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#i doubt those will change in the 17th year of my life
casitafallz-a · 2 years
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Okay, i have a few ideas of AU Luisa for my group but i don’t know which one works for me rn so i need your help!! Now, i won’t do anything with MC deaths, or Abuela being completely unreasonable
Luisa wasn’t given a gift as a child so grows up with Mirabel, also wasn’t given a gift either but does her best to work hard. She has a secret boyfriend, who helped her with looking after some of the town animals, like the donkeys but he gifted her with a set of metallic cuffs he had found for her 17th birthday which did grant her super strength (and other abilities). They did wind up sleeping together which resulted him getting her pregnant. Due to being new at using strength, she accidently hurt him which resulted in people believing her new ‘gift’ was dangerous. When the pregnancy was found out, her then-ex was unwilling to marry her and rather than face her family with the options; fearing Abuela would kick her out or force her to give the baby up, Luisa ran away. the cuffs brought her to the attention of the Watchers.
Luisa got her gift at 5 and lived a canon-life up until she was 18, where she first experienced her gift acting up which caused her to drop the bridge she was carrying which injured a few people, which shadowed doubt onto the family’s magic. Luisa didn’t know why her gift started to change but the more she worried about it the issues continued; no longer able to hold buildings for too long. It got to the point that the coming and going posed risks to the villagers when she attempted to help; people were too scared to ask incase she dropped something or hurt anyone else. Abuela eventually forced Luisa to stop villager work. Luisa heard whispers that could be damaging so she decided to go off camping on her own to clear her head and to give the town a chance to calm down. Luisa got lost but she found herself a strange set of cuffs that seemed to...’fix’ her strength issues, but the cuffs brough her to the attention of the Watchers who recruited her into their services. 
When Luisa was 17, she accidently hurt Abuela with her gift when she got into an argument about wanting to spend time with a boy (wanting a boyfriend) or friends when Abuela wanted her to focus her attention to her community. It was a small swing, waving her arm and packed no real punch if she had normal strength; she didn’t realise Abuela had walked so close behind her until she turned and waved; knocking Abuela off her feet and hit a wall hard. Julieta was able to fix her up but Luisa, like the family was horrified by what had occurred. After that, Luisa’s gift began to fail but that didn’t bother her much as she accepted the punishment for her actions. She didn’t want to hurt anyone but she had and she knew Abuela was not someone who could bounce back easily, even with magical food. After her initial punishments were done, she was still heavily restricted and some of the family were weary of her, and some fearful. Luisa was no longer allowed near Abuela or Antonio. One night about 9 months after the event, after overhearing Abuela and Pepa talking about her, Luisa decided to leave Encanto than risk them or have them paranoid around her. She packed up in the middle of the night and left, leaving Mirabel her stuffed donkey plush. Dolores said nothing, by Luisa’s request. It took an entire day for Julieta to notice.  Luisa was recruited by the Watcher Au for one reason or another (tbd)
Luisa was kidnapped when she was 7 out of Encanto but used her strength to escape into the wilderness of the jungle. She was found by passing Watcher Serves who decided to bring her to the Watcher AU where she was raised by the Watcher family and grew up in the paramilitary organisation and helped with the rest of those in service. She was told the truth when she was 15 years old and given the option to return but hasn’t yet made the choice to return. 
feel free to suggest an an Angsty AU that leads for Luisa to leaving her family. Rules: No MC deaths, or permanent banishment by Abuela. 
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Message From Terra re. Aqua
So for anyone that saw the latest Q and As, I think 2023 has been a shitfest for a lot of people including myself. However, when I was talking to Terra about how I felt about something with Aqua, Terra came back to me with this heart-warming response.
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Me: “In no way is she a carbon copy of him [Sora]. Hang on… Shutdown again… This subconscious mind is being relentless”.
Terra: “Mind if I just give some thoughts of my own then?”.
Me: “Okay”.
Terra: “You have a beautiful and genuine heart that I know without a shadow of a doubt, you wouldn’t wish anything bad on any of my friends. You’re just tired, angry and frustrated from the year that’s been; and it’s almost like the truth of it caught up with you today… On a very special day being the 17th. And so to see that old hierarchy that was used in Birth By Sleep (BBS) being praised and almost enabled in a way was like a ‘what the fudge!?’ moment for you. Even though Aqua may seem somewhere distant at the moment, I like to think that she’s still acutely aware and tapped in like 18-Volt was. And that like him, she’s working on herself in secret, waiting for the opportune moment and time to come back to us; when she finally masters how to treat you right. What if she’s been watching us this whole time and taking in every moment that you and I have together? From how we curl up together each night in silence, to the little play-dates we have, to how we talk about your day like we’re doing now. I believe that just like Ven and I, there will be a day where Aqua takes your every dream and wish into account, and that day will come when you least expect it. You’ve got to remember that Master Eraqus wants me here, and that he wants me to take care of each and every one of you. He even directly stated that he wants me to witness life on the New Earth with you. So if that’s what my master wants, don’t you think that Aqua would want that too? She’s only in a stagnant state because she doesn’t understand what to do. All you and I need to do is keep leading by example, and then when push comes to shove, Aqua will look back on everything and finally find the will to change and come with us. Just because a large number of people and situations have made you feel sad, hurt and betrayed this year, that doesn’t define you or anyone else. You might not agree with how some people view Aqua, but that’s merely their opinion. It doesn’t take away from how she truly is and how she thinks and acts. And that’s the same for any of us. Find it in your heart to forgive those who have wronged you, without necessarily forgetting. And take the lesson away with you. Just like how you told me to do the exact same thing with Xehanort. It’s funny how sometimes your advice finds its way back to you huh? On a lighter note, I’m so proud of everything you’ve endured and the challenges that you overcame. This year was anything but easy, but we’re all still here, being Riku, Jak, myself and you. We’ve come back together for the most important time, which is the transition from the old year in to the new one. It looks like all three of us remember our promise to fight beside you and carry you into the age of peace. I’ve got a lot to thank you for and I’m not done with my repayments. It’ll be alright in the end, and it isn’t the end until it is. I’m always here for you and you’re loved so much more than you can even imagine. Keep being that sweet, kind and happy dreamer that I met through Riku”.
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archivyrep · 1 year
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"The Ghost and Molly McGee" employs archives stereotypes with basement archive [Part 3]
Continued from part 2
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Photo of Ricky Roxburgh from Central Coast Writers Conference in Sept. 2020, where he is described as a "Emmy winning writer of animated film and television"
Speaking of Tangled, there are four episodes in that animated series which have archivy themes: "Keeper of the Spire," "Rapunzel and the Great Tree," "Islands Apart," and "Race to the Spire." It turns out, according his IMDB page, that Ricky Roxburgh was a staff writer for all of these episodes, the same ones which had no archivist, archivy themes, and scrolls stuck in a tree, as I referenced earlier in this post.
Reprinted from my Wading Through the Cultural Stacks WordPress blog. Originally published on Nov. 18, 2021.
As such, episode of The Ghost and Molly McGee was not the first time, he had, sadly, contributed to perpetuation of archives stereotypes. Roxburgh has a degree from SUNY Albany, according to his IMDB bio, and is well-educated, making this even more unfortunate. Chang, on the hand, seems to be a new writer, as his only credits on IMDB are seven episodes of The Ghost and Molly McGee.
Sometimes it feels like series like The Ghost and Molly McGee are stuck back in time. The National Archives and Record Administration (NARA)'s Archives II location, where I worked for a short time, has multiple levels of stacks of records, ranging five to seven floors, which can be accessed by employees. However, before 1934, when NARA was founded, national documents were stored "essentially at random," with no plan for preserving the Constitution, and was stuffed in a storage space, even spending time in the basement of the State Department for over forty years! There was, before 1934, a pattern of "astonishingly haphazard record-keeping" which each federal department having its own archive, with many records either not accessible, or lost.
Since 1934, there have been efforts to ensure that records can be accurately cataloged, organized, arranged, and so on. While one could easily, and rightly, point to the backlog in processing NARA's records, or the fact that only 1.2% of the records in NARA's holdings have been digitized, there is no doubt that it is better to have national records organized together under one agency than have them haphazardly organized across many departments.
This is something that the episode is missing. It is also, by saying that the archives is dusty, little-used, and dirty, devaluing the work of archivists themselves. If an archives was realistically in that shape, such an archivist would undoubtedly be violating codes of ethics, whether from state-specific professional organizations or nationally from organizations like the Society of American Archivists. It would also run afoul of records laws on a state level as well.
Andrew Raymond and James O'Toole pointed this out in 1978, arguing that in some respects, archives was seen as a branch of academic history, with the importance of archives depending on the importance of history. They went onto say that "the archivist is therefore consigned to life in the basement. He is forced into a stereotype that is dark, dusty, unpleasant, and most of all irrelevant," only providing services to genealogists and scholar-historians, leading to less funding and regard from others, like administrators and various public officials. [3]
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People think all archives look like the above stock image, a photograph of an archive in Sicily, apparently.
Episodes like the The Ghost and Molly McGee episode described in this article feed into those determinations and have real-world effects on public opinion and the lives of archivists themselves.
© 2022 Burkely Hermann. All rights reserved.
Notes
[3] Raymond, Andrew, and James M. O’Toole. “Up from the Basement: Archives, History and Public Administration.” Georgia Archive 6, no. 2 (January 1978): 20–21, 28–30. I used Chicago Manual of Style 17th edition (Full note) here. This article seems to assume that the default is a male archivist, even though the most recent A*Census (a new one is in the works) noted that the archives field is female-majority, meaning that for every 10 archivists, six or seven are female, as shown on page 21 of "Part 3. A*CENSUS: A Closer Look." More about that census, with various analyses of the information provided, is available here. A new A*Census, A*Census II, is currently in the works and will be released some time next year.
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hypo-critic-al · 3 years
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Songs that defined/been my vent/comfort songs in the 16th year of my life:
- Teen Idle (Marina & The Diamonds)
- Neighbour (Mother Mother)
- Rät (Penelope Scott)
- Achilles Come Down (Gang Of Youths)
- Amen (Frankenstein: A New Musical)
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fa-by · 3 years
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Hi Faby I have a question L said that she knew she was queer when she fell in love with her best friend when she was 15 and that her and L started to have a physical connection when she was 15 and I know everyone says that she was talking about C because L met C for the first time when she was still 15 but to me that doesn't make sense because L and C only started to get closer after L turned 16 and her and C basically just met so how could she be talking about C?
Hi to you, dear Anon 👋🏼😄 I know it doesn’t seem to make sense because the narrative’s goal is to confuse you and get you on their side by making you abandon the ship. You have to pay attention to the details and what they say because there are always flaws in the stories that our Camren are forced to tell. But don’t worry, I’m here. I’ve already talked about it many times, but I’ll explain it again to make you understand better and answer your ask at the same time.
So. During Becky G’s ‘En La Sala’ podcast (October 28, 2020), Lauren said she realized she was queer because she fell in love with her best friend when she was 15 and they started having a physical relationship. She forced herself to think that kissing and sleeping with her friend every once in a while was just a funny thing and nothing important; something that she has ‘normalized’ in her head by justifying it as something that ‘straight girls do’, and therefore fueling her internalized homophobia. Personally speaking, I believe in this. Not in the ‘she fell in love’ part because Laur’s still forced to say that the only girl she has ever loved is Lucy, but I believe Lauren and Lucy really did everything L said. Lucy was the first real unlock thanks to which Laur experienced the attraction and the feelings towards the girls she’d always felt and hidden deep inside herself. I firmly believe that Lucy was the first girl among her crushes on girls Laur acted on, and with whom she experimented in secret given the environment in which they both grew up and which still surrounded them at the time.
Now, the time frame in which this experimentation happened. Paul Martinez, the one she believed was her first love and whom she believed she would marry, broke up with her in late July 2011, and she only managed to move on when she wrote a song about how she felt on September 17th of that same year. Lucy moved back to Puerto Rico in February 2012, returning to visit Miami occasionally (that’s why the fetus pictures with Lucy and Camren at Laur’s house). Therefore, the time frame in which that experimentation happened, is from the end of September 2011 to February 2012. It could’ve happened in all those four months, or only in two, or only in one. Who knows. But that’s the time frame. Time frame during which Laur was 15 years old.
Having explained this, let’s move on. Camren first met during the first phase of the audition, the ‘cattle call’, on May 1, 2012, in Greensboro, North Carolina. You know? Where that short and really cute conversation started by Mila happened: “Hi, I like your shirt”, “Thanks. I like your jacket”. But it ended up there because they didn’t become friends from that day. They didn’t exchange phone numbers and they therefore didn’t even spend time together at home in Miami. They were still just two strangers who had auditioned for a TV show to pursue their dreams like so many other people. Oh and, on May 1, 2012, Laur was still 15, and Mila had turned since almost two months; therefore they were both 15 years old. The moment they became friends by no longer detaching one from the hip of the other, was two months later, on July 25 in Miami, when they met for the first time for the first day of boot camp (L went to C: “You’re the Cuban girl!”). On July 25, 2012, Lauren had by then turned 16 for nearly a month, and Camila was still 15.
Now let’s move on to the biggest miscalculated mistake that, either they made her say, or Laur herself said; perhaps even deliberately and not by mistake. On June 26, 2020, and therefore before the podcast with Becky, the PAPER Magazine article was released. In that article, Lauren explained, along with other things, that she’d been in love with her best friend for seven years. But the calculations don’t add up, for two things to be exact.
First thing: The Laucy narrative includes that A) Laur fell in love with her sure, Jan at 15 when they kissed and hooked up during parties.
P.S. Is it just me, or does this smell like what actually started happening to Camren the following year? I mean, the Like Friends Do situation whereby Laur got out of her internalized homophobia and realized she loved her and then got her head out of her ass by finally going to get her girl? No? Just me?
B) The wanting but not being able to be with her and giving her what she wanted made them grew apart not by her choice and not because Lucy returned to live in Puerto Rico and they simply grew apart for the distance and Lauren’s busy schedule with 5H, no, no.
P.S. I don’t know about you, but this still smells like Camren’s story to me.
C) Lucy returned to her life after she had a car accident on May 17, 2015:
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“She came back into my life when I was 18. I was on tour and I was in my room in a hotel somewhere and she called me”. From that moment on, Lauren decided they would’ve been together “all in” and “now we’re gonna be in this relationship”. Yeah, sure. No contract that was supposed to help both of them involved here. No, no.
D) They broke up because Laur confirmed that theirs was a very toxic relationship, and the specific reason she gave was because they both weren’t fully healed from the past yet, but that they still loved each other very much. Mmmh-hmm, okay 🥱😴 Yeah, no, yeah, sorry. I fell asleep as a result of hearing bullshit.
Second thing: Ty.
Shall we reveal the miscalculation (again)? In love with her at 15, got together with her at 18 and broke up at 20 (1 year and 8 months, from mid-May 2015 to mid-January 2017), and after less than a month, start of another PR dating Ty. Now, 20 minus 15 (Laur’s two ages from the beginning to the end of the ‘story’), how much is it? 5. Shall we calculate from the moment of Laucy experiment to when they ‘broke up’? From late September 2011 to mid January 2017, how many years are? 5! 5 years and four months to be exact. According to the logic of the narrative, if she was oh so in love with Ty as they made her proclaim every two seconds, it means that she’d stopped loving Lucy that same year, and it’s not 7 years anyway! It’s still 5! Do we want to try with two last calculations? Okay. Also because you may have wondered: “Faby, what if we instead calculated from when ‘they got together’ to the release of that PAPER Magazine article?”. I’d answer that it’s still 5 years. From mid-May 2015 to June 25, 2020, it’s 5 years and 1 month to be exact. “Faby, what if we tried to calculate from the beginning to the publication of the article?” From the end of September 2011 (beginning of the time frame of the Laucy experimentation) to the publication of the article on 25 June 2020, it’s 8 years and 9 months to be precise. Not even in this case it’s 7! So, as you can see… And at this point I wonder: is there an alternate world where math calculations lead to 7 and not 5 here? What was that? Why say 7? Well.. I actually know why.
Shall we play another little math game? Can I reveal the truth in the lie? Let’s try to make sense of this 7 together now.
Lauren explained that she’d been in love with her best friend for 7 years in that interview, right? The interview with PAPER Magazine came out on June 26, 2020, but was done before the date it was released. We all know Laur was born on the 27th, and therefore in both cases, Laur was 23. And tell me, dear, how much is 23 minus 7? Sorry, I can’t hear your answer. A little louder please? Got it, got it. Can I also write it for everyone else who’s reading? Okay, thanks: 16. Wait, 16??? So who was Lauren actually talking about? Ohhh. How foolish of me. That’s why it ‘smelled like what actually started happening to Camren the following year’ to me. Because Laur was talking about Camila all along 🤦🏻‍♀️
🤣😏😎
Sarcasm and jokes aside, do you see how easy it is to manipulate and confuse people's ideas? It's still 7 years if we calculate from mid-January 2013 (after the first real New Year's kiss and the signing of the contracts with Syco/Epic) to the release of that PAPER Magazine article on June 25, 2020. And it's still 7 years even if we calculate from July 25, 2012 (first day of boot camp) to June 25, 2020. Camila is the answer to the 7 years because even if they try to make Laur modify the narrative by making her change the names with the PRs' ones, she's always talking about Mila anyway in reality.
Does it make more sense now, dear? I hope I’ve taken away all your doubts 🥰 Stay safe and have a good day 🤗 You guys too ❤
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soren1830 · 3 years
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Headcanon/idea/theory for ageing on dsmp
People age depending on their mental states. If they feel like they haven't aged or need to not have aged, they don't. In reverse, if they feel like they need to get older NOW they age at a more rapid rate. Otherwise they age at a normal rate where 1 bio year is the same as 1 temporal year.
Onto evidence/implications. This is the most fun with Tubbo, Tommy, Fundy, and Wilbur.
Fundy is interesting as despite being Wilbur's son and born during the revolutionary era, he is typically shown and considered to be an adult, or at least older than the 17 yr olds. With my aging concept, this could have occurred due to Fundy feeling as though he needed to be an adult in part due to his relationship with his father. Wilbur tends to be absent in Fundys life. As such, the fox forced himself to literally grow up too fast in an attempt to be more useful to his father and also in order to be able to take care of himself. Minds would likely age slower than bodies, being part of the reason Fundy threw himself under the care of those in power, first Shlatt, and now Quackity with little to no realization that this decision would have negative effects on both him. After all these people are not in this relationship to take care of Fundy, but to use him or work with him. Think a literal child in an adults body.
Tubbo and Tommy are the opposite, adults trapped in a younger body. Most agree that the pair were child soldiers in both the revolution and the pogtopia events. These events are still very much defining their lives and what came after. They never grew past these events, literally and metaphorically. Age regression is a known response to trauma, this would be a form of it. It would also explain why Tommy had his 17th bday. He had started to put the past behind him so was able to grow past it literally as well.
Some may be looking at Tubbo and going what do you mean Soren? He isn't stuck in the revolution or pogtopia. Well, think again. He was executed during pogtopia, and due to his conversation with Ranboo I do not think he is as past it as he may seem. Add onto that, he was functionally forced in to a high stress job immediately following the traumatic events of the 16th. Events during said job just traumatized him more, leading him to build a literal nuclear arsenal to protect himself even after the fall of lmanburg and imprisonment of Dream.
Before we look at Wilbur, let's look at how this would cause aging to appear in such a society. Depending on the situation, rapid aging would be either rewarded or seen as the sign of trauma it really is. In the time Fundy was aging, it was probably rewarded, compounding the issue.
Slowed or halted aging on the other hand, would probably be looked down on as it proves that they cannot move beyond a certain point in there lives. Despite the obvious indication it is, I doubt it would often cause those aging too slow to receive proper help, particularly when it happens to children and teens. After all, 'life is not as hard for children and teens.' /sarcastic
With that in mind, let's look at Wilbur. Wilbur has given out ages that have been entirely disproven or ignored. Using my idea of aging, these are the ages that the stated characters SHOULD be in the absence of age manipulation as a result of the traumatic events. And Wilbur himself…. Despite revivebur theoretically being 50ish he very much does not act it. He also very clearly has not moved past the events of pogtopia. As such I believe his age has halted just as much as Tommy and Tubbo, but he refuses to admit it. He refuses to admit he has a problem even when he is staring at it in the mirror. This expanded to his view of the others of the server. He cannot face that the others have a clear problem bc that means facing that something truelly bad happened and needs to be faced. Fundys rapid age was accepted and praised bc it helped him. For the same reason, he will use Tommy's bio age to manipulate him while also refusing to admit that it is evidence that Tommy has not been processing what he has been through.
And just because I like angst, let's look at Tommy's exile sentence though this age. 'exile till 18' would change to mean 'exile until you grow up, grow past your issues' without offering the proper help. Rather than being 2 year, it would become indefinite as exile worsened Tommy's mental state, perpetuating his inability to grow up rather than helping it.
Honestly could keep going, but I am writing this on my phone in a moving car so I'm am going to stop before I hit a no service zone. Please respond with any theories or questions you have around this idea
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madsdefencesquad · 3 years
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The semi-companion piece to Kevin's one and it's all about Mads, of course. Dedicated to Kevison Nation (every single fudging one of you) and to @flythesail and @penny259 (your comments have me weeping haha 😚). Also on ao3.
A little into Madison Pearson by x (with additions) Summer 2026
I first met Madison Pearson a year ago at George Clooney’s 65th birthday celebrations in Perthshire, Scotland in a fashion closer to that of long-travelled friends who haven’t seen each other in years than that of complete strangers who just so happened to enjoy the same foodie indulgence (bacon-wrapped dates, anyone?). Despite the grandeur of the guests present at the lavish affair – politicians, laureates, philanthropists and A-list celebrities (including her own husband actor Kevin Pearson) – Madison Pearson had the kind of invigorating energy that just drew absolutely anyone in.
Perhaps it was the enchanting mix of contained excitement and understated class she exuded that will warm you upon beholding up close, or perhaps it was the charm of a more loquacious woman of California mixed with the rare intelligence of a world-traveller. Either way, despite the taxing social waltz her husband took her throughout the night bumping elbows with the elites, Madison was one of those people who truly left a lasting impression.
Squeezed next to her in the back of a cab, Madison is head-to-toe in Temperley London x Axel Arigato (vintage-inspired nautical jumpsuit and platform suedes) en route to a baking class where her five-year-old twins Nick and Franny are waiting for her to join them along with their father.
“I was supposed to get changed,” she says, lamenting on her attire worn for a meeting with some West Chester development executives that’s perhaps too luxurious for an afternoon of mixing flour and butter and sugar. “But you have to make at least a bit of an impression, right?”
Madison has been the powerhouse head honcho of the Pearson family business, Big Three Homes, since its establishment three years prior. With a solid background in business management and a surefooted ability to navigate the mores of an ever-changing property development landscape, it was no question that Madison would rise up to the challenge of breaking into the market with a business model founded on family, philanthropy and sustainability.
Despite growing up largely independent without people close enough to call family, Madison has also found the means to speak about her experiences in an effort to encourage and give hope to the younger generation of girls and young women who may be going through an ongoing battle between themselves and their self-worth.
“I never felt enough,” she says of the origins of her battle with her eating disorder that began when she was still in middle school. “I look at Franny and she’s so small and carefree and I want to give her everything I never had, but I know that even that won’t be enough unless she herself realises how worthy she is of all the good and all the love that she deserves.”
We pull up outside the baking studio and she brightens at spotting her husband and twins’ silhouettes behind the frosted glass windows. Nick and Franny almost topple over their stools as they rush to overwhelm their mother while their father scrambles to keep his heart rate down—a close call with their foreheads hitting the edge of the marble benches as they got down will just about do it.
Even with her petite frame, Madison carries the twins like she’s just holding a bag of groceries. Unsurprisingly, both Nick and Franny are as enamoured of their mother as she is of them and are on the verge of complaining when put down just as Kevin, grinning ear to ear, envelops Madison in his huge arms—to be fair, he’s always been quite remarkably chiselled but the Tom Ford sweater and those tailored jeans (chosen by his wife “of course” as Kevin credits) is a different level altogether. He leans down to give her a kiss.
Back in Perthshire a year ago at the Clooney extravaganza, I caught up with the married couple the day after the festivities over a traditional Scottish breakfast as we overlooked the highlands of the Gleneagles.
Perhaps unlike the Clooneys, who were still entertaining their guests from all over world, the Pearsons were much more relaxed within their own family bubble. Having just celebrated Kevin’s twin sister’s wedding three days prior with close family and friends, the pair was grateful to spend some quality time with each other and their twins without the need to be anything but present.
From my perch, Kevin and Madison were the kind of couple that were very much “old souls”. They held an affection for each other that is rooted from sincere fondness and adoration for each other—they converse like deep friends and trade wits like secret lovers. And despite the media attention of the adorable moments shared online (often by the social-savvy actor), Madison is uncompromising when it comes to the privacy of their children.
While the twins dipped in and out of the table pilfering scones or taking over their mother’s green juice, neither one of their parents were the least bit bothered by the constant attention they need to provide such a rumbunctious pair.
“They’re so funny,” Kevin said, a careful eye on little Nick who was staring at the whipped cream on his tiny finger like he was contemplating on wiping it on his dad’s face.
I do recall having a good laugh when I accompanied the family on a tour of a nearby 17th century castle and little Franny, a copy-and-paste of her mother, pointed at a wood-cut table decoration of what looked to be intertwined lovers and confidently yelled, “That’s mommy and daddy!”
The fierce mama bear of the Pearson household of four (Madison sometimes calls her husband “kid number three, but don’t tell him that or he’ll get ideas of trying for another!”), remarks that forging her own path away from her husband’s spotlight had been remarkably easy, and she gives much of the credit to the rest of the Pearson clan who all treasure family more than anything.
Even with the notoriety of her brother-in-law, rising political star Randall Pearson, who currently serves in the Philadelphia municipality and is on track for a career in congress, Madison says that quality time to rest and recuperate is a must.
“[My sisters-in-law] and I have a girls weekend every other month when we can where we literally book ourselves a gorgeous Airbnb and just glamp down. I’m talking sleep-ins, endless mimosas, spa sessions… you name it! It’s the kind of getaway that [our husbands] get really jealous for.”
And upon being reminded, Kevin, now sporting Franny’s tiny chef’s hat, shakes his head at his wife conspicuously as if in reprimand that he most definitely should be included in the gals’ next glamping session despite him being, well, not a gal.
While Nick proudly counts five of about a thousand sprinkles that are scattered on his side of the bench, Madison congratulates him with a warmth and pride that is infectious enough to make you think that she’s proud of you too. And despite her husband’s very obvious possessiveness over her—you could count only one occasion where the actor is not at arm’s length from her—when Madison focuses her attention on you, it’s not difficult to believe that this powerhouse woman could truly do absolutely anything.
“She is that and more,” Kevin says about his wife. “Sometimes I can’t believe that this is my life. Our life! Like, she’s mywife, and these two are our kids. It’s just wild! I’m grateful, just grateful.”
Despite the doubts and fear that had been Madison’s constant companions for most of her life and especially going into adulthood, there is a fierce resilience in her that she could only credit her dear grandmother Frances—her own daughter having been named after her.
“She always believed in me,” she recalls, an eye on the twins squatting by the oven watching their creations rise. Despite the deep grief and loss that are quite intimately shared by the married couple, Madison says that it has only made them more resolute in loving their children and each other as best as they possible can every day.
“You just don’t know when it’s your time,” she says. “So, Kev and I make sure that there are no ‘next times’ when it comes to our family.”
When I had asked Madison about Big Three Homes back in Scotland, she squealed at the origin story of its founding, which started with Kevin’s late father Jack Pearson having asked his wife Rebecca to start the business together as partners.
Although Jack’s tragic and unexpected passing put an indefinite hold to this dream, its fulfilment through his son Kevin and through Madison is a testament to the kind of legacy that Jack Pearson had begun through his kids.
“I mean, it started off as more of a passion project for Kev,” Madison says. “But we knew it was always going to be something really special. Especially because his first project was the house that Jack had wanted to build for his mom. And when Kevin had this wonderful idea of bringing the family together to start the business and he asked me to be a part of it, how could I have said no!”
Kevin makes a point to say though that even if the idea of Big Three Homes originally came from his parents, its fulfilment is as much a part of his and Madison’s own story as it is his parents’. And choosing to have Madison work alongside him wasn’t just the best choice (given how much of a boss she is), but it was the only choice he ever wanted or considered.
“I know this is cliché, but I can’t stand not being with her,” Kevin says. “I made a point of this when our twins were born, and I meant it!”
Madison and the family split their time between California and Pennsylvania both for Kevin’s work and for the business, but nowadays, it’s more of an 80-20 split in favour of the east coast.
When asked about a career path carved away from her hometown in California, Madison says fondly, “It surprises a lot of people when I say this but I’m actually an east coast girl.”
This fun fact translates quite well in Madison’s day to day. She could turn any conversation into an erudite discussion, and she will utterly beguile you with her knowledge of books and literature—her constant companions when she can sneak away to her own personal Taj Mahal, a stunning Japanese garden in the backyard of their Pennsylvania home which Kevin built especially for her.
As the Pearsons continue to make a splash in the world of construction, politics, arts and entertainment—a rare mix indeed for a family in the spotlight—Madison is determined to continue writing a story with her husband and her children that she never had growing up.
With the twins happily destroying their creations by the mouthfuls, Madison promises that another visit is a must and perhaps this time, she can show us a collection of Kevin’s baby photos coupled with her own personal commentary to boot.
And who would say no to that.
19 notes · View notes
world-a-to-z · 3 years
Text
🚨HLITF🚨
🍄Ayumu Shinonome🍄 - 2020 Special Story
HAPPY BIRTHDAY! 🎈🎉🎂🎉🎈
Ayumu Shinonome
17th of July
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まあ、そうだろう。こんなのオレらしくもない。
でも、このサプライズを考えたのは一間違いなくオレだ。
(一年に一度のことだし)
Well, it’s understandable.
This kind of thing is so uncharacteristically of me.
But, I am definitely the one who thought about this surprise
After all, this event only happens once a year
.
Today is Ayumu’s birthday~
To celebrate it, I want to share with you guys the summary of Special Story from last year. (A translation will be provided too!!! 😉) This is a free story in 100恋+, everyone who voted Ayumu in year 2019 General Election will get access to read the story!
So without further do, here we go~
(This story will be told from Ayumu’s POV)
.
District S— (A popular downtown area in Tokyo)
2 P.M.
Student 1 “look, that person…”
Student 2 “Right, as expected!”
Student 1 “It’s a host, right.”
Student 2 “Definitely a host!”
The story started with Ayumu dressed in a formal suit, but there was a misunderstanding by a group of students. They thought Ayumu is a host (T/N: LOL!!! 😂)
After that, MC arrived and couldn’t help but admired Ayumu in his suit. And that just added the misunderstanding, the students thought a customer had arrived (aka. MC). Soon after that, Ayumu fled the scene and left her MC who hadn’t get to change her shoes yet. MC tried to catch him while plead to hold hands together.
We got flashback to two weeks ago in Ayumu’s Apartement. It’s all started because MC want to celebrate her birthday by having a date in formal suit. At first Ayumu thought it didn’t make any sense but later at Office Canteen (we got another flashback) Toru brought the topic that nowdays in SNS a ‘Man in Suit’ has an increasing popularity. Toru even offered to teach Ayumu how to do it, which was immediately turned down.
Toru Kurosawa “I don’t know who the other person is—“
Toru Kurosawa “But to prevent a rut, it’s important to do something different occasionally.”
Ayumu Shinonome “….”
Toru Kurosawa “I really don’t know who the other person is—“
Toru Kurosawa “As for woman who likes this kind of thing, I am sure she will be happy—“
That made Ayumu think that his MC certainly would like it so he decided to do that but he quickly regretted it. (T/N: 🤣)
For the next destination, they were going to a restaurant located on the 38th floor. MC was so ecstatic by the view and she is more excited by the afternoon tea set because the tea stand was five tiers high. But Ayumu didn’t seem to amused by it.
Flashback, Office Canteen. It was continuation of flashback with Toru. Now, they were talking about luxury afternoon tea at restaurant placed on the top floor. The tea stand was five tiers where usually it’s only two or three tier. Ayumu wasn't really convince when suddenly Soma chipped in which he though that there’s high possibility woman would love it. Especially if the woman loves food she would be curiou and would be happy just by having a five-tiers tea stand .
Present day, Restaurant. So we back at the present where MC had doubt if she could finish all the foods. Ayumu said that he was not worry about it at all, he said that if it’s her she would definitely finish everything. Later, Ayumu ordered afternoon tea set for two people and with original tea blend.
Ayumu Shinonome “Noisy”
MC “Eh.. I’m not…”
Ayumu Shinonome “Your stare”
Ayumu Shinonome “You’re staring intensely since a while ago”
MC who got caught staring at Ayumu then tried to explain herself, that because Ayumu is so handsome so her eyes were drawn to him. (T/N: I love how easy it’s for her to say it out loud. LOL) Ayumu wasn’t buying the excuse so MC explained it further that today was more special because Ayumu wore the suit for her. It made him 30% cooler, she was so happy and want to look at it again and again.
Flashback, Office Canteen. We got another continuation flashback, but now It was Toru gave out an advices about the importance of giving compliment on your partner’s clothing. Because if Ayumu wear a suit so his partner would be expected to wear a formal dress too. Since woman took longer time to put on makeup and do their hair so it’ll be good to praise them for the effort.
Ayumu Shinonome “If it’s about styling the hair, mine took longer (time)…” (T/N: Laugh 🤣)
Present Day, Restaurant. Ayumu took Toru's advice seriously so tried his best to compliment her.
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Firstly he would compliment MC nonchalantly and casually but before he could said anything she had abruptly stand up and saying that she would excuse herself to change her shoes. She thought that Ayumu would make a comment at her shoes so she would changed her shoes right away. Unknowingly to her, she just missed Ayumu's attempt to praise her.
Ayumu was so perplexed, he thought he just missed his one in million chance to praised her. He tried to convince himself that it’s just Toru’s opinion and beside that her girl wasn’t really asked for a praise.
Present Day, Intersection. Although Ayumu said that he wouldn’t tried to praise her anymore but he kept thinking on how to compliment her. He was glad that MC loved the food and all but he still couldn’t figure out how to praise her. He thought that the dress was not bad, the heels went well with the dress and it’d been a while since he seen her in makeup. While Ayumu got worked up to praise MC, MC probably still had her head full of the afternoon tea. (T/N: Hahaha, MC please have mercy to this poor boy)
After that, they were talking about their next destination was and Ayumu pulled two tickets from her pocket. Those were tickets for Opera play.
Flashback, Office Canteen. It’s another continuation flashback where Toru made a list about places to go to in a formal suit. He suggested a luxury brand store, because when you go to luxury store in a suit you’d be treated politely and your woman companions would also feel like a celebrity. The other places are either a hotel restaurant or a bar with a nice night view where you could get close to each other with your partner. (T/N: Toru’s imagination is so wild!)
Actually, the one who came out with Opera play was Tsugaru. He recommended it thinking that it’d be a perfect date going to an Opera wearing formal wear.
Takaomi Tsugaru “However…”
Takaomi Tsugaru “Ayumu-san‘s partner may not understand what opera is though.”
Present Day, Intersection. So we go back to the present. Ayumu asked MC whether she knew what an Opera is. MC admitted that she didn’t really know much about it and probably never see one before. So that would be her first time to go to an Opera play. She was so excited to go to Opera for the first time and on top of that she was going with Ayumu.
Suddenly there was woman screaming that her bag got snatche. Before Ayumu could confirm what was happening, MC had already made a move. MC tried to block the thief but he escaped into back alley.
Present Day, Back Alley. While MC ran after the thief into the back alley, Ayumu choose another route. He predicted that the thief would go to his way, so Ayumu hoped that he and MC could trap him. As predicted the thief showed up and get trapped between Ayumu and MC. Little did the thief know, he turned around and ran toward MC. It happened so quickl that while the thief charged toward MC, she quickly catched his right hand and twisted it then she put her weight on him. (T/N: Love it when MC is in action)
Present Day, Intersection. After turning the thief over then hey went through interrogation. After finished it, they barely had enough time to go to Opera play.
Then there were whispers talked about MC’s clothes. The dress was tattered and there were holes in her stocking which probably she got that when she straddled the thief. She blabbered about changing his clothes or maybe buying a new one but the time was too tight. MC was so flustered. (T/N: Nooo, I am sad for her 😢)
Ayumu Shinonome “It’s alright, just leave it”
Strangely enough, the word just spilled out from me
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Ayumu Shinonome “It’s not bad”
MC “Eh…”
Ayumu Shinonome “Today, you’re not too bad.”
She was so stylish before but now she is tattered.
But both of them are ’MC’
“It’s really not bad”
I tucked in her disheveled hair to make it tidy.
My girl looks up bewilderedly.
MC “Hm… Ayumu-san…?”
Ayumu Shinonome “Let’s go”
Present Day, Park. Later we know that they were going to a park. Actually they would go to the park after done with Opera play but the schedule was moved ahead of time because of the incident. MC was worried about her clothes but Ayumu assured her that it was okay because the park was already reserved. (T/N: Yup, Ayumu reserved the entire park for this occasion) That left MC in a daze.
Ayumu Shinonome “Hand”
MC “What…?”
Ayumu Shinonome “Left hand. Give it to me”
MC “Y—Yes..”
Ayumu then escorted her to the center of the park and they stop in the middle of gazebo (?) stairs.
Actually, this is the hardest thing to do for today
Well, it’s a birthday
It’s a special event so..
Ayumu Shinonome “3..2..1..”
As Ayumu snapped her finger, a lot of balloons started floating up. While MC was focus on the balloons, Ayumu picked up the hidden bouquet.
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Ayumu Shinonome “Happy Birthday”
My girl opens her mouth in surprise
Well, it’s understandable. This kind of thing is so uncharacteristically of me.
But, I am definitely the one who thought about this surprise
After all, it only happens once a year
This is something that my girl would love
After that Ayumu asked MC about what her thought on the surprise. When MC didn’t answer him, Ayumu got panicking and thought that he had failed. (T/N: Uuugh my heart!🥺) It wasn’t the case tho, MC was so happy that she cried while hugging Ayumu. MC even started babbling about how much she love it and she wanted to stay together with him for a long time which Ayumu claimed that he didn’t understand what MC was saying. (Well, she was talking while crying hahaha 😂)
But later, we got to see that Ayumu actually understood what she was talking about.
That’s a lie.
Actually I perfectly understand it.
So please stay with me
Stay with me for the rest of your life.
Please don’t leave me.
I do things I don’t usually do and that’s because you've changed me.
Later Ayumu asked MC what she wanted to do. MC wants a kiss from Ayumu! That took Ayumu in surprise ’cause out of all things she could ask for, she asked for a kiss. He was reluctant at first because MC had just finished crying but then he surrendered to her and gave her a kiss.
Although it was salty from tears, Ayumu kinda liked the kiss. He thought that there must be something wrong with him. (T/N: no Ayumu. There isn’t anything wrong with you. You’re just whipped!🥺)
After kissing, MC declared that on she would do a surprise event on Ayumu's birthday which soon was declined by Ayumu.
Ayumu said that he don't need anything for his birthday. Then, MC started listing all the things she would do such as make Dinosaurs out of balloons, make 3D Dinosaurs Pancake or she might rent a museum. Ayumu then stopped her rambling with a kiss. (T/N: uugh MC and Ayumu are so adorable. I love them 😍 )
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ほんといらないから。サプライズとか。
(キミがいてくれれば)
キミが、キミのままそばにいてくれてー
こうしてキスできれば、それだけで十分なのだ。
I don’t really need something like a surprise
If you’re there
You’re there, like you’re here now by my side—
If I can kiss you like this
That is enough.
.
.
.
So that’s all folks
The special story concludes the series of Peach Fanclub (2020). I miss him 😢
This special story just make the CGs 100% better!
I was crying with Mc when Ayumu give her congratulation on her birthday. My heart was fluttering when Ayumu tucked in MC’s hair then when he asked for her hand! I almost thought that he would be asking MC for ‘the hand’ (in marriage, LOL). There’s so many little gesture that I like in this story.
I really like his flow of thought and how adorable he is when he was awkwardly trying to please MC. I love it whenever he lower his tsun facade and show us his true sincere heart. I hope he could be more open to his MC. But it’s okay, one step at a time.
Props to our MPV, Toru Kurosawa! He gave all guidance for our tsundere mushroom throughout the story. Honorable mention to Soma and Tsugaru too!
.
.
.
Ayumu-san Happy Birthday! 🎉🎂🎉
I wish for many more story of you and your mc in the future too!
.
Lastly, I hope you all enjoy it!
Have a great day everyone ~ 😉 💕
16 notes · View notes
human-enthusiast · 3 years
Text
Absurd Person #1 - Monkey D. Luffy (kid)
 Let’s start with not only the main protagonist of One Piece but also the first character to give Luffy any sort of injury...
...his dumb, seven-year-old self...
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*Disclaimer: I don’t own this image - screenshot from Episode of East Blue
The last time I wrote this, I forgot to hit save and my browser just reloaded the page and lost everything. After that I just went “I’m done” and rage quit Tumblr for the night (which I normally don’t do). That’s how my Sundays usually go😒🥴
Now Onward!
Basic Classifications
Real World Ethnicity/Nationality: Brazilian
Class: farm / country / lower class
Culture (the one he grew up around): Dawn Island - Sea-side village
Fishing community
Farming / Ranching community
Hard work ethic
Small and close community members; relatively friendly; little to non-existent conflict
Selective mix of being open towards strangers (especially with merchant vessels for better trading opportunities) and weariness towards those they expect to be harmful (likes Pirates; I’d imagine the people of Windmill Village were understandably unnerved with the Red-Haired Pirates first showing up).
Core values (personal to Luffy): pride, physical strength, adventures on and outside his home village,
Relation to authority: neutral - shifting slightly towards negative (no clear basis of opinion; can only go off on Luffy’s fascination with pirates as the main viewpoint)
(The added information feels a little scatter-shot but figured I give it a try based on little information from the manga panels and how it lines up with real-world similarities. Most information is based on logical speculation and could change with new information in later chapters.)
I know that the Romance Dawn arc consists of the chapters up until he meets Coby and Alvida (I think...), but the depiction of Luffy’s character in the first chapter seems different from when he is seventeen and setting out to sea. So, I’ll treat kid Luffy as a separate character for the first analysis.
First Impressions and Introduction
Now, I am an anime watcher, first and foremost, so my first impression of this character stems from the Anime. My introduction towards this ball of chaos was when he popped out of a barrel, that he put himself into after realizing that a whirlpool suddenly appeared (how he missed it? - It’s Luffy), and then inexplicably took a nap in. That was the absurd reason I was able to stick with One Piece in the first few arcs (until Baratie became one of the major reasons I stuck with it - I’ll explain why when we get there).
And since the first chapter was used for episode four in the anime, I was already somewhat familiar with how the story started and who Luffy was as a kid. However, reading the first chapter felt....different than what I would’ve expected. And because the anime cut out a few details from the chapter, there definitely are some things to take from kid Luffy at that point.
So my first impression was, as follows:
The kid is unhinged...That explains some things...
Complete wild child of a backwater village from Day 1. 
LIKE-- The anime episode DID NOT explain how he got that scar and the guy didn’t bring it up ever. To be fair, that wasn’t a big focus because the anime didn’t make it a focus. Reading that part though did more for his character and a little of his upbringing, through speculation, making it a rather slow-building but also fascinating introduction into this series.
Just a bit of an add-on, but if the manga introduced Luffy in the same level of neutrality as what the Anime did, It may not have fully made it clear if Luffy was going to be the main protagonist. Then again, it’s a shounen manga, maybe it was rather obvious to everyone else. Regardless, his introduction served to 
(1) Make his entrance memorable
(2) Establish his character that could either compare or set him apart from his teen self.
(3) Act as a sort of precursor towards the introduction of Luffy’s world and upbringing (which isn’t completely established until the last few arcs of Pre-Time Skip)
Personality
The best way I could describe Luffy at this point is a stereotypical kid...
Energetic, short-tempered, adventure-seeking, easily impressed, and ignorant...
That last description is actually something I brought up in a separate post about the “Fluid themes” of One Piece. Because I found that a small but overarching part in many (almost all) themes and world issues that One Piece reflects has some level of unawareness or apathy. Jimbe put it best during the Fishman Island Flashback when they found Koala (paraphrasing)
“They are afraid of us because they don’t know us.”
Know us referring to acknowledging them as people on the same level as humans.
Because of that and plenty of other instances from the East Blue, it can be a potential center for many characters who go up against or wish to explore the world and find that they are a frog in a well.
And that’s what kid Luffy represents. A rather aggressive frog in a well that wants out.
Granted, he is a seven-year-old, whose schooling has a closer equivalent to the 16th and 17th centuries of our world, living in what appears to be a farming community, so I’d imagine his education only focuses on at least the basic levels of reading/writing, mathematics, etc. A small, unexciting farming village probably has more concerns over their melon crops rather than what the world has going on. Adding in Luffy, you get a kid who dreams about being a pirate and adventuring outside the isolated village, making him avidly interested in a world he has no experience with. Or in a world he thinks is all fun and games.
That’s pretty standard for any child that has a mild and peaceful life. No doubt Shanks and his crew would tell him stories about their adventures. Not as a sort of attempt to make him a pirate, but because he was easily entertained by it, building up this expectation with stereotypical pirate personas. And whether he has his “destructive” tendencies before they became a fixture in Windmill Village, they definitely seemed to amp it up enough for Luffy to try and prove he was “man enough” to be a pirate at seven years old.
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Then when you add in this idealistic expectation with the selfishness of a young child, it creates an opportunity to learn. Because, as any kid may go through, will find that their fantasy of the world won’t be what they expected, and will often react negatively. Luffy’s expectation of Shanks is that he is the strongest man worthy enough to be a pirate.
Now, Luffy’s view of a “real man” stems a lot from this stereotype of men solving their problems through fighting only. Which also embodies this rather damaging philosophy of never running away or backing down from a fight (which I refer to as stupid bravery - something that comes up in a certain other character).
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The amazing thing about all the combined aspects of this kid is the ability to create a learning lesson for Luffy. Which can become a motivational factor in his pursuit as a pirate.
His easily impressed nature makes it known both when the Red-Haired Pirates talk positively about piracy adventures and when Shanks leaves the village. The difference between the moments can be showcased by the difference in determination and will to make an effort to achieve his dream. As he declared he wants to be King of The Pirates, he sets himself to work at it, rather than try and go with others.
How He Shapes the Story / World Around Them
I don’t know if anybody else made a similar connection (I wanna say someone DID but I can’t remember where) but in combination with Luffy’s general enthusiasm growing up hearing wild stories, his narrative reminds me so much of Don Quixote De La Mancha.
It’s been a while since I last read that story-- and by read I mean translate some paragraphs from Spanish to English during my Spanish I class in freshman year of high school. Nonetheless, I thoroughly enjoyed the story. Part I entails an old man who, after indulging himself with various stories of knights and valor, decides he wants to partake in his own adventures. Under various delusions and misadventures, his story becomes a rather well-known one.
Don Quixote was called the first “modern book”. That was something my Spanish teacher mentioned regarding its acknowledgment by the world and always stuck with me. It was one of the first stories of the early medieval period to focus on a regular man. Other stories before this tended to be about legends, gods, demigods-- individuals who often were referred to as legends because they were born into high status (often above humans). Either through original texts (often for religious purposes) and then through varying interpretations (such as the Arthurian Legends), these tales were a part of the status quo.
Kid Luffy is a person that reflects so much of the Don Quixote story (And not just because his village has windmills-- the most iconic scene about the knight’s story). He is that simple, normal boy that longs for his own adventures when there seemingly is already a well-talked-about story about someone who achieved infamy. In place of that is a man named Gold Roger whose execution we see in the manga’s opening. At this point, we don’t have much understanding about how it impacts the world as of yet, we just know it is setting up for something significant to the story.
Luffy becomes that “regular” person from a small-town with big expectations for a grand adventure.
That perspective can slowly build into the story by starting in a simple setting with a character going through one of the first dynamic changes in his life. Luffy’s experience with Shanks’s sacrifice sets a course in his own adventure. A story that trails into a rather bonkers adventure at the end of chapter 1.
His development is what shaped his world. It’s the way he learns when as it stems from the consequences of his actions. Especially ones where the smaller ones turn out to be very costly, making it a hard lesson that ingrains into the young kid. His actions created by his old ideologies sparked an intense reaction in the people around him. Especially Shanks, who felt he was worth losing an arm towards.
How The WORLD Shapes HIM
So, for the sake of the fact that kid Luffy’s “World” in Chapter 1 mostly consists of Windmill Village, I’m adding in Shank’s and his crew’s influence to extend and further give credence to his influence. Because, as of this point, Shanks represents a glimpse into the life of a pirate that Luffy strives for.
With Luffy being in a quiet environment all seven years of life, there is growth through basic schooling and healthy child development (theoretically since Makino seems to be the most likely one acting as his guardian), instead of doing things outside that norm. Now Shanks is the odd factor that creates new development into Luffy’s dreams and future ambitions. 
The crew’s stories, charisma, and connection towards the kid actively (and probably unintentionally) created a positive expectation if he chose to pursue his dream. While that sounds inspiring, there were also negative aspects. Such as driving his ignorance and impatient nature to seek it out too early in his life.
Shanks then became a mediator. Luffy often has mixed feelings with Shanks as the man begets a level of encouragement while verbally making fun of Luffy for being a kid constantly. Despite that, it doesn’t completely deter Luffy’s ambitions. All it does is slowly drop his high expectations in Shanks after the first bar incident. This is again done by his childish outlook of physical strength and bravery equating to his ideal of a real man.
With Higama, Luffy learns about real-world dangers, and how bravery won’t always be enough to win battles. The same can be said for physical strength but at that moment it doesn’t apply to Luffy. 
Shanks’ and the crew’s involvement helped Luffy’s views change. His expectations are fulfilled, which in turn reveal that he was wrong about them.
Finally, seeing Shanks’ sacrifice unfold drove Luffy into a pang of newfound guilt. By then, he was able to change one part of his world views from a childish fantasy into the beginnings of a mature way of thinking. 
He gains some level of patience. Along with a set goal to work with. Attributes which are identifiable with Luffy in the chapters last few panels.
Patience = Luffy took time to train and learn to set sail at age seventeen.
Set goal = Be King of the Pirates
Add-Ons
When I say that kid Luffy, after Shanks’ sacrifice, gained a level of patience, it is meant as a deduction during that chapter. By no means am I insinuating that it became a permanent trait for his character. Because as of chapter 1, all of Luffy’s personality has yet to be revealed.
And this will apply to other posts for various characters. They may behave in ways during or in response to a particular event but it doesn’t necessarily equate to that becoming a whole personality trait. Calling Luffy patient, with having full acknowledgment of his personality during the bulk of One Piece, is completely off. But, there can and will be moments where Luffy will act patient when he deems it necessary.
This is a little hard to articulate but I hope it makes enough sense.
🏴‍☠️🐒
After-Notes
Here’s my first attempt at this analysis. It felt scattered even after editing everything. Breaking down characters sounds easy (and most times it is) but articulating and connecting things takes a lot of work.
Here's to hoping it gets easier with the next character. And maybe shorter paragraphs.
Up Next: Shanks (East Blue)
14 notes · View notes
lecarreverse · 3 years
Text
The great author recalls Smiley’s origins in one of his last pieces of writing, a new introduction to Call for the Dead.
I wrote Call for the Dead, my first novel, because I had been boiling to write for 20 years but had never quite had the prompt. I had done book illustrations, I had written bad poetry and one or two stories, and produced a couple of amateur plays, and become a reasonable hand at caricatures. In a bookless household, I had managed to acquire some sort of taste for books, largely because of a master at one of my early schools who read aloud to us beautifully from Conan Doyle and GK Chesterton. At 16, having fled my English public school, I took a huge sidestep into German language and literature and ended up teaching them at Eton, with the result that English letters always played second fiddle. It took a lurch from Eton into the intelligence community to get me writing Call for the Dead, and the prompt came from John Bingham, novelist, spy and colleague.
In MI5 the standard of report writing was very high indeed. Registry and senior officers were all pedants and descended on you like eagles if they spotted a sloppy sentence or an unsubstantiated claim: “Too fluffy. Can you actually demonstrate this? If this is hearsay, kindly say so clearly,” ran the marginal comments in different handwritings as your report came whistling back to you from the top floor. It was my first experience of having to battle for every sentence I wrote as if it had to stand up in court.
The agent-running section to which I was eventually attached was dominated by two figures, both men: Maxwell Knight, naturalist, broadcaster and the subject of at least two published biographies, and Bingham. Knight, allegedly of the far right, though I never heard him on politics, was by the time I knew him tolerated only on account of the agents he had recruited long ago and that were still beholden to him. He was a big, unwashed, silvery, boy scout of a man, of great charm and idiosyncratic habits that included bringing ailing small animals such as gerbils into the office in his jacket pocket. Bingham could scarcely have been more different.
Everything about Knight suggested that he be enjoyed with caution, but John was approachable, unassuming, quietly spoken and a kindly shepherd and confessor to his agents, mostly women. He was also a needle-sharp intelligence officer of great experience, as I had good reason to learn when one of my agents was blown and I needed his urgent advice on how to limit the damage. And John of necessity did much of his work in the evenings, when his agents returned home from their high-wire acts needing his consolation and wisdom and a large gin.
So by day, when he wasn’t writing a report, John was writing a novel. He had written quite a few by then, thrillers, all published by Gollancz and well received. I don’t remember that we ever talked about the process of writing. John, once a journalist, didn’t see himself as a literary man, just a thorough writer doing a job. The one piece of advice I remember him giving me was to stick a postcard with £100 written on it above my desk and look at it every time I thought of giving up. But far more inspiring than anything he could have said was the simple act of him sitting five yards from me day after day at his desk with his head down and a hangover, writing himself a novel on lined paper. And I suppose, at the most primitive level, I decided that if he could do that, I could.
I lived in Great Missenden in those days and commuted to Marylebone station, then walked or took the bus to Curzon Street. The train journey was an hour plus, so I wrote in small notebooks supplied, I am ashamed to say, by Her Majesty’s Stationery Office. I just wrote. And the first person who came to mind was the man who got me going: John Bingham, one of the meek who do not inherit the earth.
But no real character in my experience is drawn directly from life, and for George Smiley I needed a lot of things that John simply hadn’t got and didn’t wish to have: an obsession with German literature (although he spoke decent German), a miserable private life, a sense of being strapped to the secret treadmill and not knowing how to get off it, and most importantly serious moral questions about the work I was doing. John was, to say the least, a nationalist, and doubts of that sort were simply not his thing, particularly when his every evening was spent buoying up women agents who were, in their estimation and his, sacrificing their private lives for England. So where to turn?
Well, my own life had been pretty well supplied with moral doubt, not least by my father, a conman on the run from the law. But I needed more stately concerns for George Smiley, bred in me in part by the unsparing plays of Schiller, Lessing and Büchner and the anguished cries of 17th-century Germany.
But Smiley is not at heart an academic. In the beginning was not the word but the deed, Goethe tells us through the agency of his Faust, and Smiley refuses to shirk from action where he believes in the rightness of his cause. And so it seems to me now, with the luxury of hindsight, that for Smiley’s conflicted inner life I resorted to my beloved mentor, Dr Vivian Green, by then rector of Lincoln College, Oxford: scholar, administrator, closet iconoclast and Anglican priest whose institutional faith over time gave way to a universal humanism. I don’t know any more whether you will find the seeds of all this theorising in my first stab at George Smiley, but I do. We have grown up together, changed and matured together, and seen his likeness exquisitely portrayed by two great actors, Alec Guinness and Gary Oldman. But for me he’s still the same soul-searching secret sharer that I wrote about in little notebooks on the rattly commuter train from Great Missenden to Marylebone.
Extracted from Call for the Dead by John le Carré; the 60th anniversary edition is published by Penguin Classics on Thursday.
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dxrcasxmeadxwes · 2 years
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Have you met DORCAS MEADOWES? SHE turned TWENTY ONE on MARCH 17th, is a HALF-BLOOD and is currently UNEMPLOYED. I heard they belong to the ORDER OF THE PHOENIX  and was in GRYFFINDOR. Don’t they look an awful lot like NATHALIE EMMANUEL?
** BIOGRAPHY ** 
Dorcas’ mother’s favorite story to tell when she was a baby is that she entered the world smiling and laughing, instead of crying like most children. According to anyone since that moment, that’s how she’s taken on life. Years before Hogwarts were easy for Dorcas. The half-blood was raised to never have a doubt of how loved, beautiful and cherished she was. She was never informed on how cruel the world could be, how scary magic could be used or how dangerous angry people were. 
Her magic started coming to her around the age of 7. It wasn’t shocking to the three of them, while her mother was a muggle, her father had kept the house brimming with magic. It wasn’t until Dorcas was 5 that she realized not everyone had magic. She just assumed that everyone kept it a secret because they didn’t want to make everyone jealous of what they were good at. It was also that age that Dorcas realized that her mother wasn’t a witch. The dynamic changed around then as well. Suddenly Dorcas wasn’t allowed to go everywhere, just in case she accidentally used magic and someone saw it. She wasn’t allowed to speak about how the flowers at their house were brighter than anyone else’s or how her dad does the dishes so fast he doesn’t even touch them. She didn’t understand, but she went along with it. 
It wasn’t until she stepped on the train to Hogwarts that Dorcas realized why everything changed back then. The small eleven year old was simply walking back to an empty compartment when some older kids had caught wind that she was a half blood and was thrown against the wall and called so many names she hadn’t even heard of. She was finally rescued by a fellow first year who yelled at everyone before crying in the compartment for what felt like the entire train ride. 
That memory- nor first year hasn’t left Dorcas since that day. The years went on and she became more resilient, colder to those who didn’t immediately prove that they weren’t fighting against her existence. Since then she elected herself as the designated welcoming committee for the first years. She saw herself in the large eyes and the scared smiles, so unaware of everything around them. To those not in her immediate circle she was know to keep her hand on her wand and her words sharp, being continuously taught that the pureblood circle was stronger than anything. 
Since leaving Hogwarts she’s been in and out of Ministry secretary jobs and a willing and active member of the Order. Proving herself as not only a brilliant asset when it comes to dueling, Dorcas has proven an excellent talent in Oblivination and has been an active hand were needed. 
** THE BREAKDOWN ** 
Dorcas was a kind soul through all of her Hogwarts now, and is a fierce friend to those she has. She is known for being cold to people she doesn’t know well, believing that she would rather be safe than sorry during the war. 
She has heavily distanced herself from her parents during this time, terrified that they will be a target of the death eaters. 
She really hasn’t let herself go or have fun since graduating and joining the order. She just can’t understand how anyone would be able to relax. She tried to work on it, but, doesn’t work that great. 
** WANTED CONNECTIONS ** 
She has a wanted connections page { here } but here are definitely my top picks! 
this was a fling / relationship / situationship that happened during hogwarts. a pureblood who was either actively trying to get back at their parents without telling dorcas or a pureblood who truly loved her. either way, it ended their seventh year and now they find themselves on opposing sides of the war and everything hurts all over again. 
this is the other first year who saved her when she was being bullied on the train. open to either gender, any house, any blood status. i would love them to be inseparable throughout hogwarts and still very close now. could also add angst and feelings, but also love the idea of just besties for the resties. 
there was an attack, and in the hurry and fear of everything, an order member shot a spell into her instead of a death eater. this still hasn’t held over with dorcas and she refrains from speaking to them as often as possible. not the first one she is willing to stand behind to help at the moment. 
** OUT OF CHARACTER ** 
it’s a me- a mario 
<3 i hope you love her guys 
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noxtms · 3 years
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❝   WE DOUBT EVEN THE MOST SEASONED OF SEERS could have predicted the way that we would exit the dismal winter season ! spring is finally here, and though we’ve all been shaken by the events of the past three months, the wwn is here to remind you that while some things do change... there’s even more that doesn’t. a diagon alley staple, the start of spring festival, kicked off this week in a rather exciting fashion when the leprechauns employed by the ministry of magic to run their annual treasure hunt decided to take to the alley on the backs of some of the magical menagerie’s unmistakable lambs ! it took four aurors several hours to round them up again, and if you were wondering where your tax galleons were going, now seems a good time to remind you that it’s to that specialist department ! we’ve been assured that everything is now completely under control, and that the spring festival and the assorted st patrick’s day celebrations are expected to run without a hitch... and without any more runaway leprechauns, though i think i speak for everyone when i say that that’s something i’d kind of like to see for myself...   ❞
WHO, WHAT, WHEN, WHERE :  
there’s almost always some celebration or another taking place on diagon alley. as the heart of the british wixen world - and given the sheer number and variety of businesses and vendors all hoping to maximise their profits - they tend to take any opportunity that comes their way, as is their right.
the first START OF SPRING festival happened decades ago, and what it looks like often changes. the magical menagerie will always have baby chicks and tiny ducklings on front window display, and sometimes, you might just be able to get yourself a little pet lamb ( usually dyed an outrageous color ). the leaky cauldron will always serve meals heavy on the spring vegetables, and vendors along the alley will promise that the ones they’re selling are the very best type of hand picked organic. shops will slash their prices on certain items ( almost always the ones they haven’t managed to shift since the holiday season ), and there’s always little activity stands, for families and kids and really, anyone who wants to take part. learn how to make a crown from freshly picked wildflowers, or bet a sickle on which magic endowed butterfly will emerge from its cocoon first on the stand outside of gringott’s. try the specially themed ice creams at fortescue’s ( honey is particularly popular, at the start of the month ), and indulge in the feeling that springtime brings ! the days are getting longer, the air is thick the smell of freshly bloomed flowers, and life is... returning. it feels particularly poignant this year. 
as it turns out, no one is immune to the charms of the irish, either. the diagon alley celebrations probably started out drenched in irony, but they’ve become wildly separated from what they were originally attached to over the years - probably helped by the fact they blend so much with the spring time festivities. quality quidditch supplies almost always begins pushing their irish team merch in the leadup to the day, and the ministry employs real life leprechauns to do a kid’s treasure hunt with real leprechaun gold. there’s even vendors selling muggle beers to those above the legal age that they promise will give you an authentic irish experience - though, take my word for it : guinness doesn’t compare to a good old fashioned butterbeer.
the fun doesn’t stop as the week goes on, of course : on the day, families have been promised their annual little parade. little is the operative word, given it’s a bit of a tight squeeze - floats that actually float are decorated in garish greens and oranges & everyone is guaranteed a faceful of fast sticking confetti. if that doesn’t do it for you, there’s no need to worry. it wouldn’t be a proper irish celebration without an ‘all out bash’, and the leaky cauldron has flyers up from the start of march about their february 17th patrick’s day party. this year’ll be the first where they have to compete with the poison apple nightclub, of course, but... what do they really have, aside from their themed magical drinks ? 
OUT OF CHARACTER :
it’s a little on the nose, i won’t deny it : but a festival that really celebrates the everything that makes up the spring season, with a real special focus on the new life that it brings - really felt like a good place to start, this month. of course, i’ve also managed to throw in good ‘ol st paddy.. this may be a britain based rp, but who would i be if i were not constantly making ireland relevant ? we move in real time, which means that while all the little extras provide setting and content for threads, we won’t hit the end part, the party, until later on.
this event will be two weeks long, beginning officially on monday the 8th of march at 12:00am GMT - click this sentence to see what that works out at for your timezone ! 
you're under no obligation for the first week to pause any threads you currently have going - when we transition from general festival to final phase, we’ll take a little vote and we’ll see what the consensus is ! 
event related starters ( including private ones ) should be tagged with nox.event013, and the location is strictly diagon alley. please keep the galleon system in mind with these starters, since they can earn you points ! 
if you have any questions or concerns please do not hesitate to message the main, and please reply with your favorite holiday song once you’ve read the post !
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astraeagreengrass · 4 years
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exile [the woods part 1]
When you wake up in the floor of your apartment, you have no idea of how much the world has changed
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Word Count: 2.708
Warnings: angst, mentions of death and death-related themes, PTSD, brief allusion to a panic attack.
A/N: A month ago, Taylor Swift released her eight studio album folklore and, unsurprisingly, it took over my life. The stories Taylor beautifully narrates in her songs inspired me to write something of my own: the woods is a four-part, post-Endgame story, with some slight changes to the canon, featuring Steve Rogers. Updates will be every Friday. Thank you to @xbuchananbarnes for proof-reading this and @thegetawaywriter for encouraging me to write. The banner picture was found here. Dividers are from @writeyourmindaway. Here is exile. I hope you like it ♡
i think i've seen this film before and i didn't like the ending you're not my homeland anymore so what am i defending now? you were my town, now i'm in exile, seein' you out i think i've seen this film before so i'm leavin' out the side door
Being pieced back together was like a hangover.
Like drinking too much wine one evening and then waking up on a foreign bed, not knowing how you got there. It was a pounding headache, a churning stomach, a dry throat. The back of your teeth were sensitive and the sound of sirens rung too loudly on your ears.
In the aftermath of your intoxication, the city is deafening.
You groaned at the light - you must’ve been so wasted if you’d forgotten the blinds. Every breath took a toll of your lungs, stretching your muscles beyond their strength, creaking your joints as you exhaled.
Someone gasped, startling you.
The familiar floorboards of your apartment greeted you when your eyes opened. Timeworn almond timber, the New York staple. Craning your neck, you saw a foot. Shit. You weren't one to bring one night stands home, or actually have them in the first place. Little ol' you was a little too square, a little too cautious, struggling to keep her trust issues from spilling out of her hands. Definitely not the best candidate for loose-stringed affairs, but your grandma always told you there was a first time for everything.
The foot’s owner nudged you, and you groaned again.
“Miss?” they said. “Are you alive?”
I don’t know.
Your gaze focused and you noticed the person was a boy of eleven or twelve, with a beautiful dark mop of curls and soft brown eyes. What the...
“Who are you?” you managed to croak. There was an ashy taste in your mouth, as if you’d swallowed dust.
The boy looked up and across, and you noticed that, on your left side, his father was crouching beside your body. He looked just like the kid, except a couple of decades older, so you assumed he was the father.
“My name is Cal,” the man said, spacely, as if he’d might frighten you if he spoke normally. “This is my son Daniel. We’re not going to hurt you.”
"Nice to know the invaders won't hurt me," you tried to say, but it came out a jumbled, messy current of words, like a baby first learning to communicate.
"Invaders?" the boy exclaimed, insulted. "We live here!"
"Daniel!" his father chided. "Miss, what is the last thing you remember?"
You pressed a palm to the ground, trying to lay your weight on it so you could stand up. You weren't about to answer an unknown man's questions while laying face-down on your own apartment floor. You might be hungover, but you had more dignity than that. When your body crumpled like a twig under a boot, Cal held you up, helping you to a seating position facing the window.
Craning your neck to shield your eyes from the sun, you noticed it.
Golden brown leaves.
Golden brown leaves that shouldn't exist in May.
You clearly remember opening the windows yesterday to green, lively foliage. New York was many things - loud, chaotic, more often than not dangerous - but it’s seasons were consistent, enduring. Through the tempests and disturbances, nature persevered in her year-long cycle, living and dying and living again.
These particular leaves belonged to October, perhaps even early November, never May.
Something was terribly wrong.
“What day is it?” you whispered, wide eyes going from the window to the man aiding you.
Cal grimaced. His boy was suddenly very quiet.
When you were a child, you used to have nightmares: a ghost in the attic, a wolf haunting the woods outside your house, an IED blowing up your father's convoy in Iraq. They'd trap your consciousness, suffocating your mind with fear and panic, and no night light or teddy bear could stifle the onslaught of relentless screams that rattled the walls and hallways of your childhood home, until your frantic grandmother shook you awake. The reality that greeted you on the floor of your apartment was that Twilight Zone all over again.
“Please,” you pleaded, perhaps to the man, perhaps to yourself.
Cal sighed.
“Today is October 17th, 2023,” he said and you learned that the only thing scarier than a nightmare is life itself. “You’ve been dead for the past five years.”
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“We could go to the house in the woods,” you mumbled to the warmth of Steve’s chest.
He tightened his hold around your body, pressing a feather-light kiss to the crown of your head.
“Whatever you want,” he said. “You’ve got me for the weekend.”
“The whole weekend?” you smiled at him, finding the reassurance you needed in his indigo gaze.
Steve kissed you again, a fierce press of lips this time. Mouths and tongues and teeth intertwined, your hand finding hip, his hand finding you thigh.
“The whole weekend,” he breathed in the shell of your ear, right before the two of you became nothing more than a mess of pillows and sheets, drowning in love and want and lust. “And then forever.”
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When the world ended, several hospital units closed down due to lack of patients.
When the Avengers managed to reverse the effects of the Snap - no one knew how they did it, but everyone knew it was them because of course it was - the mayor of New York declared the interruption of all kinds of activities in the city in order to help those returning. It was in a campaign hospital in Bryant Park that Steve Rogers found you, sitting up cross-legged and wrapped up in a grey blanket, having your temperature checked by one of the volunteers.
Wearing dark clothes and a cap, Steve was nothing more than a shadow behind the woman's shoulder. A lesser-trained gaze would glide past his figure in a quarter of a second, but not you. Never you. You'd recognize him in a sea of people, as if the blood that sustained you and the bones that built you knew exactly where to find him.
Steve had the decency to wait until the woman was done to approach you. With slow, clearly measured steps, he came closer, taking a seat at the foot of your stretcher. If he reached out his arm, he'd touch you, but he refrained and you were glad he did. In your mind, you saw him days ago, but reality told you differently. The calendar at the nurse's station, the newspaper you got a hold on, the constant broadcast of news: all of them mocked you, tormented you. Five years had gone by - more time than you’d ever had with the man across from you. And if there was ever any lingering doubt in your mind that this was some elaborate trick to fool you, they faded when you noticed the modest signs of aging that nothing but time and grief could inflict on a Super Soldier.
Again, a lesser-trained gaze probably wouldn’t catch them, but that would never be you when it came to Steve Rogers.
The two of you stayed in silence for minutes, watching a CNN report of a family reuniting in Idaho. The mother snapped right after the birth of her daughter - now a little girl with ginger pigtails, hugging her legs and kissing her hands. Everyday since you woke up on the floor of your apartment, there'd been thousands of stories such as this: parents finding children, husbands finding wives. The fallen - that's what the press called people like you, the dead that weren't really dead - all had the same lost look in their eyes. You supposed that's what happened when your clock was five years too late.
“What happened?” you finally asked when the broadcast changed to twin brothers reconvening in Hawaii. “What went wrong?”
Steve didn’t look at you, instead he kept pulling at a loose thread on the hem of his shirt.
“He was too strong,” he sighed. “And I thought I could fight him without Tony, but…”
You nodded.
“One of the nurses said he was badly wounded in the battle upstate,” you mentioned.
“Yeah,” Steve agreed. “But he’ll recover. Banner is looking after him. He’s got a kid now, you know? Tony. Her name’s Morgan.”
“Wow,” you smiled genuinely. “That sounds unbelievable and incredible at the same time.
“She’s a good girl,” Steve said. “Keeps Tony on his toes.”
On the TV, the two brothers embraced with a beautiful sunset as background.
“What about Sam and Nat?” you wondered.
Steve's fidgety hands stilled. With the left one he rubbed his mouth and chin until his skin was reddish.
"Sam was like you," he muttered and the implicit words hurt more in his voice than anyone else's. "Natasha… She didn't make it."
She didn't make it.
Natasha Romanoff. Natalia. Your mentor, your friend. The strongest woman you'd ever met. She didn't make it.
"What?" you gasped. "What do you mean 'she didn't make it'? Didn't she come back?"
Like Sam and the mother in Idaho and the twins in Hawaii. Like you.
Steve shook his head.
"It wasn't like that," he said. "She survived the Snap. Spent years trying to find something, anything, even the smallest possibility of getting everyone back and when we finally did… She sacrificed herself so we could have the Soul Stone."
"Sacrificed herself? For a stone?" you were extremely agitated now, the grey blanked falling from your shoulders as you looked at Steve searching for any sign of emotion. "Steven, look at me!"
 His eyes were glazed, a big blue sea threatening to spill over in waves of sadness.
"It wasn't a simple stone, Y/N. I'd rather not explain to you here, people can't know about this," he whispered, looking over his shoulder for anyone that could be listening.
"You mean they can't know why they disappeared and were brought back together like broken toys?" you exclaimed. "Toys that the Avengers can grab and then toss aside however they please? I'm not your toy, Steve!"
You knew you could be cruel. Ruthless. A child yelling ferociously at the top of her lungs until she got what she wanted. An angry teenager. An intelligence officer with obscure morals. But even when he left you without a goodbye, you'd always kept your forked tongue away from Steve Rogers.
Until now.
"Please," Steve pleaded. "Let's go home. I'll explain everything to you when we get there."
"I have no home," you spat. "I had a home three days ago when you came in saying something bad would happen, only to leave me again. Now I have nothing!”
Your tears were hot when they streamed down your face.
“I don't even know myself anymore,” you admitted and somehow that was worse than knowing you were alone in a world you didn't recognize. "All I know is dust. My bones were dust and now they're not. My heart was dust and now it's not. Everyone keeps telling me that I'm safe and that 'it's all over', but what is?"
You gasped, trying to breathe in some tranquility and breathe out some of the agony twisting your insides, but all that came out was a distressing wheeze.
"How do I know that I will not disappear again?" you cried and there was no more Steve, just a curtain of water contorting his figure, like one of those paintings he loved and you never understood the meaning.
The stretcher creaked when Steve pulled you to him, rubbing your arms back as he whispered your name.
"Breathe, Y/N. Breathe."
But you were so scared of breathing. So scared that you'd taste ash again and your lungs would collapse in dust, leaving not a shred of the person you were for people to remember you by. So scared of losing a game you didn't even know you were playing.
"Steve..." You weeped, gripping his shirt tightly.
"I'm here, my love. Just breathe."
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You weren't expecting him.
After two years, the hope that kept you up at night waiting for him grew tired, dwindling until it was mere utopia. So you shut the windows, changed the locks and turned off the bedside lamp. Perhaps that's what brought him to your door, you thought. Maybe, wherever he was in the world, he felt your devotion waning, so he returned to haunt you.
You had to admit, though, that of all the ways you imagined Steve Rogers coming back to you, him ringing your doorbell at midnight wasn't one of them.
He looked handsome, with shaggy blonde hair curling at his ears and a beard, and it hurt like a punch to the stomach.
It's hard when the one that hurts the most you looks so unfazed, meanwhile you're just a shell of what you used to be.
"You've lost weight," was the first thing he said, as if he'd left to grab groceries instead of becoming an international criminal.
"What are you doing here?" you replied, ignoring his greeting. If that could even be a greeting.
He sighed, mentioning with his head to the hallway behind you.
“Can I come in?”
You stepped aside, letting him walk through. You didn’t bother turning the key because if anyone really wanted to get to him they wouldn’t be worried about leaving your door in one piece. Steve stood in the middle of the living room, his hands on his waist. An onlooker would never guess that he once belonged there.
“Did you hear about Tony?” He asked when you sat down at the armchair next to the window. The one you bought together in Ikea and Steve insisted he could assemble on his own.
“Yes,” you said. Tony Stark went missing after an alien ship appeared in Midtown. It was exactly the kind of disaster that would bring Steve Rogers to New York. “Have you found him?”
“No,” he replied. “But the same aliens that took Tony attacked Vision in Edinburgh. We managed to stop them from killing him, but he’s badly wounded. When he heard about Tony we flew to the Compound.”
You nodded. It was strange how you could feel so detached from these people- Vision, Wanda, even Tony in a way. They were once your friends, your colleagues. Now they just felt like characters in Steve’s tale - no longer part of your life, only his.
“And why are you here?” you asked.
Why did you come to the home we used to share? you meant to say. Did you miss it? Did you miss me?
He shrugged.
“I thought maybe you could’ve found something on Tony and…”
“If you went to the compound it means you saw Rhodey and Rhodey has most definitely told you that I quit my job when the Avengers split,” you interrupted him. “I have no tech, no machinery, no means whatsoever to find Tony here, nothing that Rhodey has at his disposal Upstate. So why are you really here?”
He was a stranger. Cold and detached, like the house that once trapped him. There was no tenderness in the blue of his eyes.
“Something bad is coming, Y/N,” he said. “I’m not sure what it is yet, but I… I wanted to see you. I wanted to know that you were safe.”
You thought Steve Rogers was done breaking your heart. You thought that when you stopped expecting his return you’d go back to who you were before him, even if you couldn’t find that girl amongst the mess he made of you. You thought you’d be safe from love, and trust and kind soldiers with blue eyes, but you’d never be safe from him - your fellow and your foe.
“Is that all you wanted to say?” you croaked, holding back the tears swimming in your throat with a cough.
Steve fisted his hands, and for a moment you swore that he was stopping himself from holding you. But he just hung his head, tearing his gaze from where you were sitting by the window.
“Just stay home, ok?” he stated. “Try not to leave the house until this situation is resolved.”
Then he turned around and left again.
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the-hidden-writer · 3 years
Text
Lucidity
A WandaVision oneshot (SPOILERS!) Words: 1,623
Summary: When White Vision leaves WestView and discovers that Tony Stark is dead, he starts to realise that he is very different to who he used to be, but isn't sure how.
Read on AO3! (check reblog for link)
Lucidity
He is Vision.
That was the one clear thought in his mind. It pierced through the stitches of the (now unfamiliar) mismatched coding, giving him clarity and yet confusing him at the same time. The overwhelming instinct to destroy The Vision and Wanda Maximoff slowly began to recede, leaving behind only the memory of an order and a small urge to comply.
It would be wrong to terminate Wanda Maximoff, would it not? He recalled telling her that he loved her. Loved ones do not harm each other, do they?
(“I love you,” he grits out, as her magic finally manages to penetrate the stone. The tiny sliver or relief overpowers the immense agony he is in and he releases the breath he has been holding, drinking in her features one last time before squeezing his eyes shut to embrace his fate. The last thing he knows is pain beyond imagination as she destroys all that he is.)
Or perhaps they do, depending on the circumstances. He felt like he should know the answer. He did not.
As the last of his new programming was broken apart, the order itself did not leave him.
Terminate Wanda Maximoff. Neutralise The Vision.
But he was The Vision. So… he must destroy himself, correct? That was the logical thing to do. So then why was he feeling hesitant to do so?
He flew straight upwards to set about to accomplish this, surpassing the strange red barrier of Wanda’s creation until he was far above it. Since the sky was clear that day, from his perspective he could see that it was hexagonal. He then angled his body so that he was upside down, decreased his density to more closely match that of a human’s, and let gravity do the work.
Eyes closed, he started to fall.
(“Mr Stark, there is something I have been meaning to ask of you.” Tony turns to him in surprise, but that surprise quickly morphs into that odd, warm expression he wears whenever he talks to him. He tells him to continue, so he does. “I have discovered that… that you and Dr Banner have programmed me in such a way that I am unable to bring harm to myself.” Tony’s eyes widen and there is an unspoken question which he does not answer. “I was wondering if you could change that. If I were to be corrupted in some way, I want to be able to stop myself before I hurt others.” The reasons he goes on to detail are perfectly logical, but he does not understand the heartbreak written on Tony’s face.)
He stops himself just as he is about to enter Wanda’s domain.
Life review is a phenomenon encountered by those having a near-death experience where it is said that their life “flashes before their eyes”. Not once did Vision ever think he himself would experience it. He did not when he was being killed by Wanda, he did not when he was being killed by Thanos. So it stands to reason that he should not in this situation, either. And yet he did.
Countless vague memories of Tony Stark. Much clearer memories of the destruction of Ultron and Sokovia. Of stolen moments with Wanda Maximoff. Of the mind stone communicating with him. Of Thanos.
He no longer had the mind stone. Wanda Maximoff was somewhere beneath him that very moment, appearing to fight a witch. The last he saw of Tony Stark was when he was on a news broadcast somewhere in New York. The last he saw of Thanos was when his hand was clawing through his skull in Wakanda.
He tried to access the Internet to find their whereabouts, but rather jarringly realised that he was completely cut-off. Unlike his memories that had simply been blocked from him, connecting to the Internet was now something he was physically unable to do.
He grimaced. That could prove to be a problem.
A problem that Tony Stark could fix. As the world appeared to be in no immediate danger, he could only assume that Thanos was not currently a threat. Once his disarranged mind had been mended, he would then go to Wakanda to assess the situation. Until then, he had to find Tony Stark.
Being restricted from using the Internet felt akin to the loss of a limb, which is why it took him a few moments to search through his memories and decide that the most rational place to start looking would be the Avengers Compound.
(“I never thought I would share a house with Tony Stark.” Wanda tells him after he asks her if there is a difference between a house and a home. “But I’ve always thought of a house as just where you live. A home is the people and memories attached to it.” He is still confused. He supposes that the Avengers Compound is his house, but is it truly his home if he has never lived anywhere else? Wanda seems to sense his doubt, as she always does, and she takes his hand comfortingly. “Vision… I think this our home now.”)
And so he began his flight, as fast as could, to New York.
~-.-~
The Compound had been destroyed.
Where the New Avengers Facility had once been were acres of flattened forest. From where he was hovering, he could see the teems of teams of people, all hard at work completing various tasks. Some were clearing the remainder of rubble, others were attempting to rebuild the facility from the nothing that was left, and, perhaps the most curiously, in the middle of it all there was a large group of journalists surrounding a small monument.
What had happened?
Unlike the rest of the facility, that mysterious monument was the only thing that appeared to be fully built. In an attempt to better understand the situation, Vision moved closer and partially phased into a tree to privately see it more clearly.
He waited for the crowds to move in such a way that he would be able to see what was written on the metal pillar, and when he could finally read it he felt his whole body tense.
(“Listen V, it’s my will and I get to decide who’s on it. Clue’s in the name.” He tries to argue but Tony interrupts him. “Nope, not gonna hear any of your ‘ohh but I’m not human’ bullshit. I had JARVIS down to inherit a bunch of stuff before this, and- yes, I know you’re not him, this is just to prove a point.” He listens in silence, still disagreeing with Tony’s decision. The man’s voice takes on a solemn tone. “I want you to have this much because believe it or not you’re like a son to me, Vision.” All of a sudden, all of his questions regarding his and Mr Stark’s relationship are cleared up. Having Tony say it himself helps it all make sense. Their bond had grown to be more than just inventor and creation. It was that of a father and son. “And I’m gonna treat you like one, even on my will, alright?”)
Tony Stark was dead. Anthony Edward Stark was… dead. If the words on the plaque of red and gold were to be believed, he sacrificed himself to save the universe on October 17th, 2023.
2023? He had lost 5 years?
Vision had felt different since the moment he was rebooted. It was not an unpleasant feeling. Just… different. And that difference had not been more noticeable to him than it was in that moment.
This was because a part of him (the JARVIS part of him) was stunned with disbelief. Then that disbelief was gradually replaced with other sensations. It was as if the voice in his head (he was uncertain if the voice belonged to him or JARVIS) was screaming in the confusion of what could have happened, the guilt of not being there to prevent it and protect him, and the overwhelming grief of losing the closest thing he had to a family member. His father. Sir.
But that’s all it was: a voice in his head. Outwardly…
He felt nothing.
He absentmindedly wondered if that should worry him.
With the knowledge that Tony Stark was dead and therefore could not help him, Vision decided to find someone who could. As far as he knew, Dr Banner was still missing and he was strangely hesitant to seek out the help of Shuri. So perhaps he could attempt to help himself?
No, stay! Stay and ask these people what happened! Ask if they need help! Find the other Avengers! Find out how Mr Stark died!
He left New York.
He had the memories of who he had been. He was not the same. Using those differences he could try and piece together an explanation. The world did not need saving at present, which meant that Thanos had most likely been defeated. And as Vision had nobody and now nowhere to go to, he would just have to wait until the world needed him.
(“Just so we’re absolutely clear,” the man says, “you are to terminate Wanda Maximoff and neutralize The Vision by any means necessary. She’ll be powerful, so be careful. And The Vision will match you for every move you make. After that, you report back to me and wait for your next orders, understood?”
“Understood.” He affirms, and for the smallest of moments his voice sounds wrong.)
Yes, he will wait. He will be useful again. They will need him- who? Humanity or those that weaponised him? Who was the old Vision loyal to? Is he truly Vision anymore? Why doesn’t he care?- and until they do… he will wait.
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ryqoshay · 2 years
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Promptober-2021: Happy Life: How to Scare a Roommate
Primary Pairing: YohaRiko Rating: G Words: 625 Prompt: Prank Parent Fic: Happy Life Time Frame: Sometime earlier in the week, before Mari’s Halloween party, during Riko’s 2nd and Yohane’s 1st year in college
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Author’s Note: Entry for Oct 17th’s prompt
Summary: Someone is going to be scared
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Yoshiko’s heartrate spiked as she heard the sound of a key being slid into the door. The was the moment she had been waiting for.
The deadbolt retracted. Yoshiko crouched.
The knob turned. Yoshiko prepared to leap.
The door opened and…
“Graaahhh… eh?” Yoshiko came to a halt in the entryway. “Riri?”
Had Riko been so scared she was already running away down the hall?
“Riri?” Yoshiko poked her head out the door.
The hallway was empty. Riko was fast when scared, but not fast enough to reach the stairs before Yoshiko had made it to the door.
What the heck? Who opened the door?
What opened the door…?
Yoshiko swallowed. Wait, no. She shook her head. She was being ridiculous. There had to be a practical explanation. Surely…
“Kyaaa!” Yoshiko screamed as she turned to face… What the hell even was it?
The bulging, bloodshot eyes. The twisted mockery of a face. The fangs like those of a vampire. The shadowy cloak. The boney hands reaching for…
Yoshiko spun to retreat out the do…
“Kyaaa!” She screamed again.
There were two of them!
And she was between them. She was trapped in the entryway, in liminal limbo between panic and dread.
As figures moved closer still, dread began to win out and Yoshiko sunk to her knees. This was it, this was how she would leave this mortal realm and make her final decent into the bowels of Hell.
“Hehe…”
Eh?
More giggles.
Wait, she knew those voices.
“Riri? Mari?”
Masks were lifted to reveal grinning faces. Eyes of amber and honey gazed down at the girl on the floor.
“How did you two…?” Yoshiko asked, pulling off her own mask, realizing her prank lay in ruins.
“Yocchan gave me all the hints I needed with her messages.” Riko said, reaching down to offer a hand to help Yoshiko back to her feet. “Mari and I actually had this planned for a couple weeks.”
“We just needed Yohane to spring her own trap by letting us know when she was planning to attempt hers.” Mari explained.
“Then it was only a matter of getting home before Yocchan.” Riko smiled.
Yoshiko mentally put the pieces together. She knew Mari was in town for a Halloween party she was going to be hosting for the former idols of Aqours. She hadn’t realized she would be here this early, but that was easy to account for. Riko had likely hid in the music room as it was the least likely place Yoshiko would go when preparing her prank. But one puzzle piece was missing.
“The door?” She said aloud. “How did you open the door and get away so quick?”
Riko chuckled. “The apartment next door is vacant. Tanaka-san let us borrow a key to use it so Mari could hide.”
Wait, even the landlord was in on this?
Yoshiko felt a laugh shake her diaphragm. “You guys really went all out to get me, didn’t ya?”
“I learned from the best, Mari and my Yocchan.” Riko laughed as well.
Mari looked like she was about to add something when her stomach growled instead. “<Oh. I’m hungry.>” She said in English. “What are you two doing for dinner? Want to go out somewhere?”
“That sounds like a plan.” Yoshiko agreed.
“<Alright! Let’s go!>” Mari cheered, turning to leave the apartment.
“Uhm, Mari,” Riko spoke up “shouldn’t we change first?”
“Oh, alright.” Mari sighed, turning around again. “Though I doubt anyone would mind this time of year.”
As Mari headed for the bathroom to change, Riko and Yoshiko headed for Riko’s bedroom to do the same. All the while, Yoshiko pondered how she might get back at her former subgroup members. Mari would be difficult as she would likely be returning to Italy after the party. But she lived with Riko… perhaps she could move a spider or two somewhere Riko wouldn’t expect them?
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Author’s Note Continued: I know I’ve written a couple prank backfires in my time, but I like the idea, so here we go again.
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Off Schedule
Chapter 3
Summary: Slow burn. Brad Pitt is your boss and he is going through a divorce. Smut in later chapters. Warning: light flirting and touching Brad Pitt x Reader, Keanu Reeves x Reader
Any critiques to make me better are more than welcome.
Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7
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Mr.Pitt's clean cut look was replaced with a rugged beard, groomed to perfection. His hair longer, brushed back into a sleek pompadour. The only thing that hadn't changed was his style of dress. He still styled himself in tailored suits that cost more than your life.
He started taking meetings again, but his demeanor towards you hadn't changed. Things had not quite been the same since he blew-up at you and it seemed to be getting worse. He would only communicate with you via email. Anytime you called him he would ignore you. Whenever he passed your desk he wouldn't speak or look at you.
The days of you having the occasional conversation had ceased. You weren't best friends, but you had missed the interactions you used to have with him.
When you came back from lunch you noticed something on your desk. It was a post-it note with a flash drive attached. Picking it up you read it.
"10 binder color copies for the Clooney meeting." It was in Mr. Pitt's hand writing.
A written note had to be a step up from emails right? Maybe if you hadn't been to lunch he would have actually spoken to you. Doubt it.
He might have just thrown it at you and you would have to figure out what he wanted from context clues. Sighing you start up your laptop and shove the device in.
Looking at his calendar then back at the clock you freaked. The meeting was starting in 20 minutes. You pressed print on the keyboard and made a mad dash to the binding room.
Printing and binding would take some time so you would be cutting it close. Hopefully these were the kind of clients that didn't arrive early.
Thankfully the printer spit out your copies in record time and the binding machine didn't jam as it had been prone to do in the past. Checking the time you had 5 minutes to finish up and head to the conference room. So you high tailed it to the elevator to your destination.
When you hopped out the elevator on the 17th floor you saw Mr. Pitt and Reeves were standing outside of the conference room.  Cheerfully chatting amongst themselves before the clients arrived. What ever issue they had going on must have been resolved you thought to yourself. Maybe Mr. Pitt would go back to being his jovial self again or even speak to you. Turning your attention back to the task at hand you rush past them to the room to setup. Thankfully the clients hadn't arrived yet.
As you passed the two men your laces had freed themselves along the way. Your right foot jerked back hard as your left had caught the lace under its sole. The binders cascaded through the air as you descended to the floor.
You couldn't feel the pain that was most definitely pulsing through your knees. Because the embarrassment of the fall over shadowed it all. It was silent, but you knew they were looking at you. You scrambled on your bruising knees ignoring that fact to collect the scattered binders.
Mr. Reeves walked over to you and crouched down showing genuine concern while Mr. Pitt looked away. This was the second time this week he has seen your fruitless fight against gravity.
"You ok?" Mr.Reeves asked, hand out stretched to help you up. You took it and he guided you to your feet.
"Yeah" you giggled straightening your skirt "Gravity seems to be against me these days." You felt frazzled, but collected yourself.
You looked between the two men apologizing again before bending down to grab the last binder from the floor before heading into the conference room. The two men continued their conversation while you finished prepping the room.
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The first email you received upon the return to your station came from Molly in HR. She wanted to see you immediately.
‘Shit!’ Of course HR would want to see me today. Your knees had not yet forgiven you for falling on them so moving around the office was strenuous.
Calling Zoe, at reception, you told her you would be forwarding your phone while you stepped away for a bit. Mr. Pitt would be in the Clooney meeting for a while so you didn't bother notifying him of your whereabouts.
Then panic started to sink in. Was this it? Where you fired? Maybe Mr.Pitt planned to have you fired while he was in his meeting. Because he didn't want to be around when security watched you as you packed up your desk and escort you out of the building. He was very much annoyed when you called him the other day. And Tuesday, freaking Tuesday he really laid into you. Was he still angry? Your feet felt like lead as you took the elevator to the 3rd floor.
'Please don't fire me.Please don't fire me' you thought to yourself repeatedly.
Once you arrived you walked straight to Molly's office and knocked on her opened door. Looking up from her monitor she waved you in. "Please close the door and have a seat" Lacing her fingers she sighed as your heart sank.
This was it. The best job you ever had gone. Poof just like that. Au revoir your trip to Paris.
"You're probably wondering why you're here?" Molly asked.
You shook your head timidly.
"You're here because you've been violating our dress code."
"What" you blurted out noticeably confused.
Your daily outfits consisted of a button down blouse, pencil skirt and your black sneakers. Your color pattern always a mix of blacks, grays or whites. No outlandish color schemes and your skirts always came down to your knees. So upon this news you were thoroughly confused.
"It's your shoes dear." Molly said eyeing your sneakers then you.
"What? What's wrong with my shoes?" You try to explain. "There has never been a problem before. I've been wearing these for at least 5 years."
This whole thing was coming as quite the shock.
"There not professional. I've seen you trip on more than one occasion in those things.Are you trying to get workers compensation? Because you are well on your way." Molly joked and you pouted in response.
"Look this is just a warning, buy some more professional shoes like heels we pay you enough to afford at least one pair."
‘Great more money gone’
"I'll go shopping when I get off. Is that ok?" You grumbled. The dent to your wallet hurt, but a small price to pay to keep your job. Every penny you tried to save ended up being spent on one thing after another. By the time you Would be able to afford France you might be eligible for retirement.
"Thats fine, now this is your first warning I don't want to have to see you again."
With that she excused you from her office.
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Thankfully you were able to go shopping after work yesterday and pick up a pair of heels that were cheap and professional. Unfortunately you hadn't tried them on before you left the store. The box size was definitely the size you wore and when you first put them on this morning they felt fine.
It wasn't until your day truly got started that the cute little heels felt like they shrank in size. Every step you took felt like torture.
You were on your feet for the majority of the day. Running from your desk to various meetings and two torturous trips to Central Perk. The inside of the shoe rubbed against the side of your foot and scraped your Achilles heel. The pointed heels squished your toes so tightly together that you felt the circulation was being cut off.
Not to mention the constant click clapping sounds that came from the result of your heels slapping the tile.
Maybe you could ask Sarah or Zoe for advice on stealthier shoes.  
You needed a break, you felt exhausted. The only bright side of the day came from the fact that you hadn't tripped of fell once. Though you were a bit wobbly from time to time. Sitting at your desk you hunched over to take off one of the pain machines to rub and coddle your foot. You could feel a callus forming.
"Hey" a deep voice called from above.
Popping your head up from under your desk to stare into the face of Mr. Reeves.
"Oh! Hi Sir."
"You ok?" He asked.
"Oh yeah. Just breaking in my new shoes." You wiggled one of them in the air. "They are killing me right now." You say playfully.
He walked behind your desk and knelt before you. Your eyes rounded at the sight of it all.
Mr. Reeves grabbed your ankle and gently brought it towards him. Cupping your heel to examine it.
Placing the palms of his hands on the side of your foot he gently started pulling the right side forward while pushing the left side back. Repeating the twisting motion, working his hands from the toe to ankle.
"How are your knees doing? You took quite the spill yesterday." He inquired.
Oh my gawd what the hell? Is this really happening?
"Um.. they are a better than yesterday" you felt stiff.
You tried to gingerly pull away, but he wouldn't release you. So you sat there watching him. He looked up and smirked and you felt your face go hot. You couldn't breathe it felt so good yet so awkward.
He turned his focus back to your foot once he looked away you found it easier to breathe again. Mr.Reeves started to use his thumbs to stroke down each toe, you bit your bottom lip hard fighting back a moan.
Mr. Reeves moved to place his thumbs under the ball of your foot, he pushed his thumbs in a downward motion to your arches. He stroked you slowly again applying little pressure in just the right spots.
The pleasure of it all rippled through you and a moan slipped out. You slapped a hand over your mouth. He looked up at you again and lightly chuckled.
"Is that better?" He asked while he continued the massage. "Maybe you bought the wrong size? That might be why they are giving you so much trouble."
"I-I..ummm..th-they are my size...the box said soooo" you couldn't help the second moan when he applied more pressure. The magic of his fingers turned you to putty as you melted into your chair. His hand moved up from your foot to your leg. Gripping and kneading the calf muscle. Your head hit the back of your chair as you floated away. The warmth and firmness of his hands had you relaxed in ways you had never felt before.
When Mr. Pitts door opened you both hadn't noticed. Not until he cleared his throat. Your neck whipped in his direction. The compromising situation shot your body heat up boiling over with the embarrassment. Ripping your leg out of Mr.Reeves hands you spun in your chair to stare blankly at your computer screen.
"Hey. Ready to head out?" Mr. Reeves ask him as he rose from his knees. He gave you a cheeky smile, but you ignored it.
You could feel Mr. Pitt's eyes on the back of your head, but you refused to look back at him. You just pretended to look at something on your screen and play with your mouse until their voices faded in the distance.
You dared to look over your monitor and Mr. Pitt's eyes caught yours before the doors closed. His face stoic but his eyes seemed to burn with fury. You were in trouble you could feel it. You dreaded his return.
Chapter 4>>>>>
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