#this is like the fourth time I’ve used this template and I won’t stop it’s somehow always relevant | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

guileheroine · 6 years

Text

wait for the night

part one. a chance encounter with a common young man befalls the crown princess just as a court crisis does, and they both change her life / 11k / ao3

🏰❤️ masami royalty au! (bg irosami)

“Alright, I brought you something too, and it’s not the Ember Island octopus. That won’t be ready until the party tomorrow.” She takes the morning’s sweet from her pocket and slips it into his. “For your lunch break.”

It’s 4am on the junk store rooftop; Asami’s head is swimming in a good way for the first time all day and night. She snaps back to their surroundings when a noise alerts her to the presence of the shopkeeper’s cat, who they find glaring at their backs.

“He knows I’m not supposed to be here,” Mako laughs, glancing back momentarily at its unblinking face.

“Well, neither am I, you’re not so special.” Asami nudges her elbow into his arm, glancing up for the anticipated eye roll. It comes, and so does the arm, around her shoulders.

“Whatever, drink your champagne.”

She smooths the sleeve of his jacket under her hand, shivering in the slight breeze. “Toast,” she sips and announces quietly into the night, feeling the liquid slosh in the thin metal of the can.

“And to what now?” He says, probably rolling his eyes again.

Asami shrugs. “Us.” She isn’t sure if her heart shrinks or grows at the saying aloud; and tries to work it out as she stares coolly ahead. The sea way out on the horizon is still too dark to discern, but the city lights mellow against the bluing sky as she huddles closer. “I wish we could run away.”

Mako is unresponsive for a long moment. Though his grasp around her shoulders betrays nothing, she can practically sense the words hesitating in his mouth, disappearing somewhere between a swallow and a slight cough, before he eventually says, “So, uh. That’s the champagne talking…?”

“Oh, what, am I embarrassing you?” Asami’s turn to laugh, as she removes her hand from his to pull her knees in against the chill. She tilts her face up to shake her hair back, feeling the dull weight of sleep on her brow bone. “Just let me dream for a moment.”

He cracks a smile at last. He withdraws his arm and takes another sip of beer. “Ember Island octopus waiting, and you’re dreaming of me?”

~ PART ONE

Having parked and dismounted her moped, Opal pauses for a moment to brush her hands off on her trousers before speaking.

“Anyway, girls’ night. If you’re still alive after your little date with Lord Longshot or whatever on Sunday -”

“Longyang. Not Sunday, Opal. I have to write this - announcement. The engagement.” Asami’s nose wrinkles of its own accord and she mentally wards off the impending cloud of dread, well practised at it at this point. “I mean I’ve got a template… in my head...” She shakes her head as if to shake the very thought off.

Opal raises a curious brow as they walk together out of the garage. The warden bows his head as they leave and Asami inclines hers politely in return. “Wait, you have to write...? Can’t you just give them a quote or something...”

Asami shrugs. “Everybody wants me to start taking the reins, speaking for myself -”

Her schedule is torture. Her father is ever so smart. Anything public-facing (increasingly, anyone -facing) is delegated to her - for a smooth transition , urges Raiko’s slimy voice in her head. They dress the burden up like a privilege and Asami, with no other options, doesn’t have it in her to resist except nominally to the odd sympathetic ear, in private moments of utter frustration. Giving her father the cold shoulder means only that it’s harder for her to go and argue any of these stifling demands, slid her way easier than ever all of a sudden. A long line of aides, advisers and other courtiers ensure King Hiroshi reaches her all the same. She feels desperately unequipped.

“Show ‘em you have control of the narrative, right...” Opal finishes, clenching her fist, the gesture comical on her sweet face with no genuine ire behind it. “Okay, but why this? It’s... frivolous.”

“I have to be more accessible, too.” Her father - being mired in deadly secrecy having been his downfall - is sort of the roundabout architect of that as well.

Opal rolls her eyes. “Oh, Asami, you weren’t ‘accessible’ the first five times I talked to you. And I got to talk to you . I wish they’d leave you alone.”

Asami shrugs in resignation, her accord unnecessary, implicit, long voiced-out. “The illusion of control,” she says wryly, returning to Opal’s initial comment. “Jiro wants me to meet this lord whatever but he practically handed me a script. Which I’m pretty sure my father wrote. I swear I’d be glad for him to go if -”

If she didn’t have to take his mantle, of course. Opal lays a soft hand on her arm. They stop just on the doorstep of the teahouse on the edge of the Beifong estate. “Look, Asami… I don’t want to sound - pushy. And I’m not saying you haven’t thought about it but… well, have you thought how much of a difference you’re going to make in his shoes…?” She pouts entreatingly. “Bright side, right?”

“Appeal to incurable innocence, I like it,” announces the voice of Bataar Jr at doorway. He pushes in between them to go slump on the divan in the outer parlour.

“Well, I don’t feel innocent,” Asami says as she unties her muddy boots, not in the mood today.

He huffs and they share a tenderly mocking glance.

“It was a compliment, Asami.”

The United Kingdom of Nations had always been in a tug of war between the two ancient powers of whose blood it was constituted, out of which had emerged in defiance an enlightened, enterprising spirit neither offensive like the Fire Nation nor lofty and ancient like the Earth Kingdom.

The first queen was the daughter of the first king, who had been installed by the Fire Lord to take care of a colony secured but longer particularly prized since the exhaustion of its mineral reserves. A century or so later, the second ascended after her brother the King died in the conflict that preceded secession from the Earth Kingdom after a temporary reabsorption. The third queen remained the namesake of Yue Bay after annexing all its islands. A fourth did not exist, yet.

It’s Sunday and Asami has been moved to read history.

And scarcely in its long history has their country had an unmarried regent, is what she (re)discovers poring through the archives in the central library for...

...Inspiration. So she’d like to tell herself, but now she’s sparing only guilty glances to her notepaper, most of her attention sucked into the record books and papers she had spent the afternoon searching out.

The task at hand is simple. The quiet misery it represents, the uncertainty that mounts each time she considers it (the heavy certainty that its completion will symbolise), on the other hand, are enough that two hours in the library have yielded about as many words. Somehow being in here still holds more appeal than facing the Longyang delegation before they leave, though she’ll have to at some point, eventually.

Asami is here to sit and mull, to be frank, which is the closest thing to peace and quiet for her these days. The last of the autumn leaves stick to the domed window in the rain - autumn already.

She’s good at avoiding people. For the most part.

Midnight after the day that her personal hell had broken loose, Asami was finally alone.

Thirty minutes alone with her thoughts almost feels like too many, her hands clenched painfully over the handlebars in the cold; so if not for the terrible risk that her imminent crash represents, it might actually feel welcome.

As it happens, it’s sudden, frightening and very unwelcome. More frightened is the look on this unsuspecting jaywalker's face, and more unwelcome is the bang as his head hits the only street lamp lighting this alley.

“I am so sorry!” Asami dismounts faster than she can think, the image of the figure in the dim light branded on her mind.

She rushes to the man - and she’s the one practically paralysed; steeped to the neck in the panic that hits ruthlessly. Where had her mind gone? Nowhere fast: Lien was right, she was in no state to be driving (well, that was why she had taken her bike. Anyway-)

As she kneels and schools her breath the second jolt of dread reroutes her mind - here is a sure fire way to attract attention. Not the good kind, she hears her father’s retinue of specially vetted PR coaches in her mind, as if there is a good kind.

At least it’s late and dark and fairly empty on this street. Dark enough for her to have missed the shadowy figure. So she consoles herself, and steadies her voice.

“Are you alright?”

Asami reaches tentatively for him. The young man sits up, declining her hand as though he hasn’t even noticed it (she realises he probably hasn’t), rubbing the back of his head where it had made contact with the metal. Asami’s hand curls in the air before her, helpless. The man shakes his head and blinks.

Blinks.

Asami’s heart quails. What are the chances that he would recognise her? He looks young, smart - his uniform tells her he must have to remain... well-versed on current events (her chest roils painfully again, the wound fresh.) She deliberates whether to confess everything right now and have it over with. And meanwhile, he braces himself on his hand, and his eyes leave her face at last.

They go straight down - he’s embarrassed.

“I’m so sorry,” she repeats, a little breathless, feeling her own face colour. Her tentative hand returns, and she sets it gently on his arm this time.

If there had been much irritation on his face, she only catches the last of it. He straightens his spine and his expression, then screws his eyes as if to recover his senses, slightly disoriented. “It’s - it’s okay.”

She extends her hand properly to help him up, willing silently that he would speak more. That he won’t have recognised her face. Won’t go selling some story of being run over by the Princess sneaking around in the middle of the night, sketchy, under cover of dark - well, just like -

There she goes again. Asami refocuses.

He’s tall. She takes her hand from his grip. Closer to the light she finds that it’s a face she knows.

It’s a good in, or a good way to get even before he… realises anything.

“Wait, I recognise you…” His eyes widen just as hers do. “I’m sorry,” she says, for the hundredth time, but this time it’s inquisitive.

“Do you… did you ever play for the Fire Ferrets?” Some of Asami’s agitation settles at the absurd happenstance: this feels slightly less like an accident of pure inconvenience. Her mind scrambles for his name.

He shrugs and rubs his nose. “Uh, yeah.” Then he sticks his hand out, the getsure a little delayed. He clears his throat. Only when he raises his eyes to hers does she notice it’s the first time he has done so since she pulled him up. The light falls awfully favourably on the planes of his face. “I’m Mako.”

Asami’s turn to come back slow. She shakes Mako’s hand. “Asami.” She snatches her hand back, clasping both in front of her chest now. “Mako. Are you - you’re sure you’re alright?”

The vague daze of his response tells her probably no. “Yeah, I’m fine. Thank you.”

“I promise, this isn’t like, a habit of mine…” Asami laughs, out of nowhere, a rush to explain herself (not very well) under his slightly abashed gaze.

He laughs a little too, and smooths the shoulder bag at his side, as if making to leave. “Really? Uh, maybe you should teach me how to ride one of those, you know, to be safe.” She has the distinct impression that jokes are not his forte; but that this isn’t his first attempt today nonetheless. Something makes up for that. She smiles wider. He remains slightly absent.

Asami - relief, concern and the slightest excitement mingling - stops him from leaving with a grip on his forearm again. “Hey, no. Let me get you some water or something. I wanna make it up to you.”

It turns out Officer Mako had been on his way home from a late shift. Many of his shifts were late; he didn’t mind staying back at the precinct for the night shift. Hewas a probending champion, from the world tournament Asami had followed obsessively in her teens. Only her recurrent concern interrupts the incessant questioning once this has been cleared up.

“Asami -” Mako looks her squarely in the eye, the wobbliness of a moment before gone. The grip around her glass tightens as he speaks her name - her name unadorned - for the first time. She has to wonder if it’s such an intimate thing for any one of these others milling around in the garden behind this tavern, crowding it with ghostly breaths. “I promise I’m fine.”

“Anyway, what happened?” She swallows and takes a draw of the peppery tea she had bought herself along with Mako’s, opting wisely against another real drink this weekend. “You guys were amazing.”

Mako shrugs. “Grew up.” He wipes his mouth. “Nah, I figured it was time to get a real job, you know, full time.” His eyebrows flash knowingly. “Bills are year round. So you were quite the probending fan?” His brow arches again.

Asami shakes her smile away. “Why does that surprise you? You hardly know me.”

“I don’t know you,” he says plainly. “And I’m not saying it does, you just seem…” He rubs the back of his head where he had bumped it again, a glance over her person so gentle it feels barely conspicuous; even though she’s waiting for it, open for it - even though they both are vibrantly aware of it. She stiffens a little, in her crisp slacks and her neat suede jacket.

Mako’s eyes fall briefly with his attention (the twitch in his jaw tells her it’s the pain, poor thing) but then as he returns it almost immediately, there’s a smile that turns sheepish. Asami thinks about his gaze on her face, as it rests there, again, long, despite his vague diffidence. She doesn’t know by what miracle he’s failed to recognise her - or if he has - but it’s difficult to disentangle that anxiety from the other one sparking up her stomach.

“Okay, I know that you had more than your fair share of fangirls back in the day,” she says, sukcing her tongue. “Not that I was one of them.”

Mako rolls his eyes. She wishes badly that it were light enough to see his face properly. He changes the subject a little awkwardly. “So what about you? You were in a rush tonight. I know I’m off duty, but I’m pretty sure you were past the speed limit back there.”

She gives him an incredulous look. Alright, he definitely doesn’t know who he’s just threatened to ticket. His question, however, can leave her nothing but sober. “I don’t know…” she tries, frowning.

“You seemed off.”

“I thought you didn’t know me.”

He laughs.

Asami can’t join him. “Well, yeah, bad night.” She picks at a calloused spot of skin on her forefinger with her thumb. Someone’s elbow knocks hers at her side, but she continues to look down.

From the corner of her vision she still registers the slow nod that Mako gives, clearly wondering if he should expect her to continue. She decides a kind stranger is perhaps the best person she could find tonight.

“Um, family problems. My dad, he… he dropped a real bombshell on- on me today. So I’m a little cut up right now. I was distracted.” She shrugs, feeling defiantly noncommittal as soon as she turns her thought fully to the situation, not allowing it to creep up on her again. She takes a long sip of her lukewarm tea.

“Oh. I’m sorry,” Mako says. So laconic. She isn’t deterred by his terseness, but she won’t leave him feeling awkward.

“Yeah. I just... need some time. You definitely don’t have to hear it.” She sighs deeply, giving him a reassuring nod, to which he smiles wryly. “Private drama.” Terribly public private drama. The casual dismissal serves to stamp on it in her mind, like calling it small will make it so. But she’s already gone, back a quarter of the clock, back to her father’s huge study and a sheaf of papers heavy as lead. Her breath is a little short.

“It’s alright, actually,” Mako says suddenly. “My life’s a little short on the drama right now.”

She has to smile at him even as her insides churn. “Well, it’s a pretty big deal. I don’t know what to feel about it, but I’m not happy. And - ” She looks to his eyes for understanding, to know he’s with her so far, and happy to take what she’s dealing. “I’m not sure how it’s all gonna work out right now. My father, he’s not an easy man. He’s not the man I thought.”

It’s not much of a weight off her shoulders but she finds she can breathe easier for the admission.

Mako nods conspicuously. What else can he say? She lets the chatter and the clink of glasses around blur her thought momentarily until he speaks. “That’s… tough. I’m sorry. Is your mom in the picture? Siblings?”

She meets his eyes and shakes her head. “Actually, my mom died a long time ago.”

And he can’t know the particular poignance of that fact to her present agitation: he’s going to see the tears in her eyes and close right up.

Mako’s eyes do jump, but then he takes her hand. “I’m sorry,” for the third, most heartfelt time. And then he says, “I lost my parents, too. I was eight.”

It’s not what she expected. “You did? Oh.” She sets her glass down instantly, her other hand coming up to clasp over the one he has taken. The laughter of a rowdy group behind them flares and she leans in, wanting to shield their moment.

“They were killed by firebenders,” Mako explains; and if he hasn’t long made peace with the fact, it doesn’t show on his face. Asami’s gut twists again.

“...My mother, too.” Should she be amazed? She has to leave it at that, of course, no matter how tempting it is to pour her heart out.

That leaves her with his hand in both of hers. Asami squeezes, takes her hands back and clasps them in front of her. His gaze is light and long and strange again. For a second it practically bares her, but it’s too light for the moment, and too long for the man who she was quite sure was blushing under her gaze a minute ago.

“Are you alright?”

“Just a little dizzy,” Mako admits, finally.

She pushes away the glow that keeps jostling with the heaviness in her chest and brings him back with a grasp on the wrist. “Hey, I think it might be best if we took you to see a doctor, just to be safe. You can hop on my bike.”

She’s concerned about the adrenaline just in case he isn’t all right, so she tells Mako to put her arms around her and close his eyes. That way he can feel the breeze and relax. There’s a night clinic out by the big Four Elements near midtown, not too far from here.

Anyway, she remembers that her history tutor had claimed it unusual, that so few of their rulers had been unmarried. In the Earth Kingdom it was perfectly acceptable for kings at least to keep concubines, though the highest-born of these were effectively queens by another name. Not so different in the Fire Nation, only there the female Fire Lords kept many lovers, too.

The Kingdom of Nations, ever the deviator.

The queens regnant were in fact even fewer and farther between than unmarried regents: just a handful in a millennium, and none since the full departure of the Fire Nation from their lands. Most of them still married young. Asami frowns. The memory of their histories swirl in her mind as she crosses her arms and lays her head over the book.

She casts a weary glance to her notepaper. It isn’t blank, at least: she’d managed to scratch out the date. 13th Day of the Eleventh Month, 178 A.G.Almost a year.

Asami chews her nail.

The doctor turns to her awkwardly, fumbling through half a bow. “Er, Your Highness, Princess.” He clears his throat. “Your bike is waiting outside, if you wouldn’t mind… Back entrance, we don’t want to cause a scene, of course.” He gestures helplessly to the door. Asami assures him on his way as best as she can, practically ushering him out in.

Then she turns her sinking face on Mako.

He looks like he’s about to pass out for real this time.

“Wait, maybe, I think - Asami, I do have a concussion.”

Asami can’t help her burst of laughter. As it passes she comes back to him and softens. Then panics.

“Actually... well, maybe now’s not the best time…” She raises her hands, placating. Mako shoots straight up in his chair, blinking, his face white. Asami winces.

“Wait, you - I -” He closes his eyes and exhales through his nostrils.

Asami almost smiles behind the curled fist fluttering before her nervous mouth. “You don’t have to say anything,” she continues gently. The words flow, whatever she needs to calibrate their realities and ground him right now. “I just...I like to go out and clear my head sometimes. It’s not a big deal. I didn’t mean to hurt you, of course. And I - I liked talking, it was just easier…”

Eventually one of his eyes cracks open. Mako scrutinises her blankly, there’s the slightest of creases in his brow. Asami just wants to reach out and smooth it. She bites her lip.

“Wait. I just - need a moment-” He eyes her almost warily.

“Asami,” she says. “You can call me Asami.”

His brow knots again as if to say, are you sure? Trepidation mixes strangely, sharply with a bubble of affection. Asami breathes and tries not to smile again. Then she gives in. Seconds fly and fly.

“Mako?”

He blows out a long breath, finally. Asami follows his line of sight to the newspaper on the bedside, the one with her father’s face on the cover.

“I’m an idiot.”

Outside it’s chillier than ever. She pulls on the gloves some attendant at the clinic had found for her, which she had accepted with gratitude. “I never forget my gloves.” Except today, naturally - she feels dismal.

Mako lags slightly behind her. When she looks to him, he still seems a little rattled. Her sadness vanishes at the sight of him; his apprehension vanishes at her grin.

“Where to?” Asami smiles. “Don’t give me that look. I’m taking you home. Mako!”

Asami closes the book with a slap before returning to her draft, sending particles of dust into the air. Enough procrastinating. She pushes it to the corner of the desk beside her work gloves and turns to the clippings she had found to help her craft her words..

She takes up her pen for the first time in an hour. I am glad to share the news of my engagement, to which my father has given his enthusiastic consent.

Her fist lay clenched on the wad of papers, the torn confidential seal from the thick folder in her other hand.

“How could you?” Asami’s voice is so much smaller than she’d have liked. The bitterness in it doesn’t cut but trembles. She can see the pitying cast of regret swim in her father’s eyes, darkening all the time that he gazes on her.

Asami doesn’t want pity for her to be the condition of his regret.

She pushes her chair back from the table, the friction of the legs on the polished wood of her father’s study loud and harsh. Her fists fall in her lap and she breathes. Questions and more questions clamour for space in her head, her heart breaking over and over above them - making enough of a din that none manage to come to the fore. She remains speechless. She puts her pounding head in her hands.

The news broke before any of her father’s people could get to it - it was one of the tabloids in the city, the Daily Spirits or something like that, that worked faster from their crummy downtown offices than anyone in the palace could. Hot off the press! A Royal Scandal: King Hiroshi in bed with the United Brotherhood. A fresh investigation reveals the king’s pet project is not as clean as…

Innocent he obviously wasn’t, but she had searched desperately for the signs of his ignorance in the seventy-page report. It detailed the fruits (and fruitful it was) of a private corruption investigation into Future Corp, the brainchild of her father’s favourite school friend - of them both, many said - and benefactor of his royal investment, the holdings built on some of the family land that had paid their House’s way for centuries.

For years the court had thought him too close to an organization that swam in rumours of extremist sympathy almost monthly. Despite such concerns it had been something the press were more loath to capitalise on, painting him rather as the poor widower, the brave resilient King.

Now all that was effectively vaporised: Future Corp’s most loyal customers, it turned out, were the United Brotherhood.

The very United Brotherhood that targeted anarchist benders and republicans alike in the name of establishing a kingdom, a haven, of non-benders and non-benders alone. Arms were not supposed to be on Future Corp’s production line, and yet that’s exactly what they had been making, and shipping straight to the headquarters of the Brotherhood militia.

Then the death knell, on page seventy-two, underlined twice by their head press secretary in the copy that circulated the entire court: the detective who combed through the company’s finances had traced the funding of the under-the-counter weapons straight to the King’s private purse.

Asami’s head had not stopped swimming since she closed the file on page seventy-two. She had had no idea there had even been a private investigation. She saw emergency meeting with the President on the daily programme that Lien handed her when she woke up, something she definitely had not planned herself, and then she had gone straight to her father’s secretary to do the hard work of finding out.

By the time her father can give her the time of day, it’s twilight.

“How could you?”

He’s spent the last half hour saying this is not how he wanted her to find out, as if the issue here is her finding out.

“Asami, you have to understand…” He takes a strange breath as he changes his tack. “It’s not a bad cause. It’s our cause.”

Her head shoots out of her hands. “It is?!”

He takes the seat opposite her and she represses the urge to leap out of her own. Her father’s eyes narrow. “They aren’t bad people, you know. They protect the likes of us from - from...” He swallows as though he’s about draw a weapon he he wishes he didn’t have to. “The men who killed your mother. They’re gone now, and we have the Brotherhood to thank.”

Asami’s tears leak before she can stop them. It’s not that invocation, not the memory, it’s that this - the vicious way he’s guilting her - is the proof that her father is too far gone to be saved. “I lost her, too, you know. The United Brotherhood -” she spits the name, “they’re killing people - your subjects - in the name of the country, in our name. You -” Her nails dig into her palm and she forces her hand open. “You don’t care, you’re - you’ve practically beensanctioning it.”

There’s nothing placatory about her father now.

“You are being insolent. Do you see what’s happening out there? There are people calling for our removal. The benders have long been allied with the anarchists, they’re not sure what the point of effete leaders like us is exactly.” He snarls. “You would be wise to take less for granted. I am simply protecting my place - your place. How can we serve if we aren’t here to do so? Do you want to end up like your mother?”

She could cry. There is one thing endangering his precious legacy; and it’s the beast of revenge that has infested his mind.

“You’re not much of a king. You’re a zealot.”

Hiroshi claps his fist on the table. “Leave. We’ll talk about this when you’re in less of a state.” His teeth are clenched.

Right, there’s damage control to do. For all his insane defense, her father knows he’s made a grave mistake.

Asami needs air, needs to be far away from the chaos already wracking the palace. But she grinds her heel in the floor, unmoving. “Mom would have hated you for this.”

The paper forgotten again, she comes eventually to the last of the fading oil portraits in the reference album, many of which are accompanied by grainy pictures made with the earliest sliding cameras. The first clear photograph belongs to her grandfather and his wife, printed in fading sepia. Then there’s her parents, not long after their wedding by the look of it, and one of all four together. Her parents again, after their coronation.

Asami’s focus rests on her mother’s smiling face. She thinks about what the next few entries will look like, how she will be in none; what she thought of marrying into the royal house, of being in these pictures.

She won’t think of him.

“Where are we going? Is it a surprise?”

“Oh,” Mako flashes her a nonchalant sort of smile, “seriously, nowhere special.” His mouth twists in concentration as he continues down the street, eyeing for somewhere to park. He’s very careful in her car, more wary of the paces he goes through as he turns or shifts the gear than Asami thinks she has ever been. “You said you wanted to see where I grew up, right?”

They’ve come to a part of town she’s never had much reason to venture in, though she remembers a couple of blocks back a school she had visited on a charity job a few months ago. They park on the corner of a grocery market and Mako leads her down a steep alley she hadn’t noticed between the densely packed outlets, hopping down the last few paces where the slope has been tiled into wonky steps.

They emerge on a bustling, sunlit street. She recognises it, not by name or even the specific appearance: this is one of the old migrant settlements dotted around town; crowded and more organic than the neighbourhoods delineated in the original city plan. It would have been a slum twenty years ago. Asami smiles at Mako.

“I remember my mom used to bring us here,” he says, as they pass by a small bakery with a floury handprint on the window. A bell barely audible over the drone of the ovens tinkles when they enter. Asami buys a small parcel of cakes and they sit outside on an elevated section of the kerb in the shade of a tree.

“They’re better this way, I think,” Mako says, picking up a cake as Asami is about to.

“What are you -”

He produces a tiny flame in his other hand like a blowtorch, and heats around the edges until they’re brown. It crumbles and melts in Asami’s mouth, the burnt aftertaste heavenly.

She’s impressed. “Experiment,” she explains, holding a finger up, picking up an unburnt cake. Mako watches with mild affront as she affirms his statement for herself - she’s unable to help her merry scoff at his frown. “Wow, you’re right,” she laughs. She feeds him the rest, as cavalierly as possible with her heart in her throat.

There’s a hapless energy to his nostalgia. “I don’t really - recall,” he says, when Asami asks if it was the same old woman at the counter in there. A couple of vendors pass, carting their wares and calling them out into the muggy air.

A dog comes and curls in the spot in the shade next to Asami, and she feeds it before it can make a fuss, though Mako gives it a wary glance.

“Bolin and I - after mom and dad died, we had to leave, just to survive. My parents didn’t have much of a network in the city. They met here but they had only come for work, in the beginning.”

“What did they do?”

“They both started in the factories. My dad was an earthbender - pretty good money here since there aren’t that many benders. Mom was in the kitchen stalls at the market, and she worked as a clerk too once they made her a manager.”

He doesn’t want to know if she finds that quaint, and she doesn’t know how she finds it either. Foreign - that’s all. She has to wonder, no matter how premature the thought feels, how they might have found her.

“Where did you and Bolin go afterwards?”

“All over,” Mako says cryptically. “But across the station, that’s Triple Threats turf.”

“I read about them,” Asami says. She draws the scarf over her bound hair further up, feeling her head throb in the heat already. It’s uncharacteristically warm for the beginning of spring, but then, it feels like it could never be winter here.

Mako cups her hand with the cake in it this time, and scorches it deftly so that all she feels is a quick ring of warmth in her palm, though the touch of his hand is warmer. First he finds her eyes for her assent; Asami is touched at his forethought.

He continues for a while as she absorbs the sights and sounds with his commentary. “There’s a bookstore somewhere around here that my mom loved. Also there weren’t so many cars before. Over that way is Dragon Heath -”

Asami pulls the name that those words evoke to the fore of her mind like a thread. “Isn’t Crooked Chao from around here?” There was a time she knew every name in probending within a hundred miles of the city. And this fellow was as notorious as they came, dodging his way out of multiple cheating scandals scott free, who knew how.

Mako smirks. “We trained together once. I prefer Toza’s place.” At that Asami turns to him, a sly smile playing on her lips. He reads it in an instant and returns her playful tone. “Oh, I’m sorry, you have to be able to lightning bend to visit Crooked Chao’s den.”

Asami’s eyes widen. “You can lightning bend? Where did you learn that?”

Mako is unreadable for a second. “Just a job.” He scratches his chin. “So have you ever-” He puts his arm around her shoulders to draw her out of the way when someone drags their rusty bicycle across the pavement behind them. Asami feels it all the way down to her fingertips. “Have you ever been down around here before?”

“Just up where we parked. I told you about my engineering program,” she reminds him. “We do school visits to get the kids into it. I visit the girls on the scholarship sometimes, it was one of those trips.”

“They must love that,” he says, with genuine admiration.

“They’re so much fun.” Asami smiles as she glances around again. “I think a few of them are probably from around here.”

She’s thinking out loud now. “I just - never really thought of coming just to visit. I mean - I’ve never sat on the kerb before…” They both laugh and Mako pulls the slipping scarf back over the crown of her head.

“You must think I’m so -” She holds her palms out and shrugs, trusting him to understand.

Mako frowns, his eyes glinting with humour. “Mm, well. You took me to thehospital for a little bruise.”

Asami’s face falls in indignation before she laughs. “Hey, I was worried about you.”

“Okay, Princess.” He bites away his smile at her embarrassment.

“What if - what if you, like, passed out on the street and some car ran you over?”

“Then it would have been my time.” He gives her nothing, but the affection is evident in his gaze. Asami shakes her head, rearranging her long skirt to let the faint breeze skim over her legs. She shares some of the water in her bag with him.

When she puts the bottle away she wipes the condensation from her hands on her the skirt. “You know, I thought I knew the city but I don’t. Well, I know a map of it.”

Mako is watching her thoughtfully. “I’m guessing you wouldn’t get a chance.” She sighs in dejection - he guesses correctly.

So after that they go everywhere.

First the bookstore, where Asami balks at the fact that he reads history books for fun , and Mako asks her why in the hell he would want to look at a crime novel after a grueling week detectiving at work. The bursting bazaar in the old tradesmen’s district that Asami’s only ever smelled from the outside; where the fruit is twice as large and five times as cheap as what they import in the palace kitchens; and where Asami learns, for all her skill with numbers, that she can’t barter for her life. The uptown bars where she reserves a balcony seat, orders drinks from the top shelf and makes him guess their names; names all the flush clientele in the saloon below and makes him guess their dirtiest scandals. The smoky clubs where neither of them are supposed to be, where it has to be dark and they have to be ever so close lest someone that shouldn’t recognise her.

Asami leafs back through all the records she dusted off relating to the Fire Nation specifically. And to the imperial family, to him. She needs a refresher, someone else’s read on this, with her own mind all blocked up with resentment and fatigue. She rifles through the more recent clippings - there’s one about Asami’s own graduation...

No whisper of the Asami’s now rumoured former flame Fire Prince Iroh, though sources close to both prince and princess tell us it’s officially a day for the famous young couple. This week the dashing prince sails back to the Fire Nation, carrying the hopes of all the city’s bachelorettes...

Where a month ago she might have looked on this as a bittersweet memory, here in the library she feels her stomach churn at the thought of Iroh. This is the simple trigger. Oh no - she’s going to hate him. And she hates more the inevitability of the fact. Of all the things to encourage such surety.

She never wanted to, but she’ll hate him for what neither of them are really to blame for. For being convenient, for letting Asami consign herself to a future of regret and alienation. Forget love. They may just have to work on like, on a mere cordiality, if Asami can’t get her head straight in time.

A shame, because they had been more than cordial for a long time.

“Asami.”

He approaches her with a polite smile. It’s been a while - the last time they had met properly had been the gala where Emi met Rajiv, a minor noble from Kirachu Island, and now they are at their engagement party (though granted, Emi works fast.)

After a drink she leads Iroh to the dancefloor, where he’s happier, uncharacteristically, to trip over his feet while he talks about his latest campaign.

She smiles up at him. “Don’t they teach a proper waltz in the Fire Nation?”

Iroh laughs congenially. “You sound like my sister.”

“Well, we are cousins.” They laugh in unison - an old (though not forgotten, apparently) inside joke about the long tradition of intermarriage between their kingdoms that had been a great deal funnier with the distant potential prospect of another.

“You’re breaking my heart, Asami.”

The comment confuses her, until she remembers and perks up. “Wait, I taught you this dance!” She gives a sheepish snort, a little ashamed, but not truly affected by the lapse in her memory.

“We went to that resort at Chameleon Bay, remember - that trip with your flying society during winter break.”

“Right! I was crazy about you.”

The memory suddenly fresh - and farther than ever. It’s in her very tone, the wistful indifference of the words that would have cost her her entire dignity that winter. The same can’t be said for Iroh, whose bearing stiffens somewhat, in a blink, at her blase remark.

Su and Baatar’s anniversary soiree is at seven o’clock at their sumptuous mansion. They married at the end of spring, like Asami has always wanted to.

Smaller though it may be, Asami much prefers this house to the palace, with its experimental modern architecture and sumptuous gardens. Mako is here - not reluctantly, but not quite eagerly either - so dapper in the suit Asami picked out for him that if he were on anyone else’s arm she knows she’d be stupidly jealous.

“You should have more of your clothes tailored,” she says, pulling him by the cuff to take his hand.

“I do have them tailored, I just do it myself. So tell me who’s who.”

The band in the corner picks up to a pleasant if bland tune, the perfect conversation accompaniment. Asami guides his gaze across the room.

“You know Opal from last week. Those are her parents,” she nods in the direction of their hosts. Perhaps the parents she wishes she had - so easy and free-spirited that their slightly overbearing nature is almost liberating. “They’re doing these huge construction projects down in Zaofu - that’s why she’s Duchess Zaofu, the real Beifong estate is down there… But they had some land up here too and he loves working with the university…”

“That’s Bataar Jr.” Mako knows about him; Bataar and Asami are frequent companions. “And then…” She scans around. “Oh, the twins. Wing and Wei. I bet you can’t tell them apart.” She takes a glass of wine from the waiter and sips disdainfully as Mako looks where she directed him, before continuing. “They’re campaigning to have metalbenders included in probending,” she says unenthusiastically, a purist.

Mako frowns and they share a scoff of fervent dismissal, insisting over one another how metalbending isn’t separate from earthbending. Asami giggles into his sparkling eyes, before turning and finding the most distinctive shock of hair in the mill of heads.

“That’s Huan. He’s… he’s still in school doing art, but he loves his amateur theatre too. Now he’s directing a dance reinterpretation of Love Amongst the Dragons with two empresses in the lead,” she says fondly.

“I’m sure you recognise Emi and Iroh.” She nods towards the stately pair deep in conversation with one of Bataar’s friends by the elaborately draped table with the cake.

“Remind me who’s older.”

“She is, just barely. And she could be the Fire Lord tomorrow, she’s got the chops. I went to school with Iroh,” she says mildly, almost as an afterthought.

Mako leans into her just a little and asks teasingly, “Does she scare you?”

“Of course not. She’s intense, like her mom,” Asami adds, to make the situation objective, smoothing the front of her jade green dress casually. “I always got on with Iroh better.”

As if on cue, Iroh turns and catches her eye. Then he strides over to greet them. Asami introduces Mako, slinking her arm into his. Iroh glances between them before shaking Mako’s hand.

It’s not until a couple of hours later, reveling in Asami’s laughter as she drags him away from a lively, normal (Mako’s words) group of Opal and her college friends, that he learns about Asami and Iroh.

“You… you dated him?” Mako’s face falls despite his best effort. He smooths his expression with an effort. “The Fire Prince ?”

“You don’t keep up with the Daily Spirits, do you?”

She laughs, a tipple or two from wine drunk, slipping some of the pastry in her hand into his mouth. Mako chews absently as his brow furrows again without the careful conscious smoothing.

“When I was studying, until he left to join the Imperial Air Force. It was just a college thing.” She smiles, grasping his chin. “You jealous?”

“Of course not.”

She recognises his mimicry of her earlier immediately.

Maybe she doesn’t quite expect it; Mako’s immediate lightness in spite of the obvious displeasure. She takes him by the arm again. “Are you having fun ?”

He gives a noncommittal shrug, just to tease her. Asami huffs in exasperation, before it dissolves back into laughter. She pulls him behind one of Su’s florid sculptures in the hall, Mako grumbling half-heartedly; leans up to whisper in his ear. “What, you’re not having fun?” She bumps her helpless smile up into his, watching his warm eyes flutter, “let’s make this a little more fun.”

He straightens momentarily, bright red, when she kisses him; kisses his neck. A moment to close her eyes and find her bearings, while they remain snickering into each other’s shoulders, so that Asami can orient them to the nearest of the myriad guest rooms in this huge house.

It hadn’t been long before the party that their secret relationship stopped being very secret.

Asami supposes she had known what she was doing: official duty or not, broad daylight or not, the shoes you wear to a function as public as the yearly Spring Festival are a statement, so getting security to let through an attractive young man to keep on your arm for the rest of the celebration can be nothing but.

Afterwards, she makes a thoughtful decision to sit quiet through the noise - pointed whispers between various personnel when she runs past them on the staircase. She declines her father’s oblique request to talk about it, sending his messenger back wide-eyed, and calls Opal (who already knows) instead to tell her how she didn’t dare go anywhere near public relations office today. She does glimpse Jiro glaring at her back in the mirror when he thinks she can’t see; and even Lien approaches her before she goes to bed the next day, somewhat confusedly. Asami apologises for any confusion, and explains that she met Mako when he was assigned to her security detail by the very helpful Chief of Police when one of her usual people had fallen ill halfway through an outing, yes, and she took to him instantly.

The real furore is outside the palace.

“You know, you’ve finally given people something about my family to root for again,” she chuckles, sitting in Mako’s apartment late in the evening, having told Lien she would be at the Beifong estate that night.

Mako, still mortified, holds the newspaper someone apparently handed him this morning up gingerly. “What, by -”

“Infiltrating our ranks! And you’re a heartthrob !” Asami laughs, helping herself to the final sip of the bottle of wine on the coffee table between them. Then she turns serious, more cognizant of what she’s saying with the evidence of her lack of sobriety in her hand. “I’m sorry. It’ll blow over, I promise. I just wish…”

“What?” Mako says, nudging her knee when she trails off.

“I just want to protect you.”

He looks down sharply, embarrassed. “I’m telling you, Asami, this is the most interesting my life has been in - maybe ever…” She can tell this unnerves him, though, but the reassurance is enough to placate her for now.

“How was work, Mako?”

“Like I said, interesting. You know they don’t allow press in the station.” He smirks. “And my boss… not too impressed,” he admits. “So if you’re worried about me losing perspective -”

“Shut up,” she says, rising and taking him by the shoulders; smiling, ready to kiss him as soon she can bear her weight down somewhere.

Mako uncrosses his legs so that she can straddle him, but he’s pensive as she waits for his gaze again.

“What about you? How is it with… I know you’re stressed,” he says, sounding reticent despite the firm phrasing.

Asami shrugs, letting a hand fall to her side again, before she lifts it to tuck her hair back. “I haven’t spoken to my father about anything, if that’s what you’re asking.” She sighs. “I’m not sure what’s going to happen. And I hate it. It feels like…” she sighs, resolved to the fact, “they’re waiting on me to fix it or something, and I’m only - making it worse, apparently - and I don’t care…I want a break.”

She smiles fancifully once her attention rests on his face again. “They do this speedboat race on Whaletail Island that I’m dying to try.”

Mako perks up. “I’ve been wanting to go forever!”

“I’ll take you. Before the summer’s up.” She has no idea when or how, but she’s determined to figure it out.

He looks hesitant. “I’ve been saving up for a while, actually, I don’t really - I guess I wanna deserve it, you know?”

Asami feels a little foolish then. He doesn’t believe in being whisked away on a whim, rightly so - and she’s still learning it’s not always an option, not for everyone. “Right, of course.” She can’t help but droop.

He must feel the strain she’s under, though: maybe it’s something that he can’t quite know. He says after a second, “Well, maybe if the Chief lets me take my holidays all at once…” Mako tightens his arms around her.

Asami presses her cheek to his, pulling the strands of his hair between her fingertips. “I’ll make it special, I promise.”

Asami strikes a line through glad , a word weak enough it could possibly expose her, replacing it with… delighted . There. The pen she worries at her mouth is encased and nibbed in classic Earth Kingdom silver, the kind she’d spent the afternoon testing alloys of with Bataar Jr in his lab. It reminds her of what he had said the other day. Innocent.

Is it her, hoping for the unrealistic best as always?

“I don’t know why you wouldn’t tell me about this earlier,” Asami says, crossing her arms, but it’s more confusion and disappoint than ire that underscores her words. Any of that has been long subsumed. She scuffs a boot against the leg of the table between them in frustration.

Mako averts his gaze, clasping his hands together. He doesn’t answer for a moment, focusing on his drink. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realise it was something that - would come into this…”

Which is fair, but it doesn’t sound entirely truthful; Mako, if anything, is overly cautious. He had asked what to call her, for crying out loud.

Asami uncrosses her arms. Before she can continue, he speaks again.

“I guess I didn’t want to disappoint you…”

She shakes her head. “You know I don’t care about that stuff.” She stops him with a gentle hand on the shoulder, is sure to have his eyes for her firm reminder. “It’s not who you are. I know that.”

He sighs dismissively at that. “Oh, sure, but do they?”

The ready reminder makes Asami tense again. She can’t say the news of Mako’s connection with the triads surprised her upon the slightest reflection - she should have gleaned enough from the careful slivers of his past that he revealed from time to time - but the way it broke, to the world, did. It plasters papers that yesterday had carried adulatory pieces about their fairytale romance, or whatever; everything she tried her sometimes paltry best to pay no mind to, so that Mako wouldn’t, would have none of that on his shoulders.

Asami narrows her eyes. “I don’t care what they think. Neither should you.”

To her mild surprise and mild hurt, he lets his head cock and and laughs, not meanly. “That’s sweet. But it’s your job to care.”

It’s the worst job in the world, to care about what people think - appease their half-understandings of the world, of her world. Her father would have been adamantly against this from the start, of course, if she was on speaking terms with him. But she could guess his distaste at this news well enough, and found it laughably ironic. Cruelly, the world and the court were on his side - who in their casual injustice could pardon him despite awful and wilful transgressions, ensure him the cushiest send-off, while holding Mako under the microscope for things long and well beyond his choice and control.

Mako. She wants desperately to protect him.

Asami has a hunch deep and uncomfortable in her belly about where and who these triad connections had surfaced from.

The discomfort gnaws and gnaws at her, and when she learns at Mako’s later that night that he has received a telegram from one of her father’s secretaries - finally flares the anger.

But in the same breath that she’s never wanted more to drop everything and run, she knows with finality that it’s the last thing she can do. The one thing she can’t do. It’s heavy on her shoulders, on her mind - so heavy on her heart that she can barely keep her eyes open as she sits at the lake early in the morning with Mako’s side pressed all along the length of hers, feet dangling over the pier on the restricted side, lashes grazing his shoulder. He recounts, with brief searching pauses, the stories his parents told about the now faded murals on the embankment - a version of people-watching apt for the people-less scene here - while she pulls her fingers softly over the planes and sinews of his arm, the lines of his hand; feels her calloused fingertips catch on the fading burn scar on his wrist, again and again just to make sure this isn’t the last time.

President Raiko knows better than most people that PR is tricky. This awareness sits awkwardly between them when he requests a private meeting with Asami, without her father’s knowledge.

He coughs. It’s a stuffy room, boiling in the mid-afternoon heat like the glowing window is an oven door. And Asami is trapped in here.

She waits to sit so that he will have to, so he’s damn near sneering with discomfort by the time he does.

“Your Highness,” he begins, “we know there have been a lot of - tensions - around the court lately. Now, I don’t wish to impose anything on you -”

But you will.

“It’s unfortunate the position His Majesty has been left in. For us all,” he hurries to clarify. This language is odious. Why can’t he just blame her father like everyone outside this wretched establishment has sense enough to? “And so, of course, it looks a certain way when…” His fists clench on his thighs. He looks her in the eye with some gusto. “We don’t want any more associations with any kind of - anyone underhand.”

She has to admit to herself that she hadn’t expected him to be so forthright. She flashes hot inside.

Is a master at keeping it inside.

Asami stares unblinkingly. Raiko’s discomfort mounts and mounts.

“Your Highness, I only want to implore you… to consider that you have - a remarkable opportunity.”

The least she can do is make him spell it out. “What do you mean, Mr President?” She can play the fool if she wants, everyone is all too ready to believe it despite anything she achieves to the contrary.

Raiko looks a little startled, and he adjusts his glasses to give himself a moment. “Well, what I mean to say is…” He splays his fingers so that his hands make a triangle, oddly conciliatory now. It only grates on Asami. “You’re going to be the Queen of the Kingdom of Nations, sooner rather than later, as we all know now. I know you regard such a responsibility - a privilege - with the utmost gravity. And with it comes a chance you should not forsake.”

As he speaks, her anger wilts into despair. That, of course. She can’t contest that. A princess can do some things for herself; a queen - has no self. She can no longer keep her steely gaze.

Without it, Raiko is emboldened; every word splits her further. “To rebuild, to fortify. If you forge the right alliances,” his eyes shift to the side briefly, “well, it could save this monarchy.”

Maybe it doesn’t deserve that , is her final defiant thought. But queen keeps ringing in her ears like the sentence from a juror. It’s not a responsibility she can defy in good conscience. Nor is it one she can defer much longer, like every day doesn’t bring her closer to the dead end. She - they - were doomed from the moment she learnt of it.

That was the day she had known .

“Your father…?”

She fights to raise her teary eyes to Mako’s, the slightest rueful nod. It’s news that couldn’t wait, as much as she wants it to.

“I -” Asami coughs, turning down to swipe quickly with the back of her hand, before she finds she has nothing to hide under his unflinching gaze. “Yeah, I mean, not him, but everyone… Well, I guess it was a matter of time. It would be silly to think he could stay.”

She skirts around it, pretends like it’s all about him, when the core of the issue is that now it’s about her.

“So that means…”

Asami nods hesitantly, watching his eyes.

Mako frowns in consideration. “Well…” He looks about, before laughing a little. “That’s… certainly more of a promotion.”

Not a reaction she has yet had. Asami hides her face in her hands in her incredulity, but when she lifts it back up she’s laughing loud; Mako shrugging in the corner of her vision.

Then she sighs gravely, and Mako turns thoughtful again beside her. She answers his unasked questions, setting the facts out partially for her own benefit, now that his presence here can ground her out of delirium.

“Jiro - my father’s first secretary - he told me he’s going to face the press around this time next month, right after the official announcement. I read the draft of the release.”

Mako’s eyebrows rise, though he tempers his expression. “That soon?” He takes a sip of his bottle of beer, eyes pensive.

The implications are filing through his mind, while Asami looks pointedly away. She wishes she could brush his concerns off, had the power or the plans in place to do so. She tries her best.

“It won’t happen for a while, another six months at least.” Only in the voicing does it strike her how little a timespan that is. “These things take time. And not everybody considers this that much of a constitutional crisis, believe it or not. We have so many things to work out before - before I can succeed him.”

He smiles a little awkwardly, but the sadness is evident in his face. “I don’t know what I should say - congratulations?” He tries. “Good luck?” Asami shrugs, equally helpless. What she feels like is a commiseration but it’s the last thing she wants to see on his face; this flicker of defeat is enough to break her heart.

“I hope we can still go on that trip… I don’t know, before the summer’s up.”

“Of course!” Asami sighs. “I don’t… Not yet, Mako.” She says, almost pleadingly. Not yet what remains too fresh and immense to really conquer right now, but the silent agreement to think about it later is well understood.

She wants to take the moments she can, for as long as she can. Mako is here at their favourite spot to see the ocean and the city at once, with the beer he puckishly calls champagne, and he’s wrong, tonight is about his promotion, since that’s the one actually worth celebrating (she thinks, wryly not ruefully, with determination.) She toasts to him and ruffles his hair. It’s nearly morning now, she made it here a little later than planned. But she had been determined to make it - for him, she said, maybe because he might not understand just how much a respite for her each rendezvous with him is, breaths of pure air in her ever more suffocating daily life.

“So tomorr- today, is my birthday,” Asami says. To change the subject - he knows, of course. “Su ordered this special octopus from Ember Island,” she tells him.

“Well? Where is it?” He catches Asami off guard again and she rolls her eyes. Then he continues, reaching into his work bag. He’s going straight to work after this - always considerate, she knows, careful to work around Asami’s chokehold of a schedule despite the insistences that he has nothing important going on, anyway. “I got you a gift.”

Whatever Asami expected, it isn’t this, and she isn’t sure why. She softens immediately, turning her full attention to him. “You did…”

“It’s not much. I remember you said you wanted to read this. I’m sure you could find a copy, but - this is mine. I’ve had it ever since I had a place, and I marked out the parts I liked…Besides,” he smirks, “You should remember this stuff’s not all bad.”

Mako hands her the book she had found him with, the first time she met him not on time, in a cafe on the edge of town right at the beginning of summer. It’s a beautiful volume that collects the observations of some ancient imperial astrologers. Half almanac, half history book - but ‘more like legend’, as Mako had insisted, so she’ll let it pass.

“I want you to keep it. So, happy birthday.”

Asami, listening and brimming with love, knows better than to argue. The prospect of accepting something with this kind of sentimental value should daunt her, upset her with what she knows is coming their way - and it does. But accepting it nonetheless is just... that much more heartening. She wants every little piece of him that she can keep. Asami takes it, running a finger over the worn leather of the cover, before pressing it to her chest.

“Thank you,” she says. Mako kisses the top of her head, making her weightless, disarming her with the suddenness of her joy. It’s almost miraculous to be overjoyed in this moment from the despair she had felt at the proclamation that sealed her fate mere hours ago.

Asami smiles, though he can’t see it. “I love you, you know.”

It’s the very words that make him pull away, and then he kisses her lips.

Asami sighs onto the paper, careful not to smudge the ink when she slumps. Delighted - is a measured kind of word. A new business obligation kind of word.

Maybe all these words feel such a way not for their inherent quality, but simply being an instrument of this abject lie. She crosses it out.

I am overjoyed to share the news...

It’s a mere two months after the fulfilment of her tragic mutual understanding with Mako that Asami can find it in her to bite the bullet her father, Jiro, the Fire Lord, likely, and the entire court have waiting on a spoon for her.

Iroh is a pillar of strength and stability. Exactly what the country needs, what the court demands, - even if Asami is left blowing hot and cold. It’s just that whatever her personal misgivings are, they still leave one versus a million, and her thought turns naturally to the million. Would it kill her to be selfish once in her life?

He frames his offer in terms they both know suit her best: let’s get you some peace of mind. “Yes,” she tells him, torn in two. What she can’t promise is happiness, but if he can promise stability, then she can, too. He still loves her terribly, and resents the lack of reciprocity more and more, to the point that it will test that love very soon, if it isn’t already. “I love you, too,” Asami says, blinking away tears. And it’s not as if it isn’t true, right?

She puts the pen down, the gap between the first and last sentence filled, and stretches. It feels like a season since she started.

A season ago, she had said (a final test of her fate), “Don’t you love me?”

It’s supposed to be a rhetorical question, something to pierce through the confusion, his armour - but Asami finds suddenly that she doesn’t know the answer for sure, and doesn’t want to know. She has a vice grip on his wrist; and the white of his clenched knuckles on the parapet, stark against the grainy stone, tell her it’s not easy for him either. It’s a salve to her pain and an excruciating amplifier at once.

He doesn’t love her for asking , for sure - she bites her tongue a second late. That was so unkind to them both. He winced when she asked.

“I’m not sure how much that matters, Asami.”

She breathes a long breath through her mouth. He’s right, and he’s saying it and laying it out so she doesn't have to. Hold it together.

“You need to be okay , now and for the future. You’ll figure it out, Asami.” His voice is tight. “You can worry about being happy later.”

He uses his eyes to encourage her, they steel to brace the statement, lend it resolve. None of this quite obscures the pain and frustration in those clear amber eyes. But little of that frustration is at her, all of the pain for her. Again, that only makes it harder. Asami reaches up to kiss his cheek, so chaste she wishes she hadn’t bothered: it is not what they deserve.

“I know, I know. I’ll never forget you.”

The Royal Court Circular of The United Kingdom of Nations

14th Day of the Eleventh Month, 178 AG

The King is glad to announce the engagement of Princess Asami to His Royal Highness Prince Iroh of the Fire Nation, General of the United Forces. The King and the Fire Lord and their respective families are joined by both courts in extending their heartiest congratulations.

The Crown Princess says in an exclusive profile to be printed in the UKN Times this weekend (please see the press office for a copy Sunday morning):

“I am delighted to share the news of my engagement, to which my father has given his enthusiastic consent. I know that Iroh and I will continue to enrich the relationship we have nurtured since childhood. Words can hardly express my feelings at this time.”

#masami #irosami #asami sato #mako #[crying into my iced tea] i write masami fort he aesthetic #this is my Romance Novel fic. all the tropes #aka uptowngirl.mp3 #if you read it i will love u #**

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welllpthisishappening · 7 years

Text

Tripping Over the Blue Line (10/45)

It’s a transition. That’s what Emma’s calling it. She’s transitioning from one team to another, from one coast to another and she’s definitely not worried. Nope. She’s fine. Really. She’s promised Mary Margaret ten times already. So she got fired. Whatever. She’s fine, ready to settle into life with the New York Rangers. She’s got a job to do. And she doesn’t care about Killian Jones, captain of the New York Rangers. At all.

He’s done. One more season and he’s a free agent and he’s out. It’s win or nothing for Killian. He’s going to win a Stanley Cup and then he’s going to stop being the face of the franchise and he’s going to go play for some other garbage team where his name won’t be used as puns in New York Post headlines. That’s the plan. And Emma Swan, director of New York Rangers community relations isn’t going to change that. At all.

They are both horrible liars.

Rating: Mature Content Warnings: Swearing, eventual hockey-type violence AN: I love Elsa and Anna and that is a trend that will continue going forward. Do not try and ignore Elsa when she’s calling you, basically. I am just in constant awe of how much you guys love this story and it’s the nicest and you’re all the nicest. As always, I am nothing without @laurnorder, @distant-rose & @beautiful-swan. Tell them they’re fantastic internet. I’ve also started tag’ing any messages I get “blue line rambles” so that’s also happening. Hanging out on Ao3, FF.net & tag’ed up from the start on Tumblr.

His hand was killing him.

No scratch that – his entire body was killing him, every single muscle and nerve ending and something in the general vicinity of his collarbone. It all felt like it was twisted and turned and pinched in a way Killian was almost certain was impossible.

Fuck.

Hans fucking Soyer.

He should have seen it coming – should have known as soon as the puck hit the ice and he went out for his first shift. Soyer wasn’t concerned with preseason monikers. He didn’t even seem particularly concerned with the fact that the Penguins had actually wonthe Cup last season, had beat the Rangers in the playoffs and left Killian on the outside looking in when it came to postseason glory.

Soyer didn’t care.

He’d never cared.

He hit like it was Game Seven and, this time, he only seemed to be concerned with Killian – and taking out his knees.

Killian should have been ready for it. He was an idiot. Soyer had always been like that – hit first, ask questions later. Even at school. He’d set some sort of penalty-minute record at Minnesota during his sophomore season and walked around campus like that was something to actually be proud of.

He’d won the title with them – a fourth-line winger who’d come into Minnesota with Liam and barely saw any ice-time in the Tournament – and he declared after as well.

Only no one drafted Hans Soyer.

There was no press conference, no cheering family in the background or jerseys that inexplicably had his name on it as soon as he crossed the stage. That happened for Killian and Liam. It didn’t happen for Hans.

He, eventually, got picked up – by the Flames on a bottom-of-the-barrel free agent contract that barely paid for an apartment in Calgary – and spent the last eight years bouncing around the league, racking up hits and penalty minutes and two-game suspensions handed down by the commissioner’s office.

This was his second stint in Pittsburgh.

“Killian, I swear to God, if you don’t stop moving so much on this table, I’m actually going to call El, get her to fly to Pittsburgh and punch you in the face.”

He turned his head, shifting on the table again and Victor groaned loudly, rolling his eyes as he leaned back against the wall. “She’s called me five times already,” Victor added and, this time, Killian groaned. “The last one included the twins, so, you know, take that into account when you keep moving and threatening to hurt yourself even more.” He wasn’t sure that was possible.

Everything hurt. All at once.

He didn’t entirely remember the fight, just remembered throwing the punch and a right hook colliding with Soyer’s helmet and the refs had tried to pull them apart. It was a goddamn preseason game. No one was supposed to fight in a preseason game.

But Soyer wouldn’t shut up.

He kept talking and hitting and, aside from everything else, Killian was convinced there was a bruise the size of the entire state of Minnesota on the back of his leg from all the times Soyer had checked him in the calf.

And, for the most part, he’d ignored it.

It was a preseason game.

He ignored it for two periods. They were winning. It didn’t matter. And then Soyer hit him again, knocked him against the boards and Killian could feel the stick in his back, even through his pads, and he heard the muttering, even over the crowd noise and the whistles.

“It was your fault,” Soyer mumbled, pushing his stick up under the pads on Killian’s back and he was practically hanging over his shoulder.

That was enough. He saw red and heard the rushing in his ears and his gloves were on the ice before he’d really even considered any other, vaguely mature, preseason -appropriate option. He hit him. Hard.

And Soyer hit back. Harder.

The whistles kept blowing and Killian could hear Robin and Will behind him, trying to pull him away before he did something stupid like get a major in a preseason game. Robin eventually got a hold of his shoulder, almost dragging him towards the box, but Soyer wouldn’t shut up, was still shouting about Liam and the Cup and Killian might have actually lost his mind. He turned back around.

“It might have been my fault,” he yelled, “but the league wanted Liam. This team’s just taken pity on you, let you play goon for the fans.” It was a mistake. A bad mistake. One he normally wouldn’t have made in any other circumstance and this was on TV. Roland saw. Fuck, Emma saw. He hadn’t been thinking. He just wanted to hit Soyer again.

Hard.

He just hadn’t been entirely prepared for Soyer to charge at him, hands in his jersey and tugging on his pads and Killian felt his back collide with the boards before he’d even completely come to terms with the idea of fighting again.

In a preseason game.

He’d gotten hurt in a preseason game.

“When did El call?” he asked, glancing at Victor who was still leaning against the doorway of the away team’s training room, arms crossed and legs crossed and a disappointed look on his face. “And where’s my phone exactly?” “Which time? The first one was probably as soon as you got hit, on national TV, by the way. A whole audience of hockey fans saw you act like a complete idiot on national TV. Times two through four were while you were in the MRI. And time five was just now before I came in here to tell you about time five.” Killian winced. He shouldn’t have said anything. He shouldn’t have let Soyer get under his skin, but he had and five phone calls later, he’d absolutely freaked out El.

She’d never say it out loud, but he knew, every time he stepped on the ice, she worried. And he’d never actually been hurt on the ice before.

“Did…” Killian started, but Victor just nodded before he could even get the question out.

“Anna called three times. It was like they were alternating shifts on the phone or something.”

“And Gina called me twice,” Robin added, stepping into the tiny room and knocking his knuckles against Killian’s shoulders.

“Jeez, Locksley,” Victor sighed. “Don’t hurt him anymore than he already is.” “The MRI came back already?” Killian asked, shifting on the table again so Robin could move next to him. He tossed his phone into Killian’s lap and the stupid thing buzzed as soon as it hit his shorts. Voicemail. “Oh, and hey, did we win?” “Preseason,” Robin muttered. “And Rol’s totally convinced you’re dead, so call him back at some point.” Killian rolled his eyes, ignoring that particular piece of guilt-inducing information, and stared at Victor. “MRI?” Victor shook his head. “Your collarbone’s a disaster. Bruised to complete shit. But no concussion, at least as far as I can tell. We’ll get the MRI tomorrow and more tests tomorrow, so actually show up at some sort of professional time or I really will call El.” “No concussion?” Robin repeated, voice as serious as Killian had ever heard it. He glanced at him, eyebrows drawn low and he hadn’t really expected this level of overprotection. “Like, nothing?” “Tomorrow,” Victor said again. “We’ll know for certain tomorrow, but I mean, I’ve got a degree and I don’t think it’s a concussion. Just your regular run of the mill upper-body injury. I bet Ruby’s already got the release sent out.” “She’s probably just got a template at this point,” Killian muttered, running his hands through his hair. He needed to take a shower. They’d pulled him off the ice and gotten him in the machine and made sure his pupils still dilated properly, but they’d never actually given him five minutes to shower. “How long?” “Be more specific,” Victor said.

“Run of the mill upper-body. How long will that keep me off?” Victor shrugged. “The results come back tomorrow.” “You sound like a broken record.” “That’s because the answer’s not going to change.” “Guess then.” “Killian.” “Guess.” Victor made a face, finally, walking in the room and there really shouldn’t have been three people in there at the same time. “Probably the rest of the preseason,” he said under his breath, as if he couldn’t quite bring himself to say it out loud. “Maybe longer.” “Longer?” Killian asked, shouting the word and jumping off the table. That was a mistake. He clenched his teeth, hissing in the seemingly tiny bit of oxygen in the room and run of the mill upper-body also apparently hurt his entire body.

“Sit down,” Victor said, taking a step towards him. Killian glared at him, but actually sat down, huffing slightly for good measure. He almost sat on his phone. It was buzzing again, a string of text messages threatening to send it careening onto the floor. “God, idiot.” “How long?” Killian repeated, grabbing the phone and silencing it before he threw it on the ground. “Will I miss the opener?” “Cap, I don’t know,” Victor sighed and even Robin was shooting him disappointed glares now. “If I knew I would tell you. Honestly. But Soyer hit you and he hit you hard and A’s going to have a conniption over scheduling PT training. She called me three times while you were getting MRI’ed.” “Does no one have anything better to do on this team than make phone calls during games?”

“Preseason games,” Robin mumbled and Killian sighed, falling back onto the table with all the grace of someone who’d just been pushed forcibly into the boards of a hockey arena. “Also, you might want to answer that.” “What?”

“Your phone. El’s calling again.”

“If you don’t answer, she’s going to start calling everyone else,” Victor pointed out when, apparently, Killian didn’t move quickly enough. He grumbled under his breath – certain Victor was more right than he actually realized and almost surprised it hadn’t started happening yet – groaning slightly when he moved and grabbed his phone.

He didn’t even get a word out before the lecture began.

“Are you serious KJ?” Elsa hissed, each word sounding a bit more frustrated than the last one. He didn’t let himself consider the nickname, the way she’d used that more than ever in the last two weeks or how her voice caught just a bit on the two letters. She shuffled slightly on the other end, like she was trying to shift the phone on her shoulder and her voice got a bit softer when she started talking to someone that wasn’t actually Killian.

“No, sweethearrt, he’s fine,” she muttered. “Yeah, yeah, he knows you’re asking. Ok, he knows you’re both asking. Give me a few minutes, ok? I promise.” Elsa moved again and there were footsteps in the background and Liam’s voice as he tried to corral the twins before they could hear their mother screaming at their uncle.

“I’m fine, El,” Killian muttered, all too aware of Victor and Robin still staring at him expectantly. “Honestly.” She sighed into the phone, not even trying to mask the sound. She did, however, try to mask the sniffle – it didn’t work. “El,” he sighed, running his fingers through his hair and wrapping them around his neck tightly. That was also a mistake. His neck, it appeared, was just as bruised as the rest of his body. “You can ask Victor. Generic upper-body. Not even a concussion.” “How long?” “What?” “How long will you be out?” Killian rolled his eyes and he should have expected the question. Elsa had watched as much hockey as Killian had ever played and she knew as well as he did which questions to ask.

“A few weeks. They’ll know more tomorrow.” “MRI?” “Already done.” She hummed in agreement and they’d jumped from concerned to clinic so quickly it felt a bit like whiplash. “There’s not anything to worry about, El,” Killian muttered, but she was scoffing before the words were completely out of his mouth and he ran his hand over his face.

“What’d he say?”

“Who?” “KJ!” “Nothing, El,” he lied quickly and it was painfully obvious how quickly she saw through it. Elsa scoffed again, the sound vibrating through the phone and he could hear the mattress creak when she sank onto the bed in her and Liam’s room. “It was just normal on-ice stuff. He’s always been a dick, you know that.” “Yup.” “El.” “It’s totally fine. It’s not like you’re going to miss the whole preseason now or he’s in the Metro with you this season and you’ve got to deal with FA stuff. It’s fine. Totally fine.” She paused, taking a deep breath and Killian knew she’d squeezed her eyes shut. “You know Gina called me the other day.” “Of course she did.” “Are you crazy?” “About which part? Hitting Soyer and getting my ass kicked or wanting….” He cut himself off, eyes darting to Robin was who was staring at him with narrowed eyes and slightly tilted mouth, his own phone held loosely in his hand.

“You’re not by yourself are you?” Elsa asked knowingly. Killian hummed in the back of his throat and he heard her shift again, the mattress making noise in the background and someone was knocking on the door – likely two someones. “Ok,” she continued slowly, “both parts, by the way, they’re both incredibly stupid.” “A rather pointed opinion.” “And the right one. C’mon, KJ, you can’t be serious. I watched it. You turned around and yelled something at him! Why’d you do that?” “He couldn’t keep his mouth shut,” Killian mumbled and Victor muttered something under his breath that was also a rather pointed opinion . “I’m fine, El. A couple of bruises, no concussion, a few weeks off and I’m back for the opener.”

“Yuh huh.” The pounding on the door in Colorado was getting more insistent and he could even hear Liam’s voice now, shouting something about how he’d tried to keep them occupied and Killian laughed before he could stop himself, more than earning the glare that was likely on Elsa’s face at the moment. “You know Charlie cried,” Elsa continued, an accusatory edge in her voice that had gotten sharper the longer this conversation continued. “Like actual tears on his actual face.” “Yeah, well, Rol apparently thinks I’m dead,” Killian sighed, pushing off the table and ignoring the combined gasps of Victor and Robin when he started walking towards the hallway. He also ignored the pain that shot through his spine and seemed to land in the pit of his stomach, settling there like a weight and making it difficult to actually move. He was finished having an audience for this conversation.

“You hit the boards hard,” Elsa said, voice catching a bit and there was more sniffling again. “It took awhile for you to actually get up.” He’d been in the Paints more times than he could count at this point, could walk the hallways without even thinking about where he was going, but the one moment he needed to find a few inches of space that weren’t surrounded by people and team staff and questions about how he was feeling, Killian had come up decidedly short.

“I’m fine El,” he repeated again, sounding like the broken record he’d just accused Victor of being.

“So you’ve mentioned.” “It’s true. It’s just a rather painful reminder that I’m woefully out of fighting practice.” Elsa groaned and her laugh was shaky at best, but it was still a laugh and that had what he’d been going for in the first place. “Did you call Rol back and let him know you’re not dead?” “Not yet.” “You should do that.” “Aye aye, mom.” The laugh was genuine now and he could feel the smile inching across his face as he ducked into the doorway that was, somehow, devoid of people, leaning against the wall and gripping his phone just a bit tighter than normal.

“You’re really ok?” Elsa whispered. “Like for real, for real?” Killian nodded, fully aware that Elsa was on the other side of the country and not a few feet in front of him and he really was an ass. It had been a joke – a long-standing thing with him and Anna, calling Elsa mom whenever she dived into the deep end of overprotective. She’d practically perfected the dive when they were growing up.

She was the oldest and the most mature and Anna and Killian were the same age and not particularly good at listening to authority or coming up with plans that didn’t, somehow, involve public transportation or breaking the rules.

He’d always been very good at breaking the rules.

And if they had been the Four Horsemen growing up, then Elsa was, undeniably, the leader – even if Liam had thought he was for most of their teenage lives. She still was.

She fixed everything. She always had the answers and the plan and that thing she did with the side of her mouth as if to say don’t worry, I’ve got this and every problem any of them had seemed to disappear after that. She made sure Anna had somewhere to go on holidays when she wasn’t traipsing the country – or the entire goddamn world – and she was Liam’s rock after everything and she always knew exactly what to say when Killian was drowning in self-pity and guilt.

And he’d made her cry.

Ass.

“Like for real, for real,” Killian promised and Elsa made a noise in the back of her throat. “Gina shouldn’t have told you about the contract thing. It’s not certain yet.” Elsa took a deep breath and the knocking had finally stopped – Liam’s footsteps sounding down the hall and he might have actually grabbed both twins and dragged them away from the door at this point. “It’s stupid,” she said.

“I thought that was your opinion on fighting Soyer.” “Both things. When did you even come up with this?” Killian shrugged, making an evasive noise and he didn’t want to have this conversation, crowded into a dark corner in the hallway of the arena in Pittsburgh. He still hadn’t showered. “KJ,” Elsa continued. “When? It’s got to have been brewing for awhile right, because you wouldn’t just spring this on Gina without actually thinking about it.”

He took a moment to marvel at just how well Elsa actually knew him before muttering an answer into the phone. “Oh,” she muttered and he could practically see the lightbulb going off over her head. He moved farther into the corner when he heard footsteps nearby gear being dragged down the hallway and they were probably going to leave soon. “When you left, right? That’s when you decided. I thought...I thought something was off.” She could probably read his mind at this point, Killian thought and he was a combination of amazed and frustrated all at the same time. Gina shouldn’t have said anything.

He’d left Colorado a few weeks before the season started – a few weeks before the surprise party that wasn’t a surprise party and Emma and, fuck, Emma. He hadn’t even looked at his other messages.

She’d gone to Eric’s, had been watching the game, had seen him collide with the boards and yell at Soyer and it seemed a bit too much to hope that she might have been one of the several dozen texts on his phone, but he hadn’t even checked and his stomach was way ahead of his slightly more rational mind, leaping towards hope like it was going for gold in the Olympic long jump.

Killian wanted to go to Colorado.

He hadn’t even wanted to leave when he did. He’d come up with the plan then, bag on his shoulder and car waiting in the driveway and a pair of kids strapped to his side like they were glued there.

Of course Elsa had known.

He’d come back anyway – he had a contract and a Cup to win and he’d run face-first into a sea of feelings and wants and making out with Emma Swan like he was sixteen years old and sneaking around so the Vankalds didn’t find out.

Elsa probably knew that too.

“You can’t do that, KJ,” Elsa continued, unaware of whatever mental battle he was staging in the corner of the hallway. “Liam would kill you.” “It’s not really Liam’s call,” Killian mumbled, bitterness sinking into his voice without his permission.

“But leaving New York? What if you don’t actually win a Cup? You’re just going to give up on everything there? That’s insane. I mean you’ve got the team and your friends and mom and dad.”

“They’re your mom and dad, El. Not mine.” It was angry and childish and not entirely true in the grand scheme of things because Mr. and Mrs Vankald were as much Killian and Liam’s parents as anyone could have ever been, but his whole body hurt and Gina shouldn’t have said anything to Elsa and he couldn’t seem to control his temper in a fucking preseason game.

Elsa clicked her tongue and Killian rolled his eyes, knocking his head back against the wall and running his thumb against his chin. “You should just hang up on me when I say shit like that,” he muttered, working a quiet laugh out of Elsa.

“If I ask you a question right now are you totally going to bite my head off?” “You’re going to ask no matter what, El, so I don’t know why you’re precursing it.”

“What about Emma?” He bit his tongue, tasting blood almost immediately and that was probably for the best since it stopped him from actually biting off Elsa’s head through the phone.

Three weeks. It had been three weeks.

That was hardly enough time to change his entire life plan – or at least part of his life plan if Gina actually agreed to do her job and play agent and get him what he wanted. Three weeks wasn’t anything.

It was a blink, half a moment, hardly even enough time to take a deep breath.

It also didn’t seem to matter.

Three weeks and she’d inched into his life and his consciousness and, God, he hoped she’d texted him. He wasn’t just an ass, he was a selfish ass who actually wanted Emma to be worried about him, wanted tangible evidence that she hadn’t just been watching, but that she might actually care.

He cared. A lot.

And he was smiling again – wider than he had all night, crouched in the corner of this doorway like an idiot, thinking about Emma Swan.

Three weeks.

“What about her?” Killian asked, doing his best to keep his voice even and he knew he’d come up on the wrong end of that as soon as Elsa stared to laugh.

“You kiss her yet? Locksley thinks you have.” “Jeez, El.” “Anna doesn’t think you have. She thinks you’re chickening out.” “I haven’t even told Anna.” “Grapevine or whatever.” Killian lowered his eyebrows, but he wasn’t quite as frustrated as he expected himself to be. “That grapevine didn’t happen to just be you, did it?”

“Would I do that?” “I think you already did.” “She was asking,” Elsa cried. “You kept dodging her questions and you wouldn’t answer her texts and she’s in the middle of nowhere shooting now. She deserves a bit of entertainment.” “Ah, so I’m entertainment for Anna now, huh?” Elsa sighed. “Of course not. We both just want you to be happy, KJ. And you haven’t...anyway, I just think you should be willing to let yourself want something. I know you and you told me her name. You didn’t even tell Liam that.” She was right. Of course. It was a day ending in ‘y,’ so of course Elsa was right.

Except they hadn’t actually talked about it and Emma had told Henry something and there was still something off , something he couldn’t quite put his finger on or define and he couldn’t bring himself to push.

Three weeks, after all, wasn’t a very long time.

“We’ll see, El,” Killian said evasively. “It’s just...it is what it is now.” “She go to Eric’s?” “She works for the team.” “Didn’t answer my question.” “As far as I know.” “And you know this…” “El.” She made a noise in the back of her throat, a mix of confusion and interest and a, frankly, pitiful attempt at innocence and Killian couldn’t even bring himself to sigh at the sound. “We’re talking,” he said quickly. “That’s all.” “That’s all?” Elsa repeated and she definitely sounded like Anna now. He wouldn’t have been surprised if Anna had actually been listening on a third line this entire time. She would have shouted something by now. “Nothing a bit more concrete?” Killian groaned, earning a glance from one of the staffers hauling a bag full of jerseys towards the bus and he was never going to get to shower now. “Three weeks, El,” he said again. “That’s hardly any time.” “Ok, ok, ok, just promise me one thing, please?” “What?”

“Next time you play the Pens, punch Soyer right in the jaw. For me. Ok?” He barked out a laugh, leaning forward at the waist and wincing slightly from the pain of his run-of-the-mill upper body diagnosis. She absolutely knew – she knew what Soyer had said and why he’d yelled back and, now, why he’d miss the entire goddamn preseason.

“You’re a witch, you know that,” Killian mumbled. He could hear Elsa smile.

“Nah, I just know you. I’ll tell the twins you’re fine, but expect Liam to call as soon as you land in New York and yell at you for being an idiot. And critique your fighting technique.” “Yeah, well, I haven’t had to defend his honor in awhile.”

Elsa mumbled something – that probably wasn’t proper for the twins likely pressed on the other side of the door – but he knew she was still smiling. “Make sure you kiss Emma again when you see her too. She was probably worried.” Killian’s mouth dropped open, breath rushing out of him in one vaguely enormous huff and that actually hurt too and Elsa was laughing when she muttered a quick bye KJ and the line was dead before he could even begin to come up with something else to say.

He did, eventually, get to shower, pushed back into the locker room by Will almost as soon as as Elsa had hung up the phone. There were even more messages by the time he’d gotten back out, phone battery dangerously low because the entire world, it seemed, wanted to make sure he wasn’t concussed.

“I told Rol you weren’t dead,” Robin said, lifting his eyebrows when he stared at Killian in the visitor’s locker room. “He’s very relieved.” "I’ll call him,” Killian promised.

“Ah, it’s late now. He’s fine. And you’re not actually dead, so crisis averted on that front. He’ll see you tomorrow and he’ll forget this whole thing ever happened. Although he might have something to say about your technique.” “He’ll apparently have to get in line. El said Liam was disappointed too.” “See,” Will said pointedly, sinking onto the edge of the bench without lifting his eyes away from his phone screen. “That’s why you’ve got to leave the fighting to the professionals, Cap. You know if you hadn’t gotten hurt I bet they would have given you a major.” “In a preseason game,” Robin added.

Killian shrugged, tugging his sweatshirt over his head and ignoring the buzz of his phone on the top shelf of his locker. “Why’d you do it?” Robin continued, glancing up at the noise. “I mean, I know Soyer’s an ass and he kept checking you all night, but that’s not usually your thing. Scarlet’s right. Leave the fighting to the pros.” He didn’t answer at first, grabbing his phone and widening his eyes at the string of texts from Anna, ranging from angry to furious to disappointed that he was absolutely ignoring her now and Will’s breath hitched audibly in his throat.

“He said something about Liam didn’t he?” he asked knowingly and it wasn’t like Will to be quite that perceptive.

Killian still didn’t answer – and that was enough of an answer and both Will and Robin were standing and pacing and clenching their fists like they were going to go find Soyer that moment and punch him in the face, again.

“God what a fucking asshole,” Will muttered and Killian cocked his head to one side, an agreement without actually having to repeat the words. His phone rang and Anna was getting even more impatient now and Will widened his eyes meaningfully. “Where is she even calling from?” “I don’t know, probably the tundra or something. She found service though.” “Better answer before she actually figures out a way to teleport through the phone.” Killian sighed, but somewhere in the middle of being frustrated about missing the rest of the preseason and Soyer’s words and how bad he must have looked fighting on national TV, his pulse had started to thud just a bit unevenly, realization seeping into his veins – people were worried about him.

She didn’t yell as soon as he answered, far more control than Killian realized Anna possessed, and he even got an apology in before she launched into her tirade, cursing him to a variety of different gods and a handful of various underworlds.

And he told her he was fine, promised not to do it again and even managed to find out where she was shooting that week, four hours outside of Ketchikan in Alaska, and Anna stopped yelling at him once he asked about her schedule.

They’d made it back to the bus – a half an hour drive to the airport and the private plane and Killian had never wanted to be back in New York more in his entire life – by the time Anna had finished detailing all the plans and the elevations of the several mountains she was planning to climb to get the perfect shot and he rested his head against the window next to him, doing his best not to worry. It probably worked as well as it had for Elsa. And Liam. And probably Mr. and Mrs. Vankald.

Because if they were worried about him careening into the boards that night, then they were even more worried about Anna climbing mountains and taking pictures and it might have been her dream, but it also scared him to death.

“You’ll be careful, right, Banana?” Killian asked, voice hushed so he didn’t wake up the already dozing Robin in the seat next to him.

Anna groaned on the other end – and she probably rolled her eyes too. “I hate that nickname,” she mumbled, but there was affection in her tone too.

He’d started calling her that the day they moved into the brownstone, butting heads with Anna almost immediately. She was loud and boisterous and she never seemed to stop moving and, well, they were the same age.

Even if Anna claimed she was the older sister.

So he’d come up with the nickname, because even eight-year-old Killian Jones was kind of an ass and he enjoyed seeing the look on Anna’s face whenever he regarded her as a fruit. He wasn’t quite sure when it stopped being an insult and something important, wasn’t certain when she stopped scrunching her nose up at the nickname and, now, he called her that whenever he saw her, arms flung around his neck as she practically leapt on him.

“I’m serious Anna,” Killian continued, shifting in his seat slightly. “I mean, mountains? There’s got to be ice and snow and it’s freezing probably, right?” “KJ, you literally got thrown into the boards tonight and you didn’t get up for hours. Hours! And now you’re telling me I can’t climb a couple of mountains. Think of the pictures.” “Ok, several things, it did not take hours for me to get up. And I’m not telling you that you can’t climb the mountains, just to be careful. The pictures are, obviously, going to be awesome. That’s not even a consideration.” Anna didn’t say anything for a few moments and it might have been the longest she’d been quiet in the history of the entire world. “That was nice, KJ,” she mumbled. “You’re really ok, though? El said the entire preseason.” “I can be nice sometimes,” he shot back, earning a laugh out of Anna. He pushed his head against the window again, condensation sticking to his hair and his forehead and Robin was halfway to snoring now. “And yeah, at least that, maybe longer.” “The opener?” “I don’t know.”

Anna sighed softly. “I’m sorry.” “Don’t be, Banana, it was my fault.” “You know what else El said?”

“I can only imagine.” “That you’re spending some of your time in New York occupied with things that don’t have to do with your FA status and you gave her a name.” “You two gossip way too much,” Killian mumbled. “And only about half of that was true.” “Did she call you yet?” “Who?” “The girl you won’t actually name.” Killian pressed his lips together. He still hadn’t gotten the chance to read his text messages – the number seemingly growing by the moment and he’d been far too much of a coward to actually check and see if Emma was one of them.

Anna clicked her tongue disapprovingly in the background. “Oh you totally didn’t check,” she accused. “I bet she did. All worried and nervous. Did she go to Eric’s?” “You and El should coordinate these conversations better, I’m just repeating myself.” “It’s not my fault you answered her before you answered me. That’s just you being a jerk.” “That’s true,” he mumbled and Anna made a noise that sounded a bit like a mix between a sigh and a groan.

“Maybe you should call her.” “Who?” “KJ!”

He smiled against the window, shifting his hand so his phone was pressed up closer to his ear and he nearly jumped out of his seat when it vibrated again. He’d talked to everyone major already – even sent Mrs. Vankald a text so she wouldn’t worry too – there wasn’t anyone left...unless. Killian pulled the phone away from his ear so quickly he was certain he’d dislocated his shoulder as well and he tugged his lip behind his teeth when he saw the name on the screen.

Swan.

“Anna, listen, I’ve got to go,” he said.

“You make it to the airport?”

“Yup.” He could practically see her lowering her eyebrows as if she was sitting next to him instead of a now-definitely snoring Robin. “Oh,” Anna laughed. “She’s calling you isn’t she?” “I gotta go, Banana.” “Yeah, yeah, yeah, shoved aside for the girlfriend. Whatever. See if I call to make sure you’re ok after you get into a fight next time. I don’t care.” “Be careful tomorrow, ok?” “Always, KJ.” He pulled his phone away again to switch calls and, immediately, seemed to forget every single word he’d ever learned. “Killian?” Emma asked, nerves obvious in the tone of her voice and that seemed to snap him back to attention immediately.

“Hey,” he said softly. “I’m glad you called.” “Really?”

The genuine surprise in her voice caught him off guard – he was fairly certain they’d cleared, at least, that particular hurdle. She had to know he cared, right? Of course. The tiny, persistent voice in the back of his head, however, reminded him rather quickly that they hadn’t actually had much of a real conversation, usually too preoccupied with the kissing and then more kissing and Killian felt his breath hitch in his throat at the memory of her hand on his hip.

He should ask her out.

And then ask about her.

He wanted to know everything about her.

“Of course, love,” Killian said. She didn’t argue the endearment this time, breath rushing out of her quickly and loudly on the other end of the phone, like she’d been holding it for hours. “I, uh, I take it you saw the game.” “Did you talk to Roland? He’s convinced you’re dead.” “So I’ve been told,” he laughed. “Robin took care of that. I was too busy getting MRI’s and placating El.” Emma sighed again, hissing in her breath at the idea of an MRI and the bus ride to the airport probably wasn’t the best place to have this conversation – the first time they’d actually talked on the phone since the GD event.

“I know it’s fine,” she muttered, sounding as if she was half talking to herself. “Ruby went into full attack mode as soon as you didn’t get up immediately and I know...I know, like for a fact, you’re not concussed. She called Victor and got the upper-body diagnosis and I think she’s actually just got release templates saved on her phone because she did it all from the table in the restaurant at the same time we were all trying to promise Rol that you were ok and...I know. I don’t...I don’t know why I called.” She tapped her teeth together and Killian was certain it was the loudest noise he’d ever heard, or that might have been the rushing in his ears at the idea that Emma believed she shouldn’t have called.

What a disaster.

“I’m glad you called, Swan,” Killian said again. “Really. I probably would have called you...I just…”

He didn’t have an answer – or at least an answer that didn’t paint him as the coward he was, nervous to call a girl like he was a teenager and asking Emma to prom.

That was the problem. It all felt a bit teenage and he liked her – a lot – more than just someone he wanted to kiss every time he saw her. That too, but Killian wanted a lot more than he could remember ever wanting out of a three-week relationship that wasn’t really a relationship since they kept dancing around the subject of actually talking about it.

“Yeah,” Emma mumbled. “You didn’t happen to check your text messages, did you?”

Killian’s stomach fell on the floor of the bus, he was certain. He gulped quickly, not able to run his hand through his hair since that hurt too, but he muttered hold on a sec into the phone and swiped his finger across the screen, scrolling through his inbox to find two text messages from hours ago.

He clicked on Emma’s name and it was probably for the best that he was in the back corner of the bus, sitting in the dark because Killian was fairly positive he’d jumped out of his seat or been struck by lightning or something equally absurd.

She was wearing his jersey.

Holy shit.

It had happened before – he was the goddamn leader in jersey sales every year and half of those were women and he knew there was a dedicated section of the fandom that really didn’t care about the goals or the points or even the Cup, was just worried about he looked in his jersey – but none of those people had ever been Emma Swan and none of them had sent a picture wearing his jersey and Killian couldn’t think straight.

“Fuck,” he mumbled, not quite able to take his eyes off the screen. She was smiling, hair pulled up and eyes bright and the ‘C’ on her shoulder was almost painfully obvious. He tried to take a deep breath and it didn’t really work, lungs apparently incapable of doing their job anymore, and Emma was still on the phone.

“Jesus Christ, Swan,” he muttered. “That was…”

“Ok?” “Better.” She let out a soft laugh that seemed to settle in the pit of Killian’s stomach or in the space between his ribs and now he really wanted to get back to New York. “I just...they told me the rules and we’ve been…” Emma cut herself off, probably tugging on the ends of her hair for good measure and Killian was smiling like an idiot at this point.

“We have,” he said, not sure if he was confirming something or just doing his best to make sure her voice stopped shaking.

He was glad she called.

“And I wasn’t really sure what protocol was on being concerned, but, well, I was. So, there.” “So, there?” “Yeah,” Emma said. “That asshole kept checking you all night and he’s always been like that, the league should have thrown him out years ago.” “Wait, wait, Swan, do you know Soyer?” Emma clicked her tongue and Killian had sat up a little bit straighter. “Uh, yeah,” she said slowly. “I mean, not personally, but...it’s a long story.” Killian ran his hand through his hair, ignoring the pain and the far-too-tight wrap Victor had demanded he put around his chest before he even leave the locker room. “What are you doing tomorrow, Swan?”

“I have to work. Opening night thing in two weeks is slowly driving me insane. Did you know Scarlet can’t eat gluten?” “I did, actually. He complains about it, at least, once a week.” “Why? Don’t you have to be at the Garden tomorrow?” “Apparently there’s more tests and MRI results to get back and they might know when I can skate again, but, uh, you want to get coffee or something?” His voice stuttered over the actual question, groaning a bit on the uh and he was the captain of the New York Rangers, it shouldn’t have been nearly this terrifying to talk to her. But then she’d been wearing his jersey and he hadn’t actually stopped thinking about her in the last three weeks and Killian was, absolutely, in over his head.

Emma didn’t say anything for what felt like several hours and for half a second Killian thought she was going to say no, something about the rules and smashing straight through them at this point, but then he heard her take a deep breath and he was positive she was nodding. “Hot chocolate,” she said.

“What?” “I’m not really a coffee person.” Every muscle in his body seemed to loosen at her voice, smile on his face threatening to overwhelm him completely at this point, and he hummed in agreement as the bus pulled up to the tarmac, half an hour coming to an end far too quickly.

“Hot chocolate it is then,” Killian said, pointedly ignoring whatever it was his pulse was doing.

“Ok,” Emma murmured. “That, uh, that sounds nice.” “Just let me know when you’re not dealing with Scarlet’s food aversions and we can go, ok?” She laughed and he still hadn’t stopped smiling, earning a very particular look from Robin when he finally woke up. “And maybe let me know when you land?” “Of course, love.” “Bye, Killian.” “Bye.” He stuffed his phone in his pocket, standing up and grabbing his bag off the shelf above his head, ignoring whatever it was Robin was doing with his face.

“What?” Killian snapped as they walked up the steps towards the plane.

Robin shrugged, nudging him forward down the aisle. “Nothing, Cap, absolutely nothing.”

#cs ff #captain swan ff #ouat ff #cs #csbb #blue line #i wrote this chapter at a basketball game on super bowl sunday #in case anyone was wondering #also that's pretty telling about how long ago i started writing this

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inyri · 7 years

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Equivalent Exchange (a SWTOR story): Chapter Twenty-One- Immortals

Equivalent Exchange by inyri

Fandom: Star Wars: The Old Republic Characters: Female Imperial Agent (Cipher Nine)/Theron Shan Rating: E (this chapter: M) Summary: If one wishes to gain something, one must offer something of equal value. In spycraft, it’s easy. Applying it to a relationship is another matter entirely. F!Agent/Theron Shan. (Spoilers for Shadow of Revan and Knights of the Fallen Empire.)

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Immortals

16 ATC. Yavin IV.

Back at camp, Nine stops by her tent first.

She desperately wants a shower. She’s got enough of an excuse for one after a day’s work in the field, tired and sore and dirty from prowling through the ruins, but more to the point she needs to refocus and cool down before the evening’s meeting. Stripping out of her armor, robe wrapped around her body and feet slipped into bathing shoes- barefoot won’t work here, not with the rough stone underfoot, and she’d normally just wrap up in a towel but given the number of soldiers between her tent and the showers that seems an exceptionally bad plan unless one likes wolf-whistles- she pads across the Imperial half of the encampment toward her destination.

They’re only field showers, of course: sun-heated water rationed out in minute-long portions, the interface flatly refusing any attempts at overrides and beeping rudely when she tries to adjust the timer up to a more reasonable three minutes.

Oh, well.

She hangs her towel from the hook in the narrow cubicle and strips down before hitting the panel and letting the water, barely lukewarm despite the solar tank, run over her skin. In the cubicle beside hers someone’s singing an old military cadence, off-key and in a bass voice loud enough to set the thin wall vibrating; after two verses, the song cuts off with a grumble and a muttered curse.

(For a moment she remembers the Academy, remembers her school days.

Privacy was a privilege to be earned there, open dormitories with their beds in long uncurtained rows until their fourth year and communal showers divided by gender until lower sixth. It was meant to break them of bad habits when they were still young enough to take the breaking without question, strip down their individuality to make them malleable- little boy-and-girl-shaped dolls to be fit into molds to make diplomats and ambassadors and Minders and Fixers as the needs of the Empire required. It worked, most of the time.

When it didn’t, one of two things could happen. Sometimes the pressure made one fragile, brittle, prone to shatter with too much force applied; those were the empty beds, the cadets there one day and gone the next. They’d all shake their heads at those, when they were old enough to understand what went home really meant, that it meant failure- weak, they’d say, pathetic.

Children could be very cruel. That, too, was molded into them.

The other thing that could happen was subtler. Sometimes one template never quite suited, never quite fit, a sly, slippery sort of resistance that made the instructors shake their heads even as they smiled behind their hands. Only one thing to do with a cadet like that-

The ones like that, the ones like her- they went to the field.)

The water cuts off with a harsh chime and she sighs, grabs her towel to blot the water from her skin. Good enough.

Back in her tent, hair piled in a damp coil atop her head and changed into training clothes, simple black drawstring trousers and a short-sleeved shirt- she's past caring about proper dress for the meetings; none of the rest of them are stuck outdoors all day in leather and kinetic plating- she lays her armor out to air on her cot with a few sprays of cleanser for good measure.

Vector’d have seen to her gear, normally, one of so many tasks he’d taken on without complaint. Despite her protests, though, he’d been commandeered for logistics nearly as soon as they’d touched down and she’s barely seen him since. The rest of her crew stayed shipboard; Kaliyo, still wary of prolonged contact with the Empire after the last time they’d tried to arrest her, chose to remain behind; Lokin was still rebuilding the infirmary; SCORPIO would have raised far too many questions and Raina- well. If either the Jedi or the Sith got scent of her-

Best to stay away. It left her short-handed, though.

Where is everyone? She thought she’d have been summoned to conference by now, but the others seem to be occupied elsewhere: Theron and Satele are nowhere to be found and Darth Marr’s clearly in his tent given the guards posted outside; when she approaches, Lana’s alone at the War Table, two datapads in front of her and maps and diagrams from three different projectors hovering in the air around her head.

Lana waves distractedly, still focused on one of the maps. “Hello, Cipher. I'll take your report when it's ready. I've got the map all ready to integrate the new data.”

“In a little while, hm? I thought I'd work on it while I eat.”

“Best do it now. Something's got both Darth Marr and Grand Master Shan in a temper today- I feel it in the air, too, but if they know what it is they haven't seen fit to share.” Her hand skates along the holos, pulling tiny renderings of soldiers from one screen to another. “Theron ran in late for some meeting she’d scheduled and I thought she'd drag him off by his ear. I'd be careful if I was you.”

“Slavedrivers, all of you,” she grumbles, suppressing a smile. Not that Satele could ever find out why he’d been late, of course, but oh, to be a fly on that wall if she did- the look on her smug Jedi face would be delicious. “If I didn't know better, I’d think you were ordering me around, Lord Beniko.”

She, predictably, wrinkles her forehead. “Of course I'm not. It's only that-”

“I know. You Force-users run things, after all. The rest of us are just your little soldiers.” She reaches up, moving one of the groupings along the projected map to the center of the Imperial Guard facility. “We’ll need those there, to begin with, but I'll get the data processing. After I get some food.”

“I don’t run-“ Lana says, then sighs. After a moment she pushes away from the table, letting the projections fade. “Oh, hang this. I’m starving. Come on.”

(And in that moment I realized the Lana I knew had been replaced with some kind of clone. Quite a good likeness, but the work ethic- she waves a hand, mouth tilting wryly- totally unrealistic.

I can relax, Lana grumbles. Sometimes.)

***

They sit and watch the soldiers spar as they eat.

After the first awkward day the mood in camp’s a little lighter, a mixed group of scouts and infantry from both sides swapping fighting techniques in the ring beside the common area. Datapad on the table beside her as the day’s analysis compiles, she drains the last of her caf, eyeing one of their scouts critically as a Republic soldier gets him in a chokehold.

“He’ll never get him off balance that way. That ‘pub’s built like a wampa.” Setting her cup down, she mutters at Lana. “If that’s how they train, no wonder we’ve lost a squad already.”

Lana, mouth full, tilts her head in agreement as the scout tries another angle and ends up face-down on the cobblestones. Oh, honestly. She stands, striding to the middle of the ring.

“Look,” she says- the scout rolls onto his back, staring up at her. He’s just a pup, really, no more than twenty by her assessment and probably younger- “you’re doing that all wrong.”

“Don’t think he asked you, lady.” Stars, the man’s enormous. If he was half again his opponent’s weight he must be double hers. “Unless you think you can do better?”

Lana starts to stand up, opens her mouth to intervene; she waves her off, then holds up one finger to silence him. “In a minute. Here-” she turns back to the boy, giving him a hand up- “what were you trying to do, exactly?”

“D’you know the combat manual?” He’s got gravel pebbling his forehead and scuff marks on his trousers. “Maneuver sixteen, but I can’t make it work.”

“That was your first mistake. Starting from a throttle, that’ll never work on someone his size. Try… hm. Twenty into seven into thirty-two.”

“How does that-” his forehead scrunches. He’s trying to picture it, clearly, his hands moving little circles as he works his way through the different forms. “Sorry. I can’t-”

She turns back to the ‘pub, who’s got his arms folded across his chest- and no armor. Perfect. “I’ll demonstrate. Shall we begin?”

He grins and lunges for her neck.

Overconfident. Typical.

She darts her left arm outside his right, brings her cupped left hand down sharply at the crease of his elbow as two fingers of her right hit the hollow of his throat and dig in hard; his arm bends and he chokes as she pivots her weight into him. When his knees hit the ground she pulls back from his throat, slides her left hand grip down to his wrist and rotates, snaps it back against her thighs- a little more force and she’d have put his elbow out of joint, but this is meant to be a friendly spar; still, he flinches. She lets her own knees bend, driving her weight between his shoulder blades until he falls forward, pinned by her momentum and wrist still caught in her grasp, arm twisted behind his back-

“And then,” she exhales, looking up to the scout, “with a little leverage-”

She’s barely torqued his shoulder before he’s tapping out.

“Or if you’ve got a knife-” she doesn’t draw hers, leaving it tucked into her boot, but pushes a fingertip into the base of his skull, his back at the heartline and at the level of each kidney- “here, here or here. All good options.��

“What if he’s in armor, though?” Another scout, a stocky woman in Republic fatigues, calls out across the ring. Her demonstration took ten seconds, maybe, probably less, but in that time they’ve attracted quite an audience. Letting her opponent go, she settles cross-legged onto the ground beside him; he rolls over, rubbing his arm.

“Then you screwed up. If you got close enough to an opponent in full armor to let him get his hands on you,” she says, “you’re probably going to get your ass handed to you and you probably deserve it.”

Beside her, the soldier snorts in agreement, then coughs. She might have hit his throat a little hard.

“Yeah, okay-” another voice, behind her- “but what if-”

When the light starts to fade half an hour later she’s sweating, covered in dust from the cobblestones, and she’s put most of the gathered ring through their paces in some form or another.

Dodging one last attempt at a grapple with a forward somersault, she turns around-

The Grand Master’s standing at the edge of the ring with Theron at her shoulder, arms folded across her chest, looking entirely unamused. “Cipher, I really shouldn’t have to ask you not to injure our infantry.”

“No one’s injuring anything.” She wipes her face. “Just training. They’re playing too close to the book, your people and mine both. If they can’t improvise in the field, they’re all going to-”

Probably better not to say that out loud.

“She does have a point,” Theron chimes in as Satele shoots him a look out of the corner of her eye. “I thought you wanted us cooperating. Joint training isn’t a bad idea.”

“What you do with your leisure time is up to you. For tonight, however, I need you both at the war table in fifteen minutes. Promptly.” That last comment directed at Theron, Satele turns toward Lana. “Lord Beniko, you as well, please.”

As she heads off across the courtyard, the three of them roll their eyes in synchrony.

“Promptly.” Theron snorts. “Subtle as a lightsaber to the face. I should go take a nap just to spite her.”

She laughs; her datapad, still on the table, chirps as the compiler finishes and she walks across to pick it up. “Hear, hear.”

Lana slides off the bench. “I’d better go finish that map. Send me that file, won’t you?”

“On its way.”

With a nod, she stacks their empty plates, dumping them back into one of the collecting bins. “See you both shortly.”

Theron tracks her as she walks away. “Lana’s still avoiding me, isn’t she?”

“Not really. I pulled her away from work when I came back. That’s got nothing to do with you.”

“I guess,” he says. “I just keep catching her looking at me. After Rishi, it’s a little disconcerting.”

“She is sorry, you know.” Her sparring partner’s still standing near the edge of the ring, waiting; she waves the woman off with a nod. “You know she is.”

“Maybe. Anyway, that looked like fun.” Perching on the table, Theron shifts his gaze toward the still-training soldiers. “I may ask you to put me through my paces soon, if that’s okay with you. With all this down time I’m definitely getting rusty.”

“Whenever you like, once you get the all-clear. I don’t want your-” she catches herself on the words- “Grand Master Satele to shock me to death if I break one of your fingernails.”

“Jedi don’t use Force lightning, as a rule. And that assumes you can beat me, so-”

She grins. “I assume nothing. I’ll stomp you flat any day of the week.”

“I’d say you could try, but I just watched you spar for the last ten minutes. Honestly, yeah, you’ll probably kick my ass.” He returns her grin. “Do I need to read that file, too?”

“No, it’s just scouting data from today’s run. I’m sure we’ll go over it shortly. In exhaustive detail.”

“I hope not. But I’d better take notes, then. I might be talking you through tomorrow if I still can’t get field clearance.” Theron makes a face, reaching into his pocket. “I- shit. I left my datapad on my desk.”

As he pushes back up off the table, she nods. “I’ll meet you over there, then.”

“Walk with me? I just need to grab it.”

They make their way through the rows of tents, lamps within casting shadows on the canvas walls, until they reach the western edge of camp and the Republic command quarters and Theron’s tent, wedged between Satele’s to its right and the brigadier’s on its left. He starts inside, gesturing for her to follow- he wasn’t lying about the space, barely enough for the two of them standing, a cot with a duffel bag tucked underneath, a tiny desk and matching chair.

(He’s always tidy, everything neatly stacked or folded away, a tendency she recognizes in herself-

They were used to running, both of them, in those days: only the essentials kept near to hand in the field, ready to shove into a bag in ten seconds or less, ready to bolt at the slightest sign of trouble. An old habit, born of necessity.

They’ve gotten a little messier, now.)

“How did your meeting go, by the way? I heard she wasn’t happy when you made it back.”

“How do you think it went?” Plugged into a charging cable, Theron’s datapad’s on the corner of the desk; he picks it up and slips it into an inside pocket of his jacket and then turns, wraps his arms around her waist and pulls her close, face to face. “I’m standing there talking about troop deployments and getting lectured on punctuality, and all I can think about is your-”

(She clears her throat, hides a smile behind her hand. Never mind. We were still on time to that meeting, if you’ll recall.

Yes, with a minute to spare. You weren’t seriously- Lana sighs. I do not want to know. I really don’t.)

***

(“-and all I can think about is your fucking mouth,” he says, the last words muffled in the press of his lips against her forehead. “You did that on purpose, I swear.”

“And what if I did?” She slips her arms around his neck, voice pure innocence and lashes fluttering. He’s even better sport than she’d hoped for, now that he’s decided to play after all. “I thought it was better than the alternative. But if it’s too much of a distraction, I won’t do it again.”

“Not what I meant, and you know it. How much time do we have?”

Not enough. Never enough to- stars, she needs to be smarter than this. The lamp’s flickering; the power from the generators gets spotty after nightfall, especially when they’re drawing off it to run the War Table equipment. All it would take was the wrong person outside, a glimpse of silhouettes, a little too much noise-

No risk, no reward.

“Let me-” she reaches up, switches off the light (yes, that's better) and checks the time. “Minus five for walking time, that leaves us… hm. Three minutes.”

“And I still owe you.”

“Mm-hm-” he pulls at her drawstring, fingers sliding down against her skin- it’s such a cliché but ah, clever boy, his hands- “you do.”

Her knees buckle; she reaches back for the edge of the desk, something to brace against.

“Then I may need to pay my debt,” Theron says against her mouth, words against the silent ohs she’s choking back, “in installments.”)

***

He did have a point: concentrating on the maps was rather difficult after that.

Thankfully, she’s used to working around distractions.

***

By the time they drag the Commandant from the shuttle pad down the pathway to the War Table she’s in a foul temper.

She’s known she was in over her head the whole time they’ve been here. This entire mess, Revan and the Emperor... her training never covered anything like this. She can’t negotiate with these people. They’re completely insane, all of them, ranting about the Emperor, how he must feed, must feed- Force knows what the ghost of a Sith eats, but she’s pretty sure she doesn’t want to find out.

(Spirit, he says, a correction that snaps her head backward, sharp as a slap. Spirit, not ghost. I am beyond death.

Lana reaches for her arm.)

“You’re not one of them,” Iven said, “you’re meaningless.”

He doesn’t even have to quantify it. She knows exactly what he means. In the annals of history, she won’t even be a footnote in this mission. Normally that wouldn’t bother her; Cipher work means passing unnoticed, after all, a quiet hand, a shot in the darkness. There’s no fame to be had for work done well, only infamy in failure.

But meaningless? It strikes a nerve.

The man’s still raving when she shoves him to the ground at Marr’s feet, even when one of her strike team hits him with the butt of his rifle. Her own shoulder’s throbbing, a lucky blow from one of the other Guards- dead now, burning in the center of the complex courtyard- and she rubs it as they close ranks around their captive.

“We won’t get anything out of him that way.” Satele gestures toward the Commandant, at the trickle of blood now dripping from the corner of his mouth. “Let me speak with him personally. Given his mental state, I think some delicacy is required.”

Marr shakes his head, a hint of irritation in his voice. “That will take time we do not have, and we must breach the temple before Revan. He will speak, whether he wishes to or not. With Lord Beniko’s talents-”

Lana looks as though she’d like to sink into the ground. “With respect, my Lord, I can’t force him. I can only tell you what I see, not pry it out. If you mean to question him, may I suggest you’d be far better served by Cipher Nine.”

She wrinkles her nose- Theron sees it before she can compose herself, the angle of his head a question she’d rather not answer. She has experience enough in the finer points of interrogation, true, but since Hunter she’s got no taste for it and Satele’s right, anyway. Hurting him won’t give them what they need. One can't break what's already broken.

“If you torture him, you’ll only kill him without learning any more than what we already know. He needs to be tricked into confidence, not beaten.” She looks down to the man, still rocking back and forth on his knees. “But I agree with the Grand Master, I must admit. It’ll be subtle work, but manageable, I think.”

Marr sighs, and if tone could kill she’d be dead at his feet. “I can always look to you,” he says, “for a particularly skewed perspective. What a pity we can’t simply command him with a word.”

Damn him. Damn him to the Void and back.

She doesn’t answer, bites down hard on the inside of her cheek to keep herself from snapping back, to keep her muscles from shaking in helpless rage. How dare he-

“Have him moved to my quarters.” Satele turns to the guards, who move back to flank the Commandant again, one on each side, hands beneath his arms to drag him away. “We’ll begin immediately. Lord Beniko, with me, please. The rest of you are dismissed.”

Meaningless.

She turns on her heel and stalks away down the path.

By the time she’s back through the archway she’s no longer bothering to hide her fury and it must show, given the way people dart out of her way as she storms through camp toward the taskboard and the speeder bikes. She needs to get out of here. There must be something on the board, some excuse-

Massassi sighted near Watchpost Dorn. Perfect.

She moves her marker to the assignment, picks a fast speeder, and goes.

***

It was only one Massassi. Disappointing.

It never saw her coming; with poison and a few quick knifestrikes she drops the creature to its knees before she ever breaks stealth. It gets a few swipes in, none of them coming anywhere close as she dances in and out of arm’s reach and it roars, raging.

“I know exactly how you feel,” she mutters, driving her blade in deep, and it flails one last time and goes still.

Sitting down on a fallen tree beside the watchpost, she cleans her weapons and takes a few deep breaths, tries to settle her nerves.

Nope. Still pissed.

Her comm rings. She doesn’t even bother to see who’s calling, simply ignoring it; it rings again, this time on a private frequency, one they used on Rishi. Lana can’t possibly be done with the interrogation yet and Jakarro barely uses comms, which only leaves-

She answers. “What?”

“Where the hell are you?” Theron’s hard to hear, speaking just above a whisper. “You know as soon as they’re done with that lunatic they’ll want us back.”

“For what? All I’m good for is wetwork, clearly. I could have had him talking half an hour ago. You probably could have, too, and instead it’s a fucking Force-user party.”

“I know, but-” he pauses. “You okay? You sound out of breath.”

She sheathes her knife, rolling her shoulder back and forth- barely sore, now. Good. “Oh, I’m fine. My Massassi friend’s somewhat less so.”

“Your- wait, you left? ” His voice rising, Theron sighs. “Seriously. Where are you?”

“Check the board- I’m out by Dorn. I needed space.”

“Meet me at Esk again. We should talk,” he says as she starts to object- she’s really not in the mood, literally or euphemistically. “Actually talk, I mean. I’ve got a feeling you need it, the way you looked when you walked off.”

She chuckles. “Very perceptive of you."

“It’ll help, won’t it?”

“I doubt it.”

She can hear the eyeroll in his voice. “I insist.”

“Force, you’re a damned nag. Fine. You’ll need an excuse to get out of camp, though.”

“Oddly enough-” a beep over the channel, then a second; she shakes her head, trying not to laugh- “the power just went down again. I’d better go check it out. See you soon.”

She beats him there this time. Inside the cave it’s cool and quiet and peaceful; she cycles the generator back on and sits, back against the wall, beginning a memory exercise meant to calm her fraying nerves. By the time she hears him outside she’s nearly calm.

Nearly.

“So.” Theron steps out of the sunlight, blinking, looking down at her. “What the fuck was that about?”

She folds her arms across her chest, suddenly back on the defensive. “I thought we were talking. If I want someone to lecture me, I’ll take my chances with Marr again.”

“You know what I mean. I was pretty sure nothing could faze you, but you were about two seconds away from going for Marr’s throat.” He sits down beside her. “What’s wrong?”

“Thought I’d hidden it better than that.”

“You hide a lot of things,” he says, “and yes, you’re very good at it. I just know what it’s like. Also, honestly, I’ve spent way more time in the last month watching you than I care to admit, so-” he shrugs. “That was a deep cut, whatever it was.”

(Does it still bother you that much?

She makes a noise, mixed agreement and equivocation. I still dream about Hunter. I suspect I always will, even with all the desensitization training I’ve been working on, but back then I was just pretending it didn’t bother me so it was a lot worse. About a month before you and I met, before that first raid on Tython, I was trying to turn a Republic senator. She liked poetry, she murmurs, so I met her at a reading. We were discussing literary techniques.

Lana nods. I think I see where this is going.

She was particularly fond of the poet’s use of- she swallows, forces the word out, syllable by syllable- onomatopoeia. The third time she mentioned it, she says, I threw up in an ornamental rosebush. Blamed it on too much wine.)

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“You were right about how to handle Iven, whether he likes it or not, and to come back at you with whatever that was… It isn’t right. Why didn’t Lana say something?” He frowns.

“She has no more idea what he’s talking about than you do, and she’s not going to speak against Marr any more than you’d speak against your mother.” Wrapping her arms tighter, she shakes her head. “It’s an old wound. Let it be.”

He’s quiet beside her, thinking; she knows by the way he’s focused on the ground in front of him. She’s spent too much time watching him, herself. “You were tortured,” he says a moment later. “Weren’t you?”

She nods.

“By the Empire?”

“No.” Mostly true. A one-word answer to an ugly question. “Please, Theron. Don’t ask me any more.”

He takes a deep breath. “I- look, hear me out. When this is over, you could defect, you know. We could protect you.”

She turns to stare at him. He didn’t know, of course, couldn’t possibly have known, but she hears Ardun Kothe echoing in her head and for a second she’s back on Quesh, facing the same offer, the chance to make a lie real-

“No,” she says flatly. “Absolutely not. Never.”

“Why? You call yourself independent, but you’re still stuck under the Dark Council’s thumb. You deserve better than that.”

He really believes that. She can see it in his face.

But Ardun believed she’d really defected, too, at first, and it didn’t stop him from using her.

“You’re so sure of what I deserve? You have no idea. Absolutely none.” Looking away, across the cave, she focuses on a thin crack on the far ceiling. “I could say the same of you. ‘My agent.’ Do you really think you’re any more free than I am?”

A bow drawn at a venture, but it hits its mark. Beside her, Theron flinches, muscles tensing, then lets his held-in breath go in a slow, sad sigh as his head falls back against the wall with a soft little thump. “No. But the Empire-”

“We don’t all want to watch the galaxy burn, you know.” She ought to apologize but he doesn’t quite deserve it; he shouldn’t have asked that of her. She doesn’t need rescuing, doesn’t need to be saved. “Some of us realize we’ve still got to live in it.”

“You should tell your bosses that sometime, then.”

She closes her eyes. “Go to hell.”

“I would.” He’s so quiet it’s hard to make the words out. “But aren’t we already there?”

It might have been funny, some other time, if it weren’t mostly true. Letting her arms fall to her sides, fingertips raking furrows in the dirt as her hands clench into fists, she doesn’t reply. After a minute he shifts, just slightly, resting his right hand on her left; when she relaxes he threads his fingers through hers.

She doesn’t move. She should, but-

“I’m sorry,” he says. “So much for letting you vent- shit, you probably think I planned that.”

“Didn’t you?”

“Not even a little bit. I just- I’ve seen what you can do, and I thought if-” he sighs again, squeezes her hand. “Forget I said anything. Please."

“I understand.” She does. She’d have done the same, under different circumstances. “But you promised, Theron. No sides. No games. Not with me.”

(He was never going to be any good at that, was he?

She should have known better.)

“I know. But-”

Their commpads chime, Lana’s frequency; she glances down as the message scrolls, holding up her wrist so he can see it, too.

Nearly finished. Lots to discuss. Table in 30- LB.

The light from the screen dies and they glance at each other before Theron starts to stand. “We should get moving. I’ve screwed this up enough without getting us into more trouble.”

“In a minute.” She doesn’t follow, stays seated, a weight on his arm pulling him back down until he stops, not sure whether to hold on or let go. ”Will you sit with me,” she says, looking up, “just a little longer?”

He nods, settling back to the floor beside her, and she rests her head wordlessly on his shoulder.

***

Up next: Risk/Reward. Two Revans, one fight, one promotion and too much alcohol.

#inyri writes #equivalent exchange #swtor fanfiction #theron shan #imperial agent #cipher nine #cipher nine/theron shan

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everything-adobe · 7 years

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Adobe Muse: The Little Known Software That Could Change How You Build Websites

Adobe Muse is a wonderful tool for web development, but few people seem to know that it exists. Muse offers a huge array of web development tools, free of charge, with the ability to add paid, modifiable widgets. Should you be using this software? Let’s take a look.

----------------------------------------------------------------- A Crash Course on the History of Web Design -----------------------------------------------------------------

As the Internet grows ever larger, web development becomes more accessible and customizable. It used to be that you couldn’t get by without knowing HTML, creating ugly, bare-bones web pages like this.

That may be a bit of an exaggeration, but you get the idea. We eventually learned to use tables, making our web pages look a little less like dog food. These structures were fragile though, and you had to be an expert to make them work without ruining everything.

youtube

Then several tools hit the scene in the late 90s/early 2000s, including Flash, Javascript, and Cascading Style Sheets, (and more backend stuff, but we won’t get into that) and our web pages began to look more like how we wanted them to look, and less like Craigslist ads. But this still required careful study. You couldn’t just sit down and make a website without reading a few books on it first.

Nowadays, we have template websites that claim to do a lot of work for you, and those may be your style. But the disadvantages of these sites and of this type of software is that it can all look very same-y.

---------------------------------- Muse Enters the Scene ----------------------------------

Why so few people know about this software still baffles me. On one hand, it can be very costly, at something like $15 a month ($30 a month if you’re getting the suite and are a student- $30 for everything Adobe offers otherwise) and I don’t remember very many people talking about Dreamweaver either. On the other hand, Muse is extremely intuitive, and if you want to make something you can feel like you designed and put on the web yourself, there’s really no better option than Muse. So, to recap, Muse is probably best for you if you:

Have the money to afford a monthly fee, or are a student and want PhotoShop, InDesign, Premiere, etc.

Want to do it yourself

Don’t want to learn markup language (HTML & CSS) yourself

Have design skills, and want to show them off

If any or all of the above sound like you, then let’s get started.

--------------------------------------------- How to Turn On Your Computer ---------------------------------------------

One thing I’m not going to do is show you where to get Adobe’s suite, how to buy it, etc. This is not a sponsored post. I’m just a guy who happens to like Adobe programs.

So we can skip steps 1-17: getting a computer that can run Adobe, starting a bank account, putting money into said bank account, paying for an Internet connection, going to Adobe, buying Adobe programs, spending two days downloading Adobe’s suite, and so forth. What I can tell you is how Muse works, and how to get started. One fair warning is that Adobe programs can be pretty hard on computers, so you want to make sure you don’t have a zillion browser tabs open, unless your computer is a tank, like mine.

Meta. Adobe open screens all look fairly similar, but as soon as you open it, depending on your version, you’ll probably be treated to something fairly simple. You may see a popup asking if you need tutorial help, alongside a screen that shows you that you have no open projects. Here’s what mine looks like.

From here, you just need to create a new document. For that, you click file>new site... or hit ctrl+n/cmd+n, as you would with most programs (or just click on that “Create New” button.

The default settings should be fine for this, unless you’re already planning out your next project. Click “OK” (Note to past self: YOUR default settings weren’t fine. You are bad and you should feel bad).

This is really nowhere near as complicated as it seems. What we’re looking at here is called your Plan View. It gives a quick overview of all pages associated with your website, allowing you to easily move between them and get a kind of bird’s eye view.

Many sites have a sort of “template” that stays constant throughout all subdomains. It associates all pages together, creating a kind of unified experience. Also, moving to a completely different design between pages would be very jarring.

This is your “Master” page. You can have multiple Masters assigned to multiple pages (a “B Master”, for example). If you hover over the blank box at the bottom, you’ll see plus signs appear. You can click on the plus sign to the right to add a new Master page. Then, you can click on the X that appears just above and to the right of your new Master page. This is how you add pages through the Plan View. ... Well, that was pretty boring. There really aren’t many ways to make instructions interesting without sounding cheesy and inept. Here’s a gif for your time.

(I do not own Rick and Morty. Rick and Morty was co-created by Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland, All Rick and Morty-related characters and trademarks are expressly owned by © Cartoon Network. Rick and Morty is the story of a zany scientist and his illegitimate child and their adventures through time and space on the Star Trek Enterprise). Sorry. Let’s play around with the Master page, just to make you a little familiar with how design in Muse works. We could go much further with this, and maybe we will in the future, but I just want to help you get acquainted with this software.

Click on the A-Master page below. We’ll just design a generic site template.

--------------------------------------------------------------- This Subhead is Irrelevant to the Discussion ---------------------------------------------------------------

When I first saw the Design View of Muse, I thought it was basically InDesign, but for the web. If you’re familiar with InDesign, you’ll probably catch onto Muse pretty quickly. It’s structured like all Adobe programs, really. You have your toolbar on the left, your panels on the right, and some preset text, color, alignment, and other features at the top, depending on what you’re doing and what you’ve clicked on.

You should see two lines on the largest panel in your screen (probably). Everything above the top line is your header, and everything below your bottom line is your footer. I’m not sure how this renders across different browsers, but for semantic purposes, everything you want on the bottom of your page (copyright information, bottom menus, etc.) goes in your footer, and everything you want on the top (like a navigation bar) goes in your header. I have no idea why I did that in reverse, but I’m too lazy to restructure that sentence, and not lazy enough to stop typing this one. Sorry.

First, let’s create a rectangle. We won’t put anything in it- everything on this layout will be a dummy object. I made mine blue and about 160 px high by 360 wide, then placed it on the left side of my page, like this.

Your box fill color and stroke color appear at the top of the screen once you click on the rectangle tool, which should be fourth from the top of the toolbar. You can also change your whole page background by clicking outside of your elements, on the big white section of your Design View (your background). I’m going to leave mine white for now, but just know that the option is available.

If you look at the options over to the right of your screen, you should see a “Widgets Library” option. We’re going to add a navigation bar, to make this thing look more legitimate.

More options should pop up. Click on menus, and then select “Horizontal”. We’ll be placing this in our header. Hold over the selected option, then drag it over to your page. Place it on the page, then move it above your header line.

You’ll notice it’s pretty empty, with only a “Home” option listed. We’ll fix that in a bit. I’ve matched my sidebar color (the rectangular box we added earlier) using the dropper tool, which you can do by clicking on your navigation menu, then selecting its “fill” option. You’ll notice a dropper somewhere on the right. From there, you just click on the color you want to match.

This isn’t terribly attractive. There’s a lot of customization we could do, but we won’t bother with that right now. For now, look to the top of your screen. You’ll notice four options corresponding to the different views through which you can see your page. Click on “Plan” to switch back to your Plan View.

Now, hover over your Home Page, then click on the plus sign just to the right of it to add a new page. Name this one “About”. Repeat this and add three new pages. You can name all these pages whatever you like, but I’ve named mine “About”, “News”, “Contact”, and “Forum”.

Now click back on your A-Master to switch to Design View.

If you were looking closely at the Plan View, you might have noticed your navigation bar updating in real-time. The menu widget displays an option for all of your top-level pages (the pages along the top of your Plan View). This could have taken quite a bit of CSS and HTML work otherwise. It can be a real time-saver.

Let’s look back over at your widgets panel. Expand the option “Slideshows” by clicking on the arrow. Then, click and drag out a basic slideshow. I stretched mine out to fill the screen. There’s no particular reason for this; I just feel like you’re starting to learn how this works, so I don’t need to go over everything.

You’ll notice a blue sphere with a white arrow inside if you click on the image. This is where you can customize your widget, adding a different image, changing the slideshow transition properties, etc. You can modify your menu in the same way.

This isn’t the most interesting layout, but it’ll do for learning purposes. Feel free to save your project with File>Save Site/Save Site As... When that’s done saving, you can actually preview it in your default browser. Simply click File>Preview Page in Browser (or CTRL/CMD+SHIFT+E). My page doesn’t quite stretch out, so rather than taking the time to tweak my size constraints, I’m going to leave it at that. I hope this tutorial has been as informative as it has been boring.

#adobe #muse #tutorial #basic

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balancegym · 7 years

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Isha Tohill crushed it at the recent 2017 Powerlifting District Open at Balance Gym.

Tell us a bit about your powerlifting journey? How long have you been powerlifting for? How did you get into it? I've been powerlifting for a little over five years, and competing for three. When I started, I had already tried lifting with dumbbells and machines, but it never occurred to me to pick up a barbell! I happened to meet a powerlifter who encouraged me to try it, and eventually I got curious enough to overcome any hesitations. I joined an online fitness community, picked up "Starting Strength" by Mark Rippetoe, and started following the basic strength template. I got hooked pretty quickly!

Do you do competitions like this often? This was my fourth powerlifting meet ever, so no, not that often! I took off all of 2016 from training heavy to recover from some injuries, but even so, my limit is three meets per year. Peaking for a meet (i.e. building strength while prepping my body to get used to lifting heavy weights at low volume) is intense, and it usually takes me a couple of weeks after each meet to get back into the swing of things.

What was it like competing in your home Gym? IT WAS AMAZING. I don't doubt that competing at my home gym contributed to my good results. All of my gym friends were there either competing, volunteering, reffing or cheering, and some of my friends who had never seen a powerlifting meet were able to come watch. I felt so lucky.

What were your results? Were any of these results PR’s? In pounds, my best squat was 303, bench press was 165, and deadlift was 320. All of those were PRs - the bench was a meet PR, meaning I had done it in the gym before, but the other two were all-time bests. I was SO happy to get a 300-lb squat! I also placed first in my weight class and qualified for USAPL Raw Nationals.

What would you say made the biggest impact on your great results? Setting aside a great training cycle and constant support from my fellow lifters, I really think the thing that made the biggest impact on the day of the meet was my mindset. I recently started reading "With Winning in Mind" by Lanny Bassham, which completely changed the way I approached my training and meet day. Instead of thinking, well, I hope I make this lift! I KNEW I had the strength, and just focused on the process of lifting the weight. I don't think I've ever been so confident.

How long have you been preparing for this event? How many times per week do you train? No matter the time of year, I train four days per week. I started training specifically for the District Open at 9 weeks out from the meet.

What are your training essentials? And competing essentials? Training: Inzer belt, knee sleeves, squat shoes, Chucks, chalk, and preworkout mix.

Competing: All of the above, plus my singlet, knee-high socks, and tons of easily digestible carbs for after weigh-ins to keep my hydration and energy up. This time it was Pop Tarts, Gatorade, pretzels, pb&j sandwiches, and a million gummies.

Any advice for any of our members who would be interested in getting into Powerlifting? Where is a good place to start? There are so many resources out there that there's no one answer, but for strength training beginners, I recommend reading Starting Strength to learn about powerlifting form and the physics behind it. Also, use technology! Follow powerlifters on Instagram, and watch Youtube videos - Juggernaut Strength is well-regarded, and our girl Megsquats (a Balance alum) has a ton of resources on how to get into powerlifting, what the different movements look like, etc. That said: there's NO BETTER WAY to get into the powerlifting world than to meet the people. Come to the second floor at Thomas Circle on any given weeknight (and especially Saturdays at around Noon), and I guarantee there will be powerlifting men and women who will welcome you with open arms. I want to emphasize this for the women in particular: being strong is the most confidence-building, empowering thing I've ever done with my life, full stop, and strong women want other women to feel the same. We'll spot you, film you for the 'gram, and share our snacks!

Whats next for you? I won't be competing again until Nationals in October, so first I'll spend a couple of months gettin' strong and swole with programming from Megsquats (so excited!). Then I'll start a strength peaking program to lead into October. I also plan on eating everything I can.

Want to see more from Isha? Follow her on Instagram @powerisha

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gobigorgohome2016 · 8 years

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Inside the Mind of a Mental Game Coach + GIVEAWAY!

From time to time I love to highlight people within the sport, the BTS side, if you will (I only recently figured out what BTS meant, BTW. behind the scenes!). Running is a sport that requires a lot of mental fortitude. I first met Coach Dean in August of 2015 as I was preparing for the Twin Cities marathon. My interactions with him have changed the way I view both myself and the sport, and he has become a great friend. He was kind enough to do an interview with me, and even better, is giving away his unique, comprehensive mental game assessment (M4PAASS), including the results of the assessment and a complete personal mental toughness game plan. Details for how to win at the end of the interview!

You have a pretty interesting background, care to explain what your history is with the sport?

I started running as a sophomore in high school. A friend of mine on the cross-country team stopped me from catching my bus home just to get me out for the team. It worked. I’ve been running ever since. I ran in college but really improved most post-college and as a masters runner. I raced almost as fast at 40-45 years old as I did 20-25. I’ve raced everything from 400m - well really 440 yards - up to 50 kilometers (both on the track!).

How did you become interested in the mental game of athletes?

I have always loved psychology. It was my minor in college. I found the mind just amazing and complex. I first took graduate sports psych courses for my own benefit. Next thing I knew I was using it on a regular basis helping other runners but integrating it into the coaching I was doing. Back in the 90′s, I decided that this was what I wanted to do full time.

You work with a diverse group of athletes – not just runners – what parts of mental game training are the same across different sports? Different?

This could be a long answer. I’ll try to keep it succinct without losing meaning or watering this down too much.

First I’d say that the mental game is the mental game no matter the performance venue (I say this because I include musicians or dancers in this as well.) Applications and techniques are the same - such as visualization aka imagery, focus-refocus, regrouping and pre-performance routines.

But the implementation is unique to the elements of the sport.

The cues to keep one focused differ by sport. How you might use a “regrouping” technique will be different in a self-paced sport like running compared to something like basketball.

And of course any team sport has elements that individual sports do not.

What is the biggest challenge you face when working with athletes?

I think there are two. The first one is getting athletes to see the value of mental game coaching. Some athletes think you either got it or you don’t. Others don’t think you can learn the skills. The second and related is that they just don’t think it’ll help them perform better.

Now for an athlete I’m working with it’s probably patience. Everyone wants a quick fix. You didn’t get to think the way you do overnight. You won’t get to think a “new” way overnight either. I tell everyone, it’ll take every bit of effort you put into your physical training and maybe more.

One of my favorite parts about talking shop with you is that you know a lot about the science side of sport. However, science and mental game can sometimes be at odds with one another (for instance, I tend to race better than my workouts would indicate). How do you balance these two aspects with the athletes you work with?

I love this question. Because I believe that this gets to one of my strengths as a coach. I have content knowledge of science and sports as well as applied sports psychology - with emphasis on “applied”. I believe that I’m adept working with athletes as individuals. There is no single solution; no single technique; no template to force fit athletes into. And I love the challenge of finding new ways to make things work for THAT individual athlete. I can suspend that other stuff I know to get results. So, regardless of what the “books say”; in the application part of all this - you do what works.

How have your own personal running experiences shaped the way you approach mental game training?

I was never the most talented runner. I was ok. But I sure had a competitive mindset and rarely did anyone get me off my game. I can’t remember a race that I had anxiety about or doubted myself. Oh, I had my bad races for sure but I was always there to “win”. My enjoyment of pushing my limits and the freedom and self-control I felt is something I wish everyone could experience.

What is your favorite part about being a mental game coach?

This will sound so cheesy. I love making a difference in people’s lives. I love the relationships I develop. To see someone move beyond fears that limit them; to experience life fuller; to completely enjoy the moment… It’s all inspiring to me and keeps me going.

Your mental game program is pretty comprehensive. Can you explain what it is and how you developed it?

I have to give a nod to Dr. Patrick Cohn at Peak Performance. I completed his mental game coaching program after my graduate work. This provided the bridge from academic to practical-applied sports psychology. His program provided the initial base for the programs I’ve developed for athletes. I designed and tested a proprietary mental game assessment that I now have all my athletes take. That provides the initial data - our starting point. I designed programs for several sports. But even within those programs I tailor the specific elements to the needs of the athletes who come to me for help.

What is your favorite mental game technique?

For me, like music, it’s about my mood or the situation so this is tough to say. I would say that historically I’ve used imagery the most and the “announcer” in my head technique (It’s a play by play on my run - think Larry Rawson and Frank Shorter announcing the New York Marathon, only I’m the star). I have a pretty vivid imagination and I can make these so real.

As a competitive runner, what was your biggest mental struggle?

Easy: Over-thinking. The phrase that comes to mind: A thinking athlete is an under-performing athlete. An athlete’s job on competition day is execution - not over thinking. Yes, some decisions have to be made but if you are well trained they are almost automatic.

What is the most common mental struggle that you see in runners?

In youth it is often related to anxiety of racing or having an overly external reference, that is, comparing to others.

More mature runners I see the anxiety and wanting to find the secret to pushing through discomfort.

Is it the same for all types of athletes?

The peer or comparison issue is pretty strong regardless of sport.

Do you think the adage is true that running is 90% mental and 10% physical?

Thank you for this. Total garbage but it makes for a pithy quote.

First, in reality - you can’t truly quantify this.

Second, it is completely subjective (what exactly is 90% of running anyway - 9/10ths of a stride?).

Third, it is unique to the individual (you or I have different issues to different degrees).

Fourth, it is unique to the situation (practice vs competition vs championship). And I’d even throw in a fifth point - it depends on mastery of your sport (if you are still mastering skills - it’s more physical). Mental training cannot compensate for poor physical preparation.

What factor do you think most contributes to an athlete’s mental obstacles?

All behaviors are learned - directly or indirectly. So, how we think is the culmination of experiences, role models, and learning with a pinch of genetics thrown in for good measure. My focus is on Controlling the Controllables. You don’t control any of those things from your past nor your genetics. But you do control NOW. So let’s do something about it, eh?

What has been the most rewarding part of your job so far?

I think like any teacher, seeing the light bulb go off or when you get that call or out of the blue and the athlete says something like… “I couldn’t wait until our next session to tell you - I did it. I did what you taught me and nailed my performance. Thank you!”

Now, for the fun part! In order to win a mental game assessment from Coach Dean (more info can be found here) simply find my post on facebook, instagram, or twitter and reply with the best excuse you have ever used to get out of a run or workout, or reply here in the comments. For an extra entry into the contest, tag a friend or share the post. The winner will be randomly selected. Contest ends 2/10 at 5 PM PST.

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networkingdefinition · 5 years

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Clovers Quotes

Official Website: Clovers Quotes

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• A silence, the brief Sabbath of an hour, Reigns o’er the fields; the laborer sits within His dwelling; he has left his steers awhile, Unyoked, to bite the herbage, and his dog Sleeps stretched beside the door-stone in the shade. Now the gray marmot, with uplifted paws, No more sits listening by his den, but steals Abroad, in safety, to the clover-field, And crops its juicy-blossoms. – William C. Bryant • April Rain It is not raining rain to me, It’s raining daffodils; In every dimpled drop I see Wild flowers on the hills. The clouds of gray engulf the day And overwhelm the town; It is not raining rain to me, It’s raining roses down. It is not raining rain to me, But fields of clover bloom, Where any buccaneering bee May find a bed and room. A health unto the happy! A fig for him who frets!- It is not raining rain to me, It’s raining violets. – Robert Loveman • At home the great delight is to see the clover and grass now growing on places that were bare when we came. These small healings of the ground are my model accomplishment-everything else I do must aspire to that. While I was at that work the world gained with every move I made, and I harmed nothing. – Wendell Berry

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'Clover', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '', limit: '68', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_clover').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_clover img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); ); • Because I liked you better Than suits a man to say, It irked you, and I promised I’d throw the thought away. To put the world between us We parted stiff and dry: ‘Farewell,’ said you, ‘forget me.’ ‘Fare well, I will,’ said I. If e’er, where clover whitens The dead man’s knoll, you pass, And no tall flower to meet you Starts in the trefoiled grass, Halt by the headstone shading The heart you have not stirred, And say the lad that loved you Was one that kept his word. – A. E. Housman • Believing there’s no such thing as luck is very unlucky. Like, the worst. Beyond stealing someone’s lucky four-leaf clover. – Caprice Crane • Clover secretly hitched a ride with a nice German couple and their new baby…Clover appeared to the baby, so as to be a delightful, soothing surprise. Well, the child did like Clover. In fact, she held him and cooed. When the parents turned around to look at her and saw their child holding a furry, living creature, they needlessly panicked. – Obert Skye • Clover was a stout motherly mare approaching middle life, who had never quite got her figure back after her fourth foal. – George Orwell • Commemorative stone in the floor of the Chapel of St. George in Westminster Abbey, London, dedicated in 1947: TO THE MEMORY OF ROBERT Baden-Powell CHIEF SCOUT OF THE WORLD 1857-1941 Upon one side of the stone was the badge of the Boy Scouts, the arrow-head to point the true way as it had pointed the way for sailors and navigators from the time of the earliest maps; and on the other the badge of the Girl Guides-the three-leafed clover. – Robert Baden-Powell • Crowds of bees are giddy with clover Crowds of grasshoppers skip at our feet, Crowds of larks at their matins hang over, Thanking the Lord for a life so sweet. – Jean Ingelow • Green clovers. Blue diamonds. Orange Stars. Pink hearts. Purple horseshoes. Man, I never know if I’m looking at a bowl of cereal or having another acid flashback. – David Henry • Her lawn looks like a meadow, And if she mows the place She leaves the clover standing And the Queen Anne’s Lace. – Edna St. Vincent Millay • His Labor is a Chant – His Idleness -a Tune – Oh, for a Bee’s experience Of Clovers, and of Noon! – Emily Dickinson • I found it.” “People find pennies,” Gansey replied. “Or car keys. Or four-leaf clovers.” “And ravens,” Ronan said. “You’re just jealous ’cause” – at this point, he had to stop to regroup his beer-sluggish thoughts – “you didn’t find one, too. – Maggie Stiefvater • I love discovering new young brands and watching these fashion lines take off, like Peter Pilotto, Christopher Kane, and Clover Canyon. – Gillian Jacobs • I noticed that all the prayers I used to offer to God, and all the prayers I now offer to Joe Pesci, are being answered at about the same 50% rate. Half the time I get what I want, half the time I don’t… Same as the four-leaf clover and the horseshoe…same as the Voodoo Lady who tells you your fortune by squeezing the goat’s testicles, it’s all the same: 50-50. So just pick your superstition, sit back, make a wish, and enjoy yourself. – George Carlin • I was in a vintage pub rock band called Clover in the 1970s. – Huey Lewis • I was talking to a Zen master the other day and he said, “You shall be my disciple.”I looked at him and said, “Who was Buddha’s teacher?” He looked at me in a very odd way for a moment and then he burst into laughter and handed me a piece of clover. – Alan Watts • If a man who can’t count finds a four leaf clover, is he lucky? – Stanislaw Lem • If a man who cannot count finds a four-leaf clover, is he entitled to happiness? – Stanislaw Jerzy Lec • If you meet a cross-eyed person you must plunge into the grass, alongside the chilly ants, fish through the green fingernails and come up with the four-leaf clover. – Anne Sexton • If you work, if you wait, you will find the place where the four-leaf clovers grow. – Ella Higginson • I’ll toss my coins in the fountain, Look for clovers in grassy lawns Search for shooting stars in the night Cross my fingers and dream on. – Tracy Chapman • I’m feeling lucky like a four-leaf clover – Jennifer Lopez • In New Mexico, he always awoke a young man, not until he arose and began to shave did he realize that he was growing older. His first consciousness was a sense of the light dry wind blowing in through the windows, with the fragrance of hot sun and sage-brush and sweet clover; a wind that made one’s body feel light and one’s heart cry ‘To-day, to-day,’ like a child’s. – Willa Cather • In the dark of the moon, in flying snow, in the dead of winter, war spreading, families dying, the world in danger, I walk the rocky hillside, sowing clover. – Wendell Berry • Into the air, over the valleys, under the stars, above a river, a pond, a road, flew Cecy. Invisible as new spring winds, fresh as the breath of clover rising from twilight fields, she flew. – Ray Bradbury • Last of all came the cat, who looked round, as usual, for the warmest place, and finally squeezed herself in between Boxer and Clover; there she purred contentedly throughout Major’s speech without listening to a word of what he was saying. – George Orwell • Let you hold in mind, girls, that your beauty must pass Like a lovely white clover that rusts with its grass. Keep your bottoms off barstools and marry you young Or be left–an old barrel with many a bung. – X. J. Kennedy • Listen,’ Clover said. ‘Don’t worry about not being able to come back, I’ve lived both places, and trust me, you won’t be getting the short end of the stick if you end up in Foo. I mean, candy alone. – Obert Skye • Love is as bitter as the dregs of sin, As sweet as clover-honey in its cell; Love is the password whereby souls get in To Heaven–the gate that leads, sometimes, to Hell. – Ella Wheeler Wilcox • Many books belong to sunshine, and should be read out of doors. Clover, violets, and hedge roses breathe from their leaves; they are most lovable in cool lanes, along field paths, or upon stiles overhung by hawthorn, while the blackbird pipes, and the nightingale bathes its brown feathers in the twilight copse. – Robert Aris Willmott • No cop was ever born who wasn’t a sucker for a finely-executed high-speed Controlled Drift all the way around one of those clover-leaf freeway interchanges. – Hunter S. Thompson • Now I believe that lovers should be draped in flowers and laid entwined together on a bed of clover and left there to sleep, left there to dream of their happiness. – Conor Oberst • Oak, granite, Lilies by the road, Remember me? I remember you. Clouds brushing Clover hills, Remember me? Sister, child, Grown tall, Remember me? I remember you. – Gail Carson Levine • On the day the world ends A bee circles a clover, A fisherman mends a glimmering net. – Czeslaw Milosz • One June evening, when the orchards were pink-blossomed again, when the frogs were singing silverly sweet in the marshes about the head of the Lake of Shining Waters, and the air was full of the savor of clover fields and balsamic fir woods, Anne was sitting by her gable window. She had been studying her lessons, but it had grown too dark to see the book, so she had fallen into wide-eyed reverie, looking out past the boughs of the Snow Queen, once more bestarred with its tufts of blossom. – Lucy Maud Montgomery • Peaches grow wild, and pigs can live in clover; A barrel of salted herrings lasts a year; The spring begins before the winter’s over. – Elinor Wylie • Straw mulch, a ground cover of white clover interplanted with the crops, and temporary flooding all provide effective weed control in my fields. – Masanobu Fukuoka • The answer to this riddle has a hole in the middle, And some have been known to fall in it. In tennis it’s nothing, but it can be received, And sometimes a person may win it. Though not seen or heard it may be perceived, Like princes or bees it’s in clover. The answer to this riddle has a hole in the middle, And without it one cannot start over. – Trenton Lee Stewart • The dandelions and buttercups gild all the lawn: the drowsy bee stumbles among the clover tops, and summer sweetens all to me. – James Russell Lowell • The even mead, that erst brought sweetly forth The freckled cowslip, burnet, and green clover, Wanting the scythe, all uncorrected, rank, Conceives by idleness, and nothing teems But hateful docks, rough thistles, kecksies, burrs, Losing both beauty and utility. – William Shakespeare • The fears of what may come to pass, I cast them all away, Among the clover scented grass, Among the new-mown hay. – Louise Imogen Guiney • The peace of great books be for you, Stains of pressed clover leaves on pages, Bleach of the light of years held in leather. – Carl Sandburg • The pedigree of honey does not concern the bee; A clover, any time, to him is aristocracy. – Emily Dickinson • The reason so many people never get anywhere in life is because when opportunity knocks, they are out in the backyard looking for four-leaf clovers. – Walter Chrysler • The shamrock is a religious symbol. St. Patrick said the leaves represented the trinity: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. That’s why four leaf clovers are so lucky, you get a bonus Jesus. – Stephen Colbert • The sweetness of life lies in usefulness, like honey deep in the heart of a clover bloom. – Laura Ingalls Wilder • The white moth to the closing vine, The bee to the open clover, And the Gypsy blood to the Gypsy blood Ever the wide world over. – Rudyard Kipling • The wind is awake, pretty leave, pretty leaves, Heed not what he says, he deceives, he deceives; Over and over To the lowly clover He has lisped the same love (and forgotten it, too). He will be lisping and pledging to you. – John Vance Cheney • The word Miracle, as pronounced by Christian churches, gives a false impression; it is Monster. It is not one with the blowing clover and the falling rain. – Ralph Waldo Emerson • There’s no dew left on the daisies and clover; there’s no rain left in heaven. – Jean Ingelow • Through the open door A drowsy smell of flowers -grey heliotrope And white sweet clover, and shy mignonette Comes fairly in, and silent chorus leads To the pervading symphony of Peace. – John Greenleaf Whittier • To a lesser extent (they like) the whites and reds, but blues, yellows and oranges are the main bee flowers. Although there are very good white bee flowers – white sweet clover is the best honey plant in the world. – Chip Taylor • To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee, One clover, and a bee, And revery. The revery alone will do, If bees are few. – Emily Dickinson • Today While the blossoms still cling to the vine I’ll taste your strawberries I’ll drink your sweet wine A million tomorrows shall all pass away Here I forget all the joy that is mine. Today I’ll be a dandy and I’ll be a rover You know who I am by the songs that I sing I’ll feast at your table I’ll sleep in your clover Who cares what tomorrow shall bring I can’t be contented with yesterday’s glory I can’t live on promises winter to spring Today is my moment and now is my story I’ll laugh and I’ll cry and I’ll sing – John Denver • What a miserable thing life is: you’re in clover; only the clover isn’t good enough. – Bertolt Brecht • What airs outblown from ferny dells And clover-bloom and sweet brier smells. – John Greenleaf Whittier • What was that you gave me to eat?” Winter panicked. A Filler Crisp,” Clover said, his eyes seventy percent concerned and thirty percent mischievous. – Obert Skye • What’s that darkness over there?” Leven asked. “It’s not good.” Clover said. “Then what is it?” ‘Bad,” Clover suggested, sounding as though he wasn’t all that impressed with Leven’s level of knowledge. “I understand opposites,” Leven said, frustrated. – Obert Skye • When they came to harvest my corpse (open your mouth, close your eyes) cut my body from the rope, surprise, surprise: I was still alive. Tough luck, folks, I know the law: you can’t execute me twice for the same thing. How nice. I fell to the clover, breathed it in, and bared my teeth at them in a filthy grin. You can imagine how that went over. Now I only need to look out at them through my sky-blue eyes. They see their own ill will staring then in the forehead and turn tail Before, I was not a witch. But now I am one. – Margaret Atwood • Winter looked at Leven. Leven looked right back at her. Winter’s cheeks burned red and her green eyes outshone Leven’s. The two of them stared at one another and then, as if they were destined to, thay began to lean into one another, Leven closed his eyes. “What are you doing?” Geth asked concerned. Winter closed his eyes too and leaned close. Both of them looked panicked and out of control, but it didn’t stop them from moving closer and kissing each other. Clover’s jaw dropped and he pulled something out of his void just so he could let go of it in shock. – Obert Skye • You have food?” Winter scolded. “I thought you said you were hungry.” I’m hungry for other things besides what I have,” [Clover] argued. – Obert Skye • You were clearly not doing your part in the clover search, perv. – John Green • Your patience may have long to wait,Whether in little things or great,But all good luck, you soon will learn,Must come to those who nobly earn.Who hunts the hay-field overWill find the four-leaved clover. – Sarah Orne Jewett • You’re walking through a field all by yourself one day in spring and this sweet little bear cub with velvet fur and shiny little eyes comes walking along. And he says to you, ‘Hi, there, little lady. Want to tumble with me?’ So you and the bear spend the whole day in each other’s arms, tumbling down this clover-covered hill. Nice, huh? – Haruki Murakami

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equitiesstocks · 5 years

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Clovers Quotes

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chargrowsref · 5 years

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ASIDE

Sat in Vera’s falsely comfortable living room, on her brown leather sofa that she bought in the DFS sale, and her 32in tv hangs sadly on the wall. The fake fire; a silver curved piece of metal. Charlotte walks into the room and places her pint sized glass of Robinsons orange squash on the coffee table.

V.O CHARLOTTE: God, this coffee table does not sit right in the room, it’s slightly to the left of the fireplace. How annoying.

V.O VERA: She disapproves of the way I choose to decorate my house, but fuck her.

VERA: What are we watching?

CHARLOTTE: Fleabag(2016), it’s meant to be really good. Phoebe Waller-Bridge wrote it and is also in it, she’s the one that also wrote Killing Eve(2018).

VERA: oooh yeah, I really liked that.

V.O VERA: I haven’t even watched it. V.O CHARLOTTE: She didn’t even watch it.

Charlotte plays season one, episode one of Fleabag(2016)

CHARLOTTE: This is funny. I like it, it immediately establishes the connection between us and her - straightaway.

V.O CHARLOTTE: She immediately establishes that she’s addressing us by using terms such as “you know when”.

VERA: Yeah it does, Is she Fleabag then?

CHARLOTTE: Yeah, I don’t know what her actual name is in this. This is bizarre the way it feels like she’s talking directly at us.

V.O VERA: God, we get it. She repeats herself too much. I never repeat myself, I find that educated people tend to repeat themselves because they forget what they’ve said because of all the self importance flying around their brain.

VERA: Yeah.

“To be fair she’s not an evil step mother, she’s just a cunt” (Fleabag,2016)

VERA: Oh goodness I’m not sure about the swearing used in this programme. Bit much.

CHARLOTTE: Have you not noticed that the really “bad” language is mainly used when she’s addressing us, the audience, it’s like she has a connection with us and feels comfortable to be able to say anything.

V.O CHARLOTTE: This is what my own step mum is like, dismissive of me and as for my dad never says what he’s really thinking in front of her.

V.O VERA: Look at the way she holds her glass like she knows what she wants - she doesn’t know what she wants. Her thoughts runaway from her and come back again, you can tell by the expression on her face.

VERA: oh yeah, I guess thats the tactic of breaking the fourth wall, to build a connection with us.

CHARLOTTE: Well yeah, the fourth wall marks the boundary between mis-en-scene and the real world, so if that’s broken, then we are no longer passive audience members.

CHARLOTTE: I wonder what the first film was that broke the fourth wall?

VERA: Google it.

CHARLOTTE: Wikipedia says the first recorded film is a silent film titled Men who have made love to me (1918) by Mary MacLane.

VERA: Can you trust Wikipedia?

V.O VERA: hmmm, says she doing a degree but trusts wikipedia, bit suspicious.

CHARLOTTE: Hmm, let me research it a little more.

V.O VERA: Look at her face when she concentrates.

CHARLOTTE: AH, found a blog website about it. This is like the Fleabag of the 1900s, so the silent film was about a woman and her struggle with men and came from Mary MacLane’s confessional novel called The Story of Mary MacLane(1902). It says that “MacLane was a self-admitted egotist, and her writing was frank and filled with outrageous thoughts” (Buck, 2013).

VERA: That’s exactly what Fleabag is. Fleabag is the contemporary Mary MacLane. Although how did the film break the fourth wall if it was a silent film?

CHARLOTTE: That’s a good point..It says here that she (Mary) “appears, languidly smoking while addressing the audience (via title cards) about the trouble with all men” (Buck, 2013).

V.O CHARLOTTE: I wonder if the technique of breaking the fourth wall has been used in essays? How would that work?

VERA: It’s funny isn’t it that Fleabag as you said earlier is pretty groundbreaking but it actually has been done before, think how groundbreaking this would have been in 1918.

CHARLOTTE: I know, it’s crazy. I wonder if Phoebe Waller-Bridge is aware of McLane?

VERA: Probably not.

CHARLOTTE: But surely if you creating something so confessional she would need to research Because Fleabag is fictional.

VERA: Is it?

CHARLOTTE: Yeah Fleabag(2016) is fictional but McLane’s is an adaptation of her confessional novel.

V.O CHARLOTTE: This is incredible that two very similar women exist in different times but doing the same thing. I wish I could watch MacLane’s film to draw comparison’s between the two. I could buy her book.

VERA: Who came up with the technique of ‘breaking the fourth wall’?

CHARLOTTE: It started in theatre, and the technique used to break the fourth wall is called ‘aside’ which is when a characters dialogue is spoken but not heard by the other actors on stage (Literary Glossary - aside, 2019)

V.O VERA: She doesn’t listen to me properly.

VERA: Yeah I know but who created it.

CHARLOTTE: I think it was Denis Diderot who theorised it. But I think it’s been around for a very long time.

V.O VERA: The way she sits silently thinking makes me feel uncomfortable, everything she does makes me feel uncomfortable but not uncomfortable in a way that makes me want to back away but in a way that makes me want to stop her. Claims to be educated but can’t tell me a simple fact, pfft.

VERA: Oh okay.

CHARLOTTE: I need to go home in a minute.

VERA: Yeah I need to get to bed.

CHARLOTTE: Shall we watch the rest of this separately?

VERA: Yeah, How do I get it up on my tv.

CHARLOTTE: Go to recorded programmes because I’ve downloaded all of the series for you.

V.O VERA: Yeah and I bet it’s taken up all the space.

VERA: Thanks.

CHARLOTTE: Right I’m going to go, Shall we go for coffee on Saturday?

VERA: Yeah, text me.

CHARLOTTE: Okay, Bye.

VERA: Bye.

V.O VERA: She’s left her glass out on the bloody table.

V.O CHARLOTTE: I watched the whole two seasons of Fleabag from the comfort of my bed, I prefer watching it alone because it means I don’t have to listen to the sound of Vera breathing or explain my thoughts to her. You know when you love someone but sometimes just them being in your presence annoys you, but not because it’s anything they’re doing it’s just your own mind disliking their presence.

V.O CHARLOTTE: I wonder if Vera has watched the rest of this. Can’t believe I’m already on series two, episode four. I wonder if she’ll finally bone the priest.

“His neck.” (Fleabag, 2019)

CHARLOTTE: hahahaha.

V.O: I used to think things about my boyfriend when we were dating, in my mind I would be ecstatically observing and commenting on his beautiful face. We’ve all been in this situation she exposes our inner thoughts and I think that’s why is works as a comedy as well as an emotional confessional narrative.

CHARLOTTE:Oh no he can hear her!

V.O CHARLOTTE: The Priest can hear when she’s talking to us about his “beautiful neck”. Other characters noticing the cinematic technique that Fleabag uses to address us is significant to the character himself. It takes him to a new level. As he, like us, can hear her and therefore understands/has a connection with Fleabag which is what we’ve all wanted all along. He notices things about her and not just surface details, he deeply notices to the point he’s questioning her characters technique. It’s uncomfortable for Fleabag when he questions her, asking “You just said, His beautiful neck” (Fleabag, 2019) Fleabag glances at the camera with a panicked face and slowly replies “no, no, I said they were already gone.” (Fleabag, 2019)

V.O CHARLOTTE: This scene breaks the fourth wall and then critiques that technique within the storyline. Because we all imagine that breaking the fourth wall is the characters and the audiences “secret” With another character confronting this technique this late on in the series I think is significant and may be an indication to how this character is conceptually important. It’s about him and her and no one else, not even the audience. It’s like he’s trying to eliminate us in order for them to be alone, When she has him she no longer needs us because he listens.

CHARLOTTE: Please be the priest at the door. Ahhh.

CHARLOTTE: OH MY GOD. AHHHHH.

V.O CHARLOTTE: SHE DIDN’T JUST BREAK THE FOURTH WALL SHE EFFING TOOK IT WITH HER OWN HANDS. SHE’S IN COMPLETE CONTROL OVER US AND OUR RELATIONSHIP TO HER.

CHARLOTTE: Oh my god!

V.O CHARLOTTE: I think this just proves that he takes over from us, her physically removing our view of them by moving the camera shows that he replaces us. Especially when throughout the whole two series she’s even been addressing us during sex. This keeps the audience excited because we aren’t being shown the whole intimacy between the two fo them.

V.O CHARLOTTE: I feel close to Fleabag, as Ilse Lafer discusses in his essay titled, Behind the fourth wall (2010), Lafer suggests that the fourth wall “is the threshold where two spaces interlock, where the difference between fiction and reality becomes manifest.” And I feel this is true with Fleabag (2016,2019), She feels real, not like a normal character in a film. She feels real and I feel a connection to her. Her confessions and dark humour is like something that is shared between close friends, She makes you feel like you’re her friend.

V.O CHARLOTTE: Although for me personally I relate to Fleabag in ways I haven’t ever found with a fictional character, I must acknowledge that maybe I relate to her because I am too a cis white woman, living in London, navigating an awkward father - daughter relationship, has a step-mother who won’t look me in the eye, and has a sister in which I am very different to.

V.O CHARLOTTE: It brings up questions about confessional writing and confessional feminism as well. I think confessional writing can lend a hand to feminism, but I think if you suggest that its wholly feminist then you’re suggesting that feminism is solely for that one type of woman whose writing it is. As Lara Zarum suggests,

“confessional writing is a radical act, providing a template for women to be their own subjects. But the troubling paradox is that, in their quest to spin a narrative out of the fabric of their lives, these writers often fall back on the same objectifying impulse of male writers and artists since time immemorial.” (Zarum,2015)

CHARLOTTE: hmmm, I didn’t even think about this when making Vera watch this.

V.O CHARLOTTE: I need to talk to her about if she felt a connection with Fleabag in order to see if what Zarum is suggesting works in this case.

Charlotte and Vera had coffee together in Camberwell to catch up.

V.O VERA: I ordered a tea because I like to keep things simple and Charlotte ordered her usual - a Latte with skimmed milk. The sun was creeping behind the clouds and an occasional slice of sunlight would hover over Charlotte’s hand as she played with the loose silver ring on her right index finger. That annoyed me.

CHARLOTTE: This sun is so beautiful.

V.O VERA: She always notices the intricate beauty of nature.

VERA: It’s lovely isn’t it? My washing will dry nicely on the line today. I didn’t enjoy the rest of Fleabag(2016), I just don’t understand the humour.

V.O CHARLOTTE: Maybe the confessional style in this case is excluding.

CHARLOTTE: WHAT?

A short moment of silence

CHARLOTTE: I don’t understand how you couldn’t of enjoyed it; it’s funny, it’s sad - it’s life.

V.O VERA: Here she goes.

CHARLOTTE: Did you not feel a connection with Fleabag? The technique of breaking the fourth wall was used in an intricate and funny way to reveal more depth to the character making them feel like a real person. What didn’t you like?

VERA: I did but I also didn’t, I felt the way she addresses you a bit awkward. I also think I was just too old for there to be a real connection.

CHARLOTTE: That’s whats so good about it. She challenges you as a viewer, you can be a passive audience member physically but mentally you worry about her, you think about what she should do and what you would do in those situations. You also make connections between her experiences and your own. But then I guess I’m coming from the position of a young woman who is very similar to her.

VERA: Yeah you are weirdly alike in some aspects of your family situation. Do you not think it relies too heavily on the interaction between audience and actor/character? I can think of films and television programmes that break the fourth wall without physically addressing me. That for me makes it more exciting because I feel like I shouldn’t know this information.

CHARLOTTE: I get what you’re saying but I don’t think so, because when she doesn’t want or need to address us she doesn’t. Whereas shows like Peep Show (2003-15) for example; it relies almost solely on all of the humour being channeled through both Mark and Jeremy’s inner voice characters.

VERA: Oh yeah, I forgot about Peep Show.

CHARLOTTE: How could you forget about peep show?

V.O VERA: Well I obviously haven’t forgotten about it entirely.

VERA: Yeah, now you’ve said that I have to agree with you, even when other characters are being funny, the voiceover’s reaction to the situation makes it funny because the connection the audience have are with Jeremy and Mark.

CHARLOTTE: yeah.

CHARLOTTE: Did you notice in Fleabag (2016) how the direct address at first is seemingly funny and carefree and then the more we learn about her struggle with grief and rage The way she addresses the audience changes. It becomes more awkward the more we know about the darker side of what going on inside her mind.

V.O VERA: The stripe in her hair annoys me, proportionally it’s all so wrong. The colour is uneven. The texture looks like straw.

VERA: I think That’s reflective of real life relationships, sometimes people are scared to share with others incase they share too much and push the other person to leave.

V.O VERA: If only she knew what I think about her.

CHARLOTTE: Yeah thats true.

V.O CHARLOTTE: She looks troubled, I wonder what she’s thinking?

The two women left the cafe to walk home, they both walked along Peckham Road Before Charlotte had to turn right onto Crofton Road.

VERA: Have you ever watched American Physco(2000), It’s very different to Fleabag(2016-19) but it does break the fourth wall.

CHARLOTTE: Oh I have, a very good film.

V.O CHARLOTTE: This is shocking that she’s suggesting some examples.

VERA: See I really enjoy how that film breaks the fourth wall because we’re let into a dark secret that Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale), is a murdering psychopath.

V.O VERA: ooooo Christian Bale is a bit of a dish.

CHARLOTTE: Do you think you enjoyed it because he wasn’t physically addressing you?

VERA: Yeah and I think voiceover is really effective.

CHARLOTTE: But I read an article the other day about voiceover’s and a critic called Matt Seitz was suggesting that,

“because the voice-over is simple to understand and doesn’t ask the audience to hold more than one thought in its head at the same time.” (Seitz,2016)

CHARLOTTE: It makes watching a film or television programme easy to watch and makes the audience more passive than if you were to be addressed like in Fleabag(2016-19).

VERA: I disagree with him, because of the voiceover in this particular example the fact that the audience can hear the voiceover is ignored. It’s not making the storyline easy for us to follow, it’s just making it more exciting because without it eventually we would know that he’s a psychopath but we’re being let in little by little. The audience become more invested because of our strange obsession with the vulgar and the unpleasant, it hooks people in.

V.O CHARLOTTE: Wow, she’s actually getting really into this.

V.O VERA: She’s passing to try and think of something to say, she’s going to try and out smart me.

CHARLOTTE: But you wouldn’t know he was a psychopath you’d just think he was a murderer without the voiceover.VERA: Well you would know that he wasn’t a normal man.

V.O VERA: God she’s just trying to make me look so stupid.

CHARLOTTE: But you wouldn’t know the full depth of his illness, and those gruesome details are what draws you to the film.

VERA: Hmmm, you know my favourite voice-over part is when he’s on the tanning bed. He talks about his mask slipping while wearing the tanning goggles and the parallels between is inner world and his out world meet.

V.O CHARLOTTE: MY POINT EXACTLY!!!!

CHARLOTTE: Well that scene wouldn’t be as good then if there was no voiceover because the added voice adds that layer of juxtaposition between image and language.

V.O VERA: Why is she getting so angry with me? Thank god it’s her turning in a second.

VERA: I get what you’re saying. I do just think American Psycho(2000) is better than Fleabag(2016-19) and that’s just my opinion. I don’t enjoy the direct confessional relationship that Fleabag forces on you, and I’m allowed to think differently to you.

CHARLOTTE: I wasn’t suggesting that you had to agree with me, I respect your opinion. What other films or books are confessional? Maybe we could watch some different confessional films that you would like.

VERA: I can’t think of any off of the top of my head but I’ll have a think about it.

CHARLOTTE: Alright, well this is my road.

V.O VERA: Thank God for that.

VERA: Indeed it is.

V.O CHARLOTTE: I hope she’s okay she seems a bit annoyed at me. Maybe I was being too argumentative or too critical of her opinion.

CHARLOTTE: Bye, I’ll see you soon.

VERA: Bye Love.

V.O CHARLOTTE: Sometimes I don’t know how to tackle mine and Vera’s relationship, we’re so close yet so distant. She excites me but simultaneously makes my mind feel like its pouring out of my ears from boredom. I wonder all the time what she thinks of me, what thought’s are slithering around her head. I wonder what thoughts are slithering around your head.

Bibliography

Books:

Lafer, I (2010) Behind The Fourth Wall: Fictitious Lives - Lived Fictions. : Verlag fur moderne Kunst Nurnberg.

Film:

American Pyscho (2000) [CD-ROM] Edward R. Pressman. Available: Lion Gate Films.

IMAGES:

Grocutt, C. (2019) Bed.

II. Grocutt, C. (2019) Cafe Table.

III. Grocutt C. (2019) Vera’s Living Room.

IV.Jones, V. (2016) Fleabag. Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p040trv9(28/03/2019).

Sheppard, J. (2016) Lumberjack Cafe Available at: https://www.timeout.com/london/restaurants/lumberjack (Accessed/downloaded: 8/04/2019).

VI. (2000) American Physcho script. Available at: http://www.dailyscript.com/scripts/American_Psycho_Harron_Turner.html

Online Articles:

Zarum, L. (2015) Is Confessional Writing feminist?. Available at:https://newrepublic.com/article/122840/confessional-writing-feminist (Accessed: 8/04/2019).

II.Obordo, R. and Guardian Readers (2019) 'I will miss her extremely: You review the end of Fleabag. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/apr/09/i-will-miss-her-extremely-you-review-the-end-of-fleabag (Accessed: 9/04/2019).

Television Programme:

'Fleabag' (2016) Series 1 and episode 1, BBC, 21st July 2016. Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p040trv9/fleabag-series-1-episode-1 (Accessed: 18/03/2019).

‘Fleabag’ (2019) Series 2 and episode 4, BBC, 25th March 2019.

Available at:https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p073cnqq/fleabag-series-2-episode-4 (Accessed: 28/03/2019)

IV. Peep Show (2003 - 2015) Series One to Series Nine, Channel 4.

Available at: https://www.channel4.com/programmes/peep-show

Websites

Buck, Julie. "Mary MacLane." In Jane Gaines, Radha Vatsal, and Monica Dall’Asta, eds. Women Film Pioneers Project. Center for Digital Research and Scholarship. New York, NY: Columbia University Libraries, 2013. Web. September 27, 2013. <https://wfpp.cdrs.columbia.edu/pioneer/ccp-mary-maclane/

II. Literature Glossary - Aside (2019) Available at: https://www.shmoop.com/literature-glossary/aside.html (Accessed: 7/04/2019).

III. Harron, M and Turner, G. American Psycho Script. Available at: http://www.dailyscript.com/scripts/American_Psycho_Harron_Turner.html (Accessed: 5/03/2019).

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bulletinedsolitude · 6 years

Text

You’re just right at my skull. Great!

A Huge Trouble

A huge trouble, I reckon Walking with a doubt upon Looking from the cowls, the masks the rocks, the so deadly mocks

So kid, daring and dreamer Walk, reason than chin taller For the assertive you lend, and for the terrors, do bend

For as the time calls for you, you may not hustle for clues of where the compass points to Just gaze at your stars, and you

Shall highly know what to do.

More or less an hour before that piece existed, I had a painful blank page in front of me. That is a story of my trouble trying to start working on how to introduce myself “creatively.” It is a way of convincing and finding my momentum of writing genuinely, because that’s how I naturally like it—my pen must always spit out raw thoughts, like the ones running in my head in a state of solitude, otherwise the things that come out of my mind will sound foreign to myself, and someone told me non-genuine literature is trash.

Speaking of solitude, to officially start introducing myself, I will explain why I went with the name of my blog, “Bulletined Solitude.”

The Story behind Bulletined Solitude (that sounds like a so sad, so lonely feature story :()

First thought when I heard about making a blog, I wanted everything to be real, because it’s easier to write that way, and from there, the words would come out of me naturally. Writing is one of the things that I have resorted to when I felt something, because I’m not the kind of person who’s easy to get comfortable speaking about things that are very personal about me, so I would end up channeling all the emotions through my pen and paper. But for that to happen, my environment must have the sense of peace and loneliness.

So, I thought having a blog that features my honest insights, would be like bringing my solitude into publication, and bulletined solitude means something like that to me, so I chose it. And you thought it was deep.

So, yes, genuine yada yada, tell us about yourself then!!!

One thing that comes with writing, is reading. So that means I read, apparently. I started reading (literary-wise) when I was 13. I remember it was Bob Ong’s Kapitan Sino that I ever read first. And that basically influenced what I have read after that, and what I will be reading in the future probably. It is a fine chop of fantasy, dystopia, and heroic fiction. And we’re not snubbing the little touch of romance there, of course. Up to this date, my favorite books so far are Victoria Aveyard’s Red Queen Series, Veronica Roth’s Divergent Series, and The Eye of Minds by James Dashner.

While I think reading have shaped my mind better, I don’t take it seriously, so maybe it only does happen subconsciously. I jump into a book only with the aim to escape and be entertained, anything that comes with it is a subconscious blessing.

I really want to talk about my favorite book characters as well, because I’m an introvert learning only from book characters instead of going out and learning by myself. Kidding (jokes are half meant). But here they are:

Beatrice “Tris” Prior from Divergent. I love her basically because she’s brave and witty at the same time. I know the movies made her two-dimensional by portraying her as a stiff girl turned fighter and then she’s just that. But that’s expected for mainstream movie adaptations, always fails at shaping a character. In the book though, she was more than just that. Every choice she made meant so much more because her thoughts justified it, including the part where she sacrificed herself to stop the spread of serum that makes everybody lose their memories, which was sadly not featured in the adaptation. The movie series lost me there; I don’t deny that the first installment is still okay though.

Anika Dragomir from Anatomy of a Misfit. This girl gave me good laughs, but more than anything, I related to her because of her flaws—from her thoughts and her deeds. She’s a character who tried to be shallow by being one of the cliché high school perfectionists, but always knew she wasn’t. She made wrong choices and did regret, which makes the whole story much more close to heart. Also, #NoToGuns.

Logan McDonough from Anatomy of a Misfit. He is an adorable, loving, selfless person. He’s one of those few characters that you think were so easy and predictable, but at the end of the story, an act he did is revealed, so full of impact and so inspiring that it makes all your past impressions of him fade away immediately. His family is basically abused by his father who is a gun owner/enthusiast (he has a collection, if I remember correctly) and Logan’s the person who has been protecting his siblings from his father’s violence until that night when it all had to end with the loss of life.

Tiberias Calore “Cal” VII from Red Queen. He is not gonna be the last character I will list here from the same story so I’ll have to explain a little bit. Basically, their world is the Kingdom of Norta, a dystopian country divided by classes of two: Silver and Red bloods (except in the later installments, there will be Newbloods), with the former being the powerful ones for having supernatural abilities and the red bloods who are ordinary people. I listed him here for his bravery of breaking boundaries by connecting to a red blooded person, which is supposed to be forbidden as a silver blood, that may be easy-sounding, believe me, in his case, it takes a lot of guts. He is also just enough of confident and self-assured, which is deserved because he’s the first prince. And he embodies that strong and fearless but bending warrior. And he bears the ability of manipulating fire, so what’s not to like?

“I am your rightful king, Silver-born for centuries. The only reason you're still breathing is because I can't burn the oxygen from this room.” — Cal

Killed. It.

Mare Barrow from Red Queen. She made everybody’s jaw drop to the ground when she, a red blood girl, turned out to have the ability to create/control electricity. But her character is more important and she is here because of three things: she’s a fighter, she’s strong, and she’s a dreamer.

“I have lived that life already, in the mud, in the shadows, in a cell, in a silk dress. I will never submit again. I will never stop fighting.” — Mare

I am gagged.

Maven Calore from Red Queen. Spoilers first: her mother turned him an evil. But I will never forget how true he was at the beginning and how dreamy he was as a character. He was so good and so kind, I wanted to be his friend. And for him to be caged in his mother’s influence, I am weeping inside.

“The truth is what I make it. I could set this world on fire and call it rain.”

I have not lost hope for him. But…

#MareCal since the beginning.

If it’s not enough evidence, I am obsessed with Red Queen; I need May 15th to happen because the fourth and final installment is released that day. War Storm, wait for me.

Moving on.

When it comes to television, I’m not denying my Super Inggo obsession back in the day. I craved so hard for a kwek-kwek every day. But recently, I’ve come to love English and Korean series/dramas also, most of them being anything fantasy or medical. Favorites are probably D-Day, Grey’s Anatomy, The Flash, Westworld and Stranger Things.

Power Rangers is on another level. It’s an interest I share with my brother (probably the only one). Now, I did not watch so much of it as a kid, I think I only watched two/three seasons, but lately I have been watching more because of him. And the 2017 movie deserves 5 stars, it was fantastic, it made me nostalgic.

I AM THE BLUE RANGER. Do not steal it.

I was a website layout enthusiast once; I don’t know how currently rusty I am at it because I’ve never tried it since Grade 10. My teacher made me attend this competition, Technolympics and I won it (surprisingly) when I was in Grade 8, but that was just a simple static HTML website, if I may be honest it’s the neat layout that made me win it, but it’s nothing special with the coding.

I was also a campus journalist; I jumped quite from different roles every time though: broadcasting team technician, to reporter, to paper layout artist, to news editor. It’s all over the place, so I really never got to develop one skill.

When it comes to my behavior, I am slightly that kid who stutters at first meeting, hard to open up, and just straight up awkward. I am very wary of what I say at first meeting, I kind of have trouble forming the perfect topic to throw out there to a person I just met. Even to people I’ve been with long enough, I always find a way to make up something funny just so we won’t go to the serious side. I also get crazy though, like laugh to the end of Earth kind of crazy.

And…I watch ASMR (a term for Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response) videos in YouTube. They are used to trigger a static/tingling sensation which you may feel from the top of your head down your spine. I do it to enhance my napping though. Try some:

youtube

Category is: Slam book Realness

I never had a slam book, neither did my classmates (because we’re all boring; okay maybe at least one did or it’s just me who didn’t have). But I’ll be trying to be cool once in my life so here is me trying to answer slam book template questions:

PERSONAL INFO Real Name: Judd Vander Rondares Birth Month: May Zodiac Sign: Gemini Gender: M Age: 17 Romantic Status: Single (since birth and not ever regretting hehe)

FAVORITES Color: Blue Song: I Don’t Know My Name by Grace Vanderwaal Singer: Grace Vanderwaal Movies: Love You to the Stars and Back and Big Hero 6 Actors/Actresses: Winona Ryder, Joshua Garcia, Katherine Langford, Eddie Redmayne, Models: Kris Grikaite, Kit Butler, Jordan Barrett, Jhona Burjack, Julian Schneyder, Mayowa Nicholas

OTHERS Motto: Outdo yourself. What is Love (this can’t be not done): God is love. :D

ANSWER THE FOLLOWING

Where do I see myself 10 years from now? Was my learning in SPUP vital to where I’m leading to? I see myself a fully realized professional, independent, responsible, self-sustaining, and helpful citizen of the Philippines. hehe Back in Grade 10, there was a career planning program, and for the activities, I would always not know what to write for my future plans because there were not a lot of people who gave me inspiration of what insights I should have for my future aside from my parents, and one of the things that I liked about going in SPUP is that I was surrounded by people whose aspirations boosted what I already had in mind, but not very sure of. But aside from that, of course SPUP was a good school to go for SHS, and to be honest, any school would have been okay, because I’m going for a four-year college anyway and I didn’t need a school that would make me ready for literal work/job already, I just needed something to give me background for my future course, and SPUP did okay in that department, I believe.

Was STEM the best choice after all? Yes, because now that I know the path that I’m taking (will be further discussed in the next question), it is very apparent that STEM was the best choice for me.

What course will you take in college and why? My answer to this is like a continuation for my answer in the previous question. I recently just decided to take Medical Technology, and it was after a few talks with my mother, I didn’t know it was what I needed to make up my mind. I don’t mean that I was persuaded to take the course, I just didn’t have the confidence to take it, doubting that I may not be that passionate about it so I wanted some advice. I’ve long decided that I will not take a course that I’m not passionate about, I didn’t have to hear it from anybody—I just knew it. So, when I learned that she does think my plan is worth investing and especially knowing my cousin has graduated from it, made me motivated to truly pursue it.

What topic would you like to learn more in this subject? I already have taken Microsoft Office lessons and some HTML, so naturally, I would like something that I have never taken before. Since we already took Photoshop (I wouldn’t be mad for more though), maybe Illustrator, or anything for video editing. It would be also nice to revisit HTML since I’ve forgotten lots of tags already, or JavaScript.

Ask Me Anything. Sir, masyado bang maikli tong introduction ko? Sorry po sa grammatical errors, ang dami kasi, mahirap mag-spot. Haha

Along your way, you’ll see the deepest secrets of my brain, never be terrified.

0 notes

filipeteimuraz · 7 years

Text

How to Write Ecommerce Emails That Don’t Annoy the Crap out of Your Readers

Email marketing is an essential component of every business.

But it’s even more important for your ecommerce website.

Why?

It’s one of the best ways to communicate with your customers.

As an ecommerce business, you don’t have the luxury of seeing your customers face to face like you would if you were a brick-and-mortar company.

Sure, there are other ways you can communicate with your customers.

They can call your customer service department or reach out to you on social media.

But marketing experts agree that email is the most effective digital marketing tactic.

With that said, your strategy is only as effective as your message.

If your previous campaigns aren’t getting much of a response, you might need some help writing your emails.

Luckily for you, I can coach you through that.

No more bad emails.

I’ll show you how to write an ecommerce email that won’t leave your readers shaking their heads.

Start with a goal

Before you do anything, you need to establish a clear objective for your message.

What do you want your reader to do once they receive the email?

If you can’t figure that out ahead of time, there’s no way the recipient will take the action you want them to take.

Here are some examples of goals you may want to consider:

launch a new product

promote a special event or sale

upsell on a previous purchase

send shopping cart abandonment messages

The list goes on and on, but this is a good place to start.

Make sure each message focuses on one goal.

Don’t overwhelm the reader.

If you give them too many options, they may get confused and end up doing nothing.

The message should have a clear call to action.

Here’s an example from Fab:

This message has a clear and concise goal.

Fab is trying to get their subscribers to download their mobile application.

That’s it.

They aren’t offering a discount. There’s no special event.

The reader won’t be confused by this message.

Obviously, Fab wants to start promoting sales on their app.

That may be an undertone of the company’s overall marketing campaign.

However, the email doesn’t need to get into all that.

It’s short, sweet, and actionable.

A 2017 report on mobile usage found that 90% of mobile media time is spent on apps, which means Fab’s campaign is smart.

Ultimately, I’m sure they believe this will help increase conversions and revenue.

But for the time being, the message is strictly to drive downloads.

Start with a goal, and make sure your message represents that objective.

Your message needs to deliver value to the reader

Don’t just send an email because it’s been a week since your last message and you think it’s time to send another.

While sending a message once a week may be a viable strategy, each email needs to offer value to the subscriber.

If you’re not offering any value, the reader may consider your message as spam.

Here’s an example from Huckberry:

This message encourages the subscribers to invite their friends to the Huckberry community.

Why would anyone do this?

Because their campaign adds value.

Huckberry is going to give away prizes to people who share this message with friends and family.

If the message just said “invite your friends” without offering an incentive, the subscriber wouldn’t see any value. The email would be useless.

Can you promote your product while providing value?

The answer is: it depends.

For example, DODOcase was able to hype their product before launching it by promoting it to potential customers. As a result, it sold $7 million worth of products within 90 days of their first product launch.

What else offers value to your customers?

Look again at our first example of Fab.

Even though they were promoting their mobile app, the message still provided value. It offered:

free shipping

free returns

best price match

We know that 87% of Americans say price is the most influential factor in their purchasing decisions.

And 80% are influenced by the cost of shipping and delivery speed.

Discounts influence 71% of American shoppers.

What do these three statistics have in common?

Value.

That’s what your customers want, so that’s what you need to give them.

Make sure your ecommerce email focuses on the value you’re offering.

Your subject line is important

What’s the first thing your subscribers see when they get an email from you?

The subject line.

Your subject line is one of the top reasons why people would open your message:

You have to put just as much thought into your subject line as you put into the rest of the message.

If your subject line can’t hook the recipient, they will never see the content of your email.

Here are some guidelines for writing a subject line that will increase your open rates:

create urgency

use breaking news

tell a story

stimulate curiosity

personalize it

send an offer

Those of you who struggle with catchy, creative, or actionable subject lines can refer to these points for inspiration.

Look at how Eddie Bauer creates a sense of urgency with this email:

It’s the last day to get 50% off your fleece purchase.

If the customer doesn’t act now, they will miss out on the deal.

Use this technique for your subject line.

Sale ends tonight

48 hours left

Limited quantity remaining

You can use these phrases when creating a subject.

I also highly recommend using storytelling in your email subject line:

“Here’s how I did XYZ…”

Say something to that effect.

Stories engage the reader.

Creating engaging content is a top priority for marketers in 2017.

Content marketing experts recognize the importance of stimulating the customer’s curiousity.

Accomplishing this in your subject line puts you on the right track to converting the reader with the rest of your message.

Focus on your call to action (CTA)

Earlier, I talked about the importance of establishing a clear goal for your campaign.

The CTA needs to mirror that objective.

Use words like:

Buy now

Save today

Claim your reward

Become a VIP member

Choose the style you want

Reserve your seat

Earn rewards

Click to reveal my coupon

Upgrade my service

Don’t overwhelm your customers with the CTA.

Pick one and go for it.

Use a button instead of a hyperlink.

Buttons can increase conversion rates by 28% compared to a hyperlink.

Check out this CTA button from De Beers Jewelers:

It’s clear, unique, and creative.

It doesn’t just say something boring like, “Click here.”

You can use bright colors to draw attention to your CTA like Pizza Hut does:

Green has nothing to do with the Pizza Hut logo or brand, but it makes for a perfect CTA button.

This message also adds value, addressing the topic disccused above.

Pizza Hut sends a coupon code with an expiration date to create a sense of urgency.

The campaign encourages their subscribers to order food online.

Utilize drip campaigns

Drip campaigns make sense for ecommerce companies.

They are also known as marketing automation, lifecycle emails, or autoresponders.

Focusing on automation can make your life a lot easier.

What’s a drip campaign?

A drip campaign is a series of emails that get delivered in a predetermined order to your subscribers.

This is a perfect opportunity for you to contact your customers.

Here’s an example.

Let’s say someone makes a purchase on your ecommerce platform.

The first message of your drip campaign can say something like, “Your order is confirmed.”

Try something similar to this template from Fitbit:

The message assures the customer that their order has been placed.

You should always send a confirmation email to your customers.

People are cautious when they enter credit card information on the Internet.

Over the past 5 years, 46% of people in the United States have experienced credit card fraud.

If they don’t get a reassurance that their order went through safely, they could feel uneasy about your website.

Not everyone who orders from your site is an email subscriber.

But you should still ask for their email address to send them this information.

For those people, you can include a CTA button that encourages them to subscribe to your emails.

“Join our email list to receive 20% off your next purchase.”

The second and third phase of your drip campaign will be:

Order shipped

Order delivered

Again, both of these emails make sense to the recipient.

What will make your readers want to scratch their eyes out?

If they don’t know why they received a message.

Nobody will question this drip sequence.

Finally, you can send a fourth email in the drip campaign to follow up with the buyer.

Include a customer survey in the message to see if they are happy with their purchase.

Surveys help create loyal customers, increase retention rates, and grow profits.

Using the drip campaign method allows you to email a customer four times for just one purchase.

All these messages will be informative and valuable to the recipient.

Don’t forget to send shopping cart abandonment emails

Similar to the last point, shopping cart abandonment messages make sense to the reader.

They won’t be asking, “Why did I get this message?”

The customer was shopping and was just a click or two away from finalizing the purchase until something stopped them.

A number of things could have caused this:

unexpected costs like taxes or shipping

they were just browsing

website crashed or slow loading time

didn’t feel comfortable submitting credit card information

These are just a few common responses.

But you still need to send the email to remind your customers to check out.

Sending this message will improve your conversion rate.

You need to include this strategy into your email marketing arsenal.

It’s essential for ecommerce websites.

The message has a clear goal: to finalize the sale.

If you want to add value for the customer, send a promotional code to discount the order.

Embed a video in your message

If you’re worried your readers might be scratching their eyes out because of your current email campaign strategy, I’ve got a solution: mix things up.

Turn your readers into viewers.

Don’t make them read anything. Instead, send a video message.

Your customers want to watch videos.

Don’t believe me?

Well, the numbers don’t lie.

In fact, 43% of people want to see more videos from marketers.

If you’re launching a new product for your ecommerce site, send your subscribers an informative video message.

SproutVideo improved their click-through rate by 60% when they added videos to their email marketing campaign.

Your ecommerce site can do the same thing.

It’s a great opportunity for you to do a product demonstration or a tutorial.

Conclusion

It’s great you’re utilizing email marketing campaigns for your ecommerce site.

This can’t change, but the content of your messages may need some improvement.

You don’t want your readers wondering why they received a message.

If you’re not adding value to the customer, they might unsubscribe, block you, or mark your message as spam.

How can you write a killer ecommerce email?

Start with your goal.

What’s the purpose of the message?

Once you define an objective, keep the message short and focused on that goal.

Emphasize your call to action.

Your CTA button should be big, bold, bright, and not boring.

Give the customer a reason to click.

Your subject line matters.

Customers won’t bother opening the message if the subject line is weak and doesn’t grab their attention.

If you’re unsure when to email your customers, set up a drip campaign that automatically sends updates after an order is placed.

Send out shopping cart abandonment emails to help improve your conversion rates.

Videos are a great way to turn readers into viewers.

Try to include videos and other interactive emails into your campaign.

Following these tips will help you keep your audience engaged instead of frustrated.

How will you alter the subject line of your next email to increase open rates?

https://www.quicksprout.com/2017/11/03/how-to-write-ecommerce-emails-that-dont-annoy-the-crap-out-of-your-readers/ Read more here - http://review-and-bonuss.blogspot.com/2017/11/how-to-write-ecommerce-emails-that-dont.html

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endorsereviews · 7 years

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Dave Kaminski – Kaizen Copywriting System

Dave Kaminski – Kaizen Copywriting System Get Dave Kaminski – Kaizen Copywriting System right now!

A Lot Has Changed Over The Years…

Music has changed. Once there was Donna Summer. Now there’s Katy Perry. Cars have changed. Once there was the AMC Pacer. Now there’s the Toyota Prius. Television has changed. There used to be 3 channels. Now most people have over 200. And America’s e

nemies have changed. I can remember in the Marine Corps being told (literally) every day “there’s someone in Russia training to kill you right now…you better train harder than him”. Now there’s ISIS.

But you know what hasn’t changed? How everyone tells you to write “sales pitches”. The SAME stuff that people were told to do in the 1970’s (you know back when direct mail, newspapers and magazines were king), is STILL being taught today. And it’s a crime. Because while that stuff did work for a very, very long time…today…not so much. Not in a world of information at your fingertips, social media, mobile devices and ultra-short attention spans. Not in the world of the Internet.

I’m frequently asked “what do you recommend to learn copywriting?”. And I always say “um…nothing” because I know everything available just recycles the same stuff from decades ago. Stuff that was created by people who aren’t even alive anymore. Not cool.

So I decided to change this. To come up with a way where I could show people how to “sell like hell” in TODAY’S WORLD…where emails, video scripts and web pages are king. You see, you need to do things very differently today. And learn differently too. You need…Get Dave Kaminski – Kaizen Copywriting System on IMCLibrary.com right now!

A System That Quickly Turns a Handful of Words Into Money

And that’s what I’ve created. I call it the Kaizen Copywriting System.

Let me explain. Kaizen is a Japanese word that loosely means “change is good”. But it’s also the practice of doing small, simple things that lead to big results. And that’s where you come in. Because it’s a system that shows you how to use small, simple words and phrases that lead to dramatically larger sales for your business.

Here’s a fun fact. No one reads anything from beginning to end these days. Not emails, not web pages. And the majority of people never watch videos from start to finish either. They skim. We all skim.

In fact, I already know the odds of you reading this web page from top to bottom are practically nil. The problem is that the “old school” way of writing stuff assumes you will. And that absolutely kills your conversion rate…meaning how many people actually buy your stuff in response to your emails, videos and web pages.

The Kaizen Copywriting System fixes this for you. Not only will you be able to “sell like hell”, but I’ve put it all together in a system…a formula…a template…that anyone can use. Even if you suck at writing. Even if you hate writing. Even if you have no time for writing. Here’s a closer look at how I do this for you:

* I introduce you to a technique I call 15 BOTTLES OF BEER ON THE WALL. With it, you’ll be able to write web pages that sell like hell in about 30 minutes. No staring at a blank screen. no stress and no worries about your copy sucking. It won’t.

* You’ll learn to use a concept I call SAY HELLO TO MY LITTLE FRIEND. This is probably one of the most important things you need to learn for writing emails, video scripts and web pages. It can easily slash the time you spend writing in half. It can easily double your sales too. And it will take you exactly 5 minutes and 26 seconds to learn how to do this in my system.

Get other products by Dave Kaminski right now!

Kansas Attorney Accidentally Sues Himself

That sentence was 5 words long. But it got your attention and got you interested in hearing more, didn’t it? I’m going to teach you how to do the same thing. How to use just a handful of simple words to get more eyeballs on your stuff, keep them on your stuff and get them to buy your stuff. Without resorting to hype or non-professional gimmicks.

* The $500 a month membership site. In this lesson I’ll debunk one of the greatest myths about writing sales pitches. From the 70’s to today people have been taught “if you don’t do this, you will fail”. Wrong. I’ll share what this myth is, why it’s a total crock of sh** and what really brings you way more sales with no extra work.

* What to never, ever do in an email. People get this wrong all the time. And then they wonder why their sales suck. If you just stop doing this you’ll be amazed at how much more money you make. And it will take you 2 minutes and 51 seconds to learn how in my system.

* What about Bob? This is a lesson where I’ll teach you how to write a video script that sells like hell…even for products that seem virtually impossible to sell with video. After watching this lesson, you’ll never be “stuck” again when it comes to making sales videos. And your sales videos will never suck again either.

* The rise of Generation E. You’ve probably never heard of Generation E. You probably don’t realize that you’re actually part of it. And if you don’t know how to sell to Generation E, you’re headed for trouble. You have to use a different set of rules. The good news is I’ll tell you what these rules are and how to use them. It will completely transform (in a very good way) your success with emails, videos and sales pages.

The 4 Different Styles of Emails That Will Make You The Most Money

Even better, I give you the templates to use for each. But the best part is they are goof-proof…just do what I show you and you’ll be makin’ bank.

* The 4 different styles of video scripts that will make you the most money. Once again, I’m going to give you the templates to use for each. One let’s you craft video scripts in under 5 minutes. Another makes failure impossible. The third will give you an unfair advantage over competitors. And the fourth will give you the most profitable video you’ve ever made.

* We ran out of beer. In 6 minutes and 36 seconds, I’ll teach you the tricks of making your copywriting “sticky”…so people stick around to hear what you have to say…instead of bolting like your party ran out of beer. That’s very important on the Internet these days, when the next “party” is always just a click away.

* The curious case of the PowerPoint video. You’ll learn how to take a simple PowerPoint video…just words on slides…and turn it into the best sales tool you’ve ever had.

* Well, that just killed the sale. You’re probably doing this on your web pages right now. Mostly because everyone else does it. Or says you should do it. What you don’t know is that it’s draining your sales by 23%, 48% or in some cases as much as 63%. Just this one little thing on your web page. I tell you what it is and how to fix it in a lesson that takes all of 3 minutes and 14 seconds.

Get other products by Dave Kaminski right now!

Help, I’ve Fallen and I Can’t Get Up

In this lesson I tell you what you need to know about getting people off-the-fence and into your customer database. The techniques people typically use are hopelessly outdated. I’m going to tell you what works TODAY and exactly how to do it.

* Should I stay or should I go? That’s the question people immediately start asking themselves as soon as they land on your sales page. And I’m going to share with you the specific formula…the brain hack to use…that will not only have their brain saying “stay, stay, stay”, but “buy, buy, buy” too.

* Plus much, much, more. All laid out for you in plain, easy-to-follow and understand lessons that will make your emails, videos and sales pages sell like hell…

Learn How To Write Emails, Video Scripts and Sales Pages That Just Plain Work The Kaizen Copywriting System contains 100% video based lessons. Over 4 hours worth of instruction where I walk you through exactly what you need to know to sell like hell TODAY. What works now…not what worked years ago.

I’m going to tell you in plain English the new rules you need to follow. Do this and don’t do that. Very straight-forward, very to the point. You’re going to learn how to take just a handful of words and have them sell better than anything else you’ve ever written.

I’m going to cover how to write emails. Not lame sales pitches or hype filled affiliate promotions that we all get pounded with every day, but emails that get opened, get read and get acted upon. I know it sounds a little unbelievable, but with these new email skills under your belt, you can turn just about any business around in a hurry.

I’m going to cover how to write video scripts. Truth be told, the success of a video all comes down to the script…what that video is saying. Not how it looks. I’m going to teach you how to write video scripts that are successful…every time…for any product or market…period.

I’m going to teach you how to write sales pages. People probably screw these up more than anything. First I’m going to teach you to understand the “mind of the visitor”. Then I’m going to teach you how to hack that visitors mind to keep them on your page. And then I’m going to teach you how to open their wallets. Without hype or gimmicks. And without ever wondering what to write or how to write.

You don’t need any writing skills to sell like hell. Not with the Kaizen Copywriting System. I’ve set it up so people who can’t write…or hate to write…can still craft copy that sells, and often create that copy in just minutes.

It uses a template and formula based system. I don’t give you a bunch of theory and then say “go write”. Instead, I give you goof-proof templates for everything. Emails, video scripts and website sales pages. It’s all step by step. Step 1, write this. Step 2, write that. Step 3, plug that stuff into one of the templates. And you’re done. No stress, no confusion and no failure.

Get Dave Kaminski – Kaizen Copywriting System right now! Dave Kaminski – Kaizen Copywriting System Free Download, Kaizen Copywriting System Download, Kaizen Copywriting System Groupbuy, Kaizen Copywriting System Free, Kaizen Copywriting System Torrent, Kaizen Copywriting System Course Free, Kaizen Copywriting System Course Download

Dave Kaminski – Kaizen Copywriting System posted first on premiumwarezstore.blogspot.com

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networkingdefinition · 5 years

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Girl Quotes

Official Website: Girl Quotes

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• A beautiful girl can make you dizzy, like you’ve been drinking Jack and Coke all morning. She can make you feel high full of the single greatest commodity known to man – promise. Promise of a better day. Promise of a greater hope. Promise of a new tomorrow. This particular aura can be found in the gait of a beautiful girl. In her smile, in her soul, the way she makes every rotten little thing about life seem like it’s going to be okay. – Michael Rapaport • A gifted small girl has explained that pins are a great means of saving life, “by not swallowing them. – Charles Edward Montague • A girl can wait for the right man to come along but in the meantime that still doesn’t mean she can’t have a wonderful time with all the wrong ones. – Cher • A girl conceived in China has to run an eerie kind of gauntlet if she is to survive. many parents will use the ultrasound technique. and, if it reveals. a girl, they’ll abort her. If it reveals the baby is a boy, they’ll celebrate. – Steven W. Mosher • A girl should be two things: classy and fabulous. – Coco Chanel • A girl with brains ought to do something with them besides think. – Anita Loos • A guy and a girl can be just friends, but at one point or another, they will fall for each other… maybe temporarily, maybe at the wrong time, maybe too late, or maybe forever. – Dave Matthews • A liberal is a person who sees a fourteen-year-old girl performing sex acts onstage and wonders if she’s being paid minimum wage. – Irving Kristol • A toddling little girl is a centre of common feeling which makes the most dissimilar people understand each other. – George Eliot • A wise girl knows her limits, a smart girl knows that she has none. – Marilyn Monroe • Alas for those girls who’ve refused the truth: The sweetest tongue has the sharpest tooth. – Jack Zipes • All girls should have a poem written for them even if we have to turn this goddamn world upside down to do it. – Richard Brautigan • All little girls should be told they are pretty. – Marilyn Monroe • Always been a goal-oriented girl. it was both her strength and her weakness. She had a drive to completion that always gets things done, but it also made her inflexible, and stubborn. – Neal Shusterman • Always know that if you’re not happy with yourself, no one else can change that, no girl or guy, no amount of money; only yourself. – Shannon Leto • Always take a compliment, Caroline. Always take it for the way it was intended. You girls are always so quick to twist what others say. Simply say thank you and move on. – Alice Clayton • Any girl can be glamorous. All you have to do is stand still and look stupid. – Hedy Lamarr • Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves. – Albert Einstein • As Deborah Rhode describes, “When 1,100 Michigan elementary students were asked to describe what life would be like if they were the opposite sex, over 40 percent of the girls saw advantages to being male; they would have better jobs, higher incomes, and more respect. Ninety-five percent of the boys saw no advantage to being female, and a substantial number thought suicide would be preferable.” – Deborah Rhode • At a recent show, I looked out and I saw this girl crying in the audience and it really affected me. I wanted to stop the song and go and give her a hug. I should have, actually – I regret not doing that. – Elena Tonra • At the fourth grade level, girls at the same percentages of boys say they’re interested in careers in engineering or math or astrophysics, but by eighth grade that has dropped precipitously. – Chelsea Clinton

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'Girl+', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '68', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_girl').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_girl img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); ); • Basically, anything a sexual predator might do to woo a small suburban girl, I was trying. – Lena Dunham • Be that strong girl that everyone knew would make it through the worst, be that fearless girl, the one who would dare to do anything, be that independent girl who didn’t need a man; be that girl who never backed down. – Taylor Swift • Before marriage, a girl has to make love to a man to hold him. After marriage, she has to hold him to make love to him. – Marilyn Monroe • Between the ages of fourteen and twenty-four, foreplay changes from being something that boys want to do and girls don’t, to something that women want and men can’t be bothered with. … The perfect match, if you ask me, is between the Cosmo woman and the fourteen-year old boy. – Nick Hornby • Big girls need big diamonds. – Elizabeth Taylor • Boys think girls are like books, If the cover doesn’t catch their eye they won’t bother to read what’s inside”. – Marilyn Monroe • Boys will be boys. And even that wouldn’t matter if only we could prevent girls from being girls. – Anne Frank • But I am a girl with a keen interest in having it all, and what follows are hopeful dispatches from the frontlines of that struggle. – Lena Dunham • But I’ve always been fascinated with that prettiest-girl-in-the-class person that I never was, getting inside her head and showing that she’s just as tormented and messed up as everybody else. – Cecily von Ziegesar • Byrd, the former Klu [sic] Klux Klan Kleagle, is taking a stand over states’ rights, or his rights over State, or some such. Whatever the reason, the sight of an old Klansman blocking a little colored girl from Birmingham from getting into her office contributed to the general retro vibe that hangs around the Democratic Party these days. – Mark Steyn

[clickbank-storefront-bestselling] • Diamonds aren’t a girl’s best friend. Freedom is. – Camille Grammer • Due to the potent combination of my sexual recklessness and the slutty nature of some of the girls I have slept with, I have accumulated enough stories and anecdotes about abortion that they could name a Planned Parenthood clinic after me. – Tucker Max • Eating has always come up whenever and wherever. Maybe it’s because we’re girls, we have a lot of interest in eating. – Kim Hyo-yeon • Even today, well-brought-up English girls are taught by their mothers to boil all veggies for at least a month and a half, just in case one of the dinner guests turns up without his teeth. – Calvin Trillin • Every girl is a goddess. – Francesca Lia Block • Every girl likes feeling hot and sexy and beautiful and likes hearing it. – Hayden Panettiere • Every girl should use what Mother Nature gave her before Father Time takes it away. – Laurence J. Peter • Every girl wants to be the one girl that can change that guy – Lauren Conrad • Everyone fixes up their face if it’s not ideal, you know? That’s because of the race-mixing. For example, a Russian marries an Armenian. They have a kid, a cute girl, but she has her dad’s nose. She goes and files it down a little, and it’s all good. Ethnicities are mixing now, so there’s degeneration, and it didn’t used to be like that. Remember how many beautiful women there were in the 1950s and 1960s, without any surgery? And now, thanks to degeneration, we have this. – Valeria Lukyanova • Everything here is so weak, little girl. Everything breaks so easily. They want such simple things. – Neil Gaiman • Fun is fun but no girl wants to laugh all of the time. – Anita Loos • Girl with the burning golden eyes, And red-bird song, and snowy throat: I bring you gold and silver moons, And diamond stars, and mists that float. I bring you moons and snowy clouds, I bring you prarie skies to-night To feebly praise your golden eyes And red-bird song, and throat so white. ~Vachel Lindsay “To Gloriana” God wrote His loveliest poem on the day He made the first silver poplar tree, And set it high upon a pale-gold hill For all the new enchanted earth to see. – Grace Noll Crowell • Girl, when he gives you kisses twain, use one, and let the other stay; And hoard it, for moons die, red fades, and you may need a kiss—some day. – Ridgely Torrence • Girls are like exotic birds. They are pretty to look at but hard to catch. – Howie Dorough • Girls are so queer you never know what they mean. They say No when they mean Yes, and drive a man out of his wits for the fun of it. – Louisa May Alcott • Girls are trained to say, ‘I wrote this, but it’s probably really stupid.’ Well, no, you wouldn’t write a novel if you thought it was really stupid. Men are much more comfortable going, ‘I wrote this book because I have a unique perspective that the world needs to hear.’ Girls are taught from the age of seven that if you get a compliment, you don’t go, ‘Thank you’, you go, ‘No, you’re insane. – Lena Dunham • Girls aren’t beautiful, they’re pretty. Beautiful is too heavy a word to assign to a girl. Women are beautiful because their faces show that they know they have lost something and picked up something else. – Henry Rollins • Girls blush, sometimes, because they are alive, half wishing they were dead to save the shame. The sudden blush devours them, neck and brow; They have drawn too near the fire of life, like gnats, and flare up bodily, wings and all. What then? Who’s sorry for a gnat or girl? – Elizabeth Barrett Browning • Girls have a way of knowing or feeling what you feel, but they usually like to hear it also. – John Steinbeck • Girls have an unfair advantage over men: if they can’t get what they want by being smart, they can get it by being dumb. – Yul Brynner • Girls like to be played with and rumpled a little too sometimes. – Oliver Goldsmith • Girls like to see girls dressed up like princesses occasionally. – Nelly • Girls see these defined roles they’re supposed to follow in life, but when I was a young child, my parents told me I could be anything. – Joan Jett • Girls should go on thinking that there is a world out there and that it is theirs for the taking. – Anne Bancroft • Girls are like buses, miss one, next fifteen, one comin. – Gucci Mane • Girls. You never know what they’re going to think. – J. D. Salinger • Give me a girl at an impressionable age and she is mine for life. – Muriel Spark • God forbid you be an ugly girl, ‘course too pretty is also your doom, ’cause everyone harbors a secret hatred for the prettiest girl in the room. – Ani DiFranco • Growing up, I wanted desperately to please, to be a good girl. – Claire Danes • Hannah expected this to make her sob even more, but instead she found her tears drying up and her tummy growing warm. How dare they? How dare they do this to little girls? She understood now why her parents go so angry when they saw the result of bombers in the white hot streets of the Middle East, why men and women wailed in anger as well as grief as they lifted the limp bodies of children from the rubble. How dare they? No, she wasn’t going to die like this, wrapped up like some helpless baby. – Stephen M. Irwin • Harder is Better! Post work out! Foot in the Ice Bath. A girl has to make a living! #hardcandytoronto. #addictedtosweat – Madonna Ciccone • Have you heard about the morning after pill, or what I like to call breakfast in bed. Well have you heard about how some of the girls who have taken have died a few days later? Talk about two birds, looks like I will be going to the game this weekend boys. – Daniel Tosh • Honestly if a girl’s wearing, like, a Gucci shirt with a Gucci belt and a purse and a visor, that’s not cute at all. You can’t get away with that – with me – but you can always sprinkle it in there with your own stuff and it’s all good. – Kreayshawn • How long do small girls play with their dolls? As long as they are not married and do not live with their husbands. After marriage they put the dolls away in a box. What further need is there of worshipping the image after the vision of God? – Ramakrishna • How long is a girl a child? She is a child, and then one morning you wake up she’s a woman, and a dozen different people of whom you recognize none. – Louis L’Amour • I abstain from any kind of release for six weeks before a fight, no self-pleasure, nothing. Even in my dreams, I’ll be about to have sex with a beautiful girl and I’ll say, ‘Sorry darling, I’m fighting in a few weeks.’ That’s control, bro, when you’re turning down a hot chick in your subconscious. – David Haye • I always see guys get all, like, flexed on other people, trying to show off that they are tough, and it is just, like, no girl really likes that. – Kreayshawn • I always tell my mom I don’t have regular problems. I have problems, like, what type of girl is going to say they’re pregnant by me today? Those are the types of issues I have. – Fetty Wap • I am an artsy girl. It’s no secret that I am artsy, you know. – Kreayshawn • I avoid the young adult section altogether if possible, although it’s sometimes fun to catch a girl lying on the floor, reading “Gossip Girl.” – Cecily von Ziegesar • I basically became a cheerleader because I had a very strict mom. That was my way of being a bad girl. – Sandra Bullock • I could not lose unless I was caught in bed with a dead girl or a live boy. – Edwin Edwards • I did find a wonderful girl last year, but the photographs that we did were more about motorcars. – Helmut Newton • I don’t get it when girls say ‘I’m fine’ but don’t mean it. – Conor Maynard • I don’t like that sort of school… where the bright childish imagination is utterly discouraged… where I have never seen among the pupils, whether boys or girls, anything but little parrots and small calculating machines. – Charles Dickens • I don’t want to be one of those people who falls out of cabs drunk. But I don’t want to be known as some boring girl who just sits at home and doesn’t do anything. – Pixie Lott • I don’t want to be remembered as the girl who was shot. I want to be remembered as the girl who stood up. – Malala Yousafzai • I don’t want to be stinky poo poo girl, I want to be happy flower child. – Drew Barrymore • I doubt whether any girl would be satisfied with her lover’s mind if she knew the whole of it. – Anthony Trollope • I get some letters from girls that if their mothers knew what they were writing me in these letters, they’d get their butts whipped. – Rick James • I got started dancing because I knew it was one way to meet girls. – Gene Kelly • I hate dainty minds,’ answered Marjorie. ‘But a girl has to be dainty in person. If she looks like a million dollars she can talk about Russia, ping-pong, or the League of Nations and get away with it. – F. Scott Fitzgerald • I have never been a material girl. My father always told me never to love anything that cannot love you back. – Imelda Marcos • I have often been downcast, but never in despair; I regard our hiding as a dangerous adventure, romantic and interesting at the same time. In my diary I treat all the privations as amusing. I have made up my mind now to lead a different life from other girls and, later on, different from ordinary housewives. My start has been so very full of interest, and that is the sole reason why I have to laugh at the humorous side of the most dangerous moments. – Anne Frank • I have the same goal I’ve had ever since I was a girl: I want to rule the world. – Madonna Ciccone • I just don’t want to cozy up to the guy whose girl I have every intention of stealing. – Aprilynne Pike • I knew the men were probably terrible people who whistled at pretty girls, treated their wives like servants, and voted for Nixon every chance they got, but as far as I was concerned, they beat the hell out of a Volvo-load of liberals for hard work and good times. – James Crumley • I like Dancing of Indian girls more than my parents’ prayers . Because they dance with love and passion . But my parents just say their prayers because they got used to it . – Ali Shariati • I like the idea that I can talk to any teenage girls. You know, in a language that makes sense to them. – Louise Rennison • I like women, especially beautiful ones. If they have a good face and figure, I would much prefer to watch them being murdered than an ugly girl or man. – Dario Argento • I love a girl with a sense of humor. Someone who can make me laugh and that I can get along with and talk with and who is just sweet overall, inside and out. – Logan Henderson • I love to see a young girl go out and grab the world by the lapels. – Maya Angelou • I love you girl…to the moon and back. – Abbi Glines • I loved when my boyfriends would call me their Amazon girl. – Patti Hansen • I may be a man, but I fight like a girl. – Andy Cohen • I met eight great members. I really don’t think that anyone else could get along like how our nine girls get along so well. Because we’re girls, there can be a lot of jealousy going on. Thinking back on it now, I think I’m a kid who received a lot of good fortune. – Kim Hyo-yeon • I might get some more animals or something, but I’m done with the kids. I got a boy, I got a girl, and I got an older boy. I’m straight. – Jada Pinkett Smith • I never cheat unless you count the girls I cheat on – Drake • I pray to God I get inside a girl’s head one day and see what in the WORLD they are thinking. – A. J. McLean • I really can’t deny it, I am who I am. I’m pretty normal. I’m not that smooth type of girl. I run into things, I trip, I spill food. I say stupid things… I really don’t have it all together. – Katie Holmes • I think girls are the most beautiful when they become a mother. – Minzy • I think it’s important to make all women feel like they’re princesses, because every girl is a princess. I’m serious. – Justin Bieber • I try to not be too hard on myself regarding my diet. I’ve always been a workout-to-eat kind of a girl. I like to eat, to say the least. – Jennie Finch • I want girls to feel the confidence you get from being smart. – Danica McKellar • I want to make sure I’m with a girl that’s a good kisser, and that when I wake up, I have coffee and a cigarette. That’s all I really want out of life. That, and world domination. – Ryan Adams • I wanted to give young girls something positive to look up to…I wanted to give them their Blizzard of Aahhhs, Ski Movie or High Life, but done in a way that also shows the elegance, grace, community and style that is unique to women in the mountains. – Lynsey Dyer • I was about half in love with her by the time we sat down. That’s the thing about girls. Every time they do something pretty… you fall half in love with them, and then you never know where the hell you are. – J. D. Salinger • I was coming off of The O.C. and had very little interest in doing another teen drama. And then I got sent theGossip Girl book series, and I was like, ‘I might not be ready to leave high school after all.’ – Josh Schwartz • I was not a Southern California girl. I hated having my photograph taken. I felt shy and embarrassed around famous people. – Allegra Huston • I was so thrilled that I was having a girl, because I just am so girly myself, but I think the teenage years are going to be very interesting. – Sarah Dessen • I wish my mother had left me something about how she felt growing up. I wish my grandmother had done the same. I wanted my girls to know me. – Carol Burnett • I wrote the story myself. It’s all about a girl who lost her reputation but never missed it. – Mae West • I’m convinced that a world in which girls are educated is a safer, more stable, more prosperous place. – Barack Obama • I’m not a vomit in the club kinda girl. – Lady Gaga • I’d never really babysat. I feel like I’m Blair, or ‘Gossip Girl.’ A teenager, basically – and now suddenly I’m a mom? – Cecily von Ziegesar • If a girl looks swell when she meets you, who gives a damn if she’s late? Nobody. – J. D. Salinger • If a girl thinks she isn’t beautiful, I’m here to prove her wrong. – Kendall Schmidt • If I get married one day, or meet the girl I like, I’ll prepare 100m to 150m of candles, or maybe red carpet – Lee Donghae • If I had to give a definition of capitalism I would say: the process whereby American girls turn into American women. – Christopher Hampton • If I were a girl, I’d despair. The supply of good women far exceeds that of the men who deserve them. – Robert Graves • If the media is sending girls the message that their value lies in their bodies, this can only leave them feeling disempowered and distract them from making a difference and becoming leaders. – Jennifer Siebel Newsom • If we are to maximize the potential of young girls everywhere, we have to think, in this instance, literally outside the box. And the first step of doing that is to see the box for what it really is: A perfect, pretty PROBLEM. – David Trumble • If we’re going to reach a broader audience, we have to stop thinking about that audience strictly in terms of teenage boys or even teenage girls. We need to think about things that are relevant to normal humans and not just the geeks we used to be. – Warren Spector • If you can educate girls, you can change the world. – Cathie Black • If you can make a girl laugh, you can make her do anything. – Marilyn Monroe • If you invest in a girl or a woman, you are investing in everybody else. – Melinda Gates • I’m a cereal girl. I have always loved my cereal ever since I was a kid. – Rachel Stevens • I’m a Mommy’s Girl – the strongest influence in my young life was my mom. – Susie Bright • I’m a role model for lots of young girls. – Jennie Finch • I’m down to bleach my eyebrows again. I tell you what, though – that didn’t go down well with my boyfriend. Girls love it. Guys, not so into it. – Florence Welch • I’m into the girls fancying me and stuff, mad for it. – Liam Gallagher • I’m no expert on girls, but when one tries to pinch you four times, I’m pretty sure that’s flirting – Ransom Riggs • I’m not God but if I were God, ¾ of you would be girls, and the rest would be pizza and beer. – Axl Rose • I’m still chasing girls. I don’t remember what for, but I’m still chasing them. – Joe E. Lewis • I’m the girl who still believes prince charming exists somewhere out there. – Taylor Swift • I’m tired of playing little girls. I’m a woman now. I can’t run around forever being the Little Miss Fix It who bursts into song. I want to get out of Hollywood and get a fresh approach. – Deanna Durbin • I’m usually the sparkle in a closet full of conservative clothes. Either that or my customer has a closet full of my clothes and a few conservative suits from Calvin Klein. I think you’ve got to give a girl what’s missing from her closet. If something jazzy, tacky or sexy is what’s missing, I provide it. – Betsey Johnson • I’m weirdly flexible, so when I dance, I dance like a 17-year-old girl. – Michael Angarano • In America every woman has her set of girl-friends; some are cousins, the rest are gained at school. These form a permanent committee who sit on each other’s affairs, who come out together, marry and divorce together, and who end as those groups of bustling, heartless well-informed club-women who govern society. Against them the Couple of Ehepaar is helpless and Man in their eyes but a biological interlude. – Cyril Connolly • In my 20s I was going round seeing agents who were patronising because I was fat and a girl, which was a double whammy. I knew what it was to feel out-of-the-loop. – Victoria Wood • In school, I was the quietest girl ever! I had a lot of trouble in school. Kids were mean to me. – Cher Lloyd • Independent minded girls that are naked sounds like a great start to something. – Joshua Homme • It had never once occurred to me that the paper I wanted to work for would not want me. Certainly I never expected to be rejected solely because I was a girl! – Kathryn Tucker Windham • It’s all up to you, girls. You have to be strong. These are the days of post-women’s liberation. You have grown up by now and you have to take care of yourself. No one’s going to help you. – Kathy Acker • It’s like — I don’t know, sometimes it’s like chasing a pretty girl on the beach. And things I never thought I could do… I can do. – Ryan Adams • It’s not beauty but fine qualities, my girl, that keep a husband. – Euripides • It’s the good girls who keep diaries; the bad girls never have the time. – Tallulah Bankhead • It’s tough now to meet a girl who wants to hang out with you because she likes your personality – who hasn’t seen you on TV and is like, ‘Hey!’ – Shaun White • Ive always loved when girls carry their wallets as a clutch instead of a bag. – Alexander Wang • I’ve been looking for a girl like you – not you, but a girl like you. – Groucho Marx • Just watching a girl can give me the best reason to smile. Girls are something very special and you got to treat them that way. That’s why I always say don’t stare right at a chick. She’ll begin to fidget, wondering if her hair’s messed up or if her make-up is smeared. It’s kind of like going to an art gallery to see beautiful paintings. If you look at a painting just the right way, you get the most out of it! – Michael Jackson • Kissing babies and hugging fat girls. – Dave Bautista • Like every other girl in the world, my most embarrassing moment had to do with a guy completely turning me down. His loss! – Kelly Clarkson • Little girls, like butterflies, need no excuse. – Robert A. Heinlein • Many a man in love with a dimple makes the mistake of marrying the whole girl. – Stephen Leacock • Modern art is what happens when painters stop looking at girls and persuade themselves that they have a better idea. – John Ciardi • Modesty is invisibility… Never forget it. To be seen – to be seen – is to be… penetrated. What you must be girls, is impenetrable. – Margaret Atwood • More men than women like ‘Strangers With Candy’. Pretty girls don’t like the show. They don’t like to see an ugly lady. – Amy Sedaris • More than anything, acting helped me discover who I’m not. I’ve learned that I’m a girly girl, but not a prissy girl. – Debby Ryan • My mother was my Girl Scout leader, and George’s mother was his Cub Scout leader. In fact, that’s when some say her hair turned white. – Laura Bush • My real dream is to have a whole, like, buy a whole piece of land. Imagine, like, a long driveway. Like, a cul de sac-type street, with maybe, like, seven houses. Me be right here. Have my mom be able to be right here. My brother over here. My girl’s grandmother and family right here. Friends over there. That’s my real dream. – J. Cole • Nature makes boys and girls lovely to look upon so they can be tolerated until they acquire some sense. – M. William Phelps • Never call a girl fat, even if you’re joking. – Demi Lovato • Never love someone whom you think you need to mend – or who makes you feel like you should be mended. There are boys out there who look for shining girls; they will stand next to you and say quiet things in your ear that only you can hear and that will slowly drain the joy out of your heart. The books about vampires are true, baby. Drive a stake through their hearts and run away. – Caitlin Moran • No girl wants a secretly gay boyfriend, every dude wants a secretly gay girlfriend. – Joe Rogan • No legal ceremony–no election of the woman–no penalty for the perfidy of the man–no law to compel him to do his duty, no compensation for the poor woman who is turned adrift like the girl of the street, penniless, to sell herself on the best possible terms. This is Divine marriage, or Moses and the Bible lie; and this is Bible divorce–putting away! – Victoria Woodhull • No one ever told me I was pretty when I was a little girl. All little girls should be told they’re pretty, even if they aren’t. – Marilyn Monroe • No one knows how it is that with one glance a boy can break through into a girl’s heart. – Nancy Thayer • Nobody loves a fat girl, but oh how a fat girl can love. – Jim Croce • Only one girl has ever really wrapped my stomach into pretzels. She didn’t give me butterflies. She gave me pterodactyls I’m talking terrible internal bruising and the first time I kissed her was like the first time I saw fireworks, which was like the sky first kissing me in the eyeballs – George Watsky • Over 270 girls were kidnapped for going to school in Nigeria! They are still missing! I’M outraged and you should be too!! I’m supporting www.globalfundforwomen.org Join me and take a stand!!!!!!! #Bringbackourgirls #revolutionoflove – Madonna Ciccone • Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. – Albert Einstein • Put yourself in Hamlet’s shoes. Suppose you were a prince, and you came back from college to discover that your uncle had murdered your father and married your mother, and you fell in love with a beautiful girl and mistakenly murdered her father, and then she went crazy and drowned herself. What would you do? Go back for a masters? – Art Buchwald • Sex is something I really don’t understand too hot. You never know where the hell you are. I keep making up these sex rules for myself, and then I break them right away. Last year I made a rule that I was going to quit horsing around with girls that, deep down, gave me a pain in the ass. I broke it, though, the same week I made it – the same night, as a matter of fact. – J. D. Salinger • She was a natural blonde, with delicate hands and feet, and in her youthful photographs one saw a girl with mocking eyes and a tragic smile, the course of whose life would conspire in time to transpose that pair of adjectives. – Michael Chabon • She’s the wild, feline, untamed part of you, your sexual alter ego and the opposite of the “good girl” or “little lady.” Some of us know her better than others do, but I would venture to guess that your erotic creature hasn’t seen nearly enough light of day. – Sheila Kelley • She’s the kind of girl who climbed the ladder of success wrong by wrong. – Mae West • Some guys like to undermine a girl’s self-esteem with little verbal jabs. Eventually it all adds up. One bee sting doesn’t hurt a horse, but enough bee stings can kill a horse. – Oliver Gaspirtz • Sometimes I see really skinny girls. They may look great, but…they’re not happy. Have a cupcake. – Kathy Wakile • Straight to the top, rooftop glows. With a hand full of girls and they all so foreign. Brain so poisoned, rainbows flowing. – The Weeknd • Take away the Big Bang and what has God done? Burned a bush and got a girl pregnant. Great, he’s a high school junior. – Stephen Colbert • The American girl makes a servant of her husband and then finds him contemptible for being a servant – John Steinbeck • The best accessories a girl can have are her closest friends. – Paris Hilton • The best thing a girl can be is a good wife and mother. It is a girl’s highest calling. I hope I am ready. – Nancy E. Turner • The cuter girls kinda went off from the older women because we’re younger, and we’re cuter, we’ve got better bodies, and for some reason that’s like a huge issue with older people. – Heidi • The emotional, sexual, and psychological stereotyping of females begins when the doctor says, ‘It’s a girl.’ – Shirley Chisholm • The girl has a funny way of romanticizing things. – Karen Russell • The girls show more skin these days, but I think, generally, they behave the same way as when I was growing up. – Cecily von Ziegesar • The jamaat was an almost silly mish-mash of people: Rude Dawud’s pork-pie hat poking up here, a jalab-and-turban there, Jehangir’s big Mohawk rising from a sea of kufis, Amazing Ayyub still with no shirt, girls scattered throughout – some in hejab, some not and Rabeya in punk-patched burqa doing her thing. But in its randomness it was gorgeous, reflecting an Islam I felt could not happen anywhere else … If Islam was to be saved, it would be saved by the crazy ones: Jehangir and Rabeya and Fasiq and Dawud and Ayyub and even Umar. – Michael Muhammad Knight • There are many facts within fiction. This captivating story provides invaluable insights into the childhood of a girl who has Asperger’s syndrome. Fiction allows the author to explore different perspectives and add poignancy to the experiences of sensory sensitivity and being bullied and teased of someone who has Asperger’s syndrome. The title Delightfully Different describes Asperger’s syndrome but also the qualities of this novel. – Tony Attwood • There are no good girls gone wrong – just bad girls found out. – Mae West • There are so many girls, and so few princes. – Liza Minnelli • There are two things that are more difficult than making an after-dinner speech: climbing a wall which is leaning toward you and kissing a girl who is leaning away from you. – Winston Churchill • There is a small window of opportunity for freckled girls to tan. – Jeffrey Eugenides • There is no shortage of evidence that when we support the fundamental freedoms of women and girls, they are able to realize their full potential to engage in, contribute to and benefit from sustainable development. In doing so, we will all reap the benefits; in our homes, throughout our communities, and across our nations. – Sam Kutesa • There is not one female comic who was beautiful as a little girl. – Joan Rivers • There was a little girl, When she was good, she was very, very good. But when she was bad, she was horrid. – Jun Mochizuki • There was the time I bought three cars in the span of three or four weeks. It was crazy; it wasn’t greedy. It was mine, my girl’s, my mom’s. I got Benzes for my ladies. But I felt crazy. You have to understand I come from a world where we’re very modest. But that’s not greedy. That’s nice, right? – J. Cole • There were about ten years of trying, failing, trying again, suffering rejection, etc. My first published book, ‘Story of a Girl’, was the fourth book I wrote. – Sara Zarr • There’s no point for me to party. I have a girl that I love. I don’t need that. – Ryan Cabrera • There’s only a very small representation of girls among you. Too little. Women have much to tell us in today’s society. Sometimes we are too machistas and we don’t allow enough space to women. But women can see things from a different angle to us, with a different eye. Women are able to pose questions we men are unable to understand. Look out for this fact: she is the only one who has put a question for which there is no answer. She couldn’t put it into words but expressed it with tears. – Pope Francis • These Jews who run things, who are producing this mental illness ¬-teenage suicide…all these Jewish sicknesses…that’s nothing new. The Talmud’s full of things like sex with boys and girls. – David Duke • This attitude means you haven’t met a girl worthy of your attention. You’ll want to get caught if the right girl comes along. – Simone Elkeles • This is why I can’t be with Levi. Because I’m the kind of girl who fantasizes about being trapped in a library overnight-and Levi can’t even read. – Rainbow Rowell • This was how the modern working girl behaved. She didn’t hide her femininity or apologize for it, as they did in the old days. She flaunted it and, having been given more than any woman before her, demanded even more than that. – J. Courtney Sullivan • This-this was what made life: a moment of quiet, the water falling in the fountain, the girl’s voice. . . a moment of captured beauty. Those who are truly wise will never permit such moments to escape. – Louis L’Amour • To find out a girl’s faults, praise her to her girlfriends. – Benjamin Franklin • Today’s girls are tomorrow’s women – and leaders. – Isabel Allende • Too many girls follow the line of least resistance, but a good line is hard to resist. – Mae West • Wait until France gets a hard shot in the nose. Wait until France reacts with some nasty work. They’ll get a golf-clap from the chattering class over here and a you-go-girl from Red America. France could nuke an Algerian terrorist camp and the rest of the world would tut-tut for a day, then ask if the missiles France used were for sale. And of course the answer would be oui. – James Lileks • We are living in a material world and I’m a material girl. – Madonna Ciccone • We do not suffer by accident. It does not often happen that the interference of friends will persuade a young man of independent fortune to think no more of a girl whom he was violently in love with only a few days before. – Elizabeth Bennett • We had no irony when it came to girls, though. There was just no time to develop it. One moment they weren’t there, not in any form that interested us, anyway, and the next you couldn’t miss them; they were everywhere, all over the place. One moment you wanted to clonk them on the head for being your sister, or someone else’s sister, and the next you wanted to….actually, we didn’t know what we wanted next, but it was something. Almost overnight, all these sisters (there was no other kind of girl, not yet)had become interesting, disturbing, even. – Nick Hornby • We have lingered in the chambers of the sea By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown Till human voices wake us… and we drown. – T. S. Eliot • We must not close our eyes to the fact that there are conspiring men who would pollute young boys, and girls of corresponding age, for sake of increasing profits. – David O. McKay • We’re every age at once and tucked inside ourselves like Russian nesting dolls. My mother is an 8 year old girl. My grandson is a 74 year old retiree whose kidneys just failed. And that’s the glue between me and you. That’s the screws and nails. We live in a house made of each other and if that sounds strange that’s because it is. – George Watsky • Well Stephanie, I’d like to thank you for giving me such a kind Christmas gift, but unfortunately I didn’t get you any gifts. But then again, what can you get for the girl whose had everyone? – Chris Jericho • Well, we’re living in a material world, and I’m a material girl… or boy. – Adam Sandler • What are you two doing flirting with this nerd? I told you, you are supposed to be in charge of the 50 dancing girls I had set up for Miz’s celebration. – Alex Riley • What better job is there for a 17-year-old girl than being in a pop group? – Susan Ann Sulley • What do I like in a girl? I like a girl that likes me, a girl that knows how to smile and see the bright side of things. A girl that makes me a better person. – James Lafferty • What does being a girl have to do with it? There’s no time to think when you’re on the spot. – Bisco Hatori • What I know in my heart is that women and girls on the ground are powerful and that they are leaders. – Charlize Theron • When a girl cries over a guy,she really loves him.when a guy cries over a girl ,he will never love another girl like her. – Lil Wayne • When a girl is beautiful, she gets to pick – she never has to wait for someone to choose her. – Adriana Trigiani • When it’s all over I won’t miss the bruises he gave me to impress girls, or the occasional scar which will give me a story to tell my grandchildren, but I’ll definitely miss the pranks and the laughing and all the making fun of each other. I’ll miss the funky advice he gives me about everything – football, girls, video games, clothes. Most of all, I’ll miss having an older brother. – Skandar Keynes • When you were a little girl, Madam…..was this the woman you dreamed of becoming? – Andrew Sean Greer • Whenever I’m about to have sex with a girl, I play it smart and just automatically assume she has herpes; because that way I don’t have to tell her about my herpes. – Anthony Jeselnik • Whores are the most honest girls. They present the bill right away. – Alberto Giacometti • Why does a man take it for granted that a girl who flirts with him wants him to kiss her – when, nine times out of ten, she only wants him to want to kiss her? – Helen Rowland • Why is it that every time a girl says a guy is bothering her, it’s fluffed off with oh, he just likes you, as if that makes it okay? – Kelley Armstrong • Yet little by little, I was also becoming the girl who was learning to live with this, all of it, letting it weave together with everything else, the good and the bad, as life moved forward, because thats what life did, regardless of whether we were ready for it or not. – Donna Freitas • You and I both know there’s got to be some greater storyline for you than ‘girl gets heart broken, was sad forever’. I think a nice one would be ‘girl gets heart broken, was sad for a while but in her heartbreak she found freedom, friends, and the ability to look back and laugh at all she’d learned. She now lives her life on her own terms and still has fantastic hair.’ – Taylor Swift • You are the one girl that made me risk eveything for a future worth having. – Simone Elkeles • You don’t have to wait for anyone’s approval to do things. You don’t have to try to get a job and go through set steps before you start a career or start your life. That’s what I want young girls to know – you can do anything you want. Just start. – Petra Collins • You eventually get used to looking at girls picking their leotards out of their bums and that sort of stuff. – Adam Garcia • You know you love me. Xoxo, GossipGirl. – Cecily von Ziegesar • You know, honestly, if a girl can make me laugh, I’m pretty much sold. – Ryan Lochte • You may admire a girl’s curves on the first introduction, but the second meeting shows up new angles. – Mae West

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Girl Quotes

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[clickbank-storefront-bestselling] • Diamonds aren’t a girl’s best friend. Freedom is. – Camille Grammer • Due to the potent combination of my sexual recklessness and the slutty nature of some of the girls I have slept with, I have accumulated enough stories and anecdotes about abortion that they could name a Planned Parenthood clinic after me. – Tucker Max • Eating has always come up whenever and wherever. Maybe it’s because we’re girls, we have a lot of interest in eating. – Kim Hyo-yeon • Even today, well-brought-up English girls are taught by their mothers to boil all veggies for at least a month and a half, just in case one of the dinner guests turns up without his teeth. – Calvin Trillin • Every girl is a goddess. – Francesca Lia Block • Every girl likes feeling hot and sexy and beautiful and likes hearing it. – Hayden Panettiere • Every girl should use what Mother Nature gave her before Father Time takes it away. – Laurence J. Peter • Every girl wants to be the one girl that can change that guy – Lauren Conrad • Everyone fixes up their face if it’s not ideal, you know? That’s because of the race-mixing. For example, a Russian marries an Armenian. They have a kid, a cute girl, but she has her dad’s nose. She goes and files it down a little, and it’s all good. Ethnicities are mixing now, so there’s degeneration, and it didn’t used to be like that. Remember how many beautiful women there were in the 1950s and 1960s, without any surgery? And now, thanks to degeneration, we have this. – Valeria Lukyanova • Everything here is so weak, little girl. Everything breaks so easily. They want such simple things. – Neil Gaiman • Fun is fun but no girl wants to laugh all of the time. – Anita Loos • Girl with the burning golden eyes, And red-bird song, and snowy throat: I bring you gold and silver moons, And diamond stars, and mists that float. I bring you moons and snowy clouds, I bring you prarie skies to-night To feebly praise your golden eyes And red-bird song, and throat so white. ~Vachel Lindsay “To Gloriana” God wrote His loveliest poem on the day He made the first silver poplar tree, And set it high upon a pale-gold hill For all the new enchanted earth to see. – Grace Noll Crowell • Girl, when he gives you kisses twain, use one, and let the other stay; And hoard it, for moons die, red fades, and you may need a kiss—some day. – Ridgely Torrence • Girls are like exotic birds. They are pretty to look at but hard to catch. – Howie Dorough • Girls are so queer you never know what they mean. They say No when they mean Yes, and drive a man out of his wits for the fun of it. – Louisa May Alcott • Girls are trained to say, ‘I wrote this, but it’s probably really stupid.’ Well, no, you wouldn’t write a novel if you thought it was really stupid. Men are much more comfortable going, ‘I wrote this book because I have a unique perspective that the world needs to hear.’ Girls are taught from the age of seven that if you get a compliment, you don’t go, ‘Thank you’, you go, ‘No, you’re insane. – Lena Dunham • Girls aren’t beautiful, they’re pretty. Beautiful is too heavy a word to assign to a girl. Women are beautiful because their faces show that they know they have lost something and picked up something else. – Henry Rollins • Girls blush, sometimes, because they are alive, half wishing they were dead to save the shame. The sudden blush devours them, neck and brow; They have drawn too near the fire of life, like gnats, and flare up bodily, wings and all. What then? Who’s sorry for a gnat or girl? – Elizabeth Barrett Browning • Girls have a way of knowing or feeling what you feel, but they usually like to hear it also. – John Steinbeck • Girls have an unfair advantage over men: if they can’t get what they want by being smart, they can get it by being dumb. – Yul Brynner • Girls like to be played with and rumpled a little too sometimes. – Oliver Goldsmith • Girls like to see girls dressed up like princesses occasionally. – Nelly • Girls see these defined roles they’re supposed to follow in life, but when I was a young child, my parents told me I could be anything. – Joan Jett • Girls should go on thinking that there is a world out there and that it is theirs for the taking. – Anne Bancroft • Girls are like buses, miss one, next fifteen, one comin. – Gucci Mane • Girls. You never know what they’re going to think. – J. D. Salinger • Give me a girl at an impressionable age and she is mine for life. – Muriel Spark • God forbid you be an ugly girl, ‘course too pretty is also your doom, ’cause everyone harbors a secret hatred for the prettiest girl in the room. – Ani DiFranco • Growing up, I wanted desperately to please, to be a good girl. – Claire Danes • Hannah expected this to make her sob even more, but instead she found her tears drying up and her tummy growing warm. How dare they? How dare they do this to little girls? She understood now why her parents go so angry when they saw the result of bombers in the white hot streets of the Middle East, why men and women wailed in anger as well as grief as they lifted the limp bodies of children from the rubble. How dare they? No, she wasn’t going to die like this, wrapped up like some helpless baby. – Stephen M. Irwin • Harder is Better! Post work out! Foot in the Ice Bath. A girl has to make a living! #hardcandytoronto. #addictedtosweat – Madonna Ciccone • Have you heard about the morning after pill, or what I like to call breakfast in bed. Well have you heard about how some of the girls who have taken have died a few days later? Talk about two birds, looks like I will be going to the game this weekend boys. – Daniel Tosh • Honestly if a girl’s wearing, like, a Gucci shirt with a Gucci belt and a purse and a visor, that’s not cute at all. You can’t get away with that – with me – but you can always sprinkle it in there with your own stuff and it’s all good. – Kreayshawn • How long do small girls play with their dolls? As long as they are not married and do not live with their husbands. After marriage they put the dolls away in a box. What further need is there of worshipping the image after the vision of God? – Ramakrishna • How long is a girl a child? She is a child, and then one morning you wake up she’s a woman, and a dozen different people of whom you recognize none. – Louis L’Amour • I abstain from any kind of release for six weeks before a fight, no self-pleasure, nothing. Even in my dreams, I’ll be about to have sex with a beautiful girl and I’ll say, ‘Sorry darling, I’m fighting in a few weeks.’ That’s control, bro, when you’re turning down a hot chick in your subconscious. – David Haye • I always see guys get all, like, flexed on other people, trying to show off that they are tough, and it is just, like, no girl really likes that. – Kreayshawn • I always tell my mom I don’t have regular problems. I have problems, like, what type of girl is going to say they’re pregnant by me today? Those are the types of issues I have. – Fetty Wap • I am an artsy girl. It’s no secret that I am artsy, you know. – Kreayshawn • I avoid the young adult section altogether if possible, although it’s sometimes fun to catch a girl lying on the floor, reading “Gossip Girl.” – Cecily von Ziegesar • I basically became a cheerleader because I had a very strict mom. That was my way of being a bad girl. – Sandra Bullock • I could not lose unless I was caught in bed with a dead girl or a live boy. – Edwin Edwards • I did find a wonderful girl last year, but the photographs that we did were more about motorcars. – Helmut Newton • I don’t get it when girls say ‘I’m fine’ but don’t mean it. – Conor Maynard • I don’t like that sort of school… where the bright childish imagination is utterly discouraged… where I have never seen among the pupils, whether boys or girls, anything but little parrots and small calculating machines. – Charles Dickens • I don’t want to be one of those people who falls out of cabs drunk. But I don’t want to be known as some boring girl who just sits at home and doesn’t do anything. – Pixie Lott • I don’t want to be remembered as the girl who was shot. I want to be remembered as the girl who stood up. – Malala Yousafzai • I don’t want to be stinky poo poo girl, I want to be happy flower child. – Drew Barrymore • I doubt whether any girl would be satisfied with her lover’s mind if she knew the whole of it. – Anthony Trollope • I get some letters from girls that if their mothers knew what they were writing me in these letters, they’d get their butts whipped. – Rick James • I got started dancing because I knew it was one way to meet girls. – Gene Kelly • I hate dainty minds,’ answered Marjorie. ‘But a girl has to be dainty in person. If she looks like a million dollars she can talk about Russia, ping-pong, or the League of Nations and get away with it. – F. Scott Fitzgerald • I have never been a material girl. My father always told me never to love anything that cannot love you back. – Imelda Marcos • I have often been downcast, but never in despair; I regard our hiding as a dangerous adventure, romantic and interesting at the same time. In my diary I treat all the privations as amusing. I have made up my mind now to lead a different life from other girls and, later on, different from ordinary housewives. My start has been so very full of interest, and that is the sole reason why I have to laugh at the humorous side of the most dangerous moments. – Anne Frank • I have the same goal I’ve had ever since I was a girl: I want to rule the world. – Madonna Ciccone • I just don’t want to cozy up to the guy whose girl I have every intention of stealing. – Aprilynne Pike • I knew the men were probably terrible people who whistled at pretty girls, treated their wives like servants, and voted for Nixon every chance they got, but as far as I was concerned, they beat the hell out of a Volvo-load of liberals for hard work and good times. – James Crumley • I like Dancing of Indian girls more than my parents’ prayers . Because they dance with love and passion . But my parents just say their prayers because they got used to it . – Ali Shariati • I like the idea that I can talk to any teenage girls. You know, in a language that makes sense to them. – Louise Rennison • I like women, especially beautiful ones. If they have a good face and figure, I would much prefer to watch them being murdered than an ugly girl or man. – Dario Argento • I love a girl with a sense of humor. Someone who can make me laugh and that I can get along with and talk with and who is just sweet overall, inside and out. – Logan Henderson • I love to see a young girl go out and grab the world by the lapels. – Maya Angelou • I love you girl…to the moon and back. – Abbi Glines • I loved when my boyfriends would call me their Amazon girl. – Patti Hansen • I may be a man, but I fight like a girl. – Andy Cohen • I met eight great members. I really don’t think that anyone else could get along like how our nine girls get along so well. Because we’re girls, there can be a lot of jealousy going on. Thinking back on it now, I think I’m a kid who received a lot of good fortune. – Kim Hyo-yeon • I might get some more animals or something, but I’m done with the kids. I got a boy, I got a girl, and I got an older boy. I’m straight. – Jada Pinkett Smith • I never cheat unless you count the girls I cheat on – Drake • I pray to God I get inside a girl’s head one day and see what in the WORLD they are thinking. – A. J. McLean • I really can’t deny it, I am who I am. I’m pretty normal. I’m not that smooth type of girl. I run into things, I trip, I spill food. I say stupid things… I really don’t have it all together. – Katie Holmes • I think girls are the most beautiful when they become a mother. – Minzy • I think it’s important to make all women feel like they’re princesses, because every girl is a princess. I’m serious. – Justin Bieber • I try to not be too hard on myself regarding my diet. I’ve always been a workout-to-eat kind of a girl. I like to eat, to say the least. – Jennie Finch • I want girls to feel the confidence you get from being smart. – Danica McKellar • I want to make sure I’m with a girl that’s a good kisser, and that when I wake up, I have coffee and a cigarette. That’s all I really want out of life. That, and world domination. – Ryan Adams • I wanted to give young girls something positive to look up to…I wanted to give them their Blizzard of Aahhhs, Ski Movie or High Life, but done in a way that also shows the elegance, grace, community and style that is unique to women in the mountains. – Lynsey Dyer • I was about half in love with her by the time we sat down. That’s the thing about girls. Every time they do something pretty… you fall half in love with them, and then you never know where the hell you are. – J. D. Salinger • I was coming off of The O.C. and had very little interest in doing another teen drama. And then I got sent theGossip Girl book series, and I was like, ‘I might not be ready to leave high school after all.’ – Josh Schwartz • I was not a Southern California girl. I hated having my photograph taken. I felt shy and embarrassed around famous people. – Allegra Huston • I was so thrilled that I was having a girl, because I just am so girly myself, but I think the teenage years are going to be very interesting. – Sarah Dessen • I wish my mother had left me something about how she felt growing up. I wish my grandmother had done the same. I wanted my girls to know me. – Carol Burnett • I wrote the story myself. It’s all about a girl who lost her reputation but never missed it. – Mae West • I’m convinced that a world in which girls are educated is a safer, more stable, more prosperous place. – Barack Obama • I’m not a vomit in the club kinda girl. – Lady Gaga • I’d never really babysat. I feel like I’m Blair, or ‘Gossip Girl.’ A teenager, basically – and now suddenly I’m a mom? – Cecily von Ziegesar • If a girl looks swell when she meets you, who gives a damn if she’s late? Nobody. – J. D. Salinger • If a girl thinks she isn’t beautiful, I’m here to prove her wrong. – Kendall Schmidt • If I get married one day, or meet the girl I like, I’ll prepare 100m to 150m of candles, or maybe red carpet – Lee Donghae • If I had to give a definition of capitalism I would say: the process whereby American girls turn into American women. – Christopher Hampton • If I were a girl, I’d despair. The supply of good women far exceeds that of the men who deserve them. – Robert Graves • If the media is sending girls the message that their value lies in their bodies, this can only leave them feeling disempowered and distract them from making a difference and becoming leaders. – Jennifer Siebel Newsom • If we are to maximize the potential of young girls everywhere, we have to think, in this instance, literally outside the box. And the first step of doing that is to see the box for what it really is: A perfect, pretty PROBLEM. – David Trumble • If we’re going to reach a broader audience, we have to stop thinking about that audience strictly in terms of teenage boys or even teenage girls. We need to think about things that are relevant to normal humans and not just the geeks we used to be. – Warren Spector • If you can educate girls, you can change the world. – Cathie Black • If you can make a girl laugh, you can make her do anything. – Marilyn Monroe • If you invest in a girl or a woman, you are investing in everybody else. – Melinda Gates • I’m a cereal girl. I have always loved my cereal ever since I was a kid. – Rachel Stevens • I’m a Mommy’s Girl – the strongest influence in my young life was my mom. – Susie Bright • I’m a role model for lots of young girls. – Jennie Finch • I’m down to bleach my eyebrows again. I tell you what, though – that didn’t go down well with my boyfriend. Girls love it. Guys, not so into it. – Florence Welch • I’m into the girls fancying me and stuff, mad for it. – Liam Gallagher • I’m no expert on girls, but when one tries to pinch you four times, I’m pretty sure that’s flirting – Ransom Riggs • I’m not God but if I were God, ¾ of you would be girls, and the rest would be pizza and beer. – Axl Rose • I’m still chasing girls. I don’t remember what for, but I’m still chasing them. – Joe E. Lewis • I’m the girl who still believes prince charming exists somewhere out there. – Taylor Swift • I’m tired of playing little girls. I’m a woman now. I can’t run around forever being the Little Miss Fix It who bursts into song. I want to get out of Hollywood and get a fresh approach. – Deanna Durbin • I’m usually the sparkle in a closet full of conservative clothes. Either that or my customer has a closet full of my clothes and a few conservative suits from Calvin Klein. I think you��ve got to give a girl what’s missing from her closet. If something jazzy, tacky or sexy is what’s missing, I provide it. – Betsey Johnson • I’m weirdly flexible, so when I dance, I dance like a 17-year-old girl. – Michael Angarano • In America every woman has her set of girl-friends; some are cousins, the rest are gained at school. These form a permanent committee who sit on each other’s affairs, who come out together, marry and divorce together, and who end as those groups of bustling, heartless well-informed club-women who govern society. Against them the Couple of Ehepaar is helpless and Man in their eyes but a biological interlude. – Cyril Connolly • In my 20s I was going round seeing agents who were patronising because I was fat and a girl, which was a double whammy. I knew what it was to feel out-of-the-loop. – Victoria Wood • In school, I was the quietest girl ever! I had a lot of trouble in school. Kids were mean to me. – Cher Lloyd • Independent minded girls that are naked sounds like a great start to something. – Joshua Homme • It had never once occurred to me that the paper I wanted to work for would not want me. Certainly I never expected to be rejected solely because I was a girl! – Kathryn Tucker Windham • It’s all up to you, girls. You have to be strong. These are the days of post-women’s liberation. You have grown up by now and you have to take care of yourself. No one’s going to help you. – Kathy Acker • It’s like — I don’t know, sometimes it’s like chasing a pretty girl on the beach. And things I never thought I could do… I can do. – Ryan Adams • It’s not beauty but fine qualities, my girl, that keep a husband. – Euripides • It’s the good girls who keep diaries; the bad girls never have the time. – Tallulah Bankhead • It’s tough now to meet a girl who wants to hang out with you because she likes your personality – who hasn’t seen you on TV and is like, ‘Hey!’ – Shaun White • Ive always loved when girls carry their wallets as a clutch instead of a bag. – Alexander Wang • I’ve been looking for a girl like you – not you, but a girl like you. – Groucho Marx • Just watching a girl can give me the best reason to smile. Girls are something very special and you got to treat them that way. That’s why I always say don’t stare right at a chick. She’ll begin to fidget, wondering if her hair’s messed up or if her make-up is smeared. It’s kind of like going to an art gallery to see beautiful paintings. If you look at a painting just the right way, you get the most out of it! – Michael Jackson • Kissing babies and hugging fat girls. – Dave Bautista • Like every other girl in the world, my most embarrassing moment had to do with a guy completely turning me down. His loss! – Kelly Clarkson • Little girls, like butterflies, need no excuse. – Robert A. Heinlein • Many a man in love with a dimple makes the mistake of marrying the whole girl. – Stephen Leacock • Modern art is what happens when painters stop looking at girls and persuade themselves that they have a better idea. – John Ciardi • Modesty is invisibility… Never forget it. To be seen – to be seen – is to be… penetrated. What you must be girls, is impenetrable. – Margaret Atwood • More men than women like ‘Strangers With Candy’. Pretty girls don’t like the show. They don’t like to see an ugly lady. – Amy Sedaris • More than anything, acting helped me discover who I’m not. I’ve learned that I’m a girly girl, but not a prissy girl. – Debby Ryan • My mother was my Girl Scout leader, and George’s mother was his Cub Scout leader. In fact, that’s when some say her hair turned white. – Laura Bush • My real dream is to have a whole, like, buy a whole piece of land. Imagine, like, a long driveway. Like, a cul de sac-type street, with maybe, like, seven houses. Me be right here. Have my mom be able to be right here. My brother over here. My girl’s grandmother and family right here. Friends over there. That’s my real dream. – J. Cole • Nature makes boys and girls lovely to look upon so they can be tolerated until they acquire some sense. – M. William Phelps • Never call a girl fat, even if you’re joking. – Demi Lovato • Never love someone whom you think you need to mend – or who makes you feel like you should be mended. There are boys out there who look for shining girls; they will stand next to you and say quiet things in your ear that only you can hear and that will slowly drain the joy out of your heart. The books about vampires are true, baby. Drive a stake through their hearts and run away. – Caitlin Moran • No girl wants a secretly gay boyfriend, every dude wants a secretly gay girlfriend. – Joe Rogan • No legal ceremony–no election of the woman–no penalty for the perfidy of the man–no law to compel him to do his duty, no compensation for the poor woman who is turned adrift like the girl of the street, penniless, to sell herself on the best possible terms. This is Divine marriage, or Moses and the Bible lie; and this is Bible divorce–putting away! – Victoria Woodhull • No one ever told me I was pretty when I was a little girl. All little girls should be told they’re pretty, even if they aren’t. – Marilyn Monroe • No one knows how it is that with one glance a boy can break through into a girl’s heart. – Nancy Thayer • Nobody loves a fat girl, but oh how a fat girl can love. – Jim Croce • Only one girl has ever really wrapped my stomach into pretzels. She didn’t give me butterflies. She gave me pterodactyls I’m talking terrible internal bruising and the first time I kissed her was like the first time I saw fireworks, which was like the sky first kissing me in the eyeballs – George Watsky • Over 270 girls were kidnapped for going to school in Nigeria! They are still missing! I’M outraged and you should be too!! I’m supporting www.globalfundforwomen.org Join me and take a stand!!!!!!! #Bringbackourgirls #revolutionoflove – Madonna Ciccone • Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. – Albert Einstein • Put yourself in Hamlet’s shoes. Suppose you were a prince, and you came back from college to discover that your uncle had murdered your father and married your mother, and you fell in love with a beautiful girl and mistakenly murdered her father, and then she went crazy and drowned herself. What would you do? Go back for a masters? – Art Buchwald • Sex is something I really don’t understand too hot. You never know where the hell you are. I keep making up these sex rules for myself, and then I break them right away. Last year I made a rule that I was going to quit horsing around with girls that, deep down, gave me a pain in the ass. I broke it, though, the same week I made it – the same night, as a matter of fact. – J. D. Salinger • She was a natural blonde, with delicate hands and feet, and in her youthful photographs one saw a girl with mocking eyes and a tragic smile, the course of whose life would conspire in time to transpose that pair of adjectives. – Michael Chabon • She’s the wild, feline, untamed part of you, your sexual alter ego and the opposite of the “good girl” or “little lady.” Some of us know her better than others do, but I would venture to guess that your erotic creature hasn’t seen nearly enough light of day. – Sheila Kelley • She’s the kind of girl who climbed the ladder of success wrong by wrong. – Mae West • Some guys like to undermine a girl’s self-esteem with little verbal jabs. Eventually it all adds up. One bee sting doesn’t hurt a horse, but enough bee stings can kill a horse. – Oliver Gaspirtz • Sometimes I see really skinny girls. They may look great, but…they’re not happy. Have a cupcake. – Kathy Wakile • Straight to the top, rooftop glows. With a hand full of girls and they all so foreign. Brain so poisoned, rainbows flowing. – The Weeknd • Take away the Big Bang and what has God done? Burned a bush and got a girl pregnant. Great, he’s a high school junior. – Stephen Colbert • The American girl makes a servant of her husband and then finds him contemptible for being a servant – John Steinbeck • The best accessories a girl can have are her closest friends. – Paris Hilton • The best thing a girl can be is a good wife and mother. It is a girl’s highest calling. I hope I am ready. – Nancy E. Turner • The cuter girls kinda went off from the older women because we’re younger, and we’re cuter, we’ve got better bodies, and for some reason that’s like a huge issue with older people. – Heidi • The emotional, sexual, and psychological stereotyping of females begins when the doctor says, ‘It’s a girl.’ – Shirley Chisholm • The girl has a funny way of romanticizing things. – Karen Russell • The girls show more skin these days, but I think, generally, they behave the same way as when I was growing up. – Cecily von Ziegesar • The jamaat was an almost silly mish-mash of people: Rude Dawud’s pork-pie hat poking up here, a jalab-and-turban there, Jehangir’s big Mohawk rising from a sea of kufis, Amazing Ayyub still with no shirt, girls scattered throughout – some in hejab, some not and Rabeya in punk-patched burqa doing her thing. But in its randomness it was gorgeous, reflecting an Islam I felt could not happen anywhere else … If Islam was to be saved, it would be saved by the crazy ones: Jehangir and Rabeya and Fasiq and Dawud and Ayyub and even Umar. – Michael Muhammad Knight • There are many facts within fiction. This captivating story provides invaluable insights into the childhood of a girl who has Asperger’s syndrome. Fiction allows the author to explore different perspectives and add poignancy to the experiences of sensory sensitivity and being bullied and teased of someone who has Asperger’s syndrome. The title Delightfully Different describes Asperger’s syndrome but also the qualities of this novel. – Tony Attwood • There are no good girls gone wrong – just bad girls found out. – Mae West • There are so many girls, and so few princes. – Liza Minnelli • There are two things that are more difficult than making an after-dinner speech: climbing a wall which is leaning toward you and kissing a girl who is leaning away from you. – Winston Churchill • There is a small window of opportunity for freckled girls to tan. – Jeffrey Eugenides • There is no shortage of evidence that when we support the fundamental freedoms of women and girls, they are able to realize their full potential to engage in, contribute to and benefit from sustainable development. In doing so, we will all reap the benefits; in our homes, throughout our communities, and across our nations. – Sam Kutesa • There is not one female comic who was beautiful as a little girl. – Joan Rivers • There was a little girl, When she was good, she was very, very good. But when she was bad, she was horrid. – Jun Mochizuki • There was the time I bought three cars in the span of three or four weeks. It was crazy; it wasn’t greedy. It was mine, my girl’s, my mom’s. I got Benzes for my ladies. But I felt crazy. You have to understand I come from a world where we’re very modest. But that’s not greedy. That’s nice, right? – J. Cole • There were about ten years of trying, failing, trying again, suffering rejection, etc. My first published book, ‘Story of a Girl’, was the fourth book I wrote. – Sara Zarr • There’s no point for me to party. I have a girl that I love. I don’t need that. – Ryan Cabrera • There’s only a very small representation of girls among you. Too little. Women have much to tell us in today’s society. Sometimes we are too machistas and we don’t allow enough space to women. But women can see things from a different angle to us, with a different eye. Women are able to pose questions we men are unable to understand. Look out for this fact: she is the only one who has put a question for which there is no answer. She couldn’t put it into words but expressed it with tears. – Pope Francis • These Jews who run things, who are producing this mental illness ¬-teenage suicide…all these Jewish sicknesses…that’s nothing new. The Talmud’s full of things like sex with boys and girls. – David Duke • This attitude means you haven’t met a girl worthy of your attention. You’ll want to get caught if the right girl comes along. – Simone Elkeles • This is why I can’t be with Levi. Because I’m the kind of girl who fantasizes about being trapped in a library overnight-and Levi can’t even read. – Rainbow Rowell • This was how the modern working girl behaved. She didn’t hide her femininity or apologize for it, as they did in the old days. She flaunted it and, having been given more than any woman before her, demanded even more than that. – J. Courtney Sullivan • This-this was what made life: a moment of quiet, the water falling in the fountain, the girl’s voice. . . a moment of captured beauty. Those who are truly wise will never permit such moments to escape. – Louis L’Amour • To find out a girl’s faults, praise her to her girlfriends. – Benjamin Franklin • Today’s girls are tomorrow’s women – and leaders. – Isabel Allende • Too many girls follow the line of least resistance, but a good line is hard to resist. – Mae West • Wait until France gets a hard shot in the nose. Wait until France reacts with some nasty work. They’ll get a golf-clap from the chattering class over here and a you-go-girl from Red America. France could nuke an Algerian terrorist camp and the rest of the world would tut-tut for a day, then ask if the missiles France used were for sale. And of course the answer would be oui. – James Lileks • We are living in a material world and I’m a material girl. – Madonna Ciccone • We do not suffer by accident. It does not often happen that the interference of friends will persuade a young man of independent fortune to think no more of a girl whom he was violently in love with only a few days before. – Elizabeth Bennett • We had no irony when it came to girls, though. There was just no time to develop it. One moment they weren’t there, not in any form that interested us, anyway, and the next you couldn’t miss them; they were everywhere, all over the place. One moment you wanted to clonk them on the head for being your sister, or someone else’s sister, and the next you wanted to….actually, we didn’t know what we wanted next, but it was something. Almost overnight, all these sisters (there was no other kind of girl, not yet)had become interesting, disturbing, even. – Nick Hornby • We have lingered in the chambers of the sea By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown Till human voices wake us… and we drown. – T. S. Eliot • We must not close our eyes to the fact that there are conspiring men who would pollute young boys, and girls of corresponding age, for sake of increasing profits. – David O. McKay • We’re every age at once and tucked inside ourselves like Russian nesting dolls. My mother is an 8 year old girl. My grandson is a 74 year old retiree whose kidneys just failed. And that’s the glue between me and you. That’s the screws and nails. We live in a house made of each other and if that sounds strange that’s because it is. – George Watsky • Well Stephanie, I’d like to thank you for giving me such a kind Christmas gift, but unfortunately I didn’t get you any gifts. But then again, what can you get for the girl whose had everyone? – Chris Jericho • Well, we’re living in a material world, and I’m a material girl… or boy. – Adam Sandler • What are you two doing flirting with this nerd? I told you, you are supposed to be in charge of the 50 dancing girls I had set up for Miz’s celebration. – Alex Riley • What better job is there for a 17-year-old girl than being in a pop group? – Susan Ann Sulley • What do I like in a girl? I like a girl that likes me, a girl that knows how to smile and see the bright side of things. A girl that makes me a better person. – James Lafferty • What does being a girl have to do with it? There’s no time to think when you’re on the spot. – Bisco Hatori • What I know in my heart is that women and girls on the ground are powerful and that they are leaders. – Charlize Theron • When a girl cries over a guy,she really loves him.when a guy cries over a girl ,he will never love another girl like her. – Lil Wayne • When a girl is beautiful, she gets to pick – she never has to wait for someone to choose her. – Adriana Trigiani • When it’s all over I won’t miss the bruises he gave me to impress girls, or the occasional scar which will give me a story to tell my grandchildren, but I’ll definitely miss the pranks and the laughing and all the making fun of each other. I’ll miss the funky advice he gives me about everything – football, girls, video games, clothes. Most of all, I’ll miss having an older brother. – Skandar Keynes • When you were a little girl, Madam…..was this the woman you dreamed of becoming? – Andrew Sean Greer • Whenever I’m about to have sex with a girl, I play it smart and just automatically assume she has herpes; because that way I don’t have to tell her about my herpes. – Anthony Jeselnik • Whores are the most honest girls. They present the bill right away. – Alberto Giacometti • Why does a man take it for granted that a girl who flirts with him wants him to kiss her – when, nine times out of ten, she only wants him to want to kiss her? – Helen Rowland • Why is it that every time a girl says a guy is bothering her, it’s fluffed off with oh, he just likes you, as if that makes it okay? – Kelley Armstrong • Yet little by little, I was also becoming the girl who was learning to live with this, all of it, letting it weave together with everything else, the good and the bad, as life moved forward, because thats what life did, regardless of whether we were ready for it or not. – Donna Freitas • You and I both know there’s got to be some greater storyline for you than ‘girl gets heart broken, was sad forever’. I think a nice one would be ‘girl gets heart broken, was sad for a while but in her heartbreak she found freedom, friends, and the ability to look back and laugh at all she’d learned. She now lives her life on her own terms and still has fantastic hair.’ – Taylor Swift • You are the one girl that made me risk eveything for a future worth having. – Simone Elkeles • You don’t have to wait for anyone’s approval to do things. You don’t have to try to get a job and go through set steps before you start a career or start your life. That’s what I want young girls to know – you can do anything you want. Just start. – Petra Collins • You eventually get used to looking at girls picking their leotards out of their bums and that sort of stuff. – Adam Garcia • You know you love me. Xoxo, GossipGirl. – Cecily von Ziegesar • You know, honestly, if a girl can make me laugh, I’m pretty much sold. – Ryan Lochte • You may admire a girl’s curves on the first introduction, but the second meeting shows up new angles. – Mae West

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