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limit-list · 4 years

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ATLA AO3 Fic Recs!

idk about how y’all are handling the state of the world rn, but i have retreated into the “consume every available fanfic ever” phase!! for anyone else who wants to read lots of Avatar: The Last Airbender fanfiction, i’ve gathered a list of some of my favs so far!! i’ve split it into gen series, zukka series, gen fics, and zukka fics because those are the types of fics i thrive in. they’re not in any particular order other than that.

i will say that a funny trend i recognized was that Haicrescendo on AO3 (@sword-and-stars on here) made it on to every single list because everything they write is amazing hahaha, feel free to do as i did and just read all of their atla fics. anyway!! here goes, hopes this helps people, ill prolly add onto it at some point haha.

GEN SERIES:

What We’re Given by Haicrescendo

The premise of the story is that Zuko, Iroh, and the crew set out when Zuko was banished, found out that the Sky Bisons never died out, turn their ship into the Jasmine Dragon (a tea shop on a boat!!!), and never hunted the Avatar. This series is so good, it’s currently updating every Friday I think and I love it so much.

Dragon of the Yuyan by 00AwkwardPenguin00

Summary is: “In which Zuko is fostered/adopted/raised/recruited by the Yuyan Archers of Pouhai Stronghold, and destiny hiccups.” Y’all I adore this series so much, I receive so much serotonin every time this updates. The plot develops really really nicely, the OC’s are my fav people ever, and the way the author uses the signing is just perfection. It’s currently updating every Saturday I think.

kintsugi by discordiansamba

Summary is: “au in which a banished for good zuko ends up being hired by the beifongs to watch over their daughter- or, zuko and toph never took that field trip in canon so now she gets to hog him for three whole years”. If y’all know me, y’all know I love some Zuko and Toph friendship. This story is PEAK bonding, it makes me so happy.

ZUKKA SERIES:

Quarantine and Chill 2020 by Haicrescendo

Literally what it says on the tin haha. Series about roommates Sokka and Zuko as they’re stuck in quarantine, first two are explicit, there’s four total so far, and I love them all. The characterization is immaculate, the banter had me cackling, and all in all just a great series!

Carry On For You by Haicrescendo

Summary is: “Not the Pokémon AU you asked for but the one you’re getting anyway. Featuring: full time gym leader and local cryptid Zuko, badge challenger Sokka, and Katara who can only look at so many memes before she flips.” Yall I know nothing about Pokémon but this series!!! It brings me SO much serotonin. I adore this series so much, we get Zuko interacting with animals at the same time as Zukka develops and Iroh is there and I just love it.

the best laid intentions by alittleduck

Post-show fics for the most part. Summary is: “Centers around members of the Gaang coming out to their well meaning but woefully unprepared friends. Part one is centered around Zuko coming out as gay, the second one is centered around Toph coming out as a lesbian and the third one is centered around Sokka coming to terms with his bisexuality.” I love this series a lot, it’s super cute and I thrive on LGBTQ+ gaang fics. We got gay Zuko, lesbian Toph, and bi Sokka and they make me so happy.

GEN FICS:

Embers by Vathara

Ooo boy, this is a long fic, but it is my absolute favorite fanfic in possibly any fandom I’ve been in. The summary for this fic is: “Dragon's fire is not so easily extinguished; when Zuko rediscovers a lost firebending technique, shifting flames can shift the world...” I dunno how to put it any better than that without spoilers!! It rewrites canon from I think Zuko and Iroh getting into Ba Sing Se on. Expect politics, interpersonal tension, several plot lines overlapping and weaving their ways through the story, amazingly developed OC’s, and just incredible writing overall. Definitely a must read.

For Hearth and Home by Haicrescendo

Post-show fic in which Zuko hangs out with a baby all day while everyone falls in love with him. Summary is: “In which Fire Lord Zuko is a total mess and somehow people manage to love him for it anyway.” Honestly I think that sums up the plot, this is just such a pure story, it cheers me up like instantly haha! This is one of the cutest and most relaxing fics I’ve read.

The Family You Choose by TunaFishChris

Show rewrite soulmate fic with the Gaang as family! Summary is: “Some people are born with soulmarks. Zuko has them, but his grandfather burned them off because they ‘make you weak.’ Team Avatar has a few things to say about that.” No spoilers, but I love a good soulmate fic and I’ve never seen a concept quite like this one!! I think I’ve read this two or three times at this point. Amazing.

Unwanted Friends by FoiblePNoteworthy

This was inspired by The Family You Choose by TunaFishChris (see previous), and I love it so much. It’s the same concept, but minus Suki and told from the other’s perspective at an earlier place in the timeline! If y’all end up liking The Family You Choose, you’ll like this one too!!

Perfection is Overrated by Jagged Cliffs

Post-show fic. If you’re like me and have a soft spot for fics where Fire Lord Zuko is an absolute sweetheart to the palace staff, then you have to read this. One of my all time favorite fanfics. Everything about this story makes me happy.

Another Brother by AvocadoLove

Show rewrite. This is a WIP, I’m actually still reading it rn but it’s really good!! It’s about if Hakoda found Zuko as an 8 year old injured on a Fire Nation ship and brought him home to the Water Tribe. No spoilers here, but it’s a really good pure story and I love it so much so far.

Salvage by MuffinLance

Show AU WIP. Ooo goodness I love this story! Summary is: “Mid-Season-One Zuko is held ransom by Chief Hakoda. Ozai's replies to the Water Tribe's demands are A+ Parenting. Hakoda is… deeply concerned, for this son that isn't his, and who might be safer among enemies than with his own father.” Zuko is an angsts bby whomst I adore, Hakoda is my favorite ever, and the OC’s are legit the best. MuffinLance is another author where every fic is amazing! This fic in particular tore me to shreds and then makes up for it in absolute amazingness.

OUTLINE: Amnesia!Zuko Joins the Earth Army by MuffinLance

Show rewrite, I can’t remember from what point exactly, but it’s before Ba Sing Se. Summary is: “Zuko loses his memory and becomes an Earth Kingdom war hero. His father is going to LOVE this.” Written in outline/concept form, I adore this so so much. This fic is why I post concepts of stories I’ll never write, cause this story made me realize people enjoy reading them!! And this is sooo enjoyable, I fuckin love this fic.

ZUKKA FICS:

The Good Vanilla by Haicrescendo

Show AU-ish from the Western Air Temple I think. I think this is the fic that made me fall in love with Zukka actually omg. A beautiful fanfic that shows how Zuko and Sokka slowly fall in love, no spoilers here, there is lots of cooking.

Quit your life and come train Pokemon. (orphaned)

Modern Day AU. Another one of my starter Zukka fics!! Sokka kinda maybe falls in love with Aang’s roommate Zuko. There is nerdiness and awkward situations and ~emotions~. It makes me happy, definitely one of my favs.

by the stars above, i knew we were in love by theycallmesuperboy

Post-show fic. This one tore me to shreds!! It’s a fic about Zuko working his way up to proposing to Sokka. No spoilers, just saying that this story hurt me in all the best ways. Amazing story.

Unchained Melody by AvocadoLove

Show rewrite from Hei Bai’s Forest episode, WIP. Basic premise is that Sokka turns into a ghost, and Zuko is the only one who can see him. The dynamic between Zuko and Sokka is just explored so well here, and the banter is perfection. There are so many things I could say about different parts of the story, but I don’t wanna spoil a thing, so go read it!! Love this fic.

Sea Cranes by Druddigonite

Show AU. Summary is: “Between chasing the Avatar and dealing with his disgrace, Zuko begins to cough up flowers.” It’s a really interesting concept which I’d never heard of before, but I loved this fic! Just enough angst to tear my heart up and then mend it back together.

Hotman by callmecaramleh

Set during the Western Air Temple Arc. Summary is: “Toph decides she needs to know who in the gaang is hot. This leads to quite a bit of trouble for Sokka.” I love this fic so much. It’s so clear that they’re awkward teenagers here, and as an awkward teenager I love the dynamic!!! I just adore these boys so much.

Something Good Can Work by beersforqueers

Bookstore AU!!! I live for a good bookstore AU, as well as library and café AUs. Anyway, summary is: “Bookstore AU! In which Sokka tries to not-so-subtly pick up the cute boy working in the bookstore, and the cute boy is totally oblivious. Because the cute boy is Zuko.” They’re adorable and flustered. It’s precious, another fic that brings me outta a bad mood in like a minute flat. I love this!

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divinebovine12185 · 4 years

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March Catch-up

So I decided to make this blog after seeing someone elses that they were doing for pretty much the same thing (Thanks Baby Bahamut). Seeing as this is march now, I have lots of catching up to do. So, here’s what I’ve beaten so far;

January:

Mutant Mudds (3DS): This was a game that I’d picked up sometime in 2012, and then kind of forgot about. I think its been sitting on my 3DS ever since, and I’ve kept meaning to get back to it. This was its year I guess, and I decided to finally beat it to start the year. I started a new game aaaaaand...instantly remembered why I never beat it.

It just feels like so much nothing. The graphics are pretty meh, story might as well not exist, and the action isn’t really that fun, more frustrating. Especially near the end of the game, the controls really aren’t tight enough to support what it wants to do. Beat it and instantly deleted it. 3/10

West of Loathing (Switch): This was a real surprise. When I read that it was from the same guys who did Kingdom of Loathing, I thought it might be ok, but it could also just be try-hard random. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the humour was actually really clever, and the combat, while super basic, was pretty fun! I also couldn’t stop exploring and clicking on every little thing to see what it did. If I had any problems, it was that the ending was a little too abrupt, and that the combat difficulty tended to be all over the place at times. Great game, and I will definitely be playing the DLC at some point. 8/10

February:

Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap (GBA): Well, technically I played in on my 3DS, but its a GBA game so I’ll let it be. Anyways, what a fantastic little pocket zelda game! The world was pretty compact, but thanks to the kinstones I was always exploring, and the graphics, while being super cute, also kept things clear and easy to read. It’s pretty hard to know where to go, but with a ton of exploration even I managed to find my way to the next dungeon.

The equipment you find was super fun too; I didn’t realize that they had managed to get things like the deku leaf in a 2D zelda, and had lots of fun with it. Backtracking with them was great too, as re-exploring old areas always felt fresh. Definitely a must play if you haven’t already. 9/10

Legend of Zelda: Links Awakening (GBC): I already beat the original way back in the late 90′s, but I figured that the GBC version was different enough to call it a seperate game.

So this one definitely scratched a nostalgia itch, but it was kind of a mistake playing it after a more modern one. The items felt a little more basic, the movement a little more stilted. Still a great game, but definitely aged just a bit. And the colour dungeon was really basic, didn’t feel like much of a challenge. Again, still worth playing, but without the nostalgia glasses, its aged. 7/10

March:

Sonic Forces (PS4): So I know that this is a “bad” sonic game according to the mainstream, and I can totally see why (homing attacks barely work, kind of a dumb story, etc etc) but for some weird reason I actually kind of enjoyed the levels...so much so that I think I’ll go for that crazy grindy platinum! (Tho whoever thought of a trophy for getting 100,000 rings, I will find you and punch you). Theres just something fun about the missions, and again some of the levels I really enjoy. And the avatar dress-up (despite sounding dumb at first) is actually pretty great once you unlock a bunch of the clothing options.

A solid 6/10

Pokemon Shield (Switch): Okaaay, so this one is controversial. Maybe its just me being a pokemon fanboy, but I still really liked this entry. Sure it was really easy (mostly), but the things I love about the pokemon franchise were still here. Sure most of the monsters aren’t, but they are coming, and since I’m more interested in the competitive meta than the story, its kind of refreshing.

See, in past gens, the same pokemon have been on top forever (for the most part), and then you have the same pokemon that deal with them well, and before you know it, all the competitive tiers (shoutout to smogon) look the same as the past gen, and I’m already bored. Here, its a chance to remake them fresh, and I’ve been loving it. As well, they’ve made it WAY easier to train up competitive pokemon. I already have a team ready to go, and it didn’t take me a whole month to do it!

All in all, very happy with this entry, and can’t wait to see whats in the expansions. 8/10

APE OUT (PC): Guess this is the arbitrary “Arty” entry eh? So basically you are an ape that is breaking out of various places, and you attack by grabbing and throwing people at walls or each other. When you do, they die in a really satisfying explosion of blood. The really cool part of the whole thing is that its all set to a drum solo that encompasses the sound effects and everything. When you just start a level, its really quiet, but as the carnage starts, the beat picks up organically and you can really get into it! And the art style is so clean and simple, yet very artistic. Just a neat game all around!

After reading this, it sounds great, right? Well, there are a couple things that actually made this one kind of hard to finish. See, the game is super satisfying, until you’ve died a million times from something you had no control over; A couple examples are getting sniped from way off screen, or RNG making 6 super tough enemies appear in a room you just ran into, meaning instadeath. Also, the graphics are really cool, but some effects make it super hard to see what was going on, 5/10

What’s Next?

Right now, I’m just working on the platinum for Sonic, but next month I think I feel like playing the Full Throttle remake. Once I’ve beaten something, Ill be sure to make a post about it! Thanks for reading!

#video games

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twdeadfanfic · 6 years

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Life at the end of the world Pt 34

Summary: Your life as a zombie apocalypse survivor. It starts with the Reader settling into the camp at the quarry, before s1 and then follows the show events and storyline, more or less, but with the Reader in it.

Pairing: Daryl Dixon x Reader

Warnings: Slow burn, violence, language.

Author’s note: I’ve been itching to write a fic like this for a long while and I write it for fun, I don’t claim to be a writer so if you find you dislike this fic, please be kind and just stop reading. English’s not my first language so maybe there’re some mistakes, I apologize in advance. For the same reason, I can’t write character’s accents and things like that. At any rate, I hope you enjoy it. There’d be several parts to this.

Masterlist

Next morning everyone got up as soon as the sun rose.

Some wanted to keep exploring the place and meeting people, others had appointments with Deanna, and others were already starting their jobs.

Carol walked down the stairs and you blinked at her in disbelieve.

“What are you wearing? You look like some middle-aged suburban mother of three.”

“Which is exactly how I want to look.” She winked at you. “I’m invisible here, darling, I’m going to get to know these people and see what they are up to. Gonna lure them with my casseroles.”

“You just...lost all your sex appeal all of a sudden.” You teased but Carol really did look strange like that, different.

She pushed you playfully with her shoulder and walked out of the house.

“I’ll hose you down in your sleep.”

You walked out in time to hear her saying to Daryl as she walked away. You chuckled and sat down next to Daryl.

“I’ll hold you down while she does it.”

He rolled his eyes and kept fumbling with his crossbow.

“What’re you doing?” You noticed one of his fingers bleeding and took his hand to inspect it.

“Getting it ready.”

“I’m jealous of your crossbow again...we can’t have our guns but you can have it...totally unfair.” You half-joked and Daryl gave you a small smile.

“I have to meet with Deanna’s son and his team.” You informed. “I think they want me to join them next run.”

Daryl frowned, you’d known he wouldn’t like it.

“I don’t like you going out with those people.”

“It will be fine.” You assured him, lifting his hand to your lips to kiss his knuckles. “I’ll be with Glenn, Tara, and Noah too.”

Daryl nodded, though it was clear he still didn’t like it.

“Be careful.”

It wasn’t usual for you to go on runs without him, and you knew he worried about you being out there scavenging, especially with people he didn’t trust yet.

“Of course.” You smiled at him, trying to reassure him, and leaned to kiss his cheek.

You wished he could join you. You didn’t like to be away from him and you’d worry about him, knowing how unhappy he was in Alexandria...the idea of leaving him alone there made your heart clench. Not to mention you’d feel way safer if he was with you, and it’d also ease his worries about your wellbeing.

You wondered if you could talk to Deanna about it. She still hadn’t told to Daryl what he could do to contribute to the community.

“I have to go...” You said quietly.

“Okay.”

“You’ll be okay alone here?”

You didn’t like the idea, even though Michonne had told you she’d keep an eye on him when she saw you pacing around worriedly. She still didn’t have a job and had nothing to do but keep trying to know more about Alexandria.

“Yeah...I can take care of myself, Y/N...”

Daryl gave you a small, weak smile, that just saddened you more instead of making you feel better, but you said nothing.

“Okay.”

You cupped his face and kissed his lips goodbye.

***

The dry run didn’t go well...actually, it was a total nightmare.

Right after meeting Aiden, you’d already thought him to be a cocky idiot, but you’d decided not to judge him without giving him a chance.

He was, indeed, an idiot, just like his partner Nicholas.

It all had seemed to be a big, morbid game to them, and you’d watched in horror and disbelieve as they lured a walker that had killed one of their own, wanting to tie him on a tree as some sort of wicked punishment, without allowing you to kill him, no matter the danger, until it’d almost bitted Tara and you all had stormed back to Alexandria.

Back inside, that dam cocky asshole had the nerve to say it was your fault, that you weren’t ready for gigs.

You felt your blood boil and you turned around, feeling like you could just spat to Aiden’s face, but before you could do anything an argument broke between him and Glenn, catching the attention of a group of people, including Deanna, who you could see making her way to you.

“Glenn, come on, it’s not worthy.” You glared at Aiden in disgust. “He’s not worthy.”

“Why did you let these people in?” Aiden was asking to her mother, and you snorted.

“Because we actually know what we’re doing.” Glenn retorted.

Before any of could do anything, Aiden was throwing a punch to Glenn, who dodged it easily and sent Aiden to the ground with a punch of his own. Things escalated as Nicholas tried to go against Glenn too, but Daryl turned up to stop him, pinning him to the floor.

“I said stop it.”

Deanna was trying to stop everyone and then Rick and Michonne were joining her too.

“Daryl.”

You placed your hand on his shoulder, not wanting him to get into trouble. He shook you off but Rick managed to drag him away from Nicholas and you watched in worry how Daryl paced from side to side as if still wanting to go for Nicholas and Aiden, though Rick kept stepping in front of him.

“Rick and his people are part of his community now in all ways as equals.”

Deanna announced and you couldn’t deny you were glad she was standing on your side.

You walked closer to Daryl, taking his hand on yours but keeping your attention on Deanna, who was offering Rick and Michonne a job as constables. It seemed your people were finding their feet in that town.

You heard Daryl scoff and he shook off your hand, grabbing his crossbow and walking away fast.

“Hey!” You called after him but he ignored you. “Daryl! Wait!”

You followed him to a secluded area without any neighbors around, where he finally stopped though he kept pacing furiously from side to side, his eyes hard and angry.

“Calm down...”

“She throws us a bone we’re her lapdogs now?” He glared at you.

“It’s not like that. Rick and Michonne being constables here is important.” You tried to reason. “Give us authority.”

“Yeah, sure.” Daryl scoffed.

“It’s true...Deanna sees we’re useful...”

“I saw how you and Rick were looking at me...like I was feral...” Daryl resumed his pacing. “Like it was my fault and not of those pricks who attacked Glenn.”

“That’s not true...” You said, a little hurt. “I would never think that of you and I know you were trying to help us...but I didn’t want you getting into trouble, things were getting out of hand...”

It was a luck Deanna had backed you up, you had feared she’d kick you out for fighting against not only her people bur her son, or worse, that she’d try to punish you in any other way. But she was proving to be a good leader, Alexandria was not Woodbury, that was clear.

Daryl still seemed to think you had turned on him or something, because he scoffed again, shaking his head. You knew he felt out of place there and it was making him react like that, but still, it hurt you that he believed you could think ill of him.

“Think whatever you want.”

You turned on your heels and headed back home, feeling a lump in your throat. You didn’t want to fight with Daryl and you knew if you kept trying to talk while you both were upset, you’d end up arguing, so you just left and resisted the urge to cry.

You had been sitting down on the porch for a while, some of the others already returning to the house as the sun started to go down, when Daryl came back too.

He sat down next to you in silence and you snorted quietly when you noticed him trying to slowly scoot closer to you, not as subtly as he probably wanted. You turned your head and placed a peace-offering kiss on his arm.

“I’m sorry...” He said, ever so quietly.

“I know you don’t like to be here...” You said softly.

Daryl stayed silent for a moment and you snuggled against his arm, resting your head on his shoulder.

“I don’t fit in here...”

He finally whispered into your hair and you pulled away so you could look at him.

“You fit with us, like always. Nothing has changed.”

Daryl just shrugged and you decided to let it go for now, not wanting to push him. You snuggled closer again and he wrapped an arm around your shoulders.

“So the run wasn’t good?” He asked you and you let out a groan.

“It was a nightmare. I wonder how those two idiots manage to keep these people feed...they “ You complained. “Tara was almost bit because of their stupid games with the walkers...”

You felt his grip on you tighten.

“Deanna knows it, I think...” She had thanked Glenn for knocking Aiden’s arrogant ass to the floor. “She knows we can survive out there, that’s why she wants us here.” Looking around it was clear most of the people wouldn’t know what to do against the threats of the world outside.

“I don’t want to go out on more runs with them.” You admitted, even though you felt bad for abandoning Glenn, Tara, and Noah. “I can’t stand Aiden...I can’t work with them...”

“I rather you don’t go with them...” Daryl nodded, though you knew he wouldn’t interfere if you wished to keep going on runs.

“I’ll talk to Deanna...”

“You haven’t talked with your brother yet?”

“No...” You dropped your head, ashamed. Your fear had won against your wish to see him, no matter how happy you were he was alive and there. You felt anxious just thinking about walking up to him. “Maybe tomorrow.”

Daryl nodded but said nothing. You didn’t push him to talk when he wasn’t ready and neither did he push you.

You could hear people starting to make dinner inside and you lazily got up to help.

“Come on?” You reached out your hand for Daryl.

“In a minute.”

You nodded at Daryl, who took a cigarette out of his pocket, and walked inside.

You blinked when you saw Rick walking down the stairs wearing the sheriff uniform.

“First Carol, now you...” You said with a half amused smile as you saw him walk out, Carol following him.

“So...I take we’re staying.” Maggie brought up once everyone was back inside.

“Yes.” Rick nodded. “We should start settling in, starting tomorrow...use both of the houses, take the rooms...we’re here to stay.”

***

Next morning, you woke up when you felt Daryl moving away from you and sitting up.

“Hey...we’re you going? It’s early...” Looking around you could see some of you were already gone but others were still asleep.

“I’m gonna head out hunting.” Daryl looked around. “Also...I have to talk with Rick and Carol, we’re meeting outside.”

“What for?”

Daryl just shrugged and you frowned, wondering why they hadn’t told anyone else about that meeting, but didn’t ask anything else, guessing Daryl wasn’t probably even supposed to tell you about the meeting at all.

Whatever it was, you’ll know eventually. You just hoped it wasn’t more problems.

“Okay...be careful.”

Daryl nodded and pecked your lips before getting up and out of the house.

You got up too and began taking yours and Daryl’s things into one of the smaller bedrooms, hoping Daryl wouldn’t mind you moved his stuff in too. After all, Rick had said you should start settling in.

One on hand, you’d miss bedding down with everyone in the living room, feeling surrounded by your family and protected, but you also loved the idea of sleeping in a real bed and having a room just for Daryl and you.

You hoped he’d think the same.

On your way back to the living room, you saw Michonne in one of the bedrooms, trying on the constable uniform.

“Looking good.” You winked at her but she let out a sigh.

“Looking weird.”

“Come on, don’t be like that.” You walked in and flopped down on the bed. “This is good, you’ll have some sort of authority over this place...Deanna saw your potential, saw you’d be good at it.”

“Thanks.” Michonne gave you a weak smile and sat down next to you. “I like this place...but everything still feels strange.”

“I don’t know if I like this place or not, but I want to stay here.”

“Yeah...” She let out another sigh and got up again. “I have to go with Rick and Maggie to meet with Deanna.”

“Okay...I might see you later, I want to talk with Deanna about my job.”

“Alright. See you later, then.”

You walked back to what you guessed was now your bedroom, pacing around it, trying to get used to it and rummaging through the clothes you found in the closet.

You looked up when you heard a knock on the door and saw Carl standing at the open door.

“Hey.”

“Hey...I wanted to tell you I’m going to Ron’s place and Chris’s coming too...so maybe, if you want, you can come and pick me up later, so maybe you can have a chance to talk with him?”

You gave Carl a smile, grateful he was thinking on ways to easier you the task of getting a chance to talk with your brother, even though the idea still scared you and made you feel anxious.

“Yeah...yeah, okay, it’d be great...thank you, Carl, you’re the best.”

“See you later then!” Carl gave you a smile before turning away.

***

You were looking for Michonne and the others, your heart beating fast at the idea of going to pick up Carl in a short while. You found them walking up the walls, Sasha making her way to them.

“Hey, wait for me.”

Sasha looked at you impatiently and didn’t stop, so you rushed to her.

“I’m going to volunteer to keep watch at the lookout.”

“Then I am too.” That was your chance of freeing yourself from Aiden and his runs.

Turns out there was no lookout, nobody used it. How had this people survived for so long? As unlucky as your group had always been, this people seemed to have had all the fortune in the world if they hadn’t been attacked by herds of walkers and groups of dangerous people.

Soon, Rick and Michonne talked Deanna into setting a lookout, you needed it to protect Alexandria properly, and Deanna was still listening to your ideas, valuing your knowledge about this world.

“We’ll make shifts.”

“I’ll take as many shifts as possible.” Sasha offered quickly.

“I’d like to take shifts too, I’d be more useful there than in runs, I’m good at it.” You chimed in too. Deanna raised an eyebrow at you as if she could guess why you’d rather do that than going to runs with his son, but said nothing, turning her attention to Sasha.

“Why?”

“They’re two of our best shots,” Maggie informed Deanna, and you gave her a grateful smile. “They can do it.”

“I’m going to put Spencer on there,” Deanna informed and you could just hope her other son wasn’t a big of a useless idiot as Aiden. “I’ll consider Sasha being our primary lookout...” She was giving her a look like trying to read into her.

“And I’ll consider changing Y/N from working on runs to keeping watch too...but I want something in return.”

The smile that had begun to tug at your lips froze at that and you braced yourself for what she might want in return.

“Tonight I’m hosting a Welcome for all of you in my home. I want you all to be there.”

You snorted but smiled in relieve. So the condition to stop dealing with Aiden and getting a job you liked was attending a party. Alright then.

“I’ll be there.”

Sasha, though, didn’t seem to like the idea. You knew she wasn’t adapting well to Alexandria and she was still hurting, but she won’t open up to any of you, wouldn’t talk, and you had no idea how to help her. It seemed Deanna was to trying to figure it out too.

“I’m going to pick up your son, he’s in Ron’s house.”

You told Rick when Deanna left, Maggie with her. Deanna had chosen her to help around Alexandria, another job of importance in there for someone of your family.

“Didn’t know Carl needed help getting back to the house.” Rick seemed half amused, half confused.

“My brother will be there...”

Rick’s face went serious in a moment.

“Do you want me to go with you?”

“No, no, it’s fine, I can handle it.” Rick patted your shoulder and left with Carol, who gave you an encouraging smile.

Once you reached the Anderson’s house you paced anxiously back and forth, nervous and scared, all you wanted to do was to run away, even though you knew how lucky you were at having been gifted a second chance with your brother, and you knew you should take advantage of it.

Your heart started beating even faster when Carl walked out of the house with Chris, they waved goodbye to Ron and then Carl turned around, gesturing to you to come closer when he saw you standing at the other side of the street without moving.

You gave yourself a mental kick and walked towards them, shaking. Once there, you didn’t say anything, just stared at your brother longer than probably could be considered polite, but he just looked back at you with confused but kind eyes.

Luckily, Carl was there to rescue you.

“Chris, this is Y/N, she’s from my family.”

“Nice to meet you Y/N.” Your brother reached out his hand for you to shake.

You could just gape at him, unable to find words and with a lump in your throat. Now that you were close, you could easily recognize some of the features of the boy you had left, though he was so big now.

He didn’t seem to have any memory of you though, he was so little when you left he was bound not to remember your face...

But he was there, he was real, he was alive, standing in front of you. Here it was, your second chance, you were finally reunited after all this time.

You tried to swallow the lump in your throat, doing your best not to cry.

“Y/N, you okay?” Carl asked softly, looking at you with concern.

“Yeah, yeah...” You finally managed to speak, reaching out to weakly shake your brother’s hand. “I...I’m sorry...”

“It’s okay. We know people from outside have trouble settling in here, you all seem kind of out when you arrive.” The boy gave you a smile. “Enid’s been here for months now and it’s still hard for her.”

“Enid hates me.” Carl let out a sigh.

“She doesn’t hate you.” Chris rolled his eyes.

“You might want to tell that to her.”

You watched as Carl and your brother talked back and forth, a small smile tugging at your lips. How could this be real. You gathered your courage to speak.

“You have been here for long?”

“Yes, almost from the beginning, when we came just half the walls were up.” Your brother turned his attention from Carl back to you. “When everything started my father took my mother and I to a military camp, and eventually the military moved us here.”

Your mother...

“So...you live with your parents?” You hoped he didn’t notice how your voice wavered

“With my father...” Your brother looked down, his eyes suddenly sad, and your heart sank. “My mother...she didn’t make it...back at the military camp, one day we were attacked by a group of those monsters...that’s why they moved us here.”

“I’m sorry...” You murmured, feeling too close to tears.

Since you had seen Atlanta overrun by walkers, all that time ago, you hadn’t expected your mother to be alive, but still your heart broke listening to your brother...you had thought she’d be there too...but now she was gone and you wouldn’t have the chance to sort things out with her.

It made you feel surer than ever about having to sort things out with your brother, though you weren’t really sure how to do it.

“Thanks.” Your brother gave you sad smile. “Most of us have lost someone...”

“Yeah...sometimes we find people too...”

Your brother gave you a confused look but nodded politely.

“Yes, I was told you all found each other out there.”

“I was lucky.” You nodded. “Carl here is one of the most skilled people I know at killing those monsters, saved me a couple of times.”

Carl rolled his eyes at you, ducking his head in embarrassment, but your brother looked at him with admiration.

“Well, it’s was nice to meet you but I have to go back home. I’ll see you both tonight?”

“Yeah.”

Carl nodded, smiling, and you nodded too although worry and anxiety clenched your heart again as you realized your stepfather would be there too.

Your brother waved goodbye and left, and you walked with Carl back to your house.

“He’s nice...” Carl ventured.

“Yeah...yeah, he’s, isn’t he?” You gave Carl a smile, though your eyes filled with tears. “I can’t believe this is real...I’m happy I found him, I’m so happy...but I’m so scared too...”

“Hey, it’s okay...” Carl gave you a sweet smile and reached out to take your hand as you walked. “It’ll be okay.”

“Thanks...”

“You didn’t tell him who you are.”

“I couldn’t...” You shook your head. “He doesn’t know me...I don’t want to freak him out...” It was going to be a shock for the poor boy...and you’d have to deal with his father.

“You’ll tell him?”

“I don’t know...” You swallowed hard, trying to control the anxiety that threatened to take your breath away. “I think so, eventually...I don’t know how...”

“Stop worrying, it’ll be fine.” He squeezed your hand reassuringly.

“Thanks...”

You reached the house in silence.

“Hey, Y/N...” Carl stopped before getting inside his room. “I’m sorry about your mom.”

You nodded, your eyes getting wet. Carl gave you a small smile and pat your shoulder but allowed you to retreat into your room without saying anything else.

I never thought anyone’d like to be tag in any of my stories so thank you! It means the world!

If you want to be tagged please let me know.

@momc95 @jodiereedus22 @osweetdevilo@sapphire1727@coffeebooksandfandom @the-destielr@checkintoreality@daddys-little-princess67 @sesshomaru-lover@crossbowking@coltcas @feartheendlesssummer @izumi37@gruffle1 @drina365@kuolematkorjaavat @daeshaunex2 @xtinkersimsx @stressed-lasagna @moraglefay @phantom-fangirl-stuff @teenyforestfairy@yenne-yen-illustrations@mychemicalimagines @hyphymanatee

#daryl dixon #daryl dixon x reader #daryl dixon/reader #daryl dixon imagine #daryl dixon fic #daryl dixon fanfic #daryl dixon fanfiction #twd #the walking dead #twd fanfic #the walking dead fanfic #twd fanfiction #the walking dead fanfiction #twd fic #the walking dead fic

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bi-dazai · 5 years

Text

Hey! You! Yes, you!

Do you like fantasy stories? Of course you do.

Do you enjoy stories of teenagers trying to deal with the typical emotional hardships of being a teenager while also handling a revolution that involves swords, magic, occasional gods chiming in to help, and the power of friendship and learning to be confident in yourself?

And do you like the promise of not one but several endgame gay pairings? Fantasy gay pairings?! Of course you do!

Then my new online serial is for you!

Priyana is the story of three teenagers - Nik, Rada, and Kane - who find their “fate on fast forward” when the most annoying yet strangely likable character I’ve ever written cruel Prince Leander arrives in their small town. After the prince captures Amarandos (the man who raised the trio), burns their home down, and vows to destroy the escaped three kids, our trio find themselves thrust abruptly into the destiny which they thought they would be following much later on. Vowing to rescue Amarandos and reclaim the throne from Prince Leander and the evil King Olbert, they venture across the land of Priyana, learning about the true, hidden history of their country and their family, and making friends, enemies, and mending a scarred populace on the way.

The first book, Soul, follows the trio as they attempt to recapture Amarandos and struggle with the strange new existence they have been thrown headfirst into. With nothing but each other, they must learn to work as a team and not just as three moody teenagers raised by the same man. They journey to the mountain-enshrouded city of Nahvsenn, where they encounter a passionate, well-established underground rebellion simply awaiting the moment to finally take their city back from the evil King Olbert’s reign. Could our trio be the herald of that moment?

Priyana takes strong inspiration from Avatar: The Last Airbender in terms of the exploration of themes, worldbuilding style, our main characters’ relationships with the history of the land, and character development. It is written by a bisexual non-binary with an adoration for fantasy, the written word, and using fiction to criticise the ills of the society we live in.

A recommended minimum reader age would be approximately 10-12 years old, as the work contains some death, minor violence, and minor strong language.

Priyana will be published as an online serial, with the first 4 chapters published on the 12th January, 2019, the 5th chapter published on the 19th January, and the rest of the 19 total chapters of Book One: Soul being published fortnightly (every two weeks) from the 2nd February. It will be available as a PDF with occasional sketches for the series on a Google Drive (I will post the link to the folder on my Twitter and on this blog each time it is updated) and as a text-only version in the Original Work tag on Archive Of Our Own.

Chapters range between 2000-10,000 words, so it will only take 10-20 minutes out of your day to read a chapter. Sweet! And even better - it’s totally free. That’s right. A cool fantasy story, easy to read, not to long and overbearing, for free! *Keanu Reeves voice* Whoa.

And good news! If you are just so hyped for this series that you find yourself at the edge of your seat in anticipation for mid-January, well guess what! The first chapter is currently available as a sneak-peek preview! Nice!

Check out the first chapter here! It will only take you about 10-15 minutes to read, and even less time to reblog and share the news! Because this is the only form of advertising this thing has!

Even more information available under the cut:

I’ve been working on this almost exclusively over the last two years. Everything is so insanely thought-out and I’m sure I must have gone over everything over a million times now. So to say this means a lot to me is an understatement.

Certain tropes in this story are criticisms and deconstructions of common fantasy tropes, particularly tropes rooted in misogyny, racism, and xenophobia. Certain character beats are familiar to character beats in other stories that I wasn’t entirely happy with - for example, in Book 2A, there’s a character beat in Rada’s arc which is remarkably similar to a character beat in Sakura’s (from Naruto) early episodes. However, I never liked how Sakura’s character change from that beat (hint: when her hair gets chopped off) was so minimal, and often she would be acting like she would when she was first introduced. Rada is probably the best example of me using different character beats and subtly implementing them in hers to, at least in my opinion, show would could be instead done with said character beats.

So yeah, this story is in essence, a lot to me. If you’ve read and shared the news, it means the world to me. Each person that reads it I am eternally thankful for. Each person that shares it and recommends it even more so.

This isn’t my first major writing project - I’ve been writing long-form chapter books all throughout my teens, with my first chapter book having been written when I was 10 years old (sidenote - that one is a preteen mess in which I introduce vampires out of absolutely nowhere and include a wizard called Carrot-Eye). However, this is the first project I’ve written with the intent of being seen by eyes other than those in my close community of friends and family, and instead being published for those all over the world.

I struggled for a while with whether or not I would charge for this work. I’ve spent so much time and effort on it, and every day has been spent buried in Priyana, that it almost feels unfair to myself to release it for free. But as my first work, and as a poor person with few industry contacts and no industry contacts that could help me in this format, I realised it would be unwise for me to charge for it, and would make it accessible to other poor people like me. Free stories, yall!

That being said, if this project reaches a certain level of success, I’ll happily open up a Patreon, Ko-Fi and maybe a few other routes of donation. It’s my dream to be a full-time writer, and I’ve poured so much of my heart into this project already that I’m fully sure this is what I want to spend the rest of my life doing. I want to make people think with my stories, but I also want them to enjoy them and escape from real life. I want people to fall in love with my characters, to experience their emotions and to connect with my work. I hope I can do that for as many people as possible.

I’m going to now set some promises, as this series is going to be published for many years to come and my promised gay pairings are, as I mentioned, endgame, so they will be happening later on. So the following things, I promise here and now, to uphold in this series:

- there will be both a WLW and a MLM pairing with major characters

- there will be time spent exploring the dynamic and romance of said pairings

- there will be a trans girl (hint, hint: sister girl) major character with a major character as her love interest

- there is a nonbinary character from the first chapter, who although starts as a villain, undergoes a long arc in which they eventually decide to redeem themselves on their own terms

- i promise not to demonise the gender, ethnicity, race, or customs of any minority or minority-coded characters

- at least two major characters are mixed race, with issues of race, immigration, generalisation, and xenophobia explored from the perspective of racial minorities

- issues such as the above are explored with a mindset of long, long hours and days of research into real life scholars of race, gender, sociology, etc, and especially their perspectives on fantasy and allegory

Thank you for reading this, and if you did, thank you for reading that chapter and sharing!

-Natalya

#priyana

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americanowrites · 6 years

Photo

Inspired by Harry Styles and his baby holding skills

Georgina walked into the room and stopped in her tracks, stumbling over her own feet ad almost dropping the crate of cupcakes she’d brought. Around her the room was bustling but all she could see was Harry as he stood in the centre of the room dressed in all black and cradling a baby who was fast asleep in his arms. Her chest exploded.

She maybe even swooned at the sight.

She didn’t register all the musical equipment surrounding them, the mics and the guitars lined up or the large clown like pants Harry had spent the morning prancing around his house in, while telling Georgina how free his crotch felt.

All she could see was the baby, with chubby little cheeks and dimpled legs and Harry who was gazing down like it was a jewel. She’d come here to work, to help Ben out, but she doubted she’d get any work done. Her brain couldn’t even focus.

And then Harry smiled. He giggled at the baby who stirred in his arms, her eyes fluttering open. And she was a goner. She’d seen him with kids before, mainly toddlers or young fans they met in the street. Ruby was their goddaughter and they’d both looked after her many times but something about the scene today floored Georgina.

“There she is! My favourite girl!” Harry shouted, forgetting he had a baby in his arms when he saw Georgina. Ruby startled but didn’t cry, Harry was already soothing her with his thumb on her cheek and his dimpled grin. Ruby was as bad as Georgina in falling for his charm

“Hey.” making her way towards them, she felt like she was in a fever dream. Would this be her reality in a few years’ time?

“Shh Ruby pretend you’re not there, we’ll make Auntie Georgie jealous.” He whispered loudly to Ruby who gurgled in response.

“Bad luck Styles, I’ve already seen that I’ve lost you to a younger woman. And she’s a lot cuter than me.”

“Yeah but you’re still grumpier.” He laughed when she slapped his arm. “My prickly pear.”

“Stop it.” she groaned, rolling her eyes at the baby who wouldn’t understand for years how annoying he was. “He’s a nightmare.” She told Ruby who only curled her lip in what Harry always confused for a smile.

“Hi Auntie Georgie,” he lifted Ruby so she could see Georgina better, lifting her tiny hand and waving. “Don’t be mad. We’ve missed you lots and lots and Uncle Harry gives the best hugs in the world.” His voice was high, a false baby voice which made Georgina’s head swim and her heart flutter just a little.

She smiled like an idiot, her cheeks aching because they both knew she couldn’t resist him anyway but when he had a baby in his arms he was unstoppable.

He shifted so he could rest an arm around her shoulders. She hated that he could easily hold a baby in one arm, she shook with fear when she used both arms. “So you found it okay?”

“Found what?”

“The studios.” He nodded to the set up in front of them, cameramen and sound guys milling around.

“Harry this is Abbey Road studios, I think every tourist in London knows where this is.” Even though she wasn’t a huge music fan even she felt a buzz of excitement as she walked up to the studios, having battled her way through the security who were less than pleasant. She’d seen people posing on the zebra crossing, stopping all the traffic as they perfected their poses, she’d read the writing scrawled on the white walls outside the studio gates and had even been tempted by the shop next door. This place was history and she was right in the middle of it.

“I don’t see why you couldn’t have just come with me in the car.” He pouted, like he had this morning when she turned him down.

Georgina sighed, torn between wanting to spend all her limited time with Harry and knowing she actually had others in her life and responsibilities. But he was hard to ignore, especially when he was pouted at the bottom of the bed having just stepped out of the shower. She’d allowed herself an extra pancake at brunch because she’d been so strong-willed against him. “I couldn’t ditch Amy, she’s super stressed.”

“How’s wedding planning going?” he chuckled as she groaned, throwing her head against his chest. He’d been privy to many late night sessions where Georgina complained about her crazy wedding obsessed friend.

“Bad, she’s decided she hates everything but there isn’t enough time to change everything.” Gus had proposed on Christmas Day and by Boxing Day they’d set a date for next winter which meant Amy had gone into full bridezilla mode before the new year had even started and as her chief bridesmaid, Georgina had been dragged along for the ride too.

She stroked Ruby’s pink puffy cheek, “But can we not talk about weddings; I want to know why you seem to have adopted a baby while I was at brunch.”

“Well I thought it was the next step in our relationship.”

“You don’t think we should try a cat first?”

“This means dedication and I am dedicated to you.”

Someone scoffed before Georgina had chance, “God where did you read that one H? A Christmas cracker?” Ben laughed. He looked exhausted and had a white towel thrown over his shoulder. She knew Meredith had been ill for the last couple of days, her and Harry and looked after Ruby for a few hours but now Ben looked ill too.

“Benjamin, I am simply telling my girlfriend how I feel.”

“Pass me my baby please; I don’t want her around language like that.”

“Hey I want a cuddle! Don’t let the Godfather take over from the Godmother Ben!” she protested as Harry handed Ruby back to Ben.

“You’ll get your turn, but you’ve got work to do first. Harry stop distracting my staff.” He pointed sternly as he shifted Ruby onto his shoulder.

Harry laughed, shrugging his shoulders, “I can’t help it Ben, I am a large distraction.”

“No you’re a large pain in my arse; now tune your bloody guitar.”

“Charming,” Harry grumbled as Ben strode away. “Hey where are you going?” he asked Georgina when she turned to follow Ben. His fingers wound through hers as he pulled her closer. She could smell the mint of his breath.

“I’m here to film you; I gotta sort my camera out.” patting his chest, she tried to get away while she still could. She was seconds away from crumbling and that would only lead to her being fired.

“Don’t I get a kiss first?” he pouted again, this time she had to fight harder.

“No.”

“What? Why?” he looked genuinely surprised, his face falling.

“I’m being professional and you need to be too.”

“But how am I supposed to concentrate when I know I’ve not kissed you and told you how pretty you look?”

“Figure it out Styles, cos I’m off to the tech room.”

She was all alone in the stillness of the tech room, the hum of the electric chargers sounding like a warm hug. The room was dimly lit, the main light coming from all the soundboards; she was straining to see in front of her. Georgina was lost in all the music talk, the sound of guitars and keyboards but in here, she was in her element, she knew what every single machine did. This was where she knew exactly what to do, she didn’t have to fake anything or nod as she tried to keep up.

She was studying her camera, making sure the settings were right when the door creaked open. She knew who it was by the way her body electrified. Her stomach was already flipping before he wound his arms around her waist and nuzzled into the back of her neck.

“You didn’t even let me tell you how beautiful you are.” He whispered against her neck, not disturbing the peace of the room. Though Georgina was sure the thud of her heart was now filling the room.

“You told me that this morning.” she giggled as he kissed her neck gently.

“I need to tell you every hour or I might die.” Peppering her with soft kisses after each word, she was glad he had hold of her.

“Hmm well we can’t have that.”

“Nope, not at all.” Kissing her neck again, he worked his way along her jaw, pausing to draw out the tension. Her back arched against him but she grew impatient and turned in his arms so she could see him. The green of his eyes hidden by his lust and the darkness of the room.

“You really are so beautiful.” She felt herself blush, like she always did when he complimented her. Sometimes she prayed for the day she’d stop being so embarrassed but also dreaded the day he couldn’t make her feel lightheaded.

“I really liked seeing you holding Ruby,” she told him, much like she always did. He knew the affect he had on her when he was with kids.

“Get you thinking about the day that’s our baby?”

“Maybe.” Blushing again, Harry tucked her hair behind her ear.

“I can’t wait. I can’t wait until that’s us and you’re coming to see me and bringing our brood with you. Or I’m coming to see you on set with them all on a lead like Reindeers.” They both chuckled, she knew he’d probably consider doing that too.

“Brood? We’re having more than one?”

“Oh baby we’re having a whole football team.” He winked and her heart started thundering again, she realised it was excitement running through her body.

“Styles Shooters?”

“We’ll be the best team in all the world.”

“That sounds good.” She sighed hoping one day his dream would be their reality. She knew reality wouldn’t be as perfect as what she felt when he held Ruby or they looked after her for a night. It would be totally different, it wouldn’t be a novelty and they would care about losing sleep. But she couldn’t wait for it anyway even if she felt foolish for even thinking about it so early on.

Georgina smiled before sealing their lips together, unable to deny herself from him any longer. She constantly ached for him even when he wasn’t around. His hands grabbed at her, his fingers always eager to explore as if hoping to find some unexplored territory. Georgina was happy with his hair, the luscious strands which felt like honey as they slipped through her fingers kept her happy for hours, as did his very talented mouth.

#this is probably trash but i wrote it at 7am #harry styles turns me crazy #drabble

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sftswigan · 4 years

Text

Manchester gutter punks, The Battery Farm, talk to us about horrific crime inspiring a song and how they just had to form this band...

We’ve got frontman/guitarist Ben from the band.

Alright Ben, can you tell us about the band. Who plays what and how the band got together?

Hallo! We are The Battery Farm, four gutter bastards from Manchester playing gnarly, seething punk rock music.

Ben Corry on Vocals and Guitar, Dominic Corry on Guitar, Paul Worrall on Bass, Sam Parkinson on Drums. Me and Dom formed this band from the ashes of a band we'd previously been in together for 8 years. At the point we formed The Battery Farm we were in a low place, feeling like failures, feeling defeated by this thing that we'd built for years just imploding, feeling angry and scared and hopeless at the utter state of the world. We basically decided to do this in the pub one night when we felt like we had absolutely nothing to lose. It was formed as a desperate reaction to two lives and minds spiralling out of control in a hostile, hateful world.

That must have been tough but, seems like it’s worked out well and the band from what I can tell is going from strength to strength. How soon did you find the remaining members, Paul and Sam? What have they brought to the band?

It has actually. Helpfully, it was a fertile environment from which to create. The first wave of songs - stuff like I Am a Man - are the purest distillation of that sense of lashing out, that sense of desperation we were feeling at the time.

We found Paul pretty much straight away. I'd known him for years through Manchester's Fringe theatre scene, having been in a couple of plays with him. He'd come to see me in a play, I knew he was a musician as well as an actor (although I don't think I'd grasped just how good he is), so I asked if he fancied playing bass for our new band. Sam we actually didn't know before the band, and it took a little longer to get him in. He works for the same company i do and I'd heard he was a drummer, so I got his contact details, asked him if he fancied coming for a rehearsal with us. It all clicked, and the rest is history.

Paul and Sam bring a massive amount to the band. They lift the songs me and Dom write and add a very particular combination of power and melody which you'll be hard pressed to come by very often. They're fucking ace and they know what is good for the song. No ego, no fucking about. They know what's important.

Sounds like you needed that new band to form quickly and to find drummer and bassist when you did you was very fortunate. I watched an interview of you and Dom recently and you talked about inspiration for songwriting and I was interested in where 97/91 came from. When it comes to writing where do you first look to for ideas?

Yeah we did, finding a drummer was comparitively difficult and I think if we'd have really struggled then we honestly would have just given up on it. 97/91 came about after I read an article about the murder of Suzanne Capper in Moston, north Manchester, which is where me and Dom grew up. I'm not going to go into details but if you look it up you'll see that it's the most horrific thing you've ever read. It stuck with me for weeks afterwards, and part of that was because I knew the streets where it had taken place and the community in which it had taken place. The houses it happened in - numbers 97 and 91 - are still there to this day. I got to thinking about why I reacted so viscerally to that story in particular; atrocities happen every day and we don't bat an eyelid, not really. It had such an impact because I was so familiar with the setting, so familiar with the type of person involved. It was too real. 97/91 explores the idea that we make a trade-off in our lives, one which enables cognitive dissonance that shields us from the impact the mass, relentless violence of the world. It also means that when something evil happens in a familiar setting the impact is much greater.

How can it only be real when you can see it? 97/91 isn't necessarily about the Capper murder itself, but the murder is a jumping off point to explore the faustian pact at the heart of the human condition, the one that keeps us sane but also ebbs away at our souls.

Our ideas just literally come from trying to explain our perspective on the world, we don't necessarily make a conscious effort to look in one place for ideas. We just write about whatever moves us. That can be mental illness, corrupt political systems, or the fact that I've never been to Gorton, which is literally the title of one of our new songs.

I find reading about crime stories really interesting, it’s madness what goes on in this world! This is one I’m not aware of but this must have been difficult to write about with it being so close to home? I love the anger and aggression in your music and lyrics.

You mentioned being an actor earlier, do you think this has an influence on your performance as a front man?

Yeah I went through a short phase of listening to true crime podcasts earlier this year but i had to stop bec it was all too grim. It was difficult to explore the ideas that particular incident led me onto but the endgame wasn't to just write about the murder itself, so I suppose keeping that in mind kept my head clear and made things easier.

Honestly, i try to keep any ideas of acting and theatre separate from the band. The actor thing can be frustrating at times because people conflate that with what I do in the band and think that everything must be a performance of some kind, which it isn't. The whole idea of putting The Battery Farm together was that it could give us an outlet to express ourselves honestly, and to me the stuff I do as a frontman is just an honest reaction to what I'm singing and what it makes me feel. I try not to overthink that aspect of it because I feel like to do so would water it down. It needs to be raw, it needs to be stark, it needs to be reality. If it's an actor's performance I'm not really getting anything out of it.

It’s amazing how reading/listening to one can lead on to another one. But yeah hard to shake off once you’ve learned about them.

You’re performance on stage seems very honest and I love to see in a frontman.

Moving on to the music scene...Manchester in particular is buzzing at the minute. Did the band find it easy to slot in? What’s been your favourite gig up to now?

We did actually. We knew a couple of people anyway from being in previous bands but until now I'd always found the Manchester scene a little unfriendly. It's totally different now. Not only is it overflowing with incredible, original, exciting new bands but it's also full of amazing people, and in the year we've been gigging we've made some wonderful friends. There's a proper sense of inclusivity and community, a lack of ego and aloofness that wasn't there before.

My favourite, and I think the others would agree with me, is our first headline set which was at The Peer Hat last November. It was an Abattoir Blues night and they're always amazing. The venue was packed to capacity and the atmosphere was electric. It was the kind of big, simmering sweatbox that seems impossible to imagine in the current climate. I want every gig we play to be like that one.

Yeah it’s great to see bands appreciating each other’s music and plugging their stuff on social media etc. I love going to Manchester for a gig. It’s a great time for guitar music in the UK at the minute with bands like Idles, Fontaines DC and Sports Team doing really well. And also The Blinders bringing album 2 out very soon!

That gig sounds like a great night!

When all this is over and we get some normality back...what are the bands plans?

Well, we're heading into the studio later this summer to begin work on... something. Beyond that it's hard to say because like everyone else we can't really make plans at the moment. Like everyone else we're pretty much having to make it up as we go along. We do have gigs booked for November and December but whether they'll happen or not remains up to fate. Everything going to plan, we may be in for an exciting end to the year. Maybe.

Gonna be very exciting for all bands and music once gigs/recording etc can happen again isn’t it.

Got so many new bands I want to see. Have you discovered any new bands during lockdown? If not, what have you been listening to?

Lockdown's actually been really fruitful in terms of new bands releasing amazing stuff. I've been listening to a lot of Tinfoils recently, they're a delight! Also been loving new stuff from Cold Water Swimmers, The Red Stains, Richard Carlson Band, The Maitlands, loads of stuff. I've also recently discovered John Shuttleworth, a comedy singer from Sheffield who does weird Phoenix Club-type songs about stuff like margerine and vans. I love stuff like that, real end of the pier nonsense.

I love Tinfoils and down to have them on here in Wigan but then lockdown came. The other bands I’m aware of too but not the solo artists you’ve mentioned.

Yeah Tinfoils are great. John Shuttleworth has been around for years i think. I can imagine he won't be to everyone's taste. Richard Carlson Band are actually named after the actor Richard Carlson, who was in The Creatire From the Black Lagoon. There is no Richard Carlson in that band! They're absolutely ace, they released their debut single a few weeks ago and I've had it on repeat.

I’ll be sure to listen to your recommendations, love finding new music to listen to.

We’re coming to the end of the interview now, I’ve just got a couple of questions. You’ll get two options, you pick one answer...

Winter or summer?

Sex Pistols or The Clash?

Roast dinner or Chinese?

Film or Book?

Winter

The Clash

Roast Dinner

Book

Thanks for having me! Hopefully see you soon

Thanks Ben for taking the time to chat to us. Hopefully we’ll cross paths at a gig soon.

If you want to listen to the band please go and follow them on social media and their music is on Spotify etc.

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#Batteryfarm #97/91 #Manchester #Punk #SFTSWIGAN #Youtube

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maniactypewriter · 4 years

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The backlog Week 4 [where the hell have you been edition]

I LIVE! In all seriousness, when im at school, I don't have access to my gaming computer and my laptop doesnt have enough space free for a project like this. Anyway, I am back for the next month, so let's get to the first game(s)

Anomaly warzone earth + Anomaly 2 playtime: 4 hours total

Im bundling these two together as they are very similar in game play. In Warzone Earth, you play as the 14th platoon deployed into the heart of the Anomaly, a giant mysterious dome that crash landed on top of Baghdad and tokyo. As the platoon leader, its your job to make sure the convoy of APCs and walking missile platforms gets through the level safely. The game refers to itself as a tower offense game. Essentially its a tower defense game, but instead of placing down towers, you are the targets that the towers are shooting at. Your vehicle team is constantly moving forward and its your job as commander to choose the right path for the vehicles to drive down and to strategically deploy the four power ups at your disposal. Your tools include a repair which heals your units, a smoke screen which makes enemies less likely to hit your units, and a decoy, which enemies will shoot at instead of your units. Usually the player is spending their time babysitting the convoy and rushing to collect more powers as they are dropped from killed enemies. Each mission has a different objective, but it usually devolves into, get to a place and kill all the towers.

Anomaly 2 is much the same as its predecessor. Set in the far future after an alien invasion, the earth has frozen over and humanity’s numbers are dwindling. Humanity’s only hope is a single convoy on their way through a frozen america to get to New york. As this is the future, humanity's weapons have evolved as well. The standard ACP with a gatling gun on top has evolved into a car with two gatling guns. And it also turns into a walking mech flamethrowers mounted on either arm. Bad ass. The power ups have also changed a little. You have your standard repair bubble, there is a focus power up which will tell all your units to focus fire on one tower you want particularly dead and an emp type power up which will disable enemy towers for a short while. Anomaly 2 also has multiplayer, but I didn't play that as it is most likely dead at time of play.

Antihero playtime: 70 minutes

Antihero is a competitive digital board game where each player plays as a master thief in a victorian england type setting. As the leader of a thieves guild, you have to go around a burgle the good people of “London” to fund your operations and buy pieces to put around the board. You can hire urchins to occupy specific buildings for special bonuses, hire thugs to block access to areas, and gangs to off your opponent's units and hunt down targets (as well as making a little extra dosh along the way.) this game takes advantage of being a digital board game because everything your opponent does is done mostly in secret. Obscured by the smog of war, you can not see what your opponent is doing, which could spell your doom if you aren't fast enough to look into his territory with your master thief.

I am not great at this game. I couldn't get past the second level on easy mode that's how bad I am. However, I can see it is a fun game, and I can see how this game’s multiplayer was popular for a time. However, I dare not go there as I fear that I may be utterly stomped by a player who has had several years more practice than I have at this game.

Apotheon playtime: 4 hours

Apotheon is the story of one greek guy not named kratos going to olympus to kick the butts of all the greek gods. The most striking thing anyone playing this game will notice is the artstyle. It is drawn to resemble Greek pottery paintings. You know the kind. The ones that depict Hercules doing his trials or some other greek hero doing something impressive. Anyway, story. The earth has been screwed over by the gods because chronic rapist Zeus decided to revoke humanity’s access to the things that are necessary to life. Hera picks you as her champion then sends you to mt Olympus to gather the gifts of the gods and maybe smack some sense into her cheating husband along the way. The game play is a 2D mix of dark souls and metroidvania games that are so prevalent in the modern day. However, Apotheon came out before the current wave of soulslikes so there is some small growing pains. Combat is kinda clunky and your character can sprint at 30 miles an hour but immediately slows down to a crawl whenever he so much as touches a staircase. Combat as mentioned before is mildly clunky. It uses a physics engine to do all its swings and stabs. Heavy weapons like a club have a wide swing arc and is directed by which way you tilt the left analog stick. The Reliance on physics to get the job done can lead to some interesting results. I saw one raider in the first area get launched into space after being double teamed by me and a friendly malita man. Apotheon is an interesting game with a stunning artstyle and compelling exploration. Which in this modern age of soulslike metroidvanias, is all you really need to stand out.

Aquaria play time: 1 hour

Speaking of metroidvanias, Aquaria. As the name suggests, the game is an underwater metroidvania mostly concerned with puzzle solving over combat. You play as Naija, a lonely fish lady who can use the power of song to do magic. As a fish lady, you can swim around the oceanic caverns with relative freedom. The game wants to be played with a mouse and keyboard, as my attempt to play it with a controller was thwarted swiftly. As is fitting for a game where the protagonist’s main power is singing, the game has a killer soundtrack. In the little bit ive heard when I was playing, it was some pretty good music. Visuals are decent. The game has a hand painted aesthetic, however some of the animations are kinda stiff and stilted. This game was originally released in 2007 after all. Small indie metroidvanias were not knocking it out of the park yet in terms of animation yet (im sure someone will correct me on that point eventually…) the small amount I played had me swimming around a claustrophobic map going around and solving puzzles that lead me to new areas and new song powers. One of the first i got was the ability to pull around large rocks. The second allowed me to transform into an old fish goddess and shoot energy missiles at hostile fish. While the game is focused on puzzles and exploration, that doesn't mean it is devoid of combat. I feel as this is the weakest part of what i played. I gave up on the game when i died to a puzzle boss who’s apparent solution didn't work. There is probably a lot I didn't see in my short time with the game. There is a whole cooking mechanic that I didn't fully grasp, as well as pets and the ability to decorate the main character’s house with special decorations you found out in the world. I may revisit this game at some later point, but for now its going back into the backlog as I search for more interesting games with less obtuse boss fights.

Armello playtime 2 hours

Armello is yet another digital board game. Set in a fantasy version of zootopia, the king of the land has fallen ill with the Rot. and all the clans of the land have sent their strapingest of adventurers to go and try and claim the throne for themselves. This can be done in one of four ways. Having the most honour points (gained by killing other players, or completing quests), gather four spirit stones and cleansing the king of Rot, having the most Rot yourself, or just straight up murdering the king. In the few matches I have played, the easiest one to achieve is the Honour victory, although that might just be my play style. Like most board games, rounds are taken in turns. Each player has a certain amount of hexes they can move, and landing on spaces will have different effects. Most events that happened as a result of landing on a space are luck based. “Perils” have you rolling dice, quests have you selecting from a circle of icons trying to pick the one that will net you a reward, and a random spinner that could give you anything from rot to gold to teleport you to the other side of the map. Once everyone has had their turn, day turns to night and new monsters spawn on the board. When the sun rises again, the king dies a little from his fantasy aids and gives the person with the most honor points the choice between two Decrees which will most likely be terrible for everyone involved. On top of all this, players have access to a hand of three cards. Which have various effects. Proper use of your cards can lead to victory or defeat depending on who you're playing as. Armello has an online mode, but like the other online modes in this batch of games, I dare not touch for fear of getting crushed. The game also has an online store where you can buy new skins for your dice and new character packs. It's a fun little board game, but im putting it on the shelf for now because i’ve had my fill and have no friends to play it with.

#Anomaly warzone earth #games #video games #writing #review #reviews #Apotheon #Armello #antihero #aquaria #board games #metroidvania

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willswalkabout · 7 years

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Ho Chi Minh, El Nido.

I can guarantee this blog will be the hardest to write of my travels. These have been the toughest and most unforgettable 9 days of my trip so far, but not without some great moments thrown in. (On completion I’ve also just done a word count and it’s really long again, sorry, but maybe one to print!)

When I left off last time I had just landed in Ho Chi Minh. It was about 11pm and although I was shattered, I really didn’t want to pay £15 for a taxi, so after some searching I found the 80p bus, which would drop me off 5 minutes from my hostel. On arrival the place seemed closed, though only because the reception desk didn’t function after 10pm. A security guard who spoke zero English met me in the lobby and took my passport in exchange for a key. Other than that he just motioned for me to go up the stairs, with no further direction. Unlike most hostels my bed number had no correlation to the floor number, which led to some confusion before eventually finding my mattress for the next 3 nights.

The next day was to be my touristy day, though it didn’t start till quite late due to tiredness from Thursday’s travel. I walked to the Independence Palace first. Ho Chi Minh’s attractions have odd opening times, as I discovered the palace was not to open till 1pm. It was around 34'C and so I decided to sit outside in the shade for about 40 minutes watching Vietnam’s most crazy city fly by. The palace itself is quite odd. It’s very typical 60s architecture, after its rebuild in 1966, and doesn’t really resemble a palace at all. On top of this it has never been inhabited by a King, and now only functions as a tourist attraction. It did play a pretty symbolic roll however in the “fall of Saigon” something that coincided with America’s evacuation of the country, so was a good reinforcement of my grounding in the events of the war. I find it sort of crazy that it doesn’t make up even a small part of any history course taught in school, despite it being the most monumental post-WW2 ideological war.

After this visit I engaged in culture of a different form, heading to the nearest Starbucks so I could stream Ed Sheeran’s latest album, which had just been released. I have been playing it practically nonstop since, through some incredibly arduous journeys which will be described later in the blog.

I then visited a very old post office, and Ho Chi Minh’s attempt at the Notre Dame, though, as mentioned earlier, odd timings prescribed that this building closed at 4, preventing me from going inside. I went back to the Hostel, which is effectively run solely by travellers who ran out of money and thought they’d chill in Ho Chi Minh for a bit. Although Flipside Hostels is Kiwi owned, the only staff I met were Canadian, British and Vietnamese. My route back to the hostel is actually a mini story in itself, as I had my first and last experience on a ‘Grab MotoTaxi’. Grab is Asian uber, and for 25% of the price you can sit on the back of a driver’s moped (helmet included!). It was more like a thrill ride than a taxi, as my driver swerved through non-existent gaps, and used the pavement as a 'shortcut’ when he got bored of the traffic. At one point during the ride he asked me to rate him 5 stars on the app at the end of the trip, to which I replied that I would do, if we made it that far. Beers at the hostel were cheap, and I spent most of the evening with a Canadian girl, and 2 Norwegian guys, all of which were in my dorm. It is fair to say we were all feeling the effects of the previous night on Saturday morning, but it was to my delight when at about midday a hilarious English guy called Joey, with a helicopter hat (baseball cap with the spinny thing), burst into our room announcing that we were going to a pool party. At this point I will admit that there many more cultural options in the city that I didn’t explore. For example the war museum, or tunnels. On the other hand I liked the people in the hostel, and in the past I thought pool parties only existed in LA, Vegas, or movies set in LA or Vegas, so I went. I would definitely like to return to see more of the city in the future.

It was a good laugh, and a very relaxing way to spend the day, with good food, and some fun conversations with one girl who was half Russian half Swedish, but about to go to University in Spain so she could be fluent in 4 languages by the age of 20. As well as a French man who decided we should try and have a conversation where we could only speak our native languages. This was a stupid idea, albeit with amusing consequences, given I got my French GCSE over 2 and a half years ago, and he was 30 and working in English. It did however give me the smallest of glimpses of how possible it could be to learn a language if you were forced to speak it full time.

I went out again that night with the same guys, and spent much of it playing ¾ rounds of pool with 2 Indian guys while discussing the IPL.

I left Ho Chi Minh the next morning with an English traveler who was heading to Sydney, my next stop being Manila. I hijacked his pre-booked taxi, my 3rd time doing so on this trip, however due to his nerves about missing his flight I did arrive at the airport 3 and a half hours before my own. Something I was prepared to take for the ease and cheapness of getting to the airport. El Nido is impossible to reach from an international destination in less than 2 days realistically, unless you align everything perfectly and don’t take a single rest. It is 7 hours drive north of Puerto Princessa, the island’s only airport, which is an hour and 50 from Manila. Therefore I spent Sunday night in Manila, in a small hotel about 15 minutes from the airport. People generally don’t hang around in Manila, I can’t honestly pass judgement on the claims of dirtiness and roughness, however my hotel’s location was certainly not somewhere you wanted to spend any time. I was able to locate a McDonalds a 10 minute walk away, but that was enough of Manila for me in this case.

The next day I had to leave at about 5 to get my 7am flight. I got a van from Puerto Princessa at 11am, getting me to my El Nido hostel at about 5pm. The bus journey is infamously horrific, not a view I can personally attest to. The road itself is reasonable for South East Asia, and my driver was fast and very friendly. The ticket was 1000 pesos return, about £16. I also managed to persuade a girl that had somehow booked the front seat of the minibus next to the driver, that with long legs in comparison to her stature of no more than 5ft1, my need was greater. I think the driver had in fact invited the woman to that seat, no reservation had been made, and she was quite relieved to move.

To reach my hostel you had to tramp 50m along the beach, to a view I don’t think I would ever get tired of. There are maybe a couple of photos of it on here, but I may have taken close to a hundred. My roommates were Catie and Lucie, recently qualified nurses from Northumbria.

I haven’t planned how to write this next paragraph, but am aware I would like to print this entire blog on its completion as a permanent memory of the adventure. El Nido is somewhere I will never regret visiting, with crystal clear waters, stunning sunsets and perfect weather. There are factors however that take a little away from the paradise, these being next to no internet connection and frequent power cuts. For these reasons notifications come in sporadically and in clumps. On Monday evening I suddenly had missed calls from mum and dad across 3 different platforms. This is a sight that truly does make your heart skip a beat. The connection was not strong enough for us to attempt any of the video calling methods of the last 5 or so weeks, WhatsApp, FaceTime or Google Duo. I slipped in my UK SIM card to the phone and made an international phone call from the beach, where I found out my Granddad, mum’s father, Reginald Flatman had passed away. Reg first got ill around Christmas, and had been in and out of hospital since, with various issues that were increasingly hard to diagnose.

I visited Reg a few days before I set off when he was in high spirits. I discussed my trip with him, and witnessed him as his trademark jovial self, as he laughed at mum’s gardening course exam, where she had somehow managed to hit the pass mark exactly…

Reg was possibly the kindest man I’ve ever known, with hardly a bad word to say about anyone. His only criticisms were directed at the attitude of the Ipswich Town football team, something I always found odd given his total indifference towards competitive sport of any kind. I’ll never forget walking the fields of Zoe and Des’ farm with him and the dog, when I would go down to Suffolk to work in the summer. I also had a memorable conversation with him 18 months ago at the reception of James and Vicky’s wedding, where he was utterly bemused by the 'racket’ coming out of the speaker system during the reception. I was delighted to be able to invite him to our school’s big band concert at Chelmsford cathedral last year.

Reg was a man of simple pleasures who would always refuse as best he could to trouble anyone for anything. We would rarely be able to contain our amusement at dinner, as when Reg was asked “would you like some more food”, he would reply with “that was great thanks”. Nana’s firm toned “Reginald”, uttered when he made a funny face across the table, nudged one of us under it, or tried to steal a roast potato, never failed to make myself or Kate laugh. Reg was to us polo mints, shredded wheat, and a day concluded with cheese and biscuits. Reg never bothered taking life too seriously, a characteristic summed up by a set of four photos in a frame at home, of him and Nana. He is screwing his face up in an effort to make the photographer laugh, in three of the photos. If this was a school photo session with a 10 year old, you would pretend the first 3 didn’t exist and just print the fourth large. The first three however said far more about Granddad than a composed shot ever could.

I will fly back from Melbourne to London on Sunday 19th to be with family for the funeral on Thursday 23rd. Then fly back out on Friday 24th to Auckland, NZ.

So El Nido. The nights are all very boring here as I did not have the energy or desire to go out. On Tuesday I accomplished a goal I’ve had for a long time, to visit a particular beach by the name of Nacpan. There is a particular travel blogger on YouTube by the name of Christian Le Blanc. While I was doing my exam revision last year, Christian was traveling the Philippines, and his trip to this particular beach was one that really drew me to the area. You have to drive 45 minutes north of the main town via scooter to get there. This is 25 minutes of glorious winding road up the coast, before a horrific 20 minutes along an unpaved dirt track to the beach. The reward is one of the largest and most untouched spots along the coast. Fine white sand and beautiful water. However I imagine it is becoming less and less 'secret’ by the month. Even in comparison to the video I saw 8 months ago there are now a few more food and drink stalls, a relatively organised parking scheme, and a far bigger sign from the main road. The one way in which El Nido has developed impressively is in its number of high end restaurants run by Europeans, in order to serve those visiting the town from nearby resorts. This did mean I enjoyed a great pizza that night, with about 10 others from the hostel.

The next day I did the hostel’s combined package of Tour A&C. The El Nido bay is very comparable to Halong Bay in Vietnam, except for more islands with beaches, as well as individual lagoons, in comparison to Halong’s mystical 1969 limestone rocks. At some point the tourist board must of grouped different combinations of the lagoons, beaches, islands, viewpoints etc, into tour A, B, C and D. There are now dozens of outlets selling these tours at prices from 1000-2000 pesos, (£16-£32). In the vast majority of cases you should try not to book tours and other items through your hostel. They will rarely be providing the service themselves, and will therefore be taking a cut simply for making a phone call to one of the companies on the street on your behalf. For example hiring a scooter from the hostel was 700 pesos a day, though I found one in town for 350. Saying all this the hostel ran their own in house tour which was a combination of tour A and C. It was 1700 which was nearer the pricier end, but the advantages were that it left from the hostel’s own beach, and you could do it with people you knew. I did love the experience, the videos of which online were another draw for me visiting the area. I snorkelled and got some decent GoPro footage of a small jellyfish that went on to sting me as I swam away. Taking photos on my phone and proper camera though was a more hap-hazard venture, with the boat being occupied by 16 soaking wet passengers constantly walking up and down around the kit. I also started to wonder if I was really getting the most out of the day, when seeing it partially through a lens. I was never going to get the greatest of photos, for that you’d need a chartered boat where you could specify time in each place. So I put the camera away for the most part of the trip, and enjoyed just sitting on the edge of the boat and taking it all in. Sunburn was the only tarnish on the day.

Thursday started with a torrential storm, which in typical Philippines style concluded with the weather returning to normal service in the space of 5 minutes. Myself, Catie, Lucie and a Swiss guy called Kevin went to do a zip line which was pretty awesome. I’d thought at the start of the day that I would be riding, and so brought my bike helmet with me. This meant rather embarrassingly this was to be my head protection for the experience, complete with visor. I managed to fashion my camera bag shoulder strap into a way of securing my phone to my harness, so I could film and photograph the ride. After this I returned to the hostel to relax a bit before planning to return to Nacpan to try and capture the sunset. This plan in hindsight was rash. Though cloudy, I was overly trusting on one German guy’s words that “his app said the sunset would be good”. It was not, with the clouds concealing nearly the entirety of the sun. I still enjoyed seeing the light shade of pink that took over the bottom third of the horizon, but it was not something I managed to pick up on the camera. What made the decision particularly stupid was that I then had to go back down the entirely unlit gravel path in the dark. I dropped off my scooter in town before meeting the girls for a meal at a traditional Philippino restaurant that had been recommended.

What followed was one of the most uncomfortable nights of my life, something I think I am only now really coming back from 2 and a half days later. Food poisoning hit me bad all night, as it did Lucie also. The plot thickens however, when we both awoke in the morning to find at least 7 others in the hostel had experienced identical symptoms overnight. I could not join up any dots with any of them leading some people to wonder if there was something airborne going around. I don’t think we’ll ever know, but it made Friday’s van journey even more daunting.

As mentioned earlier I had booked a return trip with the company that had brought me up, however the way it seems to work is that nobody drives if their vans are not full. This meant when I arrived at the bus terminal all the other companies that were present were enquiring about my departure time. My theory is that they knew my provider wouldn’t show. So at 1:35, five minutes past my supposed leaving time, a bidding war ensued. I was eventually bundled onto someone’s minibus. I can only assume after they took photos of my ticket, that they will get a refund off my people. This was not the main frustration of the journey unfortunately. The driver still had 4 free seats, and so he transformed into a hop on - hop off service for the whole island. This meant stopping for every random person on the side of the street, negotiating a price for their destination before letting them on. We must have made around 15 stops, something my stomach was not pleased with. 6 hours later we had arrived at Puerto Princessa airport. Advice I am giving myself for the future is not to book the cheapest hotel for short 1 night stopovers. This decision on Friday night involved a 20 minute tuk tuk ride to an area I was advised “not to walk at night”. The only pleasant anecdote in this experience was the fact my driver’s sister was a nurse in Ipswich, probably at the hospital granddad was receiving such good care. It was an incredibly odd and heartwarming meeting, as the driver spoke enthusiastically about his new brother in law, who runs a barber shop on the Woodbridge road. My room itself would be more accurately described as a cell. The bed was like a roll mat, and my troubles were furthered in the morning, when the building “ran out of power”. This was an impressive feat in itself as I was the only occupant in the entire 12 room hotel. I’ve got no idea how it copes with more than 5 customers… The power cut meant I woke up with no air con and no running water. I think I may have left without paying but the owner was so confused and I was so angry at the whole situation, I think the 600 pesos might remain in my pocket.

The next day I took a flight to Manila, then another to Kuala Lumpur. I’m writing this from the final couple of hours on what’s been a pretty grim overnight flight into Melbourne. I think when flying west-east you’re supposed to sleep, something I’ve completely failed to do.

I have a 2 hour domestic to Sydney and then the 47 hours from El Nido are complete. I think I have 14 hours to Abu Dhabi and then another 8 home next Sunday, so will try and summarise my week in Australia then.

Till the next time.

#Vietnam #hochiminh #Philippines #elnido #outpost #travel #gapyear

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vileart · 7 years

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Fisk Dramaturgy: Ross MacKay @ manipulate

UK Premiere Manipulate Festival 2017

FISK

by Tortoise in a Nutshell, in co-production with Teater Katapult in association with Macrobert Arts Centre.

A new devised piece of theatre by award-winning Tortoise in a Nutshell, Fisk (fish), delves into how we manage struggles with our own mental health, with the support of others. The theatre company, renowned for their innovative puppetry and visual theatre – perform the show in both Danish and English.

The show welcomes us into the world of Man (Alex Bird), who, in the moment in which he cannot help falling under – meets Fisk (Arran Howie) coming from the depths. In a new highly physical and visual piece – the company draw on their own experiences living with depression and anxiety to create a portrait of how it’s possible to pull through – and how those around us become vital in balancing our brains.

This new poetic and visual exploration of masculinity, mental health and cups of tea at kitchen tables has been created working in collaboration with Teater Katapult, Aarhus Denmark. This collaboration has allowed Ross, Arran and Alex to stretch their wings and push the scale of their work, working with a diverse creative team. The script was devised with Danish playwright Anne Sophie Oxenvad.

The latest production from Edinburgh based theatre company, Fisk marks a huge step up for the company developing their practice and returning to venues across Scotland taking on bigger spaces. They are proud to be working with Manipulate Festival to premiere the piece in Scotland.

I always feel kind of guilty when I ask this one, because it's like the relentless merry-go-round of the critical preview. So, I am going to try and get around it... it doesn't really matter what 'visual' or 'physical' theatre actually means, but it does offer a label that sets certain work apart from other work, and operates as a suggestion for marketing purposes: but do you think there is any kind of quality that sets 'visual' theatre apart from 'scripted' theatre that enables a particular kind of theatricality? Good way to tackle that question. The idea of visual versus scripted means that the semiotics of spoken words doesn't take precedence and can exist on an equal or lower footing than other aspects of the show.

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This means that the mise-en-scene can dominate, or sometimes it's the music or sometimes it's the expression on a performers face.This means we doubt always rely on words to drive the narrative in sometimes we actively seek a more theatrical method of telling the story. Hopefully in exploring the piece in this way we do create imaginative staging.

Leaping straight from that to something blunt and obvious: I got excited to see that you have a dramaturg. Does the dramaturg have a specific set of functions within your making process, and can these be observed within the performance? The Dramaturg was vital to us. In this particular story we were awash with metaphors and Kirstine role was teasing them out and interrogating the journey that they all go on. For example: black boil like barnacles are important in the story and Kirstine was keen that this element had its own narrative e and fed into the greater story. As this story is itself a huge metaphor Kirstine was able to help us looking at when to peel back the layers of the show and show glimpses of the truth. It's delicate and if we give to much or too little at any point we ruin the journey of the piece so Kirstine was vital there. Also importantly, the playwright was Danish and Kirstine is a great interpreter so she became a conduit to ensure we were all on the same page at many points of the process. There's talk in the press release about this production marking out the company's career: how it does it relate to previous work? And has the collaboration changed anything in your process? It has. Each show we approach brings a slightly different process. We try to make each show unique in style and to make the form work with the content. One of the biggest departures here was working with an incredible movement director, Darren Brownlie. We have never worked so expressively with our bodies. Usually the performance is left to the puppets but working with a movement director gave us a whole other layer of language to use.

Shifting to the content: that seems to be a pretty heavy topic. What was the inspiration for it? We started out just with an image of a man on a boat and a fish. We didn't have any preconceptions of the theme. But as we continued to explore the piece we realised that time and again the imagery drew parallels to depression. Rather than run from that we decided to go for it. And as we pushed we found more and more that this seemed to be the story. On top of this we all had experiences we could relate to whether it was our own depression or witnessing someone else go through it. It felt pertinent and the idea of a young couple going through this. One person having to support as another suffered the illness was a story we were talking about a lot but felt we hadn't seen on stage. We felt we had something we could say here, something that would leave the audience with questions. Which is what we like to do. Do you think that theatre - and especially your approach - can be a good place to address issues about mental health? I am assuming you have not gone for an information packed, 'theatre in education' strategy, but maybe I am wrong again... No you are quite right. No facts and figures here. We worked really closely with an audience panel of mental health sufferers, carers and those who support in a professional capacity to ensure the show felt truthful and relevant but we wanted to steer clear of it being an issue based show. The theme can support a much more emotional journey than that. Also with visual theatre and these big symbolic metaphors it allows space for the audience to project on to it. Mental Health can be experienced in so many different ways and each persons own experience can be very unique even if there is a universality, we wanted people to feel there is space within the visual world to see their own story. Hopefully we have got a little close to that. You've been working with PAS for a while. What keeps you connecting with them, and do you think that your work might bear certain hallmarks that mark it as part of 'manipulate'? They keep asking us back. They have supported us so much through many of our project. We are even staging a new Work In Progress with them during Manipulate so the relationship goes beyond Fisk. Manipulate was a huge inspiration for us. When I was a student, Simon Hart gave me a bursary to attend the first ever festival in Dundee. I attended the masterclasses and saw all the shows. It was incredible. I felt part of the community and even more importantly felt inspired to make work. All of s at Tortoise have manipulate marked in our calendars. We draw a lot of inspiration and talking points from the festival so we are delighted to feel our work sits alongside these great artists.

Fisk opened at Teater Katapult, Aarhus, Denmark, in October 2016.

Scottish Tour dates

Macrobert Stirling 26 Jan

Traverse Theatre Edinburgh 28 Jan

Eden Court Inverness 1 Feb

Lemon Tree Aberdeen 3 Feb

Traverse Theatre Edinburgh 9 - 11 Feb

Perth 14 Feb

Eastgate Arts Centre 16 Feb

Platform Glasgow 20 Feb

The Company

Tortoise in a Nutshell have toured extensively over 250 performances across 78 cities in 7 countries around the globe – they have taken shows to Switzerland, Denmark, Austria, Mexico and toured extensively across the UK.

The company have worked with Imaginate Festival, Cumbernauld Theatre, Manipulate Festival and performed year in year out at the world’s largest arts festival – the Festival Fringe - in their home town of Edinburgh.

2010 – The Last Miner – Idea’s Tap ‘Edinburgh Ideas Fund’ – Edinburgh Festival Fringe

2012 – Grit shortlisted for Arches Brick Award and Total Theatre Award for Emerging Artist or Company Edinburgh Festival Fringe - Bedlam Theatre

2013 – Feral wins Fringe First, shortlisted Total Theatre Award for Physical / Visual Theatre Edinburgh Festival Fringe – Summerhall.

2014 – Feral returns to Edinburgh Festival Fringe – Underbelly – as part of Made in Scotland’s expo programme.

2015 – The Lost Things – commissioned by Imaginate Festival. A bespoke piece of theatre for young audiences.

Danish co-pro background

The relationship with Teater Katapult began when Artistic Director saw Feral in 2014 at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe as part of Made in Scotland. Invited to perform at the theatre as part of a Scandinavian tour, the companies began to work together. The EU collaboration has been an exciting way to consider other ways of working and draw on new perspectives when creating theatre.

Ross MacKay – Co-Artistic Director Tortoise in a Nutshell.

“For Tortoise in a Nutshell, art and theatre is about crossing borders and breaking down boundaries. Theatre allows you to put yourselves into someone else's world. It's important then that we can take theatre across cultures and communities. We can share different experiences and outlook on the world. Collaboration allows us to draw on different experiences, different styles of making work and different political climates. International co-productions allow us to create richer and deeper theatre and find the universal experiences even in the smallest of stories and individual of experiences.”

Creative Team

Director: Ross MacKay

Cast/Devisers: Alex Bird and Arran Howie

Designer: Ana Ines Jabares-Pita

Composer: Jim Harbourne

Lighting Designer: Simon Wilkinson

Movement Director: Darren Brownlie

Production Manager: Andrew Gannon

Dramaturg: Kirstine Christensen

Writer: Tortoise in a Nutshell and Anne Sophie Oxenvad

Producers: Dawn Taylor and Nick Wong

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easytravelpw-blog · 5 years

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The Top Things to Do in Undiscovered Northamptonshire, England

01 of 06

Britain’s Best Surprise

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Northamptonshire, about an hour and a half straight up the M1 from Central London, has got to be one of the UK's most unfairly overlooked and underrated regions for visitors. And yet it has all the attractions that vacationers and holiday-makers arrive in Britain to visit. The county is host to numerous historic homes, notable hotels, charming market towns and gardens, the epicenter of British motorsport, and even the childhood home and final resting place of Princess Diana.

So why don't more people know about and visit Northamptonshire? Recently, a group representing local attractions, businesses and boosters asked the same question and decided to change all that with a colorful and stylish campaign — Northamptonshire: Britain's Best Surprise.

The campaign shows the region off as a great destination target, whether for UK touring or weekend breaks from London or the cities of the Midlands and the North of England. If you are racing up the motorway to visit Diana's grave, then battling rush hour traffic back on the M1, you are missing the opportunity for a great short break. Here's why.

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02 of 06

Visit Historic Homes and Castles

Photo courtesy of Holdenby House

At under 100 miles from London, Northamptonshire was just far enough away for politically ambitious aristocrats of the Tudor and Elizabethan times to stay out of sight and out of mind, yet close enough to reach the court in a few days of hard riding if summoned.

As a result, in addition to a few older castles — including Rockingham, originally built by William the Conqueror, more than 900 years ago — Northamptonshire has a wealth of Medieval, Tudor and Elizabethan stately homes that you can visit. In fact, the county claims more stately homes than any county in Britain. These are just a few:

Holdenby House: Pictured above, this lovely country house, surrounded by wonderful gardens, is just a shadow of its former self (or about one quarter actually). Built as a grand country estate by an Elizabethan courtier, it was turned over to the crown as a palace for King James and the ill-fated Charles I. Charles was imprisoned there during the Civil War and then arrested by Parliamentary forces. The archways he walked through heading for his final, bloody fate, are still standing. Check out the music room, where rare and unusual instruments have been collected from all over the world by the current occupants of the house. And make time to stay for a falconry demonstration. If you can imagine Holdenby draped in rotting vegetation, you might just remember it from the 2011 BBC production of Great Expectations with Gillian Anderson as Miss Haversham. It was the stand-in for her house.

Althorp: Keen Royal watchers already know that this was the late Princess Diana's childhood home. But maybe you never knew that it has been in the same family for more than 500 years, has a spectacular collection of paintings (including a whole room of Joshua Reynolds portraits, another of Lely paintings of court mistresses and the only known life portrait of the tragic Lady Jane Grey) or that you can hire it for weddings and posh events.

Deene Park: This once grand, originally Medieval, house was having a facelift under scaffolding in April 2017 – so a bit hard to judge. But a highlight is the room devoted to the notorious 7th Earl of Cardigan who led the infamous charge of the light brigade during the Battle of Balaclava (described in one account as “the greatest old woman in the army”). The room includes a portrait of his ravishingly beautiful (and scandalous) second wife and a glass case holding half of Ronald, the horse Cardigan rode into battle. Some years ago it was discovered that the taxidermed Ronald was becoming a bit moth eaten so now only half of him remains.

Burghley House: A house full of many of its original treasures and works of art, built by William Cecil, Lord High Treasurer to Queen Elizabeth I and still considered one of the greatest Elizabethan houses in Britain.

Boughton House: Begun in 1528 by the ancestors of the current owners, the Buccleuch family, the house morphed from a modest Tudor manor to a French style palace, sometimes called “The English Versailles”. Among its treasures are paintings by El Greco, Van Dyke and Gainsborough as well as 150 acres of gardens and landscapes..

Apethorp Palace: A palace that once belonged to Queen Elizabeth I, and was a favorite of Jacobean and Stuart kings, was at risk of total collapse when purchased for the nation by English Heritage. Now, through a remarkable 80-year arrangement between English Heritage and the current owners, the house is being completely restored. It's open to the public by guided tours only, 50 days a year.

Do keep in mind that most of the stately homes in Northamptonshire are still private family homes, with limited public openings. Check their websites to find out the dates of opening and the conditions of entry.

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03 of 06

Explore Charming Gardens

VisitBritain/David Sellman / Getty Images

Most of the stately homes mentioned above have gardens that can usually be visited even when the houses are not open to the public. And there are some great ones — from a restored Elizabethan kitchen garden at Holdenby House to a landscape by the legendary Lancelot Capability Brown at Burghley.

There are 35 acres of gardens, open every day, year-round, set in the 10,000 acre Castle Ashby estate. And the county is laced with country parks, woodlands, arboretums and wetland reserves.

But by far the most impressive garden is also one of the smallest. At ten acres, plus another 5-acre bluebell wood and a wildflower meadow, Coton Manor Garden is an attraction that punches well above its weight.

Created in 1925 by the grandparents of the current owners, the garden is still managed by a small family team, assisted by students and volunteers. It's colorful herbaceous borders, water gardens, walled gardens full of roses and several more garden “rooms” are arranged around a small, private 17th century manor house. They hold more than 1,000 varieties of plants, many of them rare and hard to find elsewhere. You can buy plants in the nursery, attend a gardening school, have lunch or tea in the cafe and visit with the “wildlife”. They include a pond full of wildfowl, a pair of elegant flamingos who have been resident for more than 40 years, some very cute kune kune pigs and several English longhorn cows.

The garden is open several days a week between April and September and every day during bluebell season (end of April to mid May). A visit throughout the season is bound to be rewarded with ever changing, colorful displays.

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04 of 06

Feed Your Need for Speed

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If you've ever sat in front of one of those motor racing arcade games, enjoying the VROOM VROOM sound effects while imagining yourself speeding around the Grand Prix course in Monte Carlo, you are going to love Northamptonshire, the super-revved up motorsport capital of Britain.

Five of the world's Formula 1 teams — Mercedes, Force India, Williams, Renault (formerly Lotus) and Red Bull — are based in an area that has become known as Formula 1 Valley, covering Northamptonshire and adjacent bits of Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire. The county claims the creation of 80 percent of the world's Formula 1 cars and engines.

And Silverstone, the Northamptonshire home of the F1 British Grand Prix, is the place where you can get behind the wheel and experience those G-forces for yourself.

When it's not hosting the Grand Prix or classic car races, Silverstone offers a variety of driving experiences, ranging from a “hot ride”, as a passenger in a race-prepared sports car with a professional driver (£45 in 2017 ) to the Silverstone Challenge — an all day driving experience in eight different kinds of racing cars (£995 in 2017). The variations in between include going round the track in a Silverstone single-seater and short training sessions followed by your own chance to drive at speed on the famous track.

We tried out a hot ride in an Aston Martin driven by professional racing and stunt driver Sam Maher-Loughnan. Fitted out with a fireproof hood and a racing helmet, each of us climbed in beside Sam for the ride of our lives, three times around the track at about 130mph. Whether you enjoy it will depend on whether you like speed, whether the idea of going sideways gives you butterflies and how well you can tolerate the extra G-forces of going round corners without breaking. It's definitely an adrenaline rush.

Not into Formula 1? You could head for Rockingham Motor Speedway, which claims to be Europe's fastest banked oval racing circuit, where experiences you can book include super cars, drift driving and NASCAR-style training. Or how about a deafening day out at Santa Pod Raceway, home of the European Drag Racing Championships. On scheduled public track days there, you can take your own car or motorcycle out on the quarter-mile drag strip to test out its full-throttle performance.

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05 of 06

Fulfill Your Shoe Fetish Fantasy

Anna Clopet/Getty Images

Northamptonshire was once the center of shoemaking for most of the British Empire. It's still a center for high quality, custom made men's shoes, several major work shoe brands and, perhaps the most iconic English shoe brand, Dr. Martens.

The Northampton Museum and Art Gallery tells the story of the history of shoes with the largest collection of shoes and shoe related objects in the world. It includes more than 15,000 shoes and 50,000 archival records, documentary footage and shoe related fine art. Visit to see shoes worn by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, Tom Thumb's boot and hundreds of years of shoes fashions

It's a wonderful rainy day outing for shoe lovers and fashionistas, but you'll have to plan your trip for 2018 to see this fabulous collection as the museum is currently undergoing a major expansion. Happily, it's just one of many in the county — ranging from small local history and industry museums to transport museums and several heritage railways.

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06 of 06

Stay in a Historic Luxury Accommodation

Richard Croft/CC BY-SA 2.0

Plan a romantic getaway to Northamptonshire at the Grade 1 Listed Rushton Hall, a historic manor that is now a fabulous luxury hotel and spa.

Begun in the early 15th century, the house has a complicated history of colorful owners and plots. It even has a priests hole where secret Catholics hid their family clergy during the reign of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I and later during the English Civil War.

The Tresham family, its first owners, were implicated in the Gunpowder Plot, now annually remembered in England on Bonfire Night. Charles Dickens was a frequent visitor and the hotel's amazing hall with its double hammerbeam ceiling may have been the model for Miss Haversham's house in Great Expectations. The Hope family, for whom the Hope Diamond is named, once owned the house and the fabulous jewel, now part of the British crown, was probably kept here.

You can no doubt find a member of staff to expound at length about the history of this enormous and beautifully kept house, but it's much easier to simply enjoy its large, luxurious rooms, its first class kitchen and its extensive, landscaped grounds. Guest rooms overlook a lake with an island where sheep pose as if placed by an artist. The hotel spa includes a small but well equipped gym and a beautiful 18 meter heated pool.

Rooms in 2017 start at a reasonable £240 for two that includes dinner (a very accomplished three-course menu, easily worth £50 per person), bed and breakfast and full use of the spa.

As is common in the travel industry, the writer was provided with complimentary services for review purposes. While it has not influenced this review, TripSavvy.com believes in full disclosure of all potential conflicts of interest.

#travel #airlinetickets #airtickets #cheapairfare #planetickets #travelinsurance #travelquotes #travelblogger #traveller #travelling #travelocity #travelodge #vacation

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hsews · 6 years

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Who gained and misplaced the NBA offseason? Are these Lakers locks to make the playoffs?

With practically all the most important strikes within the books, our NBA specialists reply the massive free-agency, commerce and draft questions.

1. Which was the very best transfer of the NBA offseason?

Chris Herring, FiveThirtyEight: I really feel obligated to say LeBron James, provided that he is the very best participant on the planet. However in the event you’re the Oklahoma Metropolis Thunder, it’s a must to really feel prefer it was locking in Paul George after making the large gamble to commerce for him with out figuring out whether or not he’d keep within the small market. On prime of that, the Thunder bought out from beneath the final yr of Carmelo Anthony’s deal (and all the luxurious tax funds it might have triggered) and managed to get a helpful participant out of it. They will not win a title due to these two issues, however they got here out of all of it fairly nicely, all issues thought-about.

Kevin Arnovitz, ESPN.com: The Los Angeles Lakers signed the very best participant within the recreation. The acquisition immediately rescues a workforce that has spent the previous a number of seasons within the NBA wilderness and restores its model to among the many most related in skilled sports activities. The Lakers nonetheless must assemble some extra items, be it one other marquee free agent or the maturation of a few their younger prospects into bona fide top-shelf abilities, however the golden hue across the Lakers has formally returned.

Jackie MacMullan, ESPN.com: The most effective transfer was essentially the most anticlimactic, essentially the most predictable and the obvious. By no means thoughts that there was a run on graffiti paint since LeBron took his abilities to Redondo Seaside. The Lakers bought their man, the juice of a “massive identify” that pumps new life into the Lakers’ hype machine and an opportunity to place themselves for a game-changing summer time in 2019. Within the meantime, LeBron will settle into his L.A. digs and type by means of the — ahem — colourful solid of characters who’ve joined him. Anytime you signal the very best participant within the recreation, you win. Easy as that.

Brian Windhorst, ESPN.com: Signing the very best participant within the recreation was fairly good for the Lakers, though the Thunder maintaining Paul George was such a monumental second for the franchise that I type of really feel prefer it needs to be put in a particular class. It completely set them up for the following three seasons.

Kevin Pelton, ESPN Insider: I am selecting to interpret this as a transfer with the very best diploma of problem — or, in different phrases, not the Lakers signing LeBron James. In that case, I am going with the Toronto Raptors dealing for Kawhi Leonard and Danny Inexperienced. Though including Leonard is a high-risk transfer due to his harm and impending free company, the Raptors gave up so little along with DeMar DeRozan (middle Jakob Poeltl and a protected 2019 first-round choose) that even when Leonard leaves after this season, the commerce can nonetheless be a constructive transfer for them.

2. Which offseason transfer is least prone to work out?

Arnovitz: We’ll grade the Washington Wizards on a curve as a result of it is unlikely that they imagine the acquisitions of Dwight Howard, Jeff Inexperienced and Austin Rivers vault them towards the highest of the Japanese Convention. However sooner or later, the Wizards would possibly must take a chilly, sober have a look at the roster and measure whether or not they imagine their core, as at the moment constituted, has a robust likelihood of taking part in for an Japanese Convention title. It would very nicely be that the core in query is their finest shot, however the full vary of choices — nevertheless radical — needs to be explored.

Plenty of All-Stars have modified groups recently. Is one thing fallacious, or is the NBA simply getting sensible?

Kevin Pelton offers team-by-team evaluation of free agent strikes as July involves an finish.

1 Associated

Herring: I actually do not see an excellent match for Jabari Parker in Chicago. I totally perceive the gamble — and the truth that the contract is principally assured for under a single season — however pairing him with Zach LaVine on the wing defensively is basically an invite for opposing gamers to go to the basket at any time when they need. The hope is that his scoring will make up for this. However for all of the scoring items Parker possesses, he is out of place on protection at small ahead. Sadly, that is the place the Bulls plan to play him. I do not see it working.

MacMullan: Does inertia rely as an precise transfer? You need to marvel how each Trevor Ariza and Luc Mbah a Moute walked away from a workforce that was one strained hamstring away from advancing to the NBA Finals. Nobody can persuade me that the Houston Rockets are higher now than they had been one brief month in the past.

Ariza’s determination to decide on the money ($15 million is a wholesome haul at this level of his profession, although not the humorous cash JJ Redick coaxed out of Philly final summer time) was a bit stunning, and Houston die-hards will fortunately level out that the workforce was 15-1 in video games Ariza did not play final season. Truthful sufficient. However the Rockets oozed nice chemistry and can be examined to protect that with out two team-first guys. Including Carmelo Anthony can be a low-risk, high-reward state of affairs, and he fares higher on a workforce that values spacing, however has he lastly realized that you could nonetheless make candy music as a second (or third or fourth) fiddle?

Pelton: Many of the Lakers’ signings after LeBron might qualify, however I am going with giving Lance Stephenson a one-year, $four.45 million deal. That is barely greater than the $four.Three million workforce choice the Indiana Pacers declined days earlier, which implies they clearly did not assume he was definitely worth the cash. And bear in mind, Indiana is the one place Stephenson has discovered success in his NBA profession. As a poor outdoors shooter (29 % from Three-point vary final season) who’s finest with the ball in his fingers, Stephenson is ill-suited to slot in L.A.

Windhorst: Dwight Howard has arrived with fanfare for the previous three summers working. It appears the Wizards are banking on him being an influence participant, however that may be a departure from how the again finish of his profession has gone. We’ll see if he can buck the development. There’s cause to be doubtful.

Are the Lakers locks to make the playoffs? David Richard/USA TODAY Sports activities

Three. Which was essentially the most underrated transfer (or set of strikes)?

MacMullan: I am a fan of what the Denver Nuggets did, beginning with drafting Michael Porter Jr., who stays arguably essentially the most proficient participant within the draft. They re-signed Nikola Jokic (10 triple-doubles in 2017-18, trailing solely that of Russell Westbrook, LeBron and Ben Simmons) and sneaky good Will Barton. Additionally they paid a pittance to guess on Isaiah Thomas, who can rating in bunches and power the problem in transition in the proper setting. That chip on IT’s shoulder has been upgraded to a full-fledged boulder, and he is at his finest when individuals are counting him out. The primary goal right here is to verify he does not muck up the continued improvement of 21-year-old Jamal Murray, a younger, emotional participant who has an opportunity to change into a cornerstone.

This is the most recent on one other thrilling summer time within the NBA:

• Free-agency information, buzz and rumors • NBA Commerce Machine: Make your personal offers • Lowe: Winners and losers | Ranking the offers • Particulars on every new free-agent contract • Workforce-by-team free brokers for ’18 and ’19 • Commerce tracker: Grades and particulars • World of Woj: Newest information | Transactions

Windhorst: I believed the Grizzlies had a pleasant summer time, including two high quality function gamers in Garrett Temple and Kyle Anderson and drafting a man in Jaren Jackson Jr. who I believe may also help straight away. Mike Conley says he’s pain-free. The Grizz are poised for a turnaround.

Arnovitz: There wasn’t any ingenious front-office witchcraft this offseason outdoors of the collective restraint throughout the league, however maybe the New Orleans Pelicans. They resisted the temptation to pay massive cash to DeMarcus Cousins, then crammed out their roster with a few reasonably priced gamers — one fairly good (Julius Randle), the opposite serviceable with, no less than theoretically, some remaining upside (Elfrid Payton).

Honorable point out: The Memphis Grizzlies for getting Kyle Anderson and Garrett Temple, together with the Jaren Jackson Jr. choose.

Pelton: Brooklyn creating $16 million in extra cap area for the summer time of 2019 by swapping Timofey Mozgov for Dwight Howard, who was getting into the ultimate yr of his deal. Remarkably, after a buyout for Howard, the Nets gave up lower than $Three million in 2018 cap area to make that transfer, together with a pair of second-round picks and money. Good luck making an attempt to maneuver $16 million in wage for the same worth subsequent summer time.

Herring: I truly actually appreciated the Pacers’ summer time. In excellent Indiana style, the membership did not do something all that flashy. Tyreke Evans was possible a needed man across the league, and I am positive a handful of groups might have discovered good suits for Doug McDermott and Kyle O’Quinn. However all of them crammed wants for this membership, which was fairly rattling good final season and did not lose something of worth this summer time. If a handful of issues break proper, the Pacers might make some actual noise within the Japanese Convention playoffs subsequent yr.

four. How assured are you that the Lakers will make the playoffs?

Windhorst: I am 50/50. Even LeBron is brazenly saying he thinks the Lakers can have robust “months.” The idea that these guys “all know easy methods to play basketball” or “all like to play” falls a bit hole on these ears. That is fairly the protection of the strikes. That stated, I acknowledge that what they’re in the present day might not be what they’re in February.

Herring: I am just about all-in on the Lakers making the playoffs, as long as LeBron stays wholesome as he all the time has. I actually don’t love the remainder of the strikes the workforce has made this summer time, as they appear to run counter to the route the league has moved as a complete. However between the expansion the younger, core gamers ought to present and LeBron’s greatness, I might anticipate the Lakers to succeed in the postseason.

MacMullan: Let’s do the mathematics. Eight groups come out of the Western Convention, so let’s rely off the Warriors, Rockets, Thunder, Spurs, Blazers and Jazz. That leaves two spots among the many Pelicans, Nuggets, Timberwolves, Clippers and Lakers. I am bullish on Denver (see above), and the Pelicans flourished at breakneck velocity as soon as Boogie Cousins went down and Nikola Mirotic joined the band. The Timberwolves needs to be a playoff workforce … proper? It could appear that the Lakers are the odd workforce out — besides I’ve seen this film earlier than. So many occasions. LeBron will drag these younger ‘uns into the postseason kicking and screaming.

Pelton: Not all that assured, however I am going to go into that extra within the close to future.

Arnovitz: Very assured. The cavalry of eccentric veterans on one-year offers is not the best supply of consolation, however a LeBron James-led workforce will qualify for the postseason, even in his 16th season and even within the rugged Western Convention.

5. What’s your daring prediction for subsequent season?

Pelton: The San Antonio Spurs will win fewer video games than they did final season.

Herring: The Portland Path Blazers will miss the playoffs, one season faraway from being the No. Three seed out West. Except for the truth that the Blazers seemingly stood pat (re-upping with Jusuf Nurkic and getting Seth Curry after dropping Shabazz Napier and Ed Davis), they watched different groups within the West — ones that had way more harm issues — get higher. The thought of a Boogie signing would have doubtlessly given them an unlimited shot within the arm, however Cousins and Nurkic having the identical agent killed any probability of that occuring. That is too dangerous as a result of it feels just like the Blazers wanted the type of shake-up the Raptors simply underwent.

Windhorst: I do not make predictions, daring or in any other case, however I’ll say that I anticipate three of the league’s 5 finest groups to be within the East. It is the weaker convention, however its prime is deeper.

MacMullan: Jakob Poeltl will emerge as greater than only a throw-in for the Spurs of their blockbuster cope with the Toronto Raptors. We have spent a lot time ruminating over Leonard’s weird determination to extricate himself from San Antonio by any means potential and DeRozan’s pained exit from the Raptors that we’ve not targeted very a lot on the extra items that accomplished the commerce. Poeltl is a strong defender and shot-blocker with good defensive instincts who wants some polish on the offensive finish. He shot a league-high 65.9 % from the ground, however most of these buckets had been from three ft in.

Give him a summer time with shot physician Chip Engelland, and possibly, simply possibly, he can present some midrange prowess. Within the meantime, he is a younger, in a position backup to Pau Gasol who will allow LaMarcus Aldridge to log extra time at his desired energy ahead spot.

Arnovitz: If he stays wholesome and may drag the Pelicans to 50 wins and/or a top-four seed, Anthony Davis will win his first most beneficial participant award.

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ichangedmymindalready-blog · 6 years

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Day 6 Begin with the end in mind. You’re beautiful

As I am writing about these days, they seem so long, I have done so much! Today, I woke up in the new area, I was so glad I did not get caught. However, I woke up and one of the first things I did was roll a blunt, it seems so normal like what is wrong about putting leaves into another leave. Well, a dude with bike walked by and scared the crap out of me, he wasn’t paying attention to me but I instantly got scared so I guess im the prejudice one. Or he just wasn’t paying attention. I finish rolling the blunt, took me 2 min - new personal record. I dip out to the nearest and cleanest gas station, get dressed, take my pictures and get out. Its time to explore the other side of this highway. Its a little map I made, there is one high through two sides of a part in downtown Atlanta. Each part is a different town, I explored the other side yesterday with the movies and such but today is museum day. Chyeah! So I go to a diner called “Atlanta Breakfast Club” and its super known in the Atlanta community. I walk in and get seated by a guy in a sweater. I ask him if I could sit on the side where there is a blackboard with drawings on it, to gain inspiration for the creative shit I’m about to do. He says that side is not being served so he sits me in the middle of the cafe. WHERE DA OUTLET, all the way across the room. So I open my laptop - around 30% - what da heck. I try and do some work, order a coffee, watch a lot of beuatiful people walk in and out of the cafe. I like people watching, there are so many people in the world and to me they are all not real unless you make them real so I try to learn peoples stories or just learn about people. I feel I suck at doing things with people or I haven’t found the right people but either way Ill figure it out. I like watching people, talking to people but creating relationships suck unless they have that connection but its hard because ive learned some people don’t have that connection until later and I think its hard for me because lately its been awkward with people and I do not have a best friend, just me. Anyways, after my laptop dies, I sit for awhile until I have the nerve to ask the waiter to move spots. I finally move spots, get busy into work for like 7 minutes but first can we talk about how coffee or caffeine makes me inspired, gives me hope, but also makes me lean and vibrate its crazy. I need that drug in me without that shit. So I decided to not only do work but apply for hella jobs in ATL only applied for two because I got stuck trying to figure out somethings and I want to leave the O but I got some unfinished business there. I got to stop trying to live my life by other peoples path but Im really not, I just want to move but RUkstyle needs me and the church. Once I get those on the feet I feel like maybe more ideas and opportunities that are more and better for me will come up but I still like ATL. Cant wait to travel more. Anyways, so how got online is that I ask the “ATlatna Breakfast Club”(ABC) sweater guy who now to me seems like the manager, if they have a social media team or marketing team. I let him know Im down for that shit, he asks to see all my stuff, gives me the wifi and everything, because they dont have wifi. Boom online and showed my work to this guy for about 10 minutes and gave him my card hope everything works out! I hate half asking shit so im gonna stop that habit first letts do this shit. Anyways done with ABC, I drive around the area for twenty minutes trying to find parking, park, smoke half the blunt in the parking lot next to a school, forgetting that I decided to look for jobs at the museums so who goes to a job interview high, damn I got to get my shit together. So I get all my shit, takes me a while but I feel so dope because I love backpacking adventures. So I see that the school is a dope story from the outside so I take some pictures, go back to my car to get my camera manual so I can really get this shit looking nice. I finally get some good pics continue walking to go to a civil rights muesum across the street from ABC. AS I walk there its not cold anymore kinda hot but not too much. Im high as hit and feeling so fucking good. I finally get there and across the street is ATLANTA MISSION: ENDING HOMELESSNESS and I’m so hype because I know I can help in some way shape or form with media so I make note to go to that after the mueseum and find their hr. So I walk to the museum and just off the bat the building is one of the most beautiful things ive seen, I spend a good hour outside just taking pictures of it. Then I go upstairs to go inside nad they sayits 19 dollars - dude thats all I got let so im like nah lets see how much the other museum is. I call the other museum - 15$ - I can do that but still have doubts. Well, the Coca Cola world is right across from thsi and I’m not really that interested but I do want a glass coke or two for 1.50$ YESSS. Get two cokes and walk back to the car oh SHIT I need to go to the homelessness place. I finally go there and cant find the door, so I call and they tell me to look online. Figures. Anyways, so now I am back at the car, I put everything up and go inside the school. This school is top fucking notch. Uniforms, tv, and security. I ask for HR - in a meeting but they said they will email me so thats cool! I go back to my car, drive to a gas station near the concert venue to change its only 230 but I want to be ready. o h yeah did I mention today is the AMINE CONCERT. Anyways so I get dressed for halloween, take some pics, drink a coke, smoke the rest of that blunt nad then witness THE VARSITY - another well known DRIVE IN restaurant in the community. Im like I got to at least get fries but as I cross the street I see a guy with a broadcast camera on the bridge coming off the high way. So I drive in the resturant parking lot and they have a fucking two story drive in. I go to the second story cause when will I be able to do this again. I take some pictures from teh second floor, of the city and the place and then I drive down cause its not a drive in part just a parking lot. I park and still see the guy with the camera walking away on the highway so I get out and run, in my Jim as Dwight suit feeling like fucking clark Kent with my tie flying everywhere and my curls just bouncing. I catch the cameraman and ask him what is happening with film and photography in ATL, any spots? He says he moved here from Valdosta and just bought a camera, what a guy. Well I gave him my card and told him my story. He seemed kinda interested hopefully these people call. I run back to my car before its towed or something and look around, therses no’ button like sonic so I go to car with this black lady in a suit she cracks the window and tells me how it works. I wait look at my clock its 245, spend time on thsi or money on the museum. I end up going to teh muesum but see theres only paid parking, cut that shit, smoke the rest of yesterdays blunt WHICH I FORGOT ABOUT and go to find parking for the venue takes me about an hour, but I finally find parking for $4 totally worth the perseverance of finding cheap parking. Its right next to the venue but my ass went around and couldn’t find it, I asked a police officer and he pointed me to the right direction. SO THIS PART OF TOWN IS CALLED UNDERGROUND BECUASE ITS ACTUALLY UNDERGROUND THIS CONCERT WAS UNDERFUCKINGGROUND WHAT THE HELL. SO im underground and see a whole bunch of hot girls I mean decent but beautiful waiting in line and this is how the conversation goes.

Me(high as fucking shit): Hey are you waiting for the amine concert? Is this the VIP LINE?

Girls: yes

Me walks to the end of line

Girls: I mean yes but not VIP.

Me: Oh okay

Girls: What are you dressed up as?

Me: Do you watch The office?

Girls: Yes (get excited) and points

Me thinks I feel a connection that they get that im Dwight so I just jump in the air and squeal: Yo im so glad you get it (walks away happily)

Im not really sure if they got it or I just think they did but I feel bad because I left and I dint know.

Anyways , I realize im hungry as shit so I go find some food. I see this guy who looks cute from behind but not really the face thinking he still cool enough to be my best friend I ask him if he knows any good places to eat, he’s not from here and trying to find the same thing. Im like okay and walk in teh opposite direction on purpose. I wish I could’ve saidwel do you want t look around with me. Thats a good way to make friends but still a lot and I didn’t. Anyways, I go all the way to the other side of town and see a completely Nasty looking asian place, it wasn’t nasty it was actually too hot to tell but it tasted nice asf. Like everything seemed wrong about the place it even smelled bad but I was hungry and I gave it a try. Im proud. So after that I walk all the way back and sit in line waiting for amine. The place is underground so im just glad to be there so hype about it all. I finally get called in with the others with my badge and everything, Im kinda nervous. I see him, still on edge. I show him my video for move the right way, he tells me to send it to his assistants email so I do!, I ask him to guess my outfit (Jim as Dwight) for halloween he doesnt watch the office but his best friend does and loves the outfit and gives mea high five. He asks what do you want to do for the picture I say something stupid cause you and your friends are stupid and he’s like you calling me stupid and im like oh shit NO stupid as in weird. I feel bad now, I take the picture and wait overthinking my life for the show to start. The show is blasting bad boy records and im so bout it. I know every song, I dance to my self in the crowd. I meet some people who seem really cool one person from Orlando too. The opener comes out, Towkio, in his set he asks for dancers, some girls come on stage, INCLUDING ME. The music starts playing and the girls start twerking , almost jump off the stage but instead I start cramping dopes. Amine comes on after that and he’s going in, I wish I knew the lyrics, I honestly truly just enjoyed the concert, I sang maybe 3 songs but Caroline was everything. After that, we dance it out with a dj and im so hype, people say they like my dancing and was happy and left home.after getting lost.

#journals #atlanta #drugs #high #writings #writer

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prinzenhasserin · 7 years

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Fandom5k - Dear Author!

This letter is just in case you might want to poke at some more of my prompts/likes.

I’m not married to any of them, feel free to subvert them to your heart’s desire. I’m not so much a fan of darkfic, except for when there’s a hopeful resolution to all the dark stuff, but feel free to write me any rating, I love all these ships and combinations!

Feel also free to include other characters or OCs as side-characters, if they are necessary because of plot reasons.

Things I Love:

fake/pretend relationships

arranged marriages turning into supportive partners

loyalty

odd couples

found family, dysfunctional families that nevertheless love each other

cultural differences, age differences, height differences

heists, rescue missions

dragons, fairy tales, magical realism, urban fantasy

competent characters

people not realising they’re the most competent at their job/hobby

people failing their way to success

happy endings, earning your happy ending, open yet hopeful endings

cynical humour

mutual pining

suits, corsetry, fancy dresses

Identity shenanigans (secret identities, mistaken identities)

Blatant Lies

Enemies becoming friends and/or lovers

outsider POV

epistolary

people not usually found in law enforcement solving crimes

non-verbal expressions of affection

Kinks:

sex in weird places (hard no on libraries, though)

Sexual Tension (bonus, if in inappropriate places or situations)

I like my anal sex with lots of lube and preparation, and also not before any strenuous activities. Lot of foreplay basically :D

women knowing exactly what they want from sex

multiple orgasms

I like switching (especially for practical reason), and changing power balances

weapons kink

semi-public sex with nobody actually watching

sex toys

hate sex

dirty talk (also: teasing)

Things I Do Not Want (DNW):

relentless angst

a/b/o

Infidelity

pregnancy

rape (totally fine with dubcon, though)

Wynonna Earp (TV) —Xavier Dolls (Wynonna Earp)

If you want to include other canon characters — that would be awesome, too. Lowkey I ship Dolls with both Wynonna and Doc Holiday, separately and together, but I’d be thrilled with friendships or ambiguous relationships also.

How did he join up with Black Badge? Is there a recruitment program you have to go through -- how did that look like? Was it more like boot camp? (Was it like the Police Academy Movies, and poor Dolls the only sane man?) Was torture a thing -- how did they deal with it?

Did he join Black Badge before or after he became someone different? Does he have family/friends, which he left for some reason? How did they influence him? Do they come and visit him in the Ghost River Triangle? Are they also special, or are they completely baffled by what he does?

What exactly is he? Was he always such a deeply repressed person? Does he ever let go?

What happened to him after the Season 1 finale? Did he get rescued (by Wynonna, Doc Holiday, someone else)? Does he rescue himself? Does he even need to be rescued, or is he being recalled to fight the tentacle monsters invading L.A., or the lizard people beneath New York? I mean, the kidnapping at the end seems pretty involuntary, but his supernatural thing could just be very territorial.

Would also absolutely enjoy if it turns out Xavier Dolls is the reason the Earp’s family curse exists — and now he’s trying to break it but can’t. This could be because maybe he’s immortal, maybe he’s a relative of the original curse-making witch, maybe he tried to conquer the world once and now Black Badge has him under a geas to fix anything they want him to, maybe his family died because of a similar thing.

That said, I would also read a version of his life that is fluffy bunnies and sunshine, and everything goes right for him :D

DNW: major character death, graphic depictions of torture

Original Work — Group: Pirate/Pirate; Group: Crossdressing Regency Lady/Regency Lady; Group: Male Noir Detective/Male Mobster

Crossdressing Regency Lady/Regency Lady

Why is there crossdressing? Is it something mundane, like it being easier to ride in mens clothing (people sell you rooms/horses/land with less of a fuss), or is there some dramatic reason, like inheriting an estate or an earldom? Maybe it’s easier to pretend to be a man than an unmarried woman? Studying at university! Working in the lawyer’s office of their father because he’s sick, and the bills need to be paid, and there is no work for a female lawyer…

Some other plot ideas:

They meet at a ball, and flirt. Then they meet again at the next ball (or the theatre, or gambling halls) and their relationship continues. The crossdressing Lady is very worried about being actually a woman, and pretending to be a man, but the other Lady found out the very first night and is totally cool with it.

Would also enjoy a mystery about the young man that pops up in the neighbourhood, conveniently while the very pretty cousin of a cousin is visiting. Highway robbers! Pirates! Pretending to be her own brother because he’s off to Gretna Green (or wherever) to get married! There are no tropes that could make this bad for me :D

One Lady writes novels under a pseudonym, the other starts a letter exchange. They decide to meet — and that man looks suspiciously like one of the other lady’s childhood friends who definitely did not have brothers.

I would enjoy this in a world without homophobia, just as I would enjoy this if they had to pretend to be a heterosexual couple forever (though I would enjoy it more if they had the support of at least one of their friends/family, or a community behind them)

DNW: gender dysphoria for the character crossdressing

Pirate/Pirate

I would love pirates absolutely anywhere, Scottish smugglers, piracy on rivers, Mediterranean pirates of pre-Roman Empire, Egyptian pirates, Chinese pirates, privateers, pirates of the Caribbean, pirates in SPACE.

f/f pairings would be great, just as m/m pairings, or f/m, whatever floats your boat (heh)

Some plot ideas:

(All prompts are gender neutral, which is intentional. All prompts are also terribly fluffy which is by no means an indication of preference — I just can’t seem to write deep and dramatic things.):

Two different pirate ships try to stop a ship of loot/weapons/high profile people from arriving at its location. Two of the opposite crew fall in love along the way.

The First Mate oils their muscles, and it’s the best thing that ever happened to this bosun (or the worst, depending). There are various bets about the futility of this most obvious crush.

This one country keeps trying to invade these particular islands, and so the entire nation has taken to piracy whenever that happens. When that country catches on, they send undercover people, who turn out to like piracy after all.

The smuggling cave is only accessible during low tide, and it’s only known to the pirates, yet their stash of high-grade alcohol/sauerkraut/sails/unobtainium keeps vanishing, and so they set out a trap, and it turns out to be another pirate who needs it to help heal some other dudes.

The captain is so throughly annoyed by two of his crew members, he makes them sleep in the same cabin (or the hammocks nearest to each other) for the entire voyage, and they keep falling into the wrong bed because of reasons. (Optionally, hate-sex — or they are united by their hatred for this clearly unreasonable captain and overthrow him.)

Please no modern pirates, or rape

Male Noir Detective/Male Mobster

How does this relationship start? Are they childhood friends? Does someone get murdered, and they team up to solve it? Is the mobster in the way of an investigation and obstructing it, while trying to solve it himself?

I'm not sure from the tagset if the former is a police officer or a private eye, either would be fantastic. I don’t have a preference for the place or time setting!

Do they hate each other? Is it a slightly antagonistic relationship?

Do they like each other? Reasons for why criminals and law enforcement people could like each other: one is running the only speakeasies in town, the other really likes to get drunk; crapshot government, and the mobster provides a much needed service (maybe schools, needle exchanges, safe abortions, soup kitchens)

Or is it just because they are the only smart person in their respective business?

Would love some exploration of moral justifications of differing view-points.

Also here for pure smut: hate sex, switching power dynamics, ill-advised drunken one-night stands, sex for blackmail reasons

Crossover Fandom — Group: Cher Horowitz (Clueless)/Elle Woods (Legally Blonde)

Do they meet in law school? Or before, or after? I want them to be competent, and brilliant, and dazzle each other with their excellent taste in clothes. I want them to be besieged by terrible human beings, and persevere. I want them to cuddle on a sofa, and inspire so many girls to do great things. I want them to grow as human beings, and be kind and positive, and succeed. (And I want one of them to be President.)

Also excellent would be: Elle does criminal law, Cher is in charity work, and they need to solve this embezzlement case.

But I'm also here for the porn, because that would also be amazing. Or like, buying a house together. Getting married. Deciding to adopt a puppy together.

Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch — Group: Thomas Nightingale/Alexander Seawoll, Group: Thomas Nightingale/Varvara Sidorovna Tamonina

I love the ambiguous relationships Thomas Nightingale has with people. For all his stand-offish personality, he seems to have a great empathy, next to his principles that have clearly change with the times.

Thomas Nightingale/Seawoll

Is the negotiating about cases a sex thing? If so, is it hate sex, or the "I really like the way you look but the bullshit that comes out of your mouth"-sex? Is there going to be a romantic relationship? Is Seawoll secretly into the whole magic thing, and super delighted by the simplest things?

Would also love canon style cases — maybe they at first think magic plays a part, but then it turns out the solution to the case lies with mundane police work?

Also a thing I would read: An accident turns Seawoll into a genius loci, a being of magic which he’s entirely sceptic about. He goes to Nightingale for help.

Or: Seawoll needs to explain to some government official why they have a department of two people, and Nightingale swoops in to save him — now Seawoll makes it his personal mission to have Nightingale explain each and every of their necessary budget points to the appropriate people.

Thomas Nightingale/Varvara Sidorovna Tamonina

Maybe Nightingale is attracted to ethically challenged witches? Do they get into intense discussions about magic? How does it feel to have an unexpected contemporary, but a foreign-educated one?

Does she help solve a case, and Nightingale shows his appreciation? Does she meticulously torture him with her feminine wiles, while she's technically their prisoner and Thomas won't touch her — except he does so she'll share her information?

Psych — Group: Burton Guster/Shawn Spencer

These are the fluffiest prompts ever, and I’m sorry.

Gus has Shawn on his insurance plan, he's doing Shawn's income taxes, and they own a house together. I want people assuming they are married. I want them to get offers to hold "representation speeches" or "sensitivity training" for the police officer they are working with, people wanting to know if it was difficult finding work after coming out, and Shawn hilariously missing the point, and Gus being quietly embarrassed.

Or a "waking up married" scenario where it's easier to just stay together, because that way Gus has to only do one set of paperwork.

Or anyone quietly investigating if the two of them are together and coming to the wrong (right?) conclusions. (Shawn's dad? A potential date?)

Or a murder happens at Gus place of business, and Shawn comes in to investigate, and apparently all of Gus' colleagues think he's the husband? And of course Shawn plays it up.

Also great: Gus and Shawn have a huge fight, and they don’t speak to each other for a month, and the people around them are tip-toeing around if they have broken up — while the fight was about leaving the socks lying around, and they aren’t even together, wtf — but then they have make-up sex, and everyone is relieved.

Smut is also very welcome! As are other canon characters, and OCs.

DNW: darkfic

(Please feel free to anon me if there’s anything confusing and/or wrong. Sometimes I confuse myself!)

#dear author #fandom5k #fandom exchange #exchange letter

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type2diabetestreatments-blog · 7 years

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Creating Healthier Workplace Environments - Got Ideas?

New Post has been published on http://type2diabetestreatment.net/diabetes-mellitus/creating-healthier-workplace-environments-got-ideas/

Creating Healthier Workplace Environments - Got Ideas?

Back when I worked as a reporter in an office building in downtown Indianapolis, there'd be many days when I came in before the sun rose and left after it set. Getting outside to just walk around was a very low priority, and the only exercise I might get would be the few steps to the break room for some coffee.

Now that I'm working from home, the same kind of busy workday keeps me indoors consistently while I'm writing, editing, and talking to people online and by phone.

In my own personal corner of the world, my workplace could be healthier if I just scheduled an hour to take the dog for a walk every afternoon. Something so simple could change so much, making me healthier and probably even improving my diabetes management.

That, right there, is the point of an ongoing innovation challenge aimed at creating healthier workplace communities throughout the world. This featured challenge on the OpenIDEO platform (a crowdsourcing innovation tool from award-winning design firm IDEO) is a multi-phase process allowing people to collaborate on ideas and solutions.

For this challenge, international healthcare group Bupa has teamed up with The International Diabetes Federation (IDF) to explore how we can create healthier communities inside and beyond the workplace. Simply, how can people best be supported at work to make positive changes to their health and wellness, and what skills and tools are needed to make these changes happen?

The OpenIDEO brief outlines the challenge and sets the stage. Here's a snippet of what this is all about:

Around the world diabetes and other chronic diseases, including obesity, heart disease and cancer, are on the rise — alongside rapid growth in levels of work-related stress and mental illness. In fact, according to the World Health Organisation, there are 36 million preventable deaths every year from these health problems — a devastating social impact for communities and a major financial burden for everyone.

While what we do for work, where we work and who we work with can have a lasting effect on our overall health and wellness, they are just a few important pieces of the overall puzzle. In what ways does our work life influence our personal and home lives as well?

While our challenge focus starts in the workplace, we're eager to explore the positive ripple effect that can be experienced when happy, healthy and supported employees go back to their own families and communities. How can we leverage the place and the concept of work to improve the health and wellness of everyone — starting with the individual and moving outward to their friends and family, their colleagues and beyond? How might we create workplaces and workforces that act as health hubs for entire communities?

With your help, we're interested in creating solutions that enable people make healthier choices at work and in life. From raising awareness, inspiring behaviour change or leveraging our co-worker and community relationships to catalyze broader health and wellness impacts, we're eager to explore solutions together.

This is what IDF spokesman Lorenzo Piemonte says about the organization's involvement:

"The International Diabetes Federation is supporting the OpenIDEO challenge as part of our commitment to achieving a coordinated and multi-sectoral response to the diabetes epidemic. Diabetes affects everyone and requires a collective response. Promoting environments and solutions that encourage healthy behavior - increased physical activity and better nutrition - in all aspects of modern life, the workplace being a very important one, is one of our priorities and our hope is that the OpenIDEO challenge will make a positive impact towards preventing the further rise of type 2 diabetes. We are encouraged by the contributions that have been made so far."

And this is where we come in.

A total of 337 "inspirations" were already sent in as part of the challenge, identifying issues and possible solutions to create these healthier workplaces. Then, 241 concepts were submitted as ways to address those issues. And for each idea submitted starting Dec. 21, OpenIDEO has pledged to made a $10 donation to IDF, up to $10,000 total.

Now, it's time for the e-patient community to evaluate all those ideas and decide which should be on the short-list for possible winners. This quick-fire "applause" phase begins today (Jan. 10) and runs through Jan. 15, allowing all of us to rate and comment on our favorite concepts that we feel have the most potential. After a refinement and final evaluation process, the winning concepts will be announced Feb. 7.

While a search shows only a couple concepts mention diabetes care specifically, many ideas hit at a broad range of exercise and healthy-eating themes that are highly applicable to people with diabetes. They run the gamut: lunch-time walking groups, treadmill desks with wobble boards, to a workplace chalk board challenging employees to eat healthier each day.

One idea urges allowing school kids to "play the teacher" in presenting information on what healthier foods to eat and how to educate their families and friends. Another idea, less D-specific, is to create a registered bone marrow donor map. This one was inspired by a U.S. map showing health, income and socio-economic divides.

A quick scan of some other submitted concepts include these (not that we're endorsing these specifically; they just caught our eye):

Permission To Take a Break: A system that would encourage and reward people for taking their full lunch break, rather than rushing to get back to work.

Workout Meeting: A program that would enable people to work out together while actually working, encouraging them to exercise while meeting up for business in exercise-equipped meeting areas.

Easier Insurance and Gym Access: Freelancers or contract employees often enjoy very few of the insurance coverage and gym membership perks available to those working for bigger firms. So, maybe Bupa can provide a participatory program for these people to attend gym/classes to improve their health and thus enjoy better insurance rates?

#LaughterIsTheBestMedicine: We all know this phrase, so why not create a hashtag #LaughterIsTheBestMedicine - or #LitBM - where people can upload and share photos of themselves laughing? People could follow the link for a daily dose of happiness to lift their spirits.

Wellness Dashboard App: An app that allows you to track and report your wellness across a holistic and customizable array of different wellness measures.

These are all intriguing ideas, and we can't wait to see what gets chosen for the final winners' list. Now let's get the Diabetes Community involved in this, particularly since IDF is leading the way!

Disclaimer: Content created by the Diabetes Mine team. For more details click here.

Disclaimer

This content is created for Diabetes Mine, a consumer health blog focused on the diabetes community. The content is not medically reviewed and doesn't adhere to Healthline's editorial guidelines. For more information about Healthline's partnership with Diabetes Mine, please click here.

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