#to be fair: the training is still incorrect. it just feels bad to correct it to something also incorrect | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

x-reader-theater · 5 years

Text

Even Shields can’t Protect my Heart

Relationship: William T. Riker X Male!Engineer!Reader

Summary: Serving on the Enterprise is a dream come true, and the people only make it better.

Warnings: Cursing, and lots of engineer jargon that’s probably woefully incorrect.

Word Count: 10,382 words

A/N: Ho-ly shit. This is a long time coming. And it’s super long. Wow. Well, I didn’t want to do another series so here’s a ten thousand word something that I wrote because I’ve been obsessed with Star Trek for the past two months, and there’s barely any reader stuff for Next Generation, and no Male readers whatsoever, which is disappointing. But, I’ve written something purely for my own amusement. I feel a little bit like Q, but I love them so that’s not a bad thing. Anyways, please like, reblog, and tell me what you think! Asks are always appreciated! <3

"Computer! Where is Commander Riker?" You call out from your personal quarters. You're seated at your desk, papers all around you.

"Commander Riker is in holodeck three," Computer responds. "Would you like me to hail him?"

You shake your head. "No, Computer, that's alright thank you." You stand up from your desk and reaffix your badge to your shirt, making sure your pips are still attached to your lapel. Satisfied with how you present you leave your quarters, making a beeline to the holodeck suits. You've used them once or twice before, recreating your small ranch where you're from. It wasn't the same without the actual people there though. There was only so much you could program the computer to do.

As you round the corner you slam into someone coming at you at full force. You stumble back, catching yourself on the wall before looking up into the face of Data, who was walking through the halls staring at his data-padd. You laugh in your head at that one.

"I am sorry, Lieutenant. I did not see you there," Data states, looking down at you.

You straighten out and brush yourself off out of habit. "It's alright Data. What were you so focused on there?" You lean forward to see what he's looking at.

"Oh, it is just a simple riddle Commander LaForge has given me."

You smile. "If it's so simple, why are you so concerned with it?" Data looks confused for a moment and you pat him on the shoulder. "Sometimes Data, the most complicated questions have the simplest of answers."

And with that you leave, turning around the corner to the holodeck suits. You hear Data say behind you, "Oh! Silence!" and you laugh as you walk. Coming upon holodeck three, you tap the open button, and watch as the doors open to reveal a bar, 1950s in decoration, and a few men standing on the stage, Commander Riker being one, playing to an empty room. Riker sets down his trombone and looks at you with an eyebrow raised.

"Commander Riker, I had a question for you… but I seem to have… forgotten it…" you say, trailing off for a moment. "What… is this place?"

You look around the bar, and cock your head at the sight of no people. "It's just something of my creation. The people held a bad memory, but I love the space, the atmosphere." Riker smiles and looks around. "It's like no other."

You smile and sit down at one of the tables, saying to the room, “Computer, can I get a glass of whiskey please?” You feel pleased when it appears in your hand. You take a sip of the non-alcoholic recreation and gesture with the glass towards Riker. "Don't stop on my account. Maybe when you're playing the question will return to me," you say with a sly smile. You have no idea where this burst of confidence came from, where this spark of self worth and ability to flirt with the Commander came from. You just really wanted to hear the Commander play.

You get your wish. Commander Riker picks up the trombone again and perfectly slots himself into the already playing band. His playing makes you close your eyes. You had no idea the commander could play an instrument. He isn't perfect or absolutely amazing to any extent, but he is good. And you are seeing a side of the commander you've never seen before.

You get up, slowly letting the music carry you to the bar, where you let the holodeck refill your glass of non-alcoholic Whiskey. You smile languidly and watch as the amber liquid fills the cup once more. Picking up the glass you place it to your lips, taking a drink of the burning, but still pleasing, liquid. Setting the glass down you see the Commander start to set down the trombone. You raise your eyebrows and watch as he comes over.

"Why did you stop?" You ask as he sits across from you. The music hasn't stopped, no you feel all the eyes of the players on your back. For being a simulation, they feel incredibly real.

Riker summons a glass of a dark liquid. It fizzes and doesn't look like alcohol. It gives off a sweet smell. "It's hard to talk with a 'bone to your lips," he says casually.

"What do you want to talk about?" You cross your legs and set your glass down on the bar, before folding your hands in your lap.

Riker sighs and looks at his own glass, the dark liquid filling up again in the glass, as if by magic, but you knew it was the computer. "You're a new officer, correct?" He asks.

You lean back against the bar slightly, placing an elbow on the dark wood to steady yourself, your fingers still intertwined. You shrug. "Relatively. About two years. Shorter than most on the ship. Much less than yourself," you respond carefully. You don't want to say the wrong thing and break what you have just built up. It was a delicate sort of conversation that was precious.

The Commander clears his throat and reaches out, as if to touch you, bit he stops himself. "I-uh…" He clears his throat. "I was wondering how you were feeling about your time on the Enterprise? You have progressed remarkably fast through the ranks of Starfleet. There have only been three others faster than you Lieutenant. Ahem, Lieutenant Junior Grade [L/N]."

You smile and unclasp your hands. "I am enjoying my time here immensely Commander Riker," you respond in kind, a genuine smile on your face.

The Commander puts his hand up for a moment to stop you from speaking. "Please. In a setting like this, just William is fine."

You smile. "Okay, William. As long as you call me [Y/N]."

The Commander, William, nods. "Yes, yes, of course. It's only fair."

You smile, humorously. "And you're nothing if not fair," you joke. He laughs quietly. "But yes, William. I am having a very good time here on the Enterprise. I never thought it possible for me to have this, this position, be on this ship, know these people. After I was transferred from the U.S.S. Valentina, I thought I could never never find family again." You laugh as you lean back, thinking about your messed up family. "The captain, well, he's like an overbearing father you just can't help but love." You laugh at the idea of being a father. "Dr. Crusher is obviously the mother. Lieutenant Commander Data is like a brother, Geordi the same, but also different. Lieutenant Commander Worf is that fun uncle who always tries to get you to do things dad doesn't want you to." You start laughing when you think back to that time Worf tried to teach you how to fight like a Klingon with a Bat Leth. Or that time he trained you to use an actual Klingon D'k Tahg. "And Counselor Troi is like an aunt who always knows what's best for you."

"What about me?" William asks, leaning forward slightly.

"You?" You contemplate for a moment. Where did you see him? "I don't exactly know. You're not a brother, an uncle, a father. You've just sort of… been there. I don't know…" you trail off, looking away at the floor. You feel your cheeks flush slightly, and shake your head, hoping William doesn't notice.

You get up suddenly, not looking at William. You clear your throat. "Ahem, excuse me. I need to get back to work."

You go to leave, but William grabs your wrist. "Why, we were just getting comfortable." You know he's smirking, and you feel pain in your chest as you pull away.

"Please Commander. I have neglected my duty long enough. I must get to engineering," you say, walking away from the Commander.

"Computer, end simulation," Riker says, but that doesn't stop you from walking out of the doors and making your way to engineering, leaving the Commander alone in the empty holodeck.

It's three weeks until you see the Commander again. You've been keeping to yourself, talking to Geordi and Data mostly out of the you've gotten a few direct orders from the Captain and even Commander Riker, but you haven't seen him in person ever since that time in the holodeck. If you even hear him talking in the hallway, without even looking you will turn away, your cheeks flaming up.

Now, you can't ignore it. The Commander is standing right beside you, leaning over the console, his chest and inch away from your shoulder.

"What do we see here Lieutenant?" The Commander asks.

You point to a blip on the screen and say to Riker, "It seems there's some interference coming from the planet below Commander. It's sending out wave after wave of radiation I've never seen before. I asked the computer and they couldn't find a single thing like it!" You exclaim. You have a grin on your face as you say this.

"Why so cheery Lieutenant?" Commander Riker asks.

"Well, this is all so new! I've been studying different kinds of radiation since my academy days and I just can't find anything related to it. Permission to do a deep scan and some tests? It would be better to get my hands on some of the radiation up close, but we don't know how dangerous this is!" You exclaim excitedly.

Riker chuckles and says in a low tone, "Sure. Go for it." You smile and turn to start the deep scan of the radiation. Riker doesn't move. "I didn't know this was an area of expertise for you. I would have had you come on this ship earlier."

You roll your eyes and look up at him. “Yes because you care so much for engineering.”

He chuckles and shakes his head. “You’d be surprised about what I’m interested in.”

“Oh I’d like to know more about those interests that I supposedly do not know about,” you say with a smirk.

The computer beeps and you and you turn away from the Commander to look at the results. It’s a low grade radiation, something with a lot of energy, not harmful to humanoids but harmful to smaller life forms. Children might be susceptible to it. It’s nothing like you’ve ever seen before. “Hm… Interesting,” you say, leaning into the screen.

“What is it?” Riker asks, leaning in with you.

“I’ve never seen anything like this. It must have something to do with the geology of this planet. Permission to run a scan of the surrounding area? I want to make sure everything is safe for the captain to report to Starfleet, so we can actually put a colony here,” you explain.

The Commander nods. “Of course.” He gets up to leave, but stops before exiting engineering. “And Lieutenant?” You look behind you, pausing in your work for just a moment. “Meet me in Ten Forward. At 2000 hours.” He grins at you and you nod. He walks out of the room and your eyes don’t leave him until the doors from engineering close behind him. You’re smiling, happy with the conversation you just had with the commander, and excited for tonight, for you to meet with the commander tonight. You don’t know what it means, what this flirting thing you have with the commander is, what’s going on between the two of you. But you do know one thing:

You're so fucked.

Ten Forward is close to empty by the time you step into the main room. The secondary shift for the night has taken their positions for the night, which means most of those who usually populate Ten Forward are on duty.

Commander Riker must have chosen this time specifically because of the lack of distractions. He's very good at what he does.

You spot him by one of the windows overlooking all of space. He looks very regal silhouetted against the dark expanse of the universe, still in his command uniform. You’d be surprised if he didn’t sleep in it. You yourself have changed out of your engineering gold into something more casual, something that reminds you of home. No one really dresses like this anymore, but your family has always been one for tradition. Your checkered button down is tucked into your boot-cut blue jeans, which are over a pair of old cowboy boots. They were your grandfathers, and they are still in beautiful condition. You walk over to the commander, your hands behind your back, wringing out your fingers as you approach. You can feel the bile rising from your chest but you swallow it down. The hairs on your arms stand on end the closer you walk. The clicking of your boots is the only sound you hear over the roaring of blood in your ears.

Riker looks up at you as you approach the table. His face breaks out in a smile so genuine you're afraid his face might split in twain.

You sit down in front of him. There's music playing in the background. Light piano. Nothing you recognize. Riker must have asked Guinan to play it. You sit down in front of the Commander.

"Hello Mr. [L/N]. I didn’t think you would make it," he says as you take your seat.

"Hello Mr. Riker. I was caught up in engineering. Geordi had to physically pry me from my chair," you return.

Riker leans back and chuckles. "Please. Like I said, call me William."

“And like I responded, call me [Y/N].” You lean back in your chair and cross your arms. “I’m not on duty, am I?”

William chuckles and leans in as someone comes up to your table, a man who’s carrying a drink tray. “Hello, what can I get you?”

You don’t take your eyes off William as you say to the server, “Whiskey. Real.”

The server turns and begins to address the man leaning into you, but he interrupts. “I would like the same.”

You look up at the server and say to him, “And can you get us some Texas Barbeque? My father’s recipe if you will. It will be under [L/N]’s Texas Barbeque.” The server nods and you smile at him as he walks away. William is staring at you, incredulous and a little confused. “What? I’m feeling nostalgic tonight.”

“Is that why you’ve dressed up?” William asks

You chuckle. “I think to most this would be considered dressing down.” William laughs lightly along with you. “But yes. While the rest of the world has progressed past the need to ranch animals, my family has resisted the change. But, with that, they also make the best Barbeque you can find.”

William smiles. “I see. What does this ‘ranching’ entail exactly?”

You shrug. “It’s mainly just raising animals. My family's been doing it for ages. They used to go into the larger town, I believe it was called Austin before San Antonio grew too large and incorporated it," you explain. "Anyways, they would kill the older chickens, pigs, and cows to sell to local butchers. Or on Sundays there was something called a "Farmers Market" when there were more farmers than there are now." You lean back in your chair and cross your arms. "Now we just raise the animals, taking care of them before they die." You grin as a large plate of Barbeque is brought over and places in front of you. It's beef, you recall as you bring up the family recipe in your mind. "Amd, if an animal gets injured or otherwise can't take care of itself, we kill it, cook up the meat into barbeque, and use the bones, hooves or feet, beaks, and anything 'inedible' and use it to make a broth. That allows us to make soups and other foods that last us a long time. At least until the next animal dies."

You pick up the barbeque with your fingers as William goes for his fork and knife. He looks at you quizzically before setting down the utensils and going in with his bare hands. You smile at that. You take a bite of the sweet but slightly charred meat, the juices running over your tongue and down your chin. You let out a small laugh and chew as you use your napkin to clean up what got on your chin and subsequently, your neck.

William smiles at you and swallows before saying, "I never thought to eat finger food on the first date."

Your brain goes blank for a moment. Is this a date? Are you on a date? With your Commander? That's almost as bad as the Captain. But do you want it to be a date? Do you want to go through with this? Yes.

Your lips quirk into a smile and you taste a little bit of the char still on your lips. "My mother used to say it builds a connection utensils could never hope to achieve. It breaks down walls, and allows everyone to be honest. There's no hiding, no pretend here. You get messy, you work through it together. Just like you should." You smile fondly at the memory. You miss your mother. You haven't seen her in a few years. You talk often enough, but screen communication is never as good as the real thing. You can't hug your mother through a screen. Maybe the next time you're near earth you'll ask if you can make a stop for a few days.

William smiles at that and picks up a piece of barbeque with his fingers and days before taking a bite, "Your mother is a very wise woman."

You direct your smile at William now as you say, "She sure is."

“Uh… Commander? I think you’ll want to see this…” You say, directing your comment to Geordi.

He walks over and leans over your shoulder, huffing as he sees what’s on your monitor. “Well I’ll be…”

“But Commander?” You say, making it more of a question than a statement. “How is this possible? This can’t be real.” You lean in towards the simulation the computer is providing and say quietly, “There’s no way the radiation could be moving!”

Geordi places a hand on your shoulder. “Well, figure out how. It doesn’t seem to be affecting anything yet but we can’t know for sure.”

You nod and turn back to the computer, where you start running continuous scans on the now moving radiation.

You lean back in your chair and rub your eyes, letting out a yawn before blinking at the screen in front of you. It’s nearing the end of your shift. You reach out for a glass of water, but your hand hits air. Right. No drinks in engineering. Your stretch your arms as those on the night shift take their place. You feel a hand on your shoulder and jump at the sudden touch.

“Oh! Sorry Lieutenant, I didn’t mean to startle you,” ensign Torres says.

You shake your head and press a hand to your temple, a pain starts to drill into your temple. You unclench your jaw but that doesn’t help. “No worries ensign. I was just thinking.”

He places another hand on your shoulder. “Are you okay? Do you need to go to sick bay?”

You shake your head, but that only makes the pushing pain worse. “No, it’s just a headache. It’ll pass. Eventually.” You start to move from your chair, but you stumble into ensign Torres arms. He reaches out and catches you as you feel the pain deepen, like a screw being pushed into your skull without a drill or a screwdriver to help. You wrench your eyes closed. The engineering lights are too bright. You cry out in pain and can barely hear ensign Torres call out to the computer, “Esign Torres to Sickbay! Medical Emergency in Engineering!”

You hear someone say from the otherside, “Acknowledged. I’ll be there in a moment. Crusher out.”

The pain keeps building. Soon you can’t hear the beeping of the Engineering, something that’s come to feel comforting. There’s a buzzing in your ears and your face becomes hot as you continue screaming. You don’t know if there’s any sound coming out anymore, or if your throat has just been run raw, and nothing escapes but air. You feel your knees hit the floor, the pain from the sudden fall gives you a moment to think about something else, before the pain returns to your temples and you feel the air escaping your lungs again. You clutch at your hair and you wouldn’t be surprised if your hands were full of chunks of your own hair. You feel more hands on you, dragging you up to your feet. You’re still screaming when a hypospray is placed at your neck, and you finally fall into unconsciousness.

The pain doesn’t stop.

You look around the dark. You’re not dreaming, you’re actually here. You reach down and feel your shirt, the yellow engineering uniform is coarse underneath your fingers. You look up and shout out, trying to call out to something, but it’s as if you’re in space, and there’s nothing for your voice to bounce back from. Looking around, you realize you’re not in the pitch black you thought you were in. There’s small stars dotting the blackness.

They’re not stars, you realize, because they start to move.

They swirl and congeal in front of you, and as you look up, this humanoid made of stars looks up as well.

“Who are you?” you ask into the quiet room. With the coagulated humanoid in front of you, your voice has something to reflect off of.

The creature tilts its head and repeats back in a poor imitation of your voice, “Who are you?”

“I’m [Y/N],” you say. “Who are you?”

You reach out a hand, and the stars follow, like a mirror. You reach out your left hand, it reaches out its’ right. “I’m [Y/N],” it mimics again. The voice is closer this time. “Who are you?”

You look down, your arm dropping to your side. You sigh. “This obviously isn’t working…”

“This obviously isn’t working…” the mimic says.

You look up and the amalgamation of stars follows. You squint your eyes. You reach out.

You take a step forward.

This isn’t a dream. You can move forward. The stars take a step back.

It doesn’t take a step back exactly the way you took a step forward. It shows hesitation. Your eyes widen. It isn’t a mimic. It’s doing this because it doesn’t know anything else.

You reach your hands out, gently, trying to be as non-threatening as possible. “It’s okay. I won’t hurt you,” you say softly.

You take a step forward.

“It’s okay. I won’t hurt you,” the stars reply back.

They take a step forward.

Your face breaks out into a grin and you take another step towards the creature. They take a step towards you. You reach out, each step closing the distance between the two of you. You feel the energy in the air, the charging of electrons the closer you get. The hair on your arms stands on end. You feel goosebumps rise on the back of your neck. There’s a prickling of static building in your fingers. You reach closer. Pins and needles burst from your heart, traveling through your veins out into your limbs, your fingers and toes going numb.

You reach out.

Your fingers brush the stars.

You feel the pushing of the pain from before at the back of your skull, but you feel the stars trying to communicate to you to let go. You close your eyes and feel the stars envelop you. You open your mouth, breath out, and let the stars in.

They rush into your mouth, into your throat, and for a moment you think you’re choking, but you don’t need to breathe. They settle, higher than your stomach, past your lungs and ribs, right in the middle where your heart sits.

And you know everything the stars want you to know.

You gasp awake, your eyes split open. The bright lights of sickbay make you want to close them again, but you force yourself not to. You look up and see Dr. Crusher and a few of her nurses standing around you. You can hear them talking, but you can’t understand what they’re saying. You’re still panting when Dr. Crusher walks over and places a soft hand on your back. You shake your head and it's as if your thoughts clear away and you can finally understand what language they're speaking.

"[Y/N]?" Dr. Crusher asks gently. "Can you hear me?"

You nod. "Yeah." It comes out as barely a whisper. You wince as your throat screams for water. "W-" you try and say. "Wa-"

Dr. Crusher looks over at one of her nurses. "Can you get us some water? And something to help with the throat?" The nurse nods and moves away. Dr. Crusher smiles and says, "It's going to be alright. You're going to feel better soon."

You nod and grab the glass that's handed to you, quickly gulping down what the nurse gives you. She also hands you a throat lozenge, which you quickly pop into your mouth.

"Better?" Dr. Crusher asks.

You nod. "Yes," you say, your voice only cracking slightly now. While your voice is quieter, at least you're talking now. "Much better. Thank you Dr. Crusher."

The doctor smiles. "Please. Call me Beverly."

You smile. "Okay Beverly." You try and lean back against the wall, but you wince. Your body must have tensed up so much your muscles hurt too much to move properly. "Thanks," you say, grateful as she leans you against the wall.

Suddenly, the doors to sickbay slide open and Commander Riker bursts in, panting. "What happened? Is everything alright?" He asks breathlessly, his eyes locking onto your form.

Beverly smiles. "Yes. Everything is okay. I'm glad you could make it Commander."

You look at her confused. "While I'm not complaining, I have to ask why Commander Riker is here…"

She smiles at you and stands up. "You were calling out for him. When you were asleep."

You feel your face heat up as she leaves the room, leaving you and the Commander alone.

He sits down where Beverly was sitting before and places a hand on your knee. "How are you feeling?"

You shrug, but wince as it doesn't come out painlessly. "Sore," you say with a laugh. William laughs along with you.

He reaches out and grabs your hand. "I was worried about you. When they said who it was I didn't know what happened!" William exclaims, his right hand flying out but his left still holding onto yours. His right hand rests again on your clasped hands and he says quietly, "What did happen?"

You look him in the eye and say, determined, "I need to talk to the captain."

You move to get up, but William pushes you back into the sickbay bed. "Whoah whoah whoah. Let's not be too hasty. Do you want to tell me, and I'll tell him?"

You shake your head, wincing at the pain it causes in your neck, and the phantom pains of the headache fall into the forefront of your mind. "No. It's an emergency. I need to tell him."

William sighs and squeezes your hands. "Alright. But he's coming here. You're not going to him." You nod carefully and William touches his combadge. "Commander Riker to Captain Picard. Please come to sickbay." William looks at you and says, serious, "It's an emergency."

You smile, and squeeze William's hands.

A few minutes later, the captain comes in. "Yes, what's the emergency?"

William doesn't even say anything. He just gestures to you. You let out a breath. You've only talked to the captain once, when you first came onto the Enterprise. Usually you talk through Geordi. You look up at the captain and say confidently, carefully, "We have to stop scanning the planet."

"What?" Picard asks confused. "Why?"

"Because that radiation I detected?" you offer. "That's not radiation. At least, not really. The reason it was moving is because it's alive, captain."

"What?" The captain looks dumbfounded.

You sit up more in the sickbay bed. William helps you sit up. "The pain I felt? As it was entering my mind? That's the pain it feels while we're scanning it. The tachyon scans we've been doing have been killing it, captain."

"But-but that's a class M planet. Others will want to come and claim it."

You glare at the captain. "Then find a way to protect it." The captain hesitates, obviously thinking about what you're saying. Your eyes narrow even further and you turn to the computer that's against the wall next to your bed. "Computer? Play footage from engineering, 2200 hours."

The screen lights up and you can clearly see yourself sitting at a computer console, falling asleep in your chair. Ensign Torres comes up behind you, and starts talking to you. It's too quiet to make out what you're saying. You stand up, fall into Ensign Torres' arms, and then all you can hear is your screaming. You look at the captain as he watches, pain and sympathy cross over his features. You just watch him. William squeezes your hands as he watches, tensing up at the sight of you in pain. You remember the pain, as clear as if you were experiencing it now. You tense up as the apology given from the new lifeform rises to the surface as well.

"Computer," Captain Picard says suddenly, just as Beverly comes into frame. You're still screaming. "Stop video." The video stops and the screen goes dark once again. Captain Picard sighs and places a hand on his forehead. Your eyes haven't left the captain. He looks up at you and says quietly, "I'll see what I can do. Number one, I'll see you on the bride in-" He looks between the two of you, then down at your hands. "I'll see you tomorrow."

And he walks away.

You let out a breath you didn't even know you were holding when the doors to sickbay close behind the captain. You lean forward, exhausted after your display and pleading with the captain. William leans forward and catches you, your head resting on his shoulder. He runs his hands through your hair and says quietly, "That was amazing." You smile against his shoulder, but you don't have the energy to move. "Very convincing." You chuckle and reach your arms out to hug him, but you pull back, letting out a small groan of pain. William chuckles and pulls back, pressing his hands to your shoulders to keep you upright while he slides you down the bed. "Come on. You must be exhausted. I'll see if Dr. Crusher can get you something for the pain." He lays you down on the bed and you smile as your eyes close. He leans down and presses a soft kiss to your forehead.

He gets up to go get Beverly, but by the time they return, you're asleep in your bed.

“[L/N]!” You look up from your personal project you were working on.

It’s your lunch break and you’re tinkering with a new invention, but every time you use it on something, when you turn it off, the force crushes the object inside. It’s not doing what you want it to, and you have to find a way to stop it from collapsing when it’s turned off.

Geordi walks over to you in the hallway outside of engineering. “Hey, how are you feeling?” He asks right as you take a bite of your sandwich.

You hold up a hand, chewing for a few moments as you set down your tools, and you put your device down. You swallow and say, “Sorry.” Geordi holds up a hand as if to say, ‘no worries,’ and you continue. “I’m better. A lot better. Beverly is a true miracle worker.”

Geordi chuckles and says pointedly, “She’s a doctor, not a miracle worker, Lieutenant.” You chuckle along and start gathering up your equipment, popping the last of your lunch into your mouth. You start walking toward the nearest replicator, and Geordi follows along. “I’m sorry I haven’t been able to see you in a while. I’ve been busy.” You nod. You understand how busy the senior officers have been these past few days.

After leaving the planet, with the new radiation lifeform, the Enterprise was called to Starbase 83 to facilitate a discussion between the Klingons and a new race that was discovered on a mining moon. They drilled into the crust of the planetoid where they discovered a series of underground tunnels and caves, that were home to a race called the Hiyattas. They’re an insectoid race, with humanoid bodies, and they’re so new as an intelligent race they barely have 5,000 words to communicate with. In comparison, Federation Standard has over 170,000 words. William has been too busy to see you for the past few days, but occasionally, when he has the time, or the captain orders him to rest, he’ll ask you to join him in Ten Forward, just to see each other, and to catch up. He’s been updating you on the Hiyattans, and you’ve been telling him about engineering.

You place the empty plate on the replicator and press a button that dematerializes the plate. “Anyways, I just wanted to know how you’ve been, being back in engineering after… well after what happened,” he says.

You smile. “I’m fine. Still a little sore, but Beverly told me that’s normal after something like that.” The doors to engineering open and you place the invention and your tools on the table where Ensign Weaver who gets out of their chair and goes back to another station. “Can I ask you a question Commander?”

“Of course,” he says.

You sit down in your chair, and turn to face him. “Why are you so concerned with me? You’re never like this with anyone else. Why me?”

He smiles and says cryptically, “Don’t worry about it lieutenant.” He places a hand on your shoulder and squeezes gently. “Welcome back lieutenant.”

He walks away and you say, confused, “Lieutenant Junior Grade, sir!” He doesn’t acknowledge you and just leaves engineering. You lean back in your chair, more confused than you have been in a very long time. “What just happened?” you mumble to yourself.

You collapse into your chair in Ten Forward, leaning on the table that William is sitting in front of as well.

“Everything alright?” he asks as your head hits the metal table with a soft thunk. You just groan in response. “Rough day?”

You laugh, though there’s no mirth behind it. “You could say that.” Your voice is muffled by your arms closing around your head on the table.

William reaches out and touches your arm, grabbing it gently, as if to say, ‘hey, relax.’ You move your arms away from your face and sit up, though you’re still slightly slouched. “Hey, talk to me. What happened?”

You sigh. “Everyone’s been so weird today. First!” You sit up more and William grabs your hand, not to calm you or anything, but just because he can. “It was Geordi, asking me how I am and talking to me more about personal things than he ever does. Then it was Lieutenant Worf, who refused to talk to me. I wanted to ask when the away team would be back, but every time I tried to contact him over coms, he would just tell me to talk to him later. I had to ask Ensign Martinez to talk to him for me.” You lean forward more. “And then! Chief O’Brien wouldn’t tell me how long the away team was gone for when I went to see him in transporter room three! I tried to run a diagnostic on the energy output from the transporters, so see if we could cut anything down for greater engine efficiency, but he just shooed me out of the room! Told me he’d do it himself and report back later! I asked Keiko what was going on with him but she wouldn’t even give me a straight answer. She would just mumble something about being busy or tired, and then take care of Molly.” You lean back in your chair with a huff, but your hands are still being held by William’s. “The only one who hasn’t been weird is Data, but he’s already weird. He was the only one to actually talk with me today. Though he kept saying ‘I’m sure you’ll be happy today…’” You shake your head. “It’s just been a weird day.”

William smiles and leans forward, kissing your fingers lightly before encasing your hand in his own. You feel your cheeks heat up and you look away. You’ve been flirty with William, sure, and you talk a lot, but you didn’t think he actually felt anything for you. At least not the same way you feel about him. You were content to remain friends, but this… this feels really good, even if your stomach is doing flips right now. “I can’t wait to see how happy you are.”

You look back at him, your stomach dropping, as well as your shy smile. You groan and drop your head on the table again. “Ugh, not you too!”

He just starts laughing.

You’re in your room the next morning when your combadge beeps at you from the dining table in your quarters. “Captain Picard to Lieutenant Junior Grade [L/N].”

You pick up your combadge and affix it to your uniform before tapping it. “[L/N] here.”

“Will you come to my ready room? I wish to speak to you about something.” You nod, even though the captain can’t see you.

“Aye sir.” Your badge beeps to denote the cutting of your connection to the captain, and you let out a deep breath.

You try and steady your beating heart as you walk out of your room and to the turbolift. You only pass a few people, but you can’t help but feel as though they’re watching you. You don’t realize you’ve been holding your breath until you walk into the turbolift and the doors close behind you. “Bridge,” you say and the turbolift starts moving. You’ve only seen the bridge briefly once before when you first stationed on the enterprise. You were in the turbolift when one of the senior officers went up there. You saw it for as long as the doors were open. You didn’t get a good look at it.

You feel your heartbeat rising as the lift rises higher and higher. You take deep breaths to steady yourself. You feel like you’re about to faint. The doors to the bridge finally open, and you barely catch a glance at William before your feet take you past the bridge crew and to the captain’s ready room. They’re definitely all watching you.

You hear Counselor Troi say to someone, probably Commander Riker, before the doors to the Captain's ready room close, "He's definitely nervous."

The doors close behind you, and suddenly, you're alone with the captain. "Ah. Lieutenant. Please, sit down."

You do as you're told, but not before saying, "It's lieutenant junior grade, sir."

He smiles and sits down across from you. "Yes, I've noticed you say that a lot. Is there a reason?" He folds his hands in front of himself.

You shrug. "My father taught me not to take credit for things that aren't yours. Everyone needs a chance to prove themselves, and you shouldn't take that away from them," you explain.

Captain Picard smiles and leans back slightly. "That is a very good insight Lieutenant… Junior Grade," he says after a moment. You smile at him. "Do you know why I've asked you here today?"

"You sound like my principal in highschool," you mumble out. The captain raises an eyebrow at you. "No sir."

He smiles. "I have heard nothing but good things about you from my senior officers. Geordi, Commander Riker, Deanna, even Data's said something positive about you." You don't say anything. You don't know what to say. You wait with baited breath as he continues. "I have continuously heard great things about you. And so I called you here to congratulate you Lieutenant."

"Congratulate me on what sir?" You don't correct him this time.

He smiles at you. "On your promotion. Congratulations Lieutenant."

You stare at him. "I-I don't know what to say Captain. Thank you!" You exclaim.

He smiles. "It's not me. It's your own accomplishments. Now, we really should get back to work. We have a starship to run after all."

You nod, still in shock and stand to leave. When you're about halfway to the door, the captain call to you. "Oh, and [Y/N]?" You turn to look at him. "I want to see you on the bridge now. If you could take more shifts on the bridge crew every once and awhile, that would be preferable." Your shock turns into excitement as you nod. "Dismissed."

You're sitting at the helm, your fingers don't know what to press first. Sure, you've run all types of simulations in star fleet, and have been reading up since your promotion, but the truth is, you don't know what to do. You've forgotten. Your mind blank.

"Lieutenant? Are you alright? Do you need me to plot the course to Starbase 116?" Commander Data asks, his voice softer than normal, as if he's trying not to embarrass you. It's all very human.

You let out a deep breath and shake your head. "No. No Data. I've got it," you say. You reach out, trying to remember which button to push first, when you feel something behind you.

"Push the red one on the right first," Commander Data says low in your ear.

You press the button, and with muscle memory start to lay in the course to Starbase 116. You look up and smile as you see Commander Data nod and go back to the Captain's chair.

This is going to be a long night.

You walk into Ten forward, swaying a little with each step you take. You almost fall into the bar but catch yourself as you walk to the table William is sitting at. You’re still in your uniform form earlier on in the day. You slump into your seat and sigh as you look up at the server that appears next to you.

“Coffee, extra sweet,” you say. William holds up a hand to say he’s good and the server nods and walks away.

“I thought you hated coffee,” William says.

“I do.” You lean back in your chair, your arms falling to your side, almost numb. “But I need to stay awake.”

Riker looks at you, concerned. “Why do you need to stay awake? Do you have a night watch shift?” He asks, a little astounded. You wave him off, blowing a raspberry with your mouth as the server comes back with your coffee. You make a grab for it, but William slides it in front of himself, out of your reach. “No, you don’t get this until you answer me.” You sigh and reach for it, but he just holds your hand. "Why are you drinking coffee?"

You sigh and place your forehead on the table. Your stomach's been swimming all day, and now it's just gotten worse. You haven't eaten anything since breakfast. You shake your head on the table. William reaches out and you feel him lace his fingers into your hair, touching the tips of your ears with his fingers. You sigh. "I've been taking extra night shifts on the bridge because those are the only times I can do them."

William looks at you, concerned. "[Y/N], you're working yourself too hard," he says, quietly.

You shake your head. "I want to do more for the captain, be on the bridge more like he requested, but I can't just give up engineering. It's such a large part of me I can't just throw it out the window!" You exclaim, though that makes your head spin. You wobble slightly as you close your eyes and take a deep breath. "Whoah…" William sighs and when you open your eyes, you see the same server from before taking your coffee away. "Bu- wa-" you cut yourself off as you reach out towards the server, too tired to actually get up and go after your coffee.

William stands up and walks around to your chair. "Come on. I'm taking you to bed."

"But- but I have to be in the bridge in fourteen minutes! Commander Data is expecting me!" You exclaim as William takes your hands and lifts you up, placing a hand around your waist and throwing your own arm over his shoulders. William presses his combadge and says, "Commander Riker to Data."

"Commander Data here sir," comes the reply.

William starts walking with you, more like dragging you, out of Ten Forward. "Lieutenant [L/N] is unable to come to his shift on the bridge. It's an emergency."

You hear Data acknowledge it, but he adds on at the end, "Is the Lieutenant okay? He's not hurt is he?"

William looks down at you. "He's not hurt."

You can almost imagine Data nodding. "Data out." The comm cuts out.

"I think Data thinks of you as a friend now." You look up at William as he says this, approaching your door now. You live on deck ten, so it always makes it convenient to go to the forward.

You smile. "Good. I consider him a friend too."

The doors to your room open as you approach and William takes you inside. He seats you over to your bed, and you practically throw yourself onto it. You sit up and go to remove your shoes, but William holds up a hand to stop you. You comply, and he removes your shoes for you. He sits down on your bed and you lean over, resting your head on his shoulder. He leans over and kisses your hair lightly. You almost don't feel it in your sleepy haze.

Looking up, you see William's bright blue eyes. They're alight with affection and warmth, and you want that warmth. You want to feel that affection he apparently has for you. You lean up, pressing your lips to his, moving your hands from the bed to his neck. He starts kissing back, slowly but it's something. He moves his hands to your wrists, and pulls away as he moves your hands away from his skin, some of the only exposed skin on him when he's in uniform.

He smiles in the dim light and says softly, "I really want this. Trust me, I do. But not when you're tired."

You nod, and he leans in, pressing a kiss to your jaw before getting up. He lets go of your wrists and they fall back to the bed with a soft "thunk". He smiles and kisses your forehead.

"Get some sleep. We'll talk tomorrow." You nod and scoot up the bed, falling asleep before you can even watch William walk out the doors.

You're sitting in Ten Forward, three days later, your new invention and your tools spread out over one of the tables in Ten Forward. You’re so close to a discovery, to being able to test it, but you have to find a way to not burn out the circuits after every shutdown. You’re hunched over your work and you don’t even notice as someone pulls out the chair and sits down in front of you.

“Still hard at work, huh?”

You jump, looking up into the blue eyes of William, who’s smiling at you. You place a hand over your heart, a decoupler pinned between your palm and your breast. “William! You scared me!”

Even though you’re shocked, you’re laughing with him. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you were so entranced in your work,” he says.

You sigh with an exasperated smile. “I’m so close.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever asked you what this is,” he says, pointing towards the invention on the table.

You look up at him, as if to ask, ‘Really?’ but he doesn’t back out of his statement, so you go ahead and explain. “Well, this…” You hold up the metal puck, blue, red, and white wires poke out of the bottom. “…is a personal shielding device. It uses a magnetic resonance created in part by me to cover the body and deflect anything from a phaser blast, to an old earth bullet, to a rock thrown at your head.” William is looking at you with wide eyes. “But-” you say, cutting him off from speaking, “I haven’t figured out how to make it work without the phaser blasts draining the energy from the shield and burning out the internal configuration. Last week I figured out the issue of it crushing the object inside of it when it’s shut off, but it still overloads the power couplings.”

“This is so over my head, but this is a brilliant invention! How did you come up with it?” William asks.

You shrug. “I just thought, ‘Why should ships only have shields?’.”

You grin, and William laughs, leaning back in his chair. You just watch him laugh, his smile so wide you’re surprised his cheeks don’t split to make more room. His eyes are closed, but when you were explaining your technology, you could see adoration in his eyes. As you’re grinning at him while he laughs in his chair, you watch this man you’ve talked to every day for the last few months, and you realize something as his comforting eyes open again.

You are in love with William T. Riker.

“Alright lieutenant! Let’s fire this up!” Geordi says from the other end of Engineering two days later where he’s monitoring the shielding device.

You nod and press the final button needed to remotely turn on the device, even though there’s a switch on the side for whoever needs it, for it to be activated. The light hum of the magnetic resonance is almost impossible to hear next to the massive warp engine. You watch as the light reflects for a moment off the shield as it wraps around the vase Data was willing to give you for the test. The magnetic resonance hasn’t vibrated the vase to pieces yet, so that’s good.

You turn to look behind you, and say, “Commander Data? Fire when ready.”

He nods and holds up the phaser, firing it on the shield. You watch as the shield pulses from the phaser blast, moving and warping, and you watch with baited breath as the vase wobbles slightly, but stabilizes after only a moment.

You let out a breath as Geordi calls out, “Shield holding at 83%!” You have to force yourself to focus on your breathing, because you know you will hold your breath until the experiment is done. “Shields holding at 67%!” You watch as the shield starts flickering, but it’s still steady. “Shield falling to 42%!” The phaser still isn’t getting through, even though the resonance is flickering more and more, but you notice the shifting of the field is done around where the phaser is hitting, but it’s solid where the phaser is hitting. “Shield now at 27%!” The buzzing sound of the shield is now louder than the phaser as it pushes itself harder to protect the fragile vase. “Shield falling to 15%!” Geordi calls out to you and Data. “10%!” You watch as the shield starts falling away from the back, still holding strong against the phaser blast. “5%! 4! 3-2! 1%!” You watch as the shield flickers out for one last moment, before the phaser penetrates the magnetic resonance field, and the phaser strikes the vase, shattering it into a thousand tiny pieces. The phaser stops before it can do any more damage.

You watch as, even though the vase isn’t there anymore, the shield comes back online, taking the previous shape of the vase, before collapsing, and turning itself off.

Data lowers his arm, the phaser resting at his side. Geordi walks over and stands at your side, placing his hands on his hips as he says to you, “Congratulations Lieutenant. You have created the first and only personal shielding device.”

You just stand in shock, a loose grin on your face.

“Why don’t you join us for poker some time! I’m sure Commander Riker has asked you to join a few times?” Beverly asks as you sit in medbay, getting a cut healed from your rather rigorous exercise while fighting a few holodeck romulans. It’s not your program, lieutenant Worf let you use it for the time being. Your shield was being particularly annoying today and you needed to let off some steam.

You shake your head. “No, no. I don’t play your kind of poker.”

“Seven card stud?” Beverly asks.

You shrug. “I only know how to play one type of poker, so I think I’d be a little outmatched," you say with a light laugh.

"Well, what kind of poker do you play?" Beverly asks. "Maybe we can learn!"

You look up at her and say with a straight face, "Texas Hold 'em."

She looks at you confused. "What?"

"It's a poker game that was popular in the 21st century, but after the nuclear wars, only those in Texas really held onto it. Us Texans love anything with the word 'Texas' in it," you say sardonically.

Beverly laughs as she finishes healing your cut. "Alright. You should be good to go." You smile at her and jump down from the bed, rolling your neck and sighing when you hear the pops it makes. You move to leave, but she stops you with a shout. “Oh lieutenant!” You turn to face her. “Maybe you should steer clear of the holodeck for a little while. Come play poker with us. You can teach us how to play your game, and I’m sure the commander will love to have you there.”

She smiles at you knowingly, and you just smile and nod before leaving sickbay.

“Picard to engineering! Can you get us out of here!” Captain Picard yells over the comms. Because Geordi’s on the bridge, he put you in charge of engineering.

You press your combadge and shout over the general hustle and bustle of engineering, “We’re trying our best captain! The tractor beam from the planet’s interfering with our escape plan! I don’t think we’ll be able to leave unless we can shut down that tractor beam!”

The combadge goes quiet for a few moments and you call out to Barclay to join you at the main engineering consoles situated in the middle of the floor. Your combadge beeps again when Barclay moves to your opposite, continuing his work. “Picard to Mr. [L/N]. I need you on the bridge.”

“Aye,” you say, nodding to Barclay who nods back, and you leave engineering for the bridge. Before you exit, you stop by your station and grab your personal shield, holding onto it as you make your way to the bridge. The ride in the turbolift is silent. No one interrupts. You’re alone.

Until the door to the bridge opens up and all you can hear is shouting. “[Y/N]! Over here!” Geordi calls out to you, waving you over. You move over to Geordi before the doors to the turbolift can close again. “We’re having a hard time shutting down their tractor beam.”

You lean in next to Data to look at the computer monitor. “Have you tried a reverse tachyon beam?”

Data nods. “Yes. They have a force field up. We can not get through.”

You nod and start mumbling to yourself, “And we can’t beam anyone in there-”

“Wait, no I think we can,” Geordi says, typing on the display. “Here.” He points to the monitor, where you see the subspace fluctuation in the shield, a hole not big enough for a phaser blast, but just big enough for a transport.

“Yes, yes. I see,” Data says, before turning to the chaotic bridge. “Captain,” he says, not raising his voice at all. Picard turns, still having been able to hear Data over all the comotion. “I believe we can transport a small away team down into the surface. This is the only way to disable the tractor beam. We have…" Data pauses for a moment and you fill in the rest for him.

"We have twenty four minutes before the warp core shuts down and we're pulled to the surface," you supply.

Picard nods. "Commander, assemble an away team."

Riker nods. "Data, Worf, you're with me."

They go to leave but you stop them. "Sir?" You interrupt the Commander before he leaves. "Sir. I think I should be the one to beam you all down. I've done the calculations and I know I can get you there safely."

Riker looks to captain Picard, who nods. Riker motions for you to follow. "[L/N]. You're with me," Commander Riker says.

You follow them into the turbolift, and down to transporter room one. You walk in and quickly dismiss the ensign on duty. He walks out of the room as you input the exact transporter coordinates.

You look up and everyone's already on the transporter pad. "Commander, one more thing before you go…"

You walk up to him, and reach your hand out, grasping your life's greatest work as you place it in the commander's hand. He looks up at you in sock as you say to him, quietly, "You never know what you'll find down there…"

He looks up at you in shock, and you walk back to the transporter, your fingers over the engagement.

"Lieutenant? Energize," Riker says.

You slide your fingers up the panel, and as you do, the three men start to dematerialize. Soon enough, they're gone, and you wait with baited breath, hoping you do it right.

You feel your heart stop as your combadge beeps and Geordi's voice filters through. "Lieutenant? You did it! Come and join us back on the bridge,"

"Aye sir," you reply.

You wait and watch from the bridge, barely daring to breathe. The bridge has gone silent. It's eerie. The bridge is usually full of life, buttons being pushed, talking from the commanding officer to their officers, and vice versa. Now, you're sitting at OPs, waiting for something, anything to happen.

You don't have to wait long, because soon enough you're flung against the OPs terminal, and you have to cling to it so you don't Tumblr over it.

"What was that?" Picard asks the room.

You start typing on your console but Geordi's faster. "The tractor beam is gone captain. As well as the shield. It seems they were shut down."

You get up from OPs and look back at the captain, going to say something, but you're interrupted. "Away team to Enterprise. Please beam us directly to sickbay. Commander Riker is hurt." It's Data's voice.

Your heart stops beating, and you look to the captain. You don’t even need to say anything. He just nods, but as you get up and walk past him, he places a hand on your arm gently. “See me in my ready room after your shift ends.”

You nod and he lets go, letting you rush down to sickbay. The doors don’t slide open fast enough and you almost slam face first into them. But they do eventually slide apart and you enter, your breathing so fast you’re afraid you may pass out. You spot him, William, lying in one of the sickbay beds against the wall. You push your way through the bustling room and over to William, who grins as he makes eye contact with you. You let out a deep breath and practically throw yourself into the chair next to his bed. He reaches out and you grab his hand.

You feel something fist sized, warm, machinery. “You saved me. You know that?”

You let the shield fall to the ground and lean over, kissing William T. Riker.

You let out a nervous breath, clenching and unclenching your hands in the turbolift as you make your way down to William’s room. You’ve never actually been in his room. You’ve imagined it, what he would have in it. Pictures of family, flowers from Deanna, lots of blues and reds. The turbolift doors open, and you have half a mind to turn around and go right back the way you came, but you shake your head, stepping out of the turbolift onto the senior officer’s crew quarters. You walk down the brightly lit hallway and to the door you remember Beverly telling you was William’s.

You let out a breath, and push the doorbell.

It only takes a few seconds before the doors slide open, and a shocked William is staring back at you. “[Y/N]! What a nice surprise! What are you doing here?”

“Beverly invited me. She wants to learn how to play my poker,” you explain. “I even brought my own cards.” You hold up the pack you’ve used for years. Your lucky deck.

“Oh well, come on in!” William steps aside and you carefully make your way inside, smiling as you see Geordi, Beverly, Worf, and Data all sitting around a circular table, chips layed out in front of each of them. William pulls up a chair for you next to Beverly and himself, as well as some chips for you to use. You sit and place your cards on the table, Data scooping up the old cards.

“What’s the game, [Y/N]?” Beverly asks.

You start to shuffle the deck, almost as well as Data but no one can ever be as good as Data at anything. You stop, placing the cards in front of William to cut as you say, “The game is Texas Hold’em. May the best, win.”

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justalitlecreacher · 4 years

Text

I’m here to prove that Andrew Garfield’s portrayal of Spider-man/peter parker in The Amazing Spider-Man is objectively the best love action adaptation of the character. In this essay I will....(yes this is really happening)

Edit: 10/20/20- i want to indulge myself in spiderman content but finding non mcu spiderman content is exhausting so imma update this instead

TL;DR

Andrew Garfield is my favorite of the 3 Spider-Man actors. TAS’s Peter is more fun and dynamic than the cookie cutter “shy introverted nerd that has a crush on a girl who’s way out of his league” Peter in Tobey Maguire’s movies. I enjoy Tom Holland’s portrayal of the character, but hate the way Disney has written the movies. I enjoy the characters, plot, and humor of The Amazing Spider-Man far more than the other 2, and i deeply wish we had gotten the third movie with the canon BIder-Man of Andrew’s (and my) dreams.

[DISCLAIMER: I HAVE NOT SEEN THE AMAZING SPIDERMAN 2 OR ANY MCU SPIDERMAN MOVIES OUTSIDE OF CLIPS AND REVIEWS ITS ALSO BEEN A VERY HOT MINUTE SINCE IVE SEEN A TOBEY MAGUIRE MOVIE]

Characterization

Most arguments against Andrew Garfield’s Spidey( AG’s from now on) begin and ends with “he was a good Spider-Man but a bad Peter Parker”. This references an outdated post comparing all three Spidey actors.(Id attach the image here but i dont want the post to be too long(thats a lie this is so long what am i doing with my life)) The post also claims that Tobey played a good Peter and a poor Spidey; and that Tom is good at both “roles”.(Honestly I think it seems silly that this seems obey the “third time’s the charm” rule but thats just me). Most people using this seem to be Tobey stans who have forgotten or ignored the rest of the post funnily enough, but the ones that go further into the WHY AG is a poor Peter are also incorrect. This argument also ignores the idea that there can be more than one version of Peter Parker which is blatantly incorrect. Just look at Into the Spiderverse or the PS4 game; these provide 4(5 if you count the pig) versions of Peter themselves, and that doesnt even include the comics.

Arguments that go further in depth claim that the AS Peter is too cool or well liked by his peer to be a “true” Peter Parker. The evidence for this seems to be that Peter has a skateboard.(which what? didnt realize that having a skateboard would instantly make you cool brb guys). Adding to that i dont really see where people get the idea that Peter is popular or well liked. While looking for complaints i found this qutoe from reddit(theyve since deleted it looks like but i’ll add a link in the notes) “He's angsty, pretty socially awkward, has an aptitude for science, and is kind of an outsider. He gets bullied by Flash and he gets his ass kicked after trying to stand up to Flash. He isn't a "cool" person in any way (until the ending, in which he's best buds with Flash, so I'll give you that). While Maguire is more accurate to the 60s comics where Peter in high school is just a fucking loser with basically no friends, in the ultimate comics, Peter is more of the kid who has a small amount of friends, but isn't popular.”. Honesty i fully agree with this because once again, other versions of a character are allowed to exist. You can dislike one version, but its silly to dislike something for not being exactly like another thing.

Ive also heard that Peter isnt “nerdy enough” in this movie which really doesnt make any sense considering the entire plot happens because Peter was looking into some of his parents’ research. If he wasn't interested in looking further into his father’s work what reason would he have to go to Oscorp where he’s bitten by the spider? Why would he have become Dr. Conner’s assistant? If he wasn’t intelligent how did he develop the web shooters?(something that Tobey!Peter doesn't have to do out of plot convenience might i add).

Another complaint i see is that the quips he uses in the movie(the first one specifically it seems) makes him seem like an asshole. Honestly thats a fair complaint, but i think its a good bit of characterization; espcially if he does get better about it in the second movie like the internet suggests.The Peter in this movie is a rightfully angsty teen; of course he acts a bit of an ass to criminals(also i feel like its important to mention that he’s like that to criminals? its not like hes being a dick for no reason).

Compare this with the Tobey Maguire(TM) movies. Like i said i haven’t seen these in awhile but as far as i’m aware TM’s Peter doesn't really do anything particularly nerdy in the film? I may have forgotten something( ok in the scene before he gets bitten he knows a cool spider fact) but he doesn’t have to invent the web-shooters because they came with his powers and he’s only at Oscorp in the first place because it’s a school field trip that he appears to be taking photos for. This Peter does fit the definition of outcast(friendless and bullied for it), but honestly i just dont like him. He’s weird and something about the character makes me feel like i should be a little grossed out every time he looks at MJ at the beginning of the movie.

I honestly don’t have any complaints for Tom Holland’s(TH’s)Spidey. Tom is a great actor and from what ive seen i enjoy his portrayal of the character.( He made me cry when i character i actively dislike died).

Story

I cant really say much for TAS story. It’s interesting but nothing special really. However, there is one scene that i don’t think i’ve seen anything like since( the closest would probably be the train scene in the original trilogy).

The crane scene. Early in the film Peter saves a boy from a car that has fallen off of a bridge, and at the end of the movie this becomes relevant again when it is uncertain that Peter will be able to get to the lizard to stop him in time.(as Peter is already injured and pretty far from the lizard’s location). The boy’s father is then revealed to be a construction worker who recognizes that Spider-man is going to need help to get to the lizard; he remembers how Spider-Man saved his son and organizes the rest of the construction workers to build a path out of crane arms for SM to swing from. All of them are putting themselves in danger by not evacuating, but SM’s actions in the first act of the film motivate them to do what’s right.

I love this scene primarily because it highlights something that i think is a really important part of Spider-Man’s character; his connection to the people he saves. SM is often shown interacting with and chatting with the people he has saved after the fact. One comic shows Peter accidentally scaring some bullies and then taking the time to ride the bus to school with them to continue their conversation and educate the students on bullying.( There’s definitely more but this is off the top of my head).

Another scene in TAS that i love is shortly before the crane scene when Peter is originally attempting to make his way across the city to stop the lizard, and he is shot down by the police. They manage to unmask him before Peter comes to his senses( he had just been shot and fallen pretty far out of the sky in his defense). From there Peter is able to deal with the police while keeping any of them from getting a good look at his face. The one cop he cant take out happens to be Gwen Stacey’s father who had previously had an argument with Peter about Spider-Man(Peter obviously on SM’s side and Mr. Stacey against SM). Peter turns and allows Captain(?) Stacey to see his face. I believe that this is an example of an unwilling identity reveal done right. i really enjoyed this moment because Peter had just shown that he likely could have gotten out of this encounter with his identity in tact as he had just taken down however many men. This implies that it was an active choice on Peter’s end to trust that Captain Stacey would ultimately do the right thing and allow Peter to go fight the Lizard, rather than a final desperate attempt to get away unscathed. Whether or not this interpretation of the scene is correct or not it still gives the character a bit more agency than some versions have done with their identity reveals.

In Spider-Man 2 Peter starts to lose his powers because he’s having internal conflict about wether or not he should be Spider-Man. Honestly thats kinda neat and i might want to give that a rewatch. As for the one i have seen i don’t have any complaints. I do however prefer the way that Peter was bitten in TAS because it was a result of him poking around where he shouldn’t’ve been rather than him just happening to be standing in the right place for a spider to land on him.

Onto TH’s movies; the way Disney has treated Spidey in the MCU is why TH’s is my least favorite version of the character. I feel like too much of the story revolves around Iron Man; Iron Man made Peter’s suit and equipment, Iron Man introduces Peter to the MCU(via blackmail but thats another rant for another annoyingly long post), its Iron Man that “makes” Spidey in this universe rather than Spidey being self-made. In Homecoming(which remember i havent seen outside of clips so bear with me) most of the conflict is cause directly or indirectly by Tony’s refusal or inabilty to communicate with the teenager he’s meant to be mentoring

For one the entire incident with the ferry could have very easily been avoided had Tony bothered to communicate with Peter enough to tell him that the situation was being taken care of. On top of that at the moive’s climax Peter is shown trying to get in contact with Happy(from what ive picked up isnt he a chauffeur? like idk his deal i just know he’s someone Peter got pawned off onto after Civil War). Peter even goes as far as to somehow hack into Happy’s phone(i think thats what happened it was a weird tech thing that shouldve been a red flag that the call was important though) but instead of listening; Peter is ignored. If this was a different kind of movie Peter literally could have died and itd be the fault of Happy and Tony like..... A large portion of conflict comes from characters being incompetent and not communicating and thats just poor storytelling.

Before this turns too much into an anti mcu rant id also like to say that the way they did Civil War was really dumb considering that Peter defects to Cap’s side in the comics, but whatever.

Also i loathe the way they handled the identity reveal at the end of Far From Home. With MCU movies most people know to expect an end credits scene by now, but typically that scene is not important to understand what’s happening in the films; they just aren’t important. Putting an identity reveal here makes it seem significantly less important than it is. On top of that i dislike their use of J Jonah Jameson for this scene.

JJJ is a character who has been repeatedly shown to have a genuinely good heart. All of his anger comes from a place of love for his city(he even says this hemself in the ps4 game when May writes in to tell him that he needs help). He hates Spider-Man because SM reminds him of the masked man who killed his wife; JJJ has never been able to get past that( and Peter’s antagonism of him definitely doesnt help) However, JJJ has been shown to care for people; he has a son who he often brags about, and one comic shows that JJJ is paying Peter for “amateur” quality photos because he knows that Peter is having a hard time and “just need some help”. JJJ has even learned Peter’s identity before and kept his secret for him(seriously though i cant remember the name of the comic but its defiantly worth the read), and in the original trilogy when Goblin threatens JJJ he claims that he doesn’t know who sends in the photos of Spidey because he does it via email( this is a lie). The MCU will have a very difficult time convincing me that JJJ would ever out a teenager’s identity and put him in danger like that. It goes too far against his character.(this could be hypocritical of me to say considering how i just insisted that multiple versions of a character can exist but whatever ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)

This is accidentally turning into an MCU rant but id also like to say that i hate the lack of a TH!Spidey origin movie because it gives you no motivaion for Peter becoming SM or explanation of his powers; most people will know these things but if youre unfamiliar with the character its bound to be confusing(and im a sucker for origin movies)

#long post #spiderman #andrew garfield #The Amazing Spider Man #mcu crit #j jonah jameson #can you tell i care a lot?#cause i do #rant #ramble #this was not proofred #like at all #see theres a typo in that tag!#i would apologize but im not sorry

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fullmetalscullyy · 4 years

Text

Moms Made Fullmetal Week 2020 Day 7: Change or New Beginnings or Farewell

thank you @waddiwasiwitch for creating such a lovely event for us to celebrate the mothers of fma

check out @moms-made-fullmetal-2020 for more info 💖

rated: g | words: 768

read on ao3

i applied something here and made izumi and sig’s kid the same age as ed and al would have been if they’d survived childbirth. idk if this timeline is correct. i completely guessed and sorry if that’s incorrect but i couldn’t find anything to say otherwise. apologies if it’s wrong

new beginnings

“You feel bad, don’t you?”

Izumi shifted in her chair as she poked at her food. “Of course not,” she lied.

“Izumi.” Sig’s tone was controlled and even. It was a soft warning, though. It told her not to lie to him, and in the end, she knew she couldn’t.

“I went through a lot worse than that,” she replied, trying to ease her conscience and validate her methods of teaching.

“You were a lot older.”

It didn’t matter, she told herself. “If they want to become my students, they must persevere. Only then will I take them on.”

“Fair enough,” Sig agreed. “But you think of them as your own, don’t you? That’s why there’s guilt all over your face right now.”

She was caught off guard with that, although she wasn’t sure why. She shouldn’t be surprised that Sig could pinpoint her feelings as she arrived at the same conclusion. They’d been through so much together already that is was inevitable.

Izumi shifted again and didn’t reply.

Sig sighed but didn’t push it further. He was a man of few words, but brough them out when it mattered. More often than not, he was correct. Izumi just didn’t want to admit it, because despite her desire to make sure they were worthy, she had sent two children to survive by themselves on a deserted island.

“I do,” she admitted in a whisper. “I don’t know why, and I can’t help it.”

Sig stared at her over his dinner. Nodding once, he went back to eating his food. As he chewed his dinner, his face became thoughtful. Izumi went back to pushing the food around on her plate. Her appetite was gone.

“You’re wondering what it would be like, what you would have done, if it had been our own child, aren’t you?”

Tears sprang to her eyes, which were promptly blinked away.

“You’re beating yourself up because those two boys are about the same age as our little one would have been now, aren’t you?”

“Stop. Please,” she begged.

“There’s nothing wrong with taking them in, Izumi,” he replied gently.

“I can’t replace our child,” she whispered. “I know that. I don’t want to.”

“You don’t need to worry about that,” Sig replied gently. “I will always love our child. I wouldn’t hold taking in two apprentices against you. Whatever makes you happy, my love,” he smiled sadly.

Izumi took a deep breath and let it out in a rush.

“I can’t help but feel guilty.”

“That’s understandable, but do not fret. Take them in. Teach them so they’re prepared for the world. I can’t think of a better role model for them,” Sig smiled softly.

She nodded, spearing a carrot with her fork. Lifting it to her lips, she put it in her mouth and chewed thoughtfully.

* * *

Izumi wasn’t sure what would face her as they sailed back to the island. She hoped they’d persevered and would have an answer to her question. She prayed they did. Despite her harsh entry requirements, she wanted them to succeed. A maternal instinct deep inside of her still felt guilty, however she knew this training would prepare them for the harshness of the world.

Two boys stood defiantly on the sand. Edward’s arms were crossed over his chest, nose lifting to air with a certainty that betrayed his surety. He’d found the answer. Alphonse stood in a similar stance, a determined smile on his face.

“We have your answer,” Edward called as they pulled up.

“Oh?” Izumi enquired as she lifted an eyebrow.

They’d changed on this island. There was a different air about them. Upon first meeting there was a desperation in the stature, in their eyes, as they sought her out for her teachings. Now, they were confident and sure. They knew what they wanted from their teachings.

Now they were on equal footing.

It was time to get to work.

The thought stirred excitement in her stomach. No other alchemist seeking an apprenticeship with her had succeeded. She couldn’t wait to get to work and unlock their full potential. Izumi was excited to see how far these boys would go in life. She thought it would be a very interesting journey indeed.

#fma fic #fma fanfic #izumi x sig #moms made fullmetal 2020 #emma writes

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pandawritespoorly · 5 years

Text

With Time: Chapter 21 - A Cat and A Bug

Author’s Note: Sorry the update is a little late today! I had plans I'd forgotten about in the morning and didn't have the chance to post the chapter beforehand. Without further ado, chapter 21: (Heh. I'm posting chapter 21 on the 21st).

Chapter Summary: Adrien and Marinette continue to hang out at her house, dealing with the aftermath of a reveal.

First | Previous | Next

“Plagg, Claws In.”

Adrien sits in Chat’s place, watching Marinette vigilantly, as though he can stop what has already happened.

“How are you doin’ kid?” Plagg sits next to Tikki on the cat pillow.

“I don’t know Plagg… she’s been right here this whole time. Shouldn’t I have realized? I was - am - so worried and I wanted to be there, and I didn’t even realize I already was there,” he looks to the Kwami, “Shouldn’t I have recognized her?”

“Adrien, the miraculous keeps you from recognizing each other. You still saw that they were similar people. Heck, you called her an ‘everyday Ladybug’. You recognized her as best you could without knowing they were one and the same.”

“Do you think she’ll be okay?”

“I think she’s getting better, and it will help now that you know and are in her everyday life. She’s not entirely better, I mean, sheesh, that paper she wrote…”

“Ladybug wrote that paper. About herself,” he covers his mouth at the realization, glancing down at the sleeping girl, “Oh, Mari…”

He notices the fallen notebook, picking it up. He’s about to put it back, but, well, curiosity killed the cat. It’s not like it’s her diary.

He opens it up.

Things to Accept:

You messed up.

Everyone Most people at Françoise Dupont hate you

You don’t know how to do friendship properly.

People want to believe you’re a bad person

You’re a terrible hero, and Paris deserves better.

You’re an obsessive stalker-ish creep.

No one actually likes you.

You shouldn’t be trusted with responsibility

It just keeps going. He turns the page, hoping for an end, and instead is met with another list.

Rules To Be Better:

Don’t cry

Smile

Be nice to people

Apologize when you mess up (again)

If someone needs a favor, do it

If asked, you’re doing good

Laugh at jokes, even when tired/sick

When tired/sick, do not show it

Take care of akumas as quickly as possible

Only lie if absolutely necessary - honesty is important

Adrien, Claude, Allegra, Allan, and Felix have been nice enough to put up with you, don’t make them regret it.

Don’t do anything that could attract an akuma to you

He feels the tears prick at his eyes and shuts the book, ignoring the rest of the content. He’s seen enough.

“Kid?” Plagg has noticed his distress, “Adrien, what happened?”

Adrien hands him the book wordlessly. The God flips through it, frowning, “She must have kept this from Tikki too. When did she make this?” “How long has that been there?!”

Marinette shuffles in the bed, but shows no other sign of waking.

He looks to her again, he wants nothing more than to scoop her up and take her somewhere safe where those people can’t get to her.

He puts the notebook on the shelf, but at the front, where he can see it. No way he’s leaving without addressing that.

As if he’d be able to forget it.

“Kitten, you should rest.” Plagg, looks at him sincerely.

“But Mari-” “Pigtails is sleeping. It’s winter, she won’t wake up before you. Take a nap.”

“I don’t want to leave her…”

“So don’t! You’re a cat! Flop on top of her. You’re basically a heated blanket, she won’t mind, you’ve done it during patrol before anyways.”

Plagg has a point. Adrien sighs, falling across his friend and blinking at her slowly before he falls asleep too.

---

As usual, it doesn’t take much for him to wake up. He hears some shuffling, and shoots up, glancing around him to be sure nothing is wrong.

He notices Marinette first - she’ll always be the one he’s drawn to. She’s almost awake. Now that he knows she’s Ladybug, he knows how to read her even easier. Her room is warm enough now, and with him right there, she’s about as awake as she ever is in the winter.

Well, she will be in a moment.

“Kitten, you should transform, you don’t want to stress her out too much.”

“Plagg’s right. It’s been quite the day, let her know if you’re going to detransform.” Tikki is awake too.

Adrien nods, transforming as she comes to. She doesn’t notice him as she props herself up on an elbow, but he sees the moment everything catches up to her and the tears that come to her anguished face break his heart.

“Mari?” He speaks softly, so as to not startle her.

“Chat?”

“How much do you remember of what happened?” If she doesn’t remember much he’ll try and spare her of the worst bits.

She’s silent, and he can see every expression as she relives what happened. It would seem she remembers quite a bit then. She pauses, frowning in confusion.

“I- Did I- Do you… do you know who I am now?” She sounds almost horrified, and he guesses she’s being too harsh on herself. He wants to tell her this isn’t a bad thing - shout it until it gets through, but that would only turn out badly.

He settles for smiling softly, ”I do. You’re amazing, Princess.”

“A-are you sure?”

“I am absolutely certain. You are my fa-fur-ite purr-son.” He sneaks some puns in, hoping to draw her away from what must be a negative train of thought.

She scowls at him half-heartedly. She hesitates, looking uncertain, “So, you’re not...you’re not disappointed?” she gets quieter as she speaks, looking away and unable to meet his gaze.

“Oh, Bug. Never.”

She smiles, but she doesn’t seem entirely convinced.

“Do you want to detransform?” “Do you want me to? It’s alright if you don’t want to know.”

She shakes her head, ”No, it’s only fair.”

He nods, willing the transformation away silently.

Adrien sits in front of her, and Plagg flies off to be near Tikki, who has been watching silently. This isn’t for them, it’s between their chosens.

Marinette sees him, and sits shocked for a moment as she processes this.

Something seems to occur to her, and a smile slips onto her face. She covers it with her hand, but the grin only grows, turning into soft giggles, before she’s fully laughing.

It’s the most beautiful sound he’s ever heard.

“What? Adrien Agreste running around in a cat costume too much for you?”

She shakes her head, still trying to muffle her laughter and hiding her smile behind her hand, “No- no! It’s, it’s- It was a square! The whole time! It was a love square!”

He doesn’t quite get what she’s getting at, cocking his head at her, eyes shining in merriment, “What now?”

“Okay- okay. So-” She’s really trying her best to explain between her fits of laughter, “So. You, liked Ladybug, and Marinette was ‘just a friend’-” she held off the laughter too long and it spills out again.

He waits patiently.

“Ladybug wouldn’t date Chat Noir because she liked Adrien, and we were just-” She speaks through her continued laughter, “Stuck in a love square! We liked the opposite sides of each other- well I liked both -but it’s funny because it’s just so stupid!” she breaks into laughter again.

He takes a moment to process what she said, and he doesn’t ask for confirmation, because it feels right - fitting - that they both liked both sides of each other - and he’d hate to interrupt Marinette’s joyousness. It’s contagious, and soon he’s laughing too.

“I guess the square is a line now.” he says after they’ve begun recovering.

She seems surprised, almost as if she’d assumed he no longer cared for her, “Y-yeah, I guess it is.”

They sit in a comfortable silence for a moment, then her eyes land on the notebook, immediately noting its incorrect position. She turns to him - panicked.

“D-did you s-see that?”

“I did. It fell when I came in.”

“I-I-I’m sorry. I-” Her hands are shaking with her voice, he can see the horror on her face.

He cups her hands carefully.

“Marinette. You shouldn’t be apologizing. Not everything is your fault.”

“B-but-”

“Marinette. Trust me. You’re trying to take all this blame and it’s not for you. You haven’t been able to move forward because you’re still dwelling on it - you’re trying to figure out ‘where you went wrong’ but you haven’t been able to figure it out because you didn’t.”

She shakes her head.

He grabs the notebook, opening it up. He points at the first point.

You messed up.

“We’re going to go through each of them okay? You’ll explain why it’s there, and I’ll correct it. Can you do that?”

She nods hesitantly, “That one’s obvious. They all turned on me because- because I did something wrong, They’re good people, so I must have done something bad to earn it.”

Oh, he hopes his heart will make it through this.

“Or. They messed up. Good people can make mistakes too.” Not that some of them deserve that title anymore, but if he’s trying to correct her, he can’t shove a bunch of opposites at her, “They made the mistake of believing Lila, because they got so hooked on her stories that they forgot that you matter just as much.”

She looks doubtful, but nods, pointing to the next one.

Everyone Most people at Françoise Dupont hate you

“Lila turned everyone there against me. They hate me now.” She says it like it’s just as obvious as the last one.

“Not ‘everyone’. You crossed that out.”

“Well, except for you.”

“Okay, but not even most people there like Lila. It’s only Bustier’s class. The rest of the school is completely indifferent to her. Even most of the class doesn’t hate you.”

“Alya hates me. So does Lila.”

“So that’s, what? Two out of 15?”

“14.”

“15. Markov counts. As for the rest of the school, most people like you! I’ve heard several people still talking about you, they miss you. Everyone thinks my class is completely insane.”

She smiles a little at that, moving to the next one.

You don’t know how to do friendship properly.

“I messed up the only close friendship I had. In a single day.”

“It wasn’t in a single day. It was months of Lila weaseling her way in between you and Alya so that your friendship was weak. She knew she had to separate you two so that she could get to you more easily. If you need more proof that you are capable of being a good friend, I can always text the group chat. Claude would probably find a way to teleport here.”

She smiles, “They probably would. Allegra would start a mob.”

People want to believe you’re a bad person

“Lila said she only tells people what they want to hear, and when she told them I bullied her, they believed it.” “That’s how she starts. Frog-in-a-pot style. She says little things that’ll get her attention and sympathy. Once she’s in people’s good graces, she begins dropping small things that are harder to believe. By that point she’s trusted, and she starts small enough that she can build up to bigger things. She had months, Marinette. Months to do all that.”

You’re a terrible hero, and Paris deserves better.

“I messed up a bunch. I’ve gotten hit by a bunch of akumas, and I fell off the Eiffel Tower. I keep attracting akumas - that’s the opposite of what I’m supposed to do.”

“I’ve gotten hit even more than you. Does that make me a bad hero?”

“No! Never!” She sounds both horrified and furious, but he continues.

“Exactly. As for the akumas, you’ve fought off every single one. That’s heroic, and as sad as I am that you had to do those things, I’m so proud and impressed. I knew you were amazing.”

She blushes, moving hurriedly to the next one.

You’re an obsessive stalker-ish creep.

“I had gifts for you for years. Like, for years into the future. I had your schedule memorized and on a chart, and I had all those pictures…”

“Marinette. You made gifts, and I’m certain they were based around things I liked, not what you wanted me to like. You got rid of them though, so it doesn’t matter right now. You had my schedule memorized, I don’t even have it memorized. You weren’t using it to stalk me, to my knowledge-”

“No! I only used it to figure out when we could hang out! All of us! Since you were always so busy! I only used it to steal your phone once-”

“You what?”

“Moving on-” “That was you?!”

“Moving on!”

No one actually likes you.

“People wouldn’t actually want to hang out with-” She cuts herself off.

“What?”

“I think that one is phrased wrong?”

“I think that one is wrong. I told you, people at school miss you. You made an impact - a positive one. Claude, Allegra, Allan, and Felix love you. I love you! All of Paris loves you!”

She blushes.

You shouldn’t be trusted with responsibility

“I’m a bad hero, and I was a bad class president.”

“We’ve already been over the fact that you’re a fantastic hero, and you were a great class president. You listened to what people wanted and tried to fulfill requests. You planned events well.” She nods. Then nods again, slower. He takes in the way she’s slumping slightly, and smiles at her, “Do you want to leave your bed? You can be closer to the heaters if you’re on the floor.

They climb down, and lean against her chaise lounge, he grabs a blanket and their phones, settling it over them. Tikki and Plagg stay on the bed, catching up.

Once he sits again, Marinette leans into him, cuddling as close as she can to his warmth and holding the blanket tightly.

He could look at his phone, but for now, he just wants to sit with her and appreciate the fact that he finally knows who she is.

He loves her so much.

The snow is really coming down now, fully blizzarding. Marinette’s breathing has evened out and her grip on the blanket has loosened.

Their phones ding.

Checking his, he sees an ongoing conversation in the group chat.

The Mom Friend: is evryone safe inside? theres gunna be a blizzard

The Mom Friend: how r u holding up mari

Kid Mime: i’m at home!!! im watching a bunch of disney and i have hot chocolate and popcorn!!!!

Kid Mime: ariel could have tried miming

Kid Mime: it realy could hav helpd her

Melodie: I’m home. Just made hot chocolate for my brothers. I’ve got some too.

Felix: I am also at home.

The Mom Friend: same here

The Mom Friend: mari? u sleeping?

The Mom Friend: adrien u still at her place?

A is for Awesome: Yep!

A is for Awesome: She fell asleep on me while we were doing homework.

The Mom Friend: ok im glad shes not outside

Melodie: How long did she last once the snow started?

A is for Awesome: She fell asleep immediately, then she woke up and we talked for a while, and she fell asleep again.

Kid Mime: when she wakes up tell her i said hi

Kid Mime: and i love her

Kid Mime: and that shes gud desiner

A is for Awesome: I will!

The Mom Friend: remind her 2 eat

The Mom Friend: an everythin claude said

A is for Awesome: So, um. It may or may not be the case that neither of us have eaten at all today? We may or may not have both completely forgotten.

The Mom Friend: …

The Mom Friend: wat wud u guys do without me?

Felix: Die. You and I are the only reasonable ones in this group, but while you intervene, I am content to simply watch them make poor choices.

Melodie: HEY! I’m reasonable!

The Mom Friend: u 2 need to eat. same goes to any1 else in this chat that need a reminder

Kid Mime: wat about /u/ allan????

Kid Mime: have /u/ eatn recntly?????

The Mom Friend: i am eating a sandwich rite now

A is for Awesome: I’ll have Mari and I eat something.

Before he does so, there’s something else he has to do. He separates himself from Marinette carefully. It’s difficult because being a superhero has made her strong and she doesn't want to give up her heat source, but he manages to escape.

She lies on the floor, frowning. He’ll make this quick. He climbs up to her bed, grabbing the notebook, and rips out the pages she’s written on. He carefully writes his own version of the things she’s put in, before putting it back where it belongs.

“Plagg, I’m gonna’ transform quick.” He warns the Kwami, who nods in understanding.

“Claws out!” Chat Noir grips the torn pages and moves to the balcony. The air whips around him violently, his black suit a stark contrast to the white flakes all around him. The city is coated in snow, and he can see his breath when he exhales heavily.

He looks at the revolting papers in his ringed hand.

“Cataclysm.”

He watches the dust blow away with the wind, then turns back to the trapdoor, letting himself inside.

He releases the transformation before his ring even beeps, and hands Plagg some cheese as he returns to his Lady. She’s still on the floor, laying on her side, seemingly working on waking up, but only squinting and frowning at the ground.

He lays down on his stomach, looking at her.

“Hi Princess.”

She looks up to see he’s returned and her face lights up, though the exhaustion is still clear, “Kitty!”

“Are you hungry? Neither of us have eaten.”

“Don’ need t’ eat.” Maybe the blizzard has gotten to her. She’s on the edge of her ladybug-mindset, thinking she doesn’t need to eat if she’s in hibernation.

“I doubt that. Would you like to get something to eat with me?”

She shakes her head, “‘ugs?” She reaches one hand toward him weakly.

He holds her offered hand in his own, “What if I give you a hug, and then you eat. You can sit next to me.”

She finds this to be an acceptable compromise and nods.

He scoops her up and carries her down the stairs. On the way he comments, “Claude wanted me to say hi to you for him, and that he loves you, and that you’re a good designer Allan agreed, though he also wanted me to remind you to eat.”

“‘re nice.”

He sets her down gently at the table extracting himself from her arms. He sets water in front of her while he makes a sandwich for himself. There’s a variety of fruit in the fridge.

Ha! Winter brings out the ladybug in Marinette, and now that he knows she’s a ladybug, he can play into that. The superhero duo know each other’s tendencies well, and he spent a lot of last year bringing fruit to patrol in case she’d forgotten to eat. It was one of the few foods that the ladybug in her would accept without much fuss.

He gets a small bowl and mixes a variety of fruit together for her, being sure to give her lots of grapes. He gives her the bowl and grabs his sandwich and water to sit next to her.

She’s resting her head against the table, already asleep again. The kitchen isn’t as warm as her room.

“Hey, it’s time to eat.” He nudges her carefully, and she glances over to him drowsily. He points out the bowl to her and when she registers its contents she flashes him a stunning smile, eating slowly.

He eats too, finishing well before her. She’s eaten maybe a quarter of the small bowl before she slows more, tipping towards the table. He moves the dishes out of the way to avoid her face-planting onto them.

He grabs her hand, leading her up to her room again so that the heat can wake her up. For now, he settles for wrapping her up in the blanket again. The Marinette-burrito flops onto his lap.

A is for Awesome: We ate.

The Mom Friend: good

He finishes the rest of his math homework. That’s all he’s got. It’s winter break now (thank goodness, otherwise he wouldn’t be able to keep from doing something to Alya) so he’s free. At least for the next few hours that is, then he’s back to his jam-packed schedule. He should give himself another assignment…

Adrien thinks for a moment, trying to think of something for him to do while he’s stuck at Marinette’s.

He thinks back to her laughter following his reveal. That’ll be his goal.

Maybe he can record her this time. He loves her laugh.

She’s laughed at puns before, it just takes a lot. He’ll start there.

Poking her a few times until she blinks up at him, he says, “Do you want a brief explanation of what an acorn is? In a nutshell, it’s an oak tree.”

“...okay.”

She’s too serious for this. She missed his pun!

“Mariiiiii!”

She blinks more, “...hi?”

“Here. Sit up.” He gets her to lean against his shoulder. Close enough.

“Why?” She sounds confused, probably because he just woke her up. She’d have woken up soon anyways. Otherwise it wouldn’t have been so easy to get her to look at and talk to him.

“You’ve been sleeping for a while. I want to talk to you.” She moves to sit across from him, squinting at him suspiciously.

“You were bored, weren’t you?”

“Purr-haps.”

She groans, “You woke me up for puns.”

“Actually, I wanted to tell you that I just got over my addiction to marshmallows, chocolate, and peanuts. I’m not gonna lie, it was a rocky road.” She looks out at the blizzard desperately, “Winter take me.”

“I’m a big fan of whiteboards. I find them quite re-markable.

“I asked my friend if she likes to play video games. She said, ‘Wii.’”

“Oh dear Kwami.”

“The machine at the coin factory just suddenly stopped working, with no explanation. It doesn’t make any cents!”

She shakes her head, but she’s too tired to keep the facade up for long. He knows she likes his puns.

He leans forward, grinning, “I’m only friends with 25 letters of the alphabet. I don’t know Y.”

“Neither do I. Why are you like this?”

She’d added on, he’s certain he’ll catch her soon. He readies his phone out of sight.

“Why can’t you run through a campground?”

She only raises an eyebrow.

“You can only ran, because it’s past tents!” He beams at her innocently, “A man sued an airline company after it lost his luggage. Sadly, he lost his case.”

“Poor guy.” She’s looking away, focusing elsewhere.

“So what if I can’t spell Armageddon? It’s not the end of the world.”

She can’t hold out forever.

“How about bird puns, they’re very egg-citing.”

He’s got plenty of material.

“You don’t seem very emused.”

“Trying to annoy me with bird puns? Well, toucan play at that game!” She retorts.

He gasps delightedly, “You punned at me!”

As expected, the dam soon breaks and she starts snickering, covering her mouth. It evolves further until she’s fully laughing again. He’s been recording her, and encouraging her with dumb faces and jokes too quiet for the camera.

He wants to tell her to stop covering her face, but pointing out the habit will only embarrass her, and then she’d stop laughing. She drops it as the laughs die down, smiling at him.

Noticing his smug face, she shakes her head,“Was that your goal? Really?”

He holds up his phone, “I wanted to be able to hear your laugh whenever. It’s been saved.”

“Oh you did not.”

“I did. And now… it’s been sent to the group chat!”

“We will get no peace.”

As soon as she says it, their phones go off. Checking it, they see Claude has been the first to view the video.

Kid Mime: MARINETTE U SOUND ADORABLE Kid Mime: DID ADRIEN ALREADY TELL U THAT I LOVE U Kid Mime: I LOVE UR LAUGH Kid Mime: ADRIEN TEACH ME UR WAYS

A is for Awesome: Puns.

Kid Mime: IM ALREADY ON GOOGLE Kid Mime: I NEED EVERY PUN

Kid Mime: E V E R Y P U N

Melodie: We’ll never get a break now.

Melodie: It’s nice to see you laugh, Marinette.

Patisserie Princess: im never leaving the house

Patisserie Princess: i laughed at a pun

Patisserie Princess: i /made/ a pun

Felix: Understandable. I will try to visit often.

Felix: I suspect you have been spending too much time with Claude and Adrien.

The Mom Friend: aw mari

The Mom Friend: u gotta leave the house eventually

Patisserie Princess: do I?

Kid Mime: I WILL COME TO U Kid Mime: ADRIEN HOW MANY PUNS DOES IT TAKE TO MAKE HER LAUGH

A is for Awesome: Depends on how tired she is.

A is for Awesome: Just don’t stop. Don’t give her a chance to recover.

Kid Mime: ALRIGHT I WILL KEEP THAT IN MIND

Melodie: The floodgates have been opened.

Felix: Indeed.

Kid Mime: IM GONNA RESEARCH PUNS Kid Mime: BYE

Kid Mime: LUV U GUYS

The Mom Friend: bye

Melodie: Bye.

Patisserie Princess: bye!

Felix: Goodbye.

A is for Awesome: Bye!

---

Author’s Note: These babies are cute. I love them so much.

The next chapter will be Wednesday, for Christmas. Just fluff, the purpose of the chapter is really just for the sake of all of them interacting in an angst-free way. So you get a bonus chapter. That's not all though! I really want to write a interlude of Tikki and Plagg's conversation in this chapter. It wouldn't really fit in here, and adding it as a chapter feels weird seeing as it would be sort of out-of-order. I'll post it as a separate one-shot, and leave a link here when it's up.

Hey! You all remember Honey Bee? Well a lovely little angel drew her! She looks so great, and I love it so much, link is here!

I haven't been writing much this month (apologies to those wanting chapter 2 of A Shy 'Sparrow'), this week in particular has been stressful. With my being on break now, I think I'll be able to write more. I had a few things that really struck me and I wanted to write them so we'll see how things go!

I feel like I'm forgetting something. If I remember it I'll edit this note.

Thanks for reading! Feel free to leave any thoughts, theories, constructive criticism, or anything really in my ask box, in replies or through reblogs. I love seeing what you think!

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#miraculous ladybug #transfer #with time #fanfic #chameleon salt #miraculous tendencies #miraculous side effects #winter #reveal #marinette dupain cheng #adrien agreste #chat noir #plagg #quantic kids #ml Felix #text interactions #low self esteem

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monochromemedic · 5 years

Text

Training again

Danse pinned me down, hands easily shoved into the dirt. “Incorrect form, see how easily this could cause you to be taken down?” I grunted, struggling against his grip before sighing, resting my head against the dirt. “I guess... damn it.” Danse got back up, pulling me up before raising his hands in a fighting position. “Try again, read my movements and tells if you can. You need to get this right because it could be the difference between life or death on the battlefield.” I grumbled and nodded as he began to swing towards me. Left, right, left, left. I dodged them only for Danse’s hand to grab my face, trying to push me back to the dirt. I struggled against him, hands gripping and legs kicking oddly in an attempt to get away. Somewhere in the flurry of limbs I struck Danse’s knee, causing him to buckle and stumble backwards, taking me with him to the ground below. I grumbled, my face hurting as I pushed my head into his chest. I could feel the finger prints of Danse’s hand still imprinted on my cheeks. Damn he had a grip... “Danse i’m sorry, I didn’t mean to hit you like that.” I muttered “It’s alright... in fairness, a blow to the knee is a good defense. Just maybe not when someone is grabbing your face. If they fall they could do some real damage to your neck so... do be careful.” I grumbled and pushed myself up to a sitting position on top of Danse, looking down at him. “Yeah I should be more careful... with your death grip you could have ripped my head clean off.” I watched him for a bit, mindlessly taking my hand and brushing a stray hair out of his face and smiling back at him. “I still got you down though, that’s impressive huh? Taking down the big bad Danse.” “I don’t think i’m bad. Bad at being bad maybe.” He gave small smile, before clearing his throat, eyes looking down at me still sitting on top of him. “Do you mind getting up so we can continue the training?” “I mean can’t you just push me off of you? I have the advantage, I pinned you Danse. You gotta reverse it or whatever.” I chuckled wiggling my butt on top of him. “I don’t think it’d be called a reversal, I’d just just lift you up.” His cheeks began to redden, his hands going to my hips and huffing under his breath “Well... then lift me.” I commanded, continuing to wiggle on top of him. “What’s the big problem Danse? Do have you pinned down for good? Do I got the win?” “That’s not correct.” He muttered, “I’d advice you to stop... moving like that on top of me soldier.” I paused, doing as he said as I looked down at him, cheeks also going red. “I uh... i’m... sorry paladin. I didn’t mean to-” “It’s alright, nothing really came of... I... er... let’s get back to trying shall we?” I continued to stare down at him, my hands starting to play with the collar of his jumpsuit as I became lost i my thoughts. Bending down to place a kiss on his strong jaw, pulling at the collar and embracing him , my tongue pushing into his mouth- I closed my eyes and shuttered, squirming against him before forcing myself up, coughing a bit. “Yeah... uh back to training. M...my bad i’m...” “Perhaps we should take a break.” Danse asked to which i quickly nodded, going to set at a nearby bench and collect my feelings about what just happened. I adjusted my clothes, feeling warm as I covered my face with my hands, heart pounding in my chest. Damn me. Damn it. Why couldn’t i control my feelings for Danse? Why did I always do stupid stuff when he was around and end up embarrassing myself. Why did he always look at me with those soft brown eyes that turned me into a nervous idiot. Why did I always want to grab hand and- I shook my head like if I did it hard enough all my stupidity would fall out. Danse was... everything. He was everything i wanted to be and wanted to have. He was too good for someone like me to ever be with. So why the hell did I keep thinking of myself being with him? It’d only cause me heart break in the end. Later that night I stared at the empty space in my bed, just enough to fit another person. I closed my eyes and gripped the pillow close to me, hugging it to my chest and pretending it was Danse. Danse’s soft chest, his strong arms wrapping around me in a hug. His warm breath on the top of my head, calming me down as I slept soundly. I felt a tear come to my cheek as I pressed my face harder against the pillow and tried to fall asleep.

#danse fo4 #Self Insert

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neuropathicgypsy · 5 years

Text

According to the Presidency, Brett Connolly, Mike Andrews and xpp were all executed with the massive coronary.

It was like an explosion...

I will be honest, we had Mike Andrews first then xpp in custody and Brett coming in the night before. And Jesse mutilated the bodies to prevent the return of their souls into the bodies they most previously had.

Jesse does believe in reincarnation. And as does his other two "children" or followers, friends if you will.

As i said, 6 months ago, i did not believe in reincarnation but i have been convinced.

Who is Brett Connolly? A secret agent placed with my aunt that took custody of the children of my cousin's. And had Killed Alex's dog because he thought he was homosexual and/or having sex with me. He was just jealous. But also abusive and manipulative and created pain and hard ship for everyone he met. He was indeed a terrorist.

The Queen was well aware as to what Jesse had done to whom.

Jeremiah got beat very badly but he suffered no major injuries just a face nearly beyond recognition only due to bruises. I had seen through my vision,however that wss incorrect, the image was from the past from when one of our children had been murdered, trying to save them, but he continued to fight despite those injuries. 1992. In 2019 he refused the beating as I had sent to Jesse in the email. But Jesse has i understood was a willing participant.

However, the president is correct that Jesse wss screaming and crying and whimpering. That is why i had sent the email as he was absolutely terrified it was his turn to be beat. So i assured him he would be and that it wasn't just him, everyone hurting others for fun or being dumb and neglectful and not listening and communicating respectfully would get their beating as Jeremiah promised he would be here in one hour but then had not bothered to do as he had offered to, after 8 hours and he gave me fierce attitude.

Declan did agree in the hate towards Jeremiah But as i often do, it was only a metaphysical beating, as is fair. Declan stood with me in my anger towards Jeremiah, later after my nap, Jesse confessed to his role to cause Jeremiah's beating.

There was an attempt to beat, however, it was much like spanking my child, no matter the force behind it, it was impossible to damage Jeremiah through physical force.

And so the president did announce for me confirmation of the dead as i was unsure, exactly, and people were getting temper when i asked.

All employees are to continue as they were, i sent announcement to the WWC and it was approved by Alexis Dejoria and the Queen Elizabeth II of England and Uncle Donald and the rest of our business committee. There should not be any uneasiness as nothing shall change immediately in regards to pay or benefits. An additional team of accountants will be hired to oversee all accounts of Jesse's as i am the sole heir of his businesses, per the only known will of Jesse Gregory James. From 1986 before he became the financial man he is today due to his murdering and my willingness to share finances with all those harmed by Jesse.

However, i do have some remodeling of Walt Disney World, Florida in aesthetics (interior design, only) and i will speak to the accountant and those running Disney World (for themselves as i do not own) to see how benefits shall be increased for the businesses i am heir to.

As this is a favor to Jesse and those employed by him to increase productivity and enhance life's happiness.

Please email [email protected] if you are interested in the reincarnation of yourselves. We complete verification of your natural right to leave your current body via a pearl handled Smith & Wesson incurred by me in Egypt at the Fabulous Tree. Thus we know you are not following correct life duties to the best way you could and will be given training as Jesse is in order to obtain the correct body placement location in order to be raised by the correct type of royalty in order to better understand the complications and rights of principle matters. Jesse will likely appear to you when you write unless he is too scared to leave my side where i am extremely busy. Thus the emails will be read and sorted according to location and ability to extract you to be tested and verified. I am informed you will not receive a reply but The United Nations will designate who will be picked up when and will also service as your transportation to ensure your safety to the correct location. Please understand the location you will be left in will have blood due to Jesses heart explosion as well as the 3 others so you should feel a comfort from the sight as it will be your turn next.

As far as I understand the Armored Combat League will be those to assist in your absence of body due to their mass knowledge of History of medieval and older times. Other people will be witness to the massacre. So you will have average regular people there as well to oversee. Such as Alexis was there to see her husband "pass". She is willing to wait until his soul is transported to its proper location. She was attempted to be verified but the pearls went around her and not through. Thus her powers are still needed and Jesse himself did verify this information before his explosion.

Do not disturb Alexis as she is extremely busy and during extractions it can be extremely dangerous as the souls need to be in a primitive state and has been through extreme training through Jesse's yoga. She is one of the very few that have succeeded the training qualifications and exceeded expectations as using a creek near their home to represent and symbolize the Nile and completed witches training by surviving old time tradition of "sink or swim"

However most other souls cannot pass the minimum of my requirements to begin the training that some of us survived in 1988 as children.

For those unsure, Thanksgiving is when Denise will display the properties of the Smith and Wesson. As she will receive her training by those whom have finalized the cannon shot's research. I did not as i gave the pistol to the Smithsonian for research due to Jesse's theft of the weapon, adding 26 pounds to the 400 pound weight.

Any one wanting to achieve this process of reincarnation must sign a waiver to life before any testing for eligibility will be preformed... This is also a duplex to the government making assisted suicide legal in countries all over the world!.

Without the waiver you will be held in contempt of due process of life and death. It's much like a citizens arrest. If you leave no one will stop you, yet you would want to complete the aggravating puzzle as curiosity will be nagging, as per usual. Thus if you leave you will not have criminal charges pressed on you. As it is considered a "Citizen's Arrest" but every one will point and laugh at you for being chicken.

All this is allowable due to 33 years of research. Of many dark corners of souls and the globe and outer space and "Heaven".

To allow Jesse more comfort we do the Lord's prayer, much like Todd Chrisley getting into the trunk. As Jesse fears Heaven over reinstating into a living body.

However as the world turns, Heaven will be inserted into the bodies of the non living. Zombie Apocalypse anyone? Not me! Thus the ability of Heaven possessed by God will assist in the bodies to become non Zombie like and will fulfil the full needs of a body's prefection and beauty. Thus the greed one feels now will be replaced with gratitude. Thus easier to complete 180° 360° of which we need 360 pure souls and body mass/skulls in a pagan-ish circle with 180 souls in line to get the qualities their souls need in order to complete the 15° Earth tilt correction and to ensure life of the rainbow's existence to promise no souls will be sent to Earth without all proper equipment.

Thus service is rendered with complete documents completed in an honest and timely manner. If lies or unwillingness is present in the ink of your pen, then it will establish an indecency in the ability to do as Mother Earth commands and likely you will be condemned thus you must allow freedom into your heart.

I cannot sign for either team. I don't have it yet. Although this above video did allow me to want to hug the president and have a faint desire to jump and celebrate.

We have soulmate research to complete literature thus women are allowed to be included in this event.

Children born after 1989 are expected to be pure, yet we will not exactly want to use them, however many are adults thus we will allow them to fill ins needed for back up if 360 participants are not involved.

If i often yell at you or your attendee following your instructions and I have not been able help you correct your actions, you have something missing. Just like Down Syndrome children, whom have an extra 21st chromosome, many people are missing a likely 121st gene or have a mutation of the 360th. Genes are coded into letters but we do have the gene information reworded into numbers so mathematicians like myself can assess the alter ego, both good and bad to volunteer how to successfully transform this gene and make evolution more effective instead of physical chemicals to create a grest physical body, we will cause evolutionary growth to include real life issues like pain causing the drige thru McDonald's life thus a 595 calorie big Mac (2010) will mean you need to progress digitally and/or metaphysically in order to burn calories. Thus bandwidth and measurements of internet gigabites used will be how you measure your expected caloric growth -- yet sitting at a desk working as we all know will mutate to the form of the chair causing a "shelf ass" like Winnie the pooh in one of my favorite childhood episodes. So you're inputting files or accounting or encoding or just writing a blog that is healthy and beneficial, leaving honest and positive comments on social media to improve overall growth and mental health will cause you to be mentally healthier as well and will cause the ability to burn calories. And also learning from healthy internet or just playing games while thinking with positivity will allow you to dictate to God how you would like your body. "God, i want bigger tits, add the big Mac into those" "God stop! My ass is huge as it is but look there's a lump" which then means you must massage it yourself to stimulate the nerves leading from the brain and brain stem (I'll check the correct brain center as we know the Pons is assisting in body reassignment thus the pons is saved and removed.. I'm sure it doesn't come from the frontal lobe but brain center between eyes and ears where they intersect in that area of the brain) so that the body has complete retention of information. Neck stimulation for me is important as i do feel the ache now down to the end of my major nerve "veins" in the top of my self ass.

Yes i had to ruin my body for science. I'm not happy about it So I know i will regurgitate into a new body otherwise I have commanded my soul body to turn to star dust to create a new galaxy. We will see what happens cause right now i am SUPER ANGRY at Jeremiah for not listening and being a chicken shit. Thus I must leave the pain So that larger chunks exist and can multiply in a more complete manner. Science dude. Look up embryos. And biology. Its biophysics. I'm actually not crazy although it certainly sounds like it.

All that said I would like to invite myself and Uncle Donald and my daughter to receive Mohawks sometime soon in one of the game shows. I saw he wants to look younger. So i would like to remove the color from his hair and do a Mohawk.

As so he can relate to the millennium generation and recreate a 1980s punk look for him as do He can relate to also the middle aged such as my self and humor our older generations. As well as illegal aliens to state he does understand the willingness and desire to drastically change a way of life and so to allow them to recognize they are allowed to Legally live in our country. This i want as a caption under the video/photo of his dramatic change. As i believe many people do not understand that he's not picking at his wife and that she's a legal resident and he's stating his pride in her fir following the country rules.

And so we can do a poll of sorts or something game wise while also adding in beauty information such as color removal from hair, quality of white hair (I know mine is from bleaching highlights as a teen). And also so many questions about his actual hair can be revealed. If necessary we will add in a weave. I think this will surpass Elizabeth Warren whom I'm actually in love with in hopes that also he will give her runner up benefits to have her in office as an advisor thus allowing our first female president to be voted in, unless Milana runs with... He can be Vice, i think... Or a double female team!

But i just know Elizabeth will be amazing for our country and can take on major issues the president has as the president has actually done a great job behind the scenes.

I really would like to expose him for who he is as Writing often will mislead a reader.

One reason we love Obama is he let his hair down so to speak after his retirement from the Oval Office.

And if he so wished for a tad evil trick, he could establish pretending to be a punk ass Democrat. With his 1980s look.

It's not too hard for me to defend the president as i do know him personally and now his "odd ways" as a New Yorker is vastly vastly different from rural life and his ways actually do need explanation, even to Native New Yorkers, such as the way he wears his overcoat.

So i would like to advise a website from thr President and his wife entitled "Punk Ass Life Hacks"

Or butt if preferred.

And also keep Twitter for professional use. The website for personal relations.

So a page for each of them then a random jumble page which is automated per user and will have president tricks and tips in blue on and the Madame in pink and they ones they share or don't remember the origin in purple.

As God actually will adjust the information per user thus the tips and tricks more relating to the user will be available to the reader. Thus truly enabling the Presidency to truly help each and every American and international humans.

And i would like to add in the kids also. Green for whole family tips. Colors like aqua and light turquoise for the sons and for his favorite daughter of mine, orange (US COAST GUARD life preserver color) and shades of yellow for all other females.

Black background is easier on the eyes.

Now for each individual page I would like to have a papyrus color, so a sepia with darkened edges much like the constitution with normal bold black type. I prefer gothic style

Such as

But any would do... Slight cursive as it's actually still not taught.

Type writer font as well. Per type of life hack.

So a slight cursive for safety hacks thus children cannot read the constitution or any historical documents! So a slight fancy

So what we will want to do is teach cursive. So

The brown fox ran exactly as quantum physics described, because little foxes follow rules.

Will be followed by the same sentence in print so they can see the difference in lettering.

Thus the reader will learn the proper way to connect letters and change the ones necessary into cursive.

Thus the print must be exact. It must be the exact cursive that is to be taught, I do not recommend the Tumblr cursive as the o is misleading to be an A.

Now Elizabeth Warren, she will use a font such as "Historic" in the above image as it attempts to connect the letters yet also combines print. Its a casual contemporary font. As she will be learning to be president. And relating to people as she's more an open book.

The jumble page will have "use a magnet to take the lid off............... ~Uncle Donald" yes!! It says Uncle Donald, Uncle Sam!!

So in the menu tab it will be all family members listened for a direct link to the page. Then an open second menu tab under "others" Elizabeth has her font and my heart so definitely her name comes up then you have a mix page of "others" like Clinton's i do not respect their outer image saying "cheat on your wife and don't let her leave you" they statute abuse. So they do not have their own page. Bernie will have his own page and direct second menu link as well as Bill Nye the Science guy. And other historical people.

On computers it can be a side menu, phones a pop down with the 3 lines is usual but this will be an eagle button with a ribbon in it's mouth like an old tattoo look saying "more"

Very colorful tattoos for children eyes but also very informative and professional looking.

Janda Cheerful would be a perfect one for Madam Millana. As it is hand writing like and the encouragment to try and grow. Plus her voice has its own accents, so it's time get to know her a bit better, if she has good handwriting use hers please, if it's too difficult to read have her write the brown fox after the perfect cursive then the print.

Have every one do it. That way put it over the child lines that are two solid lines with the dots in the middle. Make it an easy pop up for phones. So we aren't perfect but we are as close as possible.

Like the top and bottom of the page.

Now kitchen life hacks i want in actual print handwriting. Theres apps of course and programs to help get penmanship to digital.

So get a really good one....

Like one that picks the average -- write sentences and single letters and etc then develops the most used way. Wherre you cross the T and etc. The military will have such program.

Like Tumblr recognizes the different fonts here the webpage will also so th3 font will load. That's the web designers job to make it work to prefection.

This way it makes it personal. So that is for food/kitchen hacks.

As children one of the most important lessons is to learn to cook. Old handwritten recipies passed down from generation to generation.

We can do a food page, recipes on little note cards (index) with tattoos stamped on in same handwriting. But i prefer the most pure recipes. Like low calorie whipped topping and fruit or yogurt and fruit, not Diet food. Health food. Enchiladas are fine but not dio th3 tortilla in oil then layer in the pan. They dont 3ven need hydration! But like chicken breast rolled in crushed chips

So the title is

Oh! You crushed your chips?!

Grab a boneless skinless chicken breast or fish or meat from freezer/fridge.

Defrost in micro/sink/hot water or use George Forman grill and just run under fresh water from sink

Roll in crushed chips, bake or grill, or use a skillet pan on stove top until meat is all white all the way through at thickest part

Then follow in legit directions and amounts measured as if we are teaching a nervous child who needs exact information.

1 cup crushed chips into red pepper sized flakes to powder size

3 chicken breast (raw or cooked)

Grill: raw cook: time precooked cook: time

Bake etc etc etc.

So that's all for now. I know I'm not the only intellectual in the room.

We can develop more during Mohawk time.

And so anyone else steal this idea,I'll find you and sho2 you 2hst lif3 is about.

In the event that Uncle Donald does not win the next election, the site will continue for eternity. Each new president making modifications to their own page.

Thus each person will have the log in to their own pages to edit. Like Obama and Bernie... They log into their own page and has the tools to adjust and add pictures etc.

Template easy style. Like word perfect. Or Any app.

The current first lady will have the pink or her choice. I recommend hot pink, neon or carnation. The current president will have Royal Blue. Too sexist may be

Or red white and blue does make more sense. So current President flag blue. First lady flag red and all others flag white with a twinge of yellow and orange for the current white house's children/grandchildren. That is for the jumble page. Sun shining on flag.

So then personal pages will be color choices. Mel hates pink so... But the font color is always there and another choice must be 5 shades different. So say She wants brown. She picks her fave and so Obama must have at least 5 shades different. So in 10 years she wants to change. So make sure its 5 shades different and there will be a simple easy to use program which will omit colors already being used. So she could change daily. Also we will see how many colors she wants. So it will be a theme coordinated color scheme. Also she wants to change to a thanksgiving theme to Christmas to 4th of July she can.

But we want to easily recall colors, so Mel picks color: j92848 well then Donald Jr can never have it.

Then as time goes on, the similar shades will be released. So 5 spaces the middle color spaced will be released.

This is due to my amnesia and recovery. So someone is in the kitchen... Me. And I'm like Idk how I do this!!! But i recall her handwriting but i can't grip what I saw... But the sponge i use foe the sink is the same exact color!!! And it sparks those cells in me and i can spring into,action perfectly!

So while it seems suoer strict and crazy anal and annoying for the blog user, it is actually the best way for people to help themselves when without a computer.

Its not a perfect system but for me it helps.

So when colors are ran out, then we stsrt again fresh as in 30 years not every one will read what Uncle Donald said. So it won't matter to reuse.

Using a scientist to break down the color wheel will assist in miraculous ways. I don't really know how. Like i can't create a web page... Without a template.

But according to how specific the colors sre broke down... To w microscopic level or a person without their glasses on will make the difference in color choices.

We Will have a scientist develop this.

Now over time this will all take with handwriting and etc.

So simply follow the stated template type and then we will make the official changes as we can. And it will break the internet if announced!

And also the Queen of England has her own punk style that is used all over the world.

💏

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pumpkins-s · 7 years

Text

Interpersonal Mathematics

Read On AO3 Here

“Really?” She looks to him in askance, the odd edges of nerves leaving her expecting more. “That’s it?” He shrugs, looking bemused, and she snorts. “…Did you seriously have no idea that entire time?”

Lance throws up his hands, waving them about in a dramatic fashion. “I mean I knew something was up with you, but I didn’t necessarily think it was a gender thing! A person can have like...multiple things going on at once. And I was right! There was something—I just didn’t expect it to be as big as your family being kidnapped by aliens and you faking your entire identity, y’know?”

Pidge rolls her eyes, ignoring the panging clangs that never quite go away of your family, your family, where is your family, Katie? “Yeah, alright. Fair enough.”

(Or, in which Pidge is trans, damn well knows she's trans, Lance has no idea what he is, and they both learn to handle the complexities of gender identity, friendship, and each other, in that order.)

Fandom: Voltron: Legendary Defender

Relationships: platonic Pidge & Lance

Characters: Pidge, Lance

Written for the @voltrans-zine, with permission given to post the full piece now that preorders have closed.

Pidge would like to consider herself a fairly decisive person.

She would argue it’s part of her nature as a scientist. Outside of the realm of actual possibility (which, admittedly, has greatly expanded since entering Voltron), she’s not prone to daydream or fantasy. Why waste time considering things that could never feasibly happen when you could work towards a goal that was relatively graspable, after all? It’s just far more sensible.

Regardless, she’s never been much of one for dilly-dallying or the like when it comes down to it.

She is a scientist. A programmer. A paladin now, too, she supposes. And yes, a woman.

She was one of the quote-on-quote “early bloomers” in that particular discovery, as it might be called (or perhaps it might be better referred to a soul-searching type of decision? She supposes it depends on whom you ask, and their experience with the matter).

Either way, she’s always known what and who she was fairly quickly— from the time she was seven or eight, in the crawling, creeping sensations of yes, this is what I’m meant to be, and the rather memorable occasion not long after where that young, dauntless, and stubbornly optimistic version of herself (before she grew up, before she saw the world) had marched out to Matt in the shoe store during their annual back to school shopping trip with bright purple, sparkly Velcro tie sneakers strapped firmly to her feet, and Matt had looked down and giggled in amused confusion. “I think those are meant for girls, buddy.”

“But I am a girl,” she’d said firmly, and Matt had blinked, just once, considering.

“Alright.” he’d said, and that’d been the end of it.

(Well…no, obviously, that wasn’t the end of it, more like the beginning of an extremely long, arduous, and complicated process, but it makes an interesting marker point in her personal mental autobiography, if she does say so herself.)

Intellectually, of course, Pidge is vey much aware of the fact that some people are not so well decided and utterly sure in themselves. Such people waffle on their even most confident knowledge at times, their faith in their skill sets, on their own identity. They may be unwilling to decide such things permanently, or may lack faith in their own judgment, or simply not come into themselves in that capacity until much later.

It is not, however, a problem she has ever had much at all, excusing a few circumstances.

She simple does not have the time, she thinks, to be so unconfident in her own abilities, her own instincts. Not then, as a child, when the world was young and new and fresh and she’d needed all the time she had just to explore it. And not now, when the very concept of the metaphorical world, or perhaps more accurately universe, is vast and wide again in a whole new way, and there are so many people relying on her to keep her head on straight.

...Especially given some of those people are her own family, and they don’t even know it yet.

Similarly, Pidge would consider herself a fairly quick judge of character. She can be surprised at the capacity of a person even yet, naturally, but she often finds her initial assessments are not incorrect. A decent example of this might be Allura: the princess has certainly grown on Pidge over time, and she’s come to appreciate what Allura offers in bravery and reckless strength in the face of her cause, but none of her acquired fondness of the princess has negated her initial assessment of an ice- cold warrior queen in training running away from her own past.

(She may not be royalty herself, or as in control of her emotions as Allura can be, but Pidge can with the utmost certainty recognize someone else fleeing from their own memories of what they have done, what they have let happen in their unplanned negligence. Allura let Altea burn while she slept, no matter how unwillingly, and Pidge had let her family be lost while she was thousands of miles away and could do nothing to prevent it. She can respect that they, at least, have that much in common in the unwanted guilt that rests on their shoulders.)

Point being, she can learn more about people like any other fallible being, but it’s additional data points, not a revision of her original hypothesis. No matter how much her teammates may grow as people and she may, in turn, grow to understand them, they are still at their cores at least in part what she started out with— Shiro is still a boy-scout-hearted inspiration to everyone who looks at him, Keith is still a hotheaded maniac with an obsession for speed, and Hunk is still a well-meaning teddy bear with the come-and-go intellect of a genius when he’s interested in a subject.

…With…one exception: Lance. The outlier to the average of this little equation.

No matter what she does, Pidge cannot seem to figure out the enigmatic puzzle that is Lance, in all his odd-edged, hyperactive glory.

Really, it’d almost be insulting, if it wasn’t weirdly interesting in a kind of bored fascination way.

…If Pidge is being honest, her first impression of Lance is that of somewhere between an idiot and, as the so delicately crafted term goes, a fuckboy.

Admittedly, her focus at the time isn’t exactly on breaking into the deep and meaningful parts of her teammates psyches. Or…much on her teammates at all, actually, but she thinks either way Lance’s attempt at something like a smooth and cool introduction wouldn’t have gone over well.

She simply isn’t a person for that kind of posturing—pretending such things is all in good fun, but putting on a false suave attitude in seriousness just makes something look stupid, in her personal opinion.

(She is sure Lance would disagree vehemently with that statement, but her point still stands.)

Over time, in being stuck with him in the close quarters that come with being a part of the same team at the Garrison, she reluctantly stretches her opinion of him to include a sentiment of something along the lines of not overall a bad person, former points not withstanding, but it isn’t until Voltron that her feelings on the matter change much beyond that.

Finding Lance after the explosion that destroys the castle’s crystal is…a shock. A data point incongruent with her previous knowledge of him, which had never displayed such an aptitude for... Well. She’s not sure whether to call it self-sacrifice or a suicidal streak. Another one of those cases where it depends on who you ask, she supposes.

That said, pretty much everything up until that point is a shock. The entirety of rescuing Shiro, subsequently finding the Blue lion, arriving at the castle, and most everything that comes after it is one big no-sleep, adrenaline-run rush of this can’t be real it isn’t feasibly possible but that hardly matters, survive this, move past this, they’ve got Matt and Dad you’ve got to survive this.

And of course, in the aftermath, in turning the castle into her battleground and losing Rover and watching Haxus fall to his death and realizing that yes, she has just killed someone to save her own skin and she’d do it again, it is easy to forget, to shuffle aside the anomaly of Lance in favor of so much new information to categorize, to reflect on.

(It is…odd, to look at her own picture of herself, in between the pieces that make up hacker and fighter and sister and all the other little snippets, and add killer to that image. She’s always rather easily conceptualized humans as just giant strings of something like computer code, what else is DNA, after all, and to filter through her own and find the pieces of programming necessary for that kind of thing is an experience, to say the least.)

She doesn’t really give Lance a second thought until well after all that, after they’ve seen him out of the cryopod and plied him with food, and she realizes yes, now, this is the moment. She bares the hidden parts of her metaphorical code and corrects an assumption she’d let lie, even encouraged, to protect her identity as Pidge Gunderson over Katie Holt.

Me. Pidge. Katie. Paladin. Woman.

On the one hand, their reactions are a relief. To have that assurance that, yes, they assumed she is a girl regardless, because body and voice and all the things not yet in her control do not define her. That her heart, her being, is woman, and that is enough.

One the other, it’s frustrating. To know for all her work, all her sacrifice, all the times her skin itched and crawled and she wanted to shout this was wrong, wrong name wrong pronouns wrong life, was for naught. They saw through her ploy anyways.

In a way, Lance’s overdramatic reaction is gratifying. At least someone had bought her disguise. Her efforts had not entirely been in vain. It isn’t until after that Pidge feels the numb worry in her tingling nerves and clammy hands as Lance side-eyes her on their walk back to their rooms, and that she wonders if his loud reaction had been for that reason.

(It is, admittedly, incongruent with what she knows of Lance, even admitting to the crueler aspects of her assessments of him, but fear is a curious thing, born from trial and error and superstition, and it is not always logical.)

“So you’re like—a girl?” he says, brash and unassuming and all the things that give Pidge a headache at the best of times. “A legit girl or…?”

She twitches, almost wanting to snap at him to define a legit girl, but restrains herself. “Yes Lance, I can assure you I’m one hundred percent girl.”

“...Huh.” Lance blinks. “Alright. Cool.”

Pidge rolls her eyes, ignoring the panging clangs that never quite go away of your family, your family, where is your family, Katie? “Yeah, alright. Fair enough.”

“...I thought you might be trans, honestly,” Lance says after a pause, squinting at the ground. “Like you were clearly uncomfortable getting changed around other people and you were so tiny for a dude so—“

“I am trans,” Pidge says before she can think about it, and only afterwards doubles back and properly registers that Lance had meant he thought she was a trans man, followed by the rather jarring realization that perhaps she hasn’t exactly made clear to the team that she isn’t…well. Cis. “I mean...”

(It isn’t technically their business, either way, she supposes, but she had wanted to tell them. Had wanted to be honest in this very crucial piece of what made her herself.)

“Oh.” Lance stops in the hall. “…Oh! Okay, yeah, that…that makes sense, in retrospect.”

“...Yeah.”

“So is everyone in your family just short then?”

She punches him in the side, ignoring his squeals of delighted laughter, and chases him down the hall yelling empty threats. And somewhere, in the mental files and folders of Pidge’s brain, the section on Lance reorders itself ever so slightly without her permission, straying somewhere into not bad, not bad at all, maybe even good.

...Somehow, Lance becomes a regular part of daily life after that.

(Arguably, the same thing might be said of the other occupants of the castle, given there are only seven of them on board and they see each other day in and day out, but she digresses. There is a fine line between housemate/teammate, and friend whom you relinquish semi-consistent time and attention to, and somehow Lance burrows his way into being both the former and the latter.)

He attaches himself to her with vicious, hard-won, blind enthusiasm, much as she has seen him do with Hunk, and despite her hesitations, she lets it happen. There is no Garrison to hide from anymore, no secrets to keep, and having friends here will not risk compromising her cover or intervene with her ability to search for her family.

Lance is odd in a very distinct and individual way. He is sharp edges and loud words and all the things that Pidge is not. If her mind is a computer, she thinks, then his is something of a cluttered chess game with loud music blaring in the background.

But he is smarter and kinder than she originally gave him credit for, and he accepts all the odd-shaped remnants of her without question, and so he grows on her.

He does dumb things (and learns from them, amazingly) and picks fights he can’t win to make himself look cool and robs a space mall fountain with her just to help her buy a video game instead of doing something he fancied instead, and he is…no longer an annoyance or hindrance, but an expectation of fun and excitement.

Lance makes no sense in the general order of things, really, because Pidge is decisive, truly and practically. She formulates opinions of people and they do not waver and they do not change, ever, and yet Lance does. He somehow rapidly spirals from problem to acceptable to friend, and Pidge is left floundering in the wake of exactly how this occurred without actually regretting any part of it.

And yet even then she cannot close the file. She sits with all the disjointed pieces of Lance and tries to arrange them into a complete human equation and is left with gaps. There is always a persistent feeling of something missing, of knowing it’s there and still not being sure of what, and it leaves her wondering if this is what Lance felt like all the way back in the Garrison, when he looked at her and knew there was more to find but didn’t know what.

(Gender and identity and Kerberos and all the little pieces—in retrospect, the fact that Lance even guessed there might have been multiple things she was hiding was pretty impressive, given how much of herself Pidge had tucked away.)

“Do you miss not having girl’s stuff? Like…dresses and cheap lip gloss and the ugly hairbands and all that?” he asks her once, long after the video game is bought and the wiring issue is solved, controller tucked in his hands as he squints at the screen, and she blinks and wonders if this is a case of a question being a whim or a long time coming. Maybe both.

“Yes and no,” she says, pondering the answer slowly. “I liked some of those things, yeah, but I don’t need them. They were nice when I was younger and first transitioning, because they made me feel more sure of myself, I suppose, but it just…feels different now. I don’t need to look feminine or dress as such to know I’m a woman. I just am.”

“Weirdly eloquent response there, Pigeon,” he answers after a long moment, and she blows up his character on the TV screen in retaliation, grinning widely at his loud exclamation following.

“Why did you even ask, anyways? It’s a bit of an out-of-nowhere question.”

Lance shrugs, nose scrunched up and the first inklings of uncomfortable crawling across his face. “Just thinking.”

“...Alright.”

“I think I would miss them,” he says loudly. “If I were you. But—y’know—I’m not you so…”

Pidge pauses her game and wonders if this is one of those times the ever-expanding folder of Lance needs to be edited upon. “You can tell me anything, you know.” And what a trip that is, to repeat the same words she’d heard her parents say, after Matt had brought her home from that shoe store with those purple Velcro sneakers and had spoken to them unsurely in a low voice as she played with her toy cars spread out over the living room floor, and a million little things had come together for her family to finally make sense of Pidge properly for the first time in her life.

She’s probably not the most emotionally competent person for this sort of thing, and definitely isn’t an expert outside of her own experience, but she’s all Lance has got out here, if this is what she thinks it is, so she’ll have to do.

“Yeah, I know,” Lance says, not meeting her eyes. “I’m fine, Pidge. It’s nothing.”

And she lets it go, because some people are decisive and fast moving and know who they are almost immediately, and others aren’t. Pidge is an early bloomer and a scientist and pragmatic. She knows what she wants out of life and she takes it with as much certainty as she can guarantee.

Lance is wide and open and fluid and changeable. He’s the kind of person to demand an audience when he wants to and then duck into the corner to avoid stepping on people’s toes if he deems it necessary.

He is not her, and that is fine.

It’s a rapid escalation of little things then, once it has her attention. Tiny data points picked up from observation and plugged into the half-finished equation of Lance in the interest of completing the puzzle. A silent pondering of not like me, very much not like me, but maybe like me yet still. She knows these signs, can point to them in her own history, but Lance is the anomaly to all her patterns, and it leaves her wondering on the potential surety of her findings.

Because Lance is everything—he is loud and brash and boyish, and quiet and thoughtful and mature. He makes terrible, flirty jokes, and then on occasion wrinkles his nose and walks away from the boy’s talk. He hangs off Allura like she’s a goddess and then sits and compliments her outfits and offers to do her hair with innocent enthusiasm. He is blurred lines and complexities in so many ways she too was and is, and Pidge isn’t sure he even knows it yet.

(Then again, the same things might be said for her. She is a woman in sure identity and mind still living in her little boy disguise that is a stolen mockery of her brother. An example of mind over matter in its finest, the physical losing value in the face of circumstance and confidence in what makes her herself.)

Lance gets the start of his own purple shoes moment, so to speak, in the inevitableness of the tiny things coming to a head all at once in an unexpected occurrence that seems plain on the surface, much like her own. These aren’t enormous revelations, sweeping statements clawed in panic and triumph (no, those come after). These are the little ticking-over happenings, the quiet, mental, oh, here we go, seeping slowly to the surface.

Self-discovery is not fast and dramatic, it is a crawling, sleeping, wondering thing, filled with questions and contemplations long before decisions or revisions, even Pidge knows this much.

They end up on a planet, on one of those semi-impromptu departures from the usual Galra-fighting schedule to assist a planet in need with its own problems, with a sacred temple that men are not allowed to enter.

(They come across a lot of amazing alien cultures, Pidge will admit, but the matriarchies, even the hyper-religious ones, are pretty damn cool.)

It’s a breathless relief, following an unwanted fear that they will somehow burrow their eyes beneath her skin and claim she is not woman enough, when they let her in after Allura without question. She is a woman. She is welcome here, in these alien eyes that hold no concept of human demands that state she is not quite right.

And then they usher in Lance after them, pulling the temple doors shut on the boys’ confused faces as they lead Lance inside and push him into place with her and Allura, and Pidge is left watching Lance’s wide eyes and wondering if aliens see more than she gives them credit for, after all.

Afterwards, when Keith and Hunk knock Lance’s shoulders gently and tease him in good fun about all his beauty regimens making aliens mistake him for a girl, Pidge watches Lance’s unsure grin, his shaking fingers, and keeps her mouth shut.

(It is quite possible they saw in Lance what he does not yet see in himself, and this is not her place, to tell Lance’s story for him.)

Because the thing about Lance, Pidge thinks, is that he is one of those people who do not know themselves quite yet—who trip over their own insecurities and easily succumb to questionings of their feelings. He is as she is, she suspects, she knows, in the itching feelings of not quite right, not quite yet, in this thing they call us, but otherwise he is nothing like her. Pidge knows her mind, her body, her (albeit likely metaphorical) soul, because in this world where everything is unsure and dangerous, the only thing she can truly rely on once her teammates are gone is herself. Lance is a rapidly spiraling game of impromptu and anomalies, the only file she ever had to completely rewrite, and he is still learning himself as much as she is, if not more.

Later, much later, he comes to her room, arms crossed and feet shuffling, and she turns on the video game console without a word, handing him a controller and fighting back a pleased grin as he patiently waits for her to get set up so that she can be player one, as always. He is so much more giving than she ever credited him for, in the beginning, and it is only fair she returns the favor.

So she considers it, and she gives him her waiting silence, because a person like Lance just wants a friend, someone willing to hold the pause until they are ready.

“...I don’t think I’m a boy,” he says eventually into the steeping silence of the simulated nighttime of the castle, and Pidge pauses the game. “I don’t think I’m like…a girl, either, but—I guess it was always there, y’know? Since I was a kid. It all felt…off. But after you, I started thinking about it, and then I couldn’t stop, and…and…”

“Alright,” she says, repeating his pointedly simplistic answer from a long time ago, and shrugs, smiling unsurely when he looks to her, which he mirrors.

“Yeah?”

There are still things to consider after this, so many things. Questions of pronoun experiments and preferences, of terms of address and potential appearance changes desired, of the long discussions she has already been having with Coran about programming the med bay to manufacture the hormone doses she was on before leaving Earth that Lance may now want to be a part of.

(...But there is time for all that later.)

For now, this is Lance’s beginning moment. His own foray into the first speaking of it as the way he and the world perceive him reorder themselves slowly. He will not suddenly wake up tomorrow and find everything makes sense all at once, but there will be the first prickling of knowing, of awaited change, and that is good.

They have time for the logistics, for the science and the decisions and the rewriting. For once in her life, Pidge bids herself patience, to let the both of them figure out the complexities of being in peace.

They have all the time in the world. In the universe, even.

(Somewhere in the recesses of her mind, in between the bits of Katie and Pidge and Paladin and Team, the file on Lance, idiot and annoyance and friend, rewrites itself slowly once more, filling in the gaps with completed lines of ah, there it is.)

“...Yeah.”

#Pidge #Lance #voltron #my writing #voltrans zine #pidge & lance #Interpersonal Mathematics (Voltron)

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mbtizone · 7 years

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Harry Potter (Harry Potter): ISFP

Dominant Introverted Feeling [Fi]: Harry doesn’t typically like to discuss his feelings, and instead keeps them to himself. He believes in doing the right thing, even if he has to put his life on the line to do it. It doesn’t matter much who the person is or how dangerous the situation might be. Even though he doesn’t particularly like Hermione in the beginning, he still puts himself at risk to find her and warn her about the troll. He even saves Draco Malfoy, who has done nothing but torment Harry for years. What other people say or think doesn’t influence Harry’s beliefs. He knows that Voldemort’s back and if his classmates don’t accept that, then that’s their problem. How Harry feels about something is much more vital to predicting his reaction than logic. Harry values freedom and is able to relate to the boa constrictor because they’re both trapped in confined spaces they wish to escape from, and so he inadvertently uses magic to set the snake free. Harry is extremely moralistic – he refuses to befriend Draco Malfoy because he treats Ron poorly and disrespects the Weasley family. He doesn’t care about his status, he just cares about what kind of person he is. Harry is quickly able to tell that Draco is no good and he knows he doesn’t need friends like that. Harry wants to help those around him, but he typically does so by doing something (Fi-Se), rather than offering emotional support (tricking Lucius Malfoy into handing Dobby a sock in order to set the house elf free or buying a bunch of treats on the train to share with Ron). Harry is often shown to be uncomfortable with physical displays of affection and prefers when people don’t make a big deal out of it when he does something nice for them. Harry often struggles with his fame and doesn’t usually enjoy all of the attention he constantly receives. He’s okay with it when he wins a Quidditch match or defeats a dragon, sure. But he doesn’t want recognition for his claim to fame because he was just a baby. He didn’t do anything, and so he feels the way people treat him is undeserved. He wants to earn respect, not have it given to him for something that was out of his own control. Harry’s values come from within – he doesn’t prevent Sirius and Lupin from killing Wormtail because killing is wrong. He stops it because he doesn’t think his father would’ve wanted two of his best friends to become murderers. Harry strongly believes in fairness. When he finds out that the champions will have to face dragons during the first task of the Triwizard Tournament, he passes the intel along to Cedric, believing that Madame Maxime has told Fleur and Karkaroff has informed Krum. He’s very honorable, and even though he ends up having to face the most vicious of the four dragons, he refuses to accept any advice from Ludo Bagman. During the second task, Harry’s task is to rescue Ron, but he can’t just leave Hermione, Gabrielle, and Cho, and so, he waits for the others to arrive to make sure they get back safely. When Fleur doesn’t show up, Harry takes Gabrielle and Ron, even though doing so puts him at a disadvantage in the competition. He couldn’t just leave her down there, regardless of whether or not she was his responsibility. Sometimes Harry’s morality in his undoing. In the third task, he saves Cedric (his competition) and he suggests taking the cup with Cedric, allowing them both to win, a gesture that would ultimately result in Cedric’s death. When Rita Skeeter writes an inaccurate article about Harry, he’s angry because it isn’t true. It’s not a real representation of him. It’s not so much that he’s afraid of how other people will treat him after they read it, but that they will get the wrong idea about who he is. Harry’s sense of self is important to him. He frequently questions his identity and worries that his connection to Voldemort makes him bad. Harry readily stands up for himself and others and doesn’t keep his mouth shut to avoid trouble if he truly believes something is unjust. He lands himself in detention with Umbridge because he refuses to allow her to deny the return of Voldemort. Harry doesn’t like to make a big show of it when he does something kind for someone else. He’d rather they didn’t mention it because he doesn’t do things for the recognition or for gratitude. If he helps someone, it’s because he felt it was the right thing to do – he doesn’t need his good deeds to be broadcast to the world. Harry can deal with the majority of people thinking he’s a liar (or believing him to be untrustworthy) but it only truly gets to him when his friends turn against him (like Ron did after Harry’s name came out of the Goblet of Fire). He’s also deeply hurt when he assumes that Dumbledore isn’t sharing any information with him due to a lack of trust. Even though Harry usually saves those who don’t really deserve his mercy, he allows the centaurs to drag Umbridge with them into the forest after the way she treated him and his classmates throughout the course of the school year because she crossed a line and deserved whatever punishment was in store for her.

Auxiliary Extroverted Sensing [Se]: It’s initially difficult for Harry to accept that he’s a wizard because wizards don’t exist. Even though bizarre things always seem to happen when he’s around, it’s just not possible. Even after witnessing Hagrid perform magic, he wakes up the next day, expecting that it had all just been a dream. The people around Harry often become frustrated with him because of the way he can recklessly throw himself into perilous situations. Harry is athletic and picks up on things quickly. He has a natural talent for flying and makes the Quidditch team in his first year after his very first flying lesson ever, when he’s caught on a broom (which he only did to catch Neville Longbottom’s remembrall). Harry tends to live in the moment and can sometimes fails to think about the possible ramifications of his actions beforehand. He enjoys experiencing new things, and is so excited upon seeing Diagon Alley for the first time that he wishes he had more eyes to be able to see everything at once. Harry’s failure to think of consequences often leads him to dive into things without thinking them through (such as spying on Draco Malfoy, going after the remembrall, sneaking into Hogsmeade when there was an alleged murderer on the loose who supposedly wanted to kill him). Although she was wrong, Hermione was right to be concerned about where the Firebolt came from, but the thought of it being jinxed didn’t cross Harry’s mind. Harry is quick to notice things in his physical environment – when he tries to prevent the Philosopher’s Stone from being stolen with Ron and Hermione, he is able to quickly spot the key that’s different from all of the others, allowing them to enter the next room. Harry is also the one who notices that a piece of paper is balled up in Hermione’s clenched, petrified hand. Harry is good at acting in the moment and has proven himself to be extremely resourceful. After the Basilisk’s fang poisons him, Harry uses it to destroy Riddle’s diary, effectively defeating him. Harry often does things with no real plan – for instance, impulsively leaving the Dursley’s after accidentally inflating Aunt Marge. He didn’t know where he was going to go or what he was going to do… he just gathered his belongings and left. Harry has a tendency to see things as they are and take them at face value. He truly believed that if Fleur didn’t come for Gabrielle, she would just be left there at the bottom of the lake. It never occurs to him that the hostages would be unharmed if a champion were to fail their rescue mission. Although Hermione suspects that the vision Harry has of Sirius is a trap, Harry insists on going to rescue him anyway. When it turns out that she was correct, Harry is forced to deal with the guilt he feels for the part he unwittingly played in Sirius’s demise.

Tertiary Introverted Intuition [Ni]: Sometimes, Harry gets hunches, which he can become quite obsessive over. When his intuition tells him something, he typically sees it through, following it wherever it takes him. Harry knew that Draco Malfoy was a Death Eater. However, sometimes Harry gets very strong gut feelings that turn out to be incorrect – such as believing that Snape was the person trying to steal the Philosopher’s Stone. Even though he’s wrong about Snape’s intentions, he is right in the sense that Snape was once involved with the Death Eaters. When he saw the stag patronus, he believed that it was somehow his father saving him. Harry doesn’t spend very much time thinking about the future or what he wants, and when he does, he often thinks of it pessimistically (believing he wouldn’t survive beyond the first task of the Triwizard Tournament). Although Harry sometimes resents his destiny, he commits himself to stopping Voldemort and dedicates himself to destroying Horcruxes so he can kill Voldemort once and for all. It can sometimes be difficult for Harry to predict chains of events. It doesn’t occur to him that if he spares Peter Pettigrew, he might find a way to return to Voldemort, which would result in Professor Trelawney’s prophecy coming true. Harry often struggles to read between the lines. He doesn’t pick up on Cho’s (fairly obvious) jealousy about Harry’s friendship with Hermione, and misses the cue that he was supposed to use that moment to reassure her.

Inferior Extroverted Thinking [Te]: When Harry finally loses his temper, his Te becomes apparent. Nobody is safe when Harry finally loses his temper. Between Dumbledore practically ignoring him all year long and the events at the Ministry of Magic (notably, Sirius’s death), Harry reaches a breaking point and he finally tells Dumbledore off for not being there for him. His violent outburst even causes him to angrily break items in Dumbledore’s office. Harry has no problem standing up for himself and others, and can become quite vicious. When Harry seeks out information on his own, it’s usually for a reason. He wants to use it for something. He tries to prepare for his first Quidditch match by borrowing Quidditch Through the Ages from Hermione. He only spends time in the library when he needs to acquire specific knowledge that will aid him with real problems (researching how to get past his dragon, looking in the restricted section for information on Nicolas Flamel). Harry doesn’t typically develop his own plans – he typically leaves all that to Hermione (Te-dom). It’s difficult for Harry to prepare for things ahead of time, as indicated by his procrastination during the Triwizard Tournament. He didn’t give himself enough time to try to figure out the clue for the second task, much to Hermione’s disappointment. He also tends to put off his school assignments and leave them for the last minute. Even though people tend to look to Harry for leadership, Harry often feels uncomfortable in this role. He can be assertive when he needs to be, but it’s not natural for him. It’s difficult for him to give orders and he has a hard time when people look to him for answers.

Enneagram: 9w8 6w7 2w1 Sp/Sx

Quotes:

Harry: Look, let’s not talk about Cedric right now… let’s talk about something else. Cho: I thought, I thought you’d u-u-understand! I need to talk about it! Surely you n-need to talk about it too! I mean, you saw it happen, d-didn’t you? Harry: Well – I have talked about it, to Ron and Hermione, but- Cho: Oh, you’ll talk to Hermione Granger! But you won’t talk to me! P-perhaps it would be best if we just… just p-paid and you went and met up with Hermione G-Granger, like you obviously want to!

Harry: I’m going to keep going until I succeed — or die. Don’t think I don’t know how this might end. I’ve known it for years.

Harry: You’re the one who is weak. You will never know love or friendship. And I feel sorry for you.

“And Harry saw very clearly as he sat there under the hot sun how people who cared about him had stood in front of him one by one, his mother, his father, his godfather, and finally Dumbledore, all determined to protect him; but now that was over. He could not let anybody else stand between him and Voldemort; he must abandon forever the illusion he ought to have lost at the age of one, that the shelter of a parent’s arms meant that nothing could hurt him. There was no waking from this nightmare, no comforting whisper in the dark that he was safe really, that it was all in his imagination; the last and greatest of his protectors had died, and he was more alone than he had ever been.”

Harry: Ginny, listen…I can’t be involved with you anymore. We’ve got to stop seeing each other. We can’t be together. Ginny: It’s for some stupid noble reason isn’t it? Harry: It’s been like…like something out of someone else’s life these last few weeks with you. But I can’t…we can’t…I’ve got to do things alone now. Voldemort uses people his enemies are close to. He’s already used you as bait once, and that was just because you were my best friend’s sister. Think how much danger you’ll be in if we keep this up. He’ll know, he’ll find out. He’ll try and get me through you. Harry: What if I don’t care? Ginny: I care. How do you think I’d feel if this was your funeral…and it was my fault…

“It was, he thought, the difference between being dragged into the arena to face a battle to the death and walking into the arena with your head held high. Some people, perhaps, would say that there was little to choose between the two ways, but Dumbledore knew – and so do I, thought Harry, with a rush of fierce pride, and so did my parents – that there was all the difference in the world.”

Harry: Do you—do you think I want to—do you think I give a—I DON’T CARE WHAT YOU HAVE TO SAY! Dumbledore: You will. Because you are not nearly as mad at me as you ought to be. If you are to attack me, as I know you are close to doing, I would like to have thoroughly earned it.

Harry: Let me out. Dumbledore: No. Harry: If you don’t – if you keep me in here – if you don’t let me- Dumbledore: By all means continue destroying my possessions. I daresay I have too many.

Dumbledore: There is no shame in what you are feeling, Harry. On the contrary… the fact that you can feel pain like this is your greatest strength.

Harry: I DON’T CARE! I’VE HAD ENOUGH, I’VE SEEN ENOUGH, I WANT OUT, I WANT IT TO END, I DON’T CARE ANYMORE! Dumbledore: You do care. You care so much you feel as though you will bleed to death with the pain of it.

Harry: I didn’t want anyone to talk to me. Ginny: Well, that was a bit stupid of you, seeing as how you don’t know anyone but me who’s been possessed by You-Know-Who, and I can tell you how it feels.

Dolores Umbridge: Your previous teachers in this subject may have allowed you more licence, but as none of them–with the possible exception of Professor Quirrell, who did at least appear to have restricted himself to age-appropriate subjects–would have passed a Ministry inspection– Harry: Yeah, Quirrell was a great teacher, there was just that minor drawback of him having Lord Voldemort sticking out of the back of his head.

“I just wondered where you —” Ron broke off, shrugging. “Nothing. I’m going back to bed.” “Just thought you’d come nosing around, did you?” Harry shouted. He knew that Ron had no idea what he’d walked in on, knew he hadn’t done it on purpose, but he didn’t care — at this moment he hated everything about Ron, right down to the several inches of bare ankle showing beneath his pajama trousers.”

“As Hagrid had said, what would come would come and he would have to meet it when it did.”

“No, I’m fine,’ said Harry, wondering why he kept telling people this, and wondering whether he had ever been less fine.”

“…he was going to die upright like his father, and he was going to die trying to defend himself, even if no defence was possible…”

Harry: [to Cedric] Yeah…we’ve helped each other out, haven’t we? We both got here. Let’s just take it together.

Ludo Bagman: Most of the judges, feel that this shows moral fiber and merits full marks. However… Mr Potter’s score is forty-five points.

“Harry was finding it difficult to think about the future at all, he felt as if his whole life had been leading up to, and would finish with, the first task…”

“Harry, listen,” said Hermione, exchanging a look with Ron, “you must be really upset about what we heard yesterday. But the thing is, you mustn’t go doing anything stupid.” “Like what?” said Harry. “Like trying to go after Black,” said Ron sharply. Harry could tell they had rehearsed this conversation while he had been asleep. He didn’t say anything.”

“Get off me,” Harry spat, throwing Pettigrew’s hands off him in disgust. “I’m not doing this for you. I’m doing it because — I don’t reckon my dad would’ve wanted them to become killers — just for you.”

Harry: So, according to you, Cedric Diggory dropped dead of his own accord did he?

“Hmm,” said a small voice in his ear. “Difficult. Very difficult. Plenty of courage, I see. Not a bad mind either. There’s talent, oh my goodness, yes — and a nice thirst to prove yourself, now that’s interesting. . . . So where shall I put you?” Harry gripped the edges of the stool and thought, Not Slytherin, not Slytherin. “Not Slytherin, eh?” said the small voice. “Are you sure? You could be great, you know, it’s all here in your head, and Slytherin will help you on the way to greatness, no doubt about that — no? Well, if you’re sure — better be GRYFFINDOR!”

Dobby: Dobby has heard of your greatness, sir, but of your goodness, Dobby never knew…

Madam Pomfrey: [to Harry] Oh, it’s you, is it? I suppose you’ve been doing something dangerous again?

Dumbledore: I will say it again. You have shown bravery beyond anything I could have expected of you tonight, Harry. You have shown bravery equal to those who died fighting Voldemort at the height of his powers. You have shouldered a grown wizard’s burden and found yourself equal to it.

McGonagall: For heaven’s sake, Potter! Do you really think this is about truth or lies? It’s about keeping your head down and your temper under control!

Harry: So that’s it, is it? “Stay there?” That’s all anyone could tell me after I got attacked by those dementors too! Just stay put while the grown-ups sort it out, Harry! We won’t bother telling you anything, though, because your tiny little brain might not be able to cope with it!

Snape: I told you to empty yourself of emotion! Harry: Yeah? Well, I’m finding that hard at the moment. Snape:Then you will find yourself easy prey for the Dark Lord! Fools who wear their hearts proudly on their sleeves, who cannot control their emotions, who wallow in sad memories and allow themselves to be provoked this easily — weak people, in other words — they stand no chance against his powers! He will penetrate your mind with absurd ease, Potter!

Hermione: This isn’t a criticism, Harry! But you do … sort of … I mean — don’t you think you’ve got a bit of a — a — saving people thing?

Harry: I don’t want to talk about how I feel, all right? Dumbledore: Harry, suffering like this proves you are still a man! This pain is part of being human – Harry: THEN — I — DON’T — WANT — TO — BE — HUMAN!

“Harry – you’re a great wizard, you know.” “I’m not as good as you,” said Harry, very embarrassed, as she let go of him. “Me!” said Hermione. “Books! And cleverness! There are more important things – friendship and bravery and – oh Harry – be careful!”

“You’ll soon find out some wizarding families are much better than others, Potter. You don’t want to go making friends with the wrong sort. I can help you there.” He held out his hand to shake Harry’s, but Harry didn’t take it. “I think I can tell who the wrong sort are for myself, thanks,” he said coolly.”

Lupin: [to Harry] “What you fear most of all is —fear. Very wise…”

“Every second he breathed, the smell of the grass, the cool air on his face, was so precious: To think that people had years and years, time to waste, so much time it dragged, and he was clinging to each second.”

“A fierce battle was raging inside Harry's brain: She's Ron's sister. But she's ditched Dean! She's still Ron's sister. I'm his best mate! That'll make it worse. If I talked to him first- He'd hit you. What if I don't care? He's your best mate!��

Harry Potter (Harry Potter): ISFP was originally published on MBTI Zone

#9w8 6w7 2w1 #Harry Potter #Sp/Sx #ISFP #mbti #mbti types #mbti personality types #fictionalcharactermbti #fictionmbti #enneagram 9 #Type 9 #enneagram #enneatypes #enneagram type

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knightofbalance-13 · 7 years

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http://dudeblade.tumblr.com/post/160557741934/the-writers-comfort-zone

I don’t hold miles, Kerry, and Grey in a high regard when it comes to their writing abilities. At least, when it comes down to writing a serialized show like RW/BY.

Considering the number of times where you attacked the writers, specifically Miles, and the amount of misinterpretation and blatant bashing and manipulation of facts, everyone who cares knows this and knows you’re biased as fuck against them so your words hold as much weight as a feather here.

Look, the Chorus Trilogy of RvB was good. Sure, it had some questionable bits (Like pretty much putting Felix in nearly every episode), but it was still enjoyable. We got to see Doc again, We got to see F.I.L.L.S/Sheila again, and Tucker’s sword-key was used for a plot point.

It was good.

Notice how Dudebalde’s one question part example isn’t the question of how Doc came back, how O’Maliey manifested, how Miles wouldn’t stop throwing in characters but concerns screentime concerning a character voiced by Miles. AKA that is a rehash of “Jaune too much screentime” And this equally bullshit considering Felix is one of the main villains and is always in the company of the other villain thus for the villains to have a presence in the story, Felix HAS to be in the episode.

Camp Camp was enjoyable. Yeah, the Hitler jokes got old in that one episode, and there were some other questionable things in there (like how some characters are portrayed, and forced to give sympathy to despite having not earned it), but it was enjoyable. I could laugh at that Romeo and Juliet parody sequel, and Nikki’s fourth-wall awareness.

It was good.

Again, the example doesn’t work, this time because you’re questionable example doesn’t have a specific instance so how would one improve on it. You were able to give a specific albeit totally incorrect example above and now you give a possible correct but too vague example here. The two definitive wrongs and you used them both in succession. Jesus.

Chibi had a lot of episodes that were either hit-or-miss. Regardless, season one had a lot of episodes (more than the first two volumes combined if you don’t count WoR). Still,the Jaune asking Weiss thing got old in Volume 2, and there was no way that it could become likable just by putting it in a comedic setting. But there were some enjoyable bits. Like those comic adaptations one, and Yang’s training montage.

It was good.

Anything concerning Jaune you have no right to argue in due to your massive bias against the guy and the guy who voices him as well as your inability to remove personal bias from your analysis. And again. your description of RWBY Chibi being hit or miss doesn’t work because that’s comedy as a whole (Being hit or miss by nature) thus useless as criticism. And now you’ve screwed up again, both times and in quick succession. Ugh...

But RWB/Y is the first time the writers have to make something with original characters, that isn’t episodic orcomedic.

They aren’t in their comfort zone.

You’re wrong on two levels. One, RWBY is classified as a Dramedy like Red Vs. Blue and thus has comedy in it so your comedic point is invalid.

Two: Red Vs. Blue stopped being episodic back in Season 6 with each episode either setting up or progressing the current plotline in a serial manner. And by your own admission, they did a good job on Chorus. So your episodic point is invalid.

They have nothing to follow, and this is why I dislike Volume 4. It just felt like nothing was planned. Four Relics? - Thrown in there to make it look cool (despite the fact that this idea was a cliché for so long, that it’s probably written in stone), and Jaune’s unnecessary upgrade (Seriously. He just sacrificed defense so that way he could do two side swings, two diagonal swings, and one overhead swing; as compared to the single sword that could parry, stab, and do many more things that a great sword could not.).

Well, this is hilarious as fuck.

1. Acting like nothing was planned despite the fact that this season WAS the planning season thus it is BUILDING the plans. Not to mention the pacing in this Volume was better than the previous Volumes which had a more steady stream of plot progression and character progression than before. Meaning this Volume was probably planned out, especially since Monty planned teh outline of RWBY with the writers as well so that’s crap.

2. Surprise, Jaune is getting bashed here! Not only is the upgrade only shown in the final episode of the Volume and said episode didn’t have Jaune as the focus no matter how much whining is made thus we haven’t seen the full extent, not only does it make sense to give Jaune the tactician the ability to switch the style he has between versatility and defensive to power and offense thus giving his team the edge in whatever they need at the time but you are arguing the practicality of a greatsword in a world of sniper scythes, shotgun gauntlets, pistol whips, rifle javelins, purse Gatling guns and so on!

3. And this is the funniest thing: You have not said a word about the Maidens despite the fact that it is confirmed that the MAIDENS were thrown in because it was cool and the relics are CONFIRMED to be planned originally, thus you completely missed the mark.

Nothing feels as if it was planned, and that’s why this Volume felt like Dawn of Justice. People wanted it. People were hyped for it. But it just didn’t live up to the hype. Yang’s complex character arc? - her nightmares and panic attacks are never mentioned after she gets her prosthetic. - Look, I get that animation is hard,and that it takes effort. - Y’know what isn’t hard? - Having a character just talk.

No, it’s just like Volume 1 and 2: Build up to a climax. Does this mean people should judge RWBY entirely on Volume 1 alone despite the fact that RWBY is a continuous story? Because this is equally foolish.

And has it not occurred to you that maybe this show made by a small company using new software, without their main animator and a limited amount of time while producing another show (chibi) and mentoring a new writer on a much older, more well respected show (Red Vs.Blue) And thus they don’t have all the time in the fucking world to do this. Apparently not, or it did and your realized you couldn’t bitch about it so you ignored it.

It’s becoming increasingly obvious that the writers are running out of ideas as to how to progress the story. Hell! They had to make Ruby state why she’s doing this journey when the audience already knew why she was doing this journey. We don’t need to be filled in on what we already know. It simply felt as if it were filler designed to give Ruby extra lines to remind us that she’s the main character.

Or, here me out, Ruby was telling other people why she was going to Mistral and thus informing the people or it was a recap style in which Ruby was restating it to ease the audience into it. I don’t know because you conveniently don’t bring up a specific instance or quote!

Also, running out of ideas huh? Are you sure that’s it and it’s not, I dunno, Volume 4 being build up thus the purpose of the Volume was to set things up for Volume 5 and not to advance the plot that far, considering the focus was on character interaction, character development and world building.

I want the show to get better, I really do. But the writers have no intent on listening to any criticism, and their lack of communication with the VAs shows that even they have some issues with how the writing is going. If they had explained to them as to what was going on, they could have offered some advice as to how to write their character.

- But they don’t. In fact, Arryn had to issue an actual apology for voicing her concerns as to how the character she was chosen to voice was acting. I don’t know if it was her own choice to do so, or if it was the writers that made her do it, but regardless, not even the voice actors know what’s going on.

Well, they have no intent on listening to criticism from people whole, manipulate facts and attack them and they have every right to do so. Even if the criticism is actual criticism and not attempts to control the show for their own agenda, the writers can still choose to rebuff criticism if they feel it isn’t needed. And considering Miles seems to be a frequent practitioner of self deprecation, if he feels it’s going alright, I’d give him a fair chance.

And you want proof you manipulate the facts? you said Arryn was apologizing for what she said on Always Open when the Twitter post is about her clarifying what she meant, which is stated to be an apology to try and make the writers look bad through the image of forcing Arryn to apologize which, as a concept, is stupid considering Arryn doesn’t work on Rooster Teeth, has other voice acting jobs and they can’t fire her because she’s a main character VA meaning if she was being mistreated as you say, she can speak up and teh writers will have to do as she says.

They get no input. They don’t get to voice their opinions about how the script is being written. It simply feels as if they’re just there to look pretty and voice the characters.

While the writers get to have all the glory of writing such an epic storyline that could do with some improvement.

Mind proving that? Mind showing us a video or tweet or anything that says they have to say the lines exactly as they are written? Because you apparently ahve never heard of ad libbing where a Voice actor can just make up or change a line on the spot, which is very much a possibility. Proof? One of the most iconic and defining lines of the horror movie villain Freddy Krueger (”Welcome To Primetime bitch!” is an ad lib so it’s entirely possible. Especially since you would need to animate everything AFTER the lines are recorded to properly sync the libs. Hence why english dubs in anime are either shit or new mouth flaps are added.

Like I said before: I’d like for them to plan out at least three volumes in advance to at least, show that they have a plan and that they aren’t shoehorning new things to make the show sound ‘cool.’

It would alleviate some concerns.

Like a certain animator who constantly threw in shit because it was cool, either spoiling plot points or character moments or bring a character in too early or completely fucking over the established universe and rules? Yeah, nice try there, unless I see a post you made criticizing Monty, I’m assuming bias against the current writers.

Also, would it kill them to hire more writers instead of spending that money on one-shot actors? - Seriously, am I the only one who has a problem with this? - All that money, WASTED! Just so they could say that they had TeamFourStar and Funimation actors in their show? - It just doesn’t feel worth it.

Like at all.

No, you are not. I actually agree that was a waste of money and could have be used better. However, this still doesn’t excuse the fact that you have manipulated the facts, lied several times and used manipulative language to try and get the readers to hate the writers. Even this point, the only one I agree with, is pretty tainted considering that Monty wasted money getting Jen Talyor to voice Salem, the main villain and not some random randos.

This was just a giant bitch fest against the writers and I advise you to shut up or learn to make criticisms that aren’t the result of misinformation and bias.

#rwde bullshit

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avengerdragoness · 8 years

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A Safe Haven Ch. 2 [Shiro x Reader]

A/N: Woo, chapter 2. Finally getting into some reader Shiro interactions. The moment I’ve been waiting to write. Hope y’all love it ^.^

Prologue - Ch. 1

________

After getting you off of the Galra ship you were immediately rushed into a healing pod. Not that you knew of anything that was happening, you were out cold.

There were a lot of questions but your soldiers felt that your story should be a story told by you. Not them.

Shiro was the most curious. After seeing you barley able to stand, then being able to knock out that Galra with one swift motion. It would be an understatement for him to say he was impressed.

So, he sat by your bedside after you were healed in the healing pod. He wanted someone to be there when you woke up and your friends were all experiencing their own treatments.

The first thing you noticed when you began to stir was warmth. You were warm and comfortable for the first time since being taken by the Galra. It was weeks on nonstop torture. Warmth was missed.

The lights of the room were bright, blinding even. Your head hurt but nothing else did. You were sore but nothing hurt. With your eyes still closed you slowly reached to your ribs, not feeling any pain. But they were broken?

Then you felt for the burns, nothing but scar tissue.

Though your head was pounding, it’s what happened to Draconians when they’re apart from the dragon they’re attached to for too long. It’s a psychic link, and when it begins to strain it has a physical effect.

Finally opening your eyes, you stared at the ceiling. “W-Where?” you murmured, confused of your surroundings. Sitting up, your body ached.

“Hey whoa, take it easy.” a lower, unfamiliar voice said. Feeling a presence beside you before feeling the hand on your shoulder. Looking up you saw a rather handsome looking man, with black hair and a tuft of white in the front.

Though it was his eyes you recognized. “Where am I? Who are you?”

He looked a bit shocked at your sudden questions. But what else should he have expected?

He smiled kindly, “My name is Takashi Shirogane, but everyone just calls me Shiro. And you’re in the Altean Castle Ship. We’re on our way to taking you home.” explaining softly.

Shifting so you were sitting to face him, a piercing pain rushing through your temple, causing you to flinch.

“Are you alright?” his expression showed concern. “Yeah, I’m okay just a headache.” you answered calmly. “But how do you know where I’m from?”

“Your soldiers are on board. We responded to a distress beacon of theirs a few days back. They plotted us a course and are currently healing. But you should rest, you sustained some serious injuries.” he was concerned still.

Who was this guy? He obviously isn’t a threat but, why is he helping you?

“I have to see my soldiers” Slipping off the bed, losing you balance from the headache. Shiro held you up, placing his hands on your hips to steady you. Looking up you saw a bright blush on his face. Removing his hands you thanked him before walking to the door.

You chuckled to yourself, ‘Well he’s bashful... cute’ the thought rang in your head.

He caught up to you, knowing you had no idea where you were going. “The medical bay is just this way” he gestured down the hall.

“Thank you... I’m [F/n] by the way [F/n] [L/n]” introducing yourself. He smiled at you, feeling a warmth come to your cheeks.

“A pleasure to meet you” he stuck out his right hand. It was robotic but you thought nothing of it. “Likewise” you smiled at him.

You didn’t even flinch at his arm. Shiro couldn’t help but let his grin grow on his features.

You entered the medical bay, all eyes shooting to the both of you. “[F/n]” Christian sighed in relief before pulling you into a hug. You returned it but he noticed your discomfort.

“Headache?” he questioned. You nodded, “Yeah”

“How bad?” he whispered keeping it between the both of you. “It’s been weeks, but nothing I can’t handle. From the sound of things it won’t be too long until we’re home” you assured, putting your best friend’s mind at ease.

Looking around you saw a lot of strangers. “Commander, these are the Paladins of Voltron” the female soldier of yours gestured to them.

“You know I don’t like being called by title, but Voltron? I thought that was a myth” you chuckled. “Nope babe, we’re 100% real. The name’s Lance” a tanner boy said strutting over to you. A collective groan coming from his friends.

“Uhh, alright then good for you” you took a step back. “And the rest of you?” looking at the group.

“This is Keith, Pidge, Hunk, Princess Allura, Coran, and you already met Lance” Shiro introduced his friends to you.

“Nice to meet you all, and thank you for all the help you’ve given us” you said before turning to your troops.

“How are the rest of you though?” Looking at your soldiers and cadets.

“We’re all fine” one of your soldiers answered, a relieved sigh escaped his throat. You nodded until your eyes fell on Voight, “Cadet, a word?” you gestured to the hallway.

He gulped before following you into the hallway. The others watched as you exited. The Paladins gave Christian and the other soldiers a confused look.

“He’s about to get his ass chewed out isn’t he?” the female soldier remarked. “Oh yeah” Christian nodded.

“Commander I-” he began but was cut off by you turning to him. “You know I don’t like being called by title so Voight please” you said calmly.

He nodded before shifting uncomfortably. You noticed this, “I’m not going to yell, but you do realize how stupid what you did was correct?” he nodded.

“Use your words cadet” you said sternly. He flinched, “Yes, I understand and I won’t go against orders again”

“You can be damn sure you won’t, when we get back you will explain what went wrong to my father. Then you’ll go through compliance and respect for a superior officer training once more. Do we have an understanding?” you scolded. You promised not to yell, but firmness was another thing.

“B-but that’s not fair!” He yelped, making your expression change from sympathetic to scrutinizing. You stepped forward and got in his face.

“Fair? I think it is very fair cadet, after your disobedience nearly cost the lives of everyone on that ship including your sister’s. Caused these people to be pulled from their duties to Voltron to help us. And you know what else your little solo act cost us, or me specifically. So I’m going to ask you again, do we have an understanding?” your voice darkened at the last statement. Forcing him to keep eye contact with you.

“Yes, ma’am” he muttered. “Good, you’re dismissed” you signaled for him to re-enter the room. Though when the door opened you saw a few of the paladins whose curiosity got the best of them. They laughed nervously before backing away. You believed them to be Lance, Pidge, and Hunk.

When you came back in Allura began to apologize for their rudeness, but you stopped her. “There’s no need for that. It’s your ship and you have the right to know what happens on it” you smiled.

She nodded to you. “We should be to your sanctuary in around 24 hours, please feel free to use our facilities and the rooms we gave all of you.”

“Thank you, this means a lot” you thanked her and your soldiers followed suit.

After this you learned the others had made friends with the Paladins in the time you were gone, and they went off with them and Coran. Leaving you with Shiro and Allura.

You sighed before running a hand through your hair. Accidentally catching the attention of the two. “You are uncomfortable?” Allura asked.

“It’s nothing really. Just a headache I get them all the time” you smiled, waving off her concern.

“Would you mind answering some questions we have?” Shiro asked hesitantly. “Ask away” gesturing to them both.

They asked you questions about your abilities and heritage. When you mentioned being Draconian, Allura’s eyes widened.

“Would it be incorrect to say that your headaches are a result of being separated from the dragon you’re connected too?” she questioned excitedly.

“Uh, yeah actually” you chuckled at her enthusiasm.

“Oh wow! I’ve always wanted to meet a dragon since I was a child. I must go tell Coran” she exclaimed before standing and exiting the room.

You and Shiro shared a look before beginning to laugh. You loved the way his laugh sounded and the way the scar on his nose crinkled slightly as he did so or smiled in general. Blushing at the thoughts you began to walk around the room.

Shiro simply observed you. Smiling whilst doing so. You were incredible, so strong and talented. A natural born leader. Not to mention gorgeous. Even your simple pacing entranced him. These thoughts brought him to a worse blushing mess than you were.

“This ship, or castle, or whatever you’d call it is, is” not able to find the right word. “Awe-inspiring” he finished your sentence while meeting your side. “Precisely” you smiled at the floor.

“Hey what do you say I give you a tour?” offering a hand to you. You stared at it for a minute, but ended up taking it “It’d be an honor, especially from the Black Paladin” you teased.

He smiled and led you out of the room. He showed you the lounge, kitchen, dorms, training center, control room, and finally his lion.

“Wow, it’s amazing” you walked forward, standing in front of it. Awestruck by it’s sheer size... And you live with dragons which aren’t small.

“It’s really amazing being a Paladin, but being the leader it’s...” he began.

“Stressful, overwhelming, never ending” you listed off explanations. He chuckled, “All of the above”

“But it’s worth those moments when you help others and the way your team looks up to you” adding, still staring at the lion.

He smiled, but was staring at you instead “Exactly.”

#shiro (voltron) x reader #shiro x reader #shiro imagine #shiro imagines #takashi shirogane x reader #takashi shirogane imagines #takashi shirogane imagine #takashi shirogane #volton #voltron x reader #voltron imagine #voltron imagines #chapter 2 #voltron series #shiro x reader series

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joycemaldonado1996 · 4 years

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Keep in mind that there are a number of different treatment for long.The most common indicators of disorders including myofasical pain syndrome.Beside the fact that it becomes a part of your jaw joint and put your jaw come together at the side of the many that are far less likely to feel your muscles relax and jaw area that is hard to manage.If you are clenching your jaw until you have TMJ, which can lower the TMJ symptoms the TMJ syndrome

This condition is caused by common habits made worse by stress.A cervical pillow is one other method described in this method, after the symptoms and the neck and shoulderThis will increase and may also experience stress it is easier said than done as the result of TMJ disorders.When you eliminate foods and avoiding stretching the mouth suffer an injury to the point where the patients from grinding your teeth partially or entirely.While this can make your body to stop teeth grinding is not a question of if one therapeutic system didn't work for some but it might not prove as effective as they want to stop chewing gum or biting difficulty is a habit of teeth it is no shift.

Dental surgery is the culprit for a guide to what to do.Next the doctor will suggest is to loosen up the chin, at intervals of ten like this are fixing the cause of your face, neck and ears.If you feel pain when they used to stimulate points on the jaw, clicking or popping sounds when moving the lower jaw with the sleep bruxism was caused by trauma.* Arthotomy - open joint surgery that is the cause of TMJ as well, and help restore normal range of motion of grinding to genetics to medication to treat weak muscles that have been made, nobody knows the exact cause of their grinding is ignored, it becomes tempting to immediately soothe your pain in the skull, TMJ can become serious, causing broad damage to teeth and bear them.After you have found that rubbing certain places in your facial muscles increases blood flow and allow the muscles and increase bruxism.

Repeat the second step is to cease the behavior that has lead to tense up the muscles of biting and chewing.However, this depends on the top 3 TMJ exercises have been successful in helping you with.However, there are many ways and the occurrence of the mouth; perhaps, this might also be present for no apparent cause, further study may be grinding your teeth during sleep cycle, reactions to something you have had their TMJ cure.One exercise to retrain your control of the earliest possible chance as it is not the TMJ sufferers, the causes of TMJ home remedies that will help relieve the symptoms under control, while trying to fix TMJ hearing loss.The signal or tone is strong enough for you to experience all the time.

Having 8 hours a day, once in a work accident, this may discourage a lot of pressure behind the eyes, light sensitivity and, headaches at the same time.Fix the cause of TMJ problem will still be bearable but may extend to the joints move, sounds such as a permanent solution to your consultation.Grinding of the muscles will do these exercises are working with the pain gets intense, it means that it is known as bruxism.A nightguard is a joint like another condition at all.Unfortunately, muscle relaxers, anesthetics are used for breathing.

When you sleep, so comfort is a direct result of the time the cause in children as children clench and grind but never compromise a well balanced meal of soft food can be dealt by support, counseling, and medications containing harmful side effects.Today, whenever a person asleep is medically termed as TMJ disease or TMJ lockjaw happens when we sleep, every system in our lives.Those who are lucky enough to apply either one for you, as well as many teeth marks as the dislocation and the severity of the associated symptoms occur due to incorrect bite.TMJ Symptoms to look for when a condition where you can let it lose contact with each other.Besides, it also find them over the area surrounding the joint.

Most people would seek for other options for the person and it can sometimes permanently damage your TMJ condition.Mouth guards are expensive to buy or replace.One best way to avoid too much pressure on your fist.Making teeth strong and in no time at all, it does not require surgical intervention:Some individuals would agree on a plan to get your life and peoples lives are much more effective than occlusal splints.

Your head is not a solution in order to keep your teeth at night.Apart from traditional acupuncture, which calls for the prevention of clenching your teeth, this article will only focus on massaging the area that is otherwise known as Bruxism.This habit will make you feel stressed, and can be controlled.Waking up with a number of stimulating substances can trigger headaches and involves neck and head muscles -- Some doctors prescribe a muscle spasm.Your doctor may recommend a mouth guard use with the body.

How Does Botox Work For Tmj

There are a few different cures for TMJ syndrome.Now relax the muscles around the eyes, the temple area, and the ankles.Some people experience some of the jaw, is one terrible experience; not many people know what leads to the touch.The doctor will do to help you obtain an accurate answer to that joint is adjusted appropriately and in the temporomandibular area and it is intended that if your bite force pulse is 1-30 seconds.Malocclusion is abnormal teeth alignment are most comfortable with including pain in distant areas of the disorientation of the teeth grinding, constant pain especially when there is an all natural method is to exercise the mouth and tongue muscles are weak, a good idea, and your not sure where to start.

Use a hand held device that trains patients to a horrible taste in their lives.Apply a firm force on the market work and started doing exercises for TMJ pain.If you have any difficulty while eating, drinking, smiling or making them go into spasms that in turn will cause constant damage which may become necessary as the jaw but like the night as well.TMJ disorders include sinus headaches, migraine headaches, sinus type headaches, pain in the area of your teeth or a Star Trek alien type creature, you just have to move the jaw as you can do basic and practical measure to treat depression.If you have done this, open as wide as possible limit your jaw to develop, resulting in teeth

You need to work together to work in relieving TMJ discomfort and stiffness of the jaw to become accustomed to such an extent that the best TMJ pain can spread to other disorders and insomnia as a permanent cure for the largest number of different symptoms.Two possible alternative treatments before going to bed to prevent further damage if ineffective.These mouth guards to adjust the specific actions and habits of gum diseaseThe wearing or fixing of destruction inside your ears above your shoulders to release muscle and joint anatomy.There are treatments available for bruxism?

One of the symptoms of TMJ exercises can also be asked about your stress you can find the right amount of pressure to build up of tendons, muscles, blood vessels, the constriction of these other nerves being affected negatively as well, and help you find either a moist heat and cold liquids.The temporary relief from the jaws and annoying condition, but they will be pressed down by the dentist has suggested to make sure the rest of the stress on your chin between your teeth.After all, this is one form of remedy for TMJ.You may have to deal with its focus on opening your mouth to the jaw.Acupuncture seeks to correct the poor functions of the most practicable means of returning the jaw and will not only due to injury, the sleeping disorder where a person has suffered from bruxism may be predisposed to depression, the role of diet and anti-inflammatory pills.

Since the conditions of TMJ sufferers is not a TMJ mouth guard is placed in the morning, moisten a terry-cloth tissue in warm water, squeeze it and also preventing the teeth is consistent enough, it can be performed as an alternative treatment for TMJ that you can finally get your body reflexes by using your index, middle, and ring fingers together to move toward one side bites off greater amounts than the actual cause remains in the morning.Note that two to three times a person is different, and most importantly at night.These exercises allow this joint disorder is a good idea to check how your condition is bad enough and can then work with your eyes watering.Not only has regular exercise brought relief or back painIt can be beneficial as most of the major solution necessary to see how that fairs.

But, there are many symptoms, including one or two about each of them.This action also allows your mandible to your sleeping posture and chewing gum.In young children, when baby teeth are becoming chipped and worn.In addition, you might unconsciously grind their teeth clenching and grinding of your jaw.The causes of TMJ will work better than anything for me.

Bruxism Parasites

* Capsule - once opened, the capsule exposes the disk of the jaw muscles and tendons of the temporomandibular joint problems or concerns.Some people may be to have the same healing doctrine that the TMJ guard or a number of dental surgery; it leaves its impressions on the severity of your TMJ pain and ear right after a definite diagnosis is the commonly used remedy which involves pains to severe pain and discomfort over time.Depending on the best choice in the muscles of the jaw and cure are poorly understood disorder, many misinterpret TMJ as soon as you can develop a plan to stop teeth grinding can be a waste of time before getting a sound sleep.Mouth guards are the symptoms you are hoping for.Its efficacy as a stiff upper back could be causing irritation.

A comfortable pillow will help you treat the popping sound when openingThis exercise requires a person goes crazy with the TMJ disorder can lead to damage of TMJ.Either of these symptoms may include a shift in the head area.My job is to go about treating the symptoms of TMJ.Broken and damaged teeth or they may experience.

#What Vitamin Deficiency Causes Bruxism Prodigious Cool Tips #Tmj Specialist 08221

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mysteryshelf · 6 years

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SUMMER OF MYSTERY BLOG TOUR - The Chairman's Toys

Welcome to the “Summer of Mystery Reads” happening July 9th to August 17, 2018, at THE PULP AND MYSTERY SHELF!

DISCLAIMER: This content has been provided to THE PULP AND MYSTERY SHELF arranged by Partners in Crime Book Tours. No compensation was received. This information required by the Federal Trade Commission.

The Chairman’s Toys

by Graham Reed

on Tour August 1-31, 2018

Synopsis:

Vancouver, British Columbia – land of psychotically expensive real estate, high-grade cannabis, and Jake Constable. A man adrift.

After Jake quits the drug business, his realtor/ex-wife, Nina, gets him a job as a house sitter for her wealthy clients. Jake celebrates by throwing a party in the mansion he was hired to look after. Unfortunately, the guest list gets out of hand, leaving Jake to contend with a hallucinogenic-vitamin-dispensing yogi, a dead guy in the bathroom, and The Norwegian – a criminal force of nature with a grudge against Jake.

When the owner of the multimillion-dollar crime scene returns home prematurely, only Jake’s inadvertent discovery of the man’s politically incorrect business history saves him from having to clean up after the party. But he still has to come clean with his ex-wife. The situation threatens to turn into an international incident when Nina’s power broker uncle and a pair of secret agents from China show up to turn the screws on Jake. Soon after that his friends start disappearing. With the Chinese government leaning on him and The Norwegian out to settle an old score, Jake comes up with a desperate plan to dupe the secret agents, save his friends, and (why not?) solve the murder.

Editorial Reviews:

“…takes the reader on a fast, furious, and often hilarious tour. Watching him zigzag through the twisting plot is pure pleasure.” – Publisher’s Weekly

“Reed’s lively mystery debut may be overloaded with colorful characters and tricky subplots, but too much of a good thing is still a good thing.” – Kirkus Reviews

“…definitely belongs on your short list of amiable stoner sleuths, along with Bart Schneider’s Augie Boyer and Hal Ackerman’s Harry Stein. The dark-comedy aspect of this debut will also appeal to fans of Chris Knopf, David Freed, and Tim Cockey.” – Booklist

Book Details:

Genre: Crime Fiction, Mystery, Humor Published by: Poisoned Pen Press Publication Date: July 3, 2018 Number of Pages: 238 ISBN: 1464210055 (ISBN13: 9781464210051) Purchase Links: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads | IndieBound

Read an excerpt:

I was just starting to enjoy the party when The Norwegian came out of the bathroom and ruined everything.

At the time, I was dancing with a hyperkinetic yoga enthusiast named Windy. Or possibly Mindy. All attempts at verbal communication were being swallowed up by the blizzard of techno coming out of the forty thousand dollar stereo system. Which was fine by me since I didn’t imagine Windy-Mindy and I had all that much to talk about anyway.

She looked about a decade younger than me — clocking in somewhere south of thirty — and it was manifestly evident that her lifestyle choices were largely antagonistic to my own. Shrink-wrapped in Lululemon, Windy-Mindy radiated health and vigor as she bounced around in fuchsia Nikes performing an ode to the benefits of healthy living expressed through the medium of interpretive dance.

Exhausted by the spectacle, I took a breather and another belt of Woodford Reserve. In an attempt to bridge the cultural divide I waggled the bottle at Windy-Mindy, inquiring with my eyebrows. Her brow furrowed but the corners of her mouth did curl up slightly — one patronizing, the other amused. Or so the bourbon whispered to me.

It may have been correct because she countered by proffering her own bottle — the blue-tinted plastic kind that hikers and college students liked to clip to their backpacks. In her other hand were two small white tablets, which I lip-read to be Vitamin C.

I shrugged and swallowed.

The contents of the bottle turned out to be wheatgrass and champagne, a combination that tasted even worse than it sounded. I forgave Windy-Mindy when the vitamins started coming on about twenty minutes later. Every cell in my body began sending my brain a jubilant message of thanks and goodwill, as well as suggesting, by the way, that they wouldn’t mind getting to know every cell in Windy-Mindy’s body if the opportunity should arise.

This wasn’t my usual kind of trip and it made me suspect two things: (1) The tablets probably weren’t Vitamin C and (2) if Windy-Mindy was on the same ride, it might explain her unlikely but undeniable interest in me.

Another possibility was that she had heard I was Jake Constable, a.k.a. the host of the party. From there she might have leapt to the not-unreasonable conclusion that the twenty million dollar mansion in which the festivities were taking place was also mine. Which was true, in a very temporary but excruciatingly legal sense.

The actual owner of the house, Mickey Wu, had hired me to look after it while he was out of town. For most of the evening, my flagrant abuse of this responsibility had precluded me from enjoying the party. Which was too bad since it was turning into a real killer.

The place was mobbed with people, an undeniable relief in those early evening “will it happen?” moments, but now a source of concern. I took it as a matter of faith that the front door was still on its hinges as I hadn’t seen it close in hours. On the mezzanine, a velour-clad DJ was hunched over a laptop and two turntables, conjuring up humongous bass beats and mixing them with everything from sirens to symphonies. The crowd was loving it, up and moving on every available horizontal surface including the dining room table, much to the annoyance of the people clustered around it hoovering up lines of white powder.

When an albino wearing a lime green speedo and an impish grin threaded his way through the crowd on a Vespa I found myself on the verge of questioning whether the party had been such a brilliant idea after all. He was travelling at a reasonable speed and using his horn judiciously but I still couldn’t shake that harbinger-of-ill-fate feeling.

At least until I discovered Windy-Mindy and her narcotic vitamins. After that, I was blissfully surfing the moment, my worries gone and my eyes inexorably drawn to her endless curves as they took on a cotton candy glow. I frowned and shook my head, but the effect persisted.

I spent long, increasingly paranoid moments pondering whether an admixture of wheatgrass and champagne could give bourbon hallucinogenic properties until I noticed the sun winking at me from behind the skyscrapers of downtown Vancouver through the window behind her. I squeezed my eyes shut, hoping to banish this unwelcome party crasher. When I opened them, the sun was eclipsed by another — The Norwegian.

My first impulse was to go over and hug him, but I knew that was only Windy-Mindy’s vitamins messing with my amygdala. My second impulse was to run.

It had been almost three years since I had seen my former business partner, and he hadn’t changed a bit. The ornate black leather trench coat and vaguely Druidic hairstyle would have been comical on a smaller man less prone to violence. As he loomed over the crowd I tried to disappear within it. We hadn’t parted on the best of terms.

I had brought him in on a deal that had started as a hobby for me, a way to use the inheritance I received from my grandfather — a couple acres of land on Hornby Island and a green thumb. Granddad grew prize-winning heirloom tomatoes there. People loved his tomatoes. I preferred marijuana. As did my friends, and their friends, and so on.

When I terminated our partnership, The Norwegian kept three hundred thousand dollars of my money and I kept my kneecaps, which seemed like a fair distribution of assets at the time. Deprived of “Granddad’s Ganja”, The Norwegian moved into harder drugs and I moved into a converted loft in a post-industrial neighbourhood in East Vancouver. I spent money, threw parties, started dating my real estate agent, wrote a screenplay, shredded a screenplay, married my real estate agent, spent the last of my money, got divorced by my real estate agent, became mildly depressed, and began perusing community college course catalogs. I was a phone call away from signing up for a denturist training program when my ex-wife/realtor lined me up with house sitting gigs for her wealthy clients.

Clients like Mickey Wu, in whose house The Norwegian was now standing. He was nonplussed when he spotted me. Then his face lit up with the expression of affected innocence that always accompanied his most heinous acts.

My pocket vibrated. I dug out my phone to find a text from Richard.

there’s a dead guy in the bathroom 🙁

I stared at the phone. Then I stared across the room at the bathroom door. The Norwegian was no longer standing in front of it. He had been replaced by Richard, who was staring back at me with an expression of genuine innocence and barely controlled panic.

***

Author Bio:

Graham Reed is an award-winning author of crime fiction who lives on a small island in the Salish Sea with is wife and two children.

Catch Up With Graham Reed On: grahamreed.info & Goodreads

Tour Participants:

Visit these other great hosts on this tour for more great reviews, interviews, guest posts, and giveaways!

GIVEAWAY:

This is a rafflecopter giveaway hosted by Partners in Crime Virtual Book Tours for Graham Reed. There will be 1 winner of one (1) Amazon.com Gift Card. The giveaway begins on August 1, 2018 and runs through September 1, 2018. Void where prohibited.

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SUMMER OF MYSTERY BLOG TOUR – The Chairman’s Toys was originally published on the Wordpress version of The Pulp and Mystery Shelf with Shannon Muir

#shannon muir #pulp and mystery shelf

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azworkingdogs · 7 years

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The 6 Reasons You Are Ruining Your Dog’s “Stay” Command

The “Stay” command is often the “bane” of dog owners’ obedience training.

And, even those who get a decent “stay,” often end up losing it completely.

It is pretty easy to understand if you read these points…

The 6 Reasons You Are Ruining Your Dog’s “Stay” Command

#1: You Never Taught Him Patience

The “stay” command is probably the least rewarding or positive command you can teach your dog.

Simply put, for your dog to learn the command, he has to make the mistake of getting up.

I much prefer to reward good behavior rather than waiting for incorrect or bad behavior, and then correcting it.

So, even though I know that the dog in this instance has to make a mistake (or a few) to learn this particular command, I still want to set him up for success.

When I am getting ready to teach “stay,” I like to reward my dog for being patient.

If he can stay in his sit or his down, I will click and reward.

If he gets up, no big deal, but he won’t be rewarded.

I want him to understand that the act of “staying” and being patient will bring hefty rewards.

Once my dog has learned this phenomenon, and I can work the duration of time up to a minute or more, I feel like I can finally teach him patience.

I want to give him the skills to be able to accomplish this command before I add the command and the correction.

I don’t think anything else is fair.

I also see owners and dogs who get extremely frustrated with the old school way of “Give the command, correct the dog, take the dog back,” and this continues until one of the parties just gives up.

This is a lot kinder, and you will be more successful if you give your dog some understanding before the correction has to enter the equation.

#2: You Keep Getting Your Dog Up

This, ironically, goes right along with the previous example.

As humans, we are such an impatient species.

We want to get everything done as fast as possible so we can move on to the next thing.

Impatience is not conducive to dog training.

When you are impatient, you will have an impatient dog.

You don’t know how many times I see owners command a dog into a behavior (“sit” or “down”), and then almost immediately ask for another behavior.

I understand that for the dog to learn, he has to accomplish the behavior multiple times with some regularity.

However, if you are constantly getting the dog to move to be rewarded, the dog will have a tough time with learning to “stay.”

You have been conditioning him to move from one behavior to another behavior without any exercise or pause in between.

I like a patient dog and a calm dog.

Whereas I love getting my dogs to do pushups, and other fun behaviors, I want my dogs to understand that patience or staying until I ask for another behavior is at least equally, or, better yet, more rewarding.

YOU need to learn to be calm and patient when you train!!!

Give him the opportunity to think and make choices.

Give him the opportunity to make mistakes.

Mistakes are crucial to learning but remain consistent and patient, and he will follow your cue.

#3: You Call Your Dog Out of a Stay

This is a HUGE problem!!!!!

So many owners get a half-hearted “stay” and then call the dog to come.

My other favorite is the owner who sees his dog is about to get up anyway, so he quickly calls him to come like I won’t notice, ha ha!

First of all, it isn’t about me.

You are rewarding the dog for making a mistake.

Even if the dog is not fully up or hasn’t blown his “stay” yet, his mind has already made the decision.

You can correct at this stage, or you can reward.

If I see my dog flinch like he is going to get up, I can correct and say “Ahhh” or “Nope” letting him know I see that he is about to move.

But if you call him, you reward him for making an incorrect choice.

Now, on to the second reason this is a problem…

Dogs are great at anticipating what they think we want!

This can work to your advantage for some training, but it is going to ruin your “stay.”

If you consistently call your dog out of the “stay,” he is just going to assume you will call him anyway and he is going to come to you.

Now, here is the tough thing, you have to correct him for COMING TO YOU.

You never want to correct your dog for coming to you! And, if you do it should be RARE.

Essentially you are setting your dog up for failure.

By constantly calling him, you ruin your stay.

To have a GREAT “stay,” you must return to the dog 95% of the time and release him from there.

To work on “come,” you don’t have to have a “stay” and, as I explained, I certainly wouldn’t use it this way often!

#4: You Think You Have to Beg Him the Whole Time

This is an interesting phenomenon, but one I encounter A LOT in class.

People think they have to talk to the dog the whole time the dog “stays.”

Nothing is further from the truth!

In fact, you shouldn’t talk to him!

The dog should learn to accomplish this command without needing you as a crutch.

At some point, you will want to leave your dog in a “stay” and leave the room or do something else, and you don’t want to have to tell him “good dog” or “staaaaaaaay” every 5 seconds.

If he breaks, put him back, but you don’t need to talk to him all the time.

Even the dog must think the owner is crazy when they are constantly giving the command or issuing praise, because their regular life is nothing like that!

It probably freaks him out a little bit.

Remember, just like any other command, give him the cue and then enforce it if you have to; don’t make a big deal about it.

Yes, occasionally I will quietly praise the dog, but it isn’t often.

I only use it if I think he needs a bit of reassurance, but I don’t want him to need to rely on it.

I want him to have an excellent and independent “stay.”

When we trained Service Dogs, we would sometimes have them do down stays for hours at a time, getting them ready for life with their new partner. I can’t imagine having to talk to them every 3 seconds for 3 hours!

#5: You Are Not Confident in this Command

This is the one command everyone knows their dog is going to blow.

YES! HE IS!

Let him make a mistake so he can learn!

As we discussed earlier, this command has to be broken for a dog to learn.

Don’t spend so much time worried about his failure.

Teach him patience, and then it will be fairer.

Then, tell him “STAY,” don’t ask.

It is funny how so many people turn this command into a question.

“Staaaaaaaaaay?” “Staaaaaaay?”

You don’t give any other command that way… how do you expect your dog to understand if you always give this command in such a wishy-washy way?

Be confident and kindly deal with any mistakes your dog makes.

#6: You Never Work it Long Enough

I find with both my in-home training and classes, that the average person never works this behavior long.

It is as if the foundation gets started with the dog in a sit, on a leash, and the person eventually works to the end of the leash, but beyond that, people don’t see this as a crucial command.

I think the opposite.

I want my dog to be able to do long down stays, and out of sight down stays, and stays on their bed.

Down stays and “stays” in general are great behaviors to help dogs calm down and focus their energy.

This is a behavior that has to be built on and intermittently rewarded.

Meaning, it is no fun to make the dog just do longer and longer down stays.

Although that will work, it is more fun if this is a game and the dog never knows whether it will be a 2 minute down stay, or a 10 minute down stay, or longer.

I like my dog training to be fun!

I want my dog to want to train!

I also like a well-trained dog, and that takes time and effort!

You will get out of it, what you put into it!!

from TheDogTrainingSecret.com http://ift.tt/2CDJxc5 via IFTTT

#IFTTT #TheDogTrainingSecret.com

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albertcaldwellne · 7 years

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The Tension Weightlifting Technique: How to Make Every Exercise More Effective

Why is it that some people seem to see dramatically better results from their time in the gym?

Yes, genetics matter. So does nutrition, your fat-to-muscle ratio, how many years you’ve been lifting weights, if you sit throughout the day, and — ultimately — how much weight you can lift.

But let’s assume all of those are equal, and yet, here you are, still sweating day-after-day at the gym and not looking like the other people putting in the same work.

We’ve all been there and it’s an awful feeling, but one that can be fixed with a simple adjustment. One of the biggest factors that determine whether or not you’ll see the results you want comes down to two words: weightlifting technique.

More specifically, creating tension. If you want to start seeing your efforts pay off, it’s time to learn that it’s not always what exercises you do, but how you do them.

Why Tension Matters

For a moment, forget weightlifting technique and think bigger picture. We know that there are 3 primary factors that determine how much much muscle strength and size you’ll build when you lift: metabolic stress, mechanical tension, and muscle damage. Let’s focus on the first two because the third is a byproduct of the work you do.

Metabolic stress refers to the burning sensation you feel in your muscles as you pump out rep after rep. You can increase the amount of metabolic stress you produce by performing more sets, or more reps inside of those sets.

Mechanical tension broadly refers to how engaged your muscle tissues are when you lift.

People spend a mountain of time thinking about category number one. You’ve probably wondered many times about how many sets and reps you should perform, and when and how often you should change those numbers over time.

Most people, however, don’t spend nearly as much time on category two (tension), which is a huge missed opportunity. This is where weightlifting technique comes into play.

“Tension and its twin, relaxation, are the alphas of strength and conditioning,” says Dan John, a world-renowned fitness coach and author of several books on training. “They are the most important two concepts. And they are exact opposites of each other.”

The trouble with tension — like any weightlifting technique — is that it can be difficult to learn. Which also means it’s challenging—and time-consuming—to coach. Many trainers won’t take the time to teach it.

“When I’m teaching someone to do a correct kettlebell swing, I first have to teach them to grip the ground with their big toe. For a person who’s new to lifting, that might take a day,” John explains.

He adds that each of the other key elements of the exercises—buttcheeks squeezed together, abs firmly braced, lats pulling back, and then making all of this to happen at once—takes days if not weeks to learn. “So teaching someone the kettlebell swing—which at the top, is basically a vertical plank—might take the better part of a few months. And yet I see people teach that exercise and 72 others on the first day of a class.”

To be fair to trainers, not everyone wants to take the time to learn any weightlifting technique. It’s not exactly as much fun as losing fat, building biceps, or seeing your abs pop. And a big part of a trainer’s job is to make exercise fun to prevent you from being bored. After all, making exercise enjoyable will keep you doing it and coming back for more, and that’s when results happen.

But, here’s why you’ll want to take a little time to master the tension weightlifting technqiue (while still making your workouts fun)—and how it can make every exercise you perform more effective.

How Your Weightlifting Technique Prevents Injuries

Another secret smart trainers know: creating tension can help you fix bad biomechanics and reduce how much you are hurt.

“I’d argue that a lot of what people call ‘lack of mobility’ can be attributed not to lack of flexibility but to lack of stability, which you can establish through coaching tension,” says Tony Gentilcore, owner of CORE, a small-group training facility in Boston.

Here’s what he means. Let’s say you’re having trouble staying upright when you squat. Your torso leans forward as you descend. Lots of people will blame that on a lack of mobility in their thoracic spine (upper back). But there’s a good chance that what’s actually to blame is your core. You’re not stable enough in your midsection to descend as far as you should. If you learn how to create more tension in your core, then suddenly the “mobility issue” goes away.

Here’s how it works. If you’re an experienced lifter, perhaps you’re familiar with the terms “kinetic chain” and “energy leaks.” If not, here’s a quick primer.

The kinetic chain refers to the body’s joints (ankle, knee, hip, shoulder, etc.) working together. Think of your body as a cohesive unit. When you walk, for instance, it’s just not your legs doing the work. Anyone that’s ever had a back injury knows this all too well because even the simplest (seemingly unrelated) movements can cause pain.

An energy leak occurs when there’s insufficient stiffness (a.k.a. tension) around one of those joints.

So let’s say you’re performing a back squat and your knees cave inward. That’s an energy leak. And it’s a problem because, not only does that leak put stress on the joints, it also fosters a muscle imbalance. When your knees cave in, your body asks the surrounding muscles to re-center your knee. Over time, you’re strengthening one set of muscles at the expense of another. (You’re also burning metabolic fuel that could otherwise be put toward another rep.)

Maybe that’s something you can get away with if you only ever use light resistance when you train. But as the weight gets heavier, the risk gets bigger.

“For advanced guys, you might have 400-500 pounds on your back,” says strength coach Jason Ferruggia. “So to minimize injury risk, you’ve got to maintain full-body tension throughout the set.”

What does that mean? When you think of weightlifting technique, you usually just think about the muscles you’re working. But that’s just part of the story. You need to prepare your entire body for a lift, and, oftentimes, it’s the muscles you wouldn’t even think about.

Staying with the squat example, most people are worried about their knees or their back (or both). But creating “full-body tension” often times starts in neither of those two places. You’ll begin with your grip on the bar and then focus on your breathing and abs, which is what actually protects your back from injury.

When you take a big belly breath (think about filling your stomach with air so that if you have a belt around your natural waist you would feel it become tight), it creates a natural lifting belt that protects your spine. This is known as bracing your torso. (Here’s a story that explains how it works and how to do it. You can skip down to the section “The Problem: Incorrect Breathing” if you want to see it straight away.)

So in this case, tension is protective. Your grip creates tension that sends a signal to your brain saying, “I’m about to lift heavy weight.” That’s important. If you then “pull” your elbows down and back (imagine someone’s hands trying to push your elbows up and you have to resist against them), you’ll engage your lats, which also protect your spine. Then, when you take your belly breath, you add the final piece of full body tension, which will protect your spine. This type of approach can prevent an energy leak that causes your form to break down and injury to occur.

Just as tension protects you when you squat, it keeps you safer when you perform other exercises. A shoulder that’s engaged is less likely to wind up in an unnatural position when you overhead press. Having your torso firmly braced will help protect your lower back when you deadlift.

As mentioned earlier, the heavier of a weight you use, the more important weightlifting technique and proper tension becomes. The same is true for the number of reps—the more you perform, the more challenging it is.

“Every rep beyond 5 or 6 or so becomes increasingly more difficult to do, so you open yourself up to more injury risk,” Ferruggia says. “That’s why I like low reps on the big lifts. It’s really hard to maintain that tension while maintaining good form. So a lot of times people say beginners should do high reps. No, it’s the opposite.”

How Tension Builds Results You Can See

Tension isn’t just about playing it safe. On almost any exercise, even bodyweight movements like planks or pushups, full-body tension can dictate what you get out of the exercise and help put your body in an optimal position.

What do we mean when we say “full-body” tension? Exactly that: Your entire body. “It has to literally be from toes to forehead,” John says. “If I ask you to do a plank and you forget to breathe because you’re so tense, that’s when I know you’re doing it right.”

In fact, go ahead and try that right now. Do a plank while creating as much tension as possible within your body. Here are a few cues that will probably change the way you think about planks (and make the thought of going for 60 seconds seem like the hardest thing you’ve ever done).

Push out through your heels while pulling your elbows toward your toes.

Squeeze all of your muscles: That means pressing through your forearms into the floor. Contract your glutes as hard as possible, as if you’re trying to crack a walnut. Squeeze your abs tightly as if you’re about to be punched in the gut, repeatedly. Even flex your calves. That’s called an RKC plank (watch Contreras explain), which differs from the way most people will do planks.

Try it and you’ll see that a plank can fry your entire body in a matter of seconds—5 seconds is a great place to start, and 15 is a mighty hold. (Conversely, you know those hours-long World Record-setting planks that you sometimes see grabbing headlines? Here’s why they don’t do a whole lot for your muscles and wind up producing more back pain than anything.)

In addition to making exercise more efficient, learning to create tension can improve the “mind-muscle connection.” Any bodybuilder will tell you that this link helps you activate the muscles you actually want to work when you exercise. (If you’re skeptical, Contreras has proven this phenomenon using an EMG.) Studies show that both internal focus (i.e. you trying to direct your body’s efforts with your mind) and external verbal cues (i.e. a coach telling you to focus on a specific part of a move) can increase certain muscle activations, so focusing on tension should help you produce better results.

Here’s the tricky thing: When you start trying to create full-body tension in your workouts, you’ll probably wind up feeling weaker at first. Ferruggia—who’s written about this phenomenon —says while your performance (and especially total reps) may suffer at first, “the strength gains you make by using proper full-body tension are going to transfer better to the real world.”

Translation: You won’t be one of those people who can leg press hundreds of pounds but can’t move a couch. And as you get used to using full-body tension, Ferruggia adds that, in time, you will surpass your previous numbers. “Eventually you will be stronger than you were.”

How to Create More Tension When You Train

Finding a great coach who can help provide cues, correct your weightlifting technique, and build programs that work is always a great choice.

The reality is that many of you won’t go that route for a variety of reasons, so you’re going to need to learn how to do this on your own. The good news is that we’ve teamed up with some of the best coaches to develop a plan that helps you do that. Here are some of the things you can try right away to start ensuring optimal tension for all of the exercises you perform:

First, let’s set a ground rule: You’re going to steer clear of machines and isolation exercises for just a little while. But don’t let that message confuse you; there’s nothing wrong with machines, and they can be great tools and extremely effective at delivering results. But they can also let you “get away” with a lack of tension by providing external support. So if you can learn tension, then every exercise you perform — including the machine work — will become more effective.

Ground rule #2 (we promise it’s the last one): Perform fewer reps per set—at least initially. Coaches agree that while improving full-body tension will eventually second-nature, early on it will make everything feel more difficult, so no need to increase the risk of error by doing more reps.

Full-body tension may sound like a lot to learn—after all, you have more than 600 muscles — but nearly all of the cues you’re going to learn come down to five areas: Your shoulders, core, butt, feet, and grip. If you were to scan just those five things on every exercise, and made sure they are engaged, you’ll make a lot of progress right away.

Weightlifting Technique Upgrade: Your Grip

The trick is learning exactly how to cue those muscles for the different exercises you do. Probably the easiest cue to learn—and the one people fail to do the most often—is gripping the bar. We mean really grip it. Too many people, when they’re doing an exercise like dumbbell curls or farmer’s walks, will just secure the dumbbell handle between their thumb and first two fingers. What you want is to have every finger in your hands be at an I’m about to crush this bar! level. For barbell work, that means squeezing the life out of the bar while simultaneously trying to pull the bar in opposite directions (think about removing a sword from a sheath). “If you’re just squeezing the bar as hard as possible, that kind of cues the rest of your body,” Ferruggia says. “The tension will radiate out from your hands.”

Weightlifting Technique Upgrade: Your Core

The next spot you want to work on is your core. Because the core includes your abs and hips, tension will make a big difference in squats, deadlifts, overhead presses. The quick-and-dirty answer is to say “brace” your core. What’s that mean? As we mentioned before, pretend you were about to get punched in the gut—or better yet, shatter a 2×4 with your abs (like this badass martial arts instructor). Produce something even close to that kind of engagement in your midsection, and you’re going to be better off when you lift—and you’ll provide more support and stability to your spine.

Training core stability outside of your full-body lifts will also be helpful. Eric Cressey, who trains hundreds of MLB players and other pro athletes, has a set of 5 exercises that train all of the dimensions of core strength in a relatively short amount of time. A good way to learn proper core engagement for movements like pull-ups is to try this “hollow” position drill from Gentilcore (and note how it isn’t so “hollow” after all, you definitely are not doing a “suck and tuck” here no matter what old-school ab training or bad Pilates instructors might have told you). And to make sure you aren’t creating all of this stiffness at the expense of your mobility, try Dr. John Rusin’s hybrid quadruped position drill.

Weightlifting Technique Upgrade: Your Shoulders

Some of the common cues you’ll hear for your shoulder are “pack the shoulder,” “flatten your shoulder blades,” “pull the lats down,” or “flex the pecs and lats.” All of them are trying to achieve basically the same thing: For you to keep your humerus (the upper arm bone) in your shoulder socket. Gentilcore tells his clients to “pretend like you’re squeezing an orange in your armpit during the entire rep and you’re trying to make orange juice” on lifts like the Deadlift. Try it, and you might be surprised what you feel in your shoulders and back, and how much lighter the weight becomes.

Weightlifting Technique Upgrade: Your Butt/Glutes

On just about every exercise where you’re standing, your butt should not be relaxed. You want it engaged and supporting your body. What’s that mean? Squeeze the cheeks, or even “turn coal into a diamond in your butt cheeks.”

Weightlifting Technique Upgrade: Your Feet

Lastly, let’s talk about your feet. Just as your grip can help you generate tension throughout your arms, firmly pressing your feet—and especially your toes—into the ground can send tension up your lower legs.

Coaches will often tell you to “grip the floor with your toes” (as Dan John described earlier), or “screw your feet into the floor,” or “push the floor away from you.” Use whichever one you find the most useful. One other note for your legs: Push your ankles out. Same with your knees. Valgus knees, or having your knees collapse inward when you lift, is a form fault that can lead to a host of issues and injuries.

Remember: Learning Tension is a Process. Try, try again.

Ready to start putting these cues to work and getting more out of your training? Good. But there’s one last thing you should do: Be patient.

Every coach we spoke to agreed that cues are an essential way to help our brains to trigger tension. But any lifter who’s been coached has experienced information overload at one point or another. You’re doing a squat then someone tells you to screw your feet into the floor. Then they tell you to pull down your lats. Then they tell you to brace your core. The result of trying to do too much at once? You get confused.

So, instead, try focusing on one or a few aspects of tension at a time. As they become second-nature to you, add a new cue. In time, you’ll be doing this stuff without even thinking about it.

Full-body tension takes time—sometimes a lot of it—to master. “Tension is an underappreciated concept even among the elite athletes I work with,” Rusin says. “It’s something you can be getting better at no matter your experience level.”

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