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inthedayswhenlandswerefew · 3 years

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We Were Something, Don’t You Think So? [Chapter 2: The Middle Of Nowhere]

You are a Russian Grand Duchess in a time of revolution. Ben Hardy is a British government official tasked with smuggling you across Europe. You hate each other.

This is a work of fiction loosely inspired by the events of the Russian Revolution (1917-1923) and the downfall of the Romanov family. Many creative liberties were taken. No offense is meant to any actual people. Thank you for reading! :)

Song inspiration: “the 1” by Taylor Swift.

Chapter warnings: Lots of shouting, if you never learned about the Russian Revolution then here's your mini crash course, references to historical stuff like violence and disease, Kroshka the mule emerges as the only emotionally stable character.

Word count: 4.1k.

Link to chapter list (and all my writing): HERE.

Please let me know if you’d like to be added to the taglist! 💜

Taglist: @imtheinvisiblequeen @okilover02 @adrenaline-roulette @youngpastafanmug @m-1234 @tensecondvacation @deacyblues @haileymorelikestupid @rogerfuckintaylor @yourlocalmusicalprostitute @im-an-adult-ish @someforeigntragedy @mo-whore

I wake up feeling harder, as if sleeping on the ground with all its stones and cool indifference has taught my spine to straighten, to endure. This is a welcome revelation. I will need to be resilient, for my family and for myself. I also wake determined to set things right with my rescuer. I am a perfectly charming person, Mother and Papa have always said so; I’m not painfully shy like Olga, or aloof like Tati, or rather dull like Maria, and I certainly don’t run around putting frogs in people’s shoes like Anastasia. I make for excellent company. Surely Ben will realize this and we will become inseparable travel companions.

Outside in the overcast brisk morning air, Ben is already busy tacking the mule. He glances over and tosses me an apple. It bounces out of my floundering hands and rolls off into the woods. This is not an auspicious start to the day.

“You’ll still have to eat that,” Ben says. “There’s no extra food. I was only able to ask for as much as I could justify needing myself.”

“Right.” I go fetch the apple—rummaging around in leaves and sticks and shrubs—and take a bite, even though it’s bruised and definitely tastes like dirt. I beam at Ben triumphantly. I am tough! I am daring! I am enchanting! I can pull my own weight on this journey!

Ben doesn’t seem to notice. He pats the mule’s thick brown neck and smiles fondly at her. “How are we feeling this morning, Kroshka? Hmm? Who’s a lovely mule? Who’s going to take us all the way to the Trans-Siberian Railroad without even one measly word of complaint? That’s right, you are! Yes you are!” He lands a smacking kiss on the velvety grey fur of her muzzle.

I attempt polite conversation; more than that, I endeavor to learn about my dashing yet evasive rescuer. “So, tell me Ben, have you worked for Sir Buchanan long?”

“Four years,” Ben replies curtly.

“And you are…” I think of his notebook. “A…writer of some sort for him…?”

“I’m his press attaché.”

“Ah.” I recognize the French word for ‘attach,’ but not its meaning in the context of employment with an ambassador. “I can’t say I know what that entails.”

“I handle Sir Buchanan’s relations with the Russian newspapers. Drafting statements and briefing him on local opinions and the like. And since his health has declined, I find myself delivering some of his particularly confidential correspondence.”

“Oh, I see. And he could spare you for this mission? It seems like a burden that would be better carried by a man with military or exploratory experience.”

“My Russian is passable. And I can tolerate rougher conditions than most.” He points to a pile of clothes he’s laid out on a tree stump. “Those are for you. There’s a stream out that way.” He flicks a thumb towards the east. “Get ready however you need to, but be prepared to leave in fifteen minutes.”

I examine the clothing: plain and practical undergarments, a heavy wool sweater, stockings, boots, and something unexpected. I hold them up with clammy hands. “These are…” I swallow noisily. “Trousers.”

“Yes. They’re travel attire. Comfortable and easy to maneuver in if we need to move quickly.”

“I’ve never worn trousers before.”

“I thought you were amenable to a…a…what did you call it? An adventure. A grand adventure.” He says this melodramatically, like there’s some humor in it. Like he’s mocking me.

“I suppose I am,” I mutter, still scrutinizing the trousers.

“Fifteen minutes,” Ben reminds me sternly. Then he begins to disassemble the tent.

I trudge off through the woods until I find the stream. I clean myself with ice-cold water, drink it down until my teeth ache, change out of my nightgown and into these strange new clothes—Trousers! Mother would lock me in church for a month!—and gaze up into the cloudy, pastel blue sky that peeks between the fingers of the trees. It is very still here, and cold, and deathly quiet. I try to remember the last time I was truly alone, without Mother or Papa or my siblings or servants or guards within shouting distance. There is none that I can remember; perhaps there is none at all. Out here in the Siberian wilderness I feel unmoored from civilization, diminutive, vulnerable, peculiarly inconsequential. I decide I don’t like being alone. By the time I return to our campsite, Ben is ready and waiting beside the loaded cart. His right hand is resting on a clunky metal monster with ‘Olivetti’ written on it.

“I’m a press attaché,” he says with a mischievous grin. “And you’re a typist.”

“A what?”

“You work for Sir Buchanan’s office as a typist. That’s our story, anyway. You came along to assist me during my audience with the former tsar, and now we’re traveling back to Sir Buchanan’s headquarters in Saint Petersburg. So if anyone happens to ask, that’s what you are to tell them. Oh, and you’re British. Your English sounds clean enough.”

“Alright,” I reply, still gaping at the metal monster like a black box with gnashing fangs. “But what is that?”

Ben’s jaw falls open. “You don’t…?” Then he rubs his forehead, sighing deeply. “Jesus Christ. You’ve never used a typewriter. Of course you haven’t. Great. Fantastic.”

“We always write by hand. My penmanship is flawless, Mother saw to that.” She’s still battling with Anastasia, but that’s a war that may go on as long as the one between the sun and the moon.

“Okay. Okay. This works out, actually. Because I’m not going to entertain you all day. So here is your assignment.” Ben slaps the back of what he tells me is a typewriter, and then waves for me to come closer. He reaches into the pocket of his coat and produces a British passport. Every line is filled out except for the name. He slides the paper into the machine and makes some bewildering adjustments. “So, you insert the paper, set the carriage—that’s this roller-type piece here—and type.” He taps forcefully on the keys until two words appear in the blank reserved for the passport holder’s name: Lana Brinkley.

“That’s me?” I ask doubtfully.

Ben smirks, amused. “That’s you.”

“So you could have given me a better name if you wanted to!”

“But then how would you learn humility?” He removes the fraudulent passport, shakes the paper until it dries, folds it into a neat little square, and slips it back into his coat pocket. “If you’re typing a longer message, the typewriter will ding when you’ve reached the end of each line. Then you use the lever to move the paper down, reset the carriage, and resume typing.”

I nod, but without much confidence. This seems complicated.

“You said you wanted a carriage,” Ben teases.

“Yes, one with magnificent draft horses and velvet seats and preferably no less than two servants. Not…whatever that is.”

“Well, if you’re going to pass for a typist, I’m afraid you must learn to type.” He finds me a stack of blank paper in his collection of bags and trunks, and then climbs into the front of the cart as I get into the back. The trousers, I hate to admit to myself, do make it easier to move around, although I’m not sure I approve of how much they accentuate the shape of my body. The thought of Ben looking at me in them gives me a plunging sort of feeling that is half-mortification and half-thrill…not that he has exhibited any interest at all. “Before we go any farther, do you have anything with you that I don’t know about?”

He means things like the heirlooms I have squirreled away in the large steamer trunk: the jewels sewn into my dress, the photograph. I can sense that he wouldn’t want me to have them, although I’m not sure why. In any case, I have no intention of giving them up. The jewels are the only thing of value that I have to trade if we find ourselves in a desperate situation. The photograph is the only string left that connects me back to my family, my home. “No,” I reply primly.

“Good.” He whistles at the mule and she tugs us through the trees and out onto the dirt road that leads, eventually, to the train station. As we ride joltingly along, the creaky cart wheels bumping over every rock and mound and muddy trough, I practice my typing: very slowly at first, and with only my index fingers. I read aloud as I go, gradually picking up speed.

“There once was a German princess born in the Duchy of Hesse. She was very beautiful but very shy. She had a wonderful talent for playing piano, but would run and hide if anyone asked her to perform in public. One day, when she was attending the wedding of her sister, the princess met a prince from a distant kingdom. They were only children, but they instantly knew they had found true love. They snuck off together and carved their names into a window pane. Over the years, each conspired to marry the other. They refused many suitors and wrote each other hundreds of letters. His family did not approve of the princess’s religion and lack of charisma; her family did not approve of the prince’s distant and troubled nation. But at last it became apparent to all that no earthly forces could keep the couple apart. Ten years after their first meeting, the prince and princess were finally married. And they lived joyously and peacefully in each other’s service for the rest of their days.”

Ben lights one of his hand-rolled cigarettes. The smoke doesn’t bother me; on the contrary, it reminds me of Papa smoking his pipe in his study, in the garden, as he read to us by the fireplace, as he danced with Mother in ballrooms back when she could still dance. It reminds me of home. “I’m not sure if you’ll ever give Shakespeare a run for his money, but I’ll admit I’m marginally entertained.”

I smile to myself, sentimental warmth rising in my face. “It’s Papa and Mother’s story.”

“Huh. I didn’t know your people were allowed to marry for love.”

By ‘your people,’ he seems to mean royalty, and there is some derision in his deep voice. “Well, surely duty must come first. But when love can accompany it, that’s a happy coincidence.”

“And what if duty compels you to marry a man who is, say, cruel? Or dreadfully boring? Or in love with another woman? Or who closely resembles a mole-rat?”

I resume my typing with a new exercise. For each letter of the alphabet, I type a French word that begins with it. “I don’t think that sort of thing happens very often.”

“But if it did.”

I shrug, not especially enjoying this topic of discussion. “Then duty comes first, as I said. But I believe most royal couples are perfectly content. At least nine out of every ten.”

“That many!” Ben marvels sarcastically. “Have you ever considered that your own personal experience, as pleasant as it may be, could be coloring your perception of how the world works?”

I ignore him and continue my typing. Attaché for A, bisou for B, croissant for C, doux for D…

After a moment, Ben says: “You aren’t going to regale me with another fairytale? I’m devastated.”

“I’m busy practicing my French now. Please don’t intrude.”

“You speak French as well as Russian and English?” He sounds impressed; for a split second anyway, just long enough for me to catch it like a firefly in my fist.

“And Italian, and Latin. And I’ve just started on Japanese.”

“But no German? That seems like it would be an easier beast to slay.”

“I’ve always purposefully avoided learning it, even though Mother’s family is German. I never envisioned myself marrying a German. I figured Maria could take that bullet. She doesn’t care, she’d marry anyone who could give her a castle and ten babies and a bulldog or two. I would say she was a milkmaid in a past life, but Mother’s heart would stop dead if she thought I subscribed to reincarnation.”

“Not fond of Germans?” Ben asks. “Well, who can blame you. Half the world isn’t fond of them at the moment.”

“I suppose they weren’t so awful before the Great War. But they’re rather boorish, aren’t they? They always sound like they’re angry. Like someone just stole their horse and they’re screaming at them from the front porch to come back or else.” I smile dreamily as I type. “I’ve always fancied the thought of marrying a prince from a glamorous, romantic kingdom. Maybe Italy or Greece. There has even been talk of me marrying Uncle George’s eldest son David. He’s rather beguiling. Tall and slim. Clear blue eyes like a lake. And he’s going to be the king of the British Empire one day, you know. We could holiday together in beautiful, sunny colonies like the Bahamas.”

“You’re still as important as all that? Important enough to make a marriage of that political significance, I mean.” Ben glances back at me and lifts one thick, dark, inquisitive eyebrow. “Seeing as your family doesn’t have a kingdom anymore.”

This is an insensitive thing for him to say. I frown down at the typewriter. “A wife almost always assumes the kingdom of her husband, so why should she require her own? She needs only sound breeding and a suitable temperament. And besides, we might yet return one day.”

Ben twists all the way around to stare at me, the reigns falling out of his hands. Fortunately, the mule seems to know her own way around. “I’m sorry, what?”

“It has been a brutal few years. The Great War, the supply shortages, the bad harvests…the people are frustrated, and understandably so. They lashed out blindly, at those who didn’t deserve it, at us. But the dust will clear. And when it does, I think the Russian people will come to their senses and realize that they want us back. That they need us.”

“Are you insane?” Ben snaps. “Are you utterly brainless? What’s floating around in that skull besides fiction and languages you’ll never use once you’re married off to some prince who only sees you as a broodmare?”

“How dare you! You can’t speak to me like this—!”

“For years, for a bloody decade, Sir Buchanan warned your father about what was coming. He tried to get him to moderate his views, to give the people more voice in government, to stop murdering them when they protested. And when none of that worked and the end was apparent, Sir Buchanan tried to convince your father to abdicate long before he did. Don’t you understand?! None of this needed to happen! Your family could have fled to Britain years ago, before the animosity against your father spread like wildfire across the globe, and Russia could have established their own parliament like Britain’s and negotiated a peace treaty to stay out of the war and none of us would be here now if not for your father’s selfish, pointless obstinacy—!”

“My father is a good man,” I choke out as hot, furious tears burn in my eyes.

“And he was a terrible ruler!” Ben shoots back like artillery. “He ordered protesters to be butchered, he sent untrained boys to die in some other country’s war, he clung to the throne for no one’s benefit but his own—”

“And what about my benefit?” I demand, still weeping, feeling monstrously like a child. “What about my mother’s and my sisters’ and Alexei’s? He must have feared for our futures if we were dethroned and left without any resources, any security, anyplace to call home—”

“He did you no favors,” Ben says harshly. “Half the country—the country that you obviously have not even a rudimentary understanding of—are moderates scrambling to secure the Provisional Government and disentangle themselves from the war while still somehow preserving their dignity and that of the millions of dead soldiers Russia has already laid on the altar. The other half are trying to instigate a wholesale communist revolution. There is no one, no one, who wants the tsar back. And you better pray to God that the communists don’t manage to seize power before King George gets your family out, or your father just might be guillotined on the steps of Saint Basil’s Cathedral.”

I bolt to my feet unsteadily, grip the side of the lurching cart, and leap out onto the dirt road.

“What the hell are you doing?!” Ben shouts after me.

I take off sprinting down the road, the wind whipping my face, sobbing as I run beneath the shadows of trees until my lungs are columns of flames and my legs feel wobbly and boneless. I can hear the pounding of the mule’s hooves approaching, the hurtling of wooden wheels, the slapping of leather reins. I am forced to slow to a vigorous march as my body betrays me, wheezing and aching and as ineffectual as a woman is so often assumed to be. The salacious trousers have come in handy once again. Who would have guessed.

Ben pulls up alongside me, reining in the mule to match my pace. “Hey! Get back in the cart!”

“I’ll walk the rest of the way to the railroad station.”

“It’s 200 more kilometers!”

“See you there.”

Now Ben jumps out of the cart. The mule, perplexed but not rattled, comes to a halt and waits in the middle of the road with her long ears angled in opposite directions. Ben rushes in front of me and leans down until we’re at eye-level, breathing heavily. I can smell smoke on him, and something else too: maybe cologne, maybe soap, maybe aftershave, maybe just the scent of a man in his prime. His lips are pink and full and soft-looking, I notice, as if for the first time. His cheeks are irritated and red from the wind; the ruthlessness of the climate here doesn’t agree with him. It is the only way in which I am stronger than he is. His green eyes are wide and blazing. “Get. In. The. Cart.”

“No,” I whisper, tears all over my face.

“You can’t just run off like that,” he pleads, less angry now. “Where are you going to go? There’s nothing out here except trees and…I don’t know…probably bears and wolves and maybe even Siberian tigers. You can’t get ripped apart by wild animals. Don’t you want to make it to London? To argue for your family’s liberation? They could find no fiercer advocate than you, of that I am convinced.”

“How would you possibly protect me from a bear?”

Ben unbuttons his coat and pulls up his white wool sweater to show me a pistol tucked into the holster clipped to his belt. “Just in case,” he says, smirking crookedly, lowering his sweater again. “Now I am keeping no secrets from you, and you are harboring none from me. We’re even.”

I nod, sniffling, thinking of my jewels and photograph hidden in the steamer trunk. My words are so strained I can barely hear them myself, my hands are trembling; hell, I’m trembling all over. The possibility is unimaginable. “Do you really think they’re going to kill Papa?”

Ben sighs, shaking his head. “No, I don’t,” he replies gently. “I think the Provisional Government will be able to keep the communists in check for now. I think they will leap at the opportunity to ship the former tsar off to Britain without the potential controversy of a trial and execution. And I also think we should get back in the cart and keep moving now.”

“I’m sorry your boss gave you this assignment and now you have to risk your life for a family that you evidently hate,” I lash out like a cornered animal, hissing and brandishing its glinting claws. “For a grand duchess that you hate. This must be an awful inconvenience for you.”

“It’s rather more complicated than that,” Ben says. “There’s some opportunity in it as well.”

Of course: his leather-bound notebook full of observations, his scrawled recollections to one day build into a famed article about our journey. An article full of what he truly thinks about me. I feel suddenly, violently nauseous. I feel horrified.

What happened to the grand adventure that I imagined? Where did it go?

And all at once, I can’t even remember how I pictured this journey unfolding; I can’t conjure up some rose-colored vision of me and Ben falling into an effortless friendship, flirting lightly and innocently, discovering new corners of the earth together, parting ways in London as lifelong confidants. Now I can only see Papa as he murmurs folktales older than Christianity with candlelight dancing on his smiling face, as he chases me and my sisters around the gardens with outstretched arms and sparkling eyes, as he carries Alexei from one room to the next when my brother’s joints are inflamed and excruciating and useless, as he never unburdens his mind to his wife or children but spends long afternoons chopping wood as the sun sinks into the west and the lines in his pale face grow deeper.

He couldn’t be responsible for bloodshed, for mercilessness. He’s not that kind of man. He’s never been that kind of man.

“We really should keep moving,” Ben prompts.

“Fine,” I fling back as I shove by him. I mop my tears away with the sleeve of my wool sweater, climb into the back of the wooden cart, and sit as far as I can from Ben with my bent knees hugged to my chest. I stare silently off into the forest as the mule drags us towards the Trans-Siberian Railroad, towards Moscow and Saint Petersburg and the Baltic Sea and London, towards the conclusion of this tenuous partnership and the redemption of my family. I am looking forward to soon never having to see Benjamin Hardy again, and yet I’m also not; and this is a difficult paradox to put into words of any language.

We don’t stop until it’s almost dusk. Ben hops down from the cart, leads the mule off the road by her bridle (and gives her an encouraging scratch on the forelock when she hesitates), and begins to set up camp in a small clearing encircled by heaps of frost grass. Dinner is loaves of bread again—even more tough and dry than yesterday—and metallic-tasting water from canteens. Dessert is a hand-rolled cigarette for Ben and a handful of honeyberries I found in the bushes for me. And when Ben grapples with the tent, I come over to help him with it just to prove I can.

Ben builds a fire, and we sit wordlessly on opposite sides of it with the reflections of flames in our eyes. Ben jots down today’s thoughts in his notebook, every so often glancing off into nowhere and tapping his chin thoughtfully with the end of his pen, biting his full lower lip absentmindedly as he sifts through the ocean of word in his head to fish out the right one. Meanwhile, I read my copy of Tarzan of the Apes. I stumble across a few English terms I don’t know—quixotic, cartography, constellations, ruminate—but I don’t ask Ben about them.

After a long time, when the moon and stars have emerged bright and ancient in the night sky, Ben closes his notebook and watches me. At first I ignore him. And then, eventually, I can’t anymore.

“What?” I ask irritably, keeping my place in Tarzan of the Apes with my pinky finger, which is nearly numb from the cold.

Ben’s words are calm, restrained, painstakingly chosen. Firelight is fierce and bloody on his face. “I had two infant brothers die of pneumonia, a perfectly preventable illness had they had access to good doctors and proper nutrition and a warm dry home, which they did not. I had a sister die in childbirth because there was no midwife available to attend to her. I have had friends come home from the war with limbs or half their faces missing, a fate which I myself am spared only because of my employment with Sir Buchanan. You have no idea what the world has been through while you were off playing board games and reading novels in greenhouses and lounging on lakeshores with your idyllic little family. You have no idea what life is like for the rest of us. And perhaps that’s not your fault, and it is unjust of me to resent you for it, and I must learn to temper this wrath I’ve been carrying around in my chest since childhood. But it’s still true.”

He stands, clutching his notebook with hands that are red from the savage Siberian wind, and vanishes into the tent.

#ben hardy fic #ben hardy x reader #borhap cast fic

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thecarnivorousmuffinmeta · 3 years

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How do you think each of the Cullens could become good/fully-realized people? Or maybe just work out their individual issues?

OOOOOOOOOOOF.

You ask an unintentionally dark question, @vexingcosmos. They have so many issues, and working through them would be... Not pleasant. But, well, I too am intrigued, let's see where this takes us.

Alice

No.

Alice is consumed by her visions and they paint both the way she sees the world and how she sees people. Her gift dehumanizes everyone around her, beloved family and friends are nothing more than pawns, whose misery or happiness is left up to probability. Alice will try her best for you, but a girl's got priorities and those might not be yours.

And the thing is, Alice doesn't know this about herself. Yes, she knows she sees the world differently, but I think she truly does see her friends as friends and believes that her manipulations are benign.

Jasper eating someone is objectively bad, of course she'll use all her resources to help him prevent that. If Bella Swan will be happy with her wedding when it happens (though she might be faking it) then of course Alice should just go ahead and plan it as she pleases, she knows the end game of this. If Bella and Edward both end up happy, in love, and together then of course Alice should help them out. And if they have a few rough patches in between, she'll guide them through it.

Alice doesn't realize that playing Russian Roulette with Bella's life, encouraging Edward's advances of her, is an awful thing to do. Because it might work out in the end, and Alice lives in the world of might.

I don't see Alice ever figuring this out on her own. More, as she does try to be mostly benign with her gift, I don't see anyone else pointing this out to her either. So Alice throws you a party you didn't want? Well, that's just Alice, we all have our quirks. More, being unable to see the worse futures Alice sees, perhaps she has a very good reason to make whatever decision she makes. The majority of the Cullens, sans Edward, will never know.

As for Edward, well, he's his own can of worms and he has far too much of a sense of kinship with Alice to ever call her out on anything (unless, of course, she gets in his way as she did with Bella).

The second problem is, even if Alice did have an epiphany, that she treats people like chess pieces, what's she supposed to do about it? Alice knows the future, there's no stopping that (well there is but we'll get to that), and the temptation to not keep her mouth shut would be too great. More, Edward reads it out of her head anyway, and he'd say it for her.

Edward would not understand that telling people their future is an objectively bad thing.

Alice does have a chance with Renesmee and Jake as permanent fixtures in the family. With them, Alice's visions are greatly diminished (though note not gone completely). This gives Alice a chance for self reflection on herself and her gift but... Seeing the future is all Alice has ever known, this is just how she sees the world, and in Breaking Dawn she's terrified and anxious when she has no idea what's going to happen to Bella. Alice has lived without her gift and she despises it, I don't think she has the current capacity to realize that she and those around her are better off without it.

The kind of self-reflection Alice would need to work through her issues and be a more empathetic person simply would not appeal to her.

Carlisle

Carlisle's deep in denial regarding his family. His ethical standards for them have gotten depressingly low and this is something he goes out of his way in order to not consciously recognize it.

Unlike Alice, there's hope for Carlisle, but it's not pretty.

The coven has to break. He has to realize his marriage to Esme is a farce, that his family cares very little about human life, that Edward is... Edward, and basically have everything he's believed for the past century thrown into his face.

And it would take something truly horrific for this to happen as Carlisle desperately wants to believe in every member of his family.

Edward

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

No.

Edward deserves fifteen metas to himself at least, none of which are written. For now I'll link this.

Edward's not going to self-improve anytime soon.

Emmett

No.

Emmett doesn't really care about human life all that much. He does the diet, but he's also willing to fall off the wagon for a singer and encourages Edward (many, many, times at that) to do so.

And that's just it: Emmett doesn't care and I don't think there's anything that could make him care.

Bella comes into his life, but he's not particularly attached to her either, she's just Edward's hilariously clumsy (and kind of plain) girlfriend that they're all waiting for Edward to turn.

Emmett has no reason to change, no great angst weighing on his soul in any direction, and is perfectly content to be what he is. He's also very level headed, even if some great disaster befalls the coven, I imagine he'd remain as he currently is and do his best to get by.

He's still "treat yo self" Emmett.

Esme

No.

Esme has left the planet Earth completely. She is completely divorced from reality and as a result reality doesn't touch her. If the charade she's living falls apart, then I imagine it would destroy her, I honestly don't know if she could recover from that.

But she wouldn't change.

This, the Cullen existence, is Esme's paradise. This is her fairytale ending where she got everything she ever wanted and then some. Why would she ever wish to change? How could she ever contemplate the idea of changing?

It's the world that would then be wrong, not Esme.

Jasper

Probably not.

Jasper as of canon is in a bottomless pit of misery and self hatred and in a terrible relationship. He doesn't seem inclined to or currently capable of clawing out of it himself.

Something big would have to happen, either Edward goes Full Edward around Bella and Jasper happens to notice or Alice dumps him and the coven implodes.

Even then, for the most part, I imagine Jasper would be in a state of stunned misery. The Cullen coven was his only hope, his last desperate attempt for a life where he doesn't live in agony, and then something awful happens.

Jasper may change, may grow as a person and claw his way out of depression, but it could also very well destroy him.

Rosalie

Probably not.

Rosalie is still desperately struggling with the trauma of her rape, death, and becoming a vampire. She could recover, but it's a very long road that she would not be inclined to take, that again would involve some major, unpleasant, catalyst which forces her to change.

TL;DR

If it was that easy they wouldn't be the Cullens, now would they?

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fieryanmitsu · 4 years

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The Heart-Pounding Sunrise Trek of Bonding | A3! | “Take the Stage” Fanzine

I am very honoured to announce that I am one of the contributors for the recently released A3! Take the Stage Fanzine! It was such a great experience working with so many talented artists and writers! Everyone's pieces turned out AMAZING, and I would highly recommend to check out the full zine! The fanzine can be downloaded for free here!

And, now that the zine has dropped, I'm able to share my piece with you all here! This story is based on the "Campfire Bonds" event and stars Muku and Citron as the focal characters!

Please enjoy~!

THE HEART-POUNDING SUNRISE TREK OF BONDING

THEME: “Campfire Bonds” event

CHARACTERS: Muku Sakisaka, Citron, Sakuya Sakuma, Masumi Usui, Tsuzuru Minagi, Itaru Chigasaki, Tenma Sumeragi, Yuki Rurikawa, Misumi Ikaruga, Kazunari Miyoshi & Izumi Tachibana

My fanfic masterpost: Here

AO3: Link in my Blog Menu

Muku stared intensely at his phone as he checked for the umpteenth time that he had set his alarm properly. Seeing that the numbers really did read ‘3:00am’, he locked his phone and placed it beside his pillow.

“Ugh. I swear I can still taste the tabasco in my mouth even though I brushed my teeth,” Tenma groaned as he entered the tent.

“Did anyone get a normal chocolate for the s’mores?” asked Kazunari, looking up from his phone.

“Izumi liked hers!” Misumi chimed in.

“That’s just because she’s a crazy Currian! No one would normally like a curry-flavoured chocolate,” Yuki snapped back.

“Anyway, everyone’s here, right? I’m gonna turn off the lights,” Tenma announced. “We have to get up early tomorrow, so we should sleep now.”

A flurry of mumbled goodnights flew around the tent as their leader turned off the lamp. Before long, the air was filled with the sounds of heavy breathing and light snoring.

However, sleep continued to elude Muku as he stared fretfully at the ceiling of the tent—his brain whirring with his anxieties. Though the Summer Troupe’s first two plays had gone well, deep down, Muku felt that he had barely squeaked by with his performances. He knew that he was still the weakest link, and was terrified of dragging everyone else down.

Just once, Muku wished he could give back to the ones who continually helped him so much. But, he didn’t even have any special skills—like Yuki or Kazunari—that he could put to use for the Summer Troupe or the Mankai Company.

So, when Izumi had first announced this training camp, Muku had immediately volunteered to be one of the organizers, even though he had never taken on such a role before. At the time, it had seemed like the perfect opportunity to prove himself and be helpful to the others. Surely, even someone as untalented as him could manage to do this much.

Inspired by a scene out of a shoujo manga, Muku had manically researched to formulate a grand plan. First, they would strengthen their bonds as they hiked side-by-side through bountiful nature. Then, they would share a heart-racing special moment together as the rising sun etched its image into their memories. Plus, with the fresh mountain air, he was sure they would get more mileage out of their vocal exercises.

However, when they had gathered to discuss the itinerary, his excitement had quickly been extinguished when his plan had been met with unenthusiastic faces. Some of the Company members hadn’t seemed interested in witnessing the sunrise, and many others had groaned about the early start time.

After the meeting, Citron had clapped him on the shoulders, looked him in the eyes with a mysterious, all-knowing smile and said: “Do not worry, Muku! Your idea is most wonderful! Everyone will be super duper happy when they see the sun grating them! I will make sure of it—trust me!”

Though his brain continued to worry and fret, Muku clung to the words and reassuring grin that the Zahran man had given him that day and allowed the darkness to finally lull him to sleep…

The next morning, with much struggle—along with Citron banging some pots and pans together—the two organizers managed to wake up their fellow troupe members and line them up outside of their tents. Though, they may as well have still been laying in their sleeping bags. Masumi was draped on top of Tsuzuru’s back, fast asleep. Itaru was crouched on the ground, muttering to himself with a half-dead expression on his face. Even the ever-chipper Kazunari had his chin propped on Misumi’s shoulder, both of them nodding off despite being on their feet.

Citron came to stand beside Muku and nudged him gently. With a gulp, the pink-haired boy mustered all of his courage and stood up as straight and tall as he could manage.

“G-Good morning, everyone! Thanks for waking up so early to join us for the first item on our itinerary today: the ‘Heart-Pounding Sunrise Trek of Bonding!’” Muku announced. “I know that it’s silly to want to follow someone who’s more annoying than the itchiest bite from a mosquito that arrived earlier than the usual mosquito season—”

“Muku, literally no one said that,” Yuki interrupted with a sigh. “Just lead the way.”

“O-Oh right! S-Sorry!” Muku responded, snapping out of his rant. “P-please follow me and watch your step!”

As Muku led the way to the forest trail, with the others shuffling groggily behind him, he couldn’t help but cringe as he heard someone yawn loudly and another person let out a groan.

“Ugh, this sucks…”

“Masumi, stop it! The Director wouldn’t be happy to hear you say that,” Sakuya protested in a hushed tone. “Look! She’s enjoying herself, so you should copy her.”

Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea, after all… Muku thought to himself, worrying at his bottom lip.

“Muku, why don’t you tell everyone about the path?” Citron suddenly said from behind him. “Did you not do lots of the research?”

“Really, Mukkun?” Kazunari asked, perking up and looking more awake than earlier.

“O-Oh, yes! Apparently, this path dates back to the Sengoku era. Monks used it as part of a pilgrimage route and this campsite actually used to be an aesthetic training ground,” Muku explained.

“That’s actually really cool,” Tsuzuru remarked. “Who knew that there was so much history in a place like this!”

“Ah! That signpost there marks the quarter-way point! We can take a quick rest here!” Muku explained, noticing that they had lost a few members.

“I-I can’t go on…” Itaru wheezed as he finally caught up to the others several minutes later.

“C’mon Itaru, we’re almost there! You can do it!” Izumi chirped encouragingly, passing the salaryman a bottle of water.

“It’s okay, Itaru! You will soon have your senses delighted by a surprise up ahead! Tell them about it, Muku,” Citron implored.

“Y-Yes! Ummm… Just down this path is a beautiful waterfall that the monks used as part of their training,” Muku responded, taking the older man’s cue. “I… I actually purposely picked this path because it would take us by the waterfall. Legend says that, if you make a wish there, your deepest desires will come true! So, I thought that you would really like to see that, Itaru! Maybe it’ll help with your next gacha pull in your games!!”

“Seriously? Maybe this won’t be so bad after all.”

Muku felt his heart flutter as the others started chattering excitedly about what wishes they would make. With this renewed vigour, their group continued on their hike, making a stop at the wish-granting waterfall on the way.

Then, almost an hour after they had left their campsite, Muku spotted the sign marking their final destination.

“We’re here, everyone!”

There was a collective sigh of relief as the members of the Mankai Company cleared the last steps and planted their feet on the plateau. However, their mutters quickly died in their throats as they came face-to-face with the view before them. A forest of trees spread out endlessly ahead, surrounded on both sides by jagged cliffs. The sun peeked above the horizon of the valley and the sky was dyed a gorgeous blend of soft oranges, pinks and straggling blues.

“Amazing!” Sakuya breathed softly. “This is beautiful, Muku!”

“Beautiful doesn’t even begin to describe it!!” Kazunari added, immediately taking out his phone.

“You did good, Muku. Here’s a triangle!” Misumi said with a smile, handing the pink-haired boy a smooth and shiny triangular-shaped rock.

“Yeah… It made waking up worth it,” Masumi murmured, showing a rare smile.

“This was great, Muku. Thanks for planning this for us,” Tenma said, punching him lightly in the arm.

“Yeah, seriously! I’m so glad that someone was able to plan a normal activity for this training camp. Unlike a certain someone’s crazy ‘Russian Roulette S’mores’ idea,” Tsuzuru said with a sigh, throwing a baleful glare at Citron.

“Oh, Tsuzuru! You wound me! I put so much thought into making an unforgiveable event for everyone!”

“I think you mean ‘unforgettable’,” Itaru piped in.

“Look here, it’s not ‘Russian Roulette’ if all of the options are weird!” Tsuzuru exclaimed in exasperation.

“No kidding! I can’t believe I had to eat that awful wasabi chocolate because of you! I thought my mouth was on fire!” Yuki added, jabbing a finger into Citron’s chest angrily. “You’re lucky this sunrise made up for that atrocious game!”

As Citron dramatically crumpled to the ground from Yuki’s attack, a hand clutched over his heart, he turned his head towards Muku and shot him a wink.

At that moment, Muku felt a rush of warmth surge out of his chest and envelope the rest of his body. As he suppressed the tears prickling behind his eyes, Muku thought that he could now truly understand the meaning behind all of those times his shojo manga had compared someone’s smile to the brightness of the sun.

Writing this story was such a fun challenge for me! I had to work with a word count restriction, but I also wanted to make sure I somehow included every other character from the event — so it was definitely a juggling act, haha! It was also my first time writing about both Muku and Citron, so that was a new challenge in itself. Especially since I wanted to make sure I did two of my favourite characters justice!! In the end, I'm really happy I had the opportunity to write this and am so thankful that I was able to be part of this zine! Again, do check out the full zine if you have a chance!|

As always, thank you for reading and feel free to leave a comment if you have any thoughts!! Any reblogs are always appreciated!!

-Anmitsu

#a3!#act! addict! actors!#a3! act! addict! actors!#muku sakisaka #a3! citron #act addict actors #a3! game #a3! actor training game #sakisaka muku #a3! muku #citron #anmitsu writes #a3! take the stage fanzine

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seitjun · 5 years

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Some fahc jerevin just cleaning wounds?

jerevin // 800+ words // fahc au

notes: i love them so much; also i'll put a readmore later since im writing on my phone right now

“You’re an idiot, you know that?”

Gavin squirms in his seat with a pout as Jeremy’s grip on his shoulder tightens, but his other hand cleans the bullet wound with a gentle touch. With every soft wince, despite Gavin’s best attempts to squash it, he can see Jeremy’s shoulders hunch up more and more; his grip on his shoulder becomes almost painful with the subdued force.

“Jeremy, you’re being mean to me! You’re not allowed to be mean to injured people,” Gavin whines. He lifts his hand on his uninjured side, trying his best to pry Jeremy’s fingers off before he loses his entire arm. “And I’m alive, aren’t I? And you’re taking good care of me.” Gavin locks their fingers together, and his thumb barely brushes over Jeremy’s skin.

He feels the raised bumps of old scars and maps the marks of healed wounds. Appreciates the rough calluses of a life lived roughly and the cold band of a promise made years ago. He admires all of Jeremy that he can.

Jeremy grunts, unmollified, even as he gives a squeeze to their locked hands. He knows what Gavin is playing at, but he can’t help falling for it anyway when his eyes drift to the familiar band on his ring finger; this precious, little thing bonded to his dumb, self-sacrificing idiot. It’s awful, this mess he’s gotten himself into, but he hasn’t found any will to leave yet.

“Being alive doesn’t make you any less of an idiot,” Jeremy retorts after another hand squeeze, pulling away to resume cleaning Gavin’s wound. The idiot had been lucky that the shot went straight through his shoulders — no dealing with extra pain or a whiney Gavin while Jeremy dug through flesh and blood.

And maybe Jeremy’s mean for it, if anyone else had been looking into the chat considering it wasn’t a life-threatening injury, but it was damn close. All it would have taken was Gavin stepping an extra inch, for the cop to take just a second longer to aim his shot better, or for anything else to happen to end Gavin’s life.

Their lives were dedicated to a business built on the rules of Russian Roulette, where every single move they made only spun the cylinder until none of them could hope to find the empty chamber. Or hell, maybe there was never an empty one in the first place.

“Jeremy…”

Gavin winces as Jeremy chucks the bloodstained rag onto the floor, pulling out a roll of bandages with barely suppressed fury. He opens his mouth to call out the other’s name again, only to blanch at the cold look in Jeremy’s eyes. He sits with puffed cheeks, like the words are building up only to be trapped there, as Jeremy starts to bandage his wound.

“You can’t keep doing that, you know. You gotta stop being an idiot, Gav,” Jeremy warns, a jaw locked tight that Gavin swears he can hear the grinding teeth. “You don’t have to protect me when I can take care of myself.”

Gavin huffs, peering up at Jeremy with narrowed eyes. “A bit unfair, innit? I told you that exact same thing years ago when we first got in the business together, and you didn’t listen to me at all. We made a promise to protect each other.”

“I know what we promised to each other, but it doesn’t mean I like seeing you getting fucking hurt,” Jeremy says. He’s stopped his bandaging, instead snatching a pair of scissors and some tape. “It would’ve been safer if I took the hit instead of you running in front of me like those shitty romantic-action movies we watch.”

“That did feel like it was one of those scenes, hm,” Gavin murmurs, settling down a bit. Those movies were awful, and it does make him wince a bit to be compared to them. “It doesn’t matter though. I didn’t know if it was safer or not at the time. All I knew was that I needed you safe, Jeremy.”

Jeremy doesn’t say anything. He leans back in his spot to look at Gavin closely, shoulders heavy with the angry concern and underlying fear; tiredness is seeping into his bones now that he’s finished fixing up Gavin, and all he can see is the stark white color of the bandages.

“C’mon, love,” Gavin says as he links their hands again. His eyes meet Jeremy’s own, suddenly looking just as tired with dark bags underneath them. “If you want to be mad at me still, you can do it tomorrow. Right now, I just want to go to bed with you, sleep off the wound.”

And God save him, Jeremy concedes. He’s done as much as he could tonight, cleaning the wounds and looking after Gavin; tomorrow would be a fresh start, a new conversation.

#jerevin #ragehappy #rtah #fahc #seiju writes

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jeremiahwasajoker · 5 years

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What I Think is Going on with Jeremiah (Spoilers Ahead)

So, as many of you know, Jeremiah “died”. Now, this is obviously disproven due to the fact that he has been shown in an abundance of trailer footage, along with pictures posted teasing his return. I’ve seen many theories speculating on what had happened, the most being a clone/lookalike/Clayface theory. However, after a little further evaluation, I have decided that I do not think this theory is true. I do think that it’s a really good idea and that it’s plausible, but something is telling me that something else had happened instead. I 10000% respect that theory, though, because it might actually happen! Anyway though, personally, I do think that it was the true Jeremiah who was stabbed.

Here are my thoughts on why and what might happen!

Jeremiah talking to himself

So at the beginning of this scene, we see Jeremiah talking to himself about a “gift”, most likely for Bruce, or it could even be himself who he is referring to for all we know. The way he is talking to himself shows that he has split personalities trying to communicate with one another. An interesting note is that Cameron stated in his Entertainment Weekly interview that Jerome lives in him in a way. This is most likely how, as he still lurks in the mind of Jeremiah. But, Jeremiah being Jeremiah, he’s probably going against all of those plans because it's Jerome. The reason why I’m bringing this up is because it links to this being the true J. I feel like a Clayface wouldn’t have these warring personalities in his mind, and I don’t think he would seem genuinely embarrassed if he saw that Ecco was watching him.

Jeremiah talking to Ecco

Another interesting detail comes from the dancing that this lovely pair shares. We see Jeremiah intently listening as Ecco tells her of all the new news she has for him. While they’re waltzing, Ecco tells Jeremiah that Selina wants to kill Jeremiah, and the two share a laugh over that idea. Why would they laugh over that? You could say that they think they’re untouchable from any harm, but here’s something interesting. There was a little detail that I found when I was reading a new article concerning the most recent episode. Here’s a quote from the article itself that stuck out to me: “It's possible that Jeremiah somehow survived his wounds. Perhaps the laughing gas he was dosed with possesses miraculous healing properties? DC's Batman: Endgame comic arc revealed the Joker has special healing abilities due to a substance known as dionesium.” What if they figured out that the laughing gas has healing properties? Let me elaborate.

After being sprayed by the insanity gas, we had seen that the way Jeremiah handled pain was significantly different than the way he did before hand. When Jerome was kicking him in the stomach and when Ecco kicked him in the crotch, you could see that he was in a lot of pain and that he was doubled over on the ground. Then again, those are really sensitive spots of the body. Afterwards, we see Alfred beat the heck out of Jeremiah, and he looks so good like he’s experiencing zero to no pain. Sure, he got a black eye, but he seemed unfazed. When Jeremiah got shot in the shoulder, it seemed like he was a bit stunned that he had been, but pain? He didn’t really show any tell-tale signs of it. He actually had the audacity to pose in that iconic pose that he did. The bullet in his shoulder seemed like the least of his thoughts. Assuming Ecco also got sprayed before she played the game of Russian Roulette to show her loyalty, that could explain why she survived the shot in the head, which is VERY rare. She would, at the most, be in a coma just like Sophia Falcone. What I can gather from all of this evidence is that Jeremiah and Ecco have a pretty high pain tolerance after the insanity gas.

In conclusion, what do I think is going to happen?

I think that Jeremiah’s body is going to restore itself due to the insanity gas’s possible healing properties. He will most likely be laying down where he is in the trailer, and his eyelids will start to beautifully flutter. However, when he wakes up, his mind set will be much different, a mixture of the split personalities of Jerome and himself in his head. That could explain his manic laughter that we’ve seen in trailers and sudden spur of charisma. He was charming when we saw him this episode, but that was because of his past success. I know that there’s that Church of Jeremiah, so perhaps he is going to pull a Jesus and come back to life after 3 or a certain amount of days? There’s no way he’s as holy as Jesus, but it might spur something in Ecco or the cult.

Thank you for reading this! Sometimes I just have to put my thoughts down on here out to you guys to get it out of my head and to actually tell someone about it, because no one that I know really watches Gotham. I hope you enjoyed!

#Gotham #jeremiah valeska #ecco #eccomiah #season 5 #gotham season five #5x04 #ruin #Cameron Monaghan #The Joker #I'm sorry #The old Jeremiah can't come to the phone right now #why?#oh #because he's dead!

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tisfan · 5 years

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Why do you have to go (and make things so complicated), 2

Title: Why Do You Have to Go (And Make things So Complicated) (Chapter 2) Collaborators: @27dragons and @tisfan AO3 Link Square Filled: B2 - Trope: Playboy Tony Stark Ship: WinterIronWidow Rating: T Major Tags: polyamory, relationship discussion, Bucky is an idiot, do not get on Pepper Potts’ bad side, paparazzi, bad press Summary: picks up a few weeks after chapter one with the relationship being outed... in the worst way possible Word Count: 3454 Created for @mcukinkbingo

They were Avengers, so having a routine wasn’t anything like stable, but excepting in cases of world-ending villainy, Natasha slept in on Wednesdays, and her roomate-lover -- as opposed to her other lover who had not yet moved in with them, or invited them to change their living situation at all -- went for a run with his best friend.

Running, Bucky firmly maintained, was a sport usually reserved for being chased or shot at, but he did it anyway, because Steve liked to, and because Bucky found it slightly less tedious than watching baseball games, or watching Steve draw things, which were the other things Steve liked to do. So, they went for a marathon every Wednesday, had a huge brunch somewhere, and came home, letting Natasha sleep in well past ten. Decadent.

And since Tony was never awake before noon unless Pepper was poking him with a cattle prod, Natasha got to lounge around in bed, take a long, lazy shower, and generally enjoy the advantages of living in a civilized city.

Which is why it was so disruptive when Bucky came in, still sweaty from his run, holding something tucked under his arm. At seven fifteen.

Natasha looked at him through one eye, still sleep-blurred, and then rolled over and pulled the covers over her head. Delivery Not Accepted.

(more below the cut)

“We got a problem, toots,” Bucky said, flopping on the bed next to her and bouncing her on the mattress. Probably on purpose, because it was Bucky and he liked living dangerously.

“The only problem here is that you are waking me up. On Wednesday.” Natasha peered out of her cocoon of warm blankets to glare at Bucky. “Why are you not chasing Steve around Long Island?”

Bucky waved the newspaper, because that’s what it was, at her. “Because we happened to run past Stop the Presses! first and I saw this. I thought… you might want to do damage control.”

Natasha growled, but Bucky didn’t take the hint and go away. She wormed one arm free of the blankets and snatched the newspaper from him so she could look at it.

Playboy Tony Stark playing Russian Roulette? teased the headline. Below that -- but well above the fold -- were a pair of pictures. On the left, Tony with his arm around Natasha’s waist, offering her a flower with the other. It was a cute picture, for a pap-shot. They’d had a nice afternoon together.

On the right side of the page, Bucky was crowding Tony against a wall, clearly leaning in for a kiss that Tony looked all too pleased to give. Unfortunately, despite the slightly grainy quality of the picture, both their faces were clearly visible.

“They haven’t hauled out the playboy moniker in a couple of years,” Natasha said, suddenly chilled despite the layers of blanket.

Bucky snorted. “I’m not Russian, either,” he pointed out. “But they’re not entirely wrong. It’s not too much of a stretch to suppose we’d be angry. If he was cheating. On one of us with the other.”

She’d managed to keep her and Bucky’s relationship out of the papers -- especially given the circumstances when they’d first met and become lovers -- but that was only because no one cared as much what she was up to. Or they were afraid she’d stab them if they talked about it. (Not untrue.) And Bucky’s murder-face tended to dissuade paps from following him around.

Tony, on the other hand, was a pap’s wet dream. They’d been foolish not to take that into account before now. “Tell me he’s not up yet,” Natasha demanded. “Or still.”

“Still,” Bucky said. “But he’s in the workshop, so he hasn’t, you know, seen sunlight. Probably in a few days now.”

Natasha struggled free of the blankets and sat up, pushing her hair out of her face as she contemplated the tabloid headline again. “If he sees this, he’s going to guilt-spiral on us again.” The first few weeks they’d all been dating, Tony had gone through at least six separate panic attacks before they’d managed to convince him that yes, they really wanted him, and no, he wasn’t too old, and yes, he was allowed to enjoy this, and no, they did not think they’d be happier if he let them go back to being a couple. “I’m not doing that again.”

“I’m not sure he wouldn’t find it funny, if we were to pretend to fight over him,” Bucky said, tapping the paper where it opined that Bucky was more likely to shoot Tony than any other outcome. “But everyone else seems to think we will be the ones breaking his neck.”

“It’s a fair assumption,” Natasha said. “If you cheated on me, I’d definitely strangle you.”

“It’s not cheating,” Bucky said, his eyes going a little wide. “I mean, do you think Tony is going to feel that way? That… we kinda are cheating. The system. Which is set up stupidly, so people can’t have what they want. We’re not hurting anyone, why do they even care?” Bucky flopped forcibly back on the bed and hid his face with a pillow. The fluffy thing did a little bit to muffle his frustrated scream, but really, too loud for no coffee yet.

“Stop that,” Natasha snapped. “We do not have time to panic and rail against the archaic and obsolete societal insistence on pair-bonding. We need to make sure no one else has brought this paper home, and keep Tony from checking his news feed for the rest of the day. At least.” She reached for her phone.

“There’s always time for panic,” Bucky insisted from under the pillow. “Steve thinks the photos are doctored. He thought I was mad because of some fake pictures.”

Natasha paused, her finger hovering over the phone screen. “What did you tell him?” They hadn’t come out to their teammates as a trio, yet, largely because Tony still seemed a little nervous about the whole thing.

“I didn’t tell him anything,” Bucky said. He pulled the pillow off his face and gave Natasha his I could kill you with my pinkie and a paperclip look. “I made that face until he stopped asking questions. Tony hasn’t said it’s okay to tell anyone yet.”

“Okay.” Natasha pulled up her contacts list. “You go sweep the common areas and make sure no one else has brought this thing home, as a joke, or something. I’m... going to call Pepper.”

Bucky gave her a disbelieving look. “You brave soul.” He didn’t dispute her decision, though, raking his fingers through disheveled hair until he looked mostly civilized, and fleeing the room before she could change her mind.

Natasha’s finger hovered over the Call button for a moment. If Pepper had seen this -- and there was little hope that she hadn’t -- then she was going to be pissed.

But Natasha had to get to Pepper before Pepper got to Tony. Resolve firmed, she pushed the button.

“I assume,” Pepper’s voice came crisply out of the phone, “that you are calling to grovel, because if I had the ability to fire you, rest assured, my advice would be to polish your resume.”

“Pepper, I can explain. It’s not as bad as it looks.”

“It could not possibly be as bad as it looks!” Pepper practically shrieked. “And while reckless and foolhardy are both words I usually use to describe Tony, he’s not so criminally negligent of other people’s hearts. His own reputation, he could care less, but he’d gone through a lot of work to keep you and Barnes, and the other team members from being smeared by the press. Even when, I might add, some of you desperately deserved it.”

“I know,” Natasha tried, placating, “I know, he’s been so incredibly generous with us, and he’s a good man. He wouldn’t ever do anything to hurt someone, not like that. And I promise there’s a good explanation for those pictures.”

“I’m breathless with anticipation,” Pepper said.

Natasha winced. “The thing is,” she said carefully, “I can’t... tell you what it is.”

“I really don’t think I can take the stress,” Pepper said in that matter of fact voice that always worried everyone. Especially since Natasha was pretty sure she meant that. That one day, all of Pepper’s hair was going to turn white and she was going to fall over on the spot. “Is it classified? Don’t tell me it’s classified, Romanoff, don’t you dare say that.”

“It’s not classified,” Natasha said. “It’s just, I don’t... I don’t have Tony’s permission to tell you. And it would be a dick move of monumental proportions to jump that gun. Stark Tower sized dick.”

“I wish everyone would remember that I designed Stark Tower,” Pepper said in a huff and then hung up the phone.

“Well. That could have gone... worse.”

Natasha got in the shower, an excuse to not deal with the issue at the present moment. And sometimes she did her best thinking in the shower.

She was out, wrapped the brilliant red towel around herself, twisted her hair up into a dripping knot at the back of her neck when the door crashed open again.

“Do you think we will need some of our teammates? I can make it look like an accident,” Bucky promised.

Natasha considered it thoughtfully. “We could probably make do without some of them. Why? What have they been doing?”

There was a thud in the living room, followed by a slither of what sounded like a whole stack of papers. “Clint. And Sam. And Thor. Exist.”

“Thor would be difficult to replace,” Natasha observed. She walked out into the living room and then stopped, arrested by the number of gossip rags on the ground by Bucky’s feet. “Did they buy out the nearest three newsstands?”

“I think that’s where Thor came into it,” Bucky said, kicking one of the papers extra hard. It hit the wall with enough force to vibrate the picture frame hanging on it. “Clint doesn’t have money, even when he has money, he doesn’t have money.”

The paper slid down the wall and landed with the offending article face-down. Which really didn’t help, since Tony was staring up at her from at least forty copies of the damn paper.

“Well... at least Tony won’t spot it if he goes across the street for coffee?” Natasha tried. “What are we going to do with all of these?” She bent to recover the nearest one. “There’s no way we can stuff them all in the garbage chute.”

Bucky watched her, eyes gleaming as the towel slipped. “We have a very nice grill on our balcony,” he suggested. “As Sam says; some men just like to watch the word burn.”

Natasha suppressed a smile. “I don’t think that’s how the saying goes. Besides--”

Knock knock knock.

Well, it wasn’t Clint. Clint didn’t bother knocking. “You answer it,” she told Bucky, backing toward the bathroom door. “I’m not decent.”

“You’re never decent,” Bucky said, smacking her thigh on his way to the door. “You just--” The door opened half an inch, not enough to give anyone a look and then-- “Shit! Tony!”

And Bucky slammed the door, turned the knob and leaned on the door.

“Fuck!”

Natasha stared at him, wide-eyed in surprise. “Tony?”

“Uh, he, yes, but--”

“But he’s never come to us before! He always waits for us to go to him!” That was a good sign, if Tony was coming to them, right? It meant he was beginning to trust them. It meant he was opening up, relaxing, letting himself believe in this relationship... “You just slammed the door in his face.”

Bucky made a sweeping gesture at the floor. “This does not look good, Tasha!”

“Okay, I know, but... All right. You... do something with these!” She dashed past Bucky to the door, opened it a sliver, and squeezed out into the hall, closing the door behind her. “Tony?”

Tony had stepped back at the door and was staring at it in something like confusion. Of course, as soon as he saw Natasha’s lack of attire, his eyes were drawn elsewhere. “Oh, uh. Hi. I was just-- But it looks like you’re busy.”

From the other side of the door, Bucky yelled, “I am an idiot. Don’t hold it against Nat.”

Natasha nodded. “He is an idiot. But we’re glad to see you!” She reached out to catch Tony’s hand and pull him closer. “It’s a nice surprise. I thought you’d be in the workshop all day.”

“Well, I was, but then I thought, you know, I haven’t seen you guys for a while, so I thought I’d just kind of... check in? Maybe make out a little, you know. But if you’re, you know, busy...”

“I like this idea,” Bucky yelled again. “Happy to be a part of it… just-- give us a minute!”

Natasha leaned against the door, partly so she could better afix the towel (Tony seeing her mostly naked was one thing, Thor wandering by at the wrong time was something else entirely) and so that Tony couldn’t go around her. “What are you working on in the shop?”

Rarely was that a question ever ignored; Tony could talk for hours about his work in the shop to any and everyone who wanted to listen. A masterful strategy, if one’s purpose was distracting Tony from pretty much anything.

“Oh, lots of things.” He perked up a bit. “I had this idea for a new mesh weave for our body armor, so we’re hashing out the cross-section on that. And Thor fried another communicator, so I’m working on insulating that a bit better. Oh! And there’s this new...” He trailed off, frowning at the door. “Is that... paper?” He raised his voice. “Bucky, I thought we cured you of Steve’s old-man obsession with physical newspapers!”

“Yes, yes, you’re absolutely right--” more crunching sounds, crumpling noises. Natasha was pretty sure he wasn’t going to be able to burn it without setting off the fire alarm, and there was not really a good place in the apartment to stuff it, unless he put it in a closet--

There was the faintest chime as the balcony door slid open. What the hell was he doing in there, anyway?

“Just-- a minu-- fuck! minute!”

Tony frowned. “What... what is he doing in there? Does he need help?” He reached for the doorknob.

“I’m quite sure Bucky needs a lot of help,” Natasha said. “Equally certain you’re not qualified for that level of disaster.” Bucky, hurry up. She probably wasn’t telepathic, but it couldn’t hurt to try, right?

Tony cocked his head at her, then reached for the doorknob again. “Come on, whatever he’s doing, it can’t be that bad.”

“Uh, well, you know, it’s--”

Tony rolled his eyes and nudged Natasha out of the way so he could open the door. “Don’t know if you know this, but I’m a superhero. I can handle a little bit of--” He broke off as he pushed into their living room.

Bucky was standing by the open door to the balcony, arms folded. All the newspapers were gone.

Tony looked around, slightly confused. “Are you... Is everything okay?”

“Fine, great, better now that you’re here,” Bucky said, turning away from the door hastily. He moved across the room to drop a kiss on Tony’s mouth.

Tony returned the kiss, but then pulled away to look at Natasha. “What’s going on in here?”

Natasha straightened up, tugging her towel back into place with a little more production than, clearly, it needed, but hey, Tony was often distracted by a good pair of breasts, too. “Nothing,” she said. Which was true, because there was, currently, nothing going on.

“And you’re... sure I’m not interrupting anything,” Tony said cautiously.

“Nope,” Bucky said, curling up around Tony like the world’s biggest cat. “Everything’s just--”

A piece of one of the newspapers blew in from the porch door, drifted around the room, and settled.

Face up.

Right in front of Tony.

And of course it was the front damn page.

“You what, threw them off the balcony? All of them?” Natasha couldn’t quite help shrieking.

“Uh, yes?” Bucky confessed.

Tony looked up from the paper at Natasha. And then at Bucky. Then he carefully extricated himself from Bucky’s embrace and went out onto the balcony and looked over the edge. “Huh. That is... that is a lot of newspapers.”

“I would like to state for the record that this is at least… thirty percent Barton’s fault,” Bucky said.

Tony nodded, still looking over the balcony. “I believe that.” He came back into the living room, shutting the door behind him. “So... What? You were trying to keep me from seeing that, I guess?”

“Well, yes?” Bucky pushed his foot around on the floor like a little kid that had been caught stealing out of the cookie jar.

“It’s not-- certainly the whole situation is a little awkward, and I don’t think anyone really wanted to come out… it’s rude to out someone,” Natasha said.

“And we haven’t really settled exactly what this is,” Bucky continued. “So, what’s to tell? It’s not anyone’s business anyway.”

“Well, that’s true,” Tony said. He picked up the lone sheet lying on the floor and studied it. “I should probably fill Pepper in, though, or she’s going to burst a blood vessel when she sees this.”

“She already did that,” Natasha confessed. “Sort of. Mine. A little bit.”

“How can someone burst a blood vessel a little bit?” Bucky wondered.

“You’ve met Pepper,” Tony pointed out. “So it’s okay if I tell her that we’re... dating?”

“Of course it’s okay,” Natasha said. “We just-- didn’t think you were comfortable with that, yet. A relationship is always harder when it’s in the public eye like this. We should have been more careful. I’m sorry.”

“Yeah,” Bucky said. “We didn’t mean to make things awkward.”

Tony blinked. He looked back and forth between them, and then burst out laughing. “Awkward? Have you ever googled me? Even once? This doesn’t even scrape the surface of awkward!” He chuckled again and pulled out his phone, thumbs flicking as he sent a text message.

Bucky exchanged a rueful glance with Natasha. “Well, I mean, we’ve seen--”

“But you’re not with any of them anymore. And… we wanted… especially since everything’s so new. It’d be-- easier to move on, I suppose.”

“Which, if we get a vote on that, I am not in favor.”

Tony looked up. “You thought I’d cut and run? Over a little bad press? Seriously? Well, now I’m hurt.”

“We, uh--” Bucky pointed between Tony and Natasha and himself. “We, uh, need to work on our communication skills, I guess. I thought you might be angry, or upset.”

“Or feel guilty,” Natasha said, because they might as well call a spade a spade at that point.

“Well, I’m pretty angry with the damn paparazzi,” Tony said. “Jesus, a guy can’t have a quiet outing anymore. And it’s... possible. Just barely. That I might have freaked out a little bit when I saw it. If only because I know neither of you want to be dragged into the spotlight.”

“I care about you very much,” Bucky said, with that face, the one that was basically all his feelings on display, like some sort of labrador billboard. “And I don’t care who knows this.”

Natasha rubbed at her face, trying to push away the headache. “I care who knows it because I wanted it to come out on our terms. Once we were… more comfortable with it. Why make a flash in the pan, if it doesn’t work out? I want it to work out, of course I do, don’t look at me in that tone of voice, Bucky. But if it doesn’t, things are going to be awful enough without everybody and their uncle commenting on it.”

“So, we just make it work out,” Bucky said. “She always has to make it complicated.”

Tony looked at Natasha. “He may have a point.”

“It’s just that simple? We make it work?” Natasha wanted to believe that, but she’d wanted a lot of things, and rarely ever got them. And she really, really wanted this.

Tony reached out and snared the top of her towel, using it to pull her closer. “We make it work,” he agreed. “We can do this.”

“All in favor, the motion passes unanimously,” Bucky said, sliding one arm around Natasha’s waist, the other going around Tony’s shoulders, bringing them all together for one nice, safe, warm hug. And if the towel fell off in the process, well…

That was just moving everyone in the right direction.

#mcukinkbingo #winterironwidow #relationship talk #bad press #bingo fill

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panickedvulture · 5 years

Text

Found this in my drafts, so I’m posting it with no shame to give this blog some life while I’m busy trying to deal with post-endgame feels in the mcu sector of tumblr:

So I had a dream last night that made me realize I spend too much time on this site because it included some of my mutuals and people I enjoy like @theuriearchives ,@yagirlcammmm ,@i-think-im-ready-to-go ,@canyousevmyheavydirtysoul ,@dunjosephurieimagines , and @andbeingblueisbetter to name a few.

I have very vivid dreams and since I write all of them down I figured why not write it here where everyone can see it.

The genre for this dream: a mystery.

The setting: A beautiful cabin (apparently mine) plucked straight out of a “Visiting your SO’s family for the holidays” or a “fake-dating for a visit to your frenemy’s family” AU, my personal favorite. And there was a snowstorm going on outside.

I should also mention everybody had their own appearance. Usually I attach someone’s name with the face in their profile pic, meaning about everybody in this I previously imagined as Brendon Urie at different angles and in different lighting. But thanks to my brain randomly generating faces for everybody, I will be greatly confused in the case that I ever learn what you actually look like.

So, the topic at hand is, as it always is, Brendon Urie. Everybody’s cuddled up on the couch and on the floor in their pajamas drinking hot chocolate, eating dessert, and writing/giving ideas. In the background AFYCSO plays on an old record player, the fire is flickering beautifully alongside some black and white videos of old Panic! performances playing on one of those old big-backed TVs with lines across the screen – at this moment I feel like I am once again a preschooler laying on my stomach and watching movies in a pile of other preschoolers at my old after-school program but I digress–

Then somebody has the audacity to break into my house.

Me being the host of this gathering, I feel obligated to check on the noise. It doesn’t help that literally everyone stops what they’re doing to push me in the direction of the mysterious noise before going back to talking about the size of Brendon Urie’s dick (a conversation brought up by i-think-im-ready-to-go, just thought I should mention that).

So I get up, the second my back is turned nobody cares and I go into the bathroom only to find it flooded because this intruder flushed literally everything it could down the toilet.

To name a few things, it flushed:

1) The monstrous dildo linked on a post by beautiful-tragic-fallout (i don’t mean to call anybody out but its been on my dash with every damn refresh for the past week), who i-think-im-ready-to-go and theuriearchives make a point to explain is out of the house buying us more chocolate-covered strawberries.

2) Every single piece of Pretty. Odd. memorabilia I can imagine because someone just has it out for that album.

3) For those of you who have seen Monsters Inc, the toys Boo flushed down the toilet in that one scene.

4) An entire manuscript that my mind recognizes as smut written by @xxip-smut

5) And pink, fucking, crocs

So I walk back into the living room and round everybody up, declaring we’re on a manhunt for whoever the fuck had the audacity to break into my house, and with that we separate into groups. Accompanying me is Cam who wields a flamethrower while wearing pastel yellow pajamas with baby elephants printed on them.

Eventually after getting tired of Cam pointing the flamethrower at my head even when in ‘resting position’ and scaring the shit out of me, we go into the basement only to find everybody else chose to search the basement and the rest of you have been arguing about who actually gets to search the basement.

Long story short, the basement doesn’t get searched.

Instead to deal with the tension, dunjosephurieimagines suggests we all go back to talking about Brendon’s dick. So we go back to talking about Brendon’s dick.

We sit on the floor in a circle in this basement not realizing its dark and creepy as hell, and if you’ve seen That 70s Show the ‘camera’ moves around in this circle to focus on the face of whoever’s talking. The conversation adds up to smut, theuriearchives pulls out a blunt and i-think-im-ready-to-go pulls out a gun, we start playing russian roulette. Out of guilt for not writing a request sent to me months ago because I suck, I give andbeingblueisbetter a free shot at me. Being a saint they don’t take the opportunity yet.

So anyway, being high and creative a thought comes to us all at once. This thought…where the fuck is @loverontheleft ?

Now we’re all mad and sad and scared and alone because where, the fuck, is cece? Everybody starts asking everybody if they’ve seen her, we conclude the answer is no and we all start freaking out.

Then we realize canyousevmyheavydirtysoul (codename: Sev) is being really quiet.

We all turn and just stare like “So um….whats up?”

Flash-forward, this is all of us trying to figure out cece’s identity, sev is just sitting on the floor smiling and reacting to everything we say with reaction gifs they pull up on their phone, meanwhile we’re all screaming running around, we’ve made a literal office out of this basement and we have glasses and slip-on ties on top of our pajamas.

Then there’s a noise upstairs because we forgot there was someone who broke into my house.

Y’all turn on me and push me up the stairs to my death, I realize this is the cabin that appears in the bodyguard series at one point (wonderfully written by canyousevmyheavydirtysoul, binge it), and in front of me is the super fancy dining room table. There’s mail on it, some envelopes, and I’m like uh no and turn around to come back downstairs.

But you’re all at the bottom of the stairs staring at me and threatening me with your knives and Cam’s flamethrower – where you got the knives I don’t know. I hesitate in turning around for a second so andbeingblueisbetter shoots me.

But I’m like, you know, walk it off. So I do and I go to the table. I’m terrified, break out into a nervous sweat, but it’s fine.

I go and open the folder.

And O - fucking - kay

If you haven’t read the bodyguard series or ready to leap I’m not gonna detail any spoilers, just the main plot given right away, and even if you have it probably won’t help this make any more sense. Here….is the story:

Our beloved Cece started off as a teacher, right? But not just any teacher, Ms. fucking Milton, who started a relationship with the music teacher of her high school, Mr. Urie, who in this case is in fact Brendon Urie of our universe and lead singer of Panic! at the Disco. But the deal with him is that he got tired of the fame and through extensive work he managed to get rid of all the files that legally point to him as being Brendon Urie of Panic! at the Disco. And for the first few years of his teaching, all the kids knew he was Brendon Urie I mean come on, but eventually the whole school and town settle on the idea that this is just one of those situations where twins are separated at birth and coincidentally given the same exact name. So boom, they do what they do – but newsflash, Cece is Y/n from the Bodyguard series and knowing Mr. Urie’s relationship with Ms. Milton, S.H.I.E.L.D pulls a Hydra Bucky Barnes situation in order to train Brendon into the best damn bodyguard the world could imagine because Cece is a valuable asset that needs the absolute best protection. Canyousevmyheavydirtysoul was like a journalist or something for S.H.I.E.L.D and witnessed all of this go down, knows every little thing about these two. So they get trained, they get close, drama happens, then they’re all put under-cover. Brendon goes back to being Brendon Urie of Panic! at the Disco, Sev and Cece are assigned to live their current lives and specifically assigned to write their stories for this Tumblr community to get everybody off their trails.

And then I look up. And there’s cece and I think…

“She is about to fucking, kill me.”

I try to throw the folders at her but for some reason I can’t throw anything in my dreams, so I get frustrated that my arm just won’t work, Cece in the meanwhile uses this time to approach me. My mind can’t even generate her an appearance and I think that she’s wearing a disguise because she’s like a spy or something that did after all break into my house to clog my toilet with dildos.

We maintain eye contact for what my dream-self recalls as a long time. I feel this energy in my soul I have never felt before and it is not fun, I don’t like it.

She takes the folder from me and gives me a red one.

And with her eyes piercing my soul, I get this feeling that literally has my skin vibrating even after I wake up, and I hear this voice that’s like “I know you know. And I’m watching you.”

So I woke up in a cold sweat obviously and tried to suppress this whole thing but it kinda lingered in the back of my mind all day. Then the weird tiny details came back to haunt me when I saw the elephants at the zoo.

#I dont understand either just dont be afraid of me #about #Dream

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merryfortune · 5 years

Text

Vrains Rare Pair Week - Day 6b

Day 6 / Dec 28 - Bad Pick-up Lines and/or Puns / Playing Games

· Ship: Kengo/Ryoken

· Warnings: Gunplay, sexual references

Revolver stared down the nozzle of Blood Shepherd’s laser. It had undoubtedly been hacked into the game; it suited his aesthetic well and Revolver was certain that if it fired, it fired for real, that a snarky little green light would be able to tear him to pieces, burning both his Avatar and his body.

Nonetheless, Revolver stared down such a real and valid threat with a cocky grin. His hands were held high in mock surrender as he waited for Blood Shepherd’s demands of him. He already had his own concocted and couldn’t wait to inflict them upon Blood Shepherd. Regardless of whether or not Blood Shepherd wanted such things.

“I want copies of your cards,” Blood Shepherd told him in a stone-cold tone of voice, “the ones you were able to use against the Wind Ignis and trump him. I’m going to get my revenge on that fucker Lightning and to do it, I need those old ass cards which aren’t in the system anymore.”

“Sounds like a fine plan,” Revolver drawled, “I thought your initial match against the Light Ignis was magnificent, personally. But yes, a shame about how it ended.”

Blood Shepherd, forever emotionless behind that mask so tight, did not reply. Those memories – the memories of being destroyed – were still fresh. He could feel the prickle of light beneath his skin. He could feel his blood crackle and shatter, even though these were just memories incited by mere suggestion of it. How pathetic.

“Are you willing to meet my demands or not, Revolver?” Blood Shepherd finally spoke; his voice so cutting like a dagger.

Revolver smirked. “Of course, but only if I can put my own little twist on it. You know I don’t like to bow to others.”

“Make your statements.”

“Let’s play a game.” Revolver suggested, all too eager with a devious edge to himself. “Let’s play a little game of… Russian Roulette, it’s a favourite of mine but all too often, I don’t get the thrill I’m looking for. I have to satisfy myself with safer alternatives. But I’m sure you would let me play the game I yearn for.”

There something akin to lust in Revolver’s voice. Blood Shepherd honestly detested it, but he was intrigued by the proposition anyway. He and Revolver were of similar strains. They were uncomfortably bonded in this world which was so trusting of artificial intelligence. Not to mention, they were both roused by danger.

“Alright.” Blood Shepherd agreed. “If I win, I get the cards. What do you want if you win?”

“Your body.” Revolver said with a flippant hand gesture and a glint in his grey eyes.

Blood Shepherd stiffened. Again, hard to read by his face, the rest of his body language had to suffice to communicate wordlessly but Revolver was quite certain that the reaction was repulsion. That amused him.

“Too forward?” Revolver asked.

“Perhaps.” Blood Shepherd said, his voice dropping a few octaves, but Revolver wasn’t intimidated.

“Alright, just a kiss then.” Revolver said. “Oh, and to pick our winner, the winner should be the one to get shot.”

“You’re a goddamn masochist.” snarled Blood Shepherd.

Revolver flashed him yet another shit-eating grin. “A sadomasochist actually. So, do you want to play or not? Otherwise, you’ve squandered my time and I’m logging out. I have better things to do than banter with someone not willing to put out.”

“Very well then. I accept your conditions, you strange bastard.” Blood Shepherd huffed.

“Fantastic, well, you can go first then.” Revolver said.

Blood Shepherd drew in closer and his gun changed slightly. There were now three slots in the barrel now, rather than five. He spun it and Revolver counted the clunky clicks. He relished the noises. He hadn’t a doubt in his mind that Blood Shepherd intended to cheat in this little match, but Revolver didn’t mind. It was a win-win for him given his affinity for pain and pleasure and how blurred such things were.

Then, Blood Shepherd brandished his little pistol with alien confidence. There was no way of confirming his true feelings. He remained of stern shoulders and kept his head held high. If he was afraid, there was no way for Revolver to know. Blood Shepherd kept it all hidden and Revolver found that… alluring.

Revolver watched, with sadistic eagerness as Blood Shepherd put his weapon to his head. His hand was steady, and his finger slowly inched around the trigger. Revolver felt his innards curl into each other and knot as cruel glee filled him. Finally, Blood Shepherd pulled the trigger.

He held his breath. He did not wince or flinch. He was ready and willing to take the punishment. But it did not come. Neither did a stringent breath of relief. Blood Shepherd then handed over the pistol.

“How unlucky for you…” Revolver mused.

Blood Shepherd had nothing to say to such a thing. Not when it was voiced in such a tone of voice; such a vulgar coo. So, Blood Shepherd remained eternally stoic with his fists by his side and his gaze, piercing and judgemental, unto Revolver who was slightly occupied.

Revolver assessed the weapon. It wasn’t as weighty as he thought it would be. He felt as though a sudden surge of wind would be able to knock it off course, but it had the virtue of being loaded with lasers rather than bullets and light was not so easily avoided unless refracted.

Revolver swallowed. It was not a nervous act. No, not at all. In fact, it was significant to his great amusement to it all. He wondered – no, he hoped – that his luck would succeed where Blood Shepherd’s had failed. He licked his lips. And where Blood Shepherd had trod carefully, Revolver was far too reckless.

He put the pistol’s nose to his forehead and he grinned. Without fumble, Revolver pulled the trigger and in the corner of his eyes, he could see it. He could see the grandiose flash of emerald light and Blood Shepherd’s heart skipped a beat. Revolver’s grin grew wider and wider. His stomach dropped.

The light pierced Revolver’s head and Blood Shepherd’s stomach lurched. His eyes shied away and then he heard it. Revolver’s laughter. He was laughing and so, Blood Shepherd’s gaze returned to him. He was untouched by the laser’s shot.

“You didn’t think I wasn’t prepared for such a thing, were you?” Revolver asked. “I’m already a step ahead of you, Kengo. I’m untouchable, at least in the Link VRAINS anyway.”

“You rat. You preach one thing but live another.” Blood Shepherd snarled.

“I’m horny,” Revolver informed him as he handed back the pistol, “not suicidal.”

Blood Shepherd likely could have continued snapping at him, but he was afraid that such a thing might be construed as concern in the mind of the Hanoi Leader. So, his tongue stayed put despite the lashing he very much wanted to deliver unto Revolver. He then returned his little gun to his inventory where it was safe from possible purges, at least for now.

“So, Blood Shepherd, may I claim my prize? I won the game after all.” Revolver asked, and he tapped his bottom lip.

“Do as you please.” Blood Shepherd huffed.

“With pleasure.” Revolver said.

He was the one to close the gap between them. The distance had always been strangely amicable up until now but as Revolver went onto his tip toes, and placed his hands onto Blood Shepherd’s firm chest, the distance became heinous. And so, Revolver claimed his prize and Blood Shepherd was indifferent to it as Revolver sweetly, amorously with closed eyes and a sigh on his lips, kissed him.

The kiss which ensued was drawn out. Or maybe it just felt that way because Blood Shepherd was not the most willing partner in such an affair. As part of a game, or otherwise. But Revolver enjoyed himself. And that was the main thing – for him at least, whilst Blood Shepherd counted the milliseconds until Revolver broke off the kiss. His lips tingled, and he smiled impishly as he returned to the ball of his heel.

“Enjoy yourself?” Blood Shepherd asked.

“Perhaps.” Revolver said but his expression betrayed himself.

For that reason, Revolver almost missed his prior Avatar. He wanted to be just as enigmatic as Blood Shepherd, even if he had found himself changing within his headspace and had wanted to reflect that in the post of the destruction that the Tower of Hanoi had spurred.

“I shall now take my leave.” Revolver said and the smile, the tingles, upon his lips began to fade.

“Very well then. I can’t say its been a pleasure.” Blood Shepherd said.

With that, Revolver pardoned himself. His Avatar shattered into a haze of blue-white data before turning yellow. His log-out data erased completely in the system and before Blood Shepherd’s view.

Blood Shepherd turned away from where Revolver had once stood. He began to cycle through his plans. He could attempt to hack the SOL Tech Data Bank since summoning Revolver for a favour had fallen through. But the Data Bank option was strenuous. Sol Tech no longer permitted him to root around in it and was now constantly updating. Blood Shepherd resolved to attempt such a thing again; perhaps he could try to recruit Playmaker’s Ally – his so-called shield – to help him.

But, as Blood Shepherd walked away with his thoughts and adjusting his Duel Disc, he discovered something in his inventory. He found those bastard cards he wanted in his deck. He cursed himself for not realising that Revolver had likely given him them during the kiss.

#vrainsrarepairweeks #pistolshipping #yugioh vrains #vrains #yugioh #ryoken kogami #kengo doujun #revolver (vrains)#blood shepherd #blood shepherd (vrains)#writing tag #i wrote this only bc i wanted my fic dump to be a pretty number on ao3

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the-gateway-girl · 5 years

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Game Spotlight: Cockroach Poker Royal (2012) Designer: Jacques Zeimet Publisher: Drei Magier Spiele Player Count: 2-6 players Game Length: ~15 – 25 minutes Mechanisms: Party Game, Bluffing, Hand Management, Set Collection

Cockroach Poker Royal (or Kakerlaken Poker if you have the German version) has nothing in common with poker – except the bluffing element! Players work from a deck of cards containing various “ugly” insects: Bats, Cockroaches, Rats, Stink Bugs, Flies, Toads, Scorpions, and “Royal” cards (all of these various animals with a crown on their head).

There is no winner in Cockroach Poker Royal, only a loser – players are trying to make sure one person ends up with four of the same type of animal in front of them, thus causing that person to lose the game. To do this, players attempt to pass on as many cards as possible and bluff their opponents into taking cards.

How to Play: To start, the 55-card deck is shuffled and a “penalty pile” is created of 7 cards face down. The top card is then flipped face-up. The remaining cards are dealt out evenly among the players. If there are extra cards, the first player will receive an extra card and the rest are then added to the penalty pile (making sure to turn back over the current face-up card and turning the new top card of the deck face-up instead).

The starting player will choose a card from their hand and pass it face-down to another player of their choice and state what that card is: Stink Bug, Cockroach, Bat, Fly, Toad, Scorpion, Rat, or Royal. If the player says that the card is a Royal, this means that it is (or could be) any animal with a crown. The starting player can choose to be truthful in what he claims the card to be, or he can choose to bluff about what animal it is instead.

Example: Noah passes a card face-down to Ellie and says, “This is a Bat”.

The player who the card is being passed to then has two options:

Option 1 – Judge the claim and reveal the card. This means the player judges the other player’s claim and verbally decides whether or not they agree before revealing the card to see what it is. They will say “Correct” if they think the other player is being truthful, or they will say “Bluff” if they don’t believe the other player’s claim. When they reveal the card, if they guessed right, the other player must keep the card and place it face-up in front of them. If they guessed incorrectly, they must keep the card and place it face-up in front of themselves. The player who had to keep the card then takes the next turn.

Example: Ellie believes Noah and says, “Correct”. She flips the card over and it is a Toad. Since Ellie guessed incorrectly, she must keep the Toad face-up in front of her. If she had been right, and it was a Bat, then Noah would have had to take the Bat back and keep it face-up in front of him.

Option 2 – Pass the card on. If the player chooses to take this option, they must CLEARLY state “I choose to pass” before they view the card. They then look at the card secretly, place it back face-down, and pass it on to another player of their choice, making a claim about the card (either the same claim or a different one). That player then has the option to either judge the claim and reveal the card or pass it on. If the card continues to be passed on around the table, the final player to receive it cannot choose to pass it on – he or she has no choice but to judge the claim and reveal the card.

Example: Since she was forced to keep Noah’s Toad card because she guessed incorrectly, Ellie takes the next turn. She passes a face-down card to Laura and says, “This is a Stink Bug.” Laura then has the choice to either judge the claim and reveal the card or to pass it on. Laura says, “I choose to pass”, and views the card. She passes it face-down to Graham and says, “This is a Rat.” Graham then has the choice of judging the claim and revealing the card or passing it on, etc.

Royal cards have TWO correct claims: the pictured animal and the claim “Royal”. Every time a player has to place a Royal card face-up in front of them (from having judged a claim incorrectly), that player must also take the top card from the penalty pile and place it face-up in front of them. If that card is also Royal, they must draw another card from the penalty pile. Afterwards, the top card on the penalty pile is turned face-up (this way, all players can see the incoming consequences if they judge a potential Royal incorrectly!) For scoring purposes, the Royals turned face-up in front of a player are counted as one type: “Royal”. This means that if a player has 3 regular Rats in front of them and they must take a Royal Rat as well, they do not lose the game – the Royal Rat counts as a Royal and not as a fourth Rat. However, 4 Royal Rats would lose the game.

The game also includes two special cards. One is a picture of a crown with a big red “X” through it – this card is a joker for all animals without a crown. No matter what claim a person makes, this card is always “Correct” with one exception – “Royal” is wrong. There is also a blank card. No matter what claim a person makes, it is ALWAYS wrong. If a player is forced to take one of these two special cards, they do NOT place it in front of them. They instead add it to their hand and then they have two options: they can choose to place one of the cards from their hand face-up in front of them that matches the last claim made (ex: if the last claim made was “Fly”, the player could choose to place a Fly from their hand face-up in front of them), OR if they cannot or do not want to do this (such as if they already had 3 Flies in front of them and a fourth Fly would cause them to lose the game), they can instead choose to place two other cards from their hand face-up in front of them.

When a player either has 4 animals of the same type face-up in front of them (e.g. four Toads or four Royal Bats, etc.) OR when it is a player’s turn and they have no more cards in their hand, that player loses the game. Everyone else has won!

Play Variants / Expansions: Technically, Cockroach Poker Royal is an alternate version itself. The original is simply titled Cockroach Poker, and you can choose to purchase that one instead if you’d like. The original Cockroach Poker, instead of including the Royal cards and the two special cards, contains a 6th animal set of spiders. The rest of the rules are the same as far as gameplay. However, if you’re going to get one, it’s usually better to go with Cockroach Poker Royal – that way you have the Royal and special cards and penalty pile rule if you want to play with them, and if you want to just play without those cards you can still play the original game with the 5 regular animal card types included. Plus, nobody likes spiders anyway.

There are also multiple games in this “ugly animals” series, and they’re all quick and light! If you and your gaming group like Cockroach Poker Royal, try checking out Cockroach Soup or Cockroach Salad, Schummel Hummel / Cheating Moth, or Assel Schlamassel / Woodlouse Chaos! (Many of the games are more readily available in the German versions, unfortunately. Also check out details on Schummel Hummel vs. Cheating Moth before you buy one - there are more differences between those two games than the other translations. Of the two, I personally prefer Schummel Hummel).

Who Will Like It? : Players who enjoy bluffing and pressing their luck will enjoy Cockroach Poker Royal immensely. It’s silly, quick, and lighthearted fun. It can also be sneaky and does have depth to it, if you really want to go all Princess Bride with it and try to psych people out and play mind games. People who don’t like the idea of being the one loser with everyone else winning may not have the most fun with this game.

Where to Buy: Both Cockroach Poker Royal and the original Cockroach Poker are available on Amazon. Also try searching your local game store or other online retailers (Cardhaus, Noble Knight Games, CoolStuffInc and Ebay are good sources for discount games). Each version usually retails for around $12 or $13. You can also buy the German version, Kakerlaken Poker, if it’s cheaper – none of the cards have text, so the only thing unreadable aspect would be the rulebook, and I’ve already gone over all of the rules right here on this post! (Except for the rule modifications for a two-player game, which don’t allow for passing cards and basically just make the game into Russian Roulette, so it’s not worth bothering with, to be honest).

Links and Resources: If you want to see more or would like other opinions, Quintin “Quinns” Smith of Shut Up & Sit Down has an amazing review here (and it has a dog in it!) : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1fGg-MKMVU . There’s also a live playthrough here so you can see how it’s done: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfQ-_nZzEOM

Tips and Strategies:

If you’re playing with first-time players, it may be helpful to leave the two special cards and the Royal cards out for the first game or two until they pick up the subtle strategy of the game. With the Royal version of the game, it’s possible to play a normal game of Cockroach Poker just using the Bats, Scorpions, Cockroaches, Rats, Stink Bugs, Flies, and Toads (and with the Royal and special cards excluded, there will be no penalty pile). Then try adding in the Royals and penalty pile rule, and once that’s mastered, give those two special cards a go.

Remember to keep an eye on that top card of the penalty pile. It’s helpful to know what you might end up having to take if you misjudge a Royal card, or what other players might be trying to PUSH you to take if it’s an animal you already have a lot of!

It’s also possible to do a little probability work to figure out whether claims are likely to be true or false. There are 8 of each regular animal and 7 royal cards in the deck, so if there are already 7 scorpions out on the table and someone passes you a “scorpion” -- while there is a small chance that it is a scorpion, it’d be more likely that it’s a bluff. If there are 8 scorpions out on the table... hopefully you get what your next move should be.

Don’t get too attached to your game plan. Since Cockroach Poker is full of bluffing and variance, just because James has three Bats and you pass a Bat card to Annie saying “THIS IS A FLY”, it doesn’t mean that she’ll take the hint and pass it on to Evelyn saying “THIS IS A FLY” until eventually it gets to James as the last player and he’s forced to make a terrifying decision. Some people are just chaotic and love the adrenaline rush of attempting to call others out on their claims. The best way to play Cockroach Poker is to appreciate its silliness and just have fun!

Happy playing!!

#cockroachpokerroyal #cockroachpoker #tabletop #boardgames #gateway #gatewaygames #the-gateway-girl #kakerlakenpoker #cardgames #games

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ask-the-bavarian-clubs · 7 years

Note

What's the clubs' full names? I only see first names in the bio!

Sechzig: “Okay, Anon, let me get this straight. You call us by our real names but still demand our aliases? Talk about-”Bayern: “Shut up, Sechzig. What she means is that she’ll explain everything about the name she chose, and we’ll explain ours too!”Sechzig: (hisses) “What the fuck are you up to, Bauern?”Bayern: (whispers) “And what the fuck are you up to, 59? You can’t scare away askers!”Sechzig: “Oh, so you care about my image now?”Bayern: “No, I care about this blog… and Fürth, too, for that matter.”Sechzig: (sneers) “Awww, so sweet.”Bayern: “I’m gonna pretend I didn’t hear that. Anyway, Anon, let us begin!”

Bayern: “My full name is Franziska Müller. I plan to change it to Franziska Lahm, though - I think it’s a great way to honor Philipp (my captain) after his retirement.”Fürth: “Hey, while you’re at it, why don’t you tell ‘em the Story of Franziska?”Bayern: (grins) “That’s a great idea! A long time ago-”Sechzig: (slaps hand over Bayern’s mouth) “NOPE!”Bayern: “Oh, yes, Leonie. It’s a meaningful story, after all…” (clears throat)

A long time ago in the city of Munich, there lived a little boy who loved football. He wanted to be a footballer when he grew up, so naturally, his biggest wish is to play for the best team in Munich at the time: TSV 1860.

When his team played said best team, he was excited beyond belief - I can’t believe I’m going to play the greatest team ever! he must have thought as his junior team takes on the field.

But his thoughts did not last long. The Sechzig team didn’t play nice - one player even clipped the then-little striker’s ear, causing him to have second thoughts about joining the Lions.

Do I really want to play for these bullies? he wondered. The answer was as clear as day: no. So when the boy turned fourteen, he joined the underdogs from FC Bayern.

As he grows up, the boy became a libero - one of Bayern’s best, no less! Over the course of his career, he clinched three European Cups, four DFB Cups, four German championships… the list goes on.

His achievements have earned him the nickname Der Kaiser, or the Emperor. Sounds familiar?

Why yes, ladies and gentlemen. This little boy is none other than the great Franz Beckenbauer.

No player will ever be bigger than the club, but he certainly comes close.

Bayern: “And that’s why I named myself after him. Not just to honor a legend, but also to remind Sechzig what could have been - and what she could never achieve!”Fürth: (gives Bayern a standing ovation) “Man, I can never get enough of that story!”Sechzig: (grumbles profanities under her breath)Fürth: “Now, can I go next? Or do you wanna talk about your last name?”Bayern: “My last name doesn’t need a lot of explanation,” (chuckles) “The name ‘Müller’ came from Gerd, my and Germany’s all-time top scorer - and the best striker in the world! - as well as Thomas, my baby boy, he’s just so loyal, such a hardworker. If he wasn’t married, I think I want him to father my children.”Sechzig: “That’s fucking disgusting.”Bayern: “What? Augsburg’s dating a mortal. Why can’t I?”Kickers: “That’s impossible, Bayern, Augsburg’s dating me!”Bayern: “Sure he does, that doesn’t stop him from-” (glances at Augsburg’s bracelet before shooting him a knowing look.) “-though.”Augsburg: (in a low, threatening voice) “Don’t bring my personal life into this.”Bayern: “Awww, fine, Mr. Privacy. Now, Fürth, didn’t you say it’s your turn?”Fürth: “Oh, yes!”

Fürth: “Hi, Anon! Name’s Emil Julius Erhardt, after two great players, Julius Hirsch and Ertl Erhardt!”Nürnberg: “Wait, where the fuck does the ‘Emil’ come from?”Fürth: “Made it up on the spot.”Nürnberg: (eyes widen) “Wow, I’m surprised you had the brain capacity for that.”Fürth: (laughs) “Ha, that’s funny, coming from someone who just copy-pasted her favorite player’s name!”Nürnberg: “I’m sorry?”Fürth: “You’re just mad I’m right, Max Morlock.”Nürnberg: “Hypocrite. I didn’t just choose my name for the heck of it, Fürz, it’s also to support the renaming of my home ground… but you don’t understand that kind of thing, do you?” (jeers)Fürth: “Nah, I just don’t care, Maxi!” (smirks and gives FCN finger guns)Nürnberg: (furious) “Did you just call me ‘Maxi’?!”

Bayern: (glances at the two Franconians) “Those two just can’t be in the same room for five minutes without fighting, can they?”Sechzig: “Who cares. Now since no one’s talking, I will! As you may have heard on TV or some shit, my name’s Leonie. Leonie Radenkovic, like Petar Radenkovic, my champion keeper. Happy, Anon? Oh, and he’s also better than Manuel Neuer, by the way. No arguments allowed.” (glares at the camera)Bayern: (furrows eyebrows) “Wasn’t your name Konietzka?”Sechzig: “Changed it. We all gotta be a club hero Russian roulette, Müller. Maybe except the Sauschwob right there.” (points at Augsburg)Augsburg: “It’s pronounced August Schwab, 59.”Sechzig: “Where’d you get that shit name? TSV Schwaben?”Augsburg: “Nowhere.” (turns to the camera) “I did name myself after a club legend, once. But an FCA fan called ‘Helmut Haller’ just raises unnecessary attention. He was so loved by us Augsburgers - even our Bunducksliga contestant was named after him. How about you, Kickers?”

Kickers: “Oh!” (smiles brightly at the camera) “Hello!” (waves) “I’m Bernd… if I could, I’d give me your last name, Augsie!”Nürnberg: “Awwww!”Sechzig, Fürth, and Ingolstadt: (pretends to puke dramatically)Augsburg: (blushes) “I’m serious, Kickers.”Kickers: (cups Augsburg’s cheeks) “Live a little, Schatzi!”Augsburg: (averts his gaze from Kickers’ piercing red-eyed glare)Kickers: (suppresses a sigh and looks back to the cam) “My name’s actually the same as my coach, Bernd Hollerbach! I wanted to show him I’m grateful for his coaching - thanks to him, we got to the 2. Bundesliga for the first time!”Fürth: (mutters) “Oh my god.” (turns to Ingolstadt) “Hey, Ingo! Say something before this gets cringier!”Ingolstadt: (yells) “Hi, Anon! You wanna know my full name?!”Fürth: “Holy shit, kid, not that loud!”Ingolstadt: “I’m not a kid! I’m thirteen, okay!”Fürth: “And I’m 114. Keep it down, kid. My old man eardrums are gonna break if you keep that up!”Ingolstadt: (sulks) “Fine! My name’s Ingo Apfelbeck! And that’s really stupid, my classmates just make fun of me-”

Someone: (slaps Ingolstadt)Someone else: (slaps the camera)

Sorry, we are experiencing technical difficulties. Please stand by!

{For notes about the namesakes, do check under the cut!}

The Franz Beckenbauer Story is 100% legit (though Bayern retold it in an extremely biased way), and the Sechzig player who clipped his ear was Gerhard König.

Gerd Müller (who shares his birthday with the mun) is, indeed, the all-time top scorer in Germany, and got the nickname Der Bomber from it. And like many other Bayern players, his achievements didn’t stop there.

Thomas Müller is Bayern’s golden boy and resident joker. He’s been playing for her since age 11, and went through many ups and downs, including the Finale Dahoam and the treble.

Philipp Lahm is also Bayern’s golden boy and captain to boot. Like Müller, he, too, went through all that, and won the World Cup in 2014. Oh, he also captains the national team.

Fürth’s everything

Sechzig (German only)

Nürnberg’s Max Morlock and the stadium renaming initiative (German only)

Helmut Haller, FCA legend and ill-fated Bunducksliga contestant

Bernd Hollerbach, FWK’s promotion hero

Ernst Apfelbeck from Ingolstadt. (All in German. And yes, this club has an official Tumblr.)

{With a few exceptions, every link is in English, but please remember that Bundesliga is a German league, and thus, the best resources are all in German. Thank you so much for reading this far! Have a great day!

#ic #ask #{FINALLY!!!}#bundeslihaha #fc bayern münchen #tsv 1860 münchen #fc augsburg #1. fc nürnberg #spvgg greuther fürth #fc ingolstadt 04 #fc würzburger kickers #names #history #sort of #anonymous #headcanon #{yes i do think they're really bad with names}#{so honoring their heroes is a great excuse}

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euphoriccalliope-blog · 7 years

Text

C’mon. Play the Game.

This just popped into my head re: the Sherlock ARG getting underway in earnest, and some anxiety around that. Folks who’ve been going harddd since January 15th are exhausted -- all the more so because the Sherlock fandom is used to operating on a years-long hiatus schedule and we’ve suddenly been pushed into hourly realtime effort. It’s decidedly uncomfortable on one hand, but also thrilling.

The ARG is basically an epic game of chicken. Do we trust we know the rules and parameters enough to play it without getting bruised or overly frustrated by TPTB who are playing it with us? We’ve been burnt before. If there is no explicit prize of another episode, promised upfront, then what does “winning” mean other than knowing we were smart enough to risk our pride to prove we’re clever?

Answer: we play it because we can, because we want to, and yeah, because we’re clever. And maybe we also know we can rescue each other from it if it gets too cray. And because it makes us fall in love with the brilliant members of this fandom a bit more. (John has a role also in this scene.)

A Study in Not Blinking

It strikes me that there are a lot of parallels between the fandom’s feelings around the ARG and this scene in ASiP when the cabbie (Moftiss) convinces Sherlock (us?) to stay at the table, even though S. knows there is no gun keeping him there. The cabbie’s gun is fake. Just as many brill folks have determined that the gun at the end of TLD/bracketing TFP is also _not a tranquilizer gun_. It’s not what we are told it is, based on the evidence of our eyes. And same goes for the representation of a J&S romantic relationship on the show -- we stand by our visual understanding of what is real and there, vs. the “official” view point that it isn’t, and also btw who you are doesn’t matter.

Bear with me a sec. I think based on what we have seen so far in the ARG, they have been playing a very long game indeed. Witness @tjlcisthenewsexy’s recent brilliant discovery & explication about the cabbie’s license # from ASiP (X). My hunch is that they’ve been building in meta-ARG stuff all along, all so that they would have the option of using it later if they wanted. With that in mind, let’s take a look at the ASiP classroom showdown from the perspective of where we are now, dipping our toes into the ARG.

Read this through, please:

Transcript courtesy of the lovely and astute Ariane DeVere (X) -- S1 E1, part 4:

CLASSROOM. SHERLOCK: What if I don’t choose either? I could just walk out of here. (Sighing in a combination of exasperation and disappointment, Jeff lifts up the pistol and points it at Sherlock.) JEFF: You can take your fifty-fifty chance, or I can shoot you in the head. (Sherlock smiles calmly.) JEFF: Funnily enough, no-one’s ever gone for that option. SHERLOCK: I’ll have the gun, please. JEFF: Are you sure? SHERLOCK (still smiling): Definitely. The gun. JEFF: You don’t wanna phone a friend? (Sherlock smiles confidently.) SHERLOCK: The gun. (Jeff’s mouth tightens, and slowly he squeezes the trigger. A small flame bursts out of the end of the muzzle. Sherlock smiles smugly.) SHERLOCK: I know a real gun when I see one. (Calmly Jeff lifts the pistol/cigarette lighter and releases the trigger. The flame goes out.) JEFF: None of the others did. SHERLOCK: Clearly. Well, this has been very interesting. I look forward to the court case. (He stands up and walks towards the door. Jeff puts the gun onto the desk and calmly turns in his seat.) JEFF: Just before you go, did you figure it out ... (Sherlock stops at the door and half-turns towards him.) JEFF: ... which one’s the good bottle? SHERLOCK: Of course. Child’s play. JEFF: Well, which one, then? (Sherlock opens the door a little but shows no sign of leaving the room.) JEFF: Which one would you ’ave picked, just so I know whether I could have beaten you? (Sherlock closes the door again.) JEFF (chuckling): Come on. Play the game. (Slowly Sherlock walks back towards him. When he gets to the table, he reaches out and sweeps up the bottle nearest to Jeff, then walks past him. Jeff looks down at the other bottle with interest but his voice gives nothing away as he speaks.)

Aside: Aaaand now I get the deeper level of all the Russian roulette gun-swapping references that have been going around (maybe kept up most hilariously by @joolabee originally).

ARG Meta Interpretation of the ASiP Classroom Showdown

Sorry if this is just reiterating something that someone else has already done. My brain is mush at the moment, and it is entirely possible folks have already thought of this exchange in a post-S4, mid-ARG context.

Here’s the mid-ARG meta view of this scene:

The fandom doesn’t have to play the ARG (alternate reality game). No one is making us. We could just walk out of here.

But. We don’t like being manipulated. We decide to play along only so far as to call the puppet master’s (cabbie/Moriarty/Moftiss) bluff, and make them show us what we are playing for, and force them to surrender. I’ll have the gun, please. We know what we are looking at (johnlock) and we believe we are right. We cannot be intimidated. I believe this corresponds to the anti-S4 backlash campaign, and the earnest expectation of more content.

The bluff is called. Definitely. The gun. Gun is not what it appears to be. The fandom unpacks TFP and other elements of S4 that are “fake,” and documents/discusses, all in record time. Some of us come out of shock and begin to see elements of narrative threads that can make sense of the mess, the true signals buried in the fake noise.

The Powers That Be (TPTB, the cabbie/Moriarty/Moftiss, all of whom are in charge of the game structure and who know us well enough to be always changing it to suit us with perfect temptations) applaud our skill in seeing the fake gun. We are unfuckable; no fear. We insist: I know a real gun when I see one.

On our own, we look back over all the times in BBC show canon, esp. within that TPTB seemingly acknowledged fandom interpretation as being deeper than casual-viewer understanding of the show. This was them saying to us: None of the others did. TAB’s heart of the conspiracy, TST’s references to ice lollies, tea code, the best secret societies having acronyms, TFP shockproof elephant glass, etc.

After S4 airs and is effed up, especially TFP, they begin to lose us for a a bit, first because narrative was false to its characters, and then because queerbaiting hamfistedness. TPTB will not publicly or officially engage to confess what their deal is. But we know what we saw. Justifiable anger/frustration/hurt from fanbase over TPTB’s lack of acknowledgment re: queerbaiting and lack of representation. Fandom amasses lists of canonical show reference points as evidence of our case. We take that case to the wider internet, to the BBC, and elsewhere, to try to hold TPTB somehow morally or legally responsible for all that jazz. There are conversations about the fandom crowdfunding an Operation Norbury PR/lawsuit initiative. We get up to leave, and we say to them: Clearly. Well, this has been very interesting. I look forward to the court case.

And then. And then they challenge us to play the game anyway, with the free knowledge that they cannot manipulate us directly with more bullets of questionable narrative content -- nothing more has been officially announced. We are on the point of walking away to wait passively, to write fix-it fic and make art and chat amongst ourselves, and get on with our lives. . . . But. There is a hint of a vast situation in front of us that offers puzzle-solving, intelligence, close-reading of the world, adrenaline and connections. Also possibly witty recycling of our own in-jokes and crack memes, and helping those to become part of the actual 130-year-old vast Sherlock canon’s Great Game, in the service of making real what we have repeatedly seen and know to be true within the BBC show. It’s rather irresistible. And they say: Come on. Play the game.

Do we turn around and consider it? I have already decided I need to sit down at the table and examine the possibilities. I don’t care about seeming foolish, so pride is not a concern. It’s not risking my life, and has the potential to be great fun. . . I respect the decision of those who don’t want to play, but personally I do. I think this is us losing our patience in the most delightful way possible, and taking the reins. Expect the best explosions.

So that’s that. I have no idea how much of this I can keep up with, simultaneously with work commitments and a personal life. But I have hope that the community can collectively carry it forward 24-7 and keep an open mind, and keep pulling on loose threads because it’s fun, and we’re clever. The fandom knows no time zones; we are global and we are engaged. You’re a scintillating group, and this narrative, this Sherlock-TV-world-real-life narrative, is super compelling. It pushes all my researcher buttons in the best way, with the ultimate reward that finding answers makes them real. No clue whether we will see canon Johnlock but I think this is worth playing to see where it goes.

Especially if we can wink knowingly at each other while doing so. (Pleased to meet you, by the way.)

Postscript: Suggestions for How to Play

ARGNet post on Getting Started with ARGs (X)

If you don’t want to play the ARG but want to stay otherwise actively engaged in the fandom, consider saying so at the top of your Tumblr blog, and perhaps blocking the (#sherlock arg) tag. I propose that tag should go on everything ARG-related.

Reminder to please document with links what you do, and tag/share info so that others can easily know what you’ve done and seen, and carry it forward. When you can, read the notes on a post and repost from something useful or new that someone else on that thread has said, done or seen -- this includes folks who want to be part of it all. Embed links in X marks like so (X) so they will show up in notes.

Players who are coming at this from TJLC fandom should throw in the #tjlc tag, to keep it front and center. All ARG playing requires tinfoil hat wearing, so I’m going to say we mostly drop that set of tinfoil hat tags unless you want to throw it in there. It’s more important to keep #tjlc if that’s the flag you fly.

If you are codebreaking, please post:

the encoded source ciphertext and where it came from (with a link also if possible), and

if you have broken the code, include the translated plaintext, as well as

what kind of cipher it was, and what key(s) it used.

be sure to add the tag (#sherlock arg codebreaking) so our army of smarties can become increasingly code-literate within the ARG, as codes become more complex.

If you’re playing, then play. Contribute something. Use the tags to read up and learn for yourself what’s going on. Engagement is always welcome, but try to refrain from just passively asking others to fill you in personally via direct questions to their ask boxes. Folks will be busy pursuing their own inquiries and organizing the info they have found. And ask box space may be precious to some, if that is how ARG clues tend to arrive from mysterious sources.

Other optional tags:

#dancing with the octopus = not knowing how many of the arms of the ARG we are or will engage, but enjoying ourselves anyway.

#the greater game = gives immediate context for what the ARG is in a way that makes folks think of Sherlock and not pirates (Belated epiphany: OMG. Sherlock always wanted to be a pirate. What do pirates say? ARRRRRG.)

#sherlock chess arg = references the S4 chess promo pic that throws the game pieces to us, and tells us it’s our move.

Tagging folks (I’m wary of tagging too many and causing annoyance, but please consider reblogging if you found this useful. We need to spread the word about standardizing our methods and tags! Thank you!):

@the-7-percent-solution, @whimsicalethnographies @teapotsubtext, @ti-ori-se @jenna221b, @inevitably-johnlocked @marcelock @tjlc @tjlcisthenewsexy, @mrsashdown, @materialofonebeing @joolabee, @toxicsemicolon,

#sherlock arg #tjlc #alternate reality game #arg meta #arg #sherlock asip #the greater game #dancing with the octopus #moftiss

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ecotone99 · 4 years

Text

[MF] Do you see me. No.

Ok, just for the record. This is not a feel good story. It has hints of alcoholic abuse, suicide, and a lot of self hate stuff. To those who read on, understand that this is not true, but if you find yourself relating to it in any way, shape, or form, get help. No one should suffer like this and everyone who does needs to find a way to get rid of it long term (AKA, please do not result to harming yourself or others). I know everyone is plagued by these thoughts from time to time and this year especially with everything going on. If you know someone who is like this, TALK to them. I’m not saying to force them to talk, nor am I saying to try to hug them. (Unless they ask and are needing it. Go crazy then.) I also do not condone the act of hurting yourself in any way. Anyway, onto the story.

____________________________________________________________________________________

You don't know me, and probably never will. I am so close to you, but you never acknowledge me. I sit there every day, and yet you still do not take the time to know me.

Am I ugly? Monstrous. Disgusting. Do you not like to look at me because you don't understand me? What I am to you? What I am to those around you? Do you not see me?

Is it just me? Do you see me, and it is just my own eyes that trick me into thinking I am ugly. I am looking at the mirror now, but I don't see a face. I see a smooth, marble surface with just a crack horizontal to where my mouth should be. It does not deviate. It does not spread. I want to take a chisel and carve a smile, a frown, even tears if it means I can see something but this crack. I would carve my head away if it meant I would never see this crack again.

I am outside now, walking alongside you. Are we going to the store? Work? Nowhere? Does it matter? You still chose to wear that thing. Why do you get to smile and I don't? Is that a smile? Why do you wave to them? They don't care! THEY DON'T CARE AT ALL! How do they not even hear you? They keep on talking like you aren't even there. ARE YOU THERE? If you SCREAMED at them, would they hear only wind?

There you are again. Sitting at the end of your bed. Why do you keep doing that? You know the drink never helps. It hurts. Everything hurts when you drink. For me at least. What game will we play today? “Tally the Pain”, “Too Scared for Hangman”, “I Fit In”. Oh, “Russian Roulette” with 5 out of 6 bullets. You sure you want to do that. Even “Driving with Consequences” is a better option than that now. You can’t hear me anyway, so what’s the point. One spin, two spin, three spin. Are you sure that one’s loaded? Go ahead then.

*Click* better luck next time. Oh, you’re trying again. One, two, three aaaann *Click*. Too bad. You know what they say. Third time’s the charm. One, two, and th...*BANG*.

How could you miss? Guess you have to fix the roof tomorrow. See you then. When will you win? When will anything in your life get better? Your life is so boring, yet you stay. Don't worry, I will be here. Your thoughts will be here when you wake. Sleep now, and rest. Dream of nothing, like you are. I guess your thoughts are the only thing to tuck you in tonight, as you sleep with hunger and drink with loneliness.

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sunshineweb · 5 years

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Seven Big Ideas from Fooled by Randomness

I have been re-reading Nassim Taleb’s Fooled by Randomness. The book is about “luck disguised and perceived as non-luck (that is, skills) and, more generally, randomness disguised and perceived as non-randomness (that is, determinism).”

It’s an enlightening read in its entirety, but here are seven key ideas I have picked up from the book.

1. Beware the Hindsight Bias

Things are always obvious after the fact … When you look at the past, the past will always be deterministic, since only one single observation took place. Our mind will interpret most events not with the preceding ones in mind, but the following ones. Imagine taking a test knowing the answer. While we know that history flows forward, it is difficult to realize that we envision it backward. Why is it so?

…here is a possible explanation: Our minds are not quite designed to understand how the world works, but, rather, to get out of trouble rapidly and have progeny. If they were made for us to understand things, then we would have a machine in it that would run the past history as in a VCR, with a correct chronology, and it would slow us down so much that we would have trouble operating. Psychologists call this overestimation of what one knew at the time of the event due to subsequent information the hindsight bias, the “I knew it all along” effect.

The main culprit for our inability to acknowledge randomness is hindsight bias. When we look back at things that have happened, we see them as less random than they were. As they say, the hindsight vision is 20/20. Once we know the outcome of an event, we find it hard to imagine the other possible ways in which things could have happened. And that often causes us grave problems as we start expecting certainties in a highly uncertain world.

2. Don’t Mistake Luck for Skill

There is one world in which I believe the habit of mistaking luck for skill is most prevalent – and most conspicuous – and that is the world of markets … we often have the mistaken impression that a strategy is an excellent strategy, or an entrepreneur a person endowed with “vision, ” or a trader a talented trader, only to realize that 99.9% of their past performance is attributable to chance, and chance alone. Ask a profitable investor to explain the reasons for his success; he will offer some deep and convincing interpretation of the results. Frequently, these delusions are intentional and deserve to bear the name “charlatanism.”

A consequence of confusing being skillful for being lucky is that we tend to think it’s easy to be a successful investor. The ultra-successful, even though they are few, have an outsized effect on us. We believe we can succeed because they did.

The world of investing, like most things in life, produces success stories and failures. It’s human nature to wish to copy success. However, an ironic truth is this: To accept success, and especially quick success at face value without acknowledging the role of luck is a strategy for failure.

3. Do Your Work, Then Let Randomness Do Its Own

…risk-conscious hard work and discipline can lead someone to achieve a comfortable life with a very high probability. Beyond that, it is all randomness: either by taking enormous (and unconscious) risks, or by being extraordinarily lucky. Mild success can be explainable by skills and labor. Wild success is attributable to variance.

In general, the world is a disorderly place, full of random events. And the irresistible urge to seek patterns can get us into serious trouble when we take this tendency to the field of finance and investing. As investors, it’s important to know that we’re dealing with something where randomness and chance can distort the expected outcome in the short term.

Time and again it has been proved that majority of stock price changes are nothing more than random jitters in the system for which no explanation is ever required — yet you can find people obsessing over every minuscule movement and explaining them like kids spotting animal shapes in the clouds.

4. Don’t Be Blind to Alternative Histories

…one cannot judge a performance in any given field (war, politics, medicine, investments) by the results, but by the costs of the alternative (i.e., if history played out in a different way). Such substitute courses of events are called alternative histories. Clearly, the quality of a decision cannot be solely judged based on its outcome, but such a point seems to be voiced only by people who fail (those who succeed attribute their success to the quality of their decision).

We are blind to alternative histories – those silent events that could have happened but didn’t. In the language of behavioural finance this irrationality is known as Survivorship Bias. The outcome which is visible, ‘survived’ and the ones which didn’t survive are hidden. As Taleb writes –

Imagine an eccentric (and bored) tycoon offering you $10 million to play Russian roulette, i.e., to put a revolver containing one bullet in the six available chambers to your head and pull the trigger. Each realization would count as one history, for a total of six possible histories of equal probabilities. Five out of these six histories would lead to enrichment; one would lead to a statistic, that is, an obituary with an embarrassing (but certainly original) cause of death.

The problem is that only one of the histories is observed in reality; and the winner of $10 million would elicit the admiration and praise of some fatuous journalist (the very same ones who unconditionally admire the Forbes 500 billionaires).

Like almost every executive I have encountered during an eighteen-year career on Wall Street (the role of such executives in my view being no more than a judge of results delivered in a random manner), the public observes the external signs of wealth without even having a glimpse at the source. Consider the possibility that the Russian roulette winner would be used as a role model by his family, friends, and neighbors.

In effect, the general belief is that if the outcome is good, the process and decisions made to arrive at that outcome must have been sound. Alas, life doesn’t follow such straight patterns. The randomness and ‘external factors’ play a defining role in life and investing.

5. It Will Happen to You

…problem called denigration of history, as gamblers, investors, and decision-makers feel that the sorts of things that happen to others would not necessarily happen to them.

“It will never happen to me!” is a widely held but dangerous notion. Surely take some risks in life and investing, but only the ones that will not cause you permanent loss. Because sooner or later, it will happen to you.

6. Focus on Process over Outcome

Heroes won and lost battles in a manner that was totally independent of their own valor; their fate depended upon totally external forces, generally the explicit agency of the scheming god (not devoid of nepotism). Heroes are heroes because they are heroic in behavior, not because they won or lost.

As investors, we often struggle with judging whether a decision was good or not, even in hindsight, because we often only look at the outcome and not the process. The truth, however, is that a good process is the only thing that could help us bring the odds of success in our favour. It’s only with a good process that we stand a chance to do well in investing over the long run.

With respect to the investment process, Michael Mauboussin writes in The Success Equation –

…in activities where luck plays a strong role, the focus must be on process. Where skill dominates, performance is a dependable barometer of progress. But where luck is a stronger force, the link between process and outcome is broken. A good process can lead to a bad outcome some percentage of the time, and a bad process can lead to a good outcome. Since a good process offers the highest probability of a good outcome over time, the emphasis has to be on process.

7. Know Thyself

It certainly takes bravery to remain skeptical; it takes inordinate courage to introspect, to confront oneself, to accept one’s limitations – scientists are seeing more and more evidence that we are specifically designed by mother nature to fool ourselves.

One of the most underrated but among the most valuable skills required to succeed in stock market investing is resilience i.e., the ability to properly adapt to stress and adversity – either in the market or in the businesses one is owning.

How easily can you bounce back from a market crash? What would be your reaction to a sharp decline in your stocks’ prices? How many ‘surprises’ can you withstand in quick succession? How safe are your overall finances in light of extreme stress on the equity component of your portfolio?

See, as Taleb says, we are anyways designed by mother nature to fool ourselves. But don’t forget what the noted financial writer George J.W. Goodman – who used the pen name of Adam Smith – wrote in his wonderful book, The Money Game – “If you don’t know who you are, this is an expensive place to find out.”

It’s a wonderful book, Fooled by Randomness. Read it certainly, and slowly.

The post Seven Big Ideas from Fooled by Randomness appeared first on Safal Niveshak.

Seven Big Ideas from Fooled by Randomness published first on https://mbploans.tumblr.com/

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detroitbecomerain · 6 years

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Love is not compatible - Chapter 6

Y/N was born in a world without androids. When she was ten, Chloe, the first android was created. Is this why she is sympathetic to the android cause now? How will she handle hunting deviants with her partner Hank and the new android Connor sent by Cyberlife? Humans and androids aren’t meant to bond are they? They simply are not compatible.

“Y/L/N, Y/N. Age 26. Born 5/23/2012 Detroit. Lived in a community home from the age of 15. At 18 joined the academy of policing. Currently the partner of lieutenant Hank Anderson. Female pronouns

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It was getting colder. Each passing day as December came closer the weather got worse. What had started as a warm rain barely a week ago was a harsh cold rain now and Y/N was happy she wasn't in it. She sat on the edge of her bed getting ready to put her pyjamas on and climb into the big, exciting warm bed. Suddenly her phone began to ring causing her to jump slightly.

"Hello, Officer Y/L/N speaking." She said almost annoyed into the speaker. "Y/L. It's Connor. The android sent my Cyberlife." Connor's voice replied. "I know who you are Connor." Y/N chuckled. "A new deviant case has been reported. I attempted to contact Lieutenant Anderson and I have checked Jimmy's bar. It would be beneficial if you could meet me at his house." "Right. Okay. No sleep for the wicked I guess." Y/N sighed "I'll see you soon." She got in one of the many taxis that was passing her house and headed towards the house that in some ways was more of a home to her. She arrived to see Connor ringing the doorbell. His finger did not leave the button, so the annoying noise was constant. "Connor!" she scolded. "You are going to wake the neighbours! They already don't like Hank." Connor slowly removed his finger from the bell. Y/N sighed and began looking through her bag. Connor took the opportunity to begin looking for a way to see if Hank was okay. If he wasn't at Jimmy's bar and he didn't hear the doorbell then something must be wrong. "Lieutenant!" Y/N heard Connor shout from the side of the house followed by the smashing of glass. "Connor wait!" Y/N called. She pulled a key out of her bag and placed it in the door quickly opening it to see Hank unconscious on the floor and Connor about to be eaten by Sumo. "See. I know your name." Connor said gently to the dog while holding up one hand. "I'm here to save your owner." Sumo backed up with a whine and gave a quick look to Y/N before laying down on his bed in the corner of the room. Y/N rushed over to Hank. "Damnit Hank! Not again!" she checked his pulse. He was alive. Even though when he woke up he probably wished he wouldn't be. "There are traces of alcohol on the breath and the gun has not been fired. I believe Hank is in an Ethylic Coma." Connor explained. "Okay. So what do we do?" Y/N said slightly worried. The word Coma was not a good one. Connor looked back down at Hank. "Lieutenant." He said softly as if he was waking him from a nap. Y/N looked at him with confusion. Connor smacked the side of Hanks face lightly. Hank grumbled but didn't wake up. "Wake up lieutenant." Hank seemingly opened his eyes for a brief moment before reclosing them. Connor raised his hand high and brought it down with a mighty hit to Hanks face. Y/N jumped back slightly amused and scared. "It's me Connor." He said leaning close into Hanks face. He grabbed Hank by the arm and pulled him up. Y/N took her queue and grabbed him by the other arm. "I'm going to sober you up for your own safety." Connor informed Hank. "Hey! Leave me alone you fucking android! Get the fuck out of my house." Hank shouted. More like slurred angrily. Connor ignored the verbal abuse. "I have to warn you. This may be unpleasant." "Y/N! Get him off me!" Y/N shook her head. "I'm sorry lieutenant, but I need you." Connor continued. Hank was not light. Especially when he was a drunken dead weight. "Thank you in advance for your cooperation." "Both of you get the fuck outta here!" Hank's breath stunk. "Sumo! Attack!" Sumo looked up at his owner before resting back down. Y/N opened the bathroom door. "Fuck, I think I'm gonna be sick." Hank moaned. "If you can, please wait just a few more seconds." Y/N begged. She couldn't handle puke. Blood, guts and gore was fine. Puke was not. "Leave me alone you assholes! I'm not going anywhere!" Hank grabbed the doorframe of the bathroom. Connor grimaced as he pulled. Y/N pried Hank's fingers away one by one. Once Hank had let go Connor pushed him into the bathtub. "What are you doing? I don't want a bath. A lady is present." Hank stood up in protest only to be pushed again. Y/N leant over and turned the tap on as far as it would go. Hank screamed and shouted for the water to be turned up. He wasn't slurring anymore. Their mission was complete. She quickly turned the tap off and lifted her hand for a high five. Connor looked at her hand. His LED flashed yellow and he lifted his own hand and touched it against Y/N's hand for a little longer then expected. The air quickly got awkward. "Why the fuck are you two doing here?" saved by the Hank. "A homicide was reported 43 minutes ago. I couldn't find you at Jimmy's bar, so I came here to see if you were home." "Jesus. I must be the only cop in the world to be assaulted by his own android and partner in his own home." He attempted to get out of the tub but slipped. Connor grabbed him and placed him on the side. "Cant you just leave me alone?" "Hank you were lucky we found you when we did." Y/N said disappointedly. "You know what could have happened if we didn't." "Beat it!" Y/N jumped. She had never seen him this bad before. Right now he reminded her too much of her father and that was not a good thing. Connor shook his head. "I understand." He said in a strange tone. "It probably wasn't interesting anyway. A man found dead in a sex club downtown. Guess they will have to solve the case with out us." Connor was teasing him! The cheeky bastard. "You know." Hank began. "It probably wouldn't do any harm to get some air." Y/N scoffed. Men. "Theres some clothes in the bedroom there." "I'll go get them." Connor volunteered and left the bathroom. Y/N spoke to Hank in a harsh whisper. "Hank you promised you wouldn't do this anymore!" "I know, I know," he brushed off. "No you don't know. You are all I have left in this world and I'm all you have. We are partners. Family. If this was the other way around what would you do?" Hank looked down. "I would kick your ass." "Exactly! So please. For both of us. Stop." Hank didn't look up. He couldn't. He felt ashamed. There was a difference between eating unhealthy food in hopes one day it would end you and actively playing Russian roulette. Hank stood up and rushed to the toilet where he began to vomit. Y/N lifted her hands in surrender and left the room.

In the kitchen she found herself rubbing behind Sumo's ears. He may look big and scary but he was a giant softie inside. Much like Hank himself really. She heard footsteps behind her and knew she wasn't alone anymore. Connor had joined her. He bent down beside her and mimicked her petting. Sumo was content with all of this attention. "Thank you for helping him." Y/N said. "We need him to complete the mission." Connor replied. "Connor. We both know you helped him for more reasons than just the mission."

Software instability

They both stood up and looked around at the mess that surrounded them. Empty bottles of booze and too many empty pizza takeaway boxes to count. While Y/N's eyes were focused on the mess Connor picked up a photo frame that was placed down on the counter. Slowly he picked it up and examined it. "Cole." Y/N said. "His name is Cole." Conner knew this already from analysis but nodded nonetheless. He looked around the room and saw another photo. "That is yourself and the lieutenant. You are younger." Y/N looked over in the direction that Connor was looking. The picture of them that had been taken from the news. She remembered the photo being taken like it was yesterday. The press loved that the newly appointed lieutenant had saved the life of a 15 year old girl and were dying to get a photograph of them together. However, they didn't like the fact Y/N was covered in bruises and cuts so covered her in makeup so that the readers wouldn't get upset at the real truth. At a quick glance you would think she had flawless skin and a perfect figure. But if you knew where to look you could see the scars and bruises. When Connor saw the photo the news article that was printed with it was available to read. The permanent damage features on Y/N matched perfectly with those mentioned in the article. He did not say anything. "We do look younger don't we." Y/N laughed off. "I guess sometimes 11 years catch up with you in the end." Connor looked at her. Yes he could see the scars on her arms. A little scar just above her eyebrow and he wondered if she would be different person if these things never happened to her. He himself, he was designed to be exactly what was needed of him. Everything about him was created by a computer. But Y/N. she was created by the life she had. If she had a normal life where would she be now? Would she still be kind to androids? Would she still even be an officer? Would she know Hank? Would she even know Connor? Would she be in a loving family away from all of this?

Software instability

Hank immerged from the bathroom looking fresh and clean. His hair was brushed and his clothes were neat. Connor almost smiled at the man. "Be a good dog, Sumo." Hank said to the dog. "I wont be long."

AN: this chapter was originally meant to havethe Eden club portion included but I didn't want it to be too long.

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jmtapio · 7 years

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Since the EU referendum got under way in the UK, it has become almost an everyday occurence to turn on the TV and hear some politician explaining "I don't mean to sound racist, but..." (example)

Of course, if you didn't mean to sound racist, you wouldn't sound racist in the first place, now would you?

The reality is, whether you like politics or not, political leaders have a significant impact on society and the massive rise in UK hate crimes, including deaths of Polish workers, is a direct reflection of the leadership (or profound lack of it) coming down from Westminster. Maybe you don't mean to sound racist, but if this is the impact your words are having, maybe it's time to shut up?

Choosing your referendum

Why choose to have a referendum on immigration issues and not on any number of other significant topics? Why not have a referendum on nuking Mr Putin to punish him for what looks like an act of terrorism against the Malaysian Airlines flight MH17? Why not have a referendum on cutting taxes or raising speed limits, turning British motorways into freeways or an autobahn? Why choose to keep those issues in the hands of the Government, but invite the man-in-a-white-van from middle England to regurgitate Nigel Farage's fears and anxieties about migrants onto a ballot paper?

Even if David Cameron sincerely hoped and believed that the referendum would turn out otherwise, surely he must have contemplated that he was playing Russian Roulette with the future of millions of innocent people?

Let's start at the top

For those who are fortunate enough to live in parts of the world where the press provides little exposure to the antics of British royalty, an interesting fact you may have missed is that the Queen's husband, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh is actually a foreigner. He was born in Greece and has Danish and German ancestry. Migration (in both directions) is right at the heart of the UK's identity.

Home office minister Amber Rudd recently suggested British firms should publish details about how many foreign people they employ and in which positions. She argued this is necessary to help boost funding for training local people.

If that is such a brilliant idea, why hasn't it worked for the Premier League? It is a matter of public knowledge how many foreigners play football in England's most prestigious division, so why hasn't this caused local clubs to boost training budgets for local recruits? After all, when you consider that England hasn't won a World Cup since 1966, what have they got to lose?

All this racism, it's just not cricket. Or is it? One of the most remarkable cricketers to play for England in recent times, Kevin Pietersen, dubbed "the most complete batsman in cricket" by The Times and "England's greatest modern batsman" by the Guardian, was born in South Africa. In the five years he was contracted to the Hampshire county team, he only played one match, because he was too busy representing England abroad. His highest position was nothing less than becoming England's team captain.

Are the British superior to every other European citizen?

One of the implications of the rhetoric coming out of London these days is that the British are superior to their neighbours, entitled to have their cake and eat it too, making foreigners queue up at Paris' Gare du Nord to board the Eurostar while British travelers should be able to walk or drive into European countries unchallenged.

This superiority complex is not uniquely British, you can observe similar delusions are rampant in many of the places where I've lived, including Australia, Switzerland and France. America's Donald Trump has taken this style of politics to a new level.

Look in the mirror Theresa May: after British 10-year old schoolboys Robert Thompson and Jon Venables abducted, tortured, murdered and mutilated 2 year old James Bulger in 1993, why not have all British schoolchildren fingerprinted and added to the police DNA database? Why should "security" only apply based on the country where people are born, their religion or skin colour?

In fact, after Brexit, people like Venables and Thompson will remain in Britain while a Dutch woman, educated at Cambridge and with two British children will not. If that isn't racism, what is?

Running foreigner's off the roads

Theresa May has only been Prime Minister for less than a year but she has a history of bullying and abusing foreigners in her previous role in the Home Office. One example of this was a policy of removing driving licenses from foreigners, which has caused administrative chaos and even taken away the licenses of many people who technically should not have been subject to these regulations anyway.

Shouldn't the DVLA (Britain's office for driving licenses) simply focus on the competence of somebody to drive a vehicle? Bringing all these other factors into licensing creates a hostile environment full of mistakes and inconvenience at best and opportunities for low-level officials to engage in arbitrary acts of racism and discrimination.

Of course, when you are taking your country on the road to nowhere, who needs a driving license anyway?

What does "maximum control" over other human beings mean to you?

The new British PM has said she wants "maximum control" over immigrants. What exactly does "maximum control" mean? Donald Trump appears to be promising "maximum control" over Muslims, Hitler sought "maximum control" over the Jews, hasn't the whole point of the EU been to avoid similar situations from ever arising again?

This talk of "maximum control" in British politics has grown like a weed out of the UKIP. One of their senior figures has been linked to kidnappings and extortion, which reveals a lot about the character of the people who want to devise and administer these policies. Similar people in Australia aspire to jobs in the immigration department where they can extort money out of people for getting them pushed up the queue. It is no surprise that the first member of Australia's parliament ever sent to jail was put there for obtaining bribes and sexual favours from immigrants. When Nigel Farage talks about copying the Australian immigration system, he is talking about creating jobs like these for his mates.

Even if "maximum control" is important, who really believes that a bunch of bullies in Westminster should have the power to exercise that control? Is May saying that British bosses are no longer competent to make their own decisions about who to employ or that British citizens are not reliable enough to make their own decisions about who they marry and they need a helping hand from paper-pushers in the immigration department?

Echoes of the Third Reich

Most people associate acts of mass murder with the Germans who lived in the time of Adolf Hitler. These are the stories told over and and over again in movies, books and the press.

Look more closely, however, and it appears that the vast majority of Germans were not in immediate contact with the gas chambers. Even Gobels' secretary writes that she was completely oblivious to it all. Many people were simply small cogs in a big bad machine. The clues were there, but many of them couldn't see the big picture. Even if they did get a whiff of it, many chose not to ask questions, to carry on with their comfortable lives.

Today, with mass media and the Internet, it is a lot easier for people to discover the truth if they look, but many are still reluctant to do so.

Consider, for example, the fingerprint scanners installed in British post offices and police stations to fingerprint foreigners and criminals (as if they have something in common). If all the post office staff refused to engage in racist conduct the fingerprint scanners would be put out of service. Nonetheless, these people carry on, just doing their job, just following orders. It was through many small abuses like this, rather than mass murder on every street corner, that Hitler motivated an entire nation to serve his evil purposes.

Technology like this is introduced in small steps: first it was used for serious criminals, then anybody accused of a crime, then people from Africa and next it appears they will try and apply it to all EU citizens remaining in the UK.

How will a British man married to a French woman explain to their children that mummy has to be fingerprinted by the border guard each time they return from vacation?

The Nazis pioneered biometric technology with the tracking numbers branded onto Jews. While today's technology is electronic and digital, isn't it performing the same function?

There is no middle ground between "soft" and "hard" brexit

An important point for British citizens and foreigners in the UK to consider today is that there is no compromise between a "soft" Brexit and a "hard" Brexit. It is one or the other. Anything less (for example, a deal that is "better" for British companies and worse for EU citizens) would imply that the British are a superior species and it is impossible to imagine the EU putting their stamp on such a deal. Anybody from the EU who is trying to make a life in the UK now is playing a game of Russian Roulette - sure, everything might be fine if it morphs into "soft" Brexit, but if Theresa May has her way, at some point in your life, maybe 20 years down the track, you could be rounded up by the gestapo and thrown behind bars for a parking violation. There has already been a five-fold increase in the detention of EU citizens in British concentration camps and they are using grandmothers from Asian countries to refine their tactics for the efficient removal of EU citizens. One can only wonder what type of monsters Theresa May has been employing to run such inhumane operations.

This is not politics

Edmund Burke's quote "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing" comes to mind on a day like today. Too many people think it is just politics and they can go on with their lives and ignore it. Barely half the British population voted in the referendum. This is about human beings treating each other with dignity and respect. Anything less is abhorrent and may well come back to bite.

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