death’s doorbell a couple of times. Rachel blames herself—she’s the one that went swimming out there, she brought the mussels back. Again, we see that connection between the ocean and death.

And that association comes back bright an early in ep seven! The tide surges higher than they’ve ever seen, taking down their shelter and leaving them all scrambling. 

While Leah convinces Fatin that her life is more important than her suitcase, Rachel is left with a decision: help Nora, screaming to her from where she’s clinging to a rock for dear life, or grab the black box. In a move that contrasts Toni’s immediate and unquestioning aid of Martha, Rachel picks the black box. 

After, when they’re debriefing, Nora’s quick to bring it up. She doesn’t hide her hurt. “It happened so fast,” she says, “we all acted irrationally. Like Fatin, who jumped into a rip current to save her toothbrush. Or Rachel, who left me for fucking dead.” I think this counts as a double whammy for the “insanity” and death count—I think “acted irrationally” is as close as Nora gets to calling anyone crazy, and is honestly a better descriptor of all the other instances of “insanity” that we’ve seen, and the ocean was the source of the very real risk to Nora’s life. 

(Honestly, I think Rachel thought she was making a rational choice here—just with some grim fucking calculus. Still, given that nobody’d responded to the black box by then, I think it was a decision fueled by the need to keep hold of hope more than actual rationality.) In a fun contrast to the rest of the episode, it’s Leah that keeps a level head in this situation. 

The rest of the episode is low on water scenes, though Leah’s paranoia about Shelby is fueled by her sneaking off to the water, which could fall under the “insanity” category. It also marks where Nora begins to take an active role in breaking apart Rachel’s fantasy about diving again. 

Ep eight has one of the best montages in a series of great montages, with the playing in the water scene! A plane has seen them, they’re gonna be saved, and they all get to get high and act like kids. 

I have this lingering and probably irrational concern that the entire water play scene is choreographed and that it’s chock-full of foreshadowing. Like I know to some extent they likely were just like “yeah guys go goof off in the water,” but like...the wave pulling Rachel and Nora apart here...I mean.... (Rachel is probably gonna get more blood on Dot in the near future, too. ) That aside, their horseplay gets interrupted when Leah notices some blood on Dot, which Rachel realizes is her own period blood.  

Fatin then chimes in with her ever-gleeful foreshadowing: “Shark week for Rachel.” So while this whole encounter with the water actually seems mostly good for a change, it’s colored by the tie-in to what we know is coming.

In ep nine, reality has set in that rescue isn’t imminent. Everyone’s starving, Leah has started to spiral, and Rachel’s unusually skittish. By the tide’s edge, Nora asks for her help fishing, but Rachel refuses, saying that she’s weak. Nora flicks water at her, and Rachel flinches, clearly scared.

Starvation seems to have triggered Rachel’s trauma around the water leftover from her diving accident. In response, Nora reaches out a hand and says, “Let’s go for a walk.”

Meanwhile, Leah’s spiral has reached critical. She starts ranting about the ocean and the water and pushes past Dot, sprinting into the waves:

And so she’s taken to heart the way they think Jeannette’s body “escaped” the island—the tide—and it’s been spun like cotton candy in her head. She’s right, technically—Jeanette/Linh’s body was moved off the island by boat, and there’s definitely an argument that if they really did all swim out Gretchen’s team would save them, or at least try to. This is also a very real suicide attempt. So it’s kind of a culmination of the threats of death and mental health issues that’ve been wrapped up in the ocean since the start.

On Rachel’s end, Nora has taken her up to a cliff. Rachel calls the whole thing “borderline insane,” walking up when they’re so low on energy, but Nora tells her she needs to make a truce between herself and the water. 

“You’re afraid of it now,” she says, and Rachel replies that, “All it ever did was make me sick.” Nora immediately surges forward to say “That’s not true!” Rachel, incredulous, says, “Isn't this what you want? For me to hang it up? For me to forget the whole fucking diving game?” Nora says, “No. I don't know. I don't want you to forget you.” She then tells Rachel she should dive off the end of the cliff, that she marked it to make sure it’s safe. Rachel says she can’t.

There’s a lot here. First, there’s the first time we’ve seen of Rachel explicitly call herself sick. In episode two, even in a treatment center, she still denies it, says she’s just an athlete who knows what it takes. But now she’s reached a place where she acknowledges her eating disorder—and also probably her recent illness with the mussels—and ties it directly to the water. It’s the reason she’s sick.

Nora’s fear that Rachel will forget herself also just hammers home how central the water has always been to Rachel’s identity. Cutting herself off from the water would be cutting off a core part of herself. (...whoops) And we’ve seen that it does bring her actual joy, when she’s allowed to relax with it, but she’s had such traumatic associations rolled up into it now. Nora doesn’t want Rachel to do diving as a sport anymore, because of how badly it’s hurt her, but she does want Rachel to keep diving and swimming as like, a form of unevaluated personal expression.

At the moment that Rachel’s refusing to jump, she and Nora hear shouts from the mainland. They see Fatin and Dot screaming after Leah. Confused, Nora asks, “Where is she going?” but Rachel understands immediately, with absolute certainty, without needing to be told—“To fucking drown to death.” Seven episodes after Leah called heading into the water a death wish, she’s finally proving it true. Rachel squares her shoulders, takes a few deep breaths, and sprints into a dive. 

Unlike all her other dives high altitude dives we’ve seen her do, this dive isn’t qualified based on aesthetics. This dive matters because of what it will do, not on how it looks. And what it does do is bring her into the ocean, where she needs to be for her friend. So with strong strokes, she swims out towards Leah.

When she reaches her, she takes hold of her, pulls her into her chest from behind. She begins to swim with her back to shore. This rescue directly parallels Leah’s rescue of Linh that we talked about above. It also, as the Out in the Wilds podcast insightfully pointed out, really calls Rachel and Leah’s relationship back to the beginning. Whereas Rachel had initially held Leah down in the water, putting her in danger of drowning, Rachel here pulls her out of the water, saving her from drowning. Together, they make it all the way back to the shore.

Finally (and, like, if you’ve made it all the way down here? bless you. thank you), we have episode ten. The ocean doesn’t really figure into episode ten until the very end. Rachel has had a long episode of healing—she’s happy to be full and she’s in a good place with her sister and things seem to be going pretty okay. She decides to heal her relationship with the water, too. She heads out, telling Nora that she’s “Just gonna float, Nor. Just float.”

Just floating. After all the times we saw her plunging into the water, purposefully, with frustration, with drive, with so much to prove and with so much sacrifice and self-abuse to prove it with, Rachel finally just wants to float. She wants to let herself relax. She wants to let the water carry her.

Of course, that means there has to be, like, a massive marine carnivore waiting to mistake her for a seal.

Visually, this shot really parallels the opening shot of Leah on the fragment of plane. Instead of being face-down, though, she’s face-up, and she’s conscious, just not of the threat from below. 

The shark bites.

In a horrible parallel to Leah’s Virginia Woolf moment and Rachel’s diving accident, we see blood pool in the water. Rachel is pulled under. The girls on the land start screaming and running toward her. We know Rachel doesn’t die, but this is still a near-death experience, one that probably cost her her arm. Leah, covered in dirt and her own blood after crawling out of the pit Nora led her into, can only stand and watch, shocked and horrified.

So that got! Way longer than I meant it to! And honestly most of this was condensed into very concise tags in a post I made a few days ago! But if you made it all the way down here, you’ve now seen everything I wanted to fit into that gifset but couldn’t. Thanks for sticking with me, friend <3

[hclyness]

I saw SANJAY DEOL at a coffee shop in BROOKLYN today. I forgot how much HE looks like RAHUL KOHLI. They are a THIRTY-FIVE year old DINER OWNER who’s been in NYC for ONE YEAR now. Every time we run into each other, they are always PATIENT & RELIABLE but I’ve heard people say they can also be ANXIOUS & RESTLESS. FRANNY BY MAGIC CITY HIPPIES reminds me of them every time it comes on the radio. 

history .

( tw: death, alcoholism )

It was always a wonder how Sanjay was born with an obsession of large bodies of water. He could never fully explain it, but there was something about them that always drew him in with the utmost fascination. If there any time or way for him to spend his recreational time at a pool, creek or lake- he’d be there knee deep and as happy as can be. Though it was arguably odd, his parents never saw any harm in it and was glad that their son was so fond of being active outside instead of piling on hours upon hours with inside technology.

When Sanjay’s mother and him moved from New York to Florida (his father stayed behind to run the family diner), it only furthered his passion. No one was surprised that he aspired to have a career that had to do with large bodies of water. He had always been a strong swimmer, was a part of the high school swim team, and was certified to scuba diver early on. Everyone in his hometown used to joke about how he was part fish, because of how often he would swim. So it was only fitting that he ended up setting his mind to become a deep sea diver. Soon enough, he landed himself the job of his dreams when he was 18. It was almost outrageous how fast he had accepted a high risk occupation, but nothing could stop him from moving away from home in order to achieve his dreams.

The dangers of being a deep sea diver came in several shapes and form, but none of them shook him up enough to make him quit. Sanjay was always sure to be careful whenever he was on duty, but death’s hands were never far away. He witnessed his fair share of the deceased by random, but what really broke him was the life of his best friend. The two of them had been working on a repair when there was a malfunction with his friend’s respiratory device. In layman’s terms- that terrible instance resulted in his friend’s death, and Sanjay had been there to witness the entire drowning. It was an awful, tragic accident that the local news ate up and spat out to every single outlet they could get their hands on. Yet with time, the news of how his friend died fizzed out into the background noise of town life. Yet Sanjay couldn’t forget what happened no matter how much time passed.

He could never forget the incident, and it eventually spurred him to do the seemingly impossible. Sanjay chose to resign from his position without any prompting, and for the first time in his life- he was completely, and utterly, lost. The surefire ambition he had been born with fell short for years, and the loss of his friend clouded every single one of his decisions. The consumption of alcohol became a vice for him, and it nearly costed him his own life several times. It wasn’t until a hard felt intervention from his parents did he start to see the wrongs of his grief filled ways. Little by little, the grief became more bearable and he managed to get back onto his feet with the support of his family and friends. Sanjay quit drinking as a whole when he decided to start his life anew.

Not too long after, his father passed away due to a sudden heart attack. Though the two of them had never been close, Sanjay still grieved the loss (without using alcohol as a vice). The diner was left in his name, so he went traveled over to decide what to do with the establishment. Originally he was going to sell it, but the community and staff grew on him. So the diner stayed up and running, and the wellbeing of his life stabilized while he does his best to give back every day.

misc info .

Emotional Support Animal: Belgian Malinois, Jack

Phobias: thalassophobia, specifically having his head submerged under water.

Sexuality: Homosexual

connections .

Childhood friends . Peers that resided in New York before he moved to Florida ( around 8th grade ).

Recent friends . Only been back a year, and boy has he changed since the last time he’s been in San Fran. Could be neighbors, someone he just so happens to run into a lot, etc. And as nervous as he is, Sanjay’s fairly easy to get along with!

Customers . First timers, regulars that knew his father ( well enough to be considered family, even ), and everything in between - whoever visits the diner has most likely ran by him.

AA Goers . Two years sober, and while he’s completed the 12-step program, he still attends from time to time; always with both arms full of treats from the diner.

Romance . He’s had a few flings here and there, but nothing too serious. Previous coworkers used to joke about how he was married to the job rather than give other people a chance. And while the diner consumes a ton of his time, he’s starting to re-think the possibility of getting himself out there.

[let-it-raines]

Nonnie, this is quite possibly one of the funniest prompts I’ve ever received. I actually, legitimately laughed out loud when I read it, and I definitely had to find the original post to read it all. Not gonna lie, I’m totally rooting for that poor girl.

I hope you enjoy this version of such a crazy little tale 😘

on ao3 | here | if that’s more your style

-/-

Her back is absolutely killing her. There are bones in positions they are definitely not supposed to be in, and she has to wonder where the hell David and Mary Margaret got their couch. Emma secretly thinks that when she asked them if she could come stay with them for a few weeks – days, weeks, months, who the hell knows at this point – they got rid of their old couch and replaced it with one that they found on the side of the road that’s full of extra springs and the smallest amount of cushion stuffing on the planet.

David and Mary Margaret are too full of kindness to do something like that, but she knows that if her sister – if she had one obviously – called and said she lost her job and her apartment and needed a place to crash for a little while, she would definitely make the stay as uncomfortable as possible.

If the couch crasher isn’t comfortable, it means they won’t stay as long, right?

It’s July, and she’s been on their couch since the end of April. So much for that theory, obviously. But hey, at least she’s not stuck still living with Neal because if she had to sleep in the same apartment as her cheating douchebag of an ex, there is no guarantee that she wouldn’t murder him in his sleep.

Small blessings and all.

Emma raises her arms above her head and interlaces her hands together, stretching her body out and loosening up her limbs, before she moves her legs and starts running. She’s never been much of a runner. She always thought it was some kind of voluntary torture. Back in Boston, she had a kickboxing gym she went to every day, but there’s not one of those in Storybrooke. There’s one gym here, and it’s got out of date equipment that definitely aren’t cleaned every day. There’s no way she’d ever pay for that when she’s already short on cash to begin with.

So running on the beach it is, even if it makes her calves feel like they are legitimately on fire.

There’s no one on the beach this morning. Sometimes tourists will get here early and mark their space with their chairs and their umbrellas, but today, it’s blissfully empty so that she can run up and down the sand without being bothered. Music blares through her headphones, and it propels her forward every time that she wants to quit. She’s never been one to want to stare at the ocean and soak in its beauty. It’s never calmed her, but now, when her days are spent going between having a bad back, serving drinks to people who don’t know how to tip, and wondering if her life is always going to suck this much, she thinks that the ocean isn’t that bad.

It’s calm and beautiful, and right now, it’s as blue as the…what the fuck?

Emma stops jogging, sand kicking up around her, and her breath escapes her as she squints and looks out onto the ocean past the pier.

Is there…is there someone out there?

About forty, fifty feet out in the water, there’s some kind of floating figure. She can’t really tell from here, but it looks like there’s a man floating on his back, his head tilted backward.

Oh shit.

This area has been full of scuba divers this summer, but they’re usually in groups and only go in the afternoon with some kind of instructor. This guy – or girl, she can’t really tell right now because she doesn’t have her contacts in and can’t see that far away – must have been a dumbass and gone on his own.

Her stomach is heavy, like it’s full of wet sand, and when she looks around, she’s reminded that there’s no one around.

Shit, shit, shit.

This isn’t what she’s trained to do. She’s not even technically trained to do anything. She’s only really ever worked in food service besides her boring as hell office job in Boston, and none of that would have ever prepared her for something like this.

“Oh, what the hell?” Emma mumbles to herself as she pulls her tank top off before tugging her leggings down, kicking them off with her socks and shoes. She drops her phone and her headphones into her shoes. She’s in nothing but a sports bra and a pair of underwear that literally has little animated penises on it from Mary Margaret’s bachelorette party, but that doesn’t really matter when this guy (girl) might be dying.

The water is cold when she first dives in, and salt gets up her nose so that her throat is itching, but she manages to swim out to the water as quickly as possible. Now that she’s closer, she can see that it’s definitely a man, and Emma closes her eyes as she closes the final strides and reaches for him.

When she opens them, he is staring directly at her, blue eyes blown wide in what she can only assume is confusion.

So, he’s not dead. That’s good to know.

“Are you okay?” Emma blurts out, salt water still in her mouth that she hacks up.

The guy nods and slowly removes his regulator and his mask. One eyebrow raises before they both furrow together. “Aye.”

Great. He thinks she’s a lunatic. She probably is.

She just tried to save a man from drowning when he wasn’t actually drowning.

This is all Mary Margaret and David’s fault because they own the most uncomfortable couch in existence, and she obviously is suffering from poor decision making because of a lack of sleep.

“I thought you were dead!” Emma explains as she starts treading water and hopes that a shark doesn’t show up any time soon. That would really be the cherry on top of her day. “But you’re obviously not dead.”

“No, love, I don’t think I am.”

“What’s going on here?”

Emma stops treading and dips under the water before she rises back up and sees another guy floating a few feet away. As she looks around more and more keep popping up, all of them deadly silent, and if she had any air in her lungs right now, she would scream.

What the hell has she just walked…swam into?

And then, when she comes to her senses, she realizes that they’re all laughing at her.

The bunch of assholes.

(She probably deserves their laughter, but she won’t admit to that.)

“Alright, alright,” the non-dead guy says, raising his hand in the air, “leave the lady alone. She is a real savior, okay?” He flashes her a pearly white smile and nods back to the shore. “Do you want to go back and get away from these assholes?”

What she’d like to do right now is drown, but there seems to be none of that going around today.

“Yeah, I would. I don’t need you to take me back though.”

“Good because I’m not going to. I’m simply going to happen to be swimming to the shore at the same time that you do.”

Emma nods and then turns around and starts swimming back. He stays at her heels while his friends whistle out words she’s ignoring behind them, and while Emma considers herself to be in good shape, she is not a swimmer. The adrenaline from her run and from her not-so-daring rescue are wearing off, and she can feel her breathing getting heavier and heavier. Is the shore getting further away? That would be impossible.

“You’re so lucky you weren’t actually dying back there because there was no way I was going to be able to drag your sorry ass back to shore.” He chuckles, and she cuts her eyes back at him. “I’m glad you find this funny.”

“I find this hysterical, love. You need a tug to shore?”

She does, but there’s no way in hell that she’s going to accept that.

“Absolutely not.”

Eventually, after what feels like ages, she steps foot on solid, if sandy, ground, and the early morning air nips at her skin as she emerges from the water. She tries to shake it off while walking toward her clothes, but she knows that there’s no way that she could possibly get her leggings back on.

That would be torture of an entirely different kind.

Holy shit. She’s wearing underwear with cartoon dicks on them.

This day could not get any worse.

Except when she turns around, she sees the guy stripping out of his gear, only the wetsuit left on, and this is the first time she gets a really good luck at him. He’s trim, like he spends a heck of a lot more time swimming than she does, and he’s got dark stubble across his jaw that she imagines would feel fantastic brushing against her skin. His eyes also seem to be bluer now, and she definitely didn’t think that was possible.

Okay, so maybe her day could get worse.

Or a little better.

Then she watches his eyes tail down her body, just for a moment, but it’s long enough that she knows that he’s noticed her unfortunate choice in underwear.

“So, do you go about saving people every morning or is this just a one-time thing?”

“Definitely a one-time thing since all of my effort was apparently useless.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that. That’s the most entertainment me and the boys have had in weeks. I don’t think we’re going to forget about this for a long time.”

Emma nods and bends down to get her tank top. She pulls it over, and it immediately clings to her skin. So much for getting a little coverage. “You lead that boring of a life then? All diving all the time?”

“Lately, yeah.”

“Is that so?”

He shakes his hair out and runs his fingers through his locks, and she is not distracted by that at all.

(She is definitely not thinking about the fact that she hasn’t had sex in several months.)

(She just embarrassed the hell out of herself in front of him, so that shouldn’t even be a though going through her mind.)

(Even if these were normal circumstances, that wouldn’t be a thought that went through her mind this early in the morning.)

“We’re training for diving school for the Navy,” he explains. “We’ve got a few weeks off that we’re spending up here for the incredible diving spots, but then we’ll be in Florida for four months.”

“Well, I hope you won’t need any saving while you’re there.”

“It won’t be you, so I’m not sure that it’d be quite as enjoyable.” Emma rolls her eyes, and she has to try her hardest not to let herself smile. That was a bad line. She will not smile at it. “Killian Jones, by the way. And you are?”

“Emma Swan.” She reaches out to take his hand to shake, but instead, he pulls it up and brushes his lips across the back of her hand, never breaking eye contact.

“It’s nice to meet you, Swan. You wouldn’t happen to know a good spot around here to get a beer, would you?”

Emma looks down at her feet, kicking them in the sand, before she raises her head and smiles. He’s flirting with her. She just embarrassed the hell out of herself, interrupted a military training exercise, and he’s flirting with her.

What’s wrong with him?

“I actually work at the Crab Shack down by the pier. Don’t let the name fool you. There is only a small possibility that you’ll get crabs if you shack up while there.”

Okay, what is wrong with her?

Killian cocks his head to the side and chuckles as a water droplet falls from his hair and streaks down his face. Why is that so distracting? “I’ll see if the boys and I can stop by tonight. You know, to celebrate the woman who saved me.”

“Alright, alright,” Emma laughs, holding her hands up and bowing her head. “I get it. I’m never going to live this down.”

“Not if I have anything to say about it.”

-/-

David and Mary Margaret are both at work when she gets home, so she thankfully doesn’t have to explain her appearance. Her heart is still racing and her clothes are still soaking wet. Her leggings were pretty much impossible to get on, so she walked through the streets of Storybrooke in nothing but sneakers, a tank top, and dick-covered underwear. She takes a shower and tries to wash away the embarrassment of the morning. She never thought that she was one to embarrass easily, but she guesses that was not some kind of normal situation.

Why is she such an idiot?

Is this just a new low point in her life?

She’s not working until after lunch, and while she would usually take this time to clean up around the loft to show her appreciation for David and Mary Margaret for letting her crash here, she doesn’t do that. Instead, she spends a ridiculous amount of time trying to decide what to wear to work, like she’s not going to wear her regular cut-offs and a tank top. That’s exactly what she puts on, and if she decides to add a lacy bralette, well, that’s just because all of her other bras need to be washed.

Eventually, she heads to work, clocks in, and starts helping to serve the few tables and the people at the bar. It’s pretty slow, though, and when there’s only one guy in a booth in the corner, she tells Ruby about her morning.

Considering Ruby literally starts choking from laughing so much, Emma thinks maybe that wasn’t her best idea.

“You were wearing the underwear from Marg’s bachelorette party?”

“It was clean! I have to do laundry!”

“This is the best thing to ever happen to me,” Ruby laughs, leaning forward and resting her face on the countertop before she pops back up with wide eye and a wolfish smirk. “Wait. Did you say that he’s coming here tonight?”

“Mhm.”

“Is that why you have on mascara?”

“I wear makeup sometimes.”

“Rarely.” Ruby places her hands on her hips, and okay, maybe she definitely shouldn’t have told Ruby. She probably wouldn’t have noticed the Navy guys coming in. “Oh, is he cute? Are you going to sleep with him? Is that what’s up with you looking slightly put together. Emma Swan, have you gone and found yourself a man in the most ridiculous way possible?”

“I am not going to sleep with him.” Ruby raises her brows and then winks, and all Emma can do is shake her head. “He’s in the Navy. He’s about to go to Florida for four months and then who knows where? What would even be the point?”

“That sounds like the perfect excuse to sleep with him. There are no strings attached, and I’m sure he knows that too. I mean, you’ve got to get over that douche eventually. Why not do it with a hot guy who is going to leave, no strings attached?”

She’s only known Ruby from when she’s come to visit David, but they’ve managed to be pretty close friends over the last few months. Ruby is fearless and crass, and there’s never anything holding her back. Emma often wishes she was like that.

The girl is right, unfortunately, not that Emma would admit that to her. She would never shut up about it.

“He’s probably not even going to show, Rubes.”

-/-

He shows.

His entire crew doesn’t. It’s just him and two guys named Robin and Will, and they all settle down at a booth, ordering burgers and drinks and taking the piss out of her every time she brings them something. Will is the main culprit, and she’s pretty sure that he’s the one who scared the shit out of her earlier by silently popping up out of nowhere.

It’s weird seeing them all out of their gear and in their civilian clothes. Killian is in a pair of dark jeans that hug his legs – not that she was staring or anything – and a short-sleeved gray t-shirt. A tattoo peaks out underneath his sleeve, and she’s curious as to what it is.

She’s not going to sleep with him, though. That’s not…that’s not happening.

“So, I have to ask,” Ruby says after Emma’s been chatting with them on and off for an hour, “did you manage to get a good look at the panties this girl had on earlier?”

“I’m afraid I didn’t, love,” Killian tells Ruby before looking at Emma and winking.

Oh, she might be in trouble if he’s going to do things like that..

“Really?” Ruby asks, disappointed.

“I’m afraid that I was too busy being thankful to be saved to pay any attention to what my savior was wearing.”

“I call bullshit on that, but whatever. You really missed out too. They were the greatest pair of panties in existence.”

Little by little, the bar fills up with people, mostly tourists, but a few locals come in. Will and Robin start talking with a few guys they happen to know, but Killian comes to sit at the bar across from her where she learns that he’s originally from California but that his dad was in the military growing up and they moved around a lot. His mom was British, and they spent the majority of his early years in England, which explains the slight accent, and he has an older brother who lives in Denmark with his wife. At twenty-four, he’s only three years older than her, and he says that he got a bit of a late start to being in the Navy, messing around too much and not knowing what the hell it is he wanted to do with his life.

Emma gets that more than he could probably ever know. She’s literally sleeping on her brother’s couch and working in a place called the Crab Shack.

They don’t even sell crab most days.

He gives as good as he gets with being teased, and she finds that he’s always quick to give back an insult or a jab whenever one comes from Ruby or from his friends.

Or from her.

It’s easy talking to him, laughing and sharing a drink and some fries, and as the night goes on, it’s even easier to forget that she hasn’t flirted since Neal and that the man smiling across from her was the witness to one of the most embarrassing moments of her life.

Killian kisses her against the wall in the hallway that leads back to the bathrooms and the storage closets. It’s dark, the music from the bar dimmed, and the only thing she can focus on is the warmth of his mouth and the expert sweep of his tongue as chills scatter across her body before warming her everywhere, from her toes to her cheeks but especially in the pit of her belly. She hasn’t been kissed like that in quite some time, if not ever, and getting lost in it is as easy as anything she’s ever done.

She doesn’t sleep with him, though.

She desperately wants to, aches for it really, but he mutters something about being a gentleman, which she protests against, but he reassures her that he is, indeed, always a gentleman.

Making out with her in the hallway of a bar doesn’t really allow that theory to hold up, but she guesses he’s going to play the gentleman card.

He promises he’ll be back, though, asking her if she’s working tomorrow, and when she says yes, he kisses her again and then walks out the door.

-/-

Killian comes back the next day.

And the next.

And the one after that.

And then he asks if he can see her outside of work, take her on a proper date or something, and the only reason Emma says yes is because she knows this is temporary. He’s going to leave soon, so it’s okay for her to get to know him and laugh with him and make out with him in the backseat of her car until her lips are kiss-swollen and every part of her is flushed.

It’s okay for her to get to know how he likes his burgers and what his favorite drink is and that the tattoo on his arm is in honor of his mom who passed away five years ago. She learns more about his brother and his apparently shitty dad, just as she tells him about David who he apparently had some kind of run-in with on his first night in town, and little by little, she starts to know all of these pieces of this man she never should have met.

If she were a romantic, Emma would say that this is like something out of a movie, a summer romance that passes by in montages full of laughter and good times. She’s not a romantic, though. She knows that this is the real world where things don’t work out like that, but even so, the weeks pass by, and when she goes to bed at night, she finds herself thinking of blue eyes and a kind but mischievous smile.

Oh.

Oh, okay. Maybe she’s gotten herself in too deep of waters without knowing the way out, and this time, there’s not going to be some idiot running along the beach who dives out into the ocean to save her.

Despite her thoughts starting to attack her, her heart aching even when she tells it to stop, she continues to see him whenever she can. And a week before he leaves, they manage to find a time when no one is home but the two of them, and while she doesn’t intend for it go that far, once his lips brush across her neck and liquid heat blazes over her skin, there’s no stopping them as they shed their clothes.

“No dick-covered underwear today, love?” Killian whispers against her bare stomach as he kisses her in such a way that her stomach ripples.

“I’m afraid those have been retired.”

“A pity that.”

They don’t talk much for the next few minutes, not more than curses and instructions and repetitive words of pleasure, and as her heart races while Killian drives her absolutely mad with his movements, it also aches, the ticking time bomb she wants liked suddenly something she’s dreading.

She likes him.

Honestly, truly likes him.

He’s kind and funny and has a mouth on him that matches hers in curses and in banter. He asks her about her day and listens to her when she talks, which Neal nearly never did, and while she finds that what’s between them is physical, there’s something more underneath the surface, so damn close to breaking through.

When he leaves, she doesn’t want to say goodbye. She’s never been particularly good at those, but Killian still comes to the bar, sits with her at the counter likes it’s not his last day, and when he has to go, he takes her hand and pulls her outside, the wind whipping around them and the smell of salt permeating the air.

“There’s not a day will go by I won’t think of you.”

Emma nearly makes some kind of sarcastic quip, but instead she leans up on her toes and slowly glides her lips over his, savoring the softness and undeniable warmth of them one last time.

“Good.”

-/-

Emma wakes to a text the next morning.

KJ: So, I have some time off in January. Do you think I could take you to dinner?

ES: I think that could be arranged. I don’t know if I’ll recognize you all bundled up to live through Maine’s winter weather.

KJ: I’ll bring a red rose, just in case.

Emma rolls over on the couch and buries her smile in her pillow.

ES: I am looking forward to it.

-/-

Emma sees Killian for the first time – FaceTime not included – on January third, four months and a week after they said goodbye. He’s standing outside her apartment – one she shares with Ruby, each of them with their own, actual bedrooms – dressed in his Naval dress uniform with a red rose in his hand.

His hair is shorter, his usual stubble a little bit more trimmed, his skin tanned, and even with his uniform, she can see that his shoulders are broader than they were this summer.

“Hi,” Emma whispers. She thought she was yelling it, but it definitely only came out as a whisper. “You’re not supposed to be here until tomorrow.”

He cocks his head to the side, smile bright, and God, she has missed that smile. “Ah, well, you see, I had an opportunity to see the woman I love one day sooner, and there was no way in hell I was going to pass up that opportunity.”

“The woman you love, huh?”

“Aye.” He steps closer, and it takes everything in Emma not to tackle him to the ground. “She’s this fiery lass who is beyond brilliant and witty. And, I’ll have you know, that she is so brave that she’ll dive into the ocean to save a drowning man. Would you happen to know anyone like that?”

Emma rolls her eyes and closes the distance between them. It was once 1,500 miles (she may have looked it up), but that is no longer. And it feels damn good. “I might have an idea where you can find her.”

“Good,” he says, her own word from so long ago echoing back to her, before pressing his lips to hers in a deep, slow kiss that feels like it never stopped.

She has never been so thankful for David’s shitty couch and how it inadvertently led her to this.

[pondermoniums]

Chapters: 11/? Fandom: Stranger Things (TV 2016) Rating: Explicit Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence Relationships: Billy Hargrove/Steve Harrington Characters: Billy Hargrove, Steve Harrington, Jim "Chief" Hopper, Neil Hargrove, Dustin Henderson, Claudia Henderson, Robin Buckley, Steve Harrington's Parents, Maxine "Max" Mayfield Additional Tags: Alternate universe - Mafia, More characters and tags to be added as I go, Steve Harrington Needs a Hug, Billy Hargrove Is Bad at Feelings, Pining, Stalking, A sprinkling of sugar daddy things, A sprinkling of coffeeshop things, Explicit mentions of gore and violence, Explicit Sexual Content, Fluff and Angst, Lingerie, Homophobic Language, swimmer Steve, Swim Coach Steve, Substitute Teacher Steve, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, traumatic injuries, Steve has pet bunnies, Billy Hargrove Being an Asshole Summary:

Steve wants out. He'll have to leave everything and every one behind, but he does it. Even if it means killing an innocent to pose as his dead body. Even if it explodes a war between the underground families or launches an investigation that comes too close to the illegal dealings of his friends and family. He does it.

And the joke of it all is that none of that happens. The war never starts and the government sleeps through another night. No one cares about the body who is fished out of the river. Except Billy.

~ Ch.1/Prologue under the cut ~

Billy Hargrove didn’t believe it.

When everyone in the house started moving all at once after some announcement that had yet to reach his ears, he still didn’t believe it. It was too weak a semblance of a trained formation in the time of crisis, but then again, no one ever really prepares for the heir apparent to be dead.

“What?”

He couldn’t remember getting into his father’s office but now those cold blue eyes stared back at him. “You heard me well enough. Harrington’s boy is dead. Blubbering queer went out on orders and had to get fished out of the river. He almost made it out to sea.”

Neil Hargrove deemed anyone with a penis a queer or faggot if they spent too long on their hair—his own son included—but Billy didn’t have it in him to feel the usual ice in his veins.

Because everything about Steve Harrington’s death is…wrong. Everything from the Harringtons barely discussing it, just wiping Steve’s history back into the river like he never mattered, to the fact that it was a river he died in. Steve was the best swimmer Billy had ever known. Considering how Billy spent his free time with divers and surfers any second he could get to a coast, that meant something.

Billy made a discrete point to have one on one time with the medical examiner, sees the body himself. Steve did a good job finding a lookalike. Dark hair the right length and thickness, right build, chiseled bone structure underneath the water bloat so it was easy to think it was really him.

The fingers were cut off. The teeth were gone. Damage to the body like Steve hadn’t chosen to be in the river in the first place. The coroner insisted the lungs were full of water, and other symptoms having to do with the bloodstream that proved drowning the actual cause of death…

But it wasn’t Steve. Billy had known Steve in so many ways. He knew the instant he saw the wrong hairline shape and how the constellations of moles and freckles were entirely off. He knew Steve was like a clock slowly but surely being wound and wound and wound up, just like him. Billy supposed his mistake had been in expecting Steve would explode in a loud, violent way, the same as he did. The same as all their fights broke out.

This? This was quiet. Calculated. Steve had been thinking about this for a long, long time. And Billy felt…something like betrayal at that. Something dark and fragile; a devastation that turned this way and that, looking at the meanness which had always been his outlet, or the sorrow and confusion which was perhaps more accurate to how he felt, but led him to no conclusions.

Never mind that the Harringtons knew their son wasn’t dead. Steve was as good as eviscerated to them for leaving without permission. It was just like them, too, to have a funeral and be done with him. Never mind an investigation as to who killed the heir of the city’s underground. Hell, Harrington was so integrated in above ground business, that he might’ve put on more airs at losing his son.

But no. Steve was gone, and everything fell into Billy’s lap.

* * *

Steve didn’t finish his last cigarette. Nicotine and tobacco were among the things he had ordained to leave behind. So he took a long draft from it as he strolled the homeless and drug addiction alleys, dumping a brown paper bag in one of the fires, and tossing his cigarette box to someone else along the way. If anyone saw the bag burn so quick that the human fingers sizzled and popped in the garbage embers, nobody squealed. They either didn’t care, or were too high to care.

Or maybe they were blissfully ignorant. A state which Steve would have traded his entirely life to be in.

Instead, he turned to walk along the river, glancing briefly at boats of all kinds, wondering which would be the one to find his dead body. A withering shred of humor considered taking on the name Tom Sawyer, but Steve put that on the back burner of his mind.

He threw his half-burnt cigarette into the river, eager to see tomorrow’s sunrise.

[thelastspeecher]

Stanuary ‘20 - Week Three: AUs

I’ve been busy working on my Master’s thesis and thus haven’t been able to do any Stanuary yet.  But now that I’m basically done (just gotta drop my thesis off at the thesis library Friday) I’m hoping to do all four weeks.  Just....not in chronological order.  Anyways, the prompt for week three was practically MADE for me.  Not to brag or anything, but I’m basically the non-binary ruler of AUs.

So, to really go whole hog with the AU prompt, I went with a crossover between two of my favorite AUs: the MerGucket AU and the Stay-at-Home Stan AU.  I’ve written something for this particular crossover before, so this is a follow-up to that.  Basically, Ford does research at sea, and when he has his big blow-up with Bill, jumps overboard, only to be rescued by Stan, who has somehow become a merman during their time apart.  Not just a merman, but a father, too.  Here’s Stan explaining how that came about.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

              Ford stared intently at the multicolored cuttlefish idly swimming by.

              It looks similar to the kraken I saw last month.  Do kraken crossbreed?  Or do juvenile kraken resemble cuttlefish?

              “Uh, Ford?” Stan asked, startling Ford free from his thoughts.  Ford looked over.

              “Yes?”

              “We’re here,” Stan said.  He jerked a thumb behind him.

              “You live in a cliff?” Ford asked.

              “Yeah.”  Stan looked over at the cliff.  “The door’s hidden, though.  Gotta make sure scuba divers or submarines or whatever don’t find us.”  Promptly after offering for Ford to stay at his place temporarily, Stan had led Ford into a partially submerged hidden cave, walked into the water, and transformed into a merman.  The casual nature of the act was off-putting to Ford, but not as much as the mumbled charm Stan had then cast on Ford to allow him to breathe underwater.

              Stan knows spells.  Well, at least one spell.  How is this reality?  How is my high school dropout twin brother a merman with a capacity for magic? Stan’s daughter, Molly, still nestled in his arms, snored loudly.  Stan looked down at her with a fond, loving expression.  Ford’s stomach turned over.  Stan’s not just a merman now.  He’s also a father, and a doting one at that.  Stan whispered something to Molly in a different language.

              “So, um, the door is hidden,” Ford said.  “Where is it?”  Stan looked up.

              “I’ll show you, but I need to get Angie’s brother outta the house, first.”

              “Pardon?”

              “We can’t just leave the eggs unsupervised,” Stan said.

              That’s right.  Stan mentioned something about eggs.

              “Angie’s older brother offered to watch ‘em while we went on our walk. Swim.  Whatever.  But he had a bad experience with a human not too long ago, so I don’t think he’d wanna see you.  Just hide behind that rock or something.”  Stan nodded at a large boulder near Ford.  “Once he’s gone, I’ll let you in.”

              “Okay, but-” Ford started.  Stan ignored him and swam over to the cliff.  Ford let out a sigh.  He ducked behind the boulder and pulled out his journal, flicking through the pages idly. He landed on the page where he had started a drawing of Stan, before he’d recognized the merman he was observing.

              At least I’ll be able to finish this sketch.  I wonder if I can get Stan to sit in this pose again.

----- 

              After about fifteen minutes, which Ford spent writing about this latest development, the sound of voices carried to where Ford was hiding.  Stan said something in the same foreign language he’d spoken in before.  A second voice, which sounded very familiar to Ford, responded in the same tongue. Ford closed his journal and held it close to his chest.  He could make out a flick of a green tail with light yellow fins as Angie’s brother passed the boulder.  The merman disappeared quickly into the distance.

              “All right, you can come in now,” Stan said, appearing next to Ford so suddenly it startled him.  Instead of being carried in Stan’s arms, Molly was now nestled in a sling draped across Stan’s chest.  Ford stared. “C’mon, Sixer.  I gotta put Molly in her actual bed or she’s not gonna sleep well.  She wakes up way too often as it is.”  Ford nodded silently.  He followed Stan to the cliff face, where Stan, with a practiced motion, slipped his fingers into a crack in the rock and pulled.  A portion of rock the size of a door swung open.  

              “Slick,” Ford said.  Stan rolled his eyes.

              “Shut up and get inside.”  Ford hurriedly swam in.  Stan followed, closing the door behind him.  Ford looked around in interest.

              “How is it so light in here?  Do merfolk have lamps?”

              “Uh, sorta,” Stan said, already heading off, deeper into the house.  “They use, um…I don’t know the English word for it.  They grow stuff that glows.”

              “Bioluminescent?” Ford suggested.  Stan shrugged.

              “You can ask Angie.  She might not know the English word, but she can explain it better than I can. Anyways, we have some lamps, but we don’t need them right now.  Enough light gets through the windows.”

              “Windows?”  Ford spun in a circle.  His eyes widened at the sight of a window above a couch.  “I didn’t see this from the outside.  Are they specially designed?”

              “Nah, stole ‘em from sunken ships,” Stan called from wherever he was. “You can’t see ‘em from the outside ‘cause of an optical illusion thing.  If you get close to the cliff, they’re more obvious, but not from a distance.”

              “Remarkable,” Ford muttered.

              “Ford.”  Ford turned around again.  Stan’s head was sticking out of a room down the hall.  “You’ll wanna see this.”

              “Not that I doubt you, but why?”

              “Don’t you wanna check out a mer egg?”

              “A- yes!”  Ford swam over.  When he entered the room, his eyes were immediately drawn to the large basket leaning against one wall.  The basket held two things: Molly, fast asleep and curled up into a ball, and one large, red fish egg.  Ford frowned. “You said eggs.  Plural.”

              “Slip of the tongue.  We haven’t been down to one egg for very long.”

              “Why is the basket so large?”

              “It’s called a guppy basket,” Stan said.  “It’s where eggs go and the baby mers sleep until they outgrow it. Normally, mers have a bare minimum of ten kids at once.  But when one of the parents used to be human…”  Stan trailed off.  Ford looked over at him.  Disappointment had settled on Stan’s face.  Stan noticed Ford looking and cleared his throat hurriedly, wiping away his saddened expression.  “When that happens, there aren’t as many kids.  Angie laid fifteen eggs.  Usually a clutch has at least twenty.  And of those fifteen Angie laid, only two are gonna hatch.”

              “What happened to the other eggs?”

              “Duds,” Stan said flatly.  “Clutches have a lot of duds.  That’s why mers have so many eggs at once.”  He sighed. “It’s fine, though.  I can handle two kids a lot better than I could handle ten.”

              “This is…I’m completely astounded,” Ford said, shaking his head. “You- how-”

              “They taught me a lot,” Stan said with a shrug.  “Even taught me their language, Mermish.”

              Oh, that must be the language he was speaking earlier.

              “Kinda had to,” Stan continued, “since I was born human, not mer.”

              “Yes.  You were.” Ford looked at Stan inquisitorially. “How did you become mer?”

              “I told you.  I fell in love with a mermaid and ate a magic plant.”

              “Give me the unabridged version.  I feel I’m owed that much.”

              “Fine.”  Stan looked over at Molly and the last egg.  “Let’s talk in the living room.  Molly’s a pretty heavy sleeper, but I don’t wanna roll those dice.  Babies are the complete monsters when they get woken up.”

----- 

              Ford settled himself on the couch, attempting to ignore the way his clothes floated upwards, tugging on his skin.  Stan sat across from him in an armchair.  He snickered.

              “What?” Ford asked.

              “You’ve got a cape on, like you’re Super Nerd or somethin’.  Why did you bother wearing that underwater?”

              “I-”  Ford looked back.  Sure enough, his trench coat was spread out behind him like a wedding train.  He scowled and tucked it under him.  “Don’t tease me, Stanley.  I’ve been too shell-shocked by all of this to act upset with you, but by no means am I going to brush what happened ten years ago under the rug.”

              “You’re in no position to make any threats towards me,” Stan said.  “I’m the one who cast the spell so you could breathe underwater.  I can remove it any time I want.”  Ford swallowed.  “Anyways, you wanted to know how I turned into a merman.”

              “…Yes,” Ford said softly.  Stan ignored his brother’s obvious unease.

              If he didn’t want me to threaten him, he shouldn’t have threatened me first.  So what if what I said had a bit more of a bite than he probably expected?  That’s what happens when you mess with merfolk. Stan sighed and settled into his armchair.  

              “All right.  Well, when Pops kicked me out, I took the Stan O’War out to sea.  Not my smartest idea.  Prob’ly shoulda taken the Stanleymobile.  I mean, I sailed into a storm pretty much right away.  I kept trying to bail her out, but it was raining buckets.  I went overboard.  Next thing I knew, I woke up on a beach.  My clothes were soaked, I had no idea where I was, but I wasn’t too worried.”

              “…Why not?”

              “‘Cause one of the prettiest chicks I’ve ever seen had my head in her lap.” Stan grinned at the memory, clear enough to have happened yesterday.  “And I just…I just stared at her.”

----- 

              Stan stared up at the young woman with his head in her lap.  She seemed like a personification of the sea, with eyes as blue as the ocean and hair the color of the beach he used to play on with Ford.  Faint freckles spilled across her nose and cheeks like she had spilled cinnamon but not bothered to wipe it off.  The young woman stared back at him, smiling like she had a secret as she stroked Stan’s hair.

              “Hi,” Stan finally croaked.  The young woman’s smile broadened.

              “Hello.  You almost drowned, do you realize that?”  Her voice was sweet and melodious, comforting like waves crashing onto the shore.

              “Figured.  Since I went overboard and woke up on a beach.  Did- did you save me?”

              “Yep.”

              “H-how?”

              “I’m a good swimmer.”

              “What’s your name?”

              “My full name’s awfully long and I ain’t too fond of it.  But I go by Angie.”

              “Angie.  I’m Stan.”

              “It’s a pleasure to meet ya, Stan.”

              “Your accent…are you from the south?” Stan asked.  A twinkle entered Angie’s eye.

              “One could say I’m from the deep south, yes.”

              “Kinda weird way to say it, but whatever.”  Stan began to slowly get up.  Angie stopped stroking his hair and scooched to the side, allowing him to sit up on his own. He looked over at her.  “So where…”  He trailed off, catching side of Angie’s bottom half.  Instead of legs, she had a large, ostentatious yellow tail with pink fins. His jaw dropped.  “You- you’re-”

              “A mermaid, yes,” Angie said softly.  Stan continued to gape at her.  “I- technically, I wasn’t s’pposed to let you see me, but I wanted to make sure you woke up.” She looked away.  “Even more technically, I wasn’t s’pposed to save you in the first place.”

              “Then- then why did you?” Stan asked, still trying to wrap his mind around what was happening.  Angie looked at him, her eyes soft and compassionate.

              “I couldn’t let you just drown when I saw ya go overboard.  I mean, yer only my age.  Yer fam’ly must be worried sick about you.”

              “Not really,” Stan mumbled, looking down at the ground.  He idly flicked away a seashell.  “They couldn’t care less about me.”

              “…Really?” Angie asked.  Stan nodded. “What makes you say that?”

              “For one thing, they kicked me outta the house.”  Angie was silent for a moment.

              “They shouldn’t have done that,” she said finally.  Stan snorted.

              “Yeah.  I fucking agree.”  He sighed. “Whatever.  Uh, thanks for rescuing me, I guess.”  He got to his feet and looked around.  “Do you have any idea where we are?”

              “I don’t know the human name for it.”

              Of course she doesn’t.

              “But it’s uninhabited.”

              “It’s-”  Stan stared at the mermaid.  “You- this is a desert island?”

              “No.  It’s got a tropical forest.  It’s not a desert.”

              “No, not- a desert island is an island that doesn’t have people on it.” Stan ran a hand through his hair. “Shit!”

              “Look, it’ll be fine.”

              “How?” Stan demanded.  “I’m not some survivalist nutjob.  I don’t know how to build shelter or kill squirrels or whatever.  I can’t-”

              “I can help with that,” Angie said, standing up as well.  Stan huffed.

              “Yeah, right.  Like you can help me make a little hut outta sticks.  You don’t even…have…legs…”  Stan stared at her.  Angie grinned cheekily.  “Wh-” He looked down.  Her tail had been replaced by two slender, pale legs.  Stan looked away immediately upon realizing that she was completely nude from the waist down.  “How-”

              “It’s a long story.  But merfolk can shift into a human form if need be.”  Angie looked down at the sand and wiggled her toes.  “I don’t take a human form often.  Don’t really feel the desire to.  But I want to help you out.”

              “The best way you could help me out would be to…”  Stan trailed off.  Angie looked at him curiously.

              “What?”

              “No, that’s stupid.”

              “Tell me.”

              “Do you- if you can turn human, can I turn into a merman?” Stan asked. Angie eyed him.  “I- honestly, I don’t really see a reason to stay on land. I don’t have anyone who cares about me, I don’t have any plans, there’s nothin’ tying me to staying human.”  Stan could feel dread and sadness sinking heavily onto his shoulders.

              Pops wouldn’t ever let me back, even if I did make a million dollars. And why would I go back anyways? Ford?  He’s never gonna forgive me.  Shermie and Mom?  Mom let Pops kick me out, and the age gap with Shermie was too big for us to get close. I don’t have anyone.  I don’t have anywhere.

              “It- it might be kinda nice to start over.  Somewhere else,” Stan continued.  Angie pursed her lips.

              “You should sleep on it,” she said finally.  Stan stuffed his hands into the pockets of his drenched pants.

              “That’s a no, then?”

              “Not necessarily.  I know there’re ways fer humans to become mer.  I don’t know the details, though.  I’d have to ask my parents.  And I’ll have to explain why I’m asking.”  Angie chewed on the inside of her cheek thoughtfully.  “It’s- it’s possible.  But you’d have to prove yer worthy of becomin’ mer first.”

              “How do I do that?” Stan asked.  Angie shrugged.  “You can’t give me any details?  Really?”

              “Look, I- yer the first human I’ve ever talked to fer this long.  Even if I knew everything about the process of turnin’ humans mer, I’d have a moral obligation to be quiet until you’ve earned our trust.”  She looked out to sea.  “And like I said, you should sleep on it, first.  Givin’ up bein’ human to become mer is not somethin’ you should take lightly. And it’s not somethin’ you should do just ‘cause ya have no other options.  You should want to do it fer a stronger reason than that.”

              “Like what?”

              “Well, my ma did it fer love.”

              “Your mom used to be human?” Stan asked, aghast.  Angie nodded.

              “Yes.  She fell in love with my pa and became a mer so they could be together.”  Angie looked at Stan.  “I ain’t sayin’ ya need to fall in love with a mer, but ya need a reason just as strong.”  She shrugged. “Anyways.  First things first.  I’ll help ya make some shelter, maybe even help ya do some foraging.  And tomorrow, I can come back with my folks. They’ll help figure this thing out.”

              “Sounds good,” Stan said with a nod, his heart racing.

              I can’t believe a mermaid rescued me and might make me a merman. What the actual hell is going on right now?  A small smile tugged the corners of Angie’s mouth.

              “What?” Stan asked.  Angie shook her head.

              “Oh, nothin’.  Just thinkin’ ‘bout how odd you are.”

              “Really?  You think I’m odd?”

              “You asked to be turned mer within five minutes of meetin’ me.” Angie grinned.  “That’s odd.”  Stan managed a smile back.

              “Fair.”

----- 

              “That’s how you met your wife?” Ford asked.

              “Yeah.  But, technically, she’s not my wife.  Merfolk don’t really have marriage.  Angie and I are mated.”

              “Does being mates still involve a union ceremony of some sort?”

              “Yes.”

              “Well, as far as Mom would be concerned, then, you’re married,” Ford said with a small smile.  Stan chuckled.  “Stanley, I’m honestly flabbergasted by all of this.  It seems…”

              “Impossible?” Stan suggested.  Ford nodded.  “I feel the same way.”  He leaned forward and clasped his hands.  He saw Ford immediately zero in on the red webbing between his fingers.  “Some days I wake up and I can’t believe where I am. I’ve got the most amazing person in the world as my mate, I’ve got a daughter, and I’m gonna have another kid any day now.”

              “Also, you’re a merman.”

              “That, too.”  Stan eyed Ford.  “And now, you’re gonna be sleeping on my couch until we figure out how to get Bill off your back.”

              “Yes.”  Ford paused. “Thank you, by the way.”

              “No problem.  I’ll take any chance I can get to stick it to a mer hunter.  Angie lost one of her aunts to a mer hunter.  And I damn near got killed, too.”

              “Wait, really?” Ford asked.  Stan nodded. He laughed, but it was clearly forced.

              “Turns out Carla McCorkle went into that business.  My own ex-girlfriend was about to kill me and sell my scales to the highest bidder.  Good thing Angie intervened.  If she hadn’t threatened to down Carla’s ship, I’d, well.  You can figure it out.”

              “Sorry, did you say that Angie is capable of sinking an entire ship?” Ford asked, holding up a finger.  Stan raised an eyebrow.

              “She’s a siren, Sixer.  That’s what they do.”

              “Are you a-”

              “Oh, hell no.”  Stan tilted his head.  “Well, technically, I’m a siren.  That’s the kinda mer I am.  But that’s not my job.  Sinking ships requires singing, and even magic can’t fix a voice like mine.  It made me extra persuasive when I talk, but if I try to sing, I still sound like a frog in a bucket.”

              “Siren is both a type of mer and a career?” Ford asked.  Stan nodded.  “Hmm. Interesting.  If you don’t sink ships, then what do you do?  Do merfolk need to have jobs?”

              “Usually, yeah.  Mine is taking care of Molly.  And when the other egg hatches, taking care of Stanley Jr.”  Stan grinned.  “It’s gonna be a boy, I can tell.”

              “You-”  Ford stared at Stan.  Stan stared back.

              “What?”

              “You’re a stay-at-home dad?”

              “Yep.”  Stan stretched languidly.  “Best job in the world.”  Ford shook his head, trying to hide his astonishment.  The front door opened.  Stan looked over.  “Hey, babe.”

              “Hello, darlin’,” Angie crooned, swimming over and kissing the top of his head. Stan grinned up at her.  “I stopped by Fidds’ place to check on him and his clutch.  He said the egg was movin’ ‘round a lot today?”

              “Yep.  Stanley Jr. is gonna hatch any day now.”

              “Oh, hon.  We aren’t namin’-”  A small squeak came from the couch.  Stan and Angie looked over.  Ford was as pale as a sheet.  “We have a visitor,” Angie said mildly.

              “Yeah, Ford got on the bad side of someone pretty nasty, so he’s gonna stay here for a bit,” Stan said.

              “Understood.  I’ll go check on Miss Molly.  She’s prob’ly hungry.”  As if on cue, crying sounded through the house.  Angie chuckled.  “Speak of the devil.”  She nodded politely at Ford.  “Pleasure to meet you, Stanford.  We’ll have to have a proper introduction once I take care of Molly.”

              “Yes,” Ford mumbled.  Angie left. Stan looked at Ford, concerned.

              “What’s wrong, Sixer?  You look like you saw a ghost.”

              “I-”  Ford took a steadying breath.  “Angie is very similar in appearance to my former first mate, who disappeared from my ship a month ago.  While we were in the middle of the ocean.”

              “Okay…” Stan said slowly.

              “He- Angie mentioned someone named ‘Fidds’.  My former first mate, he sometimes went by that nickname,” Ford continued.  Dread began to build in Stan’s gut.  “Angie’s last name wouldn’t happen to be ‘McGucket’, would it?”

              “No,” Stan said.  Relief broke across Ford’s face.  “It’s MerGucket.  But when her older brother pretended to be human to work for some researcher, he used McGucket instead.”  Ford groaned loudly.  He put his head in his hands.

              “Oh, no.”

              “Took the words right outta my mouth.”

[maxfieldparrishes]

intro to genevieve, pt. 4

Getting close to the end now!!! Only a few more to go!!! @ocelotsflatass it’s almost done!!! Here’s the reference post!!!

S: Streets 1. Viv is not particularly street smart, mostly because she’s never needed to be, but she’s pretty cautious and not dumb enough to believe everything somebody told her. That said, the streets are not her scene.  2. She’d give money to someone on the street, no question, but she sometimes wonders why there’s not a better social safety net, or why the available services are not better promoted.  3. She’s never gotten into a fight, but could be provoked enough to throw hands. Harassing her or assaulting her or her friends and not taking the hint when she tells you to stop is usually a surefire way to blow every single one of her fuses. She’s not big, but god is she pissed and when she goes feral, she goes feral. Anger at your own risk.  4. Nothing physical aside from one dude trying to grab her in a club, but she has been verbally harassed, catcalled, and followed multiple times. Definitely has one of those lipstick knives or cat-ear knuckle-duster things. Would like to take a self-defense class. Dante is more than happy to help train her.  5. Overall, yeah. Viv isn’t a big risk taker by nature and the only times she’s done something Not Smart is if she’s under the influence, but she’s pretty level-headed and at least tries to be aware of her surroundings and the people around her. But she’s usually pretty good. Even Not Smart for her is still pretty smart overall. 

T: Truth 1. Is she honest? Yes, almost to a fault. Almost to bluntness, which can be aggravating for quite a few people. It’s usually not out of meanness, she just believes in being direct.  2. She can usually tell when people are lying, or if they’re hiding something at the very least. She’s very perceptive, and very persistent if she feels someone’s not being upfront with her, which can be annoying.  3. Viv is usually honest about most things, so people don’t really think of her as someone who lies, which means she can get away with quite a few.  4. She has, but she can’t change the past. And she does believe that sometimes lies are kinder than the truth, even if keeping the lie up or telling it to begin with upsets her own conscience.  5. I’m... not really sure what this means. Has she spread rumors, or has she had rumors spread about her? Yeah, middle school sucked. She was kind of known as the weird girl in high school, but that didn’t bother her too much. 

U: Underdog 1. The bullying she experienced was mostly the bullying-by-exclusion, behind-the-back stuff that happens in middle and high school. She had enough pride to snap back at people if they insulted her to her face, which happened, but very infrequently, and people did learn quickly not to go at her directly because she would fight back.  2. She may have gone along with people who bullied other people, or taken sides in group/clique fights, but she wasn’t tormenting people in the hallway or taking their lunch money or anything. She was very sensitive and reactive in middle and high school, though, and could be a bit high strung. Viv wasn’t exactly the easiest person to deal with back then, but she has mellowed out considerably.  3. She’s never been physically attacked by a bully. She did kind of rough up some other kids as a young child, but it was mostly done out of a sense of rambunctious fun and not meanness, and she stopped when most people got bigger than her. But she does still feel bad about it. She feels that she was kind of a mean kid, which... she kind of was, but also wasn’t? It’s kind of weird. 4. Has she ever been doubted??? Uh... she has historically been dismissed about her concerns or complaints, which, for the most part, were valid and justifiable. She’s mentioned things to her parents before and been ignored, and unfortunately those things grew to be much bigger problems than they should have been. Viv fell through the cracks of her family for a long time, and she’s kind of got a chip on her shoulder about it.  5. Viv is surprisingly good with children and enjoys math as a subject, even if she sucks at actually doing it. She’s interested in a lot of activities and wants to learn a lot of practical things, like woodworking or knitting or how to fix her own car. Learning new things, however, is one area of her life where she is not particularly patient. 

V: Vomit 1. She can, particularly if she eats something that doesn’t agree with her, or during a migraine, which she gets more often than she likes.  2. She doesn’t really get a lot of stomach aches per se, but she can get nauseous pretty easily. Motion sickness is one of her nausea triggers, especially in a moving car, which is why she prefers to be the driver the majority of the time, or at least ride shotgun.  3. Viv is a mother hen to the max. She will make you soup, tea, run to get you crackers or whatever it is you need, force medicine down your throat, you name it. It makes sense, because one of her strongest love languages is caretaking and acts of service.  4. When she’s ill, Viv generally likes hot tea, a dumb movie marathon, taking as many drugs as she can stand, but mostly she likes sleeping it off. She also finds hot baths to be very soothing, if not always helpful.  5. Viv can get indigestion so her stomach can gurgle because of all the acid, but she mostly retches and coughs when she vomits. It’s very intense, and it sounds awful. Dante thought she was legit dying when he heard her vomiting for the first time during a migraine, and absolutely flipped his shit when he saw how awful she was feeling. It’s horrible to hear.

W: Water 1. She tries to, and she’s always yammering about how important it is to stay hydrated, but she can slip up with this. She’s also constantly bitching about single-use plastic, so you won’t find any plastic water bottles in DMC, and if you somehow do, she didn’t put them there.  2. She does know how to swim, but she’s no competitive swimmer. She could probably keep herself afloat long enough to get back to the boat, as long as it wasn’t going too fast or wasn’t too far away, or for someone to rescue her, but if it’s long-term survival in the ocean that you’re talking about she’s kind of fucked.  3. She doesn’t really enjoy swimming per se, she enjoys being in water as long as it’s relatively safe. Viv is actually kind of afraid of deep and open water, because she’s also kind of afraid of drowning... or any kind of death by suffocation, really.  4. She’s an... okay diver at best. She’s never gone scuba diving or snorkeling, but she does think that doing so would be fun. Viv would also like to swim with sharks, because she likes sharks. Also alligators.  5. She’s not good at rationing her oxygen, which is something her brother--who was very good at swimming--tried to help her with. Her breath control needs work. 

X: Xylophone 1. Viv likes indie music, rock music, and folk music in particular, but she’s not absolutely married to any single genre. She does not like stadium country, however, with only a few exceptions. Can roll with Dante’s metal, although she prefers symphonic metal herself.  2. She doesn’t have a single favorite song, but she does have a few long-lasting faves or songs that personally mean a lot to her. Viv will go through periods where she’ll be intensely into a few specific songs and listen to them ad nauseam, then move on to something else or have her interest in them die down.  3. She has a few fave bands and artists--Joanna Newsom, the Mountain Goats, the Decemberists, Led Zeppelin, Tom Waits, Warren Zevon, or whatever passes for them in the DMC world.  4. It’s not her talent, and she can only sing some songs well, but her voice won’t make your ears bleed. In the right circumstances it’s actually almost pretty. However, she is pretty good at piano and would like to learn guitar and cello. Again, Dante is happy to oblige, but they differ because he’s self-taught and Viv can read music... but they find a middle ground and jam together, though not without some Shenanigans. Zoe can play ukelele and guitar, and she and Viv used have some jam sessions.  5. This is one of her most closely-guarded secrets, but she does actually like some rap and hip-hop. One of her favorites comes on at a party? She’s spitting. Everyone is shocked. 

[csnews]

THINK TWICE BEFORE BOOKING A LUXURY ‘SNORKEL WITH WHALES’ SAFARI

WDC - October 11, 2018

Daydreaming about escaping the British winter for sunshine and adventure? If so, you are far from alone! Inevitably, as the nights draw in, many of us start to plan either an escape to the sun, or at the very least, a winter adventure.

Often the ocean, like a talisman, beckons.

Whale watching is, of course, a huge draw and WDC has long promoted responsible viewing. However, increasingly, travellers are being enticed by the opportunity to actually get into the water with whales and dolphins.  Nowadays, it is possible to snorkel with species ranging from coastal dolphins to massive whales such as blue, sperm and humpback.  If watching from a boat is good, then being in the water with them must be even better. Right?

Actually, wrong. You may be surprised to learn that WDC strongly recommends against tourists getting into the water with whales and dolphins for a host of good reasons.

It is easy for us to be so excited at the prospect of being in the water with whales or dolphins that we forget that we are entering their realm as uninvited guests and our presence may not always be welcome.

Swim tour vessels need to get much closer than whale watch vessels, in order to drop off clients next to the whales, increasing the chance of disturbance or even boat strike.  Scientists have documented disturbance disruption of the daily routine of whales and dolphins in regions where people are allowed into the water with them.

These interruptions can cause whales and dolphins to waste precious energy and may be particularly harmful to breeding age females and mothers with calves.  Some dolphin populations have even abandoned their usual habitat in favour of quieter areas and over time, repeated disturbance may even have long-term effects upon the health and reproductive success of the population.

There are concerns too, from a human perspective.  Whales and dolphins are large (often extremely large) and typically, are robust and powerful. They may react unpredictably - this is especially true of females with young calves - and may injure people in the water if snorkellers  get too close to their flukes (tails) or flippers, or if they feel threatened in any way.  Bear in mind too, that these tours are not always covered by travel insurance policies.

I’m personally even less keen on the growing trend for ‘celebrity’ underwater photographers to offer those who can afford it the chance to get ‘up close and personal’ with whales.  

Aimed at the luxury, high-end of the market, some of these ‘specialist-led, small group safaris’ cost thousands of pounds. In addition to the concerns outlined above, these tours may:

Blur the boundary between commercial trips and professional filming or research: Firstly, these bespoke tours often seem to operate somewhere in the fuzzy boundary zone between commercial swim tours and professional filming trips. In many regions, commercial trips to swim with whales are banned and often the only way to circumvent the regulations is to apply for a film or research permit - and then just ‘happen’ to take, say, three or four paying passengers along too, sometimes under the guise of ‘assistants’. Other in-water trips exploit regions where regulations either don’t exist or else are not properly enforced.

Pay lip service to ’research’:  some specialist trips charge a premium with the claim that passengers will contribute to ‘essential research’. In many cases, this is nothing more than a box ticking exercise, as meaningful research is simply not possible by amateurs under these conditions.

Trigger tensions with the local whale watch community:  In most regions, it simply is not practical for in-water tours to co-exist with whale watching.  Local operators, with an obvious interest in protecting the marine wildlife upon whom their livelihoods depend, are understandably angry by what they see as affluent outsiders homing in on their patch during peak season, using smaller, more manoeuvrable boats and pushing in front of local skippers, many of whom are trying to observe the guidelines.

I’ve personally witnessed shouting matches between local Sri Lankan operators who’d received training in responsible vessel handling and were understandably indignant at being barged out of the way by high-end swim tour boats intent on dropping their clients right next to a blue whale!

Off northern Norway too, there’s always the potential for tension between whale watch operators and luxury photography/snorkel-with-orca tours.  Norway desperately needs formal whale watch regulations, but in the meantime, many local operators observe the excellent local guidelines endorsed by Visit Tromso. These guidelines strongly recommend against in-water trips and Visit Tromso refuses to promote operators offering them.  

However, there is always the fear that topside operators complying with the guidelines may feel out-competed: they see the potential for big profits and may feel under economic pressure to offer these tours themselves. They also see foreign operators exploiting the fact that snorkelling with whales is not banned in Norwegian waters, as it is in many other regions.

Fail to benefit the local community: These tours are far from cheap - for example, an eight-day trip to dive with orcas off Norway is currently being marketed at a cost of US$6,500 per person, excluding flights. Snorkelling with sperm whales off Dominic costs $7,500 (excluding flights); a similar trip focused on blue whales off Sri Lanka costs an eye-watering $8,360, whilst snorkelling with southern right whales off Patagonia costs $4,950.

Most bespoke tours use foreign tour leaders, booked by overseas travel companies, often using luxury hotel chains and even outsourcing boat hire outside the local region. Quite often, impoverished coastal communities in developing regions will play involuntary host to these groups, yet fail to benefit much economically. It is also telling that genuine local conservation projects rarely benefit much - if at all - from a share of the profits.

Take risks in terms of client safety: often little attempt is made to confirm that clients are proficient in the water. Some trips state that no experience is necessary, yet many encounters take place in deep, dark or freezing waters, where a combination of strong currents or wave action, plus the presence of other vessels in the vicinity, may soon tire an inexperienced swimmer and could lead to panic.

Even in dry suits, the icy Arctic waters off Norway can be dangerous.  Sea conditions can be extreme and orcas are large and fast-moving. Last year, an expert noted: ‘I would say that this phenomenon is starting to be out of control.  And it is terrible to watch.  Some days ago, I came across two snorkellers, 300 metres from their boat.  I barely saw their two black heads in the water, and I could easily have run over them.’  This fear was echoed by a WDC supporter living in Norway who witnessed divers in the semi-darkness, without lights, near a busy harbour mouth and therefore terribly vulnerable to being struck by vessels. Orcas often approach fishing boats and if snorkellers are close by, following the whales, there is a clear risk to their safety especially during short daylight hours in Arctic regions.

Safety is an issue off Sri Lanka too, as blue whales - the largest creature on the planet - are encountered in deep waters off Mirissa to the south, where the continental shelf pinches in close to shore. The whales’ habitat happens to coincide with one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world.  Increasingly, massive sperm whales gathering to mate and socialise in deep waters, miles off Kalpitiya to the northwest, are being targeted by snorkelling tours.

With new trips to ever more exotic locations springing up all the time, it is clear that urgent action needs to be taken. We need to tackle what is fast becoming an over-confident, out of control playground for the rich - with local communities, and of course, the whales and dolphins targeted being the poorer.  Without regulation, especially a prohibition of swim-with-whales tours, I fear this increasingly chaotic situation will escalate.

I hope you’ve read sufficient to persuade you not to be swayed by the marketing around these trips. The respectful way to view whales and dolphins is from a responsibly handled whale watch boat.

[oceantrust01]

Do You Need To Know How To Swim To Scuba Dive?

To experience diving at its fullest, you need to be able to learn how to swim. Non swimmer? Do not be disheartened. Technically, you can still scuba dive even you aren't able to swim. If you can't or can hardly swim, you could attempt scuba diving with a Discover Scuba or some other "try diving" type course. However to become officially certified, you'll need to know how to swim. The world is your oyster as a diver. A certified scuba diver can see much more of the world because water covers more than 71 percent of the planet. Don't dive? Enjoy your 30%! Divers visit exotic locations such as tropical paradises, ancient cenotes, historic shipwrecks, arctic ice, underwater tunnels, and high-altitude lakes. There are countless options for you to enjoy scuba diving. At least once in your life, you should try knowing what it feels like to be an astronaut and float weightlessly around our planet. You might be curious to know how it feels to discover a new experience underwater and thought to yourself “I would love to try that.” That thought process has brought about ingenuity, beauty, and thrill to the world of scuba diving. But before venturing onto this new adventure, you thought to yourself and realized that you don’t know how to swim. Yikes! 🤿Introduction To Scuba Diving If you're like us decades ago, the mere thought of scuba diving makes your palms sweat and your heart rate spike. It's just so darn SCARY! But what if I told you that it's not as bad as you think? In fact, it can be a lot of fun! Scuba diving is a great way to see the world from a different perspective, and it's a lot easier than you might think. So if you're thinking about giving it a try, read on for some tips on how to get started. Certification Course To Scuba Dive To be certified, you'll need to know how to swim to scuba dive, no negotiations. In the open water course, which is where you become a certified diver, there will be a swim test. You'll need to swim unaided for 300 meters, or 200 meters with a mask, fins, and snorkel. The second part of the swimming test will check if you are comfortable in the water and can stay afloat for 10 minutes. Scuba Diving For Non Swimmers The difference between learning how to swim and not learning how to swim before scuba diving is your ability to dive safely. Without the skill or knowledge of how to swim, you will be severely limited during your first experience and cannot get yourself out of danger. You'll be completely reliant on your dive instructor! There will be a lot of restrictions such as only diving to 12 meters during the Discover Scuba course, and also the risk of panicking since you are not comfortable enough under the water. This is because when scuba diving for the first time might bring up emotions such as excitement, fear, anxiety, and amazement all at once, potentially overwhelming you. The first scuba diving experience and breathing underwater for the first time may be thrilling and invigorating for some but downright terrifying for non swimmers. Of course, the wonderful aquatic life would be fascinating no matter what. Nothing beats the beauty of seeing the marine creatures up close. Wouldn't you want to focus on that, instead of worrying about survival? Practice In A Swimming Pool The ocean scares people. We understand. It is vast, powerful, and you are helpless against it. More prevalent than you think is the phobia of the water, or aquaphobia, frequently experienced by non-swimmers. Being in deep water as a non swimmer can obviously have disastrous consequences, and convincing your mind that nothing bad will happen is challenging. Practice using your scuba apparatus above water in a pool, and familiarize yourself with your scuba equipment, so that when you hit the open water, all will be fine. 📜Certification For Swimmers You don't have to be a good swimmer but you'll need to demonstrate that you are one. The certification course is for swimmers who want to learn more about this incredible sport and continue to explore the oceans of the world. It is designed to produce divers who are trained in diving procedures and skills, including safety and emergency procedures. Certified scuba divers can dive with a buddy without a dive professional. Needless to say, you'll need to be able to swim. You can explore more freely under the water and enjoy yourself as you can scuba dive deeper with way more freedom. Learning how to swim can definitely boost your confidence and safety as you know that you are in control of where you are under the water. With the help of scuba diving equipment such as fins, which helps you move around the water much faster, and a BCD (buoyancy control device) that allows you to become neutrally buoyant, your diving experience would be much more enjoyable than if you try to scuba dive without learning how to swim first.  👨‍🏫How To Learn Swimming, Then Scuba Diving For people who are eager enough to learn how to swim and scuba dive, there are a lot of options that you could take. Swimming Lessons Depending on where you live, you can try to hire your own personal dive instructor from a local dive shop that might also be able to offer swimming lessons. Alternatively, many beach vacation destinations also have dedicated swimming instructors. Private classes are more expensive, but they have the benefit of allowing the instructor to focus solely on you. If a personal diving or swimming instructor is too much for your budget you could also try to find some friends or join a group of people to share the experience. If you are really invested in learning how to swim and dive but couldn’t also find a group, you can also try a beach vacation with your family or loved ones and kill two birds with one stone by spending a vacation on a nice beach and also learning some swimming skills. Try to find a buddy with whom you can split the cost, and make it a more fun experience! Obviously, this isn't an option for everyone, but if you want to spoil yourself and can afford it, go ahead, knock yourself out! Learning To Scuba Dive Learning to dive for the first time may make you feel overwhelmed by the amount of information available. But, as with anything, nothing is as difficult as it appears, and you'll quickly discover that you'll have plenty of help along the way - scuba divers are a friendly bunch! Knowledge Development As you may be aware, there is a theoretical component to becoming certified, and getting your hands on the learning materials can seem daunting at first. You'll have theory lessons potentially from a book or video before progressing into diving in a swimming pool. Related Content: The most important scuba diving rules to know in Confined Water You'll have your confined water sessions after you've gone over the knowledge development, where you get your first shot at setting up equipment and going through some vital skills underwater in a safe environment. Everyone has a different learning curve, and your instructor should allow you to complete the various skills at your own pace. Some people may have a harder time taking off and putting on their masks, while others may have a harder time with the fin pivot, buoyancy, and other skills. In either case, your instructor will let you take your time and establish your own level of comfort. Learning how to dive is usually based on mastering the skills required rather than set time periods or limits. Each individual will have a different experience than others. Some people will advance and progress more quickly while others may need a little more time in learning a particular skill before proceeding to the next.  Open Water Dives Now that you've finished all your confined water dives, it's time to apply it in the ocean! It'll be your first dive into the underwater world so cherish and enjoy it! After 4 dives (some agencies have 5), you'll then be certified. Yay! 🎓Final Thoughts The underwater world is a magical place, and the instant you dive beneath the surface, you enter a fascinating realm rich in species. Bright corals, vibrant crustaceans, and curious sea creatures abound in the water. Every dive is different, and there's nothing like a new experience for the first time. Diving will always leave you in amazement, whether you're watching sea turtles patrol the reefs, listening to a humpback whale sing, or seeing a whale shark the size of a school bus. Live life to the fullest, head to your nearest dive shop and start learning swimming and scuba diving now Read the full article

[killingmebtob]

Swimming // Im Hyunsik

Author: @killingmebtob // Chi

Title: Swimming

Characters: Hyunsik and Reader

Author’s Note: Listen to Hyunsik’s Swimming

Summary: Hyunsik met the mermaid.

—

Your name: submit What is this?

—

One day, while I was diving in the middle of the sea, I met a mermaid. And I fell in love with her.

Hyunsik took a deep breath and welcomed the sea breeze as he stood in the balcony of his hotel room. He looked from left to right and absorbed the beauty of the sea.

He was glad that he finally agreed to his boss to take this vacation. He has been working non-stop for over six months for the largest project that their company acquired.

He would always say to his boss that he will take the vacation once the project is done. So, the moment they received a notification that everything was successful, he immediately booked a flight to this island and packed his bags.

He had always loved the sea. When he was young, his father would take both him and his brother to the sea near their family house. They would play all day, picking seashells and running on the sand.

When he grew up, he even took diving lessons as he wanted to explore the sea. He loved how unpredictable the sea is. How sometimes it is so strong that it can sink ships, and sometimes it is so gentle that it nurtures the creatures living in it.

//

Hyunsik rented a boat as he decided to take a dive that afternoon and explore the wonders of that sea.

He was offered assistance but he declined as he wanted to just relax and take his time. And besides, he was a professional diver; he could take care of himself.

He asked around for good diving spots and he was not disappointed as the locals are very friendly and even told him the secret spots where the marine life is well preserved.

He picked the one spot he was told that has the best view. He was told that it was on the left side of the Island, near where the forest is. It is far away from the busy resort and it is untouched.

It took him ten minutes to get to the spot. He was also trained to navigate in the seas so this was not a problem for him.

He anchored the boat a few feet away from the diving spot to make sure that everything under will remain unharmed.

The scenery was breathtakingly beautiful. More than what he expected it to be,

Vibrant and pleasant colors are splashed all over the place. Creatures, big and small, are everywhere.

He explored every corner but made sure that he will just appreciate with his eyes. He did his best to not disturb the marine life.

He was busy admiring the scenery when a sudden pain shot up from his left leg. He felt the muscles of his calf and the toes on his feet tense and stiffen.

He tried to shake off the feeling but he can’t move it.

Panic started to build inside him. He moved his arms and tried to swim up the water and his weight was pulling him down.

The air in his lungs started to run out. His instinct told him to not open his mouth but his whole body is urging him to breathe. He felt like his eyes are going to pop out if he spend another second holding his breath. His whole body gave up causing his mouth to open. Salty water came flooding in, burning his lungs.

A few seconds and his body already stopped moving. He was still conscious but he cannot move.

Is this how he’s going to die?

He was facing upwards to the surface of the sea when he saw a shadow coming to him.

A fish? But it’s bigger than an ordinary fish.

There’s a big tail and a pair of… arms?

The creature swam to him and as it came close, he realized that it was a woman, but her lower body has the tail of a fish!

The creature wrapped its arm around his waist and swam up to the surface.

As they were gradually going up, he looked at the creatures face.

And that was the last thing he saw before everything turned black.

//

Two days passed since he almost died. He still can’t get what he saw out of his mind.

He woke up in the hospital after being unconscious for a whole day. He was told that someone called the ambulance and they found him in his boat near the shore, wrapped in blankets.

Everything was a puzzle for him. But the biggest question is: did he really see a mermaid?

He paced around his hotel room as he thought of what happened and he tried to recall what he saw.

Part of him says that he is just hallucinating. He was near death and his mind might’ve been playing tricks on him.

When he got tired of thinking, he decided to walk outside to get some fresh air.

While outside, he had the urge to ask the locals if there are tales of mermaids in the island.

He almost smacked himself. Of course there is! Where there is an island, there’s always going to be tales like that.

He decided to just put aside those thoughts and enjoy his vacation.

He visited shops and restaurants. Taking pictures of the place.

One of the locals said that there will be a special show in the afternoon at the waterpark. He got curious so he went to the park to buy tickets.

The said park is built on the east side of the Island. A huge building was built on top of the rocks. They were instructed to go inside and down an elevator taking them to an aquarium.

They are looking directly at the bottom of the vast sea.

Creatures roamed behind the glass for everyone to see.

He suddenly remembered the feeling he had two days ago when he almost drowned and died. Being there felt like he was diving again.

Cold sweat started to form on his forehead and he felt short of breathe.

He was about to head back to the elevator and up to the ground again when he heard the people clapping.

The sound of amusement and amazement filled the whole place.

He turned around to see what everyone was looking at and saw that behind the glass are two dolphins playing around.

Wait no.

It’s just one dolphin. Coz the other one has arms.

He stepped closer and felt like his heart dropped to the floor.

There in front of him is a mermaid playing with the dolphin.

Can everyone see it?

He looked around. Everyone seemed to enjoy the sight.

He looked closer to the mermaid and felt a sudden feeling.

He thought hard.

Memories came flooding in like water.

That face. That face belonged to the mermaid who saved him!

“She’s amazing, right?” a voice suddenly said from behind him. He turned around and saw an old man who looked like a tourist. The man looked at him as if waiting for a response.

“Who is she?” Hyunsik asked.

“A mermaid of course!” the man said.

Hyunsik’s brows furrowed. Suddenly, the old man laughed.

“I’m just kidding.” he joking slapped the younger man’s back. “That’s (Y/N). She’s a very good swimmer. The sea loves her, even the creatures. She performs here as a mermaid to entertain the tourists.”

Hyunsik almost punched himself. How can he, a grown up man, believe that mermaids exist?

He laughed in relief. He just spent a lot of time thinking about a nonexistent mermaid.

He watched as she performed underwater. Gracefully moving even with the tail attached to her. She never failed to flash a huge smile to the audience.

Looking at her is like looking at a painting in a museum. Every move she made conveys emotions and grace.

Hyunsik finished the whole show and waited for the mermaid to finally have legs.

After an hour  of waiting, the mermaid came out.

She was wearing a simple ripped t-shirt and acid washed, denim shorts. Her long hair, which is obviously just towel dried, were bundled on top of her head in a messy bun.

“H-hi.” Hyunsik said as he approached her.

She looked surprised and confused at the same time. From up close, he saw that her skin is tanned. Obviously because of spending a lot of time in the sea.

“My name is Hyunsik.” He said, offering his hand.

She hesitated for a bit. But at the end, she still took it and smiled.

Hyunsik felt a sigh of relief. But he can still see that she is confused. Of course, she will be! An unknown man just approached her.

“I’m not a bad guy.” He said, but somehow he felt like it made him look more suspicious.

He thought to himself, Why am I acting like a dork?!

“D-do you still remember me?” Hyunsik said.

She thought for a while, looking at his face and trying to search her memory.

Her face suddenly brighten up when she realized.

“Oh! You’re that stupid guy!” her warm voice filled with excitement almost made him melt until he realized what she just said.

“Excuse me?” Hyunsik said, still taken aback.

“Oh, I’m sorry.” She said, putting her hand on her mouth and slightly slapping it. “I didn’t mean for it to.. well.. uhmm.. I’m really sorry.” She looked at him shyly.

“It’s okay.” Hyunsik said. But it’s not okay. Why does she think he is stupid?

“I’m really sorry. It’s just that.. what were you even thinking? Diving without any diving equipment on? And in the middle of the sea?! That’s dangerous.” She said.

He wanted to defend himself and tell her that he’s a professional diver, but that wouldn’t change anything. He drowned and she saved him, that’s what matters.

With that, Hyunsik invited her for dinner, as a “Thank You” gesture since she saved him. (Y/N) hesitated at first as he was still a stranger, but he convinced her at the end.

They talked about lots of things. He found out that she was born in  the island and she had been swimming even before she learned how to walk. She told him how her ancestors were the original tribesmen in the island. Their tribe are those that believes in the ocean and treats it as their Goddess. That culture never left some of the families in the island. Many of them still does the rituals passed down by the ancestors.

They got to know each other and it didn’t even take long for them to get comfortable with each other.

A simple dinner led to (Y/N) asking Hyunsik if he would like to take a walk with her by the shore in the middle of the night.

“Take off your shoes.” She said as she took hers off and dipped her feet in the cold sea water.

Hyunsik followed her and did the same too.

He watched as she looked up to the moon, closed her eyes, put her arms up, and breathed deeply.

Her hair which is now hanging loosely behind her looked like black water falls, falling in waves to her back..

The light of the moon complimented the features of her face.

To Hyunsik, more than a mermaid, she looks like a Goddess who came to the earth to bless his soul.

He was enamored by her beauty and he can’t explain it.

“Beautiful.” He uttered the words before thinking.

(Y/N) opened her eyes with a smile and looked at him. “Yes, the sea is really beautiful at night.”

Hyunsik just smiled and didn’t correct her.

“Can I ask you something?” he suddenly said.

She faced him and gave him her full attention. “Sure, what is it?”

“That day when you saved me, you were swimming in the sea while wearing your tail, right?”

She nodded. “Yes.”

“Isn’t that dangerous? I mean, I, who had no restrictions on my feet drowned, what more someone whose feet are tied inside the tail.”

She smiled. It’s as if she was asked the same question a lot of times. “When I am swimming in the sea,” she started. “I feel like I am one with it. I trust it like how a child trusts its mother. If, by any chance, the sea decided to claim me, I will humbly abide.”

She talked mysteriously, but to Hyunsik, it just added to her charm.

//

As he spent more day with (Y/N), Hyunsik felt more attached to her. The little things she did are wonders to him. And before he knew it, he already fell for her.

But somehow, he never got the courage to confess to her.

Maybe because deep inside he knows that he will soon leave and he can never ask her to come with him. She belonged to this Island as he belonged to the city.

This thought broke his heart.

“I’m leaving tomorrow.” Hyunsik finally said while they were having dinner together.

He waited for her to tell him to stay. Just a word from her and he will drop everything that he has and he will move to the island to be with her.

But instead, her face was calm.

She never said anything. She just smiled and changed the topic.

The night grew darker and he asked her for a final dance in the restaurant where they are at.

He memorized each and every detail of her that night.

//

The morning came and she did not show up to say goodbye to him.

Although it hurts, he just took a deep breath and forced a smile.

It was a wonderful dream, he thought as he sat inside the plane, looking outside the window to the great big ocean.

Hyunsik went on with his life. He worked until he got tired so that he won’t have any time to think about her.

Before he knew it, a month has already passed.

He was too busy at work that he did not even realize the state his apartment is in. Everything’s a mess.

He decided that it was time to move on finally.

He spent the entire day cleaning and putting things in order. Thinking that he should also put his life in order.

As he was cleaning his room, he noticed the jacket that he was wearing on their last night together. It was crumpled in one corner of the room. Unwashed and might still have sand in its pockets. When he last wore that, he held (Y/N) in his arms to dance. Does it still have traces of her?

He took the jacket and was going to put it in the laundry when something fell out of the pocket.

He picked it up and saw that it is a crumpled piece of paper.

He opened it and his tears fell as he read what was inside.

The ocean gave me you. You who brought happiness in my life in the short time that we are together. And now, it’s also the ocean who will take you from me. You are like a dream. I never wanted to wake up but I had to face reality.

But if I am going to listen to my heart, I would like to be selfish at least once in my life and ask you to stay.

I love you. Please don’t go.

(Y/N)

[explorers-camille]

Share 12 dive knowledge and my July

👩1. What is the difference between snorkeling and deep diving?

Snorkeling is floating on the surface of the water using simple diving equipment such as a mirror, snorkel and fins. The breathing tube

The ends remain above the water to provide air.

Deep diving (scuba diving) involves diving with high-pressure air cylinders on your back and buoyancy control gear

Deeper (typically 5-40 m) sea floor. Deep diving also includes experience diving and certified diving.

👩1.シュノーケリングとディープダイビングの違いは何ですか？ シュノーケリングとは、鏡やシュノーケル、フィンなどの簡単なダイビング用品を水面に浮かべて使用することです。 シュノーケルの は、空気を供給するために水面に残されます。 ディープダイビング（スキューバダイビング）とは、高圧ボンベと浮力調整装置を背負って潜ることである より深く（通常は5～40メートル）底まで。 また、ディープダイビングには、体験ダイビングと認定ダイビングがあります。

👩2. Why do I need a diving license?

In the process of textual research, in addition to learning theoretical knowledge, we also need to carry out practical operations in the sea, so as to cope with emergencies freely

Conditions. You can still participate in experience diving activities without a scuba license, but due to lack of practice,

For safety reasons, participants cannot swim by themselves and must be carried by an instructor. With a scuba license, but

To fly more freely in the underwater world, to explore and enjoy the fun of diving. You can go down to 18 meters or more

Deep under the sea, enjoy a different view.

👩2.なぜダイビングライセンスが必要なのですか？ 文字情報の研究では、理論的な知識を学ぶだけでなく、予期せぬ事態に対応するために海上での実習が必要になります。 ダイビングライセンスがなくても体験ダイビングに参加することは可能ですが、練習不足のために 安全上の理由から、参加者は一人で泳ぐことはできず、インストラクターの引率が必要となります。 スキューバライセンスを取得すると、水中世界をより自由に飛び回り、ダイビングを探求し、楽しむことができます。 水深18m以上の水中に潜り、いつもと違う景色を楽しむことができます。

👩3. What is an Open Water Certificate? What is an AOW card?

OW = Open Water Diver and is the most basic introductory diving certification.

It is the most popular certification issued by PADI in China and is the world's largest

scuba diving certification.

AOW = Advanced Open Water Diver, learning additional training on top of the OW

Training in 5 very practical diving skills.

👩3.オープンウォーター・サーティフィケートとは何ですか？ AOWカードとは何ですか？ OW＝Open Water Diver（オープン・ウォーター・ダイバー）の略で、ダイビング入門の最も基本的な資格です。 中国でPADIが発行する最もポピュラーな資格であり、世界最大の スキューバダイビングの認定を受けています。 AOW＝アドバンスド・オープン・ウォーター・ダイバー、OWに加えて追加のトレーニングを学ぶ 5つの実用的なダイビングスキルのトレーニング。

👩4. can i get a scuba licence?

There are only a few categories of people who are not suitable for a scuba license, including：

1) are afraid of the water, are naturally afraid of the water and will be nervous going into the water, which cannot be overcome after training

2) People with a history of heart disease, high blood pressure, ear disease, chest and respiratory disease, haemophilia, etc

3) Children under the age of 10

👩4. スキューバのライセンスを取得できますか？ スキューバのライセンスを取得するのに適していない人は、以下のようないくつかのカテゴリーに限られています。 1）は、水が怖くて当然で、水に入ると緊張してしまい、トレーニングしても克服できません 2）心臓病、高血圧、耳の病気、胸や呼吸器の病気、血友病などの既往歴のある方 3) 10歳未満のお子様

👩5. I can't swim, can I learn to dive?

Yes, not knowing how to swim does not affect the diving course. PADI requires the ability to swim 200m or snorkel 300m with a mask, snorkel and flippers, or to float for 10 minutes, which is not a problem for most people. A small number of people in the water tend to

get nervous and panic-stricken and find it difficult to complete the course, so if you have enough time you can learn to swim first to overcome

fear of the water and overcome mental barriers, thus opening the door to the fascinating world of the sea. The aim of the swim test is not to see if you are a good swimmer, there are no strict requirements on how to swim and it is easy to do.

Even dog paddling is possible. Most people can pass.

👩5.泳げないのですが、ダイビングができるようになりますか？ はい、泳げなくてもダイビングコースに影響はありません。 PADIでは、マスク、シュノーケル、フリッパーを使って200m泳ぐか、300mシュノーケルするか、10分間浮くことができる能力が必要とされていますが、これはほとんどの人にとって問題のないことです。 水の中の少数の人は、傾向として 緊張したり、パニックになったりして、コースを修了することが難しいので、時間に余裕があれば、まず泳げるようになって克服してください。 水への恐怖心や心の壁を乗り越えて、魅力的な海の世界への扉を開きます。水泳テストの目的は、泳ぎが上手いかどうかを見ることではなく、泳ぎ方に厳しい条件はなく、簡単にできるものです。 犬のパドリングも可能です。 ほとんどの人が合格できます

👩6. I don't have enough time in my holiday to get my certificate. How long does it take?

The PADI certification usually takes 4 days, divided into theory study, calm water (pool) practice and 4 open water practice and exams. the AOW takes 2 days and you need to do 5 specialty courses including underwater navigation and deep diving. After the course you stay another day before you can take the flight as you need enough time

👩6.休日に十分な時間が取れないので、証明書を取得できない。 どのくらいの時間がかかりますか？ PADIの認定には通常4日間を要し、理論学習、静水（プール）実習、4つのオープンウォーター実習と試験に分けられます。AOWには2日間が必要で、水中ナビゲーションやディープダイビングなど5つの専門コースを行う必要があります。 コース終了後、飛行機に乗るためには十分な時間が必要なため、もう1日滞在します

👩7. I have diving experience but my eardrums can't take it, can I fix it?

Of course you can! The instructor will teach you how to "balance the pressure in your ears" underwater: pinch your nose and blow it to let the air out, and you'll relieve the pressure in your ears. Try this the next time you fly.

If you can't do it, don't be afraid. There are other ways to balance the pressure in your ears.

👩7.ダイビングの経験はあるが、鼓膜が耐えられない、治せるか？ もちろんです。インストラクターは、水中で「耳の中の圧力のバランスをとる」方法を教えてくれます。鼻をつまんで息を吹きかけて空気を出すと、耳の中の圧力が緩和されます。 次に飛行機に乗るときに試してみてください。 できなくても、怖くない。 耳の中の圧力のバランスをとる方法は他にもあります

👩8. Great white sharks in the movies are scary. Will I be attacked by sharks or other animals when I dive?

The movies are exaggerated. More people die each year from bee stings and from being stoned under coconut trees than from sharks, so take heart. Divers are lucky to see sharks!

👩8.映画に出てくるホホジロザメは怖い。 ダイビングでサメなどに襲われることはありませんか？ 映画は誇張されています。 蜂に刺されたり、ココナッツの木の下で石を投げられたりして亡くなる人の数は、サメで亡くなる人の数よりも多いのですから、心してください。 サメを見ることができるダイバーは幸運です

👩9. Can I dive with near-sighted eyes? Can I wear contact lenses while diving?

Nearsighted people can dive and wear contact lenses while diving. Nearsighted people can also wear mirrors with some strength if they do not wear contact lenses, and dive shops offer rental services.

👩9.近視の目でもダイビングできますか？ ダイビング中にコンタクトレンズを装着できますか？ 近視の方でもダイビングはできますし、ダイビング中にコンタクトレンズを装着することも可能です。 近視の方でも、コンタクトレンズをしていなければ、ある程度の強度で鏡を装着することができ、ダイビングショップではレンタルも行っています

👩10. Can women go into the water during their menstruation?

If you happen to be on your period and feel like diving, you can use a tampon.

But make sure you keep warm and don't catch a chill after you get in the water!

👩10.女性は月経中に水に入ってもいいの？ たまたま生理中で潜りたくなったときは、タンポンを使うといいでしょう。 しかし、水に入った後に寒さを感じないように、体を温めてくださいね

👩11. Can I take my child to learn to dive?

The minimum age for OW is 10 years old and they can obtain their Junior Open Water Diver certification. Until the age of 10, classes are only about simple theory and pool skills. You can apply to upgrade your adult certificate or take a more advanced adult course at the age of 15

👩11.子供をダイビングのレッスンに連れて行ってもいいですか？ OWの対象年齢は10歳以上で、ジュニア・オープン・ウォーター・ダイバーの資格を取得することができます。 10歳までの授業は、簡単な理論とプールのスキルを学ぶだけです。 15歳になると、大人のサーティフィケートをアップグレードしたり、より高度な大人のコースに申し込むことができます

👩12. Can people in their 60s learn to dive?

Anyone over the age of 10 and in good health can learn to dive. But before you can go in, you have to register for health care

If you have any medical conditions that pose a risk in diving (e.g. high blood pressure heart disease etc.) you will need a doctor's approval to dive.

👩12.60代でもダイ��ングができるようになりますか？ 10歳以上の健康な方であれば、どなたでもダイビングを学ぶことができます。 しかし、入る前に健康管理のための登録が必要です ダイビングに危険を及ぼす持病（高血圧、心臓病など）をお持ちの方は、医師の許可が必要です

The moment you enter the water you feel like you're in another world, another planet!👀🤠😲 Watching the bubbles slowly rise up in the water is indescribably fantastic and beautiful!\^o^/ Seeing the creatures in the ocean makes you love the earth more and want to protect the creatures in the ocean more!🤩🤩🤩 Once kneeling on the sand to do exercises, look at the sunlight overhead through the water, suddenly have a sense of security, thinking Ha ha I hide here you can not find me. What a strange feeling!😁😎 Practice good neutral buoyancy, can be arbitrarily suspended in the water free control up and down, to overcome the constraints of gravity, feel like flying a lot of underwater scenery may have seen before on television, magazines and videos, but how not to see with their own eyes to the shock! For example, see the clownfish couple hatching eggs on the rock, see me a stranger close to a very nervous look of her child, sigh the world's motherly love is really common; and see the seahorse with a tail wrapped around a log in the waves floating around, the first time I think the seahorse actually so cute! There is a big fault, from 5 meters deep to swim a few steps is ten thousand feet abyss, see the jack fish storm, that scene is too shocking!

[eene-fangirl]

Jaws-ED [An Ed, Edd n Eddy Fanfiction]

NOTE: Can anybody who reads this please leave a review or suggestions. I am putting it into my senior thesis. Thank you and enjoy reading!

“Are you sure about this, Eddy?” Edd asked once more when the boat stopped in the middle of a quiet part of the ocean. They were far away from Amity Beach. No civilization or other boats in sight.

Eddy shut off the motor and dipped to the floor of the boat where Edd was seated. “We’re where nobody can remotely see us. And I’ve hardly seen you this whole vacation,” Eddy whined, rubbing his hand soothingly up and down Edd’s arm.

“You saw me this morning, Eddy,” Edd remarked, furring up his eyebrow

“Yeah, but could I do this?” Eddy gifted Edd with a long awaited kiss. Before Edd could argue he wrapped his arms around the man. They’d been visiting May’s uncle on Amity Beach for the week. Edd and Eddy were involved in constant activities such as exploring the town, spending a whole day at a marine park watching divers feed fish, and even a dance the night before. The lovers hardly spent one moment to themselves. That morning when Ed told Eddy they could have a day to themselves Eddy didn’t hesitate to bring Edd on a little ocean adventure.

“Are you sure we had permission to use this boat?” Edd panted upon the long fervent kiss.

“As long as we get it back before we’re missed.”

Eddy made sure Edd was fully distracted so a rant wouldn’t interrupt their moment.

Eddy took the boat so far into the ocean that they could hardly see a spot of land. No other boats or islands were around. Just the ocean bobbing up and down causing ripples and waves. Nothing obstructed the deep blue oceans current.

All except a fin swimming towards the lovers.

“Guess what?” Eddy whispered as he stood up letting Edd’s arms slide off his shoulders.

“What?” Edd impatiently asked. He began to fiddle with his own shirt buttons.

“I brought a blanket.”

It didn’t take long for the mood to change when something banged against the boat. The force was so great that Eddy was knocked off his feet falling into the water. None of them had time to think what was happening as the boat was rowing itself across the ocean.

What they were blind to was a shark fin which caught itself on the motor. The boat jostled around nearly capsizing.

Then everything was still as if nothing ever happened. Edd took everything in slowly sitting back up. His heart pounded not at the sudden movement but at the realization that he was alone. Edd turned his head in all different directions until he found Eddy floating in the ocean. They were fifty feet away from one another.

“Eddy, are you alright?” Edd called out.

“Yeah, fine. What the hell was that?” Eddy regained his composure and started swimming towards the boat. “Start the motor!” It wasn’t like he was hurt. He felt too distracted to swim.

Edd turned the motor. It was hanging half on its hinges. The cages that protected the wheels were bent out of shape. Oh dear, was it able to work?

Before he could test it an object caught his eye on the opposite side of the boat.

A fin.

Edd’s heart stopped. He couldn’t form words. Edd darted to the other side, clenching his hands against the boat.

“EDDY, SWIM! IT’S A SHARK! SWIM!”

Fear snapped in Eddy’s mind at the mention of a shark. He had no idea where it was. Behind, coming from the side… in front? Eddy thought Edd might be playing a joke on him. That theory crossed his mind in a second knowing Edd would never joke about something so crucial as this.

Edd turned back around.

The sharks fin was gone.

No, it wouldn’t disappear. It was lurking under the water. Somewhere…

“SWIM FAST, EDDY! HURRY!” The hysteria in Edd’s voice grew. His heart was pounding as the sweat drenched his face.

Eddy had no idea how he became the champion swimmer, but he made it to the boat quicker than he expected. Edd’s breath slowly returned to its normal breathing when he touched Eddy’s hand to pull him into the boat.

“Quite the excer…”

Eddy screamed out in pain being jerked back into the water.

The shark was there. It had Eddy’s whole leg slowly biting through the skin.

In an instant Edd smashed a paddle board over the sharks head distracting it.

Eddy pulled himself into the boat falling against the floor. His head felt heavy. Edd was there touching his face mouthing words he had trouble reading. His mind drifted, his eyes were heavy wanting to fall asleep. The stinging pain in his leg was what made Eddy’s come back.

“Eddy, speak to me, please, speak to me! Are you alright?!” Edd was shouting. His face was panic stricken as he whaled and screamed. At first it was Eddy’s name, but then Edd was bellowing different sentences. Once Eddy could see straight he noticed the familiar fin coming towards the boat and banging it once more.

“Stop screaming!” Eddy sat up covering his boyfriend's mouth. The sun felt so hot that he dipped his head down. He also put his head on Edd’s shoulder in both reassurance and to rest it so he wouldn’t pass out from the pain. “Keep quiet and it will go away.”

Edd emitted little whimpers as they watched the sharks fin swim in circles around their boat.

The smell of blood grew stronger. Eddy looked down to finally notice the shape his leg was in.

The sharks fin disappeared into the water again. Edd and Eddy were finally able to move, but they were still cautious of what was out there.

Edd and Eddy looked at the sight of Eddy’s leg. His pant leg was ripped revealing the plethora of teeth marks which severed holes through his leg. Noticing how much blood he already lost made Eddy feel even more dizzy. His stomach also felt queasy. He wanted to cry, scream, call for someone. But, no, that’s hat the shark wanted.

“Double Dee…” Edd was tossing his head all around mimicking a meerkat who was looking out for danger. Edd jumped out of his skin when Eddy touched his skin. His pale face was drenched with tears.

“Double Dee, listen to me…”

“The-The S-Shark….wh-where…” he stuttered.

“Forget the shark and listen to me!” Eddy commanded gently holding his face. “You need to help me wrap my leg up. I’ve seen you do this before and I need your help. We’ll find a way to get back to the beach, I promise. Right now you need to calm down.”

Edd listened slowly calming down and ripping the blanket in half. They were lucky to have brought it along seeing that there was nothing else that would have bandaged Eddy’s leg.

Eddy bit the other half of the blanket when pressure was held against his leg. His mouth felt fry. His head was pounding. That wanting to sleep wouldn’t go away. The most unbearable wave of pain surged through his body at the slightest movement.

Edd gasped once more holding back the scream which kicked at his throat.

The fin was back. It continued to loom around them dipping up and down from the ocean.

Eddy sat up hugging Edd close. He wrapped them together in the other half of the blanket. Edd trembled whimpering nonsensical things about the shark. He was scared over the sight of blood along with the nightmare thought that if he hadn’t had the paddle Eddy may have been eaten in front of him leaving Edd alone and defenseless in the middle of an ocean.

“Shh,” Eddy comforted. Their heads touched as they held one another rocking back and forth from the waves that lightly hit against the boat. They’d jump if there was ever a big wave. It sounded as if it were the shark trying to overturn the boat again.

“I want to go home…” Edd whimpered.

“We will.”

Eddy had no idea if they were going to. How long could he force himself to stay conscious? nobody knew they were out here. Eddy felt awful that he took Edd out here. There were hundreds of other activities they could have done in the town. When was he ever going to learn? He still brought his friends into unneeded danger. This was the worst. He was hurt and Edd was a hysterical mess.

Edd still cried thinking he could see the shark even when it wasn’t there.

They were shaking. The breeze picked up. Eddy could see the sun starting to dip down. They had no idea what time it was. Eddy felt weaker. The bandage was dripping wet.

Eddy had an idea.

“‘The itsy bitsy spider went up the water spout,’” Eddy began to sing in a hoarse voice. “’Down came the rain and,’ … can you sing with me, Edd? Help me out.” Eddy gently whispered.

“…w-washed the spider out…” Edd slowly joined in as they kept singing. They continued to sing the song over and over until the sound of a motor caught their ears.

“Over here! Help us, please! Help!” They shouted.

It was Ed and May. Oh, what luck!

The excitement vanished from Ed and May’s faces when they caught sight of Edd and Eddy. Anchoring their boat close enough to the two Eds, they got out to help them.

“What happened to you guys?” Ed asked when he looked at Eddy’s leg.

May helped Edd stand up. He had such a tight grip on Eddy that they thought he was frozen to him. He was shaking out of his skin so terrible that May needed to scoop him up to take him on to the other boat.

He started sprouting off different words again. It looked as if he was having a seizure as May tried to take hold of him. Then he belted out, “SHAAAAARK!”

May covered her mouth. “Oh no, my uncle was right. How could I have ignored his warning?”

As carefully as possible Eddy was helped onto the boat. He and Edd were right beside one another. Ed sat near to keep the warm with a new blanket as May started up the motors to head back to land.

They were safe.

As Eddy finally drifted off with the happy thought they were safe Eddy interlaced his hand with Edd’s.

[thevagabondvantage]

Have faith. I take these words with me on my way up to the high dive. I feel the floor beneath me change from gentle concrete to strict metal. The smell of chlorine fades as I climb. Higher and higher, my toes curl with uneasiness if I look down. I’ve done this before, and I will certainly do it again.

Be in the moment. Twenty-five metres above the surface; nothing can bother me now. The things I found funny just moments below aren’t funny anymore. All the noise melts away. The real world looks so far away from such heights - a distance I’ve grown to love. My shoulders push back with deep urgency. My body knows what to do, I just have to let it. 

Trust in what you know. The key to a great dive is mental preparation and physical relaxation. Despite my need for absolute control, I have to let go and just let it happen. I straighten my back. Is it always this stiff right before a plunge? Hopes high and head forward, I relax my ankles, bend my knees, and let gravity decide.

-----

Everything strikes into pure silence the minute I make contact with the water. My favorite place in the world is twenty-five metres below the surface. For just a moment, I am at complete peace with all existence. The water doesn’t judge me or give me disapproving expressions. Anxiety and expectation are a world away; the only pressure I can sense is water pressure.

Air; you’ve never truly breathed until you’ve taken your first breath after a dive. Maybe the water knocks the air out of my lungs, or maybe I routinely expel it all just before impact. Regardless, the replenishment is better than sex! Or so I’ve been told…

Back on the land of concrete and opinions, I’m greeted by a towel and some Powerade. There’s still water trapped in my left ear, which is a telltale sign of a great dive. I tilt my head and let the excess water drain. I tossle the towel through my hair and let it hang from my shoulders. Two sips of Powerade later, I’ve caught my breath and feel like a new man. 

“Daniel Rogers,” a voice booms from behind me. “You’re something, kid. You know that?” Coach Jennings cusps his overly-dominant hand over my shoulder. “To think that the scrawny, hyperactive ten year old I met eight years ago would turn out to be my best diver…” His smile shared every bit of his pride. Jennings is a great coach! He took me under his wing back when I could barely finish a fifty yard freestyle and has been a second father to me. He and his wife, Alison, don’t have any kids of their own, so they make it a habit to “adopt” his swimmers and her tennis players.

“Last meet of the year! How do you feel?” We’d found a seat near the scoring room. I made an “I’m gonna barf” face in response, we both chuckled. Coach liked to give me post-practice/pre-meet pep talks, and - today - I needed it. “You’re gonna kill it, Rogers! And who knows? Some recruiters may be in the stands tonight,” he assured me . I’d already been scouted by four different universities, but none were the right fit quite yet.

“You’re keeping something from me, and I don’t like it,” I teased back. Coach grinned with smug satisfaction. 

“What would you do if I told you Notre Dame was coming tonight?” Holy shit.

“For me?!”

“And for Diaz! But mainly for you.” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “Well, what do you think?” I had a lot of thoughts, but nothing that needed to be said aloud.

“I think I need a shower.” I grabbed my Powerade and headed for the locker room.

Steam encircles the shower room, censoring anything and everything from the the naked eye. The benches were lined with discarded Speedos - I followed suit. I learned a long time ago that it’s only weird if you make it weird. I don’t have a horrible body. I could use less here and a little more there, but who couldn’t? As far as hardware is concerned, I may not have the most impressive tool, but it certainly gets the job done. The guys who make a spectacle of their equipment usually don’t last more than a season for one reason or another.

After showering and changing, the guys make small talk - ranging anywhere from one recent encounter with a pair of breasts to another encounter with a different pair of breasts. Sometimes we talk about baseball or panic over what the AP Biology assignment was the night before, but it always seems to make its way back to the female anatomy. I never have much to share, but am always down to listen to their “woes of hoes”.

Garrett, Nate, and I take turns playing “soccer mom” in our makeshift carpool - a tradition we started the minute we were allowed to drive. Today, I host us in my grandfather’s truck.

“Notre Dame?!” Nate exclaims.

“Notre Dame, man!” I hit back.

“Notre Damn, son!” Garrett is the worst. “Of course - this can only happen to you. You’re the luckiest guy I know. You turn down UCLA without any good reason and Notre Dame comes running after you. Like I said, Notre Damn... If I’d done that, I’d be stuck at community college for the rest of my life.” Garrett was rushing to copy the last few problems from our math homework.

“Aren’t you nervous?” Nate always asks the right question at the most inconvenient time. It was a damn gift, if you ask me. 

“Not really,” I lied. Truth be told, my stomach had been doing somersaults since Jennings dropped the bomb. I wish he hadn’t told me, but had no control over that, and it was starting to really freak me out.

“Well, I’d be a wreck if Notre Dame wanted to see me stick the landing,” Nate laughed. “Just make sure you remember us mediocres when you go Olympian!” I roll my eyes as we pull into the parking lot. I look at the clock - 8:00 on the dot. I can make or break all of my potential in just ten hours. Try to have that ringing through your mind during a history test - I don’t recommend it.

-----

“On deck - Varsity Men’s High Dive - Rogers, Lyle, and Denton!” Coach’s yell somehow cuts through the sound of a million parents and spectators. Two more events and we’re on. I’ve made it this far, and nothing can hold me back. I look out to the stands to scout for some familiar faces, that always calms me down. 

The first person I see is Becca, one of my exes, which has the reverse effect. She gave me a look so cold it could freeze the equator. I shrug it off and keep searching. I make eye contact with a cute blonde. She smiles and waves excitedly, which catches me by surprise. I start to wave back, but quickly realize she wasn’t waving at me in the first place. Chris Denton, standing a couple of feet to my left, waves back at her, smiling like a dog. I hope and pray it’s one of his sisters. Last, I finally see my mom. She came prepared with a camera and foam finger. Embarrassing as she may be, I can never accuse her of being anything other than supportive. 

I wish the scout from Notre Dame would have had a huge sign behind him so I could find him. Or at least a Notre Dame hat! Not knowing was so nerve-racking. There were a lot of people I didn’t recognize, so he could be anybody. For all I know, he could actually be a she! 

Garrett and Nate, my next-biggest fans, are on the benches a few yards away. Garrett does a weird dance to make me laugh while Nate gives me a reassuring smile. They’d both won their individual events, so it was up to me to bring the final crown of glory - the high dive. As another set of divers make their way up the steps, my stomach knots.

Coach Jennings must have smelled my insecurity. He cusps his hand over my shoulder in his signature fashion.

“Last swim meet of the season. How you feeling, son?” I wish he hadn’t have called me son.  Any other nickname would have been better. “Shit-brain” would have been easier to hear! I look up at him, fear flaring from my blue eyes. He catches the drift. “Remember, boy, history is written by the victors. You’re the best diver this team has seen. No judge, critic, or university can ever tell you otherwise!” He looks me in the eye, like a father to his son, and delivers a message I will never forgot. “Have faith, be in the moment, and trust in what know.”

The last set of divers emerge from the water. Time has caught up, and it’s time to face reality. My heart races as I try to find my center. I feel as if I were a surgeon with an awfully unsteady hand - one wrong move and I end a life. Whether I like it or not, it’s time; do, or dive.

-----

Have faith. I take these words with me on my way up to the high dive. I feel the floor beneath me change from gentle concrete to strict metal. The smell of chlorine fades as I climb. Higher and higher, my toes curl with uneasiness if I look down. I’ve done this before, and I will certainly do it again.

Be in the moment. Twenty-five metres above the surface; nothing can bother me now. The things I found funny just moments below aren’t funny anymore. All the noise melts away. The real world looks so far away from such heights - a distance I’ve grown to love. My shoulders push back with deep urgency. My body knows what to do, I just have to let it. 

Trust in what you know. The key to a great dive is mental preparation and physical relaxation. Despite my need for absolute control, I have to let go and just let it happen. I straighten my back. Is it always this stiff right before a plunge? Hopes high and head forward, I relax my ankles, bend my knees, and let gravity decide.

[99sshithouse]

Dr. Rocco Jr. Gallavan

Jeff Goldblum

Age : 46

Alias(es): Rocky, RJ

Place of Birth: Dalitica City, USA

Eye & Hair Color: Amber, Dark Brown

Height & Weight: 6'2" | 185lbs

Sex & Gender: Male and Identifies as Such

Orientation: Heterosexual

Marital Status: Single

Personality

Adventure Is Out There, You May Just Have To Swim To Get There

Rocco is a kind, patient, sweet man who is both extremely driven but also very fulfilled just by doing what he loves and being around those he cares about. Rocco always has a smile on his face, a twinkle in his eye, and a general warmth that comes off of him in waves. He is happy to be around people, but also just as content to sit alone and think to himself for a little while. He usually spends time alone whenever he gies back out on the ship, and finds it relatively soothing to be together with only his thoughts and his work. He is loyal to a fault, finding it physically difficult to go behind someone's back or to cheat someone of what they deserve. He secretly hopes the best for everyone, though sometimes being so openly sentimental can cause him problems because he looks soft and that isn't what he should be when apart of the crime world.

He enjoys contributing to history, and finding objects from an old world now passed really has an effect on him. He wants people to learn all the amazing things he does with every new discovery, which is why in his "spare" time, he works at the museum. He loves to see the wonder that passes through people when he explains an art piece or historical object. He has always had a love for art and music. While it's not his profession, he could sit down and talk about music <i>all damn day</i>. He will immerse himself in new styles and artists all the time. He likes everything, old and new, and loves getting new recommendations.

With his age and experience, a sort of pacifist nature has taken over Rocco. He feels most comfortable speaking and talking things out over letting things get violent. Part of it is because he doesn't like to see others in physical pain, but the biggest reason is because he has learned that violence really does breed only more violence. He has taken a lot from his previous experiences how people all effect one another, and he hates to watch people succumb to that feeling. He has learned all too well how much power it makes you feel you have, but how empty it leaves you at the end of the day. He has taken a lot experience from his family. He learned all he knew about kindness and happiness from his mother, but didn't put it into effect until after she had passed away. When he was young, he was always told he had his father's hands and spirit.

Employment

Marine Archeologist | Museum Curator

Half of the year, Rocco works as a curator at DC's local discovery museum, explaining exhibits with a wide variety of knowledge on several different topics. He helps organize when the director can't, and he sets up new tours in his spare time. The other half of the year doing his true passion, underwater archeology. He spends months at a time at sea, pulling up lost artifacts, investigating sunken ships and planes, investigating objects that either can't be pulled up because it's too heavy or because it'll break if a team tried. He has a small bit of notary, and people trust him with the more difficult jobs.

Criminal Specialty:

Smuggling of Artifacts | Black Market Art Sales | Selling Information

The pleasant thing about pulling something old from the ocean that no one has seen for hundreds of years, is that there isn't any real inventory. No honest to goodness guarantee that he'll find all that is missing or even things that might not have been known to be missing at all. That's where Rocco's craft becomes extremely useful. Taking old artifacts, turning around, and selling them is where he makes the most of his money. But if the dive is to retrieve more resent ships or planes, and he happens to find some interesting information somewhere, he'll turn around and sell that too.

Skills & Abilities

Trained Scuba Diver | Able to hold his breath for long periods of time | Excellent Swimmer and Athlete | Intelligent and Passionate in his Field | Doctorate in Marine Archeology as well as Oceanography | Can Captain, Steer, and Fix some boats | Decent Cook | Trained in Several Languages : Fluent in English, Spanish, French, Dutch. Conversational in Swahili, Arabic, Hindi, Samoan, and Portuguese | Religiously watches the weather | Street Fighter

Kind and Patient | The man is a saint. Aside from his dealings in the black market, the guy is more likely to injury himself trying to protect someone than he is actually hurt someone. He's an educator by heart and mind, takes the time to learn about people and help them whenever they need it

Audiophile | You've heard it, he either knows it or will be suddenly very very interested in hearing it. He likes music from all over the world, has an extensive music library, and loves showing people new music.

Pacifist | He prefers a gentle touch to get people to see it his way. Will use a gun if he has too, but he would rather not kill anyone unless there is no other way to handle a situation. Some may see this as a weakness, but he prides himself on not being a rabid animal that kills for no reason.

Experienced Gang Member | Has been in his gang since his teenage years.

Disabilities & Disorders

Greed | The man has been known to spoil the ones he loves and lavish them with gifts, but that is because he has always been money orientated. He can sometimes get too eager or price something he is selling too high to be sold right away.

Nicotine Addict | Usually smells like cigarette smoke. Enjoys a beer everyday to unwind but typically doesn't get drunk.

OCD | Things need to be perfect or else they go wrong. For both of his positions, this statement rings true, but he can sometime nitpick to the point of being unnecessarily stressful on himself and others.

Can get immersed in his work | He does his best to make personal time, but it feels like he is always on and always working.

Past Violent Streak | When he was younger, he wasn't exactly known, but he had a reputation of being stone cold, heartless fighter. The man knew how to throw fists and had an ego about it. He still hears people ask about why he quit while he was walking in his father's footsteps. While he can usually make the situation, he had caused people a lot of pain when he was young and it still bothers him deeply.

Crime

Assault

Charged with assault after getting into a fight with his step-dad and step-brother at the age of nineteen

Illegal Fighting Ring

Spent time in his early twenties, he spent a lot of his time fighting in an illegal ring. People would bet on him or his opponent, so illegal gambling was involved.

Gang Initiation: He had joined the gang under the guidance of his mother, who was a lifetime member. While he does regret not leaving DC as soon as he was eighteen, he has remained loyal to his gang for the last 30 years.

Parents

Janis Gallavan - Mother [Deceased]

Rocco Gallavan - Father [Deceased]

Sid Montello - Step-Father [Deceased]

Siblings

Uri Montello - Step-Brother - Currently resides in Brooklyn, NY

Friends

Plenty. He's been in DC a long time and has collected a lifetime of friends and acquaintances the entire time.

Affiliation | Wolves

[toonatic92]

Xandra Character Profile

Since I can't draw at the moment, character profiles it is. This time, it's Xandra's turn, since she's been a favourite of mine in the past few years.

(TW/CW: Profile text contains references to suicidal depression, violence, injuries and rape, as well as one instance of strong language.)

Full Name: Alexandra Pronunciation of their name: Al-icks-zahn-dra Title: Ms. Nickname(s): Xandra, The Beast of the Marsh

Gender: Cis woman Race: Mixed race (Turkish Cypriot mother, Bulgarian mother) Species: Harpy (Common pochard) Sexuality: Homoromantic Lesbian

Height: 5’8”/1.73m Weight: 12st 1lb/76.7kg Age: 25 (45 in harpy years)

Eye colour(s): Amber Contacts?: No Glasses?: No

Face shape: Heart-shaped, long, angular Describe their eyes: Very large, upturned, bags under Describe their nose: Long, thin, hooked, broken in two places Describe their lips: Full, cupid’s bow mouth, small, bottom lip fuller Ears: Long, thin, pointed, stick out, free lobes

Body build: Average height, muscular, fat, hourglass-shaped, broad shoulders, thick thighs, short body, average length arms, long legs, D-cup breasts Disabilities: Autism, depression Extra extremities: Bird wings, tail, bird legs

Hair colour(s): Dark red-brown with grey streaks Hair length: Long Hair style: High ponytail

Skin/fur colour(s): Medium brown skin, grey and dark brown feathers, dark grey legs Complexion: Medium brown, sensitive skin Patterns/designs: Freckles Scars: Stretchmarks, claw wound scars, bitemark scars, boil scarring on neck and shoulder Birthmarks: None Tattoos: None Piercings: None

Personality snapshot: Angry, depressed hermit Most prominent personality trait: Angry Best traits of their personality: Noble, practical, protective, loyal, kind Worst traits of their personality: Asocial, defensive, angry, violent, self-destructive, bitter, depressed, stubborn

Current faith: Muslim (Sunni Islam) Current superstitions/quirks: TBA

Alignment: True Neutral

Marital status: Single

Occupation: None

Good habits: Protective, loyal, noble, kind Bad habits: Self-destructive, hides feelings, violent temper, over-sensitive, stubborn, inflexible thinking

Powers: Flying, underwater breathing, super strength, sharp teeth and claws Skills: Strong fighter (close/aerial combat), strong swimmer and diver, good at flying, good hunter Hobbies: Fishing, brooding, fighting, swimming, scaring people away

Random facts:

Xandra, like most harpies, is feral and knows only enough words in human languages to tell them to fuck off. Having lived in Greece most of her life, she is more fluent in Greek than in English.

The incident that forced her to flee her home country is not something she’ll ever talk about, but it’s the reason why she secludes herself on the island in the river and the reason why she seems to have given up on life.

When she lived in Greece, Xandra was considered a troublemaker by the local harpies. When she was younger, she regularly fought with the other harpies in her flock and claimed their mates for herself. Her flock finally got fed up with this and chased her away, leaving her broken and betrayed. She settled under a cliff by a river, viciously attacking any harpies or humans who came near, until the incident happened, causing her to flee to Britain.

Xandra now lives on an islet in the middle of a river, that runs through a marshland near the town where Ama and Mickey live. She’s lived there for three years, hiding under a discarded duvet, only coming out to fish and scare away any nosy humans. She’s gained a reputation in the town as an urban legend, the Beast of the Marsh, a horrible winged monster with big orange eyes that kills and eats anyone foolish enough to walk through the marsh at night. This is completely untrue, but Xandra doesn’t really care. It keeps the humans away.

Xandra is a Sunni Muslim because both of her parents were. She didn’t wear a hijab in Greece, but has adopted the practice in Britain. She tries very hard to follow the dress code but she cannot cover her wings, legs or feet because no human clothes will fit over them.