Y’all don’t ever make me a famous blog id go fucking insane. I’d go crazy you hear me no serial killer on the planet would be able to fathom what I would do

she moves in her own way. (jj maybank)

due to the ASTOUNDING response to my first jj fic which i have to say a huuuge thank you to everyone that liked, commented & reblogged, it honestly means the absolute world !! i couldn't wait much longer to start writing for my boy again, i have so many fic ideas and cannot wait to get them out to y'all. this one is shorter than the last, & the title is inspired from the song 'she moves in her own way' by the kooks (lol) but isn't necessarily based off of it, it's just something that i wrote up quickly bc i was in my feels™️ . also i feel very unoriginal with the whole plot and aspect of this but im gonna post it anyway bc i love jj lmao. anyway hope u enjoy !

warnings: swearing, underage drinking, drug use, violence, jj with a gun™️

summary: reader walks the fine line between either pogue or kook, though technically a kook, she ignores all social standings of the obx and jj maybank cannot stop himself from getting caught up in her whirlwind.

( gif isn’t mine! please let me know if it’s yours so i can credit you. )

Everyone seemed to have a different perspective of you, unsurprisingly. You weren't really much of a social butterfly, you kept yourself to yourself, really. Nobody in the Outer Banks knew much about you at all, other than what they had come up with in their heads. And while you tried your best to stay in the shadows, that only seemed to make you stand out more.

You were known for being the best of both worlds - not really a Pogue, but not really a Kook either. While your social status and family wealth suggested you to be a Kook, your free spirit and reckless behaviour fitted you better towards the Pogue style. If anyone were to ask you, you told them you were neither.

Why should a name define you anyway? You thought it was all bullshit, the stupid territorial arguments and the snide comments from both sides. You thought it was ridiculous, you weren't living in The Outsiders, for fuck sake.

You moved in your own way, simple as that. You wouldn't let anyone tell you what to do, where you can't or shouldn't be, it was a free country you'd say, middle finger salute ready to aim towards anyone who dared cross you. You were an enigma, wild and careless, unforgiving and unforgettable. You didn't necessarily like the attention, but you got it. And you knew it, and you played on it, too.

You had used your irresistible charm more than enough times to bail JJ Maybank out of trouble, despite your parents' protest. They didn't have a problem with the Pogues, persay, how could they when your dad been one half of his life before meeting your mom and marrying into the rich lifestyle; they just had a problem with JJ, as many of the parents on the island did. He was an unstoppable force to be reckoned with, weed smoking, knuckles constantly torn, skin bruised, quick wit, sarcastic humour, daddy issues, you know the type. Kids loved him, parents hated him.

You were friends with JJ, you supposed. You spent your time with him talking about your days and smoking a joint, meaningful conversations turning into joking and general tomfoolery within seconds. With JJ, you were simply unapologetically you, and JJ never judged you. He never made you choose a side, seemingly content with the fact that you were a little bit of everything, though there was times when he teased you relentlessly about the Kook life, but that was just JJ.

And despite the social differences, him being a Pogue through and through, you technically a Kook, you were drawn to each other pretty easily. Not that you hung out all the time, but you loved every second when you did, usually joined by his group of best friends - John B, Pope, and Kiara. With Kiara a Kook herself but drawn more to the lifestyle of the Pogue's, she understood you more than anyone. You'd bonded a lot, and with each of them too.

JJ loved that you fitted in with them, like a missing puzzle piece. So perfectly, it shook him to its core. The pair of you were close, but he had no idea where he stood with you, like most people never when it came to you. You were like a rollercoaster, taking people for the most exciting ride of their lives that lasted a full three or so minutes before they returned back to solid ground. You'd given JJ a ride a number of times on your non-existent metaphorical rollercoaster, and he'd returned for another ride time and time again. You couldn't say no to that damned boy.

It was a blessing and a curse, the unspoken relationship you shared. A blessing because JJ was the best thing that happened to you, and a curse because that was your downfall. You never got attached to people, never given yourself the chance. But then JJ Maybank had come along, blonde hair and blue eyes, split lip and sharpened teeth, words cunning. You saw him as a challenge at first, the name Kook Princess haunting you as he spoke them, stood in front of you at the keg upon your first real meeting. He'd held a drink out towards you, smirk perfect on his pink lips.

You'd attended over a hundred kegger's in your lifetime, the Pogue parties more inviting than those of the Kook's. You danced and talked to anyone that came across your path, whether it be unknowing Tourons, unjudging Pogues, or unforgiving Kooks, you drew them all in. You didn't fit in with any of them, JJ had realised. You really did move in your own way, he thought. He liked that, he'd decided. And hey, you were pretty cute too.

On that particular night, he'd spoken to you directly for the first time in a long time. "Would the Kook Princess like a drink?" He'd asked, holding the red cup out towards you. You'd eyed the offended object, and subsequently him, too. He smirked at the attention. You had rolled your eyes.

"Don't call me that," you'd said simply, but taking the cup from his hands regardless. You took a sip, relieved to discover that he hadn't tampered with it in any way. You were still considered a Kook to most people, after all. You could never be too careful. "Thanks, Maybank."

And he'd blinked at you, lips suddenly raising to a sly smile as he shrugged, dimples winking at you as they appeared in his cheeks. "Anytime," and he'd spoken your name back to you and you couldn't get enough of the way it sounded coming from his mouth, and you realised hey, this guy is pretty cute, and the rest, as they, is history.

You were in the midst of another infamous Pogue kegger at the current, months after your first introduction to JJ Maybank and his friends, and you stood off to the side, listening to JJ intently as he ranted about the events of the day he'd endured. Starting from finding a Grady White sunken in the marsh, "A fucking Grady Marsh, they're like 500 G's man!", to discovering that the boat belonged to Scooter Grubbs, who had coincidentally been found dead that same day, to getting chased by two guys with a gun, to the finding of the motel key from the wreck and breaking in that same motel room, finding a safe full of money and a gun of all things, to their best attempt at laying low which, unsurprisingly, resulted in the kegger in the first place.

JJ was wild in his recite of the events, hands gesturing every which way as you watched him with your lips curled into your mouth, resisting a smile at his antics. When he finished he retelling, you raised an eyebrow and chuckled dryly. "So, complete and utter boring day for you, huh?"

JJ chuckled along with you, shaking his head as if he was still in disbelief from everything that had happened in the past twenty four hours. "Man, it was crazy," he muttered. He looked at you then, eyes sincere. "I wish you were there with us. It was like something straight from a movie, I'm telling you. I feel like such a badass with that gun."

Your secret joy at his confession of that he wished you were was short lived, as the last of his words sunk in and you felt dread build in the pit of your stomach. You stared at him, him so excited that he hadn't even realised your face had dropped, before you reached out and grabbed his arm, effectively halting his movements and stopping the hurried flow of words that were leaving his mouth.

"JJ," you said carefully, eyes trained on his as he stared, clueless. "Please tell me you did not take that gun from the safe."

Your heart dropped as you saw him falter, his lips helplessly moving but no words coming out. He held a hand up, as if to hush you, though you hadn't started to speak again, and then his hand had dropped just as quick as it was raised, his teeth biting down on his chapped lip as the realisation dawned on you.

"JJ Fucking Maybank," you spat, hands slapping gently at his arms, because you could never really hurt him, you just wanted him to know you were pissed. "Do you realise how fucking careless that is? How much trouble you could get into, if anyone knew you had a gun-" your voice trailed off, your eyes closing as you exhaled. "JJ, please tell me you don't have it on you right now."

His lack of reply was the only answer you needed, and your stomach churned as you stepped back from his figure, suddenly feeling sick. He followed you, though, not letting you get too far as he took your arms in his hands and tried to drag you closer to him once more. You shook your head, arms slipping from his hold as you glared at him fiercely.

"That's so fucking stupid, JJ. You could get into serious trouble with this, trouble I won't be able to get you out of." You warned, because you knew it was true. Your charm and looks could get him out of some trouble to its extent, but it was more so your parents wealth and status that got the both of you out of shit when you managed to get into it, and you also knew your parents would literally throw a fit if you got involved in something like this - carrying a gun was no joking matter. You stepped back once more, hand finding its way to your forehead. "And from a crime scene, no less. Fucking hell."

JJ licked his lips, standing back roughly as you watched, his jaw clenching. "Well I'm not asking for your help here, Princess," he taunted, the nickname sending a wave of annoyance through you. JJ knew it would. "It's not like I ask you to help me, you're just there. Thinking I need help, like I'm some fucking charity case, a fucking doll you picked up from the thrift store that was gonna be thrown out the next day."

You tried to protest, but JJ didn't give you the chance. "I don't need your help all the fucking time. I don't need your pity. I get that you won't understand because why would you? You're a Kook, you get everything you want handed to you on a silver platter. And you can argue and fight me about it all you want, but I know you know it's true."

He sighed heavily, hands running down his face in a sign of defeat. You watched him all the while, thankful that you had ventured off the outskirts of the party so that hopefully nobody had heard JJ shouting at you, your heart wrenching as his blue eyes settled on you. "I'm sorry, JJ," you said finally. You refused to cry, though the desire to at the sight of him being so mad at you tore you apart. "I'm just trying to look out for you. With the gun thing, with everything that I help you with. And I know I'm a Kook, and I know that my parents could afford to buy half of this fucking island if they pleased, but that doesn't define me. I care, okay? And I know I care a lot more than a lot of people in your life."

It was probably a low blow, and you knew it. But JJ took it in, let the words sink into his brain where they stayed there, his fists clenching at his sides. You crossed your arms over your chest, defeated.

"I'm gonna go back to the party," you whispered. "I'll see you around, I guess." You eyed his pockets, unsure of where exactly he held the gun. "Be careful, okay."

And even when you were angry with him, you still tried to make sure he was okay, that he stayed safe. There was multiple occasions you'd showed up unannounced, simply asking how his day was, if he okay, if he had eaten that day, stayed hydrated. At first the attention startled him, he'd never really had anyone look out for him in that aspect, and yet there you were, like an angel sent from the gods themselves, smiling down at him.

You cared, he realised. You cared so much that sometimes he couldn't take it, because he didn't know how. The most family he'd ever gotten close to having in his life was the Pogues, after losing his mother and subsequently losing his father too as he turned into the monster that he was, cold and distant, fists always poised ready for an imaginary fight, and he knew that someday the Pogues would even slip through his fingers. He couldn't let that happen with you. He wouldn't.

He'd started off in your direction, truly, he had. But then John B was grabbing him and averting his attention to him, and he focused on his friend, promising only a minute of his time. You were in his sights, stood a bit away, and he recognised the couple you were talking to as Sarah Cameron and Topper Thorton, Kooks through and through. He held his distaste back, and even held a drink out to offer to Sarah as she and Topper made their way past where he and John B were standing. Big fucking mistake, he realised quickly.

It had all happened in a blur of events, each little bit leading to big finale - as he watched his best friend being held down in the water, powerless to Topper who kneeled over him, hands forcing John B to stay put in the sea. Sarah was screaming at Topper, Pope was holding JJ back with all his might, Kie beside them as she screamed along with Sarah to let John B go. And there you were, suddenly beside JJ, gripping his arm tightly as you took in the sight with a horrified glare. JJ didn't even hesitate; the gun had been pulled from his shorts and was directed at Topper's head in the blink of an eye.

The fury in his veins was red hot and ugly, tearing through every part of him like a vice. This was the Pogues land, their side of the island, and yet the Kooks still thought they could get away with anything and everything - including, apparently, attempting to drown his best friend.

"Your move, broski," JJ uttered through clenched teeth. He could hear the screams of the crowd behind him, and he pulled the gun away from Topper's head and into the direction of the sky, firing two shots towards it as the crowd of people quickly dispersed, screeches sounding from all over. "Now everybody needs to get the fuck off our side of the island!"

He was shoved to the side as Sarah rushed to her boyfriend, telling him he was fucking crazy or something like that, he wasn't really listening. The shots rang in his ears, and the adrenaline of the moment soured through him. Kie and Pope were screaming at him, he could hear their voices distantly. His blue eyes were unfocused for a second, before they looked up, and there you were.

Sent from the gods themselves, once again. You looked vibrant, so insanely alive, lips red and cheeks flushed, eyes bright. You let out a shaky breath as you watched him. JJ clenched his jaw.

"He was going to drown John B," he thought he'd said, but he wasn't sure. He didn't really know what to keep track of at that moment, Kie and Pope's obvious disapproval at him literally doing the one thing they swore not to do, Sarah and Topper stumbling away from the scene in the distance, John B getting up and muttering something along the lines of he wasn't going to drown me, or you, simply staring at him.

Before he knew what he was doing, JJ had made his way towards you. The gun was still held in his hands, and you swallowed thickly as you eyed it. "You should put that away," you muttered. JJ seemed confused, before he caught on to what you meant and he shoved the gun back to the spot of in between his shorts and his hip. "You literally did the one thing I said not to, you tool."

JJ cracked a smile, small and uncertain as he gazed at you. You stepped closer to him, eyes glancing over his shoulder. "You really pissed them off," you said, meaning his friends.

JJ shrugged, because he didn't care about their opinion, he cared about yours. And if you hated him now, hated the fact that he was just some dirty Pogue who held guns against people's heads now, apparently. "I don't care about what they think," he spoke softly. You looked at him confused. "I care about what you think."

You smiled softly, shrugging one shoulder. "Topper was going to drown John B," you replied, matter of fact. "If you hadn't stepped in when you did, who knew what could have happened. Nothing could have stopped him." You bit your lip, hand reaching out and touching his face gently, thumb soothing over the worried line between his brows. "You did the right thing, J. A fucking crazy and stupid thing, potientally dangerous, but the right thing nonetheless."

"Yeah, that's kind of my go-to, if you haven't already noticed," JJ smiled, tongue running over his bottom lip. You rolled your eyes, though playful. "Look, I'm sorry about before, okay. I was a dick. I know you care, but sometimes that's what scares me."

Your eyebrows furrowed, a confused expression on your face as your hand dropped from his face to intertwine with his own hand, his gaze suddenly becoming fixed on your linked hands, his other absentmindedly playing with your fingers that held his hand.

"It's like, you're this untouchable thing. I mean, you don't belong to anyone, you refuse to go by anything other than your name, and you're like this perfect mix between Pogue and Kook even if you do hate it and everyone knows who are you and they make these stories up about you, like that's how popular you are," JJ chuckled. "And then you hang out with me, you look past all the dirty Pogue shit, see me for who I am, and you care. And you care so god dammed much that it fucking terrifies me because nobody's ever cared that much before about me, so why should you?"

His hand left yours to remove the hat from sitting atop his hair and then run his hand through the blonde locks. You could see his tongue running along the outsides of his bottom teeth, the action causing a bump beneath his skin. He looked nervous than you had ever seen him before, and you'd both gotten into enough nerve-wracking situations together to compare. You sighed as your hands reached for his face, gripping his cheeks and forcing his eyes to gaze down at yours.

"JJ Maybank," you started, grinning softly. "You listen to me while I tell you that you deserve the fucking world and more. All this shit that you're going through, all the crap you deal with on a daily basis, you carry it so well that nobody would even know. You fight through each day and I don't even know how you manage it half the time. I admire you so much, J. And I can't help but care about you, even if you don't want me to. I care about you so much, that you wanna know a secret? It scares me too."

JJ gazed down at you lovingly, his forehead moving to rest against yours. You welcomed the embrace, his arms wrapping around your waist and squeezing you gently, as if reassuring himself that you were actually there.

"JJ," you whispered as you were stood in silence for a precise minute, neither of you daring to break the silence until you had. His blue eyes stared into yours, awaiting the next part of your speech. You swallowed your nerves down, figuring fuck it. "I'm so in love with you."

He grinned, his head swooping down before you knew it and his lips pressing against yours in a heated embrace that sent a sensation of butterflies to fly wildly in your stomach, bashing against your ribcage and taking your breath away. Shivers flew up your spine, and every hair on your body stood on edge as the kiss grew heavier, tongues brushing and teeth clattering, bodies pressed against each other as much as they could manage.

When JJ's lips left yours, you almost whined. JJ grinned cheekily, hands digging into your hips. "I love you," he breathed against the skin of your neck as he buried his head there, lips tickling the flesh. "I can't believe you just macked on me while I have a gun in my pocket."

You rolled your eyes and tugged gently on his hair, spurring a laugh from him as you shoved him away and grinned despite yourself. "Do not remind me, please," you warned him, allowing him to pull you into his side as you made your way down the beach. "I still can't believe you took that thing."

"I knew it'd come in handy though," he grinned, pulling you closer with the arm thrown over your shoulder. You wrapped yours around his waist, face squished in his chest as you shook your head.

"You're an idiot, Maybank."

Final Fantasy XIV: A Quick(ish) Summary As Told By Someone Too Lazy To Recheck Exact Times/Things

1.0- We don't talk about it

A Realm Reborn (ARR)- for some strange reason the world got like, completely blown up 5 years ago, crazy! You are some dumb kid from nowhere in particular, with nothing but the clothes on your back and a weapon that is little more than a chunk of wood, or a book. Possibly just your fists. You have got 50 levels and a shitload of lore to get through until you reach the first expansion.

Essentially: you don't have enough money for chicken nuggets, your fashion game is nonexistent, and every high level player calls you a sprout and exhibits Concern about your every action (they mean well).

Garlemald bad, Ascians bad, Eorzea uhhh trying to be good but kinda racist/capitalist/pirates with a history of colonialism, Coerthas is French Catholic and in the Crusades with the dragons. Hydaelin... good? Confusing, for sure, often referred to as Mother in text. Primals bad and scary, but fortunately you are immune to their mind-fuckery techniques thanks to Crystal Mom and surprisingly good at kicking their asses. Garleans mad that you ""savages"" keep killing Primals, despite having a whole mandate against Primals and Primal summoning. Ascians mad that you keep killing Primals because Ascians are dicks. People die, there is an amnesia plot, some annoying twerp is annoyingly right about a lot of things and also you can't get rid of him, Moogles, possession, fucking Ancient Aliens Allagans (if it's a problem in ARR, it's Ascians or Allagans aight), and hey ho you go and kick Garlean asses until they throw a giant machine at you that they stuffed full of Primal juice. Such devastation-!

Then there is the slightly post ARR stuff, where we're still level 50-ish but not really into the next expansion. So basically, we meet Dragon Dad who slaps Crystal Mom's blessing off of you to build character, Ascians are once again dicks, Who The Hell Names These Things, wow Lysanderoth you're definitely not suspicious at all, and our annoying twerp is dabbling in politics and for some reason you're getting fond of him?? Just in time for...

Heavensward (Lvl 50-60)- Congratulations, you are now an enemy of the state! We return/flee to French Catholic Coerthas/Ishgard, where we get to room with our Dear Friend, Haurchefant.

Don't mind how all the high leveled players have started crying. This expansion is emotionally devastating, has a great storyline, and also features canonical consensual dragon vore as a plot point. You know that tweet that's all "Church bad because they won't let you fuck dragons"? Yes, that's Heavensward. You will still cry. We embark on an epic road trip with the annoying twerp (ft his existential teenage crisis), a famous dragon killer and sadboi, and a famous lady who advocates peace/fucking dragons. Somehow, none of you kill each other. Instead, you murder a weirdly attractive bug-man with good music and a desire for violence, a giant flying whale, and some old dudes. You also beat up the same Ascian from the first bit, again. And again, in his final(?) form. Dragon Dad has come along to watch your progress, and also check on his kids cause he's actually, y'know, the entire progenitor of the dragon race. Wow! His family is very sad, mostly. But he does like you, so hey, he can adopt you and have one kid that turned out ok and happy! Hahahahha there's no therapists in Eorzea :')

Then we get to deal with "Hey we ended your like 500 year+ Crusade and kind of upended your social structures, y'all good?" (no), something something Warriors of Darkness, something something Urianger sus, then ALISAIE JOINS THE PARTY. I love her ok, let me have this. She's the annoying twerp's twin, and she's more inclined to hitting things that politics and philosophy. She's also kind of crushing on you. Also Minfillia kinda fucks off to nowhere, which is weird, b/c she has been Important but also Not Involved with the plot for like. 8 years.

Stormblood (Lvl 60-70)- Return of Lysanderoth! Briefly. Before he fucks you over, again. And a bunch of other people, honestly. But hey, this puts Eorzea in open contention with Garlemald for the first time in years, instead of them hovering in an uneasy cold war. For the first goddamn time in the game, you canonically get your ass kicked. Hard. So hard you decide fuck it! And go overseas to Fantasy Japan/China to visit some nice people you helped out earlier. You get catfished. You meet a weeb. There's some pirates, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. There's Ravana take 2, this time in a slightly more 'Forever 21' phase. Wild, young, free, REJOICE.

You attempt to inspire rebellion (since your character doesn't talk much, this is quite difficult). Garleans crack down, and hey look, the dude who kicked your ass is back! Prince Zenos Yae Galvus, as by this point you've hopefully learned, even if you're bad with names like me. He kicks your ass again, but this time we break his helmet, and wait shit is he... kind of hot? Maybe? Fuck?? He pins you to a wall and tells you to find him later, it's all confusing and prompts strange butterflies in stomachs. (Side note: as a lesbian, I am making some assumptions here. Mostly based off of how I reacted to the idea of Tsukuyomi doing the same. Mm.)

Then he promptly fucks off, and to work off that sexual tension you square up and work with local friends on Rebellion! You get help from some neighboring nomads after proving you're cool enough to tame a bird, and this proves enough to free the area from Garlean control (for now). We go back to Eorzea, and prepare to kick Zenos' head in. He's playing hard to get though, so we gotta get through some other folks, learn hard lessons about war/colonization, and feel bad. AND THEN WE KICK HIS- oh no wait. Is he... coming on to us again? Oh jesus man, get a therapist, oh my god, this is awkward for us both. Turns out he's kinda depressed and just wants you. To fight him. To the death. There is some bullshittery and he becomes dragon. Fails to kill you, so he kills himself. (Spoiler: it doesn't stick)

The Garlean Empire is now pissed off at you, and Eorzea in general. Everyone is kung-fu fighting, but oops, Garlemald is preparing to commit ~war crimes~! Someone is doing something weird, which is making your Scion friends fall into comas, which is both very convenient and highly inconvenient, cause all of you are kinda needed right now! Zenos, or something in his body, is causing trouble as well. Look, even when we thought he was dead he was causing trouble.

Shadowbringers (Lvl 70-80): We find out what's been making our friends pass out- someone from another dimension has been trying to yoink you over to them, and like all attempts at using the Rescue spell, it just sometimes leads to hilarious accidents. In this case, some epic lag, so although your friends have only been out of it for a week or two at most, they've been in this other world for 5 whole years in some cases. Turns out, Garlean war crimes are all an Ascian plot (what isn't, by this point), and mysterious Crystal Exarch is hoping you can save this world and your own.

At this point, Yoshi P, the lead developer, pulls out a gun and asks if you've been doing all those side-quests and optional 48 man raids. He worked very hard on those, you know. He put in lots of lore. Then he asks if you remember all those dangling plot hooks from previous expansions. We're addressing a lot of those. And adding more. You are sweating and nodding frantically while scrolling a wiki on your phone.

You get to feel like you're in an Otome game, because there's two dudes being weirdly polite and interested in you, but also real snappish to each other in terms of "fuck off she's mine". Alisaie and Alphinaud off-screen character development. Urianger still sus. Thancred now a dad? Y'shtola still so good. A lot of things happen, and you get progressively sadder as the expansion goes on. You get a nice, great big burst of hope and love, and then SOMEONE is a DICK with a GUN. (It is not Yoshi P.)

Now you just feel bad. Your character feels bad. This is all build up for the A) some motherfucking revelations and B) the utter catharsis of "If you could take one more step... would you?" "What, all by myself?" "THROW WIDE THE GATE"

I have shed legitimate tears over Shadowbringers ok, between the music, story, and pacing it is an Experience. Oh my god tho, all the music from Shadowbringers is so good. La-HEE

If I had to choose | Boo Seungkwan

Type : best friends au

Genre : fluff, slice of life, soft Seungkwan and strong reader? Like mentally strong and the reader always protects him? You get the point.

Word count : 2k

Synopsis : Seungkwan had always needed someone to look after him, he was too naive for the world but you were always there to protect him from all the odds, you were the bold one in this friendship.

A/N : This is solely inspired by a movie I watched and I really loved the interaction between the two best friend.

The music was played blissfully at the church by the band, all of the people who came to attened the wedding were either sulking at how boring the wedding was or were either pretending to be interested.

Even if we take a look at the bride and groom who were seated in their respected seat; the bride was taking selfies and the groom was chatting with some random person.

Isn't wedding suppose to be the most happiest and lively event?

You heard someone yell your name making you halt your activity and turn towards the voice, the father of the bride made his way towards you who was busy managing other activities of the wedding.

"Yes Sir?"

You didn't even made an effort to smile fakely at the man standing in front of you.

"You're not doing you're job properly, look how boring the wedding seems to be."

He exclaimed pointing at the people and the atmosphere of the wedding which made you scoff and roll your eyes at the said man.

"Listen Sir-" you breathed in, "- I have done my part as a wedding planner for this wedding, I have decorated the church with flowers and also the outside plus the song list you gave to me for the wedding I'm even playing it, now, it's not my fault that you have such boring family and relative who can't hype up the mood of the wedding, you can't expect me to do that!"

You were really tired, now what do they want you to do? Dance your heart out and entertain people so that they won't be bored? Being a wedding planner was surely a hard job. You even needed to bear the people's reckless tantrums.

"Hangin, the plates for the lunch have out numbered the guests in the wedding and we need more plates."

The brother of the man came rushing towards you and the bride's father.

"See-"

But before he could utter a single word you stopped him by showing your hand in front of him since your phone started to vibrate.

You looked at the caller ID to see Seungkwan written over it with a picture of a really adorable boy. You shook your head and decided to answer your best friend's call afterward and kept it inside your pocket.

"I told you guys that the plates will be out numbered, in a wedding with guest list of 1200 people you just asked me bring 700 plates saying it's not necessary that everyone will come and now see what has happened, you're such a miser."

You finally snapped at the man.

"Now how are we going to manage this?" Hangin asked you finally giving in and accepting it's his fault.

You nodded thinking of a way to get out of this trouble.

"I have an idea, I'll bring out 400 plates more but I need 200 dollars more."

"What? That's too much!"

"I didn't tell you to mess up in the first place plus since I know your condition I'm willing to take just 200 dollars otherwise other planners would have took nearly 500 for the urgent delivery."

You reasoned as you waited for their answer.

Both the brothers sighed.

"Okay I'll give you the required money just get you're thing done."

"Okay let's go." you agreed smiling at yourself for gaining an extra amout of money.

"Listen Vernon I need 400 plates more for the Jung's wedding urgently so bring it in 1 hour or less."

You informed your manager/friend calling him to tell about the emergency.

"Okay baby."

He chuckled before hanging up, he liked watching you being this stress but alas he wasn't there to witness it.

As you were observing if there were any other mistakes, a lady in her mid 30's, probably the aunt of groom, stopped you from going any further.

You looked at the lady with an eyebrow raised, you weren't normally this grumpy but there are different kinds of people in this world and they need to be treated just the way they treat others.

"I don't like this white rose system, it feels like you have came to a funeral hall."

She exclaimed while making a face at the decorations.

You huffed.

"Well I'm sorry ma'am but it was the bride's wish for the flowers to be white."

"Can't you change this flowers to green colored flowers?" The lady asked. "I like green more."

"I'm sorry ma'am but the wedding is almost finished I don't think I can do that plus it's hard to find such a big amount of green colored flowers."

"I don't know who gave you the permission to be the wedding planner of this wedding. Who even gave you the degree of being one huh? I will do a better job than you in this field." The lady said while blowing her manicured nails.

"Listen woman, you don't know how much knowledge and patience is required to be at this stage and you're better than me? Hell not even in your dreams who likes green flowers you dumb."

You scoffed and walked away.

Your phone rang again making you take it out in front of you Seungkwan was written on  the caller ID, sighing you picked up the call.

As soon as you picked up the call you could clearly hear your best friend crying at the other end.

"Now what?"

You had already grown tired of your best friend's crying, not that you were heartless but the reason made sense.

"World is so cruel to me, this time it was my fault, I shouldn't have done that."

Seungkwan's voice cracked as he spoke with you.

"Yeah yeah the world is really cruel and the life can be hard sometimes." you said but that only made him cry more.

"Where are you Boo?"

You asked him softly taking in consideration that he's crying right now and he can't be treated harshly.

Seungkwan gave you the address where he is and without even a second glance you headed out of the church to fetch your bestie.

After fetching him up and constantly listening to him babbling about random things but not exactly telling you what happened, along with that crying face, both of you finally reached at your apartment.

He rushed out first and went inside the kitchen got himself a big piece of cake and sat at the corner of the kitchen silently eating and looking at nothing in particular.

You removed your blazer and shoes and stood in front of Justice.

"Mind telling me what has happened?" you asked putting both of your hands on your hips and here we go the Nigra falls started to flow again.

"Will you even tell me what has happened?"

You were so done with his constant crying that you had to control your urge to smack his head.

"Jaeyung."

"Now what? I know you're crying because of her but I want the reason, from the past 2 years all you do is cry over her and nothing else."

"It wasn't her fault, it was mine this time." he cried as he was still eating the cake.

"Eat first and then talk you brat." you made a face at him.

"Shut up. I'm already hurt."

You sighed and sat in front of him, crossed leg.

"Why don't you break up with her already?"

"I love her." Justice

"But I don't think she loves you."

"Why do you think like that? She loves me."

You pinched your eyebrows with your hands and started counting three to control your anger and also the throbbing headache which you know was soon going to follow.

"See you remember that time?"

"Which time?"

He casually asked you still eating the cake not really remembering what time.

"The time when she yelled at you for posting a picture of you with Bora."

"She was jealous okay, girlfriends tend to be jealous."

"And then he posted a picture of her with two random boys we don't even know about."

"She's different."

He furrowed his eyebrows pouting at you.

"Every freaking boy on the earth thinks that his woman is special but since it's coming from you're mouth, I know we are fucked up."

"But-"

"But what? Remember when both of us went to club with her and she introduce us to a new boy?"

"What about that?"

"Shw introduced you as her close friend and not as her boyfriend, did you get that? AS A CLOSE FRIEND, don't you know what happens when girlfriends starts introducing their boyfriends as close friends to someone?"

"But she said that she didn't want him to know about us because he was her cousin."

You rolled your eyes as you took out your phone, open up your instagram account and showed it to him.

"See where do you find a picture of both of you on her account. She has herpictures with so many boys but not with her own boyfriend."

You snapped showing him Jaeyung's profile.

"Okay I got it, it was her fault that time but this time it was me."

You motioned him to go on.

"She was in bathroom and suddenly her phone vibrated so I went to take a look at it and before I could do anything she snatched it away form me and was angry cause she thought that I'm doubting her." he says softly sniffling a bit.

"Do you know that she has a tinder account?"

"Nope." he answered.

"Boo she has a tinder account! Why does she even need it anyway? And why didn't she tell you? Do you know what it means?" you dramatically questioned.

"But what's the big deal anyway."

"Boo-" you stood up. "-out of two years means 24 months which means hundred and four weeks, she made you cry for hundred and two weeks, what kind of relationship averages one week of happiness per year?"

Seungkwan just looked at you and blinked multiple times digesting fully on what you just said.

"Then what should I do?"

"Finish it boy!"

"But I've been with her for 2 years already."

"It's never too late Boo plus that girl, I don't think she even loves you, you can forget her." you patted the latter's shoulder.

"I can't, I love her."

"Well I'm sorry then this is the only way I can save you up from that asshole."

You put both of your hand on your waist looking intently at him.

He gulped as you stood up looking at your eyes with confusion and fear written all over his face. What will you do?

"Me or her?"

The words left your mouth and horror plastered all over his face. He sighed knowing all well that whatever happens in his life he will always choose you and you'll always choose him.

"What club are we going to this time?"

You grinned at him already knowing you will win if you put out the said question in front of him.

"Surprise." and he groaned knowing he's going to have a wild night.

Mess Is Mine

Hi again babes. I’ve got something for you; it’s a single dad!harry (and single mum!yn). This is something I never thought I would even consider writing (because the thought of the MC having kids not with Harry kills me... I know 😂) but the idea has grown on me and I’ve finally got my shit together and put it down in writing. I think this is one of my favourite things that I’ve ever written so far so maybe you won’t like it but eh I’ll just post it anyway. Right I’m gonna stop rambling. Tell me what you think!

YN had it all; a cosy three bedroom house in the heart of Notting Hill (and by cosy it actually is cosy as in warm, comfy and inviting and not just some word a landlord would say to cover the fact that the place is either cramped, falling apart or has never been updated), a fulfilling job, a drop-dead gorgeous, loving husband with really nice icy blue eyes (and arms and broad shoulders and thighs and… she could go on forever but let’s not dwell on that right now) and the sweetest gurgling little baby boy. People say he’s YN’s twin only with his daddy’s eyes and hair colour.

Two years later, with a baby girl in tow, the cosy little family of three grows into a lively family of four. It all seems perfect, doesn’t it? Their marriage was perfect. They were what people would call the typical Hallmark family.

But nothing truly is perfect, isn’t it? Happily ever after only does exist in children’s tales. With two children, they were no longer “that cute couple plus baby”, they turned into a proper family overnight. James and YN were less of a couple and more of a mum and dad 24/7, which took a strain on their relationship. And as if that wasn’t enough, James was also in the run for a partnership in his firm, which would make him the youngest senior partner in Addleshaw Goddard, one of the most prestigious law firms in the City. Being one of the top lawyers in the City and working with high-profile clients such as large commercial companies or financial institutions, James had already been working long, unsocial hours. But that was nothing compared to the hours after he knew he was in the running for partnership. He basically lived in his office. He took more big cases to put his name on the map so weekends off were merely a myth. He got what he wanted in the end, full equity partnership in Addleshaw Goddard, six figure salary, £500 an hour, but little did he know that in order to get what he had always wanted, he had to lose what was matter the most.

***

“What? Now?” James lets out a heavy sigh. “I can’t now, YN. Av’ got to see a client at lunch. But I’ve already cleared my schedule from 3:30 to 4:30 so I’m still picking up Finn.”

This time, YN lets out a heavy sigh. She knows that she can’t get pissed at her ex-husband for not being able to pick up their three year old daughter at her nursery. It’s her fault after all; she’s the one who forgot that the nursery only opens for half-day on that particular Thursday. Pippa’s teacher had to call her to remind her to pick up the little girl. “Alright, thanks anyway.”

“Anytime. Give her a kiss f’me,” James asks her.

“Will do. Bye,” YN pinches the bridge between her nose as she hangs up the call. Glancing at the clock on the wall for a second, she tidies up some scattered papers and puts it aside as she stands up and walks towards the lift.

“YN!” One of her colleagues catches her as she waits for the lift. “The guests just got here and they’re all in their dressing rooms. Lisa already looked over the script a few times and she said everything’s good. Oh no, wait, I think they’re gonna need to look over the red chair again but other than that it’s fine. And- wait, are you going somewhere?”

“Yeah. Pippa’s nursery is closed at half twelve today so I need to go and pick her up now,” she answers as she takes another glance at the Kate Spade on her wrist. She knows she needs to go really soon. “I won’t be long but just in case anything happens before I get back, find Mike or Tom. Thanks!”

“Ah, alright then,” the crew nods at her. “See ya!”

How could she go from Wood Lane to Portobello Road then back to Wood Lane in less than half an hour, she’d never know. It’s in the middle of the day, mind you. But anyway, YN is back at the studio with her very excited three year old who gets to go with her mummy to work. No doubt, her older brother would be very jealous when he finds out later.

It’s not the first time YN brings her child to work, she had brought even both of them a few times before but she never brought them on Thursday. Thursday is always her busiest day at work because they’re filming the show every Thursday and not Friday when it airs even though the show is filmed as live. As a production coordinator, YN needs to be on her feet most of the time, making sure that everything is smooth sailing.

“Hey! Who have we got ‘ere, eh?” Elliot, one of the camera operators, greets them with a smile as they walk into the set. He looks down at the little girl with a teasing smirk. “D’you work ‘ere, miss?”

The little girl shakes her head and giggles. “No.”

“Pippa!” One of the crews, Chloe, calls her name as she walks towards them and the little girl smiles, turning around to see who has just called her. “Golly! Look at how big you’re getting, sweetheart! That’s a very pretty dress you’re wearing, can I borrow it sometime?”

The little girl let out another fit of giggles. “It won’t fit!”

“Ah! Too bad, s’pretty.”

“YN,” another crew walks towards them, but calling her name this time instead of her little girl. “We’re going in five and Mike asked for you.”

“Ah shoot,” she mutters under her breath, realising that there were things that still need to be done and she’s only got five minutes left. Even less because she needs to find her boss first because apparently he’s been looking for her. “C’mere darlin,”

“I’ve got spare time if you want me to watch her?” Chloe offers. “Props all done for now until red chair and it won’t be for a while.”

“You won’t mind?” YN looks up at Chloe as if she were Mrs Claus and Chloe shakes her head, smiling as she takes the little girl’s hand. “Oh Chloe, you’re an angel! Thanks! Pippa darlin’, mummy needs to work so you’ll stay with Chloe for a bit, alright? Be a good girl and listen to Chloe.”

Knowing her daughter is in good hands, she crosses the list of things that she needs to do before they start filming without worry. Fortunately for them the guests are wonderful this week—yes, some guests could be a pain in the arse. One time some Hollywood A-List (YN truly believes that the A stands for arsehole) demanded not one, not two but TEN dressing room. That’s right, TEN.

YN is still supervising the set as they film when she sees Chloe walks in without her daughter. She knows that someone probably calls her to prep the set for the red chair segment but she thought Chloe was just going to drop Pippa with her before she started working. “YN!” Chloe calls her as she walks towards her. “We bumped into Harry Styles’s daughter in the hallway earlier with her nan. Pippa and her have been playing together since then. I asked Pippa to come with me but she refused and Harry’s mum offered to watch her, so I left her in his dressing room.”

“What?” Her eyes widen in surprise. Her daughter? Playing in the dressing room?

“I’m so sorry. I could go back and-“

“No, no, it’s fine,” YN cuts her short, smiling so Chloe won’t feel like she’s upset, trying to mask the fact that she’s not actually happy about the situation. It may or may not get her in trouble after all. “Thanks for watching her earlier. I’ll just go and get her now, I don’t want her to bother them.”

“They’re having fun, YN, really. ‘Sides Harry’s mum is so nice,” Chloe reassures her.

“I know she must be, but I’ll just go and check on them regardless,” she insists. “We’re gonna have a break in three anyway.”

Standing in front of Harry’s dressing room, YN takes a deep breath before she knocks on the door. She hears a soft woman’s voice, no doubt Harry’s mum, saying “come in!”, before she opens the door.

“Mummy!” Pippa giggles and runs towards the door with her arms wide open and ready to wrap her mum’s legs.

“Hi darlin’,” she looks down at her daughter before turning her head to smile at Harry’s mum and daughter. “Are you being nice to your new friend?”

“She’s wonderful. They’ve been playing nicely for a while,” Harry’s mum chimes in.

YN apologises. “I’m sorry if she’s disturbed you.”

“Oh, not at all!” She smiles at YN. Her smile is so warm and it reminds her of her own mother. “Pippa is so sweet and they’re having fun. Nothing to apologise, love. In fact I have to thank you for bringing her because otherwise Anya would get bored.”

YN chuckles. “Glad you think so. But I can just take her with me-“

“No, no, no, you can absolutely leave her here. I can watch her. They’re having fun and I don’t want to separate them if you don’t mind,” Anne reassures her, looking at the silly little girls who were giggling at each other as they poke each other’s nose.

“Oh that’s really sweet of you, but are you sure?” She hesitates. “My daughter can be a handful.”

Anne laughs. “She’s been wonderful with me, darlin’. Really, it’s great for my granddaughter to have someone around her age to play with.”

Everyone’s head turns towards the door when they hear someone twisting the handle. The fact that they don’t even bother to knock makes YN realise who’s behind it even before the person enters the room.

“Hello!” Harry smiles as he closes the door behind him. “Got a new friend, huh?”

“Daddy!” Anya beams. “S’my friend, Pippa!”

“Hi Pippa!” Harry sweetly crouches down to be at their level, before reaching out his hand to shake Pippa’s. “I’m Harry, nice to meet you.”

“Hi!” Pippa grins and shakes his hand.

“And you must be Pippa’s mum,” Harry smiles as he stands up and walks towards YN. “Sorry, I’m really terrible with names but you do look familiar. Think I saw you last time I was here as well.”

“I was,” she nods, the corners of her mouth quirk up. She chooses to apologise instead of acknowledging his comment. “I’m sorry my daughter has disturbed yours, she’s not supposed to be here. One of the crews tried to get her to leave but she wouldn’t budge.”

“Oh nonsense!” Harry counters. “I’m sure she’s not, they look like they’re having fun. Just let them play, s’nice for them to have someone around their age. If Pippa weren’t here, my daughter would ask for that, and I’m trying to cut down screen time,” Harry says, tilting his head to where the iPad is sat on the table.

YN chuckles. “Alright then if you’re fine with it too. Mrs-“

“Just call me Anne, dear,”

YN smiles at her. “Anne, would you like to save my number so you can just call me the second Pippa starts being a little terror?”

Anne and Harry laugh. YN thinks that even if you don’t know them, you probably could have guessed that they’re related somehow, seeing how similar their facial features are especially when they’re laughing. “I’m sure she won’t, but I’ll save your number just in case she asks for you.”

***

YN’s phone is buzzing for the second time in the span of five minutes, and the same unknown number appears on the screen. She continues to ignore it; first, because she simply hates answering calls. Second, because it’s bloody Saturday so if it’s turn out to be work related, she’s got an excuse not to pick up. Third, she just really really—and she couldn’t stress this enough—hates answering calls.

James picks the kids up every Saturday morning to spend the whole day with him and brings them back every Sunday morning. It wasn’t easy at first for YN; she ended up on his bed with the kids and him on his own couch more times than she would like but she has grown to be alright having the whole day for herself. In fact, now she likes it. And she won’t say this out loud of course but she secretly looks forward to it.

After the third call ten minutes later goes unanswered, she blindly searches for his phone on the end table next to the couch without tearing her gaze from the magazine that she’s reading. Looking at the screen for a second, she sees a notification for a new voicemail and she plays it.

“Hi YN, it’s Harry. We met the other day at the studio. I’ve got your number from my mum. Anyway, Anya has been asking for Pippa nonstop so I was just wondering if you guys are up for a playdate sometime soon? Please call me back if you’ve got time. Thanks! Have a good weekend!”

She’s just realised that she has been ignoring calls from Harry sodding Styles.

YN sits up straight immediately before she dials his number and he picks it up after only the second ring. “Hi YN! Y’alright?”

“Hello, sorry I didn’t hear when you called earlier. I’m good thanks. You?” YN tries her best to sound nonchalant and it’s going well so far.

“Good, thank you. Nothing to complain really,” he chuckles. “Anyway, I was just wondering if you’re up for a playdate sometime soon?”

“Of course! Pippa would love it. They really did get along the other day,” she agrees and she tries to stifle her giggle. If someone told her last week that Harry Styles would call her and ask for a playdate she would definitely laugh at that person’s face and say, ‘you joking?’.

“Great! When’s best for you?”

“Probably on the weekends. Is that alright for you?” She asks.

“Yeah! How about today? Are you busy? Have you got any plans? Anya and I are just chilling around the house and I could tell that she’s bored. She thinks I’m less fun now that she’s made a friend,” Harry jokes.

YN laughs politely. “I’m sure she thinks you’re just as fun. And I’m not busy right now but my kids are with their dad every Saturday. How about tomorrow? Or if you’re busy maybe next weekend?”

“Oh,” Harry pauses before he continues. “Tomorrow’s perfect! What time is best for you? We haven’t got any plans so we can go anytime.”

“Say 3pm-ish?” She suggests.

“That’s perfect for us!” Harry answers excitedly. “Have you got any idea where we should go? Pippa is basically Anya’s first friend so we’ve never done any playdates before.”

“How about the Heath? Is it too far for you guys?”

“Not at all! We live in Hampstead,” Harry informs her.

“Oh, that’s brilliant! We can meet on the east side of the Heath. See you tomorrow, Harry,”

“See you tomorrow! Bye, have a lovely day YN,” says Harry.

“You too!” YN says before she hangs up.

***

“Anyaaa!” Pippa wiggles her hand out of her mummy’s so she can run towards Anya who’s holding her daddy’s hand. Anya grins at her new friend and the two of them share the sweetest hug like two old mates who haven’t seen each other for years instead of two strangers who have just met three days prior. It really is precious to see their friendship blooms in such a short period of time.

“Hello!” Harry smiles as he walks towards YN and the kids. “Y’alright?”

YN nods and smiles back at him. “Yeah, thanks. How are you?”

“Good! Who’s this little man?” He says as he reaches out his hand towards the little boy. “Hi, I’m Harry. What’s your name?”

The little boy, much shyer than his little sister hesitates to shake Harry’s hand. He looks up at his mum and YN has to nudge his shoulder to make him reaches out his hand and shake Harry’s. “I’m Finn,” he says at last.

“Nice to meet you Finn!” Harry says before he turns his head towards his daughter. “Anya, come and say hi to Pippa’s brother.”

The weather is quite nice for early October. Shorts season is definitely gone but the autumn breeze isn’t quite bone-numbing just yet. The colour of the autumn leaves make the scenery as if it comes out of a painting, it’s simply beautiful wherever they look. They ask if the kids want to go for a walk, but they spot the playground and can’t help but run towards it before Harry and YN have the chance to convince them to go for a walk instead. All three of them.

Trying to be discreet, Harry takes a quick glance at YN’s hand as they walk into the gated area of the playground to see whether or not she has a wedding band on, but he’s not quick enough to fight back the smile that’s creeping onto his face when he realises she hasn’t got one. He recalls back to Thursday when they met at the studio as they filmed The Graham Norton Show and he realised that she didn’t have a ring on that day either. Harry knows that once, maybe she forgot. But twice? She’s not putting that on.

They play with the kids on the playground. Harry patiently helps them to climb onto the slide one by one and YN waits patiently for them at the end of the slide. Then they put them on one of those large net swings where they can put all three of them on one swing and Harry pushes them higher every time, earning a shriek of giggles.

When the kids finally had enough of the playground, Harry and YN take them for a walk towards Parliament Hill. Luckily, Anya warms up rather quickly with Finn as well as Pippa so the three of them have been playing together nicely. Finn walks in front of Harry and YN, holding Pippa’s hand on one of his hands and Anya’s on the other.

“Pippa is so sweet,” Harry begins when he realises that it’s the perfect time to start a proper conversation. It was just not possible when they were looking after the kids on the playground. He looks over to YN and smiles at her.

YN lets out a chuckle. “You’re just being nice, she’s a handful.”

“I’m not!” Harry shakes his head. “She’s really sweet. Finn, too. He’s a great big brother.”

“Well, they have their moments,” YN tells him. “But I’m lucky, I guess. They rarely fight. Pippa can be quite bossy sometimes though, so when they fight it’s usually just because Finn has had enough.”

Harry laughs. “Do you know where she gets that from?”

“Definitely her nan,” YN chuckles.

“Is she close with her nans? Both sides?” Harry asks as he waves at his daughter when she looks over her shoulder to see him. “Do you see them often?”

“Quite close, yeah, and with both sides. Both of our parents live in Surrey, mine in Farnham and James’s in Virginia Water so we see them at least once a month,” YN answers. “How about Anya?”

“Well, she’s named after me mum so she’s definitely her favourite grandchild so far,” Harry grins. “She’s basically Anya’s second parent, my mum.”

“Oh, I thought her mother is Russian!” YN exclaims. “I love her name.”

Harry’s grin widens as he shakes his head. “Thank you. No, my mum’s name is Anne and I want to name my daughter after her, but having two Anne(s) would be confusing. So I opted for another version of Anne.”

“That’s a really gorgeous name. Your mum must be very happy,” YN says as she tucks her hands inside her pockets because it’s getting a bit chilly.

“Definitely made her my mum’s favourite grandchild for sure. Well, she’s currently her only grandchild so that may change sometime soon,” Harry says proudly, grinning even wider. “I’m gonna be an uncle in a few weeks.”

“Oh, congratulations!” YN gasps. “That’s so exciting!”

“It is! We all can’t wait to meet the baby,” Harry adds. “But we don’t know how Anya is gonna take this though. She has been the baby in the family her whole life.”

“I’m sure she’ll be just fine,” YN smiles at Harry reassuringly. “Anya is a sweet girl. Bet she’ll love having a little mate to play with. ‘Sides cousins are the best!”

“You’re right, cousins are the best,” Harry nods, chuckling a little. “Finn and Pippa are lucky. They’ve got built in best friend forever.”

“Both me and their father grew up as an only child so even before we got married we knew we wanted to have at least two. We both hated the fact that we haven’t got any siblings,” YN explains.

“Do you plan to have more?” Harry asks, testing the water as nonchalant as possible. He has an assumption but before he can be sure of himself, he needs to hear it from her.

“Uh,” YN clears her throat, pausing before she continues. “We’re separated.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t know,” Harry mumbles, looking down so YN won’t see the smile that’s creeping onto his face. He doesn’t even know why he’s smiling but he does. And he’s clearly having a hard time trying to hide it. “How different it is with divorce if I may ask?”

“Well, we’re just waiting really. Because one of the grounds for divorce is that we have to live apart for at least two years, and during that time we can get a legal separation. We haven’t reached that mark yet so we still have to wait, soon though. After that we can get decree nisi.” YN doesn’t let Harry respond before she continues. “How about you? I’ve never heard you talk about Anya’s mother but I don’t really follow celebrity gossips,” she chuckles. That’s a lie by the way, she reads glossy magazines like OK! and Hello! quite religiously every week.

“That’s because she’s not in the picture,” Harry smiles, pausing to clear his throat before he continues. “We weren’t together or anything, didn’t even know her to be honest. All I knew was that she got pregnant and that she was planning to give the baby up, so I stepped in and took her. Got sole custody. Nobody really knows about this so I’d appreciate it if you’d just-“

“Don’t worry, not my story to tell,” YN smiles at him reassuringly as she cuts him short. “So you took her on your own since she was born?”

Harry nods proudly. “Right from day one. Her mother didn’t even want to see her after she was born so after I got green light from the peds I took her home straight away. She was only five hours old, looking like a little pink sausage in a blanket,” Harry smiles, clearly reminiscing the day he got to bring his daughter home for the first time.

YN chuckles. “You’re bloody amazing. Just want to say this in case nobody has told you. But I’m sure they do.”

“Thank you,” Harry grins wider. “So are you. We haven’t got the easiest job, us,”

“I mean it Harry,” YN says, stopping abruptly from walking to look at Harry properly in the eyes. “Those early days are rough, I really can’t imagine doing it alone.”

“It was a blur,” he stops walking and lets out a giggle as he looks at YN. “T’was rough. But the good thing about being a single parent right from the start is that you’re used to being alone. I’ve never known what it is like to have a second set of hands. Well I’ve got my mum but it’s still different, I guess. And it must not be the case with you, so you’re the real MVP here,” he ends tamely.

YN lets out a chuckle and they lapse into silence. It’s definitely not an uncomfortable silence. They just look around at the magnificent view before them as they walk around, letting the kids take the lead. It has been a while since both YN and Harry feel at peace. They don’t know it yet, but happiness will be back within their arm's reach very very soon.

Part II

|| 𝕮𝖔𝖒𝖊 𝖑𝖎𝖙𝖙𝖑𝖊 𝖗𝖔𝖑𝖊𝖕𝖑𝖆𝖞𝖊𝖗𝖘 ||

°°°·.°·..·°¯°·._.· ☥ ·._.·°¯°·.·° .·°°° °°°·.°·..·°¯°·._.· ☥ ·._.·°¯°·.·° .·°°°


𝐼'𝓁𝓁 𝓉𝒶𝓀𝑒 𝓉𝒽𝑒𝑒 𝒶𝓌𝒶𝓎…

𝒾𝓃𝓉𝑜 𝒶 𝓁𝒶𝓃𝒹 𝑜𝒻 𝑒𝓃𝒸𝒽𝒶𝓃𝓉𝓂𝑒𝓃𝓉…


haha ^^


To all the curious ladies and gents out here, you may call me Imp.

Short, sweet and straight to the point. ;)


I am a lady in her twenties, with a strong penchant for roleplaying, writing, and drawing. The Holy Trinity if you will. I am a huge nerd and aesthetic lover boy - plain and simple. One of my main passions being video-games, illustrations, comics, live-action films, series and anime/cartoon shows, elements that shaped me during my years of growing up.



It’s been a while since I’ve posted my first ever ad on any website, and I was very much positively surprised by the amazing people that have reached out to me.

And since I am a greedy little mf, I wanted to fish for more partners. I’ve been roleplaying for a few years now and gradually gathered a good amount of experience throughout the years, but it’s always fun to meet and learn something new.




Name: Imp



Age: 27 years



Experience: 11 years



Preferences: 1:1 Roleplaying



Partner: Should be at least [18+], but I rather much prefer my counterpart to be 21 years or older 



EMAIL: [email protected]

I am a very creative sort of individual with hundreds of ideas constantly occupying my little impish head. And I am very spontaneous too, so I can always adjust to a new setting, depending on how good and compelling the concept is.

Inspirations come from various sources and origins, be it a fandom (an already existing universe) or an original storyline. Please read through these paragraphs carefully before you decide to contact me! It’s important to avoid any misunderstanding later! And I would less likely respond to a message with the title ‘Hey, wanna rp?’, since I hadn’t had any good experiences with these said messages.  Thank you. 


°°°·.°·..·°¯°·._.· ☥ ·._.·°¯°·.·° .·°°° °°°·.°·..·°¯°·._.· ☥ ·._.·°¯°·.·° .·°°°




Communication: It’s certainly chill. You can talk to me about whatever occupies your mind since I am very open and always happy to listen to others. I also tend to be chatty, sharing a meme or a joke every now and to loosen up the mood. If you consider choosing me as your roleplaying partner, be sure to maintain a certain consistency. I have nothing against going on a longer break or even a hiatus, but the whole `ghosting stick´ is something I have no patience for. So if you’re unsure of upholding a stable, long term partnership, feel free to skim past this ad. 

 Plotting: Also very important to note! I am fairly quick when it comes to building new characters, concepts, premises, storylines, backstories, etc… This means there is certain flexibility available which allows me to adjust. Even though it is a hobby, I am still extremely passionate about good storytelling and interesting character arcs. I hope to meet someone who is just as enthusiastic and willing to put in the same amount of effort as I am. If it’s only me who’s pulling all the weight, I will lose interest fast, just to get it out there. Aside from that, I love going a little crazy with the possibilities and push things to their absolute limits. Of course within the boundaries of the given setting.

 Pairing & Romance: Okay, right off the bat, I am a hopeless romantic through and through. I enjoy good and strong chemistry between characters just as much as the next, and this will be no exception. I prefer the good ol’ MxF pairing because I have more experience with this. But I also like playing a FxF dynamic or MxM. Everyone is welcome! When it comes to pairing itself, I want to make sure our creations are compatible, for I hate forcing characters into a romantic relationship for the sake of progression. A natural flow is what I am aiming for. ;)

 Mature? Yes, very much so:  Adult and taboo topics are absolute. There’s no way around it because, in my stories, it is a running theme. The adult world is not easy to handle, but it’s definitely interesting to explore. That includes violence, cursing, shocking content, and all that dark stuff. My limits are few, safe for a couple of minor pet peeves that I have, I am pretty much open to some experimentation. When it comes to action-heavy scenes (be it an intimate situation between two characters or something on a cataclysmic scale), I won’t fade to black since I am not a huge fan of censoring. However, I will not force or push my partner into something they are not comfortable with. If you want to know the extent to how far I am willing to go, what sort of content or how detailed my writing will be, you can ask me directly. As for smut or lemons, whatever you call it, it will never be the focus of any of my roleplays, but I enjoy a good erotic scene with a lot of tension (if they are good). 

 Boundaries: Not a big fan of things like pedophilia, necrophilia, scat, bestiality, or those dreaded ‘futas’.

Inspirations and interests: There’s a pretty broad spectrum of what I deem interesting and inspirational. From fallen angels and demon/monster hunters, mages, criminal masterminds, cybernetically enhanced characters to futuristic dystopian settings, ancient kingdoms who have fallen against the test of time. All of it causes my heart to skip a beat. For original content, I’ll just give a brief list of bullet points of the general themes that fall in line with my current interests. 

Writing: My texts are lengthy, detailed, and elaborate. Third-person is usually my preferred way of playing my character unless there’s a special case where an exception can be made. Word count usually fluctuates, though I have a standard form of 400-500+ words per response. It also highly depends on the given situation. I don’t want to set anything in stone… just to give you a basic idea of what you’re in for. I also expect my partner to have an at least adequate, if not decent grasp on basic grammar and punctuation. 

 Doubling: Yes, absolutely! If you are prone to doubling, chances are I might accept you as my partner straight away! Although I have nothing against the simple form of roleplaying, doubling is something I’ve done since my first time joining. 

 Characters: Very character-driven with the main focus being on interaction. I take my time writing characters and love nothing more than well-structured sheets that illustrate the vision of their creator. (But!) There’s no need to write 10-20 pages worth of character information, but I wouldn’t want to limit you either. As for the depiction of the given character, I won’t be as presumptuous as to tell you what sort of medium you can and cannot use. Face claims such as photos of real models, illustrations, 3D models, drawings or descriptions are all okay. As long as it gets its point across, I am happy.

 Aversions: A few minor things that irritate me, or let’s say, aren’t really my style are one-liners, low effort responses and out of character behaviors in canon characters. We all have different takes on characters, which is totally fine by me since I basically do the same. Though if the character acts and behaves unlike their personality dictates, it will break the immersion. I hope to stay true to my own words when saying this. If it happens on my side, just let me know! Another pet peeve of mine is that one plot that has been done time and time again…. and I’ve grown quite jaded towards it, which is ‘supernaturals trying to fit into human society’ thing… I mean, I’m not opposed to borrowing from this idea, but for me, it grew old pretty fast. Speaking from experience.

 Passione: My wish is to find a partner whom I can have a good time with and develop some chemistry. After all it is a fun hobby. We both should have fun with what we’re writing. Brainstorming among other things is one of my favorite things to do. To see how things unfold and how the characters react to the given situation is the highlight of any story.

°°°·.°·..·°¯°·._.· ☥ ·._.·°¯°·.·° .·°°° °°°·.°·..·°¯°·._.· ☥ ·._.·°¯°·.·° .·°°°




FANDOM:



I love roleplaying fandoms just as much as I have a blast with building something original universes. Worldbuilding is my preferred cup of tea… but if we opt for something more fandom inspired, I highly welcome in on expanding on the given universe and add some original lore too!

Hellsing: Haven’t done that one before and I am curious as to how things play out, especially in such a dark and mystifying universe like Hellsing. There’s a lot of subject matter that we can delve into, plus I am a big fan of powerful vampire characters!

Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: I would love you for this. No, seriously, I would. This fandom has sucked me into a downward spiral and there’s no possible chance of escaping this inescapable void. The absolute insanity of this franchise had me hooked from the second I laid eyes on it and I would be forever ecstatic if you’d message me on behalf of roleplaying Jojo. I have plenty of ideas for this one, just you wait.

Full Metal Alchemist: One of my favorite mangas and animes ever made. Recently I’ve begun rewatching FMA Brotherhood and felt a small hint of nostalgia swelling inside my blackened heart. I’d be open to play it, though it is not one of my top cravings at the moment.

Justice League / Young Justice / Justice League Dark: Huge DC fan, though I much prefer the animations and comics over the live-action cinematic. Let’s just say, I like the expansive and dynamic set of possibilities and deep, well-written cast. For instance Hellblazer Constantine or Raven.  

Bayonetta: Need I say more? Let’s dance boys!

APH Hetalia: That includes the 2P version ;)

The Boys: Well.. the 2nd season came out. And I am simply stoked.



°°°·.°·..·°¯°·._.· ☥ ·._.·°¯°·.·° .·°°° °°°·.°·..·°¯°·._.· ☥ ·._.·°¯°·.·° .·°°°

ORIGINAL: 



Supernatural: From angels to demons, from gods to monsters, I’ve seen it all and I absolutely love it. There can be any sort of creature or being involved, ranging from vampires to sirens to elves, you have it. However, I’ve never done something quite relating to angelic beings and their offspring before. I’ve read up on Nephilim and angels and found it rather fascinating, and it’s a different approach from the usual vampire vs werewolf cliche. 


Crime and intrigue: I never stray too far from the supernatural path, but hell, there’s nothing better than some good old gritty mafia inspired stories with a complex cast of characters and a solid storyline.

Sci-fi and urban fantasy: So this could be basically anything from genetically engineered superhuman (superheroes / - villains) with a dark take on the human psyche, dismantling the idea of heroism and villainy. Or a world where mankind began their interstellar journey to colonize neighboring planets, galaxies before transcending their own humanity by merging themselves with deadly technology. I have a few plans for this…

Historical and mysterious setting: So one of my favorite eras is the Victorian time period, 30s - 40s - 80s, Renaissance or Ancient times during the rise of the Egyptian / Roman / Sumerian Empire. During these times, a dark discovery was made by man, learning that they were not alone in this world. In fact, they weren’t even the supreme race that destined themselves to dominate the world, for another race of humanoids have lied dormant deep beneath the earth, slumbering through the millennia only to be re-awakened by a cataclysmic event. These ancient humanoids are gods among men, superior in every way imaginable, and they have made it their mission to reclaim their right to rule. But their nature is not what most people think it is…

The idea: I have an idea for a plot, in which I can give you if you ask for it. It is however merely a suggestion for what we could write - not a mandatory thing. If you don’t like the idea, we can always figure stuff out and keep on home-brewing till we find something we both can enjoy. There’s no need to immediately end things if the first thing doesn’t really fire you up.



°°°·.°·..·°¯°·._.· ☥ ·._.·°¯°·.·° .·°°° °°°·.°·..·°¯°·._.· ☥ ·._.·°¯°·.·° .·°°°
 

If you’re still here and haven’t fallen asleep reading through my loooong paragraphs, then I would like to thank you for bearing with me this far. I am looking forward to your messages. 

Have a wonderful day!

Humans are Weird “Slang”

Ok guys, this really, really hurt me to write, but by request, I have done it. Just a reminder before we begin that if some of these words appear to be used wrong, just remember that this around to 3000 or 4000s so language would have changed a lot during this time, and most subcultures meshed with each other at one time or another creating this sort of thing.  So I probably did what I did quite intentionally.

They ghosted into the city at 500 miles per hour. Sunny had her face pressed against the window looking up towards the sky in awe at the ethereal city of white arches and colorful flying cars rising in hundreds of multilevel platforms thousands of feet into the sky. The forest rolled directly up to the outskirts of the city, a city that reached upwards into the sky rather than sprawling outwards like cities had done in the distant past. Captain Vir leaned back in his seat eyes half closed as the rocket maglev rolled up towards the city. The captain said that maglevs used to be nearly as loud as jet engines, but sound dampening technology along the side of the rails had reduced the sound to almost nothing.

And the people, the humans were so odd compared to the Captain and the humans and Sunny had known.  They were outrageously dressed brightly colored. Their hair was died, their skin was died, some of them wore massive clothing that billowed outward feet while others were barely wearing anything at all. A woman walked past as the train was beginning to slow, and, standing next to them, Sunny took sight of an intricate tattoo of a dragon winding up and down her arm in repeated arcs and spirals.

Outside the train windows a tunnel sucked them into darkness lines of lights rolling past the windows. They slowed, and came to the stop.

Please watch your step as you exit the train.

Captain Vir stood up and made his way off of the train with Sunny and Krill following behind him onto the underground platform of dark stone and thick, squat pillars. Bright holographic kiosks lit up the station with blue purple and warm red light. Lines of people walked up and down the terminal passing their wrists under microchip scanners.

They passed through a set of scanners, and Sunny watched in shock as an alien face stared at her from behind the security desk. A humanoid face but of metal and plastic. They moved from there stepping forward, and onto a purple symbol on the ground. Sunny nearly had a heart attack as they were pushed into the air rising up through tunnels in the ground and out into the blinding sunlight and the white city.

A massive holograph bust into light above them.

Welcome to Los Angeles the city of angels. The hologram burst apart and into a set of massive wings which flapped once and then exploded once again sending pixels out across the sky like a daytime firework. The pixels reformed themselves into a large screen a massive add for two people. The new fashion trend from Apple. The clothing was in grey white and black short sleeved, high collared, shirts that hung long about the knees. The look was very clean and organic, the humans depicted were the best of their species. Feed your fashion with Apple.

A few of the humans passing them turned to look on in curiosity at the strange alien visitors, an occurrence that wasn’t particularly common yet. They looked up at sunny, some with interest, some with worry, and others with….. with something that made Sunny rather uncomfortable.  She sped up to catch the captain as he stepped onto a light rail, which send them rocketing across the city on a pocket of blue light. They landed at a central terminal, and the captain motioned them to follow passing through hundreds of tall and imposing shops before ducking into a tight alley. The bright white lights of the soaring city broke down as they made they tunneled their way into the city’s bones. The stark white walls of the soaring buildings and skywalks broke down into thick beams and burbling pipes: veins and innards creeping their way through the bones.

They slipped through another doorway and down a set of metals stairs into darkness. Even in the light of day, this part of the city was dark. They took another turn and cut outwards into another alley. The sound of voices spilled over them as they stepped into the city, and a dark marketplace. Sunny stepped a little closer to the captain eyes passing over the booths bathed in deep red lighting. From behind their stalls eyes peered out at her in interest. The one thing all these humans had in common….. well…. They weren’t totally human. Robotic legs, robotic arms, robotic eyes.

They called at the captain as he passed in words that Sunny didn’t understand. The Captain paused and pulled up his pant leg, flashing the dark metal of his prosthetic leg as the men who went silent and waved him on.

“Captain.” Krill wondered quietly, “Where are we going?”

The man gave him a nonchalant wave as they passed down another line of booths. Prosthetic legs and arms hung from hooks on every side next to glass cases of various, shiny robotic upgrades, “I have a guy who owes me a favor. Thought if we were going to stay in the city that we might as well stay with friends.” He took another corner walking them onto a wider, more inviting thoroughfare. Bright neon lights blinked above them. Music thrummed form the dark cavernous openings beneath the lights. Inside lights throbbed and beat.

The captain stopped before one of the doors, “Alright guys….. now Rocket is a friend of mine, but the guys he runs with are pretty weird. They’re called slangers, so don’t feel bad if you can’t understand them.”

“What’s a slanger?” Krill wondered.

“You’ll see.” The Captain grinned, before turning around, shoving open the door and stepping inside. Music thrummed and throbbed outwards

*I've been to the year 3000, not much has changed, but they lived underwater*

“C’mon dude y’an’t smak on these beats when they still rel’. Sunny turned her head thinking that her translator had just had a stroke. And when she looked, she was sure that her eyes had gone into stroke as well. This particular human had bright turquoise hair, numerous metal rods through his face, wore only a vest, and a set of massively flared jeans. The man next to him was nothing if not more ridiculous with odd white hair, ruffled collar, and enormous pants with buckled shoes to match.

“Tis you doth not know the truest meaning of art. Shakespeare would be caught weeping at this terrible violation of the ears.” Down to her side Sunny watched Krill as he shook his head fiddling with the translation mechanism as all the humans turned to look at them. Distant lights flashed in the other room with the beat of the song. A large mirrored ball hung in the air. The dress code was non-existent.

The captain ignored the eyes and raised his voice over the crowd, “Yo, Rocket where you posted! said you’d be here if I came slidin’!”

The actual hell was that supposed to mean?

While they were waiting for a reply, one of the human females from the right lifted her head, half shaved half long, one half died black the other purple, “Sweet bod dawg, totally tubular you dig, pred.” Sunny looked around not sure who the human was speaking to.

“Are you talking to me?” Sunny wondered.

The girl tilted her head again, “Yeah, who else?”

Sunny shuffled her feet on the floor pointing to the UV translator, “I…. don’t understand.”

The human rolled their eyes, “Peeps discriminating against the script…..” She paused, “You look cool, kid, you and your Et friend.” She said motioning down to krill who looked 110% confused.

“Erm, thanks....” The girl settled back into her seat and closed her eyes. Krill and Sunny exchanged a look as the blue lights flashed ad flickered over them. It didn’t take long before a short-dark human slipped from the crowd. He was wearing soemthing that resembled a suit, but it was powder blue and came with a matching hat, and an odd cut. He grinned wide as he saw Vir standing there.

“Bro! Looking tight in the 2000s duds didn’t think the burbs were so lit.” The two of them embraced, “How you hanging, got jarred when I caught that you’re still kicking it with the flyboys.”

“Yeah, I uh…..” The Captain sighed and gave up, “I got promoted, have my own ship and everything.”

Sunny leaned down to Krill, “What is he saying?”

“Absolutely no idea, I’m not entirely sure they’re speaking human. Most of those words aren’t even words, and when they are words, they aren’t used in context”

“Radical, just gotta nab a squeeze eh.” He elbowed the captain in the ribs, but the man went white.

“I don’t know about that.” The captain said hesitantly nervously rubbing his arm as the man walked them further into the place passing the room with all the flashing lights. The mirrored ball sent pinpricks of light across the room. The floor flashed with multiple colored squares.

“Still getting’ G-locked around chicks.” The guy wondered thoughtfully passing through a curtain of beads.

“G-locked?” The captain wondered, “Can’t say I’ve heard that one. I’m assuming it doesn’t mean what it’s supposed to mean.”

“Coined it for you. Means to be a chicken around chicks.” He threw an arm around the captain’s shoulders, “You just gotta keep it liquid bro or you’re fixin’ to get juiced. Just be chill keep it basic, you know unless she’s really high octave than even I’d be freaked. You snipe.”

The captain closed his eyes and rubbed the back of his head, “Damn, Rocket. I can barely understand you these days, but staying “liquid” Isn’t so easy.”

A loud clatter broke through their conversation from across the room, “GET LOCKED you candy-ass Bieber, keep your crotch rot over there.” And suddenly there was a sudden burst of limbs and fists, and a group of other humans ran to break up the fight. Rocket stood with his hands on hips as the fight was broken up motioning one of the humans towards the door

“What was that all about?” The Captain wondered.

“Well Steevie can be a real creeper, been tweaking, and you know I’m chill with the fam blazin’ but getting iced is bad mojo. Got himself wrapped up with a hit last week and then nearly got trunked when the candy man didn’t get his doe. And Candy man been kicking it with the Ice-Queen. Steevie’s shit ain’t cool for my rep. Tryna keep it clean.”

The Captain snorted, and quickly stopped throwing an arm in front of Sunny.

“YEET!” A spray of objects went flying past them, and a group of humans followed dressed surprisingly similar to the Captain, who sunny was beginning to learn, dressed in a rather outdated style.

They stepped from one room and into a back room. The music was just a soft thudding now. Rocket took a seat at his desk throwing his feet up onto the desk.

“So, to what do I owe this slide, you here to throw shade or you need bailed out.”

“We were actually looking for a place to crash.” The captain said motioning to Sunny and Krill who stood by the door looking confused. Sunny could see that Krill was close to blowing a fuse. He looked at Sunny gesticulating angrily with one of his arms. He clearly didn’t understand why the human would talk in a way SPECIFICALLY designed to be confusing. Sunny kind of understood the sentiment.

“Tight, sweet crew got yourself an Et and a Pred.” He leaned in a little bit close, “You’re not into a bit of that Pred tail, are you, Spine?”

The captain just looked at the man, “The F*** kind of question is that?”

Rocket just leaned back in his chair, “Cool your jets, ace you playin’ like I’m giving you the third degree. Just asking, no shame in whatever you’re sweet on.”

The captain rolled his eyes ignoring the question, “Rocket this is Krill, he’s my ships chief medical officer, and one Vrul surgical staff, and this is Sunny, my primary weapons specialist.”

“Sup fam, any squad of Adam’s is a crew of mine.”

Krill crossed his arms, and sunny rubbed the back of her head, “Thanks…. I think….. do you mind me asking why you all, talk funny?”

“Well sheila-“

“In English, please.”

The man sat back in his seat with a raised eyebrow, “A’ait, have it your way. I will lower myself to the common tongue to converse with you. We.” He motioned to himself and the club around him, “Are Slangers, schooled in the specific are and complete use of slang words in communication. Slang if you do not know is a very informal way of speaking where words are used in different contexts and are usually specific to a certain type of group. This type of language evolves very rapidly, and is difficult to keep up with.” He patted himself on the chest, “I have coined a few terms myself in the past. Including and not limited to G- lock, Locked, and Spine, however all forms and uses of slang words are accepted here. We have specialists in 1900s 2000s 3000s and so on.”

The captain turned to Krill and Sunny, “You see, humans have this thing called counter-culture, where a specific group of people do things contrary to popular culture because maybe they feel like they don’t fit in. Humans need groups, so it works out pretty well for everyone. Rocket is sort of a leading figure in counter culture these days, and some of it has sort of bled over into mainstream popularity. Like the army TOD tattoo.”

“The what?” Krill wondered

The captain pulled down the front of his shirt where a small dark tattoo sat just above his heart. The tattoo changed every few moments counting through earth time, “It’s a bio power tattoo the army started using in place of dog tags. The ink takes a bit of excess power from the body and uses it to work. When the body dies, the time stops giving you an accurate time of death.”

Rocket was nodding, “I think we hittin’ the same octave yarrn’t crashing in a hood where you could get trunked or jacked. Honest, some pads can be real jank ‘round here. I tell yah, one of my crew got clowned taking the tube back from burbs.”

Sunny just stood there confused. She was 100% sure they weren’t hittin’ the same octave, whatever that meant.

As they were lead off to a quieter side room, Krill tugged on the captain’s pants, “Captain, what’s a clown?”

The man looked at them and shrugged, “Some kind of demon that wears face paint…. I think.”

 Thank you @ma-tsu-the-male-goddess and @taliaxlatia for helping me come up with the futuristic slang words. You have hurt my soul very deeply :)

Tumblr Tips You Probably Already Know

So I don’t know about you guys, but for me learning how tumblr works was a pain in the ass. I thought it might be handy to share a few tricks I’ve picked up the last few months for anyone who needs them. Bear in mind I’m still extremely new at this, and not all blogs would benefit from my amateur advice. I’m posting this just in case one of you guys are as frustrated and annoyed as I was at the beginning.

First - Adding a “Keep Reading” divider

Why to do it -  If you post a lot of longer stories, viewers will be forced to scroll through the entire post to see anything further on their feed. While this might seem like a good way to get people to read your work, it can become a hindrance if people don’t have the time to read and are forced to either suck it up and scroll, or unfollow you.

How to do it -

When you are preparing to post (Text post) just hit “Enter”. You should see a few icons on the right of where you’re currently typing, like this.

The icon on the far right will insert a divider that can be dragged to anywhere you like, and when you post it will create one of these -

Readers will need to click to view the full post. I don’t know if there’s a way to create these with any other type of post, but it’s something I learned after an Anon asked me to please use the tool. (Thank you Anon!!!)

My personal preference is to also list the word count above the cut off, so that my readers have a rough idea how much time they might need to finish reading. If you aren’t sure what your word count is, you can paste your work here and find out - https://wordcounter.net/

Some programs have something like this built in as well.

Timing your post

Why to do it - Like any site, tumblr has peaks and valleys of activity. I did a little bit of poking around and found that the most active time of day is between 4pm and 10pm Eastern. If you are trying to maximize the number of people who see your post, it may help to post during this window.

How to do it - I’m pretty terrible about dong this, but when you’re preparing a  post, you can schedule when it appears by clicking the drop down menu on the post button, here.

A small menu should open, like this.

The schedule can be annoying to work with, since it requires a specific format of date. Again, I suck at this, but I’ve noticed if it doesn’t like what I put in the post only refuses to submit.

The post will not even minimize, so you won’t lose your work. (I still recommend keeping a copy elsewhere just in case!!!) Here’s what it looks like -

This menu will also appear when you reblog a previous post, so you can schedule your reblogs with ease.

Opinions vary on whether reblogs actually do any good, but that’s for you to decide for yourselves. Both these scheduling features can be extremely helpful if you won’t be able to post for a few days (vacation, illness, etc.) but you don’t want your blog to stagnate.

Creating a Masterlist

Why to do it - Once you have a few pieces of writing posted, you want people to be able to find them, right? A Masterlist puts links to all your work in one place, like a Table of Contents. Someone just finding your blog can go through everything you’ve written to date and binge it all at once, or just a few to decide if they really want to follow you.

How to do it - Here’s a link to an in-depth tutorial. I’ll summarize below as well.

Start with a new text post. You’ll want to have an idea of how to organize your stuff in advance. I chose to do mine based off of the main pairing, but I’ve seen others go by the date of the post or type of post. You can do it however you like.

Next, list out everything you can think of. It’s fine if you don’t have a full list, you can always go back and add more later. Make sure you put everything in the right category.

Now the annoying part - linking! Every post you make has its own page, and you’ll need to copy the full URL. There’s a million ways to do it, but I just scrolled through my post history with a tag filter on and opened/copied each one in turn. It can be time consuming if you have a lot of posts, though.

Once you have the URL copied, find the line on your masterlist you want to use and highlight it.. Here’s an example.

Now, click on the little figure eight thing I circled. It’ll open a spot for you to paste the URL, like so.

Once it’s in there, click “Done” on the right side of the bubble to save the link. It’ll add a blue line under the text to show where people can click to follow the link. Repeat this until you’ve got each item linked up!

Go ahead and post it, and grab the URL for the masterlist itself. Navigate to your profile and click the little painter’s palette to edit your blog’s appearance. Mine is in the upper right corner, I don’t know if that’s standard.

On the left side of your screen, a new window should open where you can change all kinds of settings. Scroll down to find the custom link section. I’m not sure if every theme has this feature, so you may need to pick a new one to do this. Here’s what mine looks like.

Make whatever changes you like, but make sure you hit “Save” at the top of the window. You might want to check your profile to make sure it looks the way you want it to, but that should be all you need! Be sure to update your masterlist regularly. If you ever discover a line is missing the blue line underneath to show it’s a link, that likely means the link is broken. Generally, you can fix this by redoing the URL paste step above.

A few handy sites -

https://fanlore.org/wiki/Main_Page

If you feel a bit overwhelmed by the number of fannish words you aren’t familiar with, you can find most here. Great way to deepen your understanding and also make sure you’re tagging the right genre’s!

https://prowritingaid.com/en/Analysis/WebEditor/Go

This site is amazing. They have all kinds of editing tools, too many to list in one post. The main idea here is if you want to analyze your writing, this site does it for free. There’s a 500 word limit unless you want to spend a little money, but IMO it’s worth trying out. However, it can’t tell you your style or identify deliberate grammatical errors. Take it’s advice with a grain of salt, and don’t blindly do everything it says. You will lose what makes your writing unique if you do.

https://write-it-motherfuckers.tumblr.com/

HOLY PROMPTS, BATMAN!!! Seriously, this blog has so many amazing ideas it’s ridiculous. If you want to find a new plot or crazy AU, this WILL give you ideas!

https://writeordie.com/

A great tool for breaking through writer’s block! This site allows you to set a timer and word count, and program sounds to make should you reach/miss your goal. Not for everyone, but I like it for when I have tons of ideas but just can’t settle on one. Best part is it doesn’t delete your work after the time runs out, so you can copy it anywhere you like!

https://ao3commentoftheday.tumblr.com/

This blog is fantastic for any random questions you might have regarding fanfic. They answer things from how to write a chat fic, to how to write an ASL character, to where to find references on how to write a car chase. Truly amazing stuff!

And last lil thing - HAVE FUN!!!!

(Also, sorry if this whole post reads unkindly or in a condescending tone, that is NOT how I mean any of this! I’m not perfect and still have so much to learn, honestly just wanted to share on the off chance it’s useful to someone else.)

My stomach is churning as I’m typing this. Today I will tell Max it’s over. Of course I’m too chicken to do it over a Skype call, but once I explain what just happened this past Wednesday,...you’ll understand why.

Things have been WAY too tense at my parent’s house in the past few months. It had reached such a boiling point that I was looking into options of moving out this summer once my son was done with his school year. Unfortunately, because of the income I make and having to split it between two people (my son and I) and the fact that my son’s father has not been consistent with his child support payments recently, I have had to bite the bullet and deal with things since my income doesn’t break the 3x the rent amount bracket. Cost of living in the state I live sucks! It’s so freakin’ expensive here. Rent has gone up at least $500 since the last time I had an apartment when I was last living here back in ‘11. Max knew that things were getting intense at my parent’s house and how it was affecting not only me but my schooling as well. About 2 and a half weeks ago, my mom said that she wanted to talk to me and have a heart-to-heart while my son and dad were at church on a Thursday evening. We discussed things and she said she would lay off and try to not stress me out. So, at one point she said “so, how are things between you and Max?” I said “they’re going great.” She replied “well, that’s good. I’m happy for you. But, how do you know that he doesn’t have someone out there with him in France?” To be honest, I was extremely pissed at her remark. I couldn’t believe she would insinuate such a thing. Max and I talk daily and have so for 10 months now. She has chatted with him on a few Skype calls herself and during her time before and after surgery he has prayed for her on Skype calls. For some reason, her words lingered and for days I couldn’t shake it off. 

The following weekend, Max saw that I was a bit preoccupied and asked if everything was okay. I mentioned how things were at the house and with school and Bryce’s grades not doing so well...it was like everything was happening all at once. At the end, I caved in and mentioned the remark to Max about what she had said. “What? She said that? Does she think that because I say I’m going to do pentanque on the weekends and am gone for hours on end?” I said “oh no...I don’t think it’s that...I think she knows how pretty European women can be over there and she probably thinks that you would be attracted to someone locally.” It didn’t hit me until a few moments later that Max said what he said. Wait a minute...hold up...did he just imply that he’s not at pentanque and doing something else??? I decided to brush that nagging thought off and he said “do you want me to talk to your Mom and convince her that it’s not the case?” “Oh no, honey. Don’t be silly.” 

The following week I was looking up some ideas on Pinterest on how to strengthen relationships that are long distance. One item on the list was “create an Instagram to share memories with each other until you are able to close the gap.” “Wow, what an awesome idea!” I thought to myself and decided to ask Max about it at work. (I’m typing this on my computer because I typed up a freakin’ entire post through my cell app and the whole thing kept saying “oops..we’ve encountered an error” as it was posting and I was unable to post...so I will be posting the photos in my next post from my phone so you can see what he has been posting in Skype) Max’s reaction to my question about creating an Instagram account didn’t sit well with me at all. “Being discreet on the net??? What is that supposed to mean?” Then it dawned on me...Skype was the only platform that Max and I spoke on... That weekend I asked Max about branching outside of Skype. Nope. Why put other apps on his old version phone and waste too much data? Let’s just stick with Skype. Besides, he can access Skype on all of his electronics: phone, tablet, and computer. If there wasn’t Skype we’d be chatting on something like “WhatsApp” according to him. Say what??? Okay Max...now things are starting to get strange... I asked about Facebook and he said “nope. I have to keep it semi-professional. My boss and coworkers are my friends on there. I can’t have it be all mushy and stuff.” Ooookkkkkaaaayyyyy *speechless*

At this point, I started to confide in my best friends and coworkers and all of their answers came to the same conclusion: something is going on...something’s not adding up. Why is he rejecting Instagram? Why Facebook? Why hasn’t he asked you to be friends with him on Facebook if he’s had an account for a while now? How long have you been talking? 10 months? That doesn’t sound right for him not to be introducing you to his family and friends by now...

So, Wednesday I was in so much pain with my back and that had lingered on for about 2 weeks, that I was able to schedule a sick appointment with my primary care dr. I had let Max know about this appt and he was very concerned, so he said he wanted to chat with me on Wednesday night after I got home. I had taken my anti-inflammatory and muscle relaxer and was trying to find a comfortable spot in bed after having sat at my desk chair for 8.5 hours at work. Max called me and could see that I was in a tremendous amount of pain. He knew that I wasn’t feeling well and was asking if everything was okay. I let him know that I was dealing with it and had just taken some medicine. To try and shift my pain level onto something more pleasant, I mentioned to Max that I was wanting to get to know him better. “We’ve been talking for 10 months now. I know that we talk every day, but yet I feel like I hardly know anything about you.” “What do you mean by that? What do you want to know about me?” “Well, I don’t even know where you live. I don’t know the company you work for or what you do at your job. If someone were to ask me about you, I would probably be stuttering because I can’t bring to memory a lot of details about you.” So, at this point, Max decides to put it back on me “Well, I don’t know where you work either or what you do...” (which is an absolute lie because he knew I worked at a call center because he would always text during my day time asking if I was on a call or busy with an income of calls. I also had sent him a screenshot of a letterhead from the VP of our company we received from our big boss about cell phone usage and how this would impact how often I would be able to communicate with him during the day to make sure I wouldn’t get in trouble at work) So, I pushed that to the side and he got really angry and said “Do you have a boyfriend? Are you seeing someone locally there?” “No, Max! I would never do that to you!” “Well, you certainly may be asking me questions like this. Why are you asking such weird questions? You’re making me uncomfortable.” “I just want to get to know you better. I want to be more involved in your life and feel like I’m more a part of it.” “So you think I have a girlfriend on Facebook. Is that it? Is that why you want me to add you on Facebook? You want to make sure I don’t have a girlfriend???” “No, Max! I never said that!” “Well, I already told you that it’s semi-professional since my boss and my coworkers are my friends on there. Even if I was to add you on Facebook, I wouldn’t allow you to post any hearts or any of that romance garbage on there. I had an ex do that to me in the past and it embarrassed the sh*t out of me!” “I wouldn’t post that stuff on there if you didn’t want me to...” “Do you want my Skype password?” “WHAT?!?!?! No, Max! It’s not about that...” “You don’t want my Skype username and password so you can see who I’m chatting with?” “No, Max!” “What about Facebook. You want my password so that so you can see who I’m friends with on there?” “MAX!!! I said I DON’T need that! It’s not about having passwords, it’s about being included more in your life and getting to know more about your family and friends.” “Give me your Skype password.” “WHAT?!?!?!?!” “Give me your password.” “It’s been so long since I’ve signed in with it. I have it automatically saved. Uh...I don’t know if it’s right, but here it is....” “Okay, here’s my Skype username/password. Sign out and sign back in within five minutes. Don’t be changing sh*t or posting anywhere on it!” “Max, I wouldn’t do that!” So, I logged out and waited 5 minutes. I logged back in and asked if the password had worked. He said no. I never logged in to his account. I didn’t feel right doing so. By this time it was like 2:30am his time. I kept telling him he needed to get his sleep for work and he kept blaming me for keeping him up this late. I replied “Max, I said we could talk more about it this weekend...” “No, I play pentanque on the weekends all day and by the time I get home I’m too exhausted!” Okay...so now you’re saying that you’re too busy to chat with me on the weekends??? So, he mentioned about how Facebook was his “private garden” and that it was off limits and he needed privacy. That Asian people are very private and that I probably had a misunderstanding about his intentions. I said “You told me you were very romantic when we first started talking. You said if we were in a room together you wouldn’t be able to keep your hands off of me.” “Yeah, in a room alone. You should be lucky I’m not an Asian living in an Asian country...they’re hardly romantic, period. I’m not as bad as them, but I don’t do PDA.” So then he goes on this rant about how he’s Mormon and he hasn’t asked me to conform to “their standards” and that he needs to be an individual and that with me being a Christian that I have my own standards and I wouldn’t expect him to conform to mine, right? (well, I would never force my beliefs on anyone, but he told me he was raised Christian and mentioned that as his upbringing when we first started chatting, so I thought he was on board with how I believed, also) So, then he saw that I was crying and said “I think my friends are right...maybe I am holding you ‘as a prisoner.’ You don’t seem happy...” But yet, didn’t have an apology for making me cry... So, he said he was finally going to bed and left the conversation. Let me now post the pictures from my phone app before I finish the next written post

Andrew Hammond’s Rolling Stone Top 25

Thought it would be fun to rerank the Rolling Stone top 25. 

The first number is my ranking, then band, album, the Rolling Stone ranking, then my personal favorite song. 

Without further ado...

25.Nirvana- Nevermind (6) Smells Like Teen Spirit?

24.The Velvet Underground- The Velvet Underground and Nico (23) Sunday Morning Ok this is another album that I’ve always thought got way too much hype. With a little more of an open mind, I think I do like The Velvet Underground and Nico more, having sat down and given it a couple more listens. Would it be in my personal top 25? Absolutely not. But here we are. I do hear how it influences a lot of the music I do like, but I just can’t get there with this one.

23.Carole King- Tapestry (25) Where You Lead

Through high school and college I worked at HEB. Off and on for eight years at HEB meant I developed a new genre of music: HEB Song. An HEB song has a little elevator music, a little yacht rock, a little boy band, and a lot of Carole King. This probably comes across as a backhanded compliment, but I really do appreciate someone mastering a specific sound even if it’s the sound most likely to get you to pull two bags of chips from the shelf and not just one. Where You Lead receives the favorite song nod because of its connection to Mellisa McCarthy’s breakout show, Gilmore GIrls. A favorite show of my mom and mine growing up.

22.The Notorious B.I.G.- Ready to Die (22) Juicy

A real up and down album that ends up being a little bloated once you listen to it straight through. Never a good sign when you start thinking to yourself “we are still listening to this B.I.G. album?” Juicy on its own would be pretty high up on a top songs list. “Birthdays was the worst days; now we sip Champagne when we thirsty,” my favorite line from that song.

21.Kendrick Lamar- To Pimp a Butterfly (19) Momma

Kind of a tricky one for me, since I think good kid, m A.A.d city runs laps around any other Lamar album. This choice feels a little like a reach by Rolling Stone to include something from the most recent decade in the top twenty five. My favorite parts of To Pimp a Butterfly are the Flying Lotus and Kamasi Washington influenced sounds. The avant garde lo-fi jazz sound that lurks beneath what Lamar spits out makes for a great combination. Great late night jam that took me back to my days in college when I’d play Flying Lotus late at night while studying. 

20.Bob Dylan- Highway 61 Revisited (18) Like a Rolling Stone 

 Highway 61 Revisted was the first Dylan album I listened to thanks to my dad. So I guess I knew electric Bob before I even knew there was an acoustic Bob. Like a Rolling Stone can be debated about whether or not it is a GOAT song, but it’s easily the greatest f-you song. Verse three sticks out especially. Diplomats stealing hits home pretty quickly these days. 

19.Public Enemy- It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back (15) Don’t Believe the Hype 

 The funniest album on the list, no question. Flavor Flav really brings the comic relief to Chuck D’s social commentary. Speaking of laughable, the initial Rolling Stone top 500  had It Takes a Nation as the only rap album in the top one hundred. For sure. Released in 1988, It Takes a Nation unfortunately fights the same battles that To Pimp a Butterfly is fighting twenty seven years later. The production bites your ears so viciously, and then just keeps chewing. An unrelenting record that demands the listeners attention, and the attention of the powers at be. 

18.Aretha Franklin- I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You (13) Respect 

 I feel like this album should be higher, but here we are once again. Aretha not getting any respect. I recently watched the Sister Act movies, and couldn’t help but wonder how the movies would turn out if she replaced Whoopi Goldberg. Spoiler alert: they’d be even better. Aretha’s voice really is that good, by the way. Take some time to listen to this album on a cold day, and let that gospel voice warm you up from the heart. The album cover perfectly captures that sixties black female aesthetic as well. 

17.Michael Jackson- Thriller (12) Beat It

Ok. I know this is a #hammondhottake, but I really do believe what I’m about to say, and not just trying to get clicks. Thriller has a lot of great songs, but as a whole ends up being less than the sum of its parts. Is it possible to have too much pop? If this were a top twenty five songs list I’m sure I’d have Thriller songs higher, but as a complete albumThriller lacks depth. With the recent death of Eddie Van Halen, Beat It gets the nod for my favorite track. Such an iconic guitar riff that Eddie uses to tell white America it’s ok to like this black man’s music. 

16.The Beatles- Revolver (11) Tomorrow Never Knows Over time this album has become more critically acclaimed; maybe even surpassing Abbey Road or Sgt Pepper’s. I still have it behind those two, but Revolver is no slouch. Coming out firing with Taxman, this album lays a great framework for Sgt. Pepper’s to later fill in only nine (!!!) months later. Iit makes sense that I would have Sgt. Pepper’s ranked higher since my favorite song on Revolver is Tomorrow Never Knows.  You can imagine how I felt when my favorite show went to credits playing this LSD inspired track. 

15.Bob Dylan- Blood on the Tracks (9) Lily, Rosemary, and the Jack of Hearts

Thanks to listening to this album and Highway 61 Revisited, Dorothy now knows how to imitate Bob Dylan. “It’s meeeeee Bobbbbb!” This album hits hard, especially during the Fall. While sitting on the porch watching the leaves fall I keep imagining each one of them as a different character in Dylan’s tales. Lily, Rosemary, and The Jack of Hearts fall through the air mingling and dancing, taking twists and turns as Dylan’s characters often do in his extended songs.

14.Prince & the Revolution- Purple Rain (8) Let’s Go Crazy

Full disclosure: I have not seen Purple Rain, I’ve only listened to the soundtrack. The one regret I have on our wedding day was not playing Let’s Go Crazy to start the reception danceathon. Dearly beloved… Maybe a post-COVID danceathon will have to start off with this iconic track. I hate when you hear this on the radio and the opening is cut out. You need  to have the set up before you can go crazy. This is the album you give to an alien who asks you what the eighties sounded like. Price creates such a definitive sound with this album. True talent captures a specific time and place, and then makes it timeless.

13.The Beach Boys- Pet Sounds (2) God Only Knows

Go read the Wikipedia on all the technical stuff that this album did for the first time. It’s all over my head, but does factor into the ranking here. I have to trust the studio nerds on this one, because at the end of the day it’s about the destination, not the journey. The Beach Boys create such a warm, beautiful sound, and you don’t need to know how they got it to hear the richness within it. I think a good life goal is to find someone or some-ones to whom you can genuinely sing God Only Knows and mean every single word. One of the best love songs ever. This album inspired The Beatles to make Sgt. Pepper’s, so we also can give thanks for that as well.

12.The Clash- London Calling (16) Lost in the Supermarket

What an opening bass line!! London! Calling! Pure energy in an album that keeps you pumped the whole time. A lot of high tempos, and the slower songs get their energy from the howling bass lines or Joe Strummer’s gruff voice. Like Songs in the Key of LifeI, I appreciate this album more and more as I get older. The lyrics again hit me different than they did when I was younger. Coming out two years before Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister, London Calling accurately describes the inequalities in London that she only exacerbated during her ministry. London Calling: come for the energy, stay for the class critique.

11.Fleetwood Mac- Rumours (7) Dreams

Funny this list came out right before the Tik Tok of quarantine dropped. Ha! So funny if they bumped Rumours up just because of it. Rumours has a crazy background to it, so check out the Wikipedia page to get all the gossip. I really want to talk about the ultimate backhanded compliment, Rumours being a perfect example. Is it mean to say an album is the perfect background music? I love Rumours because I can listen to it while staring at the ceiling, and it has enough going on to keep me engaged. But it might actually be a better listen if you are doing something else. Cooking, dinner conversation, playing with the kids, etc. I mean this is the best way. I really do love this album.

10.The Beatles- Abbey Road (5) Golden Slumbers 9.The Beatles- Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (24) Within You and Without You

My high school self would've ranked these albums much higher than I did here. I onced listened to the entire Beatles discography straight through. Nbd. Within You and Without You is my favorite Beatles song (breaking the tie with Abbey Road). This song comes in right behind Born to Run for GOAT opening side two song. But, speaking of side twos, Abbey Road…what a doozie. From You Never Give Me Your Money till The End, each track raises the stakes. Golden Slumbers is my favorite. Both of these albums are hard to talk about really. What hasn’t been said? They also fall victim to being so in the zeitgeist that you end up taking them for granted. The Lebron James of classic rock albums maybe? Just incredibly high expectations going into the release. They deliver a masterpiece, yet people sleep on them despite actually delivering on the astronomical expectations.

8.Stevie Wonder- Songs in the Key of Life (4) As

Rolling Stone’s highest rated double album. I’ve always known of this album, but having sat down and really listened to it straight though I appreciate it even more. Now that I’m older, this album rewards mature ears more than others on this list. Wondering aloud, could Stevie make the same album without making the previous 17(!) prior to it? Taking time to figure out who you are as a musician, and then delivering a mature album like this has to feel so satisfying for an artist. Final thought: love the cymbal on As.

7.Joni Mitchell- Blue (3) River

Maybe it’s the changing weather? Maybe it’s the clarity of sound in a house with two little girls? Still trying to figure out how Joni Mitchell’s Blue went from “the one with Mitchell’s Christmas song” to “the one where I can’t sit on the porch without playing it.” The quieter songs work better for me. Mitchell’s voice pairs so well with her acoustic guitar or piano. Mitchell wrote River in Chapel Hill while caroling with James Taylor, and I’ll be singing this to the girls this Christmas.

6.Kanye West- My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (17) Runaway

Power: track three on this album, and also the best word to describe the sound Kanye creates with this tour de force. There are all time bangers going down the track listing: Power. All of the Lights. Monster. Runaway. Lost in the World. What do the last ten years of rap and R&B look like if My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy never comes out? Is this the most influential rap album this century? Kanye has a lot of baggage these days, but don’t throw this album out with the bathwater.

5.The Rolling Stones- Exile on Main St. (14) Torn and Frayed

Much mythologized, Exile on Main St. has none of the hits but all of the groove. I do think without the background and circumstances Exile might not be remembered as fondly. I still love it though. The rough bluesy tracks like Torn and Frayed especially stand out to me. To picture them trapped in a house in France banging out these tracks give them an even greater life. Given those circumstances, it makes sense that this is a great quarantine album to have playing in the background.  

4.Marvin Gaye- What’s Going On (1) What’s Going On

The most political album on the list, and partly why Rolling Stone moved it up to number one after ranking it six in 2003. I am more than ok with it being one. I would say Gaye and Franklin would be one or two if you listed these albums on vocals alone. Gaye’s smooth voice almost works against him while singing such gritty lyrics. Clocking in at 35 minutes I do wonder if there is something about knowing when to stop and saying, “This is the album. We’ve said all we need to say.” Although number five on my list might say otherwise...

3.Radiohead- Kid A (20) Everything in Its Right Place

When will this album start to sound old? If this came out next week it would still seem ahead of its time. I have yet to see Radiohead live. Not holding my breath, but I do hear my favorite song as my alarm goes off every morning. . Waking up to Everything in Its Right Place gives me a sense that today everything will be as it should be. What will happen will happen, and I will resolutely go about the day. Or as Optimistic reminds us, “the best you can is good enough.” This is Radiohead’s best.

2.Lauryn Hill- The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill (10) Can’t Take My Eyes Off You

What an interesting career. Her only solo studio album, but what a tour de force. It always catches me by surprise how long the album is (clocking in at 69:20), but it never really drags. Justine and I danced to Can’t Take My Eyes Off You for our first dance. I often wonder how Hill would respond to hearing that a rural white male resonates with her music. She’d probably hate it since it seems like that’s what sort of turned her off from the music industry in general. Still Processing does an excellent job of reflecting on her career on this podcast.

1.Bruce Springsteen- Born to Run (21) Born to Run

This was an easy choice for me once I saw it in the top twenty five. I am actually surprised Darkness on the Edge of Town didn’t beat out B2R (as Bruce puts it when writing set lists). Darkness seems more fitting for these times than Born to Run, not that songs like Backstreets or Meeting Across the River can’t capture the current malaise. Home, to me, sounds like the harmonica and piano duet at the beginning of Thunder Road. GOAT opening side-two track: Born to Run. One of my first COVID memories is watching this on the second Sunday of lockdown. So electric. It gives me comfort to know that I’ll be listening to these eight songs for the rest of my life.

/// 𝕿𝖍𝖎𝖗𝖉 𝖙𝖎𝖒𝖊'𝖘 𝖆 𝖈𝖍𝖆𝖗𝖒 ///

Hello dear roleplayers.

For those who are curious, you may call me Imp.

I’ve been hit with a stroke of fate recently which pretty much drained me of my creativity. But I am slowly recovering… and I am looking for some distraction.


I am a lady in her twenties, with a strong penchant for roleplaying, writing, and drawing. The Holy Trinity if you will. I am a huge nerd and aesthetic lover boy - plain and simple. One of my main passions being video-games, illustrations, comics, live-action films, series and anime/cartoon shows, elements that shaped me during my years of growing up.


It’s been a while since I’ve posted my first ever ad on any website, and I was very much positively surprised by the amazing people that have reached out to me. I’ve been roleplaying for a few years now and gradually gathered a good amount of experience throughout the years, but it’s always fun to meet and learn something new.

I have a few original ideas that I’m very interested in trying out. The concept will be posted down below.




Name: Imp



Age: 27 years



Experience: 11 years



Preferences: 1:1 Roleplaying



Partner: Should be at least [18+], but I rather much prefer my counterpart to be 21 years or older

Timezone: Important to note! I am from Poland, so my timezone might differ from yours. 



EMAIL: [email protected]

I am a very creative sort of individual with hundreds of ideas constantly running through my impish mind. And I am very spontaneous too, so I can always adjust to a new setting, depending on how good and compelling the concept is.

Inspirations come from various sources and origins, be it a fandom (an already existing universe) or an original storyline. 
 Please read through these paragraphs carefully before you decide to contact me! It’s important to avoid any misunderstanding later! And I would less likely respond to a message with the title ‘Hey, wanna rp?’, since I hadn’t had any good experiences with these said messages.  Thank you. 




°°°·.°·..·°¯°·._.· ☥ ·._.·°¯°·.·° .·°°° °°°·.°·..·°¯°·._.· ☥ ·._.·°¯°·.·° .·°°°

 

Communication: It’s certainly chill. You can talk to me about whatever occupies your mind since I am very open and always happy to listen to others. I also tend to be chatty, sharing a meme or a joke every now and to loosen up the mood. If you consider choosing me as your roleplaying partner, be sure to maintain a certain consistency. I have nothing against going on a longer break or even a hiatus, but the whole `ghosting stick´ is something I have no patience for. So if you’re unsure of upholding a stable, long term partnership, feel free to skim past this ad. 


 Plotting: Also very important to note! I am fairly quick when it comes to building new characters, concepts, premises, storylines, backstories, etc… This means there is certain flexibility available which allows me to adjust. Even though it is a hobby, I am still extremely passionate about good storytelling and interesting character arcs. I hope to meet someone who is just as enthusiastic and willing to put in the same amount of effort as I am. If it’s only me who’s pulling all the weight, I will lose interest fast, just to get it out there and I will have to end the correspondence. Had that recently and wasn’t a fan of it. Aside from that, I love going a little crazy with the possibilities and push things to their absolute limits. Of course within the boundaries of the given setting.


 Pairing & Romance: Okay, right off the bat, I am a hopeless romantic through and through. I enjoy good and strong chemistry between characters just as much as the next, and this will be no exception. I prefer the good ol’ MxF pairing because I have more experience with this. But I also like playing a FxF dynamic or MxM. Everyone is welcome! When it comes to pairing itself, I want to make sure our creations are compatible, for I hate forcing characters into a romantic relationship for the sake of progression. A natural flow is what I am aiming for. ;)


 Mature? Yes, very much so:  Adult and taboo topics are absolute. There’s no way around it because, if my world, it is a running theme. The adult world is not easy to handle, but it’s definitely interesting to explore. That includes violence, cursing, shocking content, and all that dark stuff. My limits are few, safe for a couple of minor pet peeves that I have, I am pretty much open to some experimentation. When it comes to action-heavy scenes (be it an intimate situation between two characters or something on a cataclysmic scale), I won’t fade to black since I am not a huge fan of censoring. However, I will not force or push my partner into something they are not comfortable with. If you want to know the extent to how far I am willing to go, what sort of content or how detailed my writing will be, you can ask me directly. As for smut or lemons, whatever you call it, it will never be the focus of any of my roleplays, but I enjoy a good erotic scene with a lot of tension (if they are good). 


Boundaries: Not a big fan of things like pedophilia, necrophilia, scat, bestiality, or those dreaded ‘futas’. 

Inspirations and interests: There’s a pretty broad spectrum of what I deem interesting and inspirational. From fallen angels and demon/monster hunters, mages, criminal masterminds, cybernetically enhanced characters to futuristic dystopian settings, ancient kingdoms who have fallen against the test of time. All of it causes my heart to skip a beat. For original content, I’ll just give a brief list of bullet points of the general themes that fall in line with my current interests. 


 Writing: My texts are lengthy, detailed, and elaborate. Third-person is usually my preferred way of playing my character unless there’s a special case where an exception can be made. Word count usually fluctuates, though I have a standard form of 400-500+ words per response. It also highly depends on the given situation. I don’t want to set anything in stone… just to give you a basic idea of what you’re in for. I also expect my partner to have an at least adequate, if not decent grasp on basic grammar and punctuation. 


 Doubling: Yes, absolutely! If you are prone to doubling, chances are I might accept you as my partner straight away! Although I have nothing against the simple form of roleplaying, doubling is something I’ve done since my first time joining. 


 Characters: Very character-driven with the main focus being on interaction. I take my time writing characters and love nothing more than well-structured sheets that illustrate the vision of their creator. (But!) There’s no need to write 10-20 pages worth of character information, but I wouldn’t want to limit you either. As for the depiction of the given character, I won’t be as presumptuous as to tell you what sort of medium you can and cannot use. Face claims such as photos of real models, illustrations, 3D models, drawings or descriptions are all okay. As long as it gets its point across, I am happy.


 Aversions: A few minor things that irritate me, or let’s say, aren’t really my style are one-liners, low effort responses and out of character behaviors in canon characters. We all have different takes on characters, which is totally fine by me since I basically do the same. Though if the character acts and behaves unlike their personality dictates, it will break the immersion. I hope to stay true to my own words when saying this. If it happens on my side, just let me know! Another pet peeve of mine is that one plot that has been done time and time again…. and I’ve grown quite jaded towards it, which is ‘supernaturals trying to fit into human society’ thing… I mean, I’m not opposed to borrowing from this idea, but for me, it grew old pretty fast. Speaking from experience.


 Il Passione: My wish is to find a partner whom I can have a good time with and develop some chemistry. After all it is a fun hobby. We both should have fun with what we’re writing. Brainstorming among other things is one of my favorite things to do. To see how things unfold and how the characters react to the given situation is the highlight of any story. °°°·.°·..·°¯°·._.· ☥ ·._.·°¯°·.·° .·°°° °°°·.°·..·°¯°·._.· ☥ ·._.·°¯°·.·° .·°°° 




FANDOM: 

I love roleplaying fandoms just as much as I have a blast with building something original universes. Worldbuilding is my preferred cup of tea… but if we opt for something more fandom inspired, I highly welcome in on expanding on the given universe and add some original lore too! The one marked with a * will be the ones I am craving the most.

Hellsing*: Haven’t done that one before and I am curious as to how things play out, especially in such a dark and mystifying universe like Hellsing. There’s a lot of subject matter that we can delve into, plus I am a big fan of powerful vampire characters!

Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure*: I would love you for this. No, seriously, I would. This fandom has sucked me into a downward spiral and there’s no possible chance of escaping this inescapable void. The absolute insanity of this franchise had me hooked from the second I laid eyes on it and I would be forever ecstatic if you’d message me on behalf of roleplaying Jojo. I have plenty of ideas for this one, just you wait.

Full Metal Alchemist: One of my favorite mangas and animes ever made. Recently I’ve begun rewatching FMA Brotherhood and felt a small hint of nostalgia swelling inside my blackened heart. I’d be open to play it, though it is not one of my top cravings at the moment.

Justice League / Young Justice / Justice League Dark*: Huge DC fan, though I much prefer the animations and comics over the live-action cinematic. Let’s just say, I like the expansive and dynamic set of possibilities and deep, well-written cast. For instance Hellblazer Constantine or Raven.  

Bayonetta: Need I say more? Let’s dance boys!

APH Hetalia: That includes the 2P version ;)

The Boys: Well.. the 2nd season came out. And I am simply stoked.




°°°·.°·..·°¯°·._.· ☥ ·._.·°¯°·.·° .·°°° °°°·.°·..·°¯°·._.· ☥ ·._.·°¯°·.·° .·°°° ORIGINAL: 
 My ideas for a plot are versatile in which I can give you if you ask for it (Usually the ones that aren’t listed here). It is however merely a suggestion for what we could write - not a mandatory thing. If you don’t like the idea, we can always figure stuff out and keep on home-brewing till we find something we both can enjoy. There’s no need to immediately end things if the first thing doesn’t really fire you up. The one marked with a * will be the ones I am craving the most.

I will cross the oceans of time just to find you*: So this is something that began to fascinate me more and more as time went on. Our characters existing in our current modern timeline are on the verge of a discovery that could shape the very foundation of history. After they accidentally stumble upon an artefact / edifice unrelated to any culture they’ve seen before, their presence unwittingly activates a mechanism that transports them not only to a different place, but an entirely different timeline. Upon awakening, they find themselves in a mysterious setting filled with archaic cultures, wildlife and mythological figures they believed only to be possible in fairytales. It is now up to them to navigate themselves in a time where uncertainty and superstition was rampant. Where their knowledge from the future could either prove themselves as an advantage or a fatal flaw. Every decision and word will count, forcing you to rethink and carefully plan out your actions. They also come to learn that some of these ancient myths were in fact true, and that monsters as well as godly beings did once exist. Following that trail, they will be faced with the truth as to how and why they were able to travel through time and space. But more importantly, it is where they will find their soulmates, and it isn’t where or when they think they’d be.

Supernatural*: From angels to demons, from gods to monsters, I’ve seen it all and I absolutely love it. There can be any sort of creature or being involved, ranging from vampires to sirens to elves, you have it. However, I’ve never done something quite relating to angelic beings and their offspring before. I’ve read up on Nephilim and angels and found it rather fascinating, and it’s a different approach from the usual vampire vs werewolf cliche. 


Crime and intrigue: I never stray too far from the supernatural path, but hell, there’s nothing better than some good old gritty mafia inspired stories with a complex cast of characters and a solid storyline.

Sci-fi and urban fantasy: So this could be basically anything from genetically engineered superhuman (superheroes / - villains) with a dark take on the human psyche, dismantling the idea of heroism and villainy. Or a world where mankind began their interstellar journey to colonize neighboring planets, galaxies before transcending their own humanity by merging themselves with deadly technology. I have a few plans for this…

Historical and mysterious setting*: So one of my favorite eras is the Victorian time period, 30s - 40s - 80s, Renaissance or Ancient times during the rise of the Egyptian / Roman / Sumerian Empire. During these times, a dark discovery was made by man, learning that they were not alone in this world. In fact, they weren’t even the supreme race that destined themselves to dominate the world, for another race of humanoids have lied dormant deep beneath the earth, slumbering through the millennia only to be re-awakened by a cataclysmic event. These ancient humanoids are gods among men, superior in every way imaginable, and they have made it their mission to reclaim their right to rule. But their nature is not what most people think it is…





°°°·.°·..·°¯°·._.· ☥ ·._.·°¯°·.·° .·°°° °°°·.°·..·°¯°·._.· ☥ ·._.·°¯°·.·° .·°°°
 


If you’re still here and haven’t fallen asleep reading through my loooong paragraphs, then I would like to thank you for bearing with me this far. I am looking forward to your messages. 




 Have a bright day!

How Link-Begging Became the Most Annoying Search Engine Tactic

A version of this post originally appeared on Tedium, a twice-weekly newsletter that hunts for the end of the long tail.

Wanna get under my skin? Ask me to add a link to an old article of mine.

Maybe it’s a point of pride, or a desire to keep my more than 500 articles on my newsletter in a relatively pristine nature, but I frequently get requests on my articles for backlinks—probably a dozen times a week, someone will reach out asking to add this link or that link to a specific article.

(This past week, someone tried adding me on LinkedIn to convince me to link to their company.)

Often, it’s dressed up like a favor, or a gift. Sometimes they’ll offer me money. But every time, without fail, I decline, as the content generally doesn’t add anything to the article and instead costs me time. It’s the digital equivalent of a salesperson coming up to your door and not taking no for an answer.

And, in many ways, it highlights the failings of search engine optimization as a concept. It can be too easily gamed—and those backlinks are a big reason why.

“Any links intended to manipulate PageRank or a site’s ranking in Google search results may be considered part of a link scheme and a violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. This includes any behavior that manipulates links to your site or outgoing links from your site.”

—A passage from Google’s quality guidelines pointing out what Google does not allow on its platform. Despite this, the link economy exists fairly unabated throughout the internet, with entire companies pushing for links on different websites with the specific goal of pushing up their search presence on Google. I know this because many of them email me.

The rise of backlink culture reflects a digital economy full of back-scratching symbiotic relationships

If you don’t work in online marketing or digital media, you may not even realize this is happening, this sharing of URL-based currency around the web, akin to the way you give data to access a service online.

The way we share data online is often symbiotic—you give up something a company wants, and in exchange, they give you access to some new filter on your phone.

In its own way, the search engine economy works kind of like this, in that the benefits of the link are often distributed as a byproduct to the main offering. A great example of this is the infographic, which was once a highly detailed craft associated with newspapers and magazines like USA Today and Time.

However, as the internet matured and social media entered the picture, the infographic became internet currency. About a decade ago, infographics became extremely popular online, and a huge reason for this was that it was something that was quickly shareable. If you land on a site like Tumblr or Pinterest, you can find literally tons of infographics floating around everywhere.

The people who make these are not doing so just for their health. Often, people are strongly encouraged to include a backlink with that graphic, which has the side effect of potentially driving traffic to your site. But the real benefit goes to the person who actually made the infographic, as they get backlinks on every site that shared the infographic. It’s a somewhat seedy approach in the wrong hands, though it’s widely considered a “white hat” search engine optimization technique.

A similar version of this approach is the Creative Commons model, which often encourages users to share a link in exchange for a free photo or piece of content. Some large companies, most notably LinkedIn, have taken advantage of this tactic to help boost their link presence. Sure, the photos are good, but the reason they exist is because of the domain authority they build.

In a way, due to the way that Google built its PageRank system more than two decades ago, it often matters more who links you than it does how many pageviews you get. So search engine marketers are motivated to get people to share their links in lots of places.

When you break it down, the internet is just a gigantic chain-link fence. The links are interconnected. Joshua Hoehne/Unsplash

Why did this kind of link-trading become a thing?

All of these tactics are older than you think, and originated out of a general desire to be at the top of the results in a given search engine.

Google may not have come online until late 1998, but there were already internet marketers that were dipping their toes into this space, some of them doing marketing work on directories like Yahoo as early as 1995. There is a site put together by the SEO industry literally called The History of SEO that highlights the evolution of the space over the years.

Bruce Clay’s website, circa 1998. Image: Internet Archive

Some caught the trend early. Bruce Clay, an early internet marketer whose namesake company is still at it today, was dishing out advice on improving web rankings at the beginning of 1996. Here’s what his site said of SEO (also known as “search engine ranking” or “search engine registration”) as of early 1998:

The objective of search engine registration is to increase visitor count by appearing very high in the results of searches using the most appropriate keywords to the content of your site. This relative ranking is often viewed as a struggle to best use a few keywords, instead of a struggle to out-do your competition. If you search on your target keywords, you will see the leading site in the rankings. All you need to do is to be better than that number one site. This page suggests ways to improve search engine results with advice, hints, tips, and clues to improve your search engine rankings relative to existing leaders. After all, that is your real objective.

Another extremely early figure in the world of search engines is someone who is still very active and public facing in that world today, a guy named Danny Sullivan. Sullivan wrote a guide titled The Webmaster’s Guide to Search Engines in 1995. (The guide is no longer online, but Sullivan has some historic materials from the era on his site.)

Search Engine Watch, as it appeared in 1998. Image: Internet Archive

Sullivan became something of the first search-engine journalist: He started Search Engine Watch in 1996, not long after Clay started his site, and quickly sold it to MecklerMedia; Sullivan later launched Search Engine Land, a similar site, before retiring in 2017. Now Sullivan works for Google as its public search liaison.

It should be noted that during this early period, the motivation to share backlinks was not quite as strong, in part because Google’s PageRank model was what made them more valuable, by varying the value of one backlink over another. Earlier search engines weren’t quite so smart. But soon, that would change.

In their internet-defining academic paper “The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine,” Larry Page and Sergey Brin point out that their engine was partly inspired by academic literature.

“Academic citation literature has been applied to the web, largely by counting citations or backlinks to a given page. This gives some approximation of a page’s importance or quality,” Page “PageRank extends this idea by not counting links from all pages equally, and by normalizing by the number of links on a page.”

Once Google set the plot point, backlinks became hard to ignore. And marketers looking to get an edge started using a variety of tactics to gain a coveted spot on the front page that didn’t involve actually creating good content that people want to read.

Some early sites built networks of URLs that linked to one another, creating a conversation loop that Google was quick to pick up on. In response, search experts like longtime Google employee Matt Cutts, who headed the Web spam team at the company, would frequently make changes to the design of Google’s engine to help discourage certain types of links.

“The best links are not paid, or exchanged after out-of-the-blue emails–the best links are earned and given by choice,” Cutts wrote in 2005.

Despite this, such requests continue unabated, 15 years later. I know this from personal experience.

“Just so you understand the amount of work involved, I spent approximately 40 minutes searching, crafting, and sending the outreach emails. For 40 minutes of work, I received a dofollow backlink from a DA41 website. Less time and effort than crafting and pitching a guest post.”

— Mike Wood, an online marketer, writing on the SEMrush Blog about the tactics he uses to get sites to link his own using email outreach techniques. (A “dofollow” backlink means that the link is specifically set to encourage search engines to pick it up, by the way.) Wood notes that he sends these messages with the goal of sounding “sincere.” “One thing to keep in mind is that it also tells the truth so you are not trying to scam a website out of a backlink,” he writes. (Sincerity is a relative term, as I would consider “sincere” not just reaching out because you want something, but I digress.) The problem with schemes like this, from the perspective of a site owner, is that the links are never relevant, because the research is frequently surface-level, emailing based on a keyword that surfaces in a search, never actually understanding why said keyword or link was used. (This is especially problematic as the tactics are often automated.) As a result, if I got a “sincere” message like this, I would turn it down.

When it comes down to it, search engine marketing is cheap compared to the alternatives. Image: Photo Mix/Pixabay

Why it feels like this tactic is increasing in prominence

As I pointed out above, search engine marketing is not a new tactic—it’s in fact a very old one, one that dates to the earliest days of the web. Mentions of the term “search engine optimization,” the common term for describing manipulating the results of Google and similar search engines for business reasons, have appeared in newspaper classified ads as early as 1999.

(Side note: A great way to track the rise of a trend involving technology is not to look for newspaper articles that mention the term, but classifieds. They work as leading indicators as companies often hire for those skills before they become the subject of articles.)

And email outreach, the technique I frequently see, has been around since the beginning.

But in recent weeks, people I know online have anecdotally been seeing backlink requests more than usual.

And I think the reason we have been comes down to the fact that, when broken down, search engine marketing is cheap—especially compared to options like banner ads, affiliate marketing, and video ads.

You don’t need a giant production team to build out an SEO campaign, though if you have one, you can clearly do much more with it. And, the fact is, cheap is a good thing during a pandemic.

“As the shift from offline to online accelerates during these times companies are being asked to do more with less,” noted Jim Yu, the CEO of the search engine marketing firm BrightEdge, in an article for Search Engine Watch. “As consumers seek information about how businesses are handling COVID-19 restrictions, evaluate their options for buying essential needs, adapt to remote work and education, and try their very best to stay informed and entertained, search is now more important than ever.”

Combine this with the increasing sophistication of customer relationship management (CRM) tools, which allow organizations to send campaigns repeatedly and at scale, and you have a recipe for lots and lots of backlink requests.

But there are ways to build authority on a search engine without actively annoying every independent publisher in the land. They often require thoughtful in-depth strategy approaches.

Jimmy Daly, a former coworker of mine who spent years with the boutique content firm Animalz, notes a number of technical solutions for boosting search presence, but when it comes down to it, good content written for the right audience and distributed thoughtfully wins the day.

It sure beats a sketchy approach to distributing backlinks.

If you’ve read my Twitter account anytime in the past five years, you’ll know that I’ve never been a fan of outreach-driven search engine marketing, which often relies on aggressive emailing.

I get a lot of these messages, and I’ve complained about them before. They’re annoying and they take away from my time, and I’m sure that of many others.

Part of the reason they frustrate me is it feels like they’re taking a shortcut to building authority, rather than offering something valuable. They’re trying to game their place onto a page where every link was actually carefully considered. It feels like they’re piggybacking on my in-depth research, attempting to invade it with their unrelated information, and not thinking of the fact that dozens of people send these messages to me each week.

(A more recent tactic that is worth calling out: When a link breaks in an old article, some will email recommending a new link to use. In those cases, I grab the Internet Archive version of that old link, replace it and—and this is the important part—I tell them what I did. Because I want to discourage future emails from them.)

There are obviously tactics that work. I personally am a fan of what The Conversation does. They allow anyone with a site to share their content with a Creative Commons license, so as to encourage a broader distribution of ideas, giving genuine value to both the authors, who are academics generally, and to the publishers, who gain access to a piece of content that builds upon the work they’re already doing. (I’ve shared their articles myself in this way.) It helps everyone and doesn’t feel like cheating to get there.

But so many people just spray and pray like the guy I quoted above, in hopes of getting someone to add their link so they can improve their position. In many ways, search engine experts are taking advantage of weaknesses in Google and other engines to make themselves stand out.

My personal feeling is that these asks are generally self-serving. Sending links to people to put in five-year-old posts is an immense disrespect of people’s time, but when people send out these emails, they don’t care about any of that.

We live in a world where, if given the right tool, someone will bend the rules to manipulate it. Perhaps I’m idealistic, but I’d rather people actually gain popularity because they earned it—not because they gamed their way to the top.

How Link-Begging Became the Most Annoying Search Engine Tactic syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

The Best Instagram Stories of 2019

Instagram Stories was one of the most dynamic social media channels in 2019. So much happened with Stories — from new developments with the product to strong returns on Stories ads and organic reach.

Over 500 million people use Instagram Stories every day.

I’m definitely among that group.

And at Buffer, Stories has been a major focus in 2019 as well. Within the Buffer product, we debuted Stories scheduling to help you plan and manage your Stories content, and we released advanced Stories analytics to help you know what’s working.

Not to mention, we had a ton of Stories podcast episodes in 2019, which you can find in our archives. 

So when it comes to picking some of the best Stories campaigns of 2019, we really have a lot of options. And it’s hard to choose. 

The Best Instagram Stories of 2019

We’ll run through a list of our favorites. If there are any favorites of yours that we missed, please do let us know by using #bufferpodcast on any social media channel.

Let’s get right to it then. 

1. Tastemade

Some of the best Instagram content is food content. And Stories is no exception! Especially the folks at Tastemade. 

Tastemade is a community of food, travel, and design lovers. Their website is chock full of beautiful food videos and shows. They do a great job translating it to their Instagram Stories. 

In particular, their “tap fast” format has been so fun to watch. 

That’s right. Many of the stories on the @tastemadeuk handle use “tap fast.” These Stories piece together dozens of photos in stop-motion fashion — each photo just a slight movement ahead of the previous. And then you are the one who animates all the images into a moving picture by tapping quickly from one Story to the next. 

Collectively, it makes a self-propelled stop-motion video of a biscuit baking or a cooking dunking. It’s awesome.   And it’s good for your Stories stats, too. There’s a ton of incentive to tap all the way through to see how the Story ends up.

2. Brooklinen

Along with food content, music is another big theme for the year. You’ve probably seen your friends and colleagues sharing what they’re listening to on Spotify. You can share your songs straight to Instagram Stories from your Spotify mobile app. 

Another way that brands have taken advantage of this is sharing playlists through Instagram Stories. 

Brooklinen, for instance, has a great series of playlists. They’ve even branded them with their own name: Brooklinen Beats. Each time Brooklinen shares a a playlist on Stories, they add a swipe up link that sends people to Spotify to listen. Brooklinen debuted a new playlist every week at the start of 2019, and they’ve saved all their playlists to their Stories highlights for people to check out anytime.

3. Burrow

Next up, one of the most creative Stories we saw this year came from the furniture brand Burrow. 

They basically created a coloring page for their audience to fill in.

Yeah, the set of Stories was called Dream Sofa. Burrow asked its followers to describe their dream sofa — it could be as wild and imaginative as they liked. Then Burrow provided the sofa template. Burrow shared a drawing of a couch — just the outline in black, on a white background. They posted this to the Burrow Stories, along with instructions on how their community could download the picture and add to it. Then people grabbed the template, added their own stickers and colors, and shared to their personal accounts. Burrow was able to re-share the Dream Sofa Stories back to the Burrow account.Talk about great community engagement and incredible user-generated content!

4. Potluck 

For our next top Instagram Story, we’re going back to the world of food. Cookware brand Potluck had a great campaign based on one of the neatest — albeit underutilized — features of Instagram Stories: custom AR filters. 

Potluck created its very own Instagram Stories filter called Yes Chef. The filter adds a chef hat and mustache to any faces in the photo. 

Many people in their community ended up using the filter on their photos and tagging Potluck in the Stories. The Potluck team was then able to reshare and collect these photos into their own Stories collection, which remains on their profile in their Stories highlights. 

Each time Potluck shares a new Yes Chef pic, they give a shout out and an @mention to the person who originally made the photo, another great way to build community support for the brand.

I thought it was also really neat how Potluck did a Story educating people on where to find the filter. Worked great for getting the word out about it!

5. Pattern Brands

Cookware brands really had some awesome Stories this year. Our next pick is from another cookware brand, or rather, from its parent company. 

Pattern Brands, which release Equal Parts cookware products this year, had a fantastic series of Stories content that told a really compelling brand story.

(Pattern is the brand featured in our new podcast series that follows the introduction of Pattern, going from nothing to a new product over the course of a few months. You can listen to this series by searching for Breaking Brand wherever you listen to podcasts.)

Pattern’s Instagram Stories campaign is quite simple in concept. They created wallpapers that their audience could download and use as phone backgrounds. We’ll share a couple examples in our show notes. They’re beautiful. 

And what’s particularly compelling about how they approached this is that they told a larger story: the backgrounds are watercolors in a soft, calming palette, designed to promote a sense of peace when you’re spending time on your phone. This is right in line with the brand story that Pattern is telling.

6. Allbirds

Allbirds does a great job of bridging the gap between product promotion and customer service. Allbirds uses some of its Stories to share answers to frequently asked questions about its products. 

This strategy is such a wonderful display of customer service and value. Allbirds takes these FAQ Stories and adds them to their Stories Highlights so the FAQ is always visible from their Instagram profile. This gives potential customers the chance to find answers to their questions quickly and easily, right from the profile page, without having to wait any time at all to hear back from an Allbirds person. 

7. Monica + Andy

Speaking of making great use of Stories highlights, Another Stories campaign we love is the way that brands have built out almost an entire library of content within their Stories. 

Take Monica + Andy, for instance. The kidswear brand runs its own podcast, and each podcast episode gets a shoutout on the brand’s Instagram Stories.

What’s particularly great is that each Story shoutout follows a similar template. There’s a photo of the podcast guest plus some nice typography and titles. What Monica + Andy do then is take these Stories and put them all into a Stories Highlights. When you tap on the Highlights, you can thumb through the entire podcast archive, one after the other, and all the images look great and on-brand.

8. Its Nice That

The online design magazine puts together a weekly newsletter to share on their Stories at the end of every week.

It’s a ton of great content, packaged perfectly for Instagram. Each story is its own slide, designed with a unique background and with strong headline copy. You swipe up to go to the Its Nice That website to read more. They’ll share about five to ten articles each week this way — the top content and news from the past few days in a very digestible format. 

9. Instagram Story templates

And then one final Stories trend that we really loved seeing this year was the rise of Instagram Story templates. We referenced this a bit earlier with Burrow’s cool example of the Dream Sofa.  2019 introduced a whole cottage industry of Story templates for brands. 

A Story template is simply an image with graphics and text that includes a number of blank spaces for people to fill in their answers. Picture a questionnaire or a mad lib. 

The Hopper blog listed a huge number of different options of ways to use these templates, many of which we saw on several brand accounts in 2019.The list includes: 

Trending topics, like a “follow Friday” template or a “Five Women who inspire me” on International Women’s Day

Current affairs, like sporting events, where you can run a guess the score template

and a personal favorite of mine — Fill-in-the blank emoji templates where you pick an emoji that describes, say, your current mood or the weather or what you did today

How to say hello to us

We would all love to say hello to you on social media – especially Twitter!

Heather-Mae on Twitter

Dave on Twitter

Thanks for listening! Feel free to connect with our team at Buffer on Twitter, Buffer on Facebook, our Podcast homepage, or with the hashtag #bufferpodcast.

Enjoy the show? It’d mean the world to us if you’d be up for giving us a rating and review on iTunes!

About The Science of Social Media podcast

The Science of Social Media is your weekly sandbox for social media stories, insights, experimentation, and inspiration. Every Monday (and sometimes more) we share the most cutting-edge social media marketing tactics from brands and influencers in every industry. If you’re a social media team of one, business owner, marketer, or someone simply interested in social media marketing, you’re sure to find something useful in each and every episode.  It’s our hope that you’ll join our 27,000+ weekly iTunes listeners and rock your social media channels as a result!

The Science of Social Media is proudly made by the Buffer team. Feel free to get in touch with us for any thoughts, ideas, or feedback.

The Best Instagram Stories of 2019 published first on https://improfitninja.weebly.com/

The Best Instagram Stories of 2019

Instagram Stories was one of the most dynamic social media channels in 2019. So much happened with Stories — from new developments with the product to strong returns on Stories ads and organic reach.

Over 500 million people use Instagram Stories every day.

I’m definitely among that group.

And at Buffer, Stories has been a major focus in 2019 as well. Within the Buffer product, we debuted Stories scheduling to help you plan and manage your Stories content, and we released advanced Stories analytics to help you know what’s working.

Not to mention, we had a ton of Stories podcast episodes in 2019, which you can find in our archives. 

So when it comes to picking some of the best Stories campaigns of 2019, we really have a lot of options. And it’s hard to choose. 

The Best Instagram Stories of 2019

We’ll run through a list of our favorites. If there are any favorites of yours that we missed, please do let us know by using #bufferpodcast on any social media channel.

Let’s get right to it then. 

1. Tastemade

Some of the best Instagram content is food content. And Stories is no exception! Especially the folks at Tastemade. 

Tastemade is a community of food, travel, and design lovers. Their website is chock full of beautiful food videos and shows. They do a great job translating it to their Instagram Stories. 

In particular, their “tap fast” format has been so fun to watch. 

That’s right. Many of the stories on the @tastemadeuk handle use “tap fast.” These Stories piece together dozens of photos in stop-motion fashion — each photo just a slight movement ahead of the previous. And then you are the one who animates all the images into a moving picture by tapping quickly from one Story to the next. 

Collectively, it makes a self-propelled stop-motion video of a biscuit baking or a cooking dunking. It’s awesome.   And it’s good for your Stories stats, too. There’s a ton of incentive to tap all the way through to see how the Story ends up.

2. Brooklinen

Along with food content, music is another big theme for the year. You’ve probably seen your friends and colleagues sharing what they’re listening to on Spotify. You can share your songs straight to Instagram Stories from your Spotify mobile app. 

Another way that brands have taken advantage of this is sharing playlists through Instagram Stories. 

Brooklinen, for instance, has a great series of playlists. They’ve even branded them with their own name: Brooklinen Beats. Each time Brooklinen shares a a playlist on Stories, they add a swipe up link that sends people to Spotify to listen. Brooklinen debuted a new playlist every week at the start of 2019, and they’ve saved all their playlists to their Stories highlights for people to check out anytime.

3. Burrow

Next up, one of the most creative Stories we saw this year came from the furniture brand Burrow. 

They basically created a coloring page for their audience to fill in.

Yeah, the set of Stories was called Dream Sofa. Burrow asked its followers to describe their dream sofa — it could be as wild and imaginative as they liked. Then Burrow provided the sofa template. Burrow shared a drawing of a couch — just the outline in black, on a white background. They posted this to the Burrow Stories, along with instructions on how their community could download the picture and add to it. Then people grabbed the template, added their own stickers and colors, and shared to their personal accounts. Burrow was able to re-share the Dream Sofa Stories back to the Burrow account.Talk about great community engagement and incredible user-generated content!

4. Potluck 

For our next top Instagram Story, we’re going back to the world of food. Cookware brand Potluck had a great campaign based on one of the neatest — albeit underutilized — features of Instagram Stories: custom AR filters. 

Potluck created its very own Instagram Stories filter called Yes Chef. The filter adds a chef hat and mustache to any faces in the photo. 

Many people in their community ended up using the filter on their photos and tagging Potluck in the Stories. The Potluck team was then able to reshare and collect these photos into their own Stories collection, which remains on their profile in their Stories highlights. 

Each time Potluck shares a new Yes Chef pic, they give a shout out and an @mention to the person who originally made the photo, another great way to build community support for the brand.

I thought it was also really neat how Potluck did a Story educating people on where to find the filter. Worked great for getting the word out about it!

5. Pattern Brands

Cookware brands really had some awesome Stories this year. Our next pick is from another cookware brand, or rather, from its parent company. 

Pattern Brands, which release Equal Parts cookware products this year, had a fantastic series of Stories content that told a really compelling brand story.

(Pattern is the brand featured in our new podcast series that follows the introduction of Pattern, going from nothing to a new product over the course of a few months. You can listen to this series by searching for Breaking Brand wherever you listen to podcasts.)

Pattern’s Instagram Stories campaign is quite simple in concept. They created wallpapers that their audience could download and use as phone backgrounds. We’ll share a couple examples in our show notes. They’re beautiful. 

And what’s particularly compelling about how they approached this is that they told a larger story: the backgrounds are watercolors in a soft, calming palette, designed to promote a sense of peace when you’re spending time on your phone. This is right in line with the brand story that Pattern is telling.

6. Allbirds

Allbirds does a great job of bridging the gap between product promotion and customer service. Allbirds uses some of its Stories to share answers to frequently asked questions about its products. 

This strategy is such a wonderful display of customer service and value. Allbirds takes these FAQ Stories and adds them to their Stories Highlights so the FAQ is always visible from their Instagram profile. This gives potential customers the chance to find answers to their questions quickly and easily, right from the profile page, without having to wait any time at all to hear back from an Allbirds person. 

7. Monica + Andy

Speaking of making great use of Stories highlights, Another Stories campaign we love is the way that brands have built out almost an entire library of content within their Stories. 

Take Monica + Andy, for instance. The kidswear brand runs its own podcast, and each podcast episode gets a shoutout on the brand’s Instagram Stories.

What’s particularly great is that each Story shoutout follows a similar template. There’s a photo of the podcast guest plus some nice typography and titles. What Monica + Andy do then is take these Stories and put them all into a Stories Highlights. When you tap on the Highlights, you can thumb through the entire podcast archive, one after the other, and all the images look great and on-brand.

8. Its Nice That

The online design magazine puts together a weekly newsletter to share on their Stories at the end of every week.

It’s a ton of great content, packaged perfectly for Instagram. Each story is its own slide, designed with a unique background and with strong headline copy. You swipe up to go to the Its Nice That website to read more. They’ll share about five to ten articles each week this way — the top content and news from the past few days in a very digestible format. 

9. Instagram Story templates

And then one final Stories trend that we really loved seeing this year was the rise of Instagram Story templates. We referenced this a bit earlier with Burrow’s cool example of the Dream Sofa.  2019 introduced a whole cottage industry of Story templates for brands. 

A Story template is simply an image with graphics and text that includes a number of blank spaces for people to fill in their answers. Picture a questionnaire or a mad lib. 

The Hopper blog listed a huge number of different options of ways to use these templates, many of which we saw on several brand accounts in 2019.The list includes: 

Trending topics, like a “follow Friday” template or a “Five Women who inspire me” on International Women’s Day

Current affairs, like sporting events, where you can run a guess the score template

and a personal favorite of mine — Fill-in-the blank emoji templates where you pick an emoji that describes, say, your current mood or the weather or what you did today

How to say hello to us

We would all love to say hello to you on social media – especially Twitter!

Heather-Mae on Twitter

Dave on Twitter

Thanks for listening! Feel free to connect with our team at Buffer on Twitter, Buffer on Facebook, our Podcast homepage, or with the hashtag #bufferpodcast.

Enjoy the show? It’d mean the world to us if you’d be up for giving us a rating and review on iTunes!

About The Science of Social Media podcast

The Science of Social Media is your weekly sandbox for social media stories, insights, experimentation, and inspiration. Every Monday (and sometimes more) we share the most cutting-edge social media marketing tactics from brands and influencers in every industry. If you’re a social media team of one, business owner, marketer, or someone simply interested in social media marketing, you’re sure to find something useful in each and every episode.  It’s our hope that you’ll join our 27,000+ weekly iTunes listeners and rock your social media channels as a result!

The Science of Social Media is proudly made by the Buffer team. Feel free to get in touch with us for any thoughts, ideas, or feedback.

Thank The Best Instagram Stories of 2019 for first publishing this post.

How to Break off a Toxic Friendship...or at least how to recognize you’re in one

   I’ve been thinking for a while about how to write this post, mainly because the story is long and complicated, but also because it deals with an issue that EVERYONE experiences from time to time. Even if a friend isn’t completely toxic (which mine turned out to be), we all outgrow friendships sometimes. It’s part of life. I also don’t want to waste 500 words on my personal life, even though I know everyone likes a little bit of gossip and drama that doesn’t involve them. So, who’s up for some guilt-free reading?

   I’ll try to make this summary short and sweet. Basically, I was profoundly wounded, over and over again, by one of my “best” friends--let’s call her Rachel. Lol. Because that’s her name. And I’m not a real journalist, just a personal blogger who happened to get fucked over by her. She was also one of the friends I’ve had the longest, dating back from high school. Many of you who know me, probably know her, or at least know of her. So. Rachel decided to get married, and asked me to be her maid of honor. She lives in Florida, and I live in Spain. Recognizing the financial challenges this would present me with, I still wholeheartedly agreed to be her maid of honor, although I did suggest that maybe one of her friends who also lived in Florida should share the role me, as I obviously wouldn’t be able to plan a bridal shower or bachelorette party, because, duh. I live thousands of miles away. (She rejected this option, for the record.) For the following 15 months, we talked only about her wedding. And the rhetoric got more and more brutal--and more and more hurtful--as we went, especially as I reached what I will call my “financial limit”, also known as a budget.

   When that finally happened, and I officially couldn’t spend any more money on makeup, hair, or anything else, it became much clearer where I stood with her and how little I meant to her. But since I live so far away, it was easy to push to the back of my mind and not think about. Here is just one example (my second favorite one, I’m saving my favorite one for later) of the conversations we would have: Rachel wanted me to spend $70 to get my hair done, which I realize is not a ridiculous amount, but after having spent SO much money on a flight, a rental car, the dress, etc., I was feeling particularly strapped for cash, and so I told her that getting my hair done was just not in the cards for me.

   “Well we have 83 days until the wedding...couldn’t you just save $1 a day?”

   Honestly, I was shocked. Where was my friend? Where was her compassion, her empathy for me? I tried to continue:

   “It’s just that I’ve already spent a lot of money, and I still I have so much left to pay for, it’s going to be a really expensive trip, and plus, I think that the most important thing is that I will be there on your special day.”

   I was met with silence. Silence that lasted for so long, I started to count the seconds as they went by. Let’s just say that was an awkward conversation closer. She later (as in a completely different conversation later on) went on to tell me that she “knew she was being petty” but she had “paid a lot of money for a photographer” so she deserved to be petty. Again, where did my friend go?

   I’m sure you’re all saying by now, “how could you not realize that this hideous person wasn’t your friend anymore?” And all I can say is, I don’t really know. I supposed some part of me knew, but I just didn’t want to see it. I wanted to hope that the friend I had known would come back. As you can tell from the title of this post, she didn’t.

   I tried one last time to salvage things. I called her. I told her there was tension between us, and I wanted to clear it away, because she deserved to have nothing but happiness on her wedding day. She blamed me for the tension, saying that I made her feel guilty. This went on for an hour. Even when I told her I felt like she no longer wanted to be my friend anymore, there was no moment where she even pretended to be sorry that she had hurt my feelings.

   And here comes my favorite example. As many of you know, I am also getting married in December. (YAY!) And so after we had “cleared the air”, I asked her if she still wanted to come to my wedding in December, as I would just rather know now than find out later. After making some excuse about “plane tickets being expensive” (REALLY? I didn’t know! *Sarcasm*), she told me, “It would just be more convenient for me if you could get married in June.”

!@#^&Y^%$#@!

   So I guess that wasn’t really that short, but it was an extremely stressful situation for me, and also the first time in my adult life that I had to cut a toxic "friend” out of my life. I don’t let this show about me (at least I don’t think I do), but I absolutely hate confrontation. I mean, who doesn’t really? And after this last conversation--it would indeed be our last--I had to face the facts. Even though I desperately wanted my friend to come back, she had left a long time ago and it didn’t seem that she was going to return. All I had wanted was an apology, a moment of compassion, where she acknowledged my feelings, but it never happened. 

   After all of this, I have come up with a couple tips. They might seem pretty simple now, but boy oh boy, just try to remember them when you’re in the thick of it! Would have saved me lots of time and money, not to mention loads of guilt and stress.

1. Listen to the words the person tells you, but pay more attention to their actions. The actions are where it’s at, baby. If your “friend” is telling you they want to be friends with you, but their actions show a different story, then as Dan Savage says, “Dump the motherfucker already!” Otherwise known as, DTMFA.

2. The moment someone stops showing you the love, compassion, and/or empathy you deserve, leave (because we all fucking deserve those things from the people who supposedly love us). DTMFA! This can be hard to see, and it takes a lot of people treating you shittily to recognize, but man, when you finally do, get the fuck out of there!

3. Listen to your gut. Even when it’s whispering. Because 100% of the time, it will be right. Along with this, also pay attention to your physical reaction to things. If your gut clenches, bad sign. If you can’t eat or sleep, get rid of them.

   P.S. These all apply to family as well--family members can be toxic, and just because they are family doesn’t mean you have to stick around. The moment I truly learned this, my life improved immensely.

    I will leave our last interaction, and quite possibly the moment you've all been waiting for--namely the “did she go to the wedding moment??”, here; immortalized on the internet forever, so that I can feel as though I tried my hardest to be a decent person and a decent friend until the very end, and end this post on a contented note (because after all this, I am happier without her in my life):

Me: So this has been one of the hardest decisions I've ever had to make, but I will not be attending your wedding, and by extension neither will my mom, Toño, or Bethany. And it is important to me that you know why. I feel as though we stopped being friends a long time ago and I just didn't realize it..that the most important thing to you is your wedding. While your wedding is important, to me what mattered more is our friendship. And it doesn't seem like you feel the same way, and I am deeply hurt by this. Not once have you asked about how our trip is going, or about the reception we had in erie, or anything about my life at all. I am getting married too and it gives me great joy, and I feel like that should only add to your joy. But it seems to me as though that is not the case, and it confuses me and hurts me. I could go on with more examples, but I think what I've already said suffices. You said our friendship was changing and evolving, but I think it ended a while ago and I just didn't see it. Maybe I'm wrong, but every time we have talked in the last six months (or maybe more) I have left the conversation feeling like shit, and that is not how a friendship should be. I feel like the only thing that matters to you is that I show up to your wedding to keep the numbers even, and that after your wedding you will drop our friendship anyways. Like I said, i could be wrong. But that's what my gut is telling me. So I'm calling it now. I wish you the best and happiest life with Dan and hope you get everything you want. I will cherish our memories.

Rachel: You have caused me so much stress and above all sadness. None of this deserves a reply but you should know that. If you think it's about numbers then that means we lost our friendship even before I thought we did. For the record, I went through a hurricane (and plenty of other life things) and you also never asked how I am. So whatever you're feeling, I feel the same exact way about you and your situation. Good bye.

   Pettiness, bullshit, selfishness, and absolutely no compassion or recognition from her until the very end! She truly showed me her true (ugly) self. 

   By the way, whoever thinks blogging isn’t therapeutic should really try it out, by the way.

Post-apocalips Military AU

I’ve lost in chapters and forgot how I called them... XD

It smells with burning powder. With disgustingly sweet metal. With burned flesh. And with something almost imperceptible. Like soft meadow flower fragrance. Smell of death. The one that can't be mistaken for something else. Silver-haired sixteen years old boy sneaked in a partly ruined window. "Frog" waits near. Elders are so predictable. Of course they try to be tricky. To catch them of guard. But... No. Not like they're stupid. It's just the tracks of their minds. If U understood it once, U'd have been always able to predict their actions. People are mammals too. And like mammals they have a tendency to trust their experience...to much. He lands right behind the "frog". They wait for him of course. But... From the other side. He steps on partly burned woods. It should break under his weight. Or at least drop some cinder uncovering his presence. But it won't. He knows it. Just knows with that weird instinct that always made him not to be scared of darkness. Absolutely opposite. He always happily fell in blackest abyss like in the embrace. If the death feels like eternal darkness, it's fine to die, right?... He jumps down almost silently. Soldiers see him too late. When he is already in the air. In a free fall. He presses the trigger. Minus one. Minus two. Minus...

Minus eight.

Finished here. Fast and easy. Or not so easy. Silver-haired shadow digs shivering fingers into burned bricks of the wall. Adrenalin of battle has gone. Head spins. Knees aren't weak. Just the entire body feels unreal. Like it happens sometimes in dreams. Battle lasted for 52 hours. He didn't sleep. Didn't eat. Didn't even talk. Only fizzed orders to Cris and rarely gulped water from metal flask. Something sticky touches his cheek. Sticky. Wet. Smells like rotten sweets and metal. He unwillingly turns head. Why this stupid, dirty and soaked in blood carpet is so close? And what a fuck the window is doing on the floor? He shuts lashes and shakes a head. Now. To open eyes. To get up. To walk 500 meters more. To take wounded Cris. And to go with him 800 meters more, to the place where helicopter will be able to take them. It's not difficult. Not too far. Just. One minute. One fucking minute of silence. Darkness in lulling. Tempting. It's so close. Inside the head. Under lashes. Just keep them tightly closed and it will wrap around and keep exhausted body in it's embrace. Black abyss caresses partly bruised white skin, takes away the pain, worries, duties... It eases every burden. Heals. Calms down. Black abyss must be silent. Silent and tender like depth of the Arctic Ocean... It's almost here... Only these stupid thuds ruin it. Thuds and too loud, annoyingly dry breathe. [Stop for a bit, U two...] Thin body in full battle uniform lays on the floor. In unnatural position of fallen porcelain doll. Heartbeat and breath become weaker. In this condition the dose of adrenaline is needed. But Capitan Nikiforov doesn't have it with him anyway. It's almost good. Pain is so dull already. A bit more... Noone waits anyway. Cris has connector. He will be picked up by that helicopter. The task is fulfilled. No need to return. To the war... To blaming... To gossips... To the life where U're always a target regardless of what U do... It's better to sink in black abyss. It's cuddling. It leans to the collarbone like dark silk. Softly caresses cheek...

Caresses?! Cheek?!

He forces himself to open eyes. Gloomy light hurts like broken glass dust. How long did he laid like this? Chronometer on the wrist says not more than 10 minutes. He tries to inhale but skin on dry lips cracks leaving annoyingly sticky traces. Shaking and chattering teeth from hell knows why appeared fever he hardly sits on the floor, gulps the rest of the water and slowly stands up on still weak legs. Some of eliminated enemies must have water with them. There are 1300 meters to go. He has to check up. Just to make sure that kid survived. It won't hurt - to die next time, right?..

**************************** Yuuri leaned to his commander, tracing fingers through silver, now short but still stunning locks. It was dark already. But still warm enough to sit on the balcony, stare at the Moon and talk about everything. They were only together for this weekend since Beka and Kitty used the day-off to visit Safe Zone. Their part of the building was all dark. Telling the truth it all began from simple talk about Victor's weird love to darkness. And somehow turned into rare frank memories. Yuuri set behind his General who half-laid on boy's chest. He tightened the embrace, nuzzling winter silk with a cheek. Snow King reached for Kay's head, blindly caressing dark locks in reassuring gesture. He had a long story to tell. Countless long stories... But he didn't want to make his boy feel sad. Especially for unimportant things that had already gone: - Ok, малыш, enough for tod... Yuuri's palm covered cold fingers: - Tell me everything. My Yuki no Kami-sama.

*****************************

Cris is heavy. "Падла ебучая/ Fucked up bastard" - almost inaudibly mutters Capitan Snow King - "Либо блять жри меньше, либо подыхай сразу в следующий раз.../ Either fucking eat less or die faster next time..." Although he realizes in the corner of his mind this blaming isn't really correct. His teammate is rather skinny. But for exhausted body it feels like a small tank. And when Cris breathes out: - What are U saying?... He just boldly fizzes: - Praying... Not like his teammate really believes but he snorts and doesn't ask anymore. Thin, almost invisible thread hides in a grass. It's supposed to be unnoticeable. Trap? Of course it is. Snow King curses silently. He told it to colonel Feltsman - that they have defectors since last huge operation. At the very least two soldiers who were proclaimed deceased. Burned corpses weren't theirs. It was too obvious from the way they laid. If air mine stroke them close enough to burn flesh to bones, it should have also torn bodies apart. And of course they wouldn't be able to fall down as if they tried to run away. It's technically impossible. No. These wounds were caused already after death. And corpses were left there intentionally. Of course he tried to explain it to colonel Feltsman. And of course old commander almost rolled on the floor, screaming how impossible it is for a martial from his division - to become a traitor. And how low it is - to suspect heroes who died for the rest of the civilization. Great. Just great. Are U happy, old fart?! He slowly lets Cris on the ground, whispering orders. Even in this weak state he can cover him with fire when needed. The riffle can be put on supporter. Silver shadow disappears between ruins and trees. Long time ago this place was an old cemetery. Then grown up trees almost turned it into a park. Then the war ruined it. What bothered Capitan Nikiforov much - was how the hell trees were able to survive it. They can't recover and grow this fast. He knew too well how real abandoned places look like. Nothing like this. Plants were too fresh an clean. Like in the pure depth of the wild forest. Impossible... But. It's not the time for it now. He hides behind the remains of old family tomb. People are weird. They're stupidly afraid of such places in peaceful life. But loose the last decency at the war. Although in a step from death the luck is needed like never else. Cold fingers lay on the gray wall in a wordless promise to make it silent as before in no time. Shot from the distance throws a man on the ground. They instinctively fall covering heads and trying to figure out where was it from. It takes less then a couple of seconds. But for this short moment they're a perfect target for a silver death jumping from the top of the tomb. Only 5 of them here. And two somewhere far. No way to catch them if not being a bait. Polar Death stays near the ruined wall, looking around and speaking into [turned off] connector: - Enemies are eliminated. All 5 of them. Task is completed. They will be too tempted to capture him alive. Move on the right. Almost unnoticeable. Silver shadow rushes to his hide-out inside ruins. It will cover from explosion. It definitely has too... He presses the trigger while falling behind the stone. Scream in the distance. He got the target. As always. He has no ability to miss. Microseconds of this occurrence last unnaturally long. Endless microseconds between the shot and the explosion... Fucking flash-bang shit!!! He covers head on time but ringing in ears is still painful. It could be harmless from this place... For a healthy body in a full strength. Not for deadly exhausted ghost he is now. Hurts. Everything hurts. Light. Sounds. Air. Where are U - beloved endless night?... He falls on the ground in unnatural position. As if being stunned unconscious. The last one will appear in some seconds. His [loud and clumsy on Snow King's opinion] steps are too obvious. Just let him close and shoot both shoulders. Then drag to the meeting place. He will be forced to talk. Sooner or later. And everyone will think the youngest high officer planned it all from the very beginning. To get a higher rank. Again blaming. Rarely aloud. Most of them are dirty looks and whispers behind the back. Although... Who cares... Black abyss is here again. So close. So soft. So accepting. Grenade under left hand. What if to pull the ring?... Traitor will be eliminated. Cris will be saved by reinforcement. Makkachin? He waits... But old commander won't leave him alone. Makka is loved by all the base. He will live a long, happy life there. Darkness is so kind. It never demands for something. It cuddles body and mind. It wraps around like a softest embrace whispering "My Yuki no Kami-sama..."

WHAT?...

He releases the grip on the grenade ring, forcing his mind to return to reality. Insanity took not more then a couple of [eternal] seconds. Steps are already so close... Deserter was too incautious. Broken frosted doll comes to life in a blink of an eye. Storms from the ground, pressing the trigger. Twice. Scream. Smell of burning powder. Drops of blood splashed in the air. Wounded prey struggles under Snow King's foot. Feelings are so sharp again. Every move is light and easy. It's so called "second wind". Sounds good. But in such condition it's just an irredeemable credit for body and mind... Capitan Nikiforov bends to the tied up enemy, cuts clothes near wounds and pours some powder there. And brings a lighter. It's painful but not deadly. Snow King knows it too well. How old was he when he had to use this shitty trick to stop own bleeding for the first time? 12?.. 13?.. It worked. Left an ugly scar. But worked. Scream. Captured one falls unconscious. But he still breathes. He won't die from blood loss now. Maybe in any other circumstances Snow King would prefer to bandage him. But he already spent all their medical stuff on Cris. He walks to his teammate, dragging the defector by his vest. Only 200 meters left. Lieutenant Giacometti says something but Snow King doesn't hear him. Only grabs his waist, dragging forward. 100 meters. 50... 20... Teammates jump up from the helicopter to take Cris and captured one. Gloomy air is still so bright. Even hurts eyes. When the picture is so vivid, why is it so hard to concentrate on anyone's face? Although... Is it necessary?.. The task is fulfilled... Darkness... Where are U?... It's too bright even through tightly shut eyelids. Black abyss creeps from inside the head. Slowly drowns the world in lightless waves. Drop by drop sneaks into every cell. Finally. Falling unconscious he indifferently hears medic's screams: "Put him on the stretcher! Glucose to the vein! Phys-saline! Adrena..."

He doesn't hear it anymore. Black abyss looks at him from wide pupils of boy's short-sighted eyes. It leans in, caressing cheek: - ...And I found U... My Yuki no Kami-sama. Capitan Snow King leans to this small hand, dissolving in lulling darkness. Black depth of Arctic Ocean wraps around his body in so healing, so loving embrace. He falls into it's caress letting it to take away all pain, worries, burdens... All weight of loneliness disappears inside the darkest polar night. Somewhere in the corner of his mind he still remembers he must check up about that weird kid from the hospital. Just to know he survived and is fine now.

Thin porcelain body in dirty uniform tosses almost in convulsions on the stretcher inside the helicopter. Medic team tie up his wrists and calfs to the sides. It's a usual deal. Wounded or exhausted soldiers can have different reactions on treatment. And often could unconsciously harm themselves and others. He shakes in bandages, laughing and crying and with cracked voice convinces someone (or maybe himself): - I'm just gonna get to know... To check up... I promised to protect... I need to know... If the one I promised it is still alive...

*****************************************

Warm drop fell on porcelain cheek. General hurried to get up but his domestic black abyss tightened the hug, not letting go. He wouldn't let go even if to order to. Snow King nuzzled boy's shoulder: - C'mon, Yuuri, no need to cry! It's.. Soft lips leaned to his with a stubborn denying sound. More tears fell on Snow King's face. But he already surrendered in the hold of the darkness. Now he could afford it. Feeling how toned body relaxed in his arms, Yuuri tried to smile through kiss and tears. Caressed silver locks and kissed small scar under the fringe that almost noone knew about: - I'm sorry... My Yuki no Kami-sama. I'm so late. I found U so late. Snow King leaned to boy's chest more, with half-lidded eyes, remembering something again: - Nah... Just on time. U can't even imagine how on time U was that day...

******************************************

- Feltsman! Fuck your mother... Do something about your subordinate! It's your responsibility after all!!! - highest officers of old school (now everyone who were in military before the catastrophe are called like that) were half in rage, half in despair. Old colonel hid his eyes and obviously didn't know what to say. Even if words of Capitan Nikiforov sounded reasonable. Even if he gathered proofs. Even if from logical point of view he had no choice and it's a huge luck he wasn't provoked by that fake kidnapping of civilian. Even if so... Is it natural for sixteen years old kid to be this cruel?? This calculating? And to stand against people 3 times older then him now? And what's the worst - he already officially stated he won't let any peaceful agreement happen. Yes, his reasons are serious. Yes, it's sad to admit but he is right. But still... In this huge conference-room, near the massive table young Snow King seemed too small. And even fragile. Especially when he set like that... With lowered head and loosened silver locks covering eyes. He hid hands under the table and his pose could give random watcher an idea he is nearly crying. The last who spoke jumped up from his chair, rushed to young Capitan and bended close to him: - What? Why did U shut up? Didn't imagine more bullshit? - Sir... - silver-haired Polar Death slowly rose head. No. No tears in sky-like gemstones. Only fathomless glades into threat. Absolutely unreadable. Merciless. And cold: - There's no need to get this close to me. I understand U use your body scent as a protection from being captured. But I insist! U should keep it for enemies only. Arrogant one-sided smirk lasted less then some seconds, turning into frosted hateful grin. Highest officer gasped, tuned red and inhaled deeply in desperate wish to defend himself. After all, how did this little shit dare??!! Mocking whistle stopped the fight a second before it began. Snow King who set childishly curling into a ball and hiding hands, spread his shoulders and laid hands on the table. Thin fingers held a glock and a flash-bang device. Both in battle mod. He tilted head to the side with humiliating grin and narrowed eyes: - Ladies and gentlemen... U all were technically on line all this time. And didn't notice it. How can U trust your judgement about a situation after this? Even now I can capture U all, sell U to any gang and have an actual sit of a King there. Behind the wall. And I can lure away all best soldiers. Be sure, they will follow me, not U. - He snorted bitterly - U forgot... U weren't in battle for too long... Polar Death looked the room around. Telling the truth he couldn't say for sure if they realized the meaning of his words or was it glock being this cogent: - Meeting is finished. Feel free to go. Snow King stood up, pensively nodded to completely lost (but not really surprised) commander and went away.

He stayed on the balcony for rather long. Or better to say - set curling into a ball and smoking cigarettes one after another. Of course old colonel already was here and played mother-hen part. Like "U're too young and don't understand! They can be rough but of course they didn't mean anything bad." And so on, and so force... [Oh, yeah, old man, I already believe... Let's be honest, if that teammate of yours tried to punch me, U wouldn't interfere, right?...] Of course he let commander see the empty cartridge of his gun. And when he sigh in relief, added indifferently that in fact he could kill them all with bare hands. And he'd finished the last one even before the first one reached the floor falling. Commander went away cursing and swearing his young subordinate will be the reason of heart-attack. And Capitan Snow King set here for a couple of hours longer. Idea came unexpectedly. Stupid idea but... The life is stupid itself... In some minutes he already sneaked from the Base to the Neva bank. With Makkachin and a bottle of vodka snatched from Yakov's cabinet. It's always said alcohol eases the pain, right?...

Piter's nights are gloomy. That very [shitty] white nights... Not white if to tell the truth. More like gray and dirty. They annoyed Snow King mostly because this season has stolen his precious darkness. That blackest dead freedom of night sky with not-existing-anymore stars. He opened the bottle, realizing he forgot snacks. Well... No other choice anyway... He gulped from the neck. Chocked and coughed. It was burning. It scratched the throat and hurt empty stomach. Of course he had neither time no wish to have supper. But. It's ok... It must work faster like this. Makkachin whined and poked his cheek with vet nose. Not like this hurting liquid really helps... Victor lit a cigarette, pensively caressing dog's fur, and gulped more. Half of the bottle is finished. Where's that famous unreasonable joy everyone talked about? Of course he drunk spirit before. But just a little. To feel warmer or to ease the pain. In short breaks between battles in the middle of frosted, covered with snow land. Head ached badly. From hunger, cigarettes, alcohol but mostly from that shitty meeting. What are they always so mad about? He brought victory. Found answers. Prevented more troubles. But... [Seems like the last thing people want is the reality... They demand miraculous solution. Without blood, dirt... Without efforts. If U can't make it like this, U'll end up being a villain in any fairytale.] Head spun. Badly. Polar Death opened one more pack of cigarettes. Finished the bottle and winked to Makkachin: - I look like spoilt brat, right? Teen drinking and smoking at night on the bank. Everyone would think so. Arrogant spoilt brat...

(Makkachin tapped the grass with a tail. At least young master began to talk...)

Snow King snorted with a wry grin. Ruffled soft brown fur and bursted into laughter. It took less then some seconds. He buried face into dog's back, hugging Makka. Laughing turned into tempest of sobs.

*******************************************

- Promise me, we'll visit that place together... That very Neva bank... - Yuuri's embrace became almost painful. Tight to the insanity. But the more possessive his hold was, the more relaxed Snow King felt in arms of his Kay. As if adoration went from skin to skin... He rested a head on boy's shoulder: - We'll do if U want. But... This place is all ruined now. Nothing interesting. Not like he wanted to return to that place ever but... Who knows... Maybe with Kay it will feel different?.. - I have a thing to do there... - Yuuri nuzzled silver locks with a cheek. Softly. Tenderly. But with not-so-hidden insane jealousy. - Even that land itself must see U're not alone anymore.

***************************************

He dragged himself to the Base after dawn. No need to hurry. He had a day-off anyway. Even without mirror he knew he looked like shit. Hang-over and sleepless night had no mercy. While crossing the yard he heard it. Whispers. "Nikiforov was in Safe Zone. Celebrated that victory." "He doesn't care how many people he killed." "Of course. He has money and ranks for it." "Look at him. Obviously had fun all night long." "I wonder if he slept with a boy or a girl? Or both?"

[With my riffle, U, scum!!!!!!!]

In any other condition he'd definitely say something mean. Not because he really cared but because such things need reaction. Actually it was how civil war began. Only because too many crimes were left without punishment by elders. It worked like a banner in the sky: "Do whatever U want. Civilization is over." But now he wasn't in the right state at all... Falling on the bed and sinking in lulling darkness he half-consciously asked himself how it feels - to have someone who would always be by your side? Stand for U whatever happens? Against the entire world... [Nah! Stupid thoughts. Such sentimental stuff exists only in books.] Cuddling darkness dragged him into comforting embrace for next 10 hours.

He woke up in the evening. Left furry lazy ass on the Base and joined the car to the Safe Zone. Not like he wanted to visit it, but he physically wasn't able to stay in these walls. ...Solution appeared in a head more and more vivid with every step on the stone embankment. Yes... Next time. In the battle... To be just a second late... To catch a bullet. And finally reunite with the black abyss. They won't suspect... And won't hurt Makka. They will cherish him for all his dog's life. [Arn't I adult enough to marry the darkness?..] He grinned to this thought. Now it felt even comforting. [Darkness is possessive. It will steal me from everything. Erase memories, duties, burdens. Yeah... That's the best of all...] He leaned to the fence and took out a cigarette...

Shadow. Between houses in fifty meters...

Black abyss looked at him from wide pupils of Asian kid: - Kami... Sama...

******************************************

- U know, it happened every time then... - Snow King lit a cigarette, inhaled the smoke and leaned tighter to Yuuri with his back - I made sure no child from that group of patients died that time. It meant U survived. So... I promised to myself to find U... But every time when I was in Safe Zone... I thought U don't remember me, and it'll be a useless bother... And... U know... I didn't want to see that look... Like... U don't need me... And... He stopped talking. Porcelain body felt tense again. Boy kissed his ear, stroking winter silk: - And?... General shivered and snorted. Bitterly and embarrassed: - Time passed... I... I couldn't even admit it to myself but... I was afraid to see U being in love with somebody else... U know... I thought I just imagined U loving me... I'm sorry, Yuuri! Of course I didn't mean U have no right, I just... Telling the truth Victor was ready to wipe boy's tears and comfort him after that. He almost regretted this unnecessary frankness. But Yuuri's hug only became tighter. Soft lips touched General's forehead: - Stupid kid. I always loved only U.

[This simple?? He isn't offended?? Isn't mad at me?? Despite of what I said??]

Warm fingers went through silver locks. - Vitenka... - boy's voice sounded weirdly (for Snow King's opinion) tender - If U would met me that time... What did U want us to do? General Nikiforov tossed in Guard's arms with a short laugh. Set on the floor not looking at Yuuri and biting knuckles. Even his ears were red. Boy leaned to his back giggling: - C'mon, sir, reveal your secret to your Guardian. I swear to do anything U wanted. No, playful intonations didn't help at all. It only made Victor even more embarrassed. - Well... U see... I... - he deeply inhaled as if before confession in crime - I-wanted-to-sleep-on-your-laps. He blurted in out fast. All red as if being caught on something stupidily childish: - I wanted to lay, cry and feel U stroking my hair. Ok. I said it. Now U can laugh. Yuuri silently pulled him back. To lay on his laps. Being still red and not opening eyes General followed his move. Milky-white fingers began to stroke silver locks, face, neck, shoulders. Slowly taking away burning polar dawn. Like decent black abyss should do. Of course it happened before sometimes. And every time Snow King stayed like this, defenseless and relying on his Kay, Yuuri couldn't help but chocked with bitter tenderness. Because in his hold Polar Death turned again into that lonely boy who was too scared to loose his only fairytale. After some minutes of silent caress, Snow King's lips shivered in a small smile: - Hey, what are U even doing, Kayio?... If U won't stop I'll cry from happiness for real. Boy reached to kiss porcelain, still a bit pink, cheek: - If it's from happiness, I don't mind to cause it. Splinters of northern sky looked into black depth of the Arctic Ocean. With a question Yuuri was able to recognize even before his King realized it himself. He leaned to Victor's lips answering: - I want to be yours. Completely.

*********************************************

Yuuri didn't properly remember later how did they reach their room. All he realized were that icy gemstones and slow nod of his King. After walking in hand in hand Yuuri led his General to the bed to sit there. And got down on his knees in front of him. Silence was tense. But softly. Overloaded with love and wordless devotion. Boy took both white hands kissing bruised from trainings knuckles. Cold fingers tenderly caressed his lips. He leaned in, warming them with breath: - Vitenka... (He loves how it sounds! Tinkling like silvery chime of icicles at the sunny end of the winter.) - I'm sorry... I had to be with U all that time. He buried face into frosted hands: - U were longing for death so often... It's my fault. I wasn't there for U. But... Thank U for waiting until I returned. Strong arms locked him into embrace. Desperate and even suffocating. Also General's voice sounded soft and cheerful: - C'mon, Yuuri, it's not your fault. And don't talk like saying good bye. U remember it, right? How to say thanx for such things in Russian. Boy raised a head. He remembered. Splinters of northern sky looked at him with bittersweet tenderness. That uselessly tried to hide behind a shining smile. Yuuri returned the embrace and kissed porcelain cheek. Trying to fill the innocent touch with all his love. (Not like it was possible though... He knew pretty well nothing can fit in all he felt to this man.) But Victor laughed quietly and happily, digging fingers into dark locks: - I love U, малыш. Yuuri made an unclear puppy-like sound, clinging to Snow King and searching for his lips. Blindly and desperately. Chocking with air and tenderness. It happened to him sometimes. Being overwhelmed with his Yuki no Kami he lost the ability to speak and hardly even breathed or thought. Because need to release all the love he kept for his Snow King was too unbearable. Words can't express it. Boy slowly raised black t-shirt, exposing perfect and scarred body of Winter Lord. Beautiful... Of course he saw it countless times before. Stared mesmerized at water drops sliding this white skin, at moves of strong and lean muscles under silky cover, at sun rays that shamelessly nuzzled every cell (God! He envied them to tears!!!!). Went insane seeing it bleeding in a battle. Cried watching it covered with bandages. And died from shame being unable to stop fantasies looking at drops of sweet and heavy breath of his General in the middle of training. Of course it wasn't the first time he took Snow King's clothes off to say "Aishiteru" wordlessly. By touches. And still every time he was stunned. Like Northern lights his commander's beauty wasn't a view to get used to. Seam of an old wound from the right under ribs. Uneven and partly burned. Yuuri caressed it with fingertips, looking in splinters of northern sky and making a questioning sound. Snow King waved his hand: - Yes. That very one. But now it's fi... Ahhh!!... Porcelain body shivered under soft touch of lips on the scar. Boy's compassion applied to damaged and healed skin went through flesh and blood, making limbs weak and head spin. Wet warmth traced the seam, caressing every uneven line. Cherishing it. As if painful past can be taken away when the touch is tender enough. Yuuri knew pretty well already how sensitive scarred skin can be. He spent hours in General's bed, talking about everything and caressing traces of old wounds. And his Snow King narrowed eyes and almost purred from pleasure that left him relaxed and even weak. And now it ended up just like before: Victor moaned and fell on sheets, letting Yuuri to explore flawless and damaged white silk. Boy crawled on the bed, pulled his General higher and leaned to his body again. Kissing sides, abdomen, chest. Caressing every centimeter with mouth, nuzzling still wet skin with a cheek. He loved every smallest move of lean muscles under this scarred velvet. Every shiver, every soft or death threatening movement. Long time before they saw each other for the first (second if to be concrete) time in their Base hall. Messed up boy, looking younger then he really is in his nerdy glasses and stupid hat with a piglet. And General Snow King. The most beautiful and unavoidable death ever existed in the whole world. Cold fingers went through dark silk. Victor pulled boy's t-shirt to take it away too. And pressed Yuuri to his chest. To feel how cuddling darkness leans in, wrapping around his entire body. So simple. And so good. Better than anything else. Soft lips touched his earlobe: - My Yuki no Kami-sama... Make me yours... How did they undress, took the lube out of the nightstand and ended up entangling limbs and locking lips on each other's, Yuuri didn't properly remember later. He was overwhelmed with fast and heavy heartbeat in porcelain chest. Tried to cling closer to this sound, to dissolve in it, laughing and screaming from happiness with every touch of his Winter God. Honey sparkles in black eyes were a kind of drunk already. As well as bright blush on milky-white skin. Although the reason was General Nikiforov and only him. Cold hand squeezed boy's thigh close to the arousal. Yuuri moaned arching his back and spreading legs. But [so pleasant] grip disappeared... Still breathing hard Victor cupped boy's face. So weird expression of icy-blue eyes... Still clouded with desire but a kind of worried. - Yuuri... - He caressed boy's cheek, blushing. - Are U sure?...

[Not this again, Снежный. Should I beg U to fuck me on my knees? Although... No so bad idea, U know...]

Seemed like mischievous thoughts blinked into Yuuri's eyes, because perfect lips dropped a small relived smile. Dark silver lashes covered splinters of Northern sky: - Are U sure U want me to do it to U first?... Warm fingers laid on reddish cheeks, pulling Victor into a kiss. Tender and reassuring kiss that replaced lots of words. Yuuri stroke silver hair and reached for General's ear, hugging his shoulders: - If U want... I'll repay my debt after... I swear to do my best... Sir. For some moments strong body laid on Yuuri with all it's weight, surrendering into warm, tender touch. As if charging from boy's confidence that was always woken up by physical contact. - Yuuri... - Snow King set on the bed, holding his breath for a moment like before jumping to the water. Boy arched his back, reaching for his face: - Mmmm?.. - I love U... Viktor bended to raise him and hold on his knees, leaning to supporting arm. As a doll or a little sleepy child. Seemed like these associations appeared in heads of them both, because Yuuri smirked gladly and Snow King blushed biting the lip in effort to stop smiling. Cold fingers, slick and wet from lube, teasingly traced Yuuri's hardness and stopped at the entrance. Caressing hand slid from side to side, changing moves from light touches of fingertips to forceful grip with all palm and repeated it again. Yuuri moaned and breathed hard, blindly reaching to caress Snow King behind him. He was already hard. Although things didn't move further then this yet. Panting boy dropped head on Victor's shoulder. To wait became more and more unbearable with every second. Especially if to take in count that hip felt twitching and dripping proof of how much his General really wanted to continue. - Do it... Pleeeeeease... Viiitenka... - Yuuri moaned it almost aggressively, grabbed white wrist and pulled it forward, making fingers to enter inside. Light shadow of pain from hurried move caused a loud moan and frantic jerks of hips. To meet Snow King's hand. Victor's efforts to slow down was met with unsatisfied growl. - Yuuri... Are U fine? Doesn't it hurt? - whisper in the ear was worried but still passionate.

[Fine? Nothing is fucking fine here! I'm almost cuming from your slightest move, Снежный Король, and don't know how much longer could hold back!!!]

- Do me... - Yuuri's husky whisper with closed eyes was even masterful. Of course Snow King didn't listen completely. Grip on boy's shoulders became tighter. Moves of cold fingers intensified, exploring the tight heat from the inside. Sharp, almost tormenting pleasure made him shiver and scream, scratching Snow King's back with one hand and biting another one in desperate efforts not to cum from only this. When Yuuri opened eyes he was already laid on sheets. Victor kissed fresh bruise on his hand. In icy-blue eyes splashed unfamiliar expression. Tender and a bit mischievous responsibility. He leaned to boy's lips, spreading his legs and supporting his butt with one hand while another one still caressed relaxed after it all entrance: - Now... Wet from lube hardness moved inside slowly. Somewhere in the corner of Yuuri's mind blinked a thought that it's good. Good that body feels weird and overwhelmed with not so comfortable sensation. Because in any other way he would definitely cum the second Snow King entered him. And he wouldn't be able to enjoy this very feeling. Of Victor's heating body inside of him. Of icy-blue eyes locked on him with wide pupils, observing every smallest movement - to know if little Kay would feel anything wrong. Of frosted fingers holding boy's hips in deadly strong grip, not letting any [hurtful] hurried move happen.

[Why so slow? Why not painful at all? Don't hold back, my Yuki no Kami-sama... I need to feel U going crazy...]

Yuuri spred himself over sheets, narrowing eyes and moaned. Even simple looking at his blushing and panting but so overprotective Winter Lord could make him finish it accidentally. Even before reaching the actual physical pleasure. - Yuuri?... - white hand laid on boy's cheek. Of course General was going to ask how his boy feels and if they should stop...

[Caught off guard!!!!]

Boy's legs wrapped around his waist, forcefully pushing him deeper inside. Victor gasped, instinctively trying to slow down and realizing that his self-control won't last long like this... Yuuri grabbed his Yuki no Kami into the embrace, tossing under him with closed eyes and an insane grin. Warm fingers traced scarred satin of General's back and stopped on his butt. Squeezing. And pulling forward to intensify thirsts. Just like it happened countless times in Yuuri's fantasies. - Yeah... Like this... Aaaaaahhhh!!!!!! - Boy screamed, digging nails into Snow King's skin. That very spot! If it wasn't still a bit uncomfortable because Yuuri rushed everything up before, he'd definitely cum already... - I love U... My Yuki no Kami-sama... - boy traced fingers through winter locks and [nearly crying from happiness] felt how Victor's body relaxed in his hold and thirsts became more free and wild. Soft lips leaned to boy's face: - I love U too, малыш... Burring face into boy's shoulder, General still did his best to move gently. His caress of dark locks and boy's chest kept a shadow of comforting. As if he regretted causing pain.

[Снежный... Do U really think I won't make U forget all these stupid doubts?...]

With a mischievous smirk Yuuri rolled them to change positions... So he could ride his King. Victor gasped unsurely. But heavy moves of white chest, husky moans and certain feeling of twitching, hot hardness inside Yuuri's body left no doubts: he liked it. Boy intertwined their fingers and began to move. Forcefully and even violently. Trying to take his General as deep as he could. (There were no need to go this far to reach the pleasure. But Yuuri didn't even think about having a release that moment. All he felt was a greedy need to possess his Snow God. Under him. Inside of him. To experience how they belong to each other for real and pass this feeling to his Yuki no Kami.) Splinters of northern sky looked into black abyss. Happy and lost at the same time. Grip of cold fingers on Yuuri's loosened. White hand stroke his hip, reached the arousal and began to move. Blurry world spin around... Through misty from lust mind Yuuri still regretted even that light shade of pain faded away so fast... He wanted...no, he needed everything from his God - excitement, satisfaction, pain, love... - Yu-uuri!!! I'm...close... - Victor tossed on sheets, chocking with loud moans. Thirsts of white hips were fast and desperate. He pulled Yuuri's hand, giving him a sign to move away. Boy pressed both palms to the white chest, holding his General, intensifying moves, trying to squeeze him inside. Bended to his ear and whispered: - Don't spill it outside, my Yuki no Kami-sama. I want everything yours only in me. In any other situations Yuuri would die from even thinking about something like this (moments of self-pleasing in despair don't count)... But not now. He leaned backward, arching his back and supporting himself with arms. To reach the maximum contact... Strong body tossed violently under him. Snow King screamed but Yuuri hardly even realized anything because of heating liquid that filled him inside. This sensation itself pushed him to the limit in no time... He fell on Victor, right on whitish traces of own release. Happy laugh replaced scream of pleasure. Heavy moves of white chest were so lulling... But Yuuri forced himself to open eyes. To look at the most beautiful picture ever - at messy and happy, blushing and smiling Snow King. Still a bit lost. As if that lonely winter child he was years ago (and - Yuuri suspected - still existed deep inside) fell right from the war to the insane water swirl of Kay's love. White fingers caressed boy's face: - I love U... Was it...fine?... Yuuri nodded, chasing away sleepy mist of tired joy. Pecked Victor's lips and smiled, remembering the phrase he knew from Yurio. Phrase that (according to Capitan Plisetsky) contained the highest level of pleasure and amazement. - It was really пиздато!!! ...Icy-blue eyes became round. Snow King's breath stopped. And even before Yuuri realized completely that something was wrong, Victor grabbed him into tight embrace and burst into laughter.

*******************************************

- U know, our Kitty must be hiccuping now... - even after short nap Snow King didn't stop laughing and grumping about their Capitan's prank. Yuuri stretched himself gladly and leaned closer, laying a hand on Victor's butt. In any other case he would at the very least feel embarrassed after that language mess. But still heated body clinging to his, gentle arms wrapped around and still wet feeling between buttocks and hips gave him weirdly strong confidence. - In my land we'd say he must be sneezing... - tip of boy's tongue slightly touched General's lips. Victor smiled caressing dark, silky hair: - I hope both...

- Yuuri... - After some time of silent cuddling Snow King stroke boy's lips with a fingertip, sliding slowly to the neck. - U promised me something, do U remember? For a couple of seconds black abyss was covered with puzzled mist. Then realization came... Yuuri leaned to his King with his whole body, gasping and narrowing eyes with almost predatory look: - I will do my best. As I promised... Deep inside Yuuri wanted to make it perfect for his Yuki no Kami-sama. To do something surprising, something that can excite his General to the limit, something... But he clung to this perfect and tender lips with a kiss and forgot everything. His hands wondered over Victor's body still not completely believing that this absolutely perfect, so beautiful, so loved General and God is here. Trusting him so much. Longing for him. Isn't it all too good for a mere human - to kiss the Polar star?.. Although... (Boy felt it too well now.) Wet hardness touching his thigh made it clear that he's has no right to doubt in God's will. Warm fingertips traced hipbone, teasingly touched arousal and balls and moved to the butt. Fast peck on Victor's lips was questioning. Snow King returned the kiss, reassuringly cupping boy's cheek and nodded. When General did it to him, Yuuri was too excited and happy to notice if the lube is too cold or not. But now he wasn't sure. He held liquid into the palm, sharing the warmth with it and spread it over fingers.

[Is it good enough?..]

He thoughtfully licked the fingertip.

[Must be fine.]

Loud gasp interrupted boy's thinking. Black abyss met splinters of Northern sky... And only then Yuuri realized his General was watching all this scene. Boy blushed, smiled and leaned to Victor's ear, caressing his face: - Sorry for making U wait... Boy's hand slowly slid between buttocks, stroking heated skin, trying to relax it with soft, tender moves. Burning cheek nuzzled Yuuri's palm. Snow King moaned with tightly shut lashes, spreading legs wider and breathing hard. He obviously anticipated for more caress, more touches, more physical expressions of love that only his Kay had a right to give. Boy covered his lips with a kiss. Slow but deep and desperate kiss. His fingertip pressed wrinkled skin a bit more. Not really entering yet, only asking for permission. White hips slightly rocked forward. Encouraged by this move, Yuuri entered him a bit, letting one finger to sink into burning, slippery from lube flesh. Heart thudded. Scarred porcelain chest raised in deep frantic inhales with every move.

[How audible is Snow King's heartbeat now?]

Without thinking boy laid head on this chest. So loud... Mixed with husky breath and impatient already moans. So good... The happiness itself in one sound. Yuuri's lips instinctively touched where these thuds were heard.

[Closer... Even more close...]

Boy covered white velvet with soft kisses. Reached the nipple and caressed it with tongue. Snow King arched his back moaning loudly. Boy's palm that still leaned to Victor's face, stroke silver silk and slid under his shoulders, holding panting General in a tight embrace. Mouth covered sensitive pinkish spot. Sucking. Tracing from side to side. Touching lightly and teasingly. And sucking with a bit of teeth again. Every moan of Snow King sounded more like scream already... Cold fingers traced dark messy hair.

[Should I do more?...]

Boy moved to another nipple and slowly added second finger. Strong body literally melted in his arms with every touch. Snow King weakly laid in Yuuri's grip, blushing and panting. Entrusting himself to his beloved Kay and almost dissolving in every touch and every gentle thirst. He didn't even move, tossing the head back with closed eyes. But perfect lips that let out loud moans were smiling to this so new for him feeling - of being loved. Yuuri clung to him tighter, sloppily kissing from chest to these beautiful smiling lips. Caressing burning body from the inside and feeling how it relaxes around his fingers, boy half-happily, half helplessly realized that he could very possibly cum right now. Just from this sensation. He bit a lip desperately to distract himself with this little pain. And in this moment Victor arched his back, screaming. Icy-blue eyes opened wide staring into the black abyss almost helplessly. Hand that weakly touched boy's side a second ago dug into his shoulder blade with nails, leaving red traces.

[There! That very spot!]

When insane blue sky was covered with dark silver lashes, and heating porcelain body began to move rhythmically to meet his hand, Yuuri looked down for a second. Twitching arousal of his King was all covered with pre-cum. Yuuri gulped fighting the temptation to lick it clean. To feel these throbs into a mouth. He was greedy for every drop... But... Not now. Later. He will do it later. And not even once. Boy leaned to already sweating forehead of his Yuki no Kami: - Do U want me to...? Gasping for air Victor nodded with closed eyes and reached for his shoulders. Yuuri answered the gesture, pulling his King to sit on his laps. Desperate grip of cold fingers will definitely leave marks. Husky moans of his Snow God and insane blue eyes... Everything else disappeared... Yuuri slowly put it in and almost forgot to breath feeling how this perfect body of winter moves forward. To meet him. Boy bit his lip again.

[Not-to-cum-not-to-cum-not-to-cum...]

For a moment blue void fixed on Yuuri's face, slightly returning to the reality. Soft kiss touched boy's bitten lip. Reassuring. Encouraging. Even now Snow King is so protective... So caring... Chocking with tenderness Yuuri hugged his General tighter, kissing porcelain neck.

[Снежный... Let me please U. Let me give all my love to U... Everything I kept for U for so long...]

Strong body on Yuuri's laps tossed, arching the back. Victor's scream was loud. But not louder then thuds of the own heart in boy's ears. He pulled Snow King closer, pressing them forehead to forehead: - My Yuki no Kami-sama... Don't close your eyes. Look only at me. The answer was a frantic nod and fastened jerks of white hips. With an obvious effort icy-blue eyes stayed opened and fixed on black abyss in front of them. Boy's hand laid on Victor's hard-on and began to move. Maybe in black depth appeared a shadow of doubts if he really is able to please his General. Because for a second eye contact was broken. Tender lips reassuringly touched Yuuri's forehead. He gasped, clinging to his King and intensifying moves. Screaming with every thirst, Victor buried face into boy's shoulder. Nails dug into milky-white skin of the back. It will leave both: bruises and scratches. Yuuri didn't even realize he was screaming and grinning, overwhelmed with happiness. He couldn't hold back more. But his General couldn't also... Chocked with moans whisper touched boy's skin while sharp teeth dug into his shoulder: - Yu-uri... Inside... Boy didn't even had time to properly realize... Tight muscle squeezed his arousal in uncontrollable rhythmic jerks, when whitish heat splashed on his abdomen and chest, covering them both. The world shook and melted. Loosing voice and ability to breath, Yuuri weakly fell with Victor on messy sheets, unable to realize completely that his cum is inside his Yuki no Kami now, they did it to each other, it all is for real and he won't wake up anymore desperately trying to cling to disappearing dream. Breathing hard his Snow King weakly caressed scratches on boy's back. It was a bit painful.

[God!!!! So good!!! If it hurts, it means it's for real...]

Yuuri slowly forced himself to rise from Victor's chest. To reach for a kiss. Messy, stuck from sweat silver hair. Burning cheeks. Parted in hard breathes lips. And tired and happy, the most beautiful ever eyes. His General was so stunning that Yuuri even forgot how [pleaseny] exhausted he already was. - I love U. Snegurochka moya... - What??? - Snow King laughed softly. He rarely was this relaxed, completely out of control. - I love you too. But why?? Want me to dissolve from love to U? Yuuri tilted his head to the side. In any other case he'd immediately feel uneasy and nervous but now he was too busy with this living happiness in his arms. - Snegurochka... Isn't it like German Schneekind? Morozko in childhood? It's the analogy of Snow Queen, right? Amount of mythological mistakes in one phrase was unspeakable... General laughed, locking Yuuri in a tight embrace and pecking his lips: - Whatever... When U say it, I love how any of these sounds. Boy pulled his Snow King to lay on his shoulder and caressed his hip in promising gesture: - I won't let my Yuki no Kami-sama dissolve anyway. I'll lick every drop from your precious body. To save it. This night. And always. General snorted. Embarrassed and excited at the same time: - I didn't know Kay could be this intense... Yuuri kissed him. Affectionally despite of all exhaustion: - Kay waited for U for too many eternities, Снежный.