Danny is just a kid ya know? Like he is just a little guy. A baby really. 14? Tiny child! Look at him, he needs to be protected. Someone has to help this poor little dude. I mean he forgets to use his own powers to avoid attacks all the time.

Anyway cut to Batfam not knowing all of Dannys power set cause the lil dingus keeps forgetting he can do that stuff in the heat of battle.

Danny uses his invisibility all the time… to avoid being followed. But in a fight? Oopsies hes too busy thinking of funny one liners to realise he could do that.

Intangibility? Give the guy a break. I mean who calls themselves condiment king. Even he was stunned.

He so rarely actually uses his biggest advantage powers that the League doubt he actually has them. He, like any naive child, trusts them and reported fully on his power set. Instead of just asking him to demonstrate his powers they instead start watching him and try to find evidence of his powers.

At least they know duplication was true since they watched him make a copy of himself to go to the bathroom and not miss any of his fav tv show.

Dpxdc AU: Danny can’t fix Jason’s whole…deal… and doesn’t want to answer any questions on ectoplasm but he can get Jason to the best therapist he knows! Jason mistakes Danny constantly pushing Jazz his way as an awkward little brother move to set them up romantically- which uh, isn't necessarily a bad thing? Jazz has her own vested interests.

… heads up that this got long...

Jason ran his hands through this hair, relieving them from their previous position of cradling his face in embarrassment. Why was he sitting in a nice cafe with Danny’s redhead sister and a five dollar chai latte? For all the awkward live wire feelings he had, at least she was calm and composed. How many times had this happened already?

“So… the green stuff again?” Jazz asks, taking a sip from her own stupidly expensive drink and giving him eyebrows that beg for his explanation.

“Yeah. I was trying to get your brother to explain stuff without all the science mumbo jumbo. I just, I guess that means he defers to you.” Jason sighed, and tried to not think about how pretty her eyes were as she observed him.

“Not likely. But is the search for your answers helping you cope from day to day or making you climb an impossible mountain?” Jazz asks and it makes Jason fluster.

“It’s a moving goal post, sure, but I need answers if I’m going to fix my-“

“I think it might help you to realize that people don’t need to be fixed, they just need to grow.” Jazz interrupts.

They finish their drinks in a comfortable nonchalance, the rest of their conversation doesn’t go anywhere beyond their mutual hobbies and he’s grateful for that.

Jason's been doing a lot of introspection since this all started.

——

The first time it happened was months ago.

He confronts Danny after a mission, just wanting a simple answer on whether or not Danny thought the Lazarus pit contained ectoplasm? Could ectoplasm be separated from blood? Danny looked a little uncomfortable.

“Look dude, I know you want to know more but like, having this info isn’t going to help you. You need to talk it out.” Danny sounds sad and his eyes are filed with something adjacent to pity. It riles up the pit inside him.

“Oof. See that whole reaction thing. That’s not ectoplasmic, that’s something different. C’mon follow me.” Phantom cringes as he talks to him, and then floats across the rooftops, going slow enough that Jason can keep up on his grapple.

The arrive at a modest apartment building, not too far from his territory but clearly outside of it. Danny opens a window and slides in ahead of Jason, and all of a sudden he’s seated at a kitchen table with hot chocolate and teal blue eyes peering into his soul.

“Danny, some warning next time you’re bringing a crime boss to my apartment.” Jazz sighs and its not said with any malice or sarcasm. Danny gives her a grin and a peace sign before disappearing.

“So you want to talk about it?” Jazz turns back to him and asks.

“About?” Jason’s deep voice is going through the modulator and it sounds more sinister than it should.

“Death. Dying. The afterlife. Those are the normal things Danny brings people to me for.” She blinks.

“There’s a misunderstanding, I don’t need to talk, I need answers on Ectoplasm.” He grits out.

"Hm. Well that's not my field of study, but I can tell you that however your feeling is probably a valid response towards the trauma you've faced in life. Do you think showing yourself some kindness might lessen your desire to know the knitty gritty details?"

Jason scoffs.

"Oh. You're serious. No. I don't think being kind to myself is a valid approach to dealing with an infection that's cost me a lot of family relationships." Jason rolls his eyes. The woman looks contemplative for a moment and Jason can tell that while the dim kitchen lights are doing her no favors, she's incredibly beautiful. He pockets that information and refuses to think about it.

"So...Lets take this a different direction. Do you think successful people know what they're doing or do you think successful people need help to get where they want to go?"

"Most people are dumb and trying to get by." Jason grits out.

"So, accept that you're dumb. And then get by." Jazz replies, and then sighs and leaves the room.

Jason however, is now pissed off. Who the heck was she to say that to him?

____

The next time he finds himself across the table from Jazz, he's been on a wild goose chase with Danny and lands himself in a fancy restaurant. Why the hell was she here?

"Uh, it's called self care." Jazz replies, because apparently Jason asked that out loud. But he's not going to let this lead get away from him.

He takes off his helmet, years of muscle memory make him check that his Domino mask was in place, and sits down across from her. She raises a brow and then sighs.

"You think Danny might give me answers if I hold you hostage over, what is that, some kind of gnocchi dish?"

"Mm. Probably not." Jazz says, taking a bite and pulling out her phone.

"You're just going to ignore me then?" Jason finds himself a bit flabbergasted, he was a fucking crime lord, not someone to be ignored! Like he's just- just some bad blind date!

"Uh huh. You don't want to work on your issues and it's not my job to lead a stubborn horse to water."

"The expression is that you can lead a horse to water but you can't-"

"Can't what? Or are you still going to tell me it's not a huge waste of my time to tell you that you need to accept and forgive yourself to be able to move on. Find peace. Rest." Jazz is taking bites between her last few words but her glare remains unshakeable.

Jason is about to get up and leave when a terrified waiter comes over: "A dish, as compliments from the chef. Your guest's meal as well." He's shaking as he speaks and it makes Jason feel bad.

"Thanks." He grits out.

"...Is that the lasagna?" Jazz is looking at his food curiously, and Jason pushes it forward to indicate that she can take a bite. Probably not the safest thing for a civilian to do considering people regularly try to poison Jason but, meh. He's kind of pissed off at her still.

"It's pretty good. I was debating between that and the gnocchi- Okay let's think about this differently. You want to know about the green stuff, Danny is never going to tell a mortal about it and you keep denying yourself basic self-respect. What does your support system look like?"

"You're really pushing my buttons lady-" Jason can feel the green, but after a breath and seeing her unimpressed gaze "-I have a few friends who know what my deal is, I have an older brother who claims to forgive me, and a merry band of goons that I call my henchmen."

"Henchpeople?" Jazz asks.

"I mean, sure. That's more accurate."

"What do you do for fun?" She asks.

"I take down crime syndicates-" she levels him with another glare, he wonders why its so effective on him "-I read."

"Yeah? What genres?"

"Classics." He can admit only that much.

"Nerd. Are you going to eat any of that? You really shouldn't let food waste like that when it's not even fighting back."

"I don't know why I'm even bothering to talk to you right now." Jason spoke plainly.

"I dunno either but it's easier to tolerate you without the stupid helmet speaker. Anyway, If you like to read, hopefully that means you like to see new scenarios, new plots, stuff like that. You ever think to put yourself in side-character mode and contemplate what your whole deal is bringing to the table?"

"...How so?"

"Like, if you don't think it's worth it to treat yourself well, how do the main characters feel? Or, you know, if you were a child reading your story, what would you shout at them to move forward differently?"

"... I've decided that I only read poetry." Jason grumbles, trying to deflect with humor the fact that he does have some thoughts about what she's saying. She actually laughs at his joke though- he hadn't anticipated that.

"Uh, what is the Dr. Suess line? Stop telling outlandish tales, stop turning minnows into whales? something like that."

"Dr. Suess? Really?" Jason laughs.

"Sorry Mr. Classics, I spent most of my childhood raising my brother, forgive me for not knowing any fancy poetry." She huffs but he can tell she's laughing with him still.

They get off the topic of his mental health crisis and it turns out the Lasagna isn't half bad.

----

Jason keeps chasing Danny. Danny keeps leading him to Jazz. It goes for a few rounds before the ghost kid makes a joke about Jason liking her better anyway. Jason asks what the hell Phantom means by that, but Danny just laughs and says that Jason should just ask for her number.

...This does not sit right in his gut all of a sudden. Does he think that, that Jason is only pursuing this knowledge to keep talking to Jazz?? Does Danny want him to pursue Jazz? Does HE want to pursue Jazz???

----

He spots the Replacement in the Cave's lab before he heads upstairs to grab a cookie and leave as a civilian. The reason he even looked that way being that Tim is holding glowing green vials.

"Is that-"

"Yeah. They're literally the same except for the magic mumbo jumbo that Ra's has mixed in with the pit. Leave me alone now."

"So there is a way to heal it or, or extract it or-" Jason can feel his heart racing, but his constantly-exhausted sibling is looking at him like he's grown a second head.

"Dude. You're not gunna be able to flush it out with like, a juice cleanse. You're probably better off trying to find a magic user to deal with the curses and a therapist to do the rest." Tim looks like he's trying to be patient despite being deeply, deeply vexxed.

"Therapist- why in the hell would I-"

"I mean hasn't that been Danny's entire solution for you? He's only had one strategy the whole time he's lived in Gotham." Jason rolls his eyes.

"His solution is setting me up on dates with his sister not-"

"Dates!?! His sister is THE break out psychologist, she's done more for Arkham in the last year than decades of political reform! You've been goin on- wheez- oh my god I have to call Danny-" Tim is cackling, the lazarus water all but abandoned.

"Don't you fucking dare!"

After a (from both brothers) number of punches, a few headlocks and a large portion of threats, Jason agrees that Tim can tell his boyfriend but no one else.

Kon can keep a secret right? That's why he's the favorite?

----

"So... You and Jazz huh?" Danny looks amused as he floats by- Kon could not be trusted. The entire Justice league knows. Jason might have to die again. Apparently he said as much.

"Oh buddy, it's okay! You don't have to die again! I'm sure that if she likes you, she likes you just as you are, weird little zombie boy." Danny teases, turning intangible as Jason swings a punch at him.

"What do you mean if she likes me?" Jason asks, swinging with his grapple, trying to keep up with Danny.

"You think I read her diary or something? Weirdo. You need to talk to her about it tho, it's funny and all but I'm sure she's not a fan of the JL hot goss."

"I didn't start any of this-"

"My guy. Chill. I know, but uh, I did definitely tell her about it so... Oh look! We made it all the way to her apartment! BYE!"

Jazz is standing in the window and she looks like an absolute vision. Her glare makes him want to shit his pants however, and he knows that it's going to take all of his brain cells making contact to survive this encounter.

He sits on the fire escape when he realizes that she's not moving from her spot in the window, blocking his way. Ouch.

"So let me get this straight, you thought this whole time-"

"I thought Danny was being annoying and trying to set us up! I didn't know you were a shrink!" He tries to defend himself.

"...Why should I date an idiot?" the like yourself goes unsaid but he can hear it. Jason is scrambling.

"...I can make even better lasagna than that fancy restaurant you like." is what he lands on. Jazz bursts out a laugh.

"I was just fucking with you, but honestly what a great response." She's wiping tears of laughter from her eyes.

"Just fucking with me?" He grins a bit, unable to stop himself from getting excited.

"Yeah, I've been telling everyone at work that I'm dating the Red Hood for like, months now. It's been stellar for my hostage record, I haven't had an issue since I started the rumor!"

"We're dating?" Jason asks, a bit bewildered but charmed.

"I wouldn't give free therapy to just anyone! Now about that Lasagna-"

Something, something, something- they seal the deal with a kiss.

Danny’s Bagginshield Fic Recs (2021)

I haven’t done a fic rec in literal years, and I keep meaning to, but then I... don’t. This is a massive list - so I will put it under a read more to save your dashes.

Modern AUs

A Remover of Obstacles by MistakenMagic

"Dis often chided her older brother for being a misanthropist. She did it so often it had become a term of endearment. It was true that Thorin struggled with people; he struggled to form and maintain relationships. Dr. Grey had diagnosed him with this and Thorin hadn’t the heart to tell him this wasn’t a symptom of his PTSD, it was a symptom of his personality. He exercised a sense of apathy with almost everyone he met… But Bilbo was different. Thorin actually found himself wanting to know more about him."

(Note: This fic deals with a lot of mental health stuff, panic attacks, etc, so please please mind the tags.)

By Request by HildyJ

As a musician, Thorin's life can be summed up in tempos. For instance, the concerto he's perfoming on Friday is Allegro - quick and bright, followed by Andantino - slightly slow, and then back to Allegro again.

On the other hand, his relationship with his cute neighbour? Larghissimo - very, very slow.

Stepping Stones by misplacedkisses

It feels like it's fate Thorin's trying to resist, his destiny, his bloodline.

Fresh out of inpatient, Thorin's struck with the urge and maybe it's fate (or therapy) that has him stumbling into a late-night cafe instead. It may be the start of a new life.

Write Me Down Easy by lucyraebrown

Bilbo Baggins, a simple man with a wish for something more than his life teaching high school English, is obsessed with a famous author by the pen-name Oakenshield. Although he knows the future is dim for his chances of finding out about the man behind his favorite book, it's reassuring to know someone has the same thoughts about the world.

Fix-its 

I'll Die to Care for You by thehufflepuffhobbit

His gaze landed on Mahal's eyes once more. "You did your best, Thorin." It was tempting to look away; he wanted to deny that with everything he had. It certainly didn't feel as though falling into Gold Sickness and then dying was doing his best. Mahal smirked, as though he knew Thorin's desire to contradict him, and pinched his cheek before walking over to a table. "Aye, I didn't think you would believe me. I'm not lying, it certainly could have gone better. More according to my plan, but I know you really did try."

"Your plan?" He didn't know if he should ask, really. Knowing that his Maker had set a course for him, he didn't want to think about the ways he had done everything wrong. There were too many examples of mistakes in his long life, too many opportunities that he had missed that had probably been planned for him from the beginning.

Or:

Mahal feels like Thorin fucked up his legacy and gives him a do over.

Roses of Iron by Porphyrios

Two years after Bilbo returned from his adventures, he's made his peace with being back in the Shire. He still wonders what might have happened if things were different, but figures all that is behind him now. A mysterious visitor turns out to be someone he never thought he'd see again, and he's shocked by the news he hears.

Beside Myself by bliboboggins

"What are you doing? Just who do you think you are?" Startled, Bilbo turned around slowly. And there, in a familiar patchwork dressing gown, brandishing a fire poker wildly about, was... Bilbo.

i wouldn't have danced like that with any but you by Percyjacksonfan3

Thorin has survived the Battle of the Five Armies but his relationship with Bilbo is uncertain and precarious, especially in the newly reclaimed kingdom of Erebor. With Kíli set to marry Tauriel, and the Dwarves of Erebor still holding prejudice against outside races, Thorin must choose between his nephew's happiness or his own.

Though he believes sending Bilbo back to the Shire is for the good of everyone, he and the rest of Erebor are thrown into turmoil when 5 years later his nephews secretly plot to bring Bilbo back. Coming face-to-face with Bilbo again makes it impossible for Thorin to stay apart from him any longer- but is Bilbo still willing to be with Thorin once more after he broke both of their hearts?

A Matter of Payment by heartshapeddog

"And Thorin rose from the little table, keeping Bilbo’s fingers crushed gently in his own, and went down to his knee before him. Bilbo was struck with the likelihood that no creature greater than a farm-dog had lowered its head before a Hobbit since the birth of Eä until this very moment. He looked down, fascinated, at the crown of Thorin’s head, bare of royal circlet, and felt at once humbled and strong.

“I swear it,” Thorin said, and Bilbo thought of the vows from Elven history, of the type which followed the oathkeeper to the ends of Arda as a deep and binding magic. Then, he took Bilbo’s knuckles up to his lips. The rasp of his beard and his soft mouth were shocking in their immediacy and contrast. Bilbo could not help his racing heart."

Feet that Wander Have Gone by WednesdaysDaughter

“Run away with me.”

Bilbo turns to see who would say such a cowardly thing only to realize it was his own traitorous mouth which has run away with his heart: They’re already down the mountain and past Mirkwood by the time he realizes no one has objected.

“What a delightful solution my dear boy,” says Gandalf who looks to the east where the eagles are skimming the horizon.

Other AUs

between synapses and circuits by MistakenMagic

Different diagnostic results slowly trickled through and Thorin swiped them all to different corners of the screen depending on their relevance and evidence of abnormality. He paused when a particular chart appeared and smiled to himself.

“What?” Bilbo murmured, sounding genuinely worried.

“Your heterochromia,” Thorin explained, meeting Bilbo’s green and blue gaze. “The irregular algorithm that causes it has been running for almost half a century.”

“Most mechatronics offer to fix it for me,” Bilbo said, looking away, seeming suddenly self-conscious.

“Then they’re idiots.”

(Note: I just love MistakenMagic’s works. That’s all. This one is good and she writes angst so so well.)

past one hundred thousand miles (feeling very still) by childishinquiry

Commander Thorin Oakenshield is the leader of the first Mars mission, Project Golden Eagle, with twelve crewmen. Back on Earth, Specialist Bilbo Baggins is their communications specialist. Making history is easy; it's much harder to deal with falling in love with the person on the other end of the signal.

Hallowbit by batherik

As simple pawn shop owner in the human world, Bilbo isn’t all that thrilled to find himself lost in Thorin’s magical undead kingdom. Lured there by an old man dressed in grey, who turned out to be a wizard, Bilbo is charged with doing a job no one wants to do: fetch the King’s head from the corn maze. The King often loses his head when his temper boils over.

In the House of a Skinchanger by Bardic

Thorin and Company have finally reached a safe house after a few crazy weeks on the road. After three days of goblins, orcs, and a massive bear that's chased them into the home of one of Gandalf's acquaintances the Company is quite exhausted and quite tired of surprises. Unfortunately for them, or fortunately there is another staying there.

Master Baggins is not who the Company expected to find, especially when he claims to be one of the only outsiders Durin allowed a title and a rank to. Although that's the least surprising thing about him.

Thorin makes some discoveries and has some observations.

Basically an AU where Bilbo is a skinchanger and the Company meet him at Beorn's on accident.

It Runs In The Family by Imagined

At first, Bilbo is very glad to hear of the new alliance between Erebor and the Shire. He is even more excited when he learns that some of his family members are coming to the Lonely Mountain to discuss the details.

That is, until the dwarves (and Thorin, who is decidedly not and never shall be his) start getting along a little too well with one of his more adventurous cousins, and Bilbo starts doubting about his place.

You look at your watch, and the same question since the beginning of the school year crosses your mind.

Why having classes on saturday morning?

Everyone is tired, except the teacher. Everyone will have to work this weekend. Students never have a vacation, only stolen time paid from sleepless nights.

Whatever. Since you know Mandy, your saturdays to you two are as free as possible and almost nothing prevents you from seeing each other. Every week, you end up in your favorite italian restaurant for a dinner, often accompanied by a night of pleasure in your flat, or hers. Even if it's still impossible for you to live with each other, spending the weekends together is not uncommon. So much that she has clothes and toilet stuff in your appartment, and vice versa.

You thought about her face floating above a table, lit by candles. It perfumes your spirit and you quickly forget the courses. Gracious, her smile revealing so cute dimples, her long and willowy hair tumbling down like a waterfall made of the most sleeked mirror on her oppulent chest, more or less revealed according to her mood...You're already on a cloud only by thinking about her. The day is beautiful, your eyes closes while you're smiling, and nothing can lift you out of your contemplation.

-Mr. Johnson seems already on weekend. Unless he's still in dreamland?

Almost nothing. The comment is as striking as a bucket of iced water. You turn your head to the old vulture who serves as a teacher. The bun as tight as her thin pinched lips, she looks at you with eyes ready to throw lightning. You stutt.

-Sorry mam'. Tiredness.

-Think about sleeping at night, young man.

As if you could afford it...This first year of master's degree in plastic arts, sculpture course, is more exhausting than expected.You wish you could rest your head every night on Mandy, which is impossible. Since she obtained a bachelor's degree and works on the other side of the city, she had to take a flat. You, you stayed on the campus. Life is good inside it, but not as much as with her.

The rest of the class is deadly boring, but you strive to make as many notes as you can. Finally, after what seems like hours, the old harpy frees you by asking you to return a project for the next time.

You turn on your phone and the notifications appears. Mandy sent you a text. You open it right away, hoping for a soft message to wait until tonight.

"I'm sorry, I have to cancel dinner tonight"

A fleeting moment passes, then an immense disappointment falls like a hawk on his prey (and on your heart. And on your libido). This is not the first time that one of you cancels at the last moment, but it's always unpleasant. Nevertheless, you decide to not hold it against her, even if it saddens you.

"Too bad :'(  All you alright? I miss you so much ".

The answer doesn't take long to arrive.

"Yes, I'm fine, but I really cannot go out yet."

She doesn't give you more details, which worries you a bit. Usually, you immediately tell to the other the reasons for the cancellation. You are puzzled, but you trust her and don't insist.

"If you need anything, I can go to your house tonight. Shop, or anything else. What about pizzas and a movie on the TV ?"

"Yes ! That would be wonderful, and much better ! If I can't go out right now, I can at least let you in ~~ I'm sending you a list."

It's autumn, but the heat persists and the blue sky makes you want a sandwich. You would like her to be there, by your side, lying in the still soft green grass, but she never liked the heat for a simple reason : finding suitable clothes to go out in such heat is almost impossible. Not because of being overweight, no. At least, not all over her body. It's a very local overweight: a macromastia.

As a teenager, her chest was already growing at an impossible rate. At 17, she was competing with the most buxom models you'd ever seen. Since then, her chest continues to grow steadily. Every four months, she is forced to buy new bras. Whole boxes of old underwear hang around her house.

She learned to do with it. As soon as she's back home, she unravels the torture instrument to free her chest. If it excited you at first, it fast becomed as common as taking off your shoes. Ignoring her chest is clearly impossible, especially when it jumps in all directions. But the moments you prefer are those quite ones where you are together to the couch, watching TV while behaving and more if you're in the mood. These moments are still too rare. You hope this will change one day. In such a big city, your respective obligations separates you and if you get closer, it would be your obligations that would be too far from you.

You sigh. In just over a year, you'll be able to live together. Her father has promised you a job in his molding company, and he already considers you two as married. Maybe you'll even be able to take up his business later. A clear path, a good job, a dream girlfriend, and a lovely family in law. It's well worth it to endure on saturday mornings with the vulture and work like a madman.

You finish your sandwich when your phone vibrates again. It's Mandy. A short list is displayed. She doesn't need much : food, some medicine...And new bras.

There, you frown.

She bought some two weeks ago, and they were already costing a fortune, in addition to being horribly uncomfortable. Having a big chest is considered as chance, but the bad sides can be counted easily : besides the expensive and inconvenient underwears, you can cite the look of others and the lustful solicitations from complete strangers when you go out in the street.

And yet, you've never seen her complain. No back pain, a body of foolproof flexibility, and an amused satisfaction when she surprises the eyes of others dive into her deep cleavage. She likes to seduce as well, but has always looked for someone who would consider her as something much than a toy for a titfuck. Her breasts didn't leave you indifferent, but you quickly became interested about her to the point that even naked, you can discuss with her as when she wears a triple layer of thick clothes, in autumn and winter, the only seasons where she can go out without problems. Her two favorite seasons have quickly become yours as she feels comfortable.

And yet, what a pair !

You could carve it from memory on pink marble, with all the details that her body offers. Round, no, a little oval. Glossy, smooth, plumped in her clothes, looking like a silicon bag that other women implant themselves. Except that she's natural. It's so unlikely that many people find it hard to believe, at the point that "fake boobs" yeled loudly always been an insult. Harassment, she knows that. But she has always been proud of her body, and you have always been proud of her. People talk, you live your love, that's enough for you two.

You keep thinking about your sculpture. Her tits would be nothing without gravity, of course. A challenge, to account for a chest so beautiful, so full, but that falls so little. Languid into the lustiness of her own pleasure, as she is after love. She's like her chest: proud, but so smoochy when she loves...

And the nipples, of course ! Small, discreet, as cute and innocent as infants. Two small chicks hatched by two aerolas, soft hen mums. Everytime, you vacillate between kissing them softly or sucking them. Everything in her is so perfect that to soil her would be a crime, if she wern't agree to welcome you near her and into her.

Nevertheless. New bras just two weeks after buying other is strange. Have they broke ? With a chest like hers, nothing surprises you anymore.Those before were worse than grandmother's bras. Thick sackcloths, oversized sports bras, with braces stretching out day after day, until her breasts overflowed and compressed her too much. A sexy photo later, you left to buy others. Shopping with her is always a pleasure, even if shops providing sizes at her convenience are increasingly rare.

You call her, and her voice soon rings in your ears.

-Hello, Danny ?

-Mandy, sweetie, I got your list. Had you not...already bought new bras recently?

It still gets you to be embarrassed to talk about her breasts, sometimes, and you must carefully prepare your words in order to not blush. You prefer to look at them and touch them, in silence, without any other noise than her pleasure moans.

-Sorryyyyyyyy ~~ . But I can't do otherwise. I can't go out with the old ones, it's getting worse and worse.

-Better and better, you mean ?

-For you, yes.

-And for you too. I know you love your breasts.

-Stop, she said, laughing. Or I could cancel the pizza tonight.

-You wouldn't dare !

The indignation in your voice is falsely exaggerated, which makes her laugh once again.

-If the handsome and brave knight carries out his mission and goes shopping, maybe the princess will send him a foretaste of what awaits him...

-An antipasti before the pizza, hm? I'll be curious to see what you're making...

-First, shop. I will prepare everything for tonight.

You're about to say goodbye to her, when a genius idea comes to you.

- What if I buy candles?

- What for?

- You know...candlelit dinner?

- For delivery pizzas ? No thanks. And then, I'm lazy to do the dishes. They have grown so much that I start having back pain...

-Really? In this case, prepare your oils for a long and good massage.

You hear hear murmuring with satisfaction.

-Very well, brave knight. If you manage to kill the hunchbacked dragon, the princess will offer you more than an antipasti.

-It's a great honor you give me, my lady.

-Come on, hang up. The shop will not make it himself.

- See ya, sweetie.

-See ya, cutie.

You hang up, a smile on your lips. Never in your life had you had such spars with anyone before. Each of her words brings you joy. Hurry the day you move in with her : your happiness will be complete.

But now, groceries. Your phone is vibrating again. It's a text sent by Mandy.

"I called Georgina this morning, you just have to take the package and pay. It's a huge lucky break, she has just renewed her supplies and agreed to take back those of two weeks ago. I will repay you".

The advantage of being a loyal and regular customer for out-of-the-ordinary clothing is that the ladies around the globe forms a small private club where they can discuss and exchange advice and services. The shop she usually goes to is far away, but it's a warm one and the woman who holds it is super great. Georgina, the manager, is a little old woman as wrinkled as an apple and had the same chest problems. She quickly decided to help women like her. If the bras remaines expensive, she gladly takes over the old ones to retouch them. She's even made customized tailor-made. But as long as Mandy's breasts will continue to grow at a breakneck pace, it will be useless and she clearly told you that : "I should take new measurements immediately after my work is done. I'd never seen that ! Go on like this, my little one, and congratulations, young man ! "

The shop bell tolls when you enter into it. Some times later, Georgina comes out of the back shop and greets you, delighted as you go forward the sale desk.

-Ah, Daniel ! I received Mandy's message. This girl beats all records, I made a new storpile just for her ! Only two weeks, and you'd think she took six months all at once !

-Thank you, Georgina, this is the first time that happens ...

-Tell me about it ! I've never seen that ! Fortunately, I have a good contact in England. Tell her to slow down, she never listened to me! It's not like you're not already happy with what she have, huh?

You try to show a neutral face, as every time Georgina talks about your relationship. Some grandmothers are discreet, but the old seamstress would be able to collapse buildings just by talking. Like every time, you fail and can only display a shy smile.

- I'll tell him, thanks. How much do I owe you?

The old woman sweeps the air with her hand and rejects the imaginary money.

-Nothing ! We'll see that when she returns the others. Knowing her, she didn't even touch it. She made her measurements, but I put her several sizes just in case. She will only have to bring me back as soon as possible.

-Thank you so much for your generosity. Without you, we don't know what she would do.

-Bah, we have to stick together! It was even worse when I was young.. Corsets that choked you even more than the things I'm selling today ! I say, I can't wait the day we can go out without it, half naked, like you men, without being attacked at every street corner! It's not Mandy that would bother ! Beautiful melons as big and as firm as the pectorals of my late husband !

You agree, but you don't know what to say. You may have an empty look, because Georgina allows you to leave.

-Ah, you men ! Go find your beauty and make us beautiful children, it will make my pleasure !

-Yes Ma’am. Thank you Ma’am.

You leave the shop, a second opaque plastic bag in your hands. Even through it, you can feel the fabric of the cup. The more Mandy's breasts grow, the less they seems thick, padded, comfortable. As for the shoulder's straps, they must be tight to cut off her skin. You can't wait the day she'll be able to wear custom made bras for her ease. You send her a text.

"I have groceries and bras, Georgina didn't charge me and she added several sizes just in case."

The answer is quick to arrive.

"Really ? Wonderful ! I'm gonna jump on her neck when I see her. How long before you get in?"

"An hour, I just went out"

"Too looooong..."

You strat to write, but another one appears.

"Here's a little something that will make you want to come even more faster..."

A few seconds later, your reward appears on your screen. It's been a while since you're used to her chest, but your mouth is opening and it takes little to make you drool.

She never sent photos of her completely naked, preferring provocation in exciting clothes. Sometimes she sends you her pretty face. Sometimes full body in a simple, wise, accompanied by her long hair that always makes you fall in love with her when you gaze at them. This time, they are tied over her head, revealing her neck, shoulders and thin arms. She seems to come out of the shower, a few drops still bead of her soft skin A new pair of diving breasts, with monstrous cleavage, overflowing beyond a towel about to explode.

You totally understand the need for new bras. At sight of the nose, only the widest will fit.

And sh's only 21 years old. And she has not finished her growth yet.

In size, yes. Not in cup size.

A new text appears.

"Have you choosed your pizza yet ?"

"I don't know, I'm in a mood for a snack right now. A stuffed sandwich, if you know what I mean ;-)"

“I thought you was in a romantic mood ? Candles of for lightning, not for BDSM, we agrée ?”

"You're impossible, as your jokes"

"No, I'm real. Why don't you touch me, if you don't believe ? I'm still waiting for my brave bra knight ;-) ".

The bus is here. You close your phone, ranks right at the bottom of your pocket so that no one can suspect your activities, and you sit down in a quiet corner. 

Something tells you that you will not have time for eating tonight.

__________

Model is MandaDawn, on Patreon and Onlyfans. That photo is clearly not the best, from two or three years ago when she was on tumblr, but I don’t know why, it inspired me with the force of a train. I barely touched her story since her breasts are effectively still growing, for an actual X cup.

Lilo and Stitch Crossover Arc: “Rufus” (Kim Possible) Better and Worse (Paid for by WeirdKev27)

Aloha all you happy people! It’s back to Kauai for the third of my look at LIlo and Stitch’s crossover episodes! This retrospective was made possible by WeirdKev27, who had the idea for it and paid for me to review these episodes. You too can buy reviews for only 5 bucks a pop. Just go to my ask, Direct Messages or discord.

Now with my plugging out of the way, this one, out of all four is the one I looked forward to the most, and out of the four shows in this crossoverathon to make the trip to the Kauai, this one is hands down my faviorite. 

Kim Possible was just damn good and having rewatched a handful of episodes and the movie (Easily one of my faviorite Disney movies and the best DCOM, I will not back down on either), I can say it holds up every bit as good as it did in the early 2000′s. Frankly like Danny Phantom i’m surprised I never thought to get to it till now. But no time like the present: The show proper is a fun super spy sendup, but still feels unique: Instead of i’ts Teen Superspy working for some knockoff of MI6 or S.H.I.E.L.D., Kim is self employed, simply helping people because it’s the right thign to do and not for any reward with the help of her bumbling  but loveable sidekick and future boyfriend Ron, though the romance angle wasn’t overplayed with the two, just hinted at here and there, enough to make it plausable for Ron to realize he has feelings in the movie and for Kim to return them and frankly it’s probably the best handled “Friends to lovers’ plot i’ve seen in a children’s cartoon. I”ll get more into that if I hit my stretch goal for it on patreon, more on that at the end of the review, but while it has no baring on this review I still felt it worth noting as that trope is NOT easy to pull off.

Point is, the show was smart, funny, engaging and had two great characters, a tremendously talented voice cast, and more anchoring it. It was a treasured part of my adolsence. It also had one of the only succesful “Save our show” campagins from fans i’ve ever seen. Despite So The Drama having been written as a finale and having reached Disney’s episode count, fan demand for a fourth season was so incredibly high we got one and it’s to this day one of the very few Disney shows to live past three seasons as a result. The show is in full on Disney Plus, along with the movie, which I HIGHLY recommend and hope I get to talk about, and the recent live action remake movie which .. is not bad. Not GREAT but the leads do make a good kim and ron, paticuarlly my boy Sean Gambone as Ron, and for a live action remake it really does get the spirit of the show. 

But obviously we’re not here to talk about the show proper, though I REALLY want to now, but instead it’s crossover. So far the crossovers for Lilo and Stitch have been, much like said live action remake, OKAY, but nothing amazing, often shoving in sideplots related to Lilo and Stitch proper we didn’t need, forced morals and not really having a good amount of character intraction. The good news is this crossover DOES fix a lot of that.. the bad is that it also has some new problems, and still falls into some of the same traps the other episodes have. See what I mean with the full review under the cut!

We open at night, with Lilo and Stitch playing hide and seek. Adorably though Sttich dosen’t quite get the hang of it and proudly announces where he is. However things are quickly interupted when he’s kidnaped by a mystery ship out of the blue. It’s a good hook to start with, leaving us wondering who it could be...

And thus, if you hadn’t gone into this episode knwoing it was a crossover, giving us a hell of a reveal with a cut to Dr. Drakken being the one to kidnap stitch!

Look I love this Doofus. He’s easily one of John DiMaggio’s best roles, up there with Jake and Bender, and the one along with Bender that cemented his career. as one of voice acting’s finest. He’s just so loveably incompetent, over the top and quick to bicker with Sheego, which leads to some of the funneist moments in his home series as she’d either skewer him good or he’d shove his boot in his mouth and help her point instead of his own. He’s just such a great character and he not only fits neatly into Lilo and Stitch’s world, but the writers clearly get him perfectly. We get a hilarious bit where, fed up with Hamsterviel, who he’s teamed up with, he simply fakes the radio going out, adjusting the dials purposfully to make it come in buggy something I GUARANTEE he put in for SHeego and I gurantee she saw right through. His plan is to create a clone army of Stiches.. meaning Hamsterviel’s big evil plan.. is a copy of someone else’s.

Lilo goes to Jumb and Pleakly, the latter of whom has been collecting magazines adorably. Lilo plans to go after Stitch but Jumba says she can’t go on dangerous missions without him and to get a professional and this part.. does not work for me. Most of the time Jumba ENABLES Lilo’s behaviors and while not wanting an 8 year old to run out into the night is a good call, he also suggests getting help.. instead of you know GOING WITH HER WHEN IT’S LIGHT. It sounds more like Nani’s idea... it fits her more to not want Lilo to run out and to want to get help versus Jumba whose admant about keeping secrecy yet very lax on things, and you know would BE concerned that his prized creation was suddenly stolen and actually think about it. He’s just so horribly out of character it hurts. 

And Nani’s absence really hurts the episode. See the last two, as much as I missed the lovely and talented Tia Carrere’s presence, didn’t really need her, though still could’ve included her: she could’ve made a cameo at the start since Lilo was there to visit her and she woul’dve made a better target for Spats than trudy, with Oscar fighting Jumba instead, allowing us some crossover interactions instead of having Jumba argue with a random asshole the episode wrote in. But it’s minor stuff. Here though? Her being the one to tell Lilo not to go would’ve made more sense: She’s protective by nature, and while she’s let go more since the movie, it’d make sense for her NOT to want Lilo to blindly chase after someone who beat stitch of all beings, as well as for her ot be the one to later tell Kim not to let lilo be involved. It’d be stronger coming from her sister and surrogate mother than Pleakly and it would’ve been a better arc to have Nani let Lilo off the leash so to speak and accept she needed to save kim. Instead she’s just gone for no reason and Jumba is grosly out of character and i’m disapointed. 

That said the setup is the best and most intergrated so far: Pleakly sees an article about kim so he reaches out to her via a message on her site, while Lilo is stubborn about not being help.. obnoxiously so to the point it hurts the episode. While her being inscure about someone else saving Sttich would be fine, the episode never adresses that and instead just has her say she can because shut pu instead of accepting help. The episode would’ve flowed better if instead she accepted kim but Nani had Kim push her away, and thus create more problems. More on that in a bit. 

But as I said this setup is great: it uses BOTH shows for once isntead of feeling like the first two, and honestly the next one judging by the blurb on the wiki, where its just “Hey x character visits Kauai”, here it blends both: The two main villians team up, and Kim is logically called for help since that’s what she does and they don’t want to risk lilo’s saftey. It’s good stuff. 

So our other heroes enter the episode, on a ritzy jet as Kim’s dad had an old college friend with an airline. I admit the episode weirdly downplays Kim’s penchant for getting rides, getting a helicopter that appears to be a touring one and getting this one via her dad instead of the usual person who owes her a favor. IT was a neat part of her character: that she got help from people she already helped on adventure’s we hadn’t seen to establish she can’t drive herself yet and to show she’s an experinced heroine with a lot of history before the show started. I also like how a handful of episodes after season 1 had returns from people we HAD seen before or linked to them, a clever way of having callbacks. 

It’s simple stuff Kim is ready for the wrold saving mision and ron hopes to get a vacation in. Nothing too out of the ordinary. 

So the next day Lilo tries to go it solo but is spotted before she can leave, while Pleakly has built a.. photo colloage of Kim’s face on the wall...

... no wait i’m getting paid for this. Nevermind. 

It is funny as it is unsettling though and Kim arrives and Pleakly faints.. Ron also arrives doing fake kung fu moves. This episode gets ron about half right... they overdo it a bit on the shenanigans, but Will Freidle’s natural charm and talent mean that even standard ron bits coughed up by a cat onto a page and used for this script still work simply because he’s that good at delivery. 

We also get the who’s on first bit you all knew was coming as Kim asking what’s the Sitch confuses lilo and i’ts .. pretty funny. Again you could see it coming from a mile away, but Daveigh Chase and Christy Carlson Ramano really sell the hell out of it and we get a nice runner after of Kim misprouncing his name and trying NOT to say her usual catchphrase. 

She also gets filled in on the alien thing... and while she admits i’ts a lot to swallow, she also admits she’s seen weirder. And given this episode would, by airdate (ignoring the one for So the Drama as that aired before the last batch of season 3 episodes but continuity wise takes place between seasons 3 and 4), take place around the same time as the season 3 intended finale “Team Impossible”, by this point she’s seen vengeful fishteens mutated by a horrifying summer camp, a rogue gentecist who basis her crimes against nature on a beanie baby knockoff, magical monkey based kung fu, a magican egyptian amulet, killer robot’s resembling teenage girls, a body swap episode, a plan using a barcode to destroy the internet, an attack on canada, a giant poodle, a complicated time travel plot, a trucker with a mullet, her sidekick getting turned into a surprisingly competent supervillian, and draken’s plan to use his rap career to promote brainwashing shampoo. And that’s just a handful of the things I was reminded of on the episode list. So yeah, this isn’t THAT much of a stretch. Oh and lest you think Kim never encountered aliens the series finale was an alien invasion by aliens Draken had pissed off earlier in the season. Suprised Lilo didn’t you know have Stitch and the family army pitch in. Maybe Leory and Stitch was going on at the same time? 

Point is she’s in but goes with Pleakly in trying to keep Lilo out of it. And here’s yet another place the episode missteps: Kim’s REALLY patronizing to Lilo, treating her like she can’t do anything and later ignoring her advice when she brings up the current later, something that ends up getting Kim caught. The latter part especially bugs me since Kim normally listens to her clients pretty well, and had she doubted him could’ve at least asked Waid since she contacts him in the same scene. Speaking of which THAT’S why I feel her patronizing “not now kiddo” atittude dosen’t work: her spy master IS a child, her brothers have helped out multiple times, and the incident I mentioned from where she met her younger cousin who idolized her at an old west town was understandable: Her cousin was getting into dangerous stuff and throwing herself out there recklessly with no regards to her own saftey and impeding the mission with her well meant antics. Lilo.. knows who their looking for, knows the island well, and knows stitch’s weaknesses. And she goes from being annoyingly hostlile to kim to helpful, so it makes kim even more obnoxious for not accepting said help. It’s just.. draining as when this part of the plot ISN’T in play, Kim is fine. She’s her usual self.. not AS well written as the parent show, a bit too reliant on her catchphrases, but still not half bad and Christy Carlson Romanao, like Fredle helps paper over the weaker bits of the script.  She’s not even out of character in her actions, as she does have a tendency to think she knows everything or undereistmate people.. the problem is it’s written poorly enough she comes across as insufferable, and unlike the show, where she actually learned something here.. she just learns to work as a team? When she does on a regular basis with Wade and Ron? 

It’s just so frustrating because they almost had it just right, but instead just had to try and put some half assed moral about teamwork in there. They broke from the formula of having an experiment of the week but they still just HAD to keep to their own formula. And look Kim Possible has it’s own formula.. but it used that to great effect, often using the episode’s plot to shake it up in fun ways, and the plots were still diffrent enough and the villians bold and intrestin genough that it didn’t grate.  This is starting to grate. And I do remember good and intresting episodes of the show.. but i’m starting tor ealize why I don’t remember NEARLY as much of Lilo and Stitch as I do the other shows it’s crossing over with: it’s so bolted to the formula they all just sorta blend together. It’s really fucking disheartning to realize something you loved so damn much as a kid just.. isn’t as good as you remember. And with these other shows.. I don’t have that as much. I accept proud family’s fault, Jake Long actually seems MORE intresting than it was at the time, and rewatching kim possible it’s excellent, same with recess coming up. I really need to watch more Recess. The most disheartining thing about this arc is the crossover just shows how BETTER the other shows were. Lilo and Stitch wasn’t a BAD show, and it isn’t here.. but it’s a mediroce one. it has a good premise. but it feels like they just don’t break away from the premise enough. This just... hurts a lot to type and realize. I really loved this show and movie as a kid and while the movie likely still holds up this.. this just dosen’t. 

I need a moment... i’m breaking open the glass case containing my emergency patrick stewart clip excuse me...

That.. I needed that. 

So before the bicker sisters can head off, we get our goofy comedy subplot: Jumba thinks Rufus is one of his experiments, one that could destroy the universe if not cancel and is highly unstable. As for why this one wouldn’t of worked out, I get why: it’s TOO powerful. Stitch is a weapon of mass distruction in a cuddly package, but he’s also easily deployable, kind of like Wolverine if he was in the body of a cartoon mascot. Having the THREAT of destroying ap lanet is fine and good for the long term but it does you no good if you can’t control it and i’td just destroy you too. 

So he and Pleakly try to steal rufus without telling Ron why after Ron naturlaly refuses to sel land a chase insues. So while the boys and gender fluid person have their comedy plot, the girls head to where stitch was taken and find Draken’s glove.... they know it’s his because he put a note saying “return to dr. draken, his mother gave it to him”. That’s just.. fucking precious. And entirely in character. So kim aranges a ride, and dives into the ocean, but finds lilo in her parachute, and tries to send her back despite LIlo offering valuable advice both about the area , the current I mentioned earlier, and about stitch, i.e. Draken’s base is underwater (something Kim didn’t realize which feels odd for her), because Stitch can’t swim, something I genuinely forgot. 

So while Kim sends Lilo back, or rather intercut with that but I choose to compress plots for my own convinence we cut back to Drakken and Shego. And I WAS worried that Shego wouldn’t show up, she wasn’t in the synopsis or anything and was delighted to find that nope she’s here. Drakken just isn’t the same without her.. I mean I liked the recurring subplot in season 4 where other villians would break her out, that was great, but in the end the two need each other. I may not ship them romantically but as a comedy team one just needs the other: Drakken needs Shego to cut down his ego and Shego needs someone to snark at and complain about. Sullivan and DiMaggio just had perfect chemistry and it’s easy to see why Drakken and Shego went from just another part of the Rogue’s Gallery to Kim’s arch enemies. 

Which is why I am sad Gantu and 625 don’t show up for this one. I mean I can buy it: Hamsterviel likely is doing this on the sly to see if he can find a better minon, but the two sets of villians have similar dynamics and i’d love to see Shego and 625 dunk on their bosses together. It’s a really big missed opportunity but I do get it as they may of just nto been able to fit the two together or it may of been hard to block a lot of scenes iwth the human sized drakken and the giant sized gantu. So unlike a lot of missed opportunites in the other episodes, this one I at least can understand. 

We get some GREAT banter with the two though. Out of the four guest characters in this one the crew really got Drakken and Shego down and the two bicker like any episode of Kim Possible, with Shego pointing out the massive bill on Stitch’s cage and how Drakken’s tried cloning about five times now and it’s never worked, and of course how he’s 50 50 splitting with a hamster bellow his station. Seriously why get rid of Gantu and 625 but keep the annoying rodent, I don’t get you episode. 

Of course while they quack quack bicker bicker Stitch escapes and Shego gives chase. Sadly we don’t get a fight between the two like we did with Jake, another missed opprotunity but Stitch getting out of her grasp by licking her is objectively funny. Stitch finds he’s underwater though and gets recaptured. 

Kim gets captured for the first time shortly after as the current caught her, but luckily she has kimunicator gloves and calls waid to call ron. Meanwhile Ron finally catches rufus back and Jumba explains the situation.. but Ron understandably dosen’t want to give up his buddy especially since Rufus has shown no signs of being a planet killer before. He’s not mooncake... althought i do think those two could hang. God now I just want a final space kim possible crossover to wash this out of my mouth. 

So it’s down to Lilo, the really not all that ambigiously gay their pretty darn gay duo, and Ron to save the day. Lilo finally gets to do what she kept asking kim to do: use jumbas hot rod car spaceship thing to go down under the sea, and they send Lilo and Rufus in since hteir small enough to get in and suriive the pressures. Our heroes arrive and Drakken is nonplussed.. only for Lilo to prove WHY she can keep an alien in line by freeing stitch from teh leash drakken has him on using kim’s grapple gun, and then frees kim. The good guys win and the bad guys loose and the base starts to self destruct.. eh they’ll be fine. They still have the movie to get to. 

So time for the wrap up: Stitch sniffs Rufus and confirms what the audience knew... that he’s a naked mole rat not an experiment. Which didn’t make sense to begin with for either show: Jumba’s archive should’ve been able to scan him or something (And if not he could build something to do that), and Kim Possible not only implied from day one Ron had Rufus a while, long before the rain of the pods, but A Stitch in Time outright confirms Ron bought him years ago in middle school. It just makes no sense and while it thankfully dosen’t take up a ton of the episode it still takes up too much. 

But with that our heroes prepare to part on good terms but Pleakly decides to celebrate with  Luau. Kim’s repsonse “Well I can do anything...”

And we get a gratuitous luau sequence! I do love a job that allows me to type the phrase “Gratuitous Luau Sequence’ They clearly ran short and we just get a good minute of everyone doing hula dances for no reason. I mean.. you could’ve done a quick gag with the experiment who was mistaken for Rufus... who I now realize given the finale was befriended by someone. I’m headcanoning now Kim and Ron came back for that one and Kim had him sent to space as part of one her dad’s projects where he and earth would be safer and he could help with space missions or something. 

Final Thoughts: As you could tell I had mixed thoughts. As a crossover this melded things better, had a more original plot and the actors from Kim Possible brought their a-game.. but once again some disapointing characteteriztion and downright stupid decisions really let the episode down. These episodes just depress me every time and I’m looking forward to being done.. which given how excited I was going into this.. yeah. Like all of these despite their flaws I recommend checking it out if you like Kim Possible, if nothing else than for some extra drakken shego banter but.. keep your expectations low.

Next Time on Kim Possible: A team of spiteful assholes who are in a way repsonsible for Kim’s Career try to shut her down. It’s the intended finale episode outisde of hte movie people buckle up.. or you would if I was doing any of these. Though I should do “Team IMpossible” at some point. 

On the finale of these crossovers: The Recess Gang are the final visitors to Kuai as Lilo must find and stop a lazy monster... no i’m not guest starring too. 

Tommorow: Another kev one this time by patreon as I put two similar episodes of a show or franchise against each other and ask “Who Did It Better?” This time it’s two episodes of Celebrity Death Match, original versus revivial may the original.. probably win. 

If you liked this review, please consider supporting my patreon, YOU CAN FIND THE LINK TO IT HERE.  For just 2 bucks a month you get access to my discord, to pick a short each time I do one of my shortstravaganzas, and acess to my Patreon exclusive reviews! Next month I intend to do one for the show whose crossover gets the most likes within a week of it’s relase. Proud Family has already passed American Dragon so you have a week to get it ahed. And if you like Kim Possible, help me reach my 25 dollar stretch goal! At that i’ll review So The Drama, along with the Recess and Proud Family Movies. So check it out and i’ll see you at the next rainbow. 

Top 20 Best Movies of the Decade (2010′s)

Now that we have entered the 2020s, it’s time to look back on a decade of movie magic. To emphasise the importance of each year, I’ll balance things out by including two films from each year for my Top 20 list. I’ve tried to pick films that both defined this decade as well as appealed to me personally, so my list will of course, as always, be different from yours, but hopefully, I won’t totally irritate you with my humble choice, which I deem worthy to post online for the public eye to witness.

2010:

INCEPTION - “You’re waiting for a train...” Christopher Nolan unarguably is the most exciting and original directors working today. Each time he releases a movie, its an event. A literal must-see at the cinema. Which is why this isn’t the only film of his you will find on this list. With Inception, Nolan gives us a movie that is both enjoyable and imaginative, rewarding the audience for the attention that it demands. Filled with so much detail that if you miss certain shots, you will completely get lost in confusion of the narrative (as confusing as it already is). It’s intense and complex, with great performances from the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hardy, this movie will leave you lingering for more even after that mysterious ending.

SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD -  “You cocky cock! You'll pay for your crimes against humanity!” Once again, another exciting director on this list (oh there are so so many!). Ever since Edgar Wright emerged from the British isles, he’s given us some of the funniest films of the past decade and onwards. His Cornetto Trilogy is a blast, Baby Driver is a blast, Ant-Man was going to be even more of a blast if Marvel allowed Wright to do his magical shenanigans his way, and the upcoming Last Night in Soho will surely be a blast also. With Scott Pilgrim vs. The World Wright creates a meta-clever universe taking inspiration from comic books and video games and filled to the brink with wink-wink-nudge-nudge humour, this is an exciting and very sarcastic over the top endeavor. Also, Brie Larson in this movie.....phew!! And unsurprisingly, its all a blast!

2011:

DRIVE - “I just wanted you to know, just getting to be around you, that was the best thing that ever happened to me.” Drive is more of an elegant exercise in style, and its emotions may be hidden but they run deep. A shamelessly disreputable, stylish, stoic, ultra-violent thriller with amazing stunt work, one of the best opening sequences of any movie this decade and a neon-pumped soundtrack that’s a must-own for all vinyl users, if you still haven’t seen Drive, there’s only one thing you can do. Clue: it’s to go watch Drive.

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - GHOST PROTOCOL - “Your mission, should you choose to accept it...” Tom Cruise’s deal with the devil allows him to do some literally impossible stuff, and though I don’t condone his Scientology ways, the man’s stunt work and efforts in his area of expertise are worth all the praise and respect. To be honest, I’m commemorating all three of the Mission Impossible flicks that graced our screen this year (Ghost Protocol, Rogue Nation and Fallout). This franchise is like a game of dodgeball, except that Tom Cruise is the dodgeBALL, being thrown and thrust left and right like nobody cares. Also, with me being Russian, the fact that a movie manages to destroy the Kremlin and then have me not hate the film in the aftermath shows that this film is way too fun to hate.

2012:

DJANGO UNCHAINED - “Gentlemen, you had my curiosity, but now you have my attention.” Quentin Tarantino is one of my favourite directors working today. And Django Unchained happens to be my favourite film of his. The writing for this film is orgasmic (I went there!). The way the actors deliver the lines and the lines of dialogue themselves sound almost poetic to my ears. I can quote so many lines from this darn thing. The cinematography is immaculate. The soundtrack choice is great. The performances, my goodness, the PERFORMANCES!! Jamie Foxx does arguably his career-best work here, but also we have Christoph Waltz and Leonardo DiCaprio both chewing up the scenery, and I’m sure everyone has heard the story involving DiCaprio and the broken glass. Django Unchained is an easy choice on this list for me, and possibly in my Top 10 of all time.

LES MISERABLES - “Do you hear the people sing?” The film that is based on a musical that is based on a book that is based on certain true events. Tom Hooper did an interesting choice of having actors sing live in front of the camera during filming rather than pre-record their voices, and it works to grand effect, though Russell Crowe should have probably been given more singing lessons. The movie is one hell of a way to adapt such a popular stage musical. With an opening shot that emphasises the scale of this picture with a zoom-in towards this big ship during a storm being pulled by these poor prisoners, we are plunged into the despair and conflicts of various characters with adroit narrative thrust so that not a moment feels wasted or redundant. You’d think that a film with hardly any dialogue and an overall reliance on singing wouldn’t be so emotional. Yet, somehow, it works. Also props to Anne Hathaway for winning an Academy Award for being in a film for only 5 MINUTES!!

2013:

THE WOLF OF WALL STREET - “Sell me this pen.” Martin Scorsese’s mad look into Wall Street life is a bombastic caper and running at nearly 3 hours, Scorsese and his editing team manage to keep an astoundingly intoxicating pace that keeps you enthralled and engaged throughout. This one is definitely not for the families, as this R-rated fest is filled with drugs, money, sex and everything you can possibly imagine and paints quite the picture of the rich folks of Wall Street. And the middle of it all a bravura performance from Leonardo DiCaprio. Someone needs to give DiCaprio’s agent a raise, this is Leo’s third appearance on this list and we’re only in 2013!

THE WAY WAY BACK - “I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to leave. You're having way too much fun, it's making everyone uncomfortable.” Sometimes a little indie flick is enough to lift a human spirit. Real, fun, uplifting and innocent, The Way Way Back dedicated to anyone who felt awkward or out of place at some point in their life, which, let’s be honest, counts all of us. I’m not afraid to admit that. So stop being a b*** and reveal your sensitive side too! Yes, you, the person reading this. Who else could I possibly be talking to? Myself? Maybe. The Way Way Back though is one of the best feel-good indie films of this decade, with the loveable Steve Carell acting very unloveable and Sam Rockwell Rockwelling himself to charm city! If you’ve missed this one, treat yo’self and check it out.

2014:

THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL - “And?? Where is it? What's it all about dammit don't keep us in suspense this has been a complete f***ing nightmare! Just tell us what the f*** is going on!!!” Easily Wes Anderson’s best in my opinion (I have a friend who would argue Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums has the better hand but I think my opinion is more valid because it's me), this movie is a glossy, colorful, whimsical deadpan affair with an energetic turn from Ralph Fiennes as the hotel concierge M. Gustave H. as he and his lobby boy run into various Wes Anderson regulars and deal with murderers, stolen paintings, love affairs, prison breaks, and all kinds of crazy shindigs, but all shown in such a casual Wes Anderson way. This movie is like a slice of cherry pie - damn fine!

INTERSTELLAR - “Murphy’s Law doesn’t mean that something bad will happen. It means that whatever can happen, will happen.” As promised, Christopher Nolan makes another appearance on this list, now with his space time-traveling epic Interstellar, where he takes inspiration from the likes of Kubrick and Tarkovsky to give us, as always, a tad bit confusing adventure with great visuals and an interesting narrative (though it does sometimes get lost in its own way), however, the key thing holding this piece together is the father-daughter relationship with Matthew McConaughey and Mackenzie Foy (and Jessica Chastain) managing to bring so much raw emotion to their respective roles that you can’t help but want to shed a tear. I mean, I haven’t cried for over 14 years, but I remember when I first watched this film, the audience around me was sobbing quite a few times during the duration of this movie. Give it to Nolan to give us the emotional moments!

2015:

MAD MAX: FURY ROAD - “Oh what a day! What a lovely day!!” Easily the best action movie of this decade. Sorry John Wick, neither you or Tom Cruise could defeat this beast. The sheer, limitless invention behind this movie's exhilarating, preposterous chase scenes highlights action filmmaking at its finest. With big monster trucks and a random guitarist rocking-it in the middle of all the action, it’s like a nihilistic version of a Cirque du Soleil show! And it makes Tom Hardy the calmest person on-screen; no idea how it managed that.

STEVE JOBS - “I sat in a garage and invented the future because artists lead and hacks ask for show of hands.” If there is anyone who can make formulaic, mathematical or technological sound fun and exciting, its Aaron Sorkin. The man has a talent for writing screenplays about difficult and complicated topics yet turning them approachable for the casual moviegoer. Pair him with director Danny Boyle, and the result is Steve Jobs, a look at the man behind the phone. Narratively set during three important product launches of Jobs’, we get to see the behind-the-scenes of his relationships with his colleagues and family members, and this character study is one that could have easily fallen into generic biopic tropes, but it holds it’s own right till the credits roll. Also props for showing that Seth Rogen can actually do a serious role. Who would’ve thought that pot-smoking fella had dramatic chops in him?

2016:

NOCTURNAL ANIMALS - “Susan, enjoy the absurdity of our world. It’s a lot less painful. Believe me, our world is a lot less painful than the real world.” Fashion designer Tom Ford does sew his suits well. Apparently, he can also make great films too, with 2009′s A Single Man and with said Nocturnal Animals. This movie is truly incredible and I remember it taking me and my friend by surprise when we first watched it at the cinema. It’s shocking. Horrifying. Depressing. Upsetting. Altogether exhilarating. Being of a fashion background, Tom Ford directs the hell out of this movie, with gorgeous shots and great use of colour as well as managing to masterfully create tension and suspense when necessary. Honestly, I know Tom Ford is probably busy at a department store somewhere, but the guy needs to make another movie. The man has a talent.

LA LA LAND - “Here’s to the ones who dream, foolish as they may seem. Here’s to the hearts that ache; here’s to the mess we make.” Oh, La La Land. Damien Chazelle’s follow-up to the also excellent Whiplash. People who know me well know how much I love this movie. An old-school tour-de-force musical that’s a love letter to jazz and the golden age of Hollywood. The city of stars never looked so good. Featuring catchy original songs, excellent dance choreography (the sequence to the song “Lovely Night” is especially memorable) and a romance tale ten times better than the forsaken The Notebook, La La Land is one special movie. I know many are put off by the film’s not so happy ending, however for me it was the only way this narrative could have ended. 

2017:

BLADE RUNNER 2049 - “We’re all just looking out for something real.” Similarly to Nolan, Denis Villeneuve is proving to be one of the most exciting directors working today. He’s the man behind such films as *deep breath* Prisoners, Enemy, Sicario, Arrival and Blade Runner 2049. And those have all been done within the last decade. The man constantly makes quality movies of various genres, though lately, he has been leaning more towards science fiction, which is a-okay in my books, since as Blade Runner 2049 proves, he can turn science into fiction like butter on bread. A sequel made 30 years after Ridley Scott’s classic, this visually breathtaking piece is arguably even better than its predecessor with many moments giving you the “wow wow wow wow wow WOW!” factor, and when Ryan Gosling and Harrison Ford are both on-screen they are dynamite. Forget the new Star Wars film (that’s right, I'm throwing shade there), Blade Runner is where it’s at!

PHANTOM THREAD - “The tea is going out. The interruption is staying right here with me.” The supposed last Daniel Day-Lewis film, as he has now apparently retired from acting, but let’s be honest, nothing stops him from simply unretiring at any point. Exhibit A - Joe Pesci. However, like Pesci, if he comes back I’ll only be happy. He’s one of acting greats of our time, and his collaborations will director Paul Thomas Anderson bring out some of his best roles. Phantom Thread is a marvel of a movie. No, I don’t mean that’s its part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, I mean as in it can fill one with wonder and astonishment. Phantom Thread is PTA’s Gothic dark fairy-tale romance film, which expertly planned shots and scenes where every word of the dialogue counts. There is no wasted moment. And as the film transpires to its dark and unsettling climax, one begins to realize that this, THIS, is what filmmaking is about. Telling an engrossing story in an interesting way with crisp-clear shots and off-the-chart acting at play, with great costume design on display, although the latter is unsurprising due to a major aspect of the movie revolving around fashion.

2018:

MANDY -  “You ripped ma shirt!! You ripped maaa shiirrt!!” An acquired taste for sure, however, Mandy is indeed something truly special. From first glance, this film might seem like nothing out of the ordinary, especially from the point of view of the plot. Its the usual revenge flick. However director Panos Cosmatos’ vision and how he presents it is so much more unique. And what’s not love in this film? There’s something for everyone! It’s artsy and slow enough for the critics, hip and metal for the nonchalant, gory and violent for the hardcore genre fanatics and of course the Nic-Cage-rage factor is present for the fans of the actor. Alright, it may not be a family film, but this one is worth a watch. The whole thing is bound together by this psychedelic otherworldly environment, with the whole movie conceived in this dark, unsettlingly beautiful yet horror-filled aura that might stray people away, as it might be just too different for them, however, if you are looking for something different to watch, take mandy. I mean, watch Mandy!

A STAR IS BORN - “Music is essentially 12 notes between any octave. Twelve notes and the octave repeats. It’s the same story told over and over. All the artist can offer the world is how they see those 12 notes.” The film that began all the rumours surrounding Bradley Cooper’s and Lady Gaga’s affair. People, heads up, they are actors! They were putting on a performance! Jeez. That being said, I totally ship them. Nuff’ said. The film though? Yes, it’s good. Some country-style music, romance blooming, Gaga can apparently act, people sing about shallows for some reason...all together works for a pretty decent motion picture. Also, the fact that Bradley Cooper wrote, directed, produced and starred in this gives me so much respect for the guy. He poured his heart and soul into this. And Lady Gaga absolutely shines!

2019:

PAIN & GLORY -  “Writing is like drawing but with letters.” Director Pedro Almodovar semi-autobiographical film takes a close look at how one deals with acceptance, being forgotten, symptoms of depression and generally all fairly negative attributes, but delivered in such an honest and profound way that there is a strange lightness that emerges from it all. Antonio Banderas is uncannily vulnerable in the lead role, delivering such an earnest performance that shows a man that is filled with melancholic regret who seeks his own form of redemption. This movie is a thing of beauty.

PARASITE - “You know what kind of plan never fails? No plan at all. If you make a plan, life never works out that way.” Parasite is easily the most original and surprising films of 2019, and possibly the decade, managing to subvert expectations and blend together so many different genres so naturally. To spoil any narrative element of this movie would be a sin, like this one in particular works best when not knowing anything about it. This movie comes to us from Bong Joon-Ho, a South Korean director behind such films as The Host, Memories of Murder, Okja, and Snowpiercer. It’s nice to see the awards ceremonies giving him the proper recognition finally. He deserves it.

That sums up my Top 20 Best Movies of the Decade list. Of course, there are so many other great films that came out in these 10 years, such as Whiplash, When Marnie Was There, Paterson, Silence, Kubo and the Two Strings, The Nice Guys...I can go on forever. Cinema is a constant ever-growing medium, and it is fascinating to see how it changes through the years, in some ways improving and in some parts not so much. In any case, I look forward towards a new decade of, hopefully, great movies, however, let’s be honest, for all these great films there’s always a Norm of the North, a Scout’s Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse or frickin’ Cats. But let’s hope those will be kept to a minimum. In any case, bring on the 2020s!

A King For Tonight’s Fentertainment - Chap. 2: The Horde Plays Spot The Lord

Summary:  Because, of course, Red couldn't keep her mouth shut. Add in, of course, his mom doing her usual. And, of course, Danny just can't fucking die.

Danny goes wide-eyed as Red slowly points to the air just above her head, pretty well sure she’s making some kind of reference to his crown. Which, if she’s able to see his ecto-field and his shedding off ectoplasmic energy, she’d be able to see his Ghost King shit. Danny gets jolted out of his worried gaping by Maddie’s gasp, “Danny, sweetie, how? It is you. But how? And, and the cape? Sweetie?”. Danny grumbles incoherently to himself, firmly annoyed at this confirmation of his worries. Sure his Ghost King shit looks great, and he rocks it; but the point of keeping it all invisible is so others, can’t, fucking, see, it.

Dash runs up, “oh I call bullshit!”, promptly nabbing the visor away. “Fentelephone?! What the fuck?”, Dash gapes as he raises and lowers the visor repeatedly, before just passing it off to people. Dash collects himself as the other remaining students and teachers all take turns gaping at Danny; while Danny looks around awkwardly at the stupid amount of attention and inquisitive eyes. Dash smirks, making a blatant attempt at making sure Danny keeps his loser wimp title. While Danny’s distracted by Maddie awkwardly patting at his shoulder, Dash walks over and shoves Danny’s other shoulder, “you’re the only one who could make a freaking cape look so lame, Fentoenail. You managed to make it look damn pathetic on your weak little loser frame”, Dash scoffs, “bet it’s some kind of weirdo loser crown. The ultimate weirdo, king of the freaks”. Danny can’t help but snort and rolls his eyes exaggeratedly at Dash. King of freaks wasn’t exactly wrong, and he was grade A fucking weird, nearly one of a kind. It’s a fair bit hard to be weirder or freakier than being half fucking dead.

Maddie turns towards Dash and puts her hands on her hips, “excuse me, young man?”.

“Uhh..”, Dash backs off rapidly.

But the odd settling in of normalcy is jarred away, as a ghost unicorn slams into the shield followed by an ectonet. Danny tilts his head up, full well knowing that’s Skulker he’s sensing and the net’s probably Skulkers. Sure enough, Skulker comes into view. Skulker looks around before shaking his head, “I’m not even going to ask, whelp. Also not foolish enough to even attempt breaking your barrier”. Danny groans and points over his shoulder at the two GIW agents, who are aggressively trying to grab onto the visor but everyone’s basically playing keep away. Skulker sighs at the agents, “seriously?”, looking back at Danny, “you better keep them in there”, grinning maliciously, “or maybe don’t, I could use some new prey”.

Danny snorts but Maddie speaks to Danny before he can respond to Skulker, who promptly flies off looking to avoid any Phantom trademarked humour, “Danny! Ignore that! You should know better than to converse with ectofilth!”.

Danny looks back down towards his mom, “uh, isn’t getting Amity back to the Human Realm more important than who I talk to?”. Mr. Lancer raises an eyebrow, “Human Realm? Would that happen to be another term for earth?”. Danny puts his hands up again awkwardly and takes a step back, “heh heh”, promptly bumping into Dex, a tenth grader. Who’s wearing the visor and now attempting to feel the cape, Danny attempts to not laugh at how silly the guy looks; mostly failing. But this results in agent G nabbing the visor away.

Red grabs and drags Danny away from the, starting to get too close for comfort, crowd. Maddie scurrying after and grabbing onto his other wrist, jerking the two teens to a stop. Danny looks back and forth between the two huntresses yanking on his arms and sighs. While agent G shouts at Danny, “you! Not a ghost but you’re freaking leaking ectoenergy! You might as well be! And-and you’re wearing ghost clothing! Ghost items! No human should stoop so low as to be anything like those ghost freaks!”. Both agents start stalking towards him, while Danny glares at them over the petty insults before yanking his wrists free of their respective gripping ladies.

Danny backflips over top of Red. With Kwan, the one now wearing the visor after punching agent L, easily seeing Danny’s cape billowing and flapping in the air. While the GIW agents stalk after Danny aggressively, agent L glaring at the jock but ignoring him in favour of harassing the ghostly teen.

Red spins around, “Danny what?!?”, as Danny lands softly behind her. While agent L snaps, twitching the ectogun in his hand, “trying to hide behind a proper human! A ghost hunter at that! You’re worse than ectofilth! A human donning the clothing of monsters!”. Agent G points at him, “you’re probably why there’s latent ectoplasm here! Or it’s the fault of those ecto-artifacts! Relinquish them! Or we will shoot you! And we won’t feel bad about shooting some human who lowers themselves to that of those ectoplasmic entities!”.

Now Danny’s just flat-out annoyed, verging on angry. Making his ectofield pulse aggressively and threateningly; which Maddie, having easily re-obtained the visor from Kwan, flinches at. Not liking seeing her son be anything close to ghostly. Knowing he was highly ectocontaminated was one thing, this was another. Clearly the agents weren’t really wrong, her boy was ghostly. But even still, she’s not about to tolerate anyone berating or threatening her son. Maddie turns and snaps at the men, “you will leave my son alone! I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation for this”, turning back towards Danny, “right sweetie?”.

Red twitches slightly, “uh yeah Danny, care to explain all of”, gesturing at the air above his head and around his shoulders, “this?”.

Agent L barks, “we said remove your ghostly possession now!”. Agent G speaks up as-well while taking a step forward, ectogun creaking in his hands, “and please, mam, step away from him”. Danny groans, wanting everyone to shut up.

He doesn’t get his wish as Red snaps her head around, “oh shut up, I trust him more and faster than I could shoot the both of you. Which is damn fast by the way”.

“There’s nothing lowly about me. No, I’m better for this”, Danny sighs, steeling himself, before looking up and smirking. Placing a hand on his hip and moving in a way to drag his cape over half of himself, the white flames of the collar licking energetically at his chin and cheek. It still being invisible making the mildly threatening effect lost, but it makes Danny feel more powerful all the same, “no, I’m just right. And no I won’t be “relinquishing” anything. Not like I actually could anyway”.

Danny puts his hands in his pockets and rocks on his heels, looking around with a goofy grin. Officially deciding he’s gotta pretty well open up here, cause, like, everyone has seen his shit now. Smirking and turning back to the men, who still have their guns point towards him, “even offing me ain’t gonna make these babies fuck off. Naw, you’d have to double kill me. Make a ghost of the ghost of the person, ya know?”, tapping his chin, “ghostify me to de-ghostify me? Ghost the ghost to ghost the not ghost. Sorta. Words are a wonderful thing, huh?”.

“Danny get to the point for fucks sake”.

“Sweetie, what do you mean you can’t take it off? Surely you could and that would solve part of the issue, right? That stuff’s what’s making the ectofield and shedding ectoenergy, right?”. Danny can’t help but inwardly cringe at Maddie’s words. But it was a damn good cover story, and the crown really did have its own ectofield so it wasn’t even lying.

Sighing and slumping before straightening up, clearly seeing everyone paying acute attention to him, “you’re not wrong, nor are those moronic agents. But y’all are also not right”, Danny then mutters to himself, “I mean they’re straight fucking wrong about the pissing on ghosts crap, but that’s not really new information”, before looking to his mom. Smiling softly, “we’re not here cause of my accessories. Me removing it, if that was even possible, would achieve nothing. No, we’re here cause two idiots dumped fucking pixie dust meant to send ghostly lairs to the Ghost Zone, onto a ghostly lair. This place was a lair long before I got any of this stuff, my stuff is not at fault. It never was”.

“Bullshit! I said before! Ghosts can’t have earth lairs! They ca-”. Danny cuts the agent off, tilting his head back and groaning loudly at the sky, “oh would you shut up!”. Snapping his head back down, forcibly keeping his angry ectoenergy out of his eyes as he responds, “I would have thought, after all these years. All ‘o y’all would have realised you’re useless twats. You can’t tell the difference between ghost fact and ghost I-believe-this-cause-I’m-a-bigoted-moron. A ghost could take a piss on your front lawn and you’d think they were bleeding or part dog or some shit”.

Paulina, wearing the visor now, whimpers a little, “even the air energy thingy looks angry”.

While Danny steps out from around Red with an intense gaze on the two agents, hair fluffing out like some anime bullshit, “but there’s one thing you guys do get right about lairs. If you wanna destroy a lair, or, in this case, make a place no longer a lair. Well, you’ve gotta destroy its keeper. Little late to do that though, since y’all already zapped us into the Ghost Zone, like crappy teleportation lightening. And somehow, I doubt that even if lightning struck twice, that it would send Amity back to the Human Realm”.

Both the men raise their weapons at him but Danny just shrugs, glaring at their faces and paying the weapons no mind, which is a bit disconcerting to the men, “so you’re kind of in a catch twenty-two, kill the lair keeper to rid Amity Park of its ghostliness but thusly making it impossible for Amity to return to the Earth Realm. Or get Amity Park back to the Earth Realm but thusly failing in your mission to rid Amity Park of ghosts and all things ghostly”. Both men grit their teeth at him while Danny just laughs mockingly, “but then again only one of these two options are actually options. Two things impossible to you but only one with any real possibility. Possible impossibility. Sorry not sorry, you can’t destroy this lairs keeper”.

Dash sputters, “what the hell happened to Fentripod, how could that weak loser seem even slightly threatening...”. Earning nervous nods from both Paulina, who’s clinging to Dash’s arm, and Kwan, who’s more in awe than startled.

While Danny walks up to the men, letting their guns push into his chest, chuckling darkly, “even white suit scum like you will hesitate pulling the trigger on a seventeen-year-old human kid”, smirking as multiple people gasp, “you're right, no ghosts got a Human Realm lair. No. But a human certainly does. Heck! Amity Park isn’t even the only human Ghostly Lair. Though-”. Maddie cuts Danny off, starting to become a bit put off by his unusual aggressiveness, even if it’s thickly laced with mocking humour, “Danny what are you saying?!? I’m the leading scientist on these matters, that shouldn’t be possible?”.

Danny’d like to get to actually finish speaking for a change but doesn’t get to respond as he picks up motion from the agents, motion aiming to harm him. Danny quickly twists and leans sideways, avoiding an ectoshot from agent L, before springing backwards. Maddie turns on the agent, “WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING”, before punching him in the face.

Danny whistles and smirks at the downed agent. While agent G gets his gun right into Danny’s face, and just as agent G goes to shoot. Danny thoroughly confuses the agent by smirking, “you’re wasting your time”, before agent G fires the gun.

A glimpse inside everyones favorite hyperpolyglot, Sydney Bristow. (Yes, I childishly cut Danny out of the picture because I prefer Sydney with Noah, but I like this picture, so there you go.)

Let's start this off with a quick quote from Recruited: I speak five languages (six if you count pig latin. From Shadowed, we also know this: for SD-6 agents, mastering five or six languages was the bare minimum. So right out of the gate, before she even starts working at SD-6, she's already met the 'bare minimum' requirement. Sort of; I'm not sure if SD-6 would count English - or pig latin for that matter.

My current wondering is: what five languages (six including pig latin) did she know before starting SD-6? English would be 1, obviously, and Pig Latin would make two. I'm assuming she's counting her Spanish and Mandarin college electives when she said that (unless she already spoke those languages and just took them as electives to get more of a background on them), so that would be 3 and 4. So what were 5 and 6?

Truthfully, I have no idea. Wikipedia has a list of her speaking 30 languages: English, Russian, German, Greek, Dutch, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Swedish, Romanian, Hungarian, Hebrew, Uzbek, Arabic, Persian, Urdu, Indonesian, Cantonese, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean, Hindi, Vietnamese, Polish, Serbian, Czech, Ukrainian, and Bulgarian.

Now this is completely a supposition, but the Wikipedia list doesn't mention Latin - it doesn't mention pig latin, either - but I would think that one of the languages she knew before coming into SD-6 would be Latin; it just ... sorta seems like it would be the first language she would learn with her being as studious as she is since, while being considered a dead language, it's still quite present in today's world, especially in the sciences. So my guess for language-number-5 would be Latin.

The sixth language is more of a long-shot. Seriously. In the pilot episode, in the SD-6 briefing room, we hear this:

Sydney: ''What is that? Hieratic?'' Sloane: ''Good try. That's what I thought. Actually, it's demotic. Taking notes in ancient languages was just one of Muller's quirks.''

A quick Google search showed this:

Now, she obviously doesn't know Hieratic or Demotic, otherwise she would've been able to translate right off. However, she was able to recognize it. So my theory is that she either learned the 'parent language' or one of the other 'child languages'. None of them are on the Wikipedia list. Most kids are interested in hieroglyphics but usually not enough to actually learn them (at least, such was the case with me), but I think we can all agree that when it comes to languages Sydney is a bit different - in a good way. So my long-shot-of-a-guess is that her 6th language is 'Egyptian'. Granted, she'd been at the agency for about seven years when we see her in the pilot episode so she could have learned it within that time.

Now that we've done that, let's review her language history in the books (at least, all of the one that I can remember off the top of my head). (I don't think she spoke in anything but English in Sister Spy, Father Figure or Skin Deep, but I may be wrong.)

Recruited: she's taking Spanish and Mandarin as electives, and she also says that she can speak a total of six languages (prior to being recruited)(see above). Spanish is also used later in the book. A Secret Life: she's was trying to teach herself Russian. French was used in this book, but she couldn't understand it. Disappeared: she had to learn Romanian (which she was distracted and didn't do too well at, but I assume she went back and learned it properly later). She also states that after the events in A Secret Life, she came back to L.A. and learned French as if her life depended on it. Free Fall: had her brushing up on one of her ''better languages'' - French. She was also able to translate an one-sided phone conversation she was eavesdropping on, from Russian. Infiltration: her Russian is described as amazing (and at times she'd been ahead of her SD-6 tutor), she says the Romance languages had been easy to learn (I haven't got a clear answer as to how many there are), Japanese took an impossible amount of concentration, and says it was difficult to keep the Oriental languages straight when she threw Cantonese and Mandarin into the mix (which, she should have already knew a fair bit of Mandarin since, as stated above, it was one of her electives). Vanishing Act: speaks in 'flawless' Dutch. (Also, she asks a woman working in a bookstore if she has any first additions of Chekhov, and when the woman ask if she wants it in English [the book], Sydney says she wants it in Lithuanian. This doesn't necessarily mean she speaks Lithuanian since it was a code phrase and it's not listed in her Wikipedia languages, but maybe she learned at some point.) Shadowed: she had recently brushed up on her Greek, and had learned German at some point.

Think about that for a minute. Did you catch what I did? She was recruited in the fall of her freshman year (a few weeks into the school year) and Free Fall says this happened in September. Shadowed itself happens in October of her sophomore year. Which means, Sydney learned 11+ languages in a year. So, aside from learning stuff for school, learning bank stuff (so she would be able to lie more efficiently to anyone who asked what she did on a daily basis for Credit Dauphine), and learning cool spy stuff and going on missions, she managed to cram in 11+ languages amidst carving out time for a social life with Francie (and a few dates with Noah) in one year's time. At the age of 19 and 20 years old. If you didn't think she was superwoman before, you should now.

Not to mention, that that's just the languages she speaks. While Sydney's trading card lists her languages as ''numerous'', she obviously knows a various amount of codes and ciphers as well; which, to me, counts as a language. We know she knows Morse code (2x18) from her mother's earrings, the Substitution cipher from when her dad encrypted her crossword puzzles (4x12), and Skip Sequencing Cypher Text (2x19) from when she was trying to get a message to Vaughn and an ever-helpful Weiss. That's just the ones I can remember right off, I'm sure she knows quite a few more.

As a side note, on Noah Hicks' trading card, it claims he only speaks three: English, French, and Russian. Oddly enough, the Russian was episode based while the French happened in the books - it's odd because I like to find what's different between the show and novels, but that's something that lines up. I'm sure he knows more languages - as it's said, five or six was the minimum - but it's not stated in the novels, the show, his Wiki page, or his trading card.

((Update: Ok, so two things. One, one the back of her season 3 trading card, it has one of Sydney’s languages as Taiwanese, so I guess that bumps her (known) total to 31 languages. Secondly, I did forget about a language from Vanishing Act; ''... a circle filled with words in what Sydney immediately recognized as Latin.'' Now again, it said she recognized it and not knew it (though, that’s probably the same thing for her), but I feel it’s further evidence supporting my theory.))

Shadows on the Horizon - 14

Pairing: Winter Soldier! Bucky Barnes x OFC! Layne Hardin | Word Count: 2.5k | Warnings: Language, angst, steamy makeouts, shower times, not quite smut | A/N: This is a sequel to my story Like a Whisper in the Night | Shadows on the Horizon Masterlist

“You could have died and it would have actually been my fault!”

Bucky was in a total state of distress. Danny had the kids tucked away in the back of the quinjet where they kept the bunks for after missions and long flights so Layne and Bucky could hash out whatever was going on with him in peace. Lucas had bombarded the sullen and moody Bucky with questions the whole drive back to the airport in Bloomington. Susanna and Layne kept them wrangled and out of his hair well enough, but they left Sue back in Minneapolis and Danny wasn’t as well versed with children so Layne could only imagine how crazy they were driving her brother.

“It’s not your fault you hit him in his bulletproof sunglasses. Who the fuck makes bulletproof sunglasses? Do you think Tony’s glasses are bulletproof?” Layne flicked the switches over her head in the copilot seat and her brows furrowed as the scanners didn’t give her the reports she was looking for. “Besides, almost dying is kind of a frequent hazard in this job field.”

“That’s the wrong one,” Bucky mumbled, coming down from his panic for a minute to reach over and flick the switch back and flip the one next to it on the right. “And it would have been my fault regardless. I should have made sure they were dead.”

Layne rolled her eyes at her boyfriend. “Do you think I would have gone back in the van if I didn’t think you were watching and had my back, Buck?”

“I don’t fucking know,” Bucky growled, flicking his own set of switches as they prepared to land back at the compound. “I don’t fucking know anything anymore.”

Layne narrowed her eyes at Bucky, her lips turning down in a frown of disappointment before refocusing on the landing pad that was coming into view below them. “Why don’t you actually tell me what you’re mad about, James?”

Bucky froze and blinked a few times at the terseness in her voice and the fact that the only times she ever uses his real name outside of the bedroom is when he’s done something really stupid.

“I’m not mad, Layne. I feel confused and foggy and I don’t even know what else. I figured in both lives I could point and shoot so this shouldn’t have been a problem, but it’s different now. It’s all different now,” Bucky answered softly, dropping the wheels of the jet.

Layne pursed her lips as they landed the jet. Turning off toggles and switches and then the engines she focused on taking steadying breaths. “Maybe,” Layne started but stopped to chew on her thoughts some more.

Bucky watched her anxiously chew on her bottom lip, her eyes flicking back and forth as she sorted through the thoughts in her head.

“Maybe, if it will make you feel better, Shuri can put your head back to where it was. Maybe Steve was right and I was messing around with things I had no business in,” Layne mumbled softly as she cracked her knuckles nervously.

Bucky turned his head at the sound of small running footsteps, Danny was following close behind and Bucky reached up to flip the switch to open the ramp. Spinning in his chair he reached out and grabbed Layne’s hands, pulling her gently into his lap. She folded up easily, her butt between his legs with her knees folded up under his left arm and her head tucked under his chin resting against his right shoulder. He tangled his vibranium fingers in her curls as he held her close and tight to him.

“As weird as this sounds, I feel better than I ever have. Mentally, I mean,” Bucky responded. “I just thought that I had remembered everything I was going to and I was okay with that, but now I’ve had to process all this extra stuff and I’m trying to decide what to do about it.”

Layne tangled her fingers in the straps of Bucky’s vest, clinging to him impossibly tight her knuckles white from lack of blood circulation. “Together, then. Whatever you decide, we do it together.”

Bucky sighed and she felt him shake his head in refusal. “I don’t think I can bring you along for some of this.”

Layne pressed her hands flat against his chest and pushed herself away from him so she could look him in the eyes. The usual clear blue of them swirling with an icy chill that she had only seen in flickers in the past, but would have to get used to it being a permanent fixture in his gaze.

“We promised, James,” Layne pressed, “We promised everything together or not at all.”

Bucky drug his teeth over his bottom lip, his eyes adverting Layne’s pointed gaze. “There are things I just don’t want you to have to see. I don’t even know if anything is still even there or not. I don’t know how I’ll react when I go to these places or find whatever I hid at them. I don’t know if you’ll be safe from me.”

“Bucky,” Layne’s voice was firm and had zero room for argument. “Shut the fuck up. I’m coming with.”

With that she leaned forward and pressed her lips to his. Any argument that Bucky was going to come up with was lost when she nipped her teeth into his bottom lip, the soft moan he let out allowing for her tongue to slip in his mouth. His hands slid down to firmly grasp her hips and shifted her so instead of being cradled in his arms she was straddling his lap. Her hands raised to tangle in his hair, tugging at the locks softly to tilt his head back and let her kiss him deeper. He broke away for air and to let out a wanton moan as she ground her sex into his.

“Jesus, baby, we gotta hit the pause button,” Bucky begged, but planted hot and heavy kisses down from her ear to her throat despite his words.

“So I can come with you when you go?” Layne whispered huskily, dragging her nails from his scalp to the back of his neck.

“Course, doll, whatever you want,” he agreed hurriedly, his mouth on a path to her chest but suddenly his arms and lap were empty as Layne stood and straightened out her uniform.

“Great. Straighten up, soldier, we have to debrief.”

Bucky blinked a few times, his hands still in midair in front of him from when he was holding Layne in his grip, a dumb look frozen on his face. He licked his lips as he fought the lust fogging his brain. “That…that was the rudest thing you’ve ever done.”

Layne sent him a cheeky wink and giggled. “I didn’t say I didn’t have plans to finish what I started, Barnes.”

~*~

The debrief was quick and easy, which was nice because they rarely are. The children were settled across the hall from Bucky and Layne in Layne’s old apartment, Cheryl was looking to make a quick recovery and would be out to meet them by the end of the week where they would take the three children to upstate New York and introduce them to Charles Xavier. In the meantime, Layne proposed a plan to really see what her nieces and nephew were capable of so they would be more quickly placed at the Academy.

But now, back in her and Bucky’s bathroom, she peeled her skin tight suit from her body and turned on the tap for the shower. Once it was lukewarm she stepped in, lifting her face up under the water stream and letting it soak her hair and plaster it to her skin. She let out a sigh from deep in her gut, the weight that’s been sitting on her chest for the better part of the week feeling crushing.

She ignored the soft knocking on the bathroom door knowing that Bucky was going to let himself in anyway and sure enough the door clicked open.

“Room for one more?” Bucky asked and Layne nodded slightly through their frosted glass door before choking out an okay.

Bucky stuck his hand in the shower first to check the water before reaching down to turn the heat up just a little bit and then stepping in.

“Are you doing okay?” Bucky asked with concern, his hands running up his girlfriend’s back and squeezing her shoulders gently. The difference in temperature made her shudder involuntarily until the vibranium caught up from the heat of the water.

His concern made her feel guilty. She wasn’t the one anyone should be worried about right now, Bucky had literally just gone through hell and back and now here he was trying to make sure she was okay. Little fragile Layne Hardin, falling the fuck apart again. She swallowed heavily and tried to pull herself back together quickly even if she knew it was pointless with him.  

“I guess, now that everything has calmed down a little it’s just all kind of hit me,” Layne answered honestly and leaned back into his broad chest. She twists her head around and leaves a gentle kiss on the scarring of his left shoulder.

“You’re angry.” It was a statement, Bucky knew her well enough to tell when she was barely hanging onto her self control. Even back in the Twin Cities when she basically assaulted her brother it was a rare moment. She was normally very good at keeping her emotions under cloak and mask, but Bucky could feel the frustration radiating off of her like heat waves.

“There’s no point in being angry. What’s done is done and it all worked out well enough in the end,” Layne grumbled grabbing her bottle of shampoo and squirting it into her hand.

Bucky reached forward and scooped it from her open palm to massage into her scalp, Layne let out a pleased hum and another deep sigh this one allowing much of the weight to come from her chest.

“I’m sorry, if it makes a difference, I shouldn’t have gone off on my own.”

“It didn’t just put you in harm’s way, Buck. You had a partner. Fuck the mission, you know? I agree with you that any scientist that was involved with what happened to you to take priority, but you left Sue on her own. She looked up and you were just gone and she still had unfriendlies to take care of.”

Bucky took half a step back and tilted Layne’s head back slightly so he could rinse the soap from her hair.

“I know,” he agreed, chagrined. It hadn’t been his intention to abandon his partner and the mission. He had seen the scientist and suddenly he was back in that bank vault in DC and he was giving chase.

“And seeing that fucking chair in your night terrors is one thing, but goddammit Bucky. How are you even willing to jump back into all of this after that again?” Layne twisted in Bucky’s arms pressing her chest against his and wrapping her arms around his neck.

Bucky’s ice blue eyes bored into her warm caramel ones as he searched for the unspoken question hidden beneath the spoken one. His hands fell from her hair down to her shoulders and finally splayed across her ribs right under her breasts.

“Layne,” Bucky started slowly and pressed a chaste kiss to her forehead. “I am going to follow you where ever you’re going. You need to spend time in Minnesota, I’m there. You want to never leave the tower again? I’m fine with that. You want to quit this whole thing entirely and go back to working in a lab at some university anywhere in the world. I’m okay with that too. I don’t need anything else but you.”

Layne shook her head with a rueful smile on her face. “That’s dumb as fuck, James. I appreciate the sentiment, but you want things too and pretending that they don’t matter is just stupid. This isn’t a fairytale, or a Disney movie, this is real life and there’s two of us. We’re a partnership, yeah? And if we’re going to be a strong partnership we need to be honest with each other.

“I’m pissed you broke rank and order and left Sue to fend for herself. I’m angry because that caused you to get captured and hurt again. I was terrified, Bucky, more scared than I’ve ever been about anything in my life because I thought I was going to lose you again. But I’m frustrated and angry with myself because it should have always been a possibility on any of these missions that this could happen. I’m mad because I told Steve that he should stay behind because Natasha was coming home and I could handle this on my own and none of this would have probably happened if he had been there because that kid is glued to your fucking hip.”

Layne leaned up on her tip toes and pressed her lips to Bucky’s to stop whatever argument Bucky was about to spit out. “But it’s over now and you’re here with me and the kids are here and we’re going to figure this out. I love you so much.”

Bucky blinked the water out of his eyes and shook his head in disbelief. “I love you too, doll, I don’t know how I got so lucky with you.”

Layne bumped his nose with hers before capturing his lips again and kissing him deeply, a raw heat flaring behind it. When they parted to breath Layne have him a fiery look. “So, do we want to un-pause from earlier?”

Bucky growled low in his chest and slid his hands down to Layne’s waist, lifting her up and pressing her against the shower wall where she gasped at the cold towel and arched into his chest. He immediately dove to press a hard kiss to her throat but she hissed and he pulled away with guilt rising in his stomach.

Layne instantly brought her hands to his face and brought his eyes up to hers. She could see the sself-loathing and cold hatred clouding the blue of his eyes. “Hey. No, not now. Not ever.” She insisted kissing him softly to test the waters.

“But.”

“No. Shut up and love me.”

That was all it took. Bucky slammed off the water to the shower and Layne squealed, wrapping her legs around his waist as he walked her to the bedroom and threw her soaking wet on the bed.

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TEARYand WAS VERY EAGER TO CAST ASIDE DANNY BECAUSE SHE WAS PRESENTING HERSELF AS A AS A FIGURE OF DESTINYand NOW BETH IS QUITE EAGER TO HITCH HIS WAGON TO ANOTHER PERSON WHO IS PRESENTING HIMSELF AS A FIGURE OF DESTINY ABSOLUTELY ABSOLUTELYand HE BASICALLY PRESENTED WITH SOME LINE ABOUT PARADISE SAYS ABOUT DANNY WORRIES LIKE NOW SHE’S GOT HER WHEN SHE KILLED HARRISON TO GET A MEAL YOU COULD MAKE THE ARGUMENT MY TRAVELING OUT OF COLORADO BUT IT IS KIND OF CONFOUNDING WORDS LIKE BRAND IS NOW ALL OF A SUDDEN LIKE TO FIND A DRAGON COULD YOU FOUND THE DRAGON DECREASE GOING HE DIED WE DON’T KNOW THE ANSWER WAS THE BIGGER PROBLEM THAN WHAT THE ANSWER ACTUALLY IS A CRUCIALand IS SOMETHING WE TALK ABOUT MILLION TIMES BINGE MODE IS THAT IT AN INABILITY OR AN UNWILLINGNESS TO WRITE REALLY REALLY ENGAGE WITH THE FANTASY ELEMENTS BECAUSE WHAT’S IMPORTANT ABOUT THAT KIND OF WORLD BUILDING IS EXPLAINING HOW IT WORKS WE HAVE TO ADDRESS ME IN UNDERSTANDING ABOUT HOW THE RULES WORK FOR US WHAT YOU GET IS LIKE A DEUS EX MACHINA WHERE CHARACTER CAN JUST DO ENTERING THIS IS WHERE LEVELING OUTand WEAR ANYTHING NOW WITH BRENDA’S RULER STATING TO NOT KNOW HOW HIS POWERS WERE OR WHAT HE USES HIS RESPONSIBILITY IN THE WAY WE SAID SO MUCH TIME HEADING INTO THE SEASON TALK ABOUT THE ROLE OF THE 300and ENDED UP GETTING A LINE A SINGLE LINE HEADING INTO THE AREA WITH HER FATHER PLANNING FORand ABOUT HOW HE WAS THE PROTECTOR OF MEMORY OKAY SOand THE IDEA OF SOMEBODY IN CHARGE OF JERRYand HONESTLY TRY TO VOICE THIS A COUPLE TIMES WHO HAS UNDERSTANDING OF HISTORYand THUS AN UNDERSTANDING OF MISTAKESand THUS BY EXTENSION LOGICALLY HOPEFULLY HOW TO AVOID THEM OKAY MIKE MOORE DOES BRAND OF THE FUTURE BECAUSE I THERE IS AMPLE CANONICAL EVIDENCE OF THE ANSWER THAT QUESTION IS YES YOU WHENand BEFORE YOU TRAIN TO BE 300and BRAND IS A GREEN SERIES ON THE SCENE COME TO WINTER FELL THAT WAS THE SAYS OUT LOUD MY DREAMS COME TRUE HE SAW THE SHADOW OF THE DRAGON OVER THE ROWS OF KING’S LANDING SEESAW THE SO I DON’T WANT THE PERSON IN CHARGE OF MY LIFE TO KNOW MY FUTURE BECAUSE THEN NOTHING THAT I DO MATTERS MORE IS OLDEST ABOUT POSITIONING TOGETHER THAT’S A WITH ARIANAand WE ALL REALLY WERE VERY PRO RAID FOR BUT THAT WAS THAT NAGGING QUESTION THE BACK OF OUR MINDS WILL SHE ALWAYS GOING TO BECAUSE BRENT HANDED HER THE RIGHT NOW IS GET ONand GET DOWN WE’RE TALKING ABOUT THE GAME THE EPISODE IS THAT THE ONE OF THE MOST BELOVED EPISODES OF THIS ENTIRE SERIES IS WHEN WHERE IT’S WERE YOU KNOW WE STILL IN THE GARAGE ON INand THERE IS NEVER REALLY A MOMENT WHERE THAT REGARDLESS OF WHETHER OR NOT BREAKand EXPRESS HIMSELF EMOTIONALLY OR NOT IS NOT ACTUALLY EVER LIKE YOU WERE STORY WAS IMPORTANT TO THIS ENDING BECAUSE LIKE WE SHOULD LET STAND AT THE NEXT SCENE IS ESSENTIALLY LIKE JOHN GETS FARMED OUT THE NIGHTWATCH I MEAN WE SHOULD TALK ABOUT I THINK I SENSE OF THE WAY THEY PRESENT THAT FINAL SCENE WITH BRENDA’S KINGand IN WITH HIS SMALL COUNCIL I THINK THAT IS REALLY ILLUSTRATIVE AS IT IN MINIATURE OF THE WAY BRAIN IS POSITIONED WITHIN THE SERIESand KIND OF LIKE THE FLAWS IF YOU WANT TO SAY OF HOW COME THIS STORY OF HOW THIS STORYLINE FINISHEDand WHICH IS WHY I THINK A MORE CHARITABLE READING OF THIS IS REALLY LIKE TERRYand RUNNING THE REALM YOU Iand MY A WEEK CAN YOU CAN MAKE AN ARGUMENT THAT THE WORD ABOUT THE CHAIR RIGHT IS DOESN’T ACCOUNT FOR BRAND SAYING YEAH IT’S ME YOUR BOY I AGREE WITH YOU BUT I THINK THAT THAT LOOK AT THE WAY THAT SCENE PLAYS OUT IT STARTS WITH TEARY POSITIONING THE CHAIRS RIGHT OBVIOUSLY LIKE A METAPHOR FOR HIM TWEAKINGand CONTROLLING THE ROUND WHILE THE COMMITTEE MEMORIZE THE ANSWERS THEY WERE ARRANGING THE CHAIRS COMES IN THEY TALK ABOUT SELF BRAIN COMES IN FOR TWO SECONDS BLAH BLAH BLAH I’LL LOOK FOR THE DRAGON AMOUNTand THEN WE GET THAT SCENE OF THEM HAGGLING ABOUT COINSand CHIPSand SOFTand THAT SOFT PULLBACK AS IF ANand WHAT ARE WE WHAT ARE WE LEFT WITH THIS IS WHERE THE ROUNDS CAN BE CONTROLLED FROM THIS IS WHAT THE GOVERNANCE IS GONNA BE LIKE A KIND OF AS IT ALWAYS WASand BRAND IS NOT GOING TO BE INVOLVED HE WENT WAY TO GO DO STUFF HERE’S MY COUNTERPOINT THEY DIDN’T GIVE A SANITIZED VERSION OF THE STORY BECAUSE TERRY NEVER HAD A HAD A PROBLEM THE SMARTEST ONE IN THE ROOM IS TO SHINE THE CASE FOR AN WHAT IS HE SAYING IS SO DON’T NOTICE ME ACTUALLY I JUST KEEP MAKING BAD CHOICES BUT ACTUALLY YOU FOR YOUR MISTAKES BY SERVING THE HEAD OF THE KING FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE THE THING THAT I WANTED THOUGH WAS AN EXCHANGE WHEN TIERNAN JOHN SIEGE OF THE BEFORE JOHN WAS THE NIGHTWATCH IS THIS IDEAS OF LIKE OKAY SO THAT WHAT WAS WITH THE TRANSACTION HERE THAT YOU’RE YOU’RE THE HAND OF THE KING NOWand I’M NEVER TO HAVE A WIFEand I GO BACK TO WHICH HONESTLY IF TORMENT HAD BEEN LIKE M WRIGHT WANT TO START DOING THIS YOU CAN IT WAS LATER TOLD ME IT WAS MY DESTINY TO BECAUSE I WAS THE VERSION OF LIKE MY SITTING ON THE ARTS ROAD WITH THE THING THAT THE NARROWSand ALWAYS PROMISED THIS BENEVOLENT PERSON WHO WAS GONNA TRYand PROTECT PEOPLEand THEY DON’T EVEN DISCUSS IT AS EASILY GOTTEN OFF DUTY I FEELING I GOT MULTIPLE WATCHES TEARYand SYRIANSand IS A LOT MORE COMPLEX I THINK THEN ON FIRST BLANCH PLUMBING DANNY LISA JUST FINE WHEN WE GET OTHERWISE IS A SERIES OF CHARACTER CODERS YOU BREANNE WRITES JAMIE STORYand THE OTHERS I WILL SAY TO YOU HOW HAITI WILL BE REMEMBERED RIGHT LIKE NO I LIKED IT BUT IT’S LIKE THIS IN JUST A BASIC HUMAN LEVEL WHAT WOULD YOUR ASK WHO YOU LEFT RIGHT ABOUT YOU ON ANYTHING LIKE IT’S GREAT THAT SHE WROTE ALL THE NICE STUFF BUT IT’S KIND OF ALSO RINGS A LITTLE FALSE THAT SHE WASN’T LIKEand WAS AN ASS HOLE WHO LEFT ME LIKE BLAH BUT I DON’T AGREE I THINK THAT ULTIMATELY BRAND IS ONE OF THE CHARACTERS IN THE ENTIRE STORY WHO WE CAN LOOK TO AS LIKE SOMEBODY WHO REALLY UNDERSTANDS WHO SHE ISand THAT WE CAN FIND A LOT THERE TO ADMIREand TYPE SO WHEN PEOPLE AFTER EPISODE FOR LIKE OH MY GOD THEY DISLIKE REDUCE BRAND TO AUNT SALLY CRYING IS WHAT IS TO THINK THAT ALL BUT YOU CAN BE A STRONG WOMANand YOU CAN HAVE A LOTION JUST LIKE SHE COULD BE DEVASTATED THAT JAMIE LOVES HERand STILL WANT TO HONOR HER SAY HER SACRED PRINCIPLE IS NOTHINGS MORE PAINFUL THAN FAILING TO PROTECT WHEN YOU LOVEand SHE’S PROTECTING JAMIE’S I ADDITIONAL SECRET I I JUST IT’S LIKE I WOULD’VE LIKED SOME EMOTION FROM I GUESS IT’S YOU KNOW IT’S THAT THING OF LIKE SHE CAN BE BOTH STRONGand ALSO LIKE THIS THAT THIS HAPPENEDand INSTEAD SHE’S JUST A LIKE OUR OUTRAGEOUS HISTORY OR JAMIE WANDERING WALL OKAY SO BREANNE IS CLEARLY COMMANDER THE KING’S GUARD WHICH IS GREAT BUT WHAT ABOUT THE VARIOUS BRANDSand KINGSLAND NON CATHOLICS CHILDREN I GUESS THAT’S THE BUT THAT’S NOT REALLY RUTH RATE IS LIKE THERE’S NO COMMERCE I’D LOVE TO SEE THE CONVERSATION REMBRANDT SIGNS ARE WHEN THEY DECIDE CAN ACTUALLY RAIN TOGETHER PLAZA PROBABLY NEEDS A GUARD TO IT WOULD ALSO BE HAVE SAUNDERS AGREE TO THE NORTH ARIANA GOES WEST TO FIND OUT WHAT’S WEST OF WEST ROSE NOTHING RETURNS THE WALL GO SEE NORMAN SEES GOES IN THE LITTLE COUNSEL TO DISCUSS DIFFERENT PUBLIC WORKS TO DOand THEN THERE IS A MONTAGE OF THE START OF THE SEARCH ESSENTIALLY PEOPLE SALUTING GONZO WITHOUT THE CROWN DOESN’T OR YOU’LL MAILING THE MAIN CROWNand JOHN WRITING OUT I SEEM TO ESCORT THE WILD WINGS BACK OUT TO THEIR TO THEIR HOMELANDS IT ALWAYS FEELS LIKE HE’S WITH THEM WITH THEMand IT’S THAT IT WILL END THE SHOP WAS A VERY INTERESTING SO JOHN IS GOING TO LEAVE THE NICE LUNCH AGAIN WHAT HE IS RENDERING I GUESS I YEAH I THINK DELIBERATELY OPEN TO INTERPRETATIONand YOU KNOW HE MAY BE NO LINE IN THE IN THE EPISODE BETTER SUMMED UP THE LIKE THEY’LL FIGURE IT OUT NATURE OF THIS EPISODE IN THE SEASON THAN TERRYand SANG ARE NUKING DOESN’T SEND YOU THE NIGHTWATCH JOHN SAYING THERE STILL A NICE WATCHand HEARand SAVE THE WORLD WILL ALWAYS THE HOME FOR PASTORSand BROKEN MAN OKAY AGAIN ON THE ONE HAND THERE’S IDEAS ARE ESSENTIAL TO THE SHOW ON THE OTHER HAND LITERALLY WHY IS THE NIGHTWATCH AREA I WAS WAITING FOR LIKE SOCIAL I DON’T OCCUR SOMETHING I FIND IT I FOUND IT VERY I FOUND THE OUTLINE FASCINATING BECAUSE A LOT OF THE TENSION IN BETWEEN JOHNand TEARYand IN SEASON ONE IS JOHN’S NAIVETY IN BELIEVING THAT THE NIGHTWATCH WAS THIS NOBLE PROFESSION STANDING BETWEEN THE REALMS OF MANand WILD WINGSand EVIL ETC

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“I swear, the only thing I ever seen you in are those same sweaters and jeans,” Tazaki sighed, shaking her head. Her luggage toppled to the floor behind her, discarded.

Danny looked up at her from where he was perched on the couch, elbows and knees amid a scattering of papers, notes, and charts. He watched her curiously.

“That’s because this is the only thing I wear,” he replied, giving his outfit a brief glance. He was wearing the same thing he always wore - a blue sweater and light blue jeans (his leather jacket had been tossed somewhere a while ago) - and wondered what they had done to warrant such a protest.

The huntress took her usual seat across from him, reclining in his dad’s old chair. She was still eyeing him.

“Do you even own anything else?”

“Do you?” came Danny’s smart reply, nodding to her ensemble. “You’re wearing that jacket every time I see you.”

She shrugged. 

“So?” 

Danny gaped at her.

“So you can wear the same outfit and I can’t?”

A long finger pointed at him and she shook her head.

“See, I don’t wear the same outfit. Just the same jacket. At least I have more than one different style of shirts.”

“I have other shirts,” he replied, trying and failing to reoccupy himself with his papers. At her level glance, he shrugged, quietly adding that, “I just don’t really wear them…”

“And why not?”

“Why does it matter?” Her hidden agenda behind the questioning made continuing his research nearly impossible. He had half a mind to abandon it altogether, or at least until he could stuff her face with some food. That always shut her up for a while.

“Because it’s boring. I wear this jacket because it’s leather and has pockets for things like bullets and rosaries,” the redhead explained, pinching the zipper of her jacket.

Danny rolled his eyes. “And I wear mine because my ghost core acts like a chunk of liquid nitrogen inside of me and I’m always freezing.”

She gestured to him. “And the shirt and jeans?”

“And the sweater and jeans.”

There was a moment of silence as she contemplated what he had said and for a blissful minute he thought she would drop the whole ridiculous thing altogether so he could get back to work. He was studying up on his parents’ research on the radioactive energy ectoplasm emitted, hoping that if he could isolate a sample of the unstable cells he could use it to track portals before they opened.

His train of thought was almost full steam ahead when the huntress spoke again: “What ever happened to that white shirt you used to wear?”

He sighed, the likes of which he had never sighed before, and hung his head in desperation.

“Do you just want to rummage through my closet for yourself? Because if you–”

“Okay,” she said and was already on her feet, halfway up the stairs before he even realized what had just happened.

“Hey, wait a minute!” he called suddenly, scrambling after her and trying not to trip on his dad’s Styrofoam ball model of a radiated cell. “Hold on! You can’t just–”

A disembodied cackle came from upstairs. “You just said I could!”

“That was a rhetorical question! Rhetorical!” he shouted, climbing the stairs himself. He rounded the corner just in time to see a flash of crimson hair disappear into his room and something in his gut twisted sharply. Which was ridiculous. It wasn’t like he was in trouble or anything. He was an adult - or somewhere thereabouts…. probably - and could very well decide for himself what he wanted to wear. And he had been wearing the most practical, comfiest outfit he owned. At least he was fully dressed and not lounging around in his underwear like a two year old.

He skidded into his room and, sure enough, the red huntress was already up to her elbows in his wardrobe, his pile of dirty clothes shoved to the side. Well too late to stop her now, he decided, crossing his arms and leaning against his desk. This was a fight he would just have to grin and bear.

“Sweaters… sweaters… sweaters… ooh, that one’s cute,” she commented, a striped button down joined the steadily growing pile of clothes on the bed.

He hummed at it.

“What?”

“Nothing,” he shrugged. “Just forgot I had that one.”

With an eye roll she went back to work.

“I’m gonna be hearing that a lot, aren’t I?” she wondered, face and words muffled by the forest of cotton.

He shrugged again, watching a black turtle neck flop onto the bed.

“Probably.”

She rummaged in silence for a couple more minutes, and he took a moment to survey his room. It was weird seeing it from this angle. His normal path didn’t usually deviate from the bed to the door and back again. In fact, he hadn’t used his desk much at all in years. Which was obvious by the level of dust that had collected on its surface.

Grimacing, he wiped off his dirty finger onto his pants. He really should dust again, which sucked because it felt like he just did last week.

Suddenly a low whistle sounded from inside the closet and he leaned forward, curious as to what he could possibly still own that she could possibly find that would possibly elicit a reaction like that.

“Well well well, what is this?” she asked teasingly, pulling out none other than his old gray suit.

Danny’s eyes widened at it. The jacket, the white shirt, the blue tie - they were all still there, exactly as he had left them after escaping Wisconsin.

Noticing his expression, Taz frowned softly. “Everything okay?” she asked. 

Quietly, Danny nodded, taking the suit from her and sitting on the bed. He stared at the fabric, played with the four buttons on the front, remembered when Jazz had taught him how to tie a tie.

“Yeah…” he breathed quietly. Then, coming back to himself: “Yeah. I’m fine. Just… a lot of memories in this thing.” He had met Vlad Masters in this. He had been captured by Vlad Plasmius in this. He had overshadowed his dad and fought for his life in this stupid suit. And that didn’t even get into the debacle that had been the freshman year school dance.

“Good?” Taz prodded quietly, and Danny shook his head at her.

“Not really.” Slipping it off his lap, he held it by the hanger, inspecting it at arm’s length “A few that could’ve been. Eh, they were for the most part. It was just the rest of the times…”

The redhead sighed, looking away. She took inventory of what she had dispensed to the bed as she tried to figure out what to say. Staring one of his old white T-shirts, she smirked.

“Think it still fits?”

Danny scoffed at her. “Are you kidding? That was years ago. And it barely fit then.”

“But how will you know for sure unless…”

He looked at her sideways.

“Tazaki. This thing will not fit. I can promise you that.”

“Oh come on! You couldn’t have grown up that much since then!”

“Geez, thanks!” he gasped, a laugh in his words.

Rolling her eyes, she regarded him with a raised eyebrow.

“You know what I mean.”

He nodded. “I do. And the answer is still no.” With a few certain steps he approached the closet and deposited the suit into the furthest, darkest corner.

Eyes narrowed, she watched him.

“One day,” she swore, wagging a finger at him.

“Never gonna happen,” he replied coolly, brushing his hands free of the whole ridiculous matter as his footsteps carried him out of the room.

Undeterred, she shouted after him again: “One day!”

“Not on your life, princess!”

With a huff, she crossed her arms. It will happen. One day she’ll get to see him in a suit. Definitely not that one, and probably not anytime soon, but she’d get him to wear a suit if it killed her.

“And put the rest of my clothes away too!” he demanded from somewhere downstairs and the huntress winced, looking at the scattering of discarded shirts and sweaters surrounding her.

When she had said she’d get him to wear a suit if it killed her, she didn’t mean like this. She had meant out for a nice dinner - something not cooked, or broiled, or fried, or that had definitely spent most of its life in the back of a frozen truck - or maybe just in the confides of Fenton Works, where only she would be privy to his dashing….

Dashing….

Dashing-ness, Tazaki decided with a lot more of struggle than it should have taken. She was usually so eloquent, able to speak a dozen languages and had a real knack for stringing words together until they sounded just right.

But, that’s what a bullet wound will do. Screw up the mental word processing unit real good. And also cause internal bleeding, sure - and external, definitely - but having the word thing not working was a real inconvenience.

In a bleary-eyed haze, she realized just how well Danny’s tie matched his eyes. It was astonishing, really, how someone somewhere had managed to find the perfect blue, and how that blue had found its way onto a tie, which, in turn, had found its way to Maddie Fenton’s shopping cart. Sometimes the world was just awesome.

“Taz! Taz, can you hear me?” Danny asked and it took a couple slow blinks for his face to come into focus. There were those blue eyes again, looking down at her with horrible concern. “Stay with me! Don’t close your eyes, okay? Just keep them open! Keep looking at me.”

But, despite her best efforts, her gaze wandered past him, to the sparkling chandelier overhead. Moments ago, she had been complaining about that chandelier, how it glittered and shone and… she was convinced. The confounded things were cursed. 

After all, this evening had been going just fine until, suddenly, it wasn’t. It had started as a simple detail mission. Trigger had thought he smelled a werewolf in City Hall, so she and a couple other hunters, experts, and the like had staked out the place, slipping into the mayor’s annual charity dinner. They were just about to get to the third course when suddenly bullets. 

Apparently they weren’t the only ones who wanted the chief adviser’s head on a platter - she just would have very much appreciated it if the angry guns with guns had at least asked permission before they started shooting up their target, shouting some anti-establishment, save the gorillas dribble she didn’t give two hoots about.

She had counted four dead - two officials and two civilians - and many more injured before suddenly breathing was a considerable chore and the shoulder strap of her dress turned a different shade of red. Then Danny had finally found the decency to show up.

“Y’re l’te,” she slurred sleepily, head rolling side to side as noises and pain wow she didn’t have that much to drink! “N’ce suit though…”

“Uh, thanks,” Danny replied, flinching as another wave of bullets sounded from somewhere in the war zone of the giant dinner hall. “Crap…” he muttered quietly and even in her barely conscious, definitely delirious state she could see the terror in his eyes. 

It broke her heart. She wanted nothing more than the reach out to him and shield him from this violent life - to take a gun and fire back at the people who dare terrorize the boy who’s parents had daily threatened to dissect him but had looked them in the eye every day at breakfast anyway. 

She wanted to, but her arms were unresponsive. They were still there, somewhere, but unreachable past the agony under her skin and muscles on fire just under her neck. 

Suddenly, another body slammed down next to theirs, bringing a second overturned table in his wake, covering them on two sides. 

“Taz–oh no,” he gasped and she recognized him as Trigger, the jerk who’s idea this whole thing was from the beginning. Just as soon as she was finished with dispatching the goons who were horrifying her ghost boy, she was going to give that crazy coot a good one-two bam! Right in the kisser. 

“Back off!” Danny snarled instinctively, eyes aflame with hostile green energy. From her position, and general incoherence, the red huntress couldn’t tell if those were fangs in his mouth or just the lighting. 

“Whoa whoa! Hold up, kid!” Trigger exclaimed, hands raised and backing away slightly. 

Tazaki would’ve laughed if she could take at least one breath without nearly drowning in her own blood. 

“I’m a friend! I work with Tazaki,” Trigger continued, and Danny flinched again as someone started screaming in agony somewhere behind him. His eyes lit up an entirely different green, shoulders rigid and spine bent like a feral cat. 

Trigger frowned at him. “Are… are you a civilian?” 

“Somebody’s…” Danny winced as the screaming turned to pained wails. His pulse quickened, head spinning in horror. 

“Hey, hey, kid, listen to me, okay? Not them!” 

“They need–they’re…” The cries turned to a throaty gurgling sound and Taz closed her eyes reverently. It was too late. 

“Don’t think about them!” Trigger was insisting, grabbing Danny’s shoulders hard between his hands. “Think about me! Listen to what I’m saying to you!” 

Suddenly, Danny looked up, eyes alit with crystal blue clarity. 

“They’re dying aren’t they?” 

Trigger took a moment to mourn, and Tazaki could only lay there, fuming over what was happening and that there was nothing she could do to stop it.

“Yes,” the other hunter answered quietly, and Danny broke. His body started to slump with gravity, heavier than even a normal human body should ever be. And Taz wanted to scream or cry or break something because he was too young to feel the things he was. He was a boy - not a soldier like they were - still just a young child, innocent to the ways of the world. 

“Come on, kid. There was nothing you could’ve done,” Trigger said and immediately Tazaki wished for nothing else than a single bullet and the ability to aim long enough to shoot him in the face because that was no ordinary civilian he was talking to. That was a genuine, bonafide hero. The real deal. A young genius. A prodigy. A good friend. That was a boy who had done more in his lifetime than stupid Trigger had done in twice as long. 

That was Danny Phantom. 

“Dun… Dunny Pha…” she slurred, and Danny was immediately by her side, blue eyes put back together long enough to focus on her. 

Trigger blinked. “Huh? What?” he asked, scooting close, dragging his supply bag with him. It scraped against the broken glass on the floor as someone somewhere started sobbing. “Speak up, Tazaki.” 

Feebly, she slapped Danny with one hand, finger pointed to his chest. 

“…Dunny Phans…” 

Danny clasped her too cold hand in his own. 

“I’m right here, Tazzy. You… I’m right here.” 

Miraculously, something switched on in Trigger’s stupid brain and he looked at Danny, curious and stupefied. 

“What did you just call her?” 

The ghost boy blinked at him. 

“Tazzy?” 

Excitement growing, Trigger shifted so he was facing the boy, hands out as if he was about to explain ABCs. 

“And what’d you say your name was?”

Danny regarded him with a look of suspicion, which Taz could understand. She would even have encouraged it another day, but from what she remembered before everything went wrong, Trigger was the only one on the ground with her so he was likely their only option of getting out of this place alive. 

Which meant they were all as good as dead. 

“I didn’t,” Danny tested. He really wasn’t sure how he should feel about where this conversation was going. 

The red huntress at his knees tried to squeeze his hand reassuringly. 

“I…eh, I know that. But what it is?” 

“…Danny?” 

Trigger gestured for him to continue. “Danny what?” 

Taz rolled her eyes - or at least tried to. 

“Phun…” 

“Phantom?” Trigger guessed and wow remind her to be on his team next time they played charades. “You’re Danny Phantom?!” Trigger exclaimed. “Oh my– that’s Danny Phantom! He’s Danny Phantom!” 

Danny slowly inched away. 

“This… this is great! This is… fantastic!” 

Tazaki suddenly coughed, too much blood splashing out of her mouth and onto Danny’s black pants. 

“Sh’t uph,” she wheezed, and Trigger very nearly slapped himself. Too bad he didn’t. 

“Oh crap! Oh crap! Right! Right! Uh…” he looked at Danny. “Where was she hit?” 

“The neck. Around the sterno muscle, above the clavicle. Think it missed the jugular, though,” the boy replied before he could even stop and consider what a stupid question that was. 

“Missed the juggler? Guess we’ll have to go for his balls then,” Trigger tried and Taz wished she could drop dead right then and there. Whatever was waiting for her on the other side had to be an improvement of Trigger’s stupid attempts at lightening the mood. 

“No?” he asked, then cleared his throat. “Okay. Um, next order of business, uh, did the bullet come out?” 

Danny froze and tried very, very hard not to panic. It proved difficult, however, to focus on more than one thing at a time as people around him were falling and his best friend was bleeding out before him. He thought back and remembered a noise - the first gunshot - followed by an eerily long moment of silence as people comprehended what was happening. Most didn’t even hear it, and it took a few more to get everyone’s attention. Danny could see it all from above, where he had just phased through the ceiling. The maniac with the gun shouted something - his speech took a long time, which Danny had thought was weird and had stuck out to him for some reason - but amid the shock he had seen movement. Red on red, and he had known it was Tazaki and suddenly everything went crazy. He had seen chaos and bodies, and he raced to her as quickly as he could have, but the bullet had gotten to her before he could have. 

Oh no. There was a bullet. A real, metal bullet, lodged in the neck of his friend. She could die from this. She was dying. 

“No, I don’t think so,” he finally replied because he didn’t panic when he woke up after the accident and sank into the floor and he wasn’t about to start panicking now. 

“Which means…” Trigger prompted.

“The bullet is still… in her.” 

“Right. So, that leads us to can you–” 

Danny didn’t even wait for the other hunter to finish, because whatever he was going to say, wasn’t happening. Not on his watch. Instead, he planted his hands firmly on Tazaki’s body - tried not to be distracted by how cold it was - and thought metal.

Taz had zoned out as some point. Not that she could blame herself. Trigger was being his stupid self, someone somewhere else was dying, and she was so tired. But she was not going to pass out. She knew better than that. But, even in her delirious state where the world seemed to move backwards and voices sounded off pitch, she still had the presence of mind to rest her eyes for a minute. 

Or, so she thought. 

Next thing she knew, she was falling. Except she was wasn’t moving, except she was completely weightless, except she wasn’t touching anything and oh no is this what dying felt like? Being stuck in a void - unable to interact with anything, even the air? For the briefest moments she didn’t exist and it was so surreal and wrong - everything screamed at her how wrong it was - that she flailed in blind panic. This couldn’t be happening! Not to her! Not like this! She did exist, she knew it! She had memories and emotions and a life - something beyond this underwater weightlessness. 

Wait. 

Underwater. 

That rung loudly in her head and her hysterical mind clung to it, because even water - even the memory of water - existed. It had weight and form and it touched every part of her body, every pore, even when she was floating on its surface. It drenched clothes and ruined hair and somehow seemed stupidly familiar to her. But she couldn’t place it. And she was tired again. 

In the corner of her mind, the corner exactly opposite the hysteric and contemplative ones, she felt something stir. A little knock, barely distinguishable from the blood pounding in her ears, but it was there. And it brought company. 

She turned and the sight that met her eyes undid a lifetime of pain in a single instance. She screamed.

A single bullet clinked to the tile floor and Danny immediately lifted the intangibility he had placed on Taz, slowly and gently laying her back down. Hopefully she would forgive him for that one day, but the bullet was out and she would live. So that was something he could live with, even if she never spoke to him again. 

Grimacing, he flicked the thing away, not even giving it a second thought as it skittered off to who-knows-where. 

He leaned forward, staring and the red huntress’ pale face. 

“She looks really bad,” he said, and turned his eyes to Trigger, demanding he come up with the next step of keeping her alive. 

“Yeah, but she’ll be okay now that that’s out,” the hunter sighed and Danny half wanted to blast him for relaxing on the job and cry because she would be okay. “Still gotta stop the bleeding though. Doubt you’ve got a handy little trick for that, huh?” 

Like the bullet, Danny didn’t dignify that with a response. Instead, he ripped his jacket off and balled it together. She moaned and grimaced when he pressed it to her shoulder, and he had to remind himself he couldn’t ask for forgiveness if she was dead. 

“It’s alright. I’m sorry, I’m sorry. But I gotta, okay? You’re gonna… I have to, okay? I’m sorry,” he said and didn’t even realize he was sobbing until the third tear ran down his face. 

“I’m sorry,” he continued, pleading with her to hang in there, please, just for him. Just a little bit longer. 

“I’m sorry!” 

Behind him, Trigger looked up, hunter senses alert, and whooped loudly as backup burst through the doors, making efficient work of the crazed gunmen. 

“Oh, finally!” he shouted, climbing out of their little safe area. “What took you all?”

“What happened?” the leader asked, lowering his gun. As Trigger started explaining why he wasn’t crazy and the chief adviser totally was a werewolf, the largest man in the group recognized the sounds of a particular thorn in his side sobbing and holstered his rifle, breaking from the group. 

“Danny?” he asked, yanking the heavy mahogany table away. 

The ghost boy snarled at the noise, scrambling away in an hysterical panic, eyes burning in green flames. In the half instant it took him to realize he had left his charge unattended, Asha recognized that red hair and about collapsed on the spot. 

“Tazaki…! Injured over here! Hunter down!” he shouted to the rest of the group, who rushed toward him. 

Danny scrambled back to Taz’s body, hands shaking and suit stained in red as he pressed his palms into his ruined jacket. 

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” he was choking, arms pulsing as if he was giving the huntress’ shoulder CPR.

Slowly, Asha lowered himself down, waving the other hunters off for a moment. 

“Danny! Danny, it’s me. It’s Asha. I’m here.”

“I’m sorry!”

“Danny, I’m going to take over, okay? You have to get off Tazaki, alright?” 

“I’m sorry!” 

“Danny, you have to stop. You’re hurting her.” 

The ghost boy reared back as if he had been burned. Instantly, Asha took over the hold, squeezing his palm into the huntress’ shoulder hard enough for her to groan in displeasure. 

“There you go, Red. It’s okay now,” he cooed. Looking up, he whistled the other hunters over, who got to work bandaging her up and checking her vitals. 

Letting go, Asha turned to Danny. The boy had backed himself against the other overturned table, staring somewhere between Taz’s lifeless body and another dimension altogether. 

He stared quietly, as the other hunters looked her over, and stared as they lifted her onto a portable stretcher. 

“Danny?” Asha prompted quietly, lowering himself in front of the comatose child. He knew they both wanted to go with her, but the ghost boy was in no state to get there on his own. 

“She wanted to see me in a suit,” Danny said. “Said she’d do it, one day.” 

Silently, Asha reached for the boy, who leaned into him like a lifeline. Any other day, the large man would’ve laughed at the very idea of carrying the ghost boy around. The child had peeved him off more times than Asha could count and was a long way from any sort of comradery from the older hunter. 

Of course, any other day Tazaki wouldn’t be flat lining and being carried out of city hall on a stretcher. 

Any other day, but not today. 

So he carried Danny, supporting him just the way he needed. Today, they had both almost lost their best friend. Today, he could be there to comfort and coddle a scared boy as they left behind a puddle of blood and one ruined perfect blue tie. 

//

Asked by @tazaki-theredknight-blog​ for the send “dapper” for a starter where my muse is wearing a suit or tux meme. 

Got a question or prompt for the mun or muse? Ask away! 

FBIS Story ch.4

Beginning  || Previous Chapter

“Whoa, Derek. Did I miss some sort of werewolf routine thingy, like a bi-annual shift in the moon on Mars, because I know the full moon is next week so it’s impossible that’s what made you go all rogue werewolf on my bag, and we’ve spent all day in bed and I’ve had you moaning all day, which is so very different from your angry growling even if I can make you growl and moan basically at the same time but that’s different, and my point is, I know I didn’t do anything to make you angry,” Stiles rambles as he takes in the mess next to the couch in the living room.

“Nothing that warrants this at least,” he continues, “and shouldn’t you be more in control anyway?”

The backpack that Stiles had dropped there when they had arrived, having unpacked only as much as he needed, like his toothbrush, lays on its front, zipper wide open and with nearly all its contents strewn about it. He crosses his arms over his threadbare shirt as he turns to Derek, who walks in a moment later, with an unimpressed expression.

“You’re cleaning up after yourself, mister,” Stiles declares, crouching down to reach for the laptop that was still in the backpack. He stops as he notices the busted zipper and groans. “Dude, this was my favorite backpack!”

“Will you stop accusing me of something I didn’t do?” Derek huffs in reply, stepping into place next to him. “If I had gone ‘rogue werewolf’-” he actually makes air quotes as he meets Stiles pouty glare dismissively, “then that backpack would be in shreds.” He opens his mouth again to add on but Stiles interrupts.

“And ‘don’t call me, dude’. I know, I know.” Stiles waves it off. Derek knows he’ll never stop and Stiles knows he’ll never stop complaining.

Stiles also knows Derek has a point, which he kinda hates because he loves being right, and also this is totally not on him. Then again he’s stopped getting too attached to material things because they always end up getting damaged sooner or later so it’s not a big deal and Derek could just admit it. Handing off the backpack for Derek to inspect, he plops down on the couch, legs spread out on it wide and boots up the laptop.

“The only two people in this apartment are me and you - your nose would’ve told us otherwise if not - and you were the one who went to grab new blankets two hours ago so there’s really only one possibility here and it’s you,” he says without looking up.

“Or it was you who broke the zipper and then knocked over the backpack while sleepwalking,” Derek argues.

“I don’t sleep walk anymore so if anyone knocked it over it’s you… And then you kicked it for extra measure just to scatter all my things-”

“Our things, actually,” Derek corrects. He can admit that he can’t be bothered with his own backpack, so he gives Stiles anything he might need. Sometimes they switch off carrying it. Mostly it’s on Stiles though. Which makes sense because most of the things are his anyway.

“Wait, is this payback for me eating half your Ful Mudamas? Because that, while understandable, was totally unnecessary. It’s not like you couldn’t have stopped me from eating it or gotten it back with all your werewolf mojo,” Stiles says.

“Right, because I was going to tackle you and make a scene at a restaurant in the middle of Alexandria.”

Stiles smirks. “That’s why I’m the one who makes the plans. This,” he gestures to the mess between them, “is very weak because you’ll be the one cleaning up in the end. You got nothing out of this…” Stiles doesn’t mind messy, he can work with that, but Derek, on the other hand, likes to have the floors spotless at the very least. And well, a zipper can be fixed if need be. He does also have a spare bag in the closet. It’s important to always be prepared.

Derek rolls his eyes at Stiles. “You’ll know it when I go for payback, and it’ll come when you least expect it,” he declares. He spends some time looking over the backpack, getting close to it to make sure there’s no scent he missed before he figures their previous theory must hold some truth because there’s absolutely nothing else suspicious about the backpack.

After he cleans up, all the while ignoring Stiles’ victorious smirk, he lifts his legs so he can seat himself beneath them on the couch as well.

“No intriguing new reports,” Stiles informs him, eyes darting quickly over the screen. “Just your usual monthly omega scaring a few campers, aaand tiny asshole fairies taking their mischief too far and nearly taking down a whole town. No biggie. No new leads on the long term stuff. They should change the name to Division for the Affairs of the Supernatural because this is just S-A-D.”

“And I thought I was the one who didn’t know how to relax.” There is clear amusement in Derek’s voice and Stiles can tell it’s not directed at his great pun.

“We spent the last two days relaxing. I need something to /do/,” he complains, setting the laptop so he can sigh directly at Derek to show the extent of his misery. “There are so many undocumented supernatural affairs out there that we could search out and help with. We would’ve all appreciated it if someone had helped us out back in the day.”

“What? I’m not enough for you? Getting tired of me already?” Derek asks, referring to the first part of Stiles rant.

“Nuh-uh, this is not the time for a pity party. You know very well that if you just got over here and kissed me I’d be up for doing you in like 3 seconds flat but I just feel like there’s something-”

Derek has been leaning closer to Stiles but they both freeze when their phones beep simultaneously, in a tone that can only indicate one thing. Stiles grins and jumps to his feet. Derek rolls his eyes at him again but he’s right behind Stiles as they change, grab their things and head out to the office.

~

Jackson is waiting for them when they walk in through the front doors and greets them with a gruff, “Took you long enough.” Then he turns on an expensive designer shoe heel - some things never change - and walks away in long, fast strides. Derek watches a sly smile spread on Stiles’ face before he hurries to catch up to Jackson. He slings an arm around his shoulders.

“Hey, buddy. If only you know how much I’ve been /dying/ to talk to you,” Stiles starts. Jackson eyes him warily. “So I can tell you aaaaaall about the absolutely beautiful and amazing sex Derek and I had the last few days. He doesn’t talk much but boy, is he good with his mouth. He can do this thing with his tongue-”

“Stiles!” Jackson outright shouts, shoving Stiles away, who throws his head back with a laugh. They gain more than a few curious looks from around the halls. Derek just shakes his head as he follows behind them. “Unprofessional,” he splutters. “Totally and completely unprofessional. We have a serious matter on our hands.”

Stiles is still laughing to himself, looking to Derek for approval, who just shakes his head fondly.

“Are you sure your vacation is over already?” Jackson asks.

“I missed you too,” Stiles says. “So what’s this code red about? We don’t have many of those. I’m excited! Are you excited? I know Der’s excited, even if he won’t admit it.”

“Lydia said she’s never seen that type of magic before. No one in the department has. We have no clue what it is or where it came from,” Jackson explains, and Stiles can tell from the tone of his voice even he is intrigued. “We don’t know yet what the magic is doing either. We haven’t gotten any reports yet, so you guys are practically going in blind.”

Derek, for one, is frowning at this point, worried about what might happen. If this is some new form of magic, will they be able to figure it out before people get seriously hurt?

Stiles, on the other hand, has a determined twinkle in his eye. “Oh, finally something interesting!”

“Because of the severity of the circumstances, we’re calling in the whole team,” Jackson announces, timing his words with the opening of the gym doors to reveal the pack sans Lydia and Danny. They were both called in earlier for analysis and preparation, and would be the team’s referents here at Headquarters while they went out on the field - along with Jackson who supervised communications and execution of the mission, helping out wherever was necessary.

Erica, Boyd and Isaac wait for Derek and Stiles to join them on the mats, already dressed for training. Quick greetings are exchanged before they all turn to Jackson again.

“You have two, possibly three, days to get ready while we try to track down the exact location of the magical object or being and learn as much about it as we can. So far, there’s not much I can tell you about safety precautions or well, anything about what you’ll need. This isn’t going to be an easy one,” Jackson explains, meeting each of their focused gazes.

“Which is exactly why you called in the best team you have,” Erica says confidently, turning to Stiles for a high five as he supports her statement with a “Fuck, yeah!”

Derek nods. “We’ll start as usual; quick warm up, then divide into teams and practice hand to hand combat- no shifting. Then we’ll do some target practice, with and without firearms, and the faster you impress Stiles with gun power, the sooner you can join me for some shifted fighting.”

“No offense, big guy, but I think you’re the one who could use the most shooting practice,” Stiles interjects, patting his back.

“That’s why you’ll be staying here with me after hours to help.”

Isaac snickers quietly and Stiles shoots a playful glare in his direction. “I guess that’s the burden I have to carry for being such a desirable man.”

Derek has turned to Jackson again. “Keep us updated so we know what to continue with. Especially about the magic, so Stiles can prepare.”

“Of course. Stiles should go talk to Lydia soon either way,” Jackson says.

“Like I said, I’m a desirable man.” Stiles grins.

“So, are we getting started or what?” Boyd asks, clapping his hands together. Always the practical man, straight to the point and driving the team forward.

“You’re on,” Stiles calls and bounces on the balls of his feet.

“We’ll start with the two of us against you three. Call it a proper welcoming,” Derek decides and they split up in the gym, as Jackson heads back out.

“The two of you always sticking together is sickeningly sweet,” Erica coos. “But this time it’s gonna be your downfall.”

Stiles doesn’t know how he ended up being the only human amidst a bunch of werewolves, or why he never does a thing to change that situation. Then again, he holds his own pretty well amongst their speed and strength since he’s mastered the techniques. He is the one left breathing hardest either way though by the time Derek ends the first round, giving them a 3-minute break.

“Werewolves suck,” Stiles announces breathily as Derek and Boyd start one upping each other with push ups after about a minute, and Erica starts stretching and performing various flips. He’s kind of grateful for Isaac - though he’d still never admit it - because he’s the only one who takes use of the break and doesn’t show off.

Thankfully, Stiles totally outdoes them all at the shooting range. They all try but Stiles is a knife throwing expert, and well, he’d found a much easier approach to weapons since he didn’t have claws and fangs to resort to.

All in all, they make a damn good team, but there’s no telling what awaits them outside of the gym and what skills they’re going to need.

What do you think the team will find? What should their next step be? Which approach should they use, or what skill do you think they will need?

Comment or reply to keep the story alive!

Not sure if anyone is interested, but I’ve made a lil’ list of some of my favorite whump/hurt/comfort fics because @thisismywhump-re-blog​ asked. All of these are fics that I have read more than once, and a lot of them are for SPN because that was my crack way back when haha. A lot of hurt and team bonding and friends. No ships here whatsoever because I have no interest in that stuff. 

SPN

Open, Shut by MirrorDance: “A street prophet foresees a deadly disaster and goes to the only people who would believe him: the Winchesters and Bobby Singer. It's an open and shut case except the only solution is -how do you empty a town of four thousand people? Post-Family Remains.”

Lunatics by Scullspeare: “In the midst of snowstorm, a stranger runs into an injured and hypothermic Sam. His memory is spotty; he knows that a hunt went sideways and that Dean's in trouble-he just doesn't know where he is. Outsider POV, showcasing the brothers' relationship. H/C”

Heroes For Ghosts by Gaelicspirit: “Set after 1.16, Shadow. In an attempt to save a disillusioned hunter from himself, Dean and Sam are caught in a spell that sends them to 1870 Texas. Surviving the old west is hard enough. Escaping it could prove to be impossible”

Calcium Deficiency by PADavis: “A bus, a hunt, and a hungry spirit. And police.”

Desolation Angels by Gaelicspirit: “Set in Season 1. While Dean struggles to keep his head in the game after being healed, Sam works to come to grips with John's purposeful distance. The last thing they need is to run sideways of two brothers hunting for buried pirate treasure...”

Airport ‘07 by K Hanna Korossy: “Dean doesn't even have to get on a plane to have a really bad time at the airport.”

In Loco Parentis by K Hanna Korossy: “After John's death, another hunter decides to "finish" the Winchester boys' training, starting with Dean.”

Mercy by Lovin Jackson: “A "Mystery Spot" Tribute - When all seems lost, Sam comes up with a new plan to save his brother bringing unthinkable consequences.”

To The End by K Hanna Korossy: (Honestly probably my fave SPN one) “Their dad's death, echoes of Stanford, and a hunt that isn't what it seems bring Dean's doubts to light about Sam's commitment to the hunt, and to him.”

Avengers/Marvel

The Last Level by thegraytigress: (My actual fave. Hands down) “There are dark places in the world. A battle with an old enemy lands Tony, Steve, and Clint in a hellish nightmare and only their faith in each other stands between them and death.”

The Right Call by thegraytigress: “The first time Clint made a tough call, he spared Natasha's life. This time his decision may prove to be his last when it lands him and Steve in the middle of the jungle, alone, injured, and fighting to survive.”

Atlao by Nilly’s Issue: “Tony stares at the blinking timer and collapses against the wall. "Steve. Steve, I can't carry you."”

Hawaii Five 0

Old News by Maz01: “Emotional pressures send Danny into a tailspin. Five-0 must deal with the ramifications, as well as a triple murder inquiry.”

The Eleventh Hour by Faye Dartmouth: “This was all Steve's fault. The entire case had been Steve's idea, after all. And now, here they were. Handcuffed to chairs, back to back, in a deserted warehouse, in the Middle of Nowhere, Hawaii, with two idiots holding guns threatening them.”

Blue Bloods

In the Moonlight by Haley94: “A collection of missing scenes and new perspectives from the second-season episode, "Moonlighting." Now up and cross-posted, scene #7 - Frank isn't the only one unable to sleep. Contains major spoilers for "The Life We Chose."

Breathless by Haley94: “Jamie and Renzulli split up while clearing a building. They need to remember not to do that again.

Mission: Impossible

The Enemy Within by purehalo: “Ethan's team have only two days to stop a terrorist from releasing a chemical weapon. But with Brandt suffering from the effects of a drug, it's going to be a harder mission than any of them thought.”

Over the River and Through the Woods by mousie tongue: “They say the most challenging prey is that which has been trained as a hunter. William Brandt is about to experience that first hand. Gen, Brandt-centric team fic.”

The Evil Within

Anywhere But Here by Beckon: “They were going to be bleeding out and defenseless against anything that might find them- and he was stuck here where nothing could get him. He was safe and... they were as good as dead.”

If anyone wants to add more non-shippy fics I’d love to read them pls and thanks <33

Seven Biographies You Should Read to Live a Better, Richer and Happier Life

Every problem you face, has been faced by someone else before you. Biographies, therefore, represent an incredible resource: seeing the successes and failures of different approaches to life, without having to live them all yourself firsthand.

Here are some of my favorite biographies, along with the lessons I drew from that individual on how to live better:

1. Mary Somerville

Who She Was:

18th century Scottish writer and polymath. Most famous for her translation of Pierre-Simon Laplace’s Mécanique Céleste, she was of of the two first female inductees to the Royal Astronomical Society (the other was Caroline Herschel).

She spoke several languages fluently, was an expert in mathematics and physics, as well as having deep knowledge of many other subjects. Moreover, she accomplished all of this while raising six children and maintaining a household.

Lesson: You can achieve greatness while still dealing with life’s responsibilities.

The biggest obstacles to success in life are rarely the stuff of great stories. There’s no terrifying dragon to slay, no impossible odds to triumph over. Instead we’re encumbered by the mundane: needing to do laundry, take care of your kids, entertain guests and keep up appearances.

Somerville’s biography is a practical one to learn from because she, more so than most, was weighed down by the expectation to be a mother and housewife, before anything else she could accomplish.

In her biography, we can see many strategies she employed to nonetheless work diligently towards her education. These include:

Learning the ability to mentally bookmark in whatever she was working on when interrupted, so she could resume it immediately once the distraction subsided.

Working through material in her head, when she was denied a reading candle to further her studies as a child.

The ability to squeeze time from spare moments throughout the day. Somerville was a master of time-management and made use of every opportunity she got.

Read her autobiography here.

2. Jack Ma (马云)

Who He Is:

Founder of Alibaba and third-richest man in China. Spent his youth waking up early and riding his bike forty minutes to offer tours of Hangzhou to tourists to practice his English. Failed the university entrance examination three times before finally being admitted. On his first trip to the United States, he discovered the Internet and devoted himself to building online companies in China.

The success of his companies (Alibaba’s IPO in 2014 to the New York Stock Exchange, was the biggest of all-time), and his legendary public speaking ability, both in English and in Mandarin Chinese, have given Ma a reputation for charisma and leadership.

Lesson: Social skills matter more than technical know-how.

Unlike many of China’s other big tech founders, Ma doesn’t have a technical background. He himself admits, “I still don’t understand what coding is all about, I still don’t understand the technology behind the Internet.”

How then, did a mediocre student with poor technical skills build one of the biggest Internet companies in the world?

The answer is that Ma strength lies in his understanding of other people:

Inspirational leadership. Ma likes to invent aphorisms that communicate his ideas and inspire. “Work happily, but live seriously.” “Customers first, employees second, and shareholders third.”

Business strategy. Ma’s insight into human nature extends to a deep understanding of the market. His journey to success involved outmaneuvering well-heeled American rivals such as eBay by understanding what customers want.

Leading as teaching. Ma’s first start was as an English teacher, and in some ways, he’s never changed. His leadership style draws from many sources, but the role of teaching in communicating is a major part.

Although those in the West are already quite familiar with the likes of Jobs, Gates or Musk, I think Ma offers a refreshing alternative view on what it takes to be a successful business leader.

Read his biography, by Duncan Clark, here.

3. Richard Feynman

Who He Was:

Nobel-laureate physicist, Feynman worked on the Manhattan project, made breathroughs in quantum electrodynamics and even created techniques for solving difficult problems in quantum physics which bear his name. On top of that he played the bongo, spoke Japanese and Portuguese, picked locks, played pranks on his superiors and did important research work while sitting in strip clubs.

Lesson: Serious accomplishment doesn’t require a serious personality.

Feynman is an incredible example of many things: he was brilliant; he was a fantastic educator, producing some of the most lucid explanations of scientific phenomena I’ve ever encountered; he was thoroughly unconventional and unconcerned about what others thought of him. But perhaps, most of all, his biography is a lesson that success doesn’t need to be a serious business.

Feynman often started projects on whims, and took them to surprising heights before switching to something new:

Becoming a professional artist. After Feynman bet an artist friend that the friend couldn’t teach him how to draw, Feynman eventually went on to practice well enough that he was selling his artwork.

Picking locks on the Manhattan Project. To pass time during the wartime atomic bomb project, Feynman would pick the locks of his colleagues. This got out of hand so that his supervisors thought there might even be a security breach before it was revealed to be Feynman fooling around.

Refusing to sign. He was once offered fifty dollars to speak at a local college. He hated paperwork, so he agreed on the condition that he didn’t have to sign his name more than thirteen times. When he ran out of signatures after he gave the talk, but before he got paid, the school pressured to give him the money. Feynman refused: he wouldn’t sign more than thirteen times. (Eventually they found a workaround so he could use his 13th signature on the check.)

There are many biographies which illustrate the strengths and foibles of the person involved: you see how they accomplished great things, but also the price they paid to have such a personality to achieve it. Feynman, however, is different. His curiosity and spontaneous engagement, combined with his level of accomplishment makes him a figure to aspire to be, even if it’s impossible to emulate.

Read his autobiography here. Also, you can listen to my podcast episode where I discuss this book and the influence it has had on me with guest Kalid Azad.

4. Arnold Schwarzenegger

Who He Is:

Schwarzenegger is famous for his movies and his role as governor of California from 2003 to 2011. However his success has been much more broad ranging. Starting with bodybuilding, which he dominated—winning the Mr. Olympia title seven times—Schwarzenegger has gone on to build million-dollar businesses in construction, fitness, restaurants and real-estate.

Lesson: Confidence creates success.

Arnold Schwarzenegger is as close as we can possibly get to the experiment of what would happen to a person if they experienced near non-stop success in everything they attempted.

Schwarzenegger is the epitome of self-confidence. Some memorable exploits include:

Breaking the rules. Before his first bodybuilding competition, he was enrolled in the army. Despite asking for permission to compete, his commanding officer said no. Not letting that stop him, he snuck out, won the competition and immediately returned to spend 24-hours in a detention cell for insubordination. When higher officials found out he won, he was let go.

Consummate marketer. One of his early entrepreneurial exploits was construction, which he took up with fellow body builder Franco Columbu. Taking advantage of their European names and accents, they marketed themselves as offering “Italian” design. Ever the salesman, Schwarzenegger even resold what was left of a chimney they replaced at one house as “vintage bricks” to another customer.

Equity, not salary. When he was primarily known as an action star, he wanted to move into comedies. Unfortunately his salary meant the transition would be difficult as the latter tend to gross less than action blockbusters. So, with the movie Twins, he proposed an unusual deal: no salary, but a percentage of the gross he would share with costar Danny DeVito. The resulting hit ended up making him over $35 million.

In all these cases, what stands out is Schwarzenegger’s unshakeable confidence in himself and a willingness to pursue bold moves backed by that confidence. Although luck and talent have certainly been on his side, it’s also clear that his confidence has been, in many instances, a self-fulfilling prophecy—creating the reality that he believes in.

Read his autobiography here.

5. Marie Curie

Who She Was:

Born to a struggling Polish family during the Russian occupation, Marie Curie (née Marya Sklodowska) would go on to become one of the most famous scientists of all time for her discovery of the principle of radiation. She would also become the first person to receive the Nobel Prize twice, for physics and later for chemistry.

Lesson: Greatness comes from service to a mission, not the self.

In reading great biographies, there’s always the risk of importing the narcissism and megalomania that can come from both achieving great success and being the kind of person who would devote their life to reaching it.

Curie’s biography is quite different. In her pursuits, both Curie and her husband Pierre (who jointly shared her first Nobel) were wholly devoted to science and did not seek the kind of fame or gain they easily could have gathered from their discoveries:

Curie discovered radium, which at its time, was the most expensive element on the planet. Her gram of radium, carefully distilled for her research, was therefore worth a fortune, but she refused any profit from it.

The money for her Nobel she volunteered to the war effort, after France had been invaded by Germany.

Her process for refining radium, similarly, could have been patented and allowed her and her family to live in comfort for perpetuity. Instead, she offered to explain the process to anyone who would listen—many of whom eventually became rich following her recipe.

This selfless nature, at times, made for greater inconveniences with resources. However, this same spirit won her many friends and allies, and likely contributed to her scientific prestige. Devotion to causes, whether they be an independent Poland or scientific discovery, guided Curie’s life more than private gain. That she ended up achieving so much, nonetheless, may indicate that, for many, our priorities could be shifted.

Read her biography, written by her daughter Eve, here.

6. Albert Einstein

Who He Was:

Albert Einstein is paradoxical in that, despite his overwhelming fame as a scientist and genius, he is also underrated at the same time. Although he won his Nobel for the photoelectric effect, his influence on physics has been enormous:

Through an ingenious experiment using the random motion of particles suspended in water, was able to infer the size of water molecules.

Made foundational discoveries in what would eventually become quantum mechanics, our best theory of physics to date.

Discovered both special and general relativity, overturning centuries of Newton’s dominance in describing the rules of gravity.

Most scientific discoveries are a product of their times, not their discoverers. That is to say, most discoveries have parallel efforts to find the same thing, around the same time. While Darwin was formulating his theory of natural selection around the Galapagos, Alfred Wallace had also independently come up with the same idea.

Einstein was different. There were no comparable insights into the nature of space and time competing with Einstein and it may have been decades or longer for the truth to have been uncovered had it not been from his insights into relativity.

Lesson: Groundbreaking insights begin by asking questions others haven’t.

What allowed Einstein to make such groundbreaking discoveries? Although his impressive intellect is usually cited as the main contributor, that explanation seems unsatisfying to me. He was clearly more intelligent than most of us, but this doesn’t really explain his triumph over his other genius-level colleagues in making such impressive discoveries.

Rather, I think it was Einstein’s habit of asking questions and performing thought-experiments that allowed him to consider issues others hadn’t.

Some of Einstein’s most famous thought experiments include:

How would one see time on a speed-of-light trip? Special relativity came about through a question of how different observers would view the time of clocks, owing to the then-confirmed finite speed of light.

How could you tell the difference between gravity and acceleration? General relativity, with a mathematical difficulty so fiendish it gave Einstein stomach problems, began by considering an extension of the original idea—how could an observer inside a box tell whether they were being subjected to a gravitational field or were merely accelerating?

What is quantum mechanics hiding? Imagine two particles thrown together at great speeds, and then measuring the momentum of one long after the collision. It would be possible to infer, therefore, the momentum of the other by laws of conservation. However, if you measured the position instead, you would, by the Uncertainty Principle, not be able to tell this momentum. How can the outcome of a distant measurement impact the physical reality of the other particle?

What’s interesting is that these thought experiments were often fruitful, even when Einstein turned out to be wrong, as was the case for the latter experiment. Quantum events do have this “spooky action at a distance” we now know as entanglement. However wrong his intuition, however, his thought experiment nonetheless precipitated an important discovery.

Read his biography, by Walter Isaacson, here.

7. Benjamin Franklin

Who He Was:

Benjamin Franklin was many things: writer, entrepreneur, inventor, scientist, philanthropist, diplomat and one of the founding fathers of the United States. His Autobiography, ended up becoming an international bestseller, essentially defining the genre.

More than just a historical figure, Franklin is the prototype for the self-made man. Arriving in Philadelphia, penniless and unknown, after running away from the last few years of harsh apprenticeship under his brother in Boston, he built himself a successful business, contributed to many civic projects and served in creating a new kind of country.

Lesson: Your most important years might still be ahead of you

Franklin’s life has many lessons. Both those that he explicitly states in his Autobiography, where he argues in favor of virtuous living, thrift and industry, as well as the unspoken lessons we can glean from his life: the value of managing one’s reputation, satire as a more powerful weapon than outright attack and how to build alliances that will serve your entire life.

However, a less obvious lesson, which I nonetheless believe is very important in viewing Franklin’s life is how his most famous accomplishments occurred after he was “retired” and had already started to view his best moments as having been behind him.

For comparison’s sake, in Walter Isaacson’s 493-page biography of Franklin, the moment when he starts to write what would become his famous Autobiography occurs on page 254. That is to say, when Franklin, aged 65, retired and having achieved success in business, writing and science sat down to write his life for posterity, the most important events had yet to happen yet. He had yet to sign the Declaration of Independence, negotiate diplomatic ties with France or participate in drafting the American constitution.

It’s often easy to dwell in nostalgia, to rest upon past moments as having already defined the course of our lives. But, as in Franklin’s case, it may be that the story people end up telling about you has yet to happen yet.

Read his Autobiography here. I also recommend, for a more complete picture, Walter Isaacson’s biography.

Why Reading Biographies Matters

I’m persuaded that much of how we learn things is by emulating the people around us. We pick up behaviors and attitudes, not so much through direct instruction or logical deduction about the world but by watching how other people think and respond to situations.

Biographies, therefore, represent an enormous resource for those who want to shape their personality for the better. By finding people who embody the principles you want to live by, you can see firsthand how they did it.

Importantly, however, good biographies also present the trade-offs one must make in order to live a certain way. Seeing those trade-offs firsthand, tells you much more than reading about abstract notions of self-improvement, which tend to conceal the sacrifices that are necessary for the triumphs.

====

This list is necessarily incomplete—what are your favorite biographies that I’ve missed? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

Seven Biographies You Should Read to Live a Better, Richer and Happier Life syndicated from https://pricelessmomentweb.wordpress.com/

Seven Biographies You Should Read to Live a Better, Richer and Happier Life

Every problem you face, has been faced by someone else before you. Biographies, therefore, represent an incredible resource: seeing the successes and failures of different approaches to life, without having to live them all yourself firsthand.

Here are some of my favorite biographies, along with the lessons I drew from that individual on how to live better:

1. Mary Somerville

Who She Was:

18th century Scottish writer and polymath. Most famous for her translation of Pierre-Simon Laplace’s Mécanique Céleste, she was of of the two first female inductees to the Royal Astronomical Society (the other was Caroline Herschel).

She spoke several languages fluently, was an expert in mathematics and physics, as well as having deep knowledge of many other subjects. Moreover, she accomplished all of this while raising six children and maintaining a household.

Lesson: You can achieve greatness while still dealing with life’s responsibilities.

The biggest obstacles to success in life are rarely the stuff of great stories. There’s no terrifying dragon to slay, no impossible odds to triumph over. Instead we’re encumbered by the mundane: needing to do laundry, take care of your kids, entertain guests and keep up appearances.

Somerville’s biography is a practical one to learn from because she, more so than most, was weighed down by the expectation to be a mother and housewife, before anything else she could accomplish.

In her biography, we can see many strategies she employed to nonetheless work diligently towards her education. These include:

Learning the ability to mentally bookmark in whatever she was working on when interrupted, so she could resume it immediately once the distraction subsided.

Working through material in her head, when she was denied a reading candle to further her studies as a child.

The ability to squeeze time from spare moments throughout the day. Somerville was a master of time-management and made use of every opportunity she got.

Read her autobiography here.

2. Jack Ma (马云)

Who He Is:

Founder of Alibaba and third-richest man in China. Spent his youth waking up early and riding his bike forty minutes to offer tours of Hangzhou to tourists to practice his English. Failed the university entrance examination three times before finally being admitted. On his first trip to the United States, he discovered the Internet and devoted himself to building online companies in China.

The success of his companies (Alibaba’s IPO in 2014 to the New York Stock Exchange, was the biggest of all-time), and his legendary public speaking ability, both in English and in Mandarin Chinese, have given Ma a reputation for charisma and leadership.

Lesson: Social skills matter more than technical know-how.

Unlike many of China’s other big tech founders, Ma doesn’t have a technical background. He himself admits, “I still don’t understand what coding is all about, I still don’t understand the technology behind the Internet.”

How then, did a mediocre student with poor technical skills build one of the biggest Internet companies in the world?

The answer is that Ma strength lies in his understanding of other people:

Inspirational leadership. Ma likes to invent aphorisms that communicate his ideas and inspire. “Work happily, but live seriously.” “Customers first, employees second, and shareholders third.”

Business strategy. Ma’s insight into human nature extends to a deep understanding of the market. His journey to success involved outmaneuvering well-heeled American rivals such as eBay by understanding what customers want.

Leading as teaching. Ma’s first start was as an English teacher, and in some ways, he’s never changed. His leadership style draws from many sources, but the role of teaching in communicating is a major part.

Although those in the West are already quite familiar with the likes of Jobs, Gates or Musk, I think Ma offers a refreshing alternative view on what it takes to be a successful business leader.

Read his biography, by Duncan Clark, here.

3. Richard Feynman

Who He Was:

Nobel-laureate physicist, Feynman worked on the Manhattan project, made breathroughs in quantum electrodynamics and even created techniques for solving difficult problems in quantum physics which bear his name. On top of that he played the bongo, spoke Japanese and Portuguese, picked locks, played pranks on his superiors and did important research work while sitting in strip clubs.

Lesson: Serious accomplishment doesn’t require a serious personality.

Feynman is an incredible example of many things: he was brilliant; he was a fantastic educator, producing some of the most lucid explanations of scientific phenomena I’ve ever encountered; he was thoroughly unconventional and unconcerned about what others thought of him. But perhaps, most of all, his biography is a lesson that success doesn’t need to be a serious business.

Feynman often started projects on whims, and took them to surprising heights before switching to something new:

Becoming a professional artist. After Feynman bet an artist friend that the friend couldn’t teach him how to draw, Feynman eventually went on to practice well enough that he was selling his artwork.

Picking locks on the Manhattan Project. To pass time during the wartime atomic bomb project, Feynman would pick the locks of his colleagues. This got out of hand so that his supervisors thought there might even be a security breach before it was revealed to be Feynman fooling around.

Refusing to sign. He was once offered fifty dollars to speak at a local college. He hated paperwork, so he agreed on the condition that he didn’t have to sign his name more than thirteen times. When he ran out of signatures after he gave the talk, but before he got paid, the school pressured to give him the money. Feynman refused: he wouldn’t sign more than thirteen times. (Eventually they found a workaround so he could use his 13th signature on the check.)

There are many biographies which illustrate the strengths and foibles of the person involved: you see how they accomplished great things, but also the price they paid to have such a personality to achieve it. Feynman, however, is different. His curiosity and spontaneous engagement, combined with his level of accomplishment makes him a figure to aspire to be, even if it’s impossible to emulate.

Read his autobiography here. Also, you can listen to my podcast episode where I discuss this book and the influence it has had on me with guest Kalid Azad.

4. Arnold Schwarzenegger

Who He Is:

Schwarzenegger is famous for his movies and his role as governor of California from 2003 to 2011. However his success has been much more broad ranging. Starting with bodybuilding, which he dominated—winning the Mr. Olympia title seven times—Schwarzenegger has gone on to build million-dollar businesses in construction, fitness, restaurants and real-estate.

Lesson: Confidence creates success.

Arnold Schwarzenegger is as close as we can possibly get to the experiment of what would happen to a person if they experienced near non-stop success in everything they attempted.

Schwarzenegger is the epitome of self-confidence. Some memorable exploits include:

Breaking the rules. Before his first bodybuilding competition, he was enrolled in the army. Despite asking for permission to compete, his commanding officer said no. Not letting that stop him, he snuck out, won the competition and immediately returned to spend 24-hours in a detention cell for insubordination. When higher officials found out he won, he was let go.

Consummate marketer. One of his early entrepreneurial exploits was construction, which he took up with fellow body builder Franco Columbu. Taking advantage of their European names and accents, they marketed themselves as offering “Italian” design. Ever the salesman, Schwarzenegger even resold what was left of a chimney they replaced at one house as “vintage bricks” to another customer.

Equity, not salary. When he was primarily known as an action star, he wanted to move into comedies. Unfortunately his salary meant the transition would be difficult as the latter tend to gross less than action blockbusters. So, with the movie Twins, he proposed an unusual deal: no salary, but a percentage of the gross he would share with costar Danny DeVito. The resulting hit ended up making him over $35 million.

In all these cases, what stands out is Schwarzenegger’s unshakeable confidence in himself and a willingness to pursue bold moves backed by that confidence. Although luck and talent have certainly been on his side, it’s also clear that his confidence has been, in many instances, a self-fulfilling prophecy—creating the reality that he believes in.

Read his autobiography here.

5. Marie Curie

Who She Was:

Born to a struggling Polish family during the Russian occupation, Marie Curie (née Marya Sklodowska) would go on to become one of the most famous scientists of all time for her discovery of the principle of radiation. She would also become the first person to receive the Nobel Prize twice, for physics and later for chemistry.

Lesson: Greatness comes from service to a mission, not the self.

In reading great biographies, there’s always the risk of importing the narcissism and megalomania that can come from both achieving great success and being the kind of person who would devote their life to reaching it.

Curie’s biography is quite different. In her pursuits, both Curie and her husband Pierre (who jointly shared her first Nobel) were wholly devoted to science and did not seek the kind of fame or gain they easily could have gathered from their discoveries:

Curie discovered radium, which at its time, was the most expensive element on the planet. Her gram of radium, carefully distilled for her research, was therefore worth a fortune, but she refused any profit from it.

The money for her Nobel she volunteered to the war effort, after France had been invaded by Germany.

Her process for refining radium, similarly, could have been patented and allowed her and her family to live in comfort for perpetuity. Instead, she offered to explain the process to anyone who would listen—many of whom eventually became rich following her recipe.

This selfless nature, at times, made for greater inconveniences with resources. However, this same spirit won her many friends and allies, and likely contributed to her scientific prestige. Devotion to causes, whether they be an independent Poland or scientific discovery, guided Curie’s life more than private gain. That she ended up achieving so much, nonetheless, may indicate that, for many, our priorities could be shifted.

Read her biography, written by her daughter Eve, here.

6. Albert Einstein

Who He Was:

Albert Einstein is paradoxical in that, despite his overwhelming fame as a scientist and genius, he is also underrated at the same time. Although he won his Nobel for the photoelectric effect, his influence on physics has been enormous:

Through an ingenious experiment using the random motion of particles suspended in water, was able to infer the size of water molecules.

Made foundational discoveries in what would eventually become quantum mechanics, our best theory of physics to date.

Discovered both special and general relativity, overturning centuries of Newton’s dominance in describing the rules of gravity.

Most scientific discoveries are a product of their times, not their discoverers. That is to say, most discoveries have parallel efforts to find the same thing, around the same time. While Darwin was formulating his theory of natural selection around the Galapagos, Alfred Wallace had also independently come up with the same idea.

Einstein was different. There were no comparable insights into the nature of space and time competing with Einstein and it may have been decades or longer for the truth to have been uncovered had it not been from his insights into relativity.

Lesson: Groundbreaking insights begin by asking questions others haven’t.

What allowed Einstein to make such groundbreaking discoveries? Although his impressive intellect is usually cited as the main contributor, that explanation seems unsatisfying to me. He was clearly more intelligent than most of us, but this doesn’t really explain his triumph over his other genius-level colleagues in making such impressive discoveries.

Rather, I think it was Einstein’s habit of asking questions and performing thought-experiments that allowed him to consider issues others hadn’t.

Some of Einstein’s most famous thought experiments include:

How would one see time on a speed-of-light trip? Special relativity came about through a question of how different observers would view the time of clocks, owing to the then-confirmed finite speed of light.

How could you tell the difference between gravity and acceleration? General relativity, with a mathematical difficulty so fiendish it gave Einstein stomach problems, began by considering an extension of the original idea—how could an observer inside a box tell whether they were being subjected to a gravitational field or were merely accelerating?

What is quantum mechanics hiding? Imagine two particles thrown together at great speeds, and then measuring the momentum of one long after the collision. It would be possible to infer, therefore, the momentum of the other by laws of conservation. However, if you measured the position instead, you would, by the Uncertainty Principle, not be able to tell this momentum. How can the outcome of a distant measurement impact the physical reality of the other particle?

What’s interesting is that these thought experiments were often fruitful, even when Einstein turned out to be wrong, as was the case for the latter experiment. Quantum events do have this “spooky action at a distance” we now know as entanglement. However wrong his intuition, however, his thought experiment nonetheless precipitated an important discovery.

Read his biography, by Walter Isaacson, here.

7. Benjamin Franklin

Who He Was:

Benjamin Franklin was many things: writer, entrepreneur, inventor, scientist, philanthropist, diplomat and one of the founding fathers of the United States. His Autobiography, ended up becoming an international bestseller, essentially defining the genre.

More than just a historical figure, Franklin is the prototype for the self-made man. Arriving in Philadelphia, penniless and unknown, after running away from the last few years of harsh apprenticeship under his brother in Boston, he built himself a successful business, contributed to many civic projects and served in creating a new kind of country.

Lesson: Your most important years might still be ahead of you

Franklin’s life has many lessons. Both those that he explicitly states in his Autobiography, where he argues in favor of virtuous living, thrift and industry, as well as the unspoken lessons we can glean from his life: the value of managing one’s reputation, satire as a more powerful weapon than outright attack and how to build alliances that will serve your entire life.

However, a less obvious lesson, which I nonetheless believe is very important in viewing Franklin’s life is how his most famous accomplishments occurred after he was “retired” and had already started to view his best moments as having been behind him.

For comparison’s sake, in Walter Isaacson’s 493-page biography of Franklin, the moment when he starts to write what would become his famous Autobiography occurs on page 254. That is to say, when Franklin, aged 65, retired and having achieved success in business, writing and science sat down to write his life for posterity, the most important events had yet to happen yet. He had yet to sign the Declaration of Independence, negotiate diplomatic ties with France or participate in drafting the American constitution.

It’s often easy to dwell in nostalgia, to rest upon past moments as having already defined the course of our lives. But, as in Franklin’s case, it may be that the story people end up telling about you has yet to happen yet.

Read his Autobiography here. I also recommend, for a more complete picture, Walter Isaacson’s biography.

Why Reading Biographies Matters

I’m persuaded that much of how we learn things is by emulating the people around us. We pick up behaviors and attitudes, not so much through direct instruction or logical deduction about the world but by watching how other people think and respond to situations.

Biographies, therefore, represent an enormous resource for those who want to shape their personality for the better. By finding people who embody the principles you want to live by, you can see firsthand how they did it.

Importantly, however, good biographies also present the trade-offs one must make in order to live a certain way. Seeing those trade-offs firsthand, tells you much more than reading about abstract notions of self-improvement, which tend to conceal the sacrifices that are necessary for the triumphs.

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This list is necessarily incomplete—what are your favorite biographies that I’ve missed? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

Seven Biographies You Should Read to Live a Better, Richer and Happier Life syndicated from https://pricelessmomentweb.wordpress.com/

Seven Biographies You Should Read to Live a Better, Richer and Happier Life

Every problem you face, has been faced by someone else before you. Biographies, therefore, represent an incredible resource: seeing the successes and failures of different approaches to life, without having to live them all yourself firsthand.

Here are some of my favorite biographies, along with the lessons I drew from that individual on how to live better:

1. Mary Somerville

Who She Was:

18th century Scottish writer and polymath. Most famous for her translation of Pierre-Simon Laplace’s Mécanique Céleste, she was of of the two first female inductees to the Royal Astronomical Society (the other was Caroline Herschel).

She spoke several languages fluently, was an expert in mathematics and physics, as well as having deep knowledge of many other subjects. Moreover, she accomplished all of this while raising six children and maintaining a household.

Lesson: You can achieve greatness while still dealing with life’s responsibilities.

The biggest obstacles to success in life are rarely the stuff of great stories. There’s no terrifying dragon to slay, no impossible odds to triumph over. Instead we’re encumbered by the mundane: needing to do laundry, take care of your kids, entertain guests and keep up appearances.

Somerville’s biography is a practical one to learn from because she, more so than most, was weighed down by the expectation to be a mother and housewife, before anything else she could accomplish.

In her biography, we can see many strategies she employed to nonetheless work diligently towards her education. These include:

Learning the ability to mentally bookmark in whatever she was working on when interrupted, so she could resume it immediately once the distraction subsided.

Working through material in her head, when she was denied a reading candle to further her studies as a child.

The ability to squeeze time from spare moments throughout the day. Somerville was a master of time-management and made use of every opportunity she got.

Read her autobiography here.

2. Jack Ma (马云)

Who He Is:

Founder of Alibaba and third-richest man in China. Spent his youth waking up early and riding his bike forty minutes to offer tours of Hangzhou to tourists to practice his English. Failed the university entrance examination three times before finally being admitted. On his first trip to the United States, he discovered the Internet and devoted himself to building online companies in China.

The success of his companies (Alibaba’s IPO in 2014 to the New York Stock Exchange, was the biggest of all-time), and his legendary public speaking ability, both in English and in Mandarin Chinese, have given Ma a reputation for charisma and leadership.

Lesson: Social skills matter more than technical know-how.

Unlike many of China’s other big tech founders, Ma doesn’t have a technical background. He himself admits, “I still don’t understand what coding is all about, I still don’t understand the technology behind the Internet.”

How then, did a mediocre student with poor technical skills build one of the biggest Internet companies in the world?

The answer is that Ma strength lies in his understanding of other people:

Inspirational leadership. Ma likes to invent aphorisms that communicate his ideas and inspire. “Work happily, but live seriously.” “Customers first, employees second, and shareholders third.”

Business strategy. Ma’s insight into human nature extends to a deep understanding of the market. His journey to success involved outmaneuvering well-heeled American rivals such as eBay by understanding what customers want.

Leading as teaching. Ma’s first start was as an English teacher, and in some ways, he’s never changed. His leadership style draws from many sources, but the role of teaching in communicating is a major part.

Although those in the West are already quite familiar with the likes of Jobs, Gates or Musk, I think Ma offers a refreshing alternative view on what it takes to be a successful business leader.

Read his biography, by Duncan Clark, here.

3. Richard Feynman

Who He Was:

Nobel-laureate physicist, Feynman worked on the Manhattan project, made breathroughs in quantum electrodynamics and even created techniques for solving difficult problems in quantum physics which bear his name. On top of that he played the bongo, spoke Japanese and Portuguese, picked locks, played pranks on his superiors and did important research work while sitting in strip clubs.

Lesson: Serious accomplishment doesn’t require a serious personality.

Feynman is an incredible example of many things: he was brilliant; he was a fantastic educator, producing some of the most lucid explanations of scientific phenomena I’ve ever encountered; he was thoroughly unconventional and unconcerned about what others thought of him. But perhaps, most of all, his biography is a lesson that success doesn’t need to be a serious business.

Feynman often started projects on whims, and took them to surprising heights before switching to something new:

Becoming a professional artist. After Feynman bet an artist friend that the friend couldn’t teach him how to draw, Feynman eventually went on to practice well enough that he was selling his artwork.

Picking locks on the Manhattan Project. To pass time during the wartime atomic bomb project, Feynman would pick the locks of his colleagues. This got out of hand so that his supervisors thought there might even be a security breach before it was revealed to be Feynman fooling around.

Refusing to sign. He was once offered fifty dollars to speak at a local college. He hated paperwork, so he agreed on the condition that he didn’t have to sign his name more than thirteen times. When he ran out of signatures after he gave the talk, but before he got paid, the school pressured to give him the money. Feynman refused: he wouldn’t sign more than thirteen times. (Eventually they found a workaround so he could use his 13th signature on the check.)

There are many biographies which illustrate the strengths and foibles of the person involved: you see how they accomplished great things, but also the price they paid to have such a personality to achieve it. Feynman, however, is different. His curiosity and spontaneous engagement, combined with his level of accomplishment makes him a figure to aspire to be, even if it’s impossible to emulate.

Read his autobiography here. Also, you can listen to my podcast episode where I discuss this book and the influence it has had on me with guest Kalid Azad.

4. Arnold Schwarzenegger

Who He Is:

Schwarzenegger is famous for his movies and his role as governor of California from 2003 to 2011. However his success has been much more broad ranging. Starting with bodybuilding, which he dominated—winning the Mr. Olympia title seven times—Schwarzenegger has gone on to build million-dollar businesses in construction, fitness, restaurants and real-estate.

Lesson: Confidence creates success.

Arnold Schwarzenegger is as close as we can possibly get to the experiment of what would happen to a person if they experienced near non-stop success in everything they attempted.

Schwarzenegger is the epitome of self-confidence. Some memorable exploits include:

Breaking the rules. Before his first bodybuilding competition, he was enrolled in the army. Despite asking for permission to compete, his commanding officer said no. Not letting that stop him, he snuck out, won the competition and immediately returned to spend 24-hours in a detention cell for insubordination. When higher officials found out he won, he was let go.

Consummate marketer. One of his early entrepreneurial exploits was construction, which he took up with fellow body builder Franco Columbu. Taking advantage of their European names and accents, they marketed themselves as offering “Italian” design. Ever the salesman, Schwarzenegger even resold what was left of a chimney they replaced at one house as “vintage bricks” to another customer.

Equity, not salary. When he was primarily known as an action star, he wanted to move into comedies. Unfortunately his salary meant the transition would be difficult as the latter tend to gross less than action blockbusters. So, with the movie Twins, he proposed an unusual deal: no salary, but a percentage of the gross he would share with costar Danny DeVito. The resulting hit ended up making him over $35 million.

In all these cases, what stands out is Schwarzenegger’s unshakeable confidence in himself and a willingness to pursue bold moves backed by that confidence. Although luck and talent have certainly been on his side, it’s also clear that his confidence has been, in many instances, a self-fulfilling prophecy—creating the reality that he believes in.

Read his autobiography here.

5. Marie Curie

Who She Was:

Born to a struggling Polish family during the Russian occupation, Marie Curie (née Marya Sklodowska) would go on to become one of the most famous scientists of all time for her discovery of the principle of radiation. She would also become the first person to receive the Nobel Prize twice, for physics and later for chemistry.

Lesson: Greatness comes from service to a mission, not the self.

In reading great biographies, there’s always the risk of importing the narcissism and megalomania that can come from both achieving great success and being the kind of person who would devote their life to reaching it.

Curie’s biography is quite different. In her pursuits, both Curie and her husband Pierre (who jointly shared her first Nobel) were wholly devoted to science and did not seek the kind of fame or gain they easily could have gathered from their discoveries:

Curie discovered radium, which at its time, was the most expensive element on the planet. Her gram of radium, carefully distilled for her research, was therefore worth a fortune, but she refused any profit from it.

The money for her Nobel she volunteered to the war effort, after France had been invaded by Germany.

Her process for refining radium, similarly, could have been patented and allowed her and her family to live in comfort for perpetuity. Instead, she offered to explain the process to anyone who would listen—many of whom eventually became rich following her recipe.

This selfless nature, at times, made for greater inconveniences with resources. However, this same spirit won her many friends and allies, and likely contributed to her scientific prestige. Devotion to causes, whether they be an independent Poland or scientific discovery, guided Curie’s life more than private gain. That she ended up achieving so much, nonetheless, may indicate that, for many, our priorities could be shifted.

Read her biography, written by her daughter Eve, here.

6. Albert Einstein

Who He Was:

Albert Einstein is paradoxical in that, despite his overwhelming fame as a scientist and genius, he is also underrated at the same time. Although he won his Nobel for the photoelectric effect, his influence on physics has been enormous:

Through an ingenious experiment using the random motion of particles suspended in water, was able to infer the size of water molecules.

Made foundational discoveries in what would eventually become quantum mechanics, our best theory of physics to date.

Discovered both special and general relativity, overturning centuries of Newton’s dominance in describing the rules of gravity.

Most scientific discoveries are a product of their times, not their discoverers. That is to say, most discoveries have parallel efforts to find the same thing, around the same time. While Darwin was formulating his theory of natural selection around the Galapagos, Alfred Wallace had also independently come up with the same idea.

Einstein was different. There were no comparable insights into the nature of space and time competing with Einstein and it may have been decades or longer for the truth to have been uncovered had it not been from his insights into relativity.

Lesson: Groundbreaking insights begin by asking questions others haven’t.

What allowed Einstein to make such groundbreaking discoveries? Although his impressive intellect is usually cited as the main contributor, that explanation seems unsatisfying to me. He was clearly more intelligent than most of us, but this doesn’t really explain his triumph over his other genius-level colleagues in making such impressive discoveries.

Rather, I think it was Einstein’s habit of asking questions and performing thought-experiments that allowed him to consider issues others hadn’t.

Some of Einstein’s most famous thought experiments include:

How would one see time on a speed-of-light trip? Special relativity came about through a question of how different observers would view the time of clocks, owing to the then-confirmed finite speed of light.

How could you tell the difference between gravity and acceleration? General relativity, with a mathematical difficulty so fiendish it gave Einstein stomach problems, began by considering an extension of the original idea—how could an observer inside a box tell whether they were being subjected to a gravitational field or were merely accelerating?

What is quantum mechanics hiding? Imagine two particles thrown together at great speeds, and then measuring the momentum of one long after the collision. It would be possible to infer, therefore, the momentum of the other by laws of conservation. However, if you measured the position instead, you would, by the Uncertainty Principle, not be able to tell this momentum. How can the outcome of a distant measurement impact the physical reality of the other particle?

What’s interesting is that these thought experiments were often fruitful, even when Einstein turned out to be wrong, as was the case for the latter experiment. Quantum events do have this “spooky action at a distance” we now know as entanglement. However wrong his intuition, however, his thought experiment nonetheless precipitated an important discovery.

Read his biography, by Walter Isaacson, here.

7. Benjamin Franklin

Who He Was:

Benjamin Franklin was many things: writer, entrepreneur, inventor, scientist, philanthropist, diplomat and one of the founding fathers of the United States. His Autobiography, ended up becoming an international bestseller, essentially defining the genre.

More than just a historical figure, Franklin is the prototype for the self-made man. Arriving in Philadelphia, penniless and unknown, after running away from the last few years of harsh apprenticeship under his brother in Boston, he built himself a successful business, contributed to many civic projects and served in creating a new kind of country.

Lesson: Your most important years might still be ahead of you

Franklin’s life has many lessons. Both those that he explicitly states in his Autobiography, where he argues in favor of virtuous living, thrift and industry, as well as the unspoken lessons we can glean from his life: the value of managing one’s reputation, satire as a more powerful weapon than outright attack and how to build alliances that will serve your entire life.

However, a less obvious lesson, which I nonetheless believe is very important in viewing Franklin’s life is how his most famous accomplishments occurred after he was “retired” and had already started to view his best moments as having been behind him.

For comparison’s sake, in Walter Isaacson’s 493-page biography of Franklin, the moment when he starts to write what would become his famous Autobiography occurs on page 254. That is to say, when Franklin, aged 65, retired and having achieved success in business, writing and science sat down to write his life for posterity, the most important events had yet to happen yet. He had yet to sign the Declaration of Independence, negotiate diplomatic ties with France or participate in drafting the American constitution.

It’s often easy to dwell in nostalgia, to rest upon past moments as having already defined the course of our lives. But, as in Franklin’s case, it may be that the story people end up telling about you has yet to happen yet.

Read his Autobiography here. I also recommend, for a more complete picture, Walter Isaacson’s biography.

Why Reading Biographies Matters

I’m persuaded that much of how we learn things is by emulating the people around us. We pick up behaviors and attitudes, not so much through direct instruction or logical deduction about the world but by watching how other people think and respond to situations.

Biographies, therefore, represent an enormous resource for those who want to shape their personality for the better. By finding people who embody the principles you want to live by, you can see firsthand how they did it.

Importantly, however, good biographies also present the trade-offs one must make in order to live a certain way. Seeing those trade-offs firsthand, tells you much more than reading about abstract notions of self-improvement, which tend to conceal the sacrifices that are necessary for the triumphs.

====

This list is necessarily incomplete—what are your favorite biographies that I’ve missed? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

Seven Biographies You Should Read to Live a Better, Richer and Happier Life syndicated from https://pricelessmomentweb.wordpress.com/