Story prompt: Izuku and Ochako are sharing a meal, but since they're both dorks, it gets rather awkward, so they try to distract themselves from the embarrassment by eating more food. This only serves to make them bloated and gassy, which makes the awkwardness worse, thus sparking a vicious cycle.

This one ended up being huuuuuuuge :o

Warning: contains arousal belly kink bloating burps burp kink tummy rubs

Since he first joined UA Izuku was always really close to Ochako. The two of them were of best friends ever since that first practical hero exam they took with all those robots. As their journey continued the two only became closer and closer. Both had made lots of friends within the school and had their own lives but they never lost touch with each other as their academic and heroic adventures progressed.

So when Ochako invited Izuku over to her dorm to cook together Izuku was thrilled to do so. They'd spent tons of time already cooking together at summer camp before the league invaded and ruined everything so this was like putting on an old glove for them. One that slipped on just as easily as when they first started.

Of course because the two of them were so lost in talking with each other and just hanging out as they cooked they ended up making a lot more food than they originally expected they would.

Well, at least they'd have plenty of leftovers right?

They both eventually sat at the table and put everything they cooked together at the center. Obviously there was way more food than either one intended to eat but at least they could just pick at whatever they wanted if whatever was on their plates wasn't enough.

The two teenagers quickly started eating and straight away their faces lit up at how good everything tasted.

“Mmmm wow this is delicious Ochako!” Izuku praised and took in another pretty big mouthful. After swallowing it down with a pretty hearty gulp Izuku smiled back at Ochako. “You're a really great cook!”

Ochako blushed and took a bite herself unable to gush at the flavor. She gulped and waved her hand modestly. “Oh I just followed the recipe. It was a lot easier than usual with how fast you prepped all the ingredients. I guess with all those muscles chopping meat and veggies is a lot easier huh.”

It was Izuku's turn to blush when he heard that which made him turn to his food. He instinctively ate more to mask his blush. Ochako couldn't help but notice the way Izuku ate. For such a gentle boy Izuku had one of the biggest appetites in the entire school. He could often eat more than most of his most gluttonous classmates. And as he ate here Ochako noticed that he was taking really big mouthfuls and gulping them so heavily that she could practically hear his throat squelching from across the table. Her eyes couldn't help but follow the sizable lumps that emerged and pushed down his throat before disappearing behind his chest.

For some reason that sight made Ochako blush a little more. So she in turn ate more as if to distract herself. Though even then Ochako noticed that Izuky had just the cutest smile on his face when he ate. It was absolutely adorable. There really was such an endearingly boyish quality to Izuku. An innocence and adorability no other student at the school had. Though why she was thinking about that now she didnt know. Which might explain why she once again started eating more to take her mind off of her wandering thoughts.

Izuku finished in record time. He leaned back and sighed contently. “Ahh that was so good,” he said rubbing his stomach contently.

Surprisingly Ochako finished shortly after he did. She huffed very softly and smiled back at Izuku. “You said it Deku! This tasted better than usual for some reason!” She said and patted her tummy happily with both hands. Suddenly she hiccuped making her blush and very quickly cover her mouth. “Oops! Heh excuse me. Think I ate a little faster than usual there.”

“I noticed,” Izuku said with a blush of his own. “Maybe you were hungrier than you thought?”

“M-Maybe,” Ochako conceded. Then she turned to the food still at the table and smiled innocently. “Well good thing there's still so much more right?” She quickly loaded her plate with more food to distract herself.

“G-Good point. No reason we can't enjoy a little more when everything's still fresh,” Izuku said and joined Ochako in reloading his plate.

There was noticeably more on both of their plates than the first go especially Izuku's. The two teens quickly started eating more and seemed to relax a little when they did so. Everything just tasted that good.

Once again when she ate Ochako couldn't take her eyes off of Izuku. He wasn't ravenous like so many other boys in school when he ate. But something about watching him eat so much gave her a funny feeling. She couldn't peg what it was though. The hums he gave were so cute as was his smile. But the way she could see each gulp send a lump protruding down his throat and get capped with a very soft and subtle huff from the boy only stirred Ochako in a way she couldn't describe. But it certainly made her blush which only led to her eating even more to distract herself.

Something else caught Ochako's eye.

Izuku was eating so much that after a while his normally flat and muscular stomach looked like it was beginning to stick out. It wasn't entirely noticeable but his t-shirt was definitely looking noticeably more snug around the middle than it usually did. Why was that detail making her cheeks so warm?

Izuku's thoughts weren't much better. He couldn't not notice Ochako as she ate or how fast she was eating. It was surprising that a girl like her could eat so much and so quickly. And something about that fact caused a stir in Izuku's tummy. Almost like butterflies. Especially when he noticed her own flat tummy beginning to poke out from how much she was eating at so fast a pace.

Why did that detail catch his attention so much?

To take his mind off of that Izuku plowed through his second plate and eventually polished it off. Izuku huffed to himself and rubbed his belly. He still looked satisfied but also had a hint of weariness when he rubbed. Something about seeing Izuku massaging his tummy stirred Ochako even further prompting her to eat faster. Izuku appeared strained for a moment which made his rubbing stop. Instead his fingers tightened against his stomach and he held a fist up to his mouth in time to give a deep closed mouth burp. Even muffled the rumbling sound was pretty loud.

Izuku blushed and smiled sheepishly at Ochako. “...E-Excuse me.”

Ochako giggled and said “You're excused” playfully. But even her giggle didn't hide the fact that the sound had her blushing even more. What was wrong with her?

To Ochako's surprise Izuku quickly loaded his plate with even more food.

“Wow Deku you really are hungry aren't you,” she said.

“M-Maybe a little,” Izuku lied.

Ochako finished her own plate and followed suit. Both teens quickly distracted themselves with more food. Something about eating together without Iida there felt foreign to them. Not unwelcome but oddly anxiety inducing. It was hard to really describe because they both loved each others company and cared deeply for one another. Yet being alone and dining together felt...strange to them. Especially the act itself of just seeing each other eat. Was there something the two had in common and didn't realize until now?

By the time they finished their third plates both were noticeably more full than the first and second go. “Whew. Oh wow. This stuff is almost too good not to keep eating,” Izuku praised as he leaned back and rubbed his belly. It was definitely more noticeably bloated than it was before.

Ochako huffed in a slightly more exhausted way when she leaned back in her chair and held her bulging tummy in both hands. “Ohh man you're not kidding Deku. I'm so full,” Ochako said. And clearly she was even fuller than she realized because without warning Ochako burped loudly. Her face turned as red as Red Riot's dyed hair when she clamped her mouth shut with both hands and went completely wide-eyed. “Oh g-gosh excuse me! I'm so sorry!” She sputtered with embarrassment.

Izuku looked genuinely surprised to hear Ochako of all people give such an impressive burp. But he nonetheless giggled with genuine amusement and said, “Don't be sorry that was a good one!”

“Yeah but that was so unladylike and gross!” Ochako whined in a humiliated way.

“It's only natural. We both ate a lot and ate it real fast. Of course you're gonna have a lot of air in your tummy,” Izuku explained blushing a bit at saying the word 'tummy' out loud which even Ochako smiled somewhat at hearing despite her embarrassment.

Just to prove his point Izuku leaned back in his chair and patted his belly which caused a loud echoing burp to roll out of Izuku's mouth. He normally held them in which was why his closed mouth burps always rumbled so hard . But when he let them out freely they were some of the loudest a person could give.

Ochako was naturally taken back since Izuku was so well mannered. But not only did seeing him let loose so loudly dispel her embarrassment it also had her cheeks blushing for a different reason.

Izuku blushed after. Clearly even he wasn't used to letting out an eruption like that but he nonetheless giggled and smiled back at Ochako. “See?”

She couldn't help but smile gratefully at him for doing that just to make Ochako feel less embarrassed. “Thanks Deku.”

He simply beamed preciously back at her. Then a thought occurred to him. “Can I ask you something Ochako? Don't you usually go off campus with Tsu and Mina most weekend nights to eat out together?”

“Yeah but we've both been so busy these days I thought it might be nice if we could catch up. Just the two of us,” Ochako replied.

Izuku smiled softly. “I'm really glad you did. I always love getting to spend time with you.”

Ochako smiled right back in a very fond and familiar sort of way. “Me too Deku.”

Then Izuku said the quiet part out loud when he scratched the back of his mop of hair and innocently said, “You know from an outside perspective this would almost look like a date!”

The silence between them was deafening.

But the freakout was hilarious.

“A w-w-w-WHAT?!?!” Ochako sputtered with eyes like baseballs.

“AHHH! I-I DIDN'T MEAN LikE-O-OF COURSE THIS ISN'T A DATE!!!” Izuku flailed hysterically while laughing nervously. “JUST TWO FRIENDS HAVING DINNER RIGHT?!”

“R-RIGHT! N-NOTHING ROMANTIC ABOUT THAT!!” Ochako insisted while laughing just as nervously and loudly as Izuku was.

“OF COURSE NOT! FRIENDS DO THAT ALL THE TIME DON'T THEY?”

“ALL THE TIME! JUST-A-ALL THE TIME! EVERY TIME!!!”

“EXACTLY!!”

“RIGHT!!! AND FRIENDS GET FUNNY FEELINGS WATCHING THEIR FRIENDS EAT ALL THE TIME TOO-” Ochako froze in place when she realized she said that part out loud.

Izuku was frozen in place mid-freakout. And in a hilariously deadpanned way he asked, “...What was that last part?”

Ochako's face looked like it was steaming. She sputtered in her inability to think of anything to say. So instead she turned to the food still at the table. “Y-You know I think I'm just really hungry! I'm just gonna go ahead and help myself!”

“G-Good call!” Izuku concurred and loaded his own plate with as much food as it could fit just as Ochako did. “It's still fresh after all! Tastes best going down when it's fresh right?”

“E-Exactly!” Ochako agreed and both immediately stuffed their faces with as much food as they could cram down their gullets at once. Absolutely anything they could do to shut themselves up before admitting anything else out loud.

It didn't matter how full either one was they just kept on eating and eating. Anything to get over the immense embarrassment both felt at admitting anything like romantic feelings towards one another. Such talk was absolute crazy talk after all. It had to be. At least that's what both teens convinced themselves in between swallowing one giant mouthful of food after another.

And the whole while they continued stuffing themselves their tummies continued to expand with the sudden rush of food going down their throats all at once. Both of their stomachs only continued to press and round out more and more with every few hearty gulps both took. Ochako's tummy was getting so big that her bare flesh was beginning to peak out from underneath her shirt. Izuku's tummy was even bigger revealing more of his pale stomach beneath his t-shirt and almost starting to ride up around his belly button. Their embarrassment was thus that they couldn't help just shoveling more and more food down their gullets without any train of thought to it beyond the same thought of “why did I say that?!” playing on loop in their heads respectively.

If these two were at a national eating contest they would win in a heartbeat at the rate they were eating.

The good news was that they had eventually gotten over their embarrassment in the midst of their flustered feeding frenzy. Unfortunately that only happened when the two of them had finished every bit of food they had prepped which left them both incredibly bloated and overstuffed beyond reason.

"Unnnngh...I can't believe we ate so much..." Ochako moaned scooting her chair back and rubbing her incredibly bloated tummy all over with both hands. She looked like she swallowed a beach ball with how round her belly had become in her embarrassment fueled binge.

Her big tummy gave a big grumble which caused an even bigger gas bubble to rush up her throat. Her cheeks puffed as she covered her mouth to try and hold it in but the force of it was so strong that she blew her hand back with a huge absolutely unladylike burp.

HHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUURRRRAAAAAAAAHHHPPP!!!!!!

She blushed immensely and covered her mouth after that powerful eruption ripped past her lush lips.

"...Ex-cuuuUUUuu-se...m-me-eurp-oh god..." Ochako's embarrassment was made even worse when she tried to excuse herself but accidentally burped in the middle of it.

Fortunately her embarrassment was short lived. The immensely overstuffed Izuku held his huge pregnant looking belly with both hands and let loose a giant burp that somehow dwarfed Ochako's in length and volume and practically echoed throughout her whole living quarters.

BBBRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUURRRRRHHHRRREEEEEEEEEEEEUUUUUUUUUURRRRRRRROOOOOOOOOORRRRLPPP!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ochako could seriously feel that record breaking eructation Izuku let loose rattle in her own bones. To say nothing of the blood it sent rushing both to her increasingly red face and her loins.

Izuku panted breathlessly. His huge belly rose and fell with his strained breathing after having so much air ripped out of him all at once like that. He tried to speak but grew strained. Instead he patted the side of his round bare belly hard and gave another burp. It wasn't as deafening as that monster he just let out but it still extended for a few seconds straight.

After Izuku leaned back in his chair and sighed while he ran his hands across his vast pale tummy. "Ohhhh man I'm ssssooo full..." Izuku moaned then brought a fist up to his mouth to give a deep closed mouth after burp.

He was so gassy and Ochako was loving it even if she wasn't faring any better.

The two teenagers struggled under the weight of their own tummies. But they fortunately managed to push themselves up and get themselves sitting down on Ochako's couch together. They sat down next to each other and their immensely stuffed tummies churned and grumbled noisily like washing machines.

Both them looked completely spent. They both groaned and massaged their overstuffed tummies which were gurgling heavier than they'd ever gurgled before.

"Ungh my tummy is killing me..." Ochako whined while she nursed her aching belly smoothly with her hands running up and down her tight bloated flesh. "...Why did we eat so much...?"

Izuku kneaded his much larger tummy until he gave another long throaty burp. Ochako blushed heavily at how she could feel it vibrate through the couch.

"...Wow you sure are burping a lot Deku," Ochako noted in a quieted tone of voice. Like she was doing her best to hide how much it was turning her on.

"Sorry I know it's gross but-"

"-I-I don't mind you can keep doing it!" Ochako blurted and blushed even more. She hoped she didn't sound too desperate when she said that.

Izuku scratched the back of his head whilst still massaging his churning tummy with one hand. "Well I was gonna say it's helping to ease some of the pressure in my tummy. You should let a few out too. It might make your own tummy hurt less."

To illustrate his point Izuku thumped his chest and gave another heavy burp that left him moaning after at how good it felt. Ochako watched Izuku knead and push down on his large round tummy really kneading his fingers into his flesh. And every time he did a really hearty burp would roll out of his throat so forcefully at times he'd even drool a little.

He normally would've been embarrassed about burping so much and so loudly around others especially Ochako. But he'd eaten so much that it was the only way he could settle his stomach down without getting sick.

Little did he realize how much Ochako was enjoying the show.

Ochako's blush wasn't going away anytime soon. She could've just sat there watching Izuku burp well into the night but she was still suffering a pretty bad tummyache herself. So she at least tried to take Izuku's advice to heart. Ochako kneaded her tummy trying to apply pressure that would force more gas out. After doing some kneading she was rewarded with a thick burp that tore out of her mouth.

HHUUUAAAAARRRRRRUUUUUHP!!!!!

It was pretty strong and left her huffing but didn't bring her the relief she was hoping it would. Especially when her tummy gave an even thicker grumble that made her cringe uncomfortably.

"There you go. Feel any better?" Izuku asked.

Ochako pushed down on her tummy again and managed to squeeze another burp out but it was a lot lighter and more strained.

"Ungh I think they're stuck..."

Izuku bit his lips and blushed himself. "...Can I...give you a hand...?" He suggested holding up his hand and gesturing to Ochako's belly.

His face was as red as hers in that moment. But Ochako quietly nodded and leaned back against the couch which made her big round tummy stick out more.

Izuku bit his lower lip and very hesitantly placed his hands on Ochako's belly. He almost whimpered at the way Ochako's bare skin felt beneath his fingers. Her flesh was smooth and soft yet as tight as his from how bloated they both were. He'd always fantasized rubbing ochako's tummy before but never imagined he'd get the chance to actually do so.

He was legitimately overwhelmed.

But once his nerves settled Izuku proceeded to rub Ochako's troubled tummy in smooth circles. Her stomach felt so warm from her natural warmth and the massive amount of fresh food she managed to eat all in one go like that. There was a light wobble to her tummy that caused everything inside of Ochako to slosh lightly with Izuku's hand movements.

Though Ochako's face was red at having Izuku touch her, she groaned at how good that touch felt against her utterly bloated stomach. That only made Izuku blush even more but he continued to rub. Izuku practically lost himself in the feeling of Ochako's tummy. He rubbed his hands across her tummy from the softer thicker bottom all the way to the rounded top of her stomach. The boy almost had to resist the urge to rest his ear against her belly and listen to it gurgling away.

While he rubbed he felt tense portions of skin where gas was brewing and pressed down on Ochako's belly carefully but firmly enough to dislodge the gas. His push was stronger than Ochako's meaning he got a larger portion of gas out. The result of which was a loud really deep burp that sounded like it came from the very depths of Ochako's stomach.

BWROOOUUUUUUUURRRAAAAHP!!!!!!!!

Ochako gasped heavily and covered her mouth out of instinct.

Izuku giggled softly and blushed himself. "Heh hey don't be sorry. A lot of the guys would probably be jealous if they could hear that. But did that at least help?"

"Yeah actually, it kind of relieved some of that tight painful pressure in my tummy," Ochako admitted.

Izuku couldn't help but smile at not being the only one who used the word 'tummy' in the room. "Should I keep going then?"

Ochako hummed and nodded a little more comfortably eager for Izuku's touch.

He continued rubbing her belly all over and using his fingers to push into her flesh. Izuku occasionally just got lost in marveling at Ochako's beautiful belly. The little freckles across her lower tummy and that unbelievably perfect looking belly button. He couldn't help placing his palm just over her navel and blushed furiously when he felt it up. Though when he applied pressure to it Ochako lurched with a sizable gas bubble working its way up her throat.

She instinctively covered her mouth and went wide eyed unsure if she was about to throw up at first.

Instead her hand was blown back as Ochako gave a massive burp that caused some drips of spittle to fly out of her delicate mouth.

HUUUUUUUUUAAAARRRRRRRUUUUUURRRAAAAAAAAHHHP!!!!!!!

As soon as that considerable gas pocket rushed out of Ochako another huge throaty burp followed almost instantly and jostled her tummy slightly in Izuku's trembling hands.

BBBRRRREEEEEEEEUUUUUUUURRRROOOOOOOORRRRAAAAAAAUUUP!!!!!!!

Izuku was kind of stunned. He'd never heard a girl burp so loudly or so frequently in his life, not even Mina. And the absolute last person he expected to hear such sounds from was Ochako.

It was incredibly surprising...and surprisingly hot at the same time. Especially the way her tummy felt like it was jiggling in his hands as the burps rolled out of her.

He smiled and gave the side of her tummy a few pats. "There you go just get it all out," he said.

And Ochako certainly didn't have any problem with that. The more Izuku kneaded her belly the more Ochako found herself burping frequently and quite loudly. There had to be a lot of pressure in her tummy to see her burping so much and so hard.

After a really long eruption rolled out of the girl she slumped back against the couch panting breathlessly. The relief she felt was incredible.

"Ungh...ohhh...w-ooOOOOOoooowwW!!!" Ochako blushed even more despite her decidedly crass onslaught of expulsions just a moment ago. She thought she got it all out but ended up burping the word 'wow' out unexpectedly.

But Izuku saw her embarrassment and grinned. He kneaded his own tummy and gave it a firm pat to burp his response right back.

GooOOod...

...ooOOOOOOOOOOONNNNNEEEE!!!!!!

UUUUURRRRrrrhpp!!!!

Ochako looked surprised to hear sweet Izuku burp talk the response "good one" back at her before just letting out a deep burp at the end. She managed a strained giggle but was blushing furiously.

"I did that on accident...you can burp-talk on command like that?" Ochako asked looking visibly flustered which Izuku didn't seem to catch onto.

"Heh yep! Trick I picked up on as a kid but I don't do it much these days since it's pretty childish."

Between the relief Izuku provided having his hands all over her tummy and her burping her brains out moments ago Ochako's thirst crept up and got the best of her.

"...Well it is just us...besides," Ochako reached over and sneaked herself a feel of Izuku's belly by giving it a playful pat making the much larger tummy ripple a little as everything inside sloshed around and gurgled. "It sounds to me like your tummy could use a little relief too."

Izuku hiccuped from the patting and then Ochako began to gently rub Izuku's much larger belly in a more sensual way. Her touch made him shiver. But it also made his tummy gurgle richly. He grunted and rubbed his chest tenderly.

"Nrf good point. Do you want me to say anything?"

She knew almost right away what she wanted to hear and nudged that large swollen tummy of his insistently when she answered. "...Could you try...burping my name?"

Her thirst was so palpable at that point that even sweet and oblivious Izuku finally picked up on what she was asking and why. There was a slight flicker in his big adorable eyes. Izuku grinned and took in some air until he couldn't take anymore in. Then he leaned in a little closer and gave Ochako exactly what she wanted.

OoooooooooooooOOooooooooo-

chAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaak...

...ooOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORRRRRRrrmmmph!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Izuku burped out Ochako's name straining in the middle until he massively burped out the last syllable in her name stretching it out for as long as he could until he intentionally closed his mouth at the end and let it turn into a big closed mouth burp that Ochako could hear rumbling right in her ear until it ended.

To say that Ochako's arousal reached a fever high would be the ultimate understatement.

Izuku subtly blew the gas out from the side of his mouth and gave his blushing friend a smile that was a cross between sultry and cheeky.

"We should do this again sometime," Izuku said and gently ran his hand over Ochako's burbling tummy.

Ochako leaned in and caught Izuku by surprise by planting her lips onto his. Clearly she couldn't agree fast enough.

Angel With A Shotgun

Summary: The Novak family was big talk,but not nearly as famous as the L/n’s. Togther they can be unstoppable,so what say family ties like guns,drugs,money,and murder?

Paring: Michael!Dean x Male!Reader

1900's Mafia/Gangsters AU

A/N: this is a Micheal fic,but its him in Dean's body so like...idk its the same snake different skin. Also Chuck is referred as Charles

Warning:Blood,guns,knives,gore,torture,swearing. Homophobic comments like just a few. No proof reading

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The Novak's that a family that was one of the most feared yet respected. The way people talk about them down south you'd think they were inspiration for the Bible itself. A man by Charles or Chuck Novak is the head honcho with five sons to help him run is kingdom.

The youngest is Castiel he was probably the nicest of all his siblings,but also the most protected with three other brothers, Gabriel is the definition of trouble and if he slipped up head could easily get lynched good thing he puts that silver tongue to work. Raphael was one of the more head strong,but sadly he was shot when several rivals attacked at on of their bars. Lucifer is the second oldest and the most hot headed with a temper to match the black sheep in his family if you will, then last,but not least Michael he was something else entirely the play boy,a demon is a flat cap and tailored suit.Now that the Novak's have been introduced the world's most feared gang the L/n's is one family not to be fucked with.

(Father's name) leading his kingdom no...empire with his wife (Mother's name) and togther they had only two sons. The second born William and the oldest M/n. William wasn't much involved with the criminal side of the business,but his big brother was the prime example of a gangster. No one besides the L/n gang has seen him he stays out of newspaper coverage and that only allows his terror to run ramped. A man with no face and a title of Satan himself made the oldest Novak just a little timid when he found out. "WHAT THE HELL!!!" Michael threw the newspaper on his fathers desk in anger the older man looked up after glancing at the paper. "I'm due to be wed to a L/n and none the less a man! I can be hanged for so much as saying I do and it IN THE FUCKING BULLETIN!!!" He was seething with hatred in every word. Michael will admit it hurt a lot finding out he was to be wed by the slight disgust look he got while grabbing the paper before getting coffee. "I wanted to tell you sooner,but you were handling something. There's no way out of this a deal was made before you were born me and (Father's name) have been waiting for his wife to bare a girl or your mother to do the same,but your mother's untimely passing and (Mother's name) having gone unfertial our oldest are due to wed." Chuck sighed taking off his thin wired glasses.

"You two were once friends,but I guess time got rid of those memories." Chuck sat down his spectacles down looking at his son. Michael turned to father with shock evident in his eyes. He was friends with M/n L/n the man with no face. Everything was too foggy. The shorter male stood up to a shelf in the office and grabbed a small match box opening it looking around before pulling out a picture. Handing it over to his son he sat back down. "He was one of the only people you'd go to when you were a baby. Heavens he was probably the only person you liked,but when he was five and you were three the fact that our business was centered around blood and there's on bonds it became a fight,mafia versus a gang, and you guys saw eachother less and less till around the time Luci was born not at all." Chuck sighed. The young man was in shock a little boy maybe two or three was cuddled up to a baby in a pale blanket that he remembered was blue fully awake and if the picture could come to life he's sure the boy was humming all while rubbing the infants back.

"No ones seen a picture of him in twenty six years and he was on his fathers hip with a match box car. He's in town and should be coming for dinner here by himself in three days time. So til then keep your brothers in check we don't need them to shoot the young man with a stray bullet." With that Charles dismissed his eldest son as the green eyed boy stormed off in a huff. Michael started to do digging. M/n L/n was in headlines weekly in every post known to man from shootings,assassination,and gangbanding to rumors of his love-life,what he wears,and people claiming to have met him. One thing caught his eye that made him falter. "Gangsters M/n L/n Captures Murderer" that when he started reading the full paper that crumbled a bit due to age. Maybe he's not so bad the guy he caught never saw a courtroom,but met a far worse end all because he caused problems with his people. It was admirable the brunette knew he'd do the same,but not just for anybody. Marriage wasn't settling well with him that didn't mean it felt completely wrong.

One day later

Looking in the mirror Michael watched as his maid adjusted his tie while another smoothed the wrinking in his white button up and vest of his three piece suit. As the oldest he had business to handle people to keep in line. When their hands left his body they scurried out of the room rushing to be down stairs before him. His dress shoes met the floor as he grew closer to the door his youngest sibling ran up next to him. "Can I come,please!" His raven head of hair and doe blue eyes almost made him cave,but with a firm look he gazed down at him. "Sorry little raven,but I have things to handle another time." The pout on Castiel lip didn't move as he held up his hand his pinky out. "Promise?" Interlocking with the ten year olds pinky. "Promise." With that he happily skipped away to play in the garden.

Out the door he went. His flat came on his head and coat thrown over his shoulder his effects tucked in his waistband. Screams caused him to smile as he stood before the butcher on payroll. He wore the man's leather apron having abandoned his tailored suit jacket in the front of the deil. "Were is my money?" He cut the man some more as he continued to scream in pain the white fire from the rusted meat hook in his shoulder flaring with each jerked motion. "Help please!" He yelled all of a sudden in the past hour he hasn't called for assistance. "No can do." A deep voice said behind the oldest Novak turning around sharply his green eyes clashed with e/c. The man looked like anyone off the street his shoes tattered and clothing dirty form labor no bet. "I came for my five notes." The didn't seem fazed at the torture. "Fuck you gypsy scum!!" The pig of a man responded as the tall s/c man crept closer gripping a knife Michael was using. "I just unloaded a load of meat in the summer heat that would give the devil a sweat and all I asked for my effort was five notes nothing more nor less so cough of the money that you clearly owe both of us or I'll carve it out of you and make you squeal like the piggy bank you are." His tone dropped further the blade under the man's fat chin and the Novak felt aroused at the threat. This guy meant every word when the hanging man spat in his face the off color of snuff and blood made the normally clear liquid seen and thick. Let's just say Michael sat back crossing his legs in a attempt to compose himself as the man hit pitches not even the girls in the church choir could master. The heavy weight man forked over the money then some I got my full and he ended up giving the mystery man a hundred notes if he made the pain stop after pocketing the money he shot the man.

He turned around and began to leave when the brunette stopped him. "Wait! I give you my thanks friend he was stubborn for a hour almost" The h/c man turned looking at him giving a smile tilting his head for the Novak to follow as he stepped out the deli. Scrambling he walked down the street next to the man their attire clashing a well tailored suit next to rags that looked more like a potato sack then cloth. "Glad I could help a fine looking fella like yourself." His flirtatious grin caused butterflies to run ramped in Michael's guts. As they walked down the street they slowly moved from the good side of the town to the slums. No cars drove on the gravel a fire hydrine spat out water for all the children playing around it,women hung up clothes on wire between tenements and men looked more like the mysterious gypsy next to the Novak. Speaking of the mystery man he went to each crowded tenements door and knocked the women or young men of the families came to the door and he handed over twenty notes each. The women cried and clung to his tall figure and the boys almost men looked at him in wonder like a hero before running off to tell the adults of the place. "Why did you do that?" Michael asked as they walked out of the town. "You worked for that money and gave it all away." He was confused he's never seen a man work for a family that wasn't his own.

"They need it more. Schools out the children don't get meals and the men work hard to feed them at least a meal a day. I'm alone here no lover or children with the energy and muscle to work." Novak wasn't sure before,but he was sure now this was love and it felt better then any harlot he could spend the night with. "Thats very admirable of you." Michael complmented which was not a normal accuracy. "It was truly nothing to admire,handsome. I'm not saying I'm amazing,but sometimes I'm decently above average. That's what people need someone decent enough go care."

Before he knew it they were back on his side of town and getting closer to the business. "It's been a pleasure,Mr. Novak." The man dripped his head as he turned to leave somewhere. "You know who I am and I don't even get a name." He turned back around and got closer to him his chest pushed up against his till he was pinned to the wall he leaned down his lips so close to his face just out of reach. "I'm N/n,but you can call me the man of your dreams." Michael almost leaned up to peak his lips when the warm body pulled away taking with it the lust filled tension. N/n turned and left out of sight that night was full of the man tossing and turning dreaming of the e/c man that made him feel high as the clouds above. N/n smiled as his men drank around him he finally saw his baby boy all grown up and he's taking what's his this time.

Two days later=Six Hours Before Family Dinner

The buzz of the New Yorker coming to Kansas was the rage. Any man that was new in town was watched like a hawk by commoners and the Novak's. Michael was no longer looking forward to this marriage he didn't want this man no matter who he was. N/n stole his heart like a petty thief and ran away from him. No one in Kansas knew who he was a s/c skinned,h/c haired,e/c eyed gypsy was all he had to go on no last name just a image that burned bright in his mind. Michael sighed as he left his office and went down to the bank he needed enough cash on hand to throw away on booze and maybe angel dust. People parted for him like the red sea and he easily got money when gun shots went off. The teller in front of him fell to the ground wounds ridding his body and Novak turned to see men...no boys with guns.

"Everyone get down on the ground. We've come only for the money we won't hesitate for blood as well." The group chuckled as the leader smirked people shook as they easied to the ground all except Michael who stood tall. "Ah! If it isn't Michael Novak no men to protect you now." A man he didn't realize came behind him hit him over the head with his gun causing him to fall to his knees. "Pathetic." The band of thugs leader grabbed the Mafia bosses chin looking and the blood coming from his brow. Someone stood from on their knees a flat cap covering their hair and a long trench coat that was only slightly open. "It would be in your best interest to leave,boys." They all train their guns at the man. "Why's that,you motherless bastered?" The man turned his gaze upward deadly sharp e/c orbs looked at him and Michael was in shock it was N/n. "Cause I have twelve guns ready to blow holes in you and your men." After his words ten men stood up all wearing the same clothing flat caps,overcoats,and suspenders with a Tommy on every man except the leader. The cowardly man looked frightened looking around keeping his gun on the s/c man. "I only count ten I still have the upper hand." N/n gave a devilish smile that made Michelle gaze on love struck and excited for what's to come. His gray trench coat hit the floor and two sawed-off shotguns in each hand. "Upper hand you say?" He pulled both triggers the left one killing the man sending himself flying back and the right killing the man behind Michael blowing his brains painting the tan walls this made the others fire as well. The bodies of the criminals and one civilian litter the floor.

N/n sent the men off to get the people out as he walked up to the bleeding Novak. "Thank you." His green eyes gleamed making the standing man give a grin as he held his hand out to help him up. "Consider it a gift from M/n L/n." The gleam disappeared from his eyes his soon to be husband was in town has been in town and set his men up to keep him safe. "Now if I'm not mistaken you have a dinner to get ready for,pretty boy." He takes the handkerchief out of his waist coat dabbing the blood away. "Will you be there?" Michael voice sounded weak so full of hope. "You can count on it. We'll be seeing eachother alot more." The man stood up and quickly left and not a moment later Mafia men came in running tending to the boss. Looking longingly at the piece of cloth (Your Initials) were sowed into the reddend white square of fabric.

Family Dinner was about to start the Novak's sat at the table Charles sitting at the end his three eldest sons to his right while his youngest sat to the left two spots were available one across from Michael and the other on the opposite end of Charles. A maid came in the dinning hall and cleared her throat. "The L/n's are here." Two young men came through the door one taller then the other the shorter of the two sat across from Michael while the other sat at the other end of the table closest to Michael and the other man. Charles smiled at them both and Michael was in a state of shock. "M/n been a long while hasn't it?" The oldest Novak looked at the man infront of him waiting for a response when the man he thought to be just a gangster working under the L/n's answered. "That it has Chuck. Sorry father couldn't come he had some other business to handle." N/n or M/n now to Michael's knowledge said before placing a hand on the man beside him. "This is Benjamin or Benny my right hand man don't mind him." The man gave a nod of acknowledgment his blue eyes piercing. "Heard about the blood bath at the bank quite impressive from what Michael has told me." A side smile and a teasing look was turned the mentioned Novak's way. "Saw low life scum trying to rob the place and touching what's mine,their little toys they call guns were child's play compared to my men." M/n sent a wink addressing the men hitting Michael from behind.

"Are you a knight that saves people?" The youngest asked his blue eyes wide in wonder. The s/c males eyes turned to the child a warm smile gracing his lips. "Sometimes when I want to be." A bubbly giggle rang out. "You saved Mikey making him your prince." Those words caused different reactions from all the men. Gabe covered his mouth trying not to laugh at his older brother,Lucifer grinned leaning over to his brother. "Did he have to kiss you sleeping beauty?" He chuckled lowly making kissing noises in his ear,Micheal was beet red as he couldn't bear to face any of them,Chuck smiled looking at his son and son-in-law,Benny nudged his boss sliding something to him while everyone was distracted. "Yeah and I'm gonna make him my king and take him to my castle." M/n leaned towards the boy and whispered in his ear. "We'll ride off into the sunset and live happily ever after." Castiel was gobsmacked as he gazed at his brother all giddy he was gonna live a fairy tale like in all the books their mother use to read. "Um if you'll excess me. I need some air." Micheal stood up and not long after M/n followed when given a reassuring nod from Charles.

The garden of the estate was beautiful in the moonlight and it wasn't hard to spot the oldest Novak on a bench on looking the pond that reflected the night sky. "You knew the whole time who I was." Micheal didn't look up at the man as he sighed. "Yes I knew who you were...we were once closer then the stars and the skies itself." The L/n sat next to him on the bench looking forward. "Chuck knew as well." Michelle turned in shock at that statement a goose chase for nothing. "He didn't know what I looked like now,but letters everyday asking about you seemed to do the trick." Those e/c eyes turned to look into those apple green ones. "Learning from a young age that in you grasp was the person you were due to wed was shocking I almost hated you,but the moment you grabbed my finger as if I'd slip away made me realize it can't be so bad." M/n held out his hand palm up so the younger male rested his hand in his grasp. "I was afraid at first you'd hate me. So I swore to protect you always. Some of my men live here with their families and they keep me posted. Just last year a rat was found on you door step admitting his faults."

Micheal remembered that the maids came rushing to get the family and a man bloody and beaten spilled his guts about planning to cross the family having been hired by a rival Mafia to get information to attack them at a weak state. "I know this won't mean munch to you know,but maybe at some point you'll be happy to carry my last name and call yourself my husband." In M/n hand that wasn't interlocked with Micheal's he opened a box revealing two wedding bands both were silver while one had a gold trim and the other had a f/c trim. "No matter what,Novak,I'll be there when yiu need me through it all most of the times guns blazing." M/n chuckled lightly taking in a deep breath. "Just ponder on it,pretty boy,I'llbe here waiting." as he slipped the ring on the silent man's finger before doing the same with himself he gently kissed the top of his head as he stood up and left wanting to give him space. Micheal smiled at the ring that perfectly fit his finger. The one man he felt attracted to was his guardian angel always there no matter what.

Lifting his hand up he kissed the metal band as a laugh left his lips. "My angel with a shotgun."

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A/n: Second Male reader and I had to spell check for almost 50 she/her in her so I think I got them all lol.

@spnquotebingo

Quote: "I'm not saying I'm amazing,but I'm decently above average."-Blacklist @spnquotebingo

Analyzing Jon’s Speech Patterns around Dany and Sansa (cont.)

*Spoiler, this is very long.

Awhile back, I did a statistical analysis of how frequently Jon spoke when he was around Dany as compared to Sansa (and Jon with Dany versus Jon not with Dany) (x) and discovered the following:

Daenerys dominated the “speaking volume” in their shared scenes in Season 7.

Jon’s was on screen with Daenerys almost as often as he wasn’t...yet he spoke about 3x more frequently when Daenerys wasn’t in the scene.

While sharing far less screen time with Sansa in S7, Jon still spoke nearly as much dialogue in their shared scenes as he did with Daenerys in S7.

Now, I’m sure some might be wondering why this matters. Maybe the scripts just didn’t lend themselves to Jon going on long winded monologues. Maybe shouldn’t be “how much Jon spoke”, but “with what quality did Jon speak?”

This is focusing on the content of Jon’s dialogue in S7 to try to quantify what people who feel that Jon-Dany romance fell flat: it wasn’t bad acting, it was the deliberate withholding of pertinent personal information that defined the lack of depth in the build up to the Jon-Dany perceived romance.

First, I’ll describe my methods, then I’ll show some results!

1) I love statistics;

2) I am careful about how I use them;

3) If you’re reading this and think my methodology is unfair, go ahead and tell me why because I don’t like putting out predetermined outcomes

So here’s what I did...

I loaded Jon’s dialogue into textinspector.com

It’s a really useful tool that allows you to analyze text and speeches and gives scores for readability, textual diversity, and MTLD (measure of lexical diversity). MTLD essentially scores how measured language is used in a text. The higher the MTLD score, the more impersonal the text is and a lower scores means the text is more personal and casual. 

Basically you’d expect a scientific article to have a high MTLD score and a casual dialogue between normal people would score significantly lower. 

So from here on, remember that the higher the MTLD score, the more “formal” and less personal text is. It’s more thick with narrative. It’s deliberate and careful. It’s generally more disconnected with emotion.

I’m going to be showing the lines of text I included along with the scores. This isn’t perfect as the engine for some reason didn’t recognize certain points as whole sentences but it doesn’t matter for this exercise because I only focused on the words themselves, not the number of sentences spoken. Also, I did this manually so it’s entirely possible some words or lines were missed but I’m pretty sure I got it all.

Ok enough setup, here we go:

1) Jon’s interactions with Dany were very imbalanced quantitatively 

Dany spoke significantly more than Jon. I already knew this from the previous stats post I put up, but it was confirmed again. Here’s a word count summary:

First meeting word count: Jon 270 / Dany 505 Granting Dragonglass word count: Jon 22 / Dany 112 Cave Scene: Jon 83 / Dany 83 (!!! first even scene!) Drogon Petting: Jon 26 / Dany 122 (back to normal) My Queen scene: Jon 43 / Dany 97 We’re fucked scene: Jon 55 / Dany 150

Right away you can see the imbalance. The cave scene is the only one that wasn’t drastically imbalanced, but it ended with Dany demanding that Jon bend the knee, mirroring the demands Stannis set for Mance in order not to burn and for his people to survive. Eesh.

That speaks to the quantity of their interactions only. What about the quality?

[much more under the cut]

2) Dany started impersonal; ended with wearing her heart on her sleeve

Probably not too surprising whether you buy into a Jon-Dany relationship or whether you think Jon is manipulating Dany...but it’s nice to see empirical data backing this up anyway.

Here’s the rundown from Dany speaking to Jon:

A) First meeting: I split the first meeting into two parts; the beginning where Dany was just meeting Jon and it didn’t become completely antagonistic and the second half where Dany lectures Jon about what she’s gone through and tells him her personal story. It gets more personal...so I would have to guess that the MTLD score is higher for the first half and lower for the second half...the first half being more impersonal and the second half becoming more personal as she grows angrier with Jon.

Here is the written text.

Remember, if I’m correct, then narrative and formal text should score higher on the MTLD scale. The higher the number, the more impersonal the lines.

This is the MTLD score for the first half of the scene where Jon and Dany met.

A score of 94 indicates that this is very formal. Information dumping, asking rhetorical questions, etc.

This is the written text of the second half of the scene.

Passionate. Angry. Contentious. Much more personal. 

And the MTLD score? (should be lower)

About 75 now. Well, that makes sense. Let’s go on...

B) Granting the Dragonglass

This is Dany seemingly trying to stay impersonal with Jon after he reacts more or less silently to her inquiry about his brothers. The MTLD score should be higher. There’s nothing else very personal here.

94. The pattern holds. She made an initial inquiry but it went nowhere so the formality continued.

But Dany looks back. And that’s key.

We’re given a visual clue that she’s softening to him.

C. Dragonglass Cave / Drogon Petting

I put these two scenes together because I see them as Jon’s two biggest attempts at swaying Dany before the wight hunt. The Dragonglass cave is where Jon appeals to Dany’s reasoning. He uses some personal touches (like, literal physical touches) and gazing looks, but ultimately he approaches Dany with more words and information.

The Drogon petting scene is different because it’s almost entirely based on a gesture meant to impress Dany. Think of Quentyn Martell in the books trying to tame the dragons (and burning to a crisp). There’s no other reason for Jon to just waltz up to a dragon and pet it, especially when Dany had Drogon land and use the same stalking movements that have always been meant to intimidate people. Jon tries a gesture to influence Dany but I think it’s similar to the Dragonglass scene insofar as it’s a display of Jon being proactive in trying to sway Dany directly.

By this point, Dany is starting to become very attracted to Jon. This is perhaps the scene in which the ACTUAL equal coming together of Jon and Dany was the most possible. He approached her with the big picture. He tried to stress working together. He used what he could to show her that the enemy is real. As already pointed out, the dialogue word count is even for this scene. Dany appears genuinely interested as he’s showing her the cave. An alliance hangs in the balance.

The MTLD score should be dropping at this point if I’m right.

54. She’s speaking “to” Jon, not just “at” Jon. She’s trying to figure him out. She’s taking more time to explain herself. She’s asking meaningful questions. This is what happens to an MTLD score in this kind of text, it drops. It’s less academic, more personal.

“I’ve seen you staring at her good heart.”

“Ser Davos gets carried away.”

D) Jon leaves Dragonstone / “My Queen” scene

Jon’s got Dany really invested in him. There’s really not much more to say. Here’s the written text, and the MTLD score.

39 MTLD. You get it now, right? The more she gets wrapped up in Jon Snow, the more personal she’s getting, the more she’s giving him a glimpse into her soul and it’s reflected in this MTLD score that I’m using as an impartial empirical measure. I am quantifying for you what we see on screen; Dany is getting more personal with Jon as the season goes on.

6) Dragonpit and We Sail Together

I’ll save you the suspense, the pattern holds for the Dragonpit scene and the We Sail Together scene.

Dany conclusions: Starts out trying to talk tough...softens...falls in love...reveals everything to Jon.

3) Jon started informally and then completely shut it down

Yes, it’s completely true. Jon and Dany had sex. But that’s about all they shared mutually. Seriously. Just wait until you see this.

The first time Jon meets Dany, he is speaking passionately, from the heart, and with honesty. His MTLD score should be low then, right?

MTLD score of 47 for the first scene. Keep this in mind. 

Wanna see something funny? This is all the dialogue Jon Snow spoke 1 on 1 to Dany for the ENTIRETY of the rest of the season.

This is as personal as Jon gets with Dany the rest of the way. I see tons of narration. I see passive participation in the conversation. So, again, if this holds then the MTLD score should be pretty high, right? Remember, my theory is Jon spoke passionately and personally and then learned that he can’t do that and that he has to be a passenger. So his score of 47 from the initial meeting should be at least somewhat exceeded here.

*edit note* the screen cap above doesn’t have about 3 sentences but the MTLD score below includes those*

Almost 90. There it is. Jon spoke one on one with less personally than he did when they first spoke as complete strangers. He was simply observational and/or narrating the things around him. “You weren’t gone long” - “you’re still here” -etc. 

This is also where I have to point out that Jon spoke just 40 sentences  (give or take...remember, some of the punctuation messed up the sentence counter) to Dany one on one after his initial meeting with her.

And let’s dive deeper in WHAT Jon actually ever says to her.

This is where I ask you to play a game. Forget that you might know what Dany says in response in these scenes. Try and figure out what Jon is talking about just by reading Jon’s dialogue.

Something’s amazing, Tyrion likes to talk, Jon didn’t expect something from her, but thanked her. Hey! We know something about the Children and the First Men and working together and that Jon’s people won’t accept Dany. We know there are some gorgeous beasts. She went somewhere, and Davos exaggerates. 

Uhhh ok...this is going well.

Jon’s really sorry about something and regrets going. He thanks Dany, then not Dany. And.....WHAT THE FUCK SHE’S HIS QUEEN NOW? People are going to see what she is - that she isn’t like everyone else - and someone unreliable told her something. And that Tyrion said they were fucked and Jon agrees.

Epic love story.

Do you see what I mean when I say that Jon didn’t reveal anything to Dany? He held back any meaningful feedback except in 4 instances. 

His most passionate dialogues were: 1) Their first meeting when he says why he won’t bend the knee, 

2) explaining the need to fight together in the dragonglass cave, 

3) on the dragonstone beach where he asks her not to use her dragons to melt castles and burn cities, 

and 

4) pleading with Dany to allow him to leave because it’s the best chance for the world to survive extinction. 

And true to form, Jon’s  passionate pleas get a lower MTLD score of 68. This is real!Jon and it matches up with his MTLD scores in other settings.

Conclusion: Jon tried to engage with Dany as equals and as potential partners. He was discouraged by her conduct and then shut down everything. His dialogue became colder and more impersonal as their supposed love story was meant to be “heating up”. Their perceived connection is based entirely on visual cues.

4) Jon’s behavior with Sansa is significantly more balanced and personal

Just another Jonsa lyin’ about Jonsa again! But seriously, it’s empirically true.

Here’s the word count overview:

Jon-Sansa reunion word count: Jon 176 / Sansa 170 Tent scene before BotB: Jon 133 / Sansa 237 Battlements: Jon 86 / Sansa 47

The word count pattern holds in S7. Jon and Sansa speak about equally following the pardons of Ned Umber and Alys Karstark, Sansa speaks more words when Jon seeks her counsel about the scroll from Tyrion, Jon speaks more words when he’s telling Sansa that he’s leaving for  Dragonstone.

It’s an interesting side observation that the word counts are pretty even but I’m more interested in the MTLD scores for Jon and Sansa.

Remember, the lower the score, the more personal the dialogue has been as a pattern. 

Jon and Sansa should be scoring very low in S6 - Jon should be scoring higher in S7 because (as I’ve written) I think he’s intentionally trying to distance himself from Sansa due to uncomfortable feelings about her role in his life. 

First, the reunion. 

Jon’s score first, then Sansa’s.

54. Very personal. Intimate.

47 from Sansa. Very personal. Intimate. Their MTLD scores are also close to one another indicating a mirroring.

Now how about the tent scene? 

It’s contentious. Sansa is begging Jon to listen to her. Jon becomes agitated at Sansa’s protests. Sansa’s MTLD score should be lower than Jon’s but they both should be lower. First, Jon.

69 (nice) or 70. A little elevated, as expected. But still lower than the 90 Jon displays with Dany. What about Sansa?

55. Again, slightly elevated but lower than Jon’s. And, AGAIN, even though they’re disagreeing, the numbers are far closer between Jon and Sansa indicating that they are about as equally emotionally engaged in the conversation.

How about the scene on the battlements?

The pattern holds again! In case you’re wondering, Jon speaks with an isolated MTLD score of 52 and Sansa a score of 55. Incredibly personal. Emotional mirroring. Equal emotional engagement.

*EDIT FORGOT TO ORIGINALLY INCLUDE JON’S MTLD SCORE FOR THE S7 E1 SCENE WHERE I BELIEVE HE’S TRYING TO EMOTIONALLY DISTANCE HIMSELF FROM SANSA*

AND YES THE PATTERN HOLDS AGAIN!

It’s no accident either.

Jon and Sansa are consistently in the 50′s with each other and that number elevates with everyone else. Jon is usually in the upper 60′s- 70′s for scenes excluding Sansa and Dany while Sansa averages in the 70′sand goes up to even the 90′s in scenes without Jon.

Let’s play the “can you understand what’s going on in the scene just by Jon’s dialogue” game again. This time with Sansa.

They used to eat some particular vegetables. They shouldn’t have left. They couldn’t have known something probably because they were children. Sansa was occasionally awful, but Jon was no fun as a kid either. He insists he has nothing to forgive but then forgives her. They have bad ale with the Night’s Watch. He must watch over her or a ghost will murder him. They can’t stay there, though, because something really bad happened. The Boltons seem to be where they want to go. He doesn’t have an army either. I guess there’s someone available but they’re not there to serve him. He’s tired of fighting. Damn. He’s fought a lot. He’s killed brothers? Wildlings? Men that he admires? A young boy? He lost, too? This guy’s been through some shit.

Someone has a new dress...oooooooo. He’s stuttering over his words. Then he’s thanking Sansa for something. Davos saved Jon and has a reputation because Davos served Stannis. But there’s no time.  For what? Well apparently to get more men. Someone’s overconfident. Jon has been probably doing more than playing with broomsticks. Ok this is an argument. Oh, it’s about Ramsay Bolton. A bad character, but Jon believes he’s fought worse. Jon doesn’t want to give up on Rickon. Is Rickon a drug addict? Anyway... 

He’s apparently getting obvious advice now. He still is being told he needs to get a larger force but he doesn’t think it’s  possible. Black sea creatures are not coming to help. He won’t let this bad man touch Sansa again. He’ll protect her, he promises. And now he’s decorating her room and making her bed. He’s not a Stark and Sansa is in charge of WF. She deserves it and they’re there because of her. Jon lost the battle until Sansa brought the Vale - and they came because of Sansa. Now apparently a Baelish guy had previously sold Sansa to the bad people. Jon insists that Sansa and he trust each other. And Father promised...something? Hmmm.

But do you see what I mean by the quality of Jon’s dialogue completely blowing away the quality of his dialogue with Daenerys? Either it was an accident and they didn’t realize they had Dany speaking over Jon repeatedly and that Jon had completely passive and DIFFERENT speech patterns than he’s displayed anywhere else (speech patterns completely devoid of meaning or exposition) - or- this was done on purpose. I’m, again, betting on this being intentional.

Overall conclusions:

A lot of people have called the J/D romance weak...and I think it’s intentionally written weak.

Jon is demonstrably different after the first scene with Dany.

Specifically this moment.

This is when, in my estimation, Jon made his judgment of Dany. He never ever spoke like this to her again...and really he hardly said anything at all from this point. Especially in moments when he was isolated with Dany.

He let her talk. He let her and her followers tell him what she wanted to hear. He even copied her own lines. 

"People thought dragons were gone forever but here they are. Perhaps we should all be examining what we think we know." ~Dany, ep 3

"I never thought that dragons would exist again. No one did. The people who follow you know that you made something impossible happen. Maybe that helps them believe that you can make other impossible things happen." ~ Jon, ep 4

And he completely allowed himself to become a passenger in their conversations judging by both the word counts and the quality of his conversation.

I’ll leave you with this. These are the lines spoken by Jon alone with Daenerys the rest of the season.

The skepticism of the Jon-Dany romance isn’t just plausible, it’s quantifiable. 

It’s one-sided and it’s setting up a pretty dramatic final season.

What is the difference between single carrier operations and multi carrier operations? Isn't it just exactly the same thing?

Hardly. 

I’ve had several questions relating to the three aircraft carriers currently parked in the Pacific, conducting exercises close to North Korea, but this question here really neatly summarizes the general gist of all ‘of em. It’s an especially interesting question because our aircraft carriers are operating air wings of only 60 or so aircraft, due to budget cuts - despite them being designed to handle at least 100, and perhaps as many as 110, depending on what combination of aircraft are being used. Thus, two US carriers with 60 aircraft wings muster 120 aircraft... only 10-20 more than a single Nimitz is theoretically capable of mustering. 

However, aircraft carriers are far, far, far more than just floating runways - aircraft carriers are huge, floating airbases. And airbase are fucking big. Airbases aren’t just places to park planes - they also service, maintain and repair them, so they’re equipped with big machine shops and tons of specialized equipment to enable that. They also store the munitions aircraft use; hundreds and hundreds of bombs, missiles, cannon shells, etc. And fuel, of course. Airbases - like civilian airports - have their own fire departments with trained personnel and fire engines, that train specifically for the requirements of fighting aircraft fires. 

And then there’s the people that do all this shit - the service technicians, the firefighters, the ordinance techs - and then you have the people that support the operations, like air attack planners, intel officers, and other unfortunates that have to keep pilots in their goddamn chairs long enough to brief them. They need to eat, sleep, shit and shave, and that requires people to cook their food, sell them razors and even janitors to clean the bathrooms. A base has a PX store, showers, and even recreation facilities so all these people don’t go stark raving fucking mad and kill each other. Oh, speaking of, you’ll need MPs to handle things like that - basically, a big airbase is a small fucking city. 

Now say you’re President of these GREAT UNITED STATES, and you wanna fuck up some mouthy faglourde over yonder. He’s too far away from the US, so you’ll need to build a new airbase in a conveniently-located ally nation to kick his shit in with. 

All that shit above? ALL of it? Billions of dollars of equipment, thousand(s) of personnel, and a small city’s worth of buildings and concrete? You gotta build it. All of it. From scratch. Starting with a big field in a kinda sorta flat place somewhere. G’luck. 

An aircraft carrier is all of that shit, but in a huge-ass boat that you can just sail around wherever you want. And that’s why they’re so goddamned expensive, valuable and powerful - it’s far easier to sail a carrier into an area on-demand than it is to build an entire new airbase (or significantly upgrade an existing one, or civilian airport), even after you account for a carrier being more expensive per-unit of everything due to the need to cram it all into a goddamn boat. 

So with two carriers in the region, we’re basically operating the same number of aircraft as one carrier, but split between two different airfields. Twice the number of bomb handlers, service techs, machinists, system-checkers, gizmo-polishers and whizbang-whackers per aircraft. You could cram extra personnel into one carrier, but the productivity gains will be limited when nobody’s got enough room to turn around without dickslapping the clown behind them, you know? 

And then there’s just the number of runways to use. An aircraft carrier equals one whole runway. That’s it. These days you can’t just line airplanes up on the deck from the halfway point, wave a flag, and let’em zoom off all at once - you have to line’em up, hook them to the catapults, and fire them off four at a time (assuming all four fucking cats are actually working.) That takes a goodly amount of time to get a strike package airborne, and the first guys up will be guzzling fuel, so you have to launch some Superbugs five-wet for buddy-tanking top-offs, and, and, and... and then there’s recovering the motherfuckers. Which you can only do one at a time. And since carrier landings are Very Hard, some of them will have to go around, and everyone might have to wait a bit while you turn into the wind to launch some alert-five fighters off the waist cats to check out a suspicious bogey... or more damn five-wet Superbugs to tank up people too low on gas because of waiting on all these fucking shenanigans. And you gotta get all these assholes back on board to turn them around for the next strike, and that’s basically playing one of those fuckin sliding-block puzzles but with F-18s in the hangar, being towed by aircraft tractors driven by 22-year olds you wouldn’t trust with a fucking tricycle on shore. 

Air ops are hard. They are very hard. Handling the logistics of them is no easy matter. So if you can split that load between two carriers - or even better, three - you can maintain a much higher operational tempo. Say you need 40 aircraft for a strike - for one carrier, that’s pretty much every F-18 on board. It’ll take a long time to launch them, form them up, make sure everyone’s tanked up (which will take a few Superbugs out of the strike to do) and get them heading in the right direction. And it’ll take a while to recover them. And the first aircraft, being rapidly turned around, will have to wait for the aircraft that landed last to refuel and re-arm before they can sortie together again. And you’ll be interrupting this shit often to refuel your ASW helos, or because the Hawkeye has a funny sound in the engine and needs to swap off with the ready crew, or whatever the fuck. Ramirez, do fucking everything. 

But if you split that load between three carriers, it goes a LOT faster and a lot smoother. One-third the load on each ship means a three-time longer duration of avgas, munitions, and crew morale, too. 

And this is in the modern age. This also applies to WWII era operations, but in even greater degrees, because they didn’t have the angled decks that allow aircraft to land while others are taking off (the “waist cats” on the end of the angled deck, where landing aircraft won’t smack into their ass-end if they bolter.) As mentioned above, back then you could line up half the air wing on the deck and have them all take off at once - but the penalty was that lining up the other half of the air wing and launching them took a while, even if they were already prepped - you had to wait for the elevators to bring them up (30 seconds at least,) then push them into position, etc. This was/is called “deck spotting.” So unlike modern carriers - where you’re stuck with launching aircraft four at a time via the catapults, with the time it takes to hook’em up and prep the launch - the penalty of waiting for the “second half” of the strike package was much greater compared to just sending the first “deckload” off alone. So if you needed to get as many aircraft airborne as possible, launching two “deckload strikes” from two carriers would effectively put one whole carrier worth of aircraft into the air - but in a fraction of the time. 

You didn’t have air-to-air tanking back then either, so protracted landing ops would often see returning aircraft too low on gas forced to ditch near the escorts. And without the ability to launch and recover at the same time, if enemy attacks found you while you were busy recovering aircraft, you were SOL. You also had your CAP fighters rotating in and out periodically, which could interrupt landing ops (and cost you aircraft low on gas) at awkward times as well. So having one carrier dedicated to defensive air ops while others launched/recovered strikes was very important - it could also recover stray aircraft that needed to land now due to low fuel state. 

Now coordinating between multiple ships is pretty hard to do, because every ship - and their leadership, and crew - is often different. This was apparent at Midway, where the Japanese - which had been practicing multi-carrier ops for a while - were able to launch aircraft from four decks, all of them getting airborne within a few minutes of each other, and then form teams in the air with their own ship-specific squadrons merging seamlessly into larger formations, commanded by someone from a ship different than theirs, but still working together as a team. That’s not easy to do - units train together for a reason, and because of the nature of carriers, meeting up with a pilot from another carrier and forming a flight with him is like teaming up and working with another pilot stationed at another airbase, that you’ve never personally trained together with before. So your doctrine has to be great, and everyone has to be on the “same page.” You also have to train specifically for ops like this - which is exactly what our three carriers in the Pacific will soon be doing. At Midway, the less experienced crew/aircrew of Hornet fared rather worse than Enterprise and Yorktown in these regards - but the US also operated their carriers separately, which would prove to be a doctrinal/strategic error in employing multiple decks as well. 

In sum, aircraft carriers are big. They’re floating airbases, with all the connotations that come with them - including the “residency” of units attached more or less permanently to them. Employing one carrier, you could probably call “tactics.” But when you bring multiple decks into a situation, you’re automatically talking about operational-level employment. It’s a whole new scale.  

Thirty three

The St. George Marathon had long been on my “must-do” list for many reasons. First, it’s one of the most scenic marathons in the country. Second, it is notoriously fast due to its net altitude loss. And third, I needed a race in Utah.

I signed up in the spring and trained through the summer for the race. During training, I really concentrated on speed work, particularly the runs that I was supposed to do at race pace. In the past, I would slack on those runs and not put the effort forward to run fast. This season, I really pushed even when it was difficult. I surprised myself when it wasn’t overwhelmingly hard to run 10 miles at my Boston Qualifying pace (8:20). I was feeling very good going into the race, and in the back of my mind, felt that a BQ was within my reach.

The course for St. George begins 26.2 miles north of the city. I was up very early to catch a shuttle from the hotel to the next bus area that would then take runners to the start line. The loading was pretty efficient, but I was early. I assume as the morning went on things may have gotten a little more frantic as runners wanted to be sure not to be left behind.

I sat up at the front of the bus and tried to sleep a little. It was interesting to listen to the drivers on the c.b. radios. They were mostly volunteers, and some of them weren’t too sure how to get to the location of the start. I was glad to hear my driver confidently giving directions. These roads were pitch dark, steep and twisting.

When we arrived at the start camp, we were generously given gloves and a heat sheet. I was already wearing three shirts, a stocking cap, and pants. And I was freezing. We were up 6,000 feet and the wind was blowing through the mountains unrelentingly. My watch said it was 44 degrees, but it felt a lot colder. Race officials were prepared though. Extending for about 200 yards, they had set up bonfires every 10 yards or so. And they began lighting them. It was a sight to behold. Camps of strangers began to huddle around each bonfire, though not too close because the whipping wind made the safe area pretty far out.

And speaking of my watch, I was already irritated. After I had run my two mile shake out the day before, I guess I hadn’t seated it properly on the charger, and when I looked at it on the bus, the battery was only at 65%. There was no possible way it was going to last me the whole race at that point. I’ve had such trouble with watches, but this was user error and it made me even more mad. I decided to start it up and see how far it would get me, but I knew it wouldn’t be much.

I sat huddled next to a fire until the last possible moment, made my way to the portopotty and then got into the starting corral. I had taken off my leggings and the heat sheet, but I was sure I needed to start with all the rest of my layers. It was still completely dark and not warming up at all. The countdown came and the race started. I started up my watch as I crossed the tracking pad, with little hope that I would get any good info from it.

The announcer asked runners not to keep their heat sheets on them in the starting corral because they would be a trip hazard when the race started. Boy, were they right. Those things whipped in the wind and wrapped around legs. I only saw a couple, but it was definitely dangerous. Of course, also dangerous were the usual people who had positioned irresponsibly in the in the corral who were walking right away, and those who were darting in and out to get in front of them.

For the first hour or so, I was really cold. I kept thinking I would warm up, and though the sun did rise as I was hitting mile 4, it didn’t come up over the mountain to produce any direct light. I had thrown out my gloves too early and my right hand (farthest away from the sun) was distractingly cold. However, I was running great! I knew the first seven miles would be a gradual downhill, so I ran fast to put some minutes in the bank. As I always do, I was ignoring the rule of going out slowly, but with the downhill it felt like I would be making more of an effort if I put on the brakes.

I hovered around the 3:35 pace group through these miles. As we approached mile 7 and the first stretch of uphill, I casually joined onto them. The two leaders were young guys, and they introduced themselves at this point to take our minds off the impending hill. A discussion began about the hills in the race, and one woman was a real bummer when she listed all the hills and how difficult they were and how once you get to the top of this one at mile 7 it’s just the beginning. I quietly made the suggestion that she refrain from continuing the conversation, and slowly pulled away.

Miles 7 through 11 were an arduous uphill. Coming into that stretch, my per mile pace was 8:00. I told myself that if I got to an average 9:00 per mile by mile 11, I would still be able to make up the time to get back to my BQ. Amazingly, my pace didn’t fall by that much! I really had been training on hills so maybe it was all paying off. I continued to blaze through miles despite the slightly slower pace. By mile 11 I was at 8:20 average per mile, which is my BQ pace! And I knew some major downhills were coming, so I was feeling really confident.

The landscape was really beautiful. We were running on a highway, but it was carved into mountains and along canyons, not a house or person in sight. Most of it was rock, some beautiful red, and sections were grasses and deserts. The sun behind the mountains to the east was particularly amazing as it cast a rainbow in the sky before it crested.

I hit halfway and felt amazing. The miles were going by faster than I’ve ever experienced. Obviously, that’s because I was running faster than I ever have, but I wouldn’t have expected this. On my typical races, I am a tourist. I’m running along enjoying the scenery. Sometimes I’m bored and have to sing songs in my head, or list the Cubs’ starting lineup. In this race, I never had a thought in my head other than about my time, the course, or my form. Tragic, because if I had been going slower, I would have enjoyed the views more!

The most epic moment of the course was at mile 15. I was still screaming along, when we rounded a bend and there was a road sign stating the angle of the downhill would be 6+%. I took a deep breath and went forward. It was almost all I could do to not roll head over heels. It was so steep that some people were actually walking. I continued my general practice of trying to relax my entire body when going downhill. I think it was really conserving my energy throughout the race, and it was also really exciting to feel this pull of gravity without fighting it. I had to take a picture here too, because it was undoubtedly the most beautiful part of the race.

Miles 16 through 18 were supposed to even out flat, so I had to refocus and start working some different muscles again. Brett was planning to meet me around mile 16 so that was going to be a good boost. The race had sent info out to say that spectating this race would be difficult because it was going down just one highway, which was closed, and that very few roads could meet up. The only official spot they could recommend was in a state park, at mile 16. Parking would be limited, so you could buy parking in advance for $7, which I did, and prepped Brett on directions. The best laid plans though. As he has found in so many races, there was just no way to cross the race route and get to this parking lot. And if he had, he would be stuck there all day. Try as he might, he had to bail on that vantage point and find a new one.

Of course, I didn’t know this, so as I passed through this section, I was scanning everywhere to see Brett. He wasn’t anywhere, and the crowd started to thin, and I thought “oh no, he just missed seeing me and now he won’t know where I am.” This is wrong, because he was tracking me on his phone, but my marathon brain had a panic moment, and in that moment,  I decided to call him. Very unusual, as I don’t think I’ve ever made a phone call while running a marathon,  and also, I was running faster than ever so I don’t know how I had the physical coordination. I may have been slightly affected by the altitude. Nonetheless, I called his number and told him that I missed him at 16. He said he was a little bit down the road, and he would see me soon.

With that I hung up and started looking for him again. At this point I was also really fed up with carrying my phone. I was using an accessory that tucked into my shorts and clasped with a magnet to hold my phone and my Gu packets. It usually works ok, but that day, I just couldn’t get the magnet to grab and the whole thing kept slipping down my shorts. Way down. It was very distracting and uncomfortable. I spent so much time fishing for that thing and trying to reclasp it. Again, very difficult when running 8 minute miles.

Finally around mile 17 I see Brett on the sidelines waving and smiling. As I take another step toward him, he seems to be looking down, and grabbing something on the ground. I see him talking to someone, and he looks stressed. From that distance, it looked like he was reaching into his bag on the ground, and asking someone to help him find something inside. I thought to myself “I don’t need anything from the bag! Don’t worry about it!” But as I get close enough and begin to pass him, I see that he is holding up aa woman who is unconscious! I made a wide eyed look at him, and he looked at me disappointingly, and I shouted “it’s ok!” and I ran along. I was sad that we didn’t get to share good vibes, but I was proud that he was there to help this woman. Turns out, she was just spectating the race next to him, when all of a sudden she just sank down to the ground. That’s what he was reaching for. Her husband and Brett lifted her up and she was out cold. There was aa police officer right there that took over for Brett, and she did finally come to. No idea why that happened to her though.

Brett looked around and saw they didn’t need him, so he quickly put a plan together to speed down the road and see me again. It was much less dramatic this time and a great boost! I was dying to know the story though!

At mile 18 we were hit with a pretty daunting uphill. To this point and through it, I never walked. Not even at the water stations. This may actually be the first marathon that I can say that for. The hill was difficult, but it almost felt good on my legs which had been so abused by the downhills.

By this time, I was approaching an hour remaining for me to hit my Boston Qualifying time of 3:40. I really wanted to give myself some cushion and finish at 3:38 though. And I was running just fast enough. In fact, I was running ahead of the 3:35 pace group, and I started thinking I may actually be able to beat 3:30.

My legs were screaming for mercy. Unlike other races, I wasn’t mentally tired, or even physically exhausted. It was more like I was in pain. Every step felt a little like being hit by a car. It started to get in my head, and I began surrendering to the negative. I do this thing where I put a really awful grimace on my face so that spectators can see how unhappy I am. It’s silly to do this, and really only uses up energy, but for some reason it’s what I do when I’m mad that I’m running.

It was getting hot as I came into mile 23 and reached the city of St. George, and I was crabby, but starting to feel like the end was near. Those last three miles can seem really long though. My time was looking great, and slowly it began to occur to me that if I could maintain, I would definitely beat my BQ. The distraction of the city and the spectators offset some of the pain.

A great thing the race did was put a mile marker at 25.2. Near the end, that last 0.2 miles really starts to nag at you because you know you won’t be done at mile 26. With this mile marker I could really believe that I only had one mile to go, and that I was going to get my Boston Qualifier. I started to cry, sob actually. It felt so amazing. As I was about to turn to the final stretch, I saw Brett again on the sidelines! I was crying and so happy about my BQ, but he totally confused me that he didn’t seem overly excited and didn’t even say anything about my pace. I couldn’t figure it out…but later he explained that he never knows my pace because he doesn’t use the race trackers and doesn’t know what time I start. Ha! After all these races I learned something!

Pulling through to the finish line and I see my time in the 3:32’s. I slowed ever so slightly so I could cross the line of my 33rd marathon in 3:33. It was amazing. I was so happy, but of course no one around me had any idea what I had just accomplished: qualifying for Boston with 7 minutes to spare and beating my personal best of 3:48.

However, I didn’t know for sure…because literally as I crossed the finish line and stopped my watch, it died! Amazingly, the watch kept my time for the entire race with starting at 65% battery. Of course, I knew I had gotten the 3:33 but without my watch confirming it, I felt a little like I had dreamed it. A text came through on my phone from Elissa, who had been tracking me online, and she said, “did you just qualify for Boston?” I texted her back and asked for my official time, and when she said 3:33:08 I just cried. I texted Brett and said, “I just qualified for Boston” and he was like “what?” And I was like “OMG you didn’t know…”. He said he was crying and so happy for me, but also trying to figure out how to come find me at the finish line. In the meanwhile, I was texting everyone with so much pride. I couldn’t believe it…my life’s running goal was finally accomplished.

Just A Little

One of the things I love about Mickey and Ian is the way Mickey tries to develop himself to be a better person/ a better partner for Ian as their love blossoms. One thing I would have loved to see was Ian and Mickey confront the violent side of their relationship and maybe make different choices so here is a small Shameless Imagine about that and how it could have happened.

     The argument had begun over a damn cross-word puzzle. It was on the back of paper that Ian had picked up on a whim to find out what was going on in the world outside of South-Side Chicago, USA. He had skimmed the news stories, most depressing, some shocking but he had come to the conclusion that the rest of the world was just as fucked up and miserable as them and been about to chuck it in the trash when the puzzle caught his eye.

He had found a mostly working pen and a crumpled joint down the side of the sofa and been working his way through both the joint and the puzzle when Mickey walked in.

“Hey!”

A kiss, always a kiss no matter what sort of day he’d had, and Ian noticed that he tasted of beer already.

“Shitty day?”

“Too fuckin’ right. People don’t just buy guns anymore, they fuckin’ haggle and some dipshit tried to hold me up with my own fuckin’ stock. Like I would keep the fuckin’ things loaded for some asshole to rob me with?”

Ian laughed and wrapped his hand in the front of Mickey’s shirt, pulling him down and kissing him again, his tongue gently gelling with Mickey’s before softly biting his full lower lip.

“You want me to take your mind off it?”

Green eyes met blue and for the first time that day, Mickey smiled a genuine smile and let his breath out in a soft exhalation of happiness.

“You already did but if you want to fuck, I need to shower first.”

“Sure. I’ll try and finish this while you wash up.”

Ian gestured to the paper folded in his lap and Mickey raised one finely arched eyebrow at him

“You checkin’ their spelling?”

“No, it’s a cross-word.”

“Cross-word? The fuck is that?”

Mickey sat down beside Ian and peered at the little grid, some blank squares already filled in with Ian’s scruffy penmanship.

“You have to try and fill it in based on the clues, here.”

Ian explained, and Mickey nodded, a small frown creasing his brow.

“Right. They give you money for it?”

“No, it’s just for fun.”

“Fun? Shit.” Mickey eyed it doubtfully and then shrugged.

“Alright. Give me a clue.”

“Er …”

Ian looked doubtfully at the clues that were left

“I’ve done the easy ones ...”

“So give me a fuckin’ hard one.”

Mickey snapped, the humour of his statement lost on him and his eyes narrowed as Ian laughed

“What? You think I’m stupid or somethin’?”

“No it’s just ‘Give me a hard one’ ? C’mon. Dude, seriously?”

“You gonna give me a fuckin’ clue or should I just fuck off and leave you jerkin’ off over your fuckin’ paper and how smart you are?”

Ian held up his hands and looked at the list of remain clues again.

“OK, how about this one … ‘Correct name for the North Star’ seven letters.”

Mickey sniffed and absent-mindedly rubbed his knuckles over his chin thinking

“Polaris.”

“What?”

Ian sat back and looked at Mickey in open surprise

“Fuckin’ polaris. The polar star. Brightest in the night sky.”

Mickey jabbed at the paper with his finger

“Write it down, it’s right.”

Ian duly wrote it in and grinned at Mickey

“How did you know that?”

“I dunno. Discovery channel maybe. I know things.”

Mickey sounded defensive and Ian realised that he had insulted him without really meaning to.

“I know you do. Hey, I’m sorry. I was being a prick. You want another?”

“Yeah sure.”

Mickey plucked the joint Ian had discarded from the ash tray and lit it with one hand, the other slung across the back of the sofa, loosely around Ian’s bare shoulders, his fingertips lightly caressing the skin in small, gentle circles.

“What is Canada’s national animal? Six letters.”

“Moose.”

“That’s five letters.”

“Fuckin’ Mooses then.”

Ian laughed and kissed the edge of Mickey’s jaw

“Wolves.”

“Nah that’s a plural. It would be a single.”

“Wolf, then.”

“That’s four letters Mick.”

“Fuck! What are you, the fuckin’ letter police?”

Mickey’s brows drew together as he tried to think of something else and Ian snapped his fingers triumphantly

“Beaver! It’s a beaver!”

“The fuck! No one has a fuckin’ beaver as their national animal.”

Mickey shook his head and scowled

“No, it is! I remember at school we did a project on Canada ...”

“Beavers are like fuckin’ river rats with retarded tails.”

Mickey drew heavily on the joint and Ian rolled his eyes

“Whatever, I’m writing it in.”

“No! It’s not a beaver it’s got to be like … a black bear or something.”

“You get the whole ‘number of letters’ thing, right? Six. This has to be six.”

Ian flinched as Mickey thumped his arm lightly.

“I’m not fuckin’ dumb...”

“Then stop acting it! Jesus. It’s fuckin’ beaver. Idiot!”

Ian snapped and thumped Mickey back, hard. It was a split second and Ian immediately wished he hadn’t said it, hadn’t hit Mickey so hard but it was too late and as if in slow motion he saw the emotions flicker across his boyfriend’s face; shock, hurt, anger and then that impenetrable mask of indifference slammed into place, shutting Ian and the rest of the world out, sealing Mickey in on himself, a defence mechanism that was no doubt learned as a little kid trying to survive in a house with Terry Milkovich.

“What the fuck did you just call me?”

“Nothin’. I shouldn’t have said it. I’m sorry.”

Ian tried to touch Mickey and the older boy flinched backwards, slapping his hand away and standing up. Ian stood too, the paper and pen falling to the floor, forgotten in the heated atmosphere of the room.

“You didn’t say nothin’, huh? You sure? Cause if you want to say it again I’m fuckin’ listening.”

Mickey stepped forward, his eyes flashing dangerously, arms loose by his side, a fighters stance.

“Jesus!”

Ian threw his hands up in frustration.

“Why does everything have to be like this with you? I’m an asshole for two seconds and suddenly we have to fuckin' knock the shit out of each other?”

“Oh, so I should just take it, huh? You fuckin’ call me stupid and laugh at me and I’m supposed to just take it?”

“No. You can tell me I hurt your feelings or ...”

“You didn’t fuckin’ hurt my feelings! Fuck you!  Think I’m some sort of little pussy bitch as well as dumb?”

Mickey shoved Ian in the centre of his chest with one hand, it was rough but not vicious. A warning.

“Stop it! Stop hitting me every time you feel insecure.”

Ian shoved him back and Mickey came forward, years of training, of conditioning, pushing him down the same road he had followed his entire life. Someone insults you, you hit them. They hit you back, you hit them harder and you don’t stop until they quit getting up.

He wrapped his left hand in Ian’s vest front, dragging him forward, a harsh echo of Ian’s earlier action. There were no kisses now.

“What did you call me, bitch?”

Mickey raised his fist and Ian stared at him, hard.

“You hit me and we are fucking through. I mean it.”

Ian’s voice was flat and authoritative, with no trace of bluster. Mickey flinched as if struck and his eyes widened. He lowered his arm and let go of Ian’s clothing and stepped back.

“What do you mean ‘through’?”

“I mean through. Over. Done. This is not the way we are going to live.”

Mickey swallowed hard and folded his arms across his chest. He knew Ian and knew when he made his mind up there was no changing it. If Ian said they were through then they would be through and nothing Mickey said or did would be enough to change it once it was done. Fear curled in his throat making it hard to speak.

“You’ve hit me before, I ain’t ever threaten to leave you for it.”

Ian was smoothing down the fabric of his vest and massaging the patches on his chest where Mickey’s knuckles had pressed in, bruising him, but at Mickey’s words he looked up, ruddy eyebrows drawn together in a frown.

“You’re right. But it has to stop Mick. We can’t go on like it. I can’t. I don't want to be scared of my boyfriend.”

Ian's words cut him deeply and Mickey didn't know what to do with the feelings of guilt that made his shirt feel too tight across his shoulders and the house suddenly too small around him. His mask of indifference wavered, cracked and broke.

“So then what? You want me to talk about my feelings, like some faggot on the TV whining about his wife leavin’ and the dog fuckin’ dyin’?”

“No. But I want you to stop using your fists. I mean, Seriously Mickey. Is this what you want to be? Some asshole like your dad, knocking me around, knocking Yevgeny around?”

“Hey! Fuck you! I’ve never touched that kid!”

Mickey snapped, pointing a finger angrily at Ian but not moving forward, not touching him.

“Not yet. But when he gets bigger? When he learns to talk back, to say ‘Fuck you!’ … you gonna punch him in the face?”

Ian challenged, never taking his eyes from his boyfriend. He watched as initial shock turned to revulsion and then to guilt.

“No. Course not.”

Mickey mumbled and pursed his lips looking away from Ian’s face.

“Fine. Then you can control it and you can stop doing it to me. You want us to be together? You stop hitting me.”

Ian spoke firmly but not unkindly and Mickey forced himself to look at him again.

“So from now on, if I slap your ass when we fuck, you’re gone?”

Mickey shrugged one shoulder upward trying to downplay the emotions running through him, the panic he felt at the thought of Ian walking away from him.

Ian’s lip quirked upward in a lopsided smile

“No, but that’s different. I’m talking about this.”

he gestured to the space between them, the room and the atmosphere that still crackled with the threat of violence.  

“I piss you off and you bust my nose, my jaw, whatever. It’s not love, Mick. It’s wrong.”

“Yeah, well. I don’t like it either, but it’s kind of who I am, Ian. It’s what I am.”

Mickey shrugged again and looked downwards, studying the frayed caps of his boots, steel visible beneath the fraying leather. He didn't know exactly what love was and was not, had never known but he thought maybe with Ian he was starting to learn. He looked up at the sparks of gold and copper that the sunlight sent streaking through Ian's hair and at the smattering of freckles that criss-crossed his nose and cheeks and Mickey knew with a certainty that if he could not teach himself what love was with Ian Gallagher, he would never learn it in his life.

“So you’ll change. Just a little. And so will I.”

Ian stepped forward tentatively and held out his hand, as if approaching an unfamiliar dog that might bite him if he moved too quickly. Mickey met his gaze and stood perfectly still, letting Ian cup his cheek in his palm.

“I’m sorry I was an asshole. I know you're not stupid.”

Ian murmured and drew in close enough to feel the heat of Mickey’s body and feel the soft warmth of his breath as Mickey reached up and threaded his tattooed fingers through the lengths of Ian’s hair, gently pulling him down until their foreheads touched.

Mickey’s eyes blurred into twin blue orbs and then disappeared as he closed his eyes and ran his free hand up the length of Ian’s bicep.

“I’m sorry I scared you. I don’t want to scare you, Ian.”

“It’s OK. We’re OK.”

Ian slipped his hands under Mickey’s shirt and stroked his back gently

“I love you.”

“I love you too.”

“It’s not a fuckin’ beaver.”

“It is. But fuck it, who gives a shit?”

Ian pulled out of the embrace and grinned down at Mickey.

“Get in the shower. I’m going to scrub your back.”

“Yeah?”

Mickey’s own grin was almost shy and Ian took a firm grip on his ass and drew him up onto his tiptoes. Mickey gasped and gripped Ian’s shoulders equally hard.

“Not just your back.”

Ian growled softly, delighting in the way his words made Mickey lick his lip and the way his pupils swelled, darkening his blue eyes, the last of the fear leaving them until only lust remained.

“Fuck yeah, beaver boy.”

Just A Little.

One of the things I love about Mickey and Ian is the way Mickey tries to develop himself to be a better person/ a better partner for Ian as their love blossoms. One thing I would have loved to see was Ian and Mickey confront the violent side of their relationship and maybe make different choices so here is a small Shameless Imagine about that and how it could have happened.

                  The argument had begun over a damn cross-word puzzle. It was on the back of paper that Ian had picked up on a whim to find out what was going on in the world outside of South-Side Chicago, USA. He had skimmed the news stories, most depressing, some shocking but he had come to the conclusion that the rest of the world was just as fucked up and miserable as them and been about to chuck it in the trash when the puzzle caught his eye.

He had found a mostly working pen and a crumpled joint down the side of the sofa and been working his way through both the joint and the puzzle when Mickey walked in.

“Hey!”

A kiss, always a kiss no matter what sort of day he’d had, and Ian noticed that he tasted of beer already.

“Shitty day?”

“Too fuckin’ right. People don’t just buy guns anymore, they fuckin’ haggle and some dipshit tried to hold me up with my own fuckin’ stock. Like I would keep the fuckin’ things loaded for some asshole to rob me with?”

Ian laughed and wrapped his hand in the front of Mickey’s shirt, pulling him down and kissing him again, his tongue gently gelling with Mickey’s before softly biting his full lower lip.

“You want me to take your mind off it?”

Green eyes met blue and for the first time that day, Mickey smiled a genuine smile and let his breath out in a soft exhalation of happiness.

“You already did but if you want to fuck, I need to shower first.”

“Sure. I’ll try and finish this while you wash up.”

Ian gestured to the paper folded in his lap and Mickey raised one finely arched eyebrow at him

“You checkin’ their spelling?”

“No, it’s a cross-word.”

“Cross-word? The fuck is that?”

Mickey sat down beside Ian and peered at the little grid, some blank squares already filled in with Ian’s scruffy penmanship.

“You have to try and fill it in based on the clues, here.”

Ian explained, and Mickey nodded, a small frown creasing his brow.

“Right. They give you money for it?”

“No, it’s just for fun.”

“Fun? Shit.” Mickey eyed it doubtfully and then shrugged.

“Alright. Give me a clue.”

“Er …”

Ian looked doubtfully at the clues that were left

“I’ve done the easy ones ...”

“So give me a fuckin’ hard one.”

Mickey snapped, the humour of his statement lost on him and his eyes narrowed as Ian laughed

“What? You think I’m stupid or somethin’?”

“No it’s just ‘Give me a hard one’ ? C’mon. Dude, seriously?”

“You gonna give me a fuckin’ clue or should I just fuck off and leave you jerkin’ off over your fuckin’ paper and how smart you are?”

Ian held up his hands and looked at the list of remain clues again.

“OK, how about this one … ‘Correct name for the North Star’ seven letters.”

Mickey sniffed and absent-mindedly rubbed his knuckles over his chin thinking

“Polaris.”

“What?”

Ian sat back and looked at Mickey in open surprise

“Fuckin’ polaris. The polar star. Brightest in the night sky.”

Mickey jabbed at the paper with his finger

“Write it down, it’s right.”

Ian duly wrote it in and grinned at Mickey

“How did you know that?”

“I dunno. Discovery channel maybe. I know things.”

Mickey sounded defensive and Ian realised that he had insulted him without really meaning to.

“I know you do. Hey, I’m sorry. I was being a prick. You want another?”

“Yeah sure.”

Mickey plucked the joint Ian had discarded from the ash tray and lit it with one hand, the other slung across the back of the sofa, loosely around Ian’s bare shoulders, his fingertips lightly caressing the skin in small, gentle circles.

“What is Canada’s national animal? Six letters.”

“Moose.”

“That’s five letters.”

“Fuckin’ Mooses then.”

Ian laughed and kissed the edge of Mickey’s jaw

“Wolves.”

“Nah that’s a plural. It would be a single.”

“Wolf, then.”

“That’s four letters Mick.”

“Fuck! What are you, the fuckin’ letter police?”

Mickey’s brows drew together as he tried to think of something else and Ian snapped his fingers triumphantly

“Beaver! It’s a beaver!”

“The fuck! No one has a fuckin’ beaver as their national animal.”

Mickey shook his head and scowled

“No, it is! I remember at school we did a project on Canada ...”

“Beavers are like fuckin’ river rats with retarded tails.”

Mickey drew heavily on the joint and Ian rolled his eyes

“Whatever, I’m writing it in.”

“No! It’s not a beaver it’s got to be like … a black bear or something.”

“You get the whole ‘number of letters’ thing, right? Six. This has to be six.”

Ian flinched as Mickey thumped his arm lightly.

“I’m not fuckin’ dumb...”

“Then stop acting it! Jesus. It’s fuckin’ beaver. Idiot!”

Ian snapped and thumped Mickey back, hard. It was a split second and Ian immediately wished he hadn’t said it, hadn’t hit Mickey so hard but it was too late and as if in slow motion he saw the emotions flicker across his boyfriend’s face; shock, hurt, anger and then that impenetrable mask of indifference slammed into place, shutting Ian and the rest of the world out, sealing Mickey in on himself, a defence mechanism that was no doubt learned as a little kid trying to survive in a house with Terry Milkovich.

“What the fuck did you just call me?”

“Nothin’. I shouldn’t have said it. I’m sorry.”

Ian tried to touch Mickey and the older boy flinched backwards, slapping his hand away and standing up. Ian stood too, the paper and pen falling to the floor, forgotten in the heated atmosphere of the room.

“You didn’t say nothin’, huh? You sure? Cause if you want to say it again I’m fuckin’ listening.”

Mickey stepped forward, his eyes flashing dangerously, arms loose by his side, a fighters stance.

“Jesus!”

Ian threw his hands up in frustration.

“Why does everything have to be like this with you? I’m an asshole for two seconds and suddenly we have to fuckin' knock the shit out of each other?”

“Oh, so I should just take it, huh? You fuckin’ call me stupid and laugh at me and I’m supposed to just take it?”

“No. You can tell me I hurt your feelings or ...”

“You didn’t fuckin’ hurt my feelings! Fuck you!  Think I’m some sort of little pussy bitch as well as dumb?”

Mickey shoved Ian in the centre of his chest with one hand, it was rough but not vicious. A warning.

“Stop it! Stop hitting me every time you feel insecure.”

Ian shoved him back and Mickey came forward, years of training, of conditioning, pushing him down the same road he had followed his entire life. Someone insults you, you hit them. They hit you back, you hit them harder and you don’t stop until they quit getting up.

He wrapped his left hand in Ian’s vest front, dragging him forward, a harsh echo of Ian’s earlier action. There were no kisses now.

“What did you call me, bitch?”

Mickey raised his fist and Ian stared at him, hard.

“You hit me and we are fucking through. I mean it.”

Ian’s voice was flat and authoritative, with no trace of bluster. Mickey flinched as if struck and his eyes widened. He lowered his arm and let go of Ian’s clothing and stepped back.

“What do you mean ‘through’?”

“I mean through. Over. Done. This is not the way we are going to live.”

Mickey swallowed hard and folded his arms across his chest. He knew Ian and knew when he made his mind up there was no changing it. If Ian said they were through then they would be through and nothing Mickey said or did would be enough to change it once it was done. Fear curled in his throat making it hard to speak.

“You’ve hit me before, I ain’t ever threaten to leave you for it.”

Ian was smoothing down the fabric of his vest and massaging the patches on his chest where Mickey’s knuckles had pressed in, bruising him, but at Mickey’s words he looked up, ruddy eyebrows drawn together in a frown.

“You’re right. But it has to stop Mick. We can’t go on like it. I can’t. I don't want to be scared of my boyfriend.”

Ian's words cut him deeply and Mickey didn't know what to do with the feelings of guilt that made his shirt feel too tight across his shoulders and the house suddenly too small around him. His mask of indifference wavered, cracked and broke.

“So then what? You want me to talk about my feelings, like some faggot on the TV whining about his wife leavin’ and the dog fuckin’ dyin’?”

“No. But I want you to stop using your fists. I mean, Seriously Mickey. Is this what you want to be? Some asshole like your dad, knocking me around, knocking Yevgeny around?”

“Hey! Fuck you! I’ve never touched that kid!”

Mickey snapped, pointing a finger angrily at Ian but not moving forward, not touching him.

“Not yet. But when he gets bigger? When he learns to talk back, to say ‘Fuck you!’ … you gonna punch him in the face?”

Ian challenged, never taking his eyes from his boyfriend. He watched as initial shock turned to revulsion and then to guilt.

“No. Course not.”

Mickey mumbled and pursed his lips looking away from Ian’s face.

“Fine. Then you can control it and you can stop doing it to me. You want us to be together? You stop hitting me.”

Ian spoke firmly but not unkindly and Mickey forced himself to look at him again.

“So from now on, if I slap your ass when we fuck, you’re gone?”

Mickey shrugged one shoulder upward trying to downplay the emotions running through him, the panic he felt at the thought of Ian walking away from him.

Ian’s lip quirked upward in a lopsided smile

“No, but that’s different. I’m talking about this.”

he gestured to the space between them, the room and the atmosphere that still crackled with the threat of violence.  

“I piss you off and you bust my nose, my jaw, whatever. It’s not love, Mick. It’s wrong.”

“Yeah, well. I don’t like it either, but it’s kind of who I am, Ian. It’s what I am.”

Mickey shrugged again and looked downwards, studying the frayed caps of his boots, steel visible beneath the fraying leather. He didn't know exactly what love was and was not, had never known but he thought maybe with Ian he was starting to learn. He looked up at the sparks of gold and copper that the sunlight sent streaking through Ian's hair and at the smattering of freckles that criss-crossed his nose and cheeks and Mickey knew with a certainty that if he could not teach himself what love was with Ian Gallagher, he would never learn it in his life.

“So you’ll change. Just a little. And so will I.”

Ian stepped forward tentatively and held out his hand, as if approaching an unfamiliar dog that might bite him if he moved too quickly. Mickey met his gaze and stood perfectly still, letting Ian cup his cheek in his palm.

“I’m sorry I was an asshole. I know you're not stupid.”

Ian murmured and drew in close enough to feel the heat of Mickey’s body and feel the soft warmth of his breath as Mickey reached up and threaded his tattooed fingers through the lengths of Ian’s hair, gently pulling him down until their foreheads touched.

Mickey’s eyes blurred into twin blue orbs and then disappeared as he closed his eyes and ran his free hand up the length of Ian’s bicep.

“I’m sorry I scared you. I don’t want to scare you, Ian.”

“It’s OK. We’re OK.”

Ian slipped his hands under Mickey’s shirt and stroked his back gently

“I love you.”

“I love you too.”

“It’s not a fuckin’ beaver.”

“It is. But fuck it, who gives a shit?”

Ian pulled out of the embrace and grinned down at Mickey.

“Get in the shower. I’m going to scrub your back.”

“Yeah?”

Mickey’s own grin was almost shy and Ian took a firm grip on his ass and drew him up onto his tiptoes. Mickey gasped and gripped Ian’s shoulders equally hard.

“Not just your back.”

Ian growled softly, delighting in the way his words made Mickey lick his lip and the way his pupils swelled, darkening his blue eyes, the last of the fear leaving them until only lust remained.

“Fuck yeah, beaver boy.”

Chapter Fourty - It’s got a cute asshole

The bartender walks back over and says "Okay, go speak to Ysabel over there", he points to his right at a woman standing behind the bar with a book and keys behind her. Scaly walks over "We'd like some rooms please, for the night", "Yep we can do that" says Ysabel "How many have you got?", "Seven" responds Scaly. "We can do two rooms of four if that works?" says Ysabel, "Yeah that's great" responds Scaly. "Could we please get a bathroom too?" chimes in Ned, "Absolutely", so that will cost $30 per room plus an extra $10 for the bathroom. Scaly hands over 70 gold and Ysabel grabs two keys off of the wall labelled 13 and 14 "Your rooms are just out the left door and down the hallway". Scaly turns back around as he walks away and attempts to act cool "Heya...you wouldn't happen to have any idea where Ryland is would you?", "Ryland....Ryland Aldridge?" says Ysabel, "That's the one!" says Scaly, "He comes in here sometimes, but I haven't seen him in a week or so". "No worries, if he's around, let him know that Scaly's looking for him", "Ooookay" says Ysabel as the heroes walk off. "Grum" Ysabel says, "Please make sure room 13 and 14 is clean for our new guest", a large green orc walks out from a back room with a mop and feather duster, heading towards the guest rooms.

The heroes sit down to have a meal, having eaten only Shadowfell and Forest food for the last couple of weeks, a typical meat and potatoes dish was looking particularly delicious. The bartender brings out the meal, a plate full of roast meats alongside another plate of root vegetables. The heroes scoffed it down in less than ten minutes in silence, looking forward to a nights sleep in their hometown. A couple of ales later, the heroes call it a night heading to bed around 11pm and walk towards the door leading to the guest rooms. As the group uses the keys given to them to open the door, the door opens inwards and they see a large green orc in front of them. "Sorry" says the Orc in a gruff voice, "Grum clean, now good" he says walking past the heroes. Ned puts up a hand to signal Grum to stop and looks him in the eyes "Thanks Grum, we appreciate it" and hands Grum 2 gold pieces. "OOOooHH" says Grum, clearly happy, "Thanks". Grum walks off and the heroes enter their rooms. Dolgan and Ned hop into the baths in the bathroom, next to the baths were two giant pots of water, one with a fire another at room temperature. Ned and Dolgan fill their bath's with the appropriate amount of water to get it to the right temperature and take the much needed soak they had paid for. 

Once out of the bath's, dressed and about to hit the hay, hears a "Knock, knock" on the door. "Come in" says Buffalo, as the door slightly opens, revealing Grum with a round tray and 7 small glasses. "Night cap" he says softly with his low voice. "Oh thank you!" responds Ned, handing out the small glasses of liquor to everyone. "You have this one" says Ned, handing it over to Grum, "No, for you" says Grum pushing it back towards Ned, "Please I insist" says Ned, "Okay..." says Grum, throwing back his head with the liquor slipping down his throat. Grum collects the rest of the glasses and walks out, "Night" he says gruffly shutting the door. The heroes blow out their lanterns and drift off to sleep.

"Crrrreeeaak" Dolgan and Buffalo both sit up out of their beds, hearing the door creak open. Dolgan reaches down and picks up his non magical boot from the ground whispering "Lux" as it lights up and throwing it towards the sounds of the door. "Oww what the hell!" says Buffalo as a bright boot hits his leg, "Sorry" Dolgan whispers realising his throw had been a little off the mark. Dolgan gets up on his bed and moves to the closest sconce, lighting it up. The torch casts a faint glow over the room, Dolgan's shadow growing out over to the door to the bathroom. "Guys! Get up!" he yells at Scaly and Ned at the opposite end of the room. Both of them stir, slowing sitting up and rubbing their eyes. "What is it?" says Ned, a little more awake than Scaly due to the torch being closer to his bed. "Tsew tsew", the sound of two crossbow bolts shoot through the room, followed by "Argh", "Fuck" both Buffalo and Scaly being hit in the chest by bolts. Buffalo picks up the bright shoe off of the ground and throws it back to Dolgan, takes a step off of the bed and raises his bow, shooting two arrows at the door, the source of the noise from the crossbow bolts. "Thud!" the first arrow hits the door with enough force to slam it shut, "Arrrhh" the second arrow had hit the unseen assailant. Scaly runs through to the other room and yells out "Get up! We're under attack"

Meanwhile in the other room, Dolgan grabs his shield from under his bed and places it in front of him, then charges directly towards the door. "OOooof" he catches whatever was in their room in the chest and slams it into the door. "Got him!" yells Dolgan, but not before whoever it was pushes back, it was strong, strong enough to force Dolgan back. "Schhling" the sound of a sword being unsheathed comes from the shadows, the creature flying directly at Buffalo slicing into his skin with a green looking short sword. A line splits across Buffalo's chest, revealing a wound left by the sword. The wound starts festering immediately around the wound, "There's poison on it's blade!" yells Buffalo lifting his bow once more and pulling back on the drawstring. He releases another arrow, this one loaded with a net loaded into the tip. The arrow flies across the room as the net expands, capturing the creature under it as it falls to the ground. Scaly takes the opportunity and breathes in deep, exhaling lightning at the net, Ned lets the rage burn inside him, runs up to the creature and smashes down with his fists over and over again. The door bursts open, it was Grum! he runs towards the assailant axe raised in the air, but trips over the light boot on the ground, falling forward, throwing his axe across the room into the bathroom, cracking open one of the bath's. The side of the bath splits open, gushing water out over the bathroom floor and into the main room. Dolgan grabs his hammer and runs to the creature, smashing down on top, crushing it under the weight of his hammer. It crumbles below, falling into a heap on the ground, the breathing shortens as it dies.

Dolgan picks up the net, pulling it away from the creature. Buffalo lights up the sconce near the bathroom, finally illuminating the entire room so that they could see who their attacker was. "It looks like it was an assassin" says Dolgan, looking at the black robes crumpled on the floor. He pulls back the hood on the person, revealing an ashen faced human, completely bald. Dolgan splits the persons robes open, revealing the symbol of the pale hand branded into his chest. "Pale hand", Dolgan says softly, "How do they know we're here?" says Buffalo, "No idea, but they're sending assassins now it seems. I'm not sure if he was after us, or just anybody in this tavern, either way we need to be careful" Doglan says covering up the pale hand assassin with it's robe. Grum picks up the body and slings it over his shoulder "I take away now?", "Yeah Grum, thanks" says Dolgan, sitting back down in his bed. 

The heroes wake up in the morning to the smell of warm bread and porridge, "Breakfast" the gruff voice they now knew to be Grum's echoing down the hallway as the scent wafted through their doors and into their noses. Getting up and popping some clothes on, the heroes walked like zombie down to the tavern area to eat their food. It wasn't the best, but it was warm and filling and that's all the heroes wanted after the rough night that they had. After the meal Ned gets up from the table and walks over to the bartender from the night before, "Did you hear about last night? We were attacked by an assassin from the Pale hand". "I did, and I apologise, this is the first time this has happened. We had no idea the Pale Hand had any type of presence inside the Closed Eye. To be honest it's worrying for our business, if they know about the operation of this bar, why haven't they shut us down yet like all of the other taverns?" the bartender trails off in his own thoughts. "It's okay, we're okay, but you should definitely have some sort of vetting system that allows safe passage for people not so close with the pale hand" says Ned. "Yes, it seems we will have to come up with something different" responds the bartender.

The heroes gather their things and get dressed for the day, Scaly and Ned making sure they were appropriate for the street as per the Pale Hand's rule. They venture out, in the direction of Scriba's, which through a couple of conversations with the patrons of Closed Eye, they had worked out was just near the other three Kipp brothers that lived in Wolfspine. "Blingalingalingaling" the bell dinged as they walked through the door to Scriba's Superb Scribblings. "Hold on!" they hear from the back of the shop. The walls of the shop went right to the rooftop, pigeon holes completely covering where the flat wall should be. Each pigeon hole seemed to house a different type or different size of parchment. The amount of paper in the shop was astounding. "What can I do for you?" says a voice coming from nowhere. The heroes look around confused, not able to locate the person behind the voice. "oomf, errgh, aarrr" a small voice comes from behind the counter near the rear of the store, much higher than it should've been due to the mass amounts of paper piling up on top, yet everything seemed to be perfectly organised, the piles were extremely neat. "Scriba's the name" says a gnome as his small hat pops over the top of the piled paper, the heroes finally able to match the face with the voice. "What can ae do fur ya?" he says, his accent thick as porridge. 

The heroes introduce themselves one by one, "We're after passes" says Buffalo, "We have been stuck in the Shadowfell for a couple of weeks and that has affected our time in the material plane long enough that the Pale Hand has become a dominant faction. We need passes so that we can explore Wolfspine with not interruptions". "Ssssshhhh" says Scriba, "Come here", he motions towards a small gnome sized door at the back of the shop and walks through. The heroes, especially Ned and Scaly have to get on all fours before they're able to get through the door. The next room is a little bigger, big enough to at least accommodate the big boys standing up straight. "Some fake passes you need is it?" says Scriba, more ready to use a louder voice now that they were out of the front of the shop. "Yes, we have some things to sort out in this city and it would be near impossible without these passes" says Ned. "I can do that for you, but it'll cost a pretty penny" says Scriba lowering his glasses to look at the group. "How much?" asks Ned, "100 gold pieces per pass" says Scriba, still not moving his eyes off of the group. "Sure, we can afford that" says Scaly checking his bag for gold. "No worries, I'll need your full names, date of births and places of residency" says Scriba as he walks to the front of the store grabbing parchment from a pigeon hole particularly high on the wall. Scriba places a lock across the front door and walks through to the backdoor room. The heroes look at each other, concerned. They had not had their own place to live in a long time and at this point weren't able to provide half of the information Scriba needed.

"Name please" Scriba says pointing at Ned, "Ummmm, Ned..Ned Den" Ned responds. "Ooookay Ned Den" says Scriba as he starts to write on the parchment card, "Aaaand you" Scriba points at Buffalo, "First name Bison, Surname Bison". Scriba looks over the top of his glasses at Buffalo "Bison....Bison?", "Yep" Buffalo says with no hesitation. "Okay. These are weird name. Some would say fake names" says Scriba, continuing to write on the parchment. "And you three?" he looks up at Raissh, Scaly and Dolgan, "I don't need one" says Raissh. "First name Scaly, second name Jack", "First name Dolgan, second name Boneseeker". "No worries" says Scriba, he scribbles away for another couple of minutes as the heroes wander around his backroom before Scriba pipes up once more "So, what're you going to do with these passes?", "Don't worry about it" says Ned. "Well, I am a little worried about it. I'm the only scribe in Wolfspine, so if you're caught and these are revealed to be fake, that's my head" responds Scriba. Buffalo leans over to Ned saying quietly "If he's doing this for us, it must mean that he's not associated with the Pale Hand", Ned nods and says to Scriba "Fair enough" and starts to recall the tales of their last couple of weeks. "So to conclude this story, we basically need these passes to walk through Wolfspine uninhibited to find the light of the forest" Ned finishes the story as Scriba finished the names on the passes. "Well, we're all in this fight together it seems. Although I have had a lot of work from the passes of everyone in Wolfspine, I haven't been paid for any of them, I was purely just told to, nay forced to do it. No one's ordering anything from me as everyone's too poor to do so. These times are really the darkest" says Scriba. Scaly goes to hand over the 400 gold pieces. "I can't take that" says Scriba, "Now that I know what you are doing for this city, I can't possible take it". "Please take the money" says Ned, you need it and we can always get more from jobs around the town, "Why don't I give you a discount then, what say the price be 200 gold pieces instead and I'll do yours for free" Scriba says looking at Raissh. "Deal" says Scaly, handing over the 200 gold, "And let us know if you need anything Scriba, we can always help out" says Ned. Scriba applies the made up address of the heroes onto the passes including their birth dates and finally looks at Raissh and says "Alright, we're up to you now. What is your name?", Raissh says "It's Raissh, with two S's".

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly of Polygon Faces

Sometimes we just have to be honest with ourselves. There is an undeniable charm to many games from the early 3D era. While often unrefined, a style developed that now breeds nostalgia in the way blocky, squat pixel mascots did in a generation prior. Pushing polygons rather than sprites was a new art form, and not many had a clear vision as to how it should go. Many made the push toward photo realism, and in doing so, ended up drowning us in a new surreal, a limbo of concrete and abstract representation. I have a deep fondness for the 32/64 bit generation because it gave way to a new visual language for video games, but like I said before, we have to be honest with ourselves. Sometimes the language being spoken with those ground breaking graphics was unintelligible. Sometimes the results were downright unsettling.

Let’s start with this police officer from Parasite Eve II.

All things considered, this police officer really doesn’t look too bad. He’s got some nice shading and some real definition to his features. This being a 1999 release, it’s pretty clear that Squaresoft had made some real improvements over their earlier forays into 3D gaming:

(Ahem.)

The problem with the officer isn't so much in the level of detail, but really the content of those details, specifically his eyes. With Aya approaching him, his gaze seems to be aimed at nowhere in particular. Given that this game features no voice acting, it isn’t really odd that he would have a neutral expression, but neutral is not really an appropriate description. He looks eerily absent, as unresponsive as a mannequin. Compare that to the beautiful pre-rendered cutscenes that pepper the game and you have yourself quite the disconnect.

Obviously, no Playstation game is going to be rendering characters that look as good as that on the fly, but even compared to Aya’s in game face, the officer looks odd.

This closeup reveals a hint of determination, but also a sense of calm, similar to how she was characterized in the cutscene above. The officer, on the other hand, looks as though he’s never experienced stimulus of any kind.

(There’s just nothing going on in there.)

Parasite Eve II is one of the more technically impressive Playstation games, and as such, its crimes against humanity barely even register. There are modern games that can’t get characters to emote, and their faces can actually move. By that measurement, Officer No Soul is a crowning achievement. Let’s take a look at a game in the same genre and released the same year. Capcom’s Dino Crisis featured a female protagonist, Regina, with the same kind of gun totin’ sex appeal that Aya Brea brought to Squaresoft’s character lineup. For reference, when we thought about Regina, this is what Capcom would have preferred we have in mind:

The unnaturally red hair seems geared at portraying Regina as a fiery, adventurous type. Her look is pointedly alluring, which doesn’t complement the theme of the game in any way, shape or form, but was par for the course after the debut of Lara Croft. Let’s see how well this dinosaur murdering seductress translated into the actual game.

(Oh, god!)

The “come hither” look from the cover seems to have melted like a wax figure. Similar to the officer from Parasite Eve II, Regina lacks any meaningful expression on her face. The texture mapping is slightly misaligned as well, making it so her lips appear to be sliding off to the side of her mouth. What’s most disappointing has to be the way her hair is rendered. This was long before things like cloth physics or individually animated feather blowing in the breeze. I’m empathetic to the constraints of the platform, but I can’t help but feel discontent when I’m teased with distinguished hair strands and am instead given a rust colored crescent moon with some highlights capping her skull.

By 1999, the Playstation had been on the market in Japan for five years. Dino Crisis and Parasite Eve II were games developed and published by big players in the industry. While it’s all well and good to poke fun at their badness now, they were still among the most advanced graphics that could be achieved on the platform. While looking quite dated by the dawn of Sega’s Dreamcast, in the same year as these releases, they managed to hold their own. Results from games much earlier in the system’s library tell a very different tale.

This is from King’s Field, released in North America in 1995. You may have noticed that this man here has no face. There’s an extra polygon showing for his nose, but other than that, we are just staring into the void. Bad faces are unsettling, sure, but no faces is the stuff of nightmares. This game is technically the second in the King’s Field series. The first game, confusingly also just called King’s Field in Japan, released early on in the Playstation’s life, December of 1994.

While many of the established studios were busy mixing pre-rendered backgrounds with polygonal character models in order to maximize the amount of detail they could squeeze out of each scene, From Software decided to go all in on 3D right from the beginning. Nearly everything in this game is built using polygons. Even more impressive, the game continuously streams data from the disc, meaning load times are practically nonexistent once play begins. In order to accomplish that, corners had to be cut. A lot of those corners were in the details department. Most objects are made of simple shapes with little or no texturing. Edges are sharp in a way that feels unnatural. This extends to every face in the game, and is the biggest barrier to buying into the game’s world.

There is something inherently unpleasant about holding conversations with people sans mouth. It was bad enough when characters couldn’t move their lips, but to not have a visual reference for where the speech is supposed to be produced from puts the player in a tough spot. On the one hand, there is plenty of space for the player’s imagination to take over. They can create any character they want due to the faces being literal blank slates. On the other hand, of course, the inability to visually relay more detailed information about its characters through facial expressions means King’s Field has to work harder at the language that’s used when NPCs communicate directly with the player. Overall, the trade off of having a large, fully 3D world at the expense of detail was risky. Given what we know about texture mapping in the ‘90s, I’d say From Software made the right call, even though it meant talking to no faced monstrosities.

I wanted to point out a few bad examples of polygonal faces in order to demonstrate that some games took a completely different approach to the whole 3D thing: mainly, they tried to maximize their capacity to convey information visually by only including the most vital information. In Mega Man Legends, the characters are incredibly blocky. The basic shapes and sharp edges make it so that it looks as though everything was a paper cutout. When looking straight on at a character’s face, all you see is a flat surface with everything simply drawn on top of it. It may not be the most technically impressive, but it allows for a great deal more emotion. Mega Man expresses more with his face in one scene than any of the previously mentioned character do throughout their entire adventures.

Here, Mega Man shows some clear confusion. The simple frown and solid coloring gives him a great deal of personality.

In this shot, Mega Man’s sense of fulfillment is very clear, and all it took was a different mouth texture over the same facial structure. Sure, he doesn’t have the lips and his hair looks poised to pop any balloons that might be floating by, but the anime style art design allows for visual storytelling in a way that many early 3D games just couldn’t pull off.

Another great benefit to Mega Man Legend’s art style is that it has prevented the game from appearing as old as many of its contemporaries. Dino Crisis may have looked really good when it came out in 1999, but when magnified and displayed at resolutions above those that would have been possible on TVs of the time, it’s very obvious what era of video games it was made in. Games with pre-rendered backgrounds look especially bad at higher resolutions because character models and the environments don’t scale together. A character might upres quite well, but then clash horrifically against the blurry, pixelated mess of a backdrop. For anyone playing on the original hardware hooked up to a television of the era, these issues are lessened, or even non-existent thanks to the resolutions and adaptability of CRT technology. When played by more modern means, say on a Playstation 3 via the Playstation Store connected to a nice LCD screen, you can get some very unfortunate results.

Mega Man Legends’ visuals may not hold up perfectly in the modern era, but they can be blown up significantly and still maintain most of their quality. The techniques of simplifying visuals would pay off big for Nintendo just a few years later with The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker for Gamecube. Basic shapes combined with newly developed cell shading techniques allowed the game’s visuals to be expressive in ways even modern games struggle to match. When played at modern resolutions, The Wind Waker hardly skips a beat.

(That is a look of some serious, and easily distinguishable distaste.)

The increased processing capabilities of the Gamecube meant that visuals for its games would automatically outpace the Playstation, but visual techniques pioneered on that platform gave 3D games a way to circumvent the inherent limitations of the era and technology available to them so that they would have lasting power. It’s important for games to push the boundaries when it comes to visuals, and a cartoonish style certainly isn’t appropriate for every title, but I can’t help but wonder how many times this cycle will repeat. Games developed for the Playstation 3 are already starting to show significant visual age when compared to the newest released on PC, so much so that I almost prefer the abstract horror of bad face texture mapping to settling in the uncanny valley. Graphical fidelity never felt as important as artistic design, a reality that feels more true now probably than ever before.

FUCK MY LONDON

Hermit's Cave. Sniff in the bogs. Fucking stinks in here. Camberwell Road. Corrib Bar. Watching football. Landlady said we were welcome back but not to bring any black people with us. Not in those words. Never went back. Walking past venues I played in that are no longer there. Rhythm Factory. Whitechapel Road. Round the corner. Used to be able to buy hash. Private member's club. Pool table. Foreign students. Building gone. Pint in the Castle. One end of Brick Lane. £2 in my pocket. Other end. Got food. Zoot. Beer. Still had some change. In my day this was all fields. Stewart Home. This is my home. I want to leave. Leave home. Chemical Brothers. Prodigy. Brixton Academy. No drugs. 13. Wouldn't go to see either of them now. Fuck them. Tried to get into the 4 Aces. Dalston used to scare the shit out of me. Me and Andrew went to buy an ounce and got robbed. Clapton Square. Got away with the weed but Andrew got his phone and ring nicked. Andrew convinced it was a set up. I'm still not sure. Arrested for criminal damage and possession at Caledonian Road & Barnsbury Station. The free line. Graf everywhere. Me and Mark. He was already on doing more serious stuff. Getting banged up for writing would've been silly. Bumped into him on Cambridge Heath Road. Years later. He was in an X5. Little gaff out in Essex. Kid. Still moving food but not touching it if you get what I mean. Born in Walworth. First wave gentrification. Sitting out in the garden at 6am sharing a joint with one of the Birmingham Six. Reading Ballard. Under the Westway. Subterranea. Black Star and Company Flow. MCD and Scratch Perverts supporting. Mainly crushing fucking boredom though. Africa Centre. Hour of jungle at the end of Funkin' Pussy. Listening to Rudimentary Peni. Carcass. Blak Twang. Rodney P. Heartless Crew. Upfront FM. Fuck it. Listing stuff. I'm sitting in the Barbican. Working. Listening in to an American man having a conversation with an English woman. I sort of hate them. They are probably alright. Vacuous pricks. The lot of us. St James' C of E primary school. Bermondsey. Jamaica Road. Everyone white. Almost. Everyone racist. Almost. What the fuck happened there? Used to play out on the Arnold Estate near the community centre my mum helped found. Found a load of porn out back. Awakenings. You can get a St John Bakery custard donut there now. Arches used to be full of garages. Cut and shut. Dennis was a ticket tout. Got us tickets to the '93 Semi-Final. In the fucking Spurs end. I was in an Arsenal shellsuit. Scarf. Cap. Got let in the Arsenal end. Grew up watching Palace. Everyone at school was Millwall or Liverpool. Why the fuck do I support Arsenal? Questions. Didn't grow up but I got old. Long nightwalks. Getting robbed in broad daylight on my own street. Kids from Kid's Company. Wallet full of cash I couldn't really tell anyone about. My sister wanted to go down there with a kitchen knife. In the end they apologised. Sent a cheque. We all make mistakes. Always carry a glass Lucozade bottle. Middle class grunger to middle class wannabe badman but I never wanted to be anything. Books. So many books. Art was everywhere. Went to Sensation. Load of shit obviously but exciting. Southbank. Mid to late 90's. Never skated. Legendary names. Benjobe. Tom Penny. Hardcore. Hip-hop. Rapping. Kope was working at A1 Stores on Wooly. Bag full of spraypaint. I never painted. Different sort of writing. Exploration. I'm not an urban explorer. Follow the Thames. Richmond to Teddington. Tower Bridge to East India Dock. Trinity Buoy Wharf. Sitting in a lighthouse all day. Hungover. Got chased through Broadway Market. Years before the farmers showed up. London is tiny if your postcode limits your movement. Escape. Fiction is liberating. The truth won't set you free. George Davis is innocent. Frankie Fraser on the 12 bus with his little dog. Chatting to my mum. Richardson's club house and torture chamber on a quaint little square just off Camberwell Road. Pet shop that used to stink of skunk. Dangerous dogs out front. This is what you're moving into. The ghosts will catch up with you. The past is never really the past. I'm past it. Read too many conspiracy theories. Canary Wharf as a beacon of occult energy. Hawksmoor Churches. All mainstream. Pick up the info in Waterstones in the London section. Make up your own myths. Smoking DMT in Blythe Hill Fields. London breathing. Viewpoints. Greenwich Park. Primrose Hill. Parliament Hill. Lunchtime. Out of the stockroom. Packing records all day. Enough to make you hate music. Where's the glamour? Guestlist is standard. Why the fuck would you pay to watch music? I still love it. Astoria. Gone. Plastic People. Gone. We went downstairs and when we went back out everything was covered in snow. Walking back. D Double E and Footsie. Legends. Tubby on decks. I think. All blends into one. But the snow. That happened. Stayed in Hackney. Walked back along a white carpet. These moments we live for. Put up with all the shit. I never really took photos. Stopping traffic at Elephant & Castle roundabout after getting run over. Black cab driver wanting to make sure I was alright. Asked what football team I support. Told him. Said he'd leave me in the road if it was up to him. Banter. Fucked up my Helly Hansen. Driver had no insurance. I told him to drive off but everyone made him stay. Writing is alchemy. You don't have to believe me. Planning is alchemy. London is being remixed. New block of flats named after the pie and mash shop on Westmoreland Road. Some attempt at continuity. Don't worry about me. It's everyone else. The search for authenticity is futile. Tayyabs. Lahore. Needoo. The holy trinity. But don't kid yourself. You can't eat your way to an understanding of lived experience. I'm sitting across the road from Madame Tussauds. This is authentic London even if you think it isn't. Some of my best friends are northerners. GO HOME. Get out while you can. I grew out of the fear of other areas. I moved. I walk from Lesnes Abbey to Grove Park on the Green Chain with my uncle. I walk from Finsbury Park to Alexandra Palace on the Parkland Walk with my girlfriend. I walk from Limehouse Basin to Island Gardens to Greenwich to Southwark Park with my mate. I walk from my flat to Walthamstow Marshes via the Olympic Park with myself. Memories shadowing every step. An egret and a heron near Stratford Westfield. I'm convinced we're all going to die in a shopping centre. Kingdom Come. Every witness appeal tells a story. Pain. Tragedy. I was watching Therapy? at Brixton Academy when the second riot happened. A venue full of pale faced teenagers insulated from an outpouring of justified anger. I performed with the guy who is supposed to have started the first Brixton riot. When the whole city rioted I walked up the back of Walworth Road watching kids hide stuff in bins. No one even noticed me. This is England. Wembley. Norway. Such a terrible match. The people behind me and my dad making monkey noises whenever Paul Ince touched the ball. Turned me off England for life. I couldn't even enjoy Euro '96. Arch contrarian. Of course I disagree. Got my bank account emptied and lost about £140 of other people's money getting robbed on Churchill Estate. Never trust someone who has just come out of prison for kidnap who says they can get some good food for a good price. Lesson learned. Two kids on the N68 tried to move me up. This was much later. I was wearing a Stone Island. I think they thought I was balling. I'd spent the night doing other people's sniff. I had a shit phone and an Ipod. I explained. We left on good terms. Lesson learned. Even where I used to sign on is gone. RIP Camberwell Job Centre. I fucking hated you but I miss you. Monday night football at the Petchey Academy saved my life. Made me a better person. The Shacklewell before it was cool. When it was cool. Saw Rodigan out back. Felt like a proper shubs. The Haggerston when it was Uncle Sam's. Live jazz. Terrible pints. Sitting in a Polo. UKG. Smoking draw. Just driving around. My room in the attic full of smoke. Entire house stinking. So many lost years. Round to Len's after a night out. Get the chop out. Staggering home. 8am. Mouth so dry. Lying in bed. Zoot in the ashtray. Bottle of water. Normal weekend. The Gramaphone. Commerical Street. Gone. Rushing. Hudson Mohawke and Rustie. Insanely strong pills. Up to the tubes for a weird after party. Everywhere will go soon. Corsica Studios. Summer of ket. Spangled in the smoking area. That rave in Hackney Wick. Bouncer wearing a bally. I was sick into a ballon. I was falling in love. Never wanted a relationship before that. Football. Drugs. Music. Books. Art. Masturbation. Very occasional sex. That was enough for me. I was kidding myself. Obviously. You pick and choose memories. You order the moments. You try to create a coherent picture. There is no coherent picture. Nothing to see here. Move along. First football match. Palace. Millwall. Punch ups in the family enclosure. Scary as fuck. LOVED IT. Grown men screaming cunt. Just got a text saying Whitechapel Bell Foundry is closing. My London is over. Fucked. Done. You can keep it. Do what you want with it. I don't care. If I don't care then why am I crying?

THE CUNTS, FREAKS, CRIMINALS, BOHEMIANS, NAZIS, NUTCASES, IMMIGRANTS, COMMIES, TRAMPS, ARTISTS, VANDALS, MUSICIANS, SHOTTERS, MIDDLE CLASSES, WHITES, BLACKS, WORKING CLASSES, TOFFS, GAYS, CHANCERS, BANKERS, BARROW BOYS, STALLHOLDERS, STAKEHOLDERS, LADS, CASUALS, RUDEBOYS, ANARCHISTS, BELL MAKERS, DRUGGIES, BARISTAS, RAVENS, BEEFEATERS, TOURISTS ETC. ARE ALL GONE. DONE. FUCK MY LONDON.

SEASON 2018:  Trip #1 (Part 1)

We finally were able to get the “ORAH” Chalet out of storage and out for its first outing for the 2018 season.  AND  . . . without any major issues!!!  WHOO HOO!!!  At least none that ruined our trip!!!

As we get to travel the country, I will try to post as many pictures of the campgrounds that we stay at and give a review for them as well.  On this trip, there were several campgrounds that we would definitely return to and one that we will NEVER go to again!

I hope you enjoy this journey as we travel this beautiful country.

THURSDAY, MAY 17, 2018

Thursday and Friday were spent in Amarillo (our home) gathering all the stuff from the apartment that we had not been able to take to the RV.  We also got the truck and RV inspected.  Then we took the RV to our local RV park, Fort Amarillo RV Park, . . . our favorite “staging” park . . . where we gave it a much-needed bath and got her all loaded up.  We love having this nice RV park fairly close to us but it sure stinks that we have to pay for 2 nights just to load and unload the RV when we leave or return from a trip.  Since we don’t have anywhere at the apartment to park the RV to do that chore, we just don’t have any other option.  It just another cost that we factor into our trips.

A little bit about Fort Amarillo RV Park:

Per the Website:  At Fort Amarillo RV Park & Resort, you’ll enjoy an authentic western setting, complete with a stream-fed fishing pond, illuminated walking paths and sunsets so breathtaking, even the most eloquent cowboy poets don’t do them justice. Huge pull thru sites, free WiFi & be sure to shop at Lizzie Mae’s Mercantile.  10% discount to members of Good Sam, AAA, AARP, KOA, FMCA, TACO and the Military.  Daily Rate: $42 | Weekly Rate: $210  If you need more than 2 weeks, please call for price and availability.

My Review:  The staff is very friendly and helpful.  It is a really clean park, there are trees on most sites, full hookups, large level gravel sites, most are pull thru (I believe the back in ones are mostly for live-ins), laundry, really clean bathrooms/showers (hotel quality), there are two spaces that can be rented for parties, one of them is for guests with tables for cards, there are movies/books, a small kitchen (I believe it’s free to use but rentable for parties), a lit courtyard with BBQ, basketball court, tennis court, playground, indoor pool, game room, a small fish pond with nice grassy area and BEST of ALL there is an AWESOME gift shop called Lizzie Maes!!  It is soooo cool!!

All of the sites have a concrete patio with a table and a fence that blocks the other site.  They are gravel but they are level.  AND, the roads around the park are gravel and well kept as well.  Even tho the sites are close together, the fence blocks the utilities from your campsite so you are not staring at the sewer or hoses while you are enjoying your patio.

It is near I-40 making it an easy on/off stop but far enough away that it’s not noisy.  Because of the wind in Amarillo, the trees and fence around the park help to serve as a slight wind block.  You are close to a lot of eating places and shopping.  If you are into walking, you could walk but it would be easier to drive because most everything is South of the I-40 (the park is on the Northside of I-40) CONS:  No firepits or grills (but many bring/use their portable grills), all gravel roads inside and at the sites but they are level.

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  On Saturday morning we got all hooked up and headed out of town only to have a tiny issue just as we got on the highway . . . the rubber stripping around the front Cap was flapping in the wind!!!  I guess the power washer from the RV wash pushed it out of the track.  We pulled off the road and hubby stuck it back into place.  Hopefully, this would be our only issue this trip.  Well . . . actually, we did have one issue that hubby would try to fix when we get or our first major stop . . . the water to the ice maker wasn’t coming on because the cut off valve must be broken.  No matter which way you turn it, there was no water to the icemaker.  He used to fix valves like that on coffee makers in his previous life . . . so he felt confident that it would be an easy fix . . . if he can get is big hands in that tiny space to fix it.

Lamar, Colorado

Our first overnight stop was in Lamar, Co at Sportsman’s RV Park and Horse Hotel.  Normally when we go to Castle Rock, CO to see hubby’s sister, we go thru Raton Pass.  This time we decided to take another route to AVOID the Pass!  Not sure we wanted to take that pass for our first outing after having so many other truck issues.  We thought that staying on flat ground was the better option this time out and chose to take Highway 287 thru Boise City, OK up to Lamar, Colorado.

As soon as we hit Oklahoma on Highway 287, the roads were REALLY ROUGH!!  The expansion joints were rough and the tire lanes were really rough.  I actually drove with my passenger tires on the shoulder and my drivers’ side tires in the middle of the lane . . . it was still rough!!!  No potholes . . . just washboard type roads.  In any case, they SUCKED!!!

We thought it was going to shake everything out of the cabinets of the trailer and shake all the bolts loose.  The only disaster we encountered was a 12 pack of cokes that fell out of the case inside the truck.  The case was open and they all fell between the seat and door.   I had to open the window so hubby could use his long arms to reach them instead of opening the door and having them all roll out and ‘spew’ everywhere.   The only thing that happened inside the trailer was that the bedroom closet door opened and two small items fell out . . . nothing major!  WHEW!!  Oh . . . later, we found out that a cabinet shelf where we had more 12 packs of Coke had broken.  No worries on that one tho . . . we only put our cases of drinks in that one.  They can be stacked.  Once we hit the Colorado border, the roads were like “butter” . . . either that or they just seemed like “butter” after the Oklahoma roads.   So . . . for reference, try to stay off Highway 287 from just North of Stratford, Texas to the Colorado border!!  Seriously, when you hit Colorado, the roads were AWESOME . . . 2 lane but wide lanes with wide shoulders.  THANKFULLY it was only about 50 miles of bad roads.

Instead of driving all the way to Cherry Creek in Aurora, CO in one day, which was about a 7 hr drive from Amarillo, we decided to break the trip up and spend a night in Lamar, Co.  That way IF the roads were really slow or we ran into trouble, we’d have plenty of time to adjust and adapt.  It’s nice to get somewhere and not be really tired from driving all day and just sit back and relax . . . which we both needed desperately.  In fact, we have decided to drive about 200-300 miles per day OR to be parked somewhere by around 3pm.  . . . whichever comes first.  That way we have time to set up and relax. . . or adapt our plans if needed.

Highway 287 – Lamar, CO to I-70  Nice 2 lane, nonbusy, flat road

The weather was AWESOME in Lamar, Co.  . . . nice and cool!!  They apparently they had some major wind, rain and hail come thru here the night before.  We went from the 99-degree weather at home to the 60’s here!! AWESOME!!!  We had the windows open with no A/C running . . . GLORIOUS weather!!  There was a little bit of wind but nothing like we are used to.  They say that Chicago is the “Windy City”!!  I beg to differ!!!

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One of the first things we had to do was to cancel a Retirement Gift for my husband from our daughter.  She knows that he has always wanted a Porche 911, 6 speed, Convertible. This was her 3rd attempt to get him a Retirement Gift.  The first attempt was an Alaska fishing trip with her husband, Jon Nite, who was going there to write songs with someone.  But it fell through.  Her second attempt was a trip to St. John.  However, the Hurricanes had other plans.  Her third attempt was to rent a Porche 911 Convertible for him to drive for a day.   She knows that he has always wanted a Porche 911 and thought it would make a great gift for him.   However, once we realized the dates she rented it for, where the dealership was in relation to where we were camped, the logistics just were not workable, we had to cancel it.  The dealership was about 87 miles from where we were going to be and that day was going to be a “moving day” or us.  Had we gone to get it, the entire day would have been driving back and forth to the dealership.  Which would be over the allotted 100 miles per day limit and we’d have to pay $1/mile after that for the gas  . . . waste of money to not fully be able to enjoy it.   Some may say “Third time is the charm” . . . not in this case . . . for now.  Maybe next time we go to the Denver area he can get it.  When he first heard he was getting this gift, he was all ready to take it up Pikes Peak . . . which, after seeing a video of that road, he would be going without me!!!!  There is NO WAY I’d go up that in a ‘race car’!!!  Apparently, it wouldn’t have happened anyway because later in the trip we found out that they have actually closed Pikes Peak to most traffic.  You have to park and ride a passenger van up to the Summit now.  The only ones that can drive up Pikes Peak are anyone with kids who need a car seat and the elderly who need assistance.  Their vans cannot accommodate those persons.

UPDATE on Pikes Peak as of July 10, 018:  

Shuttle no longer required for all drivers on Pikes Peak Highway

In the next episode,  we will continue on Highway 287 and pick up I-70 to Cherry Creek where we stayed for 4-5 days.  We have family in that area who we visited and even celebrated with a Niece who had just graduated from college.

Stay tuned for more excitement to come from “The Ole Rooster and his Hen” . . .

  2018 Travel Journey begins Trip #1 (Part 1) SEASON 2018:  Trip #1 (Part 1) We finally were able to get the "ORAH" Chalet out of storage and out for its first outing for the 2018 season. 

Rare Find: Original 1969 Chevrolet Camaro Z/28 Rally Sport Not Driven Since 1980

The garage door to the suburban home in northern Ohio opened, and we could see a 1969 Z/28 plainly in the double-car garage. Most of the space was taken up by bicycles and what appeared to be toys.

“Karl is the guy who owns the car,” Michael Lightbourn said. “It was his father’s, and he’s got the power of attorney, so in a sense he inherited it, but his dad is still around.”

The previous night we had visited with Karl and his father’s sister, Juanita, at another house 4 to 5 miles away. Due to divorce, Karl would not be able to make an appearance the next day at the family abode where he had lived the previous 17 years.

“How long has it been parked?” Michael asked.

Karl said, “The last time it was driven was 1994. [My father, Stacy Quickle] took my son, William, for a ride. He parked it on Colby Road and it has not [been driven] anywhere since. We had a set of four Rally wheels under it, and I put on space saver spares. When those went flat, we dragged it onto a flatbed and into the garage where it’s at now.”

The time had come to sell because Stacy, living in California, had health issues and was “not going to fix it.”

“I’m not going to be the one to do it,” Karl said. “I’ve got nowhere to keep it. I don’t know what else to do with it.”

Karl was “3 or 4 years old” when Stacy, living in Elyria, Ohio, purchased the Z/28 brand new. Walking into the garage, we noticed the license plate frame inscribed with the Chevy dealer’s name, Sharpnack, on top and the location, Vermilion, on the bottom. The car sat low on those four airless space saver tires, which was strange but true.

“When I was younger it seemed like daily, several times a week, people asked, ‘Is this car for sale?’ He has said no for 49 years, and this is the first time, on March 29 [2018], that he sent me the paperwork and has agreed to sell.”

Z/28 is the big deal with this Rare Find, of course. But this particular example came from the factory with both (1) the Rally Sport front end, featuring the special black-painted grille with concealed headlights, and (2) the body-colored front bumper, option code VE3, aka Endura, made of rubber and optional on any 1969 Camaro.

Our appointment time was 8:30 in the morning. Don, Karl’s uncle, had just arrived to show us the Z/28. Don immediately slipped into the garage to start removing debris. We asked him to let us take photos first.

Being there in person is much different from receiving photos from readers, and this was an amazing find to come face to face with. How often do you see an unrestored 1969 model anything wearing its original paint and get to talk to people who have owned and driven the car since new?

The nonrunning Z/28 on that garage floor came to life as Karl and Juanita spoke. Karl said, “At around 20,000 miles, [Stacy] told me he was right over here on Pearl Avenue. He crossed some railroad tracks and he took off hard and hit a water puddle, and [the 302] developed a tick. About two weeks later he drove it to Vermilion, and that’s when [the Chevy dealer] said the wristpin had eaten into the cylinder wall.”

One of our first moves was to open the hood, which required a key to the aftermarket hood locks. We did this before checking out the trim tag to verify the Z/28’s originality, Michael said, “Want to see something amazing this car still has?”

“What?”

“The smog system. Those are the first things that got ditched on these cars.”

The AC radiator cap also appeared to be original, which was entirely possible, as the odometer was accurate at 37,403.4 and the car had hardly been driven since about 1980, the date of the last registration on the license plates.

We noticed tower-style factory hose clamps. The valve covers were stock as well. Overall, the engine compartment appeared like the dealer had done the replacement engine warranty work. The car didn’t change much from the early 1970s.

Juanita, eight years younger than her older brother Stacy, recalled how driving the Z/28 during 1970-1974 made her “the coolest kid in high school.”

Did she “hot rod” the Z/28? “I did my share of racing,” Juanita said, and “never got beat.”

“I remember driving it down 57 here and going from where the mall is to 254, running it through the gears and watching the gas gauge drop.”

With all the stories and Karl showing us the original title, from 1969, we were certain the car was a Z/28. The trim tag backed up the Z/28 package with its X33 stamping. But what about that engine? Lightbourn shined his light onto the pad on the passenger-side front of the engine, where it read, “CEA.” At the same time, Michael spoke on his cellphone to a former GM employee who worked for Chevrolet when these cars were new.

“CE” possibly refers to Counter Exchange or Chevrolet Engine. No matter—not just anybody could buy an engine stamped “CE,” which is a designation for warranty action and not available to the public.

In this light, an older GM muscle car with a warrantied engine is different from the same GM muscle car with a missing engine that has been replaced by a private party. Sometimes these shops or owners get a “correct DZ” block, but this engine installation would not be as rigorous as a CE replacement from Chevrolet.

In other words, collectors will spout, “Oh, the original engine is missing, so this Z/28 will never be numbers-matching.” Maybe so, but a Counter Exchange creates a correct factory replacement engine, authorized by Chevrolet procedure.

In this instance, the block needed to be replaced, along with the internals. The dealer reinstalled the remaining original parts, from the air cleaner assembly to the Holley four-barrel, the intake, valve covers, heads, exhaust manifolds, and right down to the smog system that was intact and those tower-style hose clamps. They even screwed on that original radiator cap, now appearing as icing on this cake.

The car will go to the collection of Duane Lobbestael from the Detroit area. Duane has been a Camaro buff since he was 10. Born in 1969, he bought his first Camaro, a 1969 RS/SS 396, in 1984 from saved paper route money. He really likes this 1969 Rally Sport Z/28 because it is a “survivor.”

The first words out of Michael Lightbourn’s mouth when he saw the Z/28 were, “Looks like a decent car.” This car has been garage-kept for all but a year or so since new. It sat low on flattened space-saver spare tires.

Karl had last seen the original window sticker in the pages of one of the old car magazines inside the car. Sadly, the invoice was nowhere to be found.

The original dealer replaced the original 302 in the early 1970s under warranty.

The four-barrel is an original Holley 780-cfm carburetor, as verified by the Chevrolet part number 3923289-DZ and Holley list number 4053. “913” is a date code where “9” stands for 1969, “1” is January, and “3” is the third week of the month.

The trim tag on the cowl has the all-important X33, which decodes as Style Trim Group with Special Performance Equipment (Z28) for cars built in Norwood, Ohio. “NOR” indicates Norwood on this plate.

Lightbourn pointed out that one of the battery cables was still factory original.

Incredibly, the original radiator cap remained.

A big surprise under the hood was finding the original smog system intact and in place.

When a Z/28 is equipped with RS equipment, the RS badges are deleted from the fenders. However, the RS logo remains on the steering wheel.

The trunk was full of debris, but the spare tire appeared to have never been on the ground.

The rear window had traces of rust around the moldings.

“CAE” stamped on the engine pad, passenger side, denotes a Counter Exchange, which was warranty work.

The odometer showed 37,403.4 miles.

The original Rally wheels were stored in a storage shed in the backyard.

The paint is the original Dover White with black stripes.

Hideaway headlights, part of the Rally Sport package in 1969, were in good condition.

Today, unrestored cars are popular with muscle car collectors. They like to see originality, like this original Z/28 badge in the grille.

Don, Karl’s uncle, struggles to get the trunk open in the sea of bikes and toys.

The biggest surprise of this treasure hunt was finding the original tires, with ample tread and probably about 500 original miles on them, concealed under 7-8 feet of boxes and toys in the corner of the garage.

Loaded on the trailer, the Z/28 was ready to be shipped to its new home. Michael Lightbourn’s plan is for the car to remain in its original state.

The post Rare Find: Original 1969 Chevrolet Camaro Z/28 Rally Sport Not Driven Since 1980 appeared first on Hot Rod Network.

from Hot Rod Network http://www.hotrod.com/articles/rare-find-original-1969-chevrolet-camaro-z28-rally-sport-not-driven-since-1980/ via IFTTT

Day 17 Standish Hickey to Dean Creek Resort. 10 miles

1:02 time, 555 calories, 535' climbed, 9.7 avg mph "Resort" is what private camp site call themselves when they want to charge you more than a state park campground, but I'm getting ahead of myself, there is quite a story tell about today.  If I was a pessimist I would call it a shit show but I'm a glass full kind of guy so I'd say it was a blessing in disguise.  God/the Universe/ the Trees, whatever you want to call it was telling me today to get off the road and quite riding.  So I did. I started out waking up to the sound of freeway, almost as nice as the birds or the ocean, at about 5:45, I got up to pee and should have stayed up and got a better start but I didn't.  Despite being a full blown "morning person" I have trouble with pre six am.  I rolled around despite the day light for another hour before got up.  Luckily inland as we were the dew was not an issue so my riding clothes dried after washing the night before and my tent wasn't wet! I was sure I was off to a great day! My companions were only 20 miles to their destination, the Northern Nights Music Festival, so we would be saying out goodbye and my plan was to ride hard and make a big day of it, an 80 miler maybe even my fist century! I've been learning for the last two years to quite trying to plan things out and demand being in control, today was a beautiful reminder of how silly insisting on running the show really is.  We don't run the show, we experience it, our lives exist to teach us lessons; that we not bull our way through this china shop of life but that we may flow, observe, learn and love the process not simply work for the end.   So, I wanted to do the most miles I've ever done and I did the least miles instead do to several things that were out of my control! This makes me smile. 10 mile day, let me tell you how it happened, it was a trip. I woke up to the sound of trucks rushing down the highway dampened by a hundred yards of trees, it's like birds or the ocean but not at all.  I was last out of my tent again. I had been up at 5:45 and got out to pee, I should have stayed up and gotten started but instead I laid on my stomach and tried to use my hood to block out the increasing daylight. I did barely fall asleep again until 6:45 when I started my morning routine sitting up getting off my ground pad, unscrewing it's air valve, fold it in half and begin to roll it up evacuating all the air, then closing the valve and strapping it shut in a small compact roll with a velro strap. That along with the tent that becomes an equal size but twice as long and a bag of camp supplies makes up the entire contents of my rear left pannier.  Well, my Chaco flip flops and my tablet and blue tooth key board go in there too. I rushed to get packed and back across the street which I knew opened at seven and had breakfast burritos, again, I'm not carrying food with me at the moment so I was stoked about a real burrito and coffee breakfast.  Then I got a Revive Kombucha as the icing on the cake of the morning.  It was their coffee brew that blew me away! I have been discussing the possibility of brewing coffee based tea with kombucha culture and what it would take to make it adapt to that change. Revive has figured it out! That bottle of buch I had was out there, absolutely delicious, kombucha with coffee's spirit.  I applaud Revive, I want more, and I really want to be able to have a conversation with the guy that made that! I knew I had a issue as we got ready to ride because my rear tire was low, I almost could have filled it up but the power went out as we were leaving so I couldn't use their air pump. We were given the heads up by one of the rad employees there that we should hit the road before the string of dump trucks did so that we would beat the road block.  There was a land slide and since January they have been working to dig out and remove it.  So they regularly close the road and let traffic pass along the only one lane strip in about thirty minute intervals, that was to be expected but we could get ahead of it starting for the day since we were ready so early.  We booked it. A mile later we see the traffic backed up and I cut over to the opposing lane that is clearly unoccupied and ride up to the front of this situation.  Along the existing strip of construction, over night, a tree had fallen into the road and taken down a power line with it.  Our friendly construction worker in charge of managing the flow of traffic, Carlos, informed us of all of this and all the different companies and steps involved in getting us on our way.  Once we realized we were there for about an hour, at least, we decided to change my tube in my tire, no big deal, I had the CO2 cartridge, the tube, the wrench, the greasy designated chain and gear gloves, I was prepared for this!  Because I had just changed the tube the day before when I got my first flat (which, might I add, was caused my some asshole two days ago asking me if I'd had many flats yet?" WTF! you dont say that, FYI) we assumed there must have been something stuck in the tire that punctured this new tube as well and was why it was slowly leaking.  Through out this whole ordeal we continued to meet all kinds of people who were out of there cars curiously roaming around or going to the porta potty that at the front of the line where we were.  Half of them were also going to Northern Nights Fest, one was a super friendly guy driving supplies to a church camp, which immediately took me back to my indoctrinating church camp days.  When I unrolled my yoga mat my muscle roller was in the center, Kurt was quick to grab and use it, as this was going on we were talking with the jolly sunday school teacher, he had the best intentions, and when kurt gave it to him to try he loved and asked me what he owed me for.  I told to pray for me and my safety.  That was an interesting experience, I have so much I could have lashed out about over why to not be doing "church camp" but instead I didn't judge and jump on a soap box  and simply appreciated the power of prayer, which is the same as the intention, manifestation and positive out put that I also believe has power and effects things in the world.  He said "Amen, brother," and I smiled. Carlos and we worked out a way to get a head start when it did become our time to go.  Sooner than expected they started to clear the traffic with south bound coming toward us first. After the last one we pedaled in, it wasn't more than a quarter mile of construction area and by the time we arrived wreckage from the tree and powerlines was undectable. We went up hill with miles of traffic just released behing us.  At times I opted to ride the wrong way on the opposite shoulder along side the newly parked traffic in waiting of instead of on the white line in the appropriate lane with all the traffic buzzing my shoulder.   Once the traffic cleared and the hill crested it was a wide open downhill across a bridge with a beautifully lit late morning light warming the cold and smiling on a bright today ahead.  Then my new tube went flat for real.  Another flat tire.  I realized and yelled down Pablo who was 40 meters ahead with "Flat!" Kurt came up behind me as he turned back around and it was what it was, a flat tire when I was out of spare tubes, out of CO2, my levers were broken and clearly my tire was host to something puncturing my tubes or I was having the worst luck ever.  I'm grateful they put it into perspective for me because other wise I would have wasted a bit of time avoiding that fact that I was hitch hiking out of there.  If you're hitching with a bike it is really hard to get a ride because you take up so much space, all you can really hope for is a pickup truck that's easy to load in the back of with a driver who will actually think all this through and make the compassionate decision to stop.  It's a lot to consider, especially when you have just been waiting at a road block and are definitely behind whatever schedule you had.  So I gave them hugs hoping to fulfill their invitations to their homes one day and said goodbye.  I put my thumb out for the first time in my life hoping to hitch a ride out of desperation, fully in need of the help of a stranger.  It's a beautiful experience to have, it's not a failure at anything, getting out of your comfort zone so much that you have to rely on the universe for a nod in favor of your survival, is a task worth pursuing. It wasn't even half an hour, probably on the third wave of cars released from the road block after I came through did Jimmy from Long Island in his beautiful piece of shit RV pull over and pick me up.  I strapped the sprouts back on the front, I had already disassembled them thinking I'd have to throw the bike in a truck, but I hadn't anticipated the fact that hitch hike picker uppers inevitably stop a good ways down the road from the hitch hiker, then I started jogging/ pushing my bike up the road hoping they would notice by my body language for as grateful and eager as I was to not make them wait. Jimmy! At first we thought about strapping it on the back rack behind the rv but then realized the bike could probably fit inside.  It was a great experience because when Jimmy jumped out of the cap of that van based RV he was asking me how it should go.  He didn't question wether or not he had room for me, he didn't think it through and base his decision off what would work for him, he saw me in need and he pulled over.  Jimmy is a saint, from Long Island, New York, not Long Island, California, and from whom I heard the word fuck more in the 15 miles I was riding with him than I have in three weeks on my trip.  Jimmy is 55 years old and retired from his families business operating construction cranes in New York City.  I told him I lived in Brooklyn for ten years and we sailing off on our new roadie friendship, and, he clearly hadn't spoken to so many people since he'd been road tripping from Denver, as far as I could tell, in search of the best weed. His passenger seat was swiveled around facing the living space, as in, not facing out the front windshield observing the direction of motion  but it was the only place to sit, after he knocked off the dog bed, so I did, with Bobo, the black Pomeranian, sitting on my lap.

That Time We Thought The Bedroom Would Simmer For A While, And Then Bam.

We mentioned some recent master bedroom movin’ & shakin’ on this week’s podcast, so we thought a post full of photos was in order for anyone wondering how it’s looking these days. Pretty much everything in our bedroom was purchased while we were living in our second house, so after moving here in 2013 stuff just kinda landed where it landed and whoop, there it was. We painted. We hung frames. We made a few sporadic dresser swaps, and then we repainted. But the anchor pieces like the rug, the bed, the armchair, and most of the other furnishings pretty much remained the same. More recently we got a super on-sale chandelier and swapped beds with the guest room and it felt like the room was nicely settling into feeling “nearly-done.” Basically, we were fully expecting to go back to ignoring this corner of the house for at least a few more years.

And then it happened. A total bedroom curveball. My friend texted me a gorgeous picture of a rug she came across in a local consignment shop. YES, A CONSIGNMENT SHOP. And I fell hard. It hit me like a ton of bricks. Rug love at first sight. I’m pretty sure you could have seen little cartoon angels flying around my head holding bow and arrows when I ran up to John with that dazed-looking cheeks-flushed expression and said “remember how we’ve always said it would be nice to have a plush wool rug in the bedroom someday!?” And thankfully, he remembered. And he agreed that it looked promising enough to go check it out in person (and smell it, because John was wondering how a consigned rug might smell).

We love a flat weave rug – and have a bunch in our house – but ever since we discovered our love of plush wool Turkish rugs, we’ve been talking about how if ever there were a spot to add one more, it’s the master bedroom. It just feels like the ultimate place for something thick and cozy underfoot. Plus, that soft green flat weave was something we bought back in 2011 for our last house’s living room, so the size wasn’t perfect for the bedroom (it wasn’t as long as the space, so it didn’t extend quite as close to the closet/bathroom door as we’d prefer). But it couldn’t have been that bad because we lived with it for nearly four years this way.

Back to the new rug. It was miraculously the perfect size (around 12 x 16′) and didn’t smell at all (hallelujah!). And because it was a one-of-a-kind find at a consignment store, we knew it wasn’t going to wait around for us. Cut to John standing there grinning with it on the dolly, ready to be loaded into our car.

And guess who muscled that giant wool beast up the stairs? That’s right. This married couple (*points to selves with thumbs*).

Once we got it into the room I pretty much did the Macarena with excitement. It might just be my favorite rug of all time. I mean LOOK AT THE DETAILS! The COLORS! The SHAPES! The SHEER AMOUNT OF CAPS LOCK I’M USING TO DESCRIBE IT!

There are tons of other rugs I love a whooooole lot in this house (I’m looking at you dining room, bonus room, and living room), but this new bedroom edition just feels extra special. So shh, don’t tell them. And don’t cry for the old rug Argentina! That green flat weave sold in less than an hour on a local buy-sell board on Facebook and is currently living her best life in a neighbor’s house.

You may also be noticing a couple of other changes in the wide shot – namely the wall behind the bed. This rug’s bolder, more colorful, and larger scale pattern made it much more of a focal point than its soft green predecessor. So when we rolled out the new rug, the frames on the wall felt kinda jumbled and crazy all of a sudden. Like Lady GaGa in a meat dress next to Bjork in a swan costume. Why? Because the frame wall used to be the focal point with a more subtle rug playing backup. But with a big bold rug in the room now, two focal points were fighting for attention.

So we took all of the frames off the wall and tried out a few “calmer” pieces instead. After buying something the instinct might be to go buy a ton of other stuff to go with the exciting new item, but one of my favorite things to do instead is just to play around with what you have. Sometimes you just have to shift a few things around the house and a few rooms end up looking and feeling fresher to the tune of zero more dollars spent.

The winner was this painting that used to hang above John’s desk in the office (we bought it right off of the wall at a ski house we rented a few years back). I may stain the frame to match some of the other woods in the room, but for now it’s doing the job of complementing – not competing with – the new rug. And from afar it looks surprisingly similar to some of the gold frames we added to the other side of the room (more on those in a sec).

And now in the office there’s a mirror we already had hanging where the pink painting used to be – which is nice because it reflects the light from the two windows across from it. There’s no better feeling than running up and down the stairs with things and trying them in other rooms until the crazy puzzle of “I need one thing for this room and another thing for that room” is solved. I’m serious. I LOVE that weird challenge feeling. It’s like Supermarket Sweep, Home Edition. Come to think of it, that would make a pretty good game show. Stop laughing. I’m serious.

And I know you were worried about where all of our family photos went (JK, nobody cares about family photos unless they’re their own family). We found a few other places around the room to hang some, and I moved some into the guest room above my sewing desk. It’s not as many as we used to have on display, but I think we’ll survive just fine without having 20+ photos of ourselves in a single room anymore.

I reframed the photos in our room in these gold frames that I already had stashed in the guest room (they’re my favorite gold ones from Target that I’ve also hoarded for the beach house). They created a nice little grid above our wood dresser – an antique hand-me-down from John’s parents that had been in the closet. We just swapped it for the white dresser that used to sit here since the wood one looks so nice with the rich new rug colors.

In rearranging our family photos, we realized we’re waaaay overdue for printing some updated ones (so many of a tiny baby boy and a toddler girl) so we sent a few new 8 x 10″ pics to Target so we can finally update these frames. It just feels like you “notice” pictures again when you change them out, so this bedroom update was a nice kick in the pants to get on that.

The other side of the room still has the gradient dresser we painted back in 2011 for our first book (yes, we have no shortage of dressers in here!). Also, can you tell John is asking Burger why he’s always walking into our pictures like he owns the place? You saw him up in the bed squishing all of our pillows a few pictures up too, right? Dude, is ALWAYS ready for his close up.

The Samantha French print above the dresser (she’s one of my favorite painters – here’s her Easy shop) is one we’ve had for years, and we FINALLY got it properly framed! It was actually a birthday gift from John, who sent it off to a framing company called Simply Framed and they made it look so much more legit and lovely with a nice chunky white frame and a perfectly sized mat. This isn’t a sponsored mention or anything (he paid for it, and we love it). It’s not as cheap as finding a ready-made frame at the store (it was about $120, with a coupon code) but it looks so expensive and well done when it comes back to you. Finally feels like the frame is doing the print justice.

It’s hard to tell in the pic, but they even emailed us to say “do you want the mat to go right up to the edge of the print or would you like it to be spaced around a quarter-inch away so the penciled title and signature are visible?” We were so glad they suggested that because that little detail that makes it feel much more professionally done and polished.

So that, my friends, is the tale of a bedroom that we thought was going back into dormancy for a few more years, but was propelled into an accidental-but-surprisingly-thrilling makeover, thanks to a rug switch and a whole lot of other free furniture and accessory swapping.

Oh, and that picture above captures one of the cooler things about the rug – see how it looks faded in a few rows? The lady who owns the consignment store said her friend who vends rugs said it’s not truly faded in those areas, it’s a different looming method and type of wool that they use for those parts so the little water-color-like effect is something they intentionally add when they make the rug. Cool, right? I love how layered and soft it looks with those strips of blurrier colors.

And yes, I totally daydream about moving those windows over so they’re centered. Except they would look wonky from the front of our balanced brick colonial, so I guess I need to leave them where they are and DEAL WITH THE FACT THAT MY ENTIRE LIFE CAN’T BE SYMMETRICAL. Maybe adding one more curtain panel on that left side and extending the rod would cheat things a little and make it less noticeable? Might give that a try sometime.

But so ends our new tour of the bedroom. I’ll leave you with this performance art piece by Burger, entitled Dog Leaves Bed.

And for anyone wondering where we got things in the room, here’s a big ol’ list for you:

bench / faux fiddle leaf fig plant / chandelier / curtains / curtain rods / night stands / swimming girl print / gold frames / similar pink painting / similar duvet / similar bedside lamps / similar dresser / similar tallboy dresser / similar chair / similar floor lamp 

You can also always find our room’s paint colors and sources for everything in them right here.

*This post contains affiliate links*

The post That Time We Thought The Bedroom Would Simmer For A While, And Then Bam. appeared first on Young House Love.

That Time We Thought The Bedroom Would Simmer For A While, And Then Bam.

We mentioned some recent master bedroom movin’ & shakin’ on this week’s podcast, so we thought a post full of photos was in order for anyone wondering how it’s looking these days. Pretty much everything in our bedroom was purchased while we were living in our second house, so after moving here in 2013 stuff just kinda landed where it landed and whoop, there it was. We painted. We hung frames. We made a few sporadic dresser swaps, and then we repainted. But the anchor pieces like the rug, the bed, the armchair, and most of the other furnishings pretty much remained the same. More recently we got a super on-sale chandelier and swapped beds with the guest room and it felt like the room was nicely settling into feeling “nearly-done.” Basically, we were fully expecting to go back to ignoring this corner of the house for at least a few more years.

And then it happened. A total bedroom curveball. My friend texted me a gorgeous picture of a rug she came across in a local consignment shop. YES, A CONSIGNMENT SHOP. And I fell hard. It hit me like a ton of bricks. Rug love at first sight. I’m pretty sure you could have seen little cartoon angels flying around my head holding bow and arrows when I ran up to John with that dazed-looking cheeks-flushed expression and said “remember how we’ve always said it would be nice to have a plush wool rug in the bedroom someday!?” And thankfully, he remembered. And he agreed that it looked promising enough to go check it out in person (and smell it, because John was wondering how a consigned rug might smell).

We love a flat weave rug – and have a bunch in our house – but ever since we discovered our love of plush wool Turkish rugs, we’ve been talking about how if ever there were a spot to add one more, it’s the master bedroom. It just feels like the ultimate place for something thick and cozy underfoot. Plus, that soft green flat weave was something we bought back in 2011 for our last house’s living room, so the size wasn’t perfect for the bedroom (it wasn’t as long as the space, so it didn’t extend quite as close to the closet/bathroom door as we’d prefer). But it couldn’t have been that bad because we lived with it for nearly four years this way.

Back to the new rug. It was miraculously the perfect size (around 12 x 16′) and didn’t smell at all (hallelujah!). And because it was a one-of-a-kind find at a consignment store, we knew it wasn’t going to wait around for us. Cut to John standing there grinning with it on the dolly, ready to be loaded into our car.

And guess who muscled that giant wool beast up the stairs? That’s right. This married couple (*points to selves with thumbs*).

Once we got it into the room I pretty much did the Macarena with excitement. It might just be my favorite rug of all time. I mean LOOK AT THE DETAILS! The COLORS! The SHAPES! The SHEER AMOUNT OF CAPS LOCK I’M USING TO DESCRIBE IT!

There are tons of other rugs I love a whooooole lot in this house (I’m looking at you dining room, bonus room, and living room), but this new bedroom edition just feels extra special. So shh, don’t tell them. And don’t cry for the old rug Argentina! That green flat weave sold in less than an hour on a local buy-sell board on Facebook and is currently living her best life in a neighbor’s house.

You may also be noticing a couple of other changes in the wide shot – namely the wall behind the bed. This rug’s bolder, more colorful, and larger scale pattern made it much more of a focal point than its soft green predecessor. So when we rolled out the new rug, the frames on the wall felt kinda jumbled and crazy all of a sudden. Like Lady GaGa in a meat dress next to Bjork in a swan costume. Why? Because the frame wall used to be the focal point with a more subtle rug playing backup. But with a big bold rug in the room now, two focal points were fighting for attention.

So we took all of the frames off the wall and tried out a few “calmer” pieces instead. After buying something the instinct might be to go buy a ton of other stuff to go with the exciting new item, but one of my favorite things to do instead is just to play around with what you have. Sometimes you just have to shift a few things around the house and a few rooms end up looking and feeling fresher to the tune of zero more dollars spent.

The winner was this painting that used to hang above John’s desk in the office (we bought it right off of the wall at a ski house we rented a few years back). I may stain the frame to match some of the other woods in the room, but for now it’s doing the job of complementing – not competing with – the new rug. And from afar it looks surprisingly similar to some of the gold frames we added to the other side of the room (more on those in a sec).

And now in the office there’s a mirror we already had hanging where the pink painting used to be – which is nice because it reflects the light from the two windows across from it. There’s no better feeling than running up and down the stairs with things and trying them in other rooms until the crazy puzzle of “I need one thing for this room and another thing for that room” is solved. I’m serious. I LOVE that weird challenge feeling. It’s like Supermarket Sweep, Home Edition. Come to think of it, that would make a pretty good game show. Stop laughing. I’m serious.

And I know you were worried about where all of our family photos went (JK, nobody cares about family photos unless they’re their own family). We found a few other places around the room to hang some, and I moved some into the guest room above my sewing desk. It’s not as many as we used to have on display, but I think we’ll survive just fine without having 20+ photos of ourselves in a single room anymore.

I reframed the photos in our room in these gold frames that I already had stashed in the guest room (they’re my favorite gold ones from Target that I’ve also hoarded for the beach house). They created a nice little grid above our wood dresser – an antique hand-me-down from John’s parents that had been in the closet. We just swapped it for the white dresser that used to sit here since the wood one looks so nice with the rich new rug colors.

In rearranging our family photos, we realized we’re waaaay overdue for printing some updated ones (so many of a tiny baby boy and a toddler girl) so we sent a few new 8 x 10″ pics to Target so we can finally update these frames. It just feels like you “notice” pictures again when you change them out, so this bedroom update was a nice kick in the pants to get on that.

The other side of the room still has the gradient dresser we painted back in 2011 for our first book (yes, we have no shortage of dressers in here!). Also, can you tell John is asking Burger why he’s always walking into our pictures like he owns the place? You saw him up in the bed squishing all of our pillows a few pictures up too, right? Dude, is ALWAYS ready for his close up.

The Samantha French print above the dresser (she’s one of my favorite painters – here’s her Easy shop) is one we’ve had for years, and we FINALLY got it properly framed! It was actually a birthday gift from John, who sent it off to a framing company called Simply Framed and they made it look so much more legit and lovely with a nice chunky white frame and a perfectly sized mat. This isn’t a sponsored mention or anything (he paid for it, and we love it). It’s not as cheap as finding a ready-made frame at the store (it was about $120, with a coupon code) but it looks so expensive and well done when it comes back to you. Finally feels like the frame is doing the print justice.

It’s hard to tell in the pic, but they even emailed us to say “do you want the mat to go right up to the edge of the print or would you like it to be spaced around a quarter-inch away so the penciled title and signature are visible?” We were so glad they suggested that because that little detail that makes it feel much more professionally done and polished.

So that, my friends, is the tale of a bedroom that we thought was going back into dormancy for a few more years, but was propelled into an accidental-but-surprisingly-thrilling makeover, thanks to a rug switch and a whole lot of other free furniture and accessory swapping.

Oh, and that picture above captures one of the cooler things about the rug – see how it looks faded in a few rows? The lady who owns the consignment store said her friend who vends rugs said it’s not truly faded in those areas, it’s a different looming method and type of wool that they use for those parts so the little water-color-like effect is something they intentionally add when they make the rug. Cool, right? I love how layered and soft it looks with those strips of blurrier colors.

And yes, I totally daydream about moving those windows over so they’re centered. Except they would look wonky from the front of our balanced brick colonial, so I guess I need to leave them where they are and DEAL WITH THE FACT THAT MY ENTIRE LIFE CAN’T BE SYMMETRICAL. Maybe adding one more curtain panel on that left side and extending the rod would cheat things a little and make it less noticeable? Might give that a try sometime.

But so ends our new tour of the bedroom. I’ll leave you with this performance art piece by Burger, entitled Dog Leaves Bed.

And for anyone wondering where we got things in the room, here’s a big ol’ list for you:

bench / faux fiddle leaf fig plant / chandelier / curtains / curtain rods / night stands / swimming girl print / gold frames / similar pink painting / similar duvet / similar bedside lamps / similar dresser / similar tallboy dresser / similar chair / similar floor lamp 

You can also always find our room’s paint colors and sources for everything in them right here.

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The post That Time We Thought The Bedroom Would Simmer For A While, And Then Bam. appeared first on Young House Love.