#i am uploading this one the second of june... and the uploader says i can upload a total of 30 minutes
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No. 5 - jetBlue 2: Electric Bluegaloo
I am writing this post on the 15th of June, 2023.
I was going to publish one post tomorrow. It was going to be about a completely unrelated airline from a different country. I wrote it already. I have several other posts written already, because I like writing them, and they make me excited. I had a partially written post on jetBlue. It was going to be finished soon and uploaded after that. Just one in a sea of many things people have painted onto their airplanes.
I did not plan to discuss jetBlue tomorrow. I did not plan to finish my jetBlue post today. But they have forced my hand by announcing an overhaul of their 20-year-old livery at the most inconvenient possible time for me specifically, and I suppose I'm someone who reviews airline liveries now so I'm not just going to not talk about it.
Okay, let’s see. What they’ve been doing has worked for them for two decades, so I am very curious what they...
(image: jetblue)
Oh.
Huh. Not...sure what I expected. This is really taking a moment to sink in.
Well, okay. My immediate thought is ‘neat, they finally extended it past the tail’. My second thought is ‘thank goodness they're finally moving past their Eurowhite phase’. My third thought is...
Obviously they don’t have an exclusive right to this shade of blue, but does...does Southwest know about this? You two are probably the two biggest players in the low-cost market on the East Coast, should you be...being nearly the exact same shade of blue? Like, the rest of the liveries are obviously very different, you wouldn’t confuse them even from a distance, and I'm pretty sure jetBlue's is slightly lighter, but it just feels, viscerally, like someone’s nose gear is being run over a little bit.
Okay. No. We are forgetting about this. We literally just talked about not comparing beautiful blue girls to each other. They’re going to stall or soar on their own merits. Let’s take another look at N982JB “A Defining MoMint” (neé “One Mint, Two Mint, Blue Mint, You Mint”), who is patient zero for jetBlue’s new rebrand.
(image: jetblue)
There she is in all her eyestraining glory. I mean, there’s bright and then there’s hard to look at. jetBlue has, for some reason, decided to unleash a migraine machine onto airports across America and beyond.
jetBlue? I know you're reading this. Can we talk, jetBlue? There are a billion shades of blue you could have picked from for the main body.
(image: jetblue)
In fact, here are five of them from your own most recent tail design. And you chose the only one that is extremely painful to look at in large quantities. So, unfortunately, we’re taking off from the wrong runway. But let’s hear what you have to say for yourself, jetBlue.
I can only imagine how badly tumblr is going to crunch this, so here’s a direct link to the PDF jetBlue put out explaining their design choices.
Well, it’s definitely one of the bluest planes they’ve ever made. I think Blueprint might actually be bluer, but that’s a discussion for later. It’s a reasonably, maybe even unreasonably, blue plane, and I think we can all agree on that.
They’ve made a lot of changes that seem almost like direct responses to my earlier complaints. Robin N. Hayes, CEO of jetBlue Airlines, are you in my head reading my mind? If you are, I think I at least deserve a couple of scale models for all the advice I’ve given you. Come on. I’ll even proofread your website for you.
Sadly, I have yet to receive my rightly deserved 1:100 model of the jetBlue retrojet, but they’ve at least recognized that I’m correct about a lot of things. The all-white fuselage is boring and the tail designs need to be allowed to unfurl from their prison on the vertical stabilizer. I’m absolutely with them on that. I actually can’t say how I feel about this new ‘mint leaves’ tail pattern. I think that I don’t like it, but it’s very hard to tell because looking at this image for too long without my darkreader on genuinely hurts my eyes. I’m sure it’ll be fine in person, but I haven’t seen this livery in person. I’ve had all of a day to process this through my computer screen, and because of that I think I sort of really dislike it!
But I also can’t commit to that opinion because it’s been a day and a half and there’s so much we still don’t know. Well, I know that this is literally the worst shade of blue that there is, but my least favorite color is orange and I think there are plenty of decent looking orange planes out there. It’s not about the base color. It’s about what you do with it. And what will they do with it? It’s...not really clear.
The thing about this launch is that if Robin N. Hayes, CEO of jetBlue Airlines, can read my mind, I can’t read his. All I have is this PDF and a couple paragraphs of copy that really raise more questions than they answer. I'm just going to paste the important bit here.
Aptly named A Defining MoMint, the first plane to sport our new livery (our first-ever Mint pattern, coming soon to all Mint planes) is an Airbus A321 with Mint—which rolls into service on 6/15/23. Look for refreshed versions of our existing patterns to make their runway debuts as the rest of the fleet is repaint-ready.
This leaves so many questions unanswered. Is this for all Mint planes? That's not an insignificant portion of the fleet. Are all the planes currently wearing the ribbon and streamer tails going to wear this exact design, or will there be multiple Mint liveries? Will the ribbon and streamer tails be retired completely? They're pretty new, that seems a bit premature to me. What about the non-Mint planes? I assume the implication is that they're going to get patterns that extend onto their main fuselages as well, but are they going to also be repainted now or will there be a gradual rollout where it'll only be Mint planes for the time being? What is even going on? Seriously, does Southwest know? How did nobody notice the two massive typos on the liveries page of your website when you updated it with this new information? Ya blue it!
This is sending me into a bit of a tailspin. This redesign is everything I should want. It's spitting in the face of the design principles that I hate so much I started this blog. It's addressing some of my complaints. But I just don't...like to look at it?
I think what's bothering me here, when my eyes adjust somewhat to the sheer piercing brightness of it, is the overwhelming amount of stuff happening. When I do focus in I can see things that I like. For example, the tail pattern seems to be almost spreading onto the main fuselage rather than being isolated on a tail with its own background color. Some things I just can't entirely process. Like the PDF says they're using a new font but I can't really tell the difference between it and the old one. I guess it doesn't matter that much.
Anyway, I'm not done complaining. On the old livery, the engines were a dark color which contrasted with the light fuselage. This is pretty common. That's for a good reason. It creates such a weird visual effect when the engines and the fuselage are the same color. When you look at them from the side they look like they're merging. Also, despite them mentioning that they made the text in the front bigger to make the livery look less rear-heavy, and the fact that it's worked to some extent, it hasn't worked nearly enough. It would really behoove them to add something else to the front.
(I'm just saying, jetBlue...if you want to be America's Fun Airline, I don't think any defunct airlines have a trademark on painting cute little faces on your airplanes. Just keep that in the back of your mind.)
I ultimately just can't reconcile my thoughts on this. I keep repeating myself and I can't seem to convince myself to like this even though I really, really want to find some way to decide that yes, this is good, actually. This is an improvement. I can't. I can't convince myself. Maybe if I chew on it a bit longer. Maybe when they show off new tail patterns they'll all look better than this. Maybe it's just the mint green that's throwing me off and it'll all be okay. Maybe I'll wake up and a perfectly designed new jetBlue livery will be standing by the side of my bed, and I won't even mind that geometry forbids every part of that scenario, and she'll be beautiful and I will remember what it felt like to first learn that jetBlue has a plane named Blue's On First. Maybe. But right now it's the 15th of June and I'm feeling an emotion I can only imagine myself sharing with cosmic horror protagonists who have stumbled on some horrible secret that destroys the foundation which until mere moments ago undergirded their entire concept of reality. I don't know how to reconcile any of this.
jetBlue...how could you blue this to me?
Provisional* Grade: D(on't Blue That)+
(provisional because I'm being very dramatic but as I've said this is brand new fresh off the livery printer, Mint condition if you will, and I've barely had any time to process it so I'll definitely revisit it at some point. But probably not soon. I'm just about jetBlued out at the moMint.)
#tarmac fashion week#runwayrunway blueses it#grade: d+#region: north america#region: united states#era: 2020s#jetblue#low cost carriers#neelemanverse#southwest airlines
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Cruel Summer: the hit that was meant to be?
Pictured: dramatic reenactment of us waiting for Cruel Summer to be a single for 4 years.
Background
This summer is the apocalypse.
-- Lover Journal entry, dated 29 August 2016
We all know about the cruel summer in question, right? To be fair, technically the cruelty of the summer stemmed from "a desperate summer love that might be doomed from the start" and "some element of desperation and pain in it, where you’re yearning for something that you don’t quite have yet", and not whatever Kim Kardashian was doing on Twitter, but given how those two events occured basically simultaneously, it's not outrageous to claim both experiences informed each other.
In 2018, Taylor went on the Reputation Stadium Tour. Between shows, Taylor started working on Lover, getting into the studio with Joel Little, Frank Dukes and our favourite producer Jack Antonoff. For Cruel Summer, however, there was something special: Annie Clark, better known as St. Vincent, was a credited writer on the track.
St. Vincent had worked with Jack for her 2017 album Masseduction, so much like how Lana ended up in the studio with Taylor, we can safely assume that Jack brought the two together. On 6 June 2018, St. Vincent mentioned that she had reworked one of her songs from Masseduction, Slow Disco, into a poppier production with Taylor's support. With this in mind, we can probably assume that she had cross passed with Taylor around this time. Taylor was papped recording at Electric Lady (Jack's stomping grounds) on 18 July 2018, which lines up with this theory. [1]
The failed single push
I’m not trying to blame the global pandemic that we had, but that is something that happened that stopped Cruel Summer from ever being a single.
-- Taylor Swift after performing Cruel Summer on tour in Pittsburgh, 17 June 2023
Cruel Summer had been a fan favourite from the get-go. When Taylor held listening parties for a select group of fans, it was the song that most people had positive feelings about. When Lover (the album) dropped in August 2019, it was the third most streamed track from the album, leapfrogging I Forgot That You Existed despite it being the second track. People started to lament the... poorly-received lead singles the album had. (I have nothing kind to say about those two tracks so I won't say anything.)
Then for a while, nothing happened. Taylor released Lover and The Man as singles to various degrees of success. The Man's disappointing (by her standards) chart run probably reignited discussion about how Cruel Summer would have smashed if it were only given a proper push and the GP had understood its talent. Then COVID came along, Lover Fest was delayed indefinitely, and it seemed that the Lover era was over, replaced by Taylor locking herself in with Joe Alwyn and drinking wine.
Then June 2020 came around, and...
Now how do we know that this is true? Apparently, Cruel Summer was added to AllAccess, a website where radio programmers download singles serviced to radio. While I can't verify this myself, I have seen numerous independent sources claim that Cruel Summer was uploaded to the site specifically on 17 June 2020. [2] Some radio website also ran with the story in early June, so I am inclined to believe this.
And it's not like there weren't any official hints...
Top to bottom: Spotify "enhanced album" promo mural, You Need To Calm Down music video, Amazon Music commercial, Lover music video [3]
The catch, however, is the Cruel Summer never got an official add date. An add date is "supposed to tell [radio] stations when to add a record to its playlist". Without an official add date, stations usually won't play your new song unless it's really hotly requested.
So the song didn't get a full label push and quickly died off, despite getting some radio play in 2020 (from anecdotal evidence), not appearing on the charts. And then in July folklore came out of the blue, and with it ended the Lover era, and seemingly all hopes for Cruel Summer world domination.
A music video?
While Taylor HQ is normally as hard to infiltrate as Fort Knox, over the years bits and pieces of information have leaked about her intentions for the rest of the Lover era. Chief among them was, apparently, to officially release Cruel Summer as a single to accompany her live shows in the summer of 2020. A music video was even filmed, before being scrapped when Taylor moved into the mythical forest of folklore.
-- Official Singles Chart (UK), 27 June 2023
Well, would Official Singles Chart lie? They do say "apparently" though, maybe to hedge their bets a little.
The problem with this claim, however, is the timeline. On 27 January 2020, Taylor released The Man as a single. She dropped the music video on Feburary 28th. Assuming a similar rollout for Cruel Summer, the music video would've come out in July. Given how the pandemic had basically put all possible filming activity to a standstill in March, it seems implausible that a music video would be filmed that early in advance, especially without knowing that the pandemic was on the horizon. Or maybe it was fully CGI and filmed in the luxury of her LA house, I don't know.
But I think there's a different catch here. Note how the above source claims that Cruel Summer would have been a single to "accompany her live shows in the summer of 2020", namely Lover Fest. According to the planned Lover Fest schedule, by the summer of 2020 she would be performing in Europe, including headlining Glastonbury.
Now consider Taylor's usual single rollout. Fearless, Sparks Fly, Red and New Romantics were all the last or second-last singles pushed from their respective albums, all of which got tour videos. [4] It seems that given how Cruel Summer would be the fifth single pushed according to the original plans, it most likely would've gotten the tour video treatment as well. Which makes sense: imagine a music video with her performing under broad daylight to huge crowds at festivals!
Cruel Summer 2: The Return of the Hit
With the advent of the pandemic something interesting happened: people started re-discovering old songs and making them into hits again. Catalogue streaming amounted to a whopping 70% of all streams in 2022. Running Up That Hill, a song from the 1980s, went viral again thanks to Stranger Things and this new ability that
Maybe it was because people wanted something familiar to go back to in a world where nothing was familiar anymore. Who knows. Many other music critics have written better articles about this phenomenon. What does matter, however, is that releasing singles from an album from years ago was now commercially viable. Sia, Lady Gaga and The Weeknd all did it to various degrees of success.
So when Cruel Summer, a song which had been among Taylor's most streamed songs for a while, acted as the tour opener on the Eras Tour [5], it would only further gain in popularity from then onwards, even re-entering the Billboard Hot 100 before it was even officially promoted to radio. And so her label moved to capitalize on this trend, and finally released Cruel Summer as a single on 20 June 2023, almost 3 years to the day after its original planned release date.
The million dollar question: would Cruel Summer have smashed if it was released as originally planned?
I'd say no. The general public had already moved on from Lover as the lacklustre The Man performance demonstrates. Besides, without the accumulation of popularity that Taylor had with folklore, evermore, the re-recordings, Midnights and the Eras Tour, who know where her career would've been?
(By the way, even if Cruel Summer had been the lead single there is absolutely no way it passes Old Town Road for #1.)
Timeline
Summer 2018: Cruel Summer is likely written around this time.
23 August 2019: Lover is released.
27 January 2020: The Man is released as a single.
27 February 2020: The Man music video is released.
5-12 March 2020: According to Steve from the IC, band rehearsals for Lover Fest took place during these days, with a whopping 32 songs.
19 March 2020: California enters lockdown due to COVID-19. Taylor was living in Los Angeles at this time.
17 April 2020: Lover Fest is officially delayed.
27 April 2020: Taylor writes cardigan, her first collaboration with Aaron Dessner and the beginning of the concept of folklore.
6 June 2020: Steve posts that cryptic message about folklore, signifying that the album was mostly complete by this time.
17 June 2020: Cruel Summer is uploaded to AllAccess, incidentally the same day as Steve teases cardigan.
20 June 2020: The European leg of Lover Fest would have begun on this day.
20 June 2023: Cruel Summer is officially released as a single.
23 October 2023: Cruel Summer hits #1 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Conclusion
Stream Cruel Summer.
[1] Cruel Summer is also the only Lover song to be registered on the US Copyright Office with a creation year of 2018, rather than 2019, suggesting that it was an early cut. (credit: @taylor-on-your-dash)
[2] Surprisingly, people have also claimed that I Did Something Bad was added to AllAccess in a similar fashion.
[3] That being said, if we take that hint in the Lover music video as hinting towards a Cruel Summer single push, this also means Afterglow was also meant to be a single...
[4] Do not quote me on this, Taylor herself didn't acknowledge that chorus of Miss Americana & The Heartbreak Prince either.
[5] Getaway Car should've been here...
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Hey :)
I like your playlists and I found lots of new songs that way. Would you mind posting your spotify wrapped? I'm curious 👀
This just... made my year??? Omg thank you???!
Ok plot twist I don't actually use spotify 😅 I must be the only person on planet earth that switched back to an iPhone so I could use my iTunes again... but yeah I don't use a streaming service, but I do have my most played for the year! I uploaded it here - its on my instagram as a highlight reel!
For people who don't / can't access gram:
Most Played Songs by Month:
January: Mob by Eve
Shockingly my only Eve song for the year?? Last year I had like 3. Fight Song by Eve, one the CSM EDs, was my second most played Eve song but wasn't quite in my January Top 10
February: Shiki no Real by Chanceデラソウル
Suuuper groovy future funk remix of Shiki no Uta, the Samurai Champloo ED and one of my all time favorite/most played songs in my life lol
March: You Know How We Do It by Ice Cube
I go through a huge Dr. Dre/Ice Cube/Snoop phase every year and I'm not embarrassed to say it lol (also yes these are color coded by seasons bc my iTunes top playlists are separated by seasons idk why and yes that I am embarrassed about)
April: When Your Ex Says He Wants You Back by LTB Remix
I have no idea what the real name of this remix is?? I know it's a remix of When Your Ex Says He Wants You Back by Surface, but idk which one. On a related note no idea how I managed to get a full version, the only one I've found online is this version at the very beginning of this big mix
May: Deep Down by Neverdull
I will never pass up a song that samples Crystal Water's Gypsy Woman, and I am also a massive fan of everything Neverdull has put out, so it was no surprise this was my most played song when I discovered it and was in the Top 10 for several months after
June: Blame Brett by The Beaches
Omg man did I get obsessed with this band after this song. Also a huge fan of their other single Me & Me.
July: Disco by Surf Curse
I don't dislike Surf Curse but I don't listen to much else from them but this song, that always ends up on my Top 10 lists during summer. idk what it is but it's such a great beachy vibe for me. I genuinely cannot go to the beach without listening to it several times
August: Slingshot by Good Kid
Good Kid is actually my top artist of the year, and I'm thrilled to see it. It's really rare that I like so many songs off of a band's discography, and I think I have every single one of theirs. Also in my Top 10 for August was Alchemist, Osmosis, Tell me You Know, and No Time to Explain from them.
September: Honey by ID Chief
My favorite kind of future funk is when the original song isn't so spliced you can barely hear it, but there's still enough remix involved to really modernize the disco.
October: North Wind by Six Lounge
Shockingly enough I didn't actually listen to Ao no Sumika - arguably 'The' J-rock song of 2023 - very much even though I like that song a lot. I think I just can't handle my own feels, and tbh, as far as J-rock for this year goes I liked this ED from MHA more? I think the hook is just a little smoother and catchier imo.
November: From the Start by Good Kid
While I also love the bossa nova vibes of the original Laufey version, this cover is soooo freaking good. It definitely has summer anime OP vibes and there's actually an AMV using the first JJK S2 opening that gives me so many feels.
December: Standing Next to You by Jungkook
Ooof ok I'll come clean here I used to love k-pop back in 2014 and kind of got sick of the genre after EXO and F(x) broke up and was never into BTS or any of the new K-pop acts. But man this song slaps. I'm obviously a disco fan and there's some major disco grooves in this song
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2023 Writing Round Up
Rules: share what you wrote this year! it can be works you posted to ao3, wattpad, tumblr, or anywhere else! you can share everything you wrote or just the ones you’re most excited about.
Thanks for the tag @a-noble-dragon. And I'm sorry it's taken me about two weeks to get to this.
January: Second Chances
February: And the Survey Says...
March: Nothing
April: At a Glance (going by when the last chapter was uploaded), In Every Sense, Hey, Brewer and Taking Care of David
May: Nothing
June: Nothing
July: Phone a Friend
August: Nothing
September: Something Brewing and TFTC
October: I will catch you, I'll be waiting
November: Nothing
December: The Song Continues, Unexpected Places and Nobody Does It Sweater
April and December were busy months! I think fests have to take a lot of credit for my productivity (thank you to all the lovely people who put them together and keep them going!)
Also now I kind of want to aim to post something every month next year.
Not going to tag anyone as once again I feel I am getting to this very late. But if anyone hasn't taken part and wants to, here's your tag!
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i am new to wrestling and was owndering, what's the wrestling thing for if i want to watch beefy women beat each other up?
There are LOTS of wrestling promotions, including indie and local ones; as far as major stuff I only keep up with All Elite Wrestling (AEW) because I really only have the time to sit down for one promotion a week. But all of AEW's and many other promotion's shows can be watched/streamed live at www dot watchwrestling dot ai. This should go without saying btw but use a fuckin adblocker lol
AEW Dynamite is two hours on Wednesday nights at 7:00 PM CST (airs on TV on TBS, but with commercials), AEW Rampage is one hour on Friday nights (I usually skip it and catch up on any interesting matches on Saturday) and airs on TV on TNT, and on June 17th is the premiere of a new two-hour Saturday show called AEW Collision that is also on TNT.
There's also a Youtube channel that uploads AEW women's matches exclusively, here's Kris Statlander's first match back as TBS Champion against Nyla Rose from last week. Here's another one that I love, Hikaru Shida vs Abadon on AEW Dark (which is AEW's own free YouTube series).
I also really recommend the St. Patrick's Day Slam hardcore match duology between Thunder Rosa and Britt Baker; the first was the Unsanctioned Lights Out Match on the March 17, 2021 episode of Dynamite and the second is a Steel Cage Match on the March 16, 2022 episode of Dynamite. These two women hate each other and it's fucking brutal.
Ultimately the best way to get into wrestling is to just sort of get interested in a particular wrestler and hoover up their matches and if they fight someone who you're also interested in then start digging for that wrestler's matches too. Look them up on YouTube, Dailymotion, just start googling shit, put their name into Tumblr and see if any match moments turned into GIFs catch your eye and then look up that match if you can, the works.
#also keep your expectations tempered because since the women's division of AEW gets to be only one division#and therefore only gets like one spot per show#so when it's bad it's pretty damn bad and then you get mad because it's like ughh the spot was wasted#asks#wrstlng
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Hi, how are you doing?
I read that there were explosions in Donetsk, I really hope that you are all right. I'm on Tumblr for the first time since the war started and I am very sorry that you, your city and your country have to go through this hell. Especially remembering that Donetsk has been occupied by Russia for the longest time and this is a crime for which no one was punished.
And as a Russian it hurts me a lot to see that even here there are brainwashed people from Russia who write terrible things to you. I'm very sorry. This “sorry” can't stop the war and I don’t want it to look like “look, I’m a good Russian”, but I just want to wish you peace, a calm sky and the victory of Ukraine.
P.S
Your rats are awesome. It's ingenious to call a rat KaMYSH'!!
Hey. This fall, a couple of months before the invasion started, I moved from Donetsk to central Ukraine, so I'm alright. My parents, however, are still there, they moved from a smaller town in Donetsk oblast to my apartment in Donetsk city right after I left.
It wasn't just "explosions," it still happens every day, even now, while I'm typing this reply, my parents listen to the sounds of artillery fire. They can't escape, men under 55 aren't allowed to leave, and my mother won't go anywhere without my father.
I don't even know how to write about it, although there's so much I want to say.
Russian terrorists do what they do best - intimidate, kill and destroy, falsely accuse the Ukrainian army of their own crimes, then use it to their advantage. And if earlier, prior to the invasion, it was clear why they were doing it (to create a casus belli), now it is more confusing. But after yesterday's speech by Pushilin (p*tin's puppet in Donetsk) it starts to clear up a little. He asked for more "additional help" from Russia, which may indicate a later conscription of more russian cannon fodder (or even invasion by the Belarusian army as well), but everything is so unclear and terrifying. I'm afraid to make any predictions.
In 2014, many Donetsk residents believed russian propaganda due to being inexperienced in war, as, you know, most people normally are. When Russians and collaborators shelled residential areas of Donetsk and blamed it on the Ukrainian army, unfortunately, some people believed them. But now it is different, now almost no one believes them, except for complete zombies. People can clearly hear the missile launch and a following explosion a couple of seconds after, which would be impossible if it was fired from the positions of the Ukrainian forces because they are too far away. It's crazy to even have to explain these details, because for Ukraine there is absolutely no benefit from these attacks and Ukraine doesn't seek to kill its own citizens.
The occupiers are doing everything so clumsily and tactlessly, this propaganda is aimed more at people who live in russia, not in Donetsk. In Ukraine, if an object is under fire, it is forbidden to upload photos and videos from the scene immediately after, so as not to direct or correct enemy fire. Simple safety rules in wartime. But in Donetsk, Russian TV cameras and bloggers appear at the scene of the shelling in a matter of seconds, instantly posting countless videos from the scene, showing exact locations. Russians aren't afraid to reveal the location of the explosions, because they are the ones who fired the shots.
They shoot close-ups of the corpses, children corpses... Russian propaganda loves dead children.
Disgusting pieces of shit, "mourning" and "condemning" their own crimes.
On June 9 they shelled Kalininsky district where I used to live, down the street from my apartment, from my parents. Near the church my mother goes to regularly. When my husband and I lived there, we often passed by this place when we went for a walk to the arboretum. Literally the day before, I persuaded my mother to go for a walk in that arboretum. Good thing she was too scared to leave the house. One woman died on the spot. This could have been my mother.
After this shelling, mother wrote to me, "I saw a mortar drove along Ilyicha Avenue half an hour ago, and I thought that they were going to shell us soon. So I was right."
It's all so wild and surreal. I'm about to say something that might be inappropriate but... Lately, I'm very glad that I haven't made any friends in my 26 years. That I don't keep in touch with classmates from all 3 of my former schools and university. That I don't even remember the names of many of them. This way, if someone I once interacted with gets hurt, I won't know about it. If anyone of my classmates was forcibly conscripted by russian terrorists and became cannon fodder for p*tin, I won't know. If I had any friends left in Donetsk, or if I had been closer to my parents, I would have gone crazy by now. But I had only one close person in Donetsk, with whom I cut off all communication a year ago. I tried to leave the city as if I had never been there. It helps a little, but not much.
What they're doing to my city and my country... I knew it was going to happen, but I still wasn't ready.
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About rats
To those of my followers who doesn't speak Ukrainian nor Russian and are confused about the "KaMYSH" part. Kamysh means "bulrush" or "reed', but the "mysh" part also means "mouse." I wanted something to go with "Bambook" name, because Kamysh was initially supposed to be a companion to Bambook (the sweet boy from my profile pic, he passed away this spring and I still mourn his death every fucking day...)
Kamysh is mostly a formal name, I call him Mysh / Kamyshka / McMiffin and a thousand other stupid nicknames, he doesn't mind.
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Hello people of the realm!!
I feel like I say this every post but it HAS been a very long time since I updated on here.
I’m sure you’re all curious, but Baby Winchester is doing phenomenal!
Here he is right before we celebrated Easter with M’Lord’s side of the family.
He’s growing and learning like crazy! He is 14 months old now if ya’ll can believe that! He has a stuffed bunny that he got for Easter named Mr. Hops that he ADORES and insists on taking every where we go! Mr. Hops also sleeps in the crib with him, which is adorable.
He also has several books he likes us to read to him, one is Essential Words for Toddlers and the others are from the Biscuit series. Much like his mother, he is a reading fiend!
He goes to daycare while M’Lord and I are at work and he LOVES it there! He’s working on playing nice with the other kids and not putting his hands on them. We’ve had a few bumps in the road and he has his good and bad days, but we’re working with him. He even has a flower planted at daycare that he’ll be able to bring home once it’s bigger. It will then go to live at Momma Wesson (my mom)’s house because I kill plants, lol.
As far as me, I’m working from home a little more now (2 days a week) and the other 3 I am in the office. I’m liking this change so far, I’m at home where I’m most comfortable and can even get a few things done before I pick up Little Man from daycare. Work is changing, in that some responsibilities are being taken off of me and new ones are getting put on me in the next few months. While I’m a little nervous, I’m also excited for a change in pace and taking on new and different responsibilities.
M’Lord is doing great as well, kicking ass and taking names in his new job. We’re actually getting a date night this week! I won tickets to see my World Series winning Braves against his Chicago Cubs, so that’s going to be a lot of fun!
In other news, my oldest brother-in-law got engaged and he is expecting his first child with his fiancée (a little girl) and we’re all very excited to meet their new bundle of joy in June! My youngest brother-in-law also got married so I’ll have 2 sisters-in-law 😳 I really love both of these girls and can’t believe how quickly our family is growing….things are changing so much but it makes me so incredibly happy!
In my time away from writing; I started a series on my YouTube channel called “History and Mysteries with Lady Winchester”, the link is in my bio. I’ve finished one episode so far (The Kennedy Curse) and I’m working on a second…it’s just been difficult to upload consistently (if you’ve made it to this point in this post, you can probably guess why, lol). But if you guys could check that out, I’d really appreciate it.
I hope you guys enjoyed this little life update and hope all of you are doing well. I love every single one of you and wish ya’ll NOTHING but the best in life!!!
Lots of love and light,
LadyWinchester
The Squad:
@waywardnerd67 @waywardbaby @jobean12-blog @deans-baby-momma @mrswhozeewhatsis @familybusinesswritingbro @ain-t-bovvered @emoryhemsworth @dean-winchesters-bacon @ anyone else that’s interested in life/blog updates :)
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Hawthorne House Update - Aaloqui Free readings and pick a card.
Hello visitors and welcome to Hawthorne House!
Just a quick update.
First for the readings, the cutoff for getting your statement in (please have a look at the post regarding how to send in a reading request below so you know how we’re doing them). Then I will finish them out over the next few days. I’ll be marking the last entry tonight when I head to bed so anything sent in after that will not be included in the Into the Unknown/May first/Aaloqui celebration readings. We appreciate your patience and the time you’ve taken to participate in these experimental readings. And also I want to give a special thanks to everyone who has sent in a review, yall have been so sweet and it’s been a joy having you join us.
If you want your response to be in a short video I will be recording all of those readings Tuesday/Thursday at the latest and sending them out.
I have a few more things planned for this month even here on tumblr in addition to another round of these quick card pulls. Which looking back now were not as quick as I was expecting them to be at all. We’ve got a full moon reading coming up on the 16th and another Zodiac check in for the month of June at the end of this month. There may also be another Zodiac one in between now and then but we will have to see what else comes up and how busy our schedules are here.
I am also very excited because at some point this month, when she has the time (new born and family stuff allowing) Mizz Azhra Hawthorne well be coming to join in on some of those quick pick readings so we’ll have two readers for the next around we do.
If there are things yall would like to see or have readings on send your suggestions in as well or reply to this, we love to see what you have to say.
Second bit of news. I ended up with five piles for today’s pick-a-card and all of them had some interesting details in them. Aaloqui was very talkative and we had some other Visitors stop in for advice and chatter. It was a lot of fun. But because there were so many piles things ran a bit late so I’m going to be posting that video on the 3rd even though it was recorded today. Just so I can take the time editing the clips together for each pile and upload it in the morning because I’ll be quite busy tomorrow. But I’ll be sure to send a link when that video is finished because I had a lot of fun recording it.
Alrighty, that’s all I have for now I think. I do hope you’re all having a lovely Sunday evening. May the new week be easy going for you!
Yours,
Aria
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Updates
Social Media and Online:
Tiktok: I fought Tiktok and won. I told them they banned me due to discrimination, the likes of which they never even bother with when it comes to literal criminals and predators. I told them that to censor someone queer and neurodivergent was pure bigotry, and if they didn't do something about it, I would let everyone know. So they did something: they gave me my account back. Am I glad? Somewhat. I've stepped back from it a great deal due to what I discussed last time, instead focussing less online and more off social media, and that has been helping me greatly, both mentally and creatively. So there is a small victory.
Twitter: I am still fighting them on this one, especially when it comes to current events and why I was banned. They keep asking me to delete the tweet that made them suspend me, but whenever I mention I can't even get into my account to do so, they don't see the problem and have yet to even talk to me about it.
Photobucket: After almost 20 years of free service, Photobucket has decided to start charging their customers for access to their own photos. Not only that, the photos they once gave you access to and that you uploaded in trust are hidden behind a pay wall, and unless i subscribe for a monthly fee, I can't even save the photos and delete my account. I am currently still fighting this, and they have yet to give me a good reason why they have done this and why they won't even let me save my photos and leave.
COVID: Both Terry and I are still struggling with side-effects, even two months later, and as such, we've scheduled for the second booster shot. Everyone around me is saying how ridiculous it is that we need these shots, and I keep thinking, "You never had it, so how would you even know?" And 99/100 of the time, the person saying I'm being a hypochondriac either has never had COVID or isn't even vaxxed. You simply do not understand how bad it is until you have it. It's not just a "bad flu". This disease has consequences, one that has caused a global pandemic that everyone has decided to ignore, and I personally am not interested in dying because of someone else's ignorance.
Personal/Misc:
Jenny: On June 29, a childhood friend's sister passed away suddenly of COVID-caused pneumonia and complications with diabetes. Her name was Jenny, and her sister is Julie. When I first heard, I sobbed my eyes out, despite never having had spoken to her in decades, nor her sister, even. This was due to two major reasons: grief, obvious grief, as she was only 40 (my sister Heather's age), but she was a mother of three children. And her death was so avoidable and needless and tragic. She was a firecracker, a tough and no-nonsense person, who took little shit but gave a great deal with a smile and a hug. She was a force of nature, fierce and loyal, and also kind. So to hear of her death in such a sudden way was heartbreaking. The second reason is more selfish: it reminded me that death can happen at any time, without any warning, and can take anyone and everyone I love. And because Jenny was also Heather's age, it's even more terrifying. (More on her in a moment.) I went to the memorial, terrified of being there and ready to leave in case I was not wanted or welcome, holding Terry's hand in my own. I walked in, looked around, and found Julie. Both of us were wearing masks, but it didn't matter. Our eyes met, and in silence, we broke the distance and hugged, hard, crying. From such a tragic loss, something else was reborn: a hopeful friendship, renewed, with Julie. Julie, who is married to her childhood love and a mother of two, who still has that orange hair but finally has meat on her bones, a beautiful fluff. I am of course wary, but I have some hope that our friendship will rebloom. I need a friend.
Family: Heather's pregnancy has bumped up early, meaning she will be giving birth to her second child, named Nicholas Basil, in a week. I am so happy and excited, but it seems to be that I am the only one. My mother is miserable about it. She thinks Heather is making a mistake having this baby, and is already blaming him for things when he isn't even born yet. She hates him, for being male, for existing aside Ellie, his older sister, and thinks he will destroy the family and cause Ellie to regress. She want "nothing to do with him," her own grandchild, because he was born late and a different sex. I told her off last week about this, but she doesn't care. I honestly hope she either grows up once he is born, or Heather tells her off, too. I love my mother, so very much, but I would support Heather if she were to disown Mom over this, over her own disowning of a literal foetus, including not allowing her into Ellie's life, anymore. Heather has that right, and if she's going to be nothing but a demon to my nephew, I don't want Mom near him or Ellie, either. She doesn't deserve to have a relationship with Ellie nor Heather if she persists in doing this. We're all worried and scared for Heather, as at 40, having her second kid will be very hard on her, which was another reason why I was so upset when Jenny died: it reminded me that Heather could, too. She could die giving birth to Nicholas, and then what? Nobody would love him, then, because they would blame him. But I would and will, specifically because of that. And I'm going to be his protector for the rest of my life, especially against his own grandmother. No grandchild should ever be treated that way. Ever. Least of all before he is even born!!
Marriage: I want to say things are well, and for the most part, they absolutely are: Terry continues to support and love me like always. But lately, sometimes, I feel distance between us. Our physical love has decreased a great deal, and while I usually am and able to label this under age, I'm also terrified it's something deeper, something hidden, something he doesn't want me to see or know. Or maybe I'm just projecting, thinking I am gross and unwanted because of my change in gender and looks. I'm not (just) a woman, anymore, and least of all the woman he married. I'm a genderqueer enby, fluctuating between what I see as a woman and something else, agender, undefined, and more and more, it's becoming the latter. I'm terrified that my changes and expressions of this are off-putting, and the fact that I am changing is turning him off of me. We barely are together like that once a month, and even though I know we're both on the ace spectrum, being who I am and having gone through what I have, I can't help but read more into this than I probably should. Maybe it's better not to, but I would rather be paranoid and catch something I missed than miss it completely. I just don't know or understand what is or isn't normal for relationships. Maybe comparison isn't such a good idea, as it's our relationship and thus one of a kind. I dunno. I just worry sometimes.
Writing: I haven't been writing much at all, and it's clearly hurting me. I have been getting great ideas for one of my series, but writing is slow. I'm not quite sure why, but as mentioned, once I stepped back for a bit and tried to prioritise, I've been mostly reading stuff, which in turn helps me imagine and think about my own words. Fanfic, usually a staple of my daily activities, has become dormant and almost dead, and several fanfics have been ended for those reasons. However, thankfully, I had a few breakthroughs over that time, so hopefully, I'm thinking that some of the fics I want to finish are now being worked on. I'm excited about it, but also worried it'll absolutely suck. I just need to write it, get it down, and not worry so much about it being perfect (write high, edit sober), because the worrying is holding me back, when instead I should just be writing, just to get the story out. Like I surmised, death is unpredictable and comes without any warning; my biggest fear is to die with all my stories unwritten or unfinished. I want to leave my nieflings something...
Personal: I'm lonely. I'm very lonely at times. I spend my days alone in my apartment, a very wonderful luxury, yes, but also isolating. I do have hopes with Julie, but past experience has warned me to be cautious and wary. I can't work, have no means of meeting people, and even when I do, whatever strikes up ends fast, because once people realise I'm autistic and mentally ill, they leave. I've spoken at length about this several times, only back then, I didn't know it was my autism that kept myself apart from most of the world. Now that I do, I lack the patience or effort to wait for long and see if a person is worth being my friend. And yes, that sounds cold and arrogant, and I do not care. I'm old and lonely and tired. I just want one person I can see and hug and talk to once and a while, to help and be helped by someone who not only likes me, but understands me, and I don't have the time or patience to work on friendships that are fake or only one-sided. It used to be that this person was my mom, but once I figured out my true gender and tried to talk to her about it, and was thus ridiculed and laughed at by her for it, I have since been unable to be my true self with her, anymore - especially when it comes to my future nephew, too. So I'm a lonely and sad housespouse who has no money to their name and nothing to show for their almost 40 years of life. Looking at myself that way, I can see why I have no friends. Maybe it's better I don't; I won't have to say goodbye.
That's all for now. Special shout out to @cypsiman2 for always sending me a kind word after a word-vomit like this post is, and I just wanted them to know that I appreciate them. Thank you.
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'Dancing with the Stars' pro Peta Murgatroyd reveals newborn son's name with Maksim Chmerkovskiy Dancing with the Stars pro Peta Murgatroyd has finally revealed her newborn son's name. Peta, who welcomed her second child with husband Maksim Chmerkovskiy on June 18, took to Instagram on Wednesday, June 21 and posted a photo of her adorable baby boy wearing tan clothes and resting on a white comforter next to a wooden sign that revealed his cute name. RELATED LINK: 'DANCING WITH THE STARS' PROS AND THEIR SIGNIFICANT OTHERS: WHO'S DATING OR MARRIED TO WHOM!? (PHOTOS) "Rio John," the wooden sign read. Peta captioned the photo, "Rio John Chmerkovskiy. Born - 6.18.2023." Peta added, "8.6 oz and thriving! We are overjoyed to share our baby boy with all of you. @shai.aleksander is already the best big brother and we all feel very complete. Life is good XO." Peta went on to call her new son the "love of my life" via Instagram Stories on Thursday, June 22. "[Maksim] can never say I didn't get him the ultimate Fathers Day gift... I cannot wait to share my birth story with you all," Peta wrote. Peta also joked about how Maksim suggested they should have one more child immediately after she had given birth in the hospital. "[Maksim] literally straight after birth. Anyone else experience this? Lol," Peta captioned a brief video of the spouses' time in the hospital. Peta and Maksim's new baby joins their first-born son, Shai, 6. Peta began documenting her second pregnancy -- including a babymoon to "paradise" with Maksim and Shai in April -- ever since announcing the big news in January that she was expecting again. The unexpected pregnancy occurred only months after Peta did a June 2022 interview in which she had revealed she was currently undergoing in vitro fertilization after suffering three miscarriages in the prior two years. FOLLOW REALITY TV WORLD ON THE ALL-NEW GOOGLE NEWS! Reality TV World is now available on the all-new Google News app and website. Click here to visit our Google News page, and then click FOLLOW to add us as a news source! "It's been a long ride for our family. Each day of those two-and-a-half years I prayed for a miracle," Peta wrote June 9 on Instagram. RELATED LINK: 'THE BACHELOR' FRANCHISE COUPLES NOW: WHO IS STILL TOGETHER? (PHOTOS) Alongside her post, Peta uploaded a video showing the moment she had learned she was pregnant again. "I really was reluctant sharing this footage, but I realized this is my journey... not a pretty journey but... MY journey. I am a changed woman from these events, I think a better woman. Today I am happy and content, I am grateful and won't take things for granted," Peta wrote. She continued, "I never thought this day at 39 weeks would come. It was an infatuation to be pregnant with my second child, I thought I needed it for my soul, to be full and whole. What I needed to realize and come to terms with was the fact that I am whole, I have a beautiful healthy family who love me and that I wasn't able to see." Peta said the joy she and Maksim were experiencing at the time was "other worldly." "I never thought we were going to be here [at 39 weeks pregnant]," Peta wrote over a photo of Maksim kissing her belly. "I thank god everyday. It was all worth it." Peta previously revealed that she got pregnant "all natural" this time around and it just "happened." Peta told People earlier this year, "I didn't even know I was pregnant for so long until I was really feeling sick. I danced through Dancing with the Stars with it. I started feeling weird, started feeling a little bit sick and a little bloated and I didn't want to test for weeks." Peta explained she had finally taken a pregnancy test around the "six or seven-week" mark and was shocked to discover the results. Peta competed on Season 31 of Dancing with the Stars last fall, however, her participation in the competition ended up being unusually brief. She and her celebrity partner, actor Jason Lewis, were eliminated at the conclusion of Season 31's premiere when it streamed live on Disney+ on September 19. Peta and Jason were eliminated after they landed in the bottom-two couples based on the combined total of judges' scores and viewer votes that were cast live throughout the two-hour premiere. Dancing with the Stars' judges at the time -- Len Goodman, Derek Hough, Carrie Ann Inaba and Bruno Tonioli -- were then tasked with saving either The Real Housewives of New Jersey star Teresa Giudice and her partner Pasha Pashkov (the other couple in the premiere's bottom-two) or Peta and Jason, and opted to save Teresa and Pasha. When asked if she'd like to return to Dancing with the Stars despite her short stint on the show last year, Peta told Us Weekly in January, "I would love to be [a pro partner again], if they want me." "I'm here, I'm willing," she noted. "I'll give birth and jump back in within, you know, the seven weeks that I did with Shai. I went back with Nick Viall that season, and I would gladly do it again." Peta became a pro partner on Dancing with the Stars for Season 13 in 2011. She competed in a total of 14 seasons and claimed the mirrorball trophy twice. Peta sat out of Season 23 while she was pregnant with Shai. Peta and Maksim welcomed Shai together in January 2017, and then the couple got married in July 2017 of that year after five years of dating. RELATED LINK: 'DANCING WITH THE STARS' PROS AND THEIR SIGNIFICANT OTHERS: WHO'S DATING OR MARRIED TO WHOM!? (PHOTOS) While awaiting the birth of Baby No. 2, Maksim's sister-in-law, Jenna Johnson, gave birth in January to her son, Rome, with Maksim's brother Val Chmerkovskiy. Dancing with the Stars' 32nd season is set to air on ABC, and stream simultaneously on Disney+, this fall. Alfonso has already teased having "fantastic" chemistry with his new co-host Julianne Hough. About The Author: Elizabeth KwiatkowskiElizabeth Kwiatkowski is Associate Editor of Reality TV World and has been covering the reality TV genre for more than a decade. !function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s) if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function()n.callMethod? n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments); if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version='2.0'; n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0; t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)(window, document,'script', 'https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js'); fbq('init', '139494146798076'); fbq('track', 'PageView'); (function(d, s, id) var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#xfbml=1&appId=226191007403108"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs); (document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk')); [ad_2] Read More
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let me get you alone - ch1 - baby it's always been you
Ao3
ORIGINALLY UPLOADED (BY ME) TO AO3 ON 21 JUNE, 2022
Word Count: 8984
Summary:
“I had a thought.” It’s the first time either of them has spoken in a few minutes, content in each other’s silence after a long, long day.
Ed, who’s been lying across Stede’s lap, twists to look up at him. “Dangerous territory, love.” His voice is rough and sleepy and it sends a pleasant shiver right down to Stede’s core. “What was your thought, then?"
“Well, I was thinking,” Stede says, drawing his words out long the way he likes to, pulling candy between his teeth for lovely Ed. “It’s been a long time since the two of us have, ah, have been properly alone.”
[In other words, Stede and Ed go bonkers trying to get some space and time alone. The crew does not help.]
Tags:
Blackbeard | Edward Teach/Stede Bonnet, Blackbeard | Edward Teach, Stede Bonnet, Lucius Spriggs, Crew of the Revenge (Our Flag Means Death), Frenchie (Our Flag Means Death), Jim Jimenez, Oluwande Boodhari, Israel Hands, Explicit Sexual Content, Implied Sexual Content, Hand Jobs, Anal Sex, Coitus Interruptus, Interrupted Sex, Explicit Language, Humor, Sexual Humor, Marriage Proposal, Engagement, Note: the following tags are NOT related to/involved in the sexual content, Choking, Torture, carving skin, Asphyxiation, ok got it? those are the trigger warnings, Lucius "Coitus Interruptus" Spriggs, Wildly Innacurate History, Historical Inaccuracies, Medical Information Received From Reddit and My Imagination, Alcohol Information Received from Google, Written By an Asexual and Boy Can You Tell, Stede And Ed Share One Moral Compass And It Got Smashed By A Piano (Complimentary), If Something Seems Off It's Probably Because I Made It Up, slight drunkenness? (relevant for about two seconds), Certain Geographical Locations Were Definitely Made Up
(notes and fic under the cut)
For waterbottle_stickers.
HEYYOOO I’M BAAACK! BOY these past few months have sucked! As you might have perhaps guessed, either from knowing me in person (hi waterbottle_stickers) or following me on tumblr, one of the few good things recently has been my newfound love of the telly show Our Flag Means Death, a show for which i have reblogged enough fanart to fill the Thames. And so naturally i decided to write fanfiction for it. And here we are!
but BEFORE WE GET STARTED, please sign these petitions to campaign for human rights in the United States.
Click here (or copy this URL: https://sign.moveon.org/petitions/senate-cancel-recess-and-pass-gun-reforms-now?source=homepage&utm_medium=promotion&utm_source=homepage) to demand that the U.S. Senate pass gun reforms to PROTECT (yes that’s right, Betsy DeVoss, PROTECT) American citizens, especially schoolchildren). We cannot let the dick-measuring contests of random people cost out children (or anyone else for that matter!) their lives.
As anyone with three braincells should know, abortion is healthcare. If you have a uterus, you have the RIGHT to be in charge of what’s inside it, no matter your ethnic, financial, or geographical background. Click here (or copy this URL: https://sign.moveon.org/petitions/abortion-is-health-care?source=homepage&utm_medium=promotion&utm_source=homepage) to protest the potential destruction of abortion rights.
And now back to the author’s notes!
This fic is a birthday gift for my dear, dear friend waterbottle_stickers. I hope you like it and that this year is better than the last. Thank you for being one of the best friends I’ve ever had and for joining me in going absolutely feral over the gay pirate show. Everyone go read their enola holmes fix-it fic (IT’S GAY) immediately.
Disclaimer: Obviously these are not my characters. I feel like we don’t need to address that like. At all. But im used to having a “disclaimer” bit in my fics because i heard about ann rice and got scared.
Oh also i think it goes without saying, but I am HEAVILY ignoring the real life times these fuckers supposedly died. Creative liberties and whatnot.
Enjoy!! And please comment oh my god.
A year and a half after Stede’s return to the Revenge:
“I had a thought.” It’s the first time either of them has spoken in a few minutes, content in each other’s silence after a long, long day.
Ed, who’s been lying across Stede’s lap, twists to look up at him. “Dangerous territory, love.” His voice is rough and sleepy and it sends a pleasant shiver right down to Stede’s core. “Remember the musical?”
Stede does indeed remember the musical. In hindsight, tasking Lucius, Frenchie, and the Swede to “put their own spin” on Macbeth was… maybe not the best way to offset restlessness between raids. He’d realized that when, gravely misunderstanding the “What, you egg?” scene and even more gravely interrupting what had been some very enjoyable, captains-only proceedings, Frenchie had tumbled into the captains’ quarters padded all over with blankets and sacks, asking if Stede had any “large sheets in a sort of pale brown color” to smooth out his egg costume.
Then again… “I’m fairly certain I heard you humming Lady Macbeth’s insomnia ballad at the hull yesterday.”
Ed huffs, but lets his eyes flutter shut when Stede traces the outline of his face with a soft pink fingertip. “Lucius kinda outdid himself on that one. ‘You killed him but I died instead’ ? I mean, jesus. Hits you right in the fucking heart.”
The finger drifts down to Ed’s mouth and stays there, perched silently and softly on his lips. “He really did, didn’t he? They’re all getting so talented.”
Ed smiles under Stede’s finger, then flicks his tongue out and laughs at the little yelp he startles out of Stede. “What was your thought, then?”
“Well, I was thinking ,” Stede says, drawing his words out long the way he likes to, pulling candy between his teeth for lovely Ed. “It’s been a long time since the two of us have, ah, have been properly alone.”
Once more, Stede’s finger is licked, and he doesn’t even bother to ignore the way it makes his stomach flop. Ed grins up at him, devious and sugar-sweet all at once. “‘Sleep uninterrupted for longer than four hours’ alone, or ‘lock the door and get that box out of the wardrobe’ alone?” By the lazy way Ed looks him up and down, Stede gets the feeling he’d be up for either.
So he simply hums in response, resuming his mapping out of Ed’s face. He drags his finger down the bridge of Ed’s nose, then traces the bone of his cheek, rests his fingertip in the little hollow under his bottom lip. It’s all perfect-- every part of Ed is perfect. This, he’s known forever, or at least he feels like he has. His love for Ed, the pure and simple truth of it, is like a--a muscle that he’s been missing all his life. Something important, something on the right side of the body. He’d lived without it for so long and it’d been pain and misery and he’d thought this was just what life was supposed to be: forever longing for that missing piece of himself, yet having no idea what it was. Now, though. Now, he’s whole.
Stede cups Ed’s face in one hand, brushing back long, grey hair with the other. Ed sighs, so softly that Stede only knows by the puff of breath on his hand. “Perhaps a little bit of both,” he says finally. “We could--we could take a vacation of sorts.”
Ed opens one eye. “Leave the ship?”
“Could put Oluwande in charge, Izzy second in command. Jim will make sure everyone obeys Oluwande, and Izzy will make sure work gets done.”
“You’ve sure put thought into this.”
Stede sinks deeper into the feather pillow behind his back, then scoops forward, curving around Ed, who shifts slightly to press a kiss to the edge of Stede’s hip bone. An involuntary sigh punches out of him.
“Perhaps.”
“Getting restless, mate?” Ed’s tone is playful, but Stede can hear the tendrils of worry shimmering underneath. A wave of guilt washes over him, momentarily pinning him down as he once again feels the shame of how he hurt Ed when he left all that time ago. Almost unconsciously, he tightens his arm around him.
Ruminating will do no good, he tells himself for the hundredth time. You’re here now.
His hand, which had been winding its way through Ed’s hair, moves to cup his cheek, firmly. “No. Not restless,” he affirms, perhaps more strongly than is strictly necessary, given the actual circumstances, but Ed knows. Ed understands. “Just…just missing you.”
Ed’s eyes, so warm and dark in that moment that Stede feels he could drown in them, stare into Stede’s own. “Love, I’m right here,” he says, and Stede’s heart just fucking aches with how much he loves this man. He leans down to kiss him, soft and chaste but holding the memories on their lips of every kiss they’ve had together. “Yeah,” Stede says. “Yeah, you are.” He chuckles softly. “But…so is the crew.”
As if on cue, there’s a suspiciously loud thud from up on deck, where the crew likes to sleep during the summer, and someone shouts “ OW! ”
Stede sighs and lets his head thunk back against the wall.
“Are they really,” Ed mutters drily before turning to bury his face in Stede’s lap. For a moment, they stay there, drawing out the moments before they have to be pirate captains again and captain their goddamn pirates. Stede’s the one who finally gives in, gently slides out from under Ed and, leaving a kiss just below his eye, makes his way over to the basket they keep by the door full of what Stede calls “de-escalization objects” (Ed doesn’t really get it, only knows that the basket appeared shortly after Stede looted some parenting manuals from a merchant ship and has inexplicably solved multiple minor disputes and one near duel among the crew members. He doesn’t mind, though, having come to enjoy Stede’s peculiar little experiments almost as much as Stede himself). Stede chooses a hard green pineapple they found on an island a few weeks ago that refuses to ripen, no matter what they do with it, and a small quilt made of a few old, soft shirts.
“Want me to come?” Ed asks, but he looks so lovely and cozy there on the bed, wearing only a night gown and the fushia banyan he likes so much.
“You handled them last night, tonight’s my round.” They both wince at the sound of another, even louder thud. Stede shifts the pineapple so that the sharp leaves on top aren’t sticking up his armpit. He stops before opening the door and looks at Ed, takes him in properly, vision that he is. “Get some sleep, love. I’ll be back momentarily.”
“Momentarily,” Ed repeats with a little--well, perhaps a bit more than a little--snark, but Stede can see that his smile is fond as he tucks himself into their bed. “Continue this talk later, yeah?”
“Yeah. Yes, of course, love. Sounds good.”
When Ed looks at him, then, Stede wonders if he can truly see right into Stede’s core, can unzip the sun-burnt skin and foolish pride and the faint smell of mushrooms that bath water won’t seem to wash away. He wonders if Ed feels the need and love that Stede just keeps finding he has for him (there seems to be a never-ending supply), if it’s welcome or overwhelming.
He wonders if Ed knows about the ring that’s hidden in a special nook under one of the floorboards (not Stede’s most creative hiding place, but the only one in their bedroom that seemed reasonably small enough to hide a ring).
Stede thinks he’d be okay if the first two were true, actually, and the revelation feels almost calming, knowing that wants to lay himself bare (literally and figuratively) for the dread pirate Blackbeard, for his beloved Ed. The third, though, he’d like to keep a secret, just for now. Call him old fashioned.
So he’s warm and buzzed, feeling like he does when Ed mixes drinks for the two of them on a special occasion, when he leans on the door, taking one last look at Ed, half asleep under the covers. “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” he says, and clicks the door shut behind him.
-
Well, it’s not the first time Ed’s been stabbed in the leg, and it probably won’t be the last.
He’s more surprised than anything else; most English merchants are comically undertrained in the area of self-defense. Ed almost feels like he should send the king a fruit basket or something for this improvement, but, unfortunately, his stab wound is currently bleeding like a motherfucker .
“ Ed , oh my god, what the hell ?”
“ Just a minute, love ,” he says through gritted teeth and deftly throws a knife at his merchant attacker, pinning their shoulder to the mast like a butterfly to piece of cork. Stede ignores the crumpled-paper groans of the merchant, rushing over to catch Ed just as his legs collapse under him.
“The fucking nerve of these people,” Stede murmurs under his breath, while he half-guides-half-carries Ed to a quiet corner while the rest of the crew continues dueling with the merchant sailors.
“To be fair, we are raiding them.”
“But to stab you like that? Uncouth at best.”
Ed’s busy thinking up a witty response when Stede starts to pull off his shirt, immediately and unfairly short-circuiting his brain.
Stede’s upper body is soft and pink from the sun and Ed stares for longer than is decent (but fuck decency, they’re pirates) as the soft shirt is used as a makeshift tourniquet, tied tightly just above Ed’s stab wound. He talks to Ed as he works, keeping up a running commentary of the fight going on nearby (“Darling, I think Buttons just bit a man’s ear off”), sharing his opinions on the merchants’ clothes (“While I firmly believe everyone should wear what they wish, this fellow looks uncomfortably similar to a chicken”), and (most interestingly) telling him about Oluwande and Jim’s quest to find the big industrial safe that, if the ship is the kind they think it is, should be hidden somewhere downstairs.
Ed appreciates it, just as he always does when Stede distracts him like this, but, really, Stede doesn’t need to utter a word to capture Ed’s attention.
Later, when they’re back on the Revenge and Stede’s locking the door of their quarters, Ed tells him. They’re on the bed. Well, Ed is. He’s been there since they got back from the raid and Roach stitched his wound shut and he’s honestly bored out his fucking skull, but the sight of Stede and his shoulders (which are now, unfortunately, clothed) cheers him up.
“Y’know,” Ed says, eyes flicking to follow the deft movements of Stede’s fingers as they unlace his boots, “that fuckin knife didn’t hurt so much as you thought it did. Can barely feel it right now. S’all good. A-fuckin-okay all because of– of you.”
Stede turns then, looking vaguely confused until he spots the brandy glass on their nightstand. (“Just a little bit, you know, to numb things,” Roach had said, pouring what was definitely more than “just a little bit” into a twinkling crystal glass). “Darling, how much of that did you have?” he asks gently, if slightly amused.
Ed’s gaze wanders around the room before inevitably returning to Stede, who’s gotten up from the small sofa and is making his way towards the bed. “Mmm. Enough? S’true though.”
Stede sits on the edge of the bed and, without once glancing away from his lover’s face, pushed the brandy glass away from the sidetable’s edge. “What’s true, love?”
“Soon as you were there, it didn’t matter. My leg--Stede, it barely hurt at all.”
“Sorry, are you saying it went numb ? Because that’s actually rather concern–”
“No, no, fuck, Stede, I’m-- complimenting you. Or something.” Ed sighs and grapples under the sheets for Stede’s hand. When he finds it, they hold on tight to eachother. “First off. M’not really that drunk.” Stede raises his eyebrows at him, and Ed exhales dramatically. “ Fine , okay, I am that drunk. But what I’m-- trying to say is that you--you have some kind of special ability. I don’t need to worry about anything else so long as you’re here with me.”
“Oh.” Stede looks almost surprised at this, like Ed wasn’t just inappropriately staring at his shoulders mid-battle, like the two of them haven’t fallen asleep more-or-less on top of each other every night, or morning, or whenever they manage to fall asleep for over a year. “I--I love you, Ed,” he says, after a breath of silence, and if a person could be melted by love then Ed would be a fucking puddle right now. It looks like he’s about to say something more, for a moment, and he inexplicably flicks his eyes down to the floor before he’s looking back at Ed, always Ed. “I’m, ah, I should. I should get ready for bed,” he says, finally. Ed--well, he knows there’s something more going on. He could push and see what Stede’s hiding, because he’s definitely hiding something, but, honestly, he’s fucking tired and trusts Stede and the rest of the crew enough to figure that, if it was something dangerous, he’d know by now.
Stede slides into bed beside him, reaching over to gently slide Ed’s rings off, pausing briefly, minutely, imperceptibly to anyone who doesn’t know him as well as Ed does, on a gold band with inlaid pearls that he’d started wearing in a panic recently, because he’d been going to give it to Stede but lost his nerve. In the same way that Ed knows when Stede’s lying or avoiding something, Stede seems to know that there’s something more to that ring. But he lets it go, just for now. They have all the time in the world.
Yeah, Ed thinks, as he settles on top of Stede, and noticing with drowsy joy the way that their bodies fit together like pieces of the jigsaw puzzle Wee John gave Frenchie for his birthday a few months ago.
It can wait.
-
Eight months earlier:
Ed finds him in the auxiliary wardrobe clutching a piece of fine parchment and staring into the middle distance.
“Stede?”
“Mmm?” His head snaps to look at Ed, eyes blinking far more than they should be. “Oh, darling, it’s you! I was just, ah, just reading this letter!”
Ed frowns but decides not to push just yet. He slides next to Stede, stretching his legs out so his bad knee can rest. “The one you got at the Republic of Pirates? Thought you’d read that days ago.” The Revenge had made a short, one-day stop in the Republic, just to stock up on some supplies and catch up on the comings and goings of various navies and enemy pirate crews. A nondescript-looking youth had abruptly handed Stede a folded letter at one point, then left in a blink of the eye. Ed was curious--Stede’s cheeks had pinked when he read the outside of the paper, but figured Stede would tell him later. Now, though, Ed wonders if there’s something else going on.
“Yes, well.” Stede says, sounding as though he desperately hopes “yes, well” might be considered a complete response.
Ed quirks an eyebrow and leans minuetly closer. His curiosity is on fire now–what the hell could be in that letter? He’s pretty sure it’s Mary, since everyone else who knows that Stede’s alive is either on the Revenge or doesn’t know how to write, but, last Ed heard she was living it up with her painter boyfriend and two kids and definitely did not want Stede back, so he can’t think what there is to worry about. He’s this close to leaning over and reading the thing himself (Ed might not be the strongest reader in the world--pirating’s not exactly a literature-heavy career--but his mum taught him his letters, and he enjoys the occasional military history, so Ed’s pretty sure he could get the jist), when Stede sighs like a squashed accordion and flops onto Ed’s shoulder.
“You okay, mate?”
“Hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.”
“...I see.”
This makes Stede laugh, which makes Ed laugh, and pretty soon the two of them are on their backs in the dim auxiliary wardrobe, giggling like teenagers and about two seconds away from feeling each other up. Before things can go down that path, though, Stede sobers up and starts talking about his ex-wife, which effectively changes the mood. “Mary and Doug are doing a big art show together,” he says.
Ed frowns. “Um. Good for them?”
“Yeah.” Stede’s voice is vague and distant, though, and Ed flips onto his side so he can see Stede’s face.
“Are you--jealous? Of–” Ed can’t think of an end to that sentence that isn’t at least a little bit disturbing, so he lets it hang.
Stede finally meets his eyes then, and his face changes immediately. “What? Oh, fuck, no! Love, no , no, I am not jealous of them. It’s not that. Sorry, look I’m so sorry if I made you think I wanted to go back or something--I promise I don’t. It’s just–” He stops, and yeah, okay, Ed’s a little relieved. He hadn’t really thought Stede would want to go back to his old life--he’d been abundantly clear when he returned to Ed and the Revenge that he knew what he wanted, and, in the months following, he’d looked happier and more at ease with himself each day. Something is clearly bothering Stede, though.
“Stede, what’s going on?”
Stede sighs again, then gently, so, so gently, brushes a strand of hair behind Ed’s ear. “Are you happy?” he asks.
This--was not what Ed was expecting. “Huh?”
“Like--do you feel satisfied with your life? With…me?”
Ed squints at Stede, wondering if this is some kind of trick question. “What do you mean? Of course I’m happy. This is the happiest I’ve ever been.”
“And--and you’re sure about that? Like, really, really certain?”
“Stede, what the fuck are you talking about? What’s going on?” It looks like Stede’s about to avoid the question by the twitch in his eyes, but he immediately sighs defeated when Ed scoops catches his cheek with one hand. “You tell me, Stede Bonnet, I know when you’re lying.” So did most other people. Stede was a fucking terrible liar.
Stede looks up at the ceiling, which droops low here to accommodate some extra storage up on the deck. “Doug and Mary seem so happy together. Everything Mary writes about the two of them--seems like they’re perfect for each other. And I’m…worried…because I don’t think I can give you that.”
Ed is incredulous, which is not an emotion he feels often, so he tries to savour it. “Sorry, you’re telling me that you’re sore because you think that your ex-wife and her painting instructor are better together than you and me, who captain a pirate ship together? That’s what’s bothering you?”
Stede rolls his eyes. “No! Well, kind of, but that’s not the way I’d put it.”
“How would you put it then?”
“I’d say that--that I want to treat you right and make you happy, but Mary’s letter reminded me that I can’t, not after everything I’ve done.”
Ed laughs, which doesn’t seem to be the expected response. “You know that’s pure shit, right?”
Finally, finally , Stede hands Ed the letter. For the first time, Ed registers the wet corners of his eyes. “She’s addressed it to ‘Ed’s Partner,’ the minx. Darling, you deserve someone better to be your partner,” his voice breaks a little, and Ed wants to kiss the sound off his lips. He does, and smiles at the lovely little noise of surprise Stede makes.
“Thing is, Stede, there isn’t anyone better. Not for me.” He kisses him again. “Never has been, never will be.” He leaves no room for argument. Naturally, Stede argues.
“But–”
“Never. Look, I know you’re very good at thinking mean things about yourself–”
“--Oh, says you –” Ed promptly clamps a hand over Stede’s mouth.
“BUT. I’ll have you know that I want you around literally all the time. I love you, you make me feel--insane. In all the good ways.”
“You really don’t have to–” Stede’s voice is muffled, but he continues to be a little bitch.
“Remember last night when I woke up screaming because I had a dream that one of my old captains was sawing me in half for running away?”
“Well, yes, that was horrid.”
“And all I wanted was for you to hold me? Because you make me feel safe and happy?”
“Yes, yes, I remember, love.” Stede’s smiling now, and he leans into Ed’s side. “You’ve made your point.” Ed shakes his head, though, and hold’s back with his arm. He’s a little bit pissed off.
“No, Stede, I haven’t. I get to decide who I want in my life, and I want you, so fuck off with this shit about not deserving me. S’not your choice. Got it?” He holds Stede tight, full of love and anger and a little bit of lust to top it all off.
“Yeah, love,” Stede says into Ed’s shoulder. “I got it, you’re right.”
“Of course I’m right. M’always right.” He nudges the bone of Stede’s shoulder. “This is where we belong. Now, what else did Mary say in that letter? Any good stories?”
When Stede flips him onto his back and kisses him, Ed can only smile against his mouth, and think how lucky he is to have this every day for as long as he wants. Of course, Lucius barges in and throws a lemon at them just as Ed has finished unbuttoning Stede’s shirt (because what would life on a boat be without getting interrupted seventy-five percent of the times they try to fuck?), but he can tell the irritation on Stede’s face is almost entirely for show and he himself feels smug as a cat, too happy to let it get to him.
It’s that moment, while he and Stede are dressing each other and Stede’s lacing up Ed’s leather trousers, that he starts to think about forever, starts to think about a ring.
He imagines a million different ways to show Stede just how much he loves him, imagines what it would be like to show their love to everyone they know, or perhaps just themselves and the bright moon.
Ed begins to smile.
-
Two months after that:
Stede is on them the second he sees their scarred hands wrapped around Ed’s throat in an alleyway. It’s a new moon, and the Revenge is docked near a port town in Georgia for a basic supply run.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this, Stede thinks to himself in frustration, though he can’t help but smile at the non-chalance in Ed’s voice as he mutters “Ah, thanks love. That little bugger was starting to get annoying.”
Stede sits on the “little bugger’s” stomach, pleased when he feels something crack beneath him. Nobody touches Ed and gets away with it.
Stede pushes a knife under the person’s chin. “Who the fuck do you think you are?” he hisses at the writhing creature underneath him. They try to flip Stede off them, but Stede is sturdy and he pushes his weight down on the--the delinquent beneath him, as though he wants to break them. “Just a man trying to make a living out here” is all they says in response. They suddenly grin, all white teeth and expressionless blue eyes, like a swathe of sky painted by someone who didn’t care.
Ed’s leaning against the wall, still breathing a little funny, but looking calm as he loads his gun for insurance. Stede’s been getting better, though, and the show of trust Ed displays by letting Stede take control with this man sends a shock of warmth through him. He decides to give it his all. Ed might be okay now, but he was still being non-consensually choked mere seconds ago.
“Give me one reason not to kill you,” he fixes the man with a hard glare.
“Forgive me,” he spits onto Stede’s knee, “if I don’t tremble at the feet of Blackbeard’s whore.”
Stede’s blood run’s cold, though not from the insult (which he actually sort of likes). “Blackbeard?” he repeats, willing his eyes not to flick up to Ed’s face, just in case he doesn’t already know, and it’s just a wildly coincidental remark. He focuses on the clothing of the man underneath him--tattered and ill-fitting, but once fancy, the kind of thing Stede would have bought back in Barbados. Almost definitely stolen from a merchant ship or a dead body. He plunges his knife into the man’s gut, reluctantly aiming for the left side, so he’ll have time to find out what’s going on. “Speak.”
He lets out a hollow laugh. “There’s a bounty on Blackbeard’s head like you wouldn’t believe. I’m not an idiot.”
Okay, so he does know it’s Blackbeard he tried to strangle. Stede aims a little higher this time, pushes harder into the pale skin of Ed’s attacker. Looking up briefly, he sees that Ed’s recovered and is watching Stede’s actions with interest, his gun held loosely in one hand. Stede remembers other fights they’ve been in together, one’s where they’ve fought back to back, feeding off each others’ energy so that they’re unstoppable.
This could be fun.
“What do you think, love?” he asks, figuring Ed should choose what happens since he’s the one who got attacked in the first place. “Shall I cut his head off, or would you like to do the honors?”
Ed chuckles and leans down to kiss Stede, ignoring the look of disgust on the man’s face. “Such chivalry,” he says with a smile. “Dunno, maybe we should let him go. Carve our names on his chest and leave him somewhere.”
Stede’s smile is bright and a little bit crazed. “Why darling, I like the way you think.”
The man is gagged with his own shirt within seconds, and Stede holds him down while Ed presses the knife to his bare chest.
FOR THE DISRESPECT OF EDWARD AND STEDE, he writes, and does a pretty good job of it, too. Stede smiles wide and kisses him again. He and Ed take off the man’s boots (Frenchie had been needing a new pair) and use his stockings to bind his legs together.
Stede carries the boots by their laces and leans into Ed’s side as they find their way through the darkness. “Do you mind that I jumped in?” he asks, sounding a little worried. “I got upset seeing him grab you like that, but maybe I should have left you alone.”
Ed shrugs. “I’d be upset if you’d put yourself in mortal danger, but I doubt that would stop you from doing it.”
“That’s probably true,” Stede muttered.
“We weren’t in danger today, though. That’s why I thought we should let that guy live. He was in over his head.”
For a moment, they stay in comfortable silence.
“I didn’t overstep, though? And you tell me if I did, please Ed, I won’t mind.”
Even in the dark, Stede can sense Ed’s little half-smile. “How about,” he says, “if you start to interfere and I don’t want you to, then I shout ‘DOLPHIN DICK,’” Stede starts to laugh, but Ed presses on. “Other way around too, of course. Then if one of us wants help, we shout ‘ZUCCHINI.’”
Stede laughs harder. “What the fuck is a zucchini?”
“No idea. I heard Jim say it yesterday and I thought it was a funny word.”
“ Zucchini. Sounds sexual.”
“Well, that’s because you’re a pervert.”
“I beg your pardon!”
“Yeah, you like that, don’t you?”
Stede’s laughing too hard to respond, so he simply falls into Ed’s arms and sucks a bruise into his neck. There’s a wall behind him, and not a soul in sight. But first…
“I like your system,” he says. “Dolphin Dick for ‘back off’ and Zucchini for ‘help,’ yeah?”
“Yep,” Ed’s voice is low into Stede’s ear. “And, for the record, I was actually really glad you were there today. I wasn’t scared yet, but it sure is hard so scream when you’re being strangled.”
“Maybe strangulation should be exempt from those rules. See someone being strangled and you stop it right away?”
“Mmhm. Can we stop talking about getting strangled now?” Ed’s knee nudges between Stede’s thighs, and they’re steadily backing up against the wall. “I’d really quite like you inside me.”
Stede giggles while he flips them around so that it’s Ed who’s against the wall. “Funny that,” he says, his voice dropping down low. “I’ve been wanting to get inside you since you carved that poor fellow’s chest. I want to do everything with you, I want–” he breaks off, the words I want to marry you half formed on his lips. He bites them back, bites Ed’s neck instead, and thinks he’s covered his tracks pretty well. Marriage isn’t something he’s thought much about, at least not consciously. Since the frigid vows that had been pre-prepared for him and Mary all those years ago, he’s only wanted to get as far away from marriage and marital duties as possible, but maybe, just maybe…
Before he can finish off the thought and preferably also Edward Teach, a voice cries out somewhere behind them.
“What’s going on over there?”
“Run!” Ed whispers, laughing. They take off, hand in hand, trousers undone, towards their home.
Later, when Stede’s made good on his words from earlier and is licking Ed’s spend off his soft brown stomach, the thought of marriage returns to him. Everything feels good when he’s with Ed. Everything’s warm and beautiful, and if it isn’t, it soon will be. Being married to Ed could only be-- would only be--the greatest thing that ever happens to him.
It’s obvious, really.
-
Now:
“How long do you think we have?”
Ed’s voice is low and flushed against Stede’s ear. He’s flat on his back in their bed, hair spread out on the pillow beneath him, and Stede’s never been so in love. He kisses him again, bites Ed’s bottom lip for good measure. “An hour maybe?”
Ed laughs into his mouth, the vibrations running straight to Stede’s core. “Ahh, you’re being optimistic, love. I’ll bet they get into trouble in half that time. Gotta be quick.” He laughs again, this time Stede joins him and they lie there, lost in each other, fumbling to undo laces and buttons. Ed’s hips are warm under Stede’s palms and when Ed wraps his hand around both of their cocks, Stede sighs into his mouth.
They’re feeling optimistic now, this is farther than they got the night before, but they still freeze at the sound of footsteps in the hallway, expecting the door to be shoved open like it has been every night this week. They’re going mad, both of them, out of desire for each other’s touch. The footsteps pass--probably just someone getting another jar of marmalade or some herbs to smoke--and they sigh in relief.
“Remember--remember what I said about taking a vacation?” Stede says abruptly, digging his hands into Ed’s hair and tilting his hips into Ed’s. “Just for a night or two, we could take as long as we wanted doing this. No crew to burst in at moments notice. No door that doesn’t lock properly…”
Ed grins lazily, looking at Stede through half-open eyes. “Mmm, I could fuck you four different ways in one night.”
Stede pulls back and his heart races at the little noise Ed makes when they separate. “ Four ? Didn’t think there were that many ways to fuck someone.”
“Stede, there are endless ways to fuck someone, and I want to do them all with you.” At that, his hand squeezes tighter and they’re close now, gasping into each other’s mouths and burying their free hands in each other’ hair, when…
“Knock knock, quick questio-- JESUS CHRIST ” Lucius’s scream echos through the room juuust at the moment Stede’s about to finish. How utterly fantastic.
“Oh you’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” the loud groan that escapes Ed as he collapses back on the bed goes straight to Stede’s groin and doesn’t exactly help matters.
But.
Stede is a pirate captain. He’s done this for nearly two years, for fucks sake, and he’s going to handle this in a professional manner.
Lucius recovers fairly quickly, this being the umpteenth time he’s walked in on them like this. He puts a hand over his eyes and blindly shuffles forwards. “Captain, put some pants on, we’ve got a pressing matter to discuss.” Whether he’s talking to Ed or Stede isn’t specified, but Stede gets up anyway. He pulls a soft green blanket over Ed and kisses him quickly on the lips. “Be right back,” he says, “even if I have to murder half the crew to do so.” Ed kisses him back. “I’m holding you to that, Stede Bonnet.”
“This better be important,” Stede grumbles to Lucius, lacing up his discarded breeches. Lucius snorts, opening his eyes. “Great job on your people-positive management style, Captain.”
“Well forgive me for being a little irritable when Ed and I have barely had a moment alone together because you lot can’t stop trying to kill each other! Come on , man, I–”
“Yes, yes, I know your balls are blue, now move it.” Lucius pokes him with one of his drawing pencils, and Stede finds himself paraded down the hall and up the stairs to the top of the deck.
Stede likes to think he’s been fairly desensitized to all the weird shit his and Ed’s crew get up to. He likes to think he’s seen everything, or at least about half of everything, and that he pretty much knows what to expect during midnight interruptions, or Roach’s “experimental” dinners, or an average six minutes with Buttons. He likes to think this and doesn’t consier himself much of a liar, even if he is a criminal and his moral compass is practically a square at this point, and yet finds himself, against all odds, pretty shocked at what he finds when he emerges up on deck.
The entire crew is there, even Izzy, sitting cross-legged and peaceful.
Alarmed, Stede watches Lucius sit down next to Black Pete. As if waiting for something, they all look at him, not speaking, not throwing anything at him.
“What--what the fuck is going on?"
Frenchie shrugs. “We figured we’d let you say your bit first.”
“...my bit?”
Lucius looks up at him with the kind of innocence that can only be achieved by a deeply not innocent person. (Stede is not comforted in the slightest). “Y’know, where you scold us for being annoying while you’re trying to fuck Ed. That bit.”
“We assumed that you’d want to get it out of your system, Captain,” the Swede chimes in from inside his barrel. Even Izzy nods and waits expectantly, and Stede’s not sure he’s ever been so unnerved in his life.
“I…let me get this straight,” he says blinking and too warm and not unreasonably frustrated. “You dragged me out of bed at…” he looks up at the moon high in the sky, but disappointingly finds he still has no clue what the time is, “...nighttime…just so you could hear me admonish you for dragging me out of bed? What--have you gone mad ?”
Black Pete sighs, as though Stede is being exceptionally dense. “ No , Captain, we got you up to show you something.”
“ CAN’T IT WAIT? ”
Here, he notices Jim’s muffled laughter into Oluwande’s shoulder, which, perhaps irrationally, makes him even more irritated. How dare they. Fuck them. Fuck everything, except, apparently, Ed, since the universe was playing dirty tricks these days and refusing to let them play theirs.
“Jesus christ, okay,” Stede eventually groans. “What the fuck do you want to show me at…this time of night.”
Frenchie hops up, actually looking excited, and Stede smiles for a moment before forgetting that he is mad at these ridiculous group in front of him, he will not be charmed by their weirdness.
“Right, so Captain, we were thinking –”
“--see we had this bet –” Black Pete cuts in, before everyone immediately starts shushing him and Lucius puts the majority of his flesh hand in his mouth for good measure. They exchange a look that Stede would honestly have preferred not to see, and Frenchie starts up again.
“Forget--uh, forget that bit about a bet. There’s no bet--never any bet, swear on Lucius’s dead finger.” Frenchie holds up his hands, eyes wide, while Jim and Izzy ( ??? ) exchange money behind his back.
Stede narrows his eyes, but waves for him to get on with it. He’ll worry about this later.
“Any--anyway, we were thinking that you, uh, you and Ed deserved a bit of a break. Was all my idea, really–” Wee John elbows him, “fine, it was John’s idea.”
“It’s, uh, it’s true, though,” Oluwande says, a slightly more reliable source. “We thought we should give you two some time off. So…Buttons?”
They all turn to their navigator, who’s standing nude in the corner, Olivia perched on his head and Dave (Olivia’s new boyfriend who Buttons claims is a ruffian and a delinquent, all the while stroking his head and feeding him crackers) on his shoulder. “Aye,” he says in a monotone. “There’s an island, Cap’n.”
He stands in complete silence for a moment, until Olivia pecks his head. “Goes by the name of Jesus.” Olivia pecks his head again. “Pardon me, that’s Garfield.” Peck. “Burnt Witch’s Hole, my bad.”
Stede…well Stede’s a bit confused. He blinks. “You--you’re putting us on an island.”
“Aye, Cap’n, calling it a practice mutiny of sorts.”
“ Excuse me?? ”
“He--he doesn’t mean that!” Oluwande shakes his head hurriedly. “We’ll come back and get you after a couple days. No mutiny, not even for practice.”
“Aye, most likely.”
“ Definitely likely!” Desperately, Oluwande looks to Jim, who has yet to stop laughing.
“Yeah, yeah, we’re sending you away to fuck your husband–”
“-- not my husband–” (Stede very deliberately does not think about the ring).
“--before you go insane and, like, eat each other or something.” Jim shrugs and gives him a half smile while also managing to look smug. “Go be gross without disturbing us, Captain.”
“I’m sorry, without disturbing you ?” Stede’s smiling, though. “Oh, goodness, that’s very kind of you guys. Very, very kind.”
The crew manages to look sheepish and modest now, except for Izzy, who scowls and saunters away to the (apparently empty) helm.
“Well, I--I suppose I’ll go tell Ed,” Stede turns to return downstairs, but Lucius flicks him on the shoulder. “ Not so fast, you nincompoop. We have conditions .”
Stede sighs. “Remind me why this couldn’t wait until morning?”
“Lucius thought this would be funnier,” the Swede says, face as blank as a duck’s. Again, the crew does some hurried shushing, and the Swede looks slightly offended. “It’s true, he told me this morning.”
Stede rolls his eyes. “It appears you’ll have some punishment chores to do while we’re gone. Lucius, what’s that about conditions?”
Lucius clears his throat and shares a nod with Wee John, evidently unbothered by the idea of ‘punishment chores.’ “In return for this generous gift , Captain, we’d like a day off in St. Oswald next month–”
“--um, okay–”
“--and use of your bathtub and also the yummy soap.”
“ All of you want to use our bathtub?” Stede’s quite fond of that bathtub, and (more importantly) how Ed looks in it.
The crew looks at each other, nodding, while Izzy shouts from the helm, “ Not on your fucking life! ”
“We’ll see about that, Jizzy!” Lucius shouts, winking at Fang for some fucking reason, and Stede’s seriously considering abandoning the lot of them right here and now. Black Pete blinks innocently, as though he’s only just thought of this idea and was entirely deaf and also blind to Lucius’s intentions. “We could, uh, we could go in groups if that would help, Captain!” he says.
“That would not help, thanks Black Pete.”
“Aye, Captain, that’s what I’m here for.”
“Okay, look.” Stede looks each of his crew members in the eye and Izzy in the back of his head. “You can have your day in St. Oswald or whatever it is, but nobody is using the bath while we’re gone.”
“Aha! He said while they’re gone , babe.” Black Pete looks triumphantly at Lucius, who shakes his head.
“As I was saying, nobody uses our bath, especially not in groups, but you may…uh, hmm. Ah, yes! You may have a little bit of our Medeira wine while we’re gone. Only a little, though. We’ll leave it out for you. Nothing else, though.”
The crew whispers together for a moment before Jim emerges. “We accept your conditions, Captain.”
Stede nods, feeling strangely like he’s just negotiated a hostage situation. “Um, thanks. I accept yours. Now can I please go to bed?”
He’s shoved downstairs as unceremoniously as he was shoved up them, pretending to ignore the questionable plans being made among his crew members. “Buttons, set course for this island you speak of. We’ll discuss it further in the morning.”
“Aye, Cap’n. Anything else?”
“Make sure you’ve tied everything right before you go to bed and leave the Swede and Wee John on the night watch! We don’t want a repeat of last week!”
“ Sí, sí , we’ll tie all the shit. Go fuck your husband.”
“And be quiet this time, Jesus,” Oluwande added, knocking his head on Jim’s shoulder.
One last time for the night, Stede turns around. “If we have to be quiet, so do you two.” Stede memorizes the look on Olu’s face to tell Ed later. “And, for fucks sake, Jim, Ed’s not my husband!”
Jim only smirks, takes Oluwande by the hand. “Yeah, but you want him to be.”
Stede opens his mouth, then closes it, then opens it again. “I—good night, you two.”
Ed’s still awake when he gets back to their cabin. He’s staring up at the ceiling, lost in thought, looking so very soft under the covers, his long hair still spread out on the pillow from their activities earlier.
“Do you want the good news or the bad news?” Stede asks, unlacing his trousers for bed.
Ed pulls back the blanket as Stede climbs into bed. “Bad news,” he says, speaking right into Stede’s ear as they slot together.
Stede sighs, but he can help the smile that Ed’s presence has always coaxed out of him. “I told the crew they could have some of that Medeira we got in Portugal.”
Ed frowns at him, but he looks too soft and content, chin propped up on Stede’s chest and his body naked under the blanket, for it to hold any weight. “Fuck, no you didn’t.” Stede nods sadly, and Ed groans. “ Why? I love that stuff.”
Stede smiles and pulls him closer still. “Ah, well that’s the good news. The ‘why’ I mean.”
“Oooh, a guessing game.”
“I didn’t say–”
“Fuck you, mate, you gave away our wine.” Like any good pirate, he punctuates this damning criticism by licking Stede’s collarbone. “S’a guessing game now. I said so.”
“Well, all right then. What do you guess?”
“Mmm, I say that there’s some filthy rich merchant ship sailing near us and we’re gonna have a raid tomorrow.” He traces the line of a scar on Stede’s torso and looks up at him. “Am I close?”
“I’ll give you a hint: there’s literally no reason why the crew had to tell us now and I’m fairly certain Lucius interrupted us just for fun.”
“The little shit.” Ed chuckles. “To be honest, I think they’ve all made a game of it.”
Stede thinks about the money exchanged between Jim and Izzy (seriously, why was Izzy of all people betting on shit with the crew?) “That wouldn’t surprise me much.”
For a moment they’re silent, until Ed chimes in again. “So it’s not a raid or anything immediately important…Are they blackmailing us? Or…just you? Is the good news that they’re only blackmailing you and not me, ‘cause that’s pretty shit.”
“It would be faster if I just told you,” Stede sing-songs, trailing his fingertips down Ed’s back.
“No, fuck off!” Ed swats Stede’s arm where it wraps across him and Stede giggles like a child.
“Ah, I’ve got it!” Ed scrambles a little so he can look Stede in the eye.
Stede reaches up to tuck a strand of hair behind Ed’s ear. “No you haven’t, you dick.”
“Yes I have,” Ed retorts with a wide grin on his face and there’s something new in his eyes, a sort of manic love that quickens Stede’s heart when he sees it. Ed leans forward a little, their faces inches apart, and his gaze flicks down to Stede’s mouth, and then to his eyes again, bright and beautiful and a little crazy. “We’re gonna get married, love.”
Stede bolts up, nearly bashing his and Ed’s skulls together, his heart racing. “What?”
Ed’s cheeks are pink now, but, Stede’s pleased to see, his eyes haven’t lost their bright gleam. “Yeah, um. Well, I’ve been think about this for a while, but if you don’t want to–”
“No no no no no no!” Stede jumps out of bed and flings his hands around. He paces, first one way, then another, then returns to the bed, kneeling on the floor beside it. “Of course I want to get married, just I was gonna ask you, you idiot! I–” he crashes forward and leans his head on the mattress, “Fuck, I had it all planned out. That’s why I wanted us to go away by ourselves for a while!”
Ed’s frozen on the bed, sitting up with the blanket wrapped around him, his face unreadable. “I thought you just wanted to fuck me without the crew getting in the way.”
Stede grabs the edge of the mattress and leans farther forward towards Ed. “ That too!!!! I--I thought we’d have a nice time together, do some things, y’know, and then on the day we were leaving, I’d ask you, and if you said yes–”
Ed blinks, apparently coming out of his stupor. “Wh--what do you mean if ? You thought I’d say no?”
“I-- no , I just--I wasn’t gonna assume –”
Ed collapses sideways onto the bed. “God you’re an idiot,” he says edging towards Stede’s face at the side of the bed. He kisses him firmly, then, and lies back down, one hand still on Stede’s cheek. “Yeah, I wanna marry you. I wanna marry you on--on the fucking moon . Idiot. Goddamn.”
Stede’s giggling again, kissing Ed and half-climbing back onto the bed just to be close to him. At some point, the top his night gown is unbuttoned and their hands are all over each other, when Ed suddenly stops him. “Ah, shit, wait.” He reaches over Stede to the nightstand and fumbles among the pile of rings. “Nope, nope, why do we have so many of these?”
“It’s the aesthetic,” Stede says, aiming for non-chalance despite also being seventy percent sure he’s crying a bit.
“Eh, you’re probably right. Here’s the bugger.” Ed pulls back, holding a gold band that reflects the light with a warm glow and holds three tiny pearls in the center, set so solidly it’s as if the ring formed around them. “This, uh, I think you knew already, but this is for you. Um, here, hold on.” Squinting in the dim light of a candle sitting next to the rings, he finds Stede’s left ring finger and slides it on. “I--I really love you. A lot. It’s--a little concerning.” Ed’s crying too, now, tiny tears rolling down his cheeks and splashing onto Stede’s face. “Lucius makes fun of me for it, like, all the time.” Stede laughs and they kiss again and again and on the whole lose track of time for a while.
“Wait, shit,” Stede says, chuckling into Ed’s mouth. “I need--I have one for you too.”
Ed’s quiet when Stede pulls up the loose floorboard and fishes out a small pouch. His fingers slip, once, twice, on the silky material. “It’s–” he looks down at the warm gold band on his own finger, then up at Ed’s face, open and vulnerable and the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen, “It’s different from yours, love, but it made me think of you when I saw it.”
The ring’s chunky, made of a darker gold than the one Ed gave him, and it has a small red stone set in the center. He slides it on Ed’s finger and holds his hand. Hand in hand, their rings touching, they kiss, and it’s like the first time all over again. Ed pulls him back to bed by the hand. They’re reaching for each other, grasping for each other, and the covers, and for Stede’s nightgown, until there’s nothing except their naked bodies laid bare on the bed, rings twinkling.
“Can I?” Stede asks, straddling Ed with one hand on his chest and one on the edge of his hip. His fingertips trail lower still, and brush over the curve of Ed’s ass.
His cheeks flushed and breath coming quickly, Ed kisses Stede’s neck and bites the soft skin of his earlobe. “ Fuck yeah.”
Stede fumbles though the drawer in the side table for the vial of oil, his mouth on Ed the whole time. He’s not looking when a little too much spills on his hands and can’t find it in himself to care when it drips on the sheets as he opens Ed up.
It’s fast and messy and when Stede comes inside of Ed, he bites down on his shoulder, fists Ed’s cock in his left hand so that he feels the smooth metal of the ring. He brings Ed over the edge, fucks him into oblivion, because, fuck, why not? They’re engaged, now, aren’t they? They’ve got to celebrate.
Stede’s happy, so happy. He kisses Ed, squeezing him one last time and they swallow each other’s cries and gasps.
“Shit,” Ed says finally, falling back onto the pillows at the top of the bed.
“Motherfucking dickfuckshit.” Stede pulls out after a long moment and collapses elegantly beside him.
Ed starts to laugh, props his chin on Stede’s shoulder. “Well, your motherfucking dick sure did fuck me. Wasn’t any shit, though.”
Stede shakes his head against Ed. He’s not entirely sure he’s been returned to his body quite yet. “I hate you,” he says into the skin of Ed’s neck.
“You asked me to marry you.” Their fingers twine together between them.
“Yeah, I did.” Their lips touch again briefly.
Ed get’s up to piss, then, and Stede definitely doesn’t watch him climb naked out of bed and grumble around for the chamber pot like he does every night.
“What’re you looking at?” Ed grins cheekily as he climbs back into bed and Stede goes to relieve himself.
“Same thing you are, I imagine.”
“Ah. The moon.”
“Oh, fuck you.”
Stede snuffs out the candle with one hand as he lies back down, Ed settling on top of him. Ed actually does look out the window, then, studying the moon and endless stars in the ink-black sky. “It’s two-thirty in the morning,” he whispers.
Arms wrapping tighter around Ed, Stede groans. “You cannot possibly know that,” he says. “Ridiculous.”
“Mmm, are you jealous? Turned on? Both?” Ed’s fingers trail down Stede’s side.
Stede feels his breath catch before he can stop it. “Insatiable minx,” he says, though it doesn’t sound much like an insult. “You just had my cock inside you.”
Ed’s laughter, Stede thinks, might just be the most beautiful sound in the world. He feels it in his chest where they’re touching, and strokes his hands through Ed’s long hair. He’s warm and comfortable and happier than ever. They’re just drifting off to sleep when he remembers–
“Hey, you know what?”
“Mm?”
“I never told you the good news.”
“The good news?”
“Yeah, I came in and said ‘I have good news and bad news,’ but, uh,”
Ed’s fingers tap rhythmically on Stede’s arm. “But then you fucked me and we forgot. Okay, yeah, what’s the good news? I get a prize for making you come so good you make up a new curse?”
“You get a prize for being lovely,” Stede assures him. “The children,” he cocks his head to the ceiling, “have decided we deserve couple days off on some island, but they demanded payment. That’s what the Madeira wine was for. And also a couple days off in St. Oswald.”
“St. Oswald?”
“Yeah, it’s far and I’d have protested, but–”
“--someone’ll have to watch the boat while they’re off reveling.”
“Two someones, even.”
Ed’s eyes meet his in the dark. “Seems like we’re getting quite a lot of time alone in the near future.”
“Guess we’ll have to make the most of it.”
When Ed kisses him in the dark, Stede can feel him smile against his lips and he smiles too. They’ve got time, so much time, and a crew that loves them enough to understand their deep need to fuck on an island, uninterrupted. They have each other, they have a lot of seagulls, and a superfluous stache of marmelade.
They have everything they need.
If you (like me) find the “coitus interruptus” genre of ofmd fic hilarious, then boy do i have some recommendations for you!
Never Trust a Seagull by mercess: https://archiveofourown.org/works/38425216
i bloom (just for you) by ruffaloon: https://archiveofourown.org/works/38238496
At Long Last (You’ll Have Me) by enbratid: https://archiveofourown.org/works/38372164
Thanks for reading! Please leave a comment!
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Homework: Due June 29
Final Project: Your final assignment is to design six high-definition wirefames for an iOS or android app. You are not creating an actual app, but a polished mock up of what that app would look like on a small screen. Your focus should be spent on the look of your screens more than the user experience or information. That said, you are welcome to upload your files to something like Adobe XD or InVision to create a working prototype. http://www.invisionapp.com
This assignment will require several skills that you have picked up throughout this class: kerning and line spacing, type combinations, basic layout and alignment, and a custom typeface. You can use animated type if you like.
Here are some questions to get you started:
What is the purpose of this app?
Who will use it?
What do you need to communicate to your user?
What content needs to be on each screen?
How will you establish hierarchy?
Here are Apple’s interface guidelines for iOS, which will be very useful for designing your app (especially Visual Design > Adaptivity and Layout:
https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines/ios/overview/themes/
And the somewhat more complicated Android guidelines:
https://developer.android.com/design/
You may use Illustrator or Indesign for your wireframes. Please print for Wednesday (classroom room 204 open at 8:45am) and upload to Drive for critique. The final project will also be submitted as a PDF via Drive.
You can design your own app, or you can create designs for one of the following (fake) apps:
Unicorn Rainbow, game
Mutiny, game
Days and Weeks, calendar app
Paparazzi, photo app
Netwerk, social
Mews, cat news
Your own project
The deliverables of this project are somewhat flexible, but I am firm on one issue: You may not use more than one image. This is a typography class, and I want to see type-based designs. (Geometric design elements like boxes, circles, triangles, and lines are fine.) This is another way of saying that you should probably start this project by thinking about a logo or an icon.
Here’s a deliverables checklist for the final project:
A custom logo or wordmark for your app. 1024 x 768 pixels. Possibly using your custom type.
Icon for your apps, one at 180 x 180 pixels and one at 1024 x 1024 pixels (app store), or one at 192 x 192 pixels (android).
Six high-definition wireframes.
At least one wireframe must include a chunk of type (maybe three paragraphs).
At least one wireframe must include a list.
Here are your deadlines:
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 29: A custom logo or wordmark for your app. 1024 x 768 pixels. Possibly using your custom type.
Icon for your apps, one at 180 x 180 pixels and one at 1024 x 1024 pixels (ios), or one at 192 x 192 pixels (android).
Six high-definition wireframes.
At least one wireframe must include a chunk of type (maybe three paragraphs).
At least one wireframe must include a list.
Reviews: Find and review two mobile apps of your choice.
WEDNESDAY, JULY 6: A custom gif that could be used as a load screen or for marketing purpose, 480p, six seconds max.
Final project revisions.
Reviews: None.
Here are two possible scenarios:
Mutiny (i based the following screens on the games 2048 and threes)
1. game screen with icon and score. buttons for best score, menu, and leaderboard
2. menu screen with the following buttons: keep going, new game, multiplayer co-op, multiplayer vs, how to play, and rate.
3. how to play screen: swipe right to kill, swipe left to love, love your friends, vanquish your enemies.
4. high score screen: 56476, 44136, 35044, 27236, 15892
5. options screen: music, sound effects, colors, show status bar, main menu
6. special thanks screen: special thanks to those who went out of their way to support us: mom, dad, and jeff stark. voices by: Harold Lloyd, Douglas Fairbanks, Clara Bow, Theda Bara, Lillian Gish, Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and Greta Garbo.
7. about screen (adapted from wikipedia): Mutiny is a single-player puzzle game created in Summer 2022 by NYU developer xxx, in which the objective is love your friends and vanquish your enemies. It is a type of puzzle game, and is very similar to several other games, but better. XXX created the game in a single weekend as a test to see if they could program a game from scratch, and was surprised when the game received over 4 million visitors in less than a week, especially since it was just a weekend project. The game is free to play and makes the world better every time someone spends an afternoon mindlessly swiping, swiping, swiping. The game runs on open-source code and has led to many additions to the original game, including a score leaderboard and improved touchscreen playability. Spinoffs have been released, but none of them are as good as the original.
Paparazzi (i based this on hipstamatic, with a shout out to Gaga)
1. Paparazzi App Icon
2 Launch File (can be animated)
3. Captioned photograph screen: Add caption. Sample caption: Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit, but the highest form of intelligence.
4. Edited screen: No edits. Photos you have edited with Paparazzi will appear here
5. Store screen: Featured: Retropak 9. With buttons for “featured,” “search,” “print lab,” and “my gear.”
6. Art School Film. Angular and moody. Popular back when photographers spent more time in the darkroom than the studio. Makes everything look more interesting.
7. about screen (adapted from wikipedia): Paparazzi is a digital photography application for the Apple iPhone and Windows Phone. It uses the phone’s camera to allow the user to shoot square photographs, to which it applies a number of software filters to make the images look as though they were taken with a vintage film camera. The user can choose among a number of effects which are presented in the application as simulated lenses, films and flashes. Several of these are included with the application, while others may be acquired through an in-app purchase. The application has sold four million copies as of Summer 2022. Paparazzi is part of a retro trend in photography, which has seen a rise in the popularity of cheap and technically obsolete analog cameras (such as Lomography and Polaroid instant cameras), as well as software filters and smartphone software that emulate such cameras. Other vintage photography applications include CameraBag and Instagram. Like Hipstamatic, they often include social networking features. Some phones include similar built-in filters.
TUTORIAL: WIREFRAMES
Here are some wireframe tutorials to help:
https://webdesign.tutsplus.com/articles/a-beginners-guide-to-wireframing--webdesign-7399
https://www.rubbercheese.com/insights/why-wireframes-are-the-most-important-part-of-web-design/
and this is a comprehensive tutorial on the first part of your wireframe process:
https://www.linkedin.com/learning/balsamiq-mockups-for-ux-design/creating-a-smartphone-wireframe?u=213155
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sugar and spice ( 1 )
pairing : resident bad boy!jjk x model student!reader
setting : highschool!au x stepbrother!au
summary :
a messy highschool!au x stepbrother!au where model student reader who has quite a few dirty little secrets sees her world take an unexpected turn when her mother comes home one day with an engagement announcement, to the father of none other than the school's resident bad boy.... Jeon Jungkook.
genre : smut, for laughs, kinda pornish, slow burn with collosaly overwhelming sexual tension
rating: soft m ( for now ) due to adult content
warnings : unconventional relationship of sexual nature, tropes and clichès, teenagers partaking in porn-esque activities, made up things with made up people happening in a made up world, don't like don't read XD
wordcount : 2.3K
a/n : i've been fighting in a long standing war and I have lost. the man known as jeon jungkook had his foot on my neck for years and today, I have finally submitted to my fate and surrendered to his reign.
yes. after a hundred years, i'm writing again. specifically, writing for bts. particularly, writing for jungkook. its been a long time coming.
life just took over and I transitioned into an adult and kind of grew out of the state of mind I was in before. but. sigh. jeon jungkook has been tormenting me the whole time. it was only a matter of time before i relapsed honestly.
so here I am again. in mind, body and spirit, a different person from who I was before but still the same in the sense that with the way bts have my whole heart, jk will always be the demon in the corner of my room that I invite to bed for a cuddle even though it's (probably really) not good for me.
do not misconstrue. I love him more than I can say. but. sigh. he has me in a chokehold, loves. please try to understand where I'm coming from.
anyways, enough with this ranting. you all came here for the nitty gritty so let me not hold you hostage with my dilemma rambling any longer. here's to the first bts fic i've posted in literal years. introducing- sugar and spice.
1 2
Unless they told someone, no one would have been able to guess it.
At school they were complete strangers.
She was the nice head girl with a clean record, all smiles and straight A’s. He was the mysterious bad boy with a track record, all tatted up with bruised knuckles.
She wore plaid skirts with neat pleads in them and pastel sweaters with bows at the collar. He wore jeans with rips in them and leather jackets with studs.
They couldn't have been any more different.
As far as anyone was concerned, they existed on two extreme ends of a vast spectrum.
What they didn't know was that they shared a dirty little secret.
.
You were a girl with many dirty secrets.
For instance, you used to sell nudes online. It was a side hustle you did.
Not because you needed money.
Your mom was a renowned doctor so there was more than enough of that in your life.
Not because you needed validation from people online either.
Even without the constant compliments and the praises you knew you were visually blessed with a pretty face and a nice body too.
All things considered, you simply thought you had a nice pair of tits and you took pictures of them sometimes.
Posting the shots you snapped online came much later when you heard about this website where people were getting paid crazy money for posting racy things.
‘It’s just so degrading…’ It was one of your friends, June, who sneered, pretty nose scrunched up. She fixed her long ponytail and rolled her brown eyes while looking in the mirror at her locker. ‘Who would do such a thing, am I right?’
She said this, but June was the girl who has slept with more boys than she could count on her two hands. And those were the ones she told you about.
Like every other time, you said nothing. Even when it carried on to lunch with the rest.
‘Pretty desperate if you ask me.’ Mei the stellar track runner shrugged casually as she stretched her limbs like routine.
‘Where are their parents?’ Nina the library nerd shook her head in disapproval as she fixed her glasses so it sat right on the bridge of her nose.
‘Um… I don’t think it’s … appropriate… to talk about ….’ Kiko the one who always carried a cross and bible around mumbled into her sleeve.
All your friends spoke of it in derision and repulsion of course. This was a school for proper children so they were proper girls. At least they were supposed to be.
Regardless the conversation sparked a curiosity in you.
So you made an account and uploaded your first picture. Nothing bizarre. Just your tits in a pretty lace bra.
You made sure to keep your face out of the frame because that was the smart thing to do and you were nothing if not the smartest student in school.
In all honesty, you weren’t expecting anything out of it. In fact, in between work with student council and tutoring your juniors with finals right around the corner, you even forgot about it for an entire month.
It was by a complete whim that you decided to open the app while you’d been unwinding at your desk following a tedious day at school.
To say you were amused by the response you found waiting for you would have be a grave understatement.
You were staring at the four figure digit that now sat in your bank account.
Reading through the comment section was even more interesting.
There were all sorts of people there who had all sorts of things to say. Ranging from honestly sweet to downright dirty.
You had never been brought to tears laughing in her life before until then.
It was just so funny to see people misbehave and lose their minds over a pair of tits.
From then on it just sort of became a thing.
.
But that wasn't the worse of your secrets.
You were making a name for yourself on the crude web months later.
The next step was naturally to move from making taking pictures to making videos. Since you was already in too deep you didn’t see why not.
So you upgraded and opened another account. An amateur one where your touched yourself for an audience.
You were no prude.
You might have never been touched by a boy before but you had touched yourself plenty times. Stress and frustration came hand in hand with being head girl. Since you couldn’t quite vent it out at the annoying troublemakers at school, this was your second best option.
Third was watching porn, but that was mostly when you were extremely bored.
But that wasn’t where that little endeavor ended.
Later on it became a lot more risqué.
.
It all started when your mom hit you with a marriage announcement.
She met a guy on her business trip who she really liked and she was convinced he was the one.
Your mom had a tragic history of being a bad judge of character.
You’ve had this conversation at least five times since you became old enough to understand that boys and girls who were just friends didn’t kiss and sleep with each other.
Most times, it felt like she was doing it because she thought you needed a dad around.
You might have once, when you were younger and your mom was too busy with work to be there. But she worked from home these days and you were soo busy with school to worry about things like that.
This time it was like she was doing it for her. You were glad.
Your mom looked genuinely happy when she spoke about this guy.
Who were you to get in the way?
.
She spent almost the whole weekend in the kitchen. It was the longest you’ve seen her in there in your entire life.
She was excited for the dinner on Sunday.
Mr Jeon was the name of the chosen man.
He was coming over with his kid. A son, his only family. His wife passed away years ago.
You wore the dress your mom picked out for you, something cream in color and off the shoulders that brushed your knees. She looked pretty in her champagne dress. It was different from the office slacks and loose blouses you were used to seeing her in.
You stood by her at the door while the guests came through.
Lifting your head from a polite bow, you found herself staring straight into an achingly familiar pair of glinting dark eyes and went completely still.
‘Sweetie,' Your mother said sounding delighted, a soft hand on your stiff shoulder. 'This is Mr Jeon and his son Jungkook.’
Ah. Fuck.
‘Jeon dear, this is my daughter. Isn’t she lovely?’
.
Dinner was a mild affair, with small talk and the occasional clinking of cutlery on fine china.
From the outside looking in, you probably looked the picture perfect family already.
Only if no-one looked close enough.
Arms crossed, tongue in cheek. Your discomfort could be detected from miles away.
The two adults were oblivious.
The dark eyed boy with the slightest wave to his nape touching, brow grazing, ear covering onyx hair sat across you though; he took note of this with a passing glance and wordlessly returned to his food.
Jeon Jungkook had a countenance that betrayed his reputation.
Even though you’ve never talked, you knew plenty about him and you were sure he knew a lot about you too.
You went to the same school.
Dressed as he was in a crisp white dress shirt buttoned at the wrist and dark tailored pants with a fine belt on, it might have been hard to tell what kind of person he really was.
You lifted her gaze from your plate to look study him wordlessly, idly twisting the noodles with your fork.
People either called him the black sheep or the dark cloud but for you, Jeon Jungkook was the school’s resident lone wolf.
He smoked in the secluded areas on campus, sometimes playing his guitar. Beat up people who got on his nerves, sometimes using his guitar. Slept in class the rare times he was there, many times on his guitar.
Being his senior, you had never seen any of any of that for yourself. But you received plenty reports weekly to come to a sound conclusion.
There was no way people hated him enough to join hands in solidarity and make this all up.
It was quite the contrary actually. He had an alarming number of fans.
On the surface level you couldn’t see why. Most times you saw him, he looked bored out his mind and honestly, intimidating.
Maybe it was the tattoos. Or the ripped skinny jeans. Or the leather jackets with studs.
Maybe it was the domineering height and fit frame and structured face.
Maybe it was the intense dark eyes or the silky ruffled hair.
Even then, you failed to see the irresistible appeal in him. All those things that made him up only added to his unapproachable aura.
Bottom line was, he was bad news.
.
You didn’t want to be a spoil sport.
But how much of a thug your mom’s boyfriend’s son was shouldn’t be something that would make her like him less.
They were both their own people. Right ?
It was just that you just didn’t want her to be shocked and devastated if something happened later. When it happened.
Yet it seemed the serious conversation would have to wait.
After dinner your mom suggested you head to the living room to chat over wine and cheese.
You stayed back to do take out the dishes.
Earlier, your mom had stood to do it instead at first.
‘Don’t bother with that, dear.’ She reached for the plates in your hands. ‘Let me do it.’
‘It’s okay, mom.’ You smiled a little. ‘This is your night. I’ll meet you in the living room.’
'Sweetie...' Your mom looked close to tears. ‘But there’s so much of it…’
‘Jungkook,’ his father's voice had cut through the moment. He was a serious man in a crisp suit with a stoic countenance. His voice was just naturally authoritarian without him trying ‘Give her a hand.’
Jungkook stood, almost robotically.
‘It’s fine.’ You said. Politely. Nicely. Tightly. ‘I can handle this much.’
You left without another word.
That had been moments ago and now you were done with cleaning.
You stood at living room entrance for a while, taking in the scene.
The two adults were exchanging moon eyes and whispering in each other’s ears at the love seat.
Jungkook was sitting on a solo seat, but he was on his phone, completely unbothered by what was happening.
Your mom seemed to think it was the perfect time to pull out the photo album right then and there upon seeing you.
It was embarrassing but at least you knew you didn’t have to worry about the pictures spreading at school.
Jungkook was looking, picking up a picture occasionally to rove over, but he wasn’t the type to do that.
He also wasn’t the type to stare but you felt his glance shifting to you and lingering multiple times.
Once, you caught his eyes and he just stared at you across the coffee table wordlessly with a curious tilt to his head, idly flipping a picture of you dressed as a knight in glitter shining armor for Halloween at eight in his hands.
Honestly, it was starting to get annoying.
But you endured. For your mom’s sake.
.
Your alarm went off at exactly ten.
As subtly as you could, you excused yourself with an apology to the guests, saying you weren't really feeling well.
In hindsight you probably should have used a better excuse.
Your mom was notorious when it came to worrying, especially when it comes to your health.
Also, you probably should’ve locked the door before undressing just for good measure since people were over.
But in the moment, you were too busy setting your camera up where you were kneeling on the floor at the foot of the bed to be concerned about that.
That day you were testing out a new toy.
.
Distractedly, you took note of a couple of people asking you if that was your boyfriend’s shirt you had lifted over your tits.
You ignored them.
Couldn’t a girl own an oversized tee without getting any flack?
Trivial comments like that aside, a good majority of the audience are fawning over how wet you were and how perfect you bouncing tits look being played with.
Your head fell back and your eyes fluttered shut.
You were sitting there, knees raised to your chest and legs splayed, your gushing pussy in full display where the toy was stuffed deep into her tightness, vibrating pleasantly.
‘I’m close…’ you mumbled throatily, squeezing your tits and pinching your stiff nipples in between your moving fingers. You moved your hips move faster, feeling the toy buzz against fluttering walls. You took a hand off one of your tits to rub at your engorged clit. ‘Fuckfuckfuck…’
Deep in your high, you didn’t hear the door open and close with a foreboding click.
You only heard your name being called by a deep, smooth voice through the heady haze.
Instantly you stilled.
When you snapped your head to look over her shoulder Jungkook was there, hands in his pockets, leaning against your doorframe with his sleeves drawn up to his elbows, muscle roped, inked skin on full display.
When he tilted his head to the side a little, appraisively, you dared to say as a quaking chill ran down your spine and your entire body felt like it was about to burst into flames, a bit of his hair fell over his face.
His eyes were like two black in the dark as he took you in, dragging his gaze up and down your exposed body languidly.
In the back of your mind, you wished the ground would part and swallow you whole.
‘Your mom,' he starts, capturing your attention wholly, dark gaze finally flickering to your face, his voice suddenly lower, hoarser. ‘She sent me over to check on you.’
It took you a moment to realize where you were, who you were, who he was.
It was like a bucket of cold water had been dropped over your head.
Jeon Jungkook, the school's resident trouble maker, soon to be your step brother, just walked in on you fingering yourself in in front of a recording camera.
Well. Yeah.
You gulped.
You were royally fucked.
depending on the response I get I might ( most probably will ) delete this. not because I'm ashamed of my work. because I'm embarrassed of myself. I really swore to never write again and here I am. sigh. yes, I have seen my previous works and noticed just how terrible they were and this is a big reason why. so sorry for putting you through that. a million apologies.
also, that's right. I have adopted a new style which might not be to everyone's liking. another reason why.
anyways, if you liked this filth ( i know it seems mild but I can tell you it's very likely gonna get worse ) please idk uh... fuck this isn't ao3. hm.
like and drop by in the ask box if you liked it and want to see more. it makes me happy. its like serotonin fuel to me.
have a nice day. see you next time ( maybe ). stay fresh. yeah. 💜💜.
#bangtan#bts#bts angst#bts fluff#bts imagine#bts scenario#bts smut#bts au#jeon jungkook#jungkook scenario#jungkook imagine#jungkook smut#bts x reader#jungkook x reader#bts high school au#jungkook high school au
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who has the biggest base on empires smp? (as of july 1st, 2021)
a somewhat in-depth mathematical deep dive into empire smp’s bases
THE CONTEXT.
for the past two weeks or so, scott (also known as: scott smajor, smajor, smajor1995, dangthatsalongname, and branding nightmare) has been building up his second base, effectively taking down his starter house.
most of this building occured during his streams, where he often proclaimed that he thought he was building the “biggest base on the server.” when his third empires smp video came out on june 26, 2021, his titled said “The Biggest Base on the Server! - Minecraft Empires SMP - Ep.03.”
however, the day after, joel (aka smallishbeans) uploaded his fourth episode of empires smp, titled “Building My House! | Empires SMP | Ep.4 (1.17 Survival).” within this video, he claimed that he had the biggest house on the empires smp server. he even went as far as to trap an afk scott in a cage of stone, and writing out three signs asking scott to change the title of his recent video.
[Image Description: A zoomed in screenshot from Joel’s newest video. The screenshot was taken within Scott’s house. There are two walls shown and a birch floor. In the middle, there are three oak signs. Joel’s crosshair is on the middle sign.
The first sign says: “Hello Scott, please can you change your video title as”
The second sign says: “It says you have the biggest base. This is wrong. My base is bigger”
The third sign says: “Come have a look if you want. - Joel”]
so, that begs the question: who has the biggest base on the empires smp out of scott and joel?
THE SEMANTICS.
now, for the purposes of today’s adventure, we’re only going to be counting the volume within the base. this does not include windows, outside accents, bridges, gardens, walls, doorways, or anything else that is not within the confines of the base itself. floors and/or divides do not count towards the total, as they take up space and are not “easily moved.”
the only exception is balconies--the space on a balcony counts towards the total, though that space is counted differently. on enclosed balcony, i.e. a balcony that is surrounded by fences and has a roof-like structure that blocks out rain, all the space that fits between the fences, the roof, and the floor count.
on an open balcony, i.e. a balcony that only has fences and a floor, with no roof, only the two blocks of air on top of the floor and in between the fences count.
similarly, both of their bases are defined by their respective houses that they built during the episode. their farms, tents, bridges, and any other structure that they have built previous do not count towards the total.
i will be only using screenshots from their own videos, e.g., i will use scott’s video (published june 26, 2021) to find the volume of his base, and use joel’s video (published june 27, 2021) to find the volume of his base. anything that scott has added between his video and joel’s will not be counted, neither will anything that either of them created after the fact.
i will not be counting joel’s most recent video, titled “Pranking Lizzie, Interiors & Windmills! | Empires SMP | Ep.5 (1.17 Survival)”, because that was uploaded when i was writing this analysis. like, after i finished all my counting, but when i was writing this post. so, uh-
also, i am not counting anyone else’s bases within this experiment, though i do believe others have similarly sized bases. the other creators not a part of this post until they officially get involved in the ‘rivalry’
THE METHOD.
first of all, volume is calculated in minecraft blocks cubed. a typical ‘minecraft block’ is just a full block, like planks, logs, or stone. i’m not going to calculate this accurately (i.e. counting the space that the glass panes leave behind), mostly because i cannot be assed.
SMAJOR’S BASE.
the volume of smajor’s house, in theory, is relatively easy to find. because his house is just a right pentagonal prism, we can use the formula B*h to find the volume. B is the area of the ‘base’ (which, in this case, is the front/back of his house), and h is the depth of his house.
[Image Description: Two screenshots from Scott’s newest video. Both screenshots have lowered transparency, and are slightly dulled.
One screenshot is of the inside of his house, as he looks at the back. The floor is still grass, though the walls are up. There are dozens of arrows within the floor and towards the back of the wall. On top of the screenshot, someone has noted that there are 13 Minecraft blocks across the back of Scott’s house.
The second screenshot is from the outside of Scott’s house, as he looks up at it. The house appears to be finished. On top of the screenshot, someone has noted that there are 10 Minecraft blocks from the floor up to the start of the room. There is a red marking where the roof hits the wall.]
there are two parts that add up to B: the rectangular bit, and the roof. in these two screenshots, i’m finding the area of the rectangular bit.
the rectangular bit is 13 blocks across and 10 blocks wide.
[Image Description: A screenshot from Scott’s newest video, with lowered transparency and slightly dulled. It’s from Scott’s timelapse, taken up in the air. Scott isn’t finished building his house. One side of the roof is done, as well as all of the walls below and the two faces.
There are various notations on the screenshot. A blue marking on the bottom counts 10 Minecraft blocks up. A block above that, a red marking notes that the roof, at its widest point, is 15 Minecraft blocks wide. Another red marking notes the slope of the room. An arrow points towards the top of the roof, saying “later adds on 3 blocks here”
To the right, there is a header saying “TO-SCALE MODEL:” Below, there is a pixel model of the front and back of Scott’s house, which are the same. There is a blue rectangular section on the bottom. On top, there is a red roof. There are 3 purple pixels on the top. Markings on the model show the measurements. A dotted line goes through the model, splitting it up into two sections: a rectangle on the bottom, and the roof on top.
Inside the rectangular section, someone has noted down “11 * 13 = 143 mb^2″ the “143 mb^2″ boxed in. Inside the roof section, someone has noted down “111 mb^2″
Below the screenshot, someone has handwritten “143 + 111 = 254 mb^2″]
the second part is the roof. the roof goes outwards for two blocks, and then goes back inwards. using this reference for the roof, the previous two screenshots for the bit underneath, and cross referencing them to find out where they meet, i created a to-scale model of it!
i found the area of the to-scale model, and B = 254 mb^2
[Image Description: A screenshot from Scott’s video, with lowered transparency and slightly dulled. The house isn’t finished--there’s only half of the side wall and the front detailing. The screenshot is taken from Scott’s timelapse, and is from the side of his base; only the side wall is visible.
Someone has marked over the screenshot with a lime green pen. On the top right, someone has written “* coutning the inner wall only”. An arrow is drawn upwards from one side of the side wall. It says “wall starts here”. On the other side of the wall, there is another arrow that says “wall ends here”. In between the two arrows, someone has made tick marks indicating where the blocks are. On the bottom, someone has noted down “3-wide doorway” by the side entrance. Off to the bottom ride, it says “24 px deep”]
next, i used this screenshot to find the h of scott’s base! this was a bit harder because scott doesn’t show the bottom of his base until he’s already detailed it, but with the precise use of my Big Brain (and my wacom tablet), i counted that it was 24 pixels deep.
so, B * h = V = 254 * 24 = 6096 mc^3
but we AREN’T DONE YET
[Image Description: On the left, there are 3 screenshots from Scott’s newest video stacked vertically on top of each other. The first one is of the side doorway. Pink ticks mark the how many blocks wide and tall the doorway is. On the right of the first screenshot, there is a solid pixellated model of the doorway in the same pink. Inside the model, someone has written “18 mb^3″ in white. On the right of the model, someone has written “volume of the side door-way” in pink.
The next screenshot is taken from the inside of Scott’s base, showing the front doorway. Orange ticks mark how many blocks tall and wide the bottom section of the front doorway is. It is 8 blocks wide and 3 blocks tall. The bottom most screenshot is a picture from Scott’s timelapse, where half of the roof hasn’t been built yet. Someone has drawn lines on the building going horizontally, dividing the top section of the front doorway into three sections: one 3 block section on the bottom, and two 2 block sections on top. On the right of these two screenshots, there is a solid pixellated model of the front doorway, labelled accordingly, in orange. Inside the model, someone has written “39 mb^3″
Below the screenshots and the models, someone has written “6096 - 39 - 18 = Vi = 6039 mb^3]
see, scot also has two main doorways: one at the entrance and one on the right side. i used the first screenshot to find the volume of the side doorway, and the next two screenshots to find the volume of the front doorway.
(this is the part where i might be wrong--i couldn’t find a reliable reference for the the front doorway, so i had to use an extremely zoomed out version. the stripped spruce log section underneath the window is either 2 or 3 blocks tall. i assumed 3 based on the bottom most screenshot but like. i could be wrong)
anyway, the first doorway is 18 mb^3, and the second is 39 mc^3. so, the total final volume for scott’s base is 6039 mb^3.
JOEL’S BASE.
joel’s base, on the other hand, is genuinely fucking insane. like, seriously. what the fuck, joel. you couldn’t have made it harder for me to do my job (it does look amazing though and i love it so much)
so, instead of taking screenshots and calculating the volume of his base through those references, i decided to build a replica of joel’s base in my own creative world, and after fill it with sand. i could then count all the sand from his base and add it up to achieve a (somewhat accurate) volume for his base
[Image Description: An array of screenshots of a replica of Joel’s base, laid out in a three by two grid. Each is labelled with a black, comic-style font. The first screenshot is taken from the front of the replica from up in the air, and is labelled “FRONT.” The second screenshot, which is to the right of the first screenshot, is taken from the right of the replica from up in the air, and is labelled “RIGHT SIDE.” The third screenshot is taken from the back of the replica from jup in the air, and is labelled “BACK.” The fourth screenshot is taken from the left of the replica up in the air, and is labelled “LEFT SIDE.” The fifth screenshot is taken from the front of the base, and the player is on the ground. It is labelled “FRONT (FROM THE GROUND).” The last screenshot is taken from the inside of the base, looking towards the back. It is labelled “INTERIOR (FROM THE GROUND).”]
anyway, most of his base is relatively easy to copy. my replica is pictured above. there are two time lapses within his video that show his process of building his base. the first timelapse (4:59-5:54) is shot from the front of his base, and angled slightly downwards, and is where i got most of my references from. the second timelapse (9:48-9:55) is shot from the diagonally back left of his base, and is what i referenced for the back of my replica.
the roofs themselves are symmetrical: barring the roofs’ intersection, the blue and red roofs are the same the entire way around. this is why, even though i technically didn’t see the back of joel’s base, i knew what it looked like and could get an accurate replica of it.
the only problem is that he never showcases the base from the left. this means that the red and blue roof intersection on the left could be very wrong. the only reference i got for this part was a screenshot at 6:12 (pictured below). this only showcases the inside of the roof, and from bad lighting, but it’s better than nothing.
other than that, though, i’m. pretty sure my replica is accurate!
[Image Description: A screenshot taken from Joel’s video, from approximately 6:12 in the video. Joel is inside his base, staring up at the red roof from the bottom. The floor is lit up by torches, but the details of the roof are barely visible in the darkness.]
next, i filled his entire base with sand. this was the most tedious part--never have i ever placed so much goddamn sand in minecraft. do not recommend, 0/10
i made sure that i filled the entire base by going into spectator mode! (i can’t fit the pics in here because, well, image limit. but i promise the entire build is full)
and, after 2 diamond shovels, two stacks of torches, a handful of night vision potions, here is how much sand i have:
[Image Description: Four screenshots, layed out in a two by two grid. The first three screenshots showcase the inside of three different double chests. They are all filled to the brim with stacks of sand. On the first screenshot, there are two notations, both in blue: one that notes out that there are 9 columns in a double chest, and another that notes that there are 6 rows in a double chest. The last screenshot is that of the interior of partially-full double chest, with 21 full stacks within it. Someone has noted down “21 stacks” in red.
Underneath the four screenshots, someone has written “number of stacks * 64 = Vt” in black. Beneath that, someone has written “there is 54 stacks in the full double chests” in blue. Beneath that, someone has written “( (54) (3) + 21) (64) = Vt,” in various colours. “(54)(3)” is in blue, while “21″ is in red. The rest is in black.
On the bottom, someone has written “Vt = 11,712 mb^3″]
the final total for joel’s base, as of july 1st, 2021, is 11,712 mb^3
THE CONCLUSION + TL;DR.
scott smajor’s title was not a lie, or at least not at the time. he had the biggest base on the server as of that upload. but soon after, joel created a base that was nearly two times scott’s, creating the bigger base out of the two of them.
so, yeah! joel has a bigger base than scott as of july 1st, 2021
this is because 11,712 mb^3 > 6039 mb^3
thank u and goodnight. send me any asks if u find anything wrong with this stupidly lost post, or if you want any progress pics! love y’all
#empires smp#smallishbeans#scott smajor#smajor1995#smajor#dangthatsalongname#mcyt#why does scott have so many names 2021#/ rania's rambles#/ mine#/ analysis#/ empires smp#/ mcyt#/ smajor1995#/ smallishbeans#also!! didn't include this in the thing but the reason why it says 'july 1st' is bc joel uploaded his video on july 2nd#so july 1st is the last date where these numbers are accurate#:D#also i didn't proofread this bc it is Pretty Late#so hmu if there are any errors
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「Wakana Botanical Land “Music Party Vol.2"」 Live Report/Commentary
Don’t forget to tune in to today’s event! A live stream option IS AVAILABLE for these two fan club exclusive performances. There is STILL time to buy a ticket so be sure to use that chance! If you can’t watch it live today, you can rely on the archived version which will be uploaded after the event and is available until June 6! (Tweet by Wakana staff)
EVENT DETAILS (find ALL details and a tutorial HERE):
■ May 29, 2021
◇ Day performance Open 14:15 Start 15:00 (JST)
◇ Night performance Open 17:15 Start 18:00 (JST)
Note: I will try my best to do a live commentary/first reaction kind of thing so this post will be updated as the day goes by. I really hope they have fixed the streaming problems they had last time with the Spring Shark Festival. It worked fine once they got it working but it took quite a while to get there. They don’t have that luxury today since there is an on-site audience, it’s pretty much impossible to delay the performance should any streaming issues arise. On a side note, I am keeping my expectations low as far as the audio-quality is concerned but we will see, maybe it’s good. Without further ado, let’s get to it!
Live Commentary
Okay, it’s about to start, there are some weird noises in my headphones but it’s manageable. Otherwise, it works totally fine! I think they fixed the weird noise issue for the evening performance. Haven’t heard it yet. Video/stream-quality is perfect for me (no freeze so far), they have a few different angles which I appreciate. A bit of shaky-cam here and there but nothing too bad. I feel like they improved quite a bit on the camera work for the evening performance. Sound is also surprisingly good.
Setlist
Happy Hello Day: The atmosphere is already so nice, everyone is clapping enthusiastically. I love it! The arrangement with piano and guitar is perfect for this song. Poor Wakana forgot the lyrics though so they had to start again. Awww, so precious, I wanna cuddle her already! Loved the “lalala” at the end! No mistakes for her night performance. Everything went smoothly. I feel like the atmosphere is a bit more toned down compared to the day performance.
瑠璃色の空 / Ruriiro no Sora (DAY): Okay, I have never really liked this song but this acoustic version is actually pretty nice. I may have actually become a fan! :P Thank you Wakana, for this beautiful rendition. Hard Rain (NIGHT): YESSSSS! So much win! While I didn’t mind this version of Ruriiro no Sora, I MUCH prefer Hard Rain.
ひらりひらり / Hirari Hirari: Not my favourite of the “magic moment” album but I really enjoy listening to the live version like this.
442: OMG, I am already blown away! This IS SO GOOD!!!! The live version (especially with this acoustic arrangement) is a REVELATION, everyone needs to listen to it! I am so glad we are also getting this on the Blu-ray this summer!
Talk Corner: Awww, once again Wakana embarrasses herself by introducing her host Bunta Nagamatsu with the wrong name. Seeing her this flustered is super cute but on the other hand, I feel sorry for her T_T They are answering some of the simple/casual questions that fan club members were able to submit in advance. It was interesting to find out that she stretches for quite a long of them a few hours before a live and that she carries pretty much all of her belongings in her bag on a performance day XD Will be summarising them properly once we get the archived version. They are using different questions for the evening performance! YAY! At the end they are demonstrating their kendama skills but Wakana fails to catch the ball the first two times but then on the third try, SUCCESS! She is so happy! At the evening performance she looked like she pulled a muscle doing the trick but yay, she managed to catch the ball on her first try
海を見ていた午後 / Umi wo miteita gogo: Yuming-cover chosen for Takebe-san due to a connection. They picked this song because it features places in Yokohama (today’s live is taking place in Yokohama). Too short but very nice. Not a particularly big fan of the voice she uses for the song though.
アイノカタチ / Ai no Katachi: Misia-cover chosen for Ishinari-san due to a connection. His guitar playing is actually featured in the original recording of the song. Wakana also sang this in one of her fan club videos (where she did her nails). Wahhhh, I am in love!! Such a beautiful cover! This hit me right in the feels, even more so the second time around! *bursts into tears*
I have a dream: Kalafina-cover chosen for Wakana due to a connection. *sobs* Ahhhhhh, this is beautiful. I have no words. Not all Kalafina songs work as a solo song but this one certainly does. Wakana nailed it!! That Kajiura-go part!! Btw, random question for everyone who has been watching the stream, where is that drum/percussion-like sound coming from? It’s noticable in almost all songs but it’s obviously not coming from the piano or guitar. Just curious since I am not an expert on that kind of stuff so I wouldn’t know what tools they have to create this sort of sound without an actual drum set or whatever. Thanks to @sa-nyan for replying, it is INDEED Ishinari using some sort of pedal.
翼 / Tsubasa: Oh wow, already digging the acoustic arrangement. Can I just say how much I appreciate it that Wakana has two super talented and passionate musicians on her side. She deserves to be accompanied by the best. This is one of Wakana’s oldest solo songs so you can tell she is very sure of herself, no hesitation whatsoever, just powerful vocals. Perfection!
恋はいつも / Koi wa Itsumo: Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! You all know this is one of my faves so I couldn’t be happier!! Wakana showing the audience how to clap :P SO CUTE! I can’t clap in rhythm for the life of me so I am kinda glad I am not there to embarrass myself :P Too bad the audience was able to sing along this time (probably because of COVID regulations). A little lyric slip-up at the beginnging but Wakana dealt with it professionally.
ENCORE: 金木犀 / Kinmokusei: Ohhhhhhh! And another one of my all-time faves!! Such a good setlist!! As always, beautiful!
ENCORE: あとひとつ / Ato hitotsu: Wakana explains the reason why this hasn’t been released on CD yet. She wants it to be a special experience that is reserved for live performances. She feels this exclusivity is nice. The PERFECT ending just like every other time she sings it.
DAY: Wakana is wearing a lovely salmon/orange/pink (?) coloured toga/tunic-sort of dress. She looks so pretty! It’s off-shoulder (always the best look for her!) and there is a white skirt layered underneath. There is also some binding around her waist. her hair is in an elaborate up-do. NIGHT: She changed into a lovely wide blue gown which goes well with the evening flair. Her hair is in a cute high ponytail. She is wearing her clear chain earrings again.
During the first MC of the day performance Wakana is already getting carried away talking about this and that so Takebe-san has to remind her they are on a tight schedule. XD At the end of the live Wakana announced an online release event for her Blu-ray. It’s gonna take place on August 21. The after-talk is now available. They filmed it after the evening performances answering a few more fan questions.
The archive videos for the day and night performance are already available! Please enjoy!
Be sure to fill in the survey to let Wakana and her team know how you felt about the event!! There will also be a Bokutachi no VOICE thread to share your impressions!
#kalafina#wakana#report#live commentary#summary#music party#wakana music party#music party vol 2#fan club exclusive content#botanical land#long text post
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Cyberattacks attributed to Russia from as far back as *2015* mirror their kinetic war in Ukraine
Yes, even regarding their occupation of a nuclear plant.
Here are relevant excerpts from the full article I wrote on the topic of malware & industrial control systems some time ago, which you can read in full here. I copy pasted it so if links are weird check the original I am too tired to perfect it for a tumblr upload.
This is an art blog but I have been trying to make people read about these things for eons and it is, unfortunately, more relevant than ever right now.
Cyberattacks say a lot about intentions of the offender. They are not trapped in the cyber world. I think of them as a promise, not a test.
It was December 23rd 2015, and 200,000 Ukrainians were left without electricity for up to six hours. The attack shut off 30 distribution substations located in the Kyiv and western Ivano-Frankivsk region [1][21]. The malware forced manual power restoration since the SCADA equipment was inoperable, elongating the delay. The attack was not especially sophisticated, which makes it especially alarming — breakers were being tripped manually through remote control software. A variation of the BlackEnergy malware was identified as what facilitated the power outage. It too was introduced to the company network through spear-phishing emails.
Then on December 17th 2016, another power outage occurred in Ukraine as the consequence of a cyberattack, six days short of a year after the first. Approximately 225,000 customers were affected [1] though power was restored much faster this time around — within three hours. Only one transmission substation was impacted, located in Kyiv [21].
The most disturbing difference is the 2016 attack demonstrated an escalation in technique — it is believed to have been facilitated by direct SCADA manipulation malware. The malware became known as CRASHOVERRIDE, the first of its kind: crafted to disrupt electrical grids [1].
CRASHOVERRIDE was the fourth piece of malware directed specifically at ICSs. Preceded only by Stuxnet, BlackEnergy-2 and Havex. Havex and BlackEnergy are suspected to be the work of a group known as GRIZZLEY STEPPES, or occasionally Dragonfly/energetic bear. Evidence suggests they are a threat actor group with ties to Russian intelligence and military agencies [1]. Both attacks on Ukrainian power grids have been attributed to Russia [21].
A year later, In the early hours of June 27th 2017, malware not unlike Slammer spread around the world with unprecedented speed. Its crosshair was locked on Ukraine, and it nearly entirely crippled them.
It began with the CEO of Dragos — an ICS cybersecurity firm — tweeting a report indicating that an electric power supplier to Kyiv had been hacked. Maersk announces its IT systems are down not long after, with countless other companies subsequently being incapacitated. Their screens displayed nothing but a ransom note demanding payment to unencrypt the now inaccessible files. Around five hours pass and Kaspersky tweets a statement detailing that the ransomware is not that of any previously identified.
At the time of the Kaspersky report it had infected approximately 2,000 organizations [16]. The ransomware was credited with being the fastest propagating piece of software to date. It took 45 seconds to bring down the network of a large Ukrainian bank. In a major Ukrainian transit hub, it took 16 seconds. The attack cost more than $10 billion in damage [12]. The malware had the appearance of the ransomware Petya, but files were not unencrypted once the ransom was paid — that appearance was a distraction. The malware was a worm designed to cause immeasurable disruption. The malware was named NotPetya.
The list of victims is long and varied; It hit four hospitals in Kyiv, six power companies, two airports and more than twenty two Ukrainian banks. It managed to escape Ukranian networks, hamstringing hospitals in Pennsylvania and a chocolate factory in Tasmania, Australia. It incapacitated multinational companies including a pharmaceutical giant, a European subsidiary of FedEx and the Danish shipping company AP Moller-Maersk. Maersk was responsible for 76 ports all over the world and nearly 800 seafaring vessels. This attack rendered them inoperable — close to a fifth of the entire world’s shipping capacity had been immobilized [12].
Even Chernobyl nuclear power plant operations were impacted; they were forced to switch to manual radiation monitoring since its windows-based sensors had been shut down. ATMs and point-of-sale terminals were infected rendering citizens unable to pay for essential goods or transport if they did not have cash on hand. Even if they did, many vendors were equally as paralysed [12][13].
Some evidence suggests that the source of the infection was a Ukrainian software company pushing an update for their accounting software Me Doc. It was suspected to be the accidental conduit from which the worm propagated, though they deny this claim [17]. The attack has been attributed to Russia by the Five Eyes and Canada [15]. Possibly due to the fact that it also compromised Ukrenego, the energy company rendered inoperable by the 2016 power grid attack [12]. According to a spokesperson, the NotPetya attack did not affect the power supply [13]. The way in which NotPetya impacted the Chernobyl nuclear plant illustrates that such an attack may be equally as dangerous as a direct attack on ICS safety controls.
Then in the summer of 2017, not even a year later, an attack of that exact nature was discovered. It used the first known piece of malware that specifically targeted industrial safety systems designed to protect human lives [1] [9] [10].
In a worst-case scenario, the code could have resulted in an explosion or a release of toxic hydrogen sulphide gas. The 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy, amongst the world’s worst industrial disasters, involved a leak of poisonous gases and it killed thousands [10]. The malware was first discovered at an anonymous Saudi Arabian petrochemical plant. It earned the name TRITON, after the Triconex safety controller model it targeted.
TRITON’s most alarming characteristic was its focus on manipulating industrial safety systems and it was built to communicate using the proprietary TriStation protocol, of which there is no public documentation. It targeted the safety instrumental system with precision, with no manipulation of the DCS beyond using it to gain access [9]. The threat actor knew precisely what they were there to target and no time was wasted in doing so.
Evidence suggests the hackers had been inside the company’s corporate IT networks since 2014. It is suspected that they worked their way into an EWS through the network, potentially through a vulnerability or via employee login credentials. This allowed them to identify the make and models and firmware versions of the hardware controllers [10].
The attacker persisted even after failed attempts due to one of their script’s conditional checks [9]. In June 2017 a flaw in the code triggered a response from a safety system which brought the plant to a halt, first attributed to a mechanical glitch. In August, several more systems were tripped which caused a shutdown. This instigated an investigation to be called upon [10].
TRITON was suspected to be the work of Iran, but a FireEye report details evidence that suggests the attack may have been the work of The Central Scientific Research Institute of Chemistry and Mechanics, Moscow- a Russian government-owned organization. There is evidence of recent activity by this same threat actor [11] [36].
#notpetya#ukraine#cybersecurity#malware#cyber attacks#history#IT#ukraine crisis#ukraine war#i stand with ukraine
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