#unofficial shark week | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

wehaveagathering · 5 months

Text

Who Does the NHL Instagram Account Love? It's not the Flyers. A (shortish) Statistical Analysis (December 1-15, 2023)

(I don't know anything about statistics.)

Recently, as a Flyers fan, I've kind of become sick and tired of seeing the @NHL instagram account NOT post my team. Of course, every fan of any team is going to feel their team is'nt getting enough love online, but I had a feeling that I wasn't just making this up. So I counted every single post so far in the month of December – from the 1st to the 15th – and added up each time the NHL instagram posted each team.

Qualifications for what counted as a post:

It could not be the list of nightly scores or weekly power rankings.

It could not be an official game announcement. Unofficial game announcements, like Connor v Connor graphics, were allowed.

It could not be a trade or coaching change – but signings did count.

If it was a video of a play during a game, the post counted as a tally for the the team with the successful play.

Any sort of list, play-of-game compilations, or fantasy team counted. However, if a team was listed twice in a post, they could still only receive one tally. In this essay I will –

The average number of posts per team was 18.47 and the median was 17.5 out of the 591 posts I counted. It's important to note that because I didn't count other types of posts – official NHL compilation videos with different players, game announcements, scoresheets at the end of every night – that the total number of posts between now and December 1st was probably around 700. I didn't look too closely at that number.

The team with the most points was the Canucks (20-9-1), with an outstanding 39 total posts, 6.6% of the total posts and 11 tallies ahead of second place with 28. Of course, the prevalence of Quinn Hughes and Brock Boeser on league-leading stat sheets, as well as the Hughes Bowl in early December and the recent influx of Luongo posting all helped to bolster this number.

Trailing behind them in the high twenties were the Rangers (20-7-1) with 28, the Oilers (13-13-1) with 27, the Devils (15-11-1), Isles (14-7-8), and Lightning (14-12-5) with 26, and the Avalanche (18-9-2) with a measly 25. All of these teams save for the Islanders had the help of league-leading scorers on their teams, which bolstered them in the compilation-post and fantasy-team standings.

On the opposite hand, trailing in the single digits were the Montreal Canadiens (12-13-4), Seattle Kraken (10-14-7), and yes, the Philadelphia Flyers (16-10-3), with 8, 9, and 9 posts respectively. (That is 4.39% or 4.4% percent of the total posts – these three teams combined for less posts than the Canucks.) The Nashville Predators (17-13-0) and the Calgary Flames (11-14-5) barely scraped into the double digits with 10 posts to their name each. The Flyers and Flames both struggled to even get on the board, and were the last two teams without a post after 3 days, when Carter Hart made a Goalie Save of the Week compilation. The Flames got on the board after 4 days worth of posts with a Noah Hanifin assist against the Avalanche.

Generally, better teams got posted more, and worse teams got posted less, but that wasn't always the case. (Clearly – the San Jose Sharks were posted 22 times! I love you san jose ❤️) Look at the Flyers and the Predators – two teams who have been good surprises this season, but have been neglected by @ NHL. Out of the teams who have been posted the least, the Flyers and the Preds have the best standings. On 12.15.23 the Flyers were at 16-10-3 with a .603 points percentage, and the Preds were at 17-13-0 with a .567 points percentage. Despite these extremely decent and reasonable stats, and the Flyers currently sitting in a playoff spot in the Metro, both these teams were only posted 9 and 10 times in the first half of December – out of 591 posts! That seems unreasonable.

In the first half of December, the Flyers received 3 solo posts for goals from Cam York, Sean Couturier, and Tyson Foerster. The Preds received 4 solo posts for goals from Yakov Trenin, two from Filip Forsberg, and Colton Sissons.

This other one though, that according to my rules, I had to count, pissed me off. These two tiny names counted as 10% of the total December postings for these two teams.

Knowing that this was the kind of post that counted for so many of these teams, this was the kind of post that bolstered the scores of the Oilers and the Canucks and the Devils, makes it nearly all the more egregious that this was the extent that it took to acknowledge the Flyers and the Preds.

Also, I think if I counted the posts that included videos of plays made against the Flyers in the games that the Flyers won, I would go absolutely bananas, despite the fact that, FOR example, Konecny is tied for 8th in goals this season with Pastrnak and Panarin. Konecny, with 16 goals and 24 points so far this season, was posted one time, on a December 5th Play of the Night compilation post with... three Coyotes. Compare this to the two 12.2.23 solo posts celebrating a Pastrnak goal.

Clearly, there's favorites. And it has nothing to do with how well a team is playing. The Edmonton Oilers, Chicago Blackhawks, and San Jose Sharks are sittin pretty in the bottom ten teams in the league but have a combined total of 66 posts. Is it about the engagement each team gets? Maybe people don't interact with Flyers or Preds or Kraken posts as much as the other ones. Is it secretly Gary Bettman, who hates me and the Flyers personally? Does the NHL just not like the Flyers? On another topic – does the amount that these teams are posted correspond with the amount they're posted on other sites, like Twitter or Tumblr?

And this isn't even getting into how approximately half of the posts about the Ducks were about Leo Carlsson, or the Caps were just Ovechkin, or the poor Montreal Canadiens, who are being shunted to the wayside to make room for the Chicago Blackhawks and their 32nd-in-the-league standing and their 17 posts, 16 of which seem to be about Connor Bedard. I didn't record these numbers, but they sure as hell SEEMED like this was the case, and I've learned to trust my gut.

I definitely know what I want to look for and need to figure out how I want to document these stats differently in the second half of December for a more thorough analysis on the types of post each team is receiving. This has been an interesting, if frustrating experiment, and I'm looking forward to part 2. I love you Flyers and I love you hockey, and I... I don't love you, NHL. You can rot.

#nhl #hockey #flyers #philadelphia flyers #nashville predators #nhl instagram #preds #travis konecny #carter hart #filip forsberg

22 notes · View notes

zaebeecee · 5 days

Text

To Sever a Loveless Bond

••RadioDust Soulmate AU••

Part 7/?

First chapter | Previous chapter | Next chapter

Read on AO3

•••

Something of an interlude chapter and a bit shorter, sorry about that. Doctor stuff slowed me down today.

•••

Guillermo’s was a small cafe on the fifteenth floor of an office building in the Greed District. It was ludicrously exclusive, the kind of place that you had to really know someone in order to get into, and it served as close to real Italian food as you could find in Hell. It was one of the few decent restaurants that wasn’t seen as part of Rosie’s overlord territory, and often saw business from overlords, various high-ranking Hellborn visiting the Pride ring, a few of the Goetian nobility, and even (on one occasion, judging by the framed and signed photo on the wall) the famous imp clown, Fizzarolli. You needed a reservation, and it could take weeks or even months to get in.

Angel Dust had never once had to wait to get into Guillermo’s. No matter when he showed up, there was a table for him, no questions asked. This was because Angel had done the place a favor by keeping the Vees from attempting to interfere with it, a thing that could easily ruin any business. And the reason Angel did them such a favor was because the place was funded—and unofficially managed by—his older brother, Arackniss.

Their entire living existence, Angel and Arackniss had a difficult relationship. Volatile, and often violent, they had at least been unified in their shared hatred of their parents and had managed to become amicable business partners after the death of their father and Arackniss’s subsequent management of the Family Business.

Arackniss had never said it, but Angel was pretty sure that Anthony’s overdose had been the final nail in the coffin of their animosity, and now, they got along well enough for two guys with nothing in common who didn’t see each other for years at a time. It had its perks, especially since Arackniss was still tangled up in Hell’s mafia and had more connections than Vox had ports.

Family is family, I guess. Even down here.

Angel was taken to a table near the window the moment he arrived, and he warned them that Cherri was coming, both so they would let her in and so they could… well, prepare for her presence. This was one of their regular spots, after all—just because Angel never saw Arackniss, and just because they no longer wanted to kill each other, didn’t mean Angel wanted to stop being an annoying little brother who took advantage of big bro’s position—and while Cherri had never caused any real property damage, she had destroyed a few tables, quite a few place settings, and at least one old bitch’s ugly hat. Because of that, the restaurant had started taking special precautions when they knew she was going to be there.

There had once been discussion among the staff about banning both of them. Within a week, half of them had been silently replaced, and nothing more was said about it.

Cherri arrived ten minutes later, looking the same sort of artistic hot mess she always did. It wasn’t unusual for her to be late, generally because she either picked a fight on her way anywhere or had one picked with her, and she could never leave that fight alone until she had finished it.

“Oh my god I hate sharks,” she muttered as she slid into the chair across from Angel. “Hey, baby, sorry about that.”

“Don’t be, I just got here,” Angel said, grinning at her irritated tone. “How’s tricks?”

“Tricky.”

When the waiter came by, Cherri ordered a Bloody Mary, but Angel just asked for water. As soon as the imp was gone, Angel noticed her staring at him with one large and squinting eye. “What?”

“I knew it.”

“Knew what?”

“Something is wrong,” she said. “You never pass up the chance to drink, and besides, you only wanna come here when something is bothering you.”

“I don’t always drink, and— wait, what?” Angel frowned. “The hell I do.”

“The hell you don’t,” Cherri said. “You always wanna come here when you’re upset about something because your brother owns this place and it’s like letting your big bro keep you safe.”

Angel barked out a laugh. “Oh, that is utter bullshit. Rack and I ain’t never been those kinda brothers.”

“Call it bullshit all you want, you still always have some kind of life-altering drama when you wanna meet here.” The imp came back, gave them their drinks, and then retreated; they always got the same food, so nobody bothered asking them anymore. “And you do, don’t you?” Cherri continued like she hadn’t been interrupted.

“…okay, first off, fuck you. Second, just because I got shit to tell you don’t mean you’re right.”

Cherri smirked, her cross-shaped pupil flickering a brighter pink in amusement. “Yeah, sure, whatever. Dish.”

Angel sighed, drumming one set of fingers on the table as he thought about how best to start. He could admit when there was a flaw in his own plan, and for all that he wanted Cherri to snap him back to reality, he hadn’t included the part where he had to actually tell her what the fuck was happening. “…it’s… I need you to give me your hundred percent honest opinion about someone. No holds barred.”

“Oh, honey, that’s not a problem. Who?”

Angel nodded. “…Alastor.”

Her eyebrow shot up. “Alastor? Like, Mister Radio Face? That guy?” Angel nodded. “The last time I gave you any kind of opinion on him, you told me I was too hard on him because I didn’t know him.”

“…I didn’t say that, did I?” Angel asked, deflating a little.

“Oh, bitch, you did,” Cherri said with a humorless laugh. “And you were really adamant, too.”

Angel sighed and put his head in two of his hands, his other two arms folded on the table. “Just humor me, Cherri.”

“Okay,” she said, drawing the word out, before she started speaking fairly quickly. “I think he’s a dangerous and unstable psychopath who’s probably never experienced a real emotion in his life and who gets his kicks manipulating everyone he meets for the hell of it. He’s mean, he’s violent, he’s untrustworthy, he’s completely unlikeable, and he smells terrible. The only two positives I have is that he’s as strong as he claims to be and he has a great radio voice, but otherwise, I wouldn’t consider him worth the powder it would take to blow him up.”

Angel sighed. “Yeah, that’s what I thought you would say.”

When he finally lowered his hands, he saw Cherri watching him expectantly. As soon as she realized Angel wasn’t going to say anything, she asked, “Why are you so interested in my opinion on the radio jackass, anyway? You already know I don’t like him.”

“I know, I know, nobody does,” Angel said, unable to keep a level of distress out of his voice. “It… I need somebody to knock some sense into me, that’s all. And if I tell you why, I really, really need you to stay calm.”

“I make no promises.”

“Then I ain’t tellin’ you.”

“Fuck…” Cherri sighed and rolled her eyes, then crossed her arms. “Okay. I will do my best. Spit it out.”

Angel drew a deep, steadying breath. “He’s my soulmate.”

There was a scream at the next table as someone’s plate of spaghetti exploded.

“Cherri!” Angel hissed.

“I’m sorry!” she said, matching his tone, looking a combination of furious and in absolute shock. “But you… you have got to be fucking kidding me! The Radio Demon?!”

“Shut up shut up shut up!” Angel waved his hands at her. “You told me you’d try to keep a lid on it!”

“The table’s still here, isn’t it?” Cherri placed her hands on the tabletop, like she was emphasizing her point, before she took a few slow breaths. “Okay. Alright. I’m fine, at least as fine as I’m gonna get. What happened?”

She did seem to calm down considerably as Angel told her about the night in the kitchen, going into more detail with her than he had with Husk. When he was finished, they sat in silence for a moment, Angel picking lightly at his food.

“And you’re sure he has one, too?” Cherri asked.

“Well, I saw it,” Angel said. “But… I mean, I got one and it activated when he touched me, don’t that mean he’s got one too?”

Cherri shrugged. “I’ve heard it’s not always… they don’t always come in pairs,” she said. “I mean, it’s Hell, right? Wouldn’t be Hell if everybody had a destined happy ending.”

“Ain’t it bad enough, bein’ tied to someone for all eternity?” Angel asked with a sigh.

“So what are you gonna do about it?”

“We’re figuring out how to break it,” Angel said. “Val found out it activated, so if I don’t do it, the Vees will. Alastor’s friend Rosie says she can find a… a ritual, or a spell, or some shit that can do it. But she says we have to finish our bond, so we’ve started… hanging out, I guess. He’s makin’ me dinner tonight.”

Cherri blinked slowly at him. “Wouldn’t trust a single thing he called food.” Angel couldn’t help a small laugh at that, but it died quickly. “So… how does he feel about it?” Cherri asked, with an edge of danger in her voice that he found perplexing.

“I… whaddya mean?”

“You said you’re breaking it because of the Vees. How does he feel about it?” Cherri clarified. “He isn’t exactly shy about his opinions, I know you know.”

“Oh, he’s fuckin’ thrilled about the idea of breakin’ it. Can’t wait to get rid of the burden, I guess,” Angel said with a roll of his eyes and a dismissive wave.

Strangely, Cherri said, “That asshole.”

Angel blinked at her. “Wait, what?”

She didn’t back down. “What kind of callous dick would be excited about breaking a soul bond with you??”

“I… thought you didn’t like him,” Angel said, one eyebrow arching.

“I don’t!” she declared in the same tone. “But that’s not the fucking point! How dare he consider a soul bond with you to be a burden on him! He’s the absolute worst creature that Hell had the audacity to spit out of whatever pit he came from, and you are perfect! He should be fucking honored that he got matched up with you!”

Angel couldn’t help it; he started giggling, his face heating up as tears welled in his eyes. He pressed one hand over his mouth. “Cherri…!”

“I’m serious,” she said, and she absolutely sounded it. “Ungrateful, disrespectful gripper. God, I should go blow him up for that!”

Angel’s giggles turned into laughter. “Stop stop stop don’t do that…!”

Cherri huffed in irritation and stabbed her pasta with her fork. “Well, I’m going to think about it really hard.” She hesitated, then looked up at him again. “You didn’t explain what you meant earlier.”

“About what?”

“You said you needed sense knocked into you. You didn’t say why.”

Angel looked down. “Right. I didn’t.” He sighed, folding his arms on the table again “I… I don’t know if it’s the mark, or… We went out last night. To a club. Rosie said it’d be a good idea for us to spend time together, and we both like jazz and dancing. So…” He shrugged a little. “And we had a real good time, y’know? Or, I mean, I did, anyway. I think he did. And I liked… I liked spending time with him. I like listening to him talk. He’s funny, and he’s charming, and he’s a kinda crass I ain’t really used to. He’s a good cook, he’s polite most of the time, he doesn’t… y’know.”

Cherri waited for him to continue. When he didn’t, she said, “He doesn’t treat you like a whore.”

“…yeah.”

“I guess he wouldn’t. He doesn’t seem to have interest in that.” Cherri tapped her fingers on the table. “…baby… I don’t have anything I can tell you that you don’t already know. You know who he is, you know what he’s like, and you know what will happen if you keep going this way.”

“I know,” Angel agreed softly. “But I… I can’t help it. I don’t know how to stop it. I don’t want to—…” He sighed. “I think about breakin’ the bond and losin’… whatever this is, and I feel kinda like freakin’ out.”

Cherri nodded. “I get it,” she said. “But hey. Angel. After it breaks, you two can still be friends, can’t you?”

Can we?

I don’t know.

“I hope so.”

•••

Alastor was, above all things, a creature that had been molded for a solitary lifestyle.

That had always suited Alastor just fine, if one asked him. His mother said he had been a strange, wrong child even as a baby—“My little curse,” she had called him, with more affection than a being like him had ever warranted—and he couldn’t remember a time in his living existence that he had ever had someone he could truthfully call a friend. Hell was no exception to this, and for nearly one hundred years, Alastor had cheerfully stalked the streets of Pentagram City, leaving nothing but fear in his wake.

Except Rosie, of course, but she hardly counted. She was the overlord of the cannibals, and if he couldn’t make friends with someone like that, he supposed he was as hopeless as most believed him to be.

The knowledge of soul marks had been, at first, a shock. It hadn’t been long for it to turn into an insult, however, as Alastor wondered who could possibly have the gall to presume to saddle him with some doe-eyed, simpering creature who would be nothing but an inconvenience.

He had once told Husker and Niffty that, should his soulmate ever be unfortunate enough to find him, he would make sure they received everything that a bond with the Radio Demon warranted. As he described the dishes he would make with their organs, the tools he would make with their bones, and the clothing he would make with their skin… Alastor still remembered with open fondness the look of terror on old Husker’s face as his ears flattened and his wings shivered. Maybe he was imagining it happening to him, or perhaps, to whoever his bond tied him to.

And that was good. He should have imagined that. Alastor would not be any gentler with the mates of his pets than he would be with his own.

Even Niffty had looked almost disturbed, by the end of his speech.

Of course, for all his talk, Alastor had never truly wished to find his soul mate. Fun as it would be to make new boots out of their belly skin, it would still come with the knowledge that he had been shackled to someone, even for such a short period of time. Alastor had never seen the point of romance, always viewing it as ridiculous at best and a complete waste of time at worst, and to think of it as even more compulsory than the society in which he was raised was downright offensive.

He had not planned on Angel Dust stirring that pain in his mark. Even with its shape… Alastor had never once contemplated that it might be him.

Of course, he was reasonable enough to think that it could have simply been because he didn’t want it to be Angel Dust. There had been no way to anticipate the creature he had first met upon setting foot into the hotel, a figure he knew well simply through social mitosis. A porn star, an employee of the Vees. Easy to write off. Easier to ignore.

But then Angel Dust had… hit on him, so flippantly and casually, almost like he was making a joke. And when Alastor had refused, Angel Dust never lost his smile, just shrugging and telling Alastor it was his loss. Alastor had anticipated that would be the end of it—he had made it quite clear he was not a potential john, and couldn’t fathom any other reason for Valentino’s prostitute to interact with him—but it wasn’t the end of it.

Alastor was the Radio Demon. He had toppled the empires of overlords who had controlled Hell for decades, centuries, before his death. He was a figure that even those who did not know him ran from. He inspired more than fear, he inspired terror.

And, within a week of knowing him, Angel Dust had given him four nicknames (each more ridiculous than the last), he had suggested they film a pornography together as a commercial to attract guests, and he had tried no less than seven times to see how strict his five foot rule was. And, through it all, he had remained so infuriatingly affable.

It hadn’t taken long for Alastor to contemplate the pros and cons of killing him. The pros were many—chief among them that he wouldn’t have to put up with Angel Dust anymore—but the two cons outweighed the rest. The first was that he was the hotel’s celebrity guest and it wouldn’t have been good for Charlie’s project to lose him.

The second was that Alastor simply didn’t want him gone.

He told himself many things. Maybe he just found the spider amusing. Maybe he wasn’t worth Alastor’s time and knife. Maybe Alastor simply thought that the years of drugs and sex and whatever Valentino had done would make Angel Dust’s meat unfit for consumption. And because Alastor so rarely reevaluated someone once passing judgment on them, the fact that he was constantly reevaluating the spider was infuriating.

But it was the mark. It had to be. And soon, that mark would be gone.

“Rosie, my dear!” Alastor called as he opened the door to her emporium and strode inside, twirling his microphone staff with a practiced ease. The shop was empty—not unusual for this time in the afternoon—and he didn’t immediately set eyes on her. “Are you here?”

“I’m in my work room, Alastor!” Rosie called. Alastor stepped around the counter and dutifully followed the sound of her voice, finding her sitting on a couch and hemming what appeared to be a deep green formal gown. “Hello, darling, so nice to see you so soon,” she said.

“Yes, well, I find myself in need of your services,” Alastor said, setting the end of his staff on the floor and placing one hand over the casing of the microphone. “I’m going to be making quite the dinner tonight and I require some rather specialized ingredients. Where better to come but to the mistress of the culinary arts herself?”

Rosie laughed. “Flatterer,” she said, with a smile that told him it worked. “Just let me finish this hem and I’ll get you all set up. What’s the occasion?”

“No real occasion,” Alastor said, settling on a plush ottoman near her to wait. “I’m simply certain that Angel Dust has not had anything resembling a proper meal in many years, excepting the jambalaya I made the other night. I plan to rectify that.”

“Oh, it’s for Angie, is it?” Rosie asked with a bright smile.

Alastor was fairly certain he didn’t care for her tone, but he couldn’t put his finger on why. “Yes,” he said simply.

Rosie nodded, her smile turning to something… untrustworthy, Alastor would call it. “I hear he helped you cook the other night.”

“Yes, he helped me with the jambalaya,” Alastor said. “He was so very insistent, and he has so many hands, I thought it would be a crime not to make use of them.” Rosie made a humming noise, and Alastor stared at her. “What.”

“Oh, nothing, sweetie, nothing. Glad to hear the two of you are getting along.”

“As well as two such vastly different people can, I suppose,” Alastor said lightly. “But I will admit that the outing he suggested yesterday was quite entertaining. I knew he did something that some people consider dancing, of a sort, but I had no idea that he truly knew how to dance.”

Rosie laughed. “He got you to go out dancing, hm? I didn’t think you went to clubs.”

“I don’t!” Alastor said brightly. “But they had serviceable rye and their house band’s ability to play jazz was wholly inoffensive. Quite the surprise, I assure you.”

“Glad to hear you’re making a friend.”

Alastor felt the record needle in his head—more a metaphorical description than anything actually tangible or physical—skip for a brief moment, and heard her giggle as she registered the audio stutter that went along with it. “Well, I wouldn’t go that far.”

“Of course you wouldn’t,” Rosie said, and despite the fact that her eyes were nothing but black voids, he knew she was rolling them. “But it took you three decades to admit that we were friends, and that was after you had been visiting me at least once every two weeks.”

“You are quite the conversationalist,” Alastor admitted. “Never thought I would find that in Hell, of all places.”

“It seems Angie is quite the conversationalist as well.”

Alastor squinted at her. “He hardly spoke when I brought him here. How do you come to that conclusion?”

“Because you had a good time going out and drinking with him,” Rosie said. “And you’re having dinner with him tonight. If you found him to be a bore, getting you to spend time together would be like pulling teeth, no matter how badly you want your bond broken.”

Alastor made a noise that was something like a growl low in his throat and looked away; he felt his ears flick backwards, and they ignored his mental urging to stand back up. “Yes. Well. …I suppose I appreciate his… candor, and he has quite the amusing sense of humor if you can get him away from more carnal topics. Fascinating perspective on life, as well; I’ll admit I never spent much time conversing with—” He cut himself off before he could say the first phrase that came to mind, both unbidden and unwanted.

With his kind.

No.

No, that was never something Alastor would use to describe another. Particularly not one that society viewed as lesser.

“With… what was the phrase he used… prostitution whoreses,” he said instead, doing his best approximation of Angel Dust’s Brooklyn accent and drawing a laugh from Rosie. “The kinds of people he has met, the sorts of jobs he has done… fascinating! He spared me the gory details, as it were, but the things people will pay actual money for seem to belong on quite the inexhaustible list.”

Rosie nodded, finishing off her seam. “Like I said. Friends.”

“You try my patience, my dear.”

“I know. Perhaps you should try it sometime.” He opened his mouth, but he couldn’t think of a response, and she got to her feet with a bright smile. “Come along, then. I’m sure you’ll need to get back and start cooking, won’t you?”

“Yes,” Alastor said, gathering himself again before he followed her from the room. He had the mind to ask her about her progress on discerning the ritual to break the bond.

He didn’t ask.

He didn’t know why he didn’t ask, but he didn’t.

It simply gave him an odd and unpleasant feeling. It was the bond talking, Alastor knew that, but knowing it didn’t make the sensation more tolerable. It was nothing like the feeling he’d had when asking Angel Dust if he would like to have dinner, a strange trepidation mixed with anticipation that made it difficult to even properly form the question. And the feeling when he had accepted…

Was it relief? Perhaps.

It wasn’t happiness. Alastor never felt happiness, not anymore.

But Alastor couldn’t imagine why Angel Dust saying yes would make him feel relieved. Of course Angel Dust would accept. He wanted this bond gone as much as Alastor did himself, of that he was certain. The thought was a different sort of unpleasant, one that he couldn’t put a name to. It felt like it would go very deep if he followed it, and where those depths would lead, he couldn’t begin to guess.

Of course, he didn’t blame Angel Dust for wanting to sever their bond.

He wouldn’t want himself as a soulmate, either.

•••

#my writing #hazbin hotel #alastor radio demon #hazbin alastor #hazbin angel dust #radiodust #alastor x angel dust #hazbin cherri bomb #hazbin rosie #hazbin hotel fanfiction #hazbin fanfic #fanfiction

11 notes · View notes

hccn-overseer · 1 year

Text

Issue 6, 5/24/2023 - The Overseer

Issue Masterpost About the Overseer

Before our wonderful stories, I would like to give a shoutout to one of our writers, Lydia! You will notice, she wrote most of this week's stories and made many of the games as well to help cover other people who are busy this week! Lydia, you absolute madlad, we appreciate you so much on the team and this server, please do not do that again.

This week’s news is once again accompanied by a PDF version of your latest news brought to us once again by the lovely Cheer! Pick it up right here for your viewing pleasure!

Show Off Your Citizen Creations with Citizen Jams!

By Lydia

Creative minds of all kinds, listen up! The Hermit Citizen Hub has introduced a weekly community event, inviting all artists and writers to participate through a series of prompts released each Friday. If you are looking for an excuse to draw your citizen but are feeling shy about it, or you feel you are running out of ideas, here’s a way to scratch that itch to create with the Hermit Citizen Hub’s new Citizen Jams! All forms of artistic mediums are welcome!

Citizen Jams, or creative prompts focused on encouraging all members of the Hermit Citizen Hub to show off their citizens, were created by Gene, also known as FireApyr, on May 11th. Found in the Discord server, these prompts have encouraged a greater number of people to broaden their citizens’ horizons through various scenarios and costumes. This thread, Citizen Prompts, can be found under Citizen Art, with a specific thread linked in the initial post to Citizen Prompt Suggestions. Your fellow citizens have added several suggestions and there is always room for more!

These suggestions have a wide range, including but not limited to displaying your citizen wearing their favorite pajamas, participating in Zedvancements, showing up in Empires, appearing in pixel art, appearing as a Villain (or a Hero if they are already one), attending a board game night, during their favorite season, drawn with the opposite color scheme of their design, cosplaying a Hermit, and training a Warden.

Two prompts and many submissions have debuted on the server as of May 24th, much to the delight of our server member participants! The first prompt, suggested by Hyo, was “Your Citizen as a DND Character,” prompting artwork of citizens as paladins, rangers, wizards, and more. The second prompt, suggested by BitterTea, for this week, is “Your Citizen at a Tea Party.” Please leave your submissions to the Citizen Prompts in the overall Citizen-Art thread. We look forward to seeing your citizens in all kinds of situations and costumes!

Now onto other news below the cut!

Affiliate Summaries

By Roo

Bdouble0: Bdubs has shark grabbers, platform boots and a stepladder now.

DocM77: They’re plotting something. There’s been no further explanation.

GoodTimesWithScar: New HotGuy merch!! Not IRL, which has been a disappointment, but they’re enjoying the new graduation hats nonetheless. Hotguy may have a shotgun in future events, it is unofficial.

Grian: They anime-d Grian?? I think. It’s honestly really concerning.

ImpulseSV: He’s sweeping your chimney right now. No, it’s not a threat. Goats are great at sweeping chimneys.

MumboJumbo: They joined the biker gang and also predicted the future. Mumbo affiliates, if you are looking for a job that is NOT in a biker gang, the Seers is always open. (/j. Kinda.)

PearlescentMoon: She’s so small!!!! Itty bitty pearl :)

Rendog: They’re all so excited about the boat race! Yay for boat races. The newspaper should probably cover that, huh.

Welsknight: They’re working hard on the scrapbook! It’s looking splendid so far.

XisumaVoid: He’s a hermitcitizen now? Apparently. He’s also adopted everyone, so if you’re looking for a father figure, we’ve got one right here. He’s at the Scarland lost and found.

ZombieCleo: They’re just vibing and getting absorbed into other games! A lovely time, really.

If you do not see your affiliates here: Yet again, this is because some channels have not been active or are not notable. Please notify us if there have been any typos or misinformation.

Citizen Appreciation: Topaz, the Quintessential Patron of the Arts!

By Lydia

If you have ever visited the art channels of the Hermit Citizen Hub, you know that every artist is on the edge of their seat as they read the latest compliment from our endlessly hardworking artistic cheerleader, Topaz. Since April 19th, our fellow citizen and adamant patron of the arts, Topaz, has tracked down each art piece posted in our Citizen Art channels on our Discord server and to leave positive affirmations for each artist’s piece. She points out specific details and praises each piece for the artist’s personal flair, highly motivating the spirits of every drawer, painter, pixel artist, and crafter who crosses the threshold from merely observing others’ art pieces to sharing their work with a larger audience in that of the Hermit Citizen Hub.

Topaz is a fellow artist herself, having depicted her own Hermit Citizen as a member of Pearl’s cleaning team, who also takes care of Bdubs’ horses and leans into her medium as a video game character, providing her own sound effects when jumping and upon deaths. She lives in a treehouse north of Mumbo Jumbo’s vault and shows her skill strengths in Mining, Exploring, and Overall Dexterity in navigation. She is also a very decent prankster and builder. Many citizens recognize her art style for its high emphasis on bold shapes and straightforward colors, with thick outlines to give her work that extra punch of polished realization. In addition to her own citizen artwork, she has also created fanart of The Life Series, Empires SMP, fellow citizens of the Hermit Citizen Hub, has shared her own artistic improvement in redrawing her older character art, and has drawn several Hermits for the Hermit A Day art challenge. Topaz also crochets in addition to drawing traditional and digital artwork. All citizens are encouraged to take a look at her pieces in the art channels if they have not done so, yet!

Topaz’s eye for both her own and others’ artistic traits is exceptionally perceptive. In her affirmations, she highlights every wonderful peculiarity and characteristic that each artist wishes to convey. Everything from the details of how meticulously textured a character’s costume is, to the dynamic color choices of each character’s design, to the uncanny lifelike nature of a character’s eyes, and anything else that you may not say aloud but want to make a known idiosyncrasy of your artwork, will be featured in Topaz’s assessment of your piece. Another staple of Topaz’s affirmation is the returned “Thank YOU!” to each person’s gratitude, turning it back to the artist for sharing their inimitable creative styles and depictions of both their own and others’ characters.

Topaz’s unbridled enthusiasm towards her fellow artistic community is returned as frequently as the awestruck members can muster, many of whom had insisted that she receive recognition for her crucial influence on the server. Because of this, Topaz has received a special role in the Hermit Citizen Hub in honor of her foundational presence as the quintessential patron of the arts: Hermitcity Art Society, as a seal of appreciation from the moderation team. This was given in reflection of the thanks that the community would like to show her. We would like to congratulate Topaz for her emotional labor, support, and dedication to this community, and we wish her all the best!

Weekly Weather Report

By Lydia

Wednesday - MOSTLY SUNNY, High 19 Degrees, Low 10 Degrees. Balloons in the shape of Withers are expected to fly through all areas.

Thursday - WINDY, High 22 Degrees, Low 9 Degrees. Several sets of DND dice will roll through all areas. Enjoy your free dice!

Friday - RAINY, High 26 Degrees, Low 11 Degrees. There is a 65% chance of rain to be iced tea instead of water.

Saturday - SUNNY, High 24 Degrees, Low 12 Degrees. Whirlpools may form in all oceans.

Sunday - PARTLY CLOUDY, High 18 Degrees, Low 7 Degrees. Temperatures are expected to drop in the early afternoon. A low growling may be heard from The Rift from 10:00 AM to 7:00 PM.

Monday - RAINY, High 23 Degrees, Low 12 Degrees. Umbrellas will be provided to any passers-by in the shopping district, courtesy of The Overseer.

Tuesday - MOSTLY CLOUDY, High 26 Degrees, Low 9 Degrees. Jellyfish are expected to wash up on many shores. They will be entirely transparent.

Wednesday - WINDY, High 20 Degrees, Low 11 Degrees. Sand storms are expected around 4:00 PM. Make sure you have a way to cover your face.

WARNING: Explosive Wither Skulls Hovering Over Scarland Central Square All citizens in Scarland are recommended to remain on high alert due to Docm77’s retaliation to The Incident (Grian and Scar breaking his Redstone). Several explosive Wither Skull Mines have been transported to Scarland’s Central Square by Docm77. They hang ominously over Scarland’s main central street. They will very likely reign destruction upon Scarland in the near future.

Editor's note: Again, if any of our readers are rich and generous, we ask for assistance in paying Rainy’s ransom. The kidnappers’ identity is still unknown, but leaving a pile of diamonds on the doorstep of the Overseer offices may be enough to reach them.

Come and Visit the Citizen Shops and Services!

By Lydia

A number of citizens in the Hermit Citizen Hub are hard at work making sure that their shops and services are in tip-top shape for the benefit of all who visit the Hermitcraft server. With the addition of an officially documented list of shops and services, we are happy to share the wares and whereabouts of our community’s bustling businesses, many of which are always on the move for your convenience! Enjoy exploring and meeting your fellow shop owners, for there is always help right around the corner! The following is a collection of official citizen businesses that help us liven up the server with everything from materials in bulk, to clinics, researchers for hire, and more!

Do you need to send a package, letter, or perhaps a collection of prized trinkets to your favorite citizens? 10K Blocks is a delivery service run by Hyo the Human that can handle everything and anything YOU need to be sent to anyone on the server! Diamonds are the commonly accepted form of payment, but if you’re short on diamonds, sentimental items will also suffice for anything you’re looking to swiftly ship to your companions! If you would like to make a delivery order, come and visit the Hyo Delivery Interaction thread!

Do you think you might have a slight touch of Watcher Trauma? Do you experience growing anxiety over your safety as an affiliate of Grian or Scar? Are you getting a twinge of bloodthirst, but afraid of hurting your companions? Glowberry Therapy, with multiple locations across the server for your convenience, is here with open arms to help you process everything from finding that your companions have been captured by The Watchers to recurring guilt over setting off an unfathomable chain of events in your past! Therapy from Theseus of Glowberry Therapy is available if you only ask him with a message in the Citizen Talk thread. Therapy is free, but donations are especially appreciated.

Do you crave cookies, pies, cakes, muffins, or any small pastries? You’re in luck because Z (or Zee) has your perfect fix with Painted Wings, their mobile vendor cart running all through Scarland! For just a few diamonds, usually within the 1-5 range, you can taste just a lovingly baked magical treat! Send Z a message in the Citizen Talk thread if you find your stomach growling!

Is your curiosity about a certain mob or biome itching the corners of your brain? Come to Cloud’s Office, located in the Shopping District, and see Azure Clouds to find yourself a researcher who will tell you anything you want to know about these creatures and locations! Send them a message in the Citizen Talk thread for any of your creature and environment studies needed! Any chance for them to share their knowledge is a chance for you to look at your chosen subject with brand-new eyes. All they ask for is 1-10 diamonds (depending on the level of danger) and an attentive ear!

Do you need any medicines or potions? Come to The Pharmacy, located in the center of the shopping district, run by Ender R. Enderwoah! Prices fluctuate based on Ender’s mood and your own demeanor, so put your best face on when you stop by! If you’re pleasant enough, you could even find common items for just a diamond a piece! Find Ender’s thread, The Pharmacy, and leave them a note!

Are you looking for materials from the deep dark areas of the Overworld? Sculk Shriekers, Deepslate, Glowberries, and more are available just east of iBuy at The Quarry Crop, run by Ashes! Give them a message in Citizen Talk, and keep your inventory open for materials in bulk! Prices vary depending on the danger factor, but are well worth it!

Are you looking for a prosthetic or mobility aid from one of the most skilled crafting citizens on the server? Look no further! You can find something perfectly suited to yourself and your style from On the Move! Located at a small workshop near the beach behind iBuy, you can purchase individually customized, hand-crafted, efficiently made, personalized prosthetics and mobility from Fin! Find their Citizen I.D. card and leave a message for them!

Do you need a child, pet, or an inebriated companion to be looked after? For 2 diamonds per hour (or a stockpile of building supplies), you can drop off your ward at The Copper Clinic and Daycare, run by Doc Zero in the Shopping District! In addition, if you are injured or looking for a medical check-up, you may receive a free referral to The Pharmacy as well, though donations are appreciated! Find Doc Zero’s Citizen I.D. card and leave him a message or leave him a message in the Citizen Talk thread if you’re looking for a sitter or clinic!

Many of these shops and services are just getting started, and are more than ready for a full string of customers! We hope you all enjoy your stay in the Hermit Citizen Hub, no matter how long you plan to be with us!

Lost and Found

By Lydia

The following items were brought in from across the server this week. As nobody knows who they belong to, they have been categorized as lost. If you recognize any of the following or would like to report a lost item, do reach out to us at [email protected]*

*Not a real email address

Item 1: A blue glass bottle with a scroll inside. The scroll shows a blueprint for a hot air balloon station. This bottle was found near Keralis’ shipyard. The blueprint seems to be recently drawn, however, the paper is turning yellow due to age. When asked about these blueprints, no one in the area had claimed them, nor had they heard of any plans for a hot air balloon station. The blueprints are drawn in colored pencil and the bottle itself glows in the dark. If this bottle belongs to you, please tell us if you are still planning to create a hot air balloon station when you come to claim it!

Item 2: An old notebook containing transcripts of a quiz show. This notebook is a spiral notebook with an orange and yellow cover that contains several transcripts and notes from a quiz show of an unknown name. It is unknown what the title of the show was, as it was never written down. The transcripts of the show appear to involve a tumultuous style of hosting which involves bringing in contestants to fist-fight each other before answering questions related to various Minecraft mobs. To the person who owns this book, please know that we have been very entertained by its contents!

Item 3: A cloth doll found near Enchantea depicting a gothic baseball player. This doll was found in near-perfect condition just outside of the shop. It is approximately 11 inches tall and has a black baseball uniform with gothic jewelry around the neck and wrists, with four ear piercings. It has curly green hair and silver button eyes. A patch of a peanut shell is sewn onto the back of its shirt. Neither a baseball nor bat was found with it.

Item 4: 6 2-inch coins made out of brass, all depicting images of fish tails and birds’ wings. These coins are green and surprisingly heavy. Four of them appear brand new, but the others appear to have rusted over many years. Each coin depicts two fish tails and four sets of bird wings, specifically the tails of Rainbow Trouts and the wings of California Condors. Anyone holding these coins notes that they feel as if they are about to be chased down by a threatening being, and everyone we have asked refuses to touch them. If these coins are yours, please claim them as soon as possible.

Item 5: A beige amphora made of clay, depicting the image of several Striders walking across a lava lake filled with dominoes. This amphora was found near Total Chaos. The artwork is painted in shades of orange, red, and dark turquoise. The images are crudely drawn and one of the handles is missing. Nothing was found inside the amphora, and it appears to have never held anything at all, as the inside is perfectly clean. If this amphora belongs to you, please consider displaying some of your plants inside of it!

Spectating Science: Warden Science with Tango Tek for Decked Out

Recapped by Cirrus, the Shoebill, written by Lydia

Scientific advancements throughout the Hermit Citizen Hub and among the Hermits themselves continue onward, allowing greater insight into familiar faces. Any citizens who are interested in the instinctual behaviors and idiosyncrasies of creatures of the most dangerous caliber are invited to share their theories related to the focused mob of this article. Wardens today are not as mysterious as they were during their first debut on all servers, however, this does not deter many from inquiring more about the aspects that we do not fully understand, or that we may elaborate upon concerning these sensory beasts.

While last week’s edition of Spectating Science focused on the study of Ravagers from the perspective of your fellow citizen, a biologist and animal behaviorist, Redfeather, this edition focuses on a single day’s experiments conducted by your Hermit, Tango Tek, as he fine-tuned his knowledge of Wardens and continued the early planning stages of his hand-crafted dungeon-crawler game, Decked Out.

Wardens are set to be integrated into the third and fourth levels of Decked Out as the primary threats to Players attempting to collect their artifacts and escape the game with their life. In addition, Wardens were stated to have many intimidating traits that can be used to strike the right level of haste and panic in these Players, but they needed great adjustments to their environment due to their many setbacks. Tango Tek’s live broadcast from May 17th featured trials and experiments conducted on these Wardens in a two-and-a-half-hour session. These experiments centered on necessary changes to increase Warden sensitivity and aggression to make the levels a greater challenge than the previous ones.

One of the Warden’s most significant obstacles, according to Tango Tek, is the extended length of time that a Warden takes to find a Player. This required several assessments of both traversal and sensitivity ranges at the beginning of his broadcast. His initial tests aimed to assess the traversal capabilities of the creatures, finding that the presence of lava slows down a Warden’s walking and running speed, causing it to struggle through its presence. Soul sand will also slow down a Warden’s walking speed. A flow of lava will also easily push a Warden in the stream’s direction, making it unusable for a Warden’s pathing. Wardens do not take damage from lava and are capable of swimming up walls made of lava, but this is not an ideal construction. Instead, Tango Tek settled on using fire in the place of lava for the time being, because it works well to slow down the Player while allowing the Warden to walk and run at its normal pace.

A given advantage for Wardens is their ability to move in a path toward a Player despite their inability to see, and this remains consistent even with the presence of trivial, small dead ends in maze settings. Larger dead ends may cause issues for Wardens, which affects the layout of the third and fourth levels to accommodate a Warden’s initial patterns of pathing. Tango Tek stated that he would likely make each corridor 2 blocks wide at a minimum. He also added that railings are imperative to any staircases if a Warden may risk falling off of them when chasing down a Player.

The next tests conducted centered on Darkness and the sound of Wardens’ heartbeats. Wardens give Players within a 20-block radius the effect of Darkness, which lasts for twelve seconds and is reapplied every six seconds, in addition to creating the sound of an audible heartbeat from approximately 50 to 60 blocks away from a Player. Each Warden’s heartbeat accelerates depending on how aggravated it is, meaning that multiple Wardens will not synchronize their heartbeats with each other. These heartbeats come in tandem with the effect of Darkness given to each Player. The level of Darkness pulsing can physically be changed by each Hermit through their out-of-world settings, and can even be set to not pulse at all. Tango Tek stated, however, that this is not an ideal way to play the game and interferes with the way that he wants them to experience the game’s environment. He also confirmed that the primary heartbeat sound effect that was added to Decked Out overpowers the heartbeat of the Wardens, but he does not see this as a large issue and prefers the sound of the Decked Out sound system to take priority in order to build up the Player’s sense of urgency.

The most intensive tests during the broadcast related to the aggravation and ability of a Warden to track down and kill a Player. With the help of a data pack created by his friend, Grifter, Tango Tek proceeded to measure the way that Wardens’ aggravation becomes affected by different factors. The first section of these intensive tests related to distance, a Warden’s sense of touch, projectiles, and a Warden’s use of scent. Wardens sniff when they are idle and can detect all Players within a 25-block radius. This does not make them aggravated, but it does send them on the path to the Player. A Player walking is the first step to aggravating a Warden, with the others being a Player throwing a projectile that physically contacts the Warden and touching the Warden with one’s bare hands or a weapon. A Warden that is hit with a projectile is easily aggravated faster than in any other way that a Player may antagonize it. A Warden’s roar is also a sign of its aggravation rising. Sneaking is the Player’s first line of defense against aggravating a Warden. If a Warden is not able to reach a Player with its long arms, it will release a Sonic Shriek, dealing a heavy amount of damage as well. A Sonic Shriek has a range of 16 blocks horizontally and 20 blocks vertically.

The second part of this intensive period related to environmental sounds and how they affect a Warden’s attention. Wardens always prioritize the vibrations of a Player over the vibrations of other objects but are also drawn to other objects that create sound within their vicinity. Wardens will not use their sniffing ability when they are distracted by noise-making objects when the Player is over 16 blocks away, which limits the way that Tango Tek may use such elements in relation to Wardens.

The third part of this section involved Tango Tek running through a maze of three-block-tall walls to get to the other side and successfully outrun a Warden. He then added more Wardens upon realizing that merely one Warden proved to be unsatisfactory. The testing area ranged approximately 70 by 70 blocks, the approximate size that Level Three is planned to match. Level Three may be larger, and will also include vertical portions. The goal of creating Level Three is to make the terrain harder for the Player to navigate, but easier for the Warden to traverse and track the Player down. Due to the set of Wardens placed within the testing area taking a longer amount of time to track down the Player and become aggravated, Tango Tek needed a solution to enhance the Wardens’ sensory input. These tests confirmed the need for a new set of experiments to increase the Wardens’ range of aggravation and tracking time.

The final portion of the broadcast showed Tango Tek’s solution to these timing issues. Tango Tek, through the use of calibrated sculk sensors (a future addition to the game), amethyst blocks, and pistons, successfully increased the range of a Warden’s aggravation from 16 blocks to a full 50 blocks. Through the connection of these “nodes” (single units consisting of a calibrated sculk sensor, amethyst block, and piston), he not only increased the range of aggravation but significantly increased the speed of a Warden tracking down a Player and shortened the time in which a Warden would become aggravated by said Player. He describes this grid format of nodes in the way of activating them through the pistons, set off by the amount of clank generated by each Player. During the Player’s run, they will activate the connected calibrated network depending on how long they stay in the dungeon. Despite this critical improvement, Tango Tek must moderate the nodes that are used throughout the entire dungeon to ensure that the game is not too difficult for the Player to complete.

The broadcast ended shortly after this experiment, leaving its viewers with a greater understanding of the capabilities, setbacks, and potential enhancement of Wardens. With this research and experimentation, Tango Tek has greatly enhanced the intelligence and threat levels posed by Wardens to Players for Decked Out, specifically through increasing their range of traversal and aggravation towards the Player. Thanks to Tango Tek’s use of calibrated sculk sensors, Wardens will be a more formidable presence as they take center stage in Levels Three and Four of Decked Out. The overall goal in this endeavor is to encourage the Player to be stealthy and quick, rather than to frustrate them and tempt them to brute force their way through the dungeon.

We invite any applied researchers to bring forth any growing developments that they would like to share in this segment and look for Cirrus, the Shoebill, for an interview about themselves and their work. In addition, tangents and rambles are more than welcome. No discovery is too small, and it is never too late to teach your fellow citizens something new!

[If you would like to be interviewed for Spectating Science, please look for Cirrus’s Citizen I.D. card in the Discord server and leave a note for them.]

Ask the Seers

By Seers Jester, S, Vi, and Nes

Has your favourite little guy been put into a situation they can’t get out of? Do you have questions about how a mountain appeared on top of your house last night? Question no more, for The Seers are here to help! Questions can be submitted through the ask box and are collected throughout the week.

—————————————————

Dear Seers, I took your advice and got things done :] Bobby now has a better room with much more space, and the cats are finally getting along with him! Too well actually. Call me paranoid, but what do I do if I feel like my cats and warden are trying to plot something against me? I feel like the snack barrels aren’t gonna safe anymore. - Paranoid Cat And Warden Parent

Hello Paranoid Cat And Warden Parent,

Apologies for the delayed response, we here at The Seers all mysteriously disappeared to a death game. But we’re back now! Hopefully just in time to save you from your scheming pets…

The most important thing is to find out why they’re plotting, have you not been feeding them their favourite snacks often enough? Are they not getting enough attention? Did you step on one of their feet last week? Figure out why they’re mad and try to bribe them with extra of whatever they’re mad about.

If that fails, separate them. They may be friends, but if they’re dangerous they cannot play together. I’m not saying rehome any of them, just maybe move Bobby away from your base until things blow over!

If you try that and Bobby ends up escaping and returning to plotting with the cats, make a noise machine. It will entertain him long enough for him to forget about whatever they were plotting about.

If all else fails, pack your bags and leave. Perhaps consider the perimeter, because that’s probably more safe then your house right now. - The Seers

ADVERTISEMENTS

By Jamie

—————————————————

Have a package to deliver? A letter to send? Contact Sirius Postal Services NOW for all your mailing needs - the cheap, quick, and easy way of delivery! All letters and packages are insured to get to their destination at precisely the correct moment, whenever that may be.

—————————————————

Come by Ashes’ shop just east of iBuy for various 1.19 blocks! Don’t want to bust your hands mining deepslate? Not to worry, in The Quarry Crop you can buy things in bulk! Be sure to clear out your inventory before shopping. Disclaimer: Prices may vary depending on the danger factor.

—————————————————

This week’s Garden club meeting is being held at Etho’s Alien Gateway! He may be washed up and late to the season but things are going swimmingly for this wet cat! Members please remember to bring your most exotic flowers so we can make Etho feel a little bit better.

—————————————————

Have those pesky SSS members lit up your base without your permission? Are you losing your mob buddies at night because of safety precautions? Here at the SUS we can fix that! Your base will go back to exactly as it was before, and you’ll no longer be lonely on cold nights.

—————————————————

Fun and Games

This week's fun and games are brought to you by Lydia once again and Azure

Word Search by Lydia

Crossword by Lydia

Coloring page by Lydia

Brain Teasers by Azure

And that’s all for this issue folks! Thank you so much for reading, and have a wonderful week!

#issue #hermitcitizen #pdf edition #hccn affilate happenings #hccn weather #hccn lost and found #hccn ask the seers #hccn advertisements #hccn fun and games

32 notes · View notes

helpimhyperfixating · 2 years

Note

APPARENTLY IT'S SHARK WEEK LMAOOOOO, time to celebrate mertaro's unofficial holiday lol

Is it??

Oh shit you’re right!!

IM MISSING DA SHARKOS, FUCK

Have some Mer art to celebrate

#hih answers #mertaro

77 notes · View notes

4reology · 1 year

Text

Dot leads a small group to explore the new island...

RACHEL: “A shark bit it off a few weeks ago.”

KIRIN: “Fuck. But like... can you use it for anything?”

RACHEL: “I’m actually using it to flip you off right now. You can’t tell?

The Wilds Season 3 - Issue#1, Frame#5

Read the first issue of The Wilds (Unofficial) Season 3 here or on Ao3.

#the wilds #the wilds season 3 #tws3fanzine #dot campbell #rachel reid #kirin o’connor #henry tanaka #rachel is a queen #martian-moons #the wilds fan art #the wilds fanart

26 notes · View notes

canonicallysoulmates · 2 years

Text

Jensen Solo Gold Panel Vancon 2022

For those that may not know, Jared sadly wasn't able to attend this con because he has covid so Jensen had to do their panels solo.

Jensen mentions that there was an impromptu unofficial wrap party the night before because when spn wrapped it was during the pandemic so they weren't able to have a party for it, so he had a long night. Says, that usually, he would rely on Jared to handle most of the talking but he has to do it today, and also says that Jared sends his love. That he thinks he was Jared's first call on Friday after he found out about his covid diagnosis, and Jared was really bummed about it.

Jensen mentions that per studio protocol they have to get tested 3x a week even if they're not working, they have to do the test and submit the results. That he asked Jared how he was feeling and Jared replied that he couldn't even take the garbage out so Jensen told him to "get some sleep, get some rest, I got you." The I got you makes me soft 🥺

Jumping right into questions: Who would be his ideal headliners at an ACL weekend?

In case someone doesn't know ACL is Austin City Limits which is a music festival in Austin or as Jensen describes it: Austin’s Coachella.

His headliners would be The Rolling Stones, Elton John, and Metallica who he has seen in concert before and he says he was in awe. He asks the fan who they would pick as a headliner and they say Justin Timberlake, and Jensen says in that genre he would go with Bruno Mars. x

Will he direct any episodes of The Winchesters? He would like to, and already would be if he wasn’t filming Big Sky. He��s filming basically till the end of the year so he doesn't have any spare time but if they end up getting more episodes he does plan to direct it's something he wants to do. He also mentions that Richard Speight Jr. was recently directing an episode. x

From the start of spn to now is there something that he has gained that he could add to his resume like any special skills? He guesses he could add tap dancing.

And also says fight choreographer because he got told he could say so by John Koyama who is a stunt coordinator for The Boys. So, for The Boys they get to rehearse fights weeks in advance and just get in there and work out the movements. During rehearsals, Jensen would make suggestions cause he has experience doing fight scenes, and John Koyama, who is a highly decorated stunt coordinator and one of the best Jensen has ever worked with, told him he felt he needed to give Jensen fight choreographer credit on the show.

Jensen says one of the great things about his job is collaborating and creating with insanely talented people like how he and Jared would sit down and find the little moments that weren’t in the script. x

The next fan used to be a scuba diving instructor and has experience diving with sharks and wants to know if Jensen has ever done an extreme sport and if he has, does he have a story about it? And if he doesn't this person is also a middle school teacher so does he have any stories about his kids and school?

He actually has been in the water with sharks, not great whites although there was a time when he thought he would like to do that he thinks that time has passed but he has been in the water with reef sharks and black tips. That it’s a wild feeling to be in somebody else's territory knowing you are completely helpless and if they wanted to do something to you there's nothing that could be done about it. That it is a bizarre out-of-body experience to dive with predators like that; then as far as kids school stories he did have a parent-teacher conference last week and they got glowing reports from the teachers about their kids. That the twins are in kindergarten and the teacher said Zeppelin is the sweetest and that Arrow did amazingly on the aptitude test that what the school is looking for is between a 3 - 5 and she got a 22 so the teacher said if they wanted they could talk about her skipping a grade but they decided not to cause she has her brother.

I wanna take a detour real quick because when Jensen was talking about swimming with the sharks the fan mentions that she carries a knife with her when diving so she can hit the shark on the nose if it gets too close, and Jensen was baffled. And as a lifelong fan of that oceanic predator, I want to take a second to say the fan is right. Ideally, if you need to push a shark away you would do so with a long stick because you don't want to let a shark get too close but if it did, depending on the type of shark and assuming it's not in an aggressive mood you can just push them away by the nose just be careful your hand doesn't accidentally end up in their mouth. They're curious animals, they just wanna know what you are but if they do attack go for the eyes and gills, and remember don't flop around like a fish. Sharks have no interest in eating humans or attacking us but if you act like prey they'll treat you like prey. Also, never swim in shark waters by yourself that's just asking for trouble.

That's my mini shark PSA 🦈

Back to the panel, what's a question he would be happy to never answer again? The what's your favorite episode question because it's hard to answer. x

Was there any special preparation before the scene where Dean meets Death in the pizzeria or was Julian Richings just enough for the tenseness that's in that scene? Julian was enough. Jensen says all the plans he had regarding that scene went out the window the moment he sat down in front of him. That there are moments in spn where you can see Dean disappear and Jensen appear as an audience member and be amazed and that's how he felt when he sat down across from Julian. That his performance and his whole persona is so rich and layered that Jensen didn't really have to do anything, that he's fantastic and one of the best guest stars they ever had. x

Everybody has a platform, and nowadays there's pressure to have an opinion on everything, what are some tools Jensen uses in his life to keep himself living genuinely and intentionally instead of hopping unto opinion bandwagons just because they're popular at the time?

He reiterates that everybody has a platform, and it's up to the individual to respect it. What the platform can do can be damaging but it can also be uplifting and it's to the individual to choose what they are gonna use their platform for; he is very precious with the fact that he gets to stand on a stage and address everyone, he doesn't take that for granted and he wants to earn it. Says that he doesn't deserve this but he's going to try and earn it every time he gets on stage and in front of a mic or he posts a thing online.

It is a responsibility a lot of people didn't have and now we all have it and we have to decide what to do with it, do we wanna bring light into the world or cast shadows. He chooses to bring light into the world and he will continue to do that; when it comes to living genuinely and not being a mouthpiece to popular ideas he tries to navigate that to the best of his ability in a way that doesn't have negative outcomes. If he has an opinion about something that's wrong and he wants to speak out about it he will because it means something to him but mostly he keeps his opinions to himself and he tries to still live by the saying of if you have nothing nice to say don't say anything at all. That if you say something you should make every effort to make it positive. x

Does he have a favorite quote that he lives by? He has some that pop into his head but he doesn’t know if there’s one in particular. One he told the cast of The Winchesters is that they don't deserve to be there, they earned the right but they have to continue to earn it every day, that it's a responsibility.

That he tries not to take things for granted. That there's also a quote from a Lincoln commercial that Matthew McConaughey did that hit him so much that he wrote it down and put it in his closet. And the quote is "taking care of yourself takes care of more than just yourself" and to him, that means his kids and his family. Being good to yourself mentally but also physically, exercising, eating healthy, trying to be a positive impact on the world are things that are good for you but also to those who depend on you, and he knows he has a big responsibility with himself, with his kids and his family, but also the fans, his friends, his work, his cast- they depend on him so he tries to be good to himself so he can be good for them. x

There's a scene where he and Jared are going down some stairs in perfect synchronization was that choreographed or was that improv?

Jensen guarantees that it was done subconsciously, that he and Jared are very similar in the way that they perform, and also when you work with somebody that long you don't even think about doing stuff for example he shares that he and Jared would come out of their individual trailers at the exact same time so often that people would start betting on it. That they lockstepped on just about everything they did because they were together so much so those in-sync moments that happened are totally subconscious. ❤️

Jensen also mentions that there is probably not one scene in spn where he and Jared don't have gum in their mouth.

SPN had a lot of extras, does he ever get to go anywhere and not know somebody or how often is he surprised to run into someone he knows and has worked with? In Vancouver, it's a lot more likely for him to walk into a restaurant and have the waiter be somebody who has been on the show but a lot of the time he feels bad cause he might not recognize them, he has worked with hundreds of people and some that he runs into might be someone who he worked with over 10yrs ago. That the great and crazy thing about being on a show for that long in the same city is that a large part of the population has gone through the spn doors, and it gives him a little pride to know that what they did for so long employed so many people and gave them an opportunity to have an experience on a show. He feels that it's like they got to come over to his and Jared's house and have a party.

And now he's getting to go to other people's houses and party in their houses. That he was asked the other day what it's like being on Big Sky and he said that it's like going to somebody else's dinner party. That he and Jared got to host one of their own for a long time and now he gets to be the guest of honor at someone else's although with Big Sky he feels like he showed up and got asked to cook the steaks x

Last question, Radio Company what can he say about it?

They are having a Christmas-themed joint concert with Louden Swain the Monday after Nashcon, tickets are going on sale on Friday, Oct 28th. So far they don't have any plans for touring or other concerts just that event. x

Jensen Solo Gold Panel Vancon

#remember kids sharks are friends #jensen ackles #mine #main panel summary will be up tomorrow

27 notes · View notes

araminakilla · 3 years

Text

He is all these things and more...

225 notes · View notes

inkblot-inc · 2 years

Note

Jaws watching Shark week. I feel like that’s something that needs to happen. Also shield getting ID made for them and Nick is like ‘we need a last name for Jaws’ and Wanda is like ‘they’re a Maximoff till Nat marries them’ cause Jaws is her sibling now, she doesn’t make the rules.

Hello hello Anon!

Now, Jaws and Shark Week:

“Am I supposed to be rooting for the people in these scenarios?”

“You kept tapping it on the nose and you didn’t think it would get mad? Do you need to have a video of a feeding frenzy from 3 feet away, Riley? They're glad the shark just tore open the fender and not your entire shark cage,”

I think Peter would be the one to show Jaws Shark Week the first time as like a “hey, your part shark right? What do you think of this?” maybe even include their thoughts in a paper for biology or something. Jaws would definitely correct information that’s either incorrect or unclear too. But what does Jaws think of Shark Week in general?

Jaws thinks it's fucking hilarious. They watch Shark Week to basically see what stupidity people have gotten up to this time. You actively go into shark territory with no protection and are surprised when they mistake you for their next meal? That’s rich buddy.

Jaws draws the line at watching people swab shark ass for research tho.

-----

Also, Jaws is absolutely a Maximoff at this point! That is the name that we will have on file, so it is now the unofficial (but basically official) government name. Jaws Maximoff baby!

#jaws au #shark week #peter parker #mutant!reader #wanda maximoff #jaws is defo team sharks #jaws is a maximoff #without a doubt #until they marry natasha #jaws maximoff #we love wanda claiming jaws as her sibling #she did not hesitate #j.headcanons #ib/jaws #ink.wanda #ib-jc.

21 notes · View notes

fallout-drabbles-n-stuff · 3 years

Note

Not sure if this has been done but if not I believe it’s time for a beach ask-isode (sorry thatwasreallybad)

Anyways! What does everyone (Maxson and gang leaders included) do while at the beach? What kind of suits do they wear?

(Ah yes, only a wedding post would top this masterpiece. Also this is going to be more on the Pre-War! Or Modern! Au spectrum since yknow..radioactivity)

Cait:

•Abosuletly HATES the beach.

•Bitches about literally everything. Sand? Fucking despises it. Getting wet? No thanks. THE SMELL?? Sis, no.

•Gets burnt AF as well. Miss Ma'am ends up looking like a boiled crab after maybe a couple minutes out in the sun.

•The only thing she enjoys is checking people out.

•either way, she goes and wears something comfortable. A bandeau and some shorts are her go to.

Curie:

•Rather likes the beach.

•She loves collecting seashells and seeing if she can capture hermit crabs (which she promptly returns to their home after taking a picture)

•She would wear one of those one pieces complete with a cute skirt and an oversized sun hat.

•SUNSCREEN ENFORCER

Danse:

•Has one helluva time running. As a matter of fact, he loves nothing more than to run on the beach at sunrise....however this is more of a social event we're talking about-

•Passive aggressively admonishes his "friends" to wear sunscreen.

•Will actually partake in alcohol is it's presented. Make sure he doesn't overdue it- Hancock is patiently waiting for him to get lit and do something stupid so he can have blackmail material. DRUNK DANSE WILL PROVIDE PLENTY OF IT.

•wears tragically boring red and orange swim trunks and that's it. Doesn't understand why Cait keeps whistling at him when he takes his shirt off.

Deacon:

•He's the type to go sun tanning and end up forgetting his sunglasses are still on. Oh well, just an excuse to keep wearing them.

•Definitely instigates water fights.

•Wears the most outlandish, neon green speedo. Scars the masses.

Gage:

•Loves the beach but will bitch about it being too hot nonstop.

•Mainly just floats out into the open water on a lounge float and sips lemonade. No one is stupid enough to try to play a prank on him anyways- they already know he isn't above drowning someone over being thrown into the water unexpectedly.

•wears a horrendous green muscle shirt and yellow swim trunks.

Hancock:

•Life of the party, as always.

•Blasts music, indulges in whatever drugs he can and has an overall wonderful day filled with debauchery.

•Provided the beach is okay with it, he'd prefer to go nude. However if that isn't an option, he'll rock an American flag speedo.

Macready:

•I know it's soft, but he prefers to bring Duncan along. So no terrible parties for Mac, unfortunately.

•He makes sandcastles and plays "soldiers" with his little boy before going with Curie to collect seashells for Duncan to add to his collection.

•For once ditches the hat and rocks a Grognak themed ensemble. Duncan hates it and often pretends he doesn't know him.

Mags:

•As a woman who enjoys the finer things, she spends a little extra money to "party up" her beach time in an expensive cabana.

•Prefers to sit out and relax, getting some sun as she smokes as many cigarettes as humanely possible and knocks back bottles of wine.

•Wears a pair of those really nice, oversized sunglasses and a simple black bikini...and probably those ridiculous platforms.

Mason:

•Despite his wealth, he "roughs" it and spends his beach time like a normal person...well..as normal as Mason can get.

•He spends the majority of his time in the water like a damn idiot, swimming until he gets sick from accidentally ingesting too much salt water.

•Very, VERY tempted to flip Gage's float over.

•Wears flamboyant flamingo themed swim trunks.

Maxson:

•Another one of the pathetically rich, buuut he doesn't overdo it. Sure, he may also rent out a nice cabana but he spends the most of his time underneath an umbrella reading whatever novel he's invested in at the moment.

•Will sit there and read for as long as possible, maybe only breaking to play a game of volleyball with Danse and Preston. Even then, his top priority is to get back to either reading or jotting down the next key points for a future meeting.

•Wears some stupid designer like burberry. It's hideous but he doesn't care.

•uhhhh, don't entice him with alcohol either, it's not a good idea.

Nick:

•Loves going to the beach right as the sun is setting. He gets a small window of time to read before being able to fully appreciate how beautiful the scenery is as the moon rises.

•Keeps an eye on Hancock so the dude doesn't do anything too stupid, but pretends to "party" so Hancock doesn't catch wind that he's being supervised.

•He's the perpetual "parent" of the group and he accepts it.

•Wears a matching shirt and trunk set, usually in black.

Nisha:

•Surfs and proceeds to beat the shit out of Mason with her board when she's finished.

•Will actually go smoke and drink with Mags and have a decent time until they inevitably hit a snag and decide to not talk to each other for weeks again.

•Tries to instigate fights with Gage fueled by her hatred for him.

•Wears an expensive wetsuit.

Piper:

•Enjoys taking nice pictures of her friends and herself at the beach.

•Also joins in the volleyball game whenever she is done with said pictures.

•Gets bored easily and decides to go back to working on her next article...until she gets bored of that and decides to go swim.

•Wears a nice red and white polka dot two piece and some red sunshades.

Preston:

•Is the unofficial life Gaurd. Like no shit, he is on a damn mission. He'll fight a shark if he has to.

•Plays fetch with Dogmeat whenever he finally calms down.

•May even go scuba diving, just depends. He loves seeing the fish and different things in the water.

•Wears a cute pair of sunflower swim shorts.

X6-88:

•Doesn't show up. He hates the beach.

•Okay fine, if you force him into it...

•He'll more or less just sit where the waves crash onto shore.

•If shaun is there though, it's a whole new story. Oh yeah. If his best buddy Shaun is there, you bet your ass he will happily do whatever the kid wants him to. Piggy back ride? Right away. Go prank Maxson? In a heartbeat.

•Wears a grey and black striped pair of shorts.

116 notes · View notes

collecting-stories · 4 years

Text

Marks - John B Routledge

Request: Hi would you be able to write something about John b (outer banks) were the reader and him have been secretly seeing each other and one day they are all one the boat and she's wearing one of his shirts over a bikini and the others see the marks???? Love your work btw and sorry if this makes no sense and it OK if you can do it and thank you 💛🌻🌼

A/N: So I hope this is what you wanted?? I like how it turned out.

Outer Banks Masterlist

///

No one knew where the unofficial rule of Pogue life in the Outer Banks had come from but you all agreed that it felt like it had been around forever. Was it something Kiara made up in seventh grade when boy/girl parties meant more pressure to kiss whoever the cutest person in the room was? Was it something someone else made up that was overheard and adopted? Had it been around for a long time? It was hard to say, all you did know was that the rule was the rule, no Pogue-on-Pogue macking, and the rule was sacred. It hadn’t been transcribed in stone by a burning bush but it might as well have been the way that everyone talked about it. Some people broke the rule but never your group.

You’d kissed tourons, a odd kook once at a party that you never spoke of again for fear of retribution, but never a Pogue. It was a stupid rule, honestly, but it’d helped you not make terrible decisions. Like when you and JJ got so high in ninth grade that you almost kissed him. But even in the haze the rule was the rule and you didn’t break it.

“How am I supposed to get a boyfriend when the guys I’m allowed to like leave after two weeks?” You questioned, laying on the end of the HMS Pogue. It was this very conversation that had changed your opinion of the rule. Before that afternoon you followed like it was written law and you were afraid of burning in hell for breaking it.

But as you turned your head to the side to look over at your friends, at John B steering the boat through the marsh, it suddenly occurred to you that your question wasn’t a vague observation but rather a specific wanting. You didn’t want any guy to be your boyfriend, you wanted John B. You must’ve looked at him a thousand times in your life, you’d known him through bad haircuts, the summer before high school when his face broke out, the year he only wore stupid graphic tee’s from five below, and ill attempted bucket hat phase. All the unpleasant, unattractive moments in life that were supposed to deter you from even thinking about him that way didn’t seem to matter when you gazed at him across the boat. Tanned, unruly hair getting a little close to too long, some ridiculous Hawaiian shirt that he had the inability to button correctly.

“I’ll be your boyfriend.” Pope offered, handing you a beer.

You sat up to drink and gave him a skeptical look, “you going somewhere I don’t know about?”

“No Pogue on Pogue macking,” Kiara piped up like she was the spokesperson for it.

“Oh my god; I know!” You groaned and Pope laughed, “why do you think I’m in this dilemma?”

“You could date a kook,” JJ teased.

“Fuck you JJ.”

“Just mack on some Pogue we don’t know,” John B suggested. You looked over at him and took a long gulp of your beer, if he only knew.

“You know everyone,” Kiara pointed out.

“See, Kie understands my dilemma.”

“Actually, I kinda prefer not being tied down.” Kiara replied.

“Okay, archaic...I’m not trying to be someone’s property or something but it’d be kinda nice to have someone ya know? To not have to flirt with rando tourists all summer.” You complained. It was a legitimate problem.

“Sure. I hear that.” Pope agreed.

When everyone else had dispersed for the night, Pope back to his house, Kie to the Wreck, JJ to sleep in the hammock outside the Chateau, you and John B sat on the couch watching a movie on your laptop. You had your head on his shoulder and he was slumped against the cushions, far too quiet for a movie about a mega shark attacking people. He hadn’t said much else after your discussion about dating had died down. John B talked the talk, he flirted easily with tourons at parties but you never knew him to really be with anyone. You couldn’t remember a time when he’d ever called someone his girlfriend but you also didn’t know him to be the type to have random hookups.

“You’re so quiet.” You observed, “we haven’t even ragged on the stupid CGI.”

“The CGI is stupid.” John B said, tilting his head to look at you and smiling.

“Loser.” You shook your head. You wanted to tell him, you had decided on the boat that you had to. If he wasn’t interested in you, if the idea of dating one of his best friends freaked him out that was fine, you could be friends and move on. But if you just thought about it, obsessed over it, you would make it awkward. It would never be normal between the two of you because all you would focus on would be the what-ifs.

John B shrugged.

“Hey John B, can I ask you something?” You sat up, shifting away so that you could look at him.

“You just did.”

“Okay dad,” you rolled your eyes at him when he smiled.

“What’s up?” He asked, turning to face you, movie forgotten. The mega shark could eat whoever he wanted, John was focused on you and that was better than a movie.

You were never sure how these things worked. Did you say that you liked him and you wanted to be in a relationship with him? Did you tell him you wanted to kiss him? How did you say okay to him when he inevitability said he wasn’t interested? He probably liked someone else. Sure, you had never seen him with anyone but that didn’t mean he didn’t like someone else...maybe Kie, everyone liked her. And if he did you couldn’t be mad about that.

“Hey, E.T., phone home.” John B teased, waving a hand in front of your face.

You laughed and grabbed his wrist, “sorry.” You moved his hand to your lap and held it there, taking a deep breath. You could do this. This was John B, best friend, dork, treasure hunter. You talked to him about everything, you could talk to him about this. “The thing is-” You leaned forward, getting a rush of adrenaline as you closed your eyes and pressed your lips against his.

John B’s eyes went wide as he sat there, his brain working overtime to catch up with what was happening. His free hand gripped the back of the couch as he leaned more into the kiss. When you’d mentioned wanting to date someone, he never imagined that you could be thinking about him. You’d been friends for a long time but that didn’t erase the fact that you were attractive. He’d never do anything that you didn’t want but there were plenty of times when he stared a little too long or hugged you a little too long. He was sure JJ and Pope had too, it wasn’t anything unusual for a group so close to have crushes on each other but he couldn’t even wrap his mind around the two of you.

As the kiss deepened you let go of his hand to hold onto his shoulders, shifting yourself to straddle his lap. John B wrapped his arm around your waist, pulling you against him completely as he laid back on the couch, the sudden motion making you yelp a little.

“Oh my god, JB!” You laughed; foreheads pressed together as you laid there on top of him.

“So uh, definitely broke a rule or two,” he joked. He watched as you sat up in his lap.

That was two weeks ago and in that time you and John B had almost perfected your ability to sneak around. Though no amount of perfectly crafted excuses, late nights at the Chateau without your friends, or actively pretending you were interested in other people when you were at a party could have helped you avoid the most obvious clue that one of you might be fooling around behind the group’s back.

You were on the HMS Pogue with the others, sitting cross-legged at the front with JJ smoking while Kiara and Pope swam. It would be dusk soon and the air was getting colder this far out. You would have just put your shorts and shirt back on but JJ had thrown you in the water earlier, fully dressed, and now you sat there, cold, with your wet clothes hanging over the side of the boat.

“Just give me your t-shirt.” You begged. You’d been asking JJ for his shirt to keep you warm for the last ten minutes.

“No. Then I’ll be cold.”

“So much for chivalry.”

“I’m sorry,” Pope called, “is your complaint that JJ isn’t chivalrous?”

“Yeah you’re right, my bad.” You stuck your tongue out at JJ and he smiled in return. John B was at the wheel, wearing your favorite of his numerous Hawaiian shirts. The one with the girls surfing. “Hey John B!” You called, leaning toward him and smiling.

“Yes?” John asked, smirking at you and raising an eyebrow in question.

“Can I have your shirt? JJ’s a douche and won’t give me his.”

“You’re such a baby.” JJ laughed.

“I guess I can spare it.” John replied, unbuttoning the only two buttons he’d done up and slipping the shirt off. You smiled, holding your hand out to him to accept the shirt.

Once he handed it over he walked back to the wheel, JJ sliding his sunglasses down his nose dramatically and letting out a low whistle. “Hot damn John B, didn’t know you liked it so rough.”

“What?” John whipped around, looking at JJ questioningly. The other boy slipped his sunglasses into his necklace and signed toward John B.

“You have, uh, scratches...on your back.” You supplied. JJ was still smirking.

“Wait what?” The commotion had caught Kiara and Pope’s attention, both swimming over to the boat and climbing in.

John’s eyes shot instinctively over at you and you looked away as he reached back and felt the slightly raised welts on his back from the previous night. None of the other pogues had stuck around last night, leaving you and John B in the Chateau alone.

JJ was watching your behavior and, when you turned away from him, noticed something off. “Hey Kie, hand me a water?”

“Seriously JJ?” She tossed the water at him as Pope followed up his “wait what” with twenty other questions. Who was it? When did you meet them? How long have you known them? Where they a pogue, a touron, worse? A kook?

JJ, meanwhile, spilled some water on his fingers and reached over, rubbing your neck without warning, “what the fuck JJ!” You shouted, jumping to your feet and moving away from him.

“Think I can answer your who Pope, unless that’s a coincidence.” He joked, pointing to the newly revealed hickey on your neck. You’d covered it with bronzer and foundation that morning but hours in the sun had sweat some of the makeup off and JJ had rubbed the rest.

“Oh my god!” Kiara grabbed your arm, turning you to look at the mark, “oh my god! For christ sake, we have a rule.”

“It’s a fucking stupid rule Kie and you know it.” John cut in immediately.

“Can’t argue with that.” JJ announced.

“Shut up Jay, you aren’t helping.”

“Guys...why didn’t you just tell us?” Pope asked.

“Cause I knew exactly how Kie would react.”

“We have a rule for a reason! What happens when you break up and then shit is awkward because we have to choose who to be friends with?” She argued.

“We aren’t gonna break up.” You insisted.

“You don’t know that, all summer you’ve been ‘I just want a boyfriend to mack on, it doesn’t have to be serious’ and so what? Some tourist won’t do because two weeks is too short but you and John B are gonna hook up? Until when?”

“Whoa, don’t turn on me!” You snapped.

“She’s got a point...not just you,” JJ quickly clarified. “But both of you...what happens when you get sick of whatever this is?”

“I’m not getting sick of anything and we’re not just hooking up for the summer Kie,” John B said, looking between his friends.

“You say that-”

“I love her.” He cut in. Turning to look at you he continued, “I love you, not exactly how I imagined telling you but...I love you.”

You bit your lip as you smiled, “I love you too.” You had known that first day on John B’s couch that there was no way the feelings you had for him could be contained to a random hookup. You weren't just dating for the summer to break up, this was something real. Something serious.

“Good, now I’m turning this fucking boat around and all of you can go the fuck home.”

“You’re kicking us off the boat cause Kie threw a tantrum.”

“I did not throw a tantrum JJ!” Kiara said, smacking his arm.

“You kinda did.”

“I’m not kicking you off the boat cause you threw a tantrum-”

“I didn’t throw a tantrum!” She laughed this time as she cut John B off.

“I’m dropping you off cause you definitely don’t wanna be around for the next couple of hours.” John B announced, glancing over at you and winking.

“Oh my god!” Pope groaned, “can you guys not talk about it.”

taglist: @maplelattes22 @poguesrforlife @freckled-and-daydreaming @calumhoodsbuckethat @millie-753

If you want to be tagged let me know!

2K notes · View notes

maybedefinitely404 · 4 years

Text

Day 21: Prinxiety (pt 2)

@tsshipmonth2020

Day 21: Combine two soulmate prompts. (This will make sense soon, I promise.)

It’s the sequel you’ve all been waiting for! This is the second part to day 16 (read that first!!!!!), and y’all finally get to see what happened to Virgil! Please heed the trigger warnings below.

TRIGGER/content WARNINGS!! Anxiety, food mention, crappy foster system/group homes, implied past abuse, religious guilt/negative view of religion, homophobia, conversion therapy/abuse, starvation, sneaking medication (antipsychotics/side effects), electrocution, seizure, ambulance. I’m sorry.

Word count: 3.8k

Unlike most kids in the foster system, Virgil didn’t know his birthday. He knew it was sometime in December, but that didn’t do much. Technically, birthdays weren’t really a huge thing anyways, not when the group home he rarely left was awfully underfunded, and a party came second to little things like working sinks and clothes without holes. Even still, all the other kids at least got a little cupcake and a half hearted birthday song on their special day, and his festivities were pushed onto Christmas. He didn’t get a weak excuse for a celebration, because the other kids ‘found it unfair’ that he got that and Christmas in the same month. To prevent an upheaval, the workers told him that he’d just have to be happy with what he got.

But it wasn’t fair, because some kids got Easter and a birthday, or Halloween and a birthday, or New Years and a birthday, and poor Virgil didn’t. The fact of the matter was, they plain didn’t like him. The other kids didn’t like that he got extra free time because of his anxiety, or was allowed to leave the table when they weren’t, and they especially didn’t like he was the youngest of the bunch. The youngest had the highest chance of getting adopted, it was just facts, so they had seemingly decided that if his stay here would be the shortest, it would be the most tortured.

It wasn’t the shortest stay, though. With his barrage of anxiety related issues and group-home-toughened demeanor, no foster home wanted to deal with him. He was snarky, ran away, regularly got in fights with the biological children of the parents, and was promptly labeled a problem child. Eventually, it was deemed easier for him to just stay in a group home until he outgrew the system, since he seemed set to escape every other place. Virgil tried to pretend it didn’t hurt as much as it did; it was his fault, after all. As he watched all his older tormentors grow out of a crooked system, he resigned himself to the same fate. After all, he was almost sixteen now, and he knew his chances were out. So he stayed stuck in his group home, lashing out at his caretakers and therapists, refusing to eat unless it was alone in his room (technically, three kids slept in there, but he so rarely left it, and they wanted to avoid him, it was unofficially deemed his room), and listening to music on his phone.

He’d been given the phone on his fifteenth birthday, a gift from one of his caretakers. It was the cheapest piece of crap he’d ever seen, glitched out every other minute and needed to be charged at least three times a day, but it was a phone nonetheless. Granted, he had no one to text. But he had access to a computer, a totally one hundred percent legal music downloading website, and a strong sense of determination, so he’d soon filled the phone’s entire measly storage with all the music he could cram on the thing.

That’s what he was doing on the night of December 18th, listening to his “Emo Playlist” on a pair of $4 Dollar Store earbuds, laying on his bed and finding shapes in his popcorn ceiling as the moon shone through the window. In the bunk beds across the room from him, his two other roommates were fast asleep, but he couldn’t follow suit. It was sadly normal for Virgil to have sleepless nights where no matter what, his anxious brain just wouldn’t shut off, and it just felt like one of those nights. His hands shook and his eyelids flinched every few seconds for no reason, so he turned the music just a little bit louder and tried to calm his breathing.

It was just past 1 am when his life changed forever.

He was on the fourth cycle of his playlist, eyes no more heavy than hours before and just as flinchy. It was just entering the “existential crisis” time of the night where he started questioning reality, and he was about to give in and start letting his mind drift to darker places, when a song distinctly not his began to play in the midst of a song switch.

How can you miss someone you’ve never met?

Because I need you now but I don’t know you yet,

But can you find me soon, because I’m in my head,

Yeah, I need you now but I don’t know you yet.

He froze, eyes suddenly wide open, and yanked the earbuds out of his ears. The song continued; not in his headphones, but in his head. It didn’t take an idiot to realize that it was his soulmate, responding, and as an afterthought, Virgil suddenly identified that today was probably his birthday. Both amazing revelations, but one was slightly more time sensitive.

Desperately scrolling through his playlists as the song stopped after the chorus, he tried to find a song that would be an adequate introduction to this new person. When his eyes landed on a song from his Adele phase (he didn’t talk about that time) that he hadn’t had the energy to delete yet, he simultaneously groaned and grinned. Subtly meme-y, heartfelt like the song his soulmate had played, a decent greeting. He tapped play.

Hello,

It’s me.

He hoped his soulmate had the same sense of humor of him and had actually given a laugh, since he was trying to stifle laughter behind his sleeve to avoid waking the sleeping kids. He paused after the first verse, since he didn’t really want to remember that phase of his life more than he had to, and waited for the other to play the next song. Hopefully they could work out some sort of rhythm, play songs back and forth. He for sure wouldn’t be able to sleep now.

(The next song his soulmate played was an almost atrocious obviously-musical-theatre song that almost made Virgil hit his head against the wall, so he retaliated with a favorite of his, the most ear assaulting screamo he could find on his playlist.)

The clock had just passed four in the morning when there was a small pause in the routine, before his soulmate played a children’s lullaby. It definitely wasn’t something you’d listen to in everyday life, so Virgil could only assume it was the other’s way of indicating that they had to sleep. As if I’m going to let you go that easily, Virgil smirked, opening YouTube and begging that the video he’d chosen would play without an ad.

It did, filling his crackling, cheap earbuds with the opening chorus of Baby Shark. Fight fire with fire, he decided, chuckling to himself as he turned off the song just before the ‘mommy shark’ verse. Silence filled his head and he mentally wished the other a good night, turning onto his stomach and screaming into his pillow, grinning madly.

Eight months later, their new way of life was deeply imbedded into him; getting woken up at asscrack o’clock in the morning by a worker who wanted to be there as much as he did, and either playing his morning playlist to get himself slightly more ready to face another monotonous day or waiting in silence until his soulmate woke up and played their own music. He’d begrudgingly started to even enjoy the showtunes. Everyone around the home had noticed his gradual shift in attitude, and he couldn’t help the natural smiles that pulled at his cheeks when a new song played out of nowhere. It got to the point where his therapist noticed his lifted mood, and the other kids stopped avoiding him and, unknown to Virgil, his social workers decided that he was ready to try another foster home.

That’s why, eight months later, there was a knock on his bedroom door and his main worker poked in her head, asking him to come downstairs. He’d been playing music for his soulmate, so he silently apologized and joined her at the dining room table, giving her a half hearted smile.

“Virgil, we’ve found a new home for you. A foster home that specializes in… harder to place cases. They’ve opened their doors to you, and we’re hoping to get you into a trial period there within the next week.”

At first, Virgil vehemently refused. No. He didn’t want to go back to foster homes, not after… everything he went to in the first few. The ones that hurt him, the ones that were more densely crowded than group homes, the ones that turned him into the angry shell he was before he had met a sign of a possibly happy future. He didn’t want to lose the progress he’d made.

But Bev looked so hopeful, so pleadingly at him, that he gave in after three days of denying. He said goodbye to the kids he’d unfortunately grown attached to, threw his few belongings into a black garbage bag, and got into his worker’s car for the first time in years. Just rebuckling that seatbelt caused a shudder to run up his spine.

------1 month later------

“Virgil, what are you doing? Do you have earbuds in? We’ve made it abundantly clear that you are not to have technology at the table.”

Virgil fought every urge in his body to roll his eyes, flicking his hair behind his ears to show they were empty. It had gotten long and shaggy, just reaching his jaw in the back. “No earbuds. My soulmate’s listening to music, and it’s catchy.” Frankly, he was surprised he hadn’t been caught bopping along to silence before by the stiflers.

They were nice enough, a woman and a man and their two biological children, but they were too religious for Virgil’s liking. He’d never had qualms with religion before, but he had grown tired of spending Saturdays and Sundays (his only days off from their homeschool regime) in a church, surrounded by older people singing repetitive songs and being yelled at by a guy on the pulpit. Faking being sick only worked so many times before they refused to listen to his excuses. They also insisted he go to a specialized youth group on Tuesdays, but that was easy enough to escape. He just waved by and booked it to the closest 7/11 when they left, making sure he was back at the church by the time it was over and made up some bullshit about the gathering. Jameson, the attendant at the gas station, was becoming the closest friend he’d ever had.

“Your soulmate?” One of the children asked around a bite of toast, spitting a decent amount onto Virgil’s sleeve.

“Like daddy and I, Mariam.” The woman explained briefly, not bothering to chastise her about speaking with her mouth full.

“Yeah.” Unlike most of the kids at his old group home, he wasn’t warming up to theirs. They were too spoiled, too bratty. One had even bit him in his first week here and he was still bitter about it.

“When did you connect with yours, Virgil?” The question wasn’t asked kindly, more for the sake of being polite, and he assumed if he didn’t answer in an equally polite tone, they’d probably make him paint a fence or something.

He knew they cared about his bond about as much as he did about theirs. Which was approximately none. The mom took her children’s empty plates and placed them in the sink, Virgil quickly following suit. No use losing more computer time because he didn’t clean his plate.

“Last December. I didn’t even know it was my birthday, and they started playing music out of nowhere. It was pretty cool.” He finished rinsing off his plate and was confused at the sudden stillness in the room.

“‘They’?” The mom asked, giving her husband what she must have believed to be a subtle glance.

“Uhm… yeah?” Virgil said slowly, “I’m bisexual. So I’m not sure if my partner’s a guy or a girl or… something in between. So… they?”

He stared with rising anxiety as the two parents had a silent interaction over the kitchen island, before the dad stood up. “Kids, plates in the sink and then go get ready for church. Virgil, you too.”

There was minimal whining as the younger ones did as they were asked, racing each other up the stairs. Virgil followed, slower, listening to hushed beginnings of a conversation, unable to fight the feeling that he’d just royally fucked up.

------------------------

“Virgil, may we speak with you for a moment?”

He froze, slowly turning from where he’d been half way up the stairs. They’d just wrapped up lessons for the day (Virgil never thought he’d miss an actual school building before, but alas) and the kids had been excused, leaving just him and the parents behind. It had been almost a week since the incident, and a part of him had been hoping they’d just drop it. There wasn’t much they could do, anyways; if their religion conflicted so badly with his sexuality, the worst they would do is send him back to the home anyways. In all honesty, he kind of hoped they would. He was sick of being here, and it was better for his record if he didn’t run.

Not that it mattered much anymore. He was almost aged out of the system anyways.

He took a cautious seat back at the dining room table, which they had just cleared from classes. The mom sat back in her chair, eyeing him carefully, as the dad began to speak.

“We spoke with our pastor the other day, and we think it would be best if we put you in therapy.”

“I don’t…” He’d stopped regular therapy at the group home almost a month before coming here, and he couldn’t imagine why he’d need to go back. He definitely wasn’t happy here, but he didn’t figure a grumpy mood was enough to warrant counseling. “I don’t understand.”

“After… what you told us? About your… urges-”

“Urges.” He couldn’t help his own disgusted tone. Of course they were homophobic.

“Yes. Our pastor suggested we try conversion therapy.”

Virgil scoffed, but he couldn’t ignore the way his heart started pounding, “Right. As if you could ever get my social workers to approve that. Ward of the state, remember?” He tapped his chest a couple times.

“Fortunately, we already talked to your social worker, Virgil. We had it approved just this morning.” The man finally stopped, as if waiting for a response.

Virgil’s eyes grew wide as he looked frantically between the two of them, the woman quickly avoiding eye contact. That wasn’t normal.

“There’s no way in hell that you-”

“Profanity, Virgil!” The man barked and Virgil shrank back in his chair, impulsively ducking to avoid a fist that didn’t come. They hadn’t hit him so far, but old habits die hard. “We’ve already signed you up. Your first session is tomorrow. First thing’s first-” He stood up, reaching a hand out to a still-shaking Virgil, “Hand over your phone.”

-------------------------

His hair was short now. Shorter than he could ever remember it being. He missed his bangs, he missed the tiny boosts of confidence it gave him when the rest of his appearance disgusted him. Now there was nothing for his hands to run through. There was no style to it, just an electric razor in the hands of his silent foster mother. He should have fought it, he really should have, but he was shaking far too much to try to move.

He didn’t like hands so near his throat.

------------------------

Surely, his social worker didn’t approve of this. The only explanation Virgil could possibly rationalize was they’d lied about the purpose of the therapy, or the method, or something. But any type of change in a foster kid's life had to go through about a million different levels to get approved, so how the hell were they getting away with this?

It wasn’t too bad. A lot of it was using religious guilt, something Virgil did not have much of, saying he was immoral and inhumane. The rest of it was just his new therapist trying to dig into his supposed ‘trauma’ that made him ‘this way’, as if there was something that caused it. They talked a lot about his old foster homes, and his therapist seemed positive something there had to be the root to everything. It made his blood boil.

It didn’t help that they still hadn’t given his phone back, and they confined him to his room when he wasn’t doing school work at the kitchen table. He could hear the way his soulmate was losing morale, the longer he didn’t respond. The songs were darker, and were few and far between. They still refused to play songs on what he’d called ‘his days’.

--------------------

His ‘therapy’ had ended hours ago, and yet he couldn’t stop twitching. Every time he closed his eyes in a vain attempt to sleep, it was like the electrodes were attached to him again. The images they’d shown him flashed before his eyes, of men kissing, holding hands, and were quickly followed by the sharp sting of electric shocks. He couldn’t close his eyes without flinching violently, no music to calm his nerves.

Virgil didn’t sleep that night.

----------------------

He held to the music like an anchor, soaking in every rare song his soulmate played like a sponge. It was his only relief from the hunger pangs in his stomach, reminding him that he hadn’t been allowed to eat at all in the day leading up to another therapy session. Apparently they wanted to put him on some kind of medication, try to increase the intensity of his sessions. It was getting to the point where Virgil was tempted to pretend it was working just to make them stop.

He missed his soulmate.

----------------------

No. He’d said no to the drugs. They wanted to put him on anti-psychotics, claiming he was severely mentally ill, and he’d downright refused. There was no way in hell he was going on anti-psychotics. Finally, after days of their demanding being met with stubbornness, they’d given in.

That had been a month ago. Maybe. Time had gotten kind of funny, like in that limbo between Christmas and New Years, or in the depths of summer break. It had been a while, for sure. They still fed him so rarely a growling stomach was more common than a full one, claiming it was part of his new therapy. He couldn’t help wonder why he was gaining weight, though. He’d been underweight for a majority of his life, thanks to a constantly overworking metabolism and genetics, along with the nasty food they served at group homes that he gladly avoided, but he was starting to fill out slightly. His ribs were barely showing.

That would be a symptom of being on antipsychotics, he knew from previous research. But he wasn’t on them, so why…?

He took another sip of his apple juice his foster mom had brought him, trying to focus on his homework. Had apple juice always tasted that bitter?

-----------------------

They’d gone too far this time, Virgil knew that much. Curse his stubbornness, his inability to just lie and go along with it. He could have just claimed the conversion therapy was working, ‘oh golly, I’m healed!’, and go on with his life, finally talk to his fucking social worker, but no. He wasn’t capable of that.

They’d shown him more pictures, shocking him more frequently, refusing to stop the session even as tears streamed down his face. It just hurt so bad. Then he remembered a shout (maybe his own?), blinding pain, and the next thing he knew, he was in his foster dad’s car. He said he’d had a seizure, but he was okay now, so they were heading home. A cup of water was forced down his throat and he was laid down in bed, commanded to rest. He was so confused, but also so tired, so he let his eyes drift shut.

Just before he lost consciousness for the second time that day, he heard a soft melody drift through his mind as his soulmate played another song. It had been so long since the last time he’d heard them play music… despite his exhaustion, he fell asleep with a smile on his face.

--------------------

The days had been a bit of a blur since his seizure. It was probably because his brain had done the human equivalent to ‘Have you tried turning it off and back on again?’, but even that was hazy in his mind. All he wanted to do was sleep, to rest, to not have to do the school work that they were still shoving down his throat. From where he was laying motionless in his bed, he watched the slowly setting sun dip below the horizon.

There was a knock at the door downstairs. Virgil flinched from the noise, triggering a series of twitches down his spine and into his limbs. People were talking downstairs. He could distinctly hear the voice of his foster parents, but the others were unfamiliar. They were getting louder, near shouting, and there were pounding footsteps echoing up the stairs and down his hallway.

He couldn’t even find the energy to be scared as his door was thrown open and a man’s voice shouted, “He’s in here!”. A flurry of people stormed into the room, the ones in the lead dressed in blue.

Clambering, people shifting to make space, a woman holding his hand. She was asking him questions as they loaded him into a stretcher and he tried his best to answer, but he was just so tired. His name was said multiple times, as well as the names of his foster parents, but it was hazy, so hazy…

“We were just trying to help, I didn’t want this to happen, I don’t-”

“Quiet, woman!”

She raised her voice but it was growing farther away. Virgil realized with a start that he was looking at the sky, bumping along on the gravel path, the bright lights of an ambulance flashing across his vision.

The husband shouted again, trying to silence his wife. That was the last thing Virgil heard as the doors slammed shut, and he finally allowed his eyes to close.

Part 3 HERE

Taglist:

@sapphic-satan

@anxious-logic

@wigsnatchedhoteltrivago

@extraintrovertedalien

@punk-academian-witch

@ray-does-stuff

@chimneychimney

@i-cant-find-a-good-username

@falsemood

@wtf-casper

@cpmansion

@killjoyjay

@fandomfan315

@anxious-darkwolf

@eternalmoonlight19

@winterwynd

@espepspes

@ironwoman359

@willowaudreykeyes

@mycatshuman

@weweregoddesses

@im-an-anxious-wreck

@imknittingahat

@surohsopsisofclouds

@korsaromantic66

@astraheart04

#lywrites #tsshipmonth2020 #prinxiety #roman sanders #virgil sanders #abuse tw #conversion therapy tw #ts soulmate au #sanders sides fanfiction #sanderssides #sanderssidesfanfiction #sanderssidesau #sanders sides au #sanders sides

206 notes · View notes

anotheronechicagobog · 3 years

Note

This is Kinda Weird Stellaride Head Canons Of Stella At That Time Of Month If You Know What I Mean Thanks. P.S. Can We Also Have Kelly Calling Her Baby Girl Or Names Like That Thank You 🥺 I am also sick right now with Bronchitis, a Sinus Infection, and an Ear Infection.

I don't normally do headcannons, but you're sick so hopefully this will cheer you up!

When it's Stella's 'time of the month'

She craves fettuccine Alfredo the entire time, but it's unhealthy to only eat that for every meal for a week which usually contributes to her unhappy mood

She is less patient with idiots, jerks, and Karens than she would normally be and will verbally eviscerate them

Kelly has her preferences, wants, and needs for that time down pat, she doesn't even have to ask, he's already prepared everything she needs

Her period doesn't last for a full week, only 3-5 days, but the cramps are murder so she keeps advil and electric heating pads in her locker

She has Earl Grey tea in her hand almost constantly for the duration, she finds comfort in the beverage that not even she can explain

Tuesday is very intuitive and always know when one of her girls is hurting, and will always snuggle up to whoever's going through shark week

She wears nothing but sweat pants and comfy tank tops

She will only listen to her Shakira/Beyonce playlist

It is the only time that Sylvie will share her chocolate stash with anyone

Violet lets her borrow her super soft blanket

She prefers pads to tampons because she finds them more comfortable but tampons are more conducive to being a firefighter

One of the girls at 'girls on fire' asked her how she dealt with periods on the job which prompted not only an interesting lecture, but also the first unofficial guide on how to best deal with your period as a firefighter

It's called "aunt Flow the Firefighter" headquarters disapproves initially but then HR accept it as good advice and format it into a resource for the CFD

Stella would feel more proud of herself is she didn't feel like Wil. E Coyote was dropping cinder blocks on her

I hope you feel better!

#one chicago #chicago fire #stella kidd

9 notes · View notes

wikioftheweek · 3 years

Text

List of Baby Geniuses Wiki of the Week Articles

0 Baby Geniuses

1 ASMR (unofficially; did not have a Wikipedia page at the time)

2 Fan death

3 Figging

4 Schmidt sting pain index

5 Bald-hairy

6 Mary Toft

7 Jenkem

8 Polyphasic sleep (now redirects to Biphasic and polyphasic sleep)

9 James Randi Educational Foundation

10 List of unusual deaths

11 Koro (medicine)

12 List of common misconceptions

13 Mojave phone booth

14 Action Park

15 Witzelsucht

16 Krampus and Zwarte Piet (Black Peter)

17 Scratch and sniff

18 Bummer and Lazarus

19 Jeanne Calment

20 Nickelodeon toys

21 Daggering

22 List of sexually active popes

23 Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo

24 Emperor Norton

25 Paris syndrome

26 ALF (TV series)

27 Fossil word

28 Spite house

29 Women in piracy

30 Art competitions at the Summer Olympics

31 List of animals with fraudulent diplomas (now redirects to List of animals awarded human credentials)

32 Prostitution among animals

33 Tenderoni

34 My Way killings

35 Mike the Headless Chicken

36 List of inventors killed by their own inventions

37 Inedia

38 (Episode does not exist)

39 Tarrare

40 Sweater curse

41 Death from laughter

42 Dude

43 List of people claimed to be Jesus

44 Lucy the Elephant

45 How to keep chickens from eating their own eggs (Wikihow article)

46 List of nicknames used by George W. Bush

47 Cryptozoology

48 Bob the Railway Dog

49 Magic Castle (discussed very briefly)

50 Wartime cross-dressers

51 Streisand effect

52 Self-cannibalism

53 Sex in space

54 Other World Kingdom

55 Death erection

56 Taboo food and drink (now redirects to Food and drink prohibitions)

57 (no Wiki of the Week)

58 Florence Foster Jenkins

59 Kentucky meat shower

60 Susunu! Denpa Shonen

61 Felix Moncla

62 Walter Jackson Freeman II

63 You're So Vain

64 McDonald's urban legends

65 List of paraphilias

66 Hedy Lamarr

67 Last meal

68 Hatoful Boyfriend

69 United States presidential pets

70 Maginot Line

71 Finnish profanity

72 McArthur Wheeler (now redirects to Dunning-Kruger Effect)

73 List of unusual deaths

74 GamerGate Controversy

75 Scaphism

76 Dancing mania

77 Non-English Versions of The Simpsons

78 Fart proudly

79 List of humorous units of measurement

80 Rumpology

81 Takanakuy

82 White Day

83 Max Headroom signal hijacking

84 Cymothoa exigua

85 Ganguro

86 Reborn doll

87 Drukpa Kunley

88 Crush, Texas (now redirects to Crash at Crush)

89 Cotard delusion

90 Why did the chicken cross the road?

91 Berners St hoax

92 Evander Berry Wall

93 Premastication

94 List of objects that have gone over Niagara Falls (now redirects to List of people who have gone over Niagara Falls)

95 Largest body part

96 You can't have your cake and eat it

97 Urine therapy

98 Oak Island mystery

99 Fearsome critters

100 Swan dress

101 List of selfie-related injuries and deaths

102 Potoooooooo

103 Julie d'Aubigny

104 (no Wiki of the Week)

105 Gavle goat

106 William Hale Thompson

107 List of Olympic mascots

108 Walter Lingo

109 Pam Reynolds case

110 Smigus-Dyngus (Dyngus Day)

111 Tio de Nadal

112 June and Jennifer Gibbons

113 Hairy Hands

114 Sunshower

115 Hypoalgesic effect of swearing

116 Lloyd's of London

117 Struwwelpeter

118 Haru Urara

119 Anti-Barney humor

120 Hundeprutterrutchbane

121 Accidental damage of art

122 Lisa Nowak

123 Tilberi

124 Hair of the dog

125 Bill Clinton Haircut Controversy (now redirects to Public Image of Bill Clinton section Haircutgate)

126 Penis captivus

127 Candle salad

128/129 Responses to sneezing

130 Gef

131 Melon heads

132 Gay and Lesbian Kingdom of the Coral Sea Islands

133 Telling the bees

134 Kappa (folklore)

135 Shrek (sheep)

136 Concealed shoes

137 Highgate vampire

138 Zozobra

139 Dirty blues

140 Office assistant (also known as Clippy)

141 Virgin boy egg

142 Fartons

143 Balloonfest '86

144 Lapland New Forest

145 Curse of the colonel

146 Squatting position: Hunkerin' (section no longer exists)

147 Margaret Howe Lovatt

148 Cobra effect (now redirects to Perverse Incentive)

149 Frozen Dead Guy Days

150 Republic of Molossia

151 List of premature obituaries

152 Athletics at the 1904 Summer Olympics - Men's Marathon

153 Agnodice

154 The Most Unwanted Song

155 Vegetable Lamb of Tartary

156 Death during consensual sex

157 Catalan mythology about witches

158 List of gestures

159 Clamato

160 Each-uisge (water horse)

161 Flatulence humor

162 Mariko Aoki Phenomenon

163 Goofy

164 Chicken eyeglasses

165 Mozart and scatology

166 Ming of harlem

167 Twelve Tribes Communities

168 Andree's Arctic Balloon Expedition

169 Joey Skaggs

170 Amy Bock

171 Greenland shark

172 Mabel Stark

173 Person

174 Wikipedia:Long-Term Abuse/List

175 Dhinga Gavar

176 Skunks as pets

177 J. I. Rodale

178 Witch bottle

179 List of U.S. Presidential campaign slogans

180 Bernd das Brot

181 George Tirebiter

182 Lloyds Bank coprolite

183 Tama (cat)

184 Wizard of New Zealand

185 Learned pig

186 Miss Baker

187 Forty Elephants

188 Sheela Na Gig

189 Planetary mnemonic

190 Seedfeeder

191 John Titor

192 Lek mating

193 Roar (film)

194 Acoustic Kitty and JD & The Straight Shot

195 Soucouyant

196 Trash talk and Flyting

197 Mannekin Pis

198 Curse tablet

199 Dancing Baby

200 Cassie Chadwick

201 Serge Voronoff

202 Groom of the Stool

203 Safety coffin

204 Table manners

205 Tempest prognosticator

206 Vittorio Emanuele, Prince of Naples

207 Icelandic Christmas folklore

208 Guy Goma

209 Extreme ironing

210 Victor Lustig

211 Australia's Naughtiest Home Videos

212 El Gran Juego de la Oca

213 Long-time nuclear waste warning messages

214 The Mad Pooper

215 Nim Chimpsky

216 Bridey Murphey

217 Grunge speak

218 WWF Brawl for All

219 Elizabeth Klarer

220 The Brave Little Toaster Goes to Mars

221 Top euphemisms for "period" by language (not a Wikipedia page)

222 Tristan da Cunha

223 Nils Olav

224 Giulia Tofana

225 Alvin "Shipwreck" Kelly

226 Egg War

227 List of sandwiches

228 Mr. Blobby

229 Robert Coates (actor)

230 Crime in Antarctica

231 Worm charming

232 McDonald's Characters (now redirects to McDonaldland)

233 Kitty Fisher

234 Jimmy Carter Rabbit Incident and Puzzle jug

235 Fascinus

236 Computer rage

237 Nutty Narrows Bridge

238 Australia's Big Things

239 Billiken

240 Loveland Frog

241 List of CB slang

242 Salmon chaos

243 Great Michigan Pizza Funeral

244 Dustin the Turkey

#baby geniuses #maximum fun #wikipedia #wiki of the week

7 notes · View notes

moonstruckbucky · 4 years

Text

Royal Holiday (1/6)

Summary: Bucky Barnes is bored - trust him, he knows how that sounds. But being royalty, in his humble opinion, isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Time to mix it up a bit.

Pairing: Prince!Bucky Barnes x fem!Reader, modern AU

Warnings: None

Notes: Here it is, my submission for @heamarvel‘s Hallmark Event! Hope you all enjoy! Feedback is appreciated. x

Series Masterlist / Main Masterlist

If it’s one thing Bucky hates, it’s diplomacy. Ironic, considering he’s currently neck-deep in a manifesto his father had dropped into his lap a week ago. Ironic still, considering he’s a bloody prince. Not a prince who prances around in jewels or silks, but a prince nonetheless - a prince with responsibilities and a duty to his country when the throne eventually comes to him.

It’s a mantra he’s heard his entire life, and it’s a mantra he’d really love to stop hearing before he takes a screwdriver to his eardrums.

He knows it’s unfair, knows he’s got it better than most, and he respects that - kind of. While he wants for nothing, he feels trapped, imprisoned by duty, regality, and nobility. Bowing under the weight of his future, the eventuality that he’ll be a king. He’ll need to command and rule and say goodbye to his freedom - however much of it he has.

He’s already damn tired of it.

And that’s why his unofficial-official bodyguard Sam finds him open-mouthed and snoring behind his desk in his office. The older man isn’t surprised by it really. Having been with the Royal Family for close to ten years now, he knows Bucky’s mannerisms, habits, quirks, and annoyances better than most, and while he wishes Bucky would grow up a little, he isn’t quite so strict as his Queen Mother over his behavior.

Sam purses his lips, rolls his eyes a bit, before he creeps to the desk. Reaches for the massive manifesto that sits open in front of Bucky, snaps it closed, the dark-skinned man’s gaze flits between the two for a few moments.

A little humming under his breath, he lifts the binder over his head above the desk, lets it drop with a loud slam that wakes Bucky with a jolt and a girlish yelp. He flies backwards and his weight shifting tips the chair. Trinkets and knick-knacks rattle as he and the chair hit the floor. Sam waits patiently, tipping a snowglobe on the shelf beside him, while Bucky splutters and curses him out.

“The hell was that for, Wilson?” he grouses, rubbing the back of his head where it hit the floor.

“Your mother is requesting you,” Sam responds with a pointed look, setting the snowglobe down.

Bucky feels himself scowl before he can stop it. He loves his mother, he does, but he knows what she’s going to speak to him about - it’s the same thing she always wants to talk to him about.

“Do I have to?” He knows he sounds like a petulant child, he knows, but if he’s honest, he’d rather play Baby Shark on repeat for the rest of his life than listen to his mother prattle on and on about how it’s time for him to find a wife. A suitable one, one of noble birth. One who’s proper and polite and graceful.

Bucky wants something different.

He admits he hasn’t thought much about marrying (clearly) or even falling in love, but as he gets older, grows closer to becoming a king and taking on more responsibility, the prospect of finding someone to share that with occasionally crosses his mind. He has no doubt his mother would find someone who’ll make him happy, but the idea of having his bride chosen for him, the risk of being trapped in a forced marriage, doesn’t sit well with him at all.

Sam gives him an exasperated look. Nodding sagely, he sighs and straightens his shirt, slightly wrinkled thanks to Sam. Following the older man out, he prepares himself for the conversation he’s heard a thousand times before.

She’s relentless, he decides, and he finally figures out where his stubbornness came from. She’s organizing a gala in his honor, a presentation of him as an eligible bachelor, and she’s taken the liberty of inviting every eligible heiress, princess, and everyone in between in a massive effort to get him to connect with someone.

She’s frustrated with him when he voices as much, voice growing higher with her irritation. “James Buchanan, it is your responsibility to marry. You’re nearly thirty, and you’ve yet to choose a wife! You’re not getting any younger and should you choose not to marry, your reign will be forfeited!”

Ah yes, the little wrench in the system. A decision made by the country’s parliament as a failsafe in case Bucky clutched his bachelor lifestyle to the vest. Clearly they hadn’t had much fail in him to marry and rule successfully, and a small part of him wants to shove their faces in it.

But only if it’s on his terms.

“Sounds like a dream to me,” he mutters back, just loud enough for his mother to hear him. She screeches, kind of like a hawk - or a banshee - and Bucky feels a little bad. But only a little. Gesticulating wildly, he exclaims, “What? Would it really be so bad if we just gave the crown to parliament? I’m sure Pierce would be happy to take it. After all, can’t have a thirty-year-old playboy bachelor ruling alone, can we? Bad for his family’s image, isn’t it?”

She opens her mouth to retort, offense written clearly on her face, but Bucky sweeps from the office before she can utter another word. Sam is waiting for him outside the door, and he straightens, tries to act like he hadn’t been eavesdropping on the loud exchange.

“Let’s go Sam,” Bucky orders, “I need to get out of here for a while.”

Sam doesn’t hesitate - he calls for a car and fetches Bucky’s winter coat. “Yes, sir.”

You resist the urge to slam the phone down into the cradle, opting instead to gently place it back where it belongs. But you do give it the middle finger as you scribble out the order you’d gotten halfway through before the customer decided she didn’t want to spend fifty dollars plus delivery on a floral arrangement.

Tossing the paper in the trash, you walk around the counter to straighten out the displays of vases, each holding stems of various flowers. Casting a glance out the window, you sigh at the people who walk right by your shop, despite the inviting fairy lights, the floral displays and boxwood trees in the windows, and soft Christmas music playing from the speaker system.

It’s a month until Christmas, and your orders are down - again. You’re not sure why, but there’s been a steady decline in sales for the past six months. Dejectedly, you chalk it up to people losing interest in sending flowers to people, with the exception of funeral arrangements if only because people die every day. In New York, it’s unheard of that people can’t afford flowers - most can. They just don’t send them. The classic gesture is being swept under the rug in favor of material things - new electronics, vacations, jewelry.

It saddens your heart to think it, but it’s true, and if sales don’t pick up, you’ll be forced to sell the building you left everything behind to buy. Tail tucked between your legs, you’ll plant yourself behind a desk for the next foreseeable future, working overtime to pay off the expenses from the flower shop.

Misty-eyed, you sniffle and clean the stamens from the stems of stargazer lilies. A little unusual to carry them this time of year, but they’d been a special request from someone who’d never showed to pick them up. Usually it’s easy to lose yourself in the pretty colors and scents of flowers, but now, you can’t even be bothered to make new arrangements for fear they’ll go to waste - then it’s more money down the drain.

Instead, you clean the shop from top to bottom, rearrange the displays, open the door despite the chilling air and display a boxwood tree - handmade - out in front. A couple slow in front of the shop, eyeing the boxwood tree. The woman smiles, pointing happily to it, remarks about bringing it for Christmas dinner.

To your joy, the husband agrees and they step inside to order one with red and gold decorations. It’s a steep sale - $100 plus tax - but it’s not quite enough to cover your rent for the month just yet. A few more boxwood tree sales and you’ll be covered. Surprisingly, you catch the woman taking a photo of the boxwood tree outside as the husband places the order.

“I’m going to send this to Sue! I’m sure she’ll love one for her house!”

You smile gratefully, hoping like hell this Sue woman indeed places the order with you. The couple waves pleasantly, offering their names - Jack and Michaela - and then they take their leave. A few more people trickle in, place orders for both Christmas and for Thanksgiving centerpieces, and you take a couple of phone calls - one to actually order, one for general information. It turns into a fairly successful afternoon, and as you get ready to close, you feel a little hope blooming in your chest.

Hope that you might not lose your dream.

Outside on the busy streets, Bucky is blown away. He’d insisted on getting far, far away from the royal house despite Sam’s initial reluctance. Bucky was a prince, a known prince, and both paparazzi and people could be unpredictable. Not to mention, he’s sure there would be people willing to hurt Bucky, ransom him or something to make money off his family - okay, Sam knows that particular scenario might be a stretch, but it’s what he’d been trained for.

Bucky’s like a kid in a candy store, weaving in and out of the crowd, ducking into this store and that, experiencing regular city life like he never got to. It had always been schedules and propriety and rigidness that he’s relishing a bit in the freedom to just be. He buys Sam a new winter coat, one that blends in a bit better with the public, and he settles on a peacoat, scarf, and paperboy hat for himself. He feels...normal, and on the street, no one recognizes him.

As he strolls down the sidewalk in the fading light, he catches a glimpse of fairy lights across the street. A woman stands outside the door, beige coat and burgundy hat in place. When Bucky crosses the street, he realizes she’s staring at the building, which he now notes is a florist shop. There’s a longing in her gaze, a shininess that suggests she might be on the verge of tears.

There’s a pull deep inside him, compelling him towards her. It’s like she’s pulled him into her orbit, and Bucky doesn’t think he’s ever had this kind of reaction to a woman before. He doesn’t even know her and yet he desperately wants to, needs to know her. He’s entranced by the look on her face, an expression of sheer yearning paired with sadness trapped within it. He wants to kiss it away, and his reaction should startle him.

But it doesn’t. It only forces that tug to pull harder, and he takes a few steps forward. Before Bucky can approach her, he’s swept up in a crowd and loses sight of her. When he steps out of the throng, he searches for the woman, but she’s gone.

Chapter Two

#bucky barnes x you #bucky barnes x reader #bucky x you #bucky x reader #prince!bucky barnes #prince!bucky x you #prince!bucky x reader #modern royalty au #heamarvel hallmark event

711 notes · View notes