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jerkbitchidjitassbutt · 3 years

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It Was You (Part One)

A/N: Jensen and Y/n are childhood best friends. When his agent informs him that his image could use some improvement for a role, will she help him? Or will her feelings get in the way?

A holiday (Christmas centric) Jensen x Female!Reader Best Friends to Lovers series for @spnchristmasbingo. Un-beta’d, so all mistakes are mine. Header created by me with images from Google. Chapter word count: 3371

Series Warnings: break up; angst-ish at times (if you squint), but mostly all the fluff.

I consider this an AU, as Jensen is single in this fic. This is completely a work of fiction, and I wouldn’t want his reality to be any different, this is purely for entertainment.

The slight chill of a Vancouver December morning roused you from a peaceful sleep, making you snuggle further into the down blanket and comfort of your plush bedding. It was two weeks until Christmas and the weather was supposed to be a balmy high of 32 degrees today, so you had planned to stay in, do some shopping online, and stay by your cozy fireplace with every holiday movie you could find. Willing yourself to get five more minutes of shut eye seemed like a helpless feat as the wintry cold seeped into your apartment. You opened your eyes to the gentle prisms of light floating in through the adjacent window, the sunrise indicating it was time to get up for the day.

Sitting up to perch on the side of your bed and grabbing your wide-rimmed glasses from the nightstand, you slid your chilled toes into the warm slippers waiting and shrugged on your fuzziest sweater. It may be time for that fire sooner than you thought.

Padding into your kitchen to get a much-needed caffeine fix after last night’s dinner and drinks with the rest of the cast and crew, you took your favorite mug from the cabinet and loaded the coffee maker, making an extra cup or two for you and any visitors you might have a bit later.

Jensen’s apartment was down the hall, and if you knew him, he’d still be sleeping, but he’d probably wander over at some point this morning. Cradling the mug in your hands warmed them slightly and sent a shiver down your spine. Even your warmest pajamas and the heat from the thermostat did little against the Canadian winds. Laughing slightly to yourself, you’d thought you’d be used to it after six years of winters here.

You wandered towards the windows of your living room to pull back the long curtains. It was a favorite spot to have your coffee and gaze at the sights of Vancouver. Settling on the window seat, you felt a warmth spread through you as you noticed it had snowed in the night, and from the looks of it, it was a depth of fresh, soft powder – a type that you rarely saw growing up in Texas. People were bundled up tightly as they walked the streets, but a few people, adults and kids alike, were already out playing in the thick blanket of snow.

As your coffee began to warm you through, you couldn’t help the giddy feeling of joy that rose at the sight – it made the holiday season and the spirit of it even more intense than just viewing the lights of downtown and the large decorations everywhere. For some reason, snow just sealed it all up in a nice little bow.

Sure enough, about halfway into your second cup of coffee, you heard a key in your door and Jensen shuffled in, still wearing his pj’s with tousled hair, but he had thrown on a thick sweater too.

“Good morning.” You called, still seated at the large window.

“Mornin’ sweetheart.” He replied with a quick wave as he tossed his keys on the counter and waltzed into your kitchen in search of his mug, his voice still thick and gruff with sleep.

He mixed his cream and sugar and took a long sip, letting out a contented sigh after the steaming liquid entered his body. He was notoriously grumpy without his coffee, but he always met you with a sweet greeting when he came over. Walking around your kitchen island and into your open living room, he slumped into the recliner across from you and pulled the leaver to release the footing, allowing him to lean back with his feet up. He adjusted himself to get comfortable, careful to not spill the mug in his hand.

“What time did you get in last night?” you asked, taking another sip from your own cup.

He covered his eyes with his free hand, still obviously tired. “About 2:30. You know how Jared gets when we break for hiatus, he never wants the party to end. He was still talking to me as I was shutting my door.”

You couldn’t help but laugh. Jared was the most social person you’d ever met and knowing that he wouldn’t be back to Canada and on set for a month, he would always soak up every little bit of time he had with the cast and crew. Even though Jensen was griping about it now, you knew he also didn’t mind. He’d probably be missing everyone, especially Jared, about four days into the break. You didn’t get home until about 1 a.m., and that was only because you were beginning to doze off in your cocktail.

“Tell Cliff thanks again for driving me home last night. I just couldn’t cut it.”

“Yeah, I know… Lightweight.” Jensen teased.

“Hey, you didn’t have a 5 a.m. set call yesterday like some of us.”

Jensen huffed a small laugh from his seat, still resting his hand across his closed eyes. His sweatpants hung low on his hips and his green Henley stretched across his biceps as he rested his coffee on his thigh. A slight 5 o’clock shadow and the bedhead he was sporting all combined into a handsome image. He may be your best friend, but you could still appreciate the looks the man was blessed with.

Seemingly close to falling back asleep, you called to him in a hushed voice, “Jay. If you want to go back to sleep just put your coffee mug on the table, okay?”

“Hmmmph. No, I’m up.” He fibbed, as evident from the way he blinked widely once he opened his eyes again. Forcing himself to stand, otherwise he would really fall back asleep instead of just resting his eyes, he walked towards you with his cup, dragging his feet slightly as his legs sluggishly pulled him across the room. His head was down and his shoulders were wilted, but he was trying to get his body moving.

When he reached you, you felt his chest bump your shoulder before he rested his cheek on the crown of your head, his arm dangling by his side as he slumped. He took a deep breath before rubbing his hand across your back and standing, smiling as you peered up at him with a grin.

Licking his lips, he finally peered out to the streets below and his eyes went wide, “Y/n!” he practically shouted.

You flinched, “What? What’d I do?”

“You didn’t tell me it snowed!”

Giving a huff and a giggle, you couldn’t help but be sarcastic, “I’m sorry, was I supposed to while you were falling asleep in my chair?! Besides… it’s Canada. It’s not like snow is very rare here.”

“Y/n! That’s, like, snow! The kind we used to wish for when we were kids!”

“I know, I thought that too.”

“Well, c’mon!” he said, setting his cup down on the ledge. “We gotta go!”

“What? Go where?”

Jensen was already halfway through your living room and heading for the front door but paused to turn and point a finger in your direction, “You, me, snowman. Now.”

“Jay,” You whined. “It’s cold and its early. You sure you don’t want to just watch Netflix?”

“Y/n!” he said once again, looking as excited as a 12-year-old on a snow day from school. “Snowman! Please?” he begged, waving his arms frantically as he gestured outside.

“Okay, okay. Fine. No need to use your puppy eyes on me. I’ll meet you outside in 15 minutes.”

With that, a huge grin broke out on his face and he took off down the hall, leaving you to go in search of your heaviest ski jacket.

Jensen knocked on your door soon after you shrugged into the puffy coat, dressed in thick snow pants, his own jacket, and a black beanie and gloves with a small bag in his hand. Straitening your scarf before locking your door, he barely gave you a moment to put on your knitted pom beanie before he was pulling you by your hand towards the elevator of your building and pushing you out of the revolving doors into the frigid air. Heading to the side where a large park sat adjacent to your complex, he looked around before tugging you along to a spot with a large open space. He nodded to himself, as if to say he’d found the perfect place for his snowman-building escapade. As your boots crunched beneath you, you each began gathering handfuls of snow to make a large base, then packed and sculpted two more spheres. Though you initially protested, you had to admit that it was fun, and the coldness against your cheeks wasn’t bad after a bit, particularly after seeing how happy Jensen was when his finished product towered over yours. He’d managed to gather the majority of the snow within about a six-foot radius of where his snowman stood before piling it high.

“Hey, hey… look at that. An accurate height difference!” He touted, teasing you.

“Oh, hush you. It’s not my fault that you were given the extended version of the human body.” You glared at him playfully.

He laughed as he bent to rummage in the bag he’d brought, producing two carrots. He wiggled them in his hands before handing one to you. He was just about to place it in a very telling place when you grabbed a handful of snow and threw it in his direction.

“Jensen!” You berated. “That’s not where the carrot goes! There’s kids out here!”

He stood up slowly, turning to you with a serious smirk, “Did you seriously just throw a snowball at me?”

Wiping your hand on your pantleg quickly, you gave him a mischievous grin, “Who, me? I’d never.”

“Oh, its on!” he declared as he bent to scoop up the little bit of remaining snow in his reach, that which he hadn’t used for his snowman.

Ducking behind your own, he threw and missed, sending the snow flying passed you. A quick grab from around you produced another snowball that you chucked from behind your shield, hitting him square in the chest. The fight lasted for a good while, the two of you trying your hardest to target the other as many times as possible and receiving some laughs and glances from passersby as they walked along the sidewalk. Finally, Jensen gave up and took off towards you, chasing you in circles before he tackled you into the plush ice, pinning you beneath him as he tried to bury you both.

“Jay! Oh my God, stop! Its freezing!” you yelled through your laughter.

“Truce?” he asked, his eyebrows raised in a challenge.

He was still on top of you, his nose and cheeks a bit flushed from the wintry air. He still had that devilish smirk on his face, but his green eyes were soft and something beneath them made your heart flutter slightly in your chest. He scanned your face quickly before glancing towards your lips, but you were quick to snatch another fistful of snow to smash onto his head. Scrambling out from underneath him, you ran as he said something about you being a cheater before he jumped to his feet.

After the war ended and a truce was finally declared, you both put the finishing touches on your snowmen after you found sticks for the arms and coerced Jensen to put the carrot in the right spot. He stood back proudly, admiring your handiwork.

“Hey.” He gestured to you, “C’mere.”

A bit warry that he was going to tackle you again, you came to his side as he pulled his phone out of his jacket pocket and turned on the camera. Pulling you into him, he said, “Gotta have evidence of our masterpieces.” He reached around your waist and tugged you in close, framing both of you and your snowmen in the background. The cold air made the tip of your nose and the apples of your cheeks change in color, and there was still some snow in your hair from when Jensen wrestled you, but both of you smiled widely. Feeling the scruff of his short beard against your temple and his arms wrapped around you made you think about the way his eyes danced across your face moments ago, but the thought was quickly dismissed as he stepped away from you slightly after he made sure the picture wasn’t too blurry.

“Oh, crap. Is that what time it is?” he said, alarmed, looking at his phone screen. “I have to meet Stacy in an hour.”

Stacy was his publicist and agent, but he usually didn’t meet with her during the hiatus. “You’re meeting Stacy today? What’s up?” you asked, a bit confused.

“She wants to talk to me about this movie. Some sort of romantic drama she thought I may be good for.”

“Oh,” you replied, “that’s great! You didn’t tell me! Would you have to cut back filming the show?” While you were a bit surprised, you were genuinely happy for him.

“Stacy knows Supernatural comes first, so I hope not.”

“Well, let’s get inside so you can warm up and change. I was going to make my mom’s chili and cornbread for dinner tonight, if you want to join me after your meeting.”

The excitement on his face was palpable as his eyes lit up the moment you said it, “You know how much I love your mom’s chili. We’re just meeting for coffee near her office, so I’ll bring the beer.”

As you were walking back into the building, your phone rang. It was Stephen, your boyfriend of three months.

“Stephen, hey.” You said as you entered the elevator, not missing the slight eyeroll that Jensen gave.

“Hey, honey. How are you? I didn’t want to call too early, just in case you were still sleeping after last night.”

“I’m good, thanks. Actually, just got done building a snowman with Jensen.”

A short silence followed, until Stephen spoke up again. “Oh, that’s nice.” He said, his voice noticeably clipped. “Well, I’m going to take my lunch break soon. Would you like to meet up? I can come to your side of town.”

“Uh, sure. I’ll meet you at that café on 3rd in about a half an hour?”

“Sounds great. See you there.”

Shoving your phone back in your pocket, you ignore Jensen’s stare as the elevator climbed to your floor.

“So…” he pressed. “Stephen?”

“Yeah, Stephen. We’re going to meet up for lunch while you have your meeting.”

“Hmph.” He huffed.

“Jay, we’ve known each other our whole lives and to this day you’ve never liked a single guy I’ve ever dated. What’s wrong with Stephen?”

“I don’t know. He’s just kind of… meh.”

He wasn’t lying, if you were being truthful. Stephen was meh. He was cute and had nice eyes and dimples, but he didn’t make you laugh. He was a bit dull and your sense of humor didn’t mesh with his well. Still, you thought that it might get a bit better once you got to know each other and began to understand one another more. Your relationship was still very casual, but maybe it could go further? You weren’t really sure, honestly.

“What about you and Laura?” you asked, quickly changing the subject.

“I told you… that was nothing.” He quipped as you reached your door. “We went on like three dates.”

“Yeah, the last one being just this past week.”

“Yeah, and it just didn’t go well.”

You let out a small sigh. Discussing your dating lives wasn’t really something the two of you loved to do with each other. Maybe when you were teenagers, yeah. You’d asked each other for advice and gossiped a bit about the people in your high school, but as you grew into adults it just became a subject you both steered away from besides the occasional, hey I’ve got a date conversation. Neither of you had ever really found a person that the other approved of, each finding a reason to be picky every time.

“I’m sorry, Jay. I’m just deflecting.”

“It’s okay, sweetheart. I was pushing.” He said sincerely with a small smile. “Well, you enjoy lunch. My meeting’s at 1:30 across town, so I should be back by 4 at the latest. Pick out a movie for us, okay?”

“Sounds great. I will.” With that, he kissed you quickly on the side of your head and went into his apartment as you ducked into yours. You freshened up quickly and changed, grabbing a different peacoat, hat, and scarf as your others were still wet.

It was a short walk to the café, and they had good sandwiches. You were surprisingly hungry, so you were glad to see Stephen waiting outside for you. He gripped your hand tightly and gave you a quick kiss in greeting before leading you into the restaurant. You were seated and ordered quickly, knowing that he would have to return to work soon.

“So, how has your day been?” You asked as you shrugged off your coat, hanging it on the chair behind you.

“It’s been… good.” He muttered.

“Uh oh,” You said, getting his attention as he looked away from you. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, really. I was just surprised to hear that you were with Jensen today. You had mentioned you were going to stay home.”

Stephen smiled, almost in an attempt to let you know that he was trying to be lighthearted about it, but you could tell it bothered him.

“Yeah, when he saw it snowed last night, he just really wanted to make a snowman.” You laughed, trying to steer away from the subject. Stephan wasn’t overstepping, but he also wasn’t going to prevent you from spending time with Jensen. The two of you had been inseparable since, well, practically since birth. Your parents had been the best of friends, so you were pretty much raised together.

“Have you, um…” Stephen began, hesitantly. “I know you’ve been friends forever, but have you ever had feelings for him?”

His blue eyes shown with a slight jealousy as you felt a slight pang to your heart.

“No, of course not.” You managed to say with a steady voice and a smile as you picked up your napkin to place in your lap.

It was a lie, one that you’d been telling for years. At one point in your life, you were in love with Jensen. But, the past was in the past. If Jensen didn’t even know, why should Stephen?

Stephen seemed satisfied with your response for the most part, and the two of you had a pleasant lunch. When you stepped away to use the restroom, your phone chimed. Stephen tried not to even look towards your side of the table where your phone sat, but when he saw Jensen’s name, he read the text quickly before the screen dimmed.

Hey, sweetheart. Finishing up here soon and then I’ll be heading home. Do you need me to grab anything from the store?

Stephen knew the two of you were a package deal, and thought he could honestly be alright with it, but between working together and spending practically all of your time together, he was starting to wonder where he fit in in your life. He busied himself by checking his Instagram as he thought about what he should do and found that Jensen had tagged you in a photo from this morning. The caption was simple, just a few words about the filming hiatus and the first snow of the season, but the two of you were so close. Stephen found himself wishing that you could reserve a smile like that for him, but he had yet to see it.

It hurt, but he knew he couldn’t play second fiddle to Jensen. He cared about you, but perhaps it was better to bow out now.

“Hey, sorry about that.” You said brightly as you got back to the table, smiling. It still didn’t reach your eyes, though.

Stephen leaned forward on his elbows with a sigh, “Y/n, I think we should talk.”

To be continued...

Tags below (if your tag is strikethrough, it wouldn’t let me use it):

Forevers:

@acortez82 @adoptdontshoppets @akshi8278 @atc74 @berrygutz @blackcherrywhiskey @busybee612 @caitsymichelle13 @daydreamingintheimpalareturns @deansbabymomma @deansenwackles @deanssweetheart23 @deanwinchesterswitch @empyreanwritings @geeksareunique @gh0stgurl @heyitscam99 @hhiggs @huntersbunker @jackburtonsays @janicho88 @jensensjaredsandmishaslover @jfrank1048 @jotink78 @maddiepants @mogaruke @mrswhozeewhatsis @nerdstackular @nerdysandwichqueen @okay-okay18 @our-jensen-ackles-love @prompt-and-circumstances @samsgirl93 @sandlee44 @sister-winchesters99 @snffbeebee @spnbaby-67 @supernatural3002 @titty-teetee @topthis808 @tardis-is-mine @tranquility-or-chaos @weepingwillowphoenix @winchester-writes @xtina2191

Jensen Only

@mrsambroserollinsacklesmgk

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aftershocked · 3 years

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tagged by the ever-lovely @tk-buckley, thank you so much! 😘💕

my response to #1 is a bit wordy, so placing this behind a read more

1. why did you choose your url?

the reason started out sort of lame but gained a lot of sentiment over time lmao

as a teenager, i was brainstorming new website URLs, and “aftershocked” happened to be one of them (and went unused). a few years later i was joining a forum to become a scanlator (specifically, proofreading & typesetting manga), and i wanted a new username, and went with aftershocked

scanlating wound up being one of the most enjoyable things i’ve ever done—made great friends, learned a lot, gained some useful and surprisingly versatile life and collaborative skills. everyone in the scanlating group mainly used our usernames, or nicknames based off of our usernames, and also one of my best friends in the group had a nickname that paralleled with mine—and idk, after a while, aftershocked/afs just became a name i rly identified with and felt close to

now i use it basically everywhere & have been using it for like 12 years, because in addition to my real life name, aftershocked... is my name, online. which probably sounds either crazy or cheesy, especially on tumblr where people change their URLs so often, but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

2. any sideblogs? if you have them, name them and why you have them.

no, actually, everything gets funneled into this one. would probably be easier on my followers if i did use sideblogs 😬

3. how long have you been on tumblr?

june 2011! very nearly ten years now skdjsks

4. do you have a queue tag?

yeah, “the queue continuum,” but it doesn’t get used often

5. why did you start your blog in the first place?

i think... a friend recommended tumblr to me or something? so i tried it out, and it seems to have stuck

6. why did you choose your icon/pfp?

i mean, sort of arbitrarily, and at this point i’ve had it basically the entire 10 years so y’know. and i’ll always have a soft spot for kuroshitsuji anyway, so why not

7. why did you choose your header?

bc of a many, many, many, many year love for star trek, and the enterprise in particular. she’s a beautiful lady and we love her

8. what’s your post with the most notes?

a gifset of all the star trek intro titles

9. how many mutuals do you have?

i’ve never counted? no idea.

10. how many followers do you have?

900+

11. how many people do you follow?

🤫

12. have you ever made a shitpost?

absolutely

13. how often do you use tumblr each day?

it reeeally depends. sometimes i’ll be on here constantly, spamming incessantly, other times i’ll go days/weeks without reblogging anything. i’ve been pretty consistent the past few months, but i know eventually i’ll slow down again

14. did you have a fight/argument with another blog once? who won?

i don’t think i’ve ever actually fought with anyone here, but i’ve certainly commented on things i disagreed with?

15. how do you feel about “you need to reblog this” posts?

when people first started doing that and it was still rare enough to be a novelty, it seemed like a valid way to grab someone’s attention about a serious issue. but after they became so commonplace, it got a little obnoxious? you choose for yourself what you want to interact with, no rando on the internet should be able to guilt you into it, and i feel bad for people who are guilted into that. you should always be able to curate and control your own experience here

16. do you like tag games?

i do, and if i don’t reply to one it’s usually only because there isn’t really a way for me to do so (like when someone tagged me in a spotify game and i don’t… use spotify…)

17. do you like ask games?

probably, haven’t really done those very often

18. which of your mutuals do you think is tumblr famous?

what even counts as tumblr famous?? like,, it’s not like there are really good metrics here

19. do you have a crush on a mutual?

i haven’t crushed on anyone in years

20. tags?

@discoreos, @anhline, @avalonsavs, @squish-diddles, @fangedcookie, @stanfordsweater, @zmediaoutlet, and if anyone else wants to try 💚

#tk buckley #afs.txt #no pressure @ anyone tagged #:')

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sailing-elitsha · 3 years

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Hallelujah

Thinking about a header for this report I am struggling, it’s from boring because of no wind from all directions in the doldrums, over: exited to come closer to the Amazon river, over: we saw Neptune, over: not being sure if we can do this up to total exhaustion. We have been so tired that we could not even show excitement and joy anymore by our safe arrival in Paramaribo, after a very difficult 11 days stretch. Let me first write everything down and see which heading we will choose.

Very quiet Dick said, “I saw you praying with your hands folded.” “Yes, I did that.” Whoever up in heaven, the universe or wherever feels I could have meant him or her: Thank you. Dick agreed.

Towards the end of this stretch, we could not think straight anymore, did not sleep because of the funny moves, Elitsha made, encouraged by Jip and Janneke, and the waves. Sometimes we really heeled onto our side after sliding down steep waves or swell. Realistically and objectively, there was no real danger, but at times it felt differently. Elitsha did a great job. And let’s be honest, while in a force 8, in gusts 45 knots on our wind vane at sea with a currant of 3,5 knots, 12 knots showing on our log, knowing shore was close even though you do not see a thing and to sail in a river mouth with low tide, you make one wrong move……… everything can happen. But we did not make a wrong move. Dick knows what he is doing, and I am not too bad a sailor too. Most importantly: when I was losing it and panicked there was Dick for me and when Dick was tired and miserable, I was there for him: Interesting self-studies of a relationship therapist, I am telling you. Do not do this if you don’t have a good relationship. But if you have good relationship, this is so special and amazing to go through together.

And… perhaps or most probably, this is normal and not a big thing for cruisers on an ocean crossing, but for us as beginning cruisers, it was a big thing. The challenge was, that for the last 4 days we hardly found a longer stretch of sleep than 1 or 2 hours and that breaks you at the end. That was, I think, the reason why we were desperate to arrive and stay somewhere for a while.

But let’s start at the beginning:

We started relaxed after leaving Fernado de Norunha. Although, sailing without wind is never relaxing. You are looking for wind all the times, changing your sails and finally if you can’t stand the slapping of the beams and sails anymore you start the motor and you get annoyed by the noise of he motor and the fact that you are a sailing boat and not sailing……all of those things. Fortaleza just didn’t want to come closer, and Suriname seemed unreachable far for us. The promise was that we at least will find the strong current which would push us along from Fortaleza to the Amazon delta and Suriname.

On the 8th of Mai at 2.23pm Brasilia time we saw Neptune and served him an Oude Jenever. He seemed to like it. We originally wanted to go and swim with Neptune but just at that time Neptune on his turn treated us with some wind and we made 7 knots: 3 of them from the current. But in the doldrums, you are happy with everything what moves you along. Anyway, he (Neptune) had to do it with the Jenever, and we kept on sailing.

Just before the Amazon river at the end of day 6 of 11 it started blowing. Yeah!!!!!!!! 180 miles a day and no motor anymore. That’s great. Forecast: 12-15 knots with gusts of 20 knot. Lovely!!!!! From late afternoon of day 7 the constant wind was 32 and the gusts up to 40, RAIN and it started with a close-by lightening flash and a thunder clap. And that carried on till close to Paramaribo. The funniest: Nothing of all was forecasted on the Iridium weather report: as I said: ENE wind 12 – 15 knots, gusts of 20 knots and some possible thundershowers, but in our case they were not gusts any more, but constant hard wind 30 knots plus for 3-4 days in a row. The Amazon, even we passed him on a big respectable distance, and later the Suriname river brought trees down to the sea. You had to have your eyes everywhere. A whale, a humpback, close to the Amazon, just next to Elitsha, I saw him thinking: you are here and not in Africa? (we see whales in Hout Bay on a regular base), that close he was. For weeks we didn’t see more than a handful ships. They were huge, okay, but we saw them on AIS far before we could see them in real. Now there were lots of fisher boats around who didn’t feel like using AIS (they don’t want to be seen by their colleagues), tankers from Venezuela who switch on AIS only last minute, and this all at night, without moon and stars assisting…...and then………..always this “gale wind”, waves and massive swell. Another thing made us nervous: the “shallow” water. After having sailed for month now in blue water, REALLY blue water of 4 000, 5 000 meters deep, we suddenly sailed up the plateau of the South American Continent: only 200 meters of depth. You should think: That’s deep enough, Sylke. Yes, but it’s just what you are used to, right?! And we were used to 4000 to 5000 meters. The water was green, closer to Suriname, when we had no more than 20 meters it was yellowish. The Amazonas brought trees with big branches and fields of green-brownish weed, leaves…. and always the strong wind, the rain and thundershowers and you can’t step out of this train or leave the movie……you have to hang in there. This paired with not sleeping and being exhausted and Navionics giving us problems at this very moment, we saw the lights of French Guyana as the lights of Suriname (same character) and panicked that we would have passed Paramaribo already. After having struck sails and heading Elitsha into the wind, to check out if we are right or wrong, we finally followed our way towards Suriname with only the Genua, which was still fast enough. Holger, one of our shore captains confirmed, that we have the entrance of the Suriname river 20 mile ahead and not behind us. Ufff, what a relief. We still didn’t see land………. only 60, 50, 40, 30 foot of water under Elitsha, no entrance buoy in sight……. Via radio we got in touch with MAS ( Suriname Harbour authorities). Anneke, our other shore captain, had arrange contact and allowance with them already. In times of Corona regulations this is essential. You can’t just go to a harbour. Everything has to be pre-arranged. When we called MAS, to ask if we were somewhere close to the entrance buoy of the river mouth, a deep voice in Dutch with a heavy Surinam’s accent answered: “ik zie jullie on AIS.” YES!!!!!!!!!!! Eventually, we saw not the entrance buoy, but the first green buoy and shared this” achievement” with him. His dry and short reaction: “Mevrouw, u bent op de goede weg!!!!!” (“Lady, you are on the right way”). Not more and not less, but it was like music to our ears. It was low tide and our echo sounder told us, 20, 10 and then 9,60 foot. Elitsha needs at least 5,50 foot of water to float. We motor sailed (to be more controllable). Still 30 knots of wind, rain, and buoys not visible all the time. On the river we almost got stuck twice in the mud: 6 foot on the depth sounder. We were blessed to have sailed for years on the Dutch Waddenzee. This was very similar. The only difference: ELITSHA is not a flatbottom with leeboards. It looked exactly like you sail from the Stortemelk into the Schuitegat towards Terschelling with low tide and it felt exactly like that.

I could tell you more about my fear of sailing over the many wrecks alongside of the coast, our chart showed us and Dick’s fear of hitting ground in the bottom of the waves (that’s why he looked for more shallow water without swell and waves), about comforting and encouraging each other that we will make it, that the fishermen would look out, that 30 - 40 knots of wind is actually not that bad and we are not in real danger but that we just needed some sleep and rest, after 2 antibiotic courses and, and……… And then we just arrived……just like that!!!! We picked a mooring buoy, made the dingy ready to go and went ashore. I did not eat for 4 days, actually ate the other way round (if you know what I mean). In the bar of the Marina, where everybody welcomed us, we ate and drank because we felt, we must celebrate. But the feeling was not there like in St Helena and Fernando. We went back to our brave ELITSHA and slept like we got paid for it. The next day we celebrated full time. We ate the whole day, talked to everybody who came across. We did 5 washes in the Marinas washing machine, had I don’t know how many showers and Elitsha got a very good clean up: you don’t want to know how it looked like inside her: flour everywhere, everything everywhere and because of the salt water everything was sticky, wet and just ick.

Now we have a fruit bowl and candles on the table, new sheets on our beds, nothing moves, and we can just move without getting thrown into one of the corners of the ship, fall of the toilet and stuff like that. Okay its rainy season and if it rains, it REALY RAINS, buckets of water coming down, but that is not such a problem: cleans the boat and fills the water tank. A bar with nice music and good food where you meet nice and friendly people, a shower, free internet: that is what we were craving for. We are on the Suriname river in Domburg, close to Paramaribo. We hear the howler monkeys on the other side of the river, where it’s already pure jungle. I am telling you, it’s REAL heaven.

I remember from the old days of sailing in Holland: the feeling of arriving after a tough stretch in bad weather and under poor conditions is unbeatable. Leaving under difficult condition makes you nervous, hanging in it, you just do what you must do, and arriving is heaven.

Wednesday we will go for the stamp in our passports and on Friday we will sail with ELITSHA 70 miles down the river to meet caiman, anaconda, howler monkey and jaguar in the real jungle. No Sonny and Crocked anymore, Dick as Tanzan and I will be Jane.

………to be continued.

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raendown · 4 years

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Pairing: None Word count: 4419 Chapter: 2/4 Rated: T+ Summary: Months after the village is built Izuna is near his breaking point. Peace is nice, don’t get him wrong, but he could do without the pale shadow that follows behind him everywhere he goes. All he wants is to understand. What the hell is Tobirama’s obsession with watching him?

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Chapter 2

“But why do I need to be in charge of it?” In spite of the usual efforts to sound more mature than his actual age, at the moment Hikaku treads dangerously close to a childish whine. Izuna is far from impressed.

“We need someone there to make sure people actually stay on task,” he says. “And we all know there’s no one better at killing a buzz than you. It’s a work site, people are gonna get rowdy, idiots are gonna want to show off. You’re basically acting as supervisor to make sure that no one gets out of hand or uses any chakra outside of strict working necessity.”

Scratching at the back of his head, Hikaku steps aside to let a man pass between them and then falls in to step beside Izuna again. His face takes on a dour expression for several minutes as they walk. By the time he orders his thoughts for whatever he wants to say they’ve already passed by several shops and turned down another street.

“I’m not exactly…the strongest guy around,” he says at last. The words sound as though they pain him to admit. Pride is a terrible affliction to them all.

“That’s fine. No one’s asking you to actually fight people. If they step out of line you tell them where to shove it. And if they try to start something you don’t think you can win then dodge like hell and report them. You know I’m always willing to crack a head for you if you need it.” Izuna grins as he claps his cousin on the back, shamelessly enjoying the bleak grimace he gets in return.

When the other falls in to a sulk Izuna lets him, too cheerful to be put off his own good mood. Plans to build the wall are progressing a lot faster than anyone expected after the council of elders had somehow all managed to agree on a single proposal in the first meeting. As a celebration of the workers going out to survey the initial measurements Izuna had invited Madara out for lunch. Unfortunately his brother is an absolute stick in the mud and had opted to stay home with some paperwork he apparently needed to get done so when Izuna passed Hikaku on his way in to the shopping district he cheerfully invited his cousin instead.

And even more cheerfully dropped the news that he is nominating Hikaku as one of the foremen for this upcoming worksite. Their lunch out has been a petty man’s delight as he enjoyed both the food and the look of exhausted irritation staring back at him.

“Come on, if we cut through here I think it leads out near the tailor’s and I need to put in an order for a new cloak.” With how the streets twist here and there Izuna is actually fairly proud of himself for remembering that. He pulls at his cousin’s shoulder until Hikaku follows along behind him with a tortured sigh.

“I thought we were going home now?”

“Oh stop whining or I’ll sit on you until you admit that you’re secretly an old man in an adolescent body.”

Even without looking he can practically hear the other pouting. “I’m nineteen!”

Izuna intends to shoot back with some quip about making his point for him. He’s interrupted before he can by the sudden appearance of two stocky figures in front of them, blocking the path in an unmistakably deliberate manner. One arm swings out instinctively to stop Hikaku and encourage the younger man behind him. His cousin might not be exactly weak but he is also enough of a level-headed realistic to step behind the stronger fighter without complaint.

“Can I help you gentlemen?” Izuna asks in a calm voice.

“Already done enough, haven’t you?” one of the men drawls. His accent is distinctly northern where the villages have all intermarried enough that none of the people living there can be said to carry even as few as three bloodlines.

“If I’ve already helped then I’m sure you wouldn’t mind stepping aside for us to pass.” Humor is, perhaps, not the best way to respond in this situation but unfortunately his mouth always works a little faster than his brain. Sometimes the words just sort of fall out of their own.

“Think you’re funny?”

Clearly these strangers do not appreciate his humor.

“Yeah I sort of think I am.” Izuna grins even as he curses himself for a trouble-seeking fool.

“Right.” One of the men turns his head to spit before cracking his knuckles. “I’ve been waiting years to get you alone. Then some people came ‘round our little hamlet talking about peace and a village where we can all be happy and sunshine together and I thought to myself ‘well now, isn’t that just an opportunity?’ And here you are.”

“Here I am.”

“My sister never took another step after you left her for dead. Now she spends every day with this look on her face like she wishes you would have just finished the job.”

A wash of sad understanding turns over in Izuna’s belly. Not guilt because he’s sure he had a reason for whatever he did, he’s never been the type for unnecessary slaughter, but the aftermath of their duties as shinobi is never pleasant to think about. One of the first lessons he’d ever been taught was how to put it all out of his mind lest it drive him to madness thinking about the things he’s done. It doesn’t take a genius to understand the sort of revenge this man is after; obviously he’s never been able to put what happened to his sister out of mind.

For perhaps a sliver of an instant Izuna considers trying to talk his way out of this but even as the idea enters his mind he cast it aside. The anger staring back at him is not the sort of anger that can be talked aside. Unfortunate, that. There goes his good mood.

“Hikaku,” he murmurs quietly, “I want you to stay out of this.”

“But-!”

“Just watch the street and make sure no one else gets involved, alright?” Keeping both eyes on the man already reaching for a poorly sharpened kunai, he waits until his cousin assents with a low grunt. Then he nods and put his trust in the other to keep out of the way.

Eyes narrowed, body language more aggressive by the moment, the stranger doing all the talking gives a harsh snort. “You must be proud of the pain you’ve caused. I’ve always enjoyed taking the pride out of men who don’t deserve it. Hurting you the way you hurt her is going to be fun, I’ll make sure to mark this day on my calendar and celebrate it every damn year.”

Izuna is already imagining the lecture Madara will give him later on setting an example for others, how they are supposed to be the pinnacles of peaceful behavior towards their new allies. He spares a moment to scowl mentally for the one who has seen most of his violence over the years. What use is having a stalker if Tobirama mysteriously disappears the only time it might be useful to have him around?

Of course, the moment he finishes that thought the two men move towards him and then every body present freezes as another appears between them. Exasperation and relief flood Izuna’s veins in equal measures. Tobirama says nothing in either greeting or explanation, merely stands like a statue with his back to the one he’s spent most of his life trying to kill. Leaning to the side puts Izuna at just the right angle to see his rival’s face and wonders at the look of sheer ice in those deep red eyes, narrowed in to a cold glare that would have frozen the blood of bigger men than the ones he has turned it on now. Nice as it is of him to give these idiots pause in whatever stupidity they had been about to commit it’s still baffling for Izuna to find himself standing behind a wall of pale flesh like some damsel that needs rescuing.

And all in utter silence.

Now faced with twice the skill as they had been a moment before, the would-be attackers seem to rethink their options, eyes darting between Tobirama’s immovable stance and Izuna’s raised eyebrows. The one who has so far done all the talking keeps his eyes forward when he cranes his neck to whisper behind himself. Wariness has already filled the second man, frustration clear on his face even as he shakes his head with obvious regret.

“Let us have five minutes with him,” the first one says finally, attempting to bargain with Tobirama. “Rumor says you follow him around like a shadow; obviously you don’t trust him. You wouldn’t shed any tears if something happened, yeah? No one has to know you were even here.”

They wait but Tobirama makes no move to reply, only continues staring the pair of them down. It’s difficult to decide whether his ability to remain so completely still is more impressive or eerie but Izuna supposes it doesn’t matter much when it is clearly serving its purpose. All confidence drains away to leave both of the strange men looking increasingly nervous as the minutes ticked by. Eventually the one in front grunts and scuffs one foot against the dusty ground.

“Whatever. Pair of goody-two-shoes softies now that you’ve got a pretty little treaty to hide behind and all. Just you wait, Uchiha. There won’t always be a Senju bodyguard around to protect you.” With a sharp gesture he motions for his companion to follow and backs away slowly until he can lose himself in the crowds just beyond the alley.

“Hn, won’t I?” Izuna murmurs unhappily under his breath.

Although he’s sure the words do not carry across the space between them, Tobirama turns and meets his eyes with the anger in his face draining away to leave him blank once more. For some reason the sight of him is unutterably irritating.

“Thanks oh so much for the help but you know I could have taken those two with both eyes closed, right? I don’t you to rescue me.” Snorting quietly as he hears his cousin splutter behind him, Izuna shakes his head. “Seriously, is this what you were following me around for? I don’t know if you were hoping for a life debt or something but no way am I declaring some bullshit like that when I could have taken care of this on my own.”

“Izuna!” Hikaku whines and pulls at his sleeve but he shakes the man off without looking.

“Go on then. Was that what you wanted? For the love of chakra just say something!”

Tobirama tilts his head slowly to one side. “Your brother was looking for you,” is all he says, leaving them to wonder if he intends that as a convenient excuse for his presence or this is a paltry attempt at moving the focus away from himself. It’s a lie either way. His brother knows exactly where he is.

With no further words Tobirama turns and walks away in a plain declaration that he considers this nonexistent conversation over. Not even when Izuna hollers after him loud enough to attract attention from both ends of the alley does he look back, leaping up on to the rooftops where, even more annoyingly, his chakra doesn’t go farther than a couple of roads away. Considering how close he tends to stay lately it’s sort of a miracle he goes even that far.

“Do you think anyone would notice if I murdered him in his sleep?” Izuna grumbles.

“Yes,” Hikaku answers in a flat voice. “Many people. Not the least of whom would be his own sibling.”

“Just a little bit?”

“No.”

It proves difficult but he manages to resist the urge to cross his arms. “Ugh, fine. Come on. I can stop by the tailor’s another day, let’s just head back home. Madara’s gonna love this.”

One glance is all it takes to see that Hikaku understands his sarcasm. At least the familiarity of rolling eyes lifts his spirits a bit. He is still frowning as they turn for home, however, working though everything that’s just happened in the span of about five minutes. For all that he hadn’t believed in peace himself for many years, apparently he’s allowed himself to grow complacent in just a few short months of it. Getting jumped is surprising enough already considering how few people would dare to challenge his reputation but having someone go to all the trouble of joining their settlement just to challenge him specifically is a dedication to hatred beyond even his own ability to carry grudges. Then to have Tobirama of all people step in like some volunteer policeman? He feels almost tempted to check himself for signs of whiplash.

Hikaku stays with him until they are well within the boundaries of the Uchiha compound, probably worrying that he might wander off and get up to no good. Which, he can admit, sounds fairly relaxing at the moment. Nothing helps him let off a bit off steam more than pulling a good prank or two on his fellow clan members. Unfortunately he’s had to rein himself in a lot more often to make a good image for anyone watching the Uchiha a little too closely, putting their best foot forward until the gathered clans are all on more solid footing with each other. It’s a shame, really. Behaving is boring.

Left alone only a few streets away from his home, Izuna spends the last few minutes’ walk trying to figure out how to describe what has just transpired without making it sound like some weird over exaggeration. He wanders up their walkway with an absent thought that it looks like the grass seeds they planted are finally sprouting, green shoots rising from bare dirt to stand proud with no help from the mokuton they still deny needing, and scowls to know that it is now perhaps a little late in the season. They will die before they have a chance to live. Perhaps to take advantage of the help Hashirama offers will be necessary after all next year. Madara looks up as Izuna enters their home and matches his frown as though by instinct.

“What’s your problem?” he demands.

“Grass is finally growing,” Izuna mumbles as he kicks off his shoes. “And I got jumped in an alley. Sort of.”

Madara's paperwork drifts slowly down to his lap, eyes narrowing behind the reading glasses he so shamefully hides away from most people, fingers already tapping random patterns against his thigh with rapid thought.

“You look remarkably unruffled for someone who just got jumped.”

“Didn’t exactly turn in to a fight. Almost, there were two of them and one was saying something about me hurting his sister, but we got interrupted.”

“By?” his brother prompts him when he doesn’t go on.

Shuffling in to the room, Izuna flops down in the closest armchair and rolls his eyes. “Who do you think? My biggest fan showed up and just stood there like a ghostly statue, stared the two idiots down until I guess they decided they didn’t want to fight me and him at the same time.”

He feels almost flattered to see Madara set his paperwork entirely aside. As the years go by his brother has grown to be more and more of a workaholic, always needing to be productive and taking less time to simply relax, almost as though he were trying to fill some kind of hole in himself. Izuna wonders sometimes if the man is lonely but he never asks. Romance is generally one of the topics they try not to talk about beyond warning each other to go sleep somewhere else for a night on rare occasions.

“Just like that?” Madara asks eventually. “He showed up out of nowhere to just…stand there?”

“Pretty much. It was weird. When I tried to tell him I had the situation handled all he said was that you were looking for me and then he disappeared like he does except he didn’t go far. Do you think he even realizes that I’m a trained fucking shinobi and I can track chakra like everyone else if I put some effort in to it?”

Several minutes pass without answer but he knows his sibling well enough to know that Madara is only mulling the situation over in his head. Much to the contrary of what most people think, he does have the ability to think before he speaks; it’s just that he loses that ability when his emotions are high and that tends to happen a little too easily. Especially around the two Senju brothers. Both of their one-time enemies have their own way of evoking emotion fairly easily from those around them.

“I can’t say I know what’s in his mind but from what you’ve told me I don’t think he cares whether you know he’s there or not.” Madara hums as though considering his own statement.

“That’s just weird,” Izuna grumbles. “This whole thing is weird. People are actually starting to talk about it, do you realize that? And some of the rumors going around are wild! I’m pretty sure the man isn’t following me around because he’s secretly in love with me.”

“You never know,” Madara points out with the careful thought on his face morphing in to sly teasing.

“Oh don’t even suggest it,” Izuna shoots back, nose wrinkling with distaste.

It isn’t that Tobirama is particularly unattractive. Quite the opposite, actually; he’s been unfairly attractive since the rest of them were all gangly teenagers hating him a little more for having never suffered the indignation of a pimple at the end of his nose. Rather it’s the idea of trying to make a relationship work with someone he would constantly be comparing himself to that balks him. Being competitive is simply in his nature and Izuna is self-aware enough to admit that being so close in power to his partner would leave him feeling childishly not good enough.

His eyes close as he realizes that now he is worrying about this ridiculous possibility he hadn’t even given credence to until he was teased about it. Madara, the bastard, snickers at him from across the room.

“Maybe I can shake him if I volunteer to take a few missions,” Izuna muses aloud. “He’s really not harming me in any way but it’d be nice to not feel eyes following me around all the time. That plays havoc with all the years I spent training myself to be hyper aware of anyone watching me. I keep thinking he’s about to attack.”

“Afraid you’ll lose?” His brother pretends to nod in sage agreement, to which he lifts his middle finger.

“Don’t project your own insecurities on to me, old man.”

The wave of profanity that crashes over him in response flows in one ear and out the other as Izuna tunes it all out with the ease of practice. He is already trying to remember the mission list that got posted this morning and whether there had been anything on it which might keep him away for a few days just to relax, to breathe without having to wonder if red eyes might be watching his every movement.

Getting out of the village will be good for him anyway. It will be interesting to see how the climates have changed in the area with the forming of Konoha and all the other lands following their example. When the only thing he needed to call himself was an Uchiha there had been certain cities and towns that welcomed him with the relief of knowing he would protect them if need be while others had watched him pass through their lands from behind closed blinds, reporting every movement to the other clans they were allied with. Now that he carries with him the weight of Konohagakure on his shoulders he wonders how those same eyes will watch him. Friendly, the ally of his allies? Or will suspicion and prejudice linger as they all pretend that it doesn’t here in the village itself?

It feels strange to hope that lingering prejudice is the only reason Tobirama keeps following him around but Izuna finds his thoughts wandering back to the rumors of a strange romantic obsession and shudders, pushing the idea away as quickly as it returns to him. Some time away will hopefully clear his mind and allow him to come back to this odd situation with fresh eyes. Maybe then he will be able to see past the things he is afraid of finding to spot the real reason.

Like any good plan, however, it is subject to unexpected changes. Namely the innocent smile on Hashirama's face the next morning as he stands in the man’s office and stares with abject horror.

“You want me to what?”

“Accompany Tobirama on his mission! It’s a simple delivery but our intelligence says that Iwa shinobi have been spotted in the area and they’ve been doing everything they can to sabotage our efforts in reaching out to new allies.” His eyes turn soft in the way that says he is slipping away in to dreamy thoughts. “Normally I would send Touka with him, they’ve always worked well together, but then something Maddy said made me realize that it would be really good to make a show of unity, you know?”

“Unity.” Izuna parrots the word faintly, hardly able to believe his ears. He is going to kill his brother for this.

With an oblivious nod Hashirama goes on. “Yes! The biggest concern we see from the clans we’re reaching out to is their doubt that this peace is real. What better way to convince them of our sincerity than to see you and Tobi working together?”

“That’s very sound logic,” he has to admit. “Terrible, awful, and disgustingly sound logic.”

“Isn’t it? When I told Tobi my idea all he did was stare at me without saying anything. I would have thought he’d be proud of me for coming up with such a clever idea.”

Doing his best to ignore the most powerful man in the nation pouting at him like a child asking for sympathy, Izuna draws in a deep breath and lets it back out slowly. Of course his old rival had only stared. The man is probably leaping for maniacal joy on the inside to be handed such a perfect excuse to continue stalking him from even closer than usual. So much for getting some time away.

“Looks like I don’t have much of a choice but to accept,” Izuna mumbles more to himself than to Hashirama. After making a point to seek out a mission for himself it will only make him look like a dissenter if he refuses to work this one simply because of who he’s been asked to work with.

“Excellent! Right, I have a copy of the mission details here if you’d like to take the scroll and look it over. You’ll be leaving in two days so don’t worry about rushing, there’s plenty of time to get things together or find someone to cover your work. I know Tobi hates to come home and find his paperwork has piled up.”

“Does he now?”

The other man beams at his rhetorical question, clearly mistaking it for interest, and continues to blather on long past the point when Izuna stops listening. Now that he’s been enjoying the benefits of it for months he will be the last person to declare this peace a mistake but Izuna will freely and eagerly state for anyone who asks that he regrets the effects it seems to be having on Tobirama. Or more accurately he regrets that it has given the man chances such as the one he finds himself falling in to now.

Quietly planning revenge on his own brother for having any part in saddling him with this doom, Izuna allows Hashirama's voice to wash over him like a constant stream as he unrolls the scroll to peruse its contents. The mission itself doesn’t seem too complicated, typical first contact stuff, a good show of cooperation and goodwill before they saunter on home again. It’s ironically just the sort of thing he’s been hoping for. Of course, he’s been hoping to go alone or perhaps to drag Hikaku along with him. Now he is to be saddled with an extra shadow to follow along behind.

A little piece of home to come with him, he thinks wryly.

“Much as I appreciate your stellar conversation”-Izuna interrupts the flow of words without guilt the moment he is finished reading-“I do believe I should go set my paperwork in order now rather than leaving it until the last minute. Whoever takes up my duties while I’m gone won’t appreciate a messy filing system.”

“Yeah, Tobi’s always on my back to be less messy. I won’t keep you then!”

Izuna nods and turns away. He makes it all the way to the door and twists the handle when his attention is called back to see Hashirama’s face take on a hesitant, almost pensive expression.

“Thank you for accepting this mission. I know the two of you aren’t close the way Maddy and I are but I think…this will be good for him.” He says nothing more than that, no explanation for such cryptic words, and once again Izuna finds himself wondering whether this man knows what sort of behavior his sibling gets up to at every opportunity.

Rather than ask he simply nods and turns back to the door again. Tobirama tends to stay farther away whenever he keeps within the boundaries of the Uchiha compound. If he is to be denied the space he’s been trying to create for himself then Izuna very much intends to spend as much time as possible on his own before several days of having to walk side by side with his own unexplained stalker. Maybe – and it’s a big maybe – he might be able to force some sort of clue out of the man while they’re alone in the wilderness for days on end.

A man can dream, even if he dreams of nothing more than an answer to his questions.

#rae writes #izuna #tobirama #hikaku #madara #hashirama #fanfiction

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xfanfics · 4 years

Photo

Destiel Fic Rec List Part 5

Last Updated in October 2014. Posted in May 2020 for posterity. Listed in no particular order - the total rec list will have ~250 fics. Header graphic used with permission.

This part of the list contains: 32 fics.

Other Destiel Rec Lists: [1]. [2]. [3]. [4]. [5]. [6]. [7].

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Casturbatus Interruptus by gaugbrojotr E | 6k | Canon!verse, Hot, , PWP

post-9.01, in a slight AU wherein Cas comes to live with the Winchesters at the Bunker. Written before 9.03. Crossposting from Tumblr. Written for a prompt from hightopsandsharpies: "Okay, so Cas is a virgin, and has no idea what pleasure is and Dean decides to show him and Cas gets all cuddly and needy afterwards. Dean walks in on Cas masturbating. He’s doing it all wrong, but when you’re a bazillion-year-old virgin, that’s to be expected. Dean decides to lend him a hand in a totally platonic, non-romantic way. Things get a little out of control.

that awkward moment when... by highermagic E | 7k | Hot, wing!Kink

All in all, with a full tank of gas and his radio turned up loud, Dean was in a pretty damn good mood. All that vanished into shock and concern when the sky lit up like daylight, as though someone had decided that black was so passé for nighttime.

This Temporary Flesh and Bone by misachan E | 5k | Canon!verse, h/c, wing!kink

Castiel doesn't serve Dean, fine, Dean has no problem with that - he just wants to know why Castiel's showing up in his dreams again.

What a fabulous little Fic. Very emotional. S4 cas is my FAVORITE.

Only Fools Rush In by baka_sensei E | 18k | Canon!verse, soulbond

Dean does something and in angelic tradition that means he's become Castiel's fiancé. Dean doesn't know if he wants to get married, but he doesn't want to let Castiel down either. Cas lets his feelings run away with him, Gabe is a total dick, Sam is concerned, and Dean has to make a choice.

Learning Curve by blualbino T | 1k | Fluff, Canon!verse

Cas has nice lips. They’re soft looking. Plush even. Dean can do this.

Dinner At Katz's by nanoochka E | 2k | Hot, canon!verse

Dean might have to teach Cas how to have a When Harry Met Sally-esque orgasm, but he certainly doesn’t have to fake it.

Free With His Hands by watermaline E | 2k | canon!verse, handprint!kink

The first time it happens, Dean chalks it up to…well, he doesn’t chalk it up to anything, he’s too busy coming his brains out in his jeans with Castiel’s hand on his shoulder.

Desecrate that Sanctuary by brokentoy E | 3k | Hot, Alt!Canon Verse

Dean develops a fascination with Cas' bones.

What Once Was Sacred by saltandbyrne E | 55k | Hot, AU, Cop Dean, DJ Cas

Los Angeles detective Dean Winchester works tirelessly to atone for the sins of his father one case at a time. When his best friend Charlie drags him to visit Sam at his new job, Dean stumbles onto a bizarre string of deaths that brings him uncomfortably close to his past.Dean can't stop thinking about Castiel, an enigmatic DJ who plays the sexiest music Dean's ever heard. A chance encounter at Castiel's house reveals that Castiel is an incubus, and Dean must face the lies and the reality of his childhood as a hunter. Dean comes to see that he and Castiel have more in common than he thought, and that guilt can be the hardest thing to cast aside.

Freefall by LastKnownWriter E | 128k | Hot, Fluff, AU, Teacher Dean, Firefighter Cas

AU. The most exciting kindergarten teacher Dean Winchester's life ever gets is when he plays mechanic in his uncle Bobby's shop on the weekends. That is until a birthday party goes tequila-nova and he trips into a one-night stand with an incredibly hot firefighter named Castiel. Dean's life gets a lot more exciting after that.

The Best Years of Our Lives, My Ass ❤ by ireallyhatecornnuts E | 110k | Hot, Fluff, HS AU but not really,

AU after Season 8, episode 6, "Southern Comfort." Dean goes to sleep in a motel room in Texarkana, and he wakes up 17 years old, in his childhood bedroom in Lawrence, Kansas, 1996. He has no idea how he got there, why his parents are still alive, why his brother is an adorable freshman with no memory of his adult life, and why the only ally he has in this place is the angel he left behind in Purgatory – somehow also 17 years old. They have to get out, that's the important thing. Only, falling in love with his angel wasn't a part of the plan....

It's like a HS AU... but better! I love how Dean is given a second chance at growing up, and Cas gets to engage with his humanity is painfully familiar ways. Some homophobia from non-central characters.

deus ex nihilo by Valyria E | 7k | AU, dubcon, god cas

Lost on an uncharted island, Dean Winchester is captured by the local villagers and offered up as a sacrifice to their winged god. Castiel takes one look at Dean and decides he wants him for a mate.

Twist and Shout ❤ by gabriel E | 97k | Angst, AU, Main Character Death

What begins as a transforming love between Dean Winchester and Castiel Novak in the summer of 1965 quickly derails into something far more tumultuous when Dean is drafted in the Vietnam War. Though the two both voice their relationship is one where saying goodbye is never a real truth, their story becomes fraught with the tragedy of circumstance. In an era where homosexuality was especially vulnerable, Twist and Shout is the story of the love transcending time, returning over and over in its many forms, as faithful as the sea.

Do I really need to say anything? Twist and Shout is one of my favorites simply because it made me bawl. Didn't love the characterization, but I still liked it overall.

Carry On ❤ by TamrynEradani E | 148k | Hot, AU, Sub!dean, Dom!Cas

When Sam gets into Stanford, Dean needs a bigger paycheck than Bobby's garage can give him. Luckily, he knows a guy.

Forget 50 Shades of Grey, they should make this fic into a movie! Even if you are not a fan of Sub!Dean, give this fic a shot, because it is nearly perfect.

Glasses by Samanthapin E | 9k | Fluff, High School AU, punk!cas, nerd!dean

Teasing turns flirting turns dating turns grossly soppy boyfriends

beer and bacon happy hour by outpastthemoat G | 2k | canon!verse, s8

The problem is that Dean’s been having good ideas all night. “No one insults the trenchcoat,” Dean says, and drives his fist into the other dude’s face. Dean figures he was bound to run out of good ideas eventually.

Hard Road ❤ by aleishapotter E | 54k | Canon!verse

Dean discovers a few truths about himself when he and Cas are forced to go undercover on a hunt to the very last place Dean ever thought he'd find himself: a gay resort called "Last Hope" that is geared towards helping troubled homosexual couples repair their relationships. This fic is hilarious and hot--my favorite things.

Dean Smith Verse by TamrynEradani E | 17k | Hot, BDSM, AU, Sub!Dean

Dean Smith is a man of routine. Castiel takes him apart.

Bratishka: Little Brother by Valyria E | 33k | Cop AU, Cop Dean, Lawyer Cas

Dean thinks he knows pretty much everything there is to know about his best friend Castiel Novak - he's a smart, gorgeous DA who probably lets Dean get away with more than he should to see the bad guy locked up - but it turns out Cas is hiding some dark family secrets.

the way to a man's heart by mkhunterz M | 15k | Fluff, Canon!verse

Dean teaches Cas to cook, and other things as well.

Branded by garrisonbabe E | 12k | | canon!verse, soul bond, marking/claiming

Michael mocked Castiel, telling him he'd never get Dean the way he truly wanted. No matter the mark on Dean's soul, he'd never get him the way the archangel could take him. Dean finds a ritual that fixes that and a few other issues.

Our Bodies, Posessed by Light by obstinatrix E | 39k | canon!verse, sastiel bromance, Fluff

Purged of all his souls, Castiel is a changed being, stronger than an angel and too powerful for Jimmy's body to contain. Happily, there's an archangel's vessel on hand, and he could use fixing, too. Dean isn't too happy about the idea of his brother acting as a vessel for Castiel, and Sam can guess why, but it isn't until Castiel gets inside his head and they learn to share the vessel -- and their thoughts -- that Sam realises Cas is as in love with Dean as Dean is with him. It's unfortunate that there's nothing much to be done about it now, but Castiel will get another vessel soon. The Winchesters will make damn sure of that. In the meantime, it's up to the three of them to establish their own strange accord, and Dean realises more fully than ever that it's Castiel, and not his vessel, that he loves.

So Glad We Made It ❤by scaramouche M | 16k | Fluff, AU

At twelve years old, Dean makes a friend, who becomes his best friend, who will eventually become the love of his life.

Oh, the best friends who grow up together AU. I have a soft spot for fics like these-- comes with pining, awkward misunderstandings, and a good basis for a realistic relationship.

Shut Up (Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is) ❤ by kototyph E | 23k | Fluff, college au

Dean's done some pretty stupid things, but getting drunk-hitched in Vegas to a colleague he barely knows might just take the cake. His surprise husband, Castiel, is a little weird but likable despite that, and Dean figures they’ll go back to Boston, get a quiet annulment, and go their separate ways. Six weeks later, he’s still married to one of the strangest, most genuine and definitely most dangerously lov-- likable guys he's ever known. Dean doesn't know why or really even how it’s happening, but it’s getting harder and harder to remember that he has divorce papers to file.

FLUFF EVERYWHERE! This is definitely a feel-good fic and I love reading it when I'm sad. Or just you know, whenever.

But the Fire is So Delightful by kototyph E | 5k | Hot, hate then love, College AU

Apparently, it’s been snowing all day. [Dean is a Douchebag Fratboy with a Cherry Ass, Castiel is Angry and Aroused]

Stitches by askance T | 23k | Fluff, h/c, blindness, Canon!verse

Castiel survived Leviathan--but only barely. Vessel mauled and eyes destroyed, Cas is barely clinging to what's left of his grace when Dean finds him naked and alone on the reservoir's edge; in a panic, Dean brings him home to the cabin where he and Sam have been holed up off the grid. What follows is the slow process of the angel's recovery and the unexpected changes that come with his being blind, and in the three months this takes, their little family slowly begins to patch itself back together in forgiveness, love, and darkness.

When Charlie Met Cas by riseofthefallenone E | 25k | Fluff, canon!verse

Charlie is back in all her glory. The Winchesters have showed up on her doorstep and she’s making the best of it the only way she knows how. By being the little sister Dean never wanted and shipping the shit out of Destiel.

The Life After the Morning After by saltyfeathers T | 17k

Dean and Cas get uber drunk on their last day of University. They end up married. Neither of them seem to mind.

The Girlfriend Experience ❤ by Rageprufrock E | 15k | Hot, Canon!Verse, First time

While it's not like Dean hasn't had a couple of truly regrettable hit-and-runs in his sexual history, this is probably the saddest fucking thing that has ever happened to him.

Classic Casturbation fic. Complete with steamy sexytimes, hilarious dialogue, and fed up and clueless Dean. Perfect.

Hands, From Which All Things Are Built by MajorEnglishEsquire T | 14k | Canon!Verse, s8

Castiel travels with the angel tablet and without the Winchesters. One day, Dean gets a text from some anonymous number. (They speak in the language of need.)

Cowboys and Real Estate Angels by almaasi E | 36k | AU

Castiel crosses paths with the ever-charming Dean Winchester at a rodeo show in Texas, of all places. Dean's singing days are long bygone, but his crowd-pleasing skills haven't waned one iota. Unexpectedly, Castiel finds himself in Dean's bedroom; they take and they give, and discover that sometimes strangers can find love like this, too. (And if a man's faith can't be put in God, it needs to go somewhere...)

#destiel #deancas #spn #spn fic rec #destiel fic rec #*#list

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fishdavidson · 5 years

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(BELATED!) Dream Journal 2019-07-10: Sort of Like Good Omens, But With Superheroes And Loud Farts

Good news, everyone! So far the new medication is not affecting dreams! However, I didn’t end up posting last night because I played Electronic Super Joy and AudioSurf 2 (purchased in the most recent Steam sale) until it was too late for me to write anything substantial before going to bed. But now that I have steeled my resolve to not play any more computer games until I have caught up on my writing, I’m finally getting around to posting some high-quality content.

This dream in particular was an almost perfectly coherent narrative without doing any editing, and it was a pretty cool story, too. And the best part is that it even had a semi-plausible and self-consistent mythology. So let’s get to narratin’!

It is mere days before the end of the world, but everyday life looks pretty similar to how it looks today. Except there were a handful of superheroes that the general public knew about who were trying to keep the world safe from various threats. These superheroes were more like Iron Man than Superman, in that they were regular mortal people that happened to own super-suits and fantastic technology.

An unnamed detective with an interest in historical archaeology is trying to solve a case where some expensive Vera Wang ceramics were stolen. She finds the plates in a disused janitor’s closet in an apartment building, and the only person who had access to that closet claims the plates were counterfeit items purchased at a dollar store. Either way, the plates got confiscated as evidence and the detective went home for the evening.

Later that night, the detective is contacted by a superhero who is basically Arthur from Amazon’s version of The Tick. Arthur has discovered something written in an ancient language that he believes may herald the impending end of the world. The detective translates it, and she confirms it has some bearing on an ancient prophecy about the battle for the end of the world.

It postulates that Adam and Eve were forbidden from ever entering the Garden of Eden again, but Adam will one day be reborn and use powerful magic to unmake the world as we know it and reshape it into a new Eden that Adam and Eve will live in to spite God. Yes, my asleep mind actually came up with this. But it gets even better!

Adam has come into our world already and reached adulthood. His mighty powers begin to manifest, but they are not quite as strong as God’s powers of creation. In order to achieve omniscience, Adam has only a scant handful of days to accomplish several large tasks:

Sing the Song of Creation, which had long since been lost to time

Find the Letters of Creation, which were a set of love letters written between Adam and Lilith.

Summon Eve into the world

Move all the land into one big supercontinent that shall become Eden.

You might think that it is nearly impossible to reconstruct a song that has been lost for thousands of years and was never written down, and you’d be right. Unfortunately, Adam realized that he can just pick a song and use his semi-divine powers to declare it to be the new Song of Creation. His choice is a little too on-the-nose, and he chooses “The Circle of Life” from The Lion King soundtrack.

This is where I, Fish Davidson, enter the picture. It’s also one of the few points in the dream that aren’t as narratively consistent. Somehow I have managed to acquire five of the twelve known Letters of Creation. Twelve letters? SUBCONSCIOUS SYMBOLISM, I SAY!

I meet up with Adam in the service corridor of a shopping mall. Adam wants to negotiate for possession of the letters. Why he doesn’t smite me on the spot at this moment is beyond me, but I have brought the letters in a ziploc bag and I am prepared to do stupid and reckless things to prevent the end of the world.

I have not come to negotiate. I am just here to stall for time.

Adam starts singing “The Circle of Life,” and it is filled with majesty and divine power. It is hard to resist singing along, so I do the only thing I can think of: yank the letters out of the bag and start literally eating them. Apparently reading the letters aloud was the key to bringing Even into this world, which would allow the newly-reunited power-couple to work even faster. But I put the kibosh on that plan by gnawing on that ancient parchment like a cow on grass-flavored methamphetamine. You can’t read the letters if they are impossibly shredded by the gnashing of teeth.

Meanwhile, Arthur has reverse-engineered something called the Engine of Creation with the help of the detective’s impressive knowledge of history. The Engine is an apocryphal golem that looks like a large clay urn with dog legs that God supposedly used to create land and vegetation in the beginning. It requires the power of a true god to work at full capacity, but Arthur is reasonably confident that it will still work (albeit less efficiently) with some big batteries and a bit of ingenuity.

Adam has already begun moving big chunks of land toward Africa. Most of South America is now underwater, traveling like a jet plane under the sea toward the western coast of Africa. By the end of the day, South America, Africa, and Australia will be one big continent.

Arthur has is charging every battery he can get his hands on, and has even sacrificed the nuclear reactor in his flying super-suit to power the Engine of Creation (codenamed Seedy) in an attempt to make more land for the displaced people of South America.

Seedy gets powered up and runs around like a playful puppy for a moment before it lowers itself to the ground and starts shaking. If God was there to give Seedy some extra power, it would be spraying industrial quantities of dirt and trees everywhere. But on battery power, all Seedy can manage to produce is a loud 10-second long fart and a single turnip.

In more traditional narratives, this would be the place where all hope seems lost. Adam has far more power by himself than we could ever muster on our own. But between Arthur activating Seedy and me eating the Letters of Creation, God got angry enough to come back Old-Testament style and smite Adam with an adequate amount of force to destroy him forever.

Humanity, you’re welcome.

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Header image is Adam and Eve expelled from Eden by an angel. Etching by H. Winstanley after G. Reni, 1728.

#dream journal #dreams #fishdavidson #adam and eve #good omens #end of the world #plates #vera wang #the tick #arthur #detective #circle of life #lion king

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fuse2dx · 4 years

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September ‘20

Paradise Killer

Putting it out there front and centre that I know some of the folks involved in creating this, and clearly I’m devoid of sufficient integrity to be impartial. You know, it’s best to get these things out there, with the internet being what it is.

It’s a whodunnit set in Paradise, with your character having been brought back from exile and tasked with solving who’s responsible for the mass-murder of the island’s core council. There’s a clear set up with one guy already due to take the fall, but it quickly becomes apparent that the island’s populous of weird deities - who perhaps have too much time on their hands - clearly have more of a stake in this than they’d like you to know. You’re left to investigate at your own pace, poking around crime scenes and places of interest, but also soaking up the island and its vibe as a whole. Getting reacquainted with its residents is a massive chunk of this, and if their out-there names, colourful outfits, and eccentric behaviours weren’t enough to draw you in, there’s more serious manners such as allegiances and motives to start peeling back the layers of. Titbits of info gleaned will often give you the opportunity to eke more out of someone else, and although the game does a great job of subtly nudging you to where loose ends might best be chased down, you’re given the freedom and ultimate responsibility on when to start wrapping things up at trial.

Given the potential for disorder in its narrative structure, the game’s job in cataloging all of your gathered information is crucially neat in its execution. The free rein that allows you to be as orderly and meticulous as you choose is welcome, as is the gentle push towards the truth of things. But there’s also just enough space to sink into convenient falsehoods - even to present them at trial and make them stick, if you can pass on that conviction - and it’s this freedom that really sets it apart from its contemporaries. Helping this is a fully realised island you can move about in and investigate, rather than doled out chunks of exposition by chains of talking head sequences. More salacious secrets are typically locked behind puzzles or specific items, but there’s also a particularly inviting nature to the architecture that suggests playful acrobatics - dashing, double-jumping and the like - be used to explore out-of-reach areas.

The look is tinged in pinks and blues, giving a suitably welcoming glow to Paradise. It’s warmth is helped massively by the soundtrack that runs throughout it, bringing pleasant, jazzy saxophones and subtle, warm electronics into its city-pop inspired stable. There’s a great voice running through its veins too - one that operates in its unspoken thoughts, the descriptions of its collectables, even the interface and the sub-headers as you enter new areas - just about damn everywhere. It’s smart, it’s cynical, and it’s snappy, and is a regular factor in keeping a smile on your face even in the moments that get closest to being downtime. Bias be damned! I can say, hand-on-heart, that it’s a game that not just nestles in comfortably among its peers, but stands tall among them.

Moon

Cult status can be a double edged sword. For anything cult - movies, albums, games, you name it - there’s that risk that if put under a modern lens, they can be painfully of their time. Cherished by those that were there, perhaps, but impenetrable - or even worse, alienating - for those without that context. Previously a Japan-only PS1 title, Moon has held such status for 20+ long years, but on its return, lets you know very quickly that a lot of what it had to say was timeless.

Its sending-up of RPG tropes is pretty spot on - the game-within-a-game that your character boots up got a big belly laugh out of me almost immediately, and then leads into a montage of a hero’s journey through a world that you’re then later transported into to pick up the pieces. See, the ‘hero’ in the game is kind of a jerk - barging into people’s homes, taking things out of their cupboards, killing all of the wildlife, and so on - and while this likely sounds very familiar, Moon prompts you to remove that filter of normal game behaviour, and instead asks that you try and be a bit more conscionable and pleasant. Acts of kindness to others are repaid in love, a tangible currency that grows your love level, allowing you to spend more time in its world before you need to rest and begin your day’s busy-bodying anew. Observing the routines of the world’s inhabitants is key to making good on its many grievances, and although these are straightforward enough at the start, some of the later challenges relied on some more tenuous thinking - to which, I’ll put my hands up and say that I turned to a walkthrough. These more patience-testing moments might have been a good way to pad things out in ‘97, however it’s a bit steeper an ask today, when I daresay most people will be visiting this as more of a curiosity. Accepting a helping hand doesn’t stand in the way of these scenarios delivering on the charm, surprise, or humour they originally aimed for, though. Labelling it a parody or a spoof might work as a descriptive shortcut, but it’s never mean spirited, and clearly loves the subjects it pokes fun at - there’s a wonderfully self-effacing humility throughout it.

Given Final Fantasy 7 - often cited as a common entry point for many modern western fans of JRPGs - didn’t even arrive in Europe until after this originally released, it’s not hard to understand why it wasn’t considered for localisation at the time. The audience certainly didn’t exist at scale, and simply wouldn’t have had the gaming experience or vocabulary to appreciate it. Not only can we now better appreciate it as the tongue-in-cheek love letter it is, but the message of compassion and thoughtfulness is something that’s more essential today than arguably ever before.

Spelunky 2

This was always on my radar as a likely ‘game of the generation’ contender. I’ve been playing the original game on and off now for around 8 years - it’s followed me as a regular part of my gaming diet across 4 different platforms, and crucially, all the way up until the night before this finally landed on my PS4. Without getting too philosophical about it, it’s a very important game to me. Despite all of the time playing it, thinking about it, talking about it, or even reading the gosh darned book about it, I never once thought to assume I had the answer for what would make a fitting sequel. Thankfully, the team behind it had more ideas, and the faith in their convictions.

All of the crucial components of the original are here in abundance, and added to with a restrained modesty. Its randomly generated levels are more complex, and offer more distinct ways of hiding secrets, all while a subtle but slick graphical overhaul does great work in making them look more organic than ever before. More complex fluid physics allows for more transformative ways of opening up levels, and mounts might add some quirky new dynamics to things, but crucially, things under the hood beside this remain largely the same.

Perhaps more importantly, Spelunky 2 understands the fervent player base centred around the original game, and uses their knowledge and familiarity to challenge them anew with clinical precision. Things are just similar enough: the title screen, the tutorial, many of the enemies, and the stages that you find them in - they’re tweaked, yes, but still familiar. On top though, there’s enough that’s new, or changed in a minute yet specific way that makes it very clear that things are going to be uniquely dangerous all over again, and that your muscle memory is more of a liability than a crutch. The curve of learning the game - understanding and tempering its dangers, and the slow, cautious, pulling back the curtain of its newer secrets - is still pitched in the same utterly compelling way as before, though. Rather than being harder outright, or just more lumped on top, it finds a way to make new players and familiar faces alike to learn to play Spelunky all over again, and it’s a total joy to have that opportunity. It’s everything I didn't realise I wanted in a sequel, and it’s breathed a new lease of life into a game that I wasn’t even bored with in the first place.

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 & 2 Remastered

The original THPS was proper lightning in a bottle stuff; while its countless sequels eventually drained every good idea bone dry, and it left countless half-baked spin-offs in its wake, it’s hard to be mad, or surprised, when the original formula was so potent. Underpinned by a brilliant combo system that called back to arcade-style score chasing, in tandem it also nailed the kind of goal-based mission objectives that became so common after it. This is before you even get on to the way that skateboarding’s irreverence, fashion, and music were curated and presented in such a way that they left a mark on an entire generation. Sports titles are often glossed over from a critical perspective, but there is no escaping the quality and impact of this series.

This remaster tries to capture it at its zenith - and although they’re arguably off by a game or two, depending on who you talk to - it’s generally welcome that some of the ideas from later games are pared back. What it does with these first two games is for my money, the gold standard of what a remaster should do - it makes them look and feel like you imagined they did at the time; smooth, detailed, and responsive. Please, don’t make me go back and look at what the originals actually did look like, because I don’t think my poor brain could take it. The kitchen sink has been thrown at everything surrounding the game, with more relevant and diverse skaters brought into the fold, menus upon menus hiding a wealth of additional challenges, and a soundtrack that celebrates the older, punkier roots of the game, but also shines a light on some musical features that are perhaps more relevant to today’s youth. It’s all handled with a surprising elegance.

It’s a great new way to introduce the series to people, and also a nice outlet for old hands, with my only real criticism being that I had blasted through both of the original tours within a day of dropping the disc in my system. Yes, I could chase high scores endlessly, and yes, there’s a park builder and an abundance of multiplayer modes - but if you’ve finished these games before and just want to revisit them with a new lick of paint, don’t be surprised when it dries out fast.

#paradise killer #moon #spelunky 2 #tony hawks pro skater

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bloodiedcuriosity · 4 years

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Chronicle 1

Note: This chronicle is over a year long, so I will summarize story beats the best I can from Fangs perspective, labelled for skimming ease.

Headers: main story arcs Bold/italics: subplots

Strike through stuff are comments from me the player, not Fang.

Coterie: Fang (Gangrel), Jacks (Ventrue), Udjat (Ministry), Ariyah (Tremere), Alex (Banu)

The Gangs First Mission:

Jacks and I were summoned to the Prince, where we met 3 others to take care of a masquerade breach. Someone frenzied in the middle of a club and we were to take care of the police that responded and the witness at the hospital, the kindred was not our main priority. Me, Jacks, and Alex handled the Police. Loki caused a distraction for Alex to sneak in and Jacks commanded the head detective to head to Brazil, and to shoot anyone asking why. Which is a great idea. We found the evidence and took care of it as well as the 2 other witnesses.

Following some leads that Udjat and Jacks had found as the previous night ended, we found the Kindred responsible, but it looks like someone had gotten to her first. We head back to Elysium as everything is handled and overall we did well and were recognized as an official coterie with domain. Ariyah says there’s ghosts in the apartment we were given though.

The Curious Case of the Thinbloods:

Nothing happens for 2 weeks, I network and gossip at parties. I overhear that there’s a group of humans spreading odd rumors as well as accurate information on Torries and Nos at a bar in Etobicoke. at the end of the 2 weeks, someone is at our haven, an Anarch named Jeremy. He offers 5 more blocks into their territory for feeding as well as phones that have been Kindred proofed (Alex the resident techie makes sure). The humans are operating in the Banu domain, of which we were granted permission to stay in for a week to handle them. Watching the bar Loki and I spot 3 odd acting humans and alerted the others. I had Loki follow the humans home, and to follow Udjat if they split up. We found the homes of the humans and broke in to figure out what they knew and what they had. RED swooped down to collect me while they were finishing up searching the houses, an urgent delivery to a warehouse in Hamilton. I didn’t open the package. Though I really wanted her to. This is relevant info I promise

I met back up with the others in the Banu domain, following a lead for the ones giving the humans kindred info at a homeless camp. A nos named Slash gives us the name and location of three thinbloods at Humber College. They’re having a party tonight so we decide to crash it. I find one of them named Gil and in trying to get him alone/looking at what he has in his room I end up in a threesome because that totally happens, what can I say, Fang the knockoff torrie has her ways. In the process Alex obtains all of their phones and determines that there’s no breaches there, though Gil was interested in Ethan’s disappearance.

A Pillar Collapses:

We learn that Ethan was aware of him being a thinblood and of the masquerade, and sought to connect with the other two, teaching them the masquerade as well before he disappeared. Ethans parents were never aware that he was missing. We capture Ethan and Jacks wants to bring him to Liams (Jacks’s sire), but Ethan would rather go to Elysium or the sun than go to Liams. He tells us all the terrible experiments that Liam has done on him and other Thinbloods. Jacks makes the executive decision to still take him to Liam, and he and the other coterie members fight, and chase. In the end, Ethan makes it to Elysium where in a month he will have an audience with the Prince, as well as the other Thinbloods with Alex as their lawyer. Jacks tells me to go back to the Haven, and he will explain everything.

30 minutes to sunrise, I get hundreds of messages from Jessica (his ghoul) to go find Jacks, but its too late for me to go out to look for him. I pass out in the living room fighting the sun to wait for messages from Jessica. When I wake up the next night, Jessica leaves one more message, saying that he walked into the sun. I frenzy at the loss of a close friend in a puff of feathers. Patches of feathers remain even when the frenzy fades for the night. When I calm down, Alex invites me to go to a meeting with Udjat and Jeremy to talk about the Thinbloods and Liam. A meeting at Elysium is called, they confirm that Jacks is dead, and to confirm the time line given for the trial of the Thinblood that is now in 3 months. Someone under the Sherrif is dispatched to the Coterie named Vinny. After the meeting we go to Jacks’s haven, and find Jessica heavily drinking. I console her, give her me phone number, and convince her to let them look through the haven. I find a briefcase full of pictures of my graffiti on his buildings which makes me cry, I also riffle through his jewelry for a ring and put it on a chain. Ariyah and I have a heart to heart, she knows loss like this. I later gain custody of Jessica, and question the three thinbloods with everyone, as I am the better lie detector. Alex says he has business to attend to and leaves. We go to Ethans parents to try and glean more information, and find that they are missing and have been for a while. Found foot prints and tire tracks but that is more Alex’s forte.

The Beach Episode:

Vinny and I decide to have some bonding time, and spar. He kicked my shit in but I proved my point to him that I could take a punch. Fortitude yeehaw. Udjat and I share blood since he was hungry and wanted some disciplines, we also learn that Vinny is Caitiff, and I wanted presence so you know. RED came and visited, saying someone came to the pack looking for me that fit the description of someone who ambushed me years ago. She doesn’t like it and offers to come with us to look for her. Udjat, Vinny, RED and I go looking for her at a close by conservatory. We find her, we fight and she falls into damage torpor. We take her to the haven with us and talk more but she falls into hunger torpor not giving us anything so we take her to the Camarilla. Ariyah mothers us and RED hits on Vinny and I hate it. Imagine if your mother started hitting on your friend, its WEIRD MAN

The Trial:

Liam gets fucked up for being a lying bitch, Slash is a lying bitch who kept lying and even tried to run away. Liams ghouls were killed, 2/3 thinbloods found innocent, we are given a major boon from the court. An explosion rocks Elysium, 3 bombs have gone off in the city. We were told to go home and wait for instructions. Vinny and I spar again while waiting, he wins again but not as bad. The following days they’re told to be even more careful and to not go near the bomb locations. Jobs for the pack have been cancelled for the next month, RED tells me to tell Vinny something and I am not having it but RED sees right through me and came over. Jeremy comes over and we learn that the man Ariyah saw in her sires library while preparing for the trial is Vigil, the Malk Primogen, and that Jonathan is his brother as well as the leader of the Anarchs. They also learn that the doors to the clubs prior to the bombings were boarded up. He also tells us that the phones will be updated soon. Alex after Jeremy leaves tells us to give him the Anarch phones and to not trust Vigil or Jonathan.

3 Years Later:

There is a remembrance every year for the bombings, RED tells me she mates for life and I realized that I can’t sabotage her and Vinny anymore. There’s CCTVs everywhere, everyone does their own thing. I try to start using my networking to gain some favor to plant the seeds of becoming a Harpy. Jeremy comes over near the end of the time skip, offering us a job to go get a shipment of thermal cameras for them to gain a Major boon from him. The mission goes well, though we had to fight SI, but I had Loki keeping watch and gave us a decent heads up. I take a couple bullets, but otherwise everyone was unscathed.

I keep my ear to the ground about the mission, to see if anyone knows more than they should and all I find is that people know it happened but no one knows who did it or why. The coterie is called to Elysium for a job, Julius Moon (Anarch) needs to be interrogated in connection to the bombings. Another Anarch we’ve kept in contact with sets up the meeting with him. The meeting was a mess, something tipped Ariyah off about his answers, he tried running, even got into Vinnys head to use him against us. In the end, he was chopped into pieces and stuffed into a suitcase to be easily transported as he was missing his arms for trying to fight us. He was brought to Elysium to be held and questioned by us, after I put him back together. He knew way too much. The Anarchs were trying to start a war with the Camarilla, and our Anarch contacts were all involved in one way or another, except notably, Vigil.

War:

Natio entrusts the coterie to deliver the first strike back in this war, granting us the right of destruction to any Anarch. Our job is to take down their main method of communication, the Anarch cellphones, by destroying their servers and bricking their phones. Udjat left, last talking with Ariyah. We scout out the building the Anarchs are using, a building at York University, to find its guarded well by mortals and kindred alike. Alex comes up with a plan and creates something to destroy and erase all the information on the servers as well as brick the phones that are attached to the servers.

The First Strike:

Vinny, Ariyah and I go directly into the building as students, as the servers are in the basement, and scout out/keep an eye out for not students while Alex sneaks his way in. We encounter another Kindred named Bennie, who also seeks to pick a bone with Jeremy. The chaos begins with EDM blasting over the speakers and a pulled fire alarm. The kindred near by burst in, fighting ensues, I get my shit wrecked by feral weapons and bot me and Vinny get wrecked by Sarah with Fist of Caine. Vinny is in damage torpor while Ariyah and I whittle her down to hunger and damage torpor, capturing her, though we later learn Benny took her while Ariyah tried to take her to Elysium. Benny disappears in the scuffle. Everything was so action packed I didnt take good notes, and Fang wasn’t part of the more ‘important’ scenes for the overall story. When the dust settles, the servers are damaged and phones bricked, though not to Alex’s satisfaction.

Cleanup Crew:

The next mission we were given, take care of some of the fighting forces for the Anarchs. The Anarchs were more Gangrel and Brujah, while the Camarilla distinctly lacked them and any fighters, besides the Camarilla Nos. We prepared to go to the Anarch Gangrel domain and smoke them out, napalm and flame throwers included. However upon arrival it looks like the SI beat us to it. It was a setup for us most likely, but Loki and I caught it before they spotted us. On the way back, I hunted. On that hunt I encountered the same bouncer I gave empty promises the night after my embrace. I was shook, he attempted to kill me, but I scared him off, I hope for good. Daunt is one hell of a drug

While we were distracted though, the SI stormed Elysium. We were told by a Nos that Vinny knows, Roach, and he asks us to come with him to kill the prisoners that are being held underground before the SI get to them. We accomplish that, killing some more SI on the way, and killing Sarah and Julius as well. No one has seen Alex in a while.

A new Elysium location is picked and called, the remaining kindred are all over the place in terms of happiness and or nervousness. 4 Anarchs want to switch sides as well. Natio announces that there is going to be a parley between him and the Anarchs, and that the coterie (and Benny) is to come with. It is not intended to be peaceful, no one goes in or out.

Parley:

There are three main figures, Jonathan is in the center, 2 guards inside and 2 more on the outside of the room. He denies having any part of the bombings, and gets aggressive when Natio accuses him of telling the SI where Elysium was. Another fight ensues, everyone killed besides Jonathan and one of the inside guards, he was an undercover Camarilla.

You Reap What You Sow:

The war is over, and things change.

Ariyah is appointed Tremere whip, her sire the new Primogen

I am the representative for the Camarilla Gangrel, not Primogen but still of some importance

Vinny was given the opportunity to Diablerize Alex, for he had tried to leave while we were killing prisoners, and he does, becoming Banu Haqim. He also becomes an official Hound

We all have our own domains as well as the coterie domain. And with that, comes the end of Chronicle 1.

#OC Fang #Campaign: Rebirth #Gangrel #Long Post #Chronicle 1

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tradewithjorgie-blog · 5 years

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2. **!!Get rick quick!!** / AUDJPY

Let’s be honest, we’ve all seen the title above. That header will find you in some way, shape, or form. A relative might text you out of the blue, worried about your health. Someone on facebook you haven’t seen since high school might send you a message randomly: “hey _____, long time! How’ve you been? The kids look great!”. You’ll even see a small hand written sign staked into the ground next to a highway exit that reads, “Real Estate Investor looking for students: Make 10k a week”. It’s inevitable. Somebody can make you wealthier than you’ve ever imagined and they usually want to make you visualize this-

I can’t say that’s how I got started, but the beginning sure felt familiar. The rush of entering a trade for the first time. The excitement of learning a new technique or style that I knew was foolproof. That first $1,000 dollar deposit into my trading account. It’s a lot like doing drugs. It makes you want more and more. To learn more, to get more involved, and ultimately make you money. Buckets and buckets of cold hard cash.

You’re a walking ATM baby, and banks everywhere will fear your name.

And why wouldn’t you feel like that. You end up joining some kind of trading program that’s guaranteed to teach you to do the same thing as whoever is in charge. And when they post profit pictures like the one below, it only makes your hunger grow.

Why wouldn’t you want that same quality of life? Why don’t you deserve it? If they can do it so can you. They came from nothing, and wanting it bad enough half the battle, is it not?

But... as you start (and you know you’re not going to get rich right away), your MT4 trading platform history starts to look more like this:

Negatives everywhere. That’s how it goes. I’m counting on it happening to you, because I want your money. Now the writer of this blog never tried to bring people into a pyramid scheme. That’s not what Forex is, I’ve got the scars to prove it. Forex is a dog fight. Forex is a wilderness full of faceless, nameless rabid dogs, all smarter than you, faster than you, better equipped than you, with accounts 1 million times your size. Forex is about survival. Hiding in the shadows long enough for the big dogs to eat, get bored, and walk away, you try to take just enough to be able to trade tomorrow, nothing more.

I don’t want you to fail, but I understand that a large part of my wins, come from your bad psychology. It’s just how the world works. It’s not pretty, I’m not offering someone a product that will actually help their life or improve their lifestyle to make money. No I’m sprinting past the biggest of the dangers, snatching up as much as I can, leaping over limp bodies and getting the hell out of dodge.

That’s Forex. Every time I enter a trade I do it for me. But even a hawk that annihilates a sweet bunny from the face of the earth.... does it to feed her chicks. Wolf packs hunt with a terrifying beauty to the haunting sounds of howling on a snowy night, so that their pups might not starve or freeze. I do it so that one day my kids can have the opportunities I didn’t while at the same time getting to spend the time with myself that I still don’t get to spend with my father.

In Forex, your goal is to react to the market. People will tell you the goal is to predict the market, but that’s impossible. The Foreign Exchange markets exist because 7+ billion people make an infinite number of decisions every day. How do you predict something like that? Over 5 trillion dollars enter and exit the Forex markets every single day. Just to put it into perspective, there’s only 11 billion dollars in liquidity in the US stock markets, or just .0022% of the Forex markets. If the stock market was an ant, Forex would be Planet earth. It’s where banks and multi-nationals do their (dirty) work and the best part: it’s 100% legal. And it will continue to be until everyone on earth uses US dollars.

I got into it because as luck would have it I sat behind a Jamaican kid in my finance class one day who had Tradingview.com open on his browser. I didn’t know exactly what it was, but I knew what it represented: a way out. I asked him about it and that’s pretty much it. We dropped out of that finance class a few days later because we were on a journey “to take our own finance class”. That was a big mistake but regardless, he and I are still thick as thieves. I love that kid.

Back to trading. Here’s how it goes. You get excited. You start losing. You win a trade here and there but that’s blind luck, you don’t know what you're doing. An impressionist painter can tell you exactly what he’s doing but unfortunately without at least a few years of practice, that doesn’t make you an impressionist painter. Forex can’t be taught Bob Ross style.

You have to absorb information the same way a tennis player does. You have to fail and fail and fail and take a break and fail again, until your mind and body start to work instinctively. Like the matrix you don’t see lines of code falling down the screen anymore. What to other people look like a bunch of little green and red candles with a wick on both sides that rise and fall, to you it becomes a living, breathing, hissing animal. You’re trying to steal one golden scale off of its back as it slides up and down. Just one at first, if you go for anymore you’re going to get bit.

Slowly you start to learn that when it gets to a certain point or the chart starts to look a certain way, this pissed off little animal is limited in it’s movement like a raccoon you’ve just cornered. Still, highly aggressive and unpredictable but... a little less unpredictable?

You start to win. Slowly you start to take back what was yours and while the other dogs are busy snarling at each other, boasting about their victories and licking their wounds, you’re content to work far, far away from the hype. This isn’t about grandeur anymore. This is about revenge. And another shot at reaching financial freedom. Speaking for myself the ultimate goal for these next 5 years is to achieve Digital Nomadicy. Ok I made the word ‘nomadicy’, but digital nomads do exist. All you need is an laptop and a wireless connection and you’re ready to trade from anywhere in the world.

So... Let’s see how I’m doing up to this point. As I show you, please don’t feed the animals.

Starting with an H4 (every candle represents 4 hours of price movement) view of my chart on AUDJPY (Aussie Dollar vs. the Japanese Yen), we can see that current price movement has entered a channel of about 75 pips (sorry the picture is blurry).

When a pair is “consolidating” that means that it’s not really going anywhere. It’s not going to nose dive, or shoot up any time soon (I hope). It’s just kind of moving up and down between to price points, in this case a little below 74.800 and almost right on 74.000. When price reaches one of these points I know it has to react to it in some way. I don’t try to predict if it’s going up or down, I’m just waiting for the moment when it picks a direction and I can jump in.

Now price hasn’t been this low except for two times that price fell super fast and then raced back up again. Wicks (the long sticks at the top & bottom) give us clues, but not too much information on the structure right here. What this means is that if price continues to fall, once it breaks that 74.000 line definitively, it has a good chance of tanking hard. And since price has been consistently falling since April 19th, 2019, there’s a good chance it will continue falling. When you trade in the same direction as the “trend”, you are trend trading. Easy enough right?

Now, if we draw lines across the top of the price action in the channel and the bottom, it looks like a triangular flag. Usually that means that price is going to bounce inside of these lines, until it breaks out and once it does, it usually moves definitively in that direction. Usually always, always being the key word.

Now remember we’re looking at the AUDJPY pair, which is in essence a battle between the two currencies. When one gets stronger, the other gets weaker relative to each other. There was a major Japanese news release planned today at 7:30PM eastern time that I thought would move the market a bit more than it did. If the information was better for Japan than expected, the price would go down because the base pair (what we’re trading, the Aussie dollar) would have weakened in reaction to Japanese strength. But the numbers were just as expected so nothing of excitement happened.

Where the red meets the green is where I got in. All those wicks right around where it is, tells me that the price is having trouble going down. Combine that with the fact that it’s sitting right at the bottom of the flag, and where I hope it goes is greater than the distance to where I would take my loses and walk away if it went the wrong, I entered the market. I am hoping that it plays back up to where the green ends, in which case I will walk away with money, not caring if it goes up even higher: don’t get greedy.

As of this moment.... I am losing. But the battle is not lost. Stay tuned for next weeks blog post to find out what happens next.

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snipsnsnailsnwerewolftales · 7 years

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Bloodlines - Part 3

A/N: Based off of the song “Heathens” by Twenty One Pilots, this will be a multichapter fic with either a lyric being a chapter title, or the headers to break down the thought process of the chapter. None of the lyrics are mine, and they are all in bold - Again, I do not claim to own them, all credit where credit is due.

I do not own Teen Wolf or it’s characters. Sadly.

Word Count: 1,488 (Not including lyrics.)

Warnings: Talks of the Hale House Fire.

Beautiful people who helped me when I came to them with this crazy idea and said to run with it: @wheresthekillswitch @obsessed-withthe-hales @aworldmadeforme @life-what-life-i-dont-have-one @xteenwolfwritingsx

Coming back to Beacon Hills was supposed to be uneventful. Yet somehow, you are now stuck in the middle of two worlds you didn’t even know existed yesterday. Now between both worlds, but not belonging to either, you try to forge your own way, finding out that some ties are stronger than bloodlines.

Part 1, Part 2

Xxx

Welcome to the room of people

It had haunted you for days to follow. Faces you’d never seen before, but now would never forget. Faces you knew before, but wanted to forget. The torture, the flames, the pain…. All of it burned every time you closed your eyes. There was nowhere to hide.

It didn’t help that it bled into the current pack situation. You couldn’t look at anyone the same anymore. Along with the fire, Peter had given you the lovely gift of a brief recap of the makeup of the current pack members, a side which you were sure was entirely tainted with his bitterness that oozed all over every memory, but all the same, it made you think twice, look three times, and breathe deep until the wave passed.

It had you clutching doorways randomly throughout the day, your knuckles turning white as you gripped the steel frames at school, swearing the metal was about to crumple under your vise like grip.

The paranoia was the worst of it. Nowhere was safe. Hunters were everywhere. Spooks and evil creatures in all the dark corners you dared to look in, disappearing when you blinked, and sometimes deciding to stay, making you question which side of reality you were on.

Lydia tried to help when she could, noticing the cloud hanging over your head, the zoning out as you started to see things that weren’t really there, something she was all too familiar with. Putting a hand on you gently, saying your name, she was usually able to pull you back, just in time for you to stop making your way from whatever monstrosity you were seeing, looking away before you made it to it’s face, which you were sure would never leave your mind no matter how hard you tried.

Stiles tried his best, distracting you with every moment that wasn’t occupied with school or pack business, talking your ear off, and you didn’t mind it for once. His voice kept you grounded, your only real way to tell which side of the world you were currently on, which side of sanity.

You wanted to question everyone’s motives, a nagging feeling in the back of your head telling you there was a reason to second guess whatever they said, whatever they did, whatever happened, no matter what.

You were surrounded by faces you knew, but didn’t understand. People you understood, but didn’t know.

You were surrounded by uncertainty, and that was the scariest part of all.

Who have rooms of people that they loved one day

The name had come up in pack meetings dozens of times, but you hadn’t put two and two together until he walked into the loft mid meeting one night.

“Chris?” Your voice of surprise abruptly stopping the current conversation, but you didn’t care. You hadn’t really been listening anyway.

“Y/N?” His voice had changed, was gruff and weathered, and his face carried a weight beyond his years. “I’d heard you were in town, but just haven’t crossed paths with you yet.” His smile still made his eyes sparkle, despite the obvious burden he carried on his shoulders, and it made you feel a little bit better knowing at least that part of him wasn’t gone.

Flashes. A face. An intense rush of memories from your own end coming out of nowhere.

“I’m sorry about Allison.” Your bottom lip trembled. “I should have been here. Even if I wasn’t in on all this supernatural crap, I could have been there or something-”

“It’s okay, Y/N-”

“No! She was my friend, Chris!” Your voice cracked, heavy with unshed tears. “For years, before Beacon Hills, I remember all the family trips, all the lakeside getaways, all the-” You had to stop. Some cache of memories you hadn’t entertained in years unleashing themselves all at once, playing behind your eyes, and pulling on all your heart strings.

“So Y/N’s family are hunters?” Derek’s voice was resigned. And you couldn’t blame him. In fact it made you want to smile. He always got caught in the middle of them.

“No.” Chris’s answer was firm, but obviously had a much deeper story than a simple one worded answer.

“Werewolves?” Scott sounded hopeful.

Chris sighed. “No.”

“Oh, God, she’s a Kanima,” Stiles moaned from behind you somewhere in the loft.

Chris grunted, annoyed, obviously having been a part of that whole fiasco. “No, that I can guarantee. But the rest…. That’s not my story to tell.”

Why was your life becoming fuller of unanswered questions than you thought could fit into a lifetime in a matter of days?

Docked away

You had to tread lightly. One wrong step and everything was blown away. The minefield of your life was now down to a thin line you had to walk to avoid the wall of solid explosives all around you.

Your parents began to question your whereabouts more often. Your old friends falling by the wayside for lack of time, or simply because of your fear for their safety in your new life.

Things just didn’t fit anymore, and you needed to find some sort of balance before you toppled over and everything went up in smoke.

Just because we check the guns at the door

“Why can’t you just tell us if you know?” You walked into the loft to Peter yelling at Chris, and rolled your eyes.

“It’s not my story to tell.”

“Then who’s is it?” They all jumped at your voice from the doorway. It was just you, Peter, Derek, and Chris.

Chris sighed. “Look, Y/N, have I ever lied to you?”

“Considering the fact that you hunt werewolves and other mythical things of the night and never thought to tell me?”

You stared Chris in the eye, begging him to come back with something witty, daring him to step over the line. You’d had enough revelations this week, you needed a nap before you had anymore.

He smiled. “But I never lied to you. Just because I never told you my side job, doesn’t mean I lied.” You crossed your arms, huffing, waiting for him to continue. “It’s your story, Y/N.”

You scoffed. “What do you mean? That doesn’t make any-”

“Talia took your memories years ago, before the fire.”

After a moment of processing, you turned to Derek and Peter with a betrayed look, only to find them looking to Chris with knit eyebrows, rubbing the backs of their necks absently. “She sure loved that trick,” Peter mumbled, grinning slightly with a gentle shake of his head.

“And no, I can’t say anything else,” Chris continued. “The Hunters Code may have been drug through the mud recently, but as far as friends go, I swore I’d never tell. The Hale’s and Argent’s were in fact on good speaking terms once, and I promised Derek’s mother I wouldn’t be the one to tell you. I’ve already said too much. It’ll all make sense in time, I promise.”

Doesn’t mean our brains will change from hand grenades

Derek’s mother’s name had struck a chord in you, in fact it had rung a freaking gong. It was like a tuning fork to the chaos in your brain, her voice clearly ringing out above the mix of flashes you were seeing.

“Trust your instincts. They’ll never lead you the wrong way. Let them be your compass when this all becomes too much one day, and may they guide you home, back safe and sound, at the right time, and to the right people.” Her eyes had flashed red, and something felt different inside you in the memory, a sense of loyalty, bravery, and understanding. “It was an honor to know you. May we see each other again someday.”

Then she did what Peter had done, inserting her claws in the back of your neck. You understood, you knew why, but it became less and less clear with every passing second, and you remembered the single tear falling down your cheek as a piece of you went missing, only to have you forget it moments later.

The loft was back in focus, and you looked to each man’s face, meeting their eyes. You don’t know how long had passed since the onslaught of memories began, but from the concern on their faces, it must have been too long.

Backing up slowly, you looked absently around the loft behind them, trying to keep the flashes at bay, before you just turned and ran, making your way down the flights of stairs and out into the night, running, running, running, until trees surrounded you, and you ran further still, letting your instincts drive you.

Where, you knew not, but if they couldn’t be wrong, they were leading you back to yourself.

Back to what you had lost.

Back to the balance you couldn’t seem to find.

They were leading you more toward a feeling, than anything, an odd sense of direction pulling you toward the pieces you longed for so desperately.

And you had a feeling, when you got there, whatever it was wouldn’t surprise you a bit.

Xxx

Tags: @palaiasaurus64 @evyiione @trashy-for-teen-wolf @ohphillip @sammyrenae68 What’s this?

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simplemlmsponsoring · 5 years

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New Post has been published on https://simplemlmsponsoring.com/attraction-marketing-formula/affiliate-marketing/10-alternatives-to-clickbank/

10 Alternatives to Clickbank

If you’ve listened to much of my training, when it comes to showing you how to find affiliate products to promote quite often I personally refer to the Clickbank Marketplace. The reason I do this is because Clickbank approves virtually everyone (unless you are from Nigeria or some other country outside their approval zones), and they have an amazing selection of products to promote with high commissions.

The other reasons are because most of the money that I make comes from Clickbank and also because they are extremely reliable with their on time payments, and I’ve built up a good relationship with them over the years. However, in this blog post I want to share with you a list of other alternatives for you to consider as I don’t want my own bias to prevent you from seeing that there is a whole world of affiliate offers to promote outside of Clickbank.

I think joining all 10 of these will be overkill, but billions of dollars in transactions are being made every year through these other networks, and many have fantastic offers that are not available at clickbank. I have several affiliate millionaire friends who earn the majority of their income outside of Clickbank, and you may find some of these networks very useful to join.

In no particular order, here they are:

1. Rakuten LinkShare Rakuten LinkShare offers affiliate programs from big brands, but you have to apply to promote them and it’s not always easy to get accepted. Best for those with some experience already.

Rakuten LinkShare has a lot of physical products to promote, including some big-brands. It’s not the fastest to sign-up to, or the simplest to navigate, but there’s a lot of helpful guidance as you go.

You have to sign-up with each individual advertiser before you can promote their products. This draws out the process, but also demonstrates that higher-quality is important here.

One of LinkShare’s strengths is its deep-linking feature. You can read more about what deep linking is here.

You can find more information comparing Rakuten LinkShare and Clickbank here.

2. CJ Affiliate by Conversant CJ Affiliate by Conversant is easy to use and full of useful stats. There’s a large variety of product types to promote.

CJ Affiliate is like Rakuten Linkshare in that you have to apply to individual advertisers, which takes more time than the instant acceptance of many other networks (such as ClickBank).

However, it’s usually not too difficult to get accepted by most advertisers here; you just have to be a legitimate marketer with ethical practices.

It’s easy to filter the products here by category, serviceable area, language, currency etc… This makes it very convenient for you to find the best products to promote quickly and painlessly.

CJ Affiliate has a very large variety of products to promote. If you’d like to know exactly how to use CJ Affiliate by Conversant, check out the guide in our free lessons here.

Learn more about how CJ Affiliate compares to ClickBank here.

3. ShareASale ShareASale is another well-known affiliate network with a lot of product options.

It’s simple and easy to sign up for ShareASale, but it’s not the most straightforward platform for navigating the available features. Search for merchants using the “Merchants” icon at the top, then “Search for Merchants”. You can then filter via keyword, category, or a mixture of information in an advanced search.

It’s not easy to get started joining affiliate programs. You have to verify that you own your website before you can join any of them, which involves placing a key in your website’s header tag.

A bonus with ShareASale is being able to add products to your “basket,” which means you can save information about merchants or products that you’d like to apply for, review, or export later on.

There is quite a wide variety of both physical and digital products on this network. Find out more about how ShareASale directly compares to ClickBank here.

4. Market Health Market Health is best for affiliates looking to promote physical products in health-related niches. Newbie friendly.

Market Health is an affiliate network with a broad variety of health products. Some of the categories include general health, weight loss, colon health, men’s health, cosmetics, health and beauty, skin care, sports nutrition and others.

It’s super easy to sign up, and the site is extremely straightforward to use. You can browse by product category, you can look at their featured products or you can sort by country/language.

If your website topic is anything to do with the health niche, then this could be a really great network for you to use.

Check out the full lesson for more information on Market Health and how it compares to ClickBank.

5. Neverblue Neverblue is a CPA network with a great reputation, but it can be difficult to get accepted.

Neverblue is a very well respected CPA, or cost-per-action, network. This basically means you get a commission when people go and perform an action, such as signing up or entering details into a form.

Neverblue connects people who want traffic and leads with those who can direct it their way. Neverblue has an incredible reputation. Everywhere I’ve looked, people are very happy with the support and communication, as well as the commissions and integrity.

The trickiest thing about Neverblue is getting accepted. The site is very careful about the potential for fraud and will do a check on everyone before accepting them. In saying that, if you’ve got nothing to hide, just be honest and you’ll be fine.

The site offers a wide variety of opportunities to choose from, and it’s known for paying correctly and on time.

Find out more about how Neverblue compares to ClickBank here.

6. Affiliate.com Another CPA network, less prominent than Neverblue but still reputable.

Affiliate.com tends to prefer intermediate to advanced affiliates, so if you don’t have much experience yet you’d probably be best to try one of the other networks first.

To sign up with the site, you have to fill out an affiliate application, which the site will review within 2 business days. You’ll get a call to confirm all of your information and be assigned to an affiliate manager.

At this point in time, Affiliate.com claims almost 2,000 live campaigns in a variety of categories, so there’s definitely a large selection to choose from.

Check out the free lesson to see how Affiliate.com directly compares to ClickBank.

7. JVZoo A digital product network like Clickbank.

JVZoo is very similar to Clickbank in that it’s a network for affiliates and sellers based around digital products. It’s easy to navigate, and, just like with Clickbank, you can check out the marketplace to get an idea of the products you could promote before you’ve even signed up.

There are a lot of less-than-ideal affiliate programs on this network however. Some have terrible grammar mistakes or poorly-executed sales pages.

This doesn’t mean that you can’t succeed with JVZoo, it just means you have to carefully filter through the products before you decide to promote something on your site. This is true of any network, but especially important here.

I like how Nathaniel explains it in his review, “Can You Make Money on JVZoo?,” so check that out if you’d like more information about this network.

Go to the full lesson to see how JVZoo directly compares to ClickBank.

8. PeerFly A high-quality CPA network, which prides itself on being custom-built.

Peerfly is another CPA affiliate network, once again with high-quality offers and a great reputation, but you do have to apply and be approved.

This verification process is a really good thing, even if it takes a little more time and effort. It means that if you do get accepted, you’re in good hands.

The cool thing about PeerFly is that the software is custom built, so you’re unlikely to experience downtime or other hosting related issues.

You can apply to be a publisher from anywhere in the world. PeerFly has a convenient payment options. You can even opt for weekly payments, so you won’t be waiting around to get your commissions. The site offers PayPal, Payoneer, check, wire, or ACH transfers if you live in the US.

You can also access your stats on your phone via the mobile stats page.

Find more information about how PeerFly directly compares to ClickBank here.

9. Amazon Associates An enormous variety of products to promote, but low commissions.

Everyone has heard of Amazon. It’s a big player in the e-tail and internet marketing games, and as an affiliate you can take advantage of this huge network.

This is probably one of the broadest networks that you could promote from, with something for nearly any niche. It’s also extremely easy and straightforward to start promoting products.

The well-known name of Amazon means that there’s a strong level of trust associated with buying from this network. This works in your favour when you promote the products here.

The downside here is that the commission rate is tiny, you have a much smaller window in which to convince people to buy (only 24 hours) and it’s hard to get approved by the network. Ideally, you need a website which already has a healthy level of traffic to get accepted, and to make it worth your while.

You can find more information or sign up for Amazon Associates here.

Check out the full lesson to see more about how Amazon Associates compares to ClickBank.

10. eBay Partner Network Huge variety of products, but you need a website with quality traffic to succeed.

eBay Partner Network is a very similar story to the Amazon Associates network. There’s a huge amount of products available for you to promote, and you get the added advantage of eBay’s credibility: People know that it’s safe to buy from eBay.

It’s hard to get accepted into this network unless you have a website with a lot of quality traffic, which is fair enough, as you need that quality traffic to earn a decent commission here anyway.

You can learn more about the commissions you can earn from the eBay Partner network here.

Check out the full lesson to learn more about how the eBay Partner Network directly compares to ClickBank.

So what should I choose? Depending on your individual marketing requirements, you could choose one or more of these networks to promote from.

If you’re looking for digital products, Clickbank is actually one of the best networks. It has high commission percentages and a wide variety of products to choose from, many of which are good quality.

If you haven’t found what you’re looking for with Clickbank previously, I’d try using the gravity filter to find the best niche and products for you before giving up. You can find a guide on how to get the most from Clickbank here.

Alternatively, if you’re looking for physical products, rather than the digital products of Clickbank, the best options are:

Rakuten LinkShare CJ Affiliate by Conversant Market Health (If you’re in a health-related niche, this is a really great option)

If none of the above are calling to you, or you just have more of an interest in CPA marketing, the best two networks to apply for are Neverblue and PeerFly.

If you’ve got a lot of experience and traffic or a large social following, you may wish to try your hand with promoting via Amazon and/or eBay. It’s just about having the right audience for promoting products from these well-known sites.

If you’d like to compare networks directly for yourself, try this table as a guide:

Add This to My Website

You’re not restricted to any one network, so you might as well try any that seem like they could be of use to you.

There are many other networks than the ones that I’ve listed above, but these are the ones that either I know others are being hugely successful in, or I have met personally with the networks and know of the quality of their organization and offers.

I’m interested in your comments, so let me know of your own experiences and opinions below.